Jake Price

Dr. Mark Finney

MCom 262

13 April 2018

Five Questions to Ask A Climate Change Denier, and How to Respond

Many people have asked how to respond to climate deniers who say that they don’t

“believe” in climate change, or have received false or bad information by those with money

based in fossil fuel, oil, and other related industries. In some cases, simple facts and logic can

help “deniers” understand the realities of our earth and how it is responding, and how it will

continue to respond, to human controlled effects such as greenhouse gas emissions and others of

the like.

However, there are many others for whom the use of evidence proves inefficient. Having a

worldview that would seem to be abhorrent to any scientist, many of these deniers do not use

direct observation, evidence, or science in general, as their primary basis for decision-making.

No amount of evidence can alter this worldview, and it has become clear that other means must

be found to prevent this deniers in the population from making self-harming decisions, whether

induced by disinformation or otherwise. So I decided to take five questions that seem to be the

arguing points for both sides of the argument and ask a local denier to answer them, and then

show the science behind the actual answers.

1. Is climate changing?

The denier responded with, “Maybe it is, but it's completely natural and nothing to worry

about”. The science supports quite the contrary to this response, because scientists have provided
observations and measurements that show undeniable data that temperatures have been rising,

precipitation patterns have been changing, and ocean and atmospheric circulation systems have

been changing through the past two centuries.

2. Are people causing the climate to change?

The denier responded with, “No. Geological records show several periods of climate change

over the course of the earth completely separate from the existence of humans.”

Wrong, carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning have caused the atmosphere to warm.The

consensus of model results shows that the global climate is sufficiently sensitive to historic

carbon dioxide emissions, caused by humans, to have already warmed by the amount measured

over the last 150 years.

3. Is climate change bad?

The denier responded with, “It may be bad for humans, but this is just a natural cycle of the earth

and it will recover.” While if something is “bad” moral is not a question to be discussed by

scientists, the earth is definitely suffering from the effects of what humans have been doing to it

over the past century in a half. Negative effects have included a shift in areas where crops can be

grown, changes in storm tracks, and rising sea levels can have devastating economic, social, and

political consequences on modern civilizations.

4. Can we do anything about it?

The denier responded with, “Given that this has happened several times over the course of time,

no, we cannot prevent it.” False, much of the warming has been caused by past emissions which

have already occurred, a decrease of emissions can stabilize climate, because when natural

carbon is overwhelmed it sinks in the ocean and terrestrial ecosystems can continue to absorb
previously emitted carbon and return global climate to the stable state in which civilization

evolved over the last millennia.

5. Is it worth doing anything about?

They responded with, “Humans are intelligent enough to be able to adapt to whatever

circumstances we find ourselves in and survive. As well, the earth must go through it's natural

processes and my preventing climate change, we may be harming it.” Although humans may be

able to adapt will their wallets? Economists indicate that the cost of adaptation to climate change

in the form of agricultural disruptions, damage to coastal cities, and impacts of extreme events

will be much greater than the cost of mitigation by transition to sustainable energy sources. So

why continue to mess with the earth even more? When we could take better, and cheaper,

options.

What we learn from the past is that nearly every major climate change in Earth’s history has

been accompanied by changes in greenhouse gases, with warming associated with more carbon

dioxide and cooling associated with less. In the past, before humans existed, climate and carbon

dioxide concentrations varied together, with carbon dioxide change not always predating climate

change. This was due to the runaway feedbacks between temperature, carbon dioxide in the

atmosphere and ocean, and water vapor in the atmosphere. However, now that we have devised a

way to inject carbon dioxide directly into the atmosphere, caused mostly by the burning of fossil

fuels, carbon dioxide is preceding climate warming, which is already responding to the

additional greenhouse gases.

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