CA.gov – “Climate Change: Just The Facts” Web site launched
Yesterday, California Governor, Jerry Brown, announced the launch of a Web site by The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research to combat the skeptics of Climate Change. The site is entitled “Climate Change: Just the Facts,” and it has the subsections: “The Climate Science,” “The Scientific Consensus,” “The Deniers,” and “Common Denier Arguments.” The occasion of the announcement was “…the 15th annual Lake Tahoe Summit, a conference examining the environmental and developmental issues affecting the iconic alpine region straddling the California and Nevada borders….”
“The main thing we have to deal with in climate change is skepticism and denial, and the cult-like behavior of political lemmings that would take us over the cliff,” Brown said at an event he co-hosted with former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last year. “[There are powerful wealthy forces] that want to crush any effort to cope with climate change.”
During 2006, then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger worked with California Democrats (not the EASIEST group of people with whom to work!) to pass a global warming bill into law that establishes a cap-and-trade system for emissions. Republican opposition in Washington, D.C. (not the EASIEST group of people with whom to work!) makes reproducing the system on a national scale almost impossible.
In some ways, having been “raised” as a scientist, I am kind of sorry that the argument has moved from the scientists (who LOSE credibility when they become too active in social issues) to the politicians (who never had any credibility to BEGIN with! 😉 ). However, government is about the only force substantial enough to oppose the (largely business) interests that are IN DENIAL of scientific observations. Although it constantly amazes me, it show me how one strongly-held belief (largely greed) can blind human beings to even those forces that would destroy them. The denial reminds me how close we always are to irrational thought and behavior, to shamans and witch doctors. I blogged on August 3 about the “conversion” of Professor Richard A. Muller (Physics, U.C. Berkeley), a long-time skeptic of global warming, who is now, finally, convinced of its reality as a product of the activities of humans.
If it took that long to convince a skeptical scientist, how long would it take to convince stubborn, self-interested businesspeople who BELIEVE so much MORE, and KNOW so much LESS?
Probably longer than we have before climatic changes become irreversible, a “climatological tipping point” that, hopefully, we have not already passed….
-Bill at
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