Interesting flurry of web noise over a 10:10 video that shows school kids getting blown up for not signing up for carbon reduction. The video caused an ‘outrage’ with a lot of groups on both sides of the issue denouncing it, got taken down and an apology issued.
On first viewing, my feeling was ‘what are they going for?’ I felt discomfort at the implied pressure to conform with the majority, and didn’t really get what good the video would possibly do. For champions of carbon reduction it would be divisive at the very least, and for sceptics it would fuel the fire that ecofascists will go to any lengths to coerce compliance. That is in fact how I came across it. A libertarian of my acquaintance posted it on facebook like it was the smoking gun that all the greens were really interested in was imposing a carbon tax and controlling people more and more.
But it got me thinking. And as I looked around on you tube I saw that the bulk of people posting in were adding similar comments to those of my ‘friend’. ‘Ecofascists murder school children for being sceptics…’, that kind of thing.
Being constitutively predisposed to anxiety, with a background in ecology, I ‘believe’ that humanity is influencing climate change. I follow the topic at a moderately advanced layman’s level, have read several books, parts of the IPCC, and other stories that percolate up through the general press. Would I be able to debate the science? Not really, and that frustrates me. Because it means I expose myself to the arguments, they support a sky is falling anxiety exacerbating view of the world, and then I go about my business ‘believing’ in climate change more or less on faith.
Many of the sceptics have a no less dogmatic view of the issue, just with different assumptions. The establishment is trying to pull the wool over our eyes to keep us frightened and extend government interference in our lives. Or big business wants to commoditize carbon to divert even more of our money into their pockets. Climate variation is a natural consequence of variations in solar output. The greens were trying to scare us into fearing an ice age 30 years ago, they are just anti-modern, anti-technological, nihilists. Etc.
So I feel the need to brain up on the issue and get as close to the bottom of the questions as possible. What is the evidence for mankind’s actions influencing the climate – and I know some of them – ‘proxy’ records for the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature like glacial ice cores, sedimentary pollen records, tree rings, etc. I’ve also read superficially about how solar variation does not explain current trends in global temperatures.
And even if our actions are causing climate change it is a whole other question whether it is already too late to reverse the damage. There are questions as to whether the lag time between carbon emissions and climate change are such that the changes will continue well into the future. Even greater questions as to how our societies could possibly decarbonise in an orderly and effective fashion. Which leaves me suspecting, prone to worry as I am, that we won’t really deal with any of these man made environmental stressors but will instead let nature run its course, with whatever wars, famines, floods, diseases and other disasters that a degraded natural world will bring.
Which makes how we deal with these questions pressing and vital. Because if a storm is coming, and you can’t avert it, you want to at least start battening down the hatches. And if trouble is brewing and it is within your power to improve things, but you do nothing about it. Well then you kind of dropped the ball.
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