# A serious question for Sam Stone on Factual Errors

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-serious-question-for-sam-stone-on-factual-errors/955881>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [December 11, 2021, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-serious-question-for-sam-stone-on-factual-errors/955881 "2021-12-11T12:32:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 1053

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**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2023, 4:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-serious-question-for-sam-stone-on-factual-errors/955881/1053 "2023-09-20T04:03:02Z")

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> [@wolfpup](#):
>
> I gave **Sam** credit for coming around on climate science

I’ll go even further than that, and declare that for at least twenty years I have not seen any evidence on these boards that Sam\_Stone is an actual denier or anti-science “skeptic” regarding the essential facts of climate change. Here, for example, is an observation that [he posted back in November 2003:](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/could-global-warming-actually-be-good-for-mankind/212072/8)

> [@Sam\_Stone](#):
>
> Global Warming probably won’t create a more ‘benign’ planet - the added energy in the system will probably make the weather more energetic. Bigger storms, stronger winds, etc.
> 
> However, I believe the consensus is that overall, global warming would be a net financial benefit for increases below about 2 degrees. At those levels, it manifests itself in the northern lattitudes in the form of more moderate nighttime temperatures (causing a reducting in heating costs), and longer growing seasons. Plus, the agricultural belt would expand a little more northward, opening up more land for farming.
> 
> But pretty much any amount of warming will hurt the poor equatorial countries, and they are the ones that are least likely to to be able to afford it (and have the least responsibility for creating it).

That was perhaps a somewhat optimistic but not in any way denialist or irrational opinion to hold about anthropogenic climate change twenty years ago. And IMHO it doesn’t qualify as denialist or anti-science even now, although its level of optimism probably wouldn’t be considered justifiable nowadays.

What I object to in many of Sam’s climate-science posts, as I explained in the post GIGObuster linked to above, is not a refusal to acknowledge the basic reality of climate-science findings, but rather his inadequately supported disparagement of certain scientific viewpoints just because they ping his personal “liberal ideology” meter.

It’s not in any way “smearing” Sam to complain when he tries to present speculative anti-liberal wish-fulfillment as an honest methodological critique.

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