Tag Archives: climate change

Environmental Predictions Using Klosterman’s “But What If We’re Wrong?”

Yes, the book cover is deliberately upside down.

But What If We’re Wrong? Thinking About the Present As If It Were the Past by Chuck Klosterman looks at present issues as if they were being viewed in the past. Explaining how we live now as if now was then is a fun and somewhat ridiculous exercise. He writes about gravity, time, rock music, television, and more. If you’re familiar with Klosterman’s work, it fits with his interesting writing. One area he doesn’t touch on is the environment. In fact, he states he’s not going to touch on the environment. I can think of many reasons he chose not to address the environment. For one, he may not have wanted the issue to become politicized. Unfortunately, this happens too often with environmental discussions. That’s what I’m here to do. I’ll play this game and make environmental predictions about the issues of today as if they were in the past. Continue reading →

#1 Issue with Climate Change Skeptics

There’s a lot to wonder about why people are still skeptical of climate change, despite decades of research and evidence. There’s one thing about the skeptics that bothers me above all else, and that’s the huge insult it is to the researchers. Climate change skeptics are giving a big slap in the face to all of the scientists and researchers doing productive work.

Climatetologists, geographers, biologists, oceanographers, geologists, meteorologists, environmental scientists, and other earth scientist are working independently and cooperatively to determine the impacts, find solutions, or develop new technologies. It means nothing to the skeptics. What really stands out to me is the research that wasn’t intended to be climate change-based, but the conclusions support and contribute to the mountain of climate change evidence. Experts in their fields using the scientific method? It’s not enough for some people.

The concept of people not believing experts is not new. We’ve all been guilty of it. But this isn’t rating wine or movie reviews. It’s science and real research is not taken lightly. There are scientists who love nothing more than to disprove other scientist’s work (classy people). Paper after paper have been written over the past few decades and the research keeps mounting, despite the critical eye of other researchers.

The Department of Energy released a thorough paper, U.S. Energy Sector Vulnerabilities To Climate Change and Extreme Weather. What I really like about it is that it’s not research to determine if climate change is happening. It’s research to determine what will happen. The team of scientist that researched and wrote this aren’t concerned with the “if” part of climate change. They’ve accepted it and are planning for it’s outcomes. There is a very good summary website of the paper, here.   

Climate skeptics, stop stepping on other people’s hard work. It’s insulting to them and to you. Embrace it, try to appreciate the work, and enlighten yourself. Maybe to bring more mainstream attention to the issue, climate scientists need a TV show about lawyer-doctor-cop-models who solve earth science problems related to dead hookers and seedy politicians. Somebody get Fox on the line for me!

I can sum up this whole issue with one of my favorite political cartoons, from Joel Pett, published in USA Today in 2009. Perfect.

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