Year 3, Month 4, Day 8: The International Homework Alarmist Conspiracy!

Anne Zammit, in the Times of Malta, notes that the time for denial is long past:

Scepticism is essential for good science but the time for debate has long been over. Scientists (notably climatologists) reached consensus that global warming is happening but it took decades for the problem to penetrate public discourse.

Indications that human activity is having an effect on the climate are nothing new:

In 1896, Swedish Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius presented his findings that human activities releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere could change the earth’s climate.

Scientists Charles Keeling and Roger Revelle demonstrated in the 1950s that a large part of the carbon dioxide released from the burning of coal, oil and gas was remaining in the atmosphere because the oceans couldn’t absorb it fast enough.

A scientific advisory panel warned US President Lyndon Johnson of the dangers of adding greenhouses gases to the atmosphere back in 1965.

By 2007 there were no credible scientific sceptics left to challenge the broad projections and underlying scientific theory of climate change.

Two years later the National Academies of Science of the world’s major industrialised nations issued an unprecedented joint statement on the reality of climate change and the need for immediate action.

Despite overwhelming evidence, a cell of climate change deniers showed up for a debate last month in Valletta, organised by the Euro Media forum, a discussion platform which “celebrates freedom of expression while respecting diversity in society”.

Letters like this one are easy; the media’s incredible irresponsibility is a ludicrous target. Sent April 1:

From schoolchildren shirking homework to cardiac patients disregarding the advice of their doctors, there’s no shortage of people who act as if ignoring a crisis will make it vanish. But the psychological mechanisms of denial are not the only thing to blame for the widespread rejection of the scientific reality of global warming.

Imagine a world in which the simple existence of heart disease was vigorously disputed; a world where the media promulgated an equivalency between concerned pulmonary specialists and those proclaiming that heart attacks and COPD are fabrications of an international conspiracy. It sounds bizarre — but it’s analogous to the way many news outlets address the issue of climate change.

Climate scientists are, in essence, “planetary physicians.” While their diagnosis is scary and their advice inconvenient, we owe it to our descendants to stop pretending that the problem will go away if we don’t acknowledge it.

Warren Senders

And it’s printed.