John Kerry Calls Out Climate Change Denier B.S.

A hack of an “environmental scholar” working for an organization that consistently seeks to undermine efforts to fight global warming got schooled on climate change policy by Senator John Kerry during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on November 10th. Kerry rebuked Green’s comments for a solid five minutes, leaving a floundering Green unable to defend his views as anything other than his own personal opinion.

Kerry: “You may know something that thousands of other scientists don’t. They won a Nobel Prize. You and I didn’t.”

Ken Green’s title as ‘resident environmental scholar’ at the American Enterprise Institute may seem to indicate that he has a clue what he’s talking about. But who, exactly, are Green and this Institute?

From a 2007 Treehugger article:

The American Enterprise Institute, according to the Guardian, was called out in February for ” offering scientists and economists $10,000 each, “to undermine the IPCC report. .” AEI visiting scholar Kenneth Green made the $10,000 offer “to scientists in Britain, the US and elsewhere,” in a letter describing the IPCC as “resistant to reasonable criticism and dissent.” They noted also that AEI “has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil, and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI’s board of trustees.”

It just goes to show who these people really are – and how easy it is for them to misrepresent themselves to climate change skeptics as “experts”. What a joke.

Link [Treehugger]

Verizon Wireless Sponsors Big Coal Global Warming Denial Rally

Tsk, tsk. How can Verizon Wireless show intelligence and class by dropping its ads on Glenn Beck’s idiotic Fox show (for his comments about President Obama’s supposed ‘racism’) – and then turn around and give money to another conservative whackjob?

Verizon has become a sponsor for a global warming denial rally organized by none other than Don Blankenship, CEO and President of Massey Energy, which has destroyed far too much of Appalachia with mountaintop removal mining.

From the NRDC:

Who is Don Blankenship?

He has been called “the scariest polluter in America.”  Just last December, my colleauge Pete Altman exposed the videotape from a speech in which Blankenship indulged in his patented version of full-blown climate change denial and also called various pro-environmental elected officials “greeniacs” bent on destroying the American way of life.

His rally next week will feature speeches by prominent global warming denier Lord Christopher Monckton, the Science & Public Policy Institute (global warming skeptics), conservative Fox blowhard Sean Hannity.  Ted Nugent and Hank Williams, Jr. are among those who will provide musical entertainment.

The website for the ‘Friends of America’ rally even offers up a petition against the Waxman-Markey climate bill. The majority of the rally’s sponsors are in the dirty energy and manufacturing industries including Coal-Mac, West Virginia Oil Marketers and Petroleum Products, Inc. Verizon looks pretty damn out of place on that list.

Verizon Wireless spokesman Jim Gerace explained it away by saying, “his company simply paid $1,000 for the right to be able to sell its products at the rally. It’s nothing more than that … and the groups who are trying to make it more than that are misguided. I’m definitely bothered that people are trying to put us in the middle of an argument.”

Aww, poor Verizon. Imagine, people getting angry over their support of complete and total destruction of beautiful mountain ranges and the dumping of toxic waste into waterways. It’s inexplicable!

Jeff Biggers said it best at The Huffington Post:

Can you hear us now, Verizon Wireless? Time to dump Massey Energy with Glenn Beck.

Link [NRDC] + [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Flickr user unanimous graphics

“30,000 Global Warming Petition” Debunked

We can always count on DeSmogBlog to call out the lies of global warming deniers – and explain why they’re wrong in a way that’s easy to understand, and backed up by facts. They’ve done it again with the “30,000 Global Warming Petition” that’s being touted by skeptics as evidence that the scientific community shares their doubts about anthropogenic global warming.

Kevin Grandia delves into the petition’s sordid beginnings, the inability to verify any of the identities of the so-called ‘experts’ that signed the petition and the fact that out of all the signers, only .001% actually have a background in climatology – 39 out of 30,000.

When I think I’m having chest pains I don’t go to Dermatologist, I go to a Cardiologist because it would be absurd to go to skin doctor for a heart problem. It would be equally absurd to look to a scientist with a background in Medicine (of which there are 3,046 on the petition) for an expert opinion on the science of climate change. With science broken down into very narrow specialties a scientific expert in one specialty does not make that person an automatic authority in all things science.

In this way the logic of the 30,000 petition is completely flawed, which isn’t surprising given its questionable beginnings.

The petition and the documents included were all made to look like official papers from the prestigious National Academy of Science. They weren’t, and this attempt to mislead has been well-documented.

Along with the petition there was a cover letter from Dr. Fred Seitz (who has since deceased) a notorious climate change denier (and big tobacco scientist), who over 30 years ago was the president of the National Academy of Science.

Read more about why this petition reeks of bullshit over at DeSmogBlog.

Link [DeSmogBlog]

Moon Landing Conspiracy Theorists Provide Insight into the Climate Change Denier’s Mind

One in five people believe that the moon landing was faked. They’re completely and utterly convinced that it all took place on a sound stage somewhere and that NASA went to great lengths to make it look real, from airbrushing photographs to creating elaborate props.

This myth has been busted again and again – check out this photo set by National Geographic, and Mythbusters Episode 104: NASA Moon Landing. But that doesn’t mean anything to the stubborn, vocal segment of the population that insists it was all a hoax.

The Daily Green points out the parallels between moon landing conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers, stemming from a lack of trust in big institutions, the ease of accessing bad information on the internet that seems plausible to the layman as well as “the allure of possessing what is thought to be secret knowledge”.

One of the moon landing hoax debunkers, astronomer Philip Plait, offers an intriguing explanation. Understanding why the hoax believers’ plausible-sounding claims are hogwash takes work. You have to know a few things about photography. You have to understand the weird optics of the moon’s airless environment. You have to know how the moon landing equipment was designed. You have to be versed in the biology of spaceflight. And so on.

You have to dig deeper and exercise critical thinking skills.

It’s similar to grasping the science of climate change. Which might partly explain the persistence of beliefs, from the hallowed halls of Congress to the corner saloon, that climate change linked to human activities is a hoax.

It can be blasted difficult sometimes to make clear the reasons why alternative global warming explanations that are regularly trotted out by climate skeptics don’t work. The climate’s workings, driven as they are by various forcing mechanisms, feedback loops, and differing time and space scales, make simplified explanations hard work.

Like some in the moon-landings-were-a-hoax crowd, some climate denialists exploit complexity to assert claims that appear reasonable on the surface but require a bit of parsing to tease out the nonsense hidden within.

It’s simple: it all comes down to whether you believe that the world’s top scientists know what the hell they’re talking about. Because honestly, do you, Bill the Grocery Store Manager, truly believe that you know more about the intricacies of climate science – or outer space – than the experts? Or you, Martha the Dog Groomer – do you claim to understand the effects of greenhouse gas emissions on the earth better than tens of thousands of climatologists worldwide?

If so, then kudos, you’ve managed to create one hell of a fantasy world for yourself.

Link [The Daily Green]

GOP Rep. Joe Barton Says CO2 is Harmless Because “It’s in Coca-Cola”

How low can the GOP go? The battered party is struggling with an identity crisis as millions of its members jump ship, and its scattered cast of current ‘leaders’ is making things even worse. The remarks that came out of Texas Rep. Joe Barton’s mouth on Tuesday morning illustrate the sort of dumbfounding stupidity – or perhaps willful refusal to accept the facts – that has come to define the Republican party.

Rep. Barton, ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, claims that we shouldn’t be concerned at all about carbon emissions. After all, CO2 is in our Coca-Cola!

“It’s odorless, colorless, tasteless, doesn’t cause cancer, doesn’t cause asthma… there’s nobody that’s ever been admitted to a hospital because of CO2 poisoning.” Stunning logic there, Congressman!

The Economist said it best:

Please don’t get me wrong, it’s not simply that Mr Barton is a climate-change sceptic. There are plenty of those and some make decent arguments against moving ahead with measures to control emissions. The problem with Mr Barton is that he is wholly uninterested in the science and statistics of the global warming debate. He is about as curious as a dead cat, as is his colleague in the Senate, James Inhofe.

Link [The Huffington Post] + [The Economist]

Global Warming Deniers are on Thin Ice

How is it that conservatives are still able to convince themselves that global warming isn’t really happening, despite being hit with solid facts supporting the opposite point of view on almost a daily basis? The collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf along with a study that shows that only ten percent of Arctic ice is more than two years old as of February 2009 should be a cold slap in the face to global warming deniers, but they haven’t budged.

The Huffington Post’s Michael Coniff explores some of the reasons.

“Well,” said Steve Campbell from Greenpeace, “if the collapse of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in the last few days is not a huge wake-up call for our political leaders at a global level, I really don’t know what is. Time for the international community to bite the bullet and come to the table in international climate negotiations, and make sure that particularly developed countries agree to deep emissions reductions, so we can start to really help to solve the climate crisis at the global level.”

Conservatives, of course, tend to be all but immune to inconvenient data of climate change, citing marginal studies and anecdotal evidence scientifically proven by looking out your bedroom window. The difference now is not just the overwhelming data and the word of eminent scientists but the satellite video and computer renderings in your face of what’s going down. Like watching a baby in the womb, the enhanced views visible in time-lapse photography render the skeptic all but defenseless, left to rely on rigor-mortis rhetoric and blowhard bluster in the face of fact after fact from those who actually know jack.

The fact of the matter is, it’s probably easy to deny the facts about global warming when you’re getting all of your information from Fox Noise talking points. Fox barely even pretends to be a real news source anymore – since the election of President Obama they’ve shifted their purpose from full-time propaganda machine to further brainwashing the right with entirely opinion-based, anti-government rhetoric. They’ve even gone so far as to call for viewers to “celebrate with Fox News” by attending these ridiculous tea parties. Fair and balanced, Glenn Beck’s left nut.

Link [The Huffington Post]

Top 10 Climate Change Deniers

They’ve made ignorant statements about climate change science, distorted facts, and totally made up sciencey equations and calculations that were dismissed by real scientists as utter bullshit. Among them are paid coal, oil and cigarette company shills, evolution deniers and winking Alaskan animal haters. The Guardian’s George Monbiot has named the top ten climate change deniers – in playing card form.

From The Guardian:

Steve Milloy
Fox News columnist

Steve Milloy writes a weekly “Junk Science” column for Fox News, which he uses, among other topics, to pour scorn on studies documenting the medical effects of secondhand tobacco smoke and showing that climate change is taking place. Fox describes his credentials thus: “Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and manages the Free Enterprise Action Fund. He is a junk science expert, and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute”.

What it doesn’t say is that he has long acted as a paid advocate for the tobacco company Philip Morris, while the fake grassroots group he runs has also received funding from ExxonMobil.

His website has been the main entrepôt for almost every kind of climate change denial that has found its way into the mainstream press. Milloy claims to be campaigning against “faulty scientific data and analysis used to advance special and, often, hidden agendas”, which seems to be a pretty good summary of his own activities.

Sarah Palin
Governor of Alaska

An Alaskan denying climate change is like a Saudi Arabian denying sand. But can she do it? You betcha. The eagle-eyed governor can – or so the satirists claim- see Russia from her house, but apparently not the melting permafrost, shrinking glaciers and disappearing sea ice closer to home.

During her vice-presidential campaign, she embarrassed John McCain by maintaining: “I’m not one though who would attribute it [climate change] to being manmade.” She has refused to classify the polar bear as an endangered species on the grounds that the sea ice is here to stay, but is making plans for opening up the Arctic Sea to oil drilling, on the grounds that the ice is due to disappear. Could her ambivalence towards climate change have anything to do with the fact that Alaska is a major oil state? You betcha.

The rest of the list includes Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips, Sunday Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker, Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus, TV presenter David Bellamy, Cato Institute Professor Pat Michaels, Northern Ireland environmental minister Sammy Wilson and professional dumbass Lord Christopher Monckton.

What a bunch of jokers. If these are the best people the deniers can come up with to trumpet their lies and misinformation about global warming, it’s no surprise that the silly ‘Climate Change Isn’t Real’ conference going on in New York City right now attracted just 600 people.

Link [The Guardian]

Climate Change Deniers’ Sad Little Gathering in NYC

First, there was the ‘Celebrate Coal’ rally held in Washington D.C. that drew less than twenty people as thousands of anti-coal demonstrators marched nearby. Now, a paltry 600 climate change deniers have gathered in New York City for their annual ‘International Conference on Climate Change’, put together by the Heartland Institute, a conservative organization that seeks to discredit climate change science.

This year’s conference is a little different than usual. You would think these people would be motivated to join together and put up a united front against what they see as a huge threat – the Obama administration, which is aggressively moving forward on climate change issues. But the fact is, their ranks are showing signs of internal rifts and weakening support.

From The New York Times, via The Huffington Post:

The meeting participants hold a wide range of views of climate science. Some concede that humans probably contribute to global warming but they argue that the shift in temperatures poses no urgent risk. Others attribute the warming, along with cooler temperatures in recent years, to solar changes or ocean cycles.

But large corporations like Exxon Mobil, which in the past financed the Heartland Institute and other groups that challenged the climate consensus, have reduced support. Many such companies no longer dispute that the greenhouse gases produced by burning fossil fuels pose risks.

Alan T. Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, said by e-mail that the company had ended support “to several public policy research groups whose position on climate change could divert attention from the important discussion about how the world will secure the energy required for economic growth in an environmentally responsible manner.”

Of course, that doesn’t mean that Exxon Mobil has suddenly had a dramatic change of heart and now fully supports the fight against global warming – their motivations are undoubtedly rooted in the desire to stay afloat as the world begins the shift toward clean energy.

However, climate change deniers are finding themselves and their arguments increasingly marginalized, especially as the economic downturn spurs climate change action all over the world. Without the Bush administration and companies like Exxon Mobil to back them up, they’re going to disappear into obscurity, and not a moment too soon. Good riddance.

Link [The New York Times] via [The Huffington Post]
Photo credit: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times

Is it Time to Kick the Term ‘Global Warming’ to the Curb?

People are confused about global warming, and no wonder. Misinformation is spread like wildfire across the web and in conversations at coffee shops, newsstands and basement poker tables every day, all over the world. “The planet is actually cooling!” “It’s snowing in Vegas! Global warming is a fraud!” “CO2 is good for us!” “Antarctic sea ice is increasing!” “Al Gore just wants your money!”

There are two major points of confusion that global warming skeptics – even those who are actively seeking facts – always seem to trip over. The first is the misinterpretation of ‘weather’ as ‘climate’. The second is the seeming interchangeability of the phrases ‘global warming’ and ‘climate change’ and what they imply.

As we’ve griped about before here on EarthFirst, every time it snows global warming deniers immediately start chirping about how global warming is obviously a myth. This belief illustrates a failure to grasp the concept of weather versus climate. As defined by NASA, “Weather is what conditions of the atmosphere are over a short period of time, and climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time.” (Read more about climate vs. weather at The Daily Green).

Those who question the existence of man-made climate change use the unpredictability of climate as a means of justifying their point: that we can’t conclude that the world is warming based on the past because climate is changing so rapidly all the time. It’s often said that “climate is what you expect and weather is what you get”. Well, climate is growing more unpredictable by the day – and it can’t all be explained away by natural cycles. Human activities that have changed the composition of the atmosphere and land surface – burning fossil fuels, deforestation, urbanization, desertification and the like – have made climate more chaotic. We’re already starting to see the effects, and unfortunately, they’ll soon become all too clear.

The phrase ‘global warming’ is too often misunderstood. People interpret it to mean that temperatures everywhere on earth are increasing. What ‘global warming’ actually means is that the surface temperature of the entire planet as a whole – when averaged together – is increasing. Not all regions of the planet will show the same changes in temperature or rainfall patterns. This doesn’t invalidate global warming – it simply reflects regional variations in our complex climate system. All of the global temperature trend analyses show significant warming in average temperature (NASA GISS, CRU, Hadley Centre). Just because some areas in the United States have shown cooling doesn’t mean the entire world has.

Global warming deniers love to point out the fact that ‘climate change’ is superceding ‘global warming’ as the phrase du jour to describe the effects of greenhouse gases on climate, claiming that we’re backtracking on what we’ve said previously. However, there’s a simple reason why the term ‘climate change’ is gaining popularity as a replacement for ‘global warming’ – it helps to convey that there is more to this phenomenon than just rising temperatures, and aims to eliminate confusion over regional versus global temperature trends.

Is the phrase ‘global warming’ itself holding back progress by keeping people misinformed about what all of this actually means? Well, perhaps it’s not helping to prevent confusion among the thickheaded, but the real problem isn’t terminology. It’s the flood of falsehoods promoted by climate change deniers who ignore scientific facts in favor of conspiracy theories that make it okay for them to continue living life as they always have, treating the Earth as if we’ve got a selection of replacement planets waiting in the wings.

There are a lot of reasons why people deny that climate change is actually happening. Many of them are rooted in emotional responses – most often, fear. Fear of losing their livelihood, if climate change action threatens the industry they work for. Fear of losing the earth-battering lifestyle they hold so dear. Fear, ironically, of a changing world.

It’s not all their fault. After all, the entire American population seemed to get a little stupider during the 8 years of Bush’s scientific oppression, and we’re force-fed misinformation and outright lies by Big Coal and Big Oil, whose continued prosperity depends on people refuting the reality of climate change.

Some people have their minds made up, and that’s that. But for those who are still just trying to figure it all out for yourselves: forget the talking points drummed into your heads by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh for a moment and consider the consequences of inaction. Call it global warming, call it climate change, call it what you will – but we’ve got everything in the world to lose, and we don’t have time to waste.

DeSmogBlog Debunks the Global Warming ‘Skeptics Handbook’

Global warming skeptics love to make ill-informed, illogical claims borne from a total lack of understanding of actual scientific concepts. So, it’s no surprise that many of them are now waving around print-outs of “The Skeptics Handbook” by Joanne Nova [PDF] in an attempt to back up their point of view. DeSmogBlog debunked the main points in “The Skeptics Handbook” in a series of three posts, including the old “temperatures haven’t warmed over the last decade” argument.

From DeSmogBlog:

The real measure we should be keeping a close eye on is how much heat the oceans are absorbing. And, wouldn’t you know it, their heat content has steadily increased since 1999. That’s a problem because, as Real Climate’s Gavin Schmidt explains, ocean heat content trends reflect “the planetary radiative imbalance” – that the planet is absorbing more heat from the sun each year than it is losing.

Oceans exert a moderating influence on the climate by soaking up extra heat; therefore, if they take in a little more heat then usual, surface temperatures will tend to fall slightly (even though the planet’s overall heat content is going up). On the other hand, if the oceans absorb less (something that could happen more often if we keep the heat on), surface temperatures will increase.

But, wait, skeptics will say: All of that is beside the point because the Vostok ice cores have now clearly demonstrated that temperature leads CO2 – so rising CO2 emissions can’t be blamed for higher average temperatures. Not quite.

“The strongest evidence for the radiative effect for CO2 (and CH4, N2O, etc) is from laboratory experiments,” said Dr. Schmidt. “The strongest evidence for a significant climate sensitivity is from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), when ice sheets covered the planet (about 20,000 years ago), and that has not changed.”

The lead/lag issue that Nova is referring to is only evidence of a strongly coupled system – not evidence that CO2 has no effect, he explained.

DeSmogBlog also tackles the “CO2 in the atmosphere doesn’t cause global warming” argument and the greenhouse signature argument. The explanations are refreshingly scientific, considering that so much discourse on global warming is based on a few oft-repeated sound bites that reveal a lack of understanding of the topic at hand. Check out parts 1, 2 and 3 and be sure to click on the links to the RealClimate.org articles as well.

Link [DeSmogBlog]

CNN Meteorologist Calls Man Made Global Warming ‘Arrogant’

Chad Meyers apparently doesn’t know much about science. The CNN meteorologist, appearing on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on December 18th, stated that he believed the idea that man could be causing global warming is “arrogant”, and that mankind is at far greater danger of dying from other natural events than of global warming.

Myers seems oblivious to the fact that global warming causes disturbances in weather patterns and that it will continue to do so into the future as its effects accelerate around the globe.  He could also use some education in the methods that scientists use to examine climate data from the past, as he seems to think we only have 100 years of data upon which to draw conclusions about global warming.

From the Business & Media institute:

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Myers also said “I think we’re gonna die from a lack of fresh water, or we’re gonna die from ocean acidification, before we die from global warming.”

Let’s see, here. According to this genius, the only effect that global warming has is warmer temperatures. In order to believe the drivel that has come out of this man’s mouth, you’d have to be ignorant of the fact that global warming causes ocean acidification, for one. Earth to Chad: Carbon dioxide turns oceans acidic. The same carbon dioxide that we humans are pumping into the atmosphere in massive amounts every single day.

The idea that it’s “arrogant” to believe that humans could have an impact on the climate is naïve at best. We have been altering the world around us at an unbelievably fast pace just in the past century. We’re filling the air with greenhouse gases, pouring chemicals into our drinking water supply, allowing millions of tons of polluting trash and lead-laden electronic waste to pile up around the world, overfishing our oceans, destroying natural habitats, disturbing the ecological balance of the earth in so many dramatic ways.

Chad, a little piece of advice: shut your trap about global warming, and stick with what you do best: pitching hissy fits for the amusement of millions of internet users.

Link [Business & Media Institute]

BBC Investigated After Global Warming Denier Claims Program ‘One-Sided’

Television watchdogs are investigating the BBC after a ‘leading climate change skeptic’ claimed that his views were ‘deliberately misrepresented’ in a program about global warming. Lord Monckton, a former advisor to Margaret Thatcher, had been interviewed for the program by Dr. Iain Stewart, a geologist.  Monckton is accusing the BBC of unfair editing and called the program “a one-sided polemic for the new religion of global warming”.

From Mail Online:

Earth: The Climate Wars, which was broadcast on BBC 2, was billed as a definitive guide to the history of global warming, including arguments for and against.

‘I very much hope Ofcom will do something about this,’ he said yesterday.

‘The BBC very gravely misrepresented me and several others, as well as the science behind our argument. It is a breach of its code of conduct.

‘I was interviewed for 90 minutes and all my views were backed up by sound scientific data, but this was all omitted. They made it sound as if these were just my personal views, as if I was some potty peer. It was caddish of them.’

Ofcom confirmed it was looking into a ‘fairness complaint’ about the documentary.

A BBC spokesman said: ‘We stand by the programme.’

This is the guy who played a key role in a legal challenge heard in the High Court in October 2007 in an attempt to prevent the film ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ from being shown in English schools.  Sorry, global warming deniers: you deserve every bit of ridicule thrown your way.  Especially this Lord Monckton – he’s such a nut, he calls for Mann, Bradley and Hughes (of the hockey stick graph) to be put on trial for genocide.  Indeed.

Link [Mail Online] + [Deltoid]

Some People Honestly Believe the World is Flat

Amazing as it seems in this day and age, there really are ‘flat-earthers’ – and I’m not saying that in the typical way it’s used, to describe someone ignorant or grossly misinformed. There are people who actually believe that the world is flat, and evidence of a round earth is simply a vast conspiracy dreamed up by people who want to take our money… wait, this is starting to sound really familiar.

From BBC News:

Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the “conspiracy” that the Earth is round.

Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first became interested in flat earth theory after “coming across some literature from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago”.

Mr Davis now believes “the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite – it stretches horizontally forever”.

What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? “The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit,” says Mr McIntyre.

Flat earthers apparently believe that the photographic evidence is fake. They see the North Pole as central and Antarctica as a ring that runs along the edge of the earth. Oh yes, and our disc-shaped earth is also 9,000 kilometers deep. Yes, they’re serious.

Right – and global warming is a hoax, we never landed on the moon, Prince Charles is the antichrist and Bigfoot roams the Pacific Northwest. We get your message loud and clear, flat earthers.

Link [BBC News]
Photo credit: BBC News & Newsweek

Why You’re a Global Warming Denier

So, you don’t believe that global warming is real. You might fall into the ranks of those who think it’s all a big hoax engineered by Al Gore to take your money, or perhaps you make money off oil, pollution-creating factories or other environment killers. There are a lot of reasons that global warming denial can affect you, and you may experience a broad range of symptoms. These symptoms don’t just affect you; they’re harmful to everyone around you.

Global warming denial hurts. EarthFirst.com can help. Here are some common reasons for global warming denial, and what you can do to treat them.

Because you fear change.

You may be among our country’s elder generations, who share a collective re-imagining of how America used to be in the fabled ‘good old days’. In your mind, America was at its best in the 1950s: a time of wholesomeness, when family values came first. You’ve conveniently forgotten that the reality of this time period doesn’t exactly match up with ‘Leave it to Beaver’ or picturesque Norman Rockwell scenes of burgers and malts at the diner – but that doesn’t even matter anymore. You can’t imagine a future where things vary too much from this idealized model – in your mind, that would be a big step down.

The fear of change is closely related to ‘I’m an American, and You Can’t Tell Me What to Do’ syndrome. You believe that you’re entitled to the things you’ve gotten used to: unlimited use of personal vehicles running on cheap gas, homes far larger than they need to be, hundreds of electronic gadgets plugged into your power outlets, 20-minute showers. Basically, using resources as much as you want because, in your mind, you’ve earned it. What you fail to understand is that you’ve grown up in an era of waste and excess, and now you’re spoiled. The prospect of giving up all of those things to ‘save the planet’ makes you angry or scared because damn it, they’re yours and you don’t wanna.

The first step is accepting that change is inevitable. The world is in constant flux. You can’t freeze it and live forever in a bubble of idealism. Things are going to shift and alter around you in a never-ending stream that will drive you insane unless you just let go. The Roman Empire fell. Periods of prosperity don’t last forever. And for that matter, all of the fierce patriotism you can muster up doesn’t make the way America has been doing things right. You may think of wastefulness and complete disregard of the consequences of your lifestyle as the American Way, but the fact is that the world can’t sustain that lifestyle anymore. For a reality check, we recommend watching the documentary The 11th Hour, which quite effectively explains the need for changes to the way we live. But don’t worry too much – the truth is, the world will go on without you, and younger generations aren’t attached to your unreasonable ideals.

Because you’re too caught up in your petty everyday life.

You’re remodeling your kitchen, planning a wedding, trying to decide whether to change your hairstyle and mentally preparing for that weeklong visit from your in-laws. Tonight, Lisa and Dean are coming over to watch The Hills and help you choose nail polish colors, oh and can you believe what LC said to Brody the other day?! Who has time to care about the environment? You don’t believe in global warming because you don’t have the first idea what it even means. You have way too much going on.

The first step is to turn off the television, for the love of god. We’re a nation of zombies who can discuss the latest episode of Grey’s Anatomy ad nauseum but don’t know the first thing about real problems that affect our lives and our surroundings. You know, stuff going on outside that pane of glass that leads to the real world rather than the one that displays advertising with some mindless prepackaged entertainment thrown in every now and then.

You tend to think that what’s going on in your everyday life is more important than the overall scheme of things. This is called narcissism, folks. To get a feel for what the rest of the world is like, we recommend going on a trip to a place like Africa, India or China to help you understand that the world doesn’t revolve around you. Or, you could just volunteer some time at a local homeless shelter or participate in a clean up in a poor community. It might just help awaken you to the fact that there are more important things than who’s screwing who on Desperate Housewives or what you’re wearing to that party tonight, and that might – MIGHT! – lead to awareness of the world at large and the problems affecting it.

Because you’re uneducated or misinformed.

Your neighbor told you that Al Gore is a swindler and that he and a few companies that stand to profit made up the whole ‘global warming’ thing to rob people of their hard-earned money. An email you got from a co-worker said that climate change is caused by sunspots. You read an article on some website (you can’t remember which) that said the earth is actually cooling down, which obviously disproves the global warming theory, right?

The problem is, none of the people who created all of the nonsense you’ve swallowed as truth are scientists. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. We live in a country where email forwards touting ridiculous claims spread like wildfire regardless of whether there’s a grain of truth to them, because nobody bothers to fact-check. People want to believe something so badly that they pass it on as truth, and the more it gets passed on, the more people believe it. But, that doesn’t make it true. Worse yet, there are a lot of people out there paid by lobbyists and/or corporations to pump out misinformation about climate change. Did we not learn from the ‘cigarettes don’t cause cancer’ fiasco?

The answer is to do some research yourself instead of sounding like an uneducated jackass who just repeats lines that have been fed to you. Seek out authoritative sources. And Jesus tapdancing Christ, stop watching Fox News.

Because you make money off dirty products and/or practices.

The factory that makes the widgets your company sells emits dark billowing pollution from its smokestacks on a daily basis. You’re not entirely sure what’s coming out of there, but one thing you are sure of is that it would be expensive for you to change the way your company operates in order to reduce harmful emissions. Or, perhaps your fortune – or the fortune you’re still seeking – is tied to a polluting industry like oil, and you don’t have the balls to be innovative and seek out moneymaking opportunities in the emerging clean energy industries.

Corporations are reckless polluters, and they fear that climate change legislation will affect their bottom line. The ones run by people with a conscience have already begun working on ways to change, while the rest deny global warming because they don’t want to admit that they’re doing something harmful. Hey, it’s understandable that you don’t want to see everything you’ve worked for go down the drain – but the fact remains that there is a clear right and wrong in this case. If you consider yourself to be a good person, taking a critical and open-minded look at how your business might be harming the environment (and along with it, human health) is the right thing to do. If you’re a slimy, greedy jerk who only cares about making money, see the final item below, ‘Because you’re an asshole’.

Because your religion has caused you to believe that it’s impossible.

The bible doesn’t say anything about global warming, and you take the bible literally, not considering the possibility that a) the bible is creative fiction written by people trying to further their own interests or b) the bible was meant as a guide to moral behavior, not a line-by-line manual to the world. Plus, you think that any day now, you’re going to be beamed up into the clouds to sit around a strum a harp all day while the rest of us are tortured in very creative ways back here on earth, so who cares?

Many religious folk intentionally walk around as if they’ve got blinders on because they don’t want to be exposed to information that may cause them to doubt ‘the word’, often believing that science is the tool of the devil. Religion is a tricky thing. It can be a shining light in the darkness for some people, but it’s also a major cause of death and destruction.

Religion and reason aren’t mutually exclusive. If you believe in god, then it follows for you to believe that god left humans in charge of taking care of the planet. Even if you truly believe that god wouldn’t let global warming happen or that ‘The Rapture’ is going to make it all a moot point, don’t you believe that we as the dominant species on the planet are responsible for looking after god’s creations? There are a lot of bad things in this world that humans are responsible for – how could that not include destroying the earth? Furthermore, if you’re a Christian, shouldn’t you be following the advice on your own cheesy bracelets and asking yourself ‘what would Jesus do’? Seems to me like he’d be out there participating in trash cleanups, riding a bicycle and snacking on organic veggies. In fact, you’d probably label him a hippie. Call me crazy.

Because you’re an asshole.

You don’t give a rat’s ass about the generations to come. You’ll happily go on polluting as much as you can during your limited time on Earth, and go out laughing. The ‘asshole qualities’ that cause you to deny global warming may also be caused by greed (see above, ‘Because you make money off dirty products and/or practices’). Or, you just want to do whatever the hell you please and take offense to the idea of having to change your lifestyle, no matter what the reasons are (see above, ‘I’m an American and You Can’t Tell Me What to Do’.)

Luckily, the global warming deniers who are truly assholes aren’t nearly as common as the other types. It’s nearly impossible to rehab a born-and-bred jackass. The rest of us will just step around them and leave them to die out like the fear-of-change generation, because they’ll be proven wrong before too long.