Growth, on the road ...
News
  • Press Center
  • Your Current Location is:Home > News  >  Press Center  > 
Let's be honest – the global warming debate isn't about science
Date:2013-10-31
Anti-carbon tax protesters in Canberra, motivated by politics, not science. Photograph: Torsten Blackwood/AFP/Getty
The 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report states with 95 percent confidence that humans have caused most, and probably all of the rapid global warming over the past 60 years. Approximately 97 percent of climate experts and peer-reviewed climate science studies agree.

There are of course open questions yet to be answered by climate scientists – precisely how sensitive the climate is to the increased greenhouse effect, for example. But even in a best case, low sensitivity scenario, we're headed for dangerously rapid climate change if we continue on our current business as usual path. And the worst case scenario, which is just as likely as the best case scenario, would mean we're headed for a global catastrophe.

The IPCC warns that if we want to avoid very dangerous climate change, we're on track to blow through our allowed carbon budget in as little as two to three decades if we continue on our current path of relying on fossil fuels. If we're lucky and the low sensitivity scenario is accurate, perhaps we'll have an extra decade or two, but even in this best case scenario, we're on an unsustainable climate path.

Politically biased media climate coverage is not a coincidence

The scientific evidence is what it is, and it has no political bias. The same is not true of the media outlets that cover the topic. It's not a coincidence that politically conservative tabloids and newspapers like the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Australian, and Wall Street Journal spend a disproportionate amount of time amplifying the voices of the less than 3 percent of climate contrarian scientists, as well as many non-scientist contrarians.

It's certainly not the case that David Rose has some brilliant insight into the state of climate science that climate scientists don't have. He and his fellow climate contrarians simply approach the question backwards. They start from their political ideological opposition to climate solutions and work backwards, seeking out cherry picked evidence to justify their predetermined conclusions, thus ignoring the 97 percent of inconvenient scientific evidence. This climate contrarianism ideological bias is illustrated in a new study, summarized by Graham Readfearn:

"if you're a conservative who believes the world runs best when businesses operate in a "free market" with little government interference, then the chances are you don't think human-caused climate change represents a significant risk to human civilisation."

Previous What is Global Warming? What are the Solutions?
Next Conservative media outlets found guilty of biased global warming coverage

 
Online Chat
Profile consulting/purchasing
Automation System purchasing
Complains us
Suggestions on line
Q&A
Our industry
Our philosophy
Our technical standards
Seminar
Technology
Cost
Personnel
Guestbook