Why are magazines like Newsweek trying to force people to believe in global warming?

Question

Right on the cover it portrays those who don't think global warming as man made to be controlled by the oil companies.
I do not believe in it because I am a history buff and know that the earth has always had warming and cooling periods with or without humans being present.
I really don't appreciate being told my beliefs are the product of oil companies schemes when they have nothing to do with my ideas or opinions.
I also really don't appreciate the very political agenda of the global warming adherents.
Does that make me a dinosaur?
No. It makes me a person who thinks for herself.

What are your thoughts on the politicizing and media pushing of certain scientific viewpoints?

How pray tell do you think we are making Mars polar ice caps melt at the same rate?
Lack of the same instruments to measure temperatures from every time period from say 100 years ago and back further into time sort of twist the results doesn't it?
Also I have seen doctoring of temperature evidence on sites like weather.com, to such a degree that they would change the averages.

I didn't say that I don't believe that people hurt the environment, I believe pollution is terrible, however I do not believe in the domesday things they are saying.

I feel they are insulting people to force them to believe what they want us to believe for political reasons not because they care.

That's it just keep insulting my beliefs and saying they are wrong. How very liberal of you.

Answer 1

They are pushing for a carbon tax, which by the way will not stop or even slow down climate change.

It's a business, in it for the money.

Answer 2

The vast majority of climatologists believe that global warming is primarily anthropogenic (man-caused). That is not the result of a politcal agenda; many scientists have independently come to that conclusion. Yes, there are natural warming and cooling cycles but it is indisputable that humans have increased the concentration of CO2 by 30% in the atmosphere and thus the odds of the pattern of warming seen coinciding so closely with this increase is low. Scientists can analyze ice core samples and correlate temperature to CO2 concentration and can use a whole array of computer modeling and statistical analysis to come to this conclusion.
The fact that you "know that the earth has always had warming and cooling periods" does not make you a history buff or qualifies you to evaluate this complex science. I also find it ironic that you accuse scientists of having a political agenda when it seems that you are primarily interested in the politics.

Update: The "global cooling" craze of the early 1970's was never accepted by the majority of scientists. We have much better data now and a much stronger consensus. The two situations are not analogous.
The warming seen on other planets tells us nothing. Mars does not have an atmosphere and thus the temperature will fluctuate greatly. This has been studied in detail and no climatologist believes that data from Mars undermines the global warming consensus.

Update 2: Whether or not the earth is warming due to anthropogenic increase in CO2 is an empirical question and thus is not open to differing "opinions." It surely is a matter of complex inference and thus is debatable just how certain this matter is and whether or not other factors are present in the warming as well. Please do not accuse scientists of queering data and then be so thin-skinned as to feel insulted when they tell you that you are wrong.

Update 3: When a group of scientists each independently come to the conclusion that global warming is anthropogenic, it is NOT a fallacy to conclude that the majority are probably right. That is basic statistics. It would be a fallacy if they did not arrive at their conclusion independently. Global warming deniers are not being "threatened" or "silenced." They are being criticized which goes on in every healthy science discussion. These accusations of "muzzling" critics are getting tiresome.

Answer 3

First off, Newsweek can't force you to do anything. If you don't like it, then don't read it.

Secondly, most scientists who deny that humans are causing global warming are funded by oil companies. This is a simple fact, which is what Newsweek's cover was probably alluding to.

Thirdly, your beliefs are not the product of oil company schemes. They're the product of ignorance. I don't mean this as an insult, but if you're basing your conclusions about global warming on this tiny bit of the data available (that climate change has happened in the past, which climate scientists are quite aware of, thank you), then you're not taking all of the evidence into account.

That's like saying you believe in Creationism because there were people around several thousand years ago. Historically there were people around, so clearly evolution is bull, right?

Answer 4

You may be a history buff, but you aren't a scientist. Only a scientist can undestand the complex issues related to global warming, especially when the general public has only a 15 second "soundbite" attention span.

But here's a little history for you, and I'll leave you to research it.

On a mountaintop in Hawaii, far from the influence of cities, a monitoring station was set up in the late forties to measure the CO2 content of the air. The rate of climb has been steady since that time. There is your history. Now here is your science.

1)Trees utilize CO2 to grow through photosynthesis
2) trees are disappearing at the rate of thousands of acres per day worldwide
3) Production of electricity increases CO2 content in the air, as do cars and other industrial processes. So does human respiration, which we can't do much to control
4) CO2 absorbs infra-red radiation which heats up the molecules. Molecular heating = increased molecular motion
5) Increased molecular motion = more storms and more severe storms

Now all of this is overlayed onto the normal cyclical global heat cycle. If we're lucky, the worst will come when we are in a cooling cycle, But if that happens when the natural warming cycle begins, the swing will be more abrupt, and more disruptive.

The Department of Defense is already game planning the effects of global warming, predicting increased violence ind war. So they obviously believe this is happening. The Supreme court in a recent ruling regarding the EPA has stated that EPA needs to step up on this issue, and not ignore it.

So many government agencies have global warming on their radar. Individuals who don't, well, you simply are naive.

Your beliefs do not trump the science and the science is clear.

Answer 5

You are correct, the world has gone through a warming and cooling phase since it's existence.

Unfortunately this phase we are going through is natural but it's being enhanced by the our use of carbon based fuels and pollution. So basically the warming phase is being amplified buy the over use of carbon fuels and pollution.
Ummm.. how to explain this better.. you already know of the oscillating heating cooling cycle recorded over history.. well this cycle is about 10 times larger than any recorded heating cycle and I'm taking about records that are logged over millions of years. These records come from ice core samples from glacial and the polar caps.

Like any thinking person you are questioning the media hype and rightly so.. just do your own research on the information sources they provide. If you do a through well balance research, I'm guessing you might just come up with the same conclusion I have.. which is it's real and they have known about this since 1970.

I will also agree with you that this has turned into a political agenda, used for fear mongering and not being addressed by any country in a logical beneficial way to the public.
There are solutions but no government in the world is serious about addressing them... not while there is a huge profit to be made in keeping the status-quo.(this is just my personal opinion of course).

Answer 6

It's funny that those that support the Global Warming Lie speak of the "consensus" among the "majority" of scientists as proof of their assertion that they are right. It's a logical fallacy known as ad populum, the appeal to popularity. When competing theories are proffered they are immediately characterized as propaganda of the big bad oil companies.

That scientists are belittled if they don't toe the global warming line should be a sure sign to anyone interested in the argument that something is definitely wrong. Science is based first on skepticism, hypothesis, theory, and in the end empirical unbiased experiment to prove or disprove. Competing arguments are not just swept aside if they are objectionable , they're either proved or disproved - something that is not going on in this debate. It's all a big Global Warming group-think love-in.

In looking at the nature of this circus you hear nothing but talk of "consensus" and "settled" science as if that were a proof. I remind those who are interested that there was once a scientific "consensus" that the world was flat and the earth was the center of the universe.

Answer 7

that's great you're a history buff...
Do you really think you're smarter than the thousands of scientists gathered at the international global warming conference last year, 100% of those scientists said that global warming is real, if you don't trust a scientist on a scientific issue, who do you trust?

and you're right the earth does have a warm-cold cycle, however ifyou were to look at a graph that showed the cycle you'd see that it goes back and forth say on a scale of 1-10 like this for the past billion years...
123321123321123321123321, back and fourth, because of man made carbon emissions, the graph is now at a 15...

Answer 8

The fact is when Co2 builds up it heats up. This can easily be prooven in a scientific lab.

Even if humans contribute a small amount of CO2, if every little bit of conservation helps slow down Global warming, why don't you want to at least try to preserve what we have left?

Answer 9

I don't think it's an issue of force as much as it is a desire to make people aware. There is global warming. We could all argue until we're old and grey about whether it's a natural cycle or whether we're to blame but the phenomenon is occurring. That is just a simple fact.

Answer 10

I really don't care if it's true or not. People need fancy stories and lies to get something done...it is just the way the brainwashed populace works.

We are destroying our planet, if you want to pretend we aren't...go right ahead. Reducing pollution even under the guise of global warming is a good thing.

Answer 11

Yes, the earth has always had its cooling and warming periods but this time the warming is happening faster than usual and many scientists believe that we are causing it. I believe that these scientists are correct. Why do we laugh at them? They laughed at Galileo when he said that the earth moved around the sun. Before that they believed that the earth was flat....and on and on. Be smart and accept reality.