Tag Archives: climate change

Truth in Numbers

Harper’s Magazine has a long-running feature called Harper’s Index, where they provide survey results without commentary. The subject-matter of those surveys varies widely, but they are generally thought-provoking, and these recent numbers provided the usual food for thought:

• Rank of “attire” among the leading reasons “millennials” are unsuccessful in job interviews: 1

• Rank of their posting inappropriate pictures on social media: 2

• Average salary earned by a full-time-employed male college graduate one year after graduation: $42,918

• By a full-time-employed female graduate: $35,296

• Percentage of Canadians who believe in global warming: 98

• Of Americans who do: 70

• Of Republicans: 48

The numbers prompt a number of observations.

To my older grandchildren, I will simply reiterate my warnings about posting those pictures of partying on Facebook. Your friends may think that goofy drunk face is funny, but future employers will not appreciate the humor. Nor will they conclude that you really can use the English language if you persist in sharing incomprehensible “street language” sentiments. Listen to your grandmother–and pull up those pants!

To my friends of the female gender, I know that confirmation of the persistence of the wage gap doesn’t really surprise us, but it should at least give us a wake-up call. After years of work agitating for women’s rights and w0rking for equity and equal pay for equal work, we still have a long way to go. Let’s gird those loins, ladies, and get back to it!

To the fearful ostrich-like, head-in-the-sand science and climate-change deniers, I have nothing to say. They don’t listen to experts and they reject both scientific research and the evidence of their own experience. They aren’t going to listen to me. They aren’t going to accept the reality of climate change until they’re sitting on an oceanside beach in Indiana. Thanks to them, however, the rest of us are going to have to work harder and smarter in order to overcome their resistance and enact policies that will address global climate change and–hopefully–avert accelerating disasters.

Happy holidays.

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No Snark Today

Today, the only appropriate sentiment is concern for those in the path of Sandy–and a fervent hope that the increasing number and severity of these atypical weather “events” jolts us out of our complacency and denial about global climate change.

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Alien Worldview

Wow. Just wow.

When Todd Akin went off on his ignorant rant about “lady parts,” it prompted a number of folks to turn over the rock under which he and his fellow “conservatives” live–and it turns out his crazy isn’t limited to women’s reproduction.

Salon raised the reasonable question, “why is this guy on the House science subcommittee?” and quoted the genius on climate change: “In Missouri when we go from winter to spring, that’s a good climate change. I don’t want to stop that climate change you know. Who in the world wants to put politicians in charge of the weather anyways?”

Unsurprisingly, Akin also rejects the “theory” of evolution.

The article also noted Akin’s firm grasp of history, made clear in his belief that the Pilgrims came to the New World to escape socialism. (He must get his history lessons from David Barton.)

This would all be funny if Akin were the only elected official with this sort of delusional worldview. But what’s really scary is how many “fellow travelers” he has. Several of them are in Indiana. A friend of mine shared a You Tube in which Linda Lawson berated Eric Turner for expressing his opposition to the “rape or incest” exception by explaining that women would pretend to be raped in order to obtain an abortion.

I don’t get it.

How do these willfully ignorant culture warriors get elected? What is it about women and science and basic logic that repels them?

And most important, what will it take to engineer a return to sanity?

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A Single Issue to Vote On

Hot enough for you this summer? Because it’s going to get hotter, and I’m not referring to our increasingly debased electoral rhetoric.

As a post to Science Matters emphasizes, climate change is not a prediction. It’s here. Even scientists who were previously skeptical (and there weren’t many) are now convinced that the earth is warming even more rapidly than previously expected, and that human activity is a large generator of that warming.

Let’s ignore every other issue dividing Americans–what to do about the economy, about Syria and Iran, about the various “wars”–on women, on the GLBT community, on drugs…you name it. In a very real sense, arguments over those issues are equivalent to arguments about how to arrange the deck chairs on the Titanic. If there is one issue of global life-and-death importance, it’s climate change.

And on that issue, the parties could not be further apart.

The science–and the scientific consensus–is overwhelming; we face a truly unprecedented global threat. The Democrats haven’t exactly covered themselves with glory, but they have acknowledged the threat and the urgency of addressing it. Most Republicans, on the other hand, continue to deny the science and reject the reality of climate change. (I suppose that shouldn’t surprise us; they also reject evolution.)  Mitt Romney is now parroting the GOP’s standard climate change denial, and Paul Ryan, his running mate, is a climate-change-denying conspiracy theorist.

I’m not a believer in single-issue voting, but I’m not a big fan of committing slow suicide, either. If there was ever a single issue worth embracing, this is it.

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A Logic Question

Tom Friedman is not a favorite columnist of mine–although I often agree with him, he often seems a bit too smug, a bit too self-satisfied with his own superior analytical skills. But today, he hit one out of the ballpark. After asking “Is It Weird Enough Yet,” he eviscerates Michelle Bachmann and Rick Perry for their insistence that climate change is just a hoax, perpetrated by research scientists to generate funding. Not only does Friedman explain (in language that even Rick Perry should be able to understand) how the extreme weather we are experiencing is a consequence of global climate change, he explains what is necessary if so-called “green jobs” are to generate real economic growth.

But let’s say you still aren’t convinced.

Ever hear of “Pascal’s wager”? The philosopher Blaise Pascal was dubious about the existence of God, but he reasoned that–since one could not know for certain–the logical course of action was to act as though he did.  If it turned out that God was real, great. If not, you would have lived a good life. In other words, by acting as though you believe even if you don’t, you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Global climate change invites a similar logic. If we decide to act on the advice of the 98% of scientists whose research supports the finding, and climate change is real, we’ll save the planet. If it turns out that our fears are ill-founded or exaggerated, we’ll end up doing a lot of things we need to do anyway–recycle, use energy more efficiently, etc.

When we have everything to gain by a particular course of action, and nothing to lose, refusing to take that action is more than weird. It’s self-destructive.

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