The reason you've heard of people like Galileo, Newton, Einstein, and Darwin is because they developed theories that overturned the common scientific view at the time. Scientists don't become famous by simply adding additional proof to an existing theory. They make their names by showing an existing theory is wrong.
So, the fact that most climate scientists support global warming is an indication of the success of that theory. They haven't, yet, been able to find a way to disprove it. You can be certain that many will try, because the person who successfully debunks global warming will be the person we all remember.
Why is global warming such a good theory? Well, we observe lots of aspects of our planet changing. We see reductions in the amount of energy leaving the planet. We see warming of certain layers of the atmosphere and cooling of others. We see CO2 levels rising. We see changes in the isotope ratios of carbon atoms in the atmosphere and in plants. We see rises in sea level, reductions in Arctic ice thickness, increases in temperature over a century, increased glacial melt. We see rising ocean temperatures and increasing acidity. We see changes in flowering dates of plants, progression of tree lines farther north, changes in migration patterns of birds. We see reductions in the O2 concentration of the atmosphere.
Now, the non-climatologist skeptics take bits of these and offer 'explanations'. But they have, so far, failed to make predictions, failed to mathematically model natural processes and show they can fit those observations, and failed to suggest experiments that could be conducted to prove their ideas.
On the other hand, scientists have a theory (our fossil fuel emissions are trapping additional heat) which explains ALL of those observations listed above. One single theory that unifies all our observations. The skeptics haven't been able to offer a theory with that same level of explanatory power. Some might say they haven't offered a theory in the scientific sense at all.
Climate Depot is the best in my opinion. It's the 'Drudge Report' of the global warming issue. It's an ever changing collection of articles from all over the web about global warming. I highly recommend it. http://www.climatedepot.com/
Climateaudit.org
drroyspencer.com
Richard Lindzen
climate-skeptic.com
Depending on what you are looking for, you can even look at non-skeptics
Roger Pielke Jr, author of The Honest Broker, who is not a skeptic but has pointed out flaws such as the claims of record hurricanes are not true, and that most proposed policies will not work.
James Annan, has frequently bet against other global warming believers like Joe Romm, and has said the models are overstating warming.
The Blackboard - rankexploits.com evaluates climate models against reality
Any scientist who thinks that the Earth's climate is a 'delicately balanced system' in which humans can control at will (whether it be "forcing" more CO2 into the atmosphere or taking it out) is out of touch with reality.
The Planet's ecosystem (including humans) is at the mercy of the Planet's "will" and not the other way around. Arrogant climate scientists can't explain 99% of how the climate works and that's why theory's are just that. Theory's!!!!
If you believe in "Anthropogenic Global Warming" and "Evolution", then you are contradicting your own intelligence and are completely and absolutely arrogant to common sense. Most, if not all, climate scientists who support AGW are believers of evolution.
There's no need to be skeptical when the basis of the science itself is wrong.
Virtually all legitimate scientists believe in anthropogenic global warming, they just question how large it will be. One exception might be the hurricane expert Dr. William Gray, who calls himself a global warming "denier"
He has a strong record of accomplishment in meteorology, even if you don't count his seasonal hurricane forecasts, which seem wrong as often as they're right.
Hi Sally, I make no claim to high interlect or scholarship but think what will happen if there is no AGW. Think of the financial losses that will be incurred by the scientific community. It will be a disaster for them. That is why there will be global warming, scientifically proven, even if hell freezes over.
You have been given great answers from Hey Dook, Gary and Baccheos. I just wanted to point out that global warming a fact and that honest sceptics will not deny the fact. The valuable sceptics are working on how we are going to deal with it
There are a few skeptics about minor points, but there are few legitimate skeptics about the theory as a whole. There is a group which I call Skeptics, with a capital "S", who refuse to accept the research answering their doubts. Those who reject data contrary to their theories are not functioning as scientists.
Richard Muller - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_A._... - is the only skeptic that I can think of that actually performed as a skeptic should approach any science based theory. Richard Muller was skeptical that the temperature data was accurate in the amount of warming that was being reported due to what is known as the "heat island effect" and the placement and/or calibrations of other temperature monitoring stations. Richard Muller, a scientist, took the scientific approach by testing the data. The University of Berkley set Richard up with a team for him to head that would test the temperature data. This study was funded through both public and private funding. The Koch brothers partially funded this study so it was an unbiased study, for anyone that would suggest otherwise. Since Richard Muller himself was a skeptic this would be an illogical conclusion to draw anyway. The study, known as the BEST (Berkley Earth Surface Temperature) study concluded that, yes, placement of the monitoring station and calibration did show a bias in the temperatures but the team also discovered that this did not matter. The poorly placed monitoring stations still showed the same amount of warming over the same trend time as did the well placed monitoring stations. Needless to say, Anthony Watts threw a hissy fit over this finding. He had counted on the study to show a bias that did not fit the rest of the temperature data.
Should you be interested in the lines of evidence for climate change, this is one of the better videos I have found on this.
Check out what Skeptic Michael Shermer said
I'm doing a project on whether global warming is an urgent issue. The main problem I'm finding is that most reliable sources of information are all supporting global warming. Where can I get reliable information to support global warming sceptics? Legitimate websites, or credible individuals?
Thank you!
Skeptical of what?
The guy who's been around consistently and who is still a professor of climatology, though seems to not do much research any more is Roy Spencer. He has clung to his random-clouds theory since the early 90s and has persuaded roughly zero of his peers.
John Christy is Spencer's partner at U Alabama Hunstville but has publicly gone rather quiet about humans' contribution to climate change. As the State Climatologist for Alabama, his public comments that I've seen a about changes and how to adapt, more than the causes. He was always open and comfortable with understanding that his beliefs were in a small minority. Now I really don't know how he feels about the large climate changes in the past few years that have affected his state and seem to be tied to Arctic warming.
Judith Curry gets thown-in sometimes, but mostly she runs a blog that rails against "certainty". Mostly she likes to present herself as a keeper of debate as though scientists in any fields don't debate with their peers all the time. Curry rants a lot about others' beliefs, but stays rather quiet about what she beliefs. So her blog as demeaned herself among her peers, but at the same time she does contribute anything to lay people either.
Then there are a variety of whack jobs with pet theories that don't hold up, and there are geezers who are dying off. Of the researchers who are actually out in the field, measuring ice or stream flows, there might be absolutely zero who are skeptical of AGW.
Adding the late Joanne Simpson to this list points up the need to define your term "skeptic" Dr Simpson expressed no change of opinion after her recommending government action in 2008 and her death in 2010. One can only wonder why somebody would choose to post lies about here her. In her public retirement letter she recommended action on climate change because the models and the consensus was all that we had, but that as a scientist she has to be a "skeptic" because there is much more to be learned. In that definition, every scientist is a skeptic, every theory considered and every hypothesis tested. That is the process, skepticism promotes science and almost all "skeptical" climatologists believe that humans are causing the environment to warm. When lay people ask for climate change skeptics, they are usually asking for people who believe the consensus is really wrong, and Dr Simpson does not belong in that category even as dishonest people try to twist her words for their own political agenda.
You cannot find a lot of real research that supports disbelief of any widely supported scientific theory. A theory becomes widely supported because the scientific research has disproved the alternatives. The research supports AGW, and that is precisely why all climate researchers believe it.
Dr. Judith Curry, Professor of Atmospheric Science at Georgia Tech. She has authored more than 130 peer reviewed papers in the field. She really was neutral for a long time. Even now, she is not reject the notion of AGW, she doesn't like how the climate community is operating. She objects to the "tribal nature" of climate scientists and their stonewalling. She is a true scientist. Here is a link to an essay about her in the New York Times.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/1...
Edit: If somebody engages in name calling (crackpot, geezer, denier) you can safely ignore their entire post. It's a poor way to make a convincing argument.
Bob Carter ( utube Bob Carter's 5 tests of carbon)
Lord Monkton, A savy economist who lays out the facts.
You have probably heard of the IPCC reports.
There are also NIPCC (Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change) reports produced by sceptics.
See http://www.nipccreport.org/ for details.
Included in the reports are scientist's names and lots of references to scientific papers.
Muller isn't a skeptic. Skeptics would include those who are skeptical. When you get older, you will probably learn that governments don't always behave honestly. They promote their own interests. News organizations are even worse.
Here are some links to skeptical sites.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/
http://climateaudit.org/2005/03/20/medie...
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/10/oc...
http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/03...
Some1, Muller wasn't skeptical. He was critical of Mann. I realize that is a distinction that is difficult for alarmists to comprehend because alarmists are supposed to march in lock step. Muller correctly argued that Mann was so sloppy that he endangered the cause. He may have even felt some jealousy.
Words like legitimate and smart are code words for how leftist they are. People like VP Biden who barely has the brains to tie his shoes is said to be smart, not because he is but because he is reliably leftist.
Everyone of the alarmists who answered so far, from Some1 to Bacheus are leftists. Bacheous claims to be a fiscal conservative but that is about as reliable as me claiming to be social liberal. I am as liberal as I think is justifiable. In any event, the point is all alarmists are leftist, not that all leftists are gullible enough to be alarmists. There is a reason for that and it isn't because science is part of leftist ideology. It is because some people can't distinguish between science and their personal ideology. They don't even believe they are ideologues. They believe what they think is only true, and not their opinion. There can be no skepticism because there is a consensus and they wonder why they are called cultists.
I should point out also that there is a difference between being skeptical of any effect of human emissions of CO2 and significant effects. Alarmists like to pretend that all scientist that think their may be some effect, suggest that they agree it is significant and harmful. In other words, their so called consensus is flawed even assuming that it is "legitimate" which it isn't.
All of the legitimate skeptics (i.e, climate scientists) accept the reality of AGW. Deniers who call themselves skeptics are liars who have no integrity or legitimacy.
Answerer C has it in a nutshell.
The legitimate skeptics were the scientists of 1900-1990 whom the FAKE skeptics (actually con artists and deniers) of today ignore. http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/...
The reasons behind their anti-science fakery (that would be a meaningful topic for your project) are discussed here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_cha...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_o...
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...
http://video.pbs.org/video/2295533310/
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/201...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/opinio...
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-mckib...
http://jcmooreonline.com/2013/01/31/engi...
The 1st link below provides some names and also some information about their past positions on the topic of climate change.
The names that sprang forward immediately to my mind are Richard Lindzen (atmospheric physics), John Christy (atmospheric science), and Roy Spencer (climatologist.) They have slightly varying opinions and those opinions haven't remained static, either.
Spencer and Christy are responsible for the UAH analysis product of the MSU T2LT satellite data. For a very long time, this was the ONLY dataset that disagreed about the clear direction of global warming. In 2005, after scientists repeatedly begged Spencer and Christy to re-evaluate their methodology without success, Mears and Wentz of RSS (Remote Sensing Systems) set aside their own schedules and attempted to duplicate the results from Spencer and Christy. What they found was an error in the diurnal corrections. RSS started publishing their own analysis of the UAH product. The MSU T2LT data is now continually processed by two groups. An unfortunate waste of effort necessitated by Spencer and Christy's refusals to examine their own work and to force others to a professionally unrewarding wasted effort of duplicating the UAH work product.
3 months later, after pulling their own work product from the web, Spencer and Christy re-evaluated their own product and, finally, their own UAH data now shows global warming in concert with other data products and climate science conclusions. Their dataset is no longer in significant conflict.
John Christy served as a pastor of an evangelical Baptist church and went to Kenya as a missionary before he took up his mathematical career, which led to his working for UAH/NASA MSFC. ?A story in the NY Times (2nd link) quoted John Christy:
? ?"The most common remark I've heard from teachers was that the
? ? chapter on evolution was assigned as reading but that virtually
? ? no discussion in class was taken," said Dr. John R. Christy, a
? ? climatologist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, an
? ? evangelical Christian and a member of Alabama's curriculum
? ? review board who advocates the teaching of evolution. Teachers
? ? are afraid to raise the issue, he said in an e-mail message,
? ? and they are afraid to discuss the issue in public.
Roy Spencer is similarly evangelical. A web site article from Roy Spencer used to be at the 3rd link below, but now must be found by the "wayback machine" at the 4th link below.
It's my belief, not established fact of course, that these two scientists let their worldviews get in the way of their professionalism. They were the ONLY dataset not congruent with the rest of climate science for many years, refused to look into their own work to see if there might be an error in their methods when pressed, and only re-evaluated their own products AFTER another team was forced to look into the issue and found a rather glaring error in the code that should have been and could have been found by Spencer and Christy had they taken the jarring disconnect of their work with all the work of others seriously or cared to take the pleas by other scientists seriously. But they never questioned themselves. I think that was because of their religious bias.
There is a very, very short list of climate scientists who dispute the mainstream understanding that humans are responsible for the majority of the recent, very rapid global warming trend. And they are very isolated. All significant, historical scientific organizations that have published an opinion, have published conclusions congruent to the IPCC conclusions: including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Physical Society.
Lindzen these days wages his denialist battles in oped pages of newspapers.
The 5th link below points to a 2004 Oreskes paper analyzing 928 climate science papers. The 6th link below is a 2010 paper that reviews the published works from 1,372 climate researchers.
EDIT: I forgot... Roy Spencer also signed An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, essentially saying God wouldn't do "that." See 7th link below. This gets to my point about worldviews getting in the way of doing science.
Climate Depot links to lots of sites and is a nice collection of articles.
"Watts Up with That" is the best one.
GLOBAL WARNING IS NOT REAL every bunch of years earth changes its. we are in global cooling now. scientist just want to make money.
No legitimate skeptic sites or credible individual skeptics. The skeptic arguments have been debunked at http://skepticalscience.com
climate scientists
