The Last Frost

Friends of Science My Ass, more like friends of the devil! By devil I mean fossil fuel based energy companies. So these guys have a page on their site listing 10 global warming 'misconceptions', and all 10 are either phrased to mislead or are flat out bullshit… so I'm calling them out.

One myth debunked per-post, for a total of 10 posts. It's like the 12 days of Christmas and the 8 days of Hanukkah… averaged! Anyway, here's part 1 of 10. Read on…

These so called Friends of Science claim that the science behind the Kyoto Protocol is incorrect. Well in their own words, "we offer critical evidence that challenges the premises of the Kyoto Protocol and present alternative causes for climate change." Alright, so they are against the Kyoto Protocol, yet they acknowledge that climate change is occurring, just that it's not caused by people? Fair enough, they don't believe in anthropogenic climate change, so let's jump right into their bullshit global warming myths.

So Called "Myth" #1: Global temperatures are rising at a rapid, unprecedented rate.

Their Argument In A Nutshell: That there has not been, "any significant change in the long term rate of increase in global temperatures" in the last 30 years. Warming has been shown in readings from ground stations, but those readings are invalid because the increase is within the range of natural variation. The ground stations also tend to be placed in areas which are increasing in population and therefore are subject to 'heat island' effects. [Read their original argument here - Myth #1]

The Truth: This is a carefully crafted argument that is designed to guide the reader towards a false conclusion while not actually saying anything false. They argued that there has been no "significant change in the long term RATE of increase". What they say is actually partially true, there hasn't been a significant change in the RATE of warming in the last 30 years, but there HAS been statistically significant warming. Even if the Earth were warming by 10 degrees per year their statement would still be true, that's why it's so misleading and that's why it's bullshit.

They then focus their energy on invalidating ground based data on the basis that they are not uniformly placed across the globe. This also might be a decent argument, but what they fail to recognize is that there is much more data available to climate scientists than just ground based measurements and they all point towards the same conclusion. Global warming is real and human activity is the main cause. There are ice core samples which help correlate atmospheric composition with past warming trends dating back thousands of years. There is now loads of satellite data rolling in which give us accurate big picture measurements which also point towards the same conclusion.

So pick on ground based measurements all you like, but it's not the whole truth.

Common misconceptions about global warming – [Friends of Science]

Digg It | Hugg It |  Email This Post | Report this post

Possibly Related Posts:

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 at 8:06 pm and is filed under Bullshit, Climate Change, Politics, Pollution, Rants, Science, Weather. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.