Another common argument against the global warming scenario is that the earth goes through cyclical variations in temperature, and that the evidence for global temperature rise is simply a reflection of a natural cycle, and not a consequence of greenhouse gas emissions. One finds references to a “little ice age” in the 16th-19th centuries.
Are we just in a natural warming phase, recovering from the “little ice age”? No!!
The following is a taken from “The Copenhagen Diagnosis,” a report issued in 2009 by the Climate Change Research Centre of the University of New South Wales. The authors primarily comprise previous IPCC lead authors familiar with the rigor and completeness required for a scientific assessment of this nature. The complete report is available at
The purpose of this report was to synthesize the most policy-relevant climate science published since the close-off of material for the prior IPCC report. Addressing the idea that global warming is a natural cycle, a "rebound" from prior colder years, the report states
A “recovery” of climate is not a scientific concept, since the climate does not respond like a pendulum that swings back after it was pushed in one direction. Rather, the climate responds like a pot of water on the stove: it can only get warmer if you add heat, according to the most fundamental law of physics, Conservation of Energy.
The Earth’s heat budget (its radiation balance) is well understood. By far the biggest change in the radiation balance over the past 50 years, during which three quarters of global warming has occurred, is due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.
Natural factors have had a slightly cooling effect during this period. Global temperatures are now not only warmer than in the 16th-19th centuries, sometimes dubbed “the little ice age” (although this term is somewhat misleading in that this largely regional phenomenon has little in common with real ice ages). Temperatures are in fact now globally warmer than any time in the past 2000 years. This is a point that all global climate reconstructions by different groups of researchers, based on different data and methods, agree upon.
The Earth’s heat budget (its radiation balance) is well understood. By far the biggest change in the radiation balance over the past 50 years, during which three quarters of global warming has occurred, is due to the human-caused increase in greenhouse gas concentrations.
Natural factors have had a slightly cooling effect during this period. Global temperatures are now not only warmer than in the 16th-19th centuries, sometimes dubbed “the little ice age” (although this term is somewhat misleading in that this largely regional phenomenon has little in common with real ice ages). Temperatures are in fact now globally warmer than any time in the past 2000 years. This is a point that all global climate reconstructions by different groups of researchers, based on different data and methods, agree upon.
It is always interesting, but sometimes personally distressing, to follow the trail of Global Warming disinformation. The “natural warming phase” argument appears throughout the contrarian internet blogs. If one Googles “natural warming trend” one finds a number of sites, of which one, the Serendipity blog is especially revealing. This blog is hosted by Peter Myer. On that site he states the following:
The global warming scare is a huge scam designed to increase the profits of the corporate capitalists and the parasitic international bankers, to advance their goal of a world government (controlled by them, of course), and to impose even more "legal" restrictions upon the freedom of people to live according to how they themselves think best.
The phrase “parasitic international bankers” leaped out at me. That is a phrase used in the early years (the 1930s) of Nazi Germany to blame Jews for the then current state of the German nation. So I Googled “Peter Myers, Serendipity,” and found
The site hosts a collection of articles which advance thoroughly discredited ideas about the World Trade Center crashes, including unsupported theories that the Pentagon was hit by a missile, that the North Tower was hit by a commuter jet, etc. Serendipity hosts articles with vehement antisemitism.
In the end, the individual who wishes to know the “truth” about global warming, but who is not trained in the sciences relevant to the issues, must decide whom to believe.
Naomi Oreskes, in an article entitled The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong? makes the following point:
the vast majority of materials denying the reality of global warming do not pass the most basic test for what it takes to be counted as scientific—namely, being published in a peer-reviewed journal. Contrarian views have been published in books and pamphlets issued by politically motivated think-tanks and widely spread across the Internet, but so have views promoting the reality of UFOs, and the "birther myth" that President Obama was not born in the United States. (In a 2011 CBS poll, 25% of those polled believed he was not born in this country. His Hawaii birth certificate is argued by many of them to be a fake.)
In addition, see the following website that refutes skeptical arguments about global warming:
It is hard to tell how long this battle between science and politics will continue. At the time I began final editing of this material (late September of 2014) I was sickened to view the “discussion” between White House Science Advisor Dr. John P. Holdren, and members of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in regard to the Obama administration’s plan to fight climate change.
But, as is true for all House Science committee hearings on climate change, much of the questioning focused not on the content of any potential legislation itself, but whether global warming is even real. My words cannot do justice to the ignorance displayed at that meeting by House members who hold the responsibility for dealing with this problem.
Watch and judge for yourself. (There are three videos from that meeting, each from one to three minutes in length. I hope you'll watch all three, and then go back to this link and listen to Pete Seeger's What Did You Learn in School?
Finally, the issue of Climate Change does not just involve science and technology. A broader analysis of the climate crisis can be found in Naomi Klein’s book, This Changes Everything. See http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/09/books/review/naomi-klein-this-changes-everything-review.html?_r=0 for a review of the book.
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