Denialists: Do you think climate scientists are wrong or is AGW a hoax?

Question

Ok, here's a question for all you people that don't believe in anthropogenic global warming. Do you think the scientists are wrong or do you think they are perpetrating fraud? The reason I ask is that I keep people here calling AGW a "hoax" and I just can understand that. I'm working on a doctorate in climate science and I can tell you that the scientists of the IPCC are trying to do the best science they can--they're certainly not trying to pull the world's most elaborate hoax. If you think the science is in error I can understand that, if you think scientists are a bunch of frauds and liars I have no respect for your opinion.

Answer 1

Climate science is in its infancy..... so much is not known.....so much is only speculation.  No hard scientific proof has evolved, in spite of some of the blind rants that we read on boards like this one.

The data that has been used to develop what we THINK we know about our climate is seriously flawed..... THAT has to be fixed before any credibility can be given to AGW.

I don't believe that climate scientists by and large are dishonest.....rather.... they have been too trusting of the flawed data given to them by government agencies.

Answer 2

It certainly woulden't be the first time scientists were wrong, but demanded everyone beleive them.

Answer 3

i note that yahoo now reorders answers, and haven't figured out the algorithm.

i also note that answers started out fairly reasoned, but pretty quickly deteriorated.

i think you make a couple incorrect assumptions.

1. there is logic that they follow, that they have formulated.  clearly not true in many cases.  worse, it's those cases that are more prone to display what they think is their logic.

2. there are morals involved.  consider, no politician ever gets elected that promises a tax increase.  americans, at least the majority of them, demand lower taxes, or at least the promise of such, even if it takes deficit spending to accomplish that.  and who are they taking that money from?  their children and grandchildren.  you're expecting moral behavior from people who would steal from their children?

3. people on either side of any issue, tend to watch the "news" that agrees with their predispositions.  how often to you watch foxnews?  many do.  and agree with them.  it's not that they've formed their opinions, it's that they've had their opinions fed to them.

4. i do think that in this country, at least in some parts of it, there is an inherent distrust of higher education.  Arthur Clark said,  "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."  i rather suspect that also applies to education in general.

5. one also might consider the "sales pitch".  a sales pitch for some good or service says, "This is really good.  it's better and will last longer than ....."  if you compare that to a well financed sales pitch to an inferior product, the inferior product will be better.  and louder.  remember the Swift Boat Veterans?  Kerry was on a swift boat, and he lost that specific battle.  even when those that served with him said that he was very good.

6. Financing.  where's the money?  in energy.  for every dollar an environmentalist has to spend telling you what would be good, the energy industry spends 10 telling you that everything is good, and you better not mess it up.

7.  Oil independence.  you hear it all the time.  it can't happen.  there isn't enough oil to be found.  not even close.  but still many folks spout it every day.  so who should i believe?  someone who tells me that i need the government to raise my taxes and take away my SUV?  or someone who tells me that if only the oil companies could drill more, then gas would go back down to $2 a gallon, and i really could take that vacation i'd like to?'

as to are they uninformed, or frauds, there are both.  as widely as yahoo is read, i'm not at all sure that there aren't people who post that are paid to do so.  maybe not a lot, but i really wouldn't be surprised if there are some.  on the other side, i rather doubt if Greenpeace does that.  there are probably many more that just don't realize what's happened.  and more who are part of groups whose philosophy they are fed every week, and psychologically need to support that.

there are people that deserve no respect.  there are others that have a hard time distinguishing between reality, and what they would like reality to be.

and they all get to vote.  :-(

like this.

http://uspolitics.about.com/library/bl_e...

have a nice day.

Answer 4

I don't know all that much of AGW aka global warming except what I see on the TV TLC or Discovery channels

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And no I do not think they are wrong only

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I was reading at several reputable web sites that the sun is entering into a hot state and the suns sun spots have decreased or are late in forming this year

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And that would first mean that the sun is putting out more energy converted into heat when it strikes the  earth

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And the polar caps of Mars have receded over the last I think it is two years for the first time since it has been observed and monitored

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And then Jupiter has shown new storm spots near the large storm that Jupiter has had since man saw it in a telescope

Could not the Huge gas planet also be reacting to the increase of the suns energy out put increase?

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I know this is suppose to be a question and my answer but seeing your field and knowledge may be you could use this in one of you class works in college

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But one thing that escapes me

is when an object warms its molecules expand forcing the object to occupy more space

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Does the same not apply to water when it is warmed

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I know the variation of one gallon of water expanding can only be measured by a so to say electron microscope (not really but you get my point)

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What happens when the surface of the ocean warms does it not also expand to take up more space

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Causing the water to rise in depth

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Answer 5

I don't think they are wrong, but blaming humans for climate change is crazy.  The climates change naturally, ice ages...

I can agree climates are changing, but why user this information as a marketing tool?

Answer 6

I find the idea of AGW to be fraudulent.  And for different reasons.  Every so often there is some new fear to be panicked about and like the latest fad, millions go for it.  The Ecology movement 30 years ago, remember all the "Pitch In" signs on every public park's trash cans?  And so it goes.  

We were told we were sliding towards and ice age that didn't happen.  

We were told we'd be wiped out by a nuclear explosion and that didn't happen.

We were told about acid rain, and I guess that magically went away.  

We were told about the holes in the ozone layer-- oops, they were there all the time but we paid money to stop using something that wasn't causing any damage to it.  

And we had Y2K and the power grid was supposed to crash and we'd all be living in a pre-industrial age existence.  

Then after 9-11-2001, we had color coded "terror alerts" which were vague at best.  No the warnings about possible terrorist threats went on for days, but for some reason, no one knew where it would happen and it became a joke.  

Anthropogenic Global Warming is just that to me, just another scare, another hype, more white noise to distract from what's really important and it takes away from what is real and damaging pollution.

Answer 7

I believe Global Warming is occurring.  But in fairness to those that don't believe, science has been wrong in the past; repeatedly.

Its not that they believe all scientists are frauds and liars and hucksters (though probably some believe it); but its more that they are human and can make mistakes.

And remember that there are scientists on the other side of the debate saying Global Warming doesn't exist.  Maybe they believe those scientists over "your" scientists.  They may be in the minority those scientists, but so was Galileo...

But there are facts and figures; and the worst thing about fact and figures is that they can be twisted to support a lot of things.  And while some scientists portray them in a way that supports Global Warming, other scientists are portraying them in a way that refutes Global Warming.

This is a difficult one to see who is right on it.  And in truth, the only reason I sided with those that believe in Global Warming is that we are putting things into the air; certain chemicals and particles and such.  It must be doing something; though I don't know what for sure.  

But it wasn't supposed to be there, it wasn't naturally produced by something in nature.  So I've got to think its changing something, and probably not for the better.

But there is very good reason for those who don't believe to not believe.  And it can and usually is more than scientists are trying to play a trick on us.

Answer 8

My god, linylons, that post was disgusting.

"and who are they taking that money from? their children and grandchildren. you're expecting moral behavior from people who would steal from their children?"

Sickening.

Answer 9

There is still no OBSOLUTE PROOF that it is man-made and natural climate cycles.

Answer 10

Well, the scientists are wrong and it is also a hoax to promote a certain political agenda. That's why dissenting views are untolerated.

I'm sorry- I see you're working on a doctorate and everything, but I must point out that "denialists" is not actually a word. I believe the appropriate term is skeptic or denier.

Answer 11

Well I've spent quite a bit of time on YA dealing with the denialists, so I think I can answer this question reasonably accurately.

The more reasonable denialists argue that the scientists are simply wrong.  The problem with this argument is that most of the people making it don't understand the basic science like the greenhouse effect.  When you try and explain it to them, they continue to refuse to understand it.  My conclusion is that they so want the AGW theory to be wrong, they simply won't accept even the most basic science which supports it.  There have been several denialists who outright reject the greenhouse effect, which just boggles my mind.

There are some more intelligent denialists in the mould of Lindzen who accept the basic science but basically argue 'we just don't know'.  Though usually they eventually regress into rejecting the theory outright.

There are some who alternate between arguing that the scientists are wrong and that the scientists are part of a massive hoax.  I call these people 'core dumpers'.  When I was a physics TA in grad school, when a student didn't know an answer to a question but recognized a key term and then threw out every piece of information he knew about that key term in the hopes that somewhere in there he would answer the question or get some points - we called that a core dump.

Some denialists use this same tactic.  They throw out solar warming and galactic cosmic rays and 'consensus has been wrong' and the temperature record is flawed and scientists are wrong and scientists are biased and scientists are frauds...whatever the argument du jour is.  All they're hoping to do is either make one reasonably valid argument or at least create sufficient doubt by throwing out as many ideas as possible.  It becomes a game of whack-a-mole.  They come up with an argument, we disprove it, they come up with another, we disprove it...eventually they cycle back to the beginning and we have to repeat the process.  It's just a game to them.

Then there are those who I call 'tin foil hatters' who think the whole thing is a socialist conspiracy to tax them and turn the US in to a communist state, and who say the scientists are just in it for the money and are frauds.  I wrote Myth #6 for them

http://greenhome.huddler.com/wiki/global...

But really there's no hope for these conspiracy theorists.  They're off in their own paranoid world.

Answer 12

I know that different climate scientists say contradictory things thus some of them must be wrong.   Whenever there are experts on both sides, no matter what side you accept, you reject the other side's experts' findings.  It may not be 50/50 on this issue but it certainly isn't the 99/1 that Dana makes it out to be.   Maybe 80/20, but there's a lot of disagreement among the 80 on severity - and that's the point, isn't it?    Nobody says CO2 doesn't trap heat, the issue is whether it traps enough heat to have an impact.    Past warming periods that were CO2-driven involved many times more CO2.   Some of the pro-AGW scientists have also been forced to backtrack from some of their claims - Hansen and Mann come to mind.  And some of the claims are just silly.    I also know that none of them has provided tangible proof of human causation of the 20th century warming.   And the burden of proof is on the AGW side since they're the ones proposing limits on others' actions.

Answer 13

In my opinion, we are too quick to make the world live under the AGW theory.  I just don't believe that the scientists have enough facts to back the theory.  Plus, I also believe that humans cannot over turn mother nature.  If we try to tackle something this big that no one really know anything about it except a few scientists who think they know.

I have hope in our scientists so I would not call it a hoax.

Answer 14

OK, lets setting this once and for all. you say climate is changing. Funny how just yesterday you all called it Global warming, now its climate change. What will it be called tomorrow ?

You want to know why I deny your hoax ? here we go..

Scientists on your side of the fence admitting they folded under political pressure to go along with the idea.

Scientists that debunked GW as a hoax having thier funding pulled and discredited.

Your side says the polar bear is drowning....the fact is they have more than doubled since 1974.

You say that the world is rising in temp due to Co2, yet world wide weather monitors show temps plateauing since 1998 and went down 1/2 a degree due to less sun spot activity. Not because you decreased the amount of co2 on earth. So if cos is a real culprit....shouldn't termps have gone up still ?

My life isn't restricted to a laboratory, I walk outside, I see many sources of information from your web sites that just aren't happening in the real world outside.

Even your own climate experts claim that there is a 10 year hold on the warming trend...HOW CONVENIENT.

Your data on the warmest temps on which days and years on many sites are flawed if not flat out lies.

And even if you can prove that there's some kind of a climatic change that is something we haven't experienced in the past, there's absolutely NO proof that it isn't natural and humans are not the cause.

So this hoax ofyours is what we are turning our economy upside down for ? increasing the cost of living ? Running up food prices so that there are world shorages and riots over ?

s***w your world view buddy, what about the people your effecting ? We aren't all elitists sitting in a penthouse that has only to write a check to make up for our "existance" on earth. There are people having trouble out there and your side of the fence is doing nothing to help them, you are exasperating the problem. Food is up because of you and your kind, fuel is up due to whacko enviromentalism and spineless politicians, Medical inhalers are up because of you, not to mention the food staple corn for many countries and all other commondity products touched by corn.

Not to mention the fact that when Pollution was realized as a problem decades ago, we did something about it. We brought about legislation to reduce air and water pollution, we spread the word, we had commericals that made people aware and we reduced the pollutants. Your carbon credit program is a scam to make Al Gore and friend rich. Your not reducing co2, your only trading it between people and getting rich off the hoax.

Now this is hard fact, it can't be refuted. That is why you can't convince me of otherwise.