Global Warming Misinformation

There is much information out there about global warming that is either patently false or highly misleading. On Friday November 20, 2009, I gave a public talk on this problem titled: Global Warming: Separating Fact from Fiction. The PowerPoint slideshow has been converted into a .PDF file that can be freely downloaded.

The links below elaborate in much greater detail on the points made in my presentation. The best sources that addresses the misinformation are John Cook's Skeptical Science: Examining Global Warming Skepticism and The Climate Institute's Climate Change: Making Up Your Mind.

John Cook sums up the hypocrisy of the global warming denialosphere this way:

There are a number of skeptic arguments against man-made global warming, many of which are mutually exclusive. You can't blame global warming on the sun one day, El Nino the next day and CFCs the day after, all the while claiming global cooling is occuring although this is in doubt because of suspect surface measurements.

• Fiction: There is No Consensus

• Fiction: Consensus Isn't Science (What About Galileo?)

• Fiction: There are Thousands of Scientists Who Say Humans are Not Causing Global Warming

• Fiction: The IPCC is Politics - Not Science

• Fiction: Global Warming is Caused by the Sun

• Fiction: Global Warming is Caused by Cosmic Rays

• Fiction: Global Warming is Caused by the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)

• Fiction: CO₂ Lags Not Leads Temperature

• Fiction: CO₂ Concentration is Too Small to Change Climate

• Misleading: Water Vapor is More Important Than CO₂

• Fiction: Glaciers are Growing

• Fiction: Global Warming Has Stopped Since 1998 or There is Global Cooling

• Fiction: Scientists in the 1970s Were Predicting a Coming Ice Age

• Fiction: Surface Temperatures are Unreliable Due to the Urban Heat Island Effect (UHI)

• Fiction: Global Warming is Caused by El Niño (ENSO)

• Fiction: Volcanoes Emit More CO₂ Than Humans

• Misleading: Nature Emits Much More CO₂ Than Humans

• Fiction: Climate Models are Unreliable

• Fiction: We Cannot Predict Weather So how Can We Predict Climate?

• Fiction: Greenhouse Effect Has Not Been Measured – Only Modeled

• Misleading: CO₂ Has Been Much Higher in the Past and It Was Colder

• Fiction: Sea Ice is Increasing

• Fiction: Scientists Are Getting Rich from Grant Funding

• Fiction: Scientists Holding an Anti-AGW Viewpoint Cannot Get Funding

• Three Major Reasons Why There is So Much Misinformation

• Introduction
• The Scientific Consensus
• Determining the Climate Record
• Impact of Greenhouse Gases
• Climate Change: The Smoking Gun for Humans
• Natural Causes of Climate Change
• Global Cooling?
• Climate Models & Accuracy
• Modern Day Climate Change
• The Global Warming Denial Machine
• Reasons for the Misinformation
• How to Talk to a Conservative about Climate Change
• Summary of Key Points
• Suggested Reading

Last updated: 07/14/10