Talk:Patrick Moore (consultant)

Dealing with the usual bias on Wikipedia

This article, like most politically tinged articles on Wikipedia, is biased, and needs to be fixed. Whoever you people are who tolerate this bias are doing the world a radical disservice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.150.170.65 (talk) 16:22, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

• Could you highlight the passages in the article that appear to be problematic? Thanks, --Hammersoft (talk) 18:51, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

You are confusing science with politics. Climate change denial is not just a political opinion, it is a pseudoscience motivated by a political opinion. --Hob Gadling (talk) 04:54, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Addition: That is what the reliable sources say - the scientific ones quoted in the article Climate change denial. If you disagree with them, that is your problem, not ours. Please read WP:FALSEBALANCE and WP:LUNATIC. --Hob Gadling (talk) 19:05, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Climate change "denial" is an attempt to impose guilt by association on climate skeptics by comparing them to Holocaust deniers. This is unacceptable in an NPOV article. I changed "Denial" to "Skepticism". 75.25.160.162 (talk) 04:35, 17 February 2021 (UTC)Larry Siegel

Your opinion is not relevant. "Denial" is the term used by scientists, so it is the term used by Wikipedia. --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:53, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Denial is not a scientific term, even when used by a scientist. Damorbel (talk) 19:07, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

Even if that were true, so what? You want to delete all words that are not "scientific terms"? But climate change denial is an actual phenomenon, and we have WP:RS saying this guy is part of it. End of story. --Hob Gadling (talk) 04:05, 19 June 2022 (UTC)

Go away. --JBL (talk) 12:03, 17 February 2021 (UTC)

Agree. But we assume good faith here. They don't realise the consequences of their actions. (Or maybe we are wrong ourselves.)

But the best way to address this is to create an account and start contributing. Don't do that to express your own POV here, that's counterproductive. Instead learn our policies etc (which are not perfect but the best we have, and normally when they fail it's because they are not followed rather than because they are) and then improve Wikipedia. Drop me a line on my talk page if I can help. Andrewa (talk) 18:20, 11 March 2020 (UTC)

More CO2

Hi Peter Gulutzan. The section of Snopes that I thought was relevant comes at the end: "As Moore states, it is true that CO2 is a crucial building block of life that provides the raw material for plants to grow. This, in turn, provides animals with food and oxygen. However, such an observation, which you can find described in any middle-school science textbook, does not infringe upon the fundamental, physical truth that higher concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere will warm the planet." Is that not relevant to the sentence in the article? Firefangledfeathers 18:25, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Your edit added a cite to Alex Kasprak at snopes.com at the end of this sentence: "He has falsely claimed that there is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide contributes to climate change." That passage which you're quoting is not saying that he made such a claim, and not attempting to refute it. So I don't agree that is relevant. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:44, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

Fair. Firefangledfeathers 19:10, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

The adverb "falsely" is biased language.

"He has falsely claimed that there is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide contributes to climate change." The sentence should read: "He has claimed that there is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide contributes to climate change." There is also improper use of the reference attached to that statement as "proof" of this wrongness. I don't know how to edit it, but perhaps someone else can. 118.211.231.92 (talk) 05:16, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree. There is no mention in David Icke's article that his claim the world is run by shape-shifting lizard people is false. This article is no different. When you say an obviously false claim is false, you ironically give it more credibility. TFD (talk) 05:36, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Icke is different because very few people would even consider his ideas to be true. For climate change, that is not the case: the disinformation campaign of people like Moore has been successful. The IP who started this thread obviously agrees with Moore's false claim and thinks that removing the "false" would be desireable because it would give his claims more credibility. Indeed, the word "false" makes it more clear that it is false. You say the opposite, so you actually do not "agree". --Hob Gadling (talk) 06:05, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

Reasonably informed rational people do not doubt the reality of climate change. OTOH they don't appreciate being lectured to and told what to believe. While the polemical style is unlikely to make them doubt the reality of global warming, it will make them doubt the veracity of claims made about Moore, sensing that the authors have a clear bias against him.

The relevant policy is Wikipedia:TONE: "BLPs should be written responsibly, cautiously, and in a dispassionate tone, avoiding both understatement and overstatement. Articles should document in a non-partisan manner what reliable secondary sources have published." I don't think that most reputable sources would use the current phrasing. TFD (talk) 15:00, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

I have asked other editors to comment at NPOVN. TFD (talk) 22:44, 14 May 2023 (UTC)

the authors have a clear bias against him That is not something reasonably informed rational people would think. It is something disinformed people who already agree with Moore would think, or people who adhere to the dogma that one should never express a standpoint. Both are unlikely to learn anything, regardless of what we write, so their reaction does not matter much. Reasonably informed rational people think instead "yes, obviously that claim is false. I know that." They are aware that lots of information they get is redundant to their own knowledge, and that it is intended to inform less reasonably informed, less rational people. --Hob Gadling (talk) 10:50, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

So you think that most people don't know that climate change is supported by scientific evidence and think that every article that mentions it is a good place to lecture readers. Sounds pretty polemical to me. It sounds more like what an opposition PAC would write than a serious article. TFD (talk) 11:58, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

There was an episode of Judge Judy where a litigant said "She's lying your honor!" And Judge Judy asked, "Can't you just say she's wrong?" A better tone doesn't change the meaning, it just makes it less emotional. TFD (talk) 12:03, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

you think that most people don't know that climate change is supported by scientific evidence I have no idea where you got that. You need to reexamine your logic.

Do I really have to explain why the "lying" - "wrong" difference has no implications for the current case? It seems to me you are grasping at straws. --Hob Gadling (talk) 12:53, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

If you think most people know that climate change is supported by evidence then you are being condescending to them.

The example from Judge Judy shows that words that have the same meaning can have different connotations.

I notice that the tone of the article Elizabeth Holmes is neutral, although she made false claims about medical devices she was selling. And unlike this article, a reasonably informed reader would not know they were ineffective unless they were told about them. It still conveys her effectively even if it doesn't contain lots of hyperbole. TFD (talk) 13:54, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

If you think most people know that climate change is supported by evidence then you are being condescending to them. I already said that I never said I think that: I have no idea where you got that. You need to reexamine your logic. I made not even one statement about how popular those positions are. So, enough with the strawman arguments already. But even if I had said that, the logic that followed your strawman is twice invalid: there is no reason why opinions about popularity of opinions are "condescending", and even if they were, opinions are (or should be) based on good reasoning and not on considerations about whether people will think them "condescending".

Since you crammed three easily-spotted mistakes into one sentence, any discussion with you is necessarily fruitless, and I do not need to read the rest of your incoherent rambling. --Hob Gadling (talk) 14:29, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

I agree that "falsely" is biased language, and also omniscient language, and therefore not encyclopedic. If a real encyclopedia were reporting on the flat-earth society, for instance, it would merely report facts, that is, that this organization has this opinion, or holds this position, which is that the earth is flat. No encyclopedia would say,"the flat-earth society falsely claims that the earth is flat." This is not because the reader might mistakenly think that the earth is flat, or that using "falsely" would give it either more or less credibility, but rather that the role of an encyclopedia is to report on what is, and in that case, the what-is is, that the flat-earth society thinks that the earth is flat, and here are the arguments they present. Then there might be a cross-reference to an article which suggests a different point of view, or a comment that this goes against the mainstream scientific opinion, but to use the world "falsely" puts the writer in the position of the omniscient observer, as they say in high-school English class, which is not the language of an encyclopedia. The same is true of the sentence that starts with, "These views are contradicted by the scientific consensus..." The word "contradicted" is also a word that puts the author in the position of claiming omniscience, which is not appropriate for an encyclopedia. Contraverse (talk) 17:36, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Do not blindly throw text at random positions. It looked as is if TFD had responded to your contribution. I moved it to the correct place.

Established facts should be handled like established facts, not like opinions. --Hob Gadling (talk) 07:24, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

That wording was mentioned in an earlier thread but was not the main subject. It's worse than that. The cite is of Climate Feedback. That group-blog post starts with a quote of Mr Moore's statement and a link to Instagram but when I followed the link I didn't see that statement, so context if any is unknown. And don't be misled by the site's list of reviewers -- its "scientists' feedback" sections are prefaced by "[Comment from a previous evaluation of a similar claim.]" i.e.those are not responses to Mr Moore's statement -- only the editor's comments are a response. In any case the quote, if valid, is about lack of proof that CO2 causes, not lack of evidence that CO2 contributes. So better to remove the whole sentence. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 14:22, 14 May 2023 (UTC) Update: I realize now that the Instagram comment might be somewhere on an accompanying video which won't play on my machine. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 13:27, 15 May 2023 (UTC)

How is it "biased" if its completely true? Leave the word in there and ignore the other IP. 73.68.72.229 (talk) 12:44, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

PhD in Ecology or Forestry, again

Sbelknap on 23 July 2024 added that the PhD was in Ecology. Safrolic on 17 November 2024 changed saying it was in Forestry. Recalling the talk page 2019 thread PhD in Ecology or Forestry? I have restored the wording as of before 23 July 2024. Peter Gulutzan (talk) 18:06, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

Would you be so kind as to explain your reasoning here? I've read through the 2019 thread; I don't get it. Surely, it must be possible to describe his PhD field of study in some way that will satisfy all engaged editors! sbelknap (talk) 03:11, 22 April 2025 (UTC)