Palegoldenrod

Today is Blog Action Day around the world and this year’s topic is Climate Change. Here is my participating post

I guess the first thing I have to say is that I know some people won’t agree with this post, and most of those group will take that stance possibly because they have missed what I am trying to say. I’m not declaring anything one way or the other, simply expressing my dissatisfaction with the entire situation. Prepare yourself for a lot of questions for which I have no answer.

This is an opinion / journal piece – my thoughts on the issue, nothing more.

Climate change; Global Warming; The Greenhouse Effect. These are common knowledge for most educated people around the world these days. We may not know the details, but we know the concepts. The propaganda, education campaigns, edutainment, media hype has been going on for long enough that pretty much the world knows.

The problem is that of late, I’ve been scratching my head over some of it. In the face of things like news of the antarctic ice increasing instead of melting I find myself wondering what is right, what is going on, and if we (the planet’s population as a whole) will ever know what is really happening.

My concerns are several. Firstly, science is a religion in the sense that it requires faith. Faith in the validity of scientific process, the error-prone ways of humans, that the scientists know more than we do and know it well, correct functioning of mechanical and scientific instruments, and also faith that we are capable of identifying and measuring all factors (what if there are influences that our human bodies can never detect and our minds can’t fathom?). When we have different groups of scientists around the world with different conclusions and theories and “solutions” related to the same situation, what do we, as a population do? Where do we put our faith?

Is one reason for the inconsistency that more modern / “up-to-date” science is pushing aside the generally accepted idea of what global warming is, and what causes it?

Is global warming modern day’s equivalent of the theory of the Earth being flat and the stars being pinpricks in the black sheet of the night sky? Will, one day, our great great great grandchildren roll their eyes at how silly were were to believe that we were influencing the planet so much? I don’t know. I guess a part of me hopes so, just because it will mean that we are not destroying our home so callously.

If we can put aside my first concern of faith in scientific method at its core, we come to my second: deliberate manipulation of science for dishonest gain – commercial, political, influential etc and I guess more accurately deliberate pollution of scientific method. When business entities commission a scientific investigation can we trust that the result will be impartial? The world has seen so many cases of scientific reports that claim a certain finding which happens to be beneficial to a company, and upon digging we find that the company actually commissioned the report in the first place. We might find that the research is actually unfinished or has a long list of fine print footnotes indicating biased assumptions etc.

Businesses want to show research that absolves them from contributing to the problem of global warming, or debunk it completely. Politicians could go either way, depending on how sinister your mind is (or political alignment?): proving that “our country is polluting less than others therefore it is not really our problem, its yours”, or pro climate change because a population focused on pollution and the fate of the planet is less likely to challenge its overlords, or … well, who really knows what the hell is going on here. Some people want to editorialise or make “breakthroughs” in research for fame and glory.

In some cases the manipulation isn’t of the scientific method itself, but the selective presentation of valid research. We know media is essentially entertainment now. cough Fox Network cough. If the media had to choose to report on “hey, its ok, business as usual” and the sensational headline “the planet is doomed, we’re killing ourselves” which do you think they would choose? Are these counter-global-warming pieces only coming through now because that very topic is challenging the norm and is sensational in itself? In fact, the piece I linked to earlier about gains in the ice shelves was carried by the Fox Network.

And the last issue may simply be that we don’t have the data. How do we know that this whole thing isn’t the planet continuing to recover from an ice-age? How do we know that these sprints of carbon dioxide increase and temperature change isn’t a normal part of that? Or that maybe something else is not significantly contributing? This is really interesting to me, and I don’t feel like as a whole, the scientific community is providing us with a united response to this (either supporting or debunking).

For me, I find it hard to confidently and clearly say “yes, I am going to commit myself 100% to this cause of urgently saving the planet from self-inflicted Climate Change” because I don’t feel I can trust the information supplied from either side. There are too many conflicting research papers at opposite ends of the spectrum.

What I can see, feel, experience is that we are certainly polluting (air, earth, water) and that needs to change rapidly or we will face the consequences (effects on food supplies, potable water, health, arable land, air quality etc). This I don’t dispute. This is why you will see me support almost any move that reduces pollution on any scale (personal, community, nationally, globally).

But it is also why you will see me give my friend a weird look when he has a rant over farmers’ markets being bad because of the carbon emissions of farmers trucks and shoppers’ personal vehicles. Yes, I can see that more carbon per apple is produced that way, but fresh, organic produce, supporting local farms and farmers and removing the reliance on distant food supplies, etc seem to be more valuable gains to me, and you’d be surprised how many buyers get there under their own power anyway. ahem.

On the topic of climate change, I ask: why is there not a consensus on the cause of it? If it is the future of life as we know it on this planet (or lack of it), what is more important than the truth of it and united action? I do have a scientific mind, I do think that science is the best answer we have in this age – I am not arguing with the idea of science. But for such a high profile issue, I feel like there is too much confusion.

Give me clear, unbiased facts backed by the scientific community and free of political, commercial and personal rubbish. Let me be informed.

(And don’t even get me started on impoverished nations and the global economics and policy of climate change).