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Friday, October 7, 2011

So I took the quiz.

This is the first page of the 5 question quiz. Seems geared to children, or perhaps limited IQ adults.

I took the quiz and purposely tried to get every one wrong in order to see the responses. It is formatted as a series of quotes and responses:

Quote #1 "If you have one volcano in the world, that one volcano puts out more carbon dioxide than everything that man puts out. I don't think [global warming is] a farce, but I think temperatures go up and I think temperatures go down."

Nope, that's not science!

That was three-time U.S. senate candidate John Raese from West Virginia incorrectly asserting that volcanoes today produce more carbon dioxide than humans. When you compare natural factors that affect the climate — such as solar variation and volcanic eruptions — with human activities that affect the climate, scientists have found time and again that humans have been a major contributor to climate change over the last 50 years. In fact, the U.S. Geological Survey found that volcanic carbon dioxide emissions were less than 1 percent when compared to the global emissions released from the burning of fossil fuels.

Quote #2 "I'm not a meteorologist. All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring."

Unfortunately, it's true.

This was Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah, confirming that an overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that climate change is happening and is primarily caused by human activity. He went on to add "If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we'd listen to them."

Quote #3 "This year, we witnessed weather disaster after weather disaster. There have been massive floods, fire, droughts, and heat waves. Yet earlier this year the House passed a bill that repealed EPA's scientific finding that climate change is occurring."

Unfortunately, it's true.

That was Representative Henry Waxman from California, commenting on the number of extreme weather events we've seen recently across the United States. Powerful rain and snow storms and intense drought periods are well-documented consequence of a global warming.

Quote #4 "The EPA has been implementing regulations to force utilities to reduce emissions of pollutants such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and mercury even though the current emissions are not causing air-quality or public-health problems anywhere in America."

Nope, that's not science.

That was Steven Milloy, Fox News commentator and founder of the website junkscience.com, incorrectly stating in an op-ed in the Washington Times that there have been no health impacts from global warming emissions. In fact, recent Union of Concerned Scientists analysis shows that global warming threatens public health and raises health care costs by increasing ground-level ozone — the primary component of smog, which can exacerbate lung diseases such as asthma and cause breathing difficulties even in healthy individuals.

Quote #5 The planet used to be dramatically warmer when we had dinosaurs and no people. To the best of my knowledge the dinosaurs weren't driving cars."

Uh-uh, that's not science.

That was Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives attempting to explain away the facts of human-caused global warming by talking about Earth's temperature 245 to 65 million years ago. While it's true that when dinosaurs roamed the planet, global average temperatures were much higher, it's faulty logic to assume that therefore means that the temperature increases scientists have seen in the last thousand years are not caused by human activity. Scientists have found that heat-trapping emissions from human sources over the past half-century by far outweigh emissions from natural sources.

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