Do you agree that global warming 'skeptics' ignore the big picture?

Question

"Climate skeptics typically take a few small pieces of the puzzle to debunk global warming, and ignore the whole picture that the larger science community sees by looking at all the pieces,” said Ignatius G. Rigor, a climate scientist at the Polar Science Center of the University of Washington in Seattle."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/science/02cold.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

Do you agree with Dr. Rigor's assessment of global warming 'skeptics'?

Answer 1

Politics is meant to argue about, science is fact. Nobody is a"skeptic" about water freezing at 32F. We have computers that do a decent job of predicting weather a few days ahead and we can use statistics to measure how accurate they are over time. The first attempts to predict weather using computers were a failure but over time it was possible to be more accurate.

There are a lot of people attempting to understand global weather. History shows us that climate has changed in dramatic ways over many thousands of years yet we only have theories as to why those changes happened.

Many people are now afraid that ice melt will add too much fresh water to the  northern Gulf Stream and disrupt the deep ocean currents plunging North America and Europe into a sudden ice age. Some scientist think glaciers had prevented fresh water from getting to the north Atlantic in the past causing a more sustained ice age. These are all valid theories but they are not yet proven to be facts.

Global warming is a fairly new theory and the scientific community would never have made conclusions as fact on such a complex theory that is still evolving without great political pressure.  People are asked to "defend" why they do not accept it as fact.  Sometimes the smartest guy in the room is the one who says. "I don't know".

Answer 2

yes

Answer 3

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/su...

Answer 4

Yes, sort of. There are three kinds of "skeptics" that I can think of right now.

1. Those who don't look at the big picture and truly believe that science debunks global warming.

2. Those who don't understand it at all or are misinformed.

3. Those who couldn't care less because they don't see it affecting them, and those who realize what's happening but believe God will swoop in and save mankind - at least the section of mankind that goes to church every Sunday - before it's too late.

Honestly, the types are equally harmful.

Edit: Oh, wait, I forgot a type!

4. Those who put the word "scientist" in quotation marks. What do "scientists" know anyway? Seriously, what are the chances that these people have never had to take any medication or have any medical produce? That's "science" too, you know.

Answer 5

You mean like how the SUN is ignored?

The sun accounts for 99.999% of our heat.  If we could turn if off we'd get cold, because we all know that AGW (if it were real) wouldn't keep us warm indefinitely sans the sun.

Answer 6

Global warming is not the issue. HUMAN CAUSED warming IS. The big picture is exactly what lets me know that WE have nothing to do with it. It has been going on since the last ice age, Since looong before we could possibly have had anything to do with it. The earth is getting warmer because it's SUPPOSED to. Besides how much faith do you have in "scientists" who only a few years were warning us about global cooling? They NEVER admit they are wrong. They are wrong more often than they are right. And besides just how good were their instruments for the last thousand years or so? Fire up the  barbeque and quit worrying, you'll just get an ulcer.

Answer 7

Yes, and they do it with inconvenient truth also by focusing on the 9 contraversial pieces of information (which nobody ever lists) and ignoring the fact that the core message was deemed true by the judge.

In any conversation I have with deniers, they try to quickly change the focus onto politics instead of science.

Answer 8

It's not, that they ignore the big picture, it's that they firmly believe that the big picture was painted by three other guy's, Russians probably. Although the people they reckon painted the big picture, it turns out, can't actually paint!

Answer 9

All you have to do to bring me over to your side is to tell me if it's going to be warmer or colder 5 years from now, and show me your work to how you came to your conclusion.

Right now everyone is just guessing.  Your predictions are nothing more than SWAG.

Answer 10

Yes

Ed F   and some-yan  say the same scientists  predicted global cooling in the 70s.  This  skeptic argument is based in disinformation.

There were a handful of scientists who theorized about global cooling in 1972.  Three years later the lead scientist recanted, admitting that he had under estimated the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.    

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11...

"It is true that there were some predictions of an "imminent ice age" in the 1970s, but a cursory comparison of those warnings and today's reveals a huge difference."

"Today, you have a widespread scientific consensus, supported by national academies and all the major scientific institutions, solidly behind the warning that the temperature is rising, anthropogenic CO2 is the primary cause, and it will worsen unless we reduce emissions."

"In the 1970s, there was a book in the popular press, a few articles in popular magazines, and a small amount of scientific speculation based on the recently discovered glacial cycles and the recent slight cooling trend from air pollution blocking the sunlight. There were no daily headlines. There was no avalanche of scientific articles. There were no United Nations treaties or commissions. No G8 summits on the dangers and possible solutions. No institutional pronouncements. You could find broader "consensus" on a coming alien invasion."

Ed F  says it has been going on since the last ice age.  This is a variation on the it's a natural phenomena argument.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12...

"It is true that 20,000 years ago the temperature was some 8 to 10° C colder than it is today. But to draw a line from that point to today and say, "look, 20K years of global warming!" is dubious and arbitrary at best."

"If you have look at this graph of temperature, starting at a point when we were finishing the climb out of deep glaciation, you can clearly see that rapid warming ceased around 10,000 years ago (rapid relative to natural fluctuations, but not compared to the warming today, which is an order of magnitude faster). After a final little lift 8,000 years ago, temperature trended downward for the entire period of the Holocene. So the post-industrial revolution warming is the reversal of a many-thousand-year trend."

"A closer look at today's trend, within the context of the last 1,000 and 2,000 years, makes it even clearer that today's trend is striking -- opposite to what one would expect without anthropogenic interference."

Ed F says the scientists are wrong more often than they are right.  Ed must be a world class scientist himself to make such a declaration.

He and other skeptics know more than these scientists who agree with the AGW theory.

  "The conclusions reached in this document have been explicitly endorsed by ..."

Academia Brasiliera de Ciências (Bazil)

Royal Society of Canada

Chinese Academy of Sciences

Academié des Sciences (France)

Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)

Indian National Science Academy

Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)

Science Council of Japan

Russian Academy of Sciences

Royal Society (United Kingdom)

National Academy of Sciences (United States of America)

Australian Academy of Sciences

Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts

Caribbean Academy of Sciences

Indonesian Academy of Sciences

Royal Irish Academy

Academy of Sciences Malaysia

Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand

Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

"In addition to these national academies, the following institutions specializing in climate, atmosphere, ocean, and/or earth sciences have endorsed or published the same conclusions as presented in the TAR report:

NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies (GISS)

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

State of the Canadian Cryosphere (SOCC)

Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Royal Society of the United Kingdom (RS)

American Geophysical Union (AGU)

American Institute of Physics (AIP)

National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

American Meteorological Society (AMS)

Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS)

If this is not scientific consensus, what in the world would a consensus look like?"

  

  And they must be all Marxists as some skeptics claim.  Sure.  When you are that far to the right, everyone else looks like a commie.

Larry M says it's a new theory and scientists are pressured by political pressure.



The most powerful political pressure I see is on the other side of the argument.  You have the Wall St. Journal publishing phony stories about how the scientific proof against AGW has surfaced.

Their source was a manuscript, that had not been presented to other scientists for review.  Real scientists present their data to other scientists, not the public, throught the popular media, so they can sway public opinion.  If they had done so, it never would have been published as a scientific paper, because it wouldn't have passed scientific scrutiny.  And you have Sen Inhofe calling AGW a hoax on the senate floor, based on his phony list of skeptics.

The theory is almost 100 years old.  The theory has been heavily researched since the mid 70s at least.  And are the scientists alarmists?  Hardly.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/0... The Cold Truth about Global Warming by Joseph Romm

"The big difference I have with the doubters is they believe the IPCC reports seriously overstate the impact of human emissions on the climate, whereas the actual observed climate data clearly show the reports dramatically understate the impact."

"One of the most serious results of the overuse of the term "consensus" in the public discussion of global warming is that it creates a simple strategy for doubters to confuse the public, the press and politicians: Simply come up with as long a list as you can of scientists who dispute the theory. After all, such disagreement is prima facie proof that no consensus of opinion exists."

"So we end up with the absurd but pointless spectacle of the leading denier in the U.S. Senate, James Inhofe, R-Okla., who recently put out a list of more than 400 names of supposedly "prominent scientists" who supposedly "recently voiced significant objections to major aspects of the so-called 'consensus' on man-made global warming."

"As it turned out, the list is both padded and laughable, containing the opinions of TV weathermen, economists, a bunch of non-prominent scientists who aren't climate experts, and, perhaps surprisingly, even a number of people who actually believe in the consensus."

"But in any case, nothing could be more irrelevant to climate science than the opinion of people on the list such as Weather Channel founder John Coleman or famed inventor Ray Kurzweil (who actually does "think global warming is real"). Or, for that matter, my opinion -- even though I researched a Ph.D. thesis at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography on physical oceanography in the Greenland Sea."

"What matters is scientific findings -- data, not opinions. The IPCC relies on the peer-reviewed scientific literature for its conclusions, which must meet the rigorous requirements of the scientific method and which are inevitably scrutinized by others seeking to disprove that work. That is why I cite and link to as much research as is possible, hundreds of studies in the case of this article. Opinions are irrelevant."

Skeptic argument.  Lots of scientists disagree.

"People that say this often have little or no grasp of the science and are using denial to avoid having to face a danger.  Fix the denial mechanism by showing them this list of sustainable/green technologies.  Then make them read this consensus and say the following quote out loud:  "I don't know anything about science, so given the choice of trusting 99.9% or 0.1% of the experts, I'll go with the 0.1%".  If still they don't think that sounds silly and they don't start to ask questions then you are wasting your time trying to educate them.  This ratio is correct because there are 12,301-14,305 members of the AGU and who knows how many European experts on climate.  As Eli Rabbet says "if you ain't a member of the AGU you ain't no d**n climate scientist in the US, just like the AMA".  Also keep in mind that with the tens of thousand of climate change skeptics on the planet if only %1 of them are corrupted by the $10,000 payment (or bribe) currently being offered by Exxon through AEI then you will have at minimum 200 skeptics/deniers.  So far 200 skeptics/deniers have not turned up."

http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_ar...

Answer 11

yes i agree completely. Most skeptics avoid the big picture to make sure the people feel safe. It's wrong.

Answer 12

This is precisely why skeptics are actually realists.  They understand that the earth has natural temper fluctuation cycles that have nothing to do with man's involvement.  These same "scientists" predicted a horrible ice age in the 1970's, and had loads of like-minded lemurs jump on the band wagon.  We are simply seeing history repeat itself, 30-some years later.

Answer 13

Yes, but I see the other side do the same thing, like citing a hot summer in one area as evidence of global warming.

Answer 14

I think the skeptics ignore the big picture because they are in denial and like things as they are. They don't want to change anything because it makes them insecure. There are also very selfish reasons, the skeptics that call names and try to intimidate to protect their greedy ways and wine about their rights...

I think ultimately this issue, like so many other environmental issues will come down to rights. The skeptics know this and that is why their battle cry is "you can't control me, I have the right to be free". But when your actions have a negative effect on others, they have the right to protect them selves. It's that your rights end where my rights begin thing...

The moral issues are never brought up in many of these yahoo rants. Dana, I know you like to keep it to pure scientific discussion but it goes far beyond science and fact. This is the major issue of our time, perhaps the biggest issue mankind will ever have to deal with, along with over population. When global warming is framed as a moral issue and even slight consideration is given to the PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE (google it) the deniers and skeptics are making fools of them selves and their motives can only be classified as selfish, greedy and stupid.

In that context the ones that claim man has nothing to do with it are the radical fringe that would claim night is day and up is down in many cases. Those that claim it is being caused by everything but man are just rationalizing to avoid change and maintain the status quo...

Those of us that understand the data and can deferentiate fact from fiction waste our time to educate and argue with these fools  because we care and want to make the world a better place, yes for ourselves and our counsciences in regaurds to the future. There is a dominate community of awareness that knows human beings have exceeded the capacity of Earth to sustain our current ways and we are going down the path of self destruction. From a moral perspective, the skeptics and deniers are no different than suicide bombers walking into public places and murdering as many people as the can with their own suicide!



What positive moral issues can the deniers and skeptics claim?

Answer 15

I believe Dr. Rigor is projecting.  Skeptics say global climate has so many variables, models are useless at our current level of understanding (that's the big picture), while proponents focus on a single component as the culprit.

Btw:  I had to Google the good doctor to make sure he was real...what a name!

Answer 16

Yes. Dr. Rigor is quite accurate.

Clearly we are seeing how a little knowledge is dangerous.  There are far too many wanna-be climate analysts on the web (some for money, some for ideology, some for pride, and some just as a hobby) that lack the education, experience, and/or necessary peer oversight to keep them from making mistakes that mislead the public.  That's where the value of peer-reviewed scientific literature (vs. op-ed pieces and personal blogs) is so obvious.

Answer 17

No, they realize it's marxist propaganda, an attempt at more control over our lifes.