In the past month, I posted an image on my Facebook profile, which gained the attention of a former buddy from high-school, who questions the validity of climate change activism. (I originally posted this image in the 10% by 2010 blog post.) In particular, this buddy argued that China and the developing world present a greater risk than the U.S. does and, anyway, climate is shifting with out our help.
Next came a somewhat clumsy response of my own, where I referred my skeptical buddy to the just-released 2007 EPA report on global warming, suppressed by the Bush administration, which was finally released under the Freedom of Information Act on Tuesday this week. The EPA "endangerment finding" (PDF), which warned the US must act to regulate greenhouse gases, or face catastrophic environmental damage.
Enter friend and colleague, Steve Pierson, with an admirable response, where he lives up to his "walks in two worlds," profile. He gently called attention to fact that the 'climate is making dramatic shifts with out our help,' argument is an acknowledgement that the climate is changing. He also aligned the, 'the developing world poses a greater threat than we do,' argument with the, 'it's not my fault,' defense.
With an appreciative nod to the man in black cowboy hat, I'd like to open this up to other comments:
How do you respond to climate change discussions? Where do fall on the skeptic-believer spectrum and what do you do about it?
Here are some additional resources that may help in your conversations with Climate Change skeptics.
• Here is a top-10 list of who they are:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/mar/06/climate-change-deniers-top-10
• Here is another opinion piece from Christian Science Monitor:
http://features.csmonitor.com/environment/2009/08/28/are-climate-change-deniers-like-creationists/
In addition, all of the following books detail what is going on with the science, politics and economics of Climate Change. Here are selected chapters that address the skeptic/ deniers & delayers issue and debunk most of it through rigorous research and analysis.
1) Heat: How to stop the planet burning - George Monbiot
Chapter 2 - The denial industry.
Monbiot is a journalist based in UK, and this book is exhaustively researched. He also has a website where he frequently debunks the D&D (deniers & delayers).
see: http://www.monbiot.com/
2) Hell and High Water: Global Warming - the solutions and the politics - Joseph Romm
Chapter 5 - How climate rhetoric trumps climate reality
Chapter 10 - Missing the story of the century
Joe Romm writes about these issues daily on his site: http://climateprogress.org/
3) Climatic Cataclysm - The Foreign Policy and National Security implications of Climate Change - Editor Kurt M. Campbell, written by several political experts affiliated with Center for New American Security (CNAS).
This is a very practical/pragmatic look at climate change through the context of global threats and American security. Contributors include former CIA director James Woolsey, Clinton chief of staff John Podesta, and Leon Fuerth who was National Security Advisor to VP Gore.
For those interested in Scenario Planning, this book discusses Three Plausible Scenarios of future Climate Change - expected, severe and catastrophic - over 120+ pages.
4) With Speed and Violence - Why Scientists fear tipping points in climate change - Fred Pearce
Pearce is a climate change reporter in UK for the New Scientist magazine. The entire book is geared for those who "take comfort in uncertainty about the predictions of scientists and their climate models...". Pearce, at one point, used to be in the skeptic camp. Over time, he has seen the evidence grow to a point that it can not be ignored.
With Speed & Violence is a MUST READ.
5) CO2: Fixing Climate - What past climate changes reveal about the current threat and how to counter it - Wallace Broecker & Robert Kunzig.
Terrific book on the history of climate science (although told through the prism of one controversial scientist's career - Wally Broecker).
This book discussed tree rings, ice core, atmospheric CO2 concentrations, solar cycles and other such methodologies and gives a perspective on how that branch of science has evolved over the past 50 years.
6) Dire Predictions - Understanding Global Warming - The illustrated guide to the findings of the IPCC - Michael E. Mann & Lee R. Kump.
Michael Mann, the author of the hockey-stick graph, is one of the scientists whose work has been under assault from the climate change skeptics, deniers and delayers industry. Even those who believe in CC have questioned some of his work, which he has successfully defended.
Andrew Winston (Co-author of Green to Gold) makes an anecdotal observation in his new book Green Recovery. He writes that people often ask him what he sees in the climate change movement and the actions taken by companies to combat it. He stated that in informal polls he conducts while speaking in front of business executives (those who actually go to listen to him), between 50% to 60% believe that there is a significant disagreement amongst scientists that a) climate change is real, b) is happening, and c) is man made. So more than half of these business folks, in one way or another, are being led to be skeptical!
There is no disagreement. More than 99% of scientists feel one way, while less than 1% feel differently. Not only is that not a disagreement, some of these 1% people are not even scientists and do not publish their findings (generally) in peer reviewed journals.
How many times can we say it: the debate is over. So I wonder if our rational arguments will ever get past the emotional response - generated through religious, economic and ideological values - by the mere mention of SCIENCE of Climate Change. Since Climate Change is occurring at human timescales and can be observed, it is time to start attributing weather related events that are trending negatively (like increased wild fires, droughts, dust storms, intense tropical hurricanes, etc) directly to man-made climate change.
Hm. No small questions today, eh? This one is complex, almost as complex as the challenge of pursuing sustainability.
I believe that there are a lot of debatable details in the science behind the climate change rallying cry. Much of it has the odor of chicken little that makes a skeptic's hackles rise (my own included).
But it's not realistic to pretend that the world can indefinitely absorb the dramatic upswing in toxin production of the indutrial and modern ages. Plastics and fossil fuels leave undeniably real and tangible residues (visit the window sill of a building in a high traffic area for the easy evidence, or the LA skyline).
These things affect us all locally and very obviously, making it fairly intuitive to believe that they *probably* affect the earth on a larger scale - if not catastrophically, then at least enough to warrant a change in behavior.