Refuting the climate denialists’ conspiracy theories on global warming

Fiddling with global warming conspiracy theories while Rome burns  The latest global warming conspiracy theory of ‘fiddling with the data’ is nonsense. Guardian, Dana Nuccitelli, 12 Feb 15 It shouldn’t need to be said, but the Earth really is warming. Air and oceantemperatures are rising fast, ice is melting across the planet, ecosystems are shifting, sea levels are rising, and so on.

The latest zombie climate myth to rise from the dead involves the oldest form of global warming denial. It’s a conspiracy theory that the Earth isn’t really warming; rather, fraudulent climate scientists are “fiddling” with the data to introduce a false warming trend…..

In reality climate scientists process the raw temperature data for very good reasons. Sometimes temperature monitoring station locations move. Sometimes the time of day at which they’re read changes. Sometimes changes are made to the instruments themselves. In each case, if adjustments aren’t made, then biases will be included in the data that don’t reflect actual changes in temperatures.

Richard Muller at UC Berkeley was skeptical that climate scientists were doing all these adjustments correctly, so he assembled the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) team to check the data for themselves. The biggest initial financial contribution to the project came from the Koch brothers.

As Muller discusses in the video below [see original article] , his team confirmed that the Earth’s surface temperatures are warming. In fact, BEST finds that NASA, NOAA, and the UK Met Office have slightly underestimated the warming over the past 15 years…..

This particular conspiracy theory is an old one, but it’s easy to understand its origins. Certain groups have an ideological opposition to the government policies that would solve the global warming problem. If the problem doesn’t exist because scientists are fudging the data, then voilà, those distasteful policies aren’t necessary.

Global warming denial can usually be traced back to this sort of ideological bias. That’s why contrarian attempts at scientific arguments like Booker’s are so poor,contradictory, and transparently wrong. These myths are just a means to an end; that end being the opposition to climate policies. Any argument that seems to justify that climate opposition will suffice, no matter how flimsy.

Unfortunately, the problem we face is a real one. Scientists only make adjustments to the data where they’re scientifically justified. The accuracy of those adjustments has been confirmed over and over and over again. And the adjustments slightly reduce the long-term global warming trend. Moreover, even if you distrust it, “fiddling” with data doesn’t make ice melt or sea levels rise. Nature’s thermometers register global warming too…….

As a society we’ve usually been smart enough to acknowledge the dangers we face and take action to mitigate them, even with environmental threats. When people resort to conspiracy theories and slip into denial, it’s time to stop listening to them and instead look for serious voices who are trying to find palatable solutions to the problem. http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/feb/11/fiddling-with-global-warming-conspiracies-while-rome-burns

Climate change is the one massive and unrelentlingly growing threat to life on this planet. However the threat from nuclear war and nuclear accidents is an equal threat, and could even bring rapid climate change.

Some new converts to the idea of climate change are the proponents of the nuclear industry, who claim, (quite incorrectly) to have the cure for climate change. In fact, to go down the “nuclear power cure” route, is to give the fossil fuel industries more time, while we all wait for this spurious cure 

February 13, 2015 - Posted by Christina MacPherson | climate change, spinbuster