Are we making progress with the GW deniers?

Question

Years ago they didn't even believe the earth was getting warmer. They said no it's the "urban heat island" effect. Then they pointed to John Christy's faulty satellite data and said see it's actually cooling. John Christy has since since admitted to making several mistakes and has signed a statement in support of man made global warming.

I don't hear them deny it anymore. Now they admit it is getting hotter but that despite what the majority of scientists believe, they just don't believe it is man made.

Answer 1

the problem is its not getting hotter!

1) record snowfall THIS YEAR!

The Ann Arbor News

It's just as you suspected - this has been the snowiest winter ever in the Ann Arbor area, or at least since 1880 when record-keeping started.

And it's not over yet.

That's because we're not even into April, a month that normally averages almost 2.5 inches of that pesky white stuff.

2) Even the IPCC agrees!!!

"Is the Earth stillwarming?"

She  (Jennifer Marohasy, a biologist and senior fellow of Melbourne-based think tank the Institute of Public Affairs )replied: "No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your point of reference. If you take 2002 as your point of reference, then temperatures have plateaued. This is certainly not what you'd expect if carbon dioxide is driving temperature because carbon dioxide levels have been increasing but temperatures have actually been coming down over the last 10 years."

Duffy: "Is this a matter of any controversy?"

Marohasy: "Actually, no. The head of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has actually acknowledged it. He talks about the apparent plateau in temperatures so far this century. So he recognizes that in this century, over the past eight years, temperatures have plateaued ... This is not what you'd expect, as I said, because if carbon dioxide is driving temperature then you'd expect that, given carbon dioxide levels have been continuing to increase, temperatures should be going up ... So (it's) very unexpected, not something that's being discussed. It should be being discussed, though, because it's very significant."

Answer 2

You realize you're up against the Ann Arbor News, as well as the MWP?

Answer 3

"I don't hear them deny it anymore. Now they admit it is getting hotter but that despite what the majority of scientists believe, they just don't believe it is man made."

Ummm..thats the way its been for years...

Answer 4

You Believers of the "Faith" are really defining idiocy right about now.... hahaha...

The true science says that it is the Sun that is causing most of the recent warming that we have been hearing about.

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is only accountable for less than 5% of greenhouse gases and we only make about 5% of that. (About 90-95% of Greenhouse Gases is Water Vapor)

The reason for increased CO2 is because as the oceans become heated, they cannot hold as much as they could if they were cooler, so the oceans release the excess into the atmosphere. From what I hear, the oceans can hold many times more energy and heat then the air. This meaning that the atmosphere should have very little effect on the oceans and that the sun or perhaps the Earth itself is heating up the surface since those are two of the only things that could heat our vast oceans.

Also, the Earth hasn’t warmed in nearly a decade but has actually fallen and it has fallen greatly within the past 2 years. Many scientists believe we are about to go through another little ice age.

http://www.dailytech.com/Solar+Activity+...

http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060825/531436...

Many scientists are skeptical about Anthropogenic Global Warming.

These are some resources:

http://sepp.org/policy%20declarations/he...

http://www.globalwarmingheartland.org/Ar...



Al Gore had a chart in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth" that showed the similarities of Carbon Dioxide and temperature. The thing that he doesn't tell you is that there is a gap in which the temperature rises before the CO2 which should be the exact opposite if his theory is correct. Watch “The Great Global Warming Swindle”

Polar bears are NOT being endangered but actually the exact opposite.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/north/story/200...

That is my point of view on the issue and I strongly encourage you to watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=... all the way through even if you don't want to. It is a great source of information and if you want to know the truth, you need to see both sides of the story.

Another great resource is http://z4.invisionfree.com/Popular_Techn...

Answer 5

No, since deniers can't offer any rational alternative explanation for the current warming, they have to cling to simplistic generalizations that don't have any actual bearing on AGW theory.

Look at how many of them have claimed "warming has stopped" since 1998 despite 2005 being the hottest year on record, 2007 in second place, and most of the past 10 years being among the warmest record holders.  

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2...

They also claim that the Medeival Warm period or the Little Ice Age are relevant, although they're not proven to be global:

"It was initially believed that the LIA was a global phenomenon; it is now less clear if this is true. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), based on Bradley and Jones, 1993; Hughes and Diaz, 1994; Crowley and Lowery, 2000 describes the LIA as 'a modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during this period of less than 1°C,' and says, 'current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this timeframe, and the conventional terms of 'Little Ice Age' and Medieval Warm Period appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries.'"

http://www.answers.com/topic/little-ice-...

Even if they were proven to be global, neither contradicts or disproves the theory that our measured contributions to CO2 are causing climate change.  Past natural canges also do nothing to disprove that current warming is occuring at an unprecedented rate:

New Research Confirms Antarctic Thaw Fears - Spiegel Online

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk...

"The paper also states that the thickness of the Pine Island Glacier has shrunk by an average of 3.8 centimeters annually over the past 4,700 years.  Satellite measurements taken between 1992 and 1996, though, show a loss of 1.6 meters in thickness per year on the Pine Island Glacier -- a figure that represents 42 times the average melt of the past 4,700 years."

Even if and when they acknowledge that it's caused by man, expect the next fallback position to be that we can't do anything about it, or that the solutions would be too expensive to implement.

Personally I think the denial noise simply reflects the current corporate PR strategy of ExxonMobil and other American Petroleum Institute members, just as the cigarette debate was shaped by tobacco companies.  It probably adapts from year to year based on whatever they think they can get away with at the time.

Answer 6

You can still hear me deny it until you take your thermometers out of blacktop parking lots and away from the side of jetways.

And no I am not gullible enough for you to make any progress with me.

Are we making any progress with you ?

No? Oh well I am patient, time and dropping temperatures will eventually do the job for us and until then have fun whining about that THEORY of yours.

Answer 7

"We "won't make any progress until "they" admit they are wrong.  Don't waste your time on them.  Focus on the folk who really do want to change.

Answer 8

I don't think any progress has been made.  They tend to keep recycling the same kinds of flawed arguments over and over.  Now we're supposedly in a "cooling trend", that for some reason (they've never explained why) is completely different than the "cooling trends" from 1901 - 1915, 1915 - 1938, 1938 - 1973, 1981 - 1990, or 1990 - 1998.

Somehow all those previous "cooling trends", at least 5 significant ones, didn't end the global warming, but they're certain we'll never again exceed 1998 (or 2005 depending on which temperature dataset you choose).

Answer 9

Well that depends how you define 'progress'.

It's true that most will now admit the planet is warming (though some cherrypick 1998 to try and argue that the warming has stopped, or claim the temperature record is faulty).  However, they still refuse to admit that humans are to blame, which is the critical step prior to taking action to mitigate our impacts.  Even when they do finally admit we're responsible, they've already planted the seeds for arguing 'warmer is better' or 'let the market control CO2 emissions'.

In terms of accepting the very basic premise of global warming the deniers have made a little progress, but in terms of actually acknowledging that we need to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, I don't think the deniers are any closer today than they were 5 years ago, and I doubt they ever will be.  That's the nature of denial.

Answer 10

oh i really hope so! it can get soul destroying having to go through 'climate science 101' over and over again on forums and message boards.

thank goodness it seems to be getting better so much more quickly in real life. i do a manual trade, and where a year ago most people i met would be quite ignorant of the issues, now a big majority seem to have taken it on board.

Answer 11

Big degree of warming.  The Earth is 0.5 degrees warmer after being 0.5 degrees colder than average for the last 130 years.  

It's nothing more than natures variations in a normal climate.  How would anyone think +/- 0.5 degrees is going to cause the end of the world?  Pleeze......

You could make a believer out of me.  Just tell me if its going to be warmer or colder in the future, and show me how you came to your conclusion.  If you're right, I would have no problem believing man is the cause.  I know you can't because AGW is just a new dogma.

Believers were wrong about the hurricanes in 2006 & 2007, wrong about positive feedback, wrong about permafrost thawing, wrong about the ice caps, wrong about new pandemics, wrong about so many things that it doesn't take a stretch of the imagination to think they're wrong about AGW.

Answer 12

I've really been trying to carefully listen to both sides of this debate, and many, many people believe that it is just a normal fluctuation that happens on a regular basis. The only way anyone could be sure would be to be 1,000 years or more old!

We just have to each keep doing our part. We can't force anyone else to do theirs.