A Rhetorical Analysis of Richard Lindzen’s The World Should Not Waste Resources on Fighting Global Warming

In his piece on climate change, Richard Lindzen addresses his stance on the heated debate of global warming. He claims that there is, in fact, no ongoing catastrophic temperature increase. Lindzen, a Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a recipient of the Jule Charney award from the American Meteorological Society (Richard Lindzen), believes that the earth goes through natural phases of warming and cooling. In this piece, he examines why he believes people have a false conception of Earth’s climate shifts.

Lindzen begins his piece by asserting that there isn't, and never will be, static, unchanging climates on planets with fluid envelopes. Throughout this article, he ponders why there has been an increase in alarm over climate change in the past few years. At the beginning of the article, he states that the increase in alarm is because the public has become scientifically illiterate, which, in turn, makes them more susceptible to being taken advantage of by people of higher status. He continues on by saying that the panic over climate change is falsely placed and that the climate is and has constantly been changing over time. He gives supportive examples of this through climate changing events that have occurred throughout the centuries. Also, according to Lindzen, findings on climate change are problematic because they are based on computer models. He claims that the data conflicts with the models, and that scientists “correct” the data to agree with the models, which points to some level of corruption in climate science. Although Lindzen does give reasons that he believes climate change may be over exaggerated, he keeps going back to another reason. Throughout the article, he ind...

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...s a scam created by those of higher power, he caused his entire argument to come into question.

In his article, Lindzen provides many points on climate change that readers should take into consideration. However, he delves too much into his personal beliefs, such as that climate change is a ruse to hide a hidden agenda by politicians and environmentalists. If Lindzen focused only on the scientific facts, rather than own his own beliefs, his argument would be thought provoking. This would allow readers to determine for themselves whether or not climate change is something that must be acted upon.

Works Cited

"Richard Lindzen." Cato Institute. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2014. .

"Trade-wind Inversion." Oxford Reference, n.d. Web. 23 Mar. 2014. .