Climate change deniers—you can’t hardy find them. The key is this: those experts that you think are denying climate change are really not doing so. They agree there is change. A few deny human causation but a more significant group is saying “Yes, the phenomenon is real, but we should focus instead on helping the poor people and the poor nations who will suffer the most from global warming or those who need our help right now for whatever reason.” They are actually talking about a massive humanitarian aid effort to lift victimized peoples, a massive welfare project if you will. They argue that fixing climate change would cost a great deal and for the same money we could do a great deal of good by eliminating hunger and disease.
Prime example is Bjorn Lomborg, who advertises himself as a skeptic of global warming. But he does agree that there is climate change and that it is a threat. He thinks that fixing the problems would be expensive; for the same money we could fix many problems by prioritizing present needs. Climate change is only one of many problems; he believes we should take that same money and spread it around on various humanitarian projects.
In another example. Robert Socolow, the Princeton emeritus professor of physics and author of the Nine Wedges theory of fighting climate change, asked his colleagues at Princeton, those who disagreed with his findings, to make a presentation on You Tube, alongside his own presentation. Those who participated spoke out as if they were the opposition, but when it came right down to it, they said it would be cheaper to take care of the downtrodden victims of climate change than to fix the system that causes it.
Humanitarian aid is wonderful. Preventing suffering in the first place is better. Furthermore the situation has changed since many of these critics spoke. Extreme weather in connection with global warming is in itself able to disrupt many of our aid systems. The equivalent of three or four Hurricane Katrina’s in a year or less could wipe out resources and cause compassion fatigue. FEMA resources have already been strained to the breaking point and its payments are limited.
Climate change is advancing at a faster rate than expected . Some of the skepticism seems to have quieted. But we should remember that these so-called deniers are making pronouncements not about physics or climatology, but about allocation of budget in the social sciences. “We’ll buy rubber boots and hope the flood in the basement doesn’t rise any higher; meantime we can pay for more school lunches for hungry children.” All of these pronouncements assume that the effects of warming will be limited to poorer peoples and to developing nations.
The so-called denials are not science. They are opinions about budgeting in the humanities by people in the sciences. Of course we should take care of people who are suffering now, and we should prevent future catastrophes as well.
Global warming is real and it is dangerous. Something you can do about it is to contact your representatives in government–local, state and federal– and demand that they have a competent science advisor on the staff.
Nevertheless.blog 