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climate change deniers
Climate change deniers are contrarians
who challenge the evidence that human activities such as deforestation and
human behaviors that result in more greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide are
causing changes in our planet's climate that may prove devastating and
irreversible.
Contrarians pose as skeptics, refusing to accept consensus conclusions in
science on the ground that there is still some uncertainty. True skeptics
raise specific doubts about specific claims and do not try to debunk a whole
area of science by an occasional error or by the general lack of absolute
certainty, which is unattainable in any area of
science.
The core of the consensus view of the scientific community has been stated by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC) in its "Climate Change 2007" report. The core of the consensus view is,
among other things, that global warming is happening and that human
activities are contributing significantly to the climate change, which is
affecting such things as the intensity of hurricanes and rising sea levels.
It would be absurd, of course, to claim that the consensus of the scientific
community agrees with everything in the IPCC reports, especially since not
all the scientists who worked on those reports agree with each other on
every item.
The evidence is piling up that global
warming is continuing at an unprecented pace and that much of it has
been due to human activity. The IPPC "Climate Change 2013"
report asserts that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and
that "continued emissions of greenhouse gases will cause further warming
and changes in all
components of the climate system." Global warming is having a
seriously deleterious effect on our oceans:
The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have
increased to levels unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years. Carbon dioxide
concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrial times, primarily from fossil fuel
emissions and secondarily from net land use change emissions. The ocean has absorbed
about 30% of the emitted anthropogenic carbon dioxide, causing ocean acidification.
According to the report, ocean warming
accounts
for more than 90% of the energy accumulated in the climate system
between 1971 and 2010. Expect to see continued melting of ice sheets and
glaciers, rising sea levels, and continued warming of the atmosphere
and oceans. Climate change deniers are quick to find fault with climate
change reports, mainly by finding errors in prediction by this or that
scientist and by condemning the whole process of modeling as unreliable.
The critical thinker should take in the whole body of evidence, not
just part of it, and shouldn't reject the many lines of argument and
evidence that have been put forth by the scientific community regarding
climate change as real and partly caused by human activity. Modeling is
just one of several lines of evidence and argumentation used. In any
case, models have improved since the last report. They now reproduce
observed continental scale surface temperature patterns and trends over
many decades, including the more rapid
warming since the mid-20th century and the cooling immediately
following large volcanic
eruptions.
In one important respect, it doesn't matter what the
scientific consensus on climate change is, since what matters is what
policies the powerful governments of the world institute, and those governments tend to ignore science.
If they don't ignore the science, they find contrarians to argue that the
consensus isn't absolutely certain*
and therefore we're justified in continuing along our current course.
Powerful governments tend to listen to scientists when the consensus science is compatible with their policies or
when it is required because of catastrophes
that have already occurred or are about to occur.
BBC News has posted 10 of the arguments most often made against the IPCC
consensus, as well as some of the counter-arguments made by scientists who
agree with the IPCC:
Climate
Skepticism: the Top 10. An even clearer contrast between the deniers and
the consensus can be found
here. Finally, an excellent account of the data regarding climate change has been provided by Donald Prothero in his article "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused."
Afterthought
A common complaint echoed in
letters-to-the-editor across the land, by seemingly informed citizens
who care, harps on the inadequacy of models used to predict changes in
the globe's climate. Here is a typical sample culled from my local
fishwrap, The Davis Enterprise, parsed here for the reader's entertainment and, perhaps, education:
The computer models used by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to “predict” global warming
were built by correlating past global temperatures with past carbon
dioxide levels, and then introducing a few “fudge” factors to make sure
the models fit the data (just remember that correlation does not imply
causation).
comment: I love this conjunction
of a true statement--experts use the past to predict the future--with
bullshit, the claim that the experts cheat and deceive while being
oblivious to a fundamental characteristic of all inductive reasoning.
The implication that the experts don't know that correlation does not
imply causation is based on what? On nothing. Making the claim, however,
may give some readers the impression that the letter writer knows more
than the experts do and is calling them out for being dishonest and
ignorant.
What the writer of this letter
fails to mention--perhaps because he doesn't understand what he's
talking about--is that there is no other way to predict the future than
by studying the past and the present. Unless, of course, you want to
resort to so-called psychics with the alleged power of precognition.
Another thing the writer fails to mention is that any attempt in science
or any other field that attempts to anticipate what will happen in the
future is, by the very nature of empirical reasoning from the past to
the future, inductive and must be couched in terms of probabilities.
Anyone who demands deductive models and absolute certainty in predictive
empirical matters is demanding what is impossible and is, by
definition, scientifically illiterate.
The worst omission by the writer
on the issue of models, however, is the false implication that climate
models are unreliable. Perhaps no other claim by climate change deniers
has been refuted more clearly by the evidence than the claim that
climate models are unreliable. G. P. Wayne of the website Skeptical Science
demonstrates: "Climate models have already predicted many of the
phenomena for which we now have empirical evidence. Climate models form a
reliable guide to potential climate change." If the reader really wants
to know how reliable models are, read Wayne's account. I won't repeat it here.
The models are very good at
“predicting” the past temperature fluctuations upon which they were
based. These models were then used to predict what future global
temperatures would be, assuming that levels of atmospheric carbon
dioxide were the primary factor influencing global temperatures.
comment: Again, the writer juxtaposes a true statement (actually two
true statements) with bullshit. The writer's last statement accuses the
climate experts of begging the question, assuming what they should be
proving. They do no such thing. The data from the past are what lead
experts to conclude that atmospheric carbon dioxide--among other
things--is a primary factor influencing global temperatures.
The IPCC computer models continue
to predict unrelenting global warming as carbon dioxide levels continue
to increase. However, there has been no increase in global warming for
the past 18 years (Remote Sensing Systems’ satellite-based monthly
global mean lower-troposphere temperature data set) even though the
atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has continued to increase
from 0.0365 to 0.0401 percent (this is analogous to adding 2.3 people to
the population of Davis over the past 18 years).
comment: Three for three:
another fact followed by bullshit. We'll forgive the loaded word
'unrelenting' in the writer's description of the IPCC's models
regarding increasing global warming. The models do predict the warming
of the planet is likely to continue if we humans don't change our ways.
Specifically, we need to change the ways we live that lead to increased
release of carbon dioxide, methane, and other harmful chemicals into our
atmosphere and seas. The writer doesn't mention it but the experts are
quite clear in their warning that even if we do change our ways
drastically, it is not certain that it will do much good. In other
words, we have dawdled for so long thanks to all those good folks who
make sowing doubt about climate change their main goal in life that
anything we do now may have little significant effect on the future of
the planet.
The bullshit--perhaps 'lie' is a
more accurate word in this case--is the claim that there has been no
increase in global warming for the past 18 years. This lie has been
making the rounds among climate change deniers for quite some time. The
deniers claim there has been no global warming since 1998. To be
charitable, this claim may not be only a lie; it may also represent a
high degree of ignorance. Most of the increased heat on our planet--more than 90%
of it--is occurring in our oceans. If you consider only land heat, the
increase has been modest compared to the increase in ocean heat. The
folks at Skeptical Science have reprinted a graph, based on real rather
than made-up or partial data, that shows where the heat is going.
This lie that there has been no increase in global warming since 1998 has been debunked by our friends at Skeptical Science.
In addition to ignoring the heating of our oceans, the liars or
ignoramuses who put forth this claim ignore "the fact that short term
temperature trends are strongly influenced by a variety of natural
factors and observational limitations which must be analyzed to isolate
the human contribution." (For an example of an attempt by climate
scientists to do just that see "Well-estimated global surface warming in climate projections selected for ENSO phase"
by Risby et al.) Looked at from the other side--the side of the
experts--it would not be justified to make grandiose claims about
continued global warming using only data from the recent past. The fact that last year (2013) was the sixth hottest year on record (tied with 2007) and the fact that "thirteen of the fourteen warmest years on record have all occurred in the 21st century"
doesn't prove global warming will continue at a record pace. You have
to look at data from a much longer period of time. It should be evident
to even the dimmest bulb in the climate change denier lamppost that you
can't reasonably conclude there is no global warming by ignoring the
heating of the oceans and looking at cherry-picked data from short term
temperature trends.
The discrepancy between the
predicted and actual global temperature is rapidly increasing; i.e., the
models are becoming increasingly inaccurate.
comment: Now the writer slips
into the land of pure bullshit. Perhaps he thinks his previous mixture
of truth and lies has laid the groundwork for the grand finale: a
flourish of made-up claims that other equally ignorant souls may find
attractive.
I am sure new computer models
will be created to better fit the new data, but unless the assumptions
underlying the models are correct (i.e., verified by unbiased testing
using new data, not by back testing against the very data set that was
used to create the model), they may be just as unreliable as the current
models.
comment: More lies and false
implications. Of course the experts are using new data to both check and
modify their models. The evidence so far is that the models are working
very well. Unfortunately, the future looks bleaker and bleaker with
each new report from the IPCC.
It is obvious that we currently do
not have sufficient understanding of the factors affecting global
climate to predict how the climate will change in a few decades, much
less in a century.
comment: Sufficient
understanding? Nice try, denier. If it is absolute certainty you are
looking for, try math or formal logic. Science doesn't deal in absolute
certainty about complex empirical matters. The truth is that we have a
very good understanding of what is happening to our global climate and
of the effects human activities are having on changes in our climate.
All our predictions, of necessity, must be couched in terms of
probabilities. To demand more demonstrates one's ignorance about
science and inductive reasoning.
Should we base critical economic
decisions using predictions from the current flawed model, or should we
take prudent actions to mitigate the near-term effects of the changing
climate while engaging in open scientific research so we can devise a
model that actually could predict future climatic changes?
comment: The letter writer
concludes in grand fashion with a false dichotomy, each arm of which is
loaded with false or misleading implications. All empirical
reasoning about the future is "flawed" in the sense that it can never
lead to absolute certainty. Only those ignorant of inductive reasoning,
however, would consider uncertainty in predicting the future a flaw.
(Remember Bertrand Russell's example of the chicken who gets fed every
day by the farmer. Then one day, seeing the farmer coming toward him,
the chicken expects to get fed. Instead, he gets axed.) Climate scientists are
conducting open scientific research, continually checking and tweaking
models, improving them as the data increases. The call to "take prudent
action" is actually a call to take no action that would hinder the
continued use of oil and gas to the profit of Big Petrol and to the
continued comfort of those of us who already have the advantages of a
comfortable lifestyle that includes having two cars in the garage and
coal for our furnaces.
Also, several climate change deniers
have noted that the ice in Antarctica is growing. This fact, they say,
proves global warming is a hoax. I don't think so. Here's why.
While it is true that ice is growing in Antarctica, it is also
true that "the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica has shown strong
warming over the same period that sea ice has
been increasing. Globally from 1955 to 1995, oceans have been warming
at 0.1°C per decade. In contrast, the Southern Ocean (specifically the region where Antarctic sea ice forms) has been warming at 0.17°C per decade. Not only is the Southern Ocean warming, it's warming faster than the global trend. This warming trend is apparent in satellite measurements of temperature trends over Antarctica."
If the Southern Ocean is warming, why is sea ice increasing? There are several contributing factors. One is the drop in ozone levels over Antarctica. The hole in the ozone layer above the South Pole has caused cooling in the stratosphere (Gillet 2003). A side-effect is a strengthening of the cyclonic winds that circle the Antarctic continent (Thompson 2002). The wind pushes sea ice around, creating areas of open water known as polynyas. More polynyas leads to increased sea ice production (Turner 2009).
Another contributor is changes in ocean circulation. The
Southern Ocean consists of a layer of cold water near the surface and a
layer of warmer water below. Water from the warmer layer rises up to the
surface, melting sea ice. However, as air temperatures warm, the amount of rain and snowfall also increases. This freshens the surface waters, leading to a surface layer less dense than the saltier, warmer water below. The layers become more stratified and mix less. Less heat is transported upwards from the deeper, warmer layer. Hence less sea ice is melted (Zhang 2007).
Those who care can read all about it at Skeptical Science.
See also
manufactroversy, "Keeping a
cool head about global warming," and
SD Newsletter 11
Jan 2010: Global warming, climate changes, science, and politics.
note: In "Keeping a
cool head about global warming," I wrote:
First, let me acknowledge that scientists who
produce scientific work that conflicts with the consensus of scientists on
climate change are not necessarily contrarians. There is room in any complex
scientific inquiry for a variety of opinions on how to interpret various
sets of data.
In a
newsletter, I
wrote:
The climate change skeptics page is now the
climate change deniers page. A link was added to
Greenfyer's take on what some are calling "climategate," the
hacking of a computer belonging to the Climate Research Unit at the
University of East Anglia in Britain and posting hundreds of e-mails and
other documents. The deniers are so hot and venting so much carbon monoxide
and methane that global warming is said to be accelerating at an
unprecedented pace and the axis of the Earth has shifted two degrees.
Jim Lippard
provides a sober view of the affair.
As the folks at
Denialism.com note, deniers employ rhetorical tactics to give the
appearance of argument or legitimate debate, when in actuality there is
none. Most deniers' arguments incorporate more than one of the following
tactics: Conspiracy, Selectivity, False Experts, Impossible
Expectations/Moving Goalposts, and Argument from Metaphor/violations of
informal logic. Global warming deniers are big on conspiracy: according to
them, an entire community of scientists has some ulterior motive for their
climate research, such as an ideology or a desire to keep their funding.
Global warming deniers are also prone to cherry-picking their data and their
quotes, citing single errors or discredited papers as proof that a whole
field of science is corrupt. Because many of those supporting the climate
change denial campaign are corporations heavily invested in fossil fuels or
are politicians who depend on those corporations for campaign funds, they
are prone to put forth fake experts to raise some dust.
reader comments
further reading
books and
articles
Friel, Howard. 2010. The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight
About Global Warming. Yale University Press.
Hoggan, James. 2009. Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global
Warming. Greystone.
Michaels, David. 2008. Doubt is Their Product: How Industry's Assault on
Science Threatens Your Health. Oxford University Press.
Oreskes, Naomi and Erik M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a
Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to
Global Warming. Bloomesbury Press.
Prothero, Donald R. How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused. eSkeptic. 8 Feb 2012.
An excellent article listing the main evidence for human-caused global
warming and the main ojections (and scathing rebuttals) of the
climate-change deniers. A must read for anyone still wondering who to
trust: Rush Limbaugh, FOX News, a few outliers and outliars or the
climate scientists.
Thompson, Lonnie G. 2010. "Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options." The Behavior Analyst 33, 153–170 No. 2 (Fall).
"Glaciers serve as early indicators of climate change. Over the last 35
years, our research team has recovered ice-core records of climatic and
environmental variations from the polar regions and from low-latitude
high-elevation ice fields from 16 countries. The ongoing widespread
melting of high-elevation glaciers and ice caps, particularly in low to
middle latitudes, provides some of the strongest evidence to date that a
large-scale, pervasive, and, in some cases, rapid change in Earth’s
climate system is underway."
book review
Mark Lynas reviews Watermelons: How Environmentalists Are Killing the Planet, Destroying the Economy and Stealing Your Children’s Future by James Delingpole.
"In case you don't know what the 'watermelons' of the title refers to,
this is a pejorative term for environmentalists - the idea is that
they are green on the outside but red on the inside. Green activists,
in this view, are the new commie menace....
"Delingpole is so deluded that he misses the real story. It is
true that there is a lot wrong with environmentalism. Most greens do
reject perfectly eco-friendly technologies such as nuclear power or GM
crops and their Luddite prejudices are as unscientific as
Delingpole's right-wing ranting. And a minority of environmentalists
are indeed fools who indulge in fantasies usually involving
back-to-the-land romanticism, peculiar obsessions with obsolete
technologies such as scythes and a hatred of the very industrially
derived comfort that feeds them and affords them the cyberspace in
which to spout their nonsense.
"In other words, some are 'watermelons'. I believe that
capitalism and democracy sometimes need defending from the more
deluded greens, and the environmental movement as a whole is far too
much a creature of the political left. Delingpole, however, is not the
man to make this case, because doing so would involve some original
research."
Donald Prothero reviews James L. Powell’s book, The Inquisition of Climate Science,
a compilation of the evidence for anthropogenic global warming
(AGW). The book also describes the many distortions of the evidence by
AGW deniers in their attempt to muddy the waters.
websites
McNider and Christy Style Themselves Revolutionary But Defend Inertia Climate Science Watch
"Peer-reviewed comparisons between data and [computer climate
change] models show that the models do a good job of simulating the
observations. McNider and Christy's non-peer-reviewed comparison showing
poor agreement requires flagrant cherry picking. In the end, like most
scientific outliers, their ideas are destined for the dustbin of
science.”
Scurvy Story: Why You Should Believe 97% Of Climate Scientists, Not Long-Wrong John Christy by Joe Romm, Climate Progress
Spencer and Christy sat by for most of a decade allowing — indeed
encouraging — the use of their data set as an icon for global warming
deniers. They committed serial errors in the data analysis, but insisted
they were right and models and thermometers were wrong. They did little
or nothing to root out possible sources of errors, and left it to
others to clean up the mess, as has now been done....But what would you
expect from a guy who contributed the chapter “The Global Warming
Fiasco” to a 2002 book called Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths,
published by Competitive Enterprise Institute, a leading provider of
disinformation on global warming that was funded by ExxonMobil?
Nazis, shoddy science, and the climate contrarian credibility gap
Climate model global warming projections have far outperformed
predictions made by climate contrarians, and have performed fairly well
overall (including current climate models).
Must-Read: Scientists Uncover Evidence Of Impending Tipping Point For Earth
"If we stay anywhere near our current greenhouse gas emissions path, we
will cross many climate tipping points this century. There’s the nearby
tipping point for an ice-free arctic, with all that means for making
our weather much more extreme and for triggering another tipping point,
the rapid loss of carbon from the permafrost. There’s the tipping point
for the 'self-amplifying' disintegration of Greenland and, after that,
an ice free planet (though we’d cross the point of no return long before
the full melting ever happened)."
Arctic Ice Thinning 4 Times Faster Than Predicted by IPCC Models, Semi-Stunning M.I.T. Study Finds
OK, climate sceptics: here's the raw data you wanted Temperature
records going back 150 years from 5113 weather stations around the
world were yesterday released to the public by the Climatic Research
Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK. The only
records missing are from 19 stations in Poland, which refused to allow
them to be made public.
The top 5 ways the ‘birthers’ are like the deniers Birtherism
is a manifestation of the GOP’s embrace of anti-intellectualism and
anti-science ideology whose “most harmful delusion” is climate science
denial, as even Washington Post’s Editorial Page Editor — the guy who
runs the disinformation of George Will, BJorn Lomborg and Sarah Palin —
acknowledged.....
5. Both groups are impervious to the evidence.
4. Both come from the same group of people.
3. Both groups get their disinformation from the same right-wing sources.
2. Both groups have an underlying motivation — their desire to obstruct progressive government action.
1. Both groups believe in a mammoth conspiracy theory.
Eight great figures summarizing the evidence for a “human fingerprint” on recent climate change
The clever deniers these days don’t deny the painfully obvious reality
that the planet is warming or that climate is changing — they simply
deny that humans are a major cause.
Climatologists under pressure from the editors of Nature: To
these denialists, the scientists' scathing remarks about certain
controversial palaeoclimate reconstructions qualify as the proverbial
'smoking gun': proof that mainstream climate researchers have systematically
conspired to suppress evidence contradicting their doctrine that humans are
warming the globe.
This paranoid
interpretation would be laughable were it not for the fact that
obstructionist politicians in the US Senate will probably use it
next year as an excuse to stiffen their opposition to the
country's much needed climate bill....
In the end, what the
UEA e-mails really show is that scientists are human beings —
and that unrelenting opposition to their work can goad them to
the limits of tolerance, and tempt them to act in ways that
undermine scientific values.
See also:
Presidential Address: Reflections On: Our Planet and Its Life,
Origins, and Futures by James J. McCarthy for a brief
overview of the history of climate science.
Swifthack - a clearing house for
articles on "climategate."
Skeptical Science - Examining the
science of global warming skepticism Deniers "vigorously criticize any
evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet eagerly, even blindly
embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog, or study that refutes global
warming."
Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States
Scientific American
UN climate convention
UN Environment Programme
data centre
World
Meteorological Organization
NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies
US National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration
US National Snow and Ice Data
Center
British Antarctic Survey
realclimate.org
Climate Audit
Gristmill:
how to talk to a climate skeptic
The Lavoisier Group
*
news stories
New Study Links Weather Extremes to Global Warming The study by Dr. Erich M. Fischer, lead author of a study published Monday by the journal Nature Climate Change, and his colleague Reto Knutti of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in
Zurich is not the first to attribute large-scale changes in extreme
weather to human influence on the climate. But it is among the first to
forecast, on a global scale, how those extremes might change with
continued global warming."
Merchants of Doubt' surveys the industry of climate denial "The new documentary “Merchants of Doubt”
addresses the reality of corporate-sponsored public disinformation
campaigns on subjects such as cigarette smoking, fire retardants and
climate science....Cigarette companies discovered as far back as 1953
that through slick public relations, parading your own “experts” for
media consumption and sticking with the mantra “We are just not sure,”
how a small cadre can fend off overwhelming scientific consensus for
decades. A few of the same scientists trotted out to argue for the
safety of smoking are now at the forefront of climate denial."
Deniers are not Skeptics - December 5, 2014 - An Open letter to journalists "Public discussion of scientific topics such as global warming is confused by misuse of the term 'skeptic.'"
Global warming melts last stable edge of Greenland's Zachariae ice stream, scientists say
The ice stream, called Zachariae, is the largest drain from an ice
basin that covers16 per cent of the Greenland ice sheet. From 2003 to
2012, north-eastern Greenland disgorged 10 billion tonnes of ice
annually into the ocean. "North-east Greenland is very cold. It used to
be considered the last stable part of the Greenland ice sheet," said
Michael Bevis, an Earth sciences professor at Ohio State University, who
led the study. "This study shows that ice loss in the north-east is now
accelerating. So, now it seems that all the margins of the Greenland
ice sheet are unstable."
Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial think tanks
Anonymous billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate
groups working to discredit climate change science. The millions were
routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund,
operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs
of Washington DC. "We exist to help donors promote liberty which we
understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free
enterprise," said Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust. An
interested thinker could chew on that bone for more than a few hours.
Boris Johnson says snow casts doubt on climate change science
The mayor of London demonstrates why common sense is so common. He
doesn't seem to think there is an important difference between weather
(personal experience: he can see and feel the snow and the cold) and
climate (scientific data: this requires thinking). According to this Guardian article, Johnson is "widely touted
as the next prime minister of this country." That would be perfect for
the climate change deniers who will block any efforts by Obama, who at
least mentioned climate change--"we will respond to the threat of
climate change"--in his cover-it-all second inaugural address.
According to a CNN poll released
yesterday, only about half of the 814 adults in the nationwide telephone
survey accept that global warming is a proven fact and due to emissions
from cars, power plants, and factories. Another fourth of those polled
accept that global warming is a fact but not due to human activities.
About one-fourth of those polled think that global warming has not been
proven. This might appear to be good news for those of us who are
concerned that the longer nations put off dealing with global warming
the more dangerous it becomes for life on earth. However, the percentage
of those who accept anthropogenic global warming is down seven points
from 2007. Even more distressing for Americans is that only one out of
every three Republicans accept the fact of anthropogenic global warming.
On the other side, one out of every three Democrats doesn't accept that
global warming is due to human activities. Independents are split on
the issue.
The poll was conducted for
CNN by ORC International on Jan. 14-15. The survey's overall sampling
error, we're told, is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
Check With Climate Scientists for Views on Climate The Wall Street Journal "published "No Need to Panic About Global Warming" (op-ed, Jan. 27) on climate change by the climate-science equivalent of dentists practicing cardiology."
CO2 sensitivity possibly less than most extreme projections "A new study in the journal Science
suggests that the global climate may be less sensitive to carbon
dioxide fluctuations than predicted by the most extreme projections, and
maybe slightly less than the best estimates of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change."
Climate Change Skeptics Eat Crow
Global warming skeptics suspected climate change scientists were hiding
data. So the skeptics paid for a new study to find the real truth. The
results are in! And they're identical to previous results: Humans are
heating up the Earth.
Energy and global warming news for February 16: Trillions at stake from climate change by 2030
It would seem that the only people who think global warming is a scam
are the industries that are set to lose the most: coal, oil, and gas
companies.
and Two
seminal Nature papers join growing body of evidence that human
emissions fuel extreme weather, flooding that harm humans and the
environment
New House Science Committee chair Ralph Hall (R-TX) threatens to subpoena climate scientists
Ralph Hall (R-TX), the incoming chair of the House Science and
Technology Committee: his anti-science pro-pollution denialist policies
are poised to deliver a ruined climate to future generations....
Climate change means colder winters: study
Climate change could lead to colder winters in northern regions,
according to a study by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact
Research on Tuesday.
Scientists launch climate science
counterattacks The American Geophysical Union
plans to announce that 700 researchers have agreed to speak out on the
issue. Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate
scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against
congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers
with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made
greenhouse gas emissions. Of the more than 100 new GOP members of
Congress, 50% are climate change skeptics.
Report
recommends UN climate panel shakeup
An enquiry by the
InterAcademy
Council into the
UN's climate panel, the IPCC, has recommended administrative
changes, including a full-time chief executive. It found the
IPCC had "assigned high confidence to statements for which there
is very little evidence," had failed to acknowledge criticism,
or follow its own guidelines. The IPCC was also criticized for
confirmation bias with lead
authors placing "too much weight on their own views relative to
other views."
The report is
available online at
http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/.
Giant Glacier Breaks on Anniversary of Global Warming "...the new ice
island was born just in time for the 35th anniversary of the scientific
paper that coined the term 'global warming.'"
Rebutting climate
science disinformer talking points in a single line
"Progressives should know the most commonly
used arguments by the disinformers and doubters — and how to
answer them. You should know as much of the science behind
those rebuttals as possible, and a great place to start is
SkepticalScience.com. BUT
most of the time your best response is to give the pithiest
response possible, and then refer people to a specific
website that has a more detailed scientific explanation with
links to the original science." Some examples:
“It’s the sun” --
The sun’s output has barely changed since 1970 and is
irrelevant to recent global warming.
“Climate’s changed before” --
Climate reacts to whatever forces it to change at the
time, which now is dominated by humans.
“There is no consensus” --
97% of climate experts agree humans are causing global
warming.
“Models are unreliable”
Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900
globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.
Open letter: Climate change and the integrity of science Full text of an
open letter from 255 members of the US National Academy of Sciences in
defense of climate research
British lawmakers issue mixed report on 'Climategate' The 14-member
parliamentary committee said in its report it had found nothing to challenge
the "scientific consensus" that global warming is occurring and influenced
by human activity. It also declared that the scientific reputation of Phil
Jones, the head of the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit
(CRU), remains "intact."
Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine Billionaire
oilman David Koch likes to joke that Koch Industries is “the biggest company
you've never heard of.” But the nearly $50 million that David Koch and his
brother Charles have quietly funneled to climate-denial front groups that
are working to delay policies and regulations aimed at stopping global
warming is no joking matter.
Case Study: The Koch-funded “ClimateGate” Echo Chamber
Piecing
together the temperature puzzle The past year,
2009, tied as the second warmest year since global instrumental temperature
records began 130 years ago. Worldwide, the mean temperature was 0.57°C
(1.03°F) warmer than the 1951-1980 base period. And January 2000 to December
2009 came out as the warmest decade on record.
Climate
scepticism 'on the rise', BBC poll shows Some 35% of Brits believe
climate change is either not happening or that it's happening but is not due
to human behavior. Only 26% of those polled believe climate change is
happening and that it is "now established as largely man-made."
Glacier-melting debate highlights importance of satellites Data from
satellites allow scientists to measure glacier extent in detail, providing
authoritative evidence of trends.
Climate Change in the American Mind: Americans’ Global Warming Beliefs and
Attitudes in January 2010 The researchers used an online research panel
of 1,001 American adults. The completion rate was 50 percent. The sample was
weighted to correspond with US Census Bureau parameters for the United
States. The survey found:
Only 50 percent of
Americans now say they are “somewhat” or “very worried” about
global warming;
The percentage of
Americans who think global warming is happening is 57 percent;
The percentage of
Americans who think global warming is caused mostly by human
a
