Article Responding to Skeptics’ Arguments

Posted on December 29th, 2009 by Wil Burns

For those of you looking for an excellent piece confronting the most pervasive arguments of climate skeptics, Scientific American has published an excellent new piece: Rennie, Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense, Nov. 30, 2009. The article responds to seven skeptic arguments:

GHGs are too minor a part of the atmosphere to be driving warming;
The alleged “hockey stick” graph of temperatures over the past 1600 has been disproven;
Climate change stopped a decade ago;
The sun or cosmic rays are likely the primary cause of warming;
Climatologists conspire to hide the truth by denying others access to their datasets;
Climatologists have a vested interest in being alarmists;
Technological fixes, e.g. geoengineering would be a more viable and cost-beneficial way to address climate change than mitigation measures.

The online article also has hyperlinks to more detailed studies on many of these issues.