Dickinson to Durban » Entries tagged with "climate change skeptics"
Attacking Global Warming
What strategies have been used to promote doubt about climate change? Have they been effective? With what consequences? When ideas concerning global warming and climate change circulated during the mid 1900’s they were met with strong opposition from a handful of renowned physicists. These men tried several methods to merchandize doubt about the issue, all of which confused the public and the government and slowed the progress of policy making. In 1989 Bill Nierenberg, Robert Jastrow and Frederick Seitz (As part of the Marshall Institute) began to attack global warming. Their first strategy was to relocate the blame from fossil fuels to the sun. They wrote a small book called “Global Warming: What Does the Science Tell Us?,” in which they picked and organized data to their liking, and presented it to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Summer Reading Responses
Seeing is Believing
Although the scientific discovery of anthropogenic caused global warming has been accepted by the vast majority of the scientific community, there are some knowledge gaps which make climate change difficult for the average person to accept and believe. One of these confusions comes from the misunderstanding of the difference between climate and weather. It can be easy for someone to believe in global warming when there are record breaking heat waves in their town or state. At the same time, an unusually cold winter or bad blizzard can give skeptics the “proof” they need to say it doesn’t exist. However, these examples can neither prove, nor disprove, global warming. These seasonal variations are examples of weather, not climate. It is true that one aspect of climate change will mean greater variability … Read entire article »
Filed under: Summer Reading Responses
The “humanness” of nearsightedness
How can we reconcile the variability of weather with that of climate? How does our humanness restrict our thinking? Climate change was observed by scientists as early as the 1930’s, it was not, however, accepted by the general public until as late as the 2000’s and much of the public still questions its validity. This lag between data collection and public education and understanding has harmed our chances of turning the problem around. Even when word spread we had a hard time believing in the severity of the problem, when “asked to name environmental problems facing the nation, most Americans would think of pollution of drinking water, local smog, or the destruction of tropical forests ahead of climate change” (185): all very visible threats. As humans we have a tendency to … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Mosaic Action, Summer Reading Responses
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