"All you global warming people" -- like
the National Research Council, the World Health
Organization, and the national science academies of the
U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and 28 other
countries? Or the dozens of other national and
international scientific bodies? Or maybe like the
Republican candidate for President, John McCain, or the
previous president, George Bush (who agreed that climate
change is a problem), or Republican Governor Charlie
Crist who actually launched an annual summit on the
issue, or Republican Senator Susan Collins? Like all
those people?
The fact is, the scientific
consensus on climate change is overwhelming. In fact,
there is not a _single_ national or international
scientific body on the face of the planet that says that
global warming isn't happening or that humans aren't
causing it. If you thought there were two
evenly-divided camps on the issue, that's because the
industry and the right-wing media have been working
overtime to sow as much doubt in the public's mind as
possible. When you go to the actual scientists, there's
no such doubt. All of the national and world scientific
bodies will tell you that it's happening and that we're
causing it, period. There are only are a tiny handful of
renegade scientists on the fringe who reject the
consensus position.
So exactly how can someone say that there's "no
significant evidence"* of climate change in
the face of the (literally) thousands of studies by
thousands of scientists whose conclusions are endorsed by
hundreds of scientific organizations, and rejected by not
even one of them? One might as well try to argue that
there's no significant proof that computers exist.
I'm always tempted to ask such people: "How
exactly is it that you are smarter than the
overwhelming majority of all the world's scientists? What
is it that you know that they don't? And how did you
arrive at that special knowledge? And why are you
emailing me, just some writer on the Internet, rather
than addressing the world scientific community to explain
how they all got it wrong and how you know better than
them? Shouldn't they be interested in your more qualified
take on the situation and what you have to teach them?
Because obviously they somehow don't have your superior
understanding."
But actually, Mr. Huisman didn't really say that the
research was wrong, he said that there's no
evidence of climate change. That suggests he might
actually believe no research has taken place. It's hard
to say from precisely which of these two delusions he's
suffering.
Either way, how exactly can people say there's no
significant evidence when the amount of evidence is
overwhelming? Unfortunately, the answer is pretty
simple: They just haven't read squat about climate
change. They've heard some radio show, or read a single
article (almost always by a non-scientist), and didn't
bother to check to see that that article has already been
thoroughly discredited.
How do I know this? I actually have proof.
Whenever people want to argue with me about this, I tell
them they first need to do at least a little cursory
reading to see how all the arguments they're making have
been exhaustively debunked (and that if they want to
persist with those points they'll need to show me exactly
how the deconstruction was wrong). I ask them to read
this set of articles before replying and that any reply
should take what was said there into account.
In fact, this is what I sent to Mr. Huisman, with a
special emphasis on the first one, since it spoke
directly to the overwhelming scientific consensus on this
issue. His reply? He said he didn't have time
to check them out, and then claimed that "no one
has been able to produce" scientists who believe in
global warming, among other things. This is the
intellectual equivalent of sticking your fingers in your
ears while repeating your position even more loudly.
I'm not exaggerating here. A few days later he
wrote again, insisting that there was no
scientific consensus about climate change, while of
course ignoring the article I sent him listing the nearly
100 national and international science bodies who endorse
the consensus, and which points out that there are none
which reject the consensus opinion.
So now we know how people can claim there's no
evidence of climate change: They haven't done even
cursory research into the matter, and when someone puts
the evidence right in front of them, they refuse to
look.
Incidentally, while I'm listing email from only one
reader, this is definitely typical of how climate change
is argued with me, and all over the Internet. One doesn't
have to go far to find this kind of uninformed
discourse.
(By the way, a list of individual scientists, even
IPCC report scientists which Mr. Huisman asked about,
isn't hard to find if one has heard of something called
Google. It's the first hit in a search of "ipcc list of
authors". And here's
a page which lists all 619 contributing authors of
IPCC Working Group 1 of the Fourth Assessment
Report.)
I'm not a scientist. And neither are the people
who argue with me about climate change. The difference
between us is that I'm trusting the consensus of the
world scientific community. They're trusting Rush
Limbaugh and Exxon-Mobil. Now, I suppose I could decide
that the world scientific community is wrong, but I'm
just not that arrogant.
Footnote: * Yes, nit-picky readers, I
understand the difference between evidence and
proof, but I'm certain that Mr. Huisman doesn't,
and that he really meant evidence. And if he
actually meant proof, that would make his argument
even weaker, since it would show that he's arguing the
wrong point.
