on "Help make a RTFM on global warming"
Posted by rick Tue, 23 May 2006 23:32:00 GMT
As seen on Boing Boing, Help make a RTFM on global warming, says:
“Alex Steffen of WorldChanging says: “Given that An Inconvenient Truth opens this week, and that it appears that the president just acknowledged that climate change is real, and that there’s been an uptick of “climate skeptics” leaving disruptive, if not downright trolling comments on environmental and science blogs recently, we thought it would be useful to come up with a way of signaling that the debate is really over on these subjects, and its time to move on.”So WorldChanging has started a discussion about developing “a page which can become shorthand in blog comment threads and online discussions for ‘we’ve already gone over this,’ a sort of RTFM message for climate change science.”
So, I’m all for education, and all for trying to find some clarity in the “debate” (or at least the shouting past one another that sometimes passes for a debate) around “Climate Change”/”Global Warming”, what have you.
What I’m not for is ignoring the fact that there is a chasm of opinion between those who take the position(s) that there is a detrimental climate change underway which is historic, dangerous, man-made, can be attributed to the excesses of Western civilization, and can somehow be changed through activism and/or policy; and those who take issue with any or all of those points (who are also often lumped together with those who have sold their souls to Exxon and lobby for dirty two-dollar bills from corporate masters).
The “let’s close the non-existent debate” tack, while mildly amusing (and definitely chic), only undermines its point. There is a strong and wide variation in facts and interpretation on climate change and plugging ears does little to move things forward.
Pastafarianism—that’s funny. It works on so many levels, precisely because the recent “Intelligent Design” “argument” is least of all “Intelligent”. We’re to the point where even bishops are acknowledging that Intelligent Design as a theory provides little useful or constructive. Striking at the base of ID absurdity has ultimately done more to harm that “movement” than all the reasoned arguments to which ID proponents refuse to listen.
On the other hand, those who would motivate action by calling down the doom that is Global Warming rest on a long string of tenuous claims purporting to point an arrow straight to desired policy goals:
- The planet is getting warmer.
- Is it? Perhaps. Depends on whom you ask, what you mean by “warming”, and what answer you want to hear. I’d probably (personally) be willing to grant this one, but there are climatologists who differ, maybe rightly, maybe wrongly.
- This warming is unprecedented.
- Even more suspect. There is stronger evidence that the planet has been warmer, that the planet has warmed faster, and that it was warmed more significantly (i.e., difference of degrees between cold trough and hot peak).
- This warming is manmade.
- Perhaps. Perhaps in part? Perhaps not significantly at all. Muddying questions: What caused the Ice Ages and what caused the drastic warming afterwards? What about evidence correlating warming to external factors, esp. sun activity? What about the fact that glaciers have been in retreat for 700+ years in Alaska (I’ve seen the evidence in person with my own eyes, so it’s hard for me to shake)? Why is data constantly being revised on this question? Which batch of research are you using? etc.
- If we do not “do something” X, Y, and Z catastrophic thing will happen.
- First off, how do we know that, sans action, the described trends would continue? How do we know the nature of the trends at all? What particular batch of research, what particular models, and what particular fit to the trend are we using: do we presume from ice cores, under a particular computational model, that the trend is a quadratic rise in temperature which will continue forwards? Second, the planet has weathered certainly more severe climate changes in the past, over much shorter and longer spans—what makes us believe the impact of a climate change is actually negative. I mean, are we worried primarily about beachfront property, or are we worried about the freakin’ Planet? Go read the archives of alt.destroy.the.earth sometime and see just how hard it is to really do anything serious to the planet. There is a wide range of evidence suggesting that warming, apart from the disruptive effect it may have on the insurance industry and the stability of the societies of this virus-with-shoes we call humanity, that warming is actually beneficial for the diversity of species and actually increases the habitable ranges of many flora and fauna. What I’m saying is that I’m not even sure anyone knows whether a warming planet would be “bad” for anyone other than Allstate and the yuppies in the Hamptons who could use a salad turd now and then anyway.
- But, given all that, if we just {ratify Kyoto, drive a corn car, Drive those fuckers out of the White House, Elect Al Gore, go see this movie, read this book, Get ANGRY, recycle, revert to Pleistocene-era technologies and population levels, etc.} then the climate will start making a comeback and everything will be Alright.
- Gimme a break.
The conclusion I always come to is that there are a bunch of corporate lobbyists, shill groups, and general right-wing reactionaries on one side distorting the case against climate change; and there are a bunch of idealistic, ideological, dogmatic, left-wing reactionaries distorting the case regarding Global Warming.
Ultimately it’s the same continual over-hyped shit: the “Left” hates the “Right” and vice versa. Corporations are dumping PCBs in the Hudson, and generally fucking up the planet., but probably not raising the temperature, whether or not that would be good or bad. The activist army can’t grasp economics or global scale facts, and will tar with any brush so long as the paint sticks.
Overall, most people have the facts wrong, and there’s many things more dangerous than half-informed self-righteous prigs (no matter what their agenda)—but few things more annoying.
(...and, yes, I’m aware that the last bit applies to me too. ;-)
