The global warming controversy is a dispute regarding the nature, causes, and consequences of global warming. The disputed issues include the causes of increased global average air temperature, especially since the mid-20th century, whether this warming trend is unprecedented or within normal climatic variations, and whether the increase is wholly or partially an artifact of poor measurements. Additional disputes concern estimates of climate sensitivity, predictions of additional warming, and what the consequences of global warming will be. The controversy is significantly more pronounced in the popular media than in the scientific literature.
History
Public opinion
In the European Union, global warming has been a prominent and sustained issue. All European Union member states ratified the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and many European countries had already been taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions prior to 1990. For example, Margaret Thatcher advocated action against man-made climate change in 1988, and Germany started to take action after the Green Party took seats in Parliament across the 1980s. Substantial activity by NGOs took place as well. Both "global warming" and the more politically neutral "climate change" were listed by the Global Language Monitor as political buzzwords or catch phrases in 2005. In Europe, the notion of human influence on climate gained wide acceptance more rapidly than in many other parts of the world, most notably the United States.
There has been a debate among public commentators about how much weight and media coverage should be given to each side of the controversy. Andrew Neil of the BBC stated that "There's a great danger that on some issues we're becoming a one-party state in which we're meant to have only one kind of view. You don't have to be a climate-change denier to recognise that there's a great range of opinion on the subject." Martin Gardner, on the other hand, sees the media in the United States bending over backwards to give equal time to both sides, when pseudoscience and science are at odds.
The table below shows how public perceptions about the existence and importance of global warming have changed in the U.S. The worldwide consensus is that climate change is a serious problem.
A June 2007 Ipsos Mori poll conducted in the UK found 56 percent of 2032 adults believed scientists were still questioning climate change. The survey suggested that terrorism, graffiti and crime were all of more concern than climate change. Ipsos Mori's head of environmental research, Phil Downing, said people had been influenced by counter-arguments.
The Canadian science broadcaster and environmental activist, David Suzuki, reports that focus groups organized by the David Suzuki Foundation showed the public has a poor understanding of the science behind global warming. This is despite recent publicity through different means, including the films An Inconvenient Truth and The 11th Hour .
An example of the poor understanding is public confusion between global warming and ozone depletion or other environmental problems.
A 15-nation poll conducted in 2006 by Pew Global found that there "is a substantial gap in concern over global warming – roughly two-thirds of Japanese (66%) and Indians (65%) say they personally worry a great deal about global warming. Roughly half of the populations of Spain (51%) and France (46%) also express great concern over global warming, based on those who have heard about the issue. But there is no evidence of alarm over global warming in either the United States or China – the two largest producers of greenhouse gases. Just 19% of Americans and 20% of the Chinese who have heard of the issue say they worry a lot about global warming – the lowest percentages in the 15 countries surveyed. Moreover, nearly half of Americans (47%) and somewhat fewer Chinese (37%) express little or no concern about the problem."
A 47-nation poll by Pew Global Attitudes conducted in 2007 found that "Substantial majorities 25 of 37 countries say global warming is a 'very serious' problem".
There is a notable difference between the opinion of scientists and that of the general public in the US. A 2009 poll by Pew Research Center found that "hile 84% of scientists say the earth is getting warmer because of human activity such as burning fossil fuels, just 49% of the public agrees."
Related controversies
Many of the critics of the consensus view on global warming have disagreed, in whole or part, with the scientific consensus regarding other issues, particularly those relating to environmental risks, such as ozone depletion and passive smoking. Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science , has argued that the appearance of overlapping groups of skeptical scientists, commentators and think tanks in seemingly unrelated controversies results from an organised attempt to replace scientific analysis with political ideology. Mooney claims that the promotion of doubt regarding issues that are politically, but not scientifically, controversial became increasingly prevalent under the Bush Administration and constituted a "Republican war on science". This is also the subject of a recent book by Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. entitled Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and Corporate Pals are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy. Another book on this topic is The Assault on Reason by former U.S. Vice-President Al Gore. Earlier instances of this trend are also covered in the book The Heat Is On by Ross Gelbspan.
Some critics of the scientific consensus on global warming have argued that these issues should not be linked and that reference to them constitutes an unjustified ad hominem attack. Political scientist Roger Pielke, Jr., responding to Mooney, has argued that science is inevitably intertwined with politics.
Scientific
Consensus
Main articles: Scientific opinion on climate change, Climate change consensus, and Climate change denialThe finding that the climate has warmed in recent decades and that this warming is likely attributable to human influence has been endorsed by every national science academy that has issued a statement on climate change, including the science academies of all of the major industrialized countries. At present, no scientific body of national or international standing has issued a dissenting statement. A small minority of professional associations have issued noncommittal statements.
Environmental groups, many governmental reports, and the non-U.S. media often state that there is virtually unanimous agreement in the scientific community in support of human-caused global warming. Others maintain that either proponents or opponents have been stifled or driven underground. Opponents either maintain that most scientists consider global warming "unproved," dismiss it altogether, or highlight the dangers of focusing on only one viewpoint in the context of what they say is unsettled science, or point out that science is based on facts and not on opinion polls.
On April 29, 2008, environmental journalist Richard Littlemore revealed that a list of "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares" distributed by the Heartland Institute included at least 45 scientists who neither knew of their inclusion as "coauthors" of the article, nor agreed with its contents. Many of the scientists asked the Heartland Institute to remove their names from the list.
In 1997, the "World Scientists Call For Action" petition was presented to world leaders meeting to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol. The declaration asserted, "A broad consensus among the world's climatologists is that there is now ‘a discernible human influence on global climate.’" It urged governments to make "legally binding commitments to reduce industrial nations' emissions of heat-trapping gases", and called global warming "one of the most serious threats to the planet and to future generations." The petition was conceived by the Union of Concerned Scientists as a follow up to their 1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, and was signed by "more than 1,500 of the world's most distinguished senior scientists, including the majority of Nobel laureates in science."
IPCC
Main article: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate ChangeIn 2001, sixteen of the world's national science academies made a joint-statement on climate change. In this statement, the science academies gave their support for the IPCC process:
Many other science academies and scientific organizations support the conclusions of the IPCC.
In Naomi Oreskes's talk The American Denial of Global Warming , Oreskes recounted the following incident:
The work of the IPCC has attracted controversy and criticism, including some from experts invited by the IPCC to submit reports or serve on its panels.
In blog posts, Roger A. Pielke contends that the IPCC distorted the evidence by not including scientific results that questioned global warming. These criticisms have been described as "failed" by William Connolley. Pielke also perceived a conflict of interest in the IPCC assessment process, since the "same individuals who are doing primary research in the role of humans on the climate system are then permitted to lead the assessment! ... Assessment Committees should not be an opportunity for members to highlight their own research." There is no obvious solution to this problem, since scientists with sufficient expertise to serve on the IPCC and scientists who have written noteworthy papers in the field are essentially the same g
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