is this "Man-made global warming hoax" thing correct?

Okay, so both sides of the global warming debate will try to persuade you that they’re right and the other side is wrong. To this end they’ll use all manner of questionable tactics to try to win you over to their side.

But science isn’t about taking sides, it’s not about proving one person right and another person wrong.

Science is the intellectual and systematic study of the natural and physical world. It doesn’t come from blogs, YouTube or the media, it comes from the world of academia and the minds of those who have sufficient comprehension of a subject to genuinely understand it (and not simply repeat what others have already said).

So let’s dispense with taking sides and drawing conclusions based on ideals and opinions and instead look at the science behind global warming.

When we do that we find that the existence of global warming is consequent to the most powerful and successful of all scientific laws – quantum mechanics. It’s governed by laws that are universal and invariable. No matter what we think, do or say, we’re never going to change them.

It’s just as well that global warming is real, if it weren’t then we wouldn’t be here.

The atmosphere retains heat because of the presence of greenhouse gas molecules. Most of these occur naturally and it’s this insulative property that provides Earth with a climate capable of supporting life. Remove the greenhouse effect and we lose our ability to retain heat, were that to be the case then Earth would be so cold that it would be frozen solid and no life could ever have evolved.

Greenhouse gases are greenhouse gases, it makes no difference where they come from. If they’re in the atmosphere they’ll retain heat. Today, due to our industrial lifestyles, levels of these gases are higher than they’ve been for at least 15 million years. In terms of carbon dioxide alone, we release more than a thousand tonnes of this gas into the atmosphere every second (33 gigatonnes per year). With ever increasing amounts of greenhouse gases, the atmosphere will inevitably retain more heat.

We can also look to the natural world for evidence that the planet is warming. Every year nearly a trillion tonnes of polar ice is melting, half of all glaciers outside the polar regions have already melted and almost all the others are melting. Plants and animals are responding to the changing climate, growing seasons have extended, birds migrate earlier in spring and later in autumn, spring flowers are appearing earlier.

We can also see from the weather that there’s been a significant change. We now have five times as many floods as we did 50 years ago, the number of heatwaves has doubled, for every cold weather record that’s set there’s seventeen hot weather records. Floods used to be the number one weather related killer, nowadays it’s heatwaves.

It’s also worth considering that almost every climate scientist in the world accepts that global warming is real. Also, there isn’t a single scientific organisation on the planet, either national or international, that disputes the fact that humans are influencing the climate.

As with pretty much any subject, be careful who you get your information from. Climate change is a very complex subject, it’s way beyond the comprehension of all but those who have studied it in detail. In this respect stick to getting information from reputable scientific organisations as opposed to blogs and videos.

PS – If you want verification of any of the statements made please ask.

Many distinguished climate scientists disagree with the consensus view of global warming, to varying degrees. Much of the disagreement is in the details. Some believe extreme weather will be the more costly problem, while others believe invasive species will be the more costly problem, for instance. A tiny minority of scientists even go so far as to suggest greenhouse gases are caused by warming and not the other way around, which would suggest mankind is not completely to blame for global warming.

But these are genuine scientific disagreements based on differing interpretations of data. To call it a hoax is something else entirely. Calling it a hoax implies a vast, international conspiracy of scientists, universities, governments, and other organizations, to fabricate multiple independent lines of data.

All climate scientists agree global warming is happening for one reason or another (and the vast majority believe the reason is human activity). Some people really, really want global warming to not be true, but the only way for it to not be true would be a massive conspiracy just like that. So, people who don't want global warming to be true must reject multiple independent lines of data; the only way to do that is to buy into the conspiracy theory, regardless of the total lack of evidence such a conspiracy exists.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, even in the wake of the Climate Research Unit e-mail thefts (so-called Climategate), no legitimate investigation of climate research has ever uncovered evidence of wrongdoing. The only appearances of wrongdoing are in the eyes of journalists and documentarians who do not understand how science works. For example, "Swindle"'s Martin Durkin often, instead of doing his own original research, takes data out of other scientists' research then comes to different conclusions than the researchers, although he does not have a background in science so is not particularly qualified to be second-guessing the people who know the research best.

See below for a partial list of -real- investigations into the matter.

This global warming thing made up to get Ignorant people to vote for the Democrats. About 10 people made at least $400,000,000 on this nonsense lead by Al Gore. Not one bet of truth coming out of these freaks mouths. The are stealing all they can carry off.

no one knows for sure there is a big controversy about global warming

If you like YouTube videos instead of reading actual science journals, then I'd suggest that you check out these two channels. They very effectively refute just about every denier lie and myth...

Denier Crock of the Week [greenman3610]:

http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610/videos

Potholer54:

http://www.youtube.com/user/potholer54/videos

[re: Maxx's answer]

>>I am by far the biggest promoter of those two videos on this board.<<

Yes, your spamming ridiculous.

Also the lies about the accuracy of those videos are pretty brazen...

[re: Ian's answer]

>>It is a hoax.<<

That's stupid.

>>If you look at actual FACTS presented by skeptics<<

Yes, but all means, do *NOT* look at the facts presented by anyone who accepts AGW!

>>you will see that there is no runaway greenhouse effect<<

I don't think anyone is saying there is a runaway greenhouse effect. Is that straw in your hair?

>>and that all predictions made by the brainless alarmist zombies have been proven false.<<

Which predictions are those again? Um... Isn't all that straw in your pants itchy?

>>You can easily differentiate between a skeptics argument against CAGW and an alarmist argument in favour of CAGW.<<

Yes, you usually can. The 'skeptic' feverishly calls those who accept AGW names and lies and makes false claims about what they are trying to say while the 'alarmist' tries to rationally explain the science behind the theory and gives reliable sources to back up their argument.

>>Skeptics use facts.<<

I see no facts in your argument...

[re: jim z's answer]

>>Ian is correct.<<

No, he's not.

>>I would just add that they don't simply redraw the line and make another prediction.<<

When new evidence arrives, predictions have to change. It's simple really.

>>Alarmists exaggerate any evidence which suggests humans have caused the warming.<<

Human's *have* caused warming. Denying it won't make it stop...

>>They exaggerate the supposed consensus and what it really means.<<

No, Deniers exaggerate a reliance on a consensus and what it means.

>>They exaggerate their knowledge<<

Unlike a certain believer in squatch's...

>>and any one that calls them on it is called a denier.<<

No, we call those who deny AGW despite all the evidence that supports it. BTW, denial means that you are certain that AGW is not real or a hoax with no doubt that you are right. That is not how a skeptic thinks...

>>An inconvenient truth literally contained a lie or exaggeration in just about every sentence.<<

Totally unlike the posts here you see from deniers, including your own... lol

>>He bought a sea shore mansion<<

See? That's a lie. You know very well that the property isn't on the ocean, but only has an ocean-view...

[re: Fred's answer]

>>Note that "an Inconvenient Truth" was ruled as not being factual by a UK court and can note be use as educational material.<<

And that is an exaggeration... It wasn't ruled as not being factual and *can* be used as educational material.

_

Did you watch this video too?

http://youtu.be/COrP0J6GwrU

You were convinced by videos that lie from videos posted by an evolution and science denying member of Yahoo Answers. And even when the errors in the video are pointed out to him he continues posting the same exact videos in every answer. The Great Global Warming Swindle is equivalent, roughly, to An Inconvenient Truth. Both videos are not by scientists. There were 9 errors found in Al Gore's movie. There are many times more found in the Great Global Warming Swindle.

I also find it odd that Maxx often posts exactly the same thing about who was in the movie, despite after the fact some of those people complaining because the movie said something differently than their personal knowledge on the subject, and when it is brought up that every scientific organization on the planet acknowledges anthropogenic climate change he turns a blind eye. Weird, weird stuff.

-----

Maxx: The Great Global Warming Swindle is chalk full of errors many of which have been brought up in here before. You have been provided with the data and the evidences. You've chosen to ignore that. Both An Inconvenient Truth and The Great Global Warming Swindle were made by non-scientists. One of the producers of these two videos actually studied this in University however. Guess which one? The bottom line is you can post all the youtube videos you want. I can rebut your claims with other youtube videos. However youtube videos are not how science is shared. Science is shared through accredited scientific journals.

Spectral calculator for background: http://spectralcalc.com/spectral_browser/db_intens...

Peer reviewed studies -

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI42...

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/11/13421/2011/acp-1...

http://rspa.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/464...

And so on. Notice the differences between the links you posted and the last links I posted?

Edit: And you can tell that all the thumbs down and such are due to an increase of anti-science deniers in here. apparently they would rather get their science from blogs and youtube videos instead of scientific journals. I think you guys need some serious help. I mean you have been stating you use 'science' and such recently yet you basically deny the existence of scientific journals.

Deniers play a two edged sword they say you should not trust Al Gores documentary, but you should trust theirs (swindle) which at last count had many more listed errors and errors that related to actual data rather than esoteric points on whether a fly over ice is real or taken from the movie "The day after tomorrow" which is seriously one of the point denier try to use against Gores documentary, what that has to do with the scientific content of his documentary is something only deniers seem to think is.

I would say trust neither stick to science site for your info like NASA, NOAA, NSIDC, but denier don't like that option as it makes it all to obvious that if people did that deniers would have nothing to link to, which is of course why you see many YouTube vids posted by deniers because they can post anything they want, with no vetting process to check it's validity another favorite is blogs again no.

Compare that to peer reviewed publications were papers are first edited by a number of experts (unknown to the authors) and then read and followed by thousands of other scientists in similar or related fields, this is the full power of peer review, not just the 3-4 who edit/review the paper, a point deniers continue to mis-understand (intentionally I think)

For a number of years deniers have tried to claim yet another (how many is that now) conspiracy over not being able to get their theories published, yet we are talking about dozens of journals each with different sets of reviewers and it's not just 3-4, each rotate through dozens of different scientists who do the reviewing and they are unknown to the author to avoid any issue of helping a buddy.

There is no conspiracy, denier can't get their theories published because they are awful science, when you have theories that claim it's because of the Sun, when there is solid evidence of the Sun's activity going back 60 years showing no activity that would explain AGW, then you see why they can't get published.

The sad nature of denial can be seen in maxx's answer, note how the number of errors in gores film goes from 35 when referencing a denier website to 11 when they tried taking it to court.

The full list of 35 were presented in the court case, but 2/3's were dismissed by the judge, again deniers ignore that when referencing the legal case that they lost.

Then there's the list of experts many are the same old faces, you will see referenced on most denier websites, also note maxx fails to mention two of the scientists in that listed claimed their comments were taken out of context and asked to have their content removed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Global_Warm...

The GGWS was deliberately mis-leading using graphs that ended in 2000 (when the doco was made in 2007) to try and show what they claimed was a decline in temperature, 2000 onwards by the way is listed as the warmest decade in the modern record, so it's pretty obvious why the journalist would leave that out, given how warm 2005 also was, sort of makes a joke of the idea of cooling he was trying to claim.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2010/13#gtemp

Note that Inconvenient Truth is scientifically factual enough to be used as science curricula in high schools in both the UK and the US, where the videos you watched and not because they are not factual.

Was the GWS a flat-out fraud? Read what one of the scientists involved said about it:

"Never before, however, have I had an experience like this one. My appearance in the "Global Warming Swindle" is deeply embarrasing, and my professional reputation has been damaged. I was duped---an uncomfortable position in which to be."

-- Carl Wunsch

This is Prof. Wunsch' statement on his personal site at MIT.

http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/respons...

You should know that Friis Christensen effectively retracted his entire claim that the warming of the environment was due to sun spots once he was busted by other solar researchers. He clarified to say the 0.14 degrees per decade of warming (which is 100% of what we have seen) is specifically no due to solar activity. That is not shown in the films because it is more recent but dishonest people like Maxx do not tell you that. The video is very old in terms of climate research.

If you have a specific question about the films, ask those questions. You don't want to be another idiot who can only say hey watch these videos while being totally unable to explain the content and who the participants are.

Stick to real science.

Hoax is being nice.

Because of the money involved SCAM is a better word.

The lies deniers use can best be seen in freds answer, deniers tried to get ICT stopped from being played in schools, they lost the case and ICT was allowed to be played in British schools.