This is not a debate about whether four is a number or if gophers exist. Climate change is a scientific fact only challenged by the odd wingnut and given that there is more scientific consensus that climate change is occurring now than there is over whether smoking cigarettes can lead to lung cancer youtube evidence to the contray will not sway me.
However, I am always amazed that I'll see some poster blasting scientific claims of anthropogenic climate change. What is even more amazing is the same crowd claiming science is corrupt turn around and attack Liberals for ignoring the science around GMO foods or vaccinations.
What I am seriously interested in from the denier crowd is what is the minimum level of observable change you need to actually witness before you would consider believing in science over your political opinion?
Look here is the issue regarding the media-created "climate change," and reality.
1. No question of climate change the question is change in which direction.
2. Interesting to note that the main supporters are all people and groups with a serious financial vested interest, i.e., Universities who would like to keep their science departments, their billion dollar government grants and of course ALL the related Ed jobs and the thousands of support staff, also the bureaucrats who will jump on any bandwagon if they think it'll win them an election by the "great unwashed." And of course the media need to sell air time and news papers, and the list goes on ad nauseum.
3. The other side of the coin is what the public is NOT being told in order to keep the myth alive, i.e., global glaciation and the fact that: a.) On a millions of years scale glaciers role down from the north something like every 100,000 years and in between those periods of world wide ice are warm periods called interstitial periods and b.) If you pay attention to anything other than the last five minutes you will see two things, I'll explain.
As you would expect, the interstitial periods fall between each successive Ice Age and they too have a periodicity, something on the order of tens of thousands of years. Further, the proof is contained in several, pardon the science, areas of research such as gases trapped in glaciers, various geological, paleontology, oceanography and numerous other (not so well supported by government) disciplines.
Second on our radar is the data supported by the above which sadly for the climate change fanatics clearly show that the earth is actually cooling NOT heating up.
Finally, is the pure flim-flammery of much of the so-called data re global warming. Anyone older than 40, I know we're dinosaurs but better educated dinosaurs with higher IQ's--don't make me go into detail on this (America is already as of two weeks ago the second dumbest country on the planet, down from a sick no. three) because the facts are seriously depressing--and many will remember the photographic "proof," i.e., a single, yes boys and girls one single picture, of the "Ozone" over the polls with, ostensibly a "hole" in it. So the smoke and mirrors of "a hole in the o-zone," along with the manufactured (all of which came up following the original single hole BS) evidence.
So now we get to the crux of the matter, re who believes what and why... For most of the people, we don't put labels on either side, just a matter of our minimal desire for Propaganda, on the anti GW side we are looking at geological time periods, i.e., millions of years and then we look at who makes the claims one way or the other. As I said at the outset, we are generally worried less about what the temperature is going to be in a decade when in 1000 years we're going to have to learn how to build igloos.
To sum up, I as a psychologist take a great interest in what is the lie-factor, e.g., why would any certain individual be prone to stretch-the-truth, how motivated are they to keep their job and so on... Meaning that for us it usually comes down to something Carl Sagan once said, that "extraordinary claims need extraordinary proofs," that has not been the case in the GW debate--when the proofs are their a lot more people will be convinced--until that time the onus is on your side; mainly because it's you asking for all the money, it's you who demand complete faith in the less than proven and it's you wanting to change political boundaries, relinquish national sovereignty and violate deeply rooted laws and traditions and create an even bigger, more cumbersome and vastly more expensive alternate global government to fulfill, what looks to us, like only your dreams of avarice. For us to jump on that kind of bandwagon some hard scientific proofs are in order and I'm afraid that that kind of data (given the dubious origins of the pro GW backers) will be a long time coming.
