Climate Change - part 3

I got these comments from a colleague and thought I would post them here in response to my previous postings:

I don't think it is fear. My impression is that Global warming denial has become a kind of conservative fashion statement. Its conservative chic. Its effectively the same thing as thinking that Sarah Palin is hot and cool, and shoots big animals and Liberals are a bunch of panty waists - nyah nyah nyah.

The only problem with treating pressing global environmental issues as a political fashion accessory is that ignoring the problems will not mitigate the real consequences. In this case pulling the covers over our heads won't save us. In fact, a critical mass of people being willing to play dumb has kept timely action from being taken up until now.

Let me explain "playing dumb". In reality some of the deniers really are just stupid. Dumb as rocks... They at least have that excuse. But I can't believe that this is the majority. Maybe I am optimistic?

For others, those of average intelligence for whom denial is like a stone wall, they cannot possibly be unaware at this point of a couple of simple facts.

1) All the real science supports the basic idea of anthropogenic global warming. Basically human produced CO2 changing the climate. That is all the real science. Done by scientists, peer reviewed by other scientists, and published in scientific journals, with full disclosure of data and method. There is no actual descent among climate scientists who study this.

2) The basic theory is supported by real observations in the real world - CO2 data, Ar temperature time series data, measurements of glaciers etc.

3) The points of actual debate among scientists are limited to details of how the effects will play out - rapidity, effects on specific weather patterns.

At this late date if you have a brain, and 2 ears and 2 eyes and any power of critical judgement you know these things.

So to continue to deny the warming actually require active intellectual gymnastics. To pretend to believe the counter arguments requires a willfully ignorant conflation of climate a weather ("its snowing outside I guess global warming doesn't work) - willfully conflating scientific journal articles with OpEd's in the popular press ("I read an article in Enquirer that said global warming is bunk!") - Or postulating a global conspiracy among governments and scientists to perpetrate a fraud that would be in absolutely no one's interest.

The last one, if it was anything besides climate change, to propose this kind of conspiracy would put you in the ranks of the people in cellars with aluminum foil on their heads. For climate change apparently its still socially acceptable.

My position is that it should not be. There no excuse for playing at being stupid. Its not conservative. Its immoral. Real people are going to suffer. Real damage will be done. Its not about scoring political points. Its about the science, a real challenge we need to be on the right side of and the real down side if we fail.