Climate change is not a future event.
Due in part to a recent Op-Ed in the NY Times, I realized yet another way that we who believe in science have failed when discussing the topic of climate change.
We wallow in the idea that one day everything might change in, as St. Paul put it, the "twinkling of an eye" — that a calamity might prove to be the longed-for transformation. But turning practical problems into cosmic cataclysms takes us further away from actual solutions.
This applies, in my view, to the towering seas, storms, droughts and mass extinctions of popular climate catastrophism. Such entertaining visions owe less to scientific climatology than to eschatology
Due to that misguided piece, I have decided to expand upon the following comment:
The piece seems to paint global warming as not only not a threat, but something that is "predicted" will cause problems someday...
The truth that the anti-science crowd tried to stifle is that climate change is a huge problem already, and that its consequences have already happened in the past.
The current debate is merely about how much worse we want to allow the problems to become before we effectively address them.
Just a few days later, in that very same newspaper, the NY Times:
Environmental Refugees Unable to Return Home
DHAKA, BANGLADESH — Mahe Noor left her village in southern Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr flattened her family’s home and small market in 2007. Jobless and homeless, she and her husband, Nizam Hawladar, moved to this crowded megalopolis, hoping that they might soon return home.
Two years later, they are still here. Ms. Noor, 25, and Mr. Hawladar, 35, work long hours at low-paying jobs — she at a garment factory and he at a roadside tea stall. They are unable to save money after paying for food and rent on their dark shanty in Korail, one of the largest slums in Dhaka. And in their village, more people are leaving because of river erosion and dwindling job opportunities.
"We’re trapped," Ms. Noor said.
Natural calamities have plagued humanity for generations. But with the prospect of worsening climate conditions over the next few decades, experts on migration say tens of millions more people in the developing world could be on the move because of disasters.
Is global warming a future event for Nizam Hawladar?
Does Mahe Noor think global warming will happen on some date decades from now?
Or has it been indeed years now they have been suffering its wrath?
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Then, today, we learn that John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods flatly stated in a New Yorker piece that when it comes to the causes of climate change, "No scientific consensus exists."
I guess that depends on your definitions of "consensus" & "scientific", doesn't it, jerkwad?
Let's be clear here. No amount of agreement will even be enough for these greedy, ignorant, "I got mine; screw you" types. If we tried to put a number on the agreement amongst real scientists, it would surely be over 80% right now, but it's likely well over 90% who agree man is to blame.
It doesn't matter.
Mackey's idiocy would be technically true if there was only a single dude funded by Exxon somewhere working on science-y stuff who claimed he wasn't 100% in agreement with the other 99.99999% of science.
The point is that it is another attempt by the rich elite to obfuscate the real issue:
The fact is that climate change has already happened.
The current debate is merely about how much worse we want to allow the problems to become before we effectively address them.
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Lastly, here is a pretty picture courtesy of Wikipedia, that haven of wild conspiracies regarding all things DFH. The chart shows the hard numbers.
The current record-smashing temperatures are clear. It's change I believe in.
But then again, I also believe the Earth revolves around the sun.
Call me crazy.
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