Is Global Warming a Myth?
Environmental Skeptics Not Convinced by Climate Change Evidence
Climate change is not a one way street. Although the vast majority of scientific opinion says global warming is a fact and man made, there are dissenting voices.
The majority of people now accept the evidence of global warming and climate change. In a paper titled “Public Opinion on Climate Change Issues in the G8+5 Countries” submitted to the website usclimatechange.com on March the 15th 2007, Thomas L. Brewer compared multi-country surveys including a 17-country survey conducted in mid- to late 2006 by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and WorldPublicOpinion.org and a “30-country survey in late 2005-early 2006, conducted by GlobScan during October-January” and concluded that, “Overall, the results indicate that strong majorities in all countries consider climate change to be a serious problem, with the level of concern up substantially in nearly all of the countries since 2003”.
Notwithstanding the seemingly majority opinion on climate change, there is a dissenting lobby that is sceptical of climate change and claims global warming is not happening or if it is then it's not man made. This group of activists is made up of scientists, organizations and commentators who question the evidence of climate change and the causes of global warming.
Dr Fred Singer
Dr. Singer was Professor Emeritus of environmental science at the University of Virginia, specializing in planetary science and global warming and is now the Director of the Science and Environmental and Policy Project. He is the doyen of environmental skeptics and is co author of the best-selling Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1,500 Years. In the first paragraph of the executive summary of the The Physical Evidence of Earth's Unstoppable 1,500-Year Climate Cycle published in 2005, at page 2, Singer claims, “The Earth currently is experiencing a warming trend, but there is scientific evidence that human activities have little to do with it. Instead, the warming seems to be part of a 1,500-year cycle (plus or minus 500 years) of moderate temperature swings.”
Professor Paul Reiter
Paul Reiter is a professor of medical entomology at the Pasteur Institute in Paris, France. He disagrees mainly with the processes used in producing climate change reports. In the closing paragraph of his testimony to the US Senate in April 2006 he said, "A galling aspect of the debate is that this spurious 'science' is endorsed in the public forum by influential panels of 'experts.' I refer particularly to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”.
Bjorn Lomborg
Bjorn Lomborg was associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark until 2005 and is now Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School. Unlike many climate change skeptics, Lomborg accepts the reality of climate change but argues in an interview with the Daily Telegraph (UK) on the 12th December 2004 that, "We need to stop our obsession with global warming, and start dealing with the many more pressing issues in the world, where we can do most good first and quickest."
Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC)
An umbrella group set up by Dr Fred Singer to mirror the work done by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from a climate change skeptical viewpoint.
The George C. Marshall Institute
The George C. Marshall Institute (GMI) is a non-profit organization founded in 1984. William Happer, Chairman of the Board of Directors, is Eugene Higgens Professor of Physics, Princeton University and William O'Keefe, Chief Executive Officer of the Marshall Institute, is President of Solutions Consulting, Inc. The first page of their website declares their mission is to "encourage the use of sound science in making public policy about important issues for which science and technology are major considerations." It concentrates on issues in national security and the environment spheres.
The Importance of Peer Review of Global Warming Studies
These are just some of the activists that tend to take a skeptical view of the global warming debate. Their views range from outright “global warming denial” to “climate change is a natural phenomenon” position. They question the science behind the climate debate, the means of assessing the evidence of global warming, the effect of solar activity on climate, the role played by carbon dioxide and the correctness of computer models used to generate the future effects of climate change.
Ordinary laypeople should not be expected to have the expertise needed to judge the minutiae of the evidence for or against global warming. That is something that should be left to the scientific community to do and is accomplished by the process of peer review, whereby scientific work, research or ideas are subjected to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field.
So far it is those scientists who believe that global warming is a fact, and that it is largely man made, that seem to be winning in the peer review process, thus their ideas are the ones that the public tend to believe. Climate change skeptics are going to have to produce much better peer reviewed work if they hope to change public opinion on global warming.
