How much of a lunatic fringe are the climate change-deniers?

Question

Like most people, I believe in man-made climate change, but I do not think that all those who do not believe in it are fruitcakes.

For my BSc dissertation in 2004, I did a study on the literature pertaining to the subject, and much to my surprise found that those who believed global warming is driven by changes in solar activity comprised about 25-30% of the authors in journals such as "Science", "Nature", "Climatology" and so on and so forth.
This was just what I found by studying academic literature, and my advisor also said to me that this was about a fair reflection of what relevant academics believed.

It was a big surprise to me. It's hard not to think that the issue is hugely politicised, and not believing in global warming denotes a heavy stigma to the denier. It does sort of strike me that unlike other scientific theories that have at least a *little* credibility, like expanding earth theory, or punctuated equilibrium, the politicisation of this issue means it will never be addressed in a scientific manner in public.

25-30% really does not strike me as a lunatic fringe, rather a large minority.

Answer 1

" I did a study on the literature pertaining to the subject, and much to my surprise found that those who believed global warming is driven by changes in solar activity comprised about 25-30% of the authors in journals such as "Science", "Nature", "Climatology" and so on and so forth. "



I somewhat disagree with Dana's opening remarks. It's not so much flat out wrong as it is ambiguous, at least from your descriptoin of your study, and a good advisor would have pointed that out. First, solar-induced climate change is not mutually exclusive from anthropogenic climate change. Believing that natural drivers of climate exist is not loony denial at all. One needs to distinguish between past warming and more recent warming (last century or half century). There are many studies that suggest solar variation is a driver of past global warming or climate change, such as the slow modest temperature swings between MWP and LIA periods. Some suggest solar increases played a role in early 20th century warming. The studies that suggest the strongest impact also indicate it can't explain warming over the last several decades, and most indications are that solar varation has been in the cooling direction. The strong majority of solar physicists would indicate that. So if you limited your research to recent warming, your 20-30% figure would fall off a cliff. No one's been able to come close to explaining recent warming with natural drivers.

Answer 2

"...For my BSc dissertation in 2004, I did a study on the literature pertaining to the subject, and much to my surprise found that those who believed global warming is driven by changes in solar activity comprised about 25-30% of the authors in journals such as "Science", "Nature", "Climatology" and so on and so forth.

This was just what I found by studying academic literature, and my advisor also said to me that this was about a fair reflection of what relevant academics believed. ..."



That isn't surprising at all. The massive amount of money being funneled into the science requires a crisis. That is the nature of politics. Remove the crisis or eliminate a cause that is something that can be changed and you remove the motivation for the funding. If it is caused by the sun and essentially completely natural, minus some unknown human contribution. and you eliminate most of the funding.



It is only alarmists deny climate change. They are the ones that had to revise history and defy the consensus of science to eliminate the MWP and the Little Ice Age. They needed to blame it all on humans. You are confusing who are the actual deniers of climate change. So what if humans contributed a minor amount of warming. Thinking of that as some kind of crisis is typical paranoia that defines the irrational activists.

Answer 3

Are you talking about the public or the scientists? For scientists, it's 3%. That is lunatic fringe. For the public it's around 25%. There was a recent poll saying 75%+ still believed in AGW, down from 84%. But there's a bulk of 20% who supported Bush till the end, believe in reptilian aliens, think the sun revolves around the earth, etc. 20% of Americans are simply flat-out insane.

Answer 4

I would agree that those that think that man can cause 0 warming are on the fringe side, but even the statistics that the warmers throw around all of the time of 97% believe is not really good support. 97% believe exactly as I do, that man has caused some warming. Though, I don't think Dana, who uses this statistic quite regularly would call me anything but a denier, with some other choice words like stupid, idiot, etc. thrown in for good measure. My basic problem is that I have modelled. I know quite a bit about modelling. I have a PhD in stats, so I should. Modeling is not precise and can quite frequently lead to exponential increases of exponential decreases in the future modeling, when these increases and decreasing are highly unlikely. I have no proble with them saying that the temp MAY continue to rise in a linear fashion and us see a 1.7 degree increase in the next 100 years. I have no problem with them saying that we have had some warmig caused by man. My problem is that they intentionally scare the public with doomsday prediction of 7 degree temp increases solely based off of modeling. It gets worse. The only backing they have for the model is paleoclimate data, which is very incomplete, can capture only a few of the hundred of variables that would go into climate modeling. and the variables it does capture are surrogates of surrogates. To make matters worse, they assume that the entire correlation of CO2 and temps is because CO2 causes temp increases, when in fact temps changes also cause more CO2 to be placed into the atmosphere. This problem alone means that all of their models will overestimate the warming caused by more CO2.



Going by the empirical data collected, we should expect to see <2 degree change in temps from a doubling of CO2, yet they try to scare us with 3-5, based off of models that have failed to make accurate predictions and are known to be highly unreliable when models chaotic systems. And I am the unscientific idiot for bringing these problems to light?

Answer 5

In the same context: people should highlight and correct things that are miss-edited, just wrong, or have/has ulterior motives. It happens in every field of endeavor, this is no exception. Most people will not take the time to question anything if it agrees with their own views. Especially Alarmist.

Answer 6

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How would you account for this? Ninety per-cent is not particularly strong, as far as scientific statistics are concerned.>>



The IPCC is more concerned about looking moderate and appeasing their critics (who, of course will not be appeased) than in doing serious science. They consistently underpredict things, and some of their methodology to accomplish their fetish of moderation is actually obviously incorrect. For example, I have repeatedly noted that they estimated future sea level rise using methodology that ignores land-ice melting and land-ice falling into the ocean, the two MAIN causes of sea level rise.

Answer 7

Just what is a "peer-reviewed scientific study"?

I see, someone tells a porkie, then runs round to all his mates, who incidentally are on the same gravy train, or have their snouts in the same taxpayer funded trough and says, please agree with me or we might lose our funding?

More power to Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli on investigating Mann, when he launches a successful prosecution against this fraud, I'll erect a statue to him.

The IPCC depends for its very existence on perpetrating this AGW myth, it could hardly carry on obtaining public funds if it was called "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that we knew was fraudulent but we couldn't tell the truth else we'd all be out of a lucrative job" could it?

Doesn't have the same ring to it somehow.

Answer 8

some people make a living or profit from the oil and coal industries . they have a vested interest in denying global climate change - to acknowledge it would cut into their bloated profits .

besides , the millions of tons of toxic pollution they put in the air and water will kill us sooner than the earth going into a runaway greenhouse .

Answer 9

In 2004 there was a great deal more debate than there is now. You might recall that the IPCC report of 2001 more couched than the 2007 report. What the 2001 report caused was a massive increase in climate research. The tools and the quality of research improved in great ways in between the reports. Those who deny global waming now, after so much more good research, are not totally a lunatic fringe but are largely frustrated, fearful uneducated conservatives who harbor hatred for academics in general, very directly for environmentalists, and largely for anybody who they believe are trying to infringe on their rights to live as they please. There are no deniers now of global warming now among climate researchers.



The study of the sun seems to have advanced rapidly also since 2001 (though perhaps I was merely not aware of much of it until recently). Some solar researchers have provided strong evidence that much of the warming caused in the first half of the last century was driven my varrying irradiance. We may also have learned that the cooling in the second half was caused as much or more by changes in the sun as by global dimming as was largely believed previously. But many solar scholars went out on a limb by claiming that changes in the sun were great enough over overwhelm greenhouse gases, but that did not happen. We did not cool as they predicted during the solar minimum though the flatness may have been contributed to by the sun as well as by the La Nina. But despite the cooling effects of both the sun and La Nina, the earth did not cool but stayed very warm -- until rapidly warming in the last year with the dispersion of the La Nina even as we remained in the very quiet portion of the suns cycle. In the past year, we no longer hear solar scientists denying the effects of greenhouse gases even while they believe the IPCC missed on solar effects.



Sun cycles might explain more of the warming of the past century than the IPCC claimed, but they cannot explain the warming of the past 30 years. This is likely to be a much bigger topic in the next IPCC Assessment in 2013.



Those who add to our knowledge are not lunitics. But those who deny global warming might indeed have awareness shortfalls.

Answer 10

"Those who deny global waming now, after so much more good research, are not totally a lunatic fringe but are largely frustrated, fearful uneducated conservatives who harbor hatred for academics in general, very directly for environmentalists, and largely for anybody who they believe are trying to infringe on their rights to live as they please."



Couldn't have put it better myself.

Answer 11

eddie,



I'm a lunatic, and I've yet to hear a copper bottomed argument for man made GW, so there's one for your list.

BTW try not to sound so self important your question was hard to understand after the first para, so I did'nt try much because you appeared so pompous.

Answer 12

I think you may be a lunatic. "Most" people don't believe in it. But I suppose "Most Lunatics" do!

Answer 13

Your supposed dissertation conclusion is wrong, plain and simple. Not one single peer-reviewed scientific study has attributed more than one-third of the recent warming to solar effects, and all but one put it in the 0-15% range, mostly close to zero.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/solar-activity-sunspots-global-warming.htm



I don't know what papers you found, but they were not from peer-reviewed journals like Nature and Science.



*edit* sorry if I came off as harsh, but you're making a statement which I know from my personal research is factually incorrect. If you believe you've found even one peer-reviewed study (authored by someone other than Scafetta) which attributes more than 15% of the warming over the past 50 years to solar effects, honestly I would like to see it. Because other than Scafetta (whose flawed study puts it at 25-35%), I can't find any, and believe me I've looked. Almost every peer-reviewed study puts the solar contribution to global warming over the past 40 years at 0-10%. The link above has a good summary.



Here's a good study by Meehl et al. (2004) attributing about 80% of the warming over the past century to anthropogenic effects vs. about 10-20% to solar effects, and about 0% over the past 50 years to solar effects.

http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/ccr/publications/meehl_additivity.pdf



There are a number of other attribution studies which have arrived at similar conclusions. Certainly it's hard to calculate, but it's been done.



*edit 2* "But I remember reading the IPCC report which said there is a "90% probablity" that man-made GW is a reality.

How would you account for this?"



Actually the IPCC said it's "very likely" that humans are the dominant cause of global warming, and defined "very likely" as greater than 90% certainty.



I would account for this by agreeing. As shown in the rest of my answer, the scientific literature is quite clear that humans are the dominant cause of global warming right now. Frankly 90% is a low number - most climate scientists are nearly 100% certain about this because the evidence is so overwhelming, as I summarized here:

http://www.greenoptions.com/wiki/global-warming-and-climate-change-causes

http://www.greenoptions.com/wiki/fingerprints-of-human-caused-climate-change



However, 'very likely' is about the most confidence the IPCC assigns to any statement. I think there is one level higher which corresponds to greater than 99% probability, but they rarely use it.