Climate Change … Real or Not?

Peer Reviewed Science Some people make claims with no science background Some scientists make claims outside of their own expertise, but lean on their “science” background for legitimacy Peer reviewed scientists have their work carefully scrutinized by other experts in their field; if these experts don’t agree to the validity of the scientific work, it doesn’t get “published” (doesn’t see the light of day)

An Inconvenient Truth (Al Gore) Problem is real, pressing, and caused by humans 90% of his assertions were supported by the peer- reviewed scientific community Problems with film include – Ambiguous time frame for rising sea levels (implied imminent, reality 100 yrs or so). Eg. no Pacific islands have been evacuated – Implication that Katrina was caused by climate change (no way of knowing, but impact of cc is more frequent, more destructive extreme weather events) – Some other impacts similarly cannot be conclusively connected to cc – You can’t actually see the impact of the “Clean Air Act” in the Antarctic ice core samples Gore’s connection of cc to humans lies in the unprecedented rise in CO 2 (more than any other time in history, so can’t be “natural”)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) IPCC was convened through the UN – it is a group of approx peer reviewed climate (and related … eg. oceanographers, glaciologists) scientists from countries all around the world Governments around the world take their cc science direction from the IPCC, albeit grudgingly in the case of Canada The IPCC now says that there is “incontrovertible” evidence that the climate is warming and that so much evidence now exists that scientists are "virtually certain" human activity is the main driver of climate change, which means they are at least 99 per cent sure. The IPCC has largely moved on from the question of “real or not” to “how do we avoid/mitigate the worst impacts, and who should pay for this mitigation”

Great Global Warming Swindle Movie was a response to A.I.T., and attempted to debunk Gore’s facts Does not really try to deny warming; instead tries to deny the human connection to warming – Variation in (sun’s) solar radiation influences climate; we’re now in middle of increased activity – Claims CO2 lags temp; not the other way around Director was sued for scientific inaccuracies of previous film; so was TV station that aired it IPCC scientists trashed it Many scientists in film were not scientists, or were completely outside their expertise, and/or received funding from big oil lobby One scientist in film sued, saying he was taken completely out of context Graphs were intentionally manipulated to tell different story

ABC on Great Global Warming Swindle Debunking Great Global Warming Swindle What to do when faced with uncertainty Some other Youtube perspectives: