One-line rebuttals now available as flashcards for study or play
Posted on 9 January 2011 by ahaynes
Guest post by Anna Haynes
When countering climate contrarianism in our daily lives, those of us without - or caught without - our SkepticalScience App-equipped iPhones, Androids and Nokias must resort to using the human memory. Fortunately, with practice this can work reasonably well; and way to practice is to run through Skeptical Science's "climate myth" one-line rebuttals, in the form of cue-and-response flashcards at http://tinyurl.com/ssflashcards from Flash Card Exchange, a website for making and sharing flashcards for study. You can either "flip" through the cards online, or - if you're the old fashioned type - you can print them out for off-computer use. (Printing them isn't free, though, so I haven't tried it.)
If you do print out the flashcards, you could play Counter the Contrarian with your friends.
Here's a cue:

And here's your answer:

A caveat: the "one-liner" wording of the contrarian claims and one-line responses is often too concise to be optimal for flashcards, so some of them do look a little odd.

Arguments




























skepticalscience.com/sun
skepticalscience.com/natural
skepticalscience.com/consensus
skepticalscience.com/cooling
skepticalscience.com/models
skepticalscience.com/uhi
skepticalscience.com/1998
skepticalscience.com/lag
skepticalscience.com/good
skepticalscience.com/cosmic
skepticalscience.com/1934
skepticalscience.com/sealevelrise
skepticalscience.com/lia
skepticalscience.com/1970s
skepticalscience.com/empirical
skepticalscience.com/mwp
skepticalscience.com/settled
skepticalscience.com/acidification
etc.
Other than that, very helpful, thanks.
In fact, scientists will often present conservative estimates in order to be safe. You seem to be arguing that scientists should use the high end of their estimates, but that would cause many contrarians to cry "alarmist!"
e.g.
skepticalscience.com/sun => skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm
e.g.
sks.to/change => skepticalscience.com/climate-change-little-ice-age-medieval-warm-period.htm
But unfortunately (when you're Studying them online) you still can't click on the URL for the relevant SkS page, or even drag over the URL to copy it. A feature, say the flashcard folks; a bug, say I.