A nice essay by Matt Bush (also see his response to the “climategate 2.0” non-scandal here):
Urgh.
Look, man-made global warming is real.
This conversation is starting to bore me. I’ve had it thrice this week, with different people who I know aren’t stupid. It also really disturbs me. I don’t think deniers are gullible idiots, I just doubt they’ve actually looked at any of the evidence.
What’s more, denialism posing as ‘scepticism’ really does bore and disturb me. It pisses me off too. So I must admit that I’ve been kicking around a draft of this post for a while. It really felt inevitable that I’d have to write something on this topic. I started it a few weeks ago, but after yet another chat today I felt compelled to finish it.
People seem to gravitate towards labels and adopt the narratives associated with them, and they don’t often examine the facts before drawing their own conclusions. You get ‘Greens’, ‘Leftists’, ‘Geelong Supporters’, ‘Liberals’, ’Tradies’, ‘Students’, ‘Conservatives’, ‘Socialists’, ‘Apatheists’; I’m left wondering where all the ‘Critical Thinkers’ are. People who don’t practice critical thinking will invariably fall victim to someone’s else’s idea of reality – and other people’s ideas about reality are generally pretty unreliable.
I don’t trust most of what I hear and read (thought I listen and read a lot), so I prefer to trust science – not individual scientists, who are fallible people, but science – the idea that we can glean facts about reality from the tests we do of reality. Science makes the effort to be objective in ways that people can’t. Science is critical thinking coupled with rigorous testing, and it’s a damn useful tool to rely on. That’s why I know that man-made global warming is real. I wish it wasn’t, but it is. It definitely is.
The scientific evidence to support the existence of man-made (anthropogenic) global warming is mounting every single day. Now, an actual sceptic (without abusing the term) should know this – given the sheer volume of resources freely available to anyone who cares. To call the current body of evidence overwhelming in magnitude would be something of an understatement. The public is woefully misinformed about the position of the scientific community on the issue, despite repeated attempts by climate scientists to make their voices heard. (Go on, follow that last link.)
Read it all here
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