The great global warming debate
by aidan eno
I had heard from a few students about a unit in their Biology classes in which they discussed the issue of global warming. The classes both watched “An Inconvenient Truth” and “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” and they voted on whether or not they believed climate change was human caused. Students voted before they had watched either movie, after they had watched “An Inconvenient Truth,” after they had watched “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” and after students had the chance to conduct some personal research.
The results were as follows:
In one class, before any videos were watched, 42 voted “yes, climate change is largely caused by humans” and 1 voted “no, humans are not largely responsible for climate change.” In that class, the results were the same after watching “An Inconvenient Truth.” After watching “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” the results changed to 28 “yes” and 12 “no” (some students were absent.
In another class, 22 voted “yes” and 23 voted “no” before watching the videos. After “An Inconvenient Truth,” 35 voted “yes” and 10 voted “no.” After watching “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” the results again changed to 23 voting “yes” and 22 voting “no.”
This took me by surprise. I’ve long been one with a strong opinion on this topic, and I had a hard time believing that so many of my peers refused the facts that the overwhelming majority of scientists stand by. I thought about what I could do to sway someone’s opinion on the matter, and after a few hypotheticals, I realized if someone were to ask me to provide evidence that supported this, I wouldn’t be able to.
So, I decided to change that. I opened up my computer and searched “International Scientific Society.” The first result was the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is an international non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. and the world’s largest scientific society. I went to the search bar on the website and did a quick search for “anthropogenic climate change.” A paper, written in 2004, showed up near the top titled “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” authored by Naomi Oreskes, an esteemed geologist. In this paper, she evaluated over nine hundred peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003. She found these papers by doing a quick keyword search of “global climate change” through the Web of Science, a database that has hundred of thousands of these papers. 928 papers surfaced with that phrase in the abstract, and she knew that because these were peer-reviewed scientific research papers, she, and anyone else for that matter, could trust them. As she points out, anybody can say anything they like about something, but in order for research to get published in a refereed journal, there must be sufficient evidence to support the claims, and it must pass the brutal critique of experts in that field.
She divided the 928 papers into six different categories - those that explicitly endorsed the idea of anthropogenic climate change, those that explicitly refuted it, those that discussed certain methodologies when conducting research, those explaining the impacts, those discussing other extreme changes in climate along the Earth’s timeline, and those providing suggestions for mitigating climate change. Roughly 75% of the papers explicitly endorsed the idea, explained the impacts, or discussed ways to combat global warming, while around 25% of the papers took no stance on anthropogenic climate change, these ones dealing with the history and the research methods. None of the papers, remarkably, explicitly refuted the idea that climate change is caused by humans.
If one really wants to understand the facts behind a scientific issue, all one need do is conduct some basic research. These papers all have their own research methods layed out, and since they’ve been reviewed time and time again by experts, they can be trusted. The point of science, by nature, is to further our collective understanding of the world around us. Scientists should be trusted, because often they do they job for the sake of research alone, not to further a political agenda. And if their methodology when conducting the research is flawed, either by mistake or by design, the reviewers of the paper call them out on it. Which brings me back to the movies shown in the Biology classes - a simple search for a scientific response to “The Great Global Warming Swindle” yields a number of open letters and critiques about the biased and misleading display of facts in that film, from esteemed scientists and scientific societies.
There is a sign hanging in one of the Biology rooms that reads, “We are living in the information age. Ignorance is a choice.” It is easy to live in a world of seclusion, but no progress, either in your opinion or your understanding, will ever be made. If you want to learn why something is the way it is, the best thing to do is conduct your own research. But don’t do it just for a class or for an assignment. Do it for yourself.
The results were as follows:
In one class, before any videos were watched, 42 voted “yes, climate change is largely caused by humans” and 1 voted “no, humans are not largely responsible for climate change.” In that class, the results were the same after watching “An Inconvenient Truth.” After watching “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” the results changed to 28 “yes” and 12 “no” (some students were absent.
In another class, 22 voted “yes” and 23 voted “no” before watching the videos. After “An Inconvenient Truth,” 35 voted “yes” and 10 voted “no.” After watching “The Great Global Warming Swindle,” the results again changed to 23 voting “yes” and 22 voting “no.”
This took me by surprise. I’ve long been one with a strong opinion on this topic, and I had a hard time believing that so many of my peers refused the facts that the overwhelming majority of scientists stand by. I thought about what I could do to sway someone’s opinion on the matter, and after a few hypotheticals, I realized if someone were to ask me to provide evidence that supported this, I wouldn’t be able to.
So, I decided to change that. I opened up my computer and searched “International Scientific Society.” The first result was the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which is an international non-profit organization headquartered in Washington, D.C. and the world’s largest scientific society. I went to the search bar on the website and did a quick search for “anthropogenic climate change.” A paper, written in 2004, showed up near the top titled “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change” authored by Naomi Oreskes, an esteemed geologist. In this paper, she evaluated over nine hundred peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals between 1993 and 2003. She found these papers by doing a quick keyword search of “global climate change” through the Web of Science, a database that has hundred of thousands of these papers. 928 papers surfaced with that phrase in the abstract, and she knew that because these were peer-reviewed scientific research papers, she, and anyone else for that matter, could trust them. As she points out, anybody can say anything they like about something, but in order for research to get published in a refereed journal, there must be sufficient evidence to support the claims, and it must pass the brutal critique of experts in that field.
She divided the 928 papers into six different categories - those that explicitly endorsed the idea of anthropogenic climate change, those that explicitly refuted it, those that discussed certain methodologies when conducting research, those explaining the impacts, those discussing other extreme changes in climate along the Earth’s timeline, and those providing suggestions for mitigating climate change. Roughly 75% of the papers explicitly endorsed the idea, explained the impacts, or discussed ways to combat global warming, while around 25% of the papers took no stance on anthropogenic climate change, these ones dealing with the history and the research methods. None of the papers, remarkably, explicitly refuted the idea that climate change is caused by humans.
If one really wants to understand the facts behind a scientific issue, all one need do is conduct some basic research. These papers all have their own research methods layed out, and since they’ve been reviewed time and time again by experts, they can be trusted. The point of science, by nature, is to further our collective understanding of the world around us. Scientists should be trusted, because often they do they job for the sake of research alone, not to further a political agenda. And if their methodology when conducting the research is flawed, either by mistake or by design, the reviewers of the paper call them out on it. Which brings me back to the movies shown in the Biology classes - a simple search for a scientific response to “The Great Global Warming Swindle” yields a number of open letters and critiques about the biased and misleading display of facts in that film, from esteemed scientists and scientific societies.
There is a sign hanging in one of the Biology rooms that reads, “We are living in the information age. Ignorance is a choice.” It is easy to live in a world of seclusion, but no progress, either in your opinion or your understanding, will ever be made. If you want to learn why something is the way it is, the best thing to do is conduct your own research. But don’t do it just for a class or for an assignment. Do it for yourself.