Global Warming

Abstract

Everywhere one looks – newspapers, websites, books, statements by public leaders and nonpartisan organizations – one hears that climate change is a misguided and unsupported conclusion (Inhofe, 2012; Dixon, 2013; Fox News, 2014; see also http://www.climate changedispatch.com/Sites-of-Interest/; http://appinsys.com/globalwarming/GW_Books.htm; http://www.iloveco2.com/p/resources.html). Even more disturbing, however, are the claims about what Tim Ball (2014) recently called “the deliberate corruption of climate science.” For example, one website dedicated to “exposing the truth about global warming hysteria” says global climate change science is a scam (Minnesotans for Global Warming, 2014; see also Rivero, 2009; Pruden, 2013). The Chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, Jim Inhofe (2003), by contrast, called the threat not a scam, but the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” a view echoed by GlobalWarmingHoax.com, “Where Only the Truth Heats Up™” (see also Caruba, 2014; and World Natural Health Organization, http://wnho.net). Or is it fraud, as alleged by Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, a senior member of the House Science Committee (Fang, 2013; see also Ferrara, 2013; Adams, 2014)? Each not only dismisses the claims about global warming and climate change, and the plentiful evidence that supports those claims, but also notes the dangerous erosion of science. But which is it? Scam, hoax, or fraud? It’s all quite alarming. What is alarming, of course, is not that the science is wrong, but that so many people reject the science, typically while appealing to the very principles and banner of science in doing so. Somewhere, science education has failed miserably. But what is the remedy? How do we prepare scientifically literate citizens? How indeed would the naive student know if global warming science is (or is not) a scam, a fraud, or a hoax? Most would say that you …