YouTube - The American Denial of Global Warming
(I want to preserve this here on my blog. It is my response to the comment on facebook of a very good friend who is a climate change skeptic).
To say that I am skeptical of climate skeptics would be an understatement! I do not intend this as a jab at you personally, but rather as a larger indictment of those who choose to believe climate science is false or a hoax, and that human activities are not in fact causing a real, measurable change in the energy dynamics of the atmosphere and oceans which are in all probability forcing long-term and potentially dramatic changes in climate. You refer me to a book called “Deniers” (the full title of which is so long it reads like the GOP's "Repeal the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act"!). I'm familiar with it, though I haven't read it. I recall it getting panned because Solomon's deniers don't actually deny climate change. They quibble about details, while allowing that observed warming is real and particularly strong in the last 20 years. Nonetheless, I'll check it out. You should watch Prof. Oreskes' The American Denial of Global Warming I posted. It is an excellent primer on the history of climate-related research and the real conspiratorial efforts of some to create confusion and politicize the science. I assume you’ve read Deniers. You’ve probably also read similar denialist pieces in the op-ed pages of popular publications (as distinguished from peer-reviewed scientific literature). Aside from such denialist or skeptical pieces, however, how much time have climate science skeptics in general spent studying the bases for the position accepted by 99% of scientists around the world who actively study and publish peer-reviewed research in the multitude of disciplines that touch on climate? That’s a vastly more daunting, demanding enterprise that I suspect the overwhelming majority of non-believers among the lay public (and politicians) have not undertaken. If one believes the thousands of scientists around the world whose research touches on climate are conspiring to purposefully manufacture data in order to perpetrate on the rest of mankind a self-serving scientific deception that humans are causing climate change, then it’s easier and less time-consuming, I suppose, to limit oneself to focusing on the less-prolific, narrower, denialist “literature” which fits his or her skepticism and world-view. (And the University of East Anglia/Phil Jones emails/Michael Mann "hockey stick" controversy has been reviewed by no less than 4 separate bodies, including British Parliament, which all exonerated Jones and dismissed allegations of data manipulation). I use the term literature loosely because scant little of it is peer-reviewed and less still is accepted, let alone widely. One of the things that has long aggravated me about climate change denialists is that they tend not to be scientists (not including the scientists profiled in Deniers, obviously), have not studied a relevant environmental science, and have read only the skeptical articles in popular publications that point out one data flaw or another which, even if true, does not by itself undermine the whole rest of the body of scientific evidence for human-caused climate change. It is worth noting, the peer-review process is inherently skeptical and science is inherently self-correcting, starting as it does from a falsifiable, testable hypothesis. An accepted scientific position gains its accepted status because it has been tested and repeated, confirmed by observation, and found to be factually superior to alternative hypotheses. If the question is whether human activities are causing climate change, there is overwhelming agreement. The body of evidence on that matter is large and even many skeptics, including apparently some of Solomon’s Deniers, agree that human activities are affecting climate. If the question is about the predictions of those effects, however, then, granted, there is not agreement, although we are seeing an increase in extreme weather events that are consistent with predictions. Have you thought about how many disciplines come into play in climate science? Physics (thermodynamics, entropy [from top of atmosphere to bottom of ocean, Earth is like a fixed system], albido), atmospheric chemistry, oceanography and marine chemistry, terrestrial ecology (nitrogen cycle, carbon cycle), agriculture and land use, geology and paleoclimatology (analyzing sediment cores and chemical isotopes in Earth strata to determine climate patterns during past epochs of geologic time), glaciology, evolutionary biology, astronomy, even botany (measuring effects of historic climate conditions on forests and plant growth by analyzing ancient tree ring data). If, after studying this spectrum of environmental sciences and attaining an understanding of the multitude of processes involved in climate, one finds more convincing the skeptics’ position that human activities are not affecting the Earth’s energy dynamics, and that those changes in Earth’s energy dynamics are not in all likelihood causing long-term changes to Earth’s climate, then so be it. If that’s the case, then tell me that by the same rationale on which climate change is rejected despite the abundance of evidence – too much money involved, perpetuation of a self-serving hoax to ensure continued funding and self-sustainability, politicization of the so-called hoax in order to exert control on the world, etc. – so, too, has monotheistic religion and the categorically unsubstantiated myth of a personal god been rejected. For organized religion is surely the far greater hoax. And as for the existence of some supernatural entity or divinity commonly known as god, there is not a scintilla, not an atom, not a quark or gluon, of evidence. I would welcome with open arms such rejectors to the atheist community. One of the climate skeptics' views is that there is a conspiracy across a world-wide community of thousands of scientists? I reject that. Conspiracy implies agreement and concert of action. It takes 3 or 4 days for a small group of my closest friends and I – 4 fellow lawyers and a lobbyist – to reach agreement on a date and time to meet for our quarterly gathering for steak dinner at III Forks! The notion of a global-scale conspiracy among scientists is itself little more than conspiracy theory lacking plausibility, let alone credible evidence. Moreover, have you seen how scientists dress? You'd think with all the intellectual horsepower at the disposal of the world's climate scientists, they'd conspire to perpetrate a more lucrative hoax which enables them to buy nicer clothes!
As for acid rain: It was proved. So, too, was the link between CFCs and stratospheric ozone depletion; likewise the link between environmental tobacco smoke exposure and lung cancer. The handful of scientists who argued against and sought to politicize those issues at the direction of the interests who paid them all lost. But they succeeded in delaying action, not by offering credible research of their own or honest education of the public on the science, but by creating confusion and doubt about the more broadly accepted, peer-reviewed science. The same is going on with climate change denial.
