(image source)

Goooooood morning GBD!  I know, I know. Today is Thursday, not Tuesday.  I’ve been busy okay??  And would you look at the size of this post??  It’s ridonkulous!  So give a girl a break!

So remember a few weeks ago the News Day Tuesday was about the Copenhagen conference?  To my heart’s delight there was a little bit of debate going on in the comments.  So Animator and I and the rest of the GBD team thought it would be a good idea to present different viewpoints on this topic and let you decide for yourselves.  Animator provided us with a bunch of sources that disagree with the claim that global warming exists and that people are responsible for it.  And me?  Well, I’m on the other side of the coin, so I’ll throw in my two cents as well, although by the looks of this post, it’s more like two thousand cents.

Before I bombard you with links and sources and all that, I just wanted to explain why I’m presenting this post the way it is.  There are many, many sides to the debate people are having over climate change, or, more specifically, AGW (anthropogenic global warming…lol, isn’t that a mouthful? It means global warming caused by people.).  And when I say there’s a lot of debate, I’m specifically referring to the one between those who believe AGW is real, and those who do not (often referred to as “skeptics”).  The sheer multitude of arguments is far too much to present in a single post.  That’s why this post focuses on just a few aspects of the debate related to the following questions:  Are we witnessing a warming climate?  And if so, are people responsible for it?

The answers to these questions are, in my opinion, primarily scientific.   Not journalistic, nor political, nor ideological.  So while the media and the politicians and the advocates are certainly free to voice their thoughts, if you were going to go out there and determine for yourself whether or not global warming is real, and whether or not people are responsible for it, then who will you turn to for the data necessary to evaluate these claims?  The media?  The politicians?   Or the scientists?

The other thing I wanted to explain is how the post is organized.  I’m familiar with many of the opposing viewpoints surrounding climate change.  Many of the skeptics’ positions are summarized in one of the links provided by Animator (the site provides links to sources used to support the skeptic arguments, you just have to click through).  It is a good summary because the points are presented in easy to understand language, so I recommend reading it.  While I understand many of the skeptic positions, I also understand the counterarguments to these positions.  So what I did was present a common argument against AGW in bold, explain that position if I could, and then follow that with a counterargument.  I tried to present things in a way that I hope will make things easier to digest.  If you would like to present a counterargument to the counterargument (lol) then please feel free to do so in comments.  Also, a good number of the sources I link to come from grist because the skeptic summary included grist as one of its sources.  So I figured if it’s good enough for the skeptic, then it’s good enough for me.

There are other issues related to climate change that people disagree over that are not covered in this post. Things like:

• It’s silly to spend all this time, energy, and money trying to fix global warming when we can use those same resources to solve other, more immediate problems (like poverty, hunger, disease, etc.).
• People are just using climate change as an excuse to become richer and/or more powerful. (For example, see below.)
• The whole carbon market/cap-and-trade/carbon tax thing is just another way for people to create money out of nothing.
• Limiting CO2 emissions is unfair to developing countries because you’re not giving them the same opportunities and leeway developed countries had when they were going through their growth phase.
• It’s all a big scam, with scientists cooking their numbers so that they come out with the result they want. Just look at the Cimategate scandal. (Climategate refers to the hacked emails of prominent climate scientists.)

And a whole lot more. These are all important concerns, but there simply isn’t enough space here to go into all these things.   But far be it from me to leave you hanging.  So Animator and I have included some links at the end of this post in case any of you are interested in exploring these issues further.

Okay!  Having said all that, what’s the deal with AGW?  What’s all the fuss about?  Even on this, there are soooo many areas of debate.  I’m just going to cover a few of the most common issues I’ve come across, ones that are less technical and yawn-inducing.

(1)  How can we know anything about climate change?  We can’t even predict the weather!

I think this has to do with how our everyday language isn’t always consistent with scientific language.  We might use words like “climate” and “weather” interchangeably, but these words mean very different things to scientists.  To scientists, the difference between climate and weather is a bit like the difference between personality and mood.  Think of the climate as an area’s personality, and the weather as its mood.

If you have a friend that you’ve gotten to know very well, and that friend is generally a chill person who laughs easily, then you may feel fairly confident about predicting what your friend will be like on most days.  It’s a lot harder to accurately predict what your friend will be like at a specific time because anything can happen, and maybe your friend is having a bad day and is in a sour mood.  It happens to the best of us.

But, if your friend, whom you’ve known as a cheerful, relaxed person, is consistently in a bad mood, and gets angry or depressed much more easily and much more often than you’re used to, then you’d be concerned right?  Because the long-term behavior doesn’t fit the personality you’re familiar with.  It’s not just a bad mood anymore.  There seems to be something else going on.  And you, as a concerned friend, will try to find out what’s going on so that you can help your BFF.

That’s what the deal is with climate change.  There are people who believe that, as a whole, the earth’s personality, or climate, is significantly different from what people are used to or expect.  So they are working to figure out the reasons for this change.  One of the reasons given is that there is too much CO2 being released from human activities.

(2)  The earth has been warmer in the past, so what’s the big deal?

This is where the discussion starts getting more technical.  I will try to make this as painless as possible.

When people say that the earth isn’t that warm now relative to the past (some even say the earth has been cooling), they are usually referring to periods in the earth’s history known as the Medieval Warm Period (about 800-1200 years ago) and the Mid-Holocene Warm Period (about 6000 years ago).

How much faith you put in these claims depends on how much faith you put in different kinds of evidence.  There are first-person accounts and observations, collected data, and computer models.  The thing about climate change and data is that the most direct kind of data – temperature – wasn’t regularly collected on a global scale until about 150 years ago.  So when scientists say such-and-such about temperatures from a long time ago (before records were taken worldwide), they are basing their claims on computer models and other data besides temperature (like boreholes, ice cores, tree rings, and more).  Some people don’t trust computer models, but you can refer to this or this if you’re wondering about that.   Anyway, temperature data from the past 150 years come from direct measurements (not models).  When the models and direct measurements are taken together, scientists say that it is warmer now than it was during the Medieval Warm Period.  The graph below shows more than a dozen different temperature models of the past 1300 years.   While there is variability between each of the models, you will notice that the models generally follow the same shape, and if you compare the temperatures from the past century to those from the Medieval Warm Period (years 800-1200), the curves show that it is generally warmer now.

(graph source)

Well then, why are people saying the opposite – that it was warmer during the Medieval Warm Period?  Because there are first-person accounts that people wrote describing their environment, and these accounts indicate that it was pretty warm during medieval times, at least in Europe.

What about the Mid-Holocene Warm Period?  Well, during this period, it is true that parts of the earth were indeed warmer, but only certain parts and only during certain times – specifically the northern hemisphere during the summer.  The other thing about the Mid-Holocene Warm Period is that scientists have an explanation for these higher temperatures that to them is reasonable because it fits the data and the conditions at the time.  This explanation is not the same as the explanation currently criticized (CO2 emissions from people) for today’s warming.  So, although it makes sense to use the Mid-Holocene Warm Period to make the claim that it was (sort of) warmer in the past, it doesn’t make sense to use the same example to argue that AGW isn’t real because the causes of the two warmings are different.  It’s a bit like apples and oranges.

For example, let’s say Juju was overweight as a teenager, but then in her 20s she gets down to a normal weight.  Juju claims that she weighs less now because she’s been eating healthier.  And then someone else comes along and says, “Hey!  That’s not true.  You weighed even less when you were a kid and all you ate was fast food back then.  So your healthier diet has nothing to do with it.”  So you look at Juju’s medical records, and sure enough, she weighed less when she was a kid.  But there’s a good explanation for that – she weighed less because she was a kid at the time and was smaller than she is now as an adult.  So even though Juju did weigh less as a kid on a fast food diet, that alone isn’t enough to contradict the claim that Juju weighs less now because she’s eating healthier.  The explanation for why she weighed less as a kid doesn’t apply to her now.  In other words, why did Juju lose all that weight she had as a teenager?  It isn’t because she’s a kid now, because she’s not.  She’s an adult.  You need to find another explanation.  Juju’s explanation is that she’s eating healthier.  Could there be another explanation?  Of course.  But it’s certainly not that she, as a 20-something adult, has the body of a kid.

That’s how it is with the Mid-Holocene Warm Period.  It may have been (sort of) warmer back then than it is now, but that doesn’t mean that the reason given for today’s warmth (CO2 emissions from people) is invalid because the reason for the warmth back then doesn’t apply today.

(3)  Okay, the earth IS warmer now, but that’s not unusual because global warming is just part of a natural cycle.  The earth has been warming and cooling for millions of years.  In fact, back in the 1970s, people were freaking out over global cooling.

It is true that the earth goes through warming and cooling cycles.  So it seems perfectly reasonable to assume that today’s warming trend is just part of that natural cycle.  So why are people getting their undies in a twist?

First, and this, in my opinion, is a crucial point to the whole debate, is that it’s not merely the higher global temperatures that worries people.  The thing that really worries people is the speed at which temperatures are rising.  When you see all these temperature graphs that people whip out, they’re freaking out over how steep the curves are for the past few decades.  Why the freak out?   Because when change happens too quickly, there isn’t enough time to adapt.  And that is a dangerous situation because when living organisms don’t have enough time to get used to a changing environment, they often die.

That brings up the question…Are global temperatures really rising that quickly?  According to the data, yes.  Remember, temperature has been directly measured for the past 150 years.  In the past few decades, the earth has seen a rise in temperature that should normally take thousands of years to occur during a natural warming cycle.  So, while it is true that the earth does go through warming cycles, there has never been a warming quicker than the one we are currently experiencing.  Even if you could point to a period in the past that was hotter than it is today, odds are it took a lot, lot longer to get that hot.

Is the speed of change really all that important?  Well, imagine you’re a passenger in a moving car.  That ride can range in comfort for you, depending on how the driver handles the car and your personal level of masochism.  Personally, I like it when things are smooth and easy, when the car speeds up or slows down gradually, when curves are taken gently.  A car can be going 70, 80, 90 miles per hour, and that, to me, doesn’t feel much different from moving at, let’s say, 40 mph, as long as I’m given enough time to get used to the speed.  On the other hand, if I had to be in a car that was booking it the way you see in the movies, with pedal-to-the-metal burn-rubber acceleration, sudden screeching stops, and crazy whipping turns, then I think I would pee myself.  Each of those changes happens too quickly and makes me want to revisit my lunch.

Or how about poor Lucy and Ethel when they were working at the chocolate factory and the conveyor belt suddenly sped up?

It is also sort of true that back in the 1970s, people were freaking out over global cooling. I say “sort of” because it depends on who you’re referring to when you say people were freaking out.  For example, you could make a reasonable argument that the media were freaking out over global cooling.  One of the sources provided by Animator is, in my opinion, a fairly comprehensive report on the amount of media coverage given to varying claims of climate change over the past century.  Global warming!  Global cooling!  Another Ice Age!  All these changing views.  It’s a bit dizzying.  So it’s perfectly understandable to cast a doubtful eye on all the current hoopla that’s going on in the media about climate change.

But that’s the media.  What about the scientists?  Were they freaking out back then the way they’re freaking out now?  Not really.  For one thing, the amount of research supporting the claims of global cooling back in the ‘70s is far less than the amount of research supporting the claims of global warming (specifically, AGW) now.  For another thing, there is simply more data to work with now.  A lot of work has been done during the 30-40 years since the ‘70s, and most of it doesn’t paint a pretty picture.

(4)  Okay, the global warming we’re seeing now IS unusual, but CO2 emissions have little to do with it.   First of all, CO2 is natural, and second of all, there’s only a small percentage of it in the atmosphere.  So there’s no way people can release so much of it that it will change global temperatures.  I mean, geez!  Change the temperature of the entire freaking earth??  Come on!

In one sense, it is true that CO2 is natural in that carbon dioxide is the product of a biochemical process (cellular respiration) that’s been around for millions of years.  In fact, people and many other living organisms, including plants, must give off CO2 in order to stay alive.

But the CO2 emissions people are blaming for global warming aren’t coming from our breathing, or even the breathing of all living organisms combined.  The CO2 emissions people are blaming specifically come from things like industrial development and the burning of fossil fuels.  Are these the only sources of CO2?  No.  There’s CO2 from volcanic eruptions, CO2 from the oceans, CO2 from here, CO2 from there.  All of these sources are valid.  But even after accounting for all these sources, scientists still haven’t come up with a reason that explains the current warming trend better than the CO2 emitted from human activities.

But what about the changing activity of the sun?  Or the changing tilt and orbit of the earth?  Or the changing amount of ice? All excellent points.  And also, all accounted for.  None of these things has been found to explain the current warming trend as well as higher CO2 levels.

It is also true that CO2 makes up a relatively small percentage of the atmosphere, especially when compared to water vapor, which makes up a far larger percentage of the atmosphere and also acts as a greenhouse gas.  So isn’t it the water vapor that’s causing the warming instead of the CO2?  The explanation is a bit complicated, but the short answer is no.

I think the important thing to remember when evaluating the effect CO2 on global temperatures is not so much the actual amount and how that compares to everything else.   Because what does that mean, really, when you say that CO2 makes up a small part or that people produce a small amount, and therefore, these things have a small effect?   How do you determine what a small cause and effect are?   For example, a virus is smaller than a single cell in the human body.  Can you imagine?  Smaller than a single cell.  And yet it can cause sicknesses ranging from the common cold to AIDS.  Or how about our own temperature?  The “normal” oral temperature of the human body is about 98.6°F.  If that temperature rises above 100°F, then most of us will have a fever.   In other words, if your temperature increases by just 2%, then you will most likely feel hot and bothered.  So, at least when it comes to things that make us feel like crap, big things can come in small packages.

So instead, when considering the environment and our relation to it, I think it’s more useful to think about change and balance.  To better understand this, let’s go back to Lucy and Ethel in the chocolate factory.   Think of the unwrapped chocolates as the CO2 entering the atmosphere and the wrapped chocolates as the CO2 leaving the atmosphere.   And let’s also assume it’s been well-established that if the average person eats too much chocolate too quickly, then he or she is not going feel so great afterwards.

If you know that a certain number of unwrapped chocolates are headed towards Lucy and Ethel, and you know how fast Lucy and Ethel can wrap those chocolates, then you can figure out how many wrapped chocolates are going to leave the room.  But then things are sped up, and more unwrapped chocolates are headed towards Lucy and Ethel.   Lucy and Ethel try to keep up, but there’s a limit to how fast they can wrap those chocolates.   So now you’ve got all these extra unwrapped chocolates flying off the belt and into the mouths and clothes of Lucy and Ethel.   Here’s the question:  Will Lucy and Ethel feel sick afterwards or not?  If you know that they ate far too much chocolate far too quickly, and yet believe that they’re going to feel totally fine afterwards, then you need to explain that, considering that most people would feel sick after eating all that extra chocolate.

And so it is with CO2 and our environment.  There has been a significant increase in CO2 because we are putting more CO2 into the environment than all the plants and all the algae and all the oceans can absorb.   Just as Lucy and Ethel had a bunch of unwrapped chocolate to deal with because they couldn’t wrap them fast enough.  It is not consistent to say that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and at the same time say that such an increase will not significantly raise global temperatures.   If people believe that CO2 can trap heat, but that more CO2 is NOT the reason for the recent rise in temperatures, then they have to come up with a good explanation as to how it is that increasing the amount of a greenhouse gas will not increase the temperature.   Because that is a surprising claim, at least as surprising as saying that you can gorge on chocolates the way Lucy and Ethel did and still feel totally fine afterwards.

(5)  Even the scientists don’t agree on climate change.  There are lots of scientists who disagree that AGW exists.  And anyone who presents a different viewpoint from the majority is stifled.

I think that in order to understand this, it’s helpful to revisit one of my favorite topics: bacon.  Yes, bacon!  My friends and family and I are in overwhelming agreement that bacon is awesome.  That bacon makes things better.  That the key to world peace is, without a doubt, bacon.

We do disagree on some of the finer points of bacon.  Like apple-smoked or hickory-smoked?  Thick cut or thin cut?  Sugar-cured or not?  Pan-fried, deep-fried, or microwaved?  So in this sense, it is fair to say that we disagree about bacon.  But to characterize that disagreement as one in which we’re arguing over whether or not bacon itself is awesome is…not quite kosher.  Hehe…“kosher” – get it?  Should I stop?  Okay.

And so it is when people say scientists disagree about climate change.  Climate science is extremely complicated, with lots of mathematical and computer models, and data collection and processing, and this method or that.  On these finer points of climate change, scientists disagree over the best way to go about doing things.  But that doesn’t mean they disagree over whether or not climate change itself, specifically AGW, exists.  Most scientists, particularly climate scientists, agree that the earth is warming more quickly than ever, and that the CO2 emitted by human activities is the primary cause of that change.  If they disagree, it’s over much more specific details that, quite frankly, would turn most of us into drooling zombies if someone tried to explain it to us.

But what about this petition that’s been going around?  More than 30,000 scientists have signed it, urging the U.S. government to reject the Kyoto Protocol and the idea that people are causing catastrophic global warming.  Well, 30,000+ scientists is no small change, so let’s take a look at that.

The petition that is referred to is known as the Global Warming Petition Project.   You can refer to their site to find out more.  According to their site, 31,486 scientists have signed, of which 9,029 have PhDs.   This seems pretty impressive, right?  Except that people have criticized how these signatures are verified.   How do you know that the signatures represent actual scientists with valid credentials?   Or that the scientists are still working and not retired?   But let’s assume that every single one of those signatures is valid.   There is another criticism, which is that of all those scientists, less than 0.4% are from those in atmospheric science, and only a bit more than 0.1% are from those in climatology.  You can do the math yourself using the numbers provided by the petition organizers.

So what?  Well, not all scientists have the experience and knowledge that climatologists have.   I realize that this may seem like climate scientists are being elevated to some elite status that perhaps rubs some people the wrong way because they interpret that as arrogance.  But I think that it’s just an objective evaluation of professional expertise.  Just as not all doctors have the same expertise, and neither do all teachers, nor engineers, nor any other professional with a sub-specialty of knowledge.   For example, all doctors graduated from medical school, but if you had to have heart surgery, would you go to an allergist or a cardiac surgeon?

Take me for example.  I have taken a LOT of science classes.   I like to think I have a good grasp of general scientific principles.  However, very little of my education has dealt specifically with climate science.   For me to think that my science background, while significant, is enough to put me on the same level as those with PhDs in climatology and decades of research experience would be, in my opinion, a bit arrogant of me.   It’s one thing if a climate scientist criticizes the work of other climate scientists, but it’s quite another for a doctor, or an engineer, or a politician to do so.  So I think that when someone criticizes some aspect of climate science, it helps to see exactly what it is he or she is criticizing and how that person’s background qualifies him or her to make such a criticism.

Sometimes non-climate scientists do make valid criticisms because their background gives them the skill set to do so.   For example, an often-cited criticism against AGW is the one made by McIntyre and McKitrick about the hockey stick graph created by Mann and his colleagues.   These men pointed out a mistake.  Mann and his team corrected the mistake.  There has since been a whole lot of debate about methodologies between McIntyre and McKitrick on the one side and climate scientists on the other.   The point is, these men (an economist and a petroleum geologist) have extensive experience in data processing and mathematical modeling.  So for them to criticize this aspect of climate science is reasonable.  If they were to criticize some other aspect of climate science that is outside the bounds of their expertise, then that’s another story.

Anyway, so you’ve got the opposition, but on the other hand, you’ve got the much-talked about “scientific consensus,” which says that global warming is real and that people are responsible.  Where is the evidence for this consensus?  Where is this group’s petition with 31,486 signatures?  Well, I don’t know if such a petition exists, but here is a list of scientific organizations that have publicly supported the consensus position, here is another one, here is a survey (published in a science journal) which showed that of the 79 climate scientists who responded (which is more than the 39 who signed the Global Warming Project Petition), 96-97% said that global temperatures have risen and that human activity is a significant cause, and here is a study that examined 928 climate change papers published during 1993-2003 in peer-reviewed science journals – none of those papers disagreed with the consensus.   It is also widely accepted among climate scientists that the IPCC report accurately represents the consensus.

Now if there is this consensus about climate change, then sure…it would certainly appear that to go against the grain would seem intimidating.  That any perspectives counter to the majority would be stifled.  I mean, in everyday life, it’s scary to go against what the majority says is cool, right?  But science isn’t quite everyday life.  Things are a little different in the world of a professional scientist – that is, someone who earns a living by studying things like climate change.  In that world, being contrary is welcomed (up to a certain point – arguing that the earth is flat isn’t going to get you anywhere nowadays), and doing things differently is actively pursued.  Why?  Because the world of a professional scientist revolves around the new: new data, new methods, new hypotheses,…new, new, new.  You’re not going to get that grant money or win a Nobel Prize by discovering or demonstrating or hypothesizing something that’s been done a hundred times before.  This is partly why there are so many different lines of evidence supporting the claim that AGW is real.

Scientists strive to be different – in fact, they are pressured to be different in order to remain relevant.  Ask any scientist who works for a research facility or a university, and chances are he or she will say that one of the demanding aspects of the job is to constantly conduct studies and publish papers in peer-reviewed journals.  Funding and publication do not favor stale research or ideas.  So scientists need to keep up, and they’re not going to do so by doing the same thing everyone else is doing over and over again.

So if you’ve got all these scientists saying that, for sure, there is global warming, and that, for sure, people are causing it, then, for sure, as a scientist, one lock-down shot to fame would be to effectively demonstrate that all (well, ok…most) of these scientists who do agree with the consensus are wrong.  You will go down in the history books if you can do that.  AND, you will give everyone a huge sigh of relief that we can happily go along as we always have and not have to stress out so much about global warming.  If you can somehow overturn dozens and dozens of methodologies and data sets and climate models, and convincingly show that either the earth is NOT warming as quickly as many believe, or that the rapid warming is NOT due to increased CO2 emissions, then you will not only be set for life, but you will also save millions of people a ginormous headache.  You may not become uber famous like Albert Einstein, but you will certainly achieve a significant level of acclaim.  Fo shizzle.

But wait!  What about Climategate?  And the hockey stick graph?  And the Y2K bug?  Excellent points.  Science isn’t perfect, but it is a process.  Problems have been found, glitches have been noted.  When these things come up, scientists account for them, because in addition to professional pride and integrity, there’s Fame! Glory! Nobel Prize!  What if one of these things is the holy grail that upends most of the research that has been done so far?  Can you imagine?  The scientists can.  So they’re constantly examining new research, crunching the numbers, and tweaking the models to see if they have come across a surefire reason to be inducted into the Hall of Nerdy Fame.  Has this happened yet?  Even after all these problems have been found?  No.

Now waitaminute…how can that be?   Well, if you dig deeper into the problems that many people have pointed out, at least the legitimate ones that scientists have acknowledged does affect the outcome of their research in some way, I think you will find that these problems are not enough (whether in number or influence) to overturn the bulk of research that has been done in climate science.

It’s a bit like being a juror for a murder trial.  The prosecution presents all this evidence: several eyewitness testimonies, security camera footage, audio recordings, photographs, DNA evidence, fingerprints, gunpowder residue, phone records, credit card statements,…all supporting the claim that the accused committed the murder.  You’re thinking that for sure the defendant is guilty.  But aha!  The defense shows that the photographs were Photoshopped!  Is that enough to change your mind?  Does the Photoshopping invalidate all the other lines of evidence?  How much of the evidence needs to be overturned before you decide that the defendant is innocent?  That, ultimately, is up to you.

And so…about a bajillion words later…that’s all I wanted to cover in this post.  Hahaha.  As I mentioned before, there are many other aspects to this debate.  The one that Animator mentioned is whether or not people are using climate change to further their own interests, especially in light of the recent Copenhagen conference and the international agreements that were supposed to be worked out there.  Another active area of debate is whether or not regulating carbon emissions is feasible, or if it’s a good idea, and if it is a good idea, then how best to go about it (A carbon tax?  Cap and trade?).

Animator has kindly provided us with numerous sources supporting the position that people are using climate change to further their own interests:

• The soap opera with the global warming hoax continues
• Obama’s Global Tax Up For Senate Vote
• Climategate: University of East Anglia U-turn in climate change row
• Is Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereignty?
• Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation

Here are some links that present opposing viewpoints with regards to regulating carbon emissions (the first one is provided by Animator):

• Could Cap and Trade Cause Another Market Meltdown?
• The Story of Cap and Trade
• Cataloguing the Errors in “The Story of Cap and Trade”

Here is a popular site that generally supports the skeptic position:

• Watts Up With That?

Here is a popular site that supports the consensus position:

• Climate Progress

Here is a site run by climate scientists:

• Real Climate

Here is an FAQ based on the IPCC report:

• Frequently Asked Questions

Here is an example of why peer-review is so important in science:

• 20th Century Climate Not So Hot
• Peer Review: A Necessary But Not Sufficient Condition (This article critiques the previous article.)

And finally, here are sites that present way more arguments against AGW and their counterarguments:

• Climate change: A guide for the perplexed
• Myths vs. Facts: Global Warming
• How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes my official entry for Most Epically Long Bordering on Ridiculous Blog Post in the Entire Freaking History of GBD.  I’m pretty confident I will win in this category.   I’d like to thank Animator for taking the time to provide us with many of the sources included in this post.

Tune in later for the GBD’s Most Bestest List of 2009!  I will post it tonight.  I hope.