(Part of the How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic guide)
Objection: Despite what the computer models tell us, there is actually no evidence of significant global warming.
Answer: Global warming is not an output of computer models; it is a conclusion based on observations of a great many global indicators. By far the most straightforward evidence is the actual surface temperature record. While there are places -- in England, for example -- that have records going back several centuries, the two major global temperature analyses can only go back around 150 years due to their requirements for both quantity and distribution of temperature recording stations.
These are the two most reputable globally and seasonally averaged temperature trend analyses:
Both trends are definitely and significantly up. In addition to direct measurements of surface temperature, there are many other measurements and indicators that support the general direction and magnitude of the change the earth is currently undergoing. The following diverse empirical observations lead to the same unequivocal conclusion that the earth is warming:
- Satellite Data
- Radiosondes
- Borehole analysis
- Glacial melt observations
- Sea ice melt
- Sea level rise
- Proxy Reconstructions
- Permafrost melt
There is simply no room for doubt: the Earth is undergoing a rapid and large warming trend.
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Change in rhetoricIt should also be noted that, at this point in time, very few dispute the fact that the Earth is warming. Even George Bush and Michael Crichton, both very skeptical, admit the Earth is warming --- they dispute the cause.
Regards
Remember, Andrew ...... that Coby is starting at the beginning of the stages of denial, which means that he'll be progressing from the most naively flat-footed arguments -- which, as you say, are more and more rare, at least in public -- to the more sophisticated ones. Think of it as a rhetorical snowball rolling downhill, gathering mass and speed until it reaches the latest, most savvy contrarian arguments and crushes them under a massive, uh ... pile of snow. OK, don't think of it that way.
www.grist.org
A little repetitionI should also point out that there will be a little repetition as we go through some variations of essentially the same argument. For example, objections about Urban Heat Island effect are closely related. I do still hear people trying to claim that UHI is the only reason we think there is warming.
Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!
-- Anonymous
But none of this matters much...they key issues are
a. the precise contribution of humans to warming
and
b. whether decreasing CO2 emissions would significantly effect warming
both of these questions have much less certainty than whether the planet is warming or not
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.
Key, yes. Uncertain, noYes those are key issues, but we are on a journey here, so those are dealt with later. I don't know if I would agree that they are much less certain. Perhaps quantitatively, but not to first order.
Invent a clever saying, and your name will live forever!
-- Anonymous
More cataloging I do still hear people trying to claim that UHI is the only reason we think there is warming.
The "climatologist" Tim Ball for one.........
Urban heat islands(That's what UHI stands for, "urban heat islands.") There have been several strong studies in the past 5-10 years that pretty conclusively showed that the warming is still statistically significant when you remove UHI effects from the record...I can't remember the authors off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure one of the papers was by Tom Karl and his colleagues at NCDC. You could look those up and cite them as well...I don't think any serious climatologists would claim anymore that the warming is an artifact of urban areas expanding around previously rural weather stations.
No, those are not the key issuesScorse writes:
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they [sic] key issues are
a. the precise contribution of humans to warming
and
b. whether decreasing CO2 emissions would significantly effect [sic] warming
both of these questions have much less certainty than whether the planet is warming or not
==============
In whose mind are those "the" key issues?
Notice anything significant about Scorse's arguments (that no response should be undertaken until he and his fellow economists approve?)
Change the topic from global heating to cigarettes to notice the simularity:
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the key issues are
a. the precise contribution of smoking to health problems
and
b. whether limiting tobacco would significantly affect health
both of these questions have much less certainty than whether cancer is increasing
==============
Perhaps the "key issues" are merely distractors thrown in to keep the discussion from progressing toward actions.
Given the stakes, an argument could be made that the KEY issue--the one that unlocks the problem--is just how aggressively we can get to a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions so that, as we learn more about the scope and scale of the unfolding problem, we don't learn that we made an irrevocable commitment to global heating of 3C or more.
It will always be quite easy to permit increased CO2 emissions if, by some miracle, we find that our reductions have been excessive.
But if we allow the global heating denialists and the ...read more
You might want to add...You might want to actually add something to the effect that this evidence has convinced people on both sides of the political aisle. (As Tokyo Tom pointed out in a comment a while back:
http://gristmill.grist.org/comments/2006/9/19/11408/1106/... )
If you don't think those are the key issues...then you're not in the realm of real policy- you're in the realm of ideology since answers to those 2 questions hold the key to actually ADDRESSING climate change, not just feel-good platitudes.
J.S.
J.S. teaches economics and blogs at http://www.voicesofreason.info.