9 Numbers

Yesterday Brian at Flashpoint linked to a recent article by one David Evans published in The Australian.  The entire article is more or less summed up in this one bold sentence: “There is no evidence to support the idea that carbon emissions cause significant global warming.”  Whoa there, Kemosabe.  Surely Dr. Evans has some peer-reviewed articles published in scientific journals to support this assertion?

Not surprisingly, no.

According to his own resume, Evans has not published a single peer-reviewed research paper on the subject of climate change. Evans published only a single paper in 1987 in his career and it is unrelated to climate change.

Evans has published an article for the Alabama-based Ludwig von Mises Instutute, a right-wing free-market think tank.

Evans also published a “background briefing” (pdf) document for the Australian chapter of the Lavoisier Group, a global warming “skeptic” organization with close ties to the mining industry.

His entire article for The Australian is debunked here (click through for the charts):

This is pure denial. There is plenty of evidence and denying that it exists does not make it disappear. For instance, Figure 4 of the SPM. The blue bands show temperature changes modelled using only natural forcings, while the red bands include anthropogenic forcings as well. The black line shows observations. Clearly, we must include anthropogenic forcings if we want to match the observations.

I still don’t understand why anyone insists on denying that humans are causing global warming.  Even if the sound scientific evidence supporting the doubters was anything more than non-existent, by taking action now there’s a chance we might save the planet.  You know, that place where we all live.  Trying to deny there is a problem and insisting we should do nothing poses the risk of destroying life as we know it.  That’s a pretty fricking big risk.