Why are there so few questions in this section these days?

Question

For a long time the number of open questions in the global warming section hovered around the 120 mark, peaking at about 200 when climate change was in the news (Copenhagen conference for example).

That number has been steadily declining and in recent weeks has been around the 80 mark.

The impression I get is that there is now considerably less participation from the skeptics and deniers than there used to be. Historically the majority of questions were from the skeptics with perhaps 50 open questions at any one time, at the moment there’s 11.

So I was wondering, why is there a marked decline in participation in this section? And is it just my perception or is much of this decline attributable to the skeptics and deniers not being as active as they were?

Answer 1

I've wondered about that too, and postulated about it a few times myself. I think there are several cogent observations in the answers so far, including media attention/big stories, the economic situation getting higher priority...school's out is certainly one I hadn't thought of.



Frankly though, I think while the quantity of questions has gone down, the quality has gone up. With the exception of a recent spate of silly questions by an apparently new participant or two, the questions and comments I have been seeing have been far more challenging, intetesting, informative and thought-provoking than what seemed to be the standard fare over the previous two and a half years that I have been here, trying to learn more about the topic.



It seems to me that people in denial about climate change have by and large dropped out and there are more people I would describe as skeptics...perhaps aggressively skeptical in many instances, but more issue-oriented than in the past, when one could count on at least a dozen or two questions a day about it being a hoax because Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite, it's cold in Poughkeepsie today so that proves nothing is happening, etc. etc. etc. My own non-scientific observation is that there is a lot less misinterpretation, oversimplification or even outright disinformation about the data and research...and far less of what I would describe as true alarmism-and have called the polar bear syndrome. You know, the world is going to end, Manhattan will be 70 feet underwater in 25 years and so on. I also think there is less 'you AGW fanatics are a bunch of communists' type of commentary and more focus on the underlying issue that lead to comments like that-the genuine concern that an already delicate economy might be undermined by poorly planned policies with unintended consequences or that draconian actions targeting individual citizens might be taken. I mean...those are legitimate concerns whenever governments tackles big problems, regardless of the political party in the leadership position.



Sure, there's still plenty of sniping and so on, but overall, I'm finding much more pertinent information and commentary here recently than in the past. I think people are calming down, getting more educated about the issue(s), and discussing them in a more educated fashion. I hope that isn't just my own wishful thinking talking, and that others have noticed the same thing.

Answer 2

CO2 Expeller asked a very similar question last week, but suggested perhaps the decline was indicative of a decrease in public concern about global warming. Wishful thinking on his part, perhaps.



My answer to him was that it would take further investigation to know the cause. You'd have to get a large sample size and determine how much the question rate has decreased, how much of the decrease comes from deniers, how much is due to new askers vs. the group of frequent participants in this section, etc.



I have noticed the decline, and like others my first guess is that it's due primarily to kids being on summer break. I have noticed a definite decrease in the number of denier questions, with the exception of Ottawa Mike, except that every so often there's a spike where deniers ask a bunch of questions all at once.



It's hard to explain. Perhaps the deniers burned themselves out on Climategate, and don't really have any 'exciting' talking points anymore. It's also northern hemisphere summer, so there isn't any cold weather for them to get excited about and claim disproves global warming. Perhaps it's because there's a bit of a lull in the US efforts to enact a climate bill. Perhaps the deniers are growing tired of being embarrassed in their Q&As on this site. Perhaps a combination of all these factors and more.



It may not be a coincidence that traffic on certain denier websites is also on the decline.

http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/23/blacklist-peak-readership-for-denier-blogs/



Whatever the reason, it wasn't long ago that I would look at the questions in this section and despite a page or two full of new questions, couldn't find one worth answering. It's nice that those days are over.



*edit* sadly there are a lot of Americans who think like Tomcat. We were headed towards an economic depression, which the stimulus prevented. But because we're still in a recession, they think it didn't accomplish anything. And they don't care that Bush created a massive deficit for no reason, but think President Obama is doing a terrible job for creating a deficit to stave of an economic depression.



Fortunately his claim that climate legislation isn't making progress is wrong. Democrats are rallying, they just haven't decided precisely which legislation to rally behind yet. But it's coming, probably this month.

Answer 3

My guess would be that the skeptics feel they have won for now, there does not appear to be any pressing issue with the current US Presidential administration, US Congress or the US Senate to press home any global warming relief legislation. The current US Presidential Administration just spent 1 trillion dollars on stimulus relief without anything to show from it, and is probably very concerned about getting reelected. Especially considering the political backlash of railroading the health care reform bill through. With the global economy on the edge of a meltdown, any talk of regulating US Industrial CO2 output would be political suicide. Nobody is really listening to the global warming crowd anymore, there are currently other much more pressing issues, at least that's what the latest polls indicate.

Answer 4

There have been some strange things going on in the older questions, I noticed last week while putting in some votes, there were many questions over week old that were still marked as 'tiebreaker' but they had clear winners I thought this strange and booked marked them and went back several days latter and they were still there. They just were not being closed correctly this seemed to be some sort of fault in the answers system and goes with several other comments I've seen lately about questions not appearing after they were asked and links not appearing in asked questions. I don't think the answerers people put that much effort into maintenance of this site.

Answer 5

I have not been here very long, so I cannot really reflect on the questioning patterns. The only suggestion I can give is that it's summer and many people might be on vacation right now.



I saw quite a few global warming questions in politics today, more than I usually do. It seems like recent political connections, i.e. the accusations against Gore, have led to people bringing up the subject (in a rather unintelligible way, but nonetheless).



As to the decline in skeptics/deniers, this lull will probably rectify itself when either:



- the Congressional investigation of Climategate comes to fruition

- a climate bill passes a committee or a house of Congress

- there's a surge in media discussion in general of global warming

Answer 6

I think that a number of people that were prolific question askers have dropped out or are laying low: Dr Jello, Didier/Randall, Richie, Meadow. The ones that are left that ask a lot are Dana, Ottawa Mike, you, hypnobunny and recently flossie has been asking the same question over and over again. Even BB-- who could be relied on for question after question that relied on a false initial clause--has decreased his output. Maybe some people have been banned from YA, certainly many should have been for the racist attitudes that you'd see here.



I'm planning on bailing out completely later in the year too, after I reach 7th level. It's actually a lot more fun in any of the science sections, because people usually are really trying to find something out. Honestly I don't find global warming to be a particularly interesting topic, either. I'd much rather talk about weather or other aspects of climate...or geology...or physics...or math... I only ventured into this section because I stumbled upon it and realized how much misinformation was being spread, and I felt a need to refute it.

Answer 7

I don't tend to ask many questions anyway, but when the weather starts to warm up here in the northern hemisphere, I'd rather be outside in my free time.

Answer 8

I have participated less in recently because I am busier with research rather than a lack of interest. As a consequence of a conversation I had 5 weeks ago with another scientist, we launched a new research collaboration that now includes scientists at 5 institutions.

Answer 9

admired Beverage: Mountain Dew admired Artist: Nightmare admired nutrition: pizza admired clothing kind: have not got one admired video pastime: Megaman X sequence admired television coach: demise word admired action picture: The Forbidden Kingdom

Answer 10

people are distracted because of the economic crisis - and with 100 trillion dollars of bad derivative debts, I'm not surprised (although most people, including the media, are not aware!)



act 2 of the financial crisis is yet to happen



globally, we can expect to see more social unrest, wars, ethnic conflict and violence - ironically, a depression is probably the best thing that could happen to the environment!

Answer 11

The number one reason why there are less questions these days is that school is out, and there were a lot of questions from kids wanting others to do their homework for them.



The other thing that I noticed is that if skeptics start asking a lot of questions, the eco religious fanatics become mental and start verbally abusing them. Many of them get fed up with this abuse and leave. If you notice Ottawa Mike is now getting a lot more abuse. Meadow F is also another person who received a lot of abuse and do not doubt that she left because of it.

Answer 12

You can only beat a dead horse for so long. And it still won't drink.



edit:



Yes, typically, when you pummel an erroneous argument into little bits, the purveyor of tripe eventually gets the message and slinks away with tail between legs. That's how life works. Or they get a talk show on Faux News.



In the upper levels of academia and business trying to pass a bad argument can cost you your reputation and/or career.



It's not ok to let bad information go unchallenged.

Answer 13

we"re becoming stupider?