Climate Change

"I came across your website when I was trying to figure out how many watts certain things use and I have to say that I thought it was sorta useful but the fact that you say 'Saving energy saves the planet' just lets me know that it is another website that can't be counted on. [The] Global warming [myth] is destroying our country and I really wish that all of you Global warming people would stop blaming man for the climate change when there is no significant proof that we have any significant effect and even if we did, there is no proof of whether it is a good thing or a bad thing. All this is doing is costing money and lives. Find a more realistic purpose. One that actually helps people instead of hurting them." -- Joseph Huisman, March 2009

"All you global warming people" -- like the National Research Council, the World Health Organization, and the national science academies of the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and 28 other countries? Or the dozens of other national and international scientific bodies? Or maybe like the Republican candidate for President, John McCain, or the previous president, George Bush (who agreed that climate change is a problem), or Republican Governor Charlie Crist who actually launched an annual summit on the issue, or Republican Senator Susan Collins? Like all those people?

The fact is, the scientific consensus on climate change is overwhelming. In fact, there is not a _single_ national or international scientific body on the face of the planet that says that global warming isn't happening or that humans aren't causing it. If you thought there were two evenly-divided camps on the issue, that's because the industry and the right-wing media have been working overtime to sow as much doubt in the public's mind as possible. When you go to the actual scientists, there's no such doubt. All of the national and world scientific bodies will tell you that it's happening and that we're causing it, period. There are only are a tiny handful of renegade scientists on the fringe who reject the consensus position.

So exactly how can someone say that there's "no significant evidence"^* of climate change in the face of the (literally) thousands of studies by thousands of scientists whose conclusions are endorsed by hundreds of scientific organizations, and rejected by not even one of them? One might as well try to argue that there's no significant proof that computers exist.

I'm always tempted to ask such people: "How exactly is it that you are smarter than the overwhelming majority of all the world's scientists? What is it that you know that they don't? And how did you arrive at that special knowledge? And why are you emailing me, just some writer on the Internet, rather than addressing the world scientific community to explain how they all got it wrong and how you know better than them? Shouldn't they be interested in your more qualified take on the situation and what you have to teach them? Because obviously they somehow don't have your superior understanding."

But actually, Mr. Huisman didn't really say that the research was wrong, he said that there's no evidence of climate change. That suggests he might actually believe no research has taken place. It's hard to say from precisely which of these two delusions he's suffering.

Either way, how exactly can people say there's no significant evidence when the amount of evidence is overwhelming? Unfortunately, the answer is pretty simple: They just haven't read squat about climate change. They've heard some radio show, or read a single article (almost always by a non-scientist), and didn't bother to check to see that that article has already been thoroughly discredited.

How do I know this? I actually have proof. Whenever people want to argue with me about this, I tell them they first need to do at least a little cursory reading to see how all the arguments they're making have been exhaustively debunked (and that if they want to persist with those points they'll need to show me exactly how the deconstruction was wrong). I ask them to read this set of articles before replying and that any reply should take what was said there into account.

• Scientific opinion on climate change (Wikipedia)
• Meta-analysis of climate change research (American Association for the Advancement of Science. In nearly 1000 studies done over the course of a decade, not a single one rejected the consensus position)
• 53 arguments against climate change refuted (Skeptical Science)
• How to argue with a global warming skeptic (Science blogs)
• Climate change doubt paid for by Exxon-Mobil (Mother Jones)

In fact, this is what I sent to Mr. Huisman, with a special emphasis on the first one, since it spoke directly to the overwhelming scientific consensus on this issue. His reply? He said he didn't have time to check them out, and then claimed that "no one has been able to produce" scientists who believe in global warming, among other things. This is the intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears while repeating your position even more loudly.

I'm not exaggerating here. A few days later he wrote again, insisting that there was no scientific consensus about climate change, while of course ignoring the article I sent him listing the nearly 100 national and international science bodies who endorse the consensus, and which points out that there are none which reject the consensus opinion.

So now we know how people can claim there's no evidence of climate change: They haven't done even cursory research into the matter, and when someone puts the evidence right in front of them, they refuse to look.

Incidentally, while I'm listing email from only one reader, this is definitely typical of how climate change is argued with me, and all over the Internet. One doesn't have to go far to find this kind of uninformed discourse.

(By the way, a list of individual scientists, even IPCC report scientists which Mr. Huisman asked about, isn't hard to find if one has heard of something called Google. It's the first hit in a search of "ipcc list of authors". And here's a page which lists all 619 contributing authors of IPCC Working Group 1 of the Fourth Assessment Report.)

I'm not a scientist. And neither are the people who argue with me about climate change. The difference between us is that I'm trusting the consensus of the world scientific community. They're trusting Rush Limbaugh and Exxon-Mobil. Now, I suppose I could decide that the world scientific community is wrong, but I'm just not that arrogant.

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Footnote: * Yes, nit-picky readers, I understand the difference between evidence and proof, but I'm certain that Mr. Huisman doesn't, and that he really meant evidence. And if he actually meant proof, that would make his argument even weaker, since it would show that he's arguing the wrong point.

Last update: April 2009