A Climate Skeptics Handbook

Here is a link to Joanne Nova's global warming Skeptics Handbook. This is a fair presentation of the anti-global warming position.

Some things that people need to realize:

• Being skeptical on the doom-and-gloom crowd's "global warming" does not mean that you do not accept the data that temperatures have been rising. That's not the argument. The argument is whether the rise reflect 'anthropogenic' global warming or is mainly just normal climate variability.


• The debate is over whether the science is at a point where we can trust models to guide policy decisions. The sceptics do not think the models can be trusted. There is not enough knowledge of feedback loops. The global warming crowd generally sees positive feedback loops everywhere. The sceptics point out that eras in the past his high CO2 didn't lead to a runaway greenhouse effect so there must be negative feedback loops that moderate the effect of CO2 (and other greenhouse gases).


• There are debates over the accuracy of temperatures measurements. The site www.surfacestations.org attempts to assess the quality of recording stations. The results are shocking. Less than one-third are rated as fair, good, or best. The overwhelming majority are poor or worse. How can you have good science when your data is poor? On top of this we now learn that organizations such as Hadley's CRU subverted by climate fanatics have distorted or 'lost' data in order to shape results to their prejudices.


• Sceptics worry that the costs of warming are overblown. There needs to be a calm rational debate over costs and benefits.


• The big picture gets lost in the controversy. What are the the technological alternatives and what is the best way to mobilize and realize a desirable future? The global warming crusaders want to tax and to cap and to mandate. Another alternative is to use a carrot instead of stick by boosting funding for scientific research and technological innovation.


• For a person like myself, the hypocrisy of the global warming crusaders raises my hackles. Too much of this 'preaching' is coming from people whose carbon footprint is 10 or 100 times mine and they want to tell me to tighten my belt. (This isn't just my reaction, this is the response coming from China, India, Brazil, and other under-developed countries.) I hate people preaching at me who don't live by the morals they preach. Here's the de facto head cheerleader, Al Gore telling everybody to shink their carbon footprint, but ABC News reports "the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours. 'If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn't care,' says the Center's 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. 'But he tells other people how to live and he's not following his own rules.'"