Are we in denial?

Question

Why is it when someone asks a question,or holds a view that differs from the Global Warming crowd that the answers come back rude? And why is it that those who do this do not accept e-mails in return?

Answer 1

Trever, If everyone believes a lie it doesn't make it the truth.

Just the other week they said Mars has global warming, but Mars doesn't have people, so if Mars can have global warming with out people, why must we assume that any warming of the Earh was caused by the people?

Its been a while since HS but I seem to recall that there have been multiple Ice Ages, which means the surface temp, has always bee in flux. During Colonial times It was arguably possible to walk from Manhatten to CT across the ice in winter, but by the Civil war that was not the case, did the relatively limited industry(and thus pollution) cause that drastic a shift over 'four score and seven years'?

Look at the Discovery Channel's "Before the Dinosaurs." series, North America used to be swamp land eons ago.

Did global warming cause the Sahara, the Gobi, et al? seems to me they weren't exactly tourist spots in antiquity either and their were no evil oil companies killing the planet back then.

Face it, the Earth is bigger than us, when the time comes we'll die off like the Dino's, the BrontoScorpios, and the dodo, and it will live on to host countless new species.

And if the left is so sure evolution is why we're here, why don't they have faith that we will evolve once again and survive the changes, and our decendants will continue to dominate.

Answer 2

No rudeness, just science.

Global warming is real and mostly caused by us.

There's an overwhelming amount of peer reviewed scientific data that says that. Short and long summaries.

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

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

Science is quite good about exposing bad science or hoaxes:

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/ATG/polywater.html

"I wasn’t convinced by a person or any interest group—it was the data that got me. I was utterly convinced of this connection between the burning of fossil fuels and climate change. And I was convinced that if we didn’t do something about this, we would be in deep trouble.”

Vice Admiral Richard H. Truly, USN (Ret.)
Former NASA Administrator, Shuttle Astronaut and the first Commander of the Naval Space Command

There's vastly less controversy in the scientific community than you might guess from the few skeptics talked about here:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/306/5702/1686

"Regardless of these spats, the fact that the community overwhelmingly supports the consensus is evidenced by picking up any copy of Journal of Climate or similar, any scientific program at the AGU or EGU meetings, or simply going to talk to scientists (not the famous ones, the ones at your local university or federal lab). I challenge you, if you think there is some un-reported division, show me the hundreds of abstracts at the Fall meeting (the biggest confernce in the US on this topic) that support your view - you won't be able to. You can argue whether the consensus is correct, or what it really implies, but you can't credibly argue it doesn't exist."

Dr. James Baker - NOAA

"There's a better scientific consensus on this [climate change] than on any issue I know - except maybe Newton's second law of dynamics".

Jerry Mahlman, NOAA

Good websites for more info, and data:

http://profend.com/global-warming/

http://www.realclimate.org

"climate science from climate scientists"

Answer 3

Please feel free to e-mail me. I've studied global warming, global cooling, climate change etc for 23 years and always answer any e-mails people send me (it sometimes takes a while but I do respond).

As for why the answers come back rude - the above two answers clearly demonstrate that both sides are responsible for this type of behaviour.

I think also the futility of some 'evidence' put forward by those who dispute global warming can lead to frustration. I know myself that it's very frustrating seeing the same arguments repeatedly being put forward by people even when they know them to be nonsense.

The arguments supporting global warming are based on over 100 years of documented scientific evidence which is openly available for anyone to inspect. Few of the arguments against global warming are based on science, most are known to be and can easily be demonstrated to be wrong.

When a scientist is shown the be wrong he or she checks the data, reruns the experiments, modifies the conclusions. When a global warming sceptic is shown to be wrong they so often ignore it and keep repeating their 'evidence'. You only have to look at the number of times people keep refering to The Great Global Warming Swindle, the Oregon Petition, Leipzig Declaration, warming of other planets, Greenland etc to see this.

Turn it around and look at it this way. 94% of the world's population see global warming as a 'serious' or 'very serious' problem, 6% don't. In number terms that's about the same as one kid in a classroom full of kids. Imagine what would happen in the classroom if every time the teacher asked a question, every child provided the same answer apart from this one child who always came up with a different answer. Don't you think the teacher and the other kids would begin to get annoyed (and probably rude) after a while.

Answer 4

The people who think we can reverse global warming with minimal effort, if we just all cooperate, are the ones in denial.

All the countries that have signed up to the Kyoto protocol are going to miss their reduction targets by a WIDE margin, because those targets are not achievable without totally wrecking the economy. I am talking about a 1930 type depression or worse. And the Kyoto targets are not nearly enough to do more than delay it a few years. Even more drastic action would be needed to reverse it, which would effectively take the entire industrialized world into a third world economy, poverty, disease and all. Compared to that catastrophe, a one foot sea level rise and 5 degrees warmer weather in 100 years is nothing.

Answer 5

The word itself almost has a negative connotation. Denial is a very common way of avoiding accepting responsibility for obvious personal wrong doing. I think it is often used with it's sister, "Justification." Both words can be used in a very positive light, but more often I see the them used to describe a failure to be open to personal growth. A positive thing would be to "deny" your baser urges, and not "justify" yourself when you slip up. Admit it, and quit it if it is harmful to yourself or others. Tee hee! Dr. Zapp has a kilt on. I read it last night, so it has to be true!

Answer 6

Have you ever heard the saying "Don't confuse me with the facts. My mind is already made up."?

More:

I love answers that include statements like "94% of the population believe that global warming is real". From this we are supposed to conclude that if we are in the 6% remainder that we are the odd man out and should change. Consider this:

In almost any poll of the American people about things THEY SHOULD KNOW ABOUT the following gems turn up:

Almost 30% can't name the three branches of government.
40% don't know that there are nine Supreme Court Justices.
Over 70% can't name the two most recent states admitted to the Union and the order in which they were admitted.

Yet despite this we are to assume that 94% of the population has informed themselves well enough on the arcane and complicated subject of global warming to have formed a considered opinion!

Get real.

Answer 7

What you have to understand is that most people are capable of having an opinion. Those who aren't capable of having an opinion of their own must adopt someone else's opinion; they are ashamed to, but must adopt someone else's opinion nonetheless. Now if they adopt the wrong opinion, this also gives them shame for not even having the mental capacity to adopt the correct opinion belonging to another. So to take away the possibility of their being discovered as a fool and an idiot, they take the offensive and viciously protect and defend the opinion they adopted from someone else without ever even trying to find out if its true or correct or not. This way, they get to skate through life without ever having an opinion or thought of their very own. They resort to personal attacks because they lack any specific facts to put forth and can only use school-yard name calling.

In earlier days, we called these people "addled" or "idiots". In the new age of political correctness, we call them intellectually challenged...or simply devotees of yet another sectarian cult religion.

We forgive them as addled or idiots or intellectually challenged if you will.

Answer 8

Because, naturally, if anyone is a skeptic, they're an "evil heretic," according to the global warming supporters. You just can't question their way of thinking, or else their whole "religion" will fall apart because of how weak the actual science is (this is coming from a big-time skeptic).

Answer 9

because they are one sided idiots, and they dont understand that there is at least two sides to every story and that there is different opinions from everyone also the one that most people agree with isnt always the right one and infact alot of the time is the wrong one