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Climate change denial

• Articles for deletion/Climate change denial
• Articles for deletion/Climate change denial (2nd nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Climate change denial (3rd nomination)
• Articles for deletion/Climate change denial (4th nomination)

Climate change denial (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log • AfD statistics)

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This is an obvious POV fork. A screen shot of this article should be used to illustrate Misplaced Pages policy on POV forks. JohnWBarber (talk) 05:38, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Delete as POV fork. Sole Soul (talk) 05:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep - The industry-funded denial of climate change has been documented both in the popular press and in academic studies. Guettarda (talk) 05:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Simply clicking on the Google Scholar link reveals a wealth of publications on this topic. Guettarda (talk) 05:49, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
    • WP:WIKILAWYERING, Clauses 2, 3, and 4. It's an encyclopedia. Not an op-ed page. We all know exactly what's the matter with basing an article on a point of view. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 05:57, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
      • Based on a point of view? All else aside, when people have actually published peer reviewed articles examining the phenomenon (e.g., McCright & Dunlap 2003 Social Problems 50(3): 348-373) it's a little more than a "point of view". Guettarda (talk) 06:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
        • WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS some of it by scholars. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 06:36, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
          • Mmm, no. Stop linking to essays. The relevant policy here is Misplaced Pages:Notability. There's more than enough to demonstrate the notability of this topic. Guettarda (talk) 07:08, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
            • Mmmm, yes. Stop wikilawyering. The relevant policy here is WP:POVFORK: "A point of view (POV) fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts." There's more than enough to demonstrate the POV nature of this fork. The industry-funded denial of climate change has been documented both in the popular press and in academic studies. The government-funded academic promotion of the idea of global warming has been documented in numerous reliable sources. Be careful what principles you base your POV fork article on -- they're just as useful for the other side. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 15:10, 3 March 2010 (UTC)added comment -- JohnWBarber (talk) 15:14, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
              • The government-funded academic promotion of the idea of global warming has been documented in numerous reliable sources. - Name three. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 15:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  My full response, with quotes, is on the talk page, because this is a tangent and I don't want to distract from the main issue. But here are three sources that are at least as good as the ones used in this article, and they could be used to create the same kind of POV fork:

  ONE:: Wall Street Journal 2/26/10 (get it before it goes behind the subscription wall )

  TWO:: The Guardian 2/10/10:

  THREE:: The Times of London 11/29/09: What those emails suggested, however, was that Jones and some colleagues may have become so convinced of their case that they crossed the line from objective research into active campaigning.

  -- JohnWBarber (talk) 18:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  Sorry, this must have been a misunderstanding. I was talking about sources about "the government-funded academic promotion of the idea of global warming". --Stephan Schulz (talk) 18:27, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  Sorry, you don't get to choose your facts. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 18:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Snow Keep Nothing has changed since last three Keeps; nomination is apparent retaliation for an apparent drama fork from Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Climate change exaggeration PhGustaf (talk) 05:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Why PhG! Mustn't WP:ABF! I actually voted to delete that one, too. How did you stand on that one...? -- JohnWBarber (talk) 05:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
    • Why PhG! An apparent drama fork!?! Who's personalizing the discussion on this page and who's moving the discussion toward policy, facts and reasoning? You're trying to counter an intellectually consistent position with a (second) personalized accusation. Why not discuss the actual subject? -- JohnWBarber (talk) 19:06, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Request: Would everybody who votes differently on keeping or deleting this article vs. Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Climate change exaggeration please note why they voted differently? It'll save us all the trouble of going back to see what you said there. And please be WP:CIVIL: Instead of telling other editors that they're hypocrites, ask them how their position on one article squares with the other. They'll either have a good explanation or they won't. Believe me, everyone will get the picture. Here's my vote there. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 06:13, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
  • Yes, please do be civil. Your reply to my comment is anything but. Guettarda (talk) 06:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
    • There's nothing uncivil in pointing out the weakness at the core of your argument. I eagerly await your scolding editors below for calling this a WP:POINTy nomination. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 15:20, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. —LadyofShalott 06:14, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Environment-related deletion discussions. —LadyofShalott 06:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep per Guettarda. A well known and well documented movement and an established article. Far more than just a concept. I have voted differently on climate change exaggeration. I am not aware of a similar well established climate change exaggeration movement therefore I strongly believe that the article on exaggeration is a POV fork. Also please note CCD is not the opposite of CCE and it does not need to somehow be weighed against it for balance. Polargeo (talk) 06:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. I had a look at merging the article with climate change consensus but came to the conclusion it really did cover a different topic and didn't fit in well. To compare with 'exaggeration' you'd need to show there was a campaign by some companies to exaggerate climate change to promote their own sectional interests and which have nothing to do with the science. I think the problem causing these AfDs is that the term 'denial' has also been used to label skeptics so if you can find a better term a rename might be reasonable. Dmcq (talk) 06:52, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Strong Keep.. as per others, nothing has changed from the last AfD's, and this nomination seems to have a WP:IDONTLIKEIT character, as well as a (poorly thought out) WP:POINT to stall the AfD at CCE. As opposed to the CCE article: This article is well-defined, has a wide variety of reliable sources that explain and describe the subject directly, all of which documents the notable character of the subject. It doesn't take a stand, but describes what secondary reliable sources state about the subject (as opposed to being a coatrack for POV) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 06:56, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
  • to stall the AfD at CCE Why Kim, your bad faith assumption is showing. I voted to delete the other article. Which I would also like deleted. Because I want it deleted. Can't be deleted fast enough for me. <knock><knock> Hello. Hello! ... Am I getting through yet ...? Hello? -- JohnWBarber (talk) 15:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep notable and verifiable. Previous AfDs have shown it not to be a POV fork. Suggest speedy close. -Atmoz (talk) 07:17, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Well sourced, relevant, notable. Article has survived three previous WP:IDONTLIKEIT nominations, and the nomination appears to be a WP:POINT and WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS nomination from the Climate change exaggeration deletion nomination, as suggested by the nominator's above request and comments on the other nomination page. Framing Climate change exaggeration and Climate change denial as equals goes against WP:UNDUE, and we don't have a Holocaust exaggeration article for good reason. StuartH (talk) 07:28, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Delete - Well sourced, relevant, notable, verifiable--and also a POV fork against policy. If there is "industry-funded denial of climate change" and a "well known and well documented movement", Misplaced Pages requires that movement be described neutrally. "Denial" is not neutral, and this article's framing of the discussion appears to me to be non-compliant. Incidentally, since each person gets one equal vote here, Strong Keep carries the exactly same weight as Keep, does it not? If I am mistaken, please note my vote is actually Super-Double Plus Mega-Delete With No Touchbacks. --DGaw (talk) 07:32, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

The comments here aren't "votes" exactly; whoever closes the discussion is charged to consider the merits more than the number of the arguments. But you're right in that Strong is unhelpful. PhGustaf (talk) 07:43, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

It is just an expression of the user's feelings. Snow Keep is not generally considered acceptable anymore :) Polargeo (talk) 08:50, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Rename - would be better under the heading of Skepticism of climate change, "denial" makes the article seem biased towards proponents of climate change. --Crablogger (talk) 08:16, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep, pointy and pointless nomination. Agree with Guettarda, Atmoz and Polargeo. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 09:08, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep — topic is well sourced in media, and there are also many scholarly papers that mention it (eg , and Heavyweight attack on climate-change denial Current Biology, Volume 15, Issue 4, Pages R109-R110) as well as books (eg Climate Change Denial Alphascript Publishing, 2009, ISBN 613004514X ). ► RATEL ◄ 10:07, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Alphascript publishing just reprints wikipedia articles. Calliopejen1 (talk) 13:55, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Keep Bad faith nomination due to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Climate change exaggeration. ScienceApologist (talk) 15:42, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Speedy keep on two counts. First, frivolous nomination. Nominating an article for AFD so you can gather evidence to accuse people of hypocrisy is WP:POINT to the max. (And no, I'm violating WP:AGF, since (1) this was the nominator's stated intention (see diff), and (2) he/she already asked people how their votes here compare to their votes there.) Second, this is an article that has already been here (three times) and this AFD presents absolutely no new evidence to support its deletion. — DroEsperanto (talk) 16:00, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  Uh, how do you get around the fact that it's a WP:POVFORK created to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts.? I, ah, did mention that at the top of this page. Minor detail? -- JohnWBarber (talk) 18:11, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

See the first three AFDs for an explanation. Simply repeating claims against which there has demonstrably been a consensus is not a valid AFD argument.— DroEsperanto (talk) 19:21, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Comment - this nomination was made in bad faith to make a point about another AfD. Not all criticisms are equally noteworthy, and if some editors were to finally come to understand that, this topic area would be much less tense than it is now. Tarc (talk) 16:23, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  And thank you so much Tarc for doing your part to reduce tensions with your accusation of bad-faith. It's so reassuring to see our recent differences at AN/I and ArbCom couldn't possibly have colored your reaction to my wanting both articles deleted. If we did move from personalities to substance, however, we might note that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS has this interesting statement in it: In consideration of precedent and consistency, though, identifying articles of the same nature that have been established and continue to exist on Misplaced Pages may provide extremely important insight into general notability of concepts, levels of notability (what's notable: international, national, regional, state, provincial?), and whether or not a level and type of article should be on Misplaced Pages. In other words, issues about one article may naturally bring up important insight into articles of the same nature. Whether or not that applies to notability or POV, the implication is obvious: We want the same considerations used fairly in treating the same issues involving similar articles. That's what the spirit of WP:NPOV and WP:POVFORK is all about. We all know that. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 18:40, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  You have a seriously flawed understanding of WP:NPOV...a trait that shared with the creator of Climate change exaggeration, interestingly enough. It is a simplistic, black-and-white approach of "if the Misplaced Pages will allow no criticism of A, then there can be no criticism of B". You place !A and !B on exactly equal footing, but with this topic, that simply is not the case. Much of this is rather similar to the drive last year to ram fringe criticism into the Bill Ayers article. You didn't get the point then, and don't get the point now. Tarc (talk) 18:55, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  Well, you're getting better, Tarc, but you still haven't got that discuss the edits, not the editor thing quite down yet, or even stick to the topic, have you? Try to keep working on that. To address the substance: In a political debate, which is primarily what this article is about, you strive to emphasize balanced coverage and you scrutinize sources. Tellingly, the first four footnotes are from op-ed articles and much of the rest of the coverage is from a Newsweek article, from a magazine known for its bias. Look at who's covered and quoted in the article: It's all negative. Even the Luntz comments are presented as if there's something sinister in a political operative suggesting that his clients do a good job in making their case. There is industry lobbying in every political debate that involves industry. That there are special interests involved in this debate is no more important here than in any other political debate, and it would be a rare subject where Misplaced Pages devotes even a whole section of an article to that kind of topic, never mind a whole article -- so what's so different about industry machinations here? There is certainly a time to simply follow what reliable sources say, but that doesn't mean we remove our own editorial judgment from the process. The importance of industry lobbying should be weighed against other influences on public opinion and public policy in this debate. The crack-up over at the CRU and the string of embarassments over at the IPCC are bigger factors that most reliable sources are citing for the recent meltdown in public support for climate-change legislation. Unlike this POV fork, those are subjects around which we could (theoretically) craft fair, NPOV articles. The purpose of this article seems to be to advance a political position -- to smear the opposition by tainting it as corrupt. Most opposition to the AGW consensus is not corrupt, so we shouldn't have a whole article meant just to emphasize that. The newspaper article links I've provided near the top of this page (expanded version on the talk page) show that two sides can play at that game, because there's plenty of corruption (of various types) to go around. We should not be examining the faults of one side in depth while ignoring the faults within the other side -- certainly not in our choice of what article subjects to have in the encyclopedia. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 19:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

  TL;DR. Cobbling together a few disparate stories to craft the "exaggeration" article is not at all comparable to an article on those who deny a broad scientific consensus on global warming. Apples and oranges. Tarc (talk) 19:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Keep. In light of Climate change consensus, Climate change denial is an appropriate subject discussed by a number of WP:RS sources.

Global-Warming Deniers: A Well-Funded Machine, Newsweek.

Resisting Change: Global Warming Deniers, Newsweek.

The Psychology of Climate Change Denial, Wired.

Now climate change denial is a psychological condition, The Australian.

Climate change denial is the new article of faith for the far right, The Guardian.

Denying Climate Change, Outlook India.

Etc. — Rankiri (talk) 16:47, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

WP:RS is not an adequate answer to objections based on WP:POVFORK. Probably almost all POV forks have reliable sourcing. I mention near the top where there are reliable sources essentially calling climate scientists political campaigners. Is that worth an article? Do we create articles on all POV-based subjects if we can find reliable sources -- especially ones with their own bias? If you allow it in one case, you'll find it cropping up in some other, very uncomfortable cases. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 18:18, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Please read WP:POVFORK#What content/POV forking is not. I see no evidence that the article in question is a POV fork. — Rankiri (talk) 18:23, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oh, I did read it. Here's your evidence:

1. WP:POVFORK: Lead paragraph: A point of view (POV) fork is a content fork deliberately created to avoid neutral point of view guidelines, often to avoid or highlight negative or positive viewpoints or facts Examples from the article: (a) First eight words: Climate change denial is a term, generally pejorative (b) Second sentence emphasizes the pejorative nature of the term (which is essential to it, or the title would replace that word with "opposition") by quoting only left-wing opinion columnists: Journalists and newspaper columnists including George Monbiot and Ellen Goodman, among others, have described climate change denial as a form of denialism. This is reliable sourcing? This is NPOV treatment? (c) First sentence of second paragraph emphasizes corrupt motives of those who are "denialists": activist George Monbiot states that he reserves it for those who attempt to undermine scientific opinion on climate change due to financial interests. If that were the common understanding of the term, then we'd be committing WP:BLP violations left and right by calling almost anyone a "climate change denier", and yet this is how the second paragraph of the article opens. There's more, but this shows how the article highlight negative ... viewpoints. It could be edited out, but you wouldn't have much to replace it with -- it really is the nature of the term to be pejorative in one way or another. The rest of the second paragraph is a vague comment with a bunch of footnotes attached.
2. From the first sentence in the section you link to: Note that meeting one of the descriptions listed here does not mean that something is not a content fork – only that it is not necessarily a content fork.
3. I think this is what you're getting at: Different articles can be legitimately created on subjects which themselves represent points of view, as long as the title clearly indicates what its subject is, the point-of-view subject is presented neutrally, and each article cross-references articles on other appropriate points of view. (a) No. 1, above, shows the subject is not presented neutrally. (b) Several commentators have compared climate change denial with Holocaust denial, though others have decried those comparisons as inappropriate. That's kind of like saying, Some say that Barack Obama is "The Anti-Christ". Others have decried the claim. With a bunch of footnotes after each. Holocaust denial. Holocaust denial. It's a smear with footnotes. (c) The three longest sections of the article are about industry efforts. The longest section in the article is titled "Connections to the tobacco lobby". Something tells me that the subject of that section isn't quite so important in the overall picture of the denialist POV. In fact, all this emphasis on industry machinations is an effort to prove that denialism is mostly not a POV but simply a special interest. There is something about the business interests for Misplaced Pages to cover, but not that much.

You wanted evidence of how WP:POVFORK applies to the article. Now you've got it. Removing the offending parts would get you a section-sized stub that belongs in another article (and probably is already there, I haven't looked). -- JohnWBarber (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

• Keep per my earlier comments. Tarc (talk) 19:59, 3 March 2010 (UTC)
• Keep. Bad faith, tendentious nomination. Climate change denial covers a notable and well-documented topic, i.e. the issue of denialism as it applies to climate change, just as Holocaust denial and AIDS denialism cover denialism as it applies to those issues. The nominator's disruptive WP:POINT-scoring is a significant violation of the article probation regime in this topic area, but that's best dealt with elsewhere. -- ChrisO (talk) 20:35, 3 March 2010 (UTC)

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