The Most Common Skeptical Arguments About Climate Change (from the Grist article: How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic)
- There is no evidence
- The temperature record is simply unreliable
- One hundred years is not enough
- Current global warming is just part of a natural cycle
- It’s cold today in Wagga Wagga
- What’s wrong with warmer weather?
- Warming is due to the Urban Heat Island effect
- The satellites show cooling
- Global warming stopped in 1998
- They predicted global cooling in the 1970s
- Some sites show cooling
- One record year is not global warming
2. Cryosphere & Oceans Temperature
- Glaciers have always grown and receded
- But the glaciers are not melting
- Antarctic sea ice is increasing
- Antarctic ice is growing
- Greenland used to be green
- Sea level in the Arctic is falling
- Kyoto is a big effort for almost nothing
- Why should the U.S. join Kyoto when China and India haven’t?
- Climate change mitigation would lead to disaster
- Hansen has been wrong before
- We can’t even predict the weather next week
- Chaotic systems are not predictable
- We cannot trust unproven computer models
- The models don’t have clouds
- Mars and Pluto are warming too
- It’s the sun, stupid
- Climate scientists dodge the subject of water vapor
- Water vapor accounts for almost all of the greenhouse effect
- There is no proof that CO2 is causing global warming
- CO2 doesn’t lead, it lags
- CO2 in the air comes mostly from volcanoes
- What about mid-century cooling?
- Geological history does not support CO2’s importance
- Natural emissions dwarf human emissions
- Mauna Loa is a volcano
- The CO2 rise is natural
- The US is a net CO2 sink
- Observations show climate sensitivity is not very high
- If aerosols are blocking the sun, the south should warm faster
- It was warmer during the Holocene Climatic Optimum
- The medieval warm period was just as warm as today
- The hockey stick is broken
- Vineland was full of grapes
- We are just recovering from the LIA
- Global warming is nothing new!
- Climate is always changing
- Historically, CO2 never caused temperature change
- If we can’t understand the past, how can we understand the present?
- Global warming is a hoax
- There is no consensus
- The null hypothesis says global warming is natural
- Position statements hide debate
- The scientists aren’t even sure
- Consensus is collusion
- Peiser refuted Oreskes