Why I'm skeptical of global warming and why it is important

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From 1988 to 2005, global warming was seen as a controversial hypothesis. For the past 5 years or so, global warming has become more or less accepted as fact within academia.

Why did this change? Did the evidence really just pile up in favor of it?

Perhaps not. Let me address some common claims made by supporters of the AGW theory, which now includes mainstream science.

1) The glaciers are melting

True, but there are some problems with this. Look at this chart: http://www.skepticalscience.com/himalay ... rowing.htm

Essentially, while glacier volume has nosedived since 1970, or the past 40 years or so, how does that explain the only slight change over the 100 years before that, and the increase in volume from 1950 to 1970? It's not like we weren't polluting back then. 40 years is not enough time to identify a permanent trend.


2) The ice caps are melting

Again, the trend is relatively short. We have only had the technology to study the extent of the Arctic ice from space for about 35 years. It being the smallest it's been in 35 years does not really say all that much, aside from that today is a little bit warmer than the '70s.


3) Average temperatures are rising

Are they really? California has seen some of the coldest weather in decades. June and July of 2011 were the coldest Junes and Julys on record in Oregon. In general, worldwide, temperatures seem chillier than they were in the hellish year of 1998.

I also find it strange that 'climate change' is replacing 'global warming' as the term, are they admitting that the world isn't really warming? Seems like it.

Why it's important to address this skepticism - look, I'm as pro-environment as anyone. I think we need to get off oil for many reasons, spills, pollution, the war it causes, etc, even without global warming, it's very necessary. I think global warming is a political, not scientific theory, meant to support the ideology of Globalism and misanthropism.

Almost every single environmentalist idea is complete bullcrap. Plants need CO2 to survive. Population control is going to destroy nations, not over population. And we are not going to wean our dependance on middle eastern oil without digging it ourselves in our own country. We won't be weaning our dependence on any oil anytime soon.

However, with wireless power transmission, we might be able to put solar panels in space for use on earth. they can be as big as we want without taking up space in a beautiful landscape. In the vacuum of space, the panels get full blast of the sunlight without it being filtered through the atmosphere. Unlimited energy!

the sun may also be a bigger factor then anyone in politics is willing to credit... primarily because the sun is not able to attend a voting booth on election day

I think there are quite a few misunderstandings here.

The first is that there was ever a mainstream theory purporting that a "global", as in "universal", warming exists; global warming is somewhat of a misnomer: The world is not universally warming; however, overall, the average global temperature is higher and rising: Thus, over a given decade, temperatures can be rising in one area, falling in another and fluctuating in another; despite this, the Earth, as a whole, is warming.

Here are some sources that show that there is a global scientific consensus on climate change being human induced:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/featur ... _name.html

http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ans-so-ill

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthn ... ation.html

As no scientific body of national nor international standing disagrees with the mainstream scientific view of global climate change, thus forming a consensus, I see no reason to believe fringe scientists, pseudoscientists and various interest groups of laypeople over all the educated bodies of the world.

Aka, the OP does not understand global warming at all.

Yeah, the "global" part is too hard to understand.

Firstly, the USA uses mostly Canadian, Mexican and Venezuelan sources of petroleum; the Middle Eastern petroleum reserves are critical mainly to the US's European Allies. Saudi Arabia is simply too far away to be economical to transport petroleum from to the USA.

Secondly, your proposition that the USA can only get off foreign petroleum if it uses its own sources is severely faulted: The largest petroleum reserve in the USA, the Bakken Formation, has about 2,193 cubic kilometres worth of petroleum in total, which is over half of all other sources in the country combined, and can only produce about 73,000 cubic metres per day, even given the most advanced extraction technology: By contrast, the USA consumes about 3,100,000 cubic metres per day; the USA currently produces about a cubic hectometre of petroleum per day, over thrice less than would be required to supply the entire country, including the Bakken Formation. Your argument thus holds no merit.

The reality is that the only way to become energy independent for the USA is to aggressively build nuclear powerplants, like Switzerland and France have done so successively, complemented by various non-hydrocarbon renewable resources. The USA needs to stop following the round about path of energy-loosing ethanol and the cumbersome hydrogen fuel cells and invest in the mass production of plug-in flexible fuel hybrids, high-speed rail and a massive increase in public transportation.

Here you are severely mistaken; you link to one site and I link to 3, along with the fact that EVERY scientific body in EVERY country of national or international standing has shown global climate change to be human induced beyond reasonable doubt. And if this scientific consensus is politically motivated, why would the bodies that represent countries and alliances of countries that have significant political differences &/or disagreements, such as the Network of African Science Academies and the United States National Academy of Sciences, not disagree if there really is some pro-globalization conspiracy? For that matter, why would countries get anything from lying about climate change? Do you really think that Exxon Mobile, British Petroleum or Sinopec want people to believe in global warming; how would this do anything but hurt their PR image and force them to be more covert about their support of political candidates?

The IPCC formed in 1988. I wonder what CC stood for....



1998 was an incredible El Nino year by the standards of the 1990s and earlier. It's an average year by the standards of the past 10 years. And has been exceeded according to NASA. The trend is obvious.

Plus, random parts of the globe != the globe.



Yeah, call up NASA, MIT, NOAA, NAS, RS, etc, etc.. and tell them you've discovered the sun.


Global warming denialists tend to be very much like creationists. They'll deny everything out of ignorance. They don't know what to admit. To argue with satellites and thermometers is a waste of time. If you want to be a skeptic then look up arguments that explain the warming via other mechanisms and just pretend that scientific orgs are too dishonest, stupid or corrupt to look at that information.

How about rational skepticism. Climate models are based on statistical weighting of the data and NOT on a sound underlying physical theory of climate. The underlying process is chaotic dynamics for which our mathematical methodology is notably lacking. To this day, the Navier Stokes equations which describe turbulence classically lack a general solution and the stability of numerical methods to solve these equations is only partially developed. One of the Millenium Prizes is being offered to anyone who can give a good method for establishing the validity of numerical methods to solve these equations.

Bottom line: we have statistical models and little sound basic physical science to back up the claims of the IPCC and the radical environmentalists.

My objections are based on epistemology, not anything resembling creationism.


Write us when we have a good sound physical theory accounting for climate and climate change.

Right now we don't.

ruveyn

I think you missed my point.

I'm talking about the morons who, just like creationists, will throw out a laundry list of incompatible ideas without hesitation. Stuff like this, "It's not warming, it's cooling, but it's warming because of the solar flares, the sun and the cosmic rays, but anyway it's cooling. And also, the warming is going to be good for us".

It's just verbal diarrhea.

I don't really care if it's happening or not, it's more what people want to do about it. I don't believe the alarmism spouted by Al Gore and the like is based in facts but rather in the interest making money and political agendas. The whole political/financial aspect completely overshadows the legitimate scientific discussion. Finding new energy sources? That's cool. Controlling all industry and running peoples lives? I think I could deal with it being a little warmer.

The area that I'm most skeptical with when it comes to global warming, is the politics involved and solutions put forward by greens. I'm for a cleaner planet, but with in reason and current ideas are not reasonable. As we are finding the prescription given by current leadership do not create many jobs, and of what has been created, costs are unaffordable. Additionally the area is rife for corruption and crony capitalism. The latest green crony capitalism we are witnessing is with defunct solar maker Solyndra. it is awful to see as that money could have been put to better use - creating real jobs for our many unemployed Americans.

Professor Walter Russell Mead has write a number of articles about the unrealistic path green leadership has taken. Greens have experienced many failures, and on the current path, will have many more come. One of the Professors more recent writings that I found enlightening.

"Feeding The Masses On Unicorn Ribs"

http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/ ... corn-ribs/

prove it. I think the problem with global warming is that the studies are not truly scientific, the IPCC is based on the idea that climate change is real, so of course it's going to operate based on an assumption their hypothesis is true.

according to Wikipedia:

and, with greater than 90% certainty, scientists have determined that most of it is caused by human activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning of fossil fuels.[3][4][5][6] This finding is recognized by the national science academies of all the major industrialized countries.



Okay, so only the national academies of the major industrialized countries. Remember that most of the First World is allied and that the power elite runs through multiple countries. And in science, greater than 90% is not anywhere near certain. unless it's close to 100%.

There is no doubt we need to protect our environment, but in my opinion. global warming and overpopulation are overhyped problems that are overblown because the elite of the world want to kill most of us off.

donnie_darko: Did you see my link to the Network of African Science Academies? Because Ghana is not a developed country. Nor is China allied with the USA (see the following link for the official Chinese opinion on global climate change: http://www.china.org.cn/english/environment/213624.htm .)

But that is beside the point: I think global climate change is given too much weight as well but I do not deny that it exists or that it is human-induced. To deny an overwhelming body of empirical evidence is to fall into conspiracy theories, which I have little respect for when, as is normally the case, a far more logical and far more consistent alternative exists to such ridiculous claims as "Bush blew up the World Trade Center", "the Freemasons and Satanists built Washington, DC as the seat of the Antichrist" or "The Earth is 6,000 years old and was created by the man in the sky in 6 Earth days (before the Earth existed.") As I have given several highly respected sources, which you apparently think are all unacceptably biased and thus unreliable; so cite your references if you wish to have my respect. As you asked me to prove something that I basically already did, I now ask the same of you: Give me some reliable, reputable sources that support your claims and I will listen.