Where do global warming skeptics get their information from?

Question

Some global warming skeptics frequently make the same unfounded claims. Assuming the statements haven't been made up, where are they getting their information from?

Here's a dozen such examples...

· Global warming is entirely natural
· The sun is the sole cause of global warming
· Mars is warming at the same rate as Earth
· The solar system is warming
· Global warming does more good than harm
· CO2 is not a pollutant
· We're still recovering from the Little Ice Age
· The sun is getting hotter
· In a few years the world will be cooling
· Scientists have never made an accurate prediction
· Most climate scientists say humans are not to blame
· Global warming was invented by politicians / Al Gore

If you're a skeptic, perhaps you could explain the origins of some of these statements or better still, include links to credible websites that verify these claims.

Answer 1

Well let's see what we've got so far.

Volcanoes are responsible. There's an old one, debunked many, many times. Volcanoes emit 1% the carbon dioxide that humans emit annually.

http://www.gaspig.com/volcano.htm

Larry provides us with the Oregon Petition. Seriously? I thought we were done debunking that several months ago. I hope it's not making a resurgence.

Tomcat's got a new critique of the Lockwood paper. Unfortunately it's rather dishonest, or perhaps simply misunderstands Lockwood's argument.

The Lockwood paper says "all solar trends since 1987 have been in the opposite direction to those seen or inferred in the majority of the twentieth century".

The critique claims "This is not true for cosmic rays which shows very low counts during the 1990-1991 solar maximum".

Of course, cosmic rays increased shortly thereafter, and have overall changed little from their levels in 1987. Of course they changed in the short-term as part of the 11 year cycle, but the overall change has been negligible. Moreover, the period of low cosmic ray counts did not result in an acceleration of global warming:

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

The critique also claims that Lockwood is lying by saying the 11-year cycle is not apparent in the temperature record. I have to agree with Lockwood on this one - you have to try and see the 11-year cycle to find any such pattern in the noise of the temperature record.

Finally, the critique discusses the oft-debunked criticism of the surface temperature record. No point in going over that again.

Answer 2

I wish you could have just ask, 'what do you make of this new German report ?' instead of couching it your irrational views of skeptics. What does this skeptic think about it. Nothing, I have not seen the report or even read much on it. Why? I don't need another HAL9000, or in this case HANS9000 telling me the AE-35 unit is going to fail. Just off hand, the presumption is that heat is being absorbed then blended into the deep ocean water, but that would somewhat be contradicted by the data in the ARGO program which has indicated no warming in the oceans. Do the authors claim that this absorption increase is caused by the synchronization of decadal and multi decadal oscillations? If so, what would be the frequency of the new global oscillation, and how did it relate to observed temperatures in the 20th century and prior? What did they use for their CO2 forcing, and why that value? Do the assume stratospheric and tropospheric aerosols will remain at historic lows or return to "normal" values? Then there is the water vapor/cloud cover issue. Too many questions about the work, so I guess well have to wait for it's release to the general public to see what they did.

Answer 3

Skeptics get their info from the same places that proponents get their info: studies, TV, Magazines and Internet. If you look hard enough you can find a study (by the University of Somewhere), a book(by someone famous) and a bunch of graphs (by some governmental office) and *TAA DAA* you can write up a theory. These can usually be recognized as bad sources of information but not always. The fact is probably that the truth about Global Warming is somewhere in the middle rather than either being totally man-made or totally natural. Of course there is no profit in middle-ground, all profits are raised when the situation goes to some extreme.

The main problem I have with the idea of Global Warming is that the loudest factions in support of the idea are so very bad at giving credible citations when publishing the stories. The website for Inconvenient Truth has some of the worst citations I have ever seen considering how "scientific" the evidence is supposed to be.

Look at the citations used to "prove" the statements made on the movie "Inconvenient Truth" http://www.climatecrisis.net/thescience/

For example:
The first citation listed: According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this era of global warming "is unlikely to be entirely natural in origin" and "the balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence of the global climate."

The Truth: The IPCC is completely devoted to "Special Report on Safeguarding the Ozone Layer and Global Climate System: Issues Related to Hydrofluorocarbons and perfluorocarbons (SROC/SROCF) "The IPCC does not carry out research nor does it monitor climate related data or other relevant parameters." In other words, IPCC is not interested in or paying attention to Global Warming. In fact IPCC is monitoring GLOBAL COOLING due to hydrofluorocarbons.

This is a case where the proponents of Global Warming Theory are using citations that are meaningless but they sound great when applied to the idea of Global Warming. Use of these types of citations discredits the whole website, the movie and in my opinion, Al Gore.

Maybe if the "Scientists" cited credible sources then the skeptics would have fewer reasons to doubt them.

Answer 4

rush limbaugh, a talk show republican guru who has lots of followers is a skeptic. That's probably where they get their info from. Skeptical means they DO NOT believe...some of your statements are not skeptical, like:

Global warming is entirely natural
The sun is the sole cause of global warming
The solar system is warming
Mars is warming at the same rate as the Earth
We're still recovering from the Little Ice Age
The sun is getting hotter.
etc. etc.
For some reason, that I don't know why, you don't understand that they are agreeing with you and are "not" being skeptical at all.

Answer 5

1. "Global warming is entirely natural" - This is just wrong. I do not know of any competent skeptic who holds this. Without doubt mankind is responsible for some warming. The scientific debate is about how much. The climate sensitivity estimate by Stephen Schwartz of Brookhaven indicates the doubling of CO2 will not be problematic.
http://www.ecd.bnl.gov/steve/pubs/HeatCapacity.pdf

2. "The sun is the sole cause of global warming" - Again, this is not right. Even the IPCC admits solar variation plays some role. Possibly a larger natural role is played by the PDO and other oceanic oscillations, but mankind also plays a role.

3.· "Mars is warming at the same rate as Earth" - This is not accurate. Mars warming appears to be related to factors other than solar variation.

4. "The solar system is warming" - This may be true but the rate of warming does not explain all of Earth's climate variation.

5. "Global warming does more good than harm" - Up until now this is probably true The Earth has greened up. Food production is higher than usual. Atmospheric CO2 is plant food and it has been good for agriculture. Global warming has the potential to cause problems in the southern hemisphere but is thought to be continue to be helpful to the northern hemisphere.
http://www.idrc.ca/en/ev-5544-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

6. "CO2 is not a pollutant" - In my opinion, this is absolutely true. Atmospheric CO2 is nontoxic, essential for life and occurs naturally as part of the carbon cycle. Plants need it to carry out photosynthesis. These points are not debated by anyone. Below Bob states that the US Supreme Court has ruled CO2 a pollutant. This was news to me so I searched for a news article. The ruling was made in April 2007.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200704/NAT20070402c.html

7. "We're still recovering from the Little Ice Age" - The Little Ice Age was a period of rapid expansion of glaciers with coldest temperatures around 1850. Current warming has nothing to do with the LIA.

8. "The sun is getting hotter" - Solar cycles are about 11 years long and go up and down. This is not debated by anyone. Solar variation is not huge, varying by about 1.3 W/M2. The only debate has to do with amplification of solar forcings. A number of solar amplication mechanisms have been proposed.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/244.htm
http://www.spacecenter.dk/research/sun-climate/Projects/WP_100.pdf

9. "In a few years the world will be cooling" - The warmest year lately was 1998. But the PDO just went into its cool phase and the solar cycle is heading lower as well, so this actually looks like a very possible prediction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_decadal_oscillation

10. "Scientists have never made an accurate prediction" - This is an overstatement. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. But predictions about climate have a poor record. Orrin Pilkey, professor at Duke University, wrote a book titled "Useless Arithmetic" about the many failures in trying to predict nature. He has a nice section on the IPCC in which he is respectful of the IPCC's statements of uncertainty and wishes these statements would make their way into the media. Unfortunately, they do not. Peer-reviewed papers sometimes discuss failed predictions.
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/anttemps.htm

11. "Most climate scientists say humans are not to blame" - Actually, this is not true. However, the better climate scientists (Pielke, Christy, Spencer, Lindzen, Schwartz, Svensmark, Shaviv, Cotton, etc, etc.) think humans are having an affect on climate but it will not be catastrophic.
·
12. "Global warming was invented by politicians / Al Gore" - Again, this is not true. Neither did Al Gore invent the internet. But Al certainly has taken some of the science, exaggerated it, and made money on a movie and book by feeding on people's fears.

Answer 6

Of the possibilities you suggested, Trevor, the only two that I’m fairly certain about are…

• Global warming does more good than harm

Certainly, I defy anyone to prove categorically that moderate warming will do more harm than good. Plainly, in the world we live, warmer is better for life. We get the most life around the equator and the amount of life diminishes as latitudes increase until we get no life whatsoever at the poles.

As you are no doubt well aware, even here in the U.K. some mammals are forced to hibernate during the cold winter months. Hibernation is not some ‘fun’ thing that they do for a laugh, it is a desperate measure they employ in an attempt to survive the cold winter months.

Global warming may mean that U.K. squirrels (for example) no longer need to hibernate through the winter and I’m sure the Alarmists would scream about this saying “Look. LOOK! Global warming is *so* bad, squirrels can’t hibernate any more.”

But the truth is, of course, that if squirrels could talk they’d be saying “Isn’t global warming *great*? I don’t have to hibernate anymore. Woohoo!”

GW is always labelled as being bad for good things, and good for bad things. GW is killing polar bears (which it isn’t, of course), but is spreading malaria (which it also isn’t).

Al Gore tells us that GW is causing problems for the Pied-flycatcher, because the caterpillars they rely on to feed their young are appearing earlier due to global warming and thus have all turned into butterflies and flown away by the time their chicks hatch.

Well, hang on, anyone with an ounce of common sense who stops to think about it for just one second will realise that temperatures have changed in the past and the Pied-flycatchers survived those changes. So what’s so special about this warming that means the Pied-flycatchers are going drop dead, instead of doing whatever they did last time?

And another thing. What if I like butterflies? Wouldn’t GW mean that they’re not getting eaten by the Pied-flycatchers? So I’d think GW was good, wouldn’t I?

As for us humans, again, cold in the winter kills far more than heat in the summer.

Oh, but GW will mean we can’t grow enough food to feed the population. Yeah, ok, they’ve been trying to scare us will that one for 40 years. They were wrong then and I’ll bet they’re wrong now.

As far as I can see, GW has so far had no effect whatsoever – despite the GW Alarmists trying to tell us otherwise. Thus I seriously doubt we have very much to worry about.



And…

• Scientists have never made an accurate prediction

I tend to go along with this one too. Hansen was wrong in 1988, because observed temperature is doing what he predicted it would do if CO2 stopped rising in 2000. The Alarmists flap around trying to convince everyone that it’s not true (usually using Hansen’s own data, which I would argue is distinctly unsound), but I’ve looked at the data and I’m satisfied that he was wrong.

And the bods at www.forecastingprinciples.com have stated that the predictions in the IPCC’s latest report are so flawed that “Claims that the Earth will get warmer have no more credence than saying that it will get colder.” (See… http://www.forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/WarmAudit31.pdf ) One of them even offered a $10,000 bets that the rise in temperature over the next 10 years would be closer to zero than anything the alarmists cared to claim. No one has yet taken him up on that bet. So, when it comes to putting their money where their mouths are, the alarmists don’t seem to be able to manage it.

Thus, in conclusion, my reasons for doubting the coming catastrophe are that we are unlikely to see the warming that is predicted and what warming we do experience will be far less harmful than we are being lead (conned?) to believe.

Answer 7

Larry - The "Oregon Petition" is bogus. It was just names emailed in, with no credentials, and no may to check their authenticity. Many are obvious fakes. The thing was a scam anyway, meant to look like an official communication from the National Academy of Sciences (which issued a press statement denying it had anything to do with it). More here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition

Tomcat - A website from a guy with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering is more convincing to you than a peer reviewed paper by two Ph.D.s? As John Stossel would say - Give me a break.

Ben O - Here are just a few of the scientists with proof the Sun is not getting hotter:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/07/the-lure-of-solar-forcing/
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/FAQ2.html
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11650
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6290228.stm

Ron C - Pretty decent and fair. The exception - You said "CO2 is not a pollutant - This is absolutely true. Atmospheric CO2 is essential for life. This point is not debated by anyone."

Flat wrong. Example. Copper is essential for life. It is also universally considered to be a pollutant. It's all in the amount. And pollutant is a legal term. The Supreme Court of the US has declared CO2 to be a pollutant.

Answer 8

Check out this NY Times story regarding the effects of global warming on the Colorado River.

Answer 9

One of my major concerns with global warming (not listed above by the way) are the assumptions made with limited data.

More specifically, scientist search for a reasons why there's a small increase in temperature when human beings haven't been recording temperatures for very long.

I've found this site to be useful.
http://www.ncpa.org/ba/ba337/ba337.html

Futhermore scientist (and politicians) rush to conclusions when scientist don't even fully understand the climate, the sun, the earth even. There's still so much to learn.

Granted lots of research is being done and has been done. But are scientist always right? Are their conclusions always right? Has the data been corrupted? Are scientist without opinion or agenda?

It's perfectly reasonable to be skeptic of global warming because it buried in political and economic agendas.

People shouldn't put blind faith in science. Doing so is a bit narrowminded.

Answer 10

A google search on each one of those phrases will give you plenty of websites.

As far as being credible, it IS the Internet, so who is to say what is credible.

Since most of those statements above are both very true, and very irrelevant, I don't see how it matters where they come from. At this point in time it seems to depend entirely on what you believe and who you can trust.

There are many instances in human history where the consensus was wrong, and many instances where the consensus was right, but Governments failed to act.

It reminds me very much of the Evolution debates that I had in college 25 years ago. Ultimately, you are not going to change a belief at all with logical arguments, and you can only change it a tiny little bit with actual facts.