You know, somewhere in one of the emotional centers of my brain I do find some understanding for the common man that falls for the propaganda from Climate Change Deniers – I can fully sympathize with a vague skepticism about anything asserted by governments, institutions and claques. And indeed, this skepticism is often warranted – remember the so-called case for war in Iraq?
However, being an adult and responsible citizen demands that one evaluates the likelihood of a conspiracy against the scope and trustworthiness of the evidence presented, before gracing the conspiracy theory with any credibility. I for one cannot believe that any conspiracy involving more that 10 people could ever be effective – I have never seen evidence of a larger group managing to keep something secret for long, and to doubt the integrity of 99.9 % of the world’s scientists is ridiculous (and bloody insulting to scientists as well).
One argument I often hear centers around the half-truth that scientific consensus changes, and therefore our knowledge about climate change is incomplete. Because we do not know exactly how much how soon the climate will change, we do not need to act. Frustrating. The assertions about scientific consensus and the limits of our knowledge may be true, but to conclude that the notion of cataclysmic climate change is bogus, is dangerously illogical. I beg you: please read Mark Kleiman’s post on the precautionary principle, an explanation of how to logically evaluate risk. (Note: this is indeed the same principle invoked by Bush/Cheney when they claimed that the risk of WMD necessitates the invasion of Iraq. The big difference is that empirical evidence did not support their claim, in fact they knowingly lied and it was clear for all to see who looked at the evidence, while the empirical evidence for climate change is pretty pervasive and irrefutable.)
What really annoys me about the science skepticism, is that, unless they are living undiscovered in some tropical rainforest and would not be reading this, the skeptics trust their lives to science routinely every day. The drive cars, fly planes, take medicines, use computers – all activities only possible through science, necessarily incomplete as it is.
We’ve reached the stage where there can only be 2 possible motivations for Climate Denial: criminality or stupidity. I only wish it was easier to sort the criminals from the dunces, so that we could dispose of the former and ignore the latter.
Update: My friend Alfed reminded me of this article discussing the precautionary principle in relation to the Iraq war. I admit to having read this a few days ago, and it was obviously in the back of my mind this morning when I wrote the above. - GLK
Update #2: Oops, mea culpa. The article Alfred refered to is not the one I thougt dealing about the PP and Iraq, but rather a thourough and interesting evaluation of the PP itself. I cannot locate the PP-Iraq article now, but it was featured at Reason.com a few days ago.