This is the statement of a group I was invited to on facebook- and to be frank it looks like a load of shit. It’s hard enough to even figure out what they’re trying to say. I am aware though that there’s been more than a few debates over climate change around here and I’m wondering if you guy’s could help me out in two ways;
Where the hell are they getting these claims from, the group picture is from Michael Chrichton’s “State of Fear”, do all the claims come from that book? I don’t have it so I can’t tell, is there a good analysis on-line?
Help me debunk them, I’m pretty sure that the majority of the arguments are distorted statistics and bad science but can you help me put it in a succinct manner- with citations too back me up- someone must have a few dusty bookmarks to help me ably dispose of this paragraph.
Alright now that’s my prayer to the teeming masses sent up, here’s what I’ve managed to figure out so far.
This is the first claim. Blatantly false, cf ICC panel report and the ice age hypothesis was never anywhere near as widely accepted as Climate change is today by scientists.
Letting alone the issue of deciding what normal temperature is, I think that they’re saying Global temperature has only been increasing for the last ten years? I’m pretty sure that that isn’t true but some pretty graphs would probably go along way to convincing people that.
This one seems a bit hard to disprove, some statistics on the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere pre industrial revolution vs after it should do the trick don’t you reckon? I reckon that I’ll also mention something about calling Greenpeace terrorists which is disgusting. And anyone got anything in particular against “State of Fear” I vaguely remember it being discussed on these boards before.
PS; the reason I’m really want to debunk this is because a couple of my friends have joined and I want to debate this with them but I’m afraid that if I do it without fully understanding what I say I may just drive them further away.
PPS; Firefox’s spellcheck is amazing- 'cept it doesn’t seem to recognise its own name. And the spelling mistakes in the group statement were there originally.
Thanks for anything you can contribute to the fight against internet ignorance
You could, you know, actually learn about the issue. Just Google “Global Warming” and start reading. It seems like what you want is prepackaged arguments to post elsewhere so you can appear knowledgable. Why not look into the issue for yourself, get a full understanding and form your own opinions? Right now it seems like your position is that you believe what you do because that’s what all the cool kids believe. Of course, one tack that would take only slightly more work on your part than the one you’ve chosen here is to search SDMB for threads on the issue.
Don’t mean to come down hard on you Sri Theo, but the idea is fighting ignorance. And simply parroting what others think doesn’t go a long way in that regard.
Fair enough, I was admittedly asking for a hand out- I can give a general argument on global warming but as to the specific claims that this group is making I find it hard to identify information that would refute what they’re saying- I have looked at Wikipedia but there was nothing I felt I could present as clear cut evidence against what they’re saying.
And no I wasn’t doing it to simply seem smart, from what I’ve seen it seems dramatically likely that global warming is occurring- though admittedly I may be relying heavily on what’s been reported in the media rather than hard facts. Which tend to be, y’know, hard.
And as too searching through the SDMB… would you believe that I forgot I could do that. I’ll do so now. You don’t remember any threads that would be particularly relevant do you?
There’s a lot of good information and links in the How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic FAQ, but the fairly short answers on specific points that it gives don’t get into the details of the science. Their blog discussions and links do chew over a lot of the finer points, though.
Here’s one. Ask them for their evidence to back up the assertion that there was a ten-year period 200 years ago where global temperature rose as sharply as it has for the most recent 20 years.
Point out the absurdity of ignoring a reasonable scientific hypothesis just because it seems “arrogant”. If humans as a species can alter the composition of the atmosphere of this planet, why shouldn’t we be able to change its temperature? Especially when there’s a scientifically plausible physical theory (the “enhanced greenhouse effect”) relating increased greenhouse-gas concentrations to increased temperature of the surface-troposphere system?
Bear in mind, though, that it hasn’t been definitively demonstrated yet that anthropogenic increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration are the chief culprit in the current warming trend. But that’s the hypothesis currently accepted by the vast majority of climate scientists, and nobody’s been able to come up with an equally credible non-anthropogenic explanation of what’s causing the current warming.
Cheers Brainglutton and Kimstu those resources will be pretty helpful in helping me compose a response, and maybe I’ll get the chance to influence a few minds.
The reason I’m willing to fight this battle Lamar Mundane is because my friends are involved, and I’d like to present another side of the argument to them- I’d just like to do a good job of it, maybe pointing out the way its written will help me out.
In addition to the excellent links provided to you by BrainGlutton and Kimstu, I’d point you to the IPCC website as the authoritative source of information. The RealClimate website is a blog maintained by a group of climate scientists…You can look in their index to see if there are relevant posts.
Finally, I would note this joint statement released in 2005 by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences along with the analogous bodies in 10 major nations (Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany, …) It admittedly doesn’t contain much scientific detail, but at least it makes it clear that if those people who you are interacting with believe that human-caused climate change is not real, they are at odds with lots of folks that are much stronger authorities on science than they are.
By the way, I would point out to folks that the fact that climate has changed in the past without our intervention, far from showing that we are not responsible for the current change, actually allows us to obtain an estimate of the sensitivity to the climate to what are generically termed “radiative forcings”. Since it just takes basic physics to calculate the radiative forcing that we are causing by raising the levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, this then allows us to estimate the effect we expect this to have and to independently check it against what the climate models predict. And, the results (although admittedly estimates because of uncertainties regarding past climate and forcings) strongly suggest that our perturbation on the climate system is significant enough to produce serious change.
Besides which, there is growing concern that, independent of climate, the acidification of the ocean that we are causing by our elevation of CO2 levels in the atmosphere (some of which is subsequently absorbed by the ocean) may in itself be a serious problem.
