Dozens of the world's top climate scientists have gathered in Japan this week with representatives from around 100 countries to work on the latest United Nations report about climate change. According to leaked drafts, the report is all but calling the climate situation an emergency: Far from causing future problems for a few species bearing white fur or feathers, hotter temperatures are already changing local conditions for humans, and a lot faster than most climate researchers once believed possible.
Science has done a good job of documenting the great divide between liberals and conservatives on the issue of climate change. Several studies have found that watching conservative media outlets, particularly Fox News, makes viewers less likely to accept that global warming is occurring or that it's caused by human activity.
When I was first asked to review Glenn Beck's new tome Agenda 21, I feared I could not accomplish the task objectively. After all, Beck - as recounted in my own book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars - once suggested that I, and indeed all of my fellow climate scientists, commit hara-kiri out of shame for promoting the purportedly bogus science of climate change. Hard not to harbor a bit of a grudge after that.
Last year, as climate change deniers were up in arms over the so-called "Climategate" controversy involving alleged manipulation of climate data, one sceptical scientist proposed taking a fresh look. Richard Muller, a physicist at the University of California-Berkeley and a self-described climate skeptic, undertook to review the temperature data underlying most global warming studies. Now his team has wrapped up their work, and it apparently solidifies the other studies' findings.
