Debunking the silliness of Global Warming Skeptics - Part 1

I have a very close family member who I respect very much but who could not have more different political views than I do, at least on certain issues. One of those issues is the subject of Global Warming and Climate Change. Or, more accurately, the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW).

There is a large, well-coordinated effort to continue to assert that AGW is somehow a hoax or that it is based on "junk science". Every talk-radio and Fox News conservative "pundit" from Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly to Michael Savage, Glenn Beck and "independent" Lou Dobbs has put this idea forward in various forms of pseudo-logic. Just having this group of fact-challenged individuals put an idea forward is enough to have me believing the opposite of what they say, but because I respect the views of my family members, I had to find out more.

Needless to say, there is a ton of garbage out there on this subject from both the right and the left. But the overwhelming majority of the misinformation on this topic is coming from the skeptics. The number of sites and blogs that spread the misinformation outnumber the ones that cover the facts and science by a wide margin. This stems at least in part from the fact that doing the real science is hard work and the people who really understand the science and can actively debunk the misinformation are busy doing real work. That isn't to say there aren't many good sites that help bring forward the truth (my favorites are RealClimate.org, A Few Things Ill Considered and SkepticalScience.com), but even they can't keep up with all the distortions and misinformation that's out there, especially in the conservative blogoshpere.

One such site that was brought to my attention was an obscure entry on the commercial web site for an Industrial Control and Automation company called Transtronics that asks the question "Is man caused Global Warming a Scientific fact?". This site is loaded with arguments meant to undermine not just the AGW theory, but the very idea that we could even study something as complex and chaotic as global climate.

This site is so full of silliness and pseudo-science that it warrants a complete debunking. So I plan to do that just for the sake of family unity! :)