# Do global warming "skeptics" honestly see us as a benign species?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [January 5, 2014, 11:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984 "2014-01-05T23:18:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 662

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2014, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984/662 "2014-02-22T05:40:59Z")

</div>

> [@FXMastermind](#):
>
> IMNSHO, if you are wrong about something scientific, it’s just science at work. If the evidence is overwhelming for something, and you stick to your error, it’s then a mistake.
> 
> The UV portion of the sun’s output varies by a huge amount. This is new knowledge, gained recently. The effect this has on our atmosphere and surface and oceans is unknown. You are wrong, or rather your sources are. But this happens all the time. It’s the refusal to move forward, integrate new knowledge, and stick to your guns when you are wrong, that’s the real scientific mistake.

Standard operating procedure again, I see. Claim you’d be delighted to see any examples of when you were ever wrong, and when it’s pointed out that you’ve been not only wrong recently on about a dozen significant points of science, but _outrageously_ wrong on most of them, just ignore it and throw in another completely irrelevant digression and run away.

And it IS irrelevant, too. It doesn’t change the minimal role of solar variations in post-industrial global average temperature as already discussed and cited at length. The changes in the UV component are just as cyclic as TSI overall, and while they change by up to a few percent in total (with bigger or smaller variations in specific spectra) over the solar cycle vs. ~0.1% for TSI, they only influence climate by incrementally warming the stratosphere directly and through indirect effects on atmospheric chemistry, like increased ozone production in the stratosphere – all of which is a drop in the bucket compared to the massive SSI warming the surface. Besides the fact that this has no discernible influence on global surface mean temp across solar cycles, the effect that it **does** have is mainly of interest with respect to regional effects and changes in some cyclic ocean circulation systems (like the NAO). Sure there are unknowns, but the denialist tactic of throwing in a FUD-bomb and then running away obfuscates the fact that the scope of influence of the unknowns is well bounded. Indeed the interest in UV cyclical variations is more to better understand and model regional climatic effects like deep tropical convection than anything to do with global surface temperature trends. So much for your latest round of diversionary BS.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-global-warming-skeptics-honestly-see-us-as-a-benign-species/677984)._