A week or so ago, British newspaper The Daily Express fell all over itself publishing 100 reasons why global warming and climate change stem from natural causes. The source was something called the European Foundation, a think tank that has nothing to do with science but rather promotes a skeptical position on the European Union. Not exactly the source climatological authority, but that didn’t stop the U.K. press from spoon feeding the list to its readers. Within a couple hours, New Scientist flew the flag of scientific evidence and debunked 50 of the reasons.

As the blog The Lay Scientist put it, “In fact the list uses the same tactics deployed by the British Chiropractic Association and British Homeopathic Association in recent times, where the reader has a metric crapload of ‘evidence’ spewed into their faces which, after wiping themselves down with a hankie and inspecting the contents turn out to be largely irrelevent, misrepresented or even internally contradictory.”

Lay Scientist points out that 39 of the reasons for natural global warming have nothing to do with whether climate change is natural or not, three are restatements of the claim that “climate change is natural”, two say climate change is beneficial, and three belong to the category of “WTF?” The other 53 are easily swatted away, it says.

Here’s the first 10 from New Scientist. For the full list, go here: LINK.

1. There is “no real scientific proof” that the current warming is caused by the rise of greenhouse gases from man’s activity.

Technically, proof exists only in mathematics, not in science. Whatever terminology you choose to use, however, there is overwhelming evidence that the current warming is caused by the rise in greenhouse gases due to human activities.

2. Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 per cent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the Earth during geological history.

Misleading comparison. Since the industrial age began human emissions are far higher than volcanic emissions.

3. Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

In the past 3 million years changing levels of sunshine triggered and ended the ice ages. Carbon dioxide was a feedback that increased warming, rather than the initial cause. In the more distant past, several warming episodes were directly triggered by CO2.

4. After world war 2, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

In fact, temperatures fell during the 1940s and then remained roughly level until the late 1970s. The fall was partly due to high levels of pollutants such as sulphur dioxide counteracting the warming effect.

5. Throughout the Earth’s history, temperatures have often been warmer than now and CO2 levels have often been higher – more than 10 times as high.

Which shows that higher CO2 means higher temperatures, taking into account the fact that the sun was cooler in the past. The crucial point is that civilization is adapted to 20th century temperatures.

6. Significant changes in climate have continually occurred throughout geologic time.

Yes. And sea level has been up to 70 metres higher during warm periods. If that happens again, there’ll be no more London or New York.

7. The 0.7 °C increase in the average global temperature over the past hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

Wrong. The rapid warming since the late 1970s has occurred even though other factors that can warm the planet, such as the sun’s intensity, have remained constant.

8. The IPCC theory is driven by just 60 scientists and favourable reviewers, not the 4000 usually cited.

Untrue, as even the briefest look at the scientific literature can establish.

9. Leaked e-mails from British climate scientists – in a scandal known as “climategate” – suggest that that has been manipulated to exaggerate global warming

Nothing in the emails undermines any of the key scientific conclusions. Independent groups have come to the same conclusions.

10. A large body of scientific research suggests that the sun is responsible for the greater share of climate change during the past hundred years.

The sun may have contributed to the warming in the first part of the 20th century but it has not caused the rapid warming since the late 1970s.

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