Why do you think global warming deniers can't make scientific arguments?

Question

I frequently ask global warming skeptics to explain with scientific evidence where the AGW theory s wrong or where another theory is better. The deniers always fail.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AgCxBALgHOtjhactMX_WFDjsy6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080129143250AA7h4p5

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AoNmYIs_4vM0RHcMCnhvppPty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080124124728AAqNR8n

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AoNmYIs_4vM0RHcMCnhvppPty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080107151333AAhEU07

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AkTk4Kabe7g268z3VRClMHzty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080102125140AAZXadV

Yet ironically the deniers claim that it's 'alarmists' who can't make scientific arguments.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Auc6n___75ABObnYjBchuygjzKIX;_ylv=3?qid=20080122122603AA0fmQp

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AoywThrORA6HV4gCuFi5ZzXty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20080130161115AAHlFmy&show=7#profile-info-7ad016542c50c46a01ee556a55c69f76aa

So where is the disconnect?

Answer 1

hey, there are many possabilities.  eg:

- they flunked biology cause the teacher didn't accept that "god created them just as they are" as an appropriate response to how evolution worked.  then they were completely afraid to take physics and chemistry.

or,

- they're illiterate, learn all their science from rush limburger, and have a speak to type program to post what the cheese told 'em.

or,

- maybe they listen to fauxnews, and think there's more oil in alaska than in saudi arabia, and that if we'd only drill there, we'd have a 100 year supply, but it's those crummy democrats who don't know anything, and want the country to be poor, and care more about saving the endangered alaska mosquito population than taking care of the good honest walmart shopping american public by keeping gas prices down, or letting the american public all have big-foot sized SUVs, and not wasting time or money on this global warming nonsense, which is only intended to ruin all of the businesses in america, and transfer all of the american jobs to china, where they'll make all the stuff we want to buy at walmart.

or,

you might note that something like 20% of kids start smoking to this day.  and 20% of the public thinks global warming is a political plot.  and isn't it interesting that Steven Milloy thinks both the campaign against tobacco, and the campaign against global warming are wrong, and infringing on the rights of the american public.  i'd venture to say, that he gets paid more than you and i put together, so obviously he must be right.

or,

then, there's the obvious.  the sun's getting brighter.  the days are getting longer.  really.  go outside today and time sunrise and sunset.  do the same next week, and there's more sunshine.  of course the world's getting hotter.  so's mars, and pluto, etc.  and what's wrong with that.  we'll be growing food in siberia.  the world will have enough food to feed 10 billion of us, and we'll soon need it.  sure is a good thing it's getting warmer.

you're welcome.  glad i could help straighten that out for you.

have a nice day.

Answer 2

That's because they can't.  A person would have to be retarded to believe that the climate isn't changing.  

On the other hand, you would have to be retarded to believe that said change is without a doubt our fault and that if the next 10 years aren't the EXACT same as they are this year, then we're to blame.

If you actually spent the effort to do non-biased research, you would find that there's quite a bit of evidence to support that climate change isn't man-made.  If you look back 30 years they were scaring everyone into believing we were on our way to a new ice-age.

And if you didn't know, Antarctica is at the highest ice level ever recorded right now, and it's growing.

This is the most informative scientific report proving the current climate change is natural and not related to carbon dioxide emissions(how people consider one of the most essential gases for life on Earth to be a pollutant is beyond me).

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images...

And here's just a few more;

http://www.globalwarming.org/node/1596

http://globalwarminghoax.com/news.php?ex...

http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarcti...

So as you can see(assuming you took the time to read these and didn't just disregard them) the debate is still going on even if a lot of people don't want you to believe it.

And for the record, don't you think it's a little cruel for a scientist to be asking for scientific evidence from us non-scientist folk and then look down on their "ignorance" when they don't understand things quite as well as you?

Answer 3

I am so sick of hearing from skeptics that if global warming was a reality then why have there been no warmer years than 1998. This is about the only "scientific" fact that I have heard but if they were to look slightly deeper they would then realise that not only is this not true but it is also necessary to consider that El Niño and La Niña are part of the equation.

Answer 4

Some do all of the time Dana, every single piece of circumstantial evidence that alarmists use as proof of global warming can be explained by a natural process with the exception of CO2 increase in the atmosphere. And there is no Geo scientific evidence that validates the physics associated with radiative transfer and CO2 increase. One of these days the outflowing IR energy originating from the surface will be partitioned properly and you will learn that the chaos of convection and conduction make the narrow little slits of the IR spectrum in which the absorptivity and emissivity properties of CO2 react with, meaningless.

Answer 5

Perhaps collectively deniers want to maintain the fiction that AGW is not proved.  To raise any and every fallacious point denying the rigor of the science and even whether it is science at all is one way of doing this.

Answer 6

Wow i worded my anwer bad so I will reword it. pretty much all the evidence points towards the idea that global warming is a real problem.

Answer 7

Because the initial computer program that showed the graph of temperatures rising from 1999-2004 was faulty.  There was a Y2K bug in it.  You could plug in random numbers into the program and get the same graph.  

Temperatures around the world are taken at airports.  Airports create heat from the planes and traffic.  There is a "heat island" effect around airports  and cities that is well documented.

Answer 8

That it is probable that ( if global warming is real ), that we should have had at least a couple of warmer years than 1998. Isn't a good argument?

We have now had so many bouts of below zero weather this year. Can you imagine how dumb all this global warming talk is starting to sound?

Answer 9

I dont think people deny global warming itself, its more of denial of what causes it thats the problem.

Answer 10

it's simple enough...there are oil and other industrial lobbyist who control the so called "opposition"...After those pictures of the shrinking Alpine glaciers and flooded Arctic landscapes that we were able to see in Al Gores' movie The inconvenient truth, there's no doubt in my mind as to where we're heading...

Answer 11

My grandmother once told me the following;  "Figures don't lie but liars figure."  So, these so called scientific facts can be segued in any fashion to make any argument seem real. If you deny the septics, would people like Columbus be able to make discoveries that would change SCIENTIFIC facts.

Answer 12

Well Bob...... I don't see any science in that "question".

I just see empty rhetoric.

Answer 13

Carollyn, I agree with the latter part of your statement but if you read a lot of questions and responses on here, you'll see that there are indeed people who believe that global warming isn't even ocurring at all, which is far scarier than sceptics arguing that the cause (or partially) has no anthropogenic basis to it.

Dana, I believe it is because they (those who deny it's even ocurrin) probably do not understand basic climate science. I am so sick and tired of stupid ridiculous questions and responses such as, the Earth has gone through several cooling and warming periods i.e ice ages etc... I mean, they must assume that scientists and I'm not just talkin about climatologists here, but a whole community of international scientists from various fields (who just happen to work together, bringing more and more evidence in favour of man made global warming) are unaware of this...it's pathetic.

If any of you who have made this argument are reading this, look up Milankovitch cycles!

It's a constant rehash of old worn out arguments with a political and economical bias rather debating real scientific evidence.

Answer 14

To easy, they are too dump to understand.

Answer 15

Kevin S is proving the point nicely.  We have had several years warmer than 1998 for the GLOBE.  You are referring to US temperatures.  Here's a hint, the US is not the GLOBE.  That is why it is called GLOBAL warming and not US warming.

Answer 16

It's because they are all high off of the very farts that cause global warming.  ;) heh.

Answer 17

If they started to embrace science, they'd eventually come to the same consensus opinion that the scientists have arrived at.  Since they are resisting arriving at that point, they must deny and resist science.

Answer 18

To my knowledge there are no scientific arguments denying global warming.  There is only some debate about it's causes and speed.