Where does all this global warming misinformation come from?

Question

I've asked 2 questions to global warming skeptics today, and the amount of misinformation I've received in response has been overwhelming. I can't even keep up to refute it all! Stuff like water vapor is what's causing global warming (rather than being an indicator and amplifier), extreme weather events aren't an early indicator of global warming, human activity is only repsonsible for 5% of atmospheric CO2, carbon dioxide doesn't cause global warming, it only follows it, volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans, etc. etc.

Where the heck does all this misinformation come from?

truthwillnotbesilenced - another example of misinformation. Here's my EVIDENCE that temperatures 1000 years ago (during the Medieval Warm Period) were lower than they are today:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Do you see how I provided evidence to support my claim? Skeptics rarely do the same.

I'm sick of this bullshit Wikipedia criticism. You can't find your own evidence so you criticize mine the only way you can. No Wikipedia is not perfect, but I'm only using graphs presented on Wikipedia. I could find them elsewhere, but Wikipedia is the easiest place to locate them. The article authors don't make the plots, they simply take graphs from scientific papers and put them onto the article website.

If the best you can do is criticize the place where my evidence was put on a website, you lose badly. And you wonder why I'm not convinced by skeptics!

Mark H. that is a grossly incorrect statement about volcanoes. Not just one, but a year's worth of volcano emissions add up to 1% of yearly human emissions of CO2. Guess what, I'll even provide a source for that evidence. It's not even Wikipedia!

"Human activities release more than 130 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of more than 8,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 3.3 million tonnes/year)!"

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/What/VolGas/volgas.html

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html

But thank you for proving my point!

Mc you're the worst of the lot. Please stop lying. Here are some examples of extreme weather being linked to global warming (as summarized in Wikipedia)

The World Meteorological Organization[2] and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency[3] have linked increasing extreme weather events to global warming, as have Hoyos et al. (2006), writing that the increasing number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes is directly linked to increasing temperatures.[4] Similarly, Kerry Emmanuel in Nature writes that hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with temperature, reflecting global warming. Hurricane modeling has produced similar results, finding that hurricanes, simulated under warmer, high CO2 conditions, are more intense than under present-day conditions.

My plot is not the "hockey stick", and it's more accurate than yours because it includes FAR more data.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

Answer 1

I know from your previous questions and answers that you already know a lot about global warming so apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs.

Global warming has been known about for a long time, it's 'discovery' is attributable to Svante Arrhenius in 1896, we;ve been studying it ever since. As more and more was learned the scientists became increasingly worried and for decades warmed governments that something needed to be done. Their please fell on deaf ears.

During this period, the best part of 100 years, there was no dispute amongst the experts that global warming was real and we were the main cause of it.

Once it became politicised the questioning began. Not by the scientists, not by the experts but by people who knew nothing about global warming - the politicians, media and those with interests to protect.

If you look you'll find that there are no scientific studies that have been conducted which don't prove the theory of global warming. Many people claim that they exist, but like people who claim that fairies and unicorns exist they've not been able to come up with the goods.

Unable to provide any real evidence against global warming the major oil companies actively engaged in a policy of discrediting the science as did the US government and some major corporations. They hired scientists and lobbyists to counter the claims about global warming.

Faced with conflicting evidence many people took 'sides'. The 'evidence' against global warming became more and more extreme and exaggerated as it was passed, like Chinese whispers, from one skeptic to another. Internet sites sprung up seeking to refute global warming, not sites that had conducted their own research or were founded on credible evidence but sites that simply repeated the rumours and distortions originally put about by the oil companies and the like.

Since the initial attack against global warming there has been a huge shift towards the science side. So much so that every government in the world, every major oil company in the world, every major organisation in the world and every credible scientific organisation bar one now accepts global warming is a reality.

The rumours, misinformation, distortions etc still abound and although they have no credibility and the vast majority can very easily be repudiated they are still widely used by the remaining skeptics.

At the end of the day, it's like any conspiracy thoery, the proponents will seize upon every possible piece of 'evidence' to support their claims no matter how futile or ridiculous it is.

Answer 2

The misinformation comes primarily from a group of special interest groups that disseminate this crap as proxies of the fossil fuel industry--mainly the oil companies. That's NOT a rant--check out the Royal Society (UK) website. They investigated this and found Exxon alone spent almost$40 million on thisin 2004 (maybe2005).

A more interesting question is WHY so many people seem to want to believe the misinformation. It doesn't appear to be just wishful thinking (which isnormal to a point--no one who's sane WANTS to think a disaster is about to happen). From a sociological perspective--and given the high correlation with right-wing political views, I think much of the acceptance is coming from two sources: a) a willing to believe anything associated with "liberals" is false (and environmentalism is linked to the liberals, whether it should be or not) and b)the even wierder pronouncements of some of the cult leadeers on the religious right that encourage these people to take denying global warming as a matter of "faith."

Answer 3

Here's a serious attempt to answer it: the internet is extremely good at a few things. One is exponential amplification of information, and another is creating ideological ghettoes. These form very efficient channels for propagating bad information - faulty but ideologically-appealing information is picked up and propagated in the ghetto, where it is unlikely to be rejected due to the favorable audience. This further reinforces the ghetto, which can paper its walls with endless amounts of such faulty tidbits, assuring that good information will have a terribly difficult time breaking through.

The ghetto surely exists - the right-wing blogosphere, populated by Free Republic readers and so on, is ripe for this sort of stuff.

As to where the information comes from, it could be anywhere. The bit about volcanoes comes from a skeptical documentary produced by British Marxists, of all people.

Answer 4

Once again not even the IPCC agrees that global warming has any effect on storms. When someone says that storms are caused by global warming you know that they are ignorant, no one I repeat no one has said anything like this. Find me a scientific study that say storms are caused by global warming, there are none, even the IPCC says this.

Once again you link to the hockey stick graph which as I explained earlier is a forgery. And once again even the IPCC who put out the graph admits this so does the national academy of science who debunked the graph officially. The hockey stick graph is really the only evidence that global warming scientists can cite because it appears that the earth's temperature has skyrocketed. Here is the real graph:
http://earth.usc.edu/~geol150/evolution/images/littleiceage/englandtemp.jpg
You can see that the current temperature is not unusual.

The misinformation comes from people like you who spout unsubstantiated ideas like the storm idea. You also have provided a link to a fake graph which makes it appear that the earth is warming beyond what is normal.

My information comes from my standard global warming answer, I didn't want to post the whole thing here.
Here is hurricanes per decade, you will note that hurricanes during 1991-2000 were the average and still less than in times past.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

Answer 5

To Dana1981: You asked "Where the heck does all this misinformation come from?"

Many different places. Hyping misinformation about global warming is a big industry with many small entrepreneurs and major players. They are outnumbered roughly 100 to 1 by those in the industry hyping information on global warming, but journalists have a tendency to keep their jerking knees stuck in a "tell both sides of the story" paradigm, even if there are 100 legitimate sides and 99 of them do not support the disinformation industry.

In other words, answering your question fully would be a very long story.

But, you can be quite assured that the misinformation does NOT come purely from

1) people who think the earth is round
2) people who think that God did not create man in order to have him try and subvert science classes with "scientific theories of intelligent design"
3) people who think Elvis is dead (not bopping around in a flying saucer)
4) people who think Saddam did not have nuclear warheads targeted at America in 2003, and that he was not involved in the 9-11 attacks
5) people who regularly publish articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals

Answer 6

All the information I have seen and read indicates that global warming is indeed in progress. The MISinformation may have been generated by the people who do NOT want regulations and costly emission improvements in various companies. I have read that a few companies have gone to great lengths to convince people that the scientists and the research studies made are incorrect. (That does not include the mere observation by all of us of the huge change in weather patterns, does it?)
Also, I'm reminded of reading in the National Geographic long before the environmental issues came to light that forest fires (created naturally) were proven to supply a better balance of oxygen for the earth's supply as it releases same in the air. Have you noticed the abundance of forest fires in recent years? I hear about the GA fire on the news as I type.

Answer 7

Apparently misinformation is what you consider to be information that doesn't fit your theory.

You haven't addressed anything I've posted - like all the evidence that it was warmer 1000 years ago than it is today.

And apparently you consider voting thumbs down to be addressing my posts.... Sad....

Sometimes I think gee, it must be us, the proof must be out there somewhere, it's just that the idiots on this board are so incapable of arguing the point. But this is uniformly true of all the boards - I must have asked 1,000 people for proof that it's us and nobody has ever offered any. I must have asked 1,000 people if it wasn't warmer 1000 years ago, how'd all that stuff happen, and nobody has any explanation - "local anomalies" - local to just about every corner of the planet, but still somehow local.

How come you still have no answer for me? I've posted a whole lot of evidence none of which from Exxon - you haven't addressed any of it, except to post a graph which isn't what you represent it to be - - the graph is the proxy model output only through 1900, with measured surfact temps from 1900 on superimposed on it, and the proxy models do not pick up the post-1990 warming - - meaning their failure to pick up the medieval warming doesn't mean it didn't happen just like the evidence of what grew when and where would indicate.

OK again, that's not evidence - it's a picture, a graph, a mere reassertion of your claim, and it's based on sources that I've demonstrated to be faulty - a model that doesn't pick up the present warming.

Saying something a second time isn't the same as proving it, son.

And I've given my links - click on my account and go to my questions - - no, they're not from Exxon, though you'll say they are just to try to discredit me without ever answering my questions.

Crickets still chirping......

Look, it's a simple question - if it wasn't warmer 1000 years ago, how'd sea and mountain trade routes exist that are now ice-bound, and how'd people farm with simple hand tools land that is now frozen year-round?

Put up or shut up.

Answer 8

Dear Sir:

It pleases me to no end to locate someone who feels as I do that we are being scammed like never before in the history of mankind by these Al Gore aficionados.

I answered an Asker's Question a moment ago about Global Warming and asked him/her to perform a simple experiment.
I suggested that they obtain three oven type thermometers and on a given day place the thermometers under a glass jar full of carbon dioxide, a stack of white roofing shingles, and a stack of black roofing shingles and record what the thermometers showed. If they do that, they will see, amazingly, that the stack of black shingles heat up faster, get much hotter, and stay hot longer than the other two things.

Now, what does this mean? It means that carbon dioxide is not the problem. BLACK ASPHALT highways, parking lots, driveways, country roads, and black roofing is the main cause of widespread heating on the Earth's surface. Anyone can see that. Solution = Quit paving the Earth's surface with BLACK materials. BEGIN painting them WHITE, and make all new paving contain white colored material. All that is required to do this is a will, and an instruction to do so.

In addition, carbon dioxide is a heavy gas that sinks to the earth's surface where it is absorbed by plants and they give of oxygen in return. This miraculous discovery may be checked out by smelling the air from the country versus the air from any city. The city has less oxygen. Why is that? Because the city has less acreage of evergreen shrubs and evergreen trees than the countryside. So, this is so simple, all one has to do to correct this problem is to plant an abundance of evergreen shrubs and evergreen trees in the town and cities to change this around.

Jet Planes emit millions and millions of cubic feet of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide into the UPPER ATMOSPHERE each day. There seems to be no interest in curbing that in the slightest bit. We could simply curb all jet aircraft flight for six months and put a huge dent in the amount of CO2 and CO that is in our atmosphere. Yes, that is really radical, but you see how easy it could be done if needed. Plants and trees take care of all of the CO2 and CO that is down at the Earth's surface, but they cannot deal with CO2 and CO emitted at 35,000 Feet until it finally drifts down to the surface.

Answer 9

Sorry the PREVIOUS POST IS SO RIDICULOUS I have to answer it:

If volcanoes emit so much CO2 where is the CO2 peak after a volcanic eruption on the measurements scientists do worldwide ?



-------------------------
WHO is in the US the politician who received the largest contributions from Exxon during his campaigns ?

INHOFE

Now check who the leader of the global warming skeptics in the US Senate is:
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Home.Home

Isn´t that interesting ?

Answer 10

Here's a nice website that catalogs most of the more sensible "skeptical" arguments as of the end of 2006.

Some arguments are legitimate scientific query, but many are generated by the right-wing propaganda factory that is american talk radio, which caters to an individualistic, anti-intellectual, anti-government, (secretly) big-business attitude.