A Reader Shares His Doubts About Global Warming
Last week, I received an email from a reader in Estonia (I was just as surprised we were big in the Baltics as you) who indicated that he used to be a believer in the global warming phenomenon until he “read some quite believable articles suggesting that man made Global Warming is a hoax.” Two of the pieces the reader pointed me to were authored by Robert Brisnmead, who, evidently, is a devoted climate change denier. The third was a longer, more detailed piece.
The reader also passed along a summary of the take-home arguments he gleaned in his newfound readings that I thought I would share with you. I’m only passing these along because the reader seemed like a friendly chap, not because I buy it. Do with it as you please.
1. The “Greenhouse Effect” is a natural and valuable phenomenon, without which, the planet would be uninhabitable.
2. Modest Global Warming, at least up until 1998 when a cooling trend began, has been real.
3. CO2 is not a significant greenhouse gas; 95% of the contribution is due to Water Vapor.
4. Man’s contribution to Greenhouse Gasses is relatively insignificant. We didn’t cause the recent Global Warming and we cannot stop it.
5. Solar Activity appears to be the principal driver for Climate Change, accompanied by complex ocean currents which distribute the heat and control local weather systems.
6. CO2 is a useful trace gas in the atmosphere, and the planet would actually benefit by having more, not less of it, because it is not a driver for Global Warming and would enrich our vegetation, yielding better crops to feed the expanding population.
7. CO2 is not causing global warming, in fact, CO2 is lagging temperature change in all reliable datasets. The cart is not pulling the donkey, and the future cannot influence the past.
8. Nothing happening in the climate today is particularly unusual, and in fact has happened many times in the past and will likely happen again in the future.
9. The UN IPCC has corrupted the “reporting process” so badly, it makes the oil-for-food scandal look like someone stole some kid’s lunch money. They do not follow the Scientific Method, and modify the science as needed to fit their predetermined conclusions. In empirical science, one does NOT write the conclusion first, then solicit “opinion” on the report, ignoring any opinion which does not fit their predetermined conclusion while falsifying data to support unrealistic models.
10. Polar Bear populations are not endangered, in fact current populations are healthy and at almost historic highs. The push to list them as endangered is an effort to gain political control of their habitat… particularly the North Slope oil fields.
11. There is no demonstrated causal relationship between hurricanes and/or tornadoes and global warming. This is sheer conjecture totally unsupported by any material science.
12. Observed glacial retreats in certain select areas have been going on for hundreds of years, and show no serious correlation to short-term swings in global temperatures.
13. Greenland is shown to be an island completely surrounded by water, not ice, in maps dating to the 14th century. There is active geothermal activity in the currently “melting” sections of Greenland.
14. The Antarctic Ice cover is currently the largest ever observed by satellite, and periodic ice shelf breakups are normal and correlate well with localized tectonic and geothermal activity along the Antarctic Peninsula.
15. The Global Warming Panic was triggered by an artifact of poor mathematics which has been thoroughly disproved. The panic is being deliberately nurtured by those who stand to gain both financially and politically from perpetuation of the hoax.
16. Scientists who “deny” the hoax are often threatened with loss of funding or even their jobs.
17. The correlation between solar activity and climate is now so strong that solar physicists are now seriously discussing the much greater danger of pending global cooling.
18. Biofuel hysteria is already having a disastrous effect on world food supplies and prices, and current technologies for biofuel production consume more energy than the fuels produce.
19. Global Warming Hysteria is potentially linked to a stress-induced mental disorder.
20. In short, there is no “climate crisis” of any kind at work on our planet.
Image: re-ality via flickr under a Creative Commons License
Other than number 19 (which I assume is tongue in cheek), all the statements are true.
Every single one of these points has been debunked long ago! This is just fantasy and/or talking points.
I wonder what the value of repeating anti-climate change fantasy on one’s website is. It actually works against fixing the problem, and with the problem being so dire, it actually works against people’s survival.
Then again, that means more water for me.
We all know Global Warming is a RELIGION, a HOAX, a SCAM invented by The Club Of Rome to bring about change, create new world relgion (earth), and to carbon tax your arse.
All those left wing fringe lunatics are a small minority, people just don’t voice their opinion as they are tired of the rhetoric - one minute Ozone layer, next global cooling, then warming, then cooling, now cows fart too much, now sheep burp too much, now we have to become vegans, now people’s farts are taxed.
The science is clear, the horse has bolted.
Now just watch the mass media change the wording from ‘global warming’ to ‘climate change’ ha ha haha … climate always is changing.
How did you respond to this reader?
I’d love it if you could cite a credible source of evidence for even one of these statements…
You can find counter arguments to most of these with minimal effort on Google. I’ll start you off with the answer to the “cooling since 1998″ one. There is a great plot at Grist that clears this one up. 1998 is an extreme outlier. Starting any comparison with an outlier will give you bad conclusions. If you take 1998 (the warmest year on record), the trend is intact. 1997, 1999, and 2000 are all cooler than every year since.
I do agree that the biofuel craze is causing more problems than it is solving. But stupid responses to a problem do not mean the problem doesn’t exist.
Shelly you’re a perfect example of a woman who SHOULD stay at home cooking & having babies. Leave the important stuff to intelligent people who have the time to research complicated topics and form educated opinions. Global Warming (sorry, Climate Change) is a SCAM and the kool-aid drinking cult members are all either liars, thieves or just plain stupid (by choice). Go do some laundry hon.
Well, it took guts to put that piece up on your site. I am a sceptic on AGW.
CO2 is not a pollutant, in fact it is vital to life. That’s why you have some commercial growers pumping it into glasshouses up to levels of 1200-1500 ppm. The result is faster, heavier, healthier fruit and vegetables.
It is heavier than air, so it falls back to earth over time. This fact alone puts an upper limit on the amount of CO2 that could ever actually be in the atmosphere.
It only traps heat at certain wavelengths, which means a doubling of the ppm will not result in a doubling of warming attributable to CO2. Even the IPCC itself believes a doubling of CO2 will result in a one degree rise in temperatures.
It has been a massive own goal focussing on CO2 the way we have done. There are far worse chemicals being pumped into the atmosphere by us. Nitrous Oxides, Sulphuric Oxides, PCBs, Dioxins, Benzene.
Benzene is the major carcinogen in cigarettes, except cigarettes are only responsible for 1% of the benzene being put into the atmosphere. Over 80% is attributable to transport.
One of the reasons attributed to the recent ice melt in the Arctic is the black soot being pumped out of Chinese and Russian coal plants. These countries were given a pass when it came to CO2 quotas. Had the emphasis been on real pollutants, the outcome could have been very different.
We have the madness of us burning wastes, which is OK because it is “carbon neutral”, but no mention of the other nasties that are being pumped out with it.
Lastly, what happens if the earth continues cooling? We have so brainwashed ourselves into thinking CO2 is the root of all evil, and the sole cause of the warming up to 1998, that people will think “No problem, let’s just pump more CO2 into the atmosphere and we’ll be OK”. So you’ll get some nutjobs leaving their cars running in their driveway, you’ll get others more organised, who will lobby against renewables, then you’ll get the extremists who’ll go around ripping the solar panels off people’s roofs, all in the name of “saving the earth from global cooling”. And when right thinking people complain about the other nasties that are being caused, they’ll just turn around and say “Well nobody gave a fig about that before, why should we worry now.”
Points 1, 2, 8, 10, 11, 16 and 18 are pretty well established scientific (or otherwise) fact, so anyone who says they have all been debunked is not serving the discussion well. Let’s have some reasonable give and take here people.
Points 4 and 20 are the final conclusions, so we’ll leave them for now. Points 3 and 5 are vital questions that need to be studied a lot more, and that’s why the hysteria about CO2 does real science a disservice. As for point 12, yes, some glaciers retreats are definitely not due to global warming (Mt. Kilimanjaro, e.g.) - others may or may not be.
Antarctic ice is not usually mentioned by the GW pro crowd, because it’s not behaving as expected. Vice versa for the Arctic ice and the anti GW crowd.
Can we talk about these issues reasonably?
Antarctic ice:
http://www.globalwarmingisreal.com/blog/2008/11/14/antarctic-warming-shows-human-fingerprints/