Lee 1 Nicole Lee Letcher Global Climate Change 30 November 2012 Climate Change Deniers With all that

occurs in the world, the public is not always accepting of the information relayed through articles and other means of media. As with the attack of 9/11, assassinations of highly respected leaders, and other major historic events, there are always people waiting to create conspiracies behind or against those events. So naturally, there would be conspiracies behind the idea of global warming and climate change. There are people who do not believe that the climate change is actually happening and try to downplay the extent of global warming, its significance, or its connection to human behavior, especially for financial or other sectional interests. They are called climate change deniers. Even though approximately 97 percent of working scientists have come to the agreement that the evidence shows a warming trend that is caused by human activity and interaction with the natural world, the general publics understanding of climate change falls along political lines. (Pappas) The opinions of people are partially influenced by what information is available to them. For example, in countries like China, the views of people are very controlled because of the intense censorship the government enforces on all households and media. The voice of the

Lee 2 people, in turn, is actually the voice of the government controlling what the people say to the rest of the world. In the recent Ipsos poll, nine out of ten people that were surveyed believed that the climate had changed significantly in the past 20 years. Interestingly enough, the highest rates of climate change skepticism, or climate change denial, was seen in Japan, Britain, and the U.S. The poll mentioned above was commissioned by the AXA Group, an international insurance firm. The poll was conducted to see what percentage of populations agreed on whether climate change had been scientifically proven. The percentage of people believing this claim was found to be the lowest in Japan at fifty-eight percent. After Japan came Britain at the second lowest percentage at sixty-three percent. The third lowest was the United States at sixty-five percent. (Gates) It is interesting to see that the United States has one of the lowest percentages of people believing in global warming. It ties in with the idea that politics influences the people. In a democratic society with freedom of speech and minimal censorship, the choice to believe global warming or not is completely up to each individual, independent from any influence from the government or one-sided biased media outlets. Those who usually label themselves as climate change deniers are also believers of other conspiracies. The research, which will be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, surveyed more than 1,000 readers of science blogs regarding their beliefs regarding global warming. The results revealed that people who tend to believe in a wide array

Lee 3 of conspiracy theories are more likely to reject the scientific consensus that the Earth is heating up (Pappas). What is it that climate change deniers are saying? One claim they make is that the records of surface temperature are unreliable and exaggerate the amount of warming the Earth is experiencing. The reason is because there are some scientists that rely on temperature readings from ground weather stations that in most cases have been artificially boosted by an urban heat island effect. Since most weather stations are located in cities or town, it captures more heat from the asphalt, concrete and other construction materials, making the warming seem higher than it really is. Even though the existence of the urban heat island effect is true, it has not interfered with the overall trends that suggest global warming. There is research put into making the temperatures as accurate and reliable as possible. For example, NASAs Goddard Institute for Space Studies compares the records of temperatures from urban and rural weather stations, and changes the temperature readings at urban stations so that the trends are equivalent to those found in weather stations located in rural areas. Along with this, there is also evidence aside from urban temperature readings that show that the Earth is heating up. These include the warming of oceans, the disappearance of glaciers and permafrost, the shrinking of the Arctic ice cap, and the migrating of plants and animals in the Northern Hemisphere out of their historic ranges. Skeptics also claim that there is nothing especially unusual or different about todays temperatures. They say that the Earths climate is constantly changing. Any evidence of the

Lee 4 planet warming is just a part of the climate shifts that have been more dramatic in the past. Such instances include the rising of the temperature during the Medieval Warm period. This period, from about 800 to 1300 A.D., was as warm, if not warmer, than the temperatures experienced in the 20th century. Climate change deniers are saying that it is likely that the warming trend that is occurring today is just the return to warmer climates after the Little Ice Age. Scientists proving climate change respond to this by showing that reliable temperature records only go back approximately 150 years. Climate change deniers say many other findings they have that suggest that climate change is not real. They claim that natural factors are enough to account for the moderate warming of the Earth that has been occurring since 1900. They also say that there is no evidence that rising sea levels are linked to increased carbon-dioxide levels. The sea level has always been rising, and that there has been no sign of recent acceleration in the rate of sea-level rise. Although there are many claims that may make sense, there is still a lot of evidence supporting the occurrence of global warming.

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The graph above shows the significant change in temperature. This graph is evidence that the Earth is in fact warming. Scientists have also gathered much research to help prove that global warming is real. The existence of global warming is a never-ending argument between scientists and conspiracy theorists. However, with recent studies, more evidence has been found, making it more difficult for global warming skeptics to back up their own claims. Maybe this is the beginning of the end of the argument over the truth of climate change.

Lee 6 Works Cited

Gates, Sara. "Climate Change Skepticism Is Highest In Japan, Britain and U.S., Poll Finds." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 04 Oct. 2012. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/04/climate-change-skepticism-poll_n_1939846.html>. Korte, Travis. "Climate Change Denial & Conspiracy Theories: New Research Provokes Even More Irrationality." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 07 Sept. 2012. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/07/climate-change-denial--conspiracytheory_n_1865896.html>. MacDonald, Glen M. "Climate-change Denial Getting Harder to Defend." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 04 Oct. 2012. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. <http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/04/opinion/la-oe-macdonald-climate-change-20121004>. McKibben, Bill. "The State of Climate Change Denial." Mother Jones. N.p., 4 July 2012. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. <http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/06/climate-change-deniersheartland>. Totty, Michael. "What Global Warming?" The Wall Street Journal. N.p., 6 Dec. 2009. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. <http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703819904574551303527570212.html>.