Year 3, Month 5, Day 29: Getting So Much Realer All The Time

The Ledger (Lakeland, FL) runs a piece by Charles Reynolds, addressing some implications — and taking a dig at the chuckleheads along the way.

Some people believe the concept of climate change, also called global warming, is a plot cooked up by tree-hugging liberals to get everyone else to stop treating planet Earth like a trash heap. But governments and multinational corporations worldwide don’t think climate change is a hoax.

Among corporations taking an active role in finding solutions for problems caused by ever-worsening weather patterns are Weyerhaeuser, DuPont, Boeing, Georgia-Pacific, Deutsche Telekom, Royal Dutch/Shell, Toyota and Ontario Power Generation. Hardly bastions of liberalism. And speaking of the flip side of altruism, the government of communist China is becoming increasingly concerned about the damage climate change is causing.

The organizations mentioned are, of course, worried about their bottom lines. It’s the world’s biologists, botanists and scientists who are distressed over the effects of climate change on hundreds of thousands of species of plants and animals.

Sent in a rush, 5/19 – getting ready for the Flutes concert.

When confronted with the facts about climate change, denialists respond in one of several extremely predictable ways. By far the most popular is a mix of guilt-by-association and ad hominem attack, as in the endless attacks on the integrity of former Vice President Al Gore. Another “greatest hit” for self-styled skeptics is the argument from incredulity — “it must be impossible, because I don’t understand anything about science.” And, of course, we’re always going to hear from the tinfoil hat brigade, with their increasingly far-fetched conspiracy theories: “global warming is a hoax cooked up by socialists in order to enforce global redistribution of wealth from the hands of the job creators into the pockets of greedy climatologists,” or something like that.

Meanwhile, the researchers who are actually working in the field keep finding more information that suggests the problem is actually significantly more dangerous than had been previously thought. While warmer weather is excellent news for gardeners in the short term, the steady increases in planetary temperature are going to make feeding our civilization exponentially more difficult in the centuries to come — something which should (eventually) engage the attention of the denialists.

Would those who reject the validity of climate science be willing to sign insurance waivers, relinquishing any damages from the effects of global warming? Let’s see them put their money where their mouths are.

Warren Senders