Global warming/skepticism/arguments

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Overview

This page collects legitimate arguments against any of the various aspects of global warming, and any known counter-arguments.

Particular Points

Although the majority of scientists agree that global warming is occurring and is caused by humanity, a few disagree; each of these few generally express one of the following positions:

• The Earth is not warming
  • e.g. surface records seem to show a warming trend, but satellite and weather balloon records do not.
• The Earth is warming but the cause is unknown
• The Earth is warming but mostly due to natural processes
• Global warming is occurring but not as much as feared
• Global warming is occurring, but there's really nothing to worry about

(Reference: wikipedia:List of scientists opposing global warming consensus)

Arguments Against

Arguments against global warming:

• Global warming is junk science: There are claims that scientists "proving" global warming are purposefully lying and modifying data or at least using questionable analytical methods.
• Scientists are divided on the issue: although there are a few dissenters, the scientific consensus agrees that global warming is happening and that it is anthropogenic; see The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change
  • anonymous user 76.228.199.73 adds: all scientists are not accounted for through the "scientific consensus", many do disagree with global warming being caused by human activity and are simply disregarded.
    • Response: I have not been able to find more than a handful of such scientists in the field of climatology, and their "dissent" is mostly about details, not any claim that the consensus is based on bad science. Please feel free to start the page global warming/dissent as a place to discuss legitimate dissenters (climate scientists who disagree with the consensus) and their arguments. (There may be more scientists in other fields who disagree with GW, but their disagreement will have to ride on the strength of their arguments alone -- which belong on this page ("arguments against...").) --Woozle 11:29, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
• Global warming is self-correcting: possibly, but the corrections may take some time
• At least one group has argued that the Earth is actually cooling:
  • New Research Indicates the Earth May Be Cooling by Amy Ridenour of the conservative National Center for Public Policy Research National Center for Public Policy Research
    • response to Ridenour

Editorials Against

• 2007-10-17 Global Warming Delusions by Daniel R. Botkin:
  • (premise) The only reason global warming matters is how it affects life, and the evidence that global warming will have serious effects on life is thin. Most evidence suggests the contrary.
    • (evidence) During the past 2.5 million years, a period that scientists now know experienced climatic changes as rapid and as warm as modern climatological models suggest will happen to us, almost none of the millions of species on Earth went extinct.
      • "The exceptions were about 20 species of large mammals (the famous megafauna of the last ice age -- saber-tooth tigers, hairy mammoths and the like), which went extinct about 10,000 to 5,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age, and many dominant trees and shrubs of northwestern Europe. But elsewhere, including North America, few plant species went extinct, and few mammals."
      • This isn't really the issue. Although it is very unlikely that such a successful species as humanity would go extinct due to climate change, it seems likely that there will be great hardship – especially by those less well-off economically. This is what active GW seeks to avoid.
    • (evidence) Also, scientific papers by Prof. Sarah Randolph of Oxford University show that temperature changes do not correlate well with changes in the distribution or frequency of [certain dangerous] diseases; warming has not broadened their distribution and is highly unlikely to do so in the future, global warming or not.
      • The evidence given relates solely to natural life, and says very little about how rising temperatures will affect human habitats, especially those in low-lying areas.
  • The article also argues that exaggerating the truth in order to get a sluggish, complacent public to react is not justified
    • I have to agree with this completely. The truth must be protected from political abuse; that is part of the purpose of Issuepedia. It is that sort of justification (the need for public action) which was apparently behind the gross exaggerations of truth which led to the US invasion of Iraq. --W.
• 2007-10-03 Stop the Global Warming Campaign: We Have the Power to Win This Fight by Phil Brennan: argues that global warming is a fiction which the government as using as an excuse to enact new laws which will gradually restrict our freedoms. Sounds like a twisted version of the reality that the War on Terror is being used for that same end -- is this a partial truth (our freedoms are in danger) concealing a lie (the claim that GW is a fraud), or is there some truth to it (that GW, fraud or real, is being used as an excuse to curtail freedoms)? The only GW measures even being considered, as far as I am aware, do not in any way restrict personal freedom, but only the "freedoms" of giant corporations which emit environmentally-significant amounts of waste.
• 2006-06-12 Scientists respond to Gore's warnings of climate catastrophe by Tom Harris (warning: popups)

Links

Reference

• Wikipedia (Global warming controversy)
• How to Talk to a Global Warming Sceptic: an excellent collection of skeptical arguments-and-responses

Filed Links

1. redirect template:links/smw

Discussion

• 2007-02-28 Mars Melt Hints at Solar, Not Human, Cause for Warming, Scientist Says
• 2006-04-02 Cooler Heads Needed on Warming By George Will: this article reeks of global warming denial, but raises some issues which need to be checked into; see this.
• 2006 Al Gore at the TED 2006 conference has some good overviews on the Global Warming situation: "There's no real disagreement about global warming – a survery of peer reviewed papers showed 928 supporting a theory of global warming and 0 opposing it. But there's a powerful lobby that is producing doubt, and suceeding – a survey ... reveals that 53% of popular press articles have some doubt about global warming."
• 2005-08-29 Chaos Manor Special Report: collection of short & long pieces, some very detailed; does not seem to be parroting anyone's party line
  • Subject: Climate change and Richard Lindzen
• 2005-05-10 The (UK) Guardian: "David Bellamy's inaccurate and selective figures on glacier shrinkage are a boon to climate change deniers"
• 2005-05-04 ExxonMobil Spends Millions Funding Global Warming Skeptics: doesn't automatically invalidate global warming skepticism, but any argument which starts with "many authorities seem to agree that it's not happening" should be aware that the balance may have been tilted a bit.

Non-Dated Articles

• 2007 Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide by Arthur B. Robinson, Noah E. Robinson, and Willie Soon of the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine; published in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (2007) 12, 79-90. The journal is questionable as a source of reliable scientific information, but the paper does nonetheless present arguments which need to be examined.
• The Global Warming Folly by Zbigniew Jaworowski, M.D., Ph.O., and D.Sc., professor at the Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection in Warsaw. Among the article's claims are that there is no such thing as scientific consensus.

Video

• 2007-04-15 Freeman Dyson on Global Warming 2of2: Stratospheric Cooling: "A prominent scientist who's followed the science of global warming from the beginning, Dyson explains why climate models have no scientific merit, why average global ground temperature is a great fiction, and what he believes the real dangers of increased CO2 in the atmosphere are. He suggests that the relatively simple solution of land use management could potentially give us the ability to control the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere at any level we'd like, and there's no need to stop burning coal and oil."
  • User:Woozle/Freeman Dyson on Global Warming: Dyson isn't saying that it's not real, but that the term "global warming" is misleading and that curtailment of industrial emissions is not the best way to solve the problem