Nearly half of Americans are climate change deniers.
They have their reasons.
Al Gore said it nearly 20 years ago. Dealing with the effects of the carbon dioxide humans are putting into the air is an "Inconvenient Truth."
A great many Americans deal with the difficulty of ending our dependance on fossil fuels as a primary source of energy by denying the "truth" and emphasizing the "inconvenience." My blog post a week ago listed eight of the assertions I encounter among climate change deniers. Two climate activists, Alan Journet and Hogan Sherrow, address their arguments by citing evidence that the objections of climate science deniers are factually wrong.
Alan Journet is Co-facilitator, Southern Oregon Climate Action Now. SOCAN is a science-based grassroots volunteer organization. Dr. Alan Journet retired from Southeast Missouri State University in 2010 after a career teaching Biology and Environmental Science.
Hogan Sherrow has a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Anthropology. He has studied the impacts of climate change on human and animal populations on two different continents. He is the Director of the Rural Oregon Climate Political Action Committee.
Guest Post: A response to the arguments of climate science deniers.
Visitors to the blog “Up Close, with Peter Sage” recently encountered an array of claims by climate science skeptics, implying that climate scientists do not agree about the dangers of climate change. Here we explore each of those claims and try to address the embodied misinformation.
The first claim accepts the reality of climate change but asserts that it is part of a natural cycle. According to this claim, “Climate-change skeptics note that the earth’s climate fluctuates,” and that there are numerous examples to show that climatic conditions in the past were drastically different than they are today. While this is accurate, it misses the point that the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the rate of planetary warming have increased exponentially since the industrial revolution as humans have come to rely on fossil fuels (Figures 1 and 2). In fact, this is one of the most basic and agreed upon results of climate science.
The second point takes a completely contradictory position by claiming that we are not warming. The assertions are that determining what “normal” is when it comes to climate is nearly impossible (true because ‘normal’ has no meaning for a constantly changing condition) and that the earth was warmer during the Roman empire. Climate scientists have been studying and modeling our climate since at least the 1970s (Buis 2020 Study Confirms Climate Models are Getting Future Warming Projections Right).
The claim that the planet isn’t warming is not supported by the evidence. A 2021 reconstructions of global trends (Figure 3) reveals no period over the past 22,000 years warmer than today (Roman or otherwise),. We are experiencing the warmest global temperatures since our emergence from the last ice age.
Point three asserts that, “Nothing Americans might do matters.” This accepts the global nature of the climate crisis but rejects the conclusion that to be successful in tackling greenhouse gas emissions, we need everyone to pull their weight. The assertion that nothing the U.S. does matters because of emissions from China and India is false. The U.S. remains the second largest national emitter of greenhouse gases, while on a per capita basis we substantially exceed both China and India. Not only do our emissions matter on a global scale, if we don’t do what we can do, we have no credibility in urging action upon others.
The fourth claim is that the CO2 warming effect is modest and that water vapor and clouds are far more important than CO2. This misses the contribution of other greenhouse gases together causing at least a third of the warming. It’s also false because water vapor molecules fluctuate in the atmosphere in response to temperature; they are responding to warming and cooling, not causing it. Additionally, water vapor lasts only a few days in the atmosphere compared to other greenhouse gases which last for years or even centuries.
The fifth claim is that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are not hazardous because indoor CO2 levels are often much higher, especially in crowded spaces. The reference to indoor carbon dioxide concentrations of 1000 parts per million is irrelevant. The impact we are concerned about is how greenhouse gases are causing global warming.
Claim 6 is that “More CO2 is good for plants...” asserting that, “Americans have conflated CO2 with pollution. CO2 isn't smoke. CO2 is good. It is plant food, the building block of life. We pump CO2 into greenhouses to make plants grow better. CO2 will make the earth greener so forests will grow better, and farms will be more productive.” While it is true that plants use CO2 during photosynthesis, it is not the limiting resource for plants. We use N/P/K fertilizers and water our gardens because these are the limiting resources for most plants - not CO2. Meanwhile, increasing CO2 results in reduced crop nutritional value and greater consumption by insect pests.
The seventh claim argues that we need more CO2. It brings us back to normal.” There is no ‘normal’ in a constantly changing climate, only averages over some arbitrarily defined historic period. There are no adherents in the climate science arena to this claim – whatever it is.
The last claim refers to the Milankovitch set of Earth orbit and axis cycles. While the Milankovitch cycles suggest that we are moving into another glacial period, our greenhouse gas emissions have compensated so significantly that we are actually in danger of the opposite – moving into another global hothouse phase. The concern is that this would destroy our natural ecosystems globally, including our natural plants and animals and our agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
Climate scientists develop conclusions from objectively collected and analyzed data and use intensely verified models. The result, from over 200 years of this work, is that over 97% of the world’s climate scientists agree that greenhouse gases (not just carbon dioxide) resulting from human behavior (largely fossil fuel use accelerating since the industrial revolution and land management) are causing warming of the atmosphere and planet which, in turn, causes the climate chaos we now experience. Unlike climate scientists, skeptics have no consistent explanation but offer merely an array of mutually contradictory opinions that have not been substantiated.
Not only do the claims presented provide no consensus regarding climate change, but most are ideas promoted by individuals who are not basing their ideas on objective assessment of evidence and data. In fact, most of the claims are long debunked propaganda generated by fossil fuel corporations and their allies to deny the scientific conclusions facing us all.
While, indeed, many of those polled in the U.S. don’t think climate change is real, or that it is a major problem, this is inconsistent with the consensus among climate scientists. The discrepancy results from how the evidence is communicated to the public. Communication challenges and the conflation of climate science consensus with ill-informed public opinion are topics that can be explored more fully in a later contribution. We thank Mr. Sage for providing us the opportunity to respond to the claims presented in his earlier blog entry and look forward to further public discussion about how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Great climate reality summary. You both have been climate champions for years! I wish I could say our work is done but we know we need to keep pushing - hard!
wonderful important over view, presented more clearly than I've ever heard. now I understand what those folks are saying and where it came from. Big thanks to you all!!!