I saw this on ThinkProgress and I wondered: what do most global warming denialists claim is the cause of increased temperatures world-wide? Or do they refuse to acknowledge the increase at all?
“It’s far more likely that it’s just sunspot activity or just something in the geologic eons of time,” he said. Excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “gets sucked down by trees and helps the trees grow,” said Johnson. Average Earth temperatures were relatively warm during the Middle Ages, Johnson said, and “it’s not like there were tons of cars on the road.”
What’s a good place to keep up with all the winger theories on global warming?
Dave
Fox News?
DougJ
@Dave:
No, those are mixed in with other crazy theories. I just want crazy theories on this particular topic.
Crashman
Pretty sure they don’t acknowledge rising temp trends. “Remember all the snow we got this winter?” Yeah, heard that one a few times.
Spaghetti Lee
Oh, these people would be so fun to watch, if they weren’t about to take over the country.
SenyorDave
The Old Testament, wingnuts can use it to explain anything. Just ask Joe Barton, he schooled the Energy Secretary on how oil is formed.
4tehlulz
The Washington Post
dmsilev
However, I’m sure if someone asked him about forestry policies, he’d be an avowed supporter of clear-cutting.
dms
Crashman
“Who cares if we burn fossil fuels? All that carbon was in the atmosphere once anyway!”
/McEstimate
Danny
As a former denier myself I can tell you that it’s a mix of both. Some people think that scientists are misleading the public as to the temperature of the earth (this is how you usually get your jokes in the winter wondering where the global warming is). Several deniers will try to point out that most scientists are undecided on the subject of anthropogenic warming, which is basically untrue.
Some more intellectually honest deniers tend to claim that of course the earth is warming, but it’s just a part of nature (caused by sun spots or just the general conditions of the earth). This is the camp I was in, and I can tell you I usually argued that temperatures tend to vary wildly over time, and this isn’t a bad thing. The Renaissance was caused by global warming, as swamp land dried up creating more arable land and fewer disease carrying bugs. The implication being that this is a natural phenomenon and may have positive implications for human civilization.
I got most of my arguments from a combination of talk radio (Mark Levin seems to talk about this stuff frequently) and Michael Crichton’s State of Fear.
Jay B.
Congress
Zandar
Well, since the answer to any wingnut question is either “Obama” or “tax cuts” take your pick.
dmsilev
@SenyorDave: Heh. I remember that incident. One of my colleagues was a PhD student under Steven Chu, and he said that the expression on Secretary Chu’s face wasn’t his “I’m confused” expression, it was his “I can’t believe I’m talking to an utter moron” expression.
(Grad students tend to see that expression a lot from their advisor…)
dms
Zifnab
It’s 40 flavors of “Not My Problem”. If you’re looking for one prevailing theory, you’re working towards a lost cause. The only consensus I’ve been able to glean is that Al Gore is fat and he has a big house, ergo Global Warming isn’t an issue.
Tsulagi
Thin air? Outer space? For the more technically advanced teaminds, the Random Word Generator? Not constrained to one source, they go with what works. For the moment.
Tonybrown74
I read that excuse, laughed out loud, then realized that these people have so much influence over our public discourse, and now I haz a sad …
Origuy
A Few Things Ill Considered seems to cover it pretty well. Also Real Climate, but that’s already on the blogroll here.
Dave
Watts Up With That? usually has a good rundown on whatever the latest denialist talking point is.
Brachiator
Here’s a little something at the Skeptical Inquirer Site Disinformation about Global Warming
The current issue of Skeptic Magazine has a cover story on Climate Skeptics vs Climate Deniers.
But it’s not just wingnuts. Another science oriented magazine I read now and again ignited a firestorm when otherwise sane, science-oriented readers accused the editors of going Al Gore in giving in to climate “junk science.”
trollhattan
@DougJ
They holster their thermometers from the beginning of spring through mid-fall. Otherwise it’s “Too much data, Mozart, too much data.”
Recommend Denial Depot for snarky recycling of denialista
talkinglying points.http://denialdepot.blogspot.com/
If you can stand wading into an actual denial swamp, here’s a start. I suspect you have the comment-fu to have some fun at their expense.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
J.W. Hamner
Real Climate’s wiki is pretty good.
Midnight Marauder
I believe this site is a prime resource for what you’re requesting.
Danny
I just remembered a good place to go for denial theories. If you’re wanting to go to the source (rather than just getting the theory and the debunking from Real Climate) Joe Bastardi has a blog where he rails against climate change science pretty regularly.
Sharl
My impression (and it’s only that) is that only the most hardcore deniers continue to deny evidence of atmospheric global warming (AGW). The bulk of them now seem to be saying, sure there’s warming, but scientific evidence indicates the earth has had such warm periods before. You can’t prove it is caused by human activity – that’s a scare tactic used by {liberals/socialists/Ivory Tower egghaids/combo platter of all of these} to advance their {socialist/anti-free market/America-hating/combo platter} agenda.
I don’t know if these AGW deniers have a favored online watering hold, so to speak. A couple of their more prominent “leaders” are meteorologist Marc Morano and “Lord” (heh) Christopher Monckton.
Comrade Dread
I don’t know.
But I’m starting to honestly believe that cause of the eventual Apocalypse is going to be about 99% human stupidity killing us all and 1% of divine wrath letting it all happen out of frustration because we refused to use the brains we were given.
KG
I just decided to google “global warming hoax”, this was the first link.
Haven’t read through it yet, but it looks like a decent place to start.
S. cerevisiae
Joe Romm at Climate Progress mocks them often. I can’t believe this idiot is running in Wisconsin and doesn’t see that Lake Superior is at record warmth.
The Moar You Know
The ash heap of history. It’s all in there.
malraux
I suspect that there isn’t a coherent single reality undergirding the denialists’ views. You already have two obviously contradictory views shown here, that the earth isn’t warming and that the warming of the earth is definitely not manmade. Those two views cannot be reconciled, the only real feature they have in common is that they both deny parts of the current consensus.
b-psycho
Exxon has a website, don’t they?
ed
Yeah. That’s it. That’s the ticket.
Thanks for the Science, mister!
Tsulagi
In addition to the random word generator, don’t forget the fountainhead of nutterknowledge, Conservapedia. They got your global warming sunspots right there.
S. cerevisiae
Love the Bob Seger title.
Cacti
I thought the latest denial was that it’s actually getting colder.
Somerville
Others have already named WattsUpWithThat, but you should also check out the science blogs as they keep track of the various deniers and provide clarification and refutation of the multitude of denialist claims.
Tim Lambert at Deltoid, the folks at DeSmogBlog and and Eli at RabettRun are all good sources for info.
DougJ
@S. cerevisiae:
Thanks. Heard that on the radio driving to work last week.
randiego
OT – but has there been an update on Soonergrunt? It’s been a busy week so far for me and I haven’t had time for the threads…
evinfuilt
I’m so happy I get to say this…
There’s an App for that.
I like that it stays up to date, so you’re always able to roll your eyes and counter the denier nonsense.
Roger Moore
I don’t think they have a consistent story. Sometimes they’ll claim that there’s no true warming trend, and it’s all either a fabrication of lying climate scientists or a short term fluctuation. Other times, they’ll admit that there is a warming trend but say it’s either part of a long-term change from the last ice age or because of altered solar output. If neither of those two strategies work, they’ll grudgingly admit that it’s anthropogenic but refuse to follow any proposed solution, either because of the collective action problem, expense, or because geo-engineering would be cheaper.
Of course most of them won’t let themselves be pinned down to any of these. They’ll try their damnedest to stop as far from admitting that we need to do something as possible, and they’ll retreat into full-on denial if they’re not pressed.
John Cole
There used to be TechCentralStation, but I think that is dead. Does the Discovery Institute stick to creationism, or do they dabble in climate change denial, too?
sjcumbuco
Skeptical Science has “a summary of skeptic arguments, sorted by recent popularity vs what science says. You can also view them sorted by taxonomy, in a print-friendly version, or with fixed numbers you can use for permanent references.”
Sentient Puddle
Based on the two wingnuts who sit in the cube across from me at work, I’d say they just make it all up as they go along. After saying “Where’s the global warming?” after getting snow in Texas, one said to the other last week “So did you hear July was the hottest month on record? Yeah, that’ll give those global warming nuts ammunition…”
Mike Toreno
Except for a couple of days, it’s been very mild where I live all summer. That proves there’s no global warming.
Stooleo
The same place where the drowned polar bears go.
Adam C
@evinfuilt: Yeah, Skeptical Science is, IMHO, the place to go.
The sun is still the big one, DougJ, but there’s some recent rumblings about the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and changes in Atlantic overturning. It’s a throw-it-all-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach.
b-psycho
@Sentient Puddle: Next time they say that, just tell them, straightforward, that climate and weather are not identical terms*.
(* – I am not liable if their heads explode)
Dr. Squid
Never mind that there seems to be a kind of anti-correlation of sunspots with global temps. And never mind that the difference between now and the Medieval Warm Period is larger than the difference between the MWP and the ensuing Little Ice Age.
Trees are also fairly inefficient at fixing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Wild prairie grasses with 20-foot deep roots are much more efficient, but hellfire, we cut just about all of it down to grow subsidized corn for ethanol making.
PaulW
Compare to Ryan Paul’s lack of awareness in his latest statements – ones that showed he only cares about the mining companies but not the workers, that showed he had no knowledge of Kentucky history and Harlan County, that showed he had no idea that meth and pot use in Eastern Kentucky are at epidemic levels, and that showed he never watched Dukes of Hazzard – and you’ll begin to see a pattern. Paul, Palin, Buchanan, Angle, this guy Johnson, half the FOX News punditry, Limbaugh, Hannity… all of them. They’re IDIOTS. They don’t know and they don’t care to know. Just whatever gets in their heads makes sense to them even though there’s A) no evidence to prove their thoughts and B) no coherence or consistency to their thoughts.
If we have competency tests for middle schoolers to see if they’re learning basic math and reading, we REALLY need competency tests for media pundits and political candidates to see if they’ve learned basic American history and economics.
morzer
Sarah Palin’s Twitter, perhaps? Quitter’s Twitters from her Sh*tter (TM) seems to be the ultimate convergence point of ignorance, delusion and self-seeking monomania these days. Or you could try James Inhofe’s latest slobbering delusionality.
BR
Watts up with that is a major climate “skeptic” site (edit: as many have linked already).
They’re skewered periodically at climateprogress:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/07/03/watts-goddard-arctic-ice/
Poopyman
@Danny: Bastardi! That explains a lot. I was a year ahead of him at PSU (not in Meteo, though). He was a notable idiot back then.
Some things never change.
randiego
here in San Diego we have our own personal TV weatherman flat-earther, perhaps you’ve heard of him – Mr John Coleman.
He’s the weather guy on an independent local TV station, KUSI. KUSI, trying to out-fox the local Fox affiliate, thought it would be a good idea to give this guy not one, but TWO separate hour-long segments to promote his “science” and bring on other flat-earthers to “educate” the TV viewers in SD about this “fraud”.
His “science” basically comes to this:
1. global warming is not happening, it’s basically global cooling
2. if global warming is happening, it’s not because of “ridiculous” assertions of too much CO2, it’s sunspots, so go ahead and drive your SUV as much as you want.
3. global warming is a fraud perpetrated by Al Gore and scientists, in order to get more grant funding.
Brachiator
Wizard of Oz?
Comrade Mary
Somewhere out there, Mr. Van Winkle has a crystalline tear in his eye over your subtle shoutout, Doug.
New Yorker
@Danny:
You’re right that this is the most (only?) intellectually honest “denier” position to take (the “arguments” that the earth isn’t actually warming are as intellectually bankrupt as Holocaust denial and 9/11 truth at this point).
My response would be: so what? Even if it is natural, it’s going to cause a lot of problems for us as a species, so shouldn’t we do something to alleviate it? If astronomers suddenly spotted another Chicxulub asteroid heading towards the earth, would these people throw up their hands and say “it’s natural” or would they try to do something about it?
(and please forgive my for using an analogy that resembles the worst of Michael Bay’s dubious output)
chopper
alcoholism.
Sue
Hey, all you folks who are so mad at Feingold for taking stands on issues, this is the guy who has a good chance of taking his place.
I’d still rather have Feingold, but this is shaping up to be the race of his career, against an inexperienced almost-teapartier who should have been an easy beat.
Southern Beale
You’ll find global warming denialists at any RW website. They like to do pretend science, there’s some “anomaly” that happened in the Middle Ages they all like to point to, I had a link at one time but basically the scientific debate was over something highly technical which the RWers used to say SEE THERE IS DEBATE!!!! when no, not really.
Here’s the thing. The denialists like to say that there has been climate change for eons and this is true, there have been ice ages and warmer periods and yet there is a REASON for this. It’s not because Earth just got in the mood to don a bikini one millennium. Things like, asteroids and volcanic activity that threw crap into the air and other naturally occuring events all caused the climate to change over the years. And I know there is discussion among scientists as to which particulate matter and gases cause which specific changes, but the fact remains if you pollute the atmosphere with a ton of crap, be it carbon dioxide from industrialization or ash and sulfur and particulate matter from volcanoes, there is going to be an effect.
We can’t do anything about volcanoes and asteroids but we CAN do something about our factories and transportation. In fact, alternatives already exist, are working, are in place, all around the world! Why for the love of God wouldn’t you use them? It makes no sense!
/rant
chopper
‘sunspot activity’ is awesome, given that the sun is only now coming out of a quiet period with few sunspots.
every time i hear that excuse, i ask what the precise mechanism is there with sunspots, but i never get an answer.
morzer
Well, it would start with Sarah Palin demanding that Muslim anchor asteroids not be allowed in American atmospheric territory. Megan McArdle would explain that spending 0.1% of GDP wasn’t a reasonable investment, since America being wiped out by an asteroid strike would never happen, and John Boehner would stand roaring into space “No, you can’t”.
wasabi gasp
God is spooning us with socks on.
General Stuck
It’s the Chicago Way. Blago found guilty on only one count of 24, false statements.
PaulW
We need new thread. Blago is Gone-o as the jury verdict comes in. He’s guilty on at least one count!
Poopyman
@b-psycho:
No worries. Any data that does not fit their pre-programmed worldview is simply jettisoned. Try it! Find a wingnut and tell him/her that the oldest arctic ice is melting and the Northwest Passage is open*. Watch how that bit of data just bounces off.
PS – This is certainly not limited to Global Climate Change (the better term)
* — http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
PaulW
the other counts are declared a mistrial. Should the prosecutors re-try or just stand pat with the guilty of lying to FBI? What’s the penalty on that one charge?
New Yorker
@Southern Beale:
Actually, we could probably use a good massive volcanic eruption right now, as those tend to cool the earth off. If you look at the temperature data in recent years, there was a dip in the early to mid 90s caused by Mt. Pinatubo’s 1991 eruption.
morzer
@PaulW:
1-5 years in prison.
The Moar You Know
@General Stuck: I knew that fucker was gonna skate. The Feds jumped the gun WAY too early on his prosecution.
He’ll see a year or two in some country-club joint, get out, and get a talk show. He’s too entertaining to keep down.
New Yorker
@morzer:
Actually, you’re wrong. If you bring up the Chicxulub impact to a Palinite, they’d deny it ever hit the earth because God created the earth 6,000 years ago and those Jesus-hating lib’rul elitist scientists are lying to us when they claim things happened 65 million years ago.
morzer
@New Yorker:
mmm the question was what happens if we see one heading our way now, not whether the Palinites can even spell ancient history.
Sentient Puddle
@b-psycho: Nah, I elect not to engage in their dumbfuckery. My criteria would be if I had something incredibly snappy to say that is more or less impossible to refute (or at least in the context of them stunned while thinking “shit, I just got sonned”). I’d need something better than “climate is not weather.”
Now if they were to actually bring up the two and say the difference is meaningless, maybe I could get away with saying something like “You know how we can predict that it’s going to be hot in the summer and cold in the winter?”
Chyron HR
@Sue:
Oh, heavens no!
Scamp Dog
@Southern Beale: The point is that the economic changes resulting from adapting to climate change are bad for the currently wealthy. If we start reducing oil consumption, replacing industrial processes with new, less greenhouse-gas emitting processes, etc, the value of current capital drops. And then you have to give money to dreadful technical types to invent new stuff. Worse yet, you have to pay workers to build the new stuff!
How will we ever continue to concentrate our national wealth into the hands of the wealthiest if such soshulistic trends are allowed to occur?
Adam C
@Scamp Dog: This.
They won’t believe in the disease because they can’t stand the cure.
TCG
Doug J
The Best Place to go is Skeptical Science
One more vote for Skeptical Science.
Roger Moore
@New Yorker:
I think that there are usually suggestions that it’s part of a fluctuation, so there’s an expectation that things will go back to normal even if we do nothing. More important, if it’s not caused by dumping CO2 into the environment then we don’t have to stop dumping CO2 into the environment to stop it. If your main funding comes from fossil fuel companies, that’s the most important outcome.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Danny:
Just out of curiosity, what was it that moved you from the “denier” column to “former denier”? That might be nice to know, just in case it works with others. Not to mention that tales of apostasy and epistemic exile are popular on this blog.
gex
@John Cole: They should turn into a one stop shop. They can tackle evolution, global warming, plate tectonics, earth shape, and heliocentrism. And we should rename it the “well you can’t really know anything for absolute certain so why not make shit up” museum.
morzer
@gex:
We already have an organization dedicated to that proposition: Fox News. Remember, there is no God but Murdoch, and Megyn Kelly is his Prophet.
Tonal Crow
@New Yorker: Volcanic eruptions — unless catastrophically extensive– tend to cool climate for only a few years, until the albedo-increasing sulfur compounds rain out.
Bill Murray
@morzer: and that Nolte kid at Breitbart’s Big Hollywood would reminisce bout how much Bruce Willis made it move for little Nolte when he watched Armageddon
Tonal Crow
@gex:
Na. They should rename it “The Nihilist”.
Tonal Crow
@morzer:
Fixed.
ronathan richardson
The smartest denier I’ve questioned on the subject says yes, temps are rising, but it’s all just fluctuations in climactic cycles, as we’ve seen throughout the history of the planet. I then asked him what part of this logic he disagrees with:
1) Temperatures are rising (irrefutable measurements)
2) The levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have been rising in strong correlation with temperature rises for hundreds of thousands of years (irrefutable analytical chemistry measurements)
3) Greenhouse gases trap heat in our atmosphere; without them our planet’s blackbody temperature would be ~ -19C (proven and experimentally reproducible physical chemistry).
He was following until the 3rd, but then he lost interest. I think it’s the physical explanation of the greenhouse effect that loses most of them.
PeakVT
[email protected]: Skeptical Science keeps a long list of denier assertions and their rebuttals.
Willem van Oranje
I wanted to mention Skeptical Science, but since a couple of people already have mentioned Skeptical Science, I’ll refrain from mentioning Skeptical Science again
Danny
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
It’s difficult to say. It was all a part of my move from conservative to liberal. To be fair I was never much of a denier because, while I didn’t think global warming was caused by man, I thought that there was a chance I was wrong about that and switching over to renewable energy resources would break our ties to foreign oil. I thought that was a good enough reason in and of itself to invest heavily in renewable energy (I guess you could call me a Jimmy Carter conservative).
If I had to pinpoint one thing that led me to realize the overwhelming evidence of anthropogenic climate change it would have been my love of biology. Even when I was a conservative I recognized the evidence for evolution, and one day I started reading blogs like Pharyngula and it’s hard to read a lot of legitimate science without learning the arguments against climate denial.
I’m not sure how useful that is, because to change someone’s mind they have to listen to your evidence with an open mind, which most people (even liberals) are reluctant to do. Plus it’s really easy to stay locked in the conservative echo chamber. I know from experience, and from my father…. I could go on for days about that, but this post is long enough.
Larkspur
There’s got to be a song in there somewhere.
Something in the geologic eons of time
Attacks me like it wants me smothered
Something maybe pre-dating the Cretaceous line
Is trying to kill me here
Give me another beer
Nah.
Meanwhile, Scampdog @ 72: ain’t it bizarre? It’s almost like the incredibly wealthy hate their great-grandchildren and don’t care whether they live in a choking, acrid wasteland, with swamps.
befuggled
@Larkspur: Nah, they think they can buy their way out. Suffering is for the little people.
Aunt Moe
Climate Denial Crock of the Week
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610
mclaren
Even the most sensible and insightful commentators are apt to run off the rails about global warming and fall into denialism.
The fabius maximus blog is an excellent source for non-partisan commentary on our failed foreign wars and bloated military-industrial complex and decaying society…but the guy is an adamant fervent global warming denialist.
It’s really bizarre.
Eli Rabett
Watts is the current US center of crazy, but man, those aussies have the best
http://joannenova.com.au/
mclaren
@gex:
Don’t forget economics and recent history.
Everyone knows Obama rammed through the TARP bailout because the economy collapsed under his administration. Also, too, Obama invaded Afghanistan…an utterly disastrous decision.
Fortunately, no terrorist attacks occurred on American soil during the previous administration. You can see that Republicans keep us safe, while Democrats are weak on terrorism!
mantis
Skeptical Science, Skeptical Science, Skeptical Science. Wait, did someone say that already?
Skeptical Science
dan
It hasn’t rained on Long Island in 3 months and the trees are all dying. So who is going to suck up all the excess carbon dioxide? I hope it’s Republicans.
Fabius Maximus
re Maclaren’s comment #92: “but the guy is an adamant fervent global warming denialist.”
That’s incorrect in two ways. First, the debate among scientists concerns the magnitude and causes of the warming over the past two centuries. And so we get different forecasts as to what might happen next.
As for the FM website, most of the climate science citations on it are from major peer-reviewed journals — or general audience articles and press releases from major science-related organizations (most frequent source: NASA).
For a list of the peer-reviewed articles cited on the FM website see the page Science & climate – studies & reports. You might find some of interest.
DPirate
Preschool.
Eric Shaw
I had a neighbor with a theory that global warming was caused by undersea vents. He explained to me that this was also the cause of whales beaching themselves. I would love to direct you to his website, but he doesn’t have one and isn’t likely to have one any time soon because he’s a guest of Uncle Sam thanks to the fact that he defrauded the EPA.