1. That they think that carbon dioxide is the only influence on climate.
2. That you can take climate models to the bank.
3. That they want to remove all of the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
4. That they want us to live in caves.
5. That new taxes are the only way to fight global warming.
6. That they just dismiss the Sun and other natural forcings and haven't actually looked at the effect of these natural forcings on temperature trends.
7. That there will be no more winters.
Most climatolgists have probably taken an undergraduate biology course, or know someone who has, and are perfectly aware that carbon dioixde is plant food. They also believe that without carbon dioixde, Earth would be too cold to support life, about -18 degrees C. Climatolgists are also aware of the yellow ball in the sky, and most analyisis of its effect on global temperature would show either little effect or a cooling effect. And most climatolgists actually like progress; where do people think that such toys as satellites and supercomputers come from, or the fact that most climatologists are avid fans of science fiction, especially Star Trek? Climatologist want to advance to more advanced energy sources which do not put stuff in the atmosphere.
You mean the 19 major storms, 9 of which would be hurricanes! I think Mexico got hit with one and Karen our latest has sorta fizzled. Whoops! I read the original book on the subject in 1969, yep I'm still around. What makes it hard to believe is that originally they had global cooling and everyone starving to death in 1980's. Hmmm! I may be wrong here and many people are starving but not everyone and they seemed to change their minds when the predicted cooling didn't pan out. Oh, speaking of predictions what about those billions of cicada that never showed up. If they get stuff like that wrong then why should I believe more bogus predictions.
Misconceptions can arise when claims are ambiguous. Although, sometimes is very advantageous to make an ambiguous claim because then you can do at least two things. You can claim that others are misrepresenting you or if real data doesn't match your claim exactly, you have excuses by stating the event which occurred is not what you claimed. (that's kink of like reverse misrepresentation.)
So you do have a point in that instead of trying to figure out what the claim represents at the potential cost of being labeled as having a misconception, it's probably better to just start out by showing how the claim is ambiguous in the first place. Actually, that happens a lot but is also ignored or still leads to claims of misrepresentation.
Nailing Jello to the wall comes to mind as an analogy. And science is lost in the noise.
I used to think that climatologists knew what they were doing.
That has become my favourite misconception.
I used to think they were scientists but many would not recognise an observation if it passed them in the street.
I used to think that they had considered all the possible inputs but it always comes back to CO2. If you ask them if CO2 is the only thing they say: "Of course not" - then offer very little else and revert to CO2 only for the next question.
That they can't find the missing heat hidden in the oceans nor can they project the future with the "noise" of water vapor and clouds.
That the current global average temperature (0.62C - Aug 2013) is higher than what it was in 1998 and that is why the planet is continuing to warm.
Not sure I would call it a "favorite," but surely a very fundamental misconception, and it can been seen all over this very page, is that clueless anti-science BSers have the first idea what science is or how it works. Ottawa and JimZ's ludicrous pretense that the solid decades-old findings of climate science are affected in some significant way by some kind of major "herd" behavior utterly deny and ignore a century of MASSIVE research by tens of thousands of scientists across many decades and many countries. The basic consensus solidly proven by this colossal research has been accepted by every major scientific academy, every significant university dept of physical sciences, printed in ever major textbook concerning earth science, nearly every Nobel prize winner in science and reflected in the strategies of many major multinational corporations for decades. And these clowns, think they have credibility by throwing out on THIS very page (read them!) a bunch of half-baked half-understood, recycled snide insinuations from Wattsup and other professional anti-science con artists, that denies this galaxy of facts, research, evidence, logic and common sense.
And Yahoo bends over backwards to give these low-level anti-science fossil fuel industry tool charlatans a global soapbox, year after year after year.
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://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpine...
“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.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_...
http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/...
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timel...
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/index...
http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument...
Well for one, I would like to know what they are predicting, they waffle on about the dangers and apart from rising sea levels, do not say what will happen or when, the IPCC AR5 being prime example a huge document that doesn't really predict anything concrete at all.
Denialists will agree with Believists that because CO2 is a greenhouse gas and there is more CO2 in the atmosphere therefore the climate warmed by some amount over the industrial revolution because of human induced CO2. That is complete conjecture, there is no proof of that and it is just as stupid as saying we can't model the way galaxies spin with computer models therefore there must be something called dark matter.
To answer this I'd need to know what the difference between sceptics and denialists is. C'mon I'm genuinely curious to get to grips with what your mind perceives this difference as.
My favourite misconception is that slighter warmer is disaster compared to slightly colder. Which is against all independent scientific consensus, [not that consensus means anything]
I liked Mike's response. When he mentioned nailing Jello, I first thought he was talking about our long lost poster, Dr. Jello. Anyway, I think I need another cup of coffee this morning. I guess to me it seems like herding cats. Climatologists aren't easily herded into a pack either. You are just selecting the cats you like. Personally I don't like cats that can be herded.
A lot of "skeptics" and denialists seem to be rejecting a cartoon strawman of AGW, instead of what scientists are actually predicting.
So, what's your favorite denialist misconception, and what do scientists actually claim instead?
Note, I'm looking for things that denialists think climatologists are claiming that they're not, not things that climatologists *are* claiming that denialists think aren't true... (for example, I'm looking for things like "denialists think climatologists haven't considered solar input", not "solar input doesn't explain the long-term climate record, but denialists think it does")
