Why do people discount global warming?

Question

What part of statistics do you not understand? Statistics don't lie. The earth is warming. Antarctic ice IS growing and that too is because of warming. The warmer it is, the more snow falls on Antarctica.

Mee, your stats. are inaccurate. Besides, who is to say that even one degree is OK?

Jalady,

Even more people are going to starve if global warming is not controlled, now.

I'm just repeating what the majority of the world's scientists have said.

Answer 1

the earth has warmed one degree in the past 100 years more than half of that happened before 1957.

GLOBAL WARMING IS A MYTH, GET OVER IT!

Answer 2

There is good evidence that the earth is in a slight warming trend. Looking back at recorded history, NASA scientists peg 1934 as the hottest year so far. They also reference a cooling trend from the 40's to the late 70's. It's been warming slightly since then.

It's been much warmer before and no one really knows what the correct temperature for the earth is, but the planet shows more activity and prosperity during the warming periods, so this warming period may be a positive thing after all.

The "global warming" issue is a catch-all for socialists who want to tax and control the masses. See how it works? Arctic ice melting as well as Antarctic ice increasing in mass are both blamed on "global warming." Colder winters, hotter summers, mild hurricane season, indeed anything can be attributed to "global warming." They've finally found a way to convince everyone that they're to blame for every ill in the world and should pay for it to be "fixed."

The bottom line is that there are too many factors involved to start laying blame on humans or cows or some other "source."

If you read enough on the subject you'll come to the conclusion that humans can't possibly have an effect on climate. Give it a try. Reading is the best way to learn.

Answer 3

Stats oh you mean the ones leftist scientist leave out to push an agenda????????? Global warming of course is real just like global cooling is. These are just natural parts of the Earth cycle. We can't do much to stop it. Being man is only responsible for like 1 to 3% of the problem not much can be done.

Answer 4

You're right. Statistics don't lie. However, statistics are a measure of what has already happened, not a predictor of what is to come.

Again, I don't discount global warming exists, nor that our lifestyle is speeding up the process. I still believe firmly that it is a natural cycle which we cannot stop, but we can slow it down.

Answer 5

When you discuss GW it is important to remember a few facts. First:
1) The planet has warmed about 0.6 deg in the last 100 years or so
2) This increase is a result of a combination of factors including: CO2 increases, solar variations, ocean currents and land use changes.
3) People on different sides of the GW debate have different opinions on significance each of those factors is.

The IPCC and GW advocates would like us to believe that CO2 is responsible for all of the increase. Unfortunately, they have no real evidence to support their claim (all of their claims are based on unverified computer simulations).
GW skeptics are people who believe that other factors, such as the sun, are more plausible explainations for the observed warming. They discount GW explaination because real experimental observations do not support the CO2 hypothesis.

Answer 6

Statistics are numbers, you can't tell me about global warming until you've lived for 5 billion years, recorded every temperature and trend the earth has had. Also, my friend, there is also, if you'd dug deep enough, a trend in the earths warming and cooling. It does this naturally. im not saying we didn't move it along, but we're just about do for another warming spell
we had one in the early middle ages, followed by a cold spell lasting into the mid 1800s, followed by a slow warmup into the 1900s. Also, statistics are numbers used to calculate trends based on probablilities. in short, no one really knows, least of all my dear friend al gore. who probably, because he's a media sap and believes all the statistics he hears, is convinced the world is warming, and the seas will rise and we'll all die. But, where water melts, it freezes somewhere else.

Answer 7

- Some people enjoy a good debate
- Most people like to feel "right," and many like it even more if they overcome resistance (like an overwhelming amount of evidence) and still can feel right.

As Mark Twain said, "There are three kinds of lies: lies, da***d lies, and statistics." There's a large body of evidence that global warming is occuring, a reasonable indication that it seems to be human influenced, but part of the scientific process is to remain skeptical and constantly entertain new theories.

Many people here seem to use the point that there is no global warming, disputing for example the reports that there have been an unusual number of hot years in the past decade. I looked into that point in case I could finally find something to hang my skeptical hat on.

What I found was about this article describing how Ross McKitrick had apparently used mathematics to discredit the common “hockey stick” temperature chart showing a dramatic rise in temperatures in the last decade, which is often also shown as corresponding with increases in greenhouse gas levels:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf

It looked really convincing... an associate professor at a university, challenging a leading scientist's analysis.

To ensure that I had the full picture, I read Ross’ own account of the background:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/MM-W05-background.pdf
“The NWT article presents a history of our original interest in the problem, proceeding through our first analysis of MBH98 in 2003.”
“We (McIntyre and McKitrick) are profiled in the cover story of the Feb. 1, 2005 edition of Natuurwetenschap & Techniek (NWT), a prominent European science magazine (both Dutch and English versions are at www.natutech.nl). The cover story is based on two new peer-reviewed papers being published in the well-known science journals Geophysical Research Letters and Environment and Energy (see www.multiscience.co.uk).”

The article was well written, and the outlook seemed grim for the hockey stick.

I happened to have a browser open to the ExxonSecrets.org site, so I searched for Ross McKitrick.

It turns out that Ross McKitrick is a senior fellow at the Frasier Intitute, which received the following funds from ExxonMobil:

2003
$60,000 ExxonMobil Corporate Giving
Climate Change
Source: ExxonMobil 2003 Corporate Giving Report

2004
$60,000 Exxon Corporation
Climate Change
Source: Exxon Giving Report 2004

Hmm, interesting that ExxonMobil compensates the Frazier Institute at the same time their senior fellow Ross McKitrick (an economist) was attacking climate researchers, then again when he was submitting that criticism for publishing . But maybe that was coincidence. He could really just be a regular economist that decided one day to tackle global warming research.

Then I looked up Ross McKitrick’s co-author Stephen McIntyre, who describes himself as a mineral exploration consultant. Wikipedia however discloses him as the former president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. which was taken over in 1998 by CGX Resources Inc. to form the oil and gas exploration company CGX Energy Inc.. McIntyre was a strategic advisor for CGX in 2000 through 2003.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_McIntyre

So one author is out of his field and appears linked to a professional anti-GW advocacy organization, the other is a self-described brilliant mathemetician firmly entrenched in the petroleum industry (but for some reason leaves that particular tidbit out in his own bio). Neither are scientists in an area relevant to the paper they attack, they do have solid ties to the industry threatened. With their math background they run hundreds of scenarios to see how they might be able to find some that don't result in the IPCC conclusion. I wonder how they'd explain why they did that; it looks like the data sets were complicated; it must have taken weeks or months to set up, run, and re-run, then analyze. And we're asked to believe that they did this for what? for fun?

People can decide for themselves, or fail to decide at all if they've pre-judged the situation, but every time that I find something that seems like it might be even mildly opposing the theory of global warming, there seems to be a slime trail leading right back to the oil industry and their paid deniers.

It's annoying, because if there is anything to the claims that global warming isn't the issue that so many scientists make it out to be, it would be nice to have credible access to that data (without connections to the industry investing millions to influence public policy).

Answer 8

How convenient for you. The northern hemisphere is slacking off in its ice cover which means warming and the Antarctic ice cover is growing which means warming. Those aren't statistics. It is called propaganda and nonsense. Get your facts straight and ease off the Kool Aid.

Answer 9

There are those who do not accept that we can definitively answer the question whether global warming is a unidirectional trend. Others do not accept that human activity accounts for most of it. Yet others do not accept that any action we can take can guarantee that Global warming will not continue despite our efforts.

All of those objections have their valid observations, but one can not support all of them at the same time.
Because water vapour is our most significant GHG it is properly observed that once our temperature passes a critical or tipping point, it becomes impossible for any reduction in CO2 to change our upward trend. The upward trend would continue until we trigger another ice age.

Answer 10

People discount global warming for the same reason that people once refused to believe the earth revolves around the sun, even after it was proven. People do not understand science.

Answer 11

I think that it is all politics; companies and governments responsible for global warming will pay out their ears in order to discredit any research about global warming, and advertise and promote research that favors their political agenda, etc.

An example of this taking place: in the mid-90's, Al Gore proposed a bill to Congress which would clean up Florida's everglades, which were heavily polluted because of runoff from the sugar cane refineries and the big business sugar industry. The Fanjul family was a major player in the sugar cane business at the time (and still is); Mr. Fanjul called Clinton ON President's Day HIMSELF and threw a fit, and in the end the Fanjuls never had to pay a single penny... in exchange Mr. Fanjul hosted a massive gala for both Democratic and Republican parties and donated heavily to various campaign funds to further buy favors with politicians... there's even record of the phone call from Fanjul in the Kenneth Star reports (every call Clinton made and received at the time was under investigation because of the Lewinsky scandal).

Al Gore's not perfect but at least he's been doing his best, it's refreshing to see someone that's been in politics that hasn't been bought out by big business...



Oh, and coconut sherbet (or is it sorbet?) is fantastic. It's my favorite type... :)


EDIT: Well, Al maybe sold out a little, but not at the scale that most of our so-called leaders have...