Global Warming - the silliest science peddled by global-warming sceptics?

Question

What are the silliest attempts at being "scientific" you've heard or read from the anti-global warming crowd recently? I'll kick it off with three:

1. Continued misunderstanding of the differences between CO2 and water vapour cycles - water vapour being more or less in continuous equilibrium, versus CO2 being very long-lasting rather than continually falling out of the atmosphere onto your head.

2. A global warming sceptic who once told me that Mars was cold and had an atmosphere of 95% CO2, therefore CO2 couldn't possibly cause global warming. He never got back to me when I asked him to use the same logic on Venus, being totally oblivious to the fact that the Martian atmosphere is 1% as dense as Earth's, and that 95% of almost nothing is slightly less than almost nothing!

3. Trying to use a NASA graph which shows positive (that's a "plus", or "greater than") global temperature changes as evidence that the Earth is cooling.

Answer 1

Well, fantasize about the 'broad spectrum' and 'global picture' all you want...  Seems that CO2 can't hold enough heat to even pass the day and night test...

Moronic you say?  As the sun goes down, does it get cold?  As it stays down throughout the night, does it get progressively colder?  Why doesn't CO2 hold enough thermal energy to last ONE SINGLE NIGHT?

But your allegations are that CO2 holds thermal energy over 10, 20, 30, and even more years????  

HOW?????

You simply can't explain a single day's energy, yet you ACT like you know about a century.  

In the daytime, when all that heated CO2 is around, does that same high temperature CO2 also keep the same heat in the shade?  Obviously NOT!!!

So, it fails the day/night test, shade test and common sense test.....

Does CO2 have little thermal energy saddle bags that are timed to re-release stored energy the following day?  That's like saying that you are going to take a 5 foot ladder to climb onto a 50 foot building...  YOU SIMPLY CAN'T!

Answer 2

That global warming nuts dont understand the meaning of the word  "average".  When a weather forecast is given, they give the AVERAGE temperature.  That does not mean that is what the temp. is supposed to be.  It is an AVERAGE of temperatures taken over the past 30 years, as a local weatherman told over the airwaves.  AVERAGE does not mean "normal".  Lets say todays AVERAGE is 50 f.  but the temp. is 57 f.  Is that global warming?  No,  that 57 degree day is AVERAGED into next years forecast.  Global warming nuts must have been to busy playing hacky-sack when they should have been in math class.

Answer 3

I like the "science" of.....It was cold outside yesterday, so that means Global Warming is a hoax. Thats just being moronic.

Also when they say that Dinos didnt drive SUVs so what caused it then.......

i'll get back to ya if i can think up any more good ones.

Answer 4

Enjoy the warm weather before the next ice age !

Answer 5

Only a computer illeterate believes in computer models.  You get one variable wrong it throws off the whole equation.

There is a far greater correlation between sun activity and temperatures than co2 and temperatures.  Temperatures cause co2 to increase and not vice versa. Then they throw in this link from NASA to prove their point.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/2...

http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/looking...

There has been no statistically significant temperature increases for the last decade.  The computer models say there should be an acceleration in temperature increases but we are not seeing them.

http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/200...

How can it be greenhouse warming when the troposphere is not warming as fast as ground temperatures.

Answer 6

There may be some skeptics who don't grasp the science, but skepticism generally comes from understanding science and the scientific methods required to prove a theory with confidence.  

Who's being silly anyway.  Climate scientists acknowledge CO2 alone won't cause significant global warming.  Water vapor is supposed to be the main driver of AGW.  

The earth has 0.038% CO2 so Mars has more atmospheric CO2 than the Earth (around 30 times more).  Using your own logic, the earth has around 1/30 of 95% of almost nothing.  Who's being silly now?

We're well aware that one individual at NASA has found that the Earths temperature have increased since 1998 despite no meterologists being able to find that.

Answer 7

4) One cool month means that 30 or 100 years of warming have been "wiped out".

5) Right-wing blogs and opinion articles written by right-wing think tanks disprove peer-reviewed science.

6) The Sun is responsible for the warming over the past 30 years even though solar irradiance has decreased slightly and no scientific study has been able to attribute more than one-third of the warming over that period to solar effects.

7) The greenhouse effect is a myth.

8) Warming is just a "natural cycle" because it's happened naturally in the past.

9) CO2 can't cause warming because it's lagged behind warming in the past.

10) Scientific predictions and projections and models run on supercomputers are no better than wild guesses.

Answer 8

This list is so large.  I'll just post a few I frequently see and find entertaining.

4. You can't trust computer models. As a computer scientist this simplistic and erroneous statement is one of my favorites.

5. It cooled down last night (as used by a poster above).  Clearly, unless it cools down to around -170C at night, we can all rest assured that the greenhouse gases are retaining heat.  I guess anyone using this argument thinks AGW claims ALL heat is trapped and thus no cooling should ever occur, kind of a perfectly insulated planet.

6. The list of skeptical "scientists" has got to be one of the great signs of desperation.  There's the Oregon Petition (long ago uncovered as a deceptive misleading scam) and the 400 "prominent" scientists of Sen. Inhofe (a pathetic collection of economists, TV weathermen, sociologist, and the same ol' handful of paid/ignorant dissenting scientists).

7. It was warmer in the MWP (or any other time in the past).  This mode of binary thinking infers that if it was ever warm in the past, due to natural causes, then obviously we can't be causing the warming now.  My favorite analogy to show the logical fallacy of that is forest fires (caused naturally in the past many time, yet clearly often caused by humans in the present).

8. The ol' appeal to authority logical fallacy is a frequently used one.  It's typically presented with a link to an op-ed piece by some guy/gal with no significant education/experience in climate science (often with no education/experience in any science at all).

9. My new favorite has to be the film "The Great Global Warming Swindle".  It takes all of 30 seconds of "research" on google to discover that this movie has numerous documented errors, has been revised at least 4 times (because of pressure to remove such errors), had threats of a lawsuit from one of the interviewed scientists because his interview was edited in a highly misleading manner, etc., etc.

Answer 9

Go to this link:

http://www.youtorrent.com/tag/?q=The+Gre...

And download the documentary called "The Great Global Warming Swindle"

Then get the propaganda follow up called PROOF THAT 'THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE' WAS A SCAM.

Do some research into these topics:

The year without a summer

The Little Ice Age

Global Dimming

Super Volcanoes

When you look at the FACTS... FACTS AND ONLY FACTS... you will see that Global Warming is nothing but a cult being used to manipulate the small minded and perpetuate the adgendas of anti-advancement and anti-globalism political groups.

Nothing more.

Answer 10

Volcanoes emit much more CO2 than Man, is in second place.  (Gotta build the suspense).

It was cold in Buffalo, NY this winter is close behind.

Sunspots is right up there.

Warming stopped in 1998.

This is a liberal political thing.

And the number one silly claim of skeptics:

Thousands of scientists all around the world are lying about this to get grant money.