Genuine skepticism means considering the full body of evidence before coming to a conclusion. However, when you take a close look at arguments expressing climate ‘skepticism’, what you often observe is cherry picking of pieces of evidence while rejecting any data that don’t fit the desired picture. This isn’t skepticism. It is ignoring facts and the science.

1. Where is this data coming from? Satellite data is arguably the most accurate way to measure temperature. Roy Spencer, a climatologist and former NASA scientist, takes issue with the way that data is normalized and adjusted, instead presenting raw, unadjusted data on his website. The WMO does not use this data.

With the average temperatures globally last year reaching 95 degrees Fahrenheit (53 Celsius) a big jump from what was recorded in 1961 (90 degrees), the means that is used for comparison purposes according to the WMO. These readings were gathered from land-based weather and climate stations, ships and buoys, and satellites and recorded by both the U.K. and U.S. weather agencies. Unfortunately this way of recording temperature control has come under dramatic scrutiny in recent years.

The land data is being challenged extensively by Anthony Watt on his SurfaceStations.org website. Watts recently graded 61% of the stations used to measure temperature with a D — for being located less than 10 meters from an artificial heating source. Many climate skeptics also take issue with NASA and NOAA, the U.S. agencies that gather U.S. climate data, but also manipulate and “normalize” it.

2. Is here really less ice is in the oceans? Overall sea-ice record shows virtually no change throughout the past 30 years, argued Lord Monckton, a British politician, journalist, and noted skeptic of global warming. He points out that “the quite rapid loss of Arctic sea ice since the satellites were watching has been matched by a near-equally rapid gain of Antarctic sea ice.”

These records only began ten decades ago. As for sea temperatures, they are less significant for analyzing “global warming” than estimated total ocean heat content – there has been no net accumulation of “missing energy” in the form of heat in the oceans worldwide in the six years since ocean heat content was first reliably measured by the 3000 automated ARGO bathythermographs in 2003.

3. Forecasts are often wrong. Being employed in the weather industry is the only job where you can be wrong on a constant basis, yet keep your job. Predicting the weather – especially a decade or more in advance — is unbelievably challenging. In 2000, a scientist with the Met Office’s Climatic Research Unit declared that within ten years, snowfall would be “a very rare and exciting event.”

And in 1970 at the first Earth Day event, one researcher predicted that the planet would be 11 degrees colder by the year 2000.
To try and extrapolate a 10,000 year cycle based upon 150 years of data is simply unreasonable. Temperature fluctuations are normal: it’s normal for the Earth to go through warming and cooling periods. People need to stop listening to this pseudoscience and focus on more important things.

Is it just me, or has this year been the coldest/snowiest in the past 5 years?

Even if it were true, you know that unless there is proof of global warming, we don’t believe anything until we have proof…unfortunately by then it may just be too late.