Is Climate Change denial legitimate or bad science?

Question

So I came across this http://www.stopdumbingdown.com/

So I tried watching some of the video but he talks too much and seemed to just bash scientists, and I wasn't interested in boring name calling.

I did look at one of the powerpoint things and he seems to blame it on water vapor, and the sun etc. It's still hard to read a lot of it because it's just so busy.

Some of the points seem interesting, but how much of it is conjecture and how much is actual science?



I'd like to hear actual supporting arguments for your points, not just yes or no answers. Thank you.

Answer 1

Bad science. Some examples with actual data.

People have frequntly recommended a movie "The Great Global Warming Swindle" which features many of the most prominent deniers.

Here's what media reviewers have said:

" A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2355956.ece

"Pure Propaganda"

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313pure_propaganda_the.php

And here is some climate scientists scientific rebuttal:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/

Even Channel 4 (which broadcast it) doesn't believe the film is correct. If you go to their website, on the page for the film are links to factual global warming sites. You can "Ask an Expert" and your question goes to a respected mainstream scientist who says man is mostly responsible for global warming.

People here have frequently cited the sun or volcanoes. The data says those aren't right.

It's not the sun. That's just a theory that is wrong according to the scientific data. Increased solar radiation has been carefully measured by many people. It's 0,12 watts per meter squared. Man caused warming is 1.6 watts per meter squared. Page 4 of this report.

http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf

It's not volcanoes. Another theory that the data shows is false.

http://www.geology.sdsu.edu/how_volcanoes_work/climate_effects.html

Also see this, which puts the sun and volcanoes in perspective with data:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Here's why CO2 has lagged warmings in the past, another favorite argument of deniers:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=13

Here's two pages with several scientific refutations of deniers arguments:

http://info-pollution.com/warming.htm#WEB

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/category/climate-science/paleoclimate/

There's more, particularly on the realclimate site. If you want to thoroughly research this, be prepared to spend some hours at it.

Sometimes scientists who go against the tide have brilliant insight. (ie Einstein). Sometimes they're just not very good scientists.

Answer 2

there is not any doubt that climate exchange is happening - the international is getting warmer, as witnessed by potential of the ice-cabinets collapsing interior the Antarctic and the undeniable fact that ships can now bypass particularly actually contained in the direction of the Arctic Ocean interior the summertime, and many different such cases. the challenge to handle is even though if any of that warming is via human activity. interior the final a hundred and fifty years, possibly 2 hundred years, or so there has been a step cheange interior the quantity of fossil gasoline used with the concommitent improve of carbon dioxide interior the ambience which holds interior the Earth's heat temperature (greenhouse gasoline) and forestalls it escaping to area. It as a result seems very probably that lots of the recent international warming is via human activity, even though if or no longer the international could have for sure warmed up rather in a organic cycle with out human intervention. There have fairly been organic cycles of warming and cooling, as witness the Ice a protracted time.

Answer 3

I think the jury is still out on this one.
The cons are easy to pick out - first Al Gore admitted he exaggerated some of his findings to help highlight the urgency of the concern and then a pole among scientists and meteorologists was found to be heavily weighted toward those who were receiving substantial funding for global warming research.
The pros are simple, too - it's not likely we can spew millions of tons of CO and CO2 into our atmosphere annually and not have any effect on our climate.
It's definitely a tough nut to crack - it isn't, even with computer models, easy to determine which side is correct, half correct or totally wrong. Hell, we can't even predict the weather with any real certainty from week to week, let alone the underlying reasons for a global climate change.
I suspect cooler heads will prevail and financially feasible steps will be taken - after all, it's a win-win situation if we try to clean up our atmosphere, global climate change or not.

Answer 4

Follow the money. Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere, however much some sock puppet is paid they are not going to deny that. (Sorry, that was name calling). There is a mathematical relationship between absorption of infra-red radiation and carbon dioxide concentration. this is how reliable chemical instruments called "non dispersive infra-red photometers" work. Absorption of IR leads to heating of the gas. This is also indisputable.

In the mid 1960s CO2 was about 300ppm by volume. In the late '70s it was about 320ppm (my personal measurement). In the 1980s I measured 345ppm, then later 360. It is now said to be about 380-385. In the 1980s I was told by a staff member of the Cape Grim Baseline Monitoring Station in Tasmania that CO2 was increasing by about 1ppm per year, and that it rose and fell a little according to season, altitude and latitude.

Measurements taken over the past few decades indicate an overall global temperature increase. Whether the two are connected is a matter of conjecture, but not quite guesswork. We do not know whether this is part of a "natural" cycle or not.

The possibility was proposed in 1896 by Svante Arrhenius, argued about for several years and more or less forgotten until about 45 or 50 years ago. Arrhenius had a habit of being correct about things when people said he was wrong. In this particular case his estimates for absorption of IR by CO2 were incorrect, probably due to the primitive instrumentation of the time. However in principle he was correct. One scientist or another has been warning about increasing CO2 for at least 35 years.

Most of the arguments against the connection between accumulating CO2 and global warming are similar to those used by people who opposed installation of a sewer system in London in the 19th century. And they come from the same kind of people. More tax, blah blah. No proven connection between disease and the filth in the streets and water supply, blah blah. And there was not any proven connection then either.

Answer 5

The climate is NOT STATIC! It changed around 12,000 years ago and that change brought about the END of an ice age.

During the middle ages our planet had a mini ice age and the climate got so cold in Europe that wine grape growing became impossible in the British Isles and that crop has never been cultivated since!

Our climate is changing again, but our planet survived quite nicely 12,000 years ago and that Little Ice age only ended about 160 years ago!

Al Gore is a PROFIT of DOOM! Blaming humanity for what is a NATURAL cycle of change and warming and cooling is the utmost of arrogance and way, way too many people have swallowed the "blame humanity for everything" lie hook, line and sinker!

I don't "deny climate change", I just am very skeptical that humanity is to blame.

Answer 6

In short: Climate change is legitimate. Just look up a history of weather forecasts. However, the "debatable" part is whether global warming is happening for the reasons many scientists claim (and in my opinion are true).