2. Lack of scientific understanding. Climate science is kind of complex, and some aspects of it aren't very intuitive ("How can it be snowing, if there's global warming?" and so on). Some people disbelieve what they don't understand. (there's something of the same problem with evolution)
3. Flat-out lying, or at least trusting a lying source. I suspect at least some people who deny global warming are skewing (or even blatantly faking) information because reality does not match their political biases, and/or because they are trying to protect some income source or the like that could be threatened by action to stop AGW.
Personally, I accept the scientific consensus on AGW.
I think Pat probably brings up the best answer (although I don't necessarily agree with their answer). The question asked is why people don't believe in it (although technically it should be why don't you agree with the scientific theory).
Pat gave an honest answer (as they don't agree with the scientific theory) and therefore although many on here have better answers (if the question was regarding is the scientific theory correct) they do not address the question asked.
Most the answers you actually want will be hidden by thumbs down, and again some are pure ignorance, others are misinformed and others are constructive. The problem others have with these answers are that usually they are easily dismiss, but again the question is not about the actual science but opinions.
A study has shown that climate change deniers are either extreme free marketeers or conspiracy theorists.
Although nearly all domain experts agree that human CO2 emissions are altering the world’s climate, segments of the public remain unconvinced by the scientific evidence. Internet blogs have become a vocal platform for climate denial, and bloggers have taken a prominent and influential role in questioning climate science. We report a survey (N > 1100) of climate blog users to identify the variables underlying acceptance and rejection of climate science. Paralleling previous work, we find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science (r .80 between latent constructs). Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin-Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings, above and beyond endorsement of laissez-faire free markets. This provides empirical confirmation of previous suggestions that conspiracist ideation contributes to the rejection of science. Acceptance of science, by contrast, was strongly associated with the perception of a consensus among scientists.
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There is always climate change. That's not the debate. I agree with all the facts. The part of Global Warming that is sinister is the promotion and the deception to gain points for environmentalism. The sensational media hypes every weather event (and many non-weather events) and tags it all as Global Warming. Then politicians claim that new taxes are justified...you guessed it, by Global Warming. The promoters and hyper media present Global Warming as the waste bin for every worst nightmare, and gullible people lap it up!
Yes, humans have an effect on the environment. It's impossible to live productive lives and not have some effect on the environment. Since 1750 it is estimated (by CDIAC, see link) that the human contribution to the increase of carbon dioxide is 14 percent. The increase in all the greenhouse gases (except water vapor, see link) combined amount to a 3.164 Watt/square meter forcing, a whopping 0.2 percent increase in Earth's 1500 W/sq.m. heat that we get from the sun. Because the effect of carbon dioxide is logarithmic (saturated at about 250 ppm, increase-effect diminishing), its threat to life on Earth is a Gothic exaggeration. Believe what you want. Whenever I see somebody chasing the Global Warming ambulance, I shudder with disgust.
George: If you want to get technical CO2 is saturated at 10ppm. However this is the center of the CO2 absorption band. the band. As CO2 increases past this point the band does not get deeper it gets wider. See figure 4-5 below.
http://forecast.uchicago.edu/archer.ch4....
And as you can see, from the link below which measure one side of the band, it is, in fact, getting wider and is continuing to do so.
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
CO2 continues to retain more heat as it increases in the atmosphere. You are arguing from ignorance.
It is true that not all atmospheric pollution causes warming. Some of it actually causes cooling. However the reality of the matter is that CO2 does cause warming and will continue to do so. the reality of it is that other forms of pollution have undesirable effects on the human respiratory system. The reality of it is that plans to mitigate the effects of it are being stepped on by those who think it is a global conspiracy theory to institute a one world communist government as plenty in here believe.
Because global warming is a natural phenominon that has occurred 100s of times in the past and will occur 100s of times in the future and mankind has nothing to do with it. Just some are using it as a vehicle to push an ideological agenda onto a world population.
Imperical data collected proves that the world has been on a steady cooling trend for at least 2000 years. It was hotter when Christ was supposedly born than it is now.
None of the predictions ever created by computer climate models have come to fruition. Not a single one. In fact those 'scientists' keep revising their theorectical outcomes based on that and they are still wrong.
CLIMATES ALWAYS CHANGE AND THERE IS NOTHING WE CAN DO ABOUT IT.
I'll answer your second question first: renaming global warming climate change is a desperate attempt at a way of diverting attention from the fact that temperatures are and have been cooling down. Since 1998.
To your first question: some people are more gullible and easily frightened than others.
The first wave of information the public really had which made them sit up and take notice was Al Gore's film. Dramatic imagery without too much gobbledygook impressed the impressionable. Most of those who said "hang on a minute" were perhaps a bit more thoughtful and less prone to being scared.
When people are scared they lose their ability to think rationally: then just want the source of the fear to go away and will do whatever it takes to achieve that.
The history of man is full of 'the end is nigh' stories; just look at the regularity with which some folk get scared out of their minds just because some nutter has predicted yet another end of the world date.
Children are especially vulnerable which is why it is wrong for schools to peddle this menace to them. They will be frightened, not really well-informed.
There are many examples of the warmists 'cooking the books' evidence-wise; choosing particular timelines to show that they prefer to show. Trying to ignore the medieval warm period and gathering spurious 'evidence' to try to make out it never happened!!
AGW has become big business indeed, from the lovely Mr Gore who makes billions with his bogus carbon trading schemes to the subsidies paid to wind factory developers. The BBC are also very big on this too so they prefer not to allow those knowledgable scientists who dispute what has become a religion on the air.
I think you will find that a rational and calm excursion into the history of the earth and its climate would prove interesting.
The normal reason : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denialism
the same reason people dont believe in evolution
"renaming global warming climate change is a desperate attempt at a way of diverting attention from the fact that temperatures are and have been cooling down." Oh FFS.........give this nonsense a rest. The IPCC was founded in 1988 - would any of the chorus line of simpletons like to guess what the "CC" in "IPCC" stands for?????? Its OK...you can phone a friend
Like most dupes of anti-science fossil fuel industry propaganda, George here uses fallacious reasoning in denying the seriousness of human-made climate change. The percent of TOTAL atmospheric CO2, is not the issue, it is the extent of the increase - nearly 100% of which has been shown by decades of solid science to be human-caused. George's "argument" would be like saying that having a body temperature of 102 is no problem because only 4% of that temperature was caused by a fever.
The science is not disputed by bonafide top scientists:
U.S. National Academy of Sciences, 2010:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record...
“Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.”
http://nationalacademies.org/morenews/20...
“Choices made now about carbon dioxide emissions reductions will affect climate change impacts experienced not just over the next few decades but also in coming centuries and millennia…Because CO2 in the atmosphere is long lived, it can effectively lock the Earth and future generations into a range of impacts, some of which could become very severe.”
http://www.physics.fsu.edu/awards/NAS/
“The Academy membership is composed of approximately 2,100 members and 380 foreign associates, of whom nearly 200 have won Nobel Prizes. Members and foreign associates of the Academy are elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research; election to the Academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a scientist or engineer.”
The denial of the science is explained here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_o...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
http://www.newsweek.com/2007/08/13/the-t...
http://video.pbs.org/video/2295533310/
Every time I read the comments on an article somewhere, people are always saying "global warming is a myth" Ok obviously you can't believe everything scientists feed you, but isn't this a reality? There is a lot of pollution. I've even seen people blame it entirely on China, when the whole world contributes.
What do you think about climate change?
I live in a different reality to you. My reality is based on science, evidence and history and in it carbon does not have the magic super powers of your reality.
Same reason not all people in Nazi Germany believed in Fascism, or folk in Soviet Russia in Communism , we can stand out from the sheep, realise what a con is being perpetuated on the stupid of thus world, AGW does not exist.
Belief in AGW is a way of assuaging rich nations' collective conscience, and guilt over colonial pasts.
I speak as one who has seen umpteen scares, too many to writes down. Global cooling, Aids etc. Guess what, we are still here!
Bollox all of it.
There are 2 sides to this issue. On the one side there are about 40,000 other scientists and generally intelligent people (one doesn't need to be a climate scientist to understand things) who understand that humans add less than 1% to the Greenhouse Effect and that "Natural Climate Variability" causes over 99% of the warming and cooling on this planet.
The other side (Climate Realist, Big Gryph, Jungle Jim, and the like) have come to a 90% certainty that man has been causing a warming of 0.75 C in the past 140 years of this planets history. 0.45 C of that warming happened before 1940 when fossil fuels were barely being used. The Globe then cooled for the next 35 years when CO2 output tripled all over the world. It cooled about 0.1 C. Since 1975 the world has warmed another 0.4 C and this is what we are spending billions of dollars on. Researching climate change.
Here's where they are having problems in proving the other 10%:
1) Past temperature data. Inferences about climate and atmospheric composition extending back as long as 400,000 years. These and other proxy data indicate that the range of natural climate variability is in excess of several degrees C on local and regional space scales over periods as short as a decade. Their case is based on a 0.75 C rise in temperature and most of that occurred before 1940 when CO2 was barely an issue. Temperature variations at local sites have exceeded 10°C (18°F) in the past. It is more difficult to estimate the natural variability of global mean temperature because large areas of the world are not sampled and because of the large uncertainties inherent in temperatures inferred from proxy evidence.
2) Water vapor in climate models and the "largest source of uncertainty" for AGW supporters to prove man-made climate change. The responses of atmospheric water vapor amount and clouds probably generate the most important global climate feedbacks. The nature and magnitude of these hydrologic feedbacks give rise to the "largest source of uncertainty about climate sensitivity", and they are an area of continuing research. Climate science base the idea of man-made "Global Warming"/"Climate Change" on climate models but they can't replicate clouds in these models which makes them completely useless. Their 90% certainty falls to 0 here (in my opinion).
3) Ocean circulation. Climate also responds in a systematic way to climate forcings, but the response can be slow because the ocean requires time to warm (or cool) in response to the forcing. The response time depends upon the rapidity with which the ocean circulation transmits changes in surface temperature into the deep ocean. If the climate sensitivity is as high as the 3°C mid-range, then a few decades are required for just half of the full climate response to be realized, and at least several centuries for the full response. Such a long climate response time complicates the climate change issue for policy makers.
I think it's easy to understand why the temperatures are going down ("Natural Climate Variability"), but the warmists will drag this out for another couple of hundred years if they can.
What are the odds that millions of people who know nothing about science would suddenly and independently become scientific experts and, amazingly, all start saying the exact same things word-for-word? The do not believe in global warming because that is what they have been told.
If Rush and FOX news told them that AGW is real - they would all believe it is real.
Theres global climate change - has been for millions of years
Plus not all the facts say its true. Australia has had tonnes of flooding, coolest day recorded etc.
i however do not see that me burning fuel is causing the higher temps. No one ever thinks its just part of a cycle.
Just because there is pollution doesn't mean there is Global Warming. It is more complex than that.
Pollution and Global Warming are two different things.
Every prediction ever made by alarmists has been wrong.... a key part of science is "predictable results."
They fear science
