The scientific evidence that global warming is happening and why it is happening is overwhelming, but what isn’t clear is why so many are vehemently disputing the observations and conclusions of so many experts. I believe that climatologists and other global warming experts must become adept in a new discipline: The Psychology of Denial.

As pointed out in the above article, it is likely that nearly every climate change believer, including me, is really a climate change denier. And the only difference between climate change “believers” and climate change “deniers” is how vocally we express our denial side of climate change.

Let’s have a poll, climate change “believers”: What are you doing to help mitigate global warming? Be honest. Just getting the scientific-based global warming messages out is not mitigating global warming.
Skeptical Science is a great website, but they delete every post I make on this subject as a waste of their time.

The majority of people around the world believe that manmade climate change and global warming are real and potentially life threatening, but we can’t accept responsibility for our actions. We climate change “believers” either remain silent or whimper inaudible protests in support of our internal angst about doing little or nothing. We climate change skeptics and deniers, on the other hand, howl loudly or go violent, hoping that the messengers and messages will go away. As I interpret the above article, our perceived immediate suffering associated with acting now would be much more severe than our perceived future suffering associated with doing little or nothing.

If you haven’t done so yet, maybe now would be a good time to switch over to Rising Tide for ideas on how to get started on the immediate 85-90% fossil fuel reduction needed to save the world for our offspring. Community Solutions, 350.org, and Richard Heinberg are other helpful sites. Please add other links that you may be aware of.

I am fully convinced that climatologists have done their job in convincing the public that manmade global warming is real, but now they have to team up with psychologists and other experts to convince the public that the time for action is now, not 25 or 50 or 100 years from now. I believe that inventing viable ways to mobilize the masses to mitigate global warming must be the new technical challenge for the coming decade.

The time to start is now!

In my own experience I have received inflammatory emails from individuals attacking my commentary on climate change (some years back now) in the Winnipeg Free Press (co-written with Danny Blair and John Hanesiak) and Brandon Sun newspapers. I occasionally contribute to blogs like this one, and also comment on the blogs for stories on climate change on the CBC website and the Globe and Mail newspaper. In my experience in these media, if there are inflammatory comments in reply to my posts or other pro-AGW posters, they are from the deniers. I don’t mean to say that all deniers are posting inflammatory comments or engaging in personal attacks, and I know some good scientist colleagues who genuinely don’t accept AGW (and who are not funded by big-oil or one of the propogandist anti-AGW organizations), but I am saying that when inflammatory responses do occur it is from a poster who is spouting denier opinions, not the other way around. To me this speaks volumes. And the lesson is clear. The more the deniers ‘play the man’ as they say in sport, the more they erode their credibility. We must remain civil, clear, and rooted in our science.

I agree. Some of the hardcore activism, like dressing up as polar bears or climbing up coal plants, seems illogical and extreme to me. However, I have yet to meet someone supportive of the scientific consensus that is as disrespectful and unproductive as the many deniers who are common in these kinds of online discussions. I don’t want my blog to cater to or allow that kind of behaviour. It’s really quite unfortunate that we have to deal with it at all. -Kate

I like your site very much and enjoy all the links as they allow me to do what I’ve always believed and that is to form my own opinions and to never take everything someones says as absolute regardless of their stature or credibility. I find all your posts intelligent and thought provoking. My only advice is as you become impressed upon by the many profs you will have in university that you keep your eyes wide open and keep the ability to form your own thoughts, ideas and conclusions. Question everything! Something I learned from a great science teacher, Mr. Chalmers.

[Of course the consensus is sometimes wrong, but that doesn't mean we should always listen to the opposite of what it's saying. Think of all the times the consensus has been right. -Kate]

I think “misleading” is the better term for the example of the CO2-temperature lead-lag story. I have called it a “half truth” for the same reason, see http://ourchangingclimate.wordpress.com/2008/07/15/half-truths/ (fourth point down).

1- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/20/us/tobacco-industry-in-fight-to-get-universities-data.html
More here: http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/tobacco-part-4-subpoenas-and-legal-chill/

Because you brought this up, here is what I have been pounding blogs with over the past several days:

The news varies depending on the political views of the organization but some blogs and newspapers/television claim that this hack has revealed that human caused global warming has been faked. Nothing could be further from the truth. Here is my opinion:

To date, there has not been a single credible journal article that shows a natural cause for the modern day warming while also showing how record high greenhouse gas concentrations are not significant.

NOT ONE.

Do people really believe that the scientists at CRU are able to squelch every scientist on the planet who tried to publish this landmark anti-AGW paper? Is there no sense of the low probability and the large scale of this conspiracy for this to be true?

If one throws out the HadCRU data and all papers by these folks, there is still a mountain of evidence for AGW.

Do the rapidly melting ice sheets and glaciers have access to these emails and joined in on the conspiracy?

Do the various climate models that show GHGs as the dominant forcing mechanism have access to these emails and joined in on the conspiracy?

Do the GISS, UAH, RSS data that show global warming of approximately 0.2C per decade over the past 30 years have access to these emails and joined in on the conspiracy? Certainly Spencer and Christy who run UAH and are well-known skeptics of AGW would not align themselves with AGW and yet their satellite-derived measurements track reasonably with GISS, RSS, and HadCRU.

Does the ocean read these emails and magically increase its heat content?

Does the cooling stratosphere (even accounting for ozone loss) read the emails and join in on the hoax?

Do the plants and animals read these emails and decide to die off and/or change their migratory habits so that they can support the conspiracy?

I could go on ad infinitum.

For quite a long time, we have known that a doubling of CO2 will warm the climate at least 1C and there is fairly good certainty that the resulting feedbacks will produce at least 2C additional warming with 3C more likely. We are also measuring CO2 increases of 2 ppm and climbing (except last year where there was a slight decrease due to the global recession) and we have levels that have not been seen in the past 15 million years.

Are we to conclude that these emails deny all of this evidence?

There are many scientists from many fields that have published data that show the effects of global warming and why humans are the primary drivers of this warming. These scientists include some of the obvious: climatologists, meteorologists, geologists, modelers, and oceanographers. Some less obvious include: biologists, marine biologists, zoologists, chemists, astrophysicists, economists, environmental politics reasearchers, and others. I am quite confident that MANY of these folks have NEVER spoken to the CRU folks nor emailed them.

It is obvious that pre-Copenhagen, the tried and true method of “if one does not like the message then attack the messenger or redirect the conversation” practiced by Big Tobacco and now ExxonMobil and their front groups (Heartland Institute, George C. Marshall Institute, Competitive Enterprise Institute, etc.) is alive and well.

Scott A. Mandia – Professor, Meteorologist, Concerned Citizen
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/global_warming/

[Well said. The emails may have been unprofessional, but they're certainly not evidence of fabrication or fraud. -Kate]

Thanks for the kind words. I really wavered on that label. Yes, it is a misleading claim in the overall perspective but it is a fictional claim in the present. I decided to use “fiction” to make a stronger point.

What do the rest of you think? Misleading or Fiction?