A Climate Change Meme Rebuttal

TW: Here Ritholz tries to put some of the denialists into context. He does not claim it as definitive but this effort to condemn climate change UNLESS change believers can prove without ANY doubt its efficacy is a bad path for world.

From Barry Ritholz at the Big Picture blog"
"One of the memes I’ve heard recently in the climate debate is that there is no scientific consensus — that there is actually strong disagreement.

The main basis of this argument is that 31,486 dissenting scientists have signed a petition against the belief that Global Warming is man made at the PetitionProject.org. I don’t want to debate climate change; rather, I want to look at that argument to see if there are any statistical flaws in it. My problem is whenever anyone uses a single, out of context, data point. What does this number actually mean? Is 31,486 alot or a little? How many scientists are there in the US? etc..."


http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/12/statistics-scientific-consensus-on-climate-change/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheBigPicture+%28The+Big+Picture%29