Study of Climate Change

Climate change is not a topic that I’m terribly interested in, and I don’t consider myself well-informed. However, I do think it’s an important issue, and there’s plenty of misinformation out there. Here goes an attempt at trying to understand. Help me out here, will you? (Have mercy on my noob soul…)

I guess I’ll just start with some claims do my best to come up with an objective answer.

  1. Claim: Climate Change (Global Warming) is a propaganda war. People like Bill Nye and Michael Mann serve to perpetuate alarm. | Answer: My first thought is that this is not evidence against climate change. Whether a person believes it is propaganda or not has nothing to do with the truth of the claim. For example there’s plenty of people that legitimately believe that man never landed on the moon, or that the earth is flat. Any evidence to the contrary is surely seen as propaganda to them.
  2. Claim: There is overwhelming agreement among the scientific community that today’s climate change is due to human activity.
  3. Claim: The earth has set a temperature record for the third straight year (since 1880). Answer: NASA Climate records going back millions of years show that the temperatures were constantly fluctuating well before humans ever even walked the earth. While modern humans may be having an effect on the climate now, it is at least evident that earth will do it’s thing with or without us. Consider the following graphs:
    Global Annual Mean Surface Air Temperature Change
    Temperature record of the past 1000 years
    Holocene Temperature Variations
    Ice cores (from 800,000 years before present)

    5 million year history, representing the Lisiecki and Raymo (2005) LR04 Benthic Stack


Here are some questions I have.

  1. Is climate change the same as global warming or different?
  2. What’s up with that “Global Cooling” scare from the 70’s?
  3. Are humans causing the global climate change?



Further Reading:

…see? hardly anything here yet. Start the conversation in the comment section below!

Image Source: Luca Rossato

2 thoughts on “Study of Climate Change

  1. I, too, am not all that interested or informed about climate change, but if you don’t mind the blind leading the blind …

    My understanding is that climate has never been constant. Throughout its existence, Earth has swung from being hotter than now to colder than now and back. Thus, there is no debate over whether the climate is changing. The questions are:

    1. Is human activity causing the Earth’s climate to become warmer and, if so, to what degree?
    2. If human activity is causing the Earth’s climate to become warmer to a significant decree, how bad a thing is that?


    1. You’re right! I do concede that the climate has always changed, and I think I will edit the post to kick off with that point.

      …and then yes. The whole issue is largely summarized into answering those two critical questions. Problem is, it’s easy to ask a question, very hard to get straight, bias-neutral answers… Which is what I intend to do with this personal study of mine. 🙂


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