Three Rebuttals For a Climate Change Skeptic

I posted this first in a discussion on another blog about a climate change skeptic who produced a film that was aired on television in England. So here, as the title to the blog post promises, is my rebuttal, followed by that of a blogger from blogspot called Wisco (apparently short for Wisconsin), in his blog called Griper Blade, Grumblings from the Heartland, and last but not least, is George Monbiot in The Guardian, from Wisco's blog.

SHORTER RESPONSE

The debate about climate change is over and that it has been for the most part from the impact of what mankind has been doing since industrialization in the mid 1800s is over. The winner is science (not science fiction). To back up my statement, I am relying on the huge peer-reviewed report (the last section of the four sections of which will be adopted and approved in Valencia, Spain, November 12-17, 2007), using peer-reviewed articles in the IPCC report, Climate Change 2007.

On one hand: There is the peer-reviewed Climate Change 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Association (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), put together or reviewed by hundreds of people. This report represents the current state of climate change science. The first section of the Climate Change 2007 report is 996 pages long, not including two of the four appendices (referred to in report as Annexes). Annex II lists the hundreds of coordinating lead authors, lead authors and contributing authors (I started to count the number of people included but got lost and gave up); Annex III lists expert reviewers and then expert reviewers from international organizations.

On the other hand: There are opinions by a fringe group of scientists who are ignored by mainstream scientists and sometimes are paid by or associated with or working for far-right wing, conservative Republican foundations or think tanks or far right-wing, conservative Christian groups or directly paid by oil and other polluting businesses. Some of the think tanks are attached to some universities. See the site Center for Media and Democracy, PR Watch and also the section called Sourcewatch for names of the lists of organizations and individuals that are known to belong to or paid by some of these organizations.

http://www.prwatch.org/

See also the book Banana Republicans by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber on the above site or more specifically:

http://www.prwatch.org/books/bananas.html

There are five other, great titled books listed there, about media manipulation by the far right-wing machine on various issues.

LONGER RESPONSE

My longer response to the skeptics or those who are undecided is from a blogger on Blogspot. Here is a great blog entry by Wisco on Tuesday, March 13, 2007, entitled 'Global Warming Swindle' is Ironically, a Swindle on his blog: Griper Blade, Grumblings From the Heartland:

http://griperblade.blogspot.com/2007/03/global-warming-swindle-is-ironically.html

The general address of blogspot is: http://www.blogspot.com/ . The blog entry also includes a response published in The Guardian from George Monbiot, the author of How to Stop the Planet From Burning.

Just pretend the following is indented to indicate Wisco wrote it and not me (technical difficulties, related to the fact that I am a techno-peasant).

A British video has been making the rounds of the right wing global warming denial crowd. The UK's Channel 4-produced video, titled The Great Global Warming Swindle, is pure crackpottery - porno for the Flat Earth Society. Among the claims made by this video is that global warming is a scam started by Margaret Thatcher to break the coal miners' union and move the UK to nuclear power. That the right has accepted this smear of a global figure they consider second only to Ronald Reagan shows you how desperate they are to find some reason to continue to believe they're not as wrong on climate change as they have been about pretty much everything since 2000 - or earlier.The video was directed by Martin Durkin. Durkin's history is bad. He's basically the British version of John Stossel. In 1997, he produced a documentary, titled Against Nature, which was nothing but an anti-evironmental screed. The claims made in that video quickly fell apart as interviewees for the piece complained that they were taken out of context and misrepresented as critics of environmentalism.

George Monbiot, The Guardian:

Mr Durkin has often been acused of taking liberties with the facts. In 1997 he made a series for Channel 4 called Against Nature, which compared environmentalists like me to Nazis, conspiring against the world's poor. No one would suggest that green claims should not be subjected to critical examination, but the people he interviewed were lied to about the contents of the programmes and given no chance to respond to the accusations the series made. The Independent Television Commission handed down one of the most damning verdicts it has ever reached: the programme makers "distorted by selective editing" the views of the interviewees and "misled" them about the "content and purpose of the programmes when they agreed to take part". Channel 4 was forced to make a humiliating prime time apology. After the series was broadcast, I discovered that the assistant producer and several of its interviewees worked for the rightwing libertarian magazine masquerading as Living Marxism, which has just been successfully sued by ITN. All the arguments Against Nature made had been rehearsed in LM. Another Durkin piece claimed to 'prove' that silicone breast implants were completely harmless. Now, Durkin is accused of doing exactly the same thing with The Great Global Warming Swindle as he had with Against Nature. Some people never learn...

The Independent:

It was the television programme that set out to show that most of the world's climate scientists are misleading us when they say humanity is heating up the Earth by emitting carbon dioxide. And The Great Global Warming Swindle, screened by Channel 4 on Thursday night, convinced many viewers that it is indeed untrue that the gas is to blame for global warming. But now the programme - and the channel - is facing a serious challenge to its own credibility after one of the most distinguished scientists that it featured said his views had been "grossly distorted" by the film, and made it clear that he believed human pollution did warm the climate.

Professor Carl Wunsch, professor of physical oceanography at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said he had been "completely misrepresented" by the programme, and "totally misled" on its content. He added that he is considering making a formal complaint. Says Wunsch, "I am angry because they completely misrepresented me. My views were distorted by the context in which they placed them. I was misled as to what it was going to be about. I was told about six months ago that this was to be a programme about how complicated it is to understand what is going on. If they had told me even the title of the programme, I would have absolutely refused to be on it. I am the one who has been swindled. "While this sort of scandal would normally flare up and be forgotten, Durkin's timing is really bad this time around. This is the same Channel 4 that's still recovering from the Jade Goody Big Brother scandal, which resulted in accusations of racism toward a game show contestant and the channel itself. The resulting uproar sparked an international incident between the UK and India. This is pretty much the last thing they need. Martin Durkin may find it harder to get other programs produced in the future. Big loss.

If you go through right wing blogs, this video is all over the place. The gullibility of these people is amazing. Riehl World says, "[The video] contained more science in debunking Global Warming than I have yet to see produced by the Global Warming crowd." That's right, some video produced by a proven charlatan is more solid than the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which represents the international consensus on climate science. In fact, global warming skepticism is such a noncompetitive field that Durkin couldn't find enough of them to fill the air time for his show. He had to misrepresent climate scientists as critics. I've said it before. We can stop listening to these fools. The media has been especially irresponsible in giving cranks the same legitimacy as the science - a failing they're also guilty of with evolution. There are two sides to every story, sure. But where we are now, the two sides are reality and laughable nutcases. CNN, for example, doesn't need to find an honest to goodness flat earther to tell everyone the moon landings were a scam every time there's a story about NASA. Likewise, there's no reason to find some global warming denier to comment every time there's a climate story. Although, as this story shows, the skeptics are an endangered species. Martin Durkin couldn't even find enough of them to fill air time on a TV show. Global warming denial is not a growth industry.

The debate is over.

-Wisco

Wisco's bit is over and it is me again. I think people who are committed to making changes to reduce the impact of climate change tend to get side-tracked by global warming skeptics. If your time is limited, you may want to limit the time you spend trying to argue with skeptics or trying to find answers to all the lines the anti-climate changers come up with.

Are they scientists who have had their ideas published in scientific journals after being peer-reviewed by other scientists? No.

Do they have any report equivalent to the report written by hundreds of scientists and researchers from around the world and peer reviewed by another very large group of scientists? And is their report based on the peer-reviewed articles of scientists published in scientific journals? I don't think so and no.

The right-wing Republicans are just mad because the majority of Americans (and Canadians) are already quite concerned about this issue. You would think skeptics would have hung up the towel when President Bush did and started the new skeptic's rant: I believe climate change is happening, but it will cost too much money, ruin the economy and result in massive job losses to do anything quick about it. That is the same line Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is using in Canada. I think they should stop hanging around together in international meetings as President Bush has been a very bad influence on Prime Minister Harper.

Take a look at the IPCC website and part of one of the summaries or reports so you have some idea of the level at which these reports and summaries are prepared and reviewed.

www.ipcc.ch/

You will have a better idea after that about how to judge the current world-wide state of scientific thinking on climate change versus science fiction. The standard for published scientific thinking is peer-reviewed articles in credible, scientific journals, which is what the IPCC reports are based on. Anything less that aims to undercut climate change science is mere science fiction and opinion.