Opinion: Looks like we won.
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Before social media, I used to inhabit internet message boards. My favorite playground was the Yahoo Financial Message Boards. Yes, lame. I used to evaluate corporations that had invested in new technology and would watch some fail to deliver their multi-million dollar ideas to market. Real-time train wrecks! The science worked, the market was dysfunctional, the executives were shameless. Good science down the drain, another free market fail.
It seems dirty corporations were easy to spot. Company executives kept issuing more company stock, diluting share values, and issuing themselves more free stock options. Some executives are excellent, don't mistake my message, some would even share information and opinions on their own internet stock boards. The good ones did a respectful job of explaining or clearing up misinformation. Most stock boards were very boring, some were amazing sources of information. A few boards were known for debate on green issues and the environment.
When I was young, debates were not limited to 140 characters, one could write pages, and pages, and pages and insert hyperlinks to it back up. Aside from the flaming trolls, there were a few amazing and brilliant folks there. I debated with expert energy lawyers, scientists, engaged citizens, astute analysts, and investors. Using my simple lean manufacturing background, I would provide useful dialogue to the discussions.
My favourite stock board was for Fuel Cell Energy. Full of characters schlepping dreams trying to make a quick buck off of day trading. We debated the viability of FCEL, its future, but there was always a steady side-debate on climate change. We would debate the latest science and reports. One side clearly identified climate change as a communist conspiracy, I know, it's outrageous and almost completely unheard of in our modern times.
I identified myself as Canadian. On an American chat board, this sometimes was a big issue. Rabid republicans love green Canadians, but at least my science confused them. Debating climate change was like the wild west, as it was, the science wasn't conclusive. The now-debunked hypotheses used to refute our current knowledge were under scientific scrutiny, so “they” actually "had" points they could make. Well, we know how those turned out.
A few years ago I was tired of hearing journalists continue to use the term “climate skeptic” since the mathematics demonstrated convergence on anthropomorphic climate change. Journalists also abused scientific language. I started trolling journalists to use the term “climate denier”. Even the Koch Brothers confirmed climate change, they were really quiet about that study.
Each day, week, month adds new knowledge and confirmations that some climate science predicted. I wish I had some of the videos, like this and this, in the 1990's, I could have kept my message and links under 140 characters. Short and sweeter.
P.S. - I was correct about FCEL, as well, the 1990's stock hypemen were saying it would be an easy $150 / share stock. "No brainer", I once heard. I said FCEL would be lucky to be a dollar stock. I just checked and it's trading at $ 0.79 down 2 cents on low volume. Seems my 2 cents paid some interest. Thanks, lean manufacturing and design!