Classroomtools.com Warm-up Activity - Is That A Fact?

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Is That A Fact?

Glaciers have been growing, not shrinking.

On April 16, 2005, New Scientist published a letter from botanist David Bellamy that made this assertion. It was a boon to Global Warming deniers, and was widely disseminated by them.

On May 10, 2005, the UK newspaper The Guardian published an article by George Monbiot titled Junk Science, in which he recounts his efforts to validate Bellamy's assertion. In the end, he is unable to do so. His article is a masterpiece of clear thinking and journalistic detective work.

In the late 1980s, when James Hanson first brought the threat of Global Warming to the fore, those struggling to preserve the status quo denied the possibility in the strongest possible terms; and, true to form, waged a personal attack against Hanson. Once the evidence became undeniable that warming was occurring, they changed their arguments to claim that the warming was a natural occurrence, not human induced. Now that the evidence for human induced warming is becoming incontrovertible, they fall back to cherry picking (focusing on places where data is still being collected and interpreted), denying proof when it is presented, and false assertions like David Bellamy's. They count on the scientific illiteracy and innumeracy of most of the US populace and press to make their fallacious arguments and false assertions work.

Those wishing to explore the current state of knowledge produced by climate change science would do well to begin with the following sites:

The National Science Foundation's What Science is Telling Us About Climate Change
Hurricanes: the Heat is On, a look at the scientific links between more intense hurricanes and global climate change from the Why? Files
Beginner's Guide to Global Warming - a presentation of The Woods Hole Research Center
Global Warming Facts and Our Future - an online exhibit from the National Academy of Sciences' Marion Koshland Science Museum
Statement of the Joint Academies of Science (Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, and the US) on Global Warming, prepared for presentation to the leaders of the G8 at their conference at Gleneagles, Scotland in July 2005. This is a brief, clearly written one and one half page summary from the leaders of the scientific community. A subsequent statement released in 2009 is available here: http://www.nationalacademies.org/includes/G8+5energy-climate09.pdf
Statement of the Joint Academies of Science (Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, and the US) on Global Warming, prepared for presentation to the leaders of the G8 at their 2007 conference. This statement is a follow-up to the one presented in 2005.
A first rate Climate Literacy Guide produced from the collaboration of The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
Climate Literacy: The Essential Principals of Climate Sciences is an excellent overview.
The web site accompanying the documentary An Inconvenient Truth is also worthy of exploration.
Understanding and Responding to Climate Change: Highlights of National Academies Reports (2010)
A bit more daunting for those poorly educated in science, but nonetheless worthy of an intellectual struggle, is Climate Change Science from the US National Academies Press. An online overview of the evidence and argument is available at http://web.archive.org/web/20061012034724/http://www4.nationalacademies.org/onpi/webextra.nsf/web/climate?OpenDocument.
Global Warming Skeptics have a hard time responding to information like that found at the links above. Nevertheless, they continue to try. To see how, take a look at the Global Warming Student Research Page.
Global Warming Skeptics often charge that they are subject to censorship. On April 10, 2007, George Monbiot turned his critical eye to that charge. To see what he found, you may read his column, There Is Climate Change Censorship - And It’s The Deniers Who Dish It Out.
Finally, if you want to find out how to respond to a climate skeptic, click here; and if you want to learn to speak intelligently and clearly on climate change issues, read The Psychology of Climate Change Communication.
Scientific American's John Rennie lays waste to the claims of Climate Skeptics in his Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense (11-30-09)
Clear explanations of Climate Change science and rebuttals of deniers are available at http://skepticalscience.com/

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