Joanne Nova, an Australian writer, publishes skeptical commentary on climate science, climate policy and, more recently, Covid and vaccines.
HN commenters link it to support claims on Antarctic ice, CO2, prescribed burns and Covid in Mexico, and others push back on those claims.
I had a look at his. The problem with this (and similar seen) is they pick very specific things, and attempt to make this as an argument against the whole.
In this video for example, they mention a few times the 'missing satellite data' conspiracy from the 70's. You know we only put a man on the moon in '69 right? And they were using slider rulers still then. While I acknowledge this be wrong it seems entirely realistic to decide systems before then were inaccurate and focus on reliable data from '79.
And if you look at longer sea ice data below, you can see this increase during the 70's is still part of a long term decline. So this video is selecting a small upward increase and making it out NASA avoided this period when the video creators could seem they are doing the exact same thing, avoiding previous period data to make theirs agree with a point. See below longer data.
Arctic sea ice data: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-piecing-together-arctic-sea-ice-history-1850
I find the more interesting skeptics look at holistic weather patterns at geological time frames. Something like this article which seems to have some merit to my limited knowledge. Thought the weakness (flaw?) seems they merge geological time frame to the current short term as though changes were this rapid. So sure a 4C temp swing doesn't seem much against millions of years of fluctuation, but our change in happening in 100 years and we dont have a clue where it will go in 10,000 years type…
The IPCC, being a UN body of government appointed scientists, economists etc, consistently take an overly conservative view
No, IPCC predictions have been wrong/over-aggressive in the past. Their 1990 long range predictions can be compared against the present now and are 40% out:
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/05/the-ipcc-1990-far-predictions-were-wrong/
People have a tendency to cherry pick predictions that worked out or which assert a requirement for even more panic, whilst ignoring predictions that didn't work out (of which there are many).
Your argument is basically unfalsifiable: scientists must be listened to because they all agree (itself a dubious or false claim), but the internationally agreed consensus must not be listened to because it's "bland" and influenced by people who might disagree (but who in the end endorsed the report anyway).
It appears that evidence is only accepted as legitimate if it's more alarming than past evidence: how could this argument ever ramp itself down? And how can the argument both be argument by authority whilst simultaneously attacking the credibility of those authorities?
That's a good achievement but energy grids have varying degrees of robustness. So a number of days later the grid went down, Spain and Portugal blackouts were making global headlines. The cause - TLRD version it seems like a cascade shut down all the interconnected power networks. From [1]
The Guardian
The Portuguese prime minister, Luís Montenegro, said that the issue originated in Spain. Portugal’s REN said a “rare atmospheric phenomenon” had caused a severe imbalance in temperatures that led to the widespread shutdowns.
REN said: “Due to extreme temperature variations in the interior or Spain, there were anomalous oscillations in the very high voltage lines (400 kV), a phenomenon known as ‘induced atmospheric vibration’. These oscillations caused synchronisation failures between the electrical systems, leading to successive disturbances across the interconnected European network.”
[1] https://joannenova.com.au/2025/04/days-after-spain-reaches-100-renewable-mass-blackouts-hit-due-to-mysterious-rare-atmospheric-phenomenon/
What the critics are saying:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/09/20/josh-takes-on-xkcds-climate-timeline/
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/09/how-to-make-climate-graphs-look-scary-a-reply-to-xkcd/
From what I gather, there's a lot of skepticism over the Marcott 2013 study that Randall used. I don't know enough about the subject to comment on that further, but the critiques are as much food for thought as the comic itself.
Maybe prescribed burns once every 500 years isn't enough
http://joannenova.com.au/2019/10/california-maybe-prescribed-burns-once-every-500-years-are-not-enough/
There is a big difference between 'burning off' a couple of hundred acres and 'landscape scale fuel reduction', many reports conflate the two. Burning off 800 acres makes no difference when the surrounding 100,000 acres has high unmanaged forest fuel loads.
Here's one from NASA:
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses
More detailed discussion on Antarctic here:
http://joannenova.com.au/2016/07/backflip-antarctic-peninsula-posterchild-of-polar-disaster-has-been-cooling-not-warming/
Nature study finding Antarctic has cooled is in the "References" section of that second link.