I have not been by since the last badger sighting but climate and weather from about 4 years ago (if memory serves) was one of my favorite threads I've ever jumped on, here or elsewhere. I take it a lot of the posters from that time (although there are still some long-haulers!) have moved on. The infodemic was just in its infancy. It had not yet been professionalized and the methods fine tuned to the point that we see here. So you still had these individual groups who were going to all the trouble to create alternative data sets that they would upload onto the internet, which would then get picked up and show up on the soccer forum somehow. Like they'd wrap a light bulb in tin foil, heat it up, turn it off, take some readings with a digital thermocouple, plug it all into a spreadsheet and conclude that the entirety of black body radiation physics had to be wrong. It was like getting to play along inside a Firesign Theatre skit. So that one was a lot of fun actually. Thanks E for the good times!
As I recall we even had poetry corner time outs when things would get a little heated.
I think most of the alternative-fact-based theories that deniers were using have been overwhelmed by evidence, so they gave up trying. They missed a good chance for a topical debate, too, since so far this year's global temperatures have been the lowest since 2014. Untested topics would include Is global warming over? Is this a result of the 2020 economic slowdown? Is this a result of China finally clamping down on greenhouse gas emissions? It could have gone on and on.
Maybe "deniers" is too strong a word -- misinformed comes to mind since there has been so much of that flavor around here lately on other topics.