The Daily Caller

The Daily Caller
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Global warming skeptics increase ranks in wake of IPCC reports

8:49 PM 02/17/2010
Mike Riggs

Three years after Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman wrote, “Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), its seminal 2007 report and the University of East Anglia all have come under attack for mistakes ranging from erroneous projections of when the Himalayan glaciers will melt to hiding and destroying contradictory data.

The opening in the ranks of the environmental movement has reinvigorated the debate over global warming and highlights the growing role of “skeptics” in a world previously dichotomized into two always-warring camps: alarmist or denier.

“I think at least in the British press the breakthrough has been made that there are deep flaws with the climate science process, and that real debate is necessary to see if this implies deep flaws with climate science itself,” Warren Meyer, author of www.climate-skeptic.com, wrote in an e-mail to The Daily Caller.

Meyer calls the perceived increase in skepticism — as suggested by a February BBC poll — “the most important outcome from some of the recent news stories.” He also thinks that a swelling in the ranks has its drawbacks. Mainly, new voices in the skeptic camp ocassionally drown those of people who have done the research.

“My guess is that many of these new skeptics have a fairly unsophisticated understanding of the science,” Meyer said, and “some are using this latter fact to try to discredit the growing skepticism.”

“You have to ask yourself what you mean by skepticism,” Ted Nordhaus, a former consultant for the Sierra Club and chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, told The Daily Caller. Skepticism can mean believing none of the science behind global warming, or accepting some or all of the science, but challenging “the claims that global warming is driving rising disaster losses in the present.”

He added, “There is in fact great uncertainty about exactly what that contribution is in relation to other natural and anthropogenic factors (e.g. land use changes, etc.)” and, “we should be skeptical of claims, by scientists and non-scientists alike, that we can predict with certainty what is going to happen.”

But Nordhaus doubts that Brits — or Americans — have actually changed their minds about global warming, or that the number of skeptics has grown as a result of recent news stories.

“The public has always actually understood that there was a lot of uncertainty in climate science and the way that pollsters try to reduce that to, ‘Do you believe in climate change?’ or not or various variations on that question does the public and our understanding of public opinion on the subject a great disservice.”

Tags: Climate change, Climatology, Environment, Environment, Global Warming, Global warming controversy, Joe Kennedy, Sierra Club, University of East Anglia
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  • artinflorida

    About time somebody has said ” let’s take an objective look at this”
    That’s all the critics of climate warming wanted in the first place.

    When science becomes political you have a problem.

    Art

  • joltinjoe

    I too would like to see the “science” about the alleged “global warming”. The recent revelations clearly show that not much of anything was “science”. I don’t see any of the vaunted “peer reviewed” science that supports the alarmists claims. The relied upon measuring devices are being shown to be faulty and misplaced. Records that were supposedly relied upon have gone missing. Sloppy “scientific method” was the order of the day at the IPCC and CRU. Skeptics were systematically excluded from the “scientific debate”. No wonder then that the bottom has fallen out of their claims. Such gross over statements and conclusions based on the flawed research makes any real research doubtful at best and for all practical purposes a vacuous endeavor. Now you know!

    • dogisgreat

      You should copy your comment and put it in your scrapbook so your descendants can read it.

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  • bahama

    What a joke this global warming issue has come to be. Our three major network network so called weatherman in town can not even agree how cold its going to be from day to day. Would that be partly cloudy, with your partly sunny? If you are a deciple and follower of Al Gore, you are likely to be standing in line for a live Elvis concert.

    • dogisgreat

      The joke will be on your descendants. Hee hee hilarious. Sorry kids, we ruined the planet, but we just had to have those big belly american cars. Hee hee hilarious.

  • angst

    The reasonable, conciliatory tone of both Meyer and Nordhaus is quite amusing. One wonders if they’ve always been so eminently fair-minded toward those people who don’t share their views or if that’s a rather more recent phenomenon having to do with the fact that they suddenly find themselves at the mercy of said people…

  • rick013

    Gotta remember there’s mucho dinero involved in this global warming fiasco. Look at al gore*; he’s made millions by spoofing the public. Love and kisses chicken little gore and his cronies – the useless nations, ipcc, obama, and the wind and solar industry. Without subsidy these so called “green” industries can not survive.

    We do need CO2 otherwise what would plants use to regenerate O2.

    • dogisgreat

      Hee hee hilarious. I think the “mucho dinero” is in the petro-chemical industry.

  • howardroark

    Show Me, Don’t Tell Me

    If you believe in global warming, that it is destroying the earth as we speak, then show me how much you believe it to be true. Most global warming alarmists don’t seem to believe their own prognostications, they continue to live as part of the perceived problem, they still drive cars, fly in planes, use electicity, not taking an active stance against carbon emissions, but merely a vocal one. Come on folks, I thought you said the world is being destroyed? That sounds like serious business to me.

    Here is a question for the global warming alarmists: what proof exists that curtailing carbon emissions would actually reduce global warming?

    If hypothetically the entire world, starting tomorrow, would immediately stop driving cars, stop burning coal, and stop all industrial emissions, would the earth’s atmosphere then start cooling? would the supposed warming trend abate suddenly? If not suddenly then when? And how much? These are questions that matter, a lot. It’s clear that the debate is not over, but really just getting under way.

    The real truth is, no one has any idea whether the world would begin cooling, or stop warming, if carbon emissions were halted. Yet this is the assumed outcome, the basis and goal of reduced carbon emissions. It is, in fact, the sole basis of the carbon-reduction/global warming alarmists’ argument, that we have to act now, that global warming is a terrible threat which we can fix if we act immediately.

    Well then, when I see the alarmists doing without electricity, cars, and airplanes, then I will see a movement that actually makes sense.I will see people who believe what they say as more than political sparring and side-taking. As it is, global warming is all talk, and global warming alarmists, including YOU if you are currently reading this with the aid of electricity, are like PETA members running around in fur coats. How can I take that seriously?

    • toddthesofaking

      Or, in other words, “I’ll start believing it’s a crisis when those who are telling me it’s a crisis start acting like it’s a crisis.” – Glenn Reynolds, Instapundit

    • joltinjoe

      Very well said. The mobs of folks on the streets of Copenhagen caused more “global warming” than anything they said would reduce. They are most hypocritical by their actions, as you suggest. Thanks for your comments. I hope everybody reads them.

  • freerangecheese

    Must suck to be a warmist these days, watching their cause die the a slow painful death like Al Gore’s Presidential ambitions did.

    • erick1740

      No kidding, some of these comments are pretty shrill and desperate. They just cannot let go of this hoax. I think the one dude who thinks he is a scientist / ninja is actually crying.

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