Published by on 03 Jun 2008 at 02:58 pm
Welcome to Climate Change Deniers Anonymous
We refuse to feel guilty about something we didn’t cause
Paul MacRae, June 2, 2008
Good evening, and welcome to tonight’s meeting of Climate Change Deniers Anonymous. My name is Paul, and I am a Climate Change Denier.
This doesn’t mean I don’t believe climate change is occurring. Like most Deniers, I’m aware that global warming has been going on for the past 15,000 years, ever since the last Ice Age ended.
Fifteen thousand years ago, the oceans were more than 100 metres lower than they are now–that’s how the Siberians got to North America, walking across a land bridge at what is now the Bering Strait. Most of us learned that in Canadian history, didn’t we?
In other words, the oceans have been rising, a millimetre or two a year, for the past 15,000 years. Somehow, then, the Climate Change Affirmers’ fears that the oceans may rise even more doesn’t strike much fear in Climate Change Deniers’ hearts. Oceans slowly rise and fall as part of a natural planetary cycle.
What Climate Change Deniers also deny is that climate change is a human-driven phenomenon largely based on industrialization, and that we should therefore feel guilty about our comfortable lifestyles. Undoubtedly, human activity plays a part in climate change; we are creatures who change planets. But it seems far more likely that, since the Earth has a hundred-thousand-year warming and cooling cycle, other, much grander factors are in play.
There have been eight of these climatic cycles over the past 800,000 years or so, and we’re darned lucky to be in one of the warming phases. Global warming isn’t the thing to fear: what we should worry about is global cooling and another Ice Age, which is due in the next 10,000 years or so. In fact, at the moment, the planet’s default position isn’t global warmth, it’s Ice Age.
What caused the planet to begin warming 15,000 years ago? Human activity? Climate Deniers tend to ask these questions, and conclude that maybe human beings aren’t at fault and other, cosmic factors are, such as the fluctuating temperature of the sun due to sunspots or Earth’s elliptical orbit.
In other words, we refuse to feel guilty about something we didn’t cause.
We can deal with warming
Climate Deniers also tend to believe that, if there is a global-warming problem, we can deal with it. If the oceans are rising, for example, we can build dikes. The Dutch do that and it works for them.
Indeed, for the $7 billion or so that Canada has wasted so far pretending to comply with the Kyoto Accord (with, literally, no benefit at all and an actual increase in greenhouse gas emissions), we could have protected all of Canada’s coastal cities from rising oceans.
Speaking of which-has anyone noticed water levels rising in Victoria, B.C., where I live? This city is on the ocean, after all. In fact, it’s gone up a whole inch (3 cm) in the last 50 years (see table, taken from the BC’s governments Environmental Trends: 2007). Vancouver’s gone up less than an inch in 50 years; Tofino sea levels are down three inches because the land there is rising.
An inch or two isn’t much compared to how much the seas have risen in the past, so us Deniers are not inclined to believe the Ocean-is-Rising Chicken Littles.
Below is a graph showing how sea-level increases and decreases around Victoria were much greater in the past–right now, we’re pretty much flatlined. How likely is it that we’re going to get a sudden increase in sea level rise beyond what is natural because of human CO2 emissions, which are less than 5 per cent of nature’s carbon dioxide emissions? Not very likely.
Deniers ask themselves a number of other inconvenient (to borrow a phrase from Al Gore’s climate-affirmer movie) questions. Like, if global warming is occurring, can we do anything to stop it?
Here’s an analogy for the chances human beings have of bringing global warming to a standstill: stopping an ocean liner with a rubber ducky. Nothing we do is going to prevent the planet doing what it does naturally, which is go from Ice Age to Interglacial to Ice Age.
But, the Affirmers say, the consensus of the scientific community is that global warming is caused by human activity, and several thousand scientists can’t be wrong. Of course, there are several thousand other scientists who don’t agree, but their voices are ignored.
And since when does science operate by consensus? If there’s evidence that humans are producing global warming, then why don’t the Affirmers just produce that evidence, as Darwin did with evolution? Show us the smoking scientific gun, and we’ll believe.
No ‘problem,’ no government grants
Ah, the Affirmers say, but the scientific Deniers are in the pay of the oil industry (hah! I wish I was–bring it on, Exxon!), while the Affirmer scientists are… well, in the pay of government grants.
Now, let me ask you: If you are a scientist and you tell the government, “Climate change isn’t a problem,” are you going to get grants? Of course not, because there’s no problem to study. Therefore, there is a huge incentive for scientists to say climate change is a human-caused problem because then they, as Affirmers, will get grants to “study” the problem. Maybe the Affirmer scientists aren’t as Simon Pure as they claim after all.
Of course, it makes sense to develop more efficient technologies and energy sources, but we’re doing this anyway. Industry has been getting more and more efficient for 200 years, pretty much all by itself with little government prompting. Industry will solve the problems associated with global warming, too, if we let it. Which is precisely what the Affirmers (like, alas, our new Liberal Leader, Stephane Dion) do not want to do.
If all our efforts do nothing, why are we bothering? For the same reason, I think, that people throughout the ages have sacrificed to the gods. Faced with forces beyond our control, we fall back on what are essentially religious rituals.
In other words, Kyoto and the whole global warming industry is the 21st century equivalent of the Rain Dance. Rather than face our fears, we hide those fears behind purposeless (and pointlessly expensive) activity.
The climate is changing. It’s always been changing. It always will change. And we’re not at fault, so there’s nothing to feel guilty about.
That’s not a very popular position right now, which is why some of we Deniers prefer to stay Anonymous. Still, we’re not that hard to find: just look for the place where people are still using their minds and senses, rather than buying into the climate-change “consensus” that humans are the cause of climate change.
littleblackduck on 17 Jun 2008 at 8:26 am #
The only problem I have with the term ‘Deniers Anonymous’ is the implication that this is something that is a problem that needs curing – like Alcoholics Anonymous or some such thing.
I prefer to see it more as an underground resistance like the Partisans in World War II.
The more I read into global warming – from those who advocate the AGW position – the more doubtful I became of either it being a crisis, or that burning fossil fuels was causing the warming, to even doubting the planet is warming at all.
The more I read on realclimate the more convince I became that they were primarily interested in defending their models – since that’s what their careers depend upon – and attack any other position through omission, distortion, cherry-picking, attacks, hiding behind ‘peer-review’, smearing opponents and taking advantage of rampant scientific illiteracy to spread a lot of nonsense.
I read the original source of the ‘consensus’ – that Oreskes’ study and found it to be so seriously flawed that it makes me doubt anything published in Science as no better than something in Gristmill or a Greenpeace press release.
I haven’t blogged much on the subject myself, but far too many people are even attributing the past weekend’s thunderstorms to ‘stuff we’re doing’.
Heaven forbid the weather should be different from one year to the next!
I noticed that the site climate-resistance.org isn’t on you’re blogroll – I highly recommend them, and they’ve done some excellent work digging up the funding for greenpeace, and so on. Once people realize that the ‘deniers’ are out-funded by the AGW prosthelytizers an an order of several thousand to 1 then they may be able to see further holes in their theories too.
Bill on 08 Sep 2008 at 12:06 pm #
So, it doesn’t concern you that atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher now (by about 50% or 100 ppm) than they have been in the last 400,000 years, and that carbon dioxide levels and global temperature have correlated over that span as well?
Anwer to Bill on 22 Sep 2008 at 1:51 am #
Bill, CO2 increase in the atmosphere FOLLOW global temperature increase. CO2 increase is the RESULT of global warming, not cause.
CO2 is transparent to sunlight, it’s NOT a greenhouse gas.
This whole commotion is similar to 90’s ritual of cutting 6 pack can packaging plastics because they could strangle some animal in the ocean. It makes you feel good, but is completely useless and nonsense.
Eric Anderson on 02 Oct 2008 at 9:18 am #
Great site, Paul, and a fun read.
Just one minor suggestion: I’d probably drop the Darwin reference above, as Darwin himself didn’t produce much of anything in the way of evidence (re-read The Origin, where he acknowledges that his book is just “one long argument” and that much of hard the evidence, he hoped, would subsequently be found to support his position). Further, there is plenty of skepticism for the larger claims of modern evolutionary theory, even among scientists. Anyway, let’s assume for sake of argument that evolutionary theory is well-supported by modern evidence, it is nevertheless the case that the “consensus” argument is regularly used by supporters of evolutionary theory, so I think it probably isn’t the best example to use to challenge orthodox AGW consensus.
Anyway, not big deal, just a suggestion.
Keep up the good work,
Steve on 23 Oct 2008 at 5:42 pm #
@ Anwer to Bill
You are correct, visible light from the sun passes through the atmosphere, and very little is absorbed by CO2.
This light reaches the earth, (some is reflected back as visible light, especially by snow), the rest is absorbed by the earth’s surface. As with all warm objects, the earth radiates heat energy as infra-red light (invisible to the human eye) and certain frequencies of infra-red resonate CO2 molecules, and are absorbed.
Some infra-red light destined to travel into space, is unfortunately absorbed by CO2 (and Methane) causing warming.
=>Illustration of infra-red: Someone turns-on an electric stove element to “High” and holds their hand above the element.
Infrared radiation coming from the element (not visible to the human eye), will increasingly warm their hand; eventually the element will GLOW RED HOT (visible light starts to be emitted).
————
I agree the industrial emissions of CO2 are part of the problem. However, let us remember that woodland and tropical rainforest have been cut down over the last few hundred years, these are the sinks that absorb CO2. The tropics are the lungs of the planet, and we should be spending more money protecting them, not cutting them down more forests to grow “bio-fuels”.
DC Man on 30 Jan 2009 at 6:17 am #
Just googled “climate change denier anonymous” because the brow-beating is getting pretty intense for the folks who don’t exactly buy the entire line. There just seems to be a truth that is not being told in the debate. It would be better if the spokesman for the movement were not Al Gore. He’s a creep and entirely boring to listen to.
Personal motivations asside, I do not enjoy it when my tax dollars are hijacked by bad or falsified science. That being said, even on this one site, there are two different opinions offered as fact on what happens with CO2 in the atmosphere and its effect on warming. Do you see what happens to this population when you offer opinion as fact? Everyone else knows that someone is lying to them…
This is become politics, because it involves multinational taxes. It fits with global socialism and thus is summarily dismissed by many out of fear. Many others do not want to give up their lifestyle truth or no. The rest of us… the rest of us just want scientists to be scientists in dorky coats, pocket protectors and not worry about how they get their funding.
Kelly Beninga on 18 Apr 2009 at 11:02 pm #
You climate change deniers don’t seem to understand basic physics, not to mention the complexities of climate change. Open you mind and look a the facts. See the article below.
Public release date: 19-Jan-2009
Contact: Paul Francuch
francuch@uic.edu
312-996-3457
University of Illinois at Chicago
Survey: Scientists agree human-induced global
warming is real
While the harsh winter pounding many areas of North America and Europe seemingly
contradicts the fact that global warming continues unabated, a new survey finds consensus among scientists about the reality of climate change and its likely cause.
A group of 3,146 earth scientists surveyed around the world overwhelmingly agree that in the past 200-plus years, mean global temperatures have been rising, and that human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures.
Peter Doran, University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor of earth and environmental
sciences, along with former graduate student Maggie Kendall Zimmerman, conducted the
survey late last year.
The findings appear today in the publication Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union.
In trying to overcome criticism of earlier attempts to gauge the view of earth scientists on
global warming and the human impact factor, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman sought the
opinion of the most complete list of earth scientists they could find, contacting more than
10,200 experts around the world listed in the 2007 edition of the American Geological
Institute’s Directory of Geoscience Departments.
Experts in academia and government research centers were e-mailed invitations to participate
in the on-line poll conducted by the website questionpro.com. Only those invited could
participate and computer IP addresses of participants were recorded and used to prevent
repeat voting. Questions used were reviewed by a polling expert who checked for bias in
phrasing, such as suggesting an answer by the way a question was worded. The nine question
survey was short, taking just a few minutes to complete.
Two questions were key: have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels,
and has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures.
About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.
In analyzing responses by sub-groups, Doran found that climatologists who are active in
research showed the strongest consensus on the causes of global warming, with 97 percent
agreeing humans play a role. Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the
biggest doubters, with only 47 and 64 percent respectively believing in human involvement.
Doran compared their responses to a recent poll showing only 58 percent of the public thinks
human activity contributes to global warming.
“The petroleum geologist response is not too surprising, but the meteorologists’ is very
interesting,” he said. “Most members of the public think meteorologists know climate, but
most of them actually study very short-term phenomenon.”
He was not surprised, however, by the near-unanimous agreement by climatologists.
“They’re the ones who study and publish on climate science. So I guess the take-home
message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you’re likely to
believe in global warming and humankind’s contribution to it.”
Doran and Kendall Zimmerman conclude that “the debate on the authenticity of global
warming and the role played by human activity is largely nonexistent among those who
understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.” The challenge
now, they write, is how to effectively communicate this to policy makers and to a public that
continues to mistakenly perceive debate among scientists.
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4/18/2009 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-01/uoia-ssa011609.php
Goth VanHellsing on 18 Dec 2009 at 4:30 pm #
And Kelly you don’t understand basic computer science I could post this same message here as many times as I wanted with each one showing a different IP address using proxy servers to buffer the data being sent. I really question any poll that shows numbers like theirs does. Not to mention what group is less likely to care about taking the poll in the first place.