Sound arguments AGAINST anthropogenic climate change?

[gmalivuk]

Well, I'm a biology student, and I've always taken anthropogenic climate change as being most likely present, based on the data we've collected so far, and worth dealing with, since the costs of doing nothing if it's real outweigh, in my opinion, the costs of doing something if it's not. However, reading some discussions online, I've come to realize that I've never actually read any serious arguments against climate change, and dismissed the ones I saw as ill-informed or politically motivated. Needless to say, that's not exactly a very good attitude to have as a scientist.

As such, I'm looking for well-written papers or articles with a solid scientific foundation that conclude the climate change is most likely not anthropogenic. While I doubt I'll believe them anyways (confirmation bias ahoy!), I can at least try to maintain a properly open mind.

So, anyone have some good papers to recommend?

[tomandlu]

IMHO pretty much any decent paper will be 'against' climate change in the sense that it will not state with absolute certainty that climate change is incontrovertible. This, plus their own naivety, has placed the climate scientists in an unenviable position - on the one hand, admitting this just raises a chorus of "see - told you" from the antis, but fighting it raises a different chorus of "see - they're making unsupportable claims".

[Jplus]

If you want scientific studies that argue against climate change being anthropogenic, you should change the thread title... Right now it seems like you're looking for scientific studies that suggest there will be no climate change at all. Everyone, please keep a clear distinction between those two things.

[gmalivuk]

Yeah, I changed the title to reflect what is actually being requested. At this point, arguing against the claim that the climate is changing in the first place has stopped being remotely scientifically sound, but I suppose reasonable arguments can still be had about the degree to which it is anthropogenic.

[Username4242]

With my (admittedly limited) understanding of climate science, even the extent to which the observed change is anthropogenic is pretty well sealed. The fact is, climate scientists cannot reconstruct anything close to the observed temperature record and climatic behavior without the addition of CO2 forcings, the vast majority of which are anthropogenic in origin. The big question now is to what degree the future climate will change, and that will be a consequence of the behavior of various feedback loops (e.g. the changes in albedo caused by reduced sea ice extent) and the degree to which CO2 emissions change over time (reduction, 'business as usual', or an increase in emissions).

[Bears!]

I'd recommend this website. It might look a little sketchy because of the ads, but the arguments for and against global climate change are legitimate (they cite papers and everything!). Granted, this website finds anthropogenic global climate change undeniably true (and I agree with them), but there is dialog between skeptics and non-skeptics for each article. In addition, each individual article actually gives a true (as in, this is what skeptics really say) representation of the arguments against anthropogenic global climate change. I know it's not exactly what you were looking for, but solid websites and resources critical of global climate change are hard to come by simply because the consensus on global climate change among climate researchers is that anthropogenic climate change is real (consensus = 97-98% agree that anthropogenic climate change is real). While consensus shouldn't convince anyone (evidence should), it indicates that the evidence is incredibly strong (i.e. virtually undeniable).

Hope this helps a little!

[EMTP]

There aren't any.

Serious people (which, in terms of climate "skeptics," is very much a relative term) no longer argue AGW, but rather focus on "CAGW" ("catastrophic anthropogenic global warming") a popular straw man used to describe the mainstream view that rapid, costly, destructive climate change is likely. They use a few arguments:

* Warming trends are running less than expected, so climate sensitivity may be lower than predicted.

* Natural variability may be greater than we think (paleoclimatology is hard) and hence some significant part of the warming trend may be not just AGW, but AGW + (unspecified natural forcing).

* Harms from warming may be overstated; benefits from warming may be understated.

All of these lines of argument have serious problems, but none as severe as those encountered by deniers of any and all AGW. The emphasis among "serious" "skeptics" is on minimizing the significance of AGW rather than denying it. Roy Spencer, John Christy, and Judith Curry are examples of this outlook.

[The Geoff]

There's a cod-science equation to be done here:

$-available-to-anti-AGW-industry > $-available-to-independant-research

scientists-who-like-$ > scientists-who-don't-care-about-$

scientific-papers-in-favour-of-AGW > scientific-papers-refuting-AGW

Therefore the money points at AGW.

Me? I'm undecided to the point of having to take the balance of evidence presented to me, so I believe in AGW.

[Numquam]

$-available-to-anti-AGW-industry > $-available-to-independant-research

Wah?

Ever heard of the oil and gas industry?

[mfb]

Probably, therefore he says that this side has more money.

[Gagundathar The Inexplicable]

Egads, y'all.
It seems pretty much decided that the total amount of energy in the atmosphere is significantly larger than it was 50 years ago.
This will obviously have some effect on the atmospheric balance of energy. Now, we can all pretend that anthropogenic caused energy increase along with the associated results of demonstrably energy trapping emissions are not causing the changes in the climate.
And, of course, it isn't human activity that is causing these changes.

But, by doing so, I believe we doom our next generations to some horrible existence and if we can change it, then what kind of folks are we not do so?

Is there an answer?
Do we have any solution?
As our oil is depleted, we are forced to use more coal, which produces measurably larger amounts of CO2.

We all like to pretend that this is some political football game.
It isn't; it is as real as rain.

Now what do we do?

Do we just pretend this is something cooked up by 'them liberal scientists'
Or do we do something about it?

Is there ANYTHING we can do, as citizens?
We can petition the Federal government, but I'll bet you dollars to donuts that won't any difference.

Not a single politician out there has come out and said, "Yes, this is our problem and we are going to deal with it".

Not One.

Without that kind of support we are all truly screwed.

[JWalker]

Without that kind of support we are all truly screwed.

That is definitely true. However, sometimes I wonder if at this point we are screwed no matter what we do. That is all the more reason to at least try to do something about it though.