Tough Duty for Climate Deniers
I’m told there are climate deniers who are both intelligent and honest, but I really can’t understand how it’s possible for such people to hold that belief. According to new data just released by NASA this week, July was the hottest month on Earth ever recorded, marking the 15th consecutive month of record heat. 15 in a row. Does that seem like a coincidence? (If so, let’s get together for some high-stakes backgammon.)
From the Natural Resources Defense Council:
This year’s on track to be the hottest yet globally, as NASA predicted — and the drumbeat of bad climate news is growing louder:
• Australia’s Great Barrier Reef faces ecosystem collapse, biologists say.
• Arctic sea ice continues to shrink, and new research shows Greenland has lost 9 trillion tons of ice this century.
• Climate change may increase the spread of rare diseases like the Zika virus.
• Hotter, drier temps are creating conditions for more wildfires and drought.
• Sea level rise is causing cities like Miami and Virginia Beach to flood more often, even in modest storms.
Again, I would think it would be increasingly more embarrassing to be an overt climate denier. Let me ask: How much hotter does it have to get? Sorry, I’m lost.
Even intelligent and well-educated people can be total scatterbrains; I have witnessed it. Permit me to provide a concrete example.
When I lived in Fiji, I knew a retired Peace Corps volunteer who had retired to Fiji. He had a degree in philosophy from a highly respected university, yet he was a total scatterbrain. He told me that Fijian villages had no furniture. Well, I’d visited a few Fijian villages and they certainly did have furniture, although less than we typically have. Even driving through them on the highway one could see furniture in some of the houses, yet the retired Peace Corps volunteer asserted that he had never seen furniture in a Fijian village.
I could go on about several other things which demonstrated that he was an educated scatterbrain, but I think I’ve made my point.
You have indeed.
Climate change deniers should be dismissed in any discussion swiftly and with extreme prejudice. Their views are irrelevant.
Lawrence,
The views of climate change deniers would be irrelevant only if they had no influence. Unfortunately, they do have significant influence; therein lies the problem.
I’m afraid I have to side with Frank on this one. But their days are numbered. Again, how hot does it have to get? There’s a certain point at which more people will believe that the Earth is flat.
Craig,
Those who now deny climate change may very well change their tune when weather events force them to acknowledge that the climate has changed and is continuing to change. At that point they may simply insist that human activities had nothing to do with it.
Well there is Ignorance and then there is Stupid
Some Climate Deniers are just ignorant and can be rehabilitated or deprogrammed with respectful care and information etc.
Stupid deniers – well They say Stupid is Forever !
There is an article I read some time back that suggested paradoxically that “intelligent people are more easily fooled.” It maked for interesting reading. While I can’t find the original article. Here is some subsequent reading:
It seems that intelligent people are more likely to trust others: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/03/140316133840.htm
This article about some famous hoaxes shares with us that, “Smart people learn to believe things that are counterintuitive,” and that the fallacy of authority seems ingrained into our species: http://discovermagazine.com/2010/oct/13-why-are-smart-people-the-most-gullible
I have elsewhere written about a connection between believing in creationism which not only gives “faith” supremacy over Reason but tends to deny validity to “reason,” and not believing in human caused climate change.
Really interesting stuff!
Breath,
Your post included this quotation: “…and that the fallacy of authority seems ingrained into our species:”
Quite true, but I personally tend to question authority unless there is evidence to support it. I resist accepting something simply because some authority has stated it.