Climate Change

The propagation of myths and misconceptions continues to poison the debate over how to mitigate or adapt to a warming world. Notes For a discussion of the rise of climate change as a public-policy issue, see Jeffrey Mazo, Climate Conflict, Adelphi 409 (Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS, 2010), pp. 9–10. ‘This Week’, ABC, 8 July 2012, video extract available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MzeLPFGPuqI. Simon D. Donner and Jeremy McDaniels, ‘The Influence of National Temperature Fluctuations on Opinions about Climate Change in the U.S. since 1990’, Climatic Change, vol. 118, nos. 3–4, June 2013, pp. 537–50. See Jocelyn Fong and Shauna Theel, ‘Wash. Post Continues to Publish George Will's Climate Change Misinformation’, Media Matters, 6 September 2011, http://mediamatters.org/research/2011/09/06/wash-post-continues-to-publishgeorge-wills-cli/181471. For detailed and documented refutations of the various arguments see the Skeptical Science website at http://www.skepticalscience.com/. ‘Inaugural Address by President Barack Obama’, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/01/21/inaugural-address-president-barackobama. George F. Will, ‘Recipe for Conservative Revival’, Washington Post, 26 January 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-will-obamas-recipe-for-aconservative-revival/2013/01/25/f12f3746-6667-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html; for a rebuttal of Will, see ‘Where there's a Will, there's a Way to Distort the Truth’, Open Mind blog, http://tamino.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/where-theres-a-will-theres-a-way-todistort-the-truth/. Stefan Rahmstorf and Dim Coumou, ‘Increase of Extreme Events in a Warming World’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 108, no. 44, 1 November 2011, pp. 17,905–9; Dim Coumou and Stefan Rahmstorf, ‘A Decade of Weather Extremes’,Nature Climate Change, vol. 2, no. 7, July 2012, pp. 491–6. Vladimir Petoukhov et al., ‘Quasiresonant Amplification of Planetary Waves and Recent Northern Hemisphere Weather Extremes’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 110, no. 14, 2 April 2013, pp. 5,336–41; Q Tang et al., ‘Cold Winter Extremes in Northern Continents linked to Arctic Sea Ice Loss’, Environmental Research Letters, vol. 8, no. 1, 12 March 2013, 014036; Laura Naranjo, ‘What Caused Last Summer's Greenland Surface Melt?’, Icelights, 3 December 2013, http://nsidc.org/icelights/2012/12/03/what-caused-last-summers-greenlandsurface-melt/. Alexander Otto et al., ‘Energy Budget Constraints on Climate Response’, Nature Geoscience, vol. 6, no. 6, June 2013, pp. 415–16; Matt McGrath, ‘Climate Slowdown Means Extreme Rates of Warming “Not as Likely”’, BBC News, 19 May 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/scienceenvironment-22567023; Alister Doyle, ‘Extreme Global Warming Seen Further Away than Previously Thought’, Reuters, 19 May 2013, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/05/19/us-climate-temperatures-idUKBRE-94I0DJ20130519. Alexander Otto, ‘The “Warming Pause” and the Transient Climate Response to a Doubling of CO2’,UK Met Office website, 21 May 2013, http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/alex-otto-article. Alister Doyle, ‘Climate scientists struggle to explain warming slowdown’, Reuters, 16 April 2013, http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/16/us-climate-slowdown-idUSBRE-93F0AJ20130416; Dana Nuccitelli, ‘Why is Reuters Puzzled by Global Warming's Acceleration?’, Climate Consensus blog, 24 April 2013, http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/apr/24/reuters-puzzled-global-warming-acceleration. Otto, ‘The “Warming Pause”’. For a discussion of media coverage of climate issues see Jeffrey Mazo, ‘Thinking the Unthinkable’, Survival, vol. 50, no. 3, June–July 2008, pp. 249–56. Otto, ‘The “Warming Pause”’. McGrath, ‘Climate Slowdown’. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php. ‘Remarks by the President on Climate Change’, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/25/remarks-president-climate-change. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, ‘Carbon Dioxide at NOAA's Mauna Loa Observatory Reaches New Milestone: Tops 400 ppm’, press release, 10 May 2013. United Nations Environment Programme, The Emissions Gap Report 2012 (Nairobi, UNEP, 2012). A likely chance is one of 66% or more. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 14. Mazo, Climate Conflict, pp. 18–19; John Cook et al., ‘Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature’, Environmental Research Letters, vol. 8, no. 2, 15 May 2013. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJeffrey Mazo Jeffrey Mazo is IISS Consulting Senior Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy, and Consulting Editor, Survival

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• Science denial as a form of pseudoscience

  Open Access•Sven Ove Hansson•Studies in History and Philosophy…•2017

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