Despite this flood of media trying to prove the information is false, we, as a society, continue to see ice caps melting, global temperatures on a rise, droughts across the globe, and ocean levels rising by the year. So, if global warming is a hoax, why is all this happening? Well, some conservatives tell me it is God's work. I write this off because in our history God was also responsible for storms, the sun rising, and whether or not a disease would spread through a city or not. God also backed two different nations who were at war with each other during the 100 Years War, and God backed both the Catholic Inquisition and the Protestant Reformation. So, with that reasoning set aside - why do conservatives continue to argue that climate change is not happening?
However, with a scientific consensus - meaning a majority of climatologists in agreement - stating that climate change is happening and that humans do have an impact on such things, the arguments against are beginning to sound like the arguments against the idea that cigarettes cause lung cancer. We now know, due to several decades of scientific data and smokers developing lung cancer, that cigarettes do in fact contribute to lung cancer. The evidence is clear. Similarly, now that enough scientific data has been discovered and proven by even the harshest of skeptics, we find that the loudest arguments are being made by private sector researchers who are given money to 'debunk' climatologists. They are paid several thousand dollars to find holes in the scientific data collected, and then make a statement regarding those holes. Science is a collection of conclusions reached through observations of events. Science does not have a pre-determined conclusion when observing. However, when scientists are paid to have a pre-determined conclusion before they read someone else's observations, it stops becoming science and starts becoming something else.
What is the scientific consensus on Climate Change? Here's a link to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research's report on Climate Change. It directly states that humanity has an impact based on the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Fossil fuels are burned in cars, coal power plants, and a variety of other things, and add CO2 to the atmosphere - proven and well known. How? Cars burn gas - they emit CO-, or carbon monoxide. This carbon monoxide fuses with the O3, or ozone, and takes the hanging oxygen molecule to create O2 and CO2 - thus reducing the ozone and increasing the carbon dioxide levels. Deforestation reduces the planets ability to absorb the excess CO2.
But that single source is not enough - here's NASA's research, and here's the World Health Organization's (WHO) study as well. I believe the evidence is clear that climate change is happening. However, because this means that certain parties in the United States will have to pay more money to make sure their drilling and burning does not pollute too much, they decide to confuse the argument with false facts and misleading information. Instead, they make it a social argument, and turn it into a political debate. They cry that the way we did things in the past was fine and that we shouldn't be forced to do things we don't want to do. If that argument ever held up, then cars would made without seat-belts, workers would be working seven days a week and twelve hours a day, and our country would resemble China - who is having problems with their rivers being contaminated with radiation and human waste, and their rain being more acidic across their country. Other issues have arisen there, as well, due to the lack of climate awareness and pollution reduction.
The scientific facts do not always change the minds of people who refuse to believe that climate change is happening. You can argue the facts until you are out of breath, and they will continue to assert that 'nature has cycles' or that 'our temperatures and sea levels are completely normal for an Earth going through the ice age melt'. They sound ridiculous, but people will adamantly stick to their guns because the people misleading them have turned the climate change idea into a social argument. It becomes the ideology of - typically - the conservative wing of the socio-political environment. So, to argue that climate change exists means - to them - that you are from the other side of the aisle. Instead of arguing facts, they argue ideas. Instead of accepting truth, they revert to what they've 'always' known, and we see cognitive dissonance. This means that people who have listened to one side of the argument for too long cannot, or do not accept the facts from the other side of the argument, and continue their lives as they always have.
In essence, Climate Change is being refuted by people who think what they've been doing has been fine and has not been hurting the country. These people are being manipulated into continuing such a train of thought by wealthy individuals or mega-corporations that do not want to change how they do things - most of the times because it will cut a few million off their billions of profits.
The image I keep getting in my head about people arguing against climate change is the man who closes his eyes to lead the people into the forest. The people all ask him to open his eyes, but he tells them he knew the forest as a child and can lead them blind-folded. They follow him anyway, because they trust him, and he leads them into a newly inhabited den of wild animals that rip them all to shreds.
I encourage debate about issues, but only if scientific data has not made the argument moot. This argument is like the arguments we heard for and against cigarettes, or for and against racial integration. Eventually, facts and experiences will win out over misleading, or misunderstood information. I just hope we don't have to lose cities to show people the truth.
Tip: When arguing against someone who refuses to believe climate change is happening - use the effects of climate change and ask them them if it is happening. If they agree that the effects of climate change are happening, then they have agreed that climate change is real. The argument then becomes whether or not humans have a big or small impact on such a thing. Good luck! Change some minds.
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