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Scientific skepticism is healthy. Scientists should always challenge themselves to expand their knowledge and improve their understanding. Yet this isn't what happens in global warming skepticism. Skeptics vigorously criticise any evidence that supports man-made global warming and yet uncritically embrace any argument, op-ed piece, blog or study that refutes global warming. So this website gets skeptical about global warming skepticism. Do their arguments have any scientific basis? What does the peer reviewed scientific literature say? Thursday, 2 September, 2010Climate change: Water vapor makes for a wet argumentWhen skeptics use the argument 'Water vapor is the most powerful greenhouse gas', they are trying to imply that an increase in CO2 isn't a major problem. If CO2 isn't as powerful as water vapor, which there's already a lot of, adding a little more CO2 couldn't be that bad, right? What this argument misses is the fact that water vapor creates what scientists call a 'positive feedback loop' in the atmosphere — making any temperature changes larger than they would be otherwise. Posted by James Frank at 9:40 AM | 18 commentsWednesday, 1 September, 2010Carbon dioxide equivalentsGuest contribution by Dr Chris McGrath Posted by Chris McGrath at 5:22 PM | 15 commentsWednesday, 1 September, 2010How we know an ice age isn't just around the cornerAccording to ice cores from Antarctica, the past 400,000 years have been dominated by glacials, also known as ice ages, that last about 100,000 years. These glacials have been punctuated by interglacials, short warm periods which typically last 11,500 years. Figure 1 below shows how temperatures in Antarctica changed over this period. Because our current interglacial (the Holocene) has already lasted approximately 12,000 years, it has led some to claim that a new ice age is imminent. Is this a valid claim? Posted by Anne-Marie Blackburn at 9:59 AM | 25 commentsTuesday, 31 August, 2010Urban Heat Islands: serious problem or holiday destination for skeptics?The Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI) is a phenomenon whereby the concentration of structures and waste heat from human activity (most notably air conditioners and internal combustion engines) results in a slightly warmer envelope of air over urbanised areas when compared to surrounding rural areas. It has been suggested that UHI has significantly influenced temperature records over the 20th century with rapid growth of urban environments. Posted by mothincarnate at 11:04 PM | 32 commentsTuesday, 31 August, 2010The surprising result when you compare bad weather stations to good stationsThe website surfacestations.org enlisted an army of volunteers to photograph US surface temperature measurement stations and document stations located near parking lots, air conditioners, or anything else that might impose a warming bias. They found that 89% of the stations did not meet the US weather service siting criteria in one way or another. That is not good. Does this prove that a US warming trend is just the artificial influence of parking lots and air conditioners on the temperature record coming from bad stations? Posted by Jim Meador at 9:25 AM | 57 commentsMonday, 30 August, 2010The empirical evidence that humans are causing global warmingWhen presented with the overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming, many people react by asking "but how can we be sure that we’re causing the warming?" It turns out that the observed global warming has a distinct human fingerprint on it. Posted by James Wight at 9:45 PM | 42 commentsMonday, 30 August, 2010Sea level rise: the broader pictureSea level rises as ice on land melts and as warming ocean waters expand. Sea level rise mutually corroborates other evidence of global warming as well as being a threat to coastal habitation and environments. Posted by doug_bostrom at 10:26 AM | 72 commentsSunday, 29 August, 2010Human CO2: Peddling Myths About The Carbon CycleBefore the industrial revolution, the CO2 content in the air remained quite steady for thousands of years. Natural CO2 is not static, however. It is generated by natural processes, and absorbed by others. Posted by gpwayne at 6:14 PM | 17 commentsSaturday, 28 August, 2010Why we can trust the surface temperature recordSurveys of weather stations in the USA have indicated that some of them are not sited as well as they could be. This calls into question the quality of their readings. Posted by John Russell at 7:41 PM | 30 commentsSaturday, 28 August, 2010Ocean acidification threatens entire marine food chainsNot all of the CO2 emitted by human industrial activities remains in the atmosphere. Between 25% and 50% of these emissions over the industrial period have been absorbed by the world’s oceans, preventing atmospheric CO2 buildup from being much, much worse. Posted by Michael Searcy at 10:11 AM | 37 comments |
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