Global warming touches a nerve for many people, and I don’t think there is an easy answer for why such a seemingly uninteresting topic has produced so much animosity and debate. To be fair, global warming is just one general aspect of the reality of our planet’s climate which is fundamentally unstable. On a global average the planet is getting hotter over time while new variations are being introduced into all the climates aroung the world, a phenomenon rightly referred to as global climate change. Perhaps there are so many climate change denialists because it goes against the outdated scientific paradigm of universal equilibrium. Maybe it comes from a dissonance with common sense or with religious sensibilities. Whatever the reason for it, climate change denialism misunderstands reality and deserves some careful attention to its underlying causes.
To put it bluntly, climate change occurs, whether anyone denies it or not. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a wonderful website devoted to the subject. One of the first items on epa.gov/climatechange/basics declares the empirical evidence that our global temperature is rising on average over time, “our Earth is warming Earth’s average temperature has risen by 1.4°F over the past century, and is projected to rise another 2 to 11.5°F over the next hundred years,” and it goes on to warn of the potential harm that can be caused by shifts away from our present ideal climate saying, “small changes in the average temperature of the planet can translate to large and potentially dangerous shifts in climate and weather.”
This is all fine and dandy, but the debate flares up once people start pointing fingers. The EPA website goes on to mention that human activity has driven and will continue to cause climate change, “Since the Industrial Revolution began around 1750, human activities have contributed substantially to climate change by adding CO2 and other heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. These greenhouse gas emissions have increased the greenhouse effect and caused Earth’s surface temperature to rise.”
These conclusions are virtually uncontested in the scientific community, but people unfamiliar with the facts stick to denialism. Wiktionary.org defines denialism as “the position of those who reject propositions that are strongly supported by scientific or historical evidence and seek to influence policy processes and outcomes accordingly.” Maybe climate change denialism is popular because it lets us step back and avoid a tough issue, but doing so avoids our responsibility to protect our planet. We must consider that our actions have repercussions; the only reason these repercussions haven’t been noticed until recently is because we have only been poor stewards for a few hundred years. We need to get our act together and face the facts before we can begin to make a difference. That is the only way we can make any progress toward a safe and sustainable human existence on our pale blue dot among the stars.
