All sorts of claims are made about climate change. The excellent Number Watch site by John Brignell keeps a list of things (claimed to be) caused by global warming. Pointless speculation about climate change is rife. This is perhaps the most absurd instance of it.

Aliens may destroy humanity to protect other civilisations, say scientists

Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat, warns a report

There’s no need for sceptics to ‘distort science’ when scientists are perfectly capable of doing it all by themselves. Ian Sample — the article’s author — is even more daft.

It may not rank as the most compelling reason to curb greenhouse gases, but reducing our emissions might just save humanity from a pre-emptive alien attack, scientists claim. Watching from afar, extraterrestrial beings might view changes in Earth’s atmosphere as symptomatic of a civilisation growing out of control – and take drastic action to keep us from becoming a more serious threat, the researchers explain. This highly speculative scenario is one of several described by a Nasa-affiliated scientist and colleagues at Pennsylvania State University that, while considered unlikely, they say could play out were humans and alien life to make contact at some point in the future.

Sample is the Guardian’s science correspondent. But it seems that he has more correspondence with science fiction than science proper. How can any discriminating journalist — which is their job, after all — not have seen the report, and thought to themselves… ‘oh, for ****’s sake’, and either ignored it, or given it the ridicule it deserves?

Never mind human-haters from another planet. The more immediate problem is the journalist’s and scientists’ deeply ingrained misanthropy, right here on Earth. It’s not just speculation that is the problem; it’s what the speculators are speculating from. They presume to sit in judgement of the rest of us, as aliens. That’s got nothing to do with science.