{"id":6235,"date":"2017-03-11T15:22:15","date_gmt":"2017-03-11T21:22:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/?p=6235"},"modified":"2017-03-12T11:16:13","modified_gmt":"2017-03-12T17:16:13","slug":"5-reasons-im-suspicious-climate-change-crusaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2017\/03\/5-reasons-im-suspicious-climate-change-crusaders.html","title":{"rendered":"5 reasons I’m suspicious of climate change crusaders"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/pollution-global-warming-environment-2049211\/\"<\/p>\n

So I\u2019ve had some (gasp!) off-blog conversations about the whole issue of climate change\/global warming.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be honest: \u00a0this is not something I really deal with much. \u00a0I generally tend to think that\u00a0there are better than even odds that the planet is warming, but at the same time, I don\u2019t think that Science is a god that demands our worship, and that those who carry the name Scientist must be treated as infallibly making the right decisions about human actions.<\/p>\n

So here is my list of reasons why I am, let\u2019s say, suspicious of the message of climate change activists.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Climate has changed in the past, even in the recent past \u2014 e.g., the Medieval Warm, and the Little Ice Age. \u00a0Heck, as much as everyone likes to say of Greenland, \u201cthey called it that in order to con Vikings into moving there,\u201d the climate in Greenland during the period of Viking settlement was meaningfully warmer than in the subsequent years, when those Vikings either died or left, depending on the theory. \u00a0And, from what I understand, the melting of glaciers in such places as Greenland and the Alps is not necessarily a sign of unnatural warming, but more a return to \u201cnormal\u201d after\u00a0the glaciers built up during the result of the Little Ice Age\u2019s unnatural cooling.<\/li>\n
  2. Climate change \u201calarmists\u201d present solutions that are too-good-to-be-true: \u00a0at no cost to anyone in terms of standard of living, we will have high-speed trains, alternate-fuel or high-fuel-economy cars, renewable fuel, etc.<\/li>\n
  3. At the same time,\u00a0their predictions seem to be so extreme \u2014 droughts! \u00a0floods! \u00a0crop failures! \u00a0\u2014 that it\u2019s hard to come to a sense of what is extremist and what is more probable. \u00a0And some of the proofs\u00a0that activists cite \u2014 the smog in Beijing, for instance, are a result of industrialization without pollution controls, but are not a matter of global warming per se.<\/li>\n
  4. The reality is that there are costs and benefits to both warming, and methods of fighting warming \u2014 but the \u201calarmists\u201d deny the benefits to warming and deny the costs of fighting warming. \u00a0There are also a mix of true costs, and problems of adaptation: \u00a0humans have adapted to a specific climate during the period of industrialization, urban growth, and the development of a modern economy. \u00a0Is there a real cost to humankind of the ski tourism industry in various locations no longer being as profitable, for instance?<\/li>\n
  5. And in my lifetime, the crusade for solar panels and alternate-fuel cars has moved from the drive to fight for clean air and water by moving away from polluting coal and gas, to the worry that we\u2019ll run out of oil and other fossil fuels, to the current anti-climate change crusade. \u00a0It reminds me of the March of Dimes: they fundraised and funded research for polio and provided support for polio victims \u2014 and after polio was cured, rather than disband, they found a new mission. \u00a0In the same way, I\u2019m suspicious of environmentalists who, rather than celebrating the successes of clean air and water, found a new cause. \u00a0It certainly suggests that their goal is solar and wind, and their climate change crusade is just the current tool for reaching this goal.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Are these scientific proofs that climate change activists are wrong, or, more nefariously, are hoaxers? \u00a0No. \u00a0I don\u2019t believe that there\u2019s an intentional desire to deceive the public. \u00a0I\u2019m not even saying that they\u2019re wrong;\u00a0<\/em>I\u2019m just suspicious, which leads me to tend towards neutrality, coupled with a desire not to disrupt the status quo too heavily.<\/p>\n

    But having said that, it\u2019s not my cause. \u00a0I\u2019m not going to run out and join the Heartland Institute (though it kills me that they\u2019re pretty much the only local think tank), or, alternatively, become a Climate Warrior. \u00a0I have other causes, other issues, about which I can write about, and learn about, more competently.<\/p>\n

    Readers, what say you?<\/p>\n

    UPDATE: \u00a0Once you\u2019re done railing at my anti-science denialist backwardness, you can check out one reader\u2019s guest post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    Image: \u00a0https:\/\/pixabay.com\/en\/pollution-global-warming-environment-2049211\/; public domain<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    So I\u2019ve had some (gasp!) off-blog conversations about the whole issue of climate change\/global warming. I\u2019ll be honest: \u00a0this is not something I really deal with much. \u00a0I generally tend to think that\u00a0there are better than even odds that the planet is warming, but at the same time, I don\u2019t think that Science is a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":6242,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[581,583,582],"class_list":["post-6235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-climate-change","tag-environmentalism","tag-global-warming"],"yoast_head":"\n5 reasons I'm suspicious of climate change crusaders<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"So I've had some (gasp!) off-blog conversations about the whole issue of climate change\/global warming. 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