A growing number of people think the risk of climate change is exaggerated, according to a Gallop poll. About 4 out of 10 Americans think the media overestimate the threat, the highest in a decade of polling. Although the majority still believe the media get it right or underestimate the problem, this number has been falling, while those who think its overblown is rising.
What’s ironic about these stats is that they almost directly precede a statement by hundreds scientists that climate change is actually worse than we originally thought. Meeting in Copenhagen on Thursday, nearly 2,000 researchers issued a statement that global warming is not only “accelerating” beyond the worse predictions, but the changes were threatening to trigger “irreversible” climate shifts on the planet.” These statements, which update the the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, offer stark forecasts. The panel previously predicted a sea level rise of 18 to 59 centimetres by the end of the century. Those figures have now been revised upwards, to between 50 centimetres to one metre. When a consensus of international scientists warns that the problem is worse than predicted, the media doesn’t need to exaggerate: accepting the facts is hard enough.
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About 4 out of 10 Americans think
That’s about right.
The people claiming that climate change is “accelerating” are clearly out of their tree. Global temperatures have been dropping for ten years. So anything they have seen in the natural world is just that, natural variation.
When they predicted a larger sea-level rise, this was based on no evidence at all. The subject of the report was not that sea levels are increasing, it was that the predictions are increading while sea levels remain the same.
The more these so-called experts utter such clear malarkey, the more people will cease to believe their rhetoric.
Those people you refer to are the vast majority of scientists, SF. If you don’t believe them, then you might as well tear pull the wires out of your computer since they obviously didn’t know what they were talking about when they talked about sending information over an unmoderated network of wires through magnetic pulses.. obviously some sort of preposterous idiocy.
Thwimmer………Breathe, relax. When temperatures fall for 10 years in a row, despite increasing CO2, people are bound to wonder if the theory holds water. Observed temperature (GISS and HadCRU) is now far enough below the IPCC AR4 models as to invalidate the models with over 95% confidence. Maybe global warming is a disaster about to kill us all, maybe not, but just because you lack the background to examine the question rationally doesn’t mean the rest of the public should be forced to contract out their thinking to others.
Peter: Myth. Busted.Twice over.
So who have you contracted your thinking out to?
Are you kidding? Every single piece of scientific evidence points to human-affected climate change. Bush had an elite team put together to try to poke a hole in the theory, and they couldn't find anything wrong with it. The Arctic sea ice, which was predicted to disappear by 2100, is almost completely gone. Look at the pictures. Look at the evidence that's staring the world in the face.
sf,
When you refer to ‘global temperatures’ you mean that the Hadley record of SURFACE tempatures has shown a decrease since 2003, with 1998 being the warmest year on record.
Using that record to claim that GW is bogus is well….laughable.
1. Take a look at the overall trend (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!):
http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/ns/cms/dn14527/dn14527-4_629.jpg
Yes, the Hadley centre data had a slight decrease in the past decade, but it is still about 1 degree warmer than before 1920
2. One of the other major surface records, Nasa’s Goddard, has 2005 thw warmest year on record.
Of course, your point about natural variability having impact is important, just not the way you think:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14527-climate-myths-global-warming-stopped-in-1998.html
” Doesn’t it show that the world has cooled since the record warmth of 1998, as many claim?
Not necessarily. The Hadley record is based only on surface temperatures, so it reflects only what’s happening to the very thin layer where air meets the land and sea.
In the long term, what matters is how much heat is gained or lost by the entire planet – what climate scientists call the “top of the atmosphere” radiation budget – and falling surface temperatures do not prove that the entire planet is losing heat.
….
ater stores an immense amount of heat compared with air. It takes more than 1000 times as much energy to heat a cubic metre of water by 1 degree Centigrade as it does the same volume of air. Since the 1960s, over 90% of the excess heat due to higher greenhouse gas levels has gone into the oceans, and just 3% into warming the atmosphere (see figure 5.4 in the IPCC report (PDF)).
Globally, this means that if the oceans soak up a bit more heat energy than normal, surface air temperatures can fall even though the total heat content of the planet is rising. Conversely, if the oceans soak up less heat than usual, surface temperatures will rise rapidly.
This is why surface temperatures do not necessarily rise steadily year after year, even though the planet as a whole is heating up a bit more every year. Most of the year-to-year variability in surface temperatures is due to heat sloshing back and forth between the oceans and atmosphere, rather than to the planet as a whole gaining or losing heat.
”
So yeah, sure, the surface temperature isn’t as high as it was when the ‘98 El Nino transferred a bunch of the ocean’s stored energy to the atm/surface system…..but both the ocean and the surface/atm systems are accepting more heat than they give out, and will continue to do so.
Well sf, I hate to tell you but the debate really is over now. Noted “climatoligist” Prince Charles has weighed in and after having studied the issue with his sharp mind has declared the apocolypse now, unless we, for all intents and purposes, shut down the modern world. He goes on further to say that every other priorety must be put on the back burner including third world poverty and preventing the next depression(I kid you not). I guess when you are born wealthy and have never had to work a day in your life you never have to worry about things like jobs, paying the morgage, etc. Ironically he and his useless extended family produce more hot air than many third world countries. I guess he’s worried if the planet warms up it might cut short his ski season in the Alps, where you can usually find him and a bunch of other family drones this time of year. No doubt you will find Suzuki and Big Al there as well, hole up in an expensive chalet telling everyone else, in very earnest terms, to suck it up. No doubt Dumbo Ears will tell us all to eat cake. Cheers.
Isn’t this more a comment on how media influences us? (i.e. we are more concerned about the economic ‘crisis’ rather than the environmental ‘crisis’ and therefore don’t ‘care/believe’ as much?). I have no idea if these learned people are right or wrong but I do think us simple folk can change our opinions as often as our underwear based on what’s on the front page.
and how that poll was conducted too. polls are easily manipulated; i always take them with a huuuge grain of salt.
The louder you people scream, the more it’ll appear to be overhyped when the promised catastophe keeps failing to appear.
In thirty years, the current climate change hysteria will look as quaint and self-evidently silly as the overpopulation panic of the 70s.
lets hope so….but why not make small personal changes now? with all the evidence in front of your faces, pollution, etc..people can empower themselves by taking action. Im going to start a vermi-composting in my daughters classroom, hopefully it will catch on to the rest of the school.
Why do we still need petrolium products? because unfortunately, so many jobs depend on this broken system of over-abundance!
Given the tenor and tone of coverage accorded this issue by the main stream media, it is amazing that the ranks of sceptics are growing. Maybe people finally pay attention to the true state of climate science (as opposed to the fictional state promoted by the IPCC) when various carbon suppression schemes threaten their standard of living.
Alexandra Shimo puts a lot of stock in the fact that X-number of scientists buy into the IPCC stance. That faith illustrates what is wrong with much of the reporting on climate change. If the media weren’t such scientific illiterates, they would understand that consensus (or the appearance of same) does not matter in science. It is the results of the scientific method that matter and those outcomes are not validated by polls or media popularity. They are validated when other scientists cannot disprove them.
The warmies would have us believe this is settled science because they have a political agenda whose progress requires that this be the accepted view. A just-concluded international conference in New York on the topic of climate change shows this science is anything but settled. Is it too much to expect some fair and balanced reporting on this issue from the media? Some very important and potentially expensive public policy decisions rest on this science so the public needs to hear both sides of this story, not must warmist propaganda regurgitated by the mainstream media.
Blah, blah, blibbety blah.
There really should be an age threshold on these blogs, no baby biffers allowed!
JMD,
Surely, your point that science should never be accepted from theauthority of consensus is N.B.
However, the facts collected in WG I, and the predictions made from them represent the what is the best we can get from scientific method- the best system that fits the physical facts.
Although consensus of opinion has no impact on scientific method, the consensus of physical data DOES.
I mean, you arguing that we can’t accept a bunch of scientists opinions is valid- but in this case it is a bit like claiming that the scientists consensus that gravity exists and is predictable is bunk because it is based on scientists opinion. In both cases of GW and gravity, what is important is that the scientific method has found a consensus of fact.
Certinaly the sceince isn’t settled- anyone who knows the science will readily admit that water vapour feedbacks introduce quite a bit of uncertainty, which is probably what you are referencing. That doesn’t mean that everything else is unknown though!
The whole AGW case is built on computer model outputs. Those models cannot possibly encompass all the variables present in a non-linear, chaotic system like the earth’s climate. So the modellers fill in the gaps with suppositions and guesswork. In the meantime we have real world data that points to other factors far more significant than atmospehric CO2 levels as drivers of climate change.
(Why has the earth cooled a bit in the last 10 yearfs while CO2 levels have risen steadily? If CO2 is the potent force the IPCC says it is, those temperatures should not have fallen. Obviously more powerful factors are in play.)
I just want the media to recognize these realities and do fair and balanced reporting on this issue instead of relying on the aura of authority that surrounds pronouncements from the politically-motivated IPCC. If there were more (hell any) journalists with scientific backgrounds this reliance on “official science” might not be a problem.
Because you’re measuring from 1998. http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/11/4/175028/329
And you’re measuring from 1850. Take that graph back another 150 years.
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/Warm_periods.jpg
The IPCC has failed to predict a single thing with any accuracy whatsoever.
in the shade of denial and opinion everything appears cool even though the mean temp around remains the same. but hey, i thought for example that good religious naysayers actually read/heard of the the Christian version of the Hebrew scriptures at least which clearly has the earth ending in mucho Galactic Warming catastrophe non? i also thought that, for agnostics alike, scientific evidence (empirical/observed/measured) was supreme; wishing something away because it’s too inconvenient or because you’re too preoccupied is folly.
actually, the GW issue has never been most important for me; more relevant, i think, is that we are likely to destroy ourselves by generating harmful pollutants that destroy our environment long before we go up in a huge galactic fireball.
the existence of humanity more likely ends with an asthmatic wheeze or coughing to death, not a whimper or a sizzle, if we don’t learn to be responsible and clean up our act.
i’m just sayin’…
i forgot to add where G-d says, “i will destroy them that destroy the earth”. might be worth a “selah” where you can pause and think calmly/soberly about that.
I agree with you. The time and money spend adressing the phantom menace of global warming could be more usefully employed dealing with real air and water pollution that actually makes people sick. CO2 is not a pollutant; it is essential to life on earth. When we inflate CO2 into some overarching menace, we take our focus off the real threats.
Well, said. Have you noticed how the eco-fraudsters have ratcheted up the rhetoric to apocolyptic levels since Obama came to power. I guess the 100 million or so Big Al has collected selling hot air credits wasn’t enough so he is now claiming the entire Arctic ice pack will be gone in less than five years. Don’t take my word for it. You can see his crazy pronoucement on U-Tube. Finally he has been caught in a whopper we will not have to wait 50 or 100 years to see debunked. Of course Gore has also made pronoucments in the past claiming to have invented the internet so I guess you have to look at the source. Like anything else, all you have to do is follow the money to find out who’s doing what and why. I find it astonishing that anyone would blindly accept at face value doomsday climatic searios based on computer models. There are so many variables to be factored in that we can’t get a weather forcast with any reliability past 72 hours. How in the world are they so bloody sure they know what’s going to happen years, decades or a century down the road. I think I will hold off on buying that beachfront property on Baffin Island for a while yet. Cheers.
uhmmm…JMD did you even *read* what i commented or just couldn’t wait to try to co-opt my intent or what? “in the shade of denial and opinion everything appears cool…” is what i stated above; i do not discount the fact that our earth is warming up–but the cause.
and by your ill-gotten gain i see you breathe CO2 then…hmm; something rather strange about that.
The question “Is the threat of climate change exaggerated” is misleading but symptomatic of the massive confusion and distortion of the issue by most Main Street Media and politicians, many best-selling authors and a myriad of member-soliciting organizations.
Climate change is one of the most important determinants for cultural evolution – it has always shaped the rise and decline of civilizations, sometimes subtly, often very dramatically. Warmer periods typically have brought great advances that have then been followed by colder dark ages. Examples: the Roman Optimum, when the centurions crossed the practically glacier-free Alps to expand their Empire all over Europe; the Medieval Warm Period, when the Vikings settled Greenland and explored Atlantic Canada; and the Little Ice Age with the Thirty Year War, famines and pandemics. Or, going back further – it’s climate change that shook early cultures at the end of the last Ice Age – cataclysmic floods are well-documented in numerous legends and the resulting massive sea level changes are now being confirmed by geologists and anthropologists.
Today, the shrill claims “we need to stop/combat/fight climate change”, “the debate is over” and “the science is settled” are either opportunistic power grabs, orchestrated moneymaking schemes to exploit environmental guilt or well-meant apocalyptic confusions. If one uses such bellicose terms, wouldn’t it serve to define what kind of climate change is meant and who the enemy is that needs to be fought so urgently? The proponents of such dire rallying cries, be it President Obama, the hapless Stephane Dion or a multi-national environmental NGO, always mean anthropogenic or man-made climate change, brought on by this dastardly polluting life gas CO2. We all spew it into the atmosphere with every breath, trees absorb and respire it and we contribute it with abandon through our SUVs and coal-fired power stations.
Surely, these eco-warriors and Planet Earth saviours don’t mean to imply that we could combat real, i.e. natural climate change? That we feeble humans could influence the cosmic and planetary forces of solar storms, cosmic rays and their poorly understood interplay with that grand hot water bottle, the global ocean? Or that atmospheric blanket that keeps us at liveable temperatures? If they mean that, they are delusional – the supporting scientific facts are mounting despite those huge institutional and political roller coasters. Kyoto has clearly demonstrated that it is but a forum for “Hot Air” discussions and a waste of tax payers’ money to shuffle thousands of functionaries to exotic locales. The concept of global temperature differentials of fractions of degrees is quite meaningless, as are the computer models that drive the craze – let’s measure changes in ocean heat content! Of course, it‘s meaningful trying to embrace better habitat stewardship and to understand Earth’s metabolism so that we can respond and adapt to natural climate change and further prosper while facilitating developing worlds to increase their standards of living – that requires objective science instead of agenda-driven doom-and-gloom clamouring.
In short, it’s time to stop the foolishness. Such opinion polls are starting to reveal that the populace is waking up. The efforts for Kyoto Two may run into turbulence – only nine months left. Time is now for concerted action towards some sanity, aimed at tackling real world issues.
Very well put. The only quibble I have is when you mentioned Obama as a true believer in the hot air nonsense. He’s a pretty quick study and if you noted his statement in Ottawa about “opening a dialouge”, “exploring new techologies”, bla,bla bla. He has no intention of demolishing what little remains of the North American economy to placate a handful of eco-loons. He just took a page out of the old master’s (Cretian) play book. Talk it to death, form commitees to study the problem, hold round table disccussions, and so on, anything to shut the loonie toons up. You will remember after a dozen years in power the only thing Cretian did was allow the nutty professor(Dion) to name his dog kyoto. Iggie is the same way. God, he is now enamoured with the tar sands of all things. I think the tide has turned. Now people have far too real problems to deal with. Make believe problems only sell when people have more time and money on their hands than they know what to do with. That is certainly not the case now.