Talk:Hollywood Global Warming

If there are further changes to this page that are solely political and have nothing to do with works or tropes, it will be reverted and locked.

As NotaBene says, there is a consensus, and changes to the article whose only purpose is to obscure or deny that are on the same level as revising Gravity Is a Harsh Mistress to dispute gravity because of Sokal's claims in "Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity". They will be treated as vandalism or trolling.

I'm going to need a citation on this.

The article as is is extremely soapboxy looking and seems to have been directly imported in that state.

Read the Wikipedia link. It was a hoax article created, deliberately opaque, to demonstrate that the journal to which it was submitted published not based on scientific merits but on politics. It basically said that gravity was not a fundamental element of the objective universe but a right-wing political structure inherent to the reactionary nature of "the so-called scientific method" and that a proper "liberatory science" and an "emancipatory mathematics" would reveal that gravity was entirely unnecessary in a "properly progressive" scientific model.

The point I was making was that one voice saying "no, you're wrong" doesn't make you wrong. It should make you look closer at your work to make sure you're right, but simple disagreement doesn't invalidate your point. Yes, there are scientists that dispute the interpretation of evidence for global warming. But they are in the vast minority, and many of them aren't climatologists. And they have yet to offer anything in the way of a hypothesis, let alone a working theory, to account for the observations without invoking a global warming trend. That is the requirement of science -- if you disagree, come up with a better explanation, and let its strength -- not the volume of your voices, or your political allies -- win the day for you. Until they do so, global warming is the accepted explanation.

Pretending there isn't a consensus because you don't like the implications, or because it conflicts with your holy book of choice, or with your personal prejudices, doesn't change the truth -- any more than me proclaiming that you are not a human being but a sapient koala bear will make you fuzzy and prone to chowing down on eucalyptus leaves.

Anyway, the point is -- if your edit is only about changing the politics of the article, it will be reverted and it will be locked to prevent an Edit War.

I meant a citation there is a consensus. I've only ever seen (and can find) this used by non-scientist politicians to shut down opposition, which wouldn't be needed if there actually was a consensus.

NASA has this to say on the subject:

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

"Multiple studies published in peer-reviewed scientific journals [1] show that 97 percent or more of actively publishing climate scientists agree: Climate-warming trends over the past century are extremely likely due to human activities."

That footnote says as follows:

J. Cook, et al, "Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming," Environmental Research Letters Vol. 11 No. 4, (13 April 2016); DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/11/4/048002

Quotation from page 6: "The number of papers rejecting AGW [Anthropogenic, or human-caused, Global Warming] is a miniscule proportion of the published research, with the percentage slightly decreasing over time. Among papers expressing a position on AGW, an overwhelming percentage (97.2% based on self-ratings, 97.1% based on abstract ratings) endorses the scientific consensus on AGW.”

That's actually a stronger statement than the article makes -- the article merely says that there is consensus that global warming is happening, but the peer-reviewed literature is in nearly unanimous agreement that human activity takes a central role. This is about as strong a consensus as any theory (I use that term in the scientific sense) can have.

Even with all that, it's easier to overturn climate change than, say, quantum physics -- no particle accelerators necessary, just find that global average temperatures are falling while greenhouse gases are rising. Anecdotally, some deniers made bets against climatologists several years ago that the Earth would do just that...and are losing. For example: http://www.reuters.com/article/climatechange-bets-idUSL8N1541LL, https://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=72

By the way, you cite Schrodinger's Cat as a theory that needed to be rewritten, when in fact it was originally a thought-experiment that Schrodinger hoped to use to show that quantum physics was wrong, and was himself proven wrong (i.e. quantum physics is quite well-supported experimentally, even though there is much philosophical debate over what it really means). It's not really true that quantum physics replaced or rewrote classical physics either. Newtonian physics is no less valid or useful than it was in Newton's day (maybe even more so, given the number of flying and orbiting objects we use these days); we've just found a few more terms in our models of reality.

(yawn) So the usual. "I agree with myself". Also:

> changing the politics of the article

Are we going to deny TVT (where the politicalness of the article is from) didn't have fairly slanted politics enforced? "There is a consensus so you can't argue it" doesn't strike me as a solid reason to keep a very soap boxy article description (indeed, science is actually quite proud to admit even the most basic stuff isn't possible to "prove", just the explanation that works with current data. Several fields have had to be re-written because someone found the underlying theories were shown to be wrong, with Schrödinger's Cat being the most famous.). It's a lot closer to an essay than a trope description and I can't see any reason it shouldn't be cut down.

Regardless of anyone's beliefs on the matter, the warning remains. If it looks like an edit war is in the offing, the article will get locked. And that's all that matters.

Because it's pretty clear that no one is going to be convinced by anyone else.

I've had some time to think about this discussion.

As a short-term measure, I've put a cite about the consensus on the main page.

As a long-term measure, I propose that we rename this page to "Hollywood Global Warming" to make it more clear what we're discussing - fiction. In the process, we would remove most of the real-world information (leaving just a statement that there is a scientific consensus that it exists and inviting people to read the Wikipedia article on the matter), and hang a "No Real Life Examples" tag on the end of the description.

Alternately, we could keep the real-world information, ditch the information about fictional examples, and hang a "Useful Notes" tag on the page.

Would either of these be a good idea?

> leaving just a statement that there is a scientific consensus that it exists and inviting people to read the Wikipedia article on the matter),

Isn't it superfluous? I mean, Wikipedia can supply all the oxymorons one may need (starting right with its tagline) on its own, probably including this one.

Anything that gets this drama to end has my vote.

I think it's fair to do both. A nod to the consensus on "HGW" (i.e. AGW is real, but its effects almost certainly will not be as spectacular as portrayed), and a link to a Useful Notes page with the details.

On the other, part of me wonders if a Useful Notes page is necessary. Climate change is certainly notable, but are there lots of tropers interested in writing fiction who think "gee, my novel could use a plot point related to climate change"?

Do we really need a useful notes page to go with a rename? Rename and cut the soapboxing sounds fine to me.

If there is a link, it most definitely shouldn't be to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is even more nakedly corrupt than TVT is (TVT isn't sitting on millions of dollars and claiming to be broke every year and it hasn't tried to get journalists fired for questioning them even slightly) and there's a reason it can't be cited in anything remotely serious.

> Rename and cut the soapboxing sounds fine to me.

Would solve the problem.

I'm going to leave this open until either we get replies saying it's a bad idea, or I get time to do the re-write work (which should be two days from now).

The two days have passed. Time for the re-write.