I know the arguments for and against climate change. Not looking to rehash here, there are plenty of other threads. I’m just looking for a factual answer.
Are there any large, organized groups of people, outside of the Republican Party in the US, who do not accept the current consensus on climate change?
The argument that it is just a political position taken up by the Democrats for [insert your own reason here] is tiresome and i want to be able to refute it with the fact that it’s pretty much the accepted position worldwide regardless of political stance.
I don’t know, I see it as a particularly common point of denial from anyone in the Republican - survivalist - “no government intrusion” crowds. Not aware of any large groups that specifically espouse denial.
The point I usually find in the discussion is that the “We are in Climate Change!” argument has become more a point of dogma than a scientific discussion. It has achieved the same position as political correctness, that dissenting valid scientists are denied funding or recognition, much like a politically correct war on those wanting to study , say, race and IQ. The pro-CC like to retaliate with “anti-CC financed by Big Oil”. (And man anti-CC also tend to deny that there is a Peak Oil issue) It goes downhill from there.
The problem is that the field is a lot more complex than either side wants to admit, and prone to “interpretation”. Has global warming stalled since 2005? What does the current weak solar cycle imply for possible repeat of the Little Ice Age? etc. We still don’t know what caused the last ones… Is it possible what we see as global warming is just a two-century-long rebound from the last one?
The world is more complex and unpredictable than we know. The trouble with the anti-CC argument is why make major irreversible changes to our only world with the hope that it will have no ill effects?
The subtlety that is lost in the press’s discussion of climate change is that the debate isn’t really over, “is it happening?” (Well, ok, there’s probably one crazy group that literally believes that it is not happening, but that’s really, really fringe), the debate is over, “what do we do about it?” I honestly doubt you’ll find a single mainstream organization that honestly and truly believes climate change doesn’t happen or isn’t possible.
The thing is, “nothing” is a perfectly valid answer. So if I believe in climate change, but I believe nothing should be done about it, I get labeled as a “denier” generally, and my attempt to explain my actual beliefs goes completely unheard. From what I can determine, this is a universal issue from the smallest message board to the most-watched CNN debate.
For some reason, we’ve been unwilling or unable to re-frame the discussion around, “what should we do about climate change?”
As far as the actual question goes, Wikipedia has an extensive page on it (which, again, refuses to acknowledge that “doing nothing” is a valid response to climate change), but it doesn’t list organizations there. It does have a list of scientists which is pretty well-organized. (It classifies them as “doubt the accuracy of projections”, “argue that global warming is caused by natural processes”, etc.)
Sorry, but I have to rebut all of this. The Little Ice Age was most likely due to volcanic activity, much more so than any reduction is solar activity (note also that the Maunder Minimum only coincides with part of it), and there has been no sign of a reduction in the rate of warming in recent years, unless you want to cherry-pick individual years (i.e. 2011 was cooler than 2010, or better yet, 1998, so it must be cooling, no matter what the underlying trend is). It is also virtually certain, if you actually follow the science, that the warming over the past two centuries, and especially over the past 50 years or so is NOT a simple “rebound” from the little Ice Age (note also that the current weak solar cycle is NOT an aberration in terms of solar activity trends over the past few decades - solar activity peaked in the 1950s, so we should be cooling, yet we are not cooling and Earth’s energy balance is still positive). It also isn’t due to misunderstood cycles like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (see the note about correcting for global warming), which was near record-breaking negative during the warmest September on record globally (can’t blame El Nino for it either).
Many who are labled as deniers are simply not accepting that CO2 is having as much affect as it is being blamed for. Ocean currents play a huge factor in weather and once they are disturbed may take decades to come to another equilibrium of sorts. Many factors may be having accumaltive affects on weather that would be difficult to model.
Sorry for the double post, I just want to clarify:
I don’t think you’ll find a single mainstream organization that denies that climate change is occurring.
I do believe you’ll find dozens that people outside that organization label as “denialists” because of the nature of how the debate is framed by the press.
For example, the Republican Party has accepts climate change in its official platform statement. It also criticizes Obama’s campaign for doing too much in response for climate change.
So a Republican will read that and say, “of course the Republican party accepts climate change”, while a Democrat might say, “well they oppose Obama’s climate change regulation, so of course they deny climate change.”
The key word here is “weather” - which is not the same thing as climate.
Also of note, this article on the true effects of the Gulf Stream on Europe’s climate, which probably wouldn’t even be noticeable to the average layman; the heat storage of the local ocean and that from general circulation, driven by mid-latitude high pressure cells (due to large-scale atmospheric circulation which will likely not change significantly even with high-end warming scenarios since it is a basic feature of the Earth’s rotation and size), is far higher than the heat transport of the Gulf Stream; compare Europe to the west coast of North America at similar latitudes.
But the fact remains, the “scare quotes” might not be to your liking, but the Republican Party does not deny climate change. Like I said before, I highly doubt any mainstream organizations do.
Including the causes of climate change (mainly due to human activity), Wikipedia says that no major scientific organizations deny the basics of climate change as put forth by the IPCC; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2007. Now of course, there are a few scientists who claim that climate change is due to some natural process, such as Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer, but their arguments fly in the face of observations (such as Lindzen’s claims of an “iris effect” which diminishes climate sensitivity - but how does one then reconcile past climate variability, or the actual observations of clouds?).
Not that I care or believe this carpolla, but look at the graphs - assuming they are correct. Global temperature takes a precipitous drop about 1400, almost a century after Mike6’s link about volcanism that claims to have started the downward trend and just at the onset of the Sporer minimum. We really do NOT know what causes sunspot cycles, or whether there is a real correlation between that and temperature - the data is limited and subject to guesses.
Similarly, the link about “virtually certain” suggests CO2 output and reforestation from both the Black Death and the decimation of natives from European diseases are to blame for cooling cycles. This ignoring the deaths happened by the time De Soto hit the Missisppi about 1540, the amount of deforestation cause by settlers on the east coast likely balanced that, etc. If the climate is that sensitive to CO2 and forest cover, we should be cooking twice as hot by now. Similarly, if industrial carbon output in 1850 was having a effect, then holy cow! Our output should be frying the planet. The level of carbon output has grown exponentially in the century and a half since then.
I say this not to refute Climate Change, but to say:
“the arguments get very detailed and on-going, and like evolution, the general trend is obvious (we are hotter than 200 years ago) but the fine details on cause and effect are subject to interpretation and difficult to nail down.”
Like hurricane Sandy, we can do whatever we want to our planet but mother nature is bigger; we could try to turn Earth into a CO2-overloaded oven like we are, but if mother nature has a contrary attitude odds are our efforts will be miniscule beside that.
Just look at the climate records going back millenia - the high points of the ice ages (like we are in now) are very short interludes between times when the earth was significantly colder.
[QUOTE=OP]
Are there any large, organized groups of people, outside of the Republican Party in the US, who do not accept the current consensus on climate change?
[/QUOTE]
The question is not about individuals. The question is about organizations. The Republican Party, as an organization, accepts the current consensus on climate change, as shown by their 2008 policy statement.
That is a factual answer to the question. And in the future, the OP might want to research whether the assumption he makes in his question is true before asking it.
Edit: also your very quotes confirm that Mitt Romney and Herman Cain believe in climate change, and suggests that Rick Santorum does also.
The effort that seems to be missing is much of anything addressing the sociopolitical issues of climate change. All of the discussion of what to do seems to be centered on technological and social changes to counter the effect, whether the participants believe it’s anthropogenic or natural.
There’s no question in my mind that climate change is real (having just weathered Hurricanes Irene and Sandy up here in the quiet northeast), although I tend to believe we will discover that human activity is the smaller part of the cause… in forty or fifty years. From my perspective, we need to stop pointing fingers and focusing exclusively on “solutions” that may or may not ever be practicable - if it’s largely Ma Nature, as I suspect, then it’s probably beyond our power to “correct.”
Even if it’s 100% human-caused, we’re likely looking at a 100-year plan to correct it. In the meantime - that is, for the remainder of nearly all current lifetimes - we need to figure out what to do when the US midwest turns to desert and the fertile band marches up in to Canada. Worse, what’s western Asia going to do when Ukraine turns to that same arid desert while the northern countries have to clear more and more forest to grow crops? Anywhere the fertile bands move across political boundaries there’s going to be friction; anywhere those borders are hostile, there’s going to be war.
Maybe someone should start working on this alongside the chemical and technical solutions…
Are you able to elucidate what you mean by “accept climate change” ?
If you mean, “accept that the climate is changing,” that’s a different thing from “accept that humans are the primary driver of climate change and it is possible to ameliorate this human-caused climate change with non-draconian measures.”
These are the two extremes I see within what is generally meant by “accept that the climate is changing.”
I see a lot of people willing to accept that the climate might be changing; fewer willing to accept that humans might be a primary driver; and still fewer willing to accept that non-draconian measures will effect a difference.
Therefore the commonest group I see–across all political parties–is a verbal affirmation that someone ought to do something, but that something should not affect my personal lifestyle or pocketbook, please. This last group includes everyone from Al Gore to the most radical right winger.
Are you able to elucidate what you mean by “accept climate change” ?
If you mean, “accept that the climate is changing,” that’s a different thing from “accept that humans are the primary driver of climate change and it is possible to ameliorate this human-caused climate change with non-draconian measures.”
These are the two extremes I see within what is generally meant by “accept that the climate is changing.”
I see a lot of people willing to accept that the climate might be changing; fewer willing to accept that humans might be a primary driver; and still fewer willing to accept that non-draconian measures will effect a difference.
Therefore the commonest group I see–across all political parties–is a verbal affirmation that someone ought to do something, but that something should not affect my personal lifestyle or pocketbook, please. This last group includes everyone from Al Gore to the most radical right winger. If you don’t change your personal degree of consumption, you haven’t “accepted” climate change in any real sense, have you?
Sorry I’m double-posting again, but let’s look at those quotes from prominent Republicans:
Michele Bachmann - quote says nothing about whether she believes in climate change
Herman Cain - quote clearly says he does believe in climate change
Ron Paul - quote says nothing about whether he believes in climate change
Mitt Romney - quote says he believes in climate change (although he uses a weaker “I think” in the quote)
Rick Santorum - quote clearly says he believes in climate change
So, while there may be prominent Republicans who do not believe in climate change, I don’t see any evidence of that from the quotes provided. And, in any case, it’s not relevant to the question which is about organizations and not individuals.