3 Celebrity Climate Change Deniers

In some cases, celebrities are just selling stuff, in other cases they’re opining on important issues such as climate change. Although we’d hope that our favorite celebrities are thoughtful and well-informed on global issues, alas this is sometimes (often?), not the case!

Donald Trump

While Donald Trump is an esteemed business mogul, we believe he cannot be more wrong when it comes to climate change. Indeed, merely days after Hurricane Sandy, he cited cold weather as a means to discredit the existence of climate change.

Since the mid 1970’s, the global climate has been warming at about 0.2 degrees Celsius per decade. Even with this warming trend, weather, the day-to-day state of the atmosphere in a region and its short-term variations, can still depict record cold temperatures. Since humans naturally remember unusual events and are less likely to mentally calculate long-term statistical trends, it is common for people to question global warming on a particularly cold day. According to a study called, "Relative increase of record high maximum temperatures compared to record low minimum temperatures in the US", the number of record high temperature events have far outnumbered record low weather events; in fact, in the last 10 years there have been twice as many record high days than record low days. If the climate were stable, the number of record high days and record low days would be roughly equal.

Also, since the global climate has been warming, the ocean temperature has increased. Ocean temperature is directly related to hurricane intensity. That is why you will see stronger hurricanes in warmer regions, especially in warmer months. Hurricane Sandy was a strong indication of climate change and warming oceans since it happened in October, way past the normal hurricane season, and in northern latitudes, where oceans are usually too cool to support hurricanes.

Whether or not Trump was citing a record low temperature day or not is irrelevant; as the climate heats up, we still expect to see cold weather days, and unfortunately, strong hurricanes. I guess he was unaware of the full extent of the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy from up high in Trump Tower.

Victoria Jackson

Former Saturday Night Live star, Victoria Jackson has been noted for her attacks on climate change science. During a Howard Stern interview she claimed, “human-caused global warming has never been proven, it’s based on false science.”

Hmmm... Let's see, a recent scholarly article called "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming the scientific literature" examined 11,944 climate-related abstracts of peer-reviewed scientific literature and found that 97.1% of those abstracts endorsed the consensus that humans are causing global warming. The analysis from this report suggests that the number of papers rejecting climate change is a very small proportion of the published research, and that proportion is shrinking over time. Call me crazy, but if thousands of peer review scientific articles agree that climate change is real and is caused by humans, science is not on the side of climate deniers.

Who knows where Jackson gets her “facts.” This funny lady probably won't be laughing if catastrophic weather events impact her and her family.

Ted Nugent

Ted Nugent, the lauded guitarist, has publically called Al Gore a “fraud” and a “global-warming Ponzi-schemer,” as if Gore has something to gain from climate change. He was also recently performing for his daughter’s high school and told students that global warming is a hoax and that they should watch more Glenn Beck, the politically conservative television and radio host.

As explained above, the consensus from the scientific community indicates that climate change is real and anything but a hoax. Al Gore is merely a climate communicator; his strategy is to synthesize hard climate data in order to better explain how climate change works. He uses his social status and celebrity to get the word out about the sound science behind climate change. Gore initiated the first congressional hearing on climate change in 1981 and has continued to make climate change an important topic of political and cultural conversation ever since. He did not schemed or fabricated data to create the now famed slide show presentation, An Inconvenient Truth.

While there are other celebrity climate deniers out there, and certainly a plethora of climate denying politicians in seats of power, these are the stars that have been most outspoken about their erroneous views on climate change. When looking to celebrities, it is important to remember that viewpoints of those who deny climate change are not based on sound science. Climate change is real; just because these prominent stars have a louder voice when it comes to sharing their opinion does not mean their opinion is the universal truth.