How many of the deniers base their conclusion on "common sense" or "think for themselfs"?

Question

Instead of making an effort to try to understand at least the basic science behind global warming and the greenhouse effect.

I think it's scary that statements made by skeptics using their "common sense" are likely to become new truths among deniers.

I read in one answer today that "consensus among scientists is that CO2 doesn't cause global warming"

In another answer there was a link that shows that skin cancer is decreasing as a argument against global warming and wonder how any "common sense" relates that to AGW? (Maybe this was related to the persistent misunderstanding about the ties between the ozone hole and global warming that makes people confuse these subjects when they think for themself.)

Answer 1

Clear as mud

Answer 2

i think this quote is quite fitting.

             "Logic ,the last refuge of a scoundrel."

that person you are referring to thinks the greenhouse effect is wrong and heat is really just friction brought about higher pressure lower to the earth. i really did not expect much more then that.

although there is alot of disagreement about how details of AGW such as out effect the vast majority of papers agree with AGW. [1]

Answer 3

It is pure denial. It is unimaginable how someone could be brainwashed enough to say that scientific concensus is that increased CO2 is not causing climate change. The person either has a very low level of reading comprehension or they never learned the basics of critical thinking. Unfortunately, this sort of denial is everywhere, and this website attracts it in spades.

Answer 4

The use of the word 'Denier' instead of 'Skeptic' implies you may be the 'non-thinker'.  As does your comparison of honest skeptics to those too ignorant to tell UV from IR.

Here's a common sense question for you.

Where did that Fossil Fuel CO2 originally come from?

If the answer is: "From Earths atmosphere at a time when life was thriving"   you should seriously question the 'science' that says putting it back would be catastrophic.

Answer 5

I just saw one of these types  reference his post with

"The people in power will do anything to stay in power. Look at the plot of Star Wars Ep 3".

then call a child an "ignorant pr**k"

Answer 6

First of all, it would be 'think for themselves"  Selves is plural for self.  Selfs makes no sense.

Onto other points.  

I cannot even begin to believe in Global Warming when it is now April 9th, and in my region, the average normal tempurature is supposed to be 45, at least.  This weekend, as in April 12th and 13th, it is supposed to snow up to 8 more inches.

If Global Warming were true...and I mean IF it were...then it would be over 45 degrees, which is the normal average tempurature AND it would NOT be snowing as much as it is.

I'm sorry, but thinking Global warming when it's snowing in the second week of April...well I just laugh.

I'm not a "Global Warming Skeptic," I am simply an intelligent person who knows that global warming is a farse.

Edit:  No problem, I like to help out in grammar whenever possible!  Or at least spelling.  :D

Answer 7

"Anyone who denies global warming generally doesn't understand the science, because the consensus among scientists is that global warming is happening (I assure you, I'm not a layman, I'm a PhD climatology student)." by godhead

I do not have a PhD, but I do have a BA in History and I know how to do research.  Anyone who believes that man is the cause of global warming is an arrogant prick.  This is nothing more than a socialist agenda.  It is a way to get you to give up the way you live your life.  Let's all give up the way we live and return to a simpler time, like the 7th century.  I don't think so!  The great thing about man is his ability to adapt to change and think for himself.  More of us need to start thinking and stop relying on government to guide us along the path of life.

Tuba in the Rose Parade, I never said I had a PhD in History.  If man is the cause of global warming, please explain to me every climate change that has happened before mankind had their industrial revolution.  And as for "arrogant pr**k" the individuals I work with who believe this (man made global warming)are, no matter what evidence you give them.  As for the Star Wars Ep3 line, are you telling me that if you were in a position of political power that you wouldn't do whatever it took to stay in power.  I am sure Communist China loves the idea of democracy.  And, thank you, at least know I now people actual read what I post.

Answer 8

It would be so nice to have just a bit of that 'evidence' that you people keep talking about, but I guess it wont be now will it?

Answer 9

Anyone who denies global warming generally doesn't understand the science, because the consensus among scientists is that global warming is happening (I assure you, I'm not a layman, I'm a PhD climatology student).

Perhaps the problem is that global warming is a bit vague, because although we are observing a 0.13 degree C rise in temperatures per decade, this is only a global average.

Other places will see cooling, and this is what a lot of skeptics base their arguements on. Many people see this as a common sense argument, but a logical, well informed one will easily beat it.

Answer 10

yes, scary. the weather thing too, 'its snowing here so agw must be wrong'. regardless of the fact that there is drought at the same time in spain, in australia.

'common sense' is shorthand for 'i cant be bothered to research this properly, i'll just go for the first thing i'm told that i like the sound of'.

(oh, and by the way liss, it's spelled 'farce')

Answer 11

I'm not sure I understand your argument here.

Answer 12

Most of us do think for ourselves.

True, there is confusion between the winter ozone hole at the pole, and the theory of AGW, but there is also no "consensus" as to whether AGW exists on the pure science front. There are different ideas, but to go off the deep end and say that it's actuality only clouds the research.

The only thing Al Gore has done is to muddy the waters and scare lawmakers into spending money on ineffective programs.

If he were so convinced, he would be pushing for non-polluting  energy such as nuclear like the French have done.

Answer 13

steady on

that implies intellect

what ever next?????

Answer 14

Global warming is one-half of the climatic cycle of warming and cooling.

The earth's mean temperature cycles around the freezing point of water.

This is a completely natural phenomenon which has been going on since there has been water on this planet. It is driven by the sun.

Our planet is currently emerging from a 'mini ice age', so is

becoming warmer and may return to the point at which Greenland is again usable as farmland (as it has been in recorded history).

As the polar ice caps decrease, the amount of fresh water mixing with oceanic water will slow and perhaps stop the thermohaline cycle (the oceanic heat 'conveyor' which, among other things, keeps the U.S. east coast warm).

When this cycle slows/stops, the planet will cool again and begin to enter another ice age.

It's been happening for millions of years.

The worrisome and brutal predictions of drastic climate effects are based on computer models, NOT CLIMATE HISTORY.

As you probably know, computer models are not the most reliable of sources, especially when used to 'predict' chaotic systems such as weather.

Global warming/cooling, AKA 'climate change':

Humans did not cause it.

Humans cannot stop it.

Answer 15

Temperatures have gone down over the last 10 years, yet co2 levels have increased steadily.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that there is no connection between the two.

Who would have predicted the record cold and snows worldwide this year?  I'll bet no believer saw it coming.  Will this year be warmer or colder than the average of the last 10 years?  No one knows.

The co2 theory is old school.  That was originally proposed over 20 years ago.  It's time you updated your studies.

Answer 16

For me what is scary is people who buy into a religion lock, stock and barrel without so much as real investigation.

The fact is there is no real "con"census except in the mind of Al Gore.

Even scientists who contributed to the IPCC report have said the data they provided was usurped to provide an agenda for UN globalists.

I believe Al Gore and his ilk, are nothing more than power hungry globalists intent on control. This I believe fully was and is the reason this is so prevalent in today's discussions.

30 years ago,

I recall as a Freshman taking a climatology class the discussion at that time was global cooling.  

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?art...

I tend to adhere to the view the earth's climate to cyclical in nature, solar/lunar cycles, larger astronomical cycles, change weather patterns, temperatures and atmospheric gas content based on normal activity outside the realm of human on control.

Patrick Michaels and Robert Balling, for one provides very good information, the religionists of the global warming mythos despise him.

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?art...

For me, the argument is about causality and extent. The histrionic dogma of doom, detracts from reality.

As I have read both sides of the argument, the dogmatic approach of the global warming alarmists tends to exagerate facts, and also modeling is poorly controlled.

Who do you define as skeptic? and why? What is "common sense".

for the layman, and in very a simplistic way, the common sense issue relates to the weight of gas molecules, in a given volume, and the effort required to make the supposed CO2 blanket Al Gore's religionist claim

CO2 is a natural gas, CO2 is also a heavy gas. much heaviery than the surrounding Nitrogen./Oxygen atmosphere. CO2 sinks in normal atmosphere.

In a microclimate, yes, CO2 can impact larger cities to a greater degree but globally the numbers don't add up.

While I don't claim to be an environmental scientist, I've been a long term student of resource management. I believe we have a responsibility to the environment but resource use and management it must be done in conjunction with economic realities. My view takes a bit more of the paleo-climatological view. Our earth has been in existence for 4.6 billion years, It has survived a great deal. It will exist long after we've become fossils.  

Look back 5000 years and the climate was substantially warmer than present..

To answer the "skin cancer" prevalence, the fact remains we don't have historical data to correlate current data.. I don't think the data regarding the prevalence of melanoma is any greater then it was 30 years, 100 years ago, or 2000 years ago. But that is because the data does not exist. Treatments for Melanoma, carcinoma are more routine, due in large part not to increases in cancer, but due in a larger part to early detection and treatment.

Factors effecting ozone are different the the global warming issue, and are effected by different issues.

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?art...

I would ask more people be skeptical of Information on all sides in this argument, I believe many people cut off their nose to spite their face, and fail to make truly informed decisions.

I do believe we need to be personally diligent about how we use and reuse resources.. I think we need to make conscientious decisions about our future and that of our kids.

We need to do so in a fashion that is consistent with the best of economic development and environmental issues in mind.

Contrary to the Al Gore crowd I don't believe these two are mutually exclusive.

You might check out some of the peer reviews on the websites in the information below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XttV2C6B8...

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

http://www.junkscience.com

Industry caught in carbon ‘smokescreen’

By Fiona Harvey and Stephen Fidler in London

Published: April 25 2007 22:07 | Last updated: April 25 2007 22:07

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on “carbon credit” projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.

A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.

Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.

The growing political salience of environmental politics has sparked a “green gold rush”, which has seen a dramatic expansion in the number of businesses offering both companies and individuals the chance to go “carbon neutral”, offsetting their own energy use by buying carbon credits that cancel out their contribution to global warming.

The burgeoning regulated market for carbon credits is expected to more than double in size to about $68.2bn by 2010, with the unregulated voluntary sector rising to $4bn in the same period.

The FT investigation found:

■ Widespread instances of people and organisations buying worthless credits that do not yield any reductions in carbon emissions.

■ Industrial companies profiting from doing very little – or from gaining carbon credits on the basis of efficiency gains from which they have already benefited substantially.

■ Brokers providing services of questionable or no value.

■ A shortage of verification, making it difficult for buyers to assess the true value of carbon credits.

■ Companies and individuals being charged over the odds for the private purchase of European Union carbon permits that have plummeted in value because they do not result in emissions cuts.

Francis Sullivan, environment adviser at HSBC, the UK’s biggest bank that went carbon-neutral in 2005, said he found “serious credibility concerns” in the offsetting market after evaluating it for several months.

“The police, the fraud squad and trading standards need to be looking into this. Otherwise people will lose faith in it,” he said.

These concerns led the bank to ignore the market and fund its own carbon reduction projects directly.

Some companies are benefiting by asking “green” consumers to pay them for cleaning up their own pollution. For instance, DuPont, the chemicals company, invites consumers to pay $4 to eliminate a tonne of carbon dioxide from its plant in Kentucky that produces a potent greenhouse gas called HFC-23. But the equipment required to reduce such gases is relatively cheap. DuPont refused to comment and declined to specify its earnings from the project, saying it was at too early a stage to discuss.

The FT has also found examples of companies setting up as carbon offsetters without appearing to have a clear idea of how the markets operate. In response to FT inquiries about its sourcing of carbon credits, one company, carbonvoucher.com, said it had not taken payments for offsets.

Blue Source, a US offsetting company, invites consumers to offset carbon emissions by investing in enhanced oil recovery, which pumps carbon dioxide into depleted oil wells to bring up the remaining oil. However, Blue Source said that because of the high price of oil, this process was often profitable in itself, meaning operators were making extra revenues from selling “carbon credits” for burying the carbon.

There is nothing illegal in these practices. However, some companies that are offsetting their emissions have avoided such projects because customers may find them controversial.

BP said it would not buy credits resulting from improvements in industrial efficiency or from most renewable energy projects in developed countries.

Additional reporting by Rebecca Bream

Media Shows Irrational Hysteria on Global Warming

"The Public Has Been Vastly Misinformed," NCPA's Deming Tells Senate Committee

12/6/2006 5:57:00 PM

To: National Desk

Contact: Sean Tuffnell of the National Center for Policy Analysis, 972-308-6481 or [e-mail]

WASHINGTON, Dec. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- David Deming, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma and an adjunct scholar with the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), testified this morning at a special hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. The hearing examined climate change and the media. Bellow are excerpts from his prepared remarks.

"In 1995, I published a short paper in the academic journal Science. In that study, I reviewed how borehole temperature data recorded a warming of about one degree Celsius in North America over the last 100 to 150 years. The week the article appeared, I was contacted by a reporter for National Public Radio. He offered to interview me, but only if I would state that the warming was due to human activity. When I refused to do so, he hung up on me.

"I had another interesting experience around the time my paper in Science was published. I received an astonishing email from a major researcher in the area of climate change. He said, "We have to get rid of the Medieval Warm Period." "The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a time of unusually warm weather that began around 1000 AD and persisted until a cold period known as the "Little Ice Age" took hold in the 14th century. ... The existence of the MWP had been recognized in the scientific literature for decades. But now it was a major embarrassment to those maintaining that the 20th century warming was truly anomalous. It had to be "gotten rid of."

"In 1999, Michael Mann and his colleagues published a reconstruction of past temperature in which the MWP simply vanished. This unique estimate became kn

Answer 17

You've hit the nail on the head - most 'skeptics' base their arguments on "common sense".  For example, the argument "maybe global warming is caused by that big flaming ball of gas in the sky" is one we see often.  It's common sense that since the planet receives most of its energy from the Sun, that the Sun could very well be causing global warming.  Until you look at the data and find out that it's clearly not.

Another one is "climate has changed naturally in the past, therefore the current warming is natural".  Again it seems logical, until you do a bit of research.

Another is "CO2 makes up such a small fraction of the atmosphere" or "humans emit such a small amount of CO2 relative to natural sources that it can't be causing global warming".  Again, it seems to make sense, until you do a little bit of research.

In every case, these comments taken by themselves seem to make sense.  Once you start to gather more information, they all fall apart.

As I discussed in the link below, "common sense" based on ignorance will lead you to the wrong conclusion every time.

Answer 18

Some of the deniers are professionals and they use a recipie that works whether they are trying to sell 'natural remedies', cars that use water as a fuel, a gold mine in the Indonesian jungle with core samples salted with a ground up wedding ring,  or doubt about global warming.  The common ingredients in a scam are:

1.  the proponent is an outcast rejected by the authorities in the field.

2.  the authorities in the field are part of a conspiracy to supress the proponent to protect their vested interests.

3.  an appeal to reject the conventional science and accept the proponent's version of science using 'common sense'.  'Think for yourself' in this context realy means to neglect the evidence and accept the proponent's version.

4.  life will be easy if you believe the proponent.  ie

the "natural remedy" will make you healthy; the water car scam promises unlimited free fuel; the fake gold mine promises easy wealth; doubt about global warming absolves responsibility and gives license for business as usual.  

The deniers are merely using well tested boiler plate marketing methods used by scam artists worldwide.  Can you realy blame someone being paid to spread confusion for using the tools that work?

Answer 19

Here is truth about global warming:

Global warming is one-half of the climatic cycle of warming and cooling.

The earth's mean temperature cycles around the freezing point of water.

This is a completely natural phenomenon which has been going on since there has been water on this planet. It is driven by the sun.

Our planet is currently emerging from a 'mini ice age', so is

becoming warmer and may return to the point at which Greenland is again usable as farmland (as it has been in recorded history).

As the polar ice caps decrease, the amount of fresh water mixing with oceanic water will slow and perhaps stop the thermohaline cycle (the oceanic heat 'conveyor' which, among other things, keeps the U.S. east coast warm).

When this cycle slows/stops, the planet will cool again and begin to enter another ice age.

It's been happening for millions of years.

The worrisome and brutal predictions of drastic climate effects are based on computer models, NOT CLIMATE HISTORY.

As you probably know, computer models are not the most reliable of sources, especially when used to 'predict' chaotic systems such as weather.

Global warming/cooling, AKA 'climate change':

Humans did not cause it.

Humans cannot stop it.

Answer 20

To answer your question - many AGW sceptics are intelligent, educated, knowledgable about science and scientific technique and that is the reason we are sceptics.

Being from Sweden, you should know that in the 14'th century the Swedish army marched accross the frozen Sea to invade Denmark.  The evidence suggests that the earth climate changes quite significantly by itself.  Those activists who claim that the Little Ice Age never happened are going against some compelling evidence.  

The only thing sceptics are generally not socialists who are predisposed to believing that the evil corporations are poisoning the Earth for their own selfish gain.

Answer 21

A lot of people in the denier crowd tend to "dis" science, but then use it to their benefit. A bit hypocritical considering everything that assists them during their day (cars, computers, cell phones, electric grid and so on) is there because of science. There are also the "selective believers" of science, supporting only what does not conflict with their values and belief system.

EDIT - Phoenix doesn't seem to understand that with deforestation, there won't be enough plant life to absorb all that carbon. He also doesn't realize that when all that fossil fuel CO2 was in the atmosphere "when life was thriving", the planet was a jungle. Typical short-sightedness.