Five reasons why people refuse to accept global warming
By S. Tom Bond
When 97 percent of the scientists (that is, the people that are trained to study the problem) agree that global warming is happening and will continue to happen, why do people deny it is going on? As the poet says, “Let me count (some of) the ways.”
Reliance on the mainstream media
Many simply follow the news. With its “On the one hand, and then on the other hand” approach to coverage (to avoid driving off advertisers and readers), the mainstream media do not adequately report the facts that are substantiated by scientific research. Reporting on science takes a special type of reporter, as well as producers and editors with patience and understanding. Lacking those, as we do, the facts get lost in the “she-said, he-said” approach. The facts are indisputable however: melting glaciers, decline of arctic ice, average world temperatures rising year after year, range inhabited by many species moving north, changes in weather, melting permafrost, famine, and drought among the obvious symptoms of global warming.
Refusal to accept new ideas
Many folks don’t have a view that extends beyond their home, job and family. They have difficulty accepting a new paradigm, and new framework of understanding.”
Even when the news about global warming is reported fully and accurately, there is still the problem of humanity’s tendency to resist change. Many people are unwilling to accept new ideas. Many folks don’t have a view that extends beyond their home, job and family. They have difficulty accepting a new paradigm, and new framework of understanding.
One thinks of the change when the earth was thought flat, then was recognized to be a very large sphere, or when the sun was thought to cross the earth, then it was recognized the earth went around the sun. When new ideas are incorporated into the public discourse, it takes a while for most folks to adapt. Today there are a few people dedicated to older ideas, such as the earth is cooling, or that a warming earth produces higher carbon dioxide content in the earth’s atmosphere, rather than the other way around. If someone has ideas based on earlier science, it may be hard to accept global warming.
Religious dogma
Some think God wouldn’t allow global warming. It is his creation and it will end in fire when He is good and ready. Global warming – ironically – does not fit their apocalyptic vision. Don’t argue with them.
Greed
Perhaps the most basic cause of global warming is as old as mankind: cupidity. The petroleum industry is an elite sector because of its wealth, which purchases political power. What it covets, it gets – all while it spends billions on advertising to implicitly and explicitly discredit global warming and those studying it. There is extensive information on situations where the business elite have interests that gives them an advantage that is contrary to the long-term interest of the society. The business elite persists until the society no longer has some resource it needs to continue, so it crashes. One of the most famous of these is the deforestation of Easter Island, which caused a population crash and an abrupt change in culture.
… all of us need to recognize our limitations and trust experts.”
Of course, training in a science does little to help in business. So this peculiarity of omission of understanding of other areas is not one-sided. My point is that all of us need to recognize our limitations and trust experts. It must be a much greater temptation for a businessman with millions at his disposal to ignore or deny science that will hinder his success than for a scientist with almost no disposable wealth to ignore business ideas opposed to his success. But the future of the earth depends on future climate, not someone’s ego or financial success. That future should be determined by those with data and training who take time to think about it.
Modern society’s disconnect from the land
Finally, there is another reason that is a bit abstruse, but vital. This is the separation of modern man from the biological world of which he is a part. Primitive man was close to his environment. Getting food was a daily preoccupation. If times were good, this took two or three hours a day. If times were bad, 24 hours weren’t enough. He/she was subject to danger from animals, floods, droughts, disease, the next village over and much other uncertainty. Everything including trees, rocks, or storms had a spirit. Many of these had to be appeased. But this religion was his connection to survival.
… our industry is so linked together and powerful it is possible to destroy civilization. The supremacist attitude toward the biological world is that our environment is not viable. This is not sustainable.”
Domination of earth and nature became a way of life. Increasingly, urban man became separated from the biological world from which he came. Dominion over others became increasingly important. And man was dominant over things, apparently supreme. That included the biological world, reverence for which was eliminated from his culture and religion.
Now the whole earth is occupied, and our industry is so linked together and powerful it is possible to destroy civilization. The supremacist attitude toward the biological world is that our environment is not viable. This is not sustainable. To avoid planetary destruction because of global warming, atomic warfare, over population, or resource exhaustion seems like an insurmountable problem. Ignoring these threats to our survival, though, will only work to ensure that the unthinkable becomes reality.
Conclusion
These are but a few of the reasons that we refuse to acknowledge – let alone tackle – the existential threat from global warming. It has been said that we are entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts.
Well, the facts are in. We have a rational understanding of our natural world; we know how we are negatively impacting it; and, we have debated and adopted plans to reverse global warming. We simply choose to ignore them. That won’t make them go away. However, the same can’t be said for human life – or life in any form – if we continue to argue over facts as if they are opinions.
© S. Tom Bond, 2017. Thomas Bond is an eighth generation West Virginian writing from his farm in Jane Lew, W.Va. He is a farmer and retired chemistry professor. Michael Barrick contributed to this article.
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It appears that Mr. Bond is the victim of disinformation. Even as a qualified scientists he is not in the loop doing the research but relies on being told like the rest of us. Then it boils down to who do you believe. When one says global warming there needs to be differentiation between natural global warming and cooling that has been occurring for thousands of years before man showed up and global warming caused by humanity. I believe the side that says man made global warming is a hoax. Here are 14 reasons why people should deny global warming.
1. It is no longer 97% of the scientists. The majority now say man is not causing global warming.
2. The rich elite are the ones pushing man made global warming as an excuse to transfer wealth from the poor and middle class to themselves though a carbon tax. 2a. Big oil companies support man made global warming because they know you can’t stop driving to work and heating your dwelling. Adding an additional tax will not decrease demand that much. A recession will decrease energy usage more than a tax.
3. More Co2 means plants produce more oxygen to balance it out.
4. More Co2 means food crops grow better. More food can be produced to feed people.
5. They use to grow crops in Greenland. Be nice to do that again. More food can be produced to feed people.
6. Mainstream media have been pushing man made global warming and ignoring most evidence proving otherwise which is the opposite of what Mr. Bond believes.
Here is what mainstream media has ignored and only alternative media has covered.
7. These global warming hysterics ignore the studies done that points to the sun causing the fluctuation in earth temperatures.
8. For the past 10 years or better average global temperature has declined.
9. NOAH and NASA keeps lowering past published average temperatures in order to make it appear that the temperature is increasing.
10. The hackers of East Angela produced emails between these climate scientists that acknowledge temperatures have declined and ask how to cover it up.
11. Comments in the source code to Al Gore’s hockey stick chart computer program states the data will not produce it and here is what they did to make it show the stick
12. Al Gore’s chart showing Co2 vs temperature for thousands of years shows reverse correlation that temperature drives Co2 not the other way around when the graphs are overlaid. Must be why he had them separated.
13. Volcanoes produce more greenhouse gases in a day than humanity does in a year.
14. The government only gives grant money to scientists who do studies in support of man made global warming. This should raise a red flag.
Mr. Bond probably receives his disinformation from fake mainstream media and not alternative media and is totally unaware of this. As Mark Twain said “If you don’t read the paper you are uninformed. If you read the paper you are misinformed.”
Thanks Karl
Karl, As usual your tribe is too lazy, or more likely unable, to source your 14 items. Based on what I see here, I would be compelled to think you a propaganda peddler. Yawn.
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