Thread by @AutumnMandrake

Sigh. Right-wing conservatives really are welded to their science denial.

https://twitter.com/StormSignalSA/status/1172459834131828743

Let's start from the beginning. W Jackson Davis is an emeritus whose work on "alternative" theories to human-caused climate change garners almost no scientific credibility.

1/13

Davis is moderately recognised though for being a useful agent of the climate science denial movement. Heartland, WUWT, Curry, and those of similar ilk (including the posters here) happily jump on his work without critical appraisal.

2/13

The Davis paper to which StormSignal linked above garnered very professional little attention, in part because it is a very crude and severely limited analysis, and hence it holds little of notable scientific merit. Let me list some of the issues...

3/13

1. Davis does not in any part of his analysis consider the impact of major astronomical paleoclimate forcings such as variations of solar output (including the issue of a faint young sun), nor does he consider the input of Milanković cycles.

4/13

2. Likewise, Davis completely ignores terrestrial paleoclimate forcings including vulcanism, and albedo differences that arise from the hugely significant arrangement of the continents that occur as a result of plate tectonics.

5/13

3a. Davis also ignores the well recognised fact that CO₂ has been long understood to act as a feedback in climate shift processes, rather than as a forcing, because of the manner in which it interacts with the hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere in a natural setting.

6/13

3b. Warming is occurring now because a factor that previously operated as a feedback has been artificially altered by human activity, overwhelming the mechanisms that used to moderate its atmospheric levels and causing CO₂ to instead act as a forcing. Davis ignores this.

7/13

3c. Whilst Davis himself ignored the difference between a forcing and a feedback, no one in in the profession of climatology expected there to be a direct correlation between CO₂ and temperature over geological time, on the scale at which Davis attempted to identify such.

8/13

3c. Whilst Davis ignored the difference between a forcing and a feedback, no one in in the profession of climatology would have expected there to be a direct correlation between CO₂ and temperature over geological time on the scale at which Davis attempted to identify it.

8/13

4. Aside from the scientific limitations of the paper, there’s the issue that some MDPI journals have been ‘relaxed’ about some of the papers that they publish. There is very likely a reason why Davis published in this journal and not in one of the higher ranked outlets.

9/13

The preceding issues aside, there’s also the elephant-in-the-room comment that Davis himself makes in a subsequent paper where he references this one. It’s extremely telling that no one in the denial movement ever mentions it: I’ll let Davis speak for himself...

10/13

Davis says: “Peaks in atmospheric CO₂ concentration in the ancient climate [3] coincide closely with peaks in past mass extinctions [83], mediated perhaps by acidification of ocean water [84,85]...”

11/13

“… Therefore, irrespective of the source of the contemporary global warming signal, and subject to further research, limiting anthropogenic CO₂ emissions through existing and new international policy instruments such as the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change…”

12/13

“… and the evolving Paris Climate Accords, respectively, may prove essential to preventing human-induced mass extinction of biodiversity.”

Enough said.

And for those interested, some references:

mdpi.com/2225-1154/6/1/…

skepticalscience.com/co2-higher-in-…

tamino.wordpress.com/2019/04/15/ice…

13/13

@threadreaderapp unroll.

@threadreaderapp Bah, I wondered why there were 13... 🤪

I'm too tired to fix it. I'll just note that the duplicated post is particularly salient, and therefpre worthy of repetion anyway.

😴💤🛌