So, an interesting thing happened this week on the climate change denialism front--a prominent denialist, physicist Richard Muller, admitted that having looked into the data, the planet is warmer and humans are definitely the cause. This is great--for him. Now, how many other Doubting Thomases out there need to stick their fingers in the old side-pocket to figure out we're behind the 8-ball?
It sort of reminds me of when Bjorn Lomborg also recognized what the hell was going on--know where that went?
Well, from the US political vantage, nowhere. See, scientists looking at the data and revising their views doesn't seem to effect any change on the opinion of the already-very-committed but non-science-oriented. Denialism is still pretty much alive and well here--take a look at this nonsense:
US Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, is offended that something like 98% of scientists, regardless of what this means for electricity costs, say that carbon emissions is making our planet too hot to support life as we know it.
Of-FEN-ded. That's a damn shame, innit? Why in the hell won't the data support ol' Jeff's fee-wee's?
Probably because facts are true whether you want to believe in them or not.
My area is going through it's sixth heat wave of the summer, and August has only just started. At this rate, 90+ degree days are like, the norm, and days in the upper 80's feel quite luxuriously comfy. A dipshit like OK Sen Inhofe might persuade his grandbabies that a little snow in Tulsa means Al Gore is fullashit, but I'm thinking that streetlight melting and record droughts and wildfires might just bring this matter home for even the likes of him--(although by "home" I mean, sent home and not back to Washington, hopefully sometime soon.)
Oh well. I'm probably just kvetching because I'm the kind of bleeding-heart hippie who cares about the effects of this kind of weather on pets, babies, old people, and skin cancer on fish and stuff. And ocean acidification and crop failures....
(And climate-based disaster refugees, economic collapses of tropical areas, increased incidence of storms, droughts, wildfires, earthquakes, death, war over resources, and all the other stuff I wish people found more of-FEN-sive.)
1 comment:
If "global warming alarmists" are wrong, but policy based on their predictions is put into place, we get clean, renewable energy, reduced need to deal with petroleum rich dictators, fewer health problems due to pollution...
If global warming deniers are wrong, but we continue basing policies on their beliefs, you die, she dies, everybody dies.
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