Summary Of The Book 'Traits Of Doubt'

Climate change is one of today’s most hotly debated topic. Scientists for many decades have made supposed claims that current energy creation and reliance on fossil fuels will lead to inevitable changes to the planet. Today, climate change denial is still a popular to most of the world despite the mounds of evidence to support that it exists. The climate change issue suffers from being mismanaged by various parties through focusing on the wrong issues and the lack of true commitment from the general public, according to Sandra Steingraber.

Although the climate scientists who say that the climate is changing (about 97 percent by some estimates) far outnumber those who don’t, Gore's comments indicate the strength of the

Climate change is the long term shift in global climate patterns attributed mainly to the use of fossil fuels. Many people are aware of this issue, however, there has been an increase in the amount of people who deny climate change. 23 percent of Americans (compared to last year’s 16 percent) believe that climate change is not a problem (Atkin). To conclude that people do not accept cli­mate change because they do not under­stand it or need to be educated about it, is reasonable. However, I believe that it isn’t skepticism driving this denial. Rather, it is the phenomenon of reaffirming one’s identity. Instead of analyzing the evidence, it is intentionally interpreted in such a way as to maintain a pre-existing belief.

It’s deceitful to characterize the basic facts of climate change as debatable or unsettled. Year after year, humans extract billions of tons of carbon from the bowels of the earth and blast it into the atmosphere. We need to stop indulging the questioning of humanity’s culpability.

Koonin, who was the undersecretary for science in the Energy Department, a professor of theoretical physics and provost at Caltech, a chief scientist of BP, and is currently director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. With all those positions, Koonin appears to be a very credible proponent for delaying climate change. He argues that climate science is not settled and society should, in turn, hold off in making brash decisions. Koonin states that there are three challenges to why climate change is not settled: the climate systems variability, the poor understanding of oceans regarding climate, and the uncertainties regarding positive and negative feedback loops (2). In other words, Koonin is saying that there are many things we do not know when we predict the climate. Koonin adds that “although most [computer] models are tuned to reproduce the gross features of the Earth’s climate, the marked differences in their details and projections reflect” all the things he stated that climate science is not settled on (3). Ergo, he concludes by saying “any serious discussion of the changing climate must begin by acknowledging not only the scientific certainties but also the uncertainties, especially in projecting the future” (5). Koonin is concerned less with the certainties of climate change than with the uncertainties of climate change. This is troubling because it delays and perhaps halts the general public from agreeing towards a sensible solution in dealing with climate change. Primarily, all humans fear uncertainties -- nothing is scarier than not knowing what can happen. So if humans are scared due to the uncertainty of a situation, they hold off from making decisions which are vital to their future. Nonetheless, life is filled with uncertainties and that should not prevent society from making progress on climate change. After all, it would be wiser to

Mann begins his article by addressing the common occurrence of scientists having their work questioned by other scientists. These questions are always asked in an effort to better their work and for the sake of advancing scientific knowledge. However, politicians and ideologues also question scientists simply because they dislike the scientists’ findings. He states that him and his colleagues have fallen victim to various political interests and those who do not want to believe or accept that there is a climate change, which is owed to the harmful effects of man-caused greenhouse emission, also known as carbon

It was not entirely clear in the reading how efficient these organizations are and what could make them better. One such example of room for improvement was the IPCCs annual report in which critics jumped on some sloppy and scientifically inaccurate findings, which greatly hurts the credibility of the organization and the cause. Also, it is apparent that political leaders will have varying degrees of proficiency in scientific research and may interpret results differently. This was demonstrated by the examples of Bert Bolin’s scrutiny over the types of words used to relay the implications of their findings on whether human activity was responsible for global warming and to what degree. In the “alphabet soup” of organizations and agencies are efforts as coordinated as they could be and how can the scientific communities voice best be heard on the international stage as well as in the individual countries?

Stephen Schneider states that it is his "strong belief that there is an overwhelming amount of evidence to form a subjective prior" concerning the verity of global warming and the human causes that underlie it (Schneider). His argument is admittedly based on "a priori" (before the fact) knowledge, yet he attempts to move from "a priori" knowledge to "a posteriori" (after the fact) by introducing the lightest touches of empirical data and suggesting that much more data will be accumulated in the future to confirm his "a priori" assertion. Schneider's argument is brief but convincing in its own way: he admits that his approach to the question of global warming is subjective but that time should prove it to be objectively true. This paper will analyze Schneider's argument by summarizing it, defining the key terms, assessing the conclusion and showing how it follows from the proposition.

Even though there is evidence proving that the increasing danger of climate change and global warming is a threat to all life, anti-believers argue that although 2014 was deemed the hottest year on record, the year saw record snow and cold in all four hemispheres. Additionally, oceans are rising much less than predicted. In 2005, Al Gore predicted that oceans would rise 20 feet by 2100. However, 80% of the tide gauges show less rise than the official “global average”. In fact, many tide gauges show no rise in sea level, and almost none show any acceleration over the past 20 years (Top Ten Reasons). These statistics accurately represent how torn many are on the subject of climate change. Although there are great points to be made on each side, it is always better to be safe than sorry, and the fight against climate change, believe or not, should be in the back of one’s mind at all

Scientists try to find the answers to the mysteries, like climate change, that people constantly question about. So they use their equipment and a team of researchers to conduct experiments to make new discoveries that would benefit people’s lives. But even when new theories are formed by scientists with the support of evidence, people still hesitate to believe in the theories’ validity because of seven reasons mentioned by Joel Achenbach in “Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science.” The reasons include people’s common sense, personal experiences, vulnerability to confirmation bias, political arguments, the media, peer pressure, and the internet. Even though all seven reasons cause people to doubts science, the two that most affect their

Theories presented in the sciences tends to normally have a general consensus amongst scientists in that field of study, but, like always, there are those that may find fault in the data or the way that the study was conducted. One example of such debate is the topic of climate change. There are scientists who believe that it is not possible to accurately project global climate and to test for the rise of sea level and temperature for the next decades. Scientists opposing climate change believe that there are too many inadequacies to of the current global climate modeling to make any accusations or projections of what is the main source behind rising temperatures. Furthermore, scientists have claimed that the average increase of temperatures is a natural occurrence and has barely anything to do with human

Prior to the Paris conference, in 2013 after NOAA published the paper, Republicans, who have a pattern of rejecting climate change, headed by Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, launched an inquiry into the validity of the report (Rose 9). Rose omitted the date of this inquiry, and strategically placed the information about the inquiry after talking about John Bates releasing the information discrediting NOAA, falsely suggesting the inquiry was a result of Bates’ whistleblowing. In 2013, NOAA failed to comply with subpoenas for their information, but the Daily Mail failed to mention NOAA made its scientists available on multiple occasions (Gallucci 3). Also, critically the Daily Mail failed to report, the result of the inquiry was that NOAA was found of no wrong doing (4). The Mashable article omitted, that NOAA’s data sets were flawed due to software bugs and that NOAA has taken steps to retake sea measurements after releasing the report (Rose 5). The information the authors did not omit, they labeled with a bias towards the article’s ultimate

In this article, Akerman pushes several points as to why Climate Change doesn’t exist or that it’s effects are non-existent. He goes on to state how global leaders are using this to push alternate agendas such as further taxation and change the global economy as a whole. However, the article is constantly discredited by its lack of scientific facts to back up claims as well as the constant

The response to climate change has proved inadequate on many levels. Partially this is because the issue requires scientific literacy that many simply do not possess, allowing leaders to underplay or ignore the danger since the public is not able to analyze the issues, and giving opportunity for groups such as gas companies to wield their considerable clout in favor of what benefits business instead of the environment. Furthermore, because of the large scale of climate change, the consequences are hard to see and the blame can be pushed around. Accordingly, climate change is highly-politicized, and cannot be addressed factually without upsetting one group or another. Whether or not climate change exists may be a difficult question to answer to the satisfaction of some individuals, but it is still not a political question; treating it as such means leaving the potential danger unexamined.

Despite a mountain of evidence they think that this is just a natural cycle that global temperature rises and falls over time as part of a natural process. Deniers argue that scientists are constantly changing their minds about climate change. The media fuels this mindset by constantly looking for new headlines. The reporters proclaim loudly that “Scientists predict an ice age,” based on a cursory reading of some study before it has even been peer reviewed. In reality the debate has long been settled within the scientific community. Approximately 97 percent of scientists agree that the current trend of global warming is caused by man. The projected temperature rise from these greenhouse gasses has matched almost perfectly with actual observed global temperature. This is an irreversible process that we can slow but not stop, but in order to do so, we need to come together as a planet and agree to some strict rules on