For example, this article in the Wall Street Journal, claims that the climate is less sensitive to CO2 emissions than previously believed and that's why the Earth has not warmed as much as predicted. The author, Judith Curry, says her work shows the likely impact of continuing our emissions is only about one more degree of warming over the rest of this century. How I wish it were true!
DeSmogBlog debunks this claim. They show her science is weak at best, arriving at a range of potential temperature changes that match the IPCC's. However, by looking at a smaller number of studies, she gets a lower median figure, and hence less warming to be predicted.
Now here's a prediction you can count on. This denier is not an independent thinker, but has financial reasons to hold these opinions. According to the DeSmogBlog post:
This is typical when you look deeper. Those denying climate change are from a small group. They support each other, and they benefit from the industries that are spewing carbon into the atmosphere at greater and greater rates.
- Curry recently participated in a forum held by the discredited, fossil-fuel funded George Marshall Institute, which advocates outright climate denial and has denied the link between tobacco and cancer in the past.
- Her consulting company has received funding from the fossil fuel industry since 2007, at her own admission.
- Her work has been repeatedly criticized by reputable scientists including those at RealClimate and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Now, I'm not a scientist. I've tried to look deep into the science and although I'm convinced, the actual physics of atmospheric change are beyond my ability. What it comes down to is which climate models you trust, and I think a basic psychological attitude toward the world.
I don't much like the labels "denialist" or "warmist". They tend to shape people into narrow categories for the purpose of denying the strength of their arguments. (Mea culpa: I just did that to Judith Curry.) But this is something of a debate between two groups: one says climate change (global warming, I use the terms interchangeably) is real and present and we need to deal with it; the other says it either isn't here, isn't serious, or needs to be dealt with through a strong economy.
People in the latter camp tend to see global warming as a ploy by big government to tax more, restrict personal choice more and generally interfere with the pursuit of happiness. And all these fears may be to some extent justified. Except that it's not a ploy.
We are the government. The government is our collective will. In a truely functioning democracy individual citizens would have a lot more power. Unfortunately in a modern democracy, the need to raise money to get elected gives the rich a disproportionate voice in influencing our elected representatives. But government action is needed to change the economy to support renewable sources of energy and move away from carbon based energy sources. That may mean changes in tax regimes.
One reason that I am pessimistic about change happening is that no politician is ever going to be elected by promising less. And I really think that the only good solution will be for us to consume less, have less personal mobility (cars) and pay more for most of the things we like to do. I also believe that we in the industrialized countries have a much greater burden to make change than the poorer countries. Not just because we got rich through the tonnes of carbon we've put into the atmosphere over the last century, but because it needs to be done now and we are the ones who can afford best to do it.
