I was sent a link to a video by Ben Crowder, titled DEBUNKED: Top 5 "Climate Change" Myths. (Link) The person who sent me the video said that it encapsulates a lot of their own skepticism about climate change, and wanted to know if I had any response. This is my response.
Crowder makes a bunch of argments, but groups them broadly under 5 main claims. We'll address them individually.
Claim:
- The initial paper showing a 97% consensus among scientists has some flaws. They didn't sample enough people, etc. So we don't really know how much consensus there is.
Response:
- Yeah there were some flaws, but a whole bunch of subsequent studies have shown that the real consensus number is somewhere between 90% and 98%. Whether or not it's exactly 97%, it's still a strong consensus. (Source: https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-advanced.htm)
- There are a huge number of scientific organizations that all agree that climate change is happening. See https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ for a list of some of them.
- Note that most of his following points basically hinge on this claim. If there is actually broad scientific consensus that climate change is happening, then you have to assume that either the broad scientific community is unaware of the following points (unlikely), or that there is strong reason to be concerned despite the following claims.
Claim:
- Ice sheets are supposedly melting, but a NASA paper showed that they actually grew from 1992 to 2001.
Response:
- Yes, but go read that paper. (https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-of-antarctic-ice-sheet-greater-than-losses.) They don't disagree that ice melt is increasing. They just said that increased snowfall in some parts of Antarctica is currently outweighing the melt in other areas.
- Also, there are tons of papers that show lots of evidence for concern. This paper doesn't dispute the results from other papers. They don't dispute that ARCTIC sea ice is still melting. They don't dispute that ocean levels are rising. But Crowder picks out the one paper that shows some positive news and tries to show that disagreement means we can't trust anything. If we're going to go by NASA's data, let's look at all their data. (https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/land-ice/). Yes, it fluctuates a bit, but there's clearly a downward trend. This paper doesn't dispute that trend at all. It just refines it. It also doesn't say anything about data from the last 15 years, during which time all other indicators have gotten worse.
- Antarctic sea ice isn't even the main concern, so this is kinda a straw man argument. Melt from the Arctic ice and especially from Greenland is a far larger concern in terms of sea level rise than that from Antarctica. Arctic sea ice is deviating wildly from historical trends—it's disappearing rapidly.
Claim:
- Polar bear populations have actually increased in recent years
Response:
- This is a silly argument. Although polar bears have been a common "mascot" for climate change, they're hardly the central area of concern. The scientific argument for climate change is not centered on concern over polar bears. Not at all. Even if polar bears are doing just fine, there is still plenty of reason for concern for dozens of other habitats.
- A more pressing extinction threat, for example, is found in South Pacific coral reefs. When water temperatures increase above a certain threshold, the coral experiences a process called "bleaching" that results in most of the nutrients dispersing away from the coral ecosystem. This is a stressful situation for the coral, but it can usually recover over time. However, higher temperatures have led to more and more frequent bleaching events; while it used to happen once every decade or so, there are now many coral reefs that are experiencing bleaching every few months. When that happens, the coral can't survive. And when the coral does, that takes out a huge chunk of the ecosystem, which has detrimental impacts on other sea life in the area.
- Just a note: it's possible for the number of polar bears to increase over the short term and for their habitat to still be in severe long-term danger. These aren't mutually exclusive.
Claim:
- Climate models are super unreliable. They can't even predict the number of hurricanes we'll have in any given year! And what about global cooling that everyone was talking about back in the 1970s?
Response:
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Climate models are not intended to predict the number of hurricanes, so that's a red herring. Climate models are forecasting long-term trends on the order of decades and centuries. There is, of course, short term fluctuation on the scale of weeks, months, or even a year or two. Climate models aren't trying to model that activity, so it's not surprising they don't capture it.
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An analogy: there is a lot of population growth in northern Utah County right now. UDOT makes predictions about how many people are going to be here in 10 or 20 years, and tries to plan infrastructure accordingly. Those predictions won't be perfect, but they take into account reasonable assumptions. But it would be ridiculous to claim "UDOT growth models can't even predict how many traffic jams we'll have next week; why should we trust their claims about 20 years from now?!". That's just an absurd argument.
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As for global cooling... this is a common misconception. There was some scientific speculation that cooling might happen, based on some recent discoveries. This set off a bunch of pop-science magazine articles, books, and media reports, because people like to be alarmist. But there was never any broad scientific consensus. We didn't have constant reports of actual, real-life problems being caused by global cooling; it was just a possibility that had been suggested. On the other hand, we have broad consensus and evidence now that the climate is changing, not just that it might change. Global average temperatures are actually climbing, according to tons of independent measurements.
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Note that on-average global warming does not mean that temperatures will climb everywhere; higher temperatures lead to higher evaporation, which increases precipitation in some areas and changes weather patterns. So it's very possible that some areas may actually become more livable under a warming climate.
Claim:
- Even if climate change is really happening, we shouldn't trust the government to deal with it. Look at all these examples of the government messing things up.
Response:
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Okay, yes, government isn't perfect. It's often inefficient, and it's made of people, who make mistakes.
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But Crowder seems to think that's an argument for doing nothing. He doesn't propose any alternative mechanism for fixing the problems leading to climate change, which makes sense because there's no economic incentive for any company to address it. It's the frequently cited "Tragedy of the Commons"; it's in the economic interest of every business to run things as cheaply as possible, and when pollution doesn't have an economic cost, pollution runs rampant. It's known as a "negative externality" in economics; Party A and Party B come to an economic agreement, and unrelated Party C suffers as a result. (In this case, car manufacturers and oil companies set up a system that works well for both of them, but fisheries halfway across the world suffer.) There are two ways to correct negative externalities: either you can make regulations to protect the external party, or you can make the externalized cost part of the price that the two participating parties agree on.
For example, we could impose regulations on CO2 emissions—we could make a law that producing more than 100 liters of CO2 per day is illegal, and you can go to jail for breaking the law. That's the regulatory approach. Or we could say that each liter of atmospheric CO2 produced by a business results in a tax of $0.10. That's the "internalize the cost" approach. Either way works, but in either case, some sort of governing body is required to intervene. It won't just resolve itself on its own.
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If you accept that climate change is actually happening, then claiming "the government shouldn't be involved" is nonsensical; the government has an active interest in protecting its military bases from flooding due to rising sea levels, in protecting its military forces from unrest due to regional habitability changes, and in protecting its citizens from the harmful effects of climate change. If you actually accept that climate change is happening, then of course the government should do something. You could argue that private businesses and private citizens should also do something, but it's ridiculous to suggest that the government should do nothing to protect is own interests. So this argument isn't really an argument against climate change at all; Crowder disagrees with the government taking action simply because he doesn't believe climate change is happening. There's no reasonable argument that his first 4 "myths" are actually true, but that the government still should not take action.
Whew!
Okay, so those are my responses to his main points. I didn't address every claim in the video; it was 20 minutes long, and this would have a short novel to address every claim made there. I'm just addressing his main points.
But luckily for you, reader, other websites have addressed these claims. If you're interested in reading more responses to common criticisms of climate change, check out http://grist.org/series/skeptics/. It's a huge list of responses to common skeptical claims of climate change. It's well written, well sourced, and worth your time.