Cranky about Climate Change Deniers

 Your Beliefs become your thoughts

Your Thoughts become your words

Your words become your actions

Your actions become your destiny

...from Gandhi....

Yesterday I read an email from one of my neighbours (and someone with whom I am friendly) on our local island list serve and he posted a link to one of the internet climate science deniers.  Usually I don't bother to respond to such nonsense because it reminds me too much of the jerks I had to deal with professionally when I was still working as an environmental consultant.  But finding myself relaxed here on the beach I must have had a brain lapse.  And, I did it nicely too...see below...instead of my usual response to climate deniers who say climate change is always happening (yes,and it's happening faster than ever because of anthropogenic factors), or it's just a theory (and guess what, so is gravity) and who ultimately refuse to believe that human activity is actively influencing the climate. So, I let fly....

Steven Goddard (is a pseudo name for somebody who wrote the article you posted) is a nut job blogger who is not respected or believed by any of the credible scientific organizations around the world.  Whomever he is, he is completely wrong, not supported by the evidence and has a history of distorting the facts.  And, for the record, cherry picking data doesn't work in evidence based science.

There are uncertainties in parts of the models used to forecast future climate, but thousands of scientists have made meticulous efforts to make sure that the processes are based on basic physics, substantiated by laboratory work, and sound theoretical calculations. 

There is lots to debate around the issue of climate change: mitigation, adaptation, taxes, government policies, subsidies or do nothing but please let's base our debates on real evidence. ...

So here I am on the beach thinking about these climate change deniers who fill up the news and the internet with their stories (several more were posted online from equally specious sources following my post).  

I keep coming back to the question, Who are these people? That is beyond the usual suspects like Fox News, the coal industry and Exxon Mobil and the lasses-faire anti regulatory types ( oh, right they are now called Libertarians). Clearly many of these climate deniers are funded by the above but there are also the conspiracy freaks,  and others most of whom, if not all, are not scientists, do not subject their positions to peer review, and focus on the media, public policy makers etc.  to spew their misinformation. And, don't get me started on the media and their fair and balanced reporting....that's worth a separate rant.....

What is troubling is that all this noise is not just clogging up the airwaves but it clouds the discussion , rather all the noise skews the publc's understanding of a very serious issue because of the media's penchant for "balanced" reporting even though there is overwhelming consensus among real scientists that the climate change is happening and it's human induced.  

My friend Patti says, and I think she got it right, she feels impotent to be able to do anything to remedy the situation so it's easier to either not think about it or pretend it doesn't exist.  

Well politicians certainly don't have solutions and neither does industry with their we'll figure it out but don't regulate attitude.  But I don't have a good solution either and frankly this is depressing.  I'd like to think that advances in technology will eventually slow emissions but with China and India's growth it may be too little too late.  All I can say is industry and business leaders and our politicians are not adequately focusing on the economic impacts of climate change.  

Enough.......