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climate change skeptics
Climate change skeptics 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.
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.
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.
further reading
websites
Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States
New Scientist: A guide for the perplexed
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
Natural Resources Stewardship Project
Gristmill:
how to talk to a climate skeptic
The Lavoisier Group
*
news stories
New Statisticians reject global cooling In a blind test, the Associated Press gave temperature data to four independent statisticians and asked them to look for trends, without telling them what the numbers represented. The experts found no true temperature declines over time. "If you look at the data and sort of cherry-pick a micro-trend within a bigger trend, that technique is particularly suspect," said John Grego, a professor of statistics at the University of South Carolina.
PM warns of climate 'catastrophe' The UK faces a "catastrophe" of floods, droughts and killer heatwaves if world leaders fail to agree a deal on climate change. There is no plan B, says Gordon Brown.
What happened to global warming? (Click here for the answer, which is "nothing." the global cooling myth is the result of selective use of statistics.) "For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures....The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate predictions, says ... temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling. What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures. And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up....The Met Office ... predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).
Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely."
Doctors warn on climate failure "Failure to agree [on] a new UN climate deal in December will bring a "global health catastrophe," say 18 of the world's professional medical organizations. "A low-carbon economy will mean less pollution. A low carbon diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
Global warming has made Arctic summers hottest for 2,000 years "Warming as a result of increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has overwhelmed a millennia-long cycle of natural cooling in the Arctic.... "The accumulation of greenhouse gases is interrupting the natural cycle towards overall cooling," said Professor Darrell Kaufman....The Arctic began cooling around 8,000 years ago as natural variations in the Earth's orbit and angle of tilt reduced the amount of sunlight reaching high latitudes. Today, the planet is one million kilometres farther away from the sun during the northern hemisphere's summer solstice than it was in 1BC. This natural cooling effect will continue for 4,000 more years."
Fake EPA Scandal Of The Day "Earlier this year, when the EPA was putting together its finding that carbon-dioxide endangers the public health, an economist at the agency named Al Carlin drafted a short report disputing the scientific consensus on global warming and asked his bosses to consider it. The bosses heard him out, but decided, in the end, to leave climate science to actual scientists. And with good reason: As NASA's Gavin Schmidt explains, Carlin's "critique" makes a bunch of very basic errors—no surprise, given that he's not a climatologist and was mostly just parroting right-wing pseudoscience.") Even more interesting that this news about no news is the latest op-ed column from Paul Krugman about climate-change deniers in Congress, whom he accuses of betraying the planet. ("If there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate [on the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill], it was the declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change is nothing but a 'hoax' that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific community. I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists."
Ice sheet melt threat reassessed The collapse of a major polar ice sheet will not raise global sea levels as much as previous projections suggest.
Climate Change Myths and Facts by Chris Mooney "Readers and commentators must learn to share some practices with scientists -- following up on sources, taking scientific knowledge seriously rather than cherry-picking misleading bits of information, and applying critical thinking to the weighing of evidence."
The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus
Antarctica's cold awakening "90% of all the ice on the globe is locked into Antarctica. If all of it melted, the oceans would rise by 70m (230ft)...the latest research suggests wider areas are getting warmer."
Japan's boffins: Global warming isn't man-made; Climate science is 'ancient astrology', claims report In a new report from Japan's Energy Commission, three of the five researchers "disagree with the UN's IPCC view that recent warming is primarily the consequence of man-made industrial emissions of greenhouse gases."
The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global Warming by John W. Farley
Thaw of polar regions may need new U.N. laws
Mount Shasta glaciers growing, despite warming
Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice
Methane rise points to wetlands
Antarctic glaciers surge to ocean
Increasing Acid Could Kill Most Coral by 2050 by Andrea Thompson, LiveScience
Researcher: What's bad for coral reefs also bad for lobster
Rising seas 'to beat predictions' BBC
Arctic ice melt spurs a dire new warning, AP, by Seth Borenstein
UN challenges states on warming, BBC News, by Richard Black
Last updated 10/29/09
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Clever Hans phenomenon