Do anthropogenic global warming deniers understand the theory?

Question

Looking at the "scintific evidence against man made climate change" in these questions:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AmAoWZ.vqx2njpOt1dCAV2Xty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080201124931AA04nP2&show=7#profile-info-9nWBISDBaa

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AmPvm6SEkATKS7gnxEs95m3ty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080201053712AAXbylT&show=7#profile-info-W6Wu1PxEaa

Many anthropgenic global warming (AGW) deniers seem to think that the AGW theory reequires CO2 and global temperature to always rise at a 1-to-1 rate. They think that by pointing out that sometimes they don't rise at the same time, this disproves the theory.

Of course, in reality this is not the case. In fact, just over the 20th century scientists modelled the climate changes with high accuracy without a 1-to-1 relationship.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Do you think AGW deniers object to the theory because they don't understand it, and if so, why do you think they don't understand it?

Answer 1

I think their agenda drives them to ensure that they don't understand it.

To rephrase: they choose not to try to understand it because it suits them, for various reasons.

Answer 2

There is not theory it is all made up look at what the less liberal scientist say.

Answer 3

Ahhh Dana, although I am relatively sure you will pick some silly answer from a zealot, (because I believe you are as close minded as you think deniers are) I will still try to explain. Yes many deniers understand the science of AGW, even if I wouldn't be able to do the math if I had to. At least the same percentage of deniers understand it as the number of believers that understand it; judging from the posts I see on here. You have to admit there are the same ratio of dumb questioners and answerers on both sides of the fence. So where do we get off questioning the scientists? It's not them we question. I truly think they believe their findings.  It is the constant bombardment and exaggerations from other sources that drive us away.  The scientists may be right; CO2 may be or is probably helping to warm the atmosphere a bit. However when media, bureaucrats and politicians blow it way out of proportion we have to say hey, this isn't real information any more, this is now c**p. The results from AGW are not going to have the huge effect they are saying and this is not going to happen as fast as they want you to believe. Bad news sells shows, keeps jobs, and gets reelections. Then, when a good portion of society tries to use this c**p to pass bills through congress and to get us to sing damaging treaties; that is when we have to speak up and say this is not the way to go.

Answer 4

Most of the deniers on Yahoo! Answers are really misinformed, and probably have not had any science education since High School. I think that the celebrity deniers understand the theory, but for other motives (money), they will misrepresent known and well understood physics.

Note to Shapeshifter: CO2 IS a greenhouse gas, which means that it can BOTH react to warmer temperatures and force global temperatures to increase. Why does it have to be one or the other?

Answer 5

Yes.  And I dont believe it.  Here let me post some links too.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080202/ap_o...

Well there it is,  100% undisputable proof that it is all c**p.

Oh, wow, a 100 year chart.  You GOT ME!

Do skeptics actually think we can stop using oil within the next 10 years?

See look, when you look at a 200 year chart, co2 and temps seem to move around together, but longer term charts show that temp can increase without co2 increasing with it, and co2 levels can decrease without decreasing the temp.  It seems to show that the two variable are related, but not that one follows the other.  One theory says co2 warms the atmosphere, and one says the atmosphere fills with more co2 when it is warmer.  Can you disprove the fact that co2 increases when temps increase?

Most of the proponents have probably never thought outside the box, or ever realized that american media is c**p(something you realize when you spend some time in other countries).  Also, most of the proponents still drive oil powered cars!  Most proponents are still producing carbon dioxide and are far from being carbon neutral.  Most proponents on here copy/paste paragraphs from the same sites over and over again.  The IPCC is c**p, they have changed their "predictions" like 3 times already.  And they still havent acknowledged that their computer models cant take into account the various feedback effects.  They claim to, but I dont believe any computer can predict something as complex as the entire global climate.  There are far too many unknowns.

Answer 6

CO2 increases have shown to follow increases in temperature.  This indicates CO2, much less CO2 contributed by human activity, does not generate global warming.

Answer 7

I don't know about others. However, yes I do understand the theory. And, since the theory is foundationally based on a positive feedback mechanism between CO2 and temperature, it is mathematically incapable of yielding a result of declining temperatures in the presence of a fixed and elevated atmospheric CO2 concentration. This is simply a fact of the mathematics of the model. Therefore, it is incapable of reproducing historical temperature/CO2 data. Since the historical record is our only insight into the physics of the process and since the model cannot reproduce that historical record, the model is at best unreliable and at worst completely useless.

Perhaps you could enlighten your audience and tell them just exactly what I have stated in the paragraph above that is incorrect. Surely you are familiar enough with the theory and have sufficient understanding into its mechanics to confirm or deny the accuracy of my assessment.

Answer 8

some do, some don't.  some don't care.  among some, i think there's quite a distrust of "the elite".

i think that there is not one group of deniers that constitutes most of them.

the fact is that you probably post as many questions as any of them, and i do wonder about your motives.  i'm not questioning the truth, only the reasons.

as for the deniers, i suspect that there are several categories:

--  there is a large group of folks who seem to thrive on the "there's a global conspiracy against me" feeling.  clearly this feeds that need.

--  there is a large group of folks who listen to the likes of fauxlies and limburger, and truly don't realize how wrong they are.

--  there's a group for whom their SUV constitutes their manhood, and are appropriately afraid that someone will take it away from them.

--  there's a group that lives in coal and oil producing regions, where schools (at least some of 'em) teach that this is an elite plot against them.

--  there's school kids who honestly don't know.

--  the largest share of particularly obnoxious posts here appear to be by people who do, or should, know better, but for some reason deny it.  one wonders why.  are they paid?  is exxon desperate enough to pay them?  it wouldn't seem so, but it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Answer 9

If they understood it, few would reject it. Denial is facilitated by ignorance (and arrogance or prejudiced paranoia).

Answer 10

Over 400 prominent scientists don't believe in AGW.

"U.S. Senate Report: Over 400 Prominent Scientists Disputed Man-Made Global Warming Claims in 2007

Senate Report Debunks "Consensus"

Over 400 prominent scientists from more than two dozen countries recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called "consensus" on man-made global warming. These scientists, many of whom are current and former participants in the UN IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), criticized the climate claims made by the UN IPCC and former Vice President Al Gore.

Brief highlights of the report featuring over 400 international scientists:    

Israel: Dr. Nathan Paldor, Professor of Dynamical Meteorology and Physical Oceanography at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has authored almost 70 peer-reviewed studies and won several awards. "First, temperature changes, as well as rates of temperature changes (both increase and decrease) of magnitudes similar to that reported by IPCC to have occurred since the Industrial revolution (about 0.8C in 150 years or even 0.4C in the last 35 years) have occurred in Earth's climatic history. There's nothing special about the recent rise!"

Russia: Russian scientist Dr. Oleg Sorochtin of the Institute of Oceanology at the Russian Academy of Sciences has authored more than 300 studies, nine books, and a 2006 paper titled "The Evolution and the Prediction of Global Climate Changes on Earth."  "Even if the concentration of ‘greenhouse gases' double man would not perceive the temperature impact," Sorochtin wrote. (Note: Name also sometimes translated to spell Sorokhtin)

Spain: Anton Uriarte, a professor of Physical Geography at the University of the Basque Country in Spain and author of a book on the paleoclimate, rejected man-made climate fears in 2007. "There's no need to be worried. It's very interesting to study [climate change], but there's no need to be worried," Uriate wrote.  

Netherlands: Atmospheric scientist Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, a scientific pioneer in the development of numerical weather prediction and former director of research at The Netherlands' Royal National Meteorological Institute, and an internationally recognized expert in atmospheric boundary layer processes, "I find the Doomsday picture Al Gore is painting - a six-meter sea level rise, fifteen times the IPCC number - entirely without merit," Tennekes wrote. "I protest vigorously the idea that the climate reacts like a home heating system to a changed setting of the thermostat: just turn the dial, and the desired temperature will soon be reached."

Brazil: Chief Meteorologist Eugenio Hackbart of the MetSul Meteorologia Weather Center in Sao Leopoldo - Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil declared himself a skeptic. "The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming.  The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming," Hackbart wrote on May 30, 2007.  

France: Climatologist Dr. Marcel Leroux, former professor at Université Jean Moulin and director of the Laboratory of Climatology, Risks, and Environment in Lyon, is a climate skeptic.  Leroux wrote a 2005 book titled Global Warming - Myth or Reality? - The Erring Ways of Climatology.  "Day after day, the same mantra - that ‘the Earth is warming up' - is churned out in all its forms. As ‘the ice melts' and ‘sea level rises,' the Apocalypse looms ever nearer! Without realizing it, or perhaps without wishing to, the average citizen in bamboozled, lobotomized, lulled into mindless ac­ceptance. ... Non-believers in the greenhouse scenario are in the position of those long ago who doubted the existence of God ... fortunately for them, the Inquisition is no longer with us!"

Norway: Geologist/Geochemist Dr. Tom V. Segalstad, a professor and head of the Geological Museum at the University of Oslo and formerly an expert reviewer with the UN IPCC: "It is a search for a mythical CO2 sink to explain an immeasurable CO2 lifetime to fit a hypothetical CO2 computer model that purports to show that an impossible amount of fossil fuel burning is heating the atmosphere. It is all a fiction."  

Finland: Dr. Boris Winterhalter, retired Senior Marine Researcher of the Geological Survey of Finland and former professor of marine geology at University of Helsinki, criticized the media for what he considered its alarming climate coverage. "The effect of solar winds on cosmic radiation has just recently been established and, furthermore, there seems to be a good correlation between cloudiness and variations in the intensity of cosmic radiation. Here we have a mechanism which is a far better explanation to variations in global climate than the attempts by IPCC to blame it all on anthropogenic input of greenhouse gases," Winterhalter said.  

Germany: Paleoclimate expert Augusto Mangini of the University of Heidelberg in Germany, criticized the UN IPCC summary. "I consider the part of the IPCC report, which I can really judge as an expert, i.e. the reconstruction of the paleoclimate, wrong," Mangini noted in an April 5, 2007 article. He added:  "The earth will not die."  

Canada: IPCC 2007 Expert Reviewer Madhav Khandekar, a Ph.D meteorologist, a scientist with the Natural Resources Stewardship Project who has over 45 years experience in climatology, meteorology and oceanography, and who has published nearly 100 papers, reports, book reviews and a book on Ocean Wave Analysis and Modeling: "To my dismay, IPCC authors ignored all my comments and suggestions for major changes in the FOD (First Order Draft) and sent me the SOD (Second Order Draft) with essentially the same text as the FOD. None of the authors of the chapter bothered to directly communicate with me (or with other expert reviewers with whom I communicate on a regular basis) on many issues that were raised in my review. This is not an acceptable scientific review process."  

Czech Republic: Czech-born U.S. climatologist Dr. George Kukla, a research scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, expressed climate skepticism in 2007. "The only thing to worry about is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid," Kukla told Gelf Magazine on April 24, 2007.  

India: One of India's leading geologists, B.P. Radhakrishna, President of the Geological Society of India, expressed climate skepticism in 2007. "We appear to be overplaying this global warming issue as global warming is nothing new. It has happened in the past, not once but several times, giving rise to glacial-interglacial cycles."

USA: Climatologist Robert Durrenberger, past president of the American Association of State Climatologists, and one of the climatologists who gathered at Woods Hole to review the National Climate Program Plan in July, 1979: "Al Gore brought me back to the battle and prompted me to do renewed research in the field of climatology. And because of all the misinformation that Gore and his army have been spreading about climate change I have decided that ‘real' climatologists should try to help the public understand the nature of the problem."  

Italy: Internationally renowned scientist Dr. Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists and a retired Professor of Advanced Physics at the University of Bologna in Italy, who has published over 800 scientific papers: "Significant new peer-reviewed research has cast even more doubt on the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused global warming."

New Zealand: IPCC reviewer and climate researcher and scientist Dr. Vincent Gray, an expert reviewer on every single draft of the IPCC reports going back to 1990 and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of "Climate Change 2001: "The [IPCC] ‘Summary for Policymakers' might get a few readers, but the main purpose of the report is to provide a spurious scientific backup for the absurd claims of the worldwide environmentalist lobby that it has been established scientifically that increases in carbon dioxide are harmful to the climate. It just does not matter that this ain't so."  

South Africa: Dr. Kelvin Kemm, formerly a scientist at South Africa's Atomic Energy Corporation who holds degrees in nuclear physics and mathematics: "The global-warming mania continues with more and more hype and less and less thinking. With religious zeal, people look for issues or events to blame on global warming."

Poland: Physicist Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, Chairman of the Central Laboratory for the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Radiological Protection in Warsaw: "We thus find ourselves in the situation that the entire theory of man-made global warming-with its repercussions in science, and its important consequences for politics and the global economy-is based on ice core studies that provided a false picture of the atmospheric CO2 levels."  

Australia: Prize-wining Geologist Dr. Ian Plimer, a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Adelaide in Australia: "There is new work emerging even in the last few weeks that shows we can have a very close correlation between the temperatures of the Earth and supernova and solar radiation."  

Britain: Dr. Richard Courtney, a UN IPCC expert reviewer and a UK-based climate and atmospheric science consultant: "To date, no convincing evidence for AGW (anthropogenic global warming) has been discovered. And recent global climate behavior is not consistent with AGW model predictions."

China: Chinese Scientists Say C02 Impact on Warming May Be ‘Excessively Exaggerated' - Scientists Lin Zhen-Shan's and Sun Xian's 2007 study published in the peer-reviewed journal Meteorology and Atmospheric Physics: "Although the CO2 greenhouse effect on global climate change is unsuspicious, it could have been excessively exaggerated." Their study asserted that "it is high time to reconsider the trend of global climate change."  

Denmark: Space physicist Dr. Eigil Friis-Christensen is the director of the Danish National Space Centre, a member of the space research advisory committee of the Swedish National Space Board, a member of a NASA working group, and a member of the European Space Agency who has authored or co-authored around 100 peer-reviewed papers and chairs the Institute of Space Physics: "The sun is the source of the energy that causes the motion of the atmosphere and thereby controls weather and climate. Any change in the energy from the sun received at the Earth's surface will therefore affect climate."

Belgium: Climate scientist Luc Debontridder of the Belgium Weather Institute's Royal Meteorological Institute (RMI) co-authored a study in August 2007 which dismissed a decisive role of CO2 in global warming: "CO2 is not the big bogeyman of climate change and global warming. "Not CO2, but water vapor is the most important greenhouse gas. It is responsible for at least 75 % of the greenhouse effect. This is a simple scientific fact, but Al Gore's movie has hyped CO2 so much that nobody seems to take note of it."

Sweden: Geologist Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, professor emeritus of the Department of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology at Stockholm University, critiqued the Associated Press for hyping promoting climate fears in 2007. "Another of these hysterical views of our climate. Newspapers should think about the damage they are doing to many persons, particularly young kids, by spreading the exaggerated views of a human impact on climate."  

USA: Dr. David Wojick is a UN IPCC expert reviewer, who earned his PhD in Philosophy of Science and co-founded the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie-Mellon University: "In point of fact, the hypothesis that solar variability and not human activity is warming the oceans goes a long way to explain the puzzling idea that the Earth's surface may be warming while the atmosphere is not. The GHG (greenhouse gas) hypothesis does not do this." Wojick added: "The public is not well served by this constant drumbeat of false alarms fed by computer models manipulated by advocates."

# # #

Background: Only 52 Scientists Participated in UN IPCC Summary  

The over 400 skeptical scientists featured in this new report outnumber by nearly eight time the number of scientists who participated in the 2007 UN IPCC Summary for Policymakers. The notion of "hundreds" or "thousands" of UN scientists agreeing to a scientific statement does not hold up to scrutiny. (See report debunking "consensus" LINK) Recent research by Australian climate data analyst John McLean revealed that the IPCC's peer-review process for the Summary for Policymakers leaves much to be desired. (LINK) & (LINK) (Note: The 52 scientists who participated in the 2007 IPCC Summary for Policymakers had to adhere to the wishes of the UN political leaders and delegates in a process described as more closely resembling a political party’s convention platform battle, not a scientific process - LINK)

Proponents of man-made global warming like to note how the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the American Meteorological Society (AMS) have issued statements endorsing the so-called "consensus" view that man is driving global warming. But both the NAS and AMS never allowed member scientists to directly vote on these climate statements. Essentially, only two dozen or so members on the governing boards of these institutions produced the "consensus" statements. This report gives a voice to the rank-and-file scientists who were shut out of the process. (LINK)

The most recent attempt to imply there was an overwhelming scientific "consensus" in favor of man-made global warming fears came in December 2007 during the UN climate conference in Bali. A letter signed by only 215 scientists urged the UN to mandate deep cuts in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050. But absent from the letter were the signatures of these alleged "thousands" of scientists. (See AP article: - LINK )

UN IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri urged the world at the December 2007 UN climate conference in Bali, Indonesia to "Please listen to the voice of science."

The science has continued to grow loud and clear in 2007. In addition to the growing number of scientists expressing skepticism, an abundance of recent peer-reviewed studies have cast considerable doubt about man-made global warming fears. A November 3, 2007 peer-reviewed study found that "solar changes significantly alter climate." (LINK) A December 2007 peer-reviewed study recalculated and halved the global average surface temperature trend between 1980 - 2002. (LINK)  Another new study found the Medieval Warm Period "0.3C warmer than 20th century" (LINK)

A peer-reviewed study by a team of scientists found that "warming is naturally caused and shows no human influence." (LINK) - Another November 2007 peer-reviewed study in the journal Physical Geography found "Long-term climate change is driven by solar insolation changes." (LINK ) These recent studies were in addition to the abundance of peer-reviewed studies earlier in 2007. - See "New Peer-Reviewed Scientific Studies Chill Global Warming Fears"

With this new report of profiling 400 skeptical scientists, the world can finally hear the voices of the "silent majority" of scientists. "

So most scientis don't actually believe in AGW, and only 52 scientists attended the IPCC meeting where they decided that GW is 90% likely to be caused by humans.

Answer 11

Some seem willfully ignorant (and proud of it). They like taking blind potshots, and think they're demonstrating their superior intellect when they make an assertion that, unknown to them, was dealt with and discounted decades ago by science.

Some have a general understanding of AGW, but their doubts come from an oversimplification of things.  They seem unable to separate areas still under actual debate (e.g. hurricane effects) from the rest of the theory. When they read of debate in one facet they mistakenly think that causes the entire theory to crumble.

Some are simply cocky high school males (maybe a few females in there, it's not always clear) who've never taken any actual science or math courses (or logic courses for that matter) yet they somehow imagine that they're more intelligent than the 619 climate scientists from around the world that helped author the IPCC report (which, they've obviously never read or even skimmed).

Some (this would definitely be the minority around here) are relatively new in their study of the topic and they have legitimate concerns and unanswered questions.  Their understanding is growing (and will continue to grow if they have an open mind), but their questioning can at times appear intentionally disingenuous to those that have been studying the issue a long time.  I give a lot of grace to these people, because it took me a long time sifting through many journal articles, graphs, and arguments before I really understood AGW.

Then there are those who continually post the Inhofe 400 list of "prominent scientists" and falsely claim the IPCC report had hardly any real climate scientists involved. These are the "I don't understand science, math, or logic, and I don't want to learn" group.

Answer 12

I think they deny it for 2 reasons.

1 is that the news media are always saying it is much worse than it really is. Even Al Gore says that. He knows better but he needs to get people all riled up to support his cause. This has the effect of making people who really know the true scale of the effect scoff at all the talk.

2 is that if we follow the IPP advice and reduce CO2 emissions by 90% in 50 years, we will almost certainly have to do it by SEVERELY reducing our total energy use, because there is just no way to so quickly find alternatives to 90% of the energy we use now plus alternatives for all the new energy we will need as the third world pulls itself out of poverty. And wealth in a modern society is directly related to energy. Less eneregy is less wealth. If you have to dig a hole without a tractor, you need 100 people for example. So less energy means we all work 100 times harder or we make do with 100 times less stuff. And stuff includes not only luxuries, it also means food, clothes, shelter, and especially health care. People 200 years ago used way less energy and they also had what today would be considered zero health care. Health care is expensive and as I said before, wealth=energy. So less energy = less wealth = less health care. The connection is not obvious or direct but the linkage IS there.