Why is there so much skepticism from the general public about Global Warming when the science supports it?

Question

In a Gallup poll done in 2008, 97.5% of climatologists who actively publish research on climate change responded yes to the question "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?" On top of overwhelming consensus in the scientific community, the scientific data and models from all over the world of current and historical merged land-ocean surface temperature confirm that our earth is warming and that we play a part in that. There is no denying the data, but then why is there so much debate?

Answer 1

This explains one of several key reasons (deliberate deception funded by fossil fuel companies): http://www.newsweek.com/2007/08/13/the-truth-about-denial.html



Note: If you google "Holocaust hoax," you get over a hundred thousand hits. This does NOT, however, mean that there is "much debate" on the topic amongst recognized scholars of history.



Edit: Notice how the "answer" of Sagebrush here provides zero citations or context for any of the prefab cherry-picked quotes he blindly cuts and pastes from his favorite nitwit anti-science blogs.



Edit to Trevor: While psychological difficulties are certainly a major factor in why people BELIEVE in the anti-science that denies the reality of seriously negative human-caused long-run climate change, it is NOT being "hard on deniers" to point out that, for instance, HALF of the top ten "answerers" in this category of this website are not just believers in anti-science propaganda, but consciously active anti-science liars, and that there is no excuse for such lying.

Answer 2

Well let's start with your survey question and this part: "significant contributing factor". What does "significant" mean? And the human contributing factor consists of much more than CO2 emissions; it includes land use changes and urbanization effects as well.



Then there's the political aspect of anything we do. We identify problems and decide what to do about them. And many times, a completely valid solution is to wait and see as we learn more and collect more data, especially if other solutions involve and lot of cost, resources and questionable benefit.

Answer 3

only the government scientists who are paid to support global warming support it , if I were paid a $150000 per year to write reports supporting it , then I might do that as well



Lets check NASA it says all planets are warming, so how are humans warming Mars or Pluto ? The simple common sense fact is they are not , because they can not plain and simple !!!



And so it is with the Earth as well, You warming guys claim its CO2 yet , measurements show all plants will die at about 200ppm of CO2 , we are at 300ppm on a scale of 0 to 1000ppm so we are near the bottom of the scale ,

Plants are carbon sinks and will regulate the CO2 in the earths atmosphere , so plain and simple normal earth regulation systems are functioning correctly ,,,, ie if humans or volcanos make more CO2 plants grow faster and adsorb it , ,,,, this is a well know and proven fact of nature ,,, so there CAN NOT BE A CO2 PROBLEM we have built in regulation of CO2 on the Earth !!!

Also of course the oceans are all full of plankton that does the same and oceans cover about 2/3 of the planet , that along with land plants = 98% of the earth covered with CO2 regulators called plants

If per a German Science experiment CO2 goes below 200ppm all plants die, so please don't lower CO2 any more or you will kill the entire Earth

Also there are many of you who will deny plants use CO2 and emitt O2 so google it if you don't know or believe that fact that has been known for 100's of years and nobody that has a brain denies it either !!! This is a basic fact of plant biology plain and simple

So global warmers get your head out of your ***

The Earth will and is taking care of itself with out you liberals doing a GOD DAMM THING

Answer 4

Deniers are morally deficient. They are extreme conservatives who take their belief order from Fox news and hate science. The pass lies among themselves, like this guy Maxx who both clings to myths and passes along flat out lies about Phil Jones. These people don't want to learn, and have no moral integrity -- they don't even care that their poor moral character is so easily and often proved.



They know nothing and refuse to admit that people with education know more than they do. They hate science and believe scientists are "liberal".

Answer 5

Skeptics look at evidence and facts while alarmist rely on predictions. When the prediction fails to come true, they just make another prediction.

Answer 6

Many members of the general public do not really understand how science works. Special interests (notably the oil industry, according to the British Royal Society, among others) have taken advantage of this to mount a campaign of misinformation.



They've been aided by far-right wing (not real conservatives) political groups who regard any environmental issue as "liberal" and oppose it solely on that basis, without regard to facts -- or honesty.



It's not unlike the endless stream of fad diets you see promoted by various charlatans. The perpetrators make money by palming off nonsense to people who lack adequate knowledge of how to live a healthy lifestyle and are frustrated by being overweight. The sheer amount of false information is so great that some people are bound to be taken in by the scams.

Answer 7

The sample is not representative in the survey you cited. "97.5% of climatologists who actively published research". You can't just survey people who agree with you. the predictions of doom over the last 50 years have not come to pass.

Are these the same climatologists who falsified research from East Anglian Univ. ?

the people you cited have an agenda to get Americans to accept higher tax rates, reduced standard of living and more government intrusion.

It's a hoax.

Answer 8

Without human influence, infra red radiation emitted from the sun is trapped within the biosphere mostly by water vapour and CO2 which then heats the earth to a life-sustaining average temperature of around about 15 degrees, this is reffered to as 'the greenhouse effect' which is vital for life within the biosphere.

the 'enhanced' greenhouse effect is caused by combustion of carbon-containing fuels, however the effects of this are mitigated by another phenomina known as global dimming which is slowing the immediate effetcs of global warming and creating skeptasism within the regular 'un-educated'/ignorant community.

Answer 9

Not that hard to explain, the general public have little interest in or understanding of science, look at how many times people here confuse Ozone depletion & CFC with AGW & Co2, claiming Co2 causes Ozone depletion, a very silly mistake to make.

The sad fact is people don't want to take the blame for what is happening and will believe any silly story deniers spin to try and avoid that blame for as long as possible.

If you look dispassionately at deniers stories (and they have a lot of them, 170+ and counting) they actually make very little sense "it's the Sun" (when solid data shows it isn't) "it's volcanoes" (when solid data shows it isn't) even to totally absurd claims like "Co2 isn't even a greenhouse gas" when in fact it has been known as a strong greenhouse gas for over a century.

The solid evidence on AGW covers quite a few different fields of science (not just climate science) and is now so large that few serious scientists doubt that it is indeed happening you have sea level rise, glacial retreat, temperature rise, Arctic sea ice decline and changes in ocean acidity also directly linked to the rise in atmospheric Co2

http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/

Who or what deniers will try to blame next is anyone's guess, but as usual they will have nothing to back the claim but blogs and YouTube videos, actually scientific evidence is beyond them.

Answer 10

I would say "fear" ... politically and economically. The oil and gas companies are the major businesses in the world (they are 6 out of the top 10 most profitable businesses in the world). Some countries whole economies run on oil and gas.



Not to mention that these companies employ thousands of people around the world, and also bankroll governments (either through party contributions or taxes).



People "fear" that by "hurting" these companies the global economy will suffer and that the therefore the people will be "hurt". It is the same with any major change ... we "fear" the unknown.



Ironically most of these oil and gas companies are now leading the way with renewable energy resources ... Shell and BP both are pushing hard into this new sector.



Politics are "debating" the issue because of the socio-political impacts of implementing change, and the perceived "threat" to the living standard of voters. I personally believe that governments haven't gone about this the right way, that is they have sort of tried to make people feel guilty about their actions (or inactions) rather than make them feel good about actions!

Answer 11

1. Confirmation bias, and similar brain tricks. Our minds tend to reject "unfriendly" information, however valid; http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2011/03/denial-science-chris-mooney discusses the matter at length.



2. Lack of scientific understanding. Climate science is kind of complex, and some aspects of it aren't very intuitive ("How can it be snowing, if there's global warming?" and so on). Some people disbelieve what they don't understand. (there's something of the same problem with evolution)



3. Flat-out lying, or at least trusting a lying source. I suspect at least some people who deny global warming are skewing (or even blatantly faking) information because reality does not match their political biases, and/or because they are trying to protect some income source or the like that could be threatened by action to stop AGW.

Answer 12

Some people I guess are just afraid of big businesses getting regulated and others just don't believe it's happening. :\ They probably just think it's something hippes/liberals made up or won't believe it till they see it.



Even though we have global warming we also had climate change(different than GW) going on for thousands of years. A good site for anyone to look into climate change/global warming is climate.nasa.gov. Lots of graphs, slides, videos, and info.

Answer 13

In a word – denialism.



It’s a recognised medical condition defined as “the refusal to acknowledge the existence or severity of unpleasant external realities or internal thoughts and feelings.”

http://www.minddisorders.com/Del-Fi/Denial.html



In essence, the affected person constructs a mental barrier that filters out anything they don’t want to know about, whilst still allowing the passage of information that reinforces the victim’s belief. The result of this is, that as time passes, the victim becomes more and more convinced they’re right and everybody else is wrong.



There are several symptoms of denialism, these will be very easy to spot in some of the regular contributors to this form (although their own condition will prohibit awareness of this)



• CONSPIRACY

Claim that global warming is a conspiracy, that it was invented by such and such a person, that it’s the work of the government etc. Common tactic used to avoid addressing the real issue and to avoid having to explain the data.



• SELECTIVITY

Cherry pick the data, focus on exceptions to the rule rather than the rule itself, continually repeat the same discredited notions, quote scientists out of context.



• IMPOSSIBLE EXPECTATIONS

Consistently refuse to accept defeat even when it’s starting the victim in the face. Format – denier asks a question, gets an authorative and correct answer, denier then says “what about…”, “that doesn’t explain…”; it’s a refusal to accept the issue has been addressed. The denier will drag the matter out as long as possible, often repeating themselves and introducing unrelated challenges.



• FALSE AUTHORITY

Claim that this person or that person is an expert when in fact they’re not, defer to lists of fake experts, accept only the word of other skeptics and deniers, overrate the competence of skeptics and deniers whilst underrating the competence of believers.



• LOGICAL FALLACIES

Essentially another diversionary tactic, only effective amongst other deniers. There are thousands of examples, common ones include reference to Al Gore’s house by the sea, calling the other side names, that warming and cooling have occurred naturally, that Mars is warming etc.



So remember, don’t be too hard on the deniers – it’s a psychological condition over which they have limited control.



Further Info:

http://eurpub.oxfordjournals.org/content/19/1/2.full

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/317/5837/425

Answer 14

It just might be because not one "prediction" has come about.



It also might be because the warmie fanatics feel the need to lie time after time about "facts" which turn out to be figments of an overheated imagination, to say the least or deliberate mis truths, when caught out in telling porkies the warmies do not even have the good grace to admit to falsifications.



So called "climatologists" have to persist in the lie or they would be out of work, nobody likes good news.



If you think this is a rant, please feel free to point out one prediction which has proven truthful.

http://digitaljournal.com/article/162241#tab=comments&sc=

Answer 15

Lets look at Maxx's answer before we answer your question.



He claims there is no empirical evidence. I've posted for him time and time again what shows the CO2 is causing the warming, that being the associated frequencies dealing with the rise of energy in the atmosphere, and that humans are the cause of atmospheric increase, humans emits over 33.5 billion tonnes per year while the atmosphere is increasing by 15.6 billion tonnes and the excess is being taken up by carbon sinks. now on to his points.



1) Who cares if the Earth has been much colder and warmer in the past? This has nothing to do with the proof nor disproof of what is causing the current warming. Fire existed before man did as well. Does that mean man can not create fire? No of course not. He states his comment "these are obviously natural cycles" without even looking further at any data or without any explanation as to the cause.



2) A bold faced lie. Alright perhaps calling it a lie from him personally is false. He has however been manipulated by others who have lied. Remember the 'climategate scandal'? Another lie to manipulate those with a certain belief system. He seems to have fed on them.



3) Al Gore is not a scientist and has nothing to do with the reality of climate change. bringing up Al Gore in a discussion about climate change and the reality of it is something people do when they are unaware of the facts and the science



4) Climategate was spoken about previously. It was a manipulative attempt to bring in people with a certain mindset before the big climate conference. Oddly enough climategate 2, which brought out more of the same emails, happened just before another climate conference. I wouldn;t doubt that climategate 3 will do the same.



5) This is a lie. The globe is warming. The warmest years on record have occurred within the last decade. What people who states this are doing is looking at short term variation, mainly things like the ENSO, and coming to the conclusion that itr is cooling or static based on different ENSO cycles such as the El Nino and La Nina cycles.



6) This is another lie brought on by observations that Mercury is warming. Here is a link to the National Geographic article.



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html



note that there are two pages and it being a solar cycle is the minority view. A coule months later this article appeared in the same magazine.



http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/04/070404-mars-warming.html



Pluto is also warming because of seasonal changes. And a moon of Saturn or Jupiter is warming because of internal dynamics.



7) This is a misquotes based on a misunderstanding of what exactly 'statistical significance' means. It does not mean that there has been little or no warming. It is a measure of short term noise to long term trends.



8) Again with Al Gore. Maxx's hero Christopher Monckton, yes the same guy who claims to have found a drug that cures HIV, multiple sclerosis, and about a dozen other problems including the common cold, has also denied an online debate with one potholer54. You can read more here: http://www.leagueofreason.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=9542



9) Delves into conspiracy mode and again goes with Al Gore. the CO2 we exhale isn't what is being taxed, as he has been told before, as it doesn't originate from the geological carbon cycle and is not due to fossil fuel combustion and he doesn't understand current science to make the statement he does.



As you can see his answers are pretty much what every person labelled a 'denier' states. It is filled with politics and ignorance. He seems to ignore everything that is stated against what he states as does every other person who thisnk similar.

Answer 16

http://digitaljournal.com/article/162241#tab=comments&sc=



You might look at this article. That poll doesn't support reality. Were Al Gore and Paul Erhlich two of them which were polled? They are published but they are definitely not climatologists. What is the definition of 'climatologist' according to them? You see a lot of polls are rigged to make the reader switch sides or just to decide to go with the 'majority'.



Besides, consensus is not true science. That is a ploy of the lame. Was it consensus which created the light bulb? Was it consensus which created the Ottocycle, or reciprocal engine? Was it consensus that created the telephone? No it was hard work and ingenuity and going against the consensus, in many cases.



Quote by Gerrit van der Lingen, scientist: “Being a scientist means being a skeptic.”

Yes in true science you take a theory and prove it. You don't just sit around a table and follow the crowd. Doing this has brought down a lot of established companies.



Quote by Will Harper, Princeton University physicist, former Director of Energy Research at the Department of Energy: “I had the privilege of being fired by Al Gore, since I refused to go along with his alarmism....I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect....Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science. The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past.” The mentality in the green movement is to silence the ones who don't agree with you. Does that sound like true science?



Quote by Martin Keeley, geology scientist: “Global warming is indeed a scam, perpetrated by scientists with vested interests, but in need of crash courses in geology, logic and the philosophy of science.”



Quote by Eduardo Tonni, paleontologist, Committee for Scientific Research, Argentina: “The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.”



Quote by George Kukla, climatologist, research scientist with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University: "The only thing to worry about is the damage that can be done by worrying. Why are some scientists worried? Perhaps because they feel that to stop worrying may mean to stop being paid."



Quote by James Spann, American Meteorological Society-certified meteorologist: "Billions of dollars of grant money [over $50 billion] are flowing into the pockets of those on the man-made global warming bandwagon. No man-made global warming, the money dries up. This is big money, make no mistake about it. Always follow the money trail and it tells a story."



How many of those polled scientists had a financial interest in GW? The poll didn't tell you that and deliberately so.



If Global Warming is a fact then why is the IPCC stacked with so many politicians rather than scientists. If it were truly a scientific problem then scientists not politicians should solve the problem.



This is what is in the mind of those who would solve this phoney trumped up crises:



Quote by John Davis, editor of Earth First! journal: "Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs."



Quote by John Holdren, President Obama's science czar: "There exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated...It has been concluded that compulsory population-control laws, even including laws requiring compulsory abortion, could be sustained under the existing Constitution if the population crisis became sufficiently severe to endanger the society."



Quote by John Miller, a NOAA climate scientist: "I would be remiss, as a scientist who studied this, if I didn't mention the following two things: The first is that, most importantly, we need to do, as a society, in this country and globally, whatever we can to reduce population"....."Our whole economic system is based on growth, and growth of our population, and this economic madness has to end."



Quote by Susan Blakemore, a UK Guardian science journalist: "Finally, we might decide that civilisation itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population – weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example."



Are you one of those who will be culled out? That is a radical answer to the problem of GW. Do you want to go along with people like these who haven't proven anything but want to take human lives. Right now it is just picking our pockets and taking away our liberties. But it is evident that down the road we see what these 'geniuses' have in store for us. Right now they take deniers and cast them out of their system. In the future they have a death sentence in store for the unbeliever. Do you really want to go down that path just because a POLL?

Answer 17

The so called scientific consensus is just a lie, I'll give you a link where you can read the whole story about how the silly 97% or 98% percent figures were contrived.



Please read my answer here

https://answersrip.com/question/index?qid=20111126214812AAORznb



Man-made Global Warming belief is still prevalent because the proponents control such massive sums of public funding. The United States alone pours about 2 billion in tax dollars into the Global Warming agenda every year. And world-wide it's many billions more.



And you should not believe the man-made Global Warming scam because it's advocates have no empirical science to back their claim. And their advocacy movement has been mired in scandal since its beginning. Here are some things you should know:



1) The Earth has been both much warmer and much colder in the distant past, long before the industrial age. Climate is indeed changing, but it has always changed and probably always will. These are obviously natural cycles that man does not and cannot control.



2) Global Warming alarmist have been caught in one lie after another. Huge scandals have been continuously revealed since the early 1980’s when the campaign began. Some of these are listed below:



3) Al Gore’s movie "An Inconvenient Truth" was full of bald faced lies. Like the Polar Bears were drowning, or the Ice Caps were melting, or the oceans were rising --- all lies. In fact a court of England ruled the movie was so flawed that it could not be shown to school children without a disclaimer.



4) The ClimateGate affair exposed the utter corruption of the Warmist community with their exposed emails speaking of how they intended to “hide the decline” and how to manipulate data and the peer-review process in their favor.



5) Then there is the fact that the globe isn’t even warming anymore and the small amount of warming experienced from the 1900’s to 2012 timeframe was negligible and well within the envelope of normal.



6) During this same period of marginal warming, scientists also noticed that other planets in our solar system were warming. What do these planets have in common ? --- the Sun.



7) Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit, the Guru and High Priest of Global Warming himself admitted there has been no statistically significant warming. If anyone on the planet would have been aware of statistically significant warming it would have been Phil Jones and he admitted there has been none. (Game Over)



8) Warmist like Al Gore refuse to engage in any formal debate on the issue. That’s because on the few occasions Warmist have debated openly, they lose, and they lose big. Lord Monckton utterly destroys them time and time again.



9) Al Gore and other Warmist have stated clearly that they want to make CO2 the object of a global tax. CO2 is the perfect object for their revenue purposes because you literally cannot live without making CO2, after all, we exhale it. And current science has shown clearly that there is no correlation between the planet’s mean temperature and the concentration of CO2 in the air. Demonizing CO2 is all about the tax dollars, and that’s all its about.



See the scam for what it is and don’t believe any of it.



Polar Bears are doing fine:

http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/190805/20110802/polar-bear-global-warming-extinction-climate-change-research-world-wide-fund-wwf-geological-survey-s.htm



Phil Jones admits NO statistically significant warming

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/15/global-warming-insignificant-years-admits-uks-climate-scientist/



35 major errors in Al Gore’s movie

http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/monckton/goreerrors.html



Court rules Al Gore’s movie unfit without disclaimer (11 major errors reviewed)

http://creation.com/al-gores-inconvenient-errors



Graphs showing that CO2 does NOT drive Temperature

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/correlation_last_decade_and_this_century_between_co2_and_global_temperature/



Warming on Mars -- and Jupiter, Pluto, Neptune

http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=6544



Lord Monckton destroys Warmist in debate (Video)

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/no_wonder_the_warmists_hate_debate/





For the full story on the man-made Global Warming scam watch these:



The Great Global Warming Swindle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ov0WwtPcALE



Global Warming Doomsday Called Off

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3309910462407994295#



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Answer 18

what science supports it, the only thing i see is manipulation

Answer 19

The hype, its like a drug for extremist.

Answer 20

Because in general people are idiots

Answer 21

Nothing confirms crap.