Tag Archives: sceptics

No More Climate Denialist “Debate” Here

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I have decided it’s past time to stop humouring climate skepticism and denial by allowing their “debate” on my posts.  Why?  Because tolerating it only helps to perpetuate the myth that climate scientists are divided and there’s a lot of doubt about the cause of global warming.  It feeds the trolls.

The AGW menu and submenu lists items related to global warming that are archived here, so I don’t have to keep repeating the same arguments to sceptics who keep repeating the same old arguments.  I just updated the AGW tag with the following.

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Global warming: window closing

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You may have read or heard that the shrinkage of the Arctic sea ice recently smashed the previous 2007 record low.  You may not have heard of a new study that says we might, just, still have a chance of keeping global warming below 2°C.  You may or may not have heard that some prominent climate scientists, including James Hansen, think 2°C is too high, and we need to keep warming below 1.5°C or even 1°C.

All this means we might still have a chance of avoiding “dangerous” global warming, but the chance is already small, and diminishing very rapidly.  It also means we are not doing nearly enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even though there is a great deal more we can do at quite modest cost to our economies.

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How do people reject climate science? (Post)

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[I recently added a page on this topic, under the AGW tab.  This post is to bring it to your attention.]

By John Cook, University of Queensland

In a previous article on The Conversation, Stephan Lewandowsky asked, why do people reject science? I’m going to take a slightly different angle and consider how people are able to reject climate science in the face of strong evidence.

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Our views on global warming – sources and opinions

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Two good recent discussions of views on climate change are reproduced under the new AGW tab, above.

The main tab preserves the recent post “The productive way to address global warming”.  The tab will allow me to avoid the post discussions becoming cluttered with sceptic distractions.  Distraction and confusion are, of course, the primary weapons of the professional deniers (those who work for fossil fuel industries).

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The Productive Way to Address Global Warming

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Most of the discussion of global warming is about the wrong questions.  The important debate is about the level of risk, the consequences of inaction and the cost of action.

The debate about scientific uncertainty is secondary, and exploited as a distraction.  So as to minimise the continuing spurious discussions here and elsewhere, I’ll set it out as I see it.

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Down the up escalator: cherry picking for the global temperature trend you want

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Here is a graph I’ve wanted for a long time.  It shows how you can get the answer you want out of the global temperature data series.  Just pick the right start and finish point and, presto, the temperature is rising, or falling, or flat.

It’s why denialists keep insisting that global warming stopped in 1998.

Courtesy Skeptical Science: http://www.skepticalscience.com

Climate science and Hansen misrepresented – aerosols disguise real global warming

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[Published on The Drum 20 May]

Recently climate sceptics Anthony Cox and David Stockwell published an opinion piece on the ABC’s The Drum claiming climate scientist James Hansen had “admitted” climate models have been wrong, and that human-caused global warming was therefore in doubt.  The article contains basic misrepresentations of Hansen and of the substance and implications of a draft paper by Hansen.

The Hansen paper does not weaken the case that humans are the main cause of global warming.  On the contrary, it suggests we have unwittingly and temporarily shielded ourselves from the full effects of our activities.

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Evidence firms: we are causing dangerous global warming

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[Published by On Line Opinion, 24 August.]

As the national election campaign approaches its climax, with global warming all but ignored by the major parties, the Australian Academy of Sciences has issued a report summarising the current state of climate change science.  Its conclusions are clear and concerning.  Global warming continues to occur, and the evidence is now strong that human emissions of greenhouse gases are the main cause.  The evidence supporting supporting climate sceptics is melting like the Arctic snow.

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“Global Cooling” Over, Hottest Year to Date So Far

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[Updated 21 July 10.]  One of the most frequently and loudly repeated claims of climate sceptics is that the Earth has cooled since 1998.  What the data have actually been showing is a pause similar to pauses in the 1980s and 1990s.  The likely cause of the recent pause has been the El-Niño-La-Niña cycle.  So far 2010 has been the hottest year on record, so the pause is over.  Let’s see if false claims of global cooling also cease.

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