Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming
Headlines are great for getting attention without necessarily having any facts behind your claims. For example: 500 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of "Man-Made" Global Warming.
Now, skepticism is an honorable word and not always deserved, but real climate change skeptics do exist. So with my own healthy dose of skepticism, I looked into this list, and it didn't take long for it to start to crack. I left a comment explaining my disappointment with the misrepresentation in this list - not knowing if the comment would be approved (it wasn't)::
Wow - that's a much more concrete claim than others I've seen, for disproving AGW (even if 500 is a small number). If this turns out not to disprove AGW, I'd like to think we can agree to move past these arguments and just deal with our carbon.
Let's start looking into the details, to see if the papers are actually what they are claimed. Just to pick one issue, on the paper about thickness of ice-sheets and related papers: http://www.factcheck.org/article395.html - some angry scientists who don't like being represented (one pointed out that his findings were consistent with AGW and yet were misrepresented to say the opposite).
Another paper here says: "A new dynamical mechanism for major climate shifts" - their conclusion states that their research "suggests an alternative hypothesis, namely that the climate shifted after the 1970s event to a different state of a warmer climate, which may be superimposed on an anthropogenic warming trend."
Do some hunting for Swanson's opinion on how his past work has been misused - here's a start to help your web search: "What do our results have to do with Global Warming... VERY LITTLE..."
Starting to look like... not even junk science, but simply a misrepresentation of science. How much time have people wasted looking at false claims like this, either believing them, or looking deeper to find that they're false?
If you want to make a more serious effort, put relevant quotes from the papers after each link, so we can see how this relates to your claim (I mean several sentences at least). Otherwise, this is looking, at best, like an inflated list that isn't what it claims.
Of course it wasn't published, though another comment has since been published (a link to a video spoof of climate science).
Now, are there peer reviewed papers that support skepticism of anthropogenic global warming? I'm sure there are - the nature of science is that the truth is complex, and building up a complete picture of anything involves getting things wrong as well as getting things right, and correcting mistakes to gradually complete the jigsaw puzzle. There will be papers that find errors in claimed evidence for climate change, and that improve our understand of some part of the complex whole. If the sum of such papers casts doubt on the bigger picture of our understanding of climate change, then we should ask as a matter of course: is there a systemic bias in the practice of climate science? I haven't seen that happen, but it's certainly possible.
And then what? The mere asking of the question is not enough to say that climate change is not a risk, and stop preparing for the risks. But the question should compel a redoubled examination of the evidence. And if it turns out that climate change is much less serious than we thought, then at that time we can breathe a sigh of relief and turn our energies to more productive things. Has that happened yet? Not by a long shot - the evidence is firmly behind a strong risk of an increase in global temperature of 3 or 4 degrees C or more in coming decades, with serious consequences.
So, skeptics please be skeptical - if you see a list like this, check out the details before praising or forwarding it.
On the wiki:
Relevant pages on the wiki:
- Measures to stop global warming - Can you help to fill out this page with solid facts and comparisons?