What made you go from a manmade global warming skeptic to a believer?

Question

Here is one persons account, Michael Shermer. He is a hard nosed skeptic. He is fiscally conservative and has just written a book about the free market. He is the founder of Skeptic Magazine. "Nevertheless, data trump politics, and a convergence of evidence from numerous sources has led me to make a cognitive switch on the subject of anthropogenic global warming. "

Read his statement in Scientific American here:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-flipping-point

Answer 1

I went the other way, and for me, it had to do with the quality of the data...Anthropogenic Warming (A.W.) is not established to the extent many think. A consensus is not a substitute for a proven event. The probabilistic modeling used to predict climate changes are scenarios and only as good as the parameters & defined variables in the model.

Case in point:  Anthony Watts is a broadcast meteorologist who is leading an all-volunteer effort to photograph and document all of the weather stations in the GHCN. He started in the US and now 1/3 of US stations have been photographed. 85% of them do not meet the minimum standards of NOAA and have a strong warm bias. The NOAA specifies that temperature sensors should be a minimum of 100 feet away from buildings, concrete, and asphalt.

This indicates that up to half of the observed warming is not real. Watts presented his findings to scientists at UCAR. You can see examples of surface station warm bias here:

http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather...

Answer 2

I am quite familiar with Shermer.  Your attempt to portray him as a conservative is news to me.  He is a skeptic of things like ghosts, UFOs, and bigfoot.  He is one of the better skeptics out there but sometimes the skeptical arguments are just an attempt to maintain the status quo and the arguments are hollow and reveal an ignorance of the evidence.

Here's a quote, "My attention was piqued on February 8 when 86 leading evangelical Christians--the last cohort I expected to get on the environmental bandwagon--issued the Evangelical Climate Initiative calling for "national legislation requiring sufficient economy-wide reductions" in carbon emissions. "

So now he is taking scientific arguments from religious sources?  The problem is that Shermer generally is skeptical about topics he knows very little about.  He is a nice guy and fairly smart but it is no shock to me that he is wrong about this subject as well.

Answer 3

Actually..... the tide is turning away from blind 'believer' to healthy 'skeptic':

May 15, 2007

Climate Momentum Shifting: Prominent Scientists Reverse Belief in Man-made Global Warming - Now Skeptics.

Growing Number of Scientists Convert to Skeptics After Reviewing New Research

Following the U.S. Senate's vote today on a global warming measure (see today's AP article: Senate Defeats Climate Change Measure,) it is an opportune time to examine the recent and quite remarkable momentum shift taking place in climate science. Many former believers in catastrophic man-made global warming have recently reversed themselves and are now climate skeptics.  The names included below are just a sampling of the prominent scientists who have spoken out recently to oppose former Vice President Al Gore, the United Nations, and the media driven “consensus” on man-made global warming.  

The list below is just the tip of the iceberg.  A more detailed and comprehensive sampling of scientists who have only recently spoken out against climate hysteria will be forthcoming in a soon to be released U.S. Senate report.

EDIT:

aaronesque.... IF I were attempting to disguise anything, I would not have provided any source.  Am I to believe that IF anything that does not agree with 'man-did-it' global warming is  "right-wing", THEN anything that SUPPORTS 'man-did-it' global warming is from the 'radical left'....?????

Answer 4

coming from a 'waste is immoral' point of view from a child (parents brought up during ww2), i never really was a sceptic as such.

i could see the way 'developed' society was going was stupid, inneficient, wasteful, unfair, and plain wrong

i just added over the years to the reasons why this lifestyle was a bad idea.

Answer 5

First of all i began as many of the people around the world watching a movie of Gore, but then i got interested and i started to take actions, turning off lights and those things, after i realized   that the global warming has got to my place, how? well here we have a volcano that is named the The Snowed of Toluca, thats a nickname it received a lot of years ago, but in the last decade i have almost seen it without snow must part of the year. Caused by global warming.

Thats why i started to read more and i decided to make my own forum to let the people know about global warming, and i invite you to visit my webpage with a lot of things that will convince you about this problem http://www.ecologyforlife.info/

Answer 6

I'm still very much a skeptic, though I try not to be preachy about it.

Re: your article, I find this to be a very weak arguement.  Anyone who says, "the disappearance of glaciers around the world shocked me out of my doubting stance" clearly doesn't understand that this is a debate between manmade global warming and natural global warming.  Melting glaciers are going to be a result of either case, so that's a moot point.

Anyway, the circumstances around his change of heart seem unimpressive to me, but I still respect his freedom of opinion, just like everyone else's.

Answer 7

It appears that his “flipping point” was spurred by Gore’s documentary. What a shame, since it is scientifically untenable.

I had a flipping point too. I was a casual believer in AGW until I started really researching the topic, and discovered the science too weak and the political influence too strong.

Answer 8

cos global warming is true!

Answer 9

Just the sheer amount of scientific evidence supporting the AGW theory (summary linked below).

Like any scientist, I started out uninformed and skeptical of the theory.  But then the more I learned about it, the more obvious it became that the scientific evidence supported it.  For example, the cooling of the upper atmosphere as the lower atmosphere warms is a clear indicator of an increased greenhouse effect.  None of the proposed alternaive theories can explain this observation.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

And there are many such examples.  As I summed up in the link below, the AGW theory is simply the only one supported by the body of scientific evidence.  At this point, you really have to be ignorant of the science to be an AGW doubter.  For example, claiming that the planet has stopped warming or that the Sun is responsible for the warming.

Answer 10

Apparently you didn't read the comments beneath your changed skeptic's article.

Answer 11

Hrm.  Well, I think that global warming may or may not be true.  The data is suggesting it is, but then, statistics are always fudgable.  So here's the thing:  why would conservation or reduction of consumption be a BAD thing?  I back global warming theories because we (meaning Americans in general) already overconsume- we eat too much, we drive too much, we fly too much... I'm not demanding a return to the horse and buggy, but I'm sick of seeing one person tooling around in a pristine Hummer or Avalanche who drives it as either a status symbol or because 'they like to sit up high'.  Get over yourselves and thing about someone else for a change!

Answer 12

Yeah well Jim z, keep in mind that Bush fired up the whole DENIER/skeptic business (and some other things) as a payoff to the Evangelical Christians.  Their subsequent renunciation of it is HUGE!  One has to ask oneself, exactly who is to the Right of them?  Not many.  The skeptical deniers are in elite company.

Answer 13

An Inconvenient Truth. Watch it. it will shed light on many issues.

Answer 14

While climate changes have always been around, the fact that the latest phases of droughts in major cities and sudden extinction or near-extinction of several species including polar bears and frogs (frogs are especially susceptible to pollutants) seems to send out the message loud and clear we are doing something wrong.