Climate change: A guide for the perplexed.

New Scientist debunks the 26 most common myths and misconceptions about global climate change, ranging from “It’s all a conspiracy” to “Polar bear numbers are increasing,” “The ‘hockey stick’ graph has been proven wrong” to “Global Warming is caused by the sun.” These myths are utterly wrong, and easily shown to be so.

Published by Waldo Jaquith

Waldo Jaquith (JAKE-with) is an open government technologist who lives near Char­lottes­­ville, VA, USA. more »

21 replies on “Climate change: A guide for the perplexed.”

  1. So’s this one:

    http://www.globalwarminghysteria.com/

    And since alarmists take advantage of every opporunity a Cat 3 or better hurricaine gives them to tout “global warming,” (or, my personal favorite, the deliciously and deliberately vague “climate change”) it only seems fair that I note that April’s temperature was below average.

  2. You seem to have missed New Scientist‘s Myth #24, JS: Hurricane Katrina was caused by global warming.

    or, my personal favorite, the deliciously and deliberately vague “climate change”

    I’m beginning to suspect that you may legitimately not understand the nature of the problem of global climate change, JS. Humans are uniquely adapted to live within a very narrow climatological window. Western society (and, to a lesser extent, mankind) requires a certain range of humidity, cloud cover, daily temperature swings, inches of rain, yearly high/lows, etc. in order to continue to exist. It doesn’t matter what direction that the climate radically changes. Warm, cold, wet, dry, whatever. The problem is that we are ill prepared to meet the enormous demands that would be placed on us by tiny modifications to the biosphere’s norms to which we have become utterly dependent.

  3. Waldo,

    Its not that Good Ole Smails does not understand it, he just will not accept it…until Karl tells him to. Quite literally, the hardcore will nail their feet to the deck and go down with the ship. Funny thing is, tomorrow, if Dubya suddenly found a way for his ‘Base’ to profit from the changes required and said “Global Warming is a bigger threat than any thing else”….that would be Smails’ opinion too.

    Original thought is not allowed.

  4. It would be interesting to see how the rank and file Rs would react if Bush did a 180 on the issue. JS. how do you feel about McCain’s stance on the issue?

    Also, if you excuse me I wont put much stock the web site you linked to . . . it is run by an english professor, huh?

    I find it interesting that you link to a site, that perpetuates the very same myths and misconceptions that the site Waldo pointed us to debunks.

    hehehe, I love this one–from Smail’s web site of choice:

    “FACT: The liberal Left sees the manipulation of the environmental movement and especially global warming alarmism as the ideal scare campaign to secure increasingly strict controls over peoples lives.”

    What is this stuff written by high-school kid conspiracy nuts!?

    Its great! I absolutely love it, so good.

    here, I suggest this one:

    FACT: The liberal left, hired space Aliens to kidnap JFK and replace him with a doppelganger who was then assassinated to cover their tracks.

    Funny or sad that this paranoia even finds its way into mainstream conservative commentary, via men who are some times reasonable like George Will and his like.

  5. Although I’m not fond of all the self-congratulation, smugness, and pointless attacks on JS that’re going on here, I am amused at the “FACT: The liberal Left sees the manipulation of the environmental movement and especially global warming alarmism as the ideal scare campaign to secure increasingly strict controls over peoples lives.”

    Strict control over people’s lives… Like, telling them who they can or can’t marry, or what they can do with their uterus. Or maybe the establishment of Orwellian surveillance schemes, and detention centers into which citizens can just disappear.

    Oh wait, they said left, so we’re talking about emissions standards. That’s much worse.

  6. Ben C.
    I thought I would leave that un-said, kind of speaks for its self doesn’t it?
    As for “self-congratulation, smugness and pointless attacks”
    Huh?

    Maybe Tim up there but not me . . . I just perversely enjoy the machinations of a movement that traffics in absurd conspiracy theories of the “left” and, oh god even worse, “Hollywood” driving the discourse, science and policy of, say I don’t know, NASA, large international organizations, governments, corporations, investment companies . . .

    Goodness, just this moment I am looking at UBS’s monthly news letter:

    “Climate change is no longer a hypothesis–the scientific community is virtually certain that human activities are influencing the earth’s climate system. What does this mean for investment decisions?”

    How many billions of dollars of investors monies is UBS responsible for . . . I am sorry I am going to put my money–figuratively of course, I like Vanguard better– anyway I’ll put my money with the credible experts instead of . . . I don’t know crazy Lizden, Lomburg or Micael Crichton!

  7. Clearly I’m just a sheep doing what he’s told and not a bold, free-thinker like you guys.

    Like the Population Bomb before it, “global warming” will be the punchline to a joke in 10 years. But your intentions are so noble, and that’s what counts, isn’t it?

    I’ll take Lizden, Lomburg and Crichton over Gore, Laurie David, and Dicaprio any day.

  8. It has nothing to do with intentions, its just what is happening, you know like gravity.

    Oh wait, but is global warming going to be a punch-line to a joke in 10 years, just like tectonic plate theory or the big bang or any other consensus driven theory that has been completely proven by empirical data?

    My god, ever heard of modern spectral analysis: they know exactly what CO2 does in the atmosphere! Even your hero Lindzen acknowledges this:
    “[T]here has been no question whatsoever that CO2 is an infrared absorber ”

    Also, ever heard of molecular finger printing? They can take atmospheric samples and tell exactly where the various compounds came from!

    And if your politics of resentment blurred vision can’t stand to look at Al Gore, take a look at these guys–after all they are the ones l doing the work!

    (It is interesting, people like you will hold up a Lindzen, or a Lomborg (a Ph.D. in political science of all things), and tout their credentials, but when it comes to the much larger majority, who are of course, heavily credentialed, you dismiss them because they don’t match your world view.)

    Here is the majority, first my favorite:

    The Federal Climate Change Science Program
    http://www.climatescience.gov/

    Commissioned by the Bush administration in 2002 released the first of 21 assessments that concluded that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system (due to changes in greenhouse gases, aerosols, and stratospheric ozone

    NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)
    http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
    http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html

    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
    http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm

    National Academy of Sciences (NAS)
    http://books.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.html

    State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)
    http://www.socc.ca/permafrost/permafrost_future_e.cfm

    Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
    http://yosemite.epa.gov/OAR/globalwarming.nsf/content/index.html

    The Royal Society of the UK (RS)
    http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=3135

    American Geophysical Union (AGU)
    http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/climatechangeresearch_2003.html

    American Institute of Physics
    http://www.aip.org/gov/policy12.html

    National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)
    http://eo.ucar.edu/basics/cc_1.html

    American Meteorological Society (AMS)
    http://www.ametsoc.org/policy/jointacademies.html

    Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)
    http://www.cmos.ca/climatechangepole.html

    G8 Joint Science Acadimies

    United States National Academy of Sciences

    National Research Council

    American Association for the Advancement of Science

    American Geophysical Union

    American Institute of Physics

    Geological Society of London

    Geological Society of America

    American Association of State Climatologists

    American Chemical Society

    American Meteorological Society

    Oh and here are my favorites big companies, you know because they are SOOOO, beholden to Laurie David, and Cheryl Crow!

    Allianz

    Bayer

    Citigroup

    DuPont

    General Electric

    Rolls Royce

    Volvo, PepsiCo

    ConocoPhillips

    Shell

    BP

    Walmart

    so on and so on.

  9. There’s an article by a scientist detailing his $6,000 bet with a colleague that the earth is or will soon be entering a cooling phase. Money graf:

    And the political realm in turn fed money back into the scientific community. By the late 1990’s, lots of jobs depended on the idea that carbon emissions caused global warming. Many of them were bureaucratic, but there were a lot of science jobs created too. I was on that gravy train, making a high wage in a science job that would not have existed if we didn’t believe carbon emissions caused global warming. And so were lots of people around me; and there were international conferences full of such people. And we had political support, the ear of government, big budgets, and we felt fairly important and useful (well, I did anyway). It was great. We were working to save the planet!

    Read it all here:

    http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2007/04/climate-skeptics-guest-post-why-david.html

  10. There’s an article by a scientist detailing his $6,000 bet with a colleague that the earth is or will soon be entering a cooling phase.

    Actually, that’s not his bet. He writes:

    Basically, if the current warming trend continues or accelerates then Brian will win; if the rate of warming slows then I will win.

    This guy has placed his money on warming continuing, just at a slower rate. This would be like two people placing a bet on September 2, 2005 over whether the flood waters would climb up to 6′ in height over the course of two days, or whether it would take three.

    He also writes:

    I think that it *is* possible that carbon emissions are the dominant cause of global warming

    And:

    Meanwhile let’s do more research, and take cheap measures to curb carbon emissions!

    This random dude’s bet isn’t quite as interesting as one might think initially. :)

  11. Right you are, Waldo, I should have read it more carefully. It certainly is nice to see a liberal who understands the difference between a “cut” and “slowing the rate of growth.”

  12. JS

    James Annan has been challenging skeptics to money bets for awhile . . . few take them.

    I think Lindzen sort of took up his bet , but wanted absurd odds . . . something like 50:1 in his favor . . .

    Anyway, are you really proposing that such a large and wide consensus would be formed because of bureaucratic inertia? Are you serious? Such a thing forming across every major scientific society and national and international government agency dealing with the relevant issues!? Your arguments are getting very weak.

    You are making an argument based strictly on anecdotal hearsay grounds, a variant of the of the “dissent oppressed” thats why there is consensus . . . give me a break.

    Anyway, I think one could make quite a bit more money working for oil companies than government . . . I would say the profit incentive to cloud the truth is a bit stronger . . .

  13. Anyway, I think one could make quite a bit more money working for oil companies than government . . . I would say the profit incentive to cloud the truth is a bit stronger . . .

    That’s an excellent point.

  14. I guess I might be more sympathetic to the “global warming” enthusiasts if I weren’t aware of so much past alarmist rhetoric from some of the same people that turned out to be wrong. Weren’t we supposed to have run out of oil by now? Didn’t we have “10 years to save the oceans” like 15 years ago? Wasn’t welfare reform supposed to result in millions of homeless and hungry. Wasn’t scrapping the ABM Treaty supposed to start a new arms race?

    There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that this is simply a cyclical pattern which manmade CO2 can’t possibly have contibuted enough to to make a dime’s worth of difference. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t put much stock in the arguments of people who have a financial stake in the outcome. The oil comapanies – like it or not – are gonna be around for a while. Jobs researching “climate change” only exist as long as there’s a reason to believe it’s occuring.

  15. Weren’t we supposed to have run out of oil by now? Didn’t we have “10 years to save the oceans” like 15 years ago? Wasn’t welfare reform supposed to result in millions of homeless and hungry. Wasn’t scrapping the ABM Treaty supposed to start a new arms race?

    All you’re doing is naming claims (some of which I’ve never heard) that may or may not have turned out to be inaccurate. The fact that some people have forecast a thing that turned out not to happen in no way affects claims made by other people on different topics.

    If the weatherman forecasts that it’s going to rain tomorrow, and it doesn’t, do you put less stock in Merrill Lynch’s recommendation to buy Apple stock? Or is it possible that the two are wholly unrelated?

    There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that this is simply a cyclical pattern which manmade CO2 can’t possibly have contibuted enough to to make a dime’s worth of difference.

    And there’s hundreds of times more evidence to the contrary, which is precisely why every scientist working in the field disagrees with you.

    The only people who make such arguments are guys like Bjørn Lomborg — not a research climatologist, or even a scientist, but a adjunct professor at a business school in Denmark. Demark’s own government ruled that his book was riddled with lies, distortions, even plagiarism, but found that he knew so little about the topic that it was best to chalk up all of the mistakes to sheer ignorance.

  16. Judge,

    What on earth are you talking about? You conflate so many unrelated issues I do not know if you are coming or going. Thats the problem, to you this is a CULTURAL argument, not an argument about facts.

    (Also, I mean the oceans are doing great: slowing carbon absorption, bleached reefs, oxygen dead zones the size of small states , etc, etc.)

    Not to mention that climate science or geology or physics or oceanography or meteorology is not going anywhere, scientists have been studying the climate and the effects of the climate on environment as long as the oil age has existed, that’s for sure.

    And you are wrong, the dead horse is beat, all the possible explanations have been exhausted–thats what the scientific process is about.

    Again, we know what C02 does, absorbs infrared heat, we know that C02 levels are increasing (yes nature makes way more than we do, but its the balance that we are worried about), and we know where that balance of C02 is coming from (they can track its molecular signature).
    look even Cville’s own Ron Bailey, Reason’s science editor, and author of Ecoscam, even he has relented:

    “Details like sea level rise will continue to be debated by researchers, but if the debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming wasn’t over before, it is now…. as the new IPCC Summary makes clear, climate change Pollyannaism is no longer looking very tenable”

    Did you look at the links above!? Every single science society and institution of any relevance whatsoever is in agreement. Seriously give it up. This is for real.

  17. even Cville’s own Ron Bailey, Reason’s science editor, and author of Ecoscam, even he has relented

    This is a great point. Ron’s with the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, author of a 1994 book about how global climate change is a scam and, as you mention, Reason‘s science editor. He was one of the nation’s most prominent global climate change deniers. So his September explanation of how he was so utterly wrong about global climate change makes for fascinating reading. In the piece, he tries defends himself ably against charges that he was just a shill for ExxonMobil. He explains:

    Up until the last year or so, the satellite data and weather balloon data pointed to relatively modest global warming much below the trends predicted by most climate models. If those trends were correct then there was no imminent “planetary emergency.” When the trends were shown to be incorrect last year, I “converted” into a global warmer.

    […]

    But was I too skeptical, demanding too much evidence or ignoring evidence that cut against what I wanted to believe? Perhaps. In hindsight I can only plead that there is no magic formula for deciding when enough evidence has accumulated that a fair-minded person must change his or her mind on a controversial scientific issue. With regard to global warming it finally did for me in the last year.

    He now understands that:

    [T]he balance of the evidence pretty clearly indicates that humanity is contributing to global warming chiefly by means of loading up the atmosphere with extra carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels.

    And he concludes with:

    So then not a whore, just virtuously wrong. Looking to the future, I can’t promise that my reporting will always be right (no reporter can, but I will strive to make it so), but my reporting has always been honest and I promise that it always will be.

    I know Ron, and he’s a smart guy. (We’re in a small group that meets each month for lunch. Also, his wife is my investment advisor.) If he hadn’t come around to changing his opinion by now, I’d have been a little puzzled and disappointed. Even an ardent contrarian, when armed with the facts that have emerged in the past few years, cannot help but admit that we have got to change how we live.

    It’s the weak, defeatist attitude of many Republicans that gets to me. The dominant attitude used to be to deny that global climate change exists. Then it was to deny that it’s man-made. Now the retreat has led them to “and even if it is man-made, there’s nothing we can do about it, anyway.” There’s nothing we can do? We sent a man to the moon. We won WWII. We can damned well reverse global climate change if we want to. Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad to see Republicans broadcasting a message that’s so harmful to them. I look forward to being able to hang that “weak” sign around Republicans’ necks in the years ahead. But it sure is pathetic to watch.

  18. Waldo,

    Again, I think it is a cultural debate, it is completely a politics of resentment issue for them. Ok, so I am going to go way out on a limb here:

    They can not get beyond the “liberals and environmentalists want to steal your freedom” meme . . . It is completely within the context of the “Culture War”. Which is based on victimhood (ironic right), but it is inevitable that conservative or traditional sections of society would feel put upon by a world that is changing so rapidly that it is scary.

    It scares me, to see the fabric of society being pushed to the breaking point: but what is absurd, looney and conspiratory is that conservatives like Smails blame these rapid powerful changes on college professors, homosexuals and Greenpeace, not rapid technology growth, macro market economics, population migration, etc, etc.(In many ways things completely out of our control . . . )

    Anyway within the modern conservative movement there is so much irrational distrust of the institutions that are behind the discovery of Global Warming . . . thats why Smails can present that mash-up in his previous post, welfare, weapons control, global warming, whatever its all part of the same liberal/college professor/Hollywood plot.

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