Why I Have My Doubts About “ Global Warming ” and “ Climate Change ” By

Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 2014

Meteorologists and other atmospheric science experts are playing important roles in helping society respond to climate change. However, members of this professional community are not unanimous in their views of climate change, and there has been tension among members of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who hold different views on the topic. In response, AMS created the Committee to Improve Climate Change Communication to explore and, to the extent possible, resolve these tensions. To support this committee, in January 2012 we surveyed all AMS members with known email addresses, achieving a 26.3% response rate (n=1,854). In this paper we tested four hypotheses: (1) perceived conflict about global warming will be negatively associated-and (2) climate expertise, (3) liberal political ideology, and (4) perceived scientific consensus will be positively associated-with (a) higher personal certainty that global warming is happening, (b) viewing the global warming observed over the past 150 years as mostly human-caused, and (c) perception of global warming as harmful. All four hypotheses were confirmed. Expertise, ideology, perceived consensus and perceived conflict were all independently related to respondents' views on climate, with perceived consensus and political ideology being most strongly related. We suggest that AMS should: attempt to convey the widespread scientific agreement about climate change; acknowledge and explore the uncomfortable fact that political ideology influences the climate change views of meteorology professionals; refute the idea that those who do hold non-majority views just need to be "educated" about climate change; continue to deal with the conflict among members of the meteorology community. 3 Capsule In a survey of American Meteorological Society members, perceived scientific consensus was the strongest predictor of global warming views, followed by political ideology, climate science expertise and perceived organizational conflict.

As most everyone is aware, there is considerable controversy over climate change. It has become a political football of course like many other issues. What is particularly perplexing is that denial or acknowledgement either way seems to mostly follow from social media or some other politically connected source. Why a significant number of people don't believe that the climate is changing is some sort of sociopolitical phenomena, not based on scientific data and directly tied to rampant political polarization and tribalism. To the deny-ers, the idea of climate change seems to be irrationally characterized as some sort of conspiracy, to what end heaven only knows. The fact is that world wide data from NOAA and other agencies is indisputable. The temperature of the earth is rising, the ice caps are melting, weather phenomena is getting more severe, the oceans are warming and becoming acidified and on and on…….Scarcely a day goes by that we don't hear about it in one form or another. The graph below depicting the global average temperature rise relative to the average temperature from 1951-198 over time is one manifestation of this change.

Journal of Scientific Exploration, 2015

This booklet poses and answers 20 questions about climate change, followed by a section on "Basics of Climate Change." If it had been published by an activist environmentalist organization, it could safely be ignored as a self-confessed piece of propaganda. But it can hardly be ignored since it comes from the top scientific institutions in the United States and Britain and might therefore be presumed to provide the most judicious available assessment of its chosen subject. Nevertheless, it is propaganda, not a scientific assessment. It argues from authority and distorts evidence in doing so. The very term "climate change" in this context is rhetorical sleight of words. Until a few years ago, "global warming" was the universally used shorthand for human-caused (anthropogenic) global warming (AGW). But since there has been no appreciable warming globally for the last 15 years or so, the critics of carbon emissions have been using the term "climate ch...

BMJ, 1998

Editor-The apocalyptic tone that Smith adopted in relation to the environment bears little relation to reality. 1 In his editorial Smith asserts, "virtually all scientists agree that global warming is happening." Global warming is now joining the list of "what everyone knows." Whether most scientists outside climatology believe that global warming is happening is less relevant than whether the climatologists do. A letter signed by over 50 leading members of the American Meteorological Society warned about the policies promoted by environmental pressure groups. "The policy initiatives derive from highly uncertain scientific theories. They are based on the unsupported assumption that catastrophic global warming follows from the burning of fossil fuel and requires immediate action. We do not agree." 2 Those who have signed the letter represent the overwhelming majority of climate change scientists in the United States, of whom there are about 60. McMichael and Haines quote the 1995 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is widely believed to "prove" that climate change induced by humans has occurred. 3 The original draft document did not say this. What happened was that the policymakers' summary (which became the "take home message" for politicians) altered the conclusions of the scientists. This led Dr Frederick Seitz, former head of the United States National Academy of Sciences, to write, "In more than sixty years as a member of the American scientific community. .. I have never witnessed a more disturbing corruption of the peer-review process than the events that led to this IPCC report." 4 Policymaking should be guided by proved fact, not speculation. Most members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change believe that current climate models do not accurately portray the atmosphereocean system. Measurements made by means of satellites show no global warming but a cooling of 0.13°C between 1979 and 1994. 5 Furthermore, since the theory of global warming assumes maximum warming at the poles, why have average temperatures in the Arctic dropped by 0.88°C over the past 50 years? 5

Risk Analysis, 1994

A set of exploratory studies and mental model interviews was conducted in order to characterize public understanding of climate change. In general, respondents regarded global warming as both bad and highly likely. Many believed that warming has already occurred. They tended to confuse stratospheric omne depletion with the greenhouse effect and weather with climate. Automobile use, heat and emissions from industrial processes, aerosol spray cans, and pollution in general were frequently perceived as primary causes of global warming. Additionally, the "greenhouse effect" was often interpreted literally as the cause of a hot and steamy climate. The effects attributed to climate change often included increased skin cancer and changed agricultural yields. The mitigation and control strategies proposed by interviewees typically focused on general pollution control, with few specific links to carbon dioxide and energy use. Respondents appeared to be relatively unfamiliar with such regulatory developments as the ban on CFCS for nonessential uses. These beliefs must be considered by those designing risk communications or presenting climaterelated policies to the public.