Combating Climate Change Denial

Updated

It may be hard to believe that there are people who can stare straight at where a glacier used to be and swear that Earth's climate is not changing to any degree that will affect humanity. It may be hard to believe that some people who are not oil company executives still refuse to believe that human activities have any effect on the earth's climate. Such arguments do exist, however, and as silly as they sound they cannot be simply ignored.

According to cognitive scientists, a statement that is met with silence is more likely to be believed. Therefore, as frustrating as it is to confront the same falsehoods over and over and over and over... it is necessary. Not to change the minds of the claimants, who are emotionally invested in their position, but for the sake of the innocent bystanders.

Here are some resources for debunking myths and misinformation about climate change:

• From the environmental news blog Gristmill, a complete list of the articles in How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic, a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming.
  
  
• The better you understand the evidence, the better you can explain it. NewScientist news service has a guide to evaluating the evidence on climate change, and answers to 26 common climate myths.
  
  
• DeSmogBlog, "Clearing the PR Pollution that Clouds Climate Science," is on ongoing resource.
  


• NEW: RealClimate.org has a Wiki collecting a LOT of information in one place.
  

I hope that helps you! Human beings are affecting our climate, and being affected by it; these effects will become increasingly serious; and we must take serious actions now or pay serious penalties later. We do not have to wait to act until every last soul on earth is convinced of the necessity. Most people already agree. Our actions will be more effective, however, the more people participate. People with accurate information always solve problems better.

Busting the Climate Change "Myth Busters" : Part II

“I’ve made up my mind. Don’t confuse me with the facts.” Steven Milloy says that this is the mantra of "global warming fanatics." I say it's the mantra of fanatic global warming deniers. Let's examine Milloy's "Top 10 Climate Myth-Busters for 2007" and see, shall we? I busted Milloy's first five myth-busters back in December; will the next five hold up better?

6. The multiplication of straw men. Milloy cites the discovery that "brown clouds" (aerosols) in the atmosphere are a warming factor, instead of a cooling factor as previously supposed, to be somehow a reason for dismissing all concern about global warming. He represents climate scientists as having portrayed CO2 as the one culprit in all global warming, and since it isn't, the scientists don't know what they are talking about, at all at all.
   
   #1: No, climate scientists do not claim that CO2 is the one & only man-made influence on global climate change.
   #2: Learning you were wrong about something is not evidence that you don't know your science; it is evidence that you are doing real science.
   
   For all those interested in real science:
   • The even darker side of blown clouds
   • Black carbon and brown clouds
   • Global Dimming and climate models
   • The global cooling 1940-1970
   
   
7. Milloy claims that global temperatures are not rising as fast as global CO2 levels, therefore the two are not after all connected. From Wikipedia: "None of the effects of forcing are instantaneous. The thermal inertia of the Earth's oceans and slow responses of other indirect effects mean that the Earth's current climate is not in equilibrium with the forcing imposed." source is a pdf.


8. Milloy cites research published in "April" (it was published in December 2005) indicating that while planting more forest in the tropics could lessen global warming, planting more forest in Northern latitudes could increase it. From here, he jumps to "so maybe Northern forests are causing all the global warming." Read what the research actually says. Oh, and he missed one in 2001.


9. 55 million years ago, warming preceded release of CO2. That's probably what's going on now. This was addressed on RealClimate in 2004: What does the lag of CO2 behind temperature in ice cores tell us about global warming?


10. In #10, Milloy gives up citing science and just cites the EPA directly. And we all know that George Bush's EPA is completely objective on the science of climate change.

Milloy cannot end the year without crowing that a British judge gave the movie An Inconvenient Truth a "spanking." What the judge really ruled was that An Inconvenient Truth is "broadly accurate" and "substantially founded upon scientific research and fact" and that it can be shown in schools as long as students are informed of nine "errors and omissions" -- none of which invalidate the major premises of the movie. Unhappily for Mr. Milloy et. al. Justice Barton declared that "These propositions, [which the government] submits (and I accept), are supported by a vast quantity of research published in peer-reviewed journals worldwide and by the great majority of the world's climate scientists."

1. global average temperatures have been rising significantly over the past half century and are likely to continue to rise ("climate change");


2. climate change is mainly attributable to man-made emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide ("greenhouse gases");


3. climate change will, if unchecked, have significant adverse effects on the world and its populations; and


4. there are measures which individuals and governments can take which will help to reduce climate change or mitigate its effects.

Even the Judge's list of nine 'errors' is in dispute. Judge Barton claimed there was no evidence of any Pacific atolls being evacuated. Nobody showed him the newspaper. Judge Barton disputed that "coral reefs were bleaching because of global warming and other factors." The Judge's pointed out: "The actual scientific view, as recorded in the IPCC report, is that, if the temperature were to rise by 1-3 degrees Centigrade, there would be increased coral bleaching and widespread coral mortality, unless corals could adopt or acclimatise, but that separating the impacts of climate change-related stresses from other stresses, such as over-fishing and polluting, is difficult." The bottom line is:

• The Judge does not dispute the IPCC report or the general scientific consensus about global warming.
• The impacts on the coral cited by the IPCC are man-made.
• Global climate changes that have a disastrous effect on human lives and societies are happening.

We need to address questions like "how do we provide clean drinking water after the glaciers melt" and "how do we support communities whose land is washing out from under them." Those problems aren't going to go away no matter how much junk science the Denial Brigade piles up to prove It's Not Really Happening.

Climate change deniers never get tired - only their arguments do

According to cognitive scientists, the first thing our brain naturally does when hearing a new statement is believe it. Only afterwards do the habits of skepticism kick in -- if we have trained them -- and send our neurons scouting for any counter-evidence. "It ain't necessarily so" is a trained response -- not a built-in circuit.

So what do you do if your claim is disproved the first time you make it? Repeat it -- over and over and over, until everybody gets tired of correcting you, and then you win!

I am not tired yet. Steven "The JunkMan" Milloy of the Competitive Enterprise Institute posts a Global Warming Denial's Top Ten List as a year-end wrap-up. Here, once again, is why he is still wrong:

1. Milloy trumpets a study by climate-change skeptics claiming that Observed temperature changes measured over the last 30 years don’t match well with temperatures predicted by the [IPCC's] mathematical climate models..."
   
   He didn't finish his research. On the same day that Science Daily and Fox News noticed the study, the climate scientists at RealClimate.org posted a refutation of it. For a less technical summary, See #3 of Prof. John Mitchell's Climate Change Myths:
   

   Myth 3 - There is less warming in the upper atmosphere than at the surface which disproves human-induced warming
   
   We expect greater warming in the upper atmosphere than at the surface in the tropics, but the reverse is true at high latitudes. This expectation holds whether the cause of warming is due to greenhouse gases or changes in the Sun’s output. Until recently, measurements of the temperature changes in the tropics in recent decades did not appear to show greater warming aloft than at the surface. It has now been shown that allowing for uncertainties in the observations, the theoretical and modelling results can be reconciled with the observations.
   
   The bottom line is that the range of available information is now consistent with increased warming through the troposphere (the lowest region of the atmosphere).

   Turns out, the authors tried the same argument before in 2004 and got trounced. They tried this year with a slightly revised version; they are still wrong.
   
   
2. Milloy says one more time with feeling, "It's all the sun's fault!" This is getting as old as "Evolution is just a theory." One more time, with feeling, "No, it's not!"
   
   
3. It was even warmer 1000 years ago, so we can't be causing the warming now!
   
   This is one more attempt to sell the Medieval Warming Period as a global phenomenon; still shoddy merchandise. The latest "study" is by Craig Loehle, of the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement -- an "environmental resource for the forest products industry" that is largely funded by the forest products industry.
   
   Find out more on the Medieval Warming Period at GristMill, NOAA, and Wikipedia, as well as the RealClimate entry linked above.
   
   
4. We don't have to do anything to correct global warming: the atmosphere self-regulates.
   
   One more example of "personal responsibility" conservatives sloughing off any hint of personal responsibility. James Lovelock, who first proposed the vision of a "self-regulating" system Earth, himself thinks we have overloaded the system.
   
   I think: 1) When you make a mess, do you clean it up yourself or do you wait for the "natural forces of the environment" to decay it? 2) How many people have to lose their livelihoods, lose their homes, sicken, and die while we wait for the climate to "self regulate"? 3) Nature has no reason to favor human interests in her "self-regulation." Natural "self-regulation" could include plague, flood, fire, and other methods more unpleasant to humans than cutting down on driving.
   
   
5. Roll out the Straw Man! A 2005 report on the Atlantic Ocean current raised alarms in some of the media. Milloy uses this as an example of scientists being "alarmist," although scientists themselves were much more cautious about the findings. A better way to prevent future alarmism would have been to improve his readers' understanding of the science, as the scientists at RealClimate did. Further news about the Atlantic Current.

I have gotten a bit tired, after all. I'm going to have to close this blog entry here and continue the list "next year." Do you think that Steven Milloy, who gets paid for this kind of thing, could be induced to do his own research?

More on Steven Milloy.