A few weeks back someone gave me a copy of a little booklet by the Royal Society, called ‘Climate Change Controversies – a Simple Guide‘. It’s a useful resource, and I thought I’d pass on the link. The above is a pdf, or the questions are all on the Society’s website.
It tackles eight misleading arguments, which are, briefly:
- The Earth’s climate is always changing and this is just a natural cycle.
- Carbon dioxide only makes up a small part of the atmosphere.
- Rises in co2 in the atmosphere are the result of increased temperatures, not the other way round.
- High altitude temperatures do not support the theory of global warming.
- Computer models which predict the future climate are unreliable.
- It’s all about the sun.
- It’s all about cosmic rays.
- The effects of climate change are overstated and no urgent action is required.
The climate change section of the Royal Society site is actually very useful in its entirety actually, both in reviewing existing science and finding out the latest developments.
Grist has a pretty good one, too:
http://gristmill.grist.org/skeptics