What is the human-caused climate change denier position

[james_davis_nicoll]

On the Dust Bowl.

Comments

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

"It was just weather. Farming practices probably made it worse, but when you come down to it, it was just weather."

I actually saw this somewhere recently. Hoyt's commenter? Anyway, wherever it was, it was your fault.

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

This, especially the "it was your fault" bit.

[montedavis.livejournal.com]

Sure, it might make more sense for James to slap a blanket Memetic Prophylactic Recommended label on the whole LJ. But I believe that he still nurtures the intent someday to post a 100% wholesome entry, free of any reference or link to the fecklessness and folly of our species.

I say it could happen, and... what? No, I'm not a betting man.

[pperiwinkle.livejournal.com]

Perhaps if we can find a suitable substitute for our delicious tears...

[scott-sanford.livejournal.com]

I certainly hear that climate was exactly the same up until 20 or 30 years ago, when things began getting amazingly hotter in a way which has never happened before, ever. So any reports of bad weather in the 1930s were just that, weather, not climate change.

In the same way, the recent storm that hit New York and the rest of the east coast is said to be caused by climate change; the great storms that hit New York in the 1930s, and there were several, were just regular storms.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Well, the model of climate change that I've been seeing is that human-driven climate change started a while before the Industrial Revolution, and the current crisis is a result of accumulated effects and acceleration.

I'm not seeing actual scientists saying that any one particular storm is caused by climate change: I'm seeing a discussion about trends, the shape of things, statistics, frequencies, overall effects.

But you may in fact be hearing all manner of things from whoever you listen to.

[(Anonymous)]

It appears from the work of John Smol that the earliest signs of global warming appeared in arctic lakes in the 1890s. Now, this is still not something that is commonly agreed in the climate community, but Smol published this about fifteen years ago and has since dealt quite reasonably with various objections. Unless someone comes up with a good counter-argument soon, I'd say that Prof Smol has made his case.

William Hyde

[mme-hardy.livejournal.com]

That's funny. Every time I hear a climatologist interviewed during a great storm, the climatologist says "Well, I can't tell you one way or another about THIS storm, but the overall trend is..." What reporters and men on the street say is not the climatologists' fault. I have never heard anybody, activist or climatologist, say that the whole thing started 20 or 30 years ago. It's a long slow climb, not a cliff.

The issue is what's happening in the large numbers, not what's happening in individual instances. Great storms have always happened; see the Galveston Flood*. The climate change issue is that the models predict, and have predicted for some time, that the frequency of large storms is rising, and the data bear this out.


* My father used to say that my untidy bedroom looked like the Galveston Flood.

[krfsm.livejournal.com]

Or the Grote Mandrenke!