I don't believe in climate change: A line in the sand
Meteorologist
Tuesday, February 7, 2017, 12:01 PM - I don’t believe in climate change.
Wait! Before you start smashing a nasty reply back to me, keep reading.
As a trained meteorologist, storm chaser who also studied wildlife biology as an undergraduate, I don’t believe in climate change.
I accept the overwhelming evidence for it.
And that’s the critical point. When you’re talking about science, there’s no such thing as believe. There’s an acceptance or a rejection of the evidence presented. I hear far too often, from both side of the “debate” that this person or that person BELIEVES in climate change.
It drives me up the wall.
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But it’s also the crux of the issue. I have talked to many people about climate change and why I accept the evidence for it. One commonality that I find with people who reject the evidence is an almost religiosity in their belief (and I use this term correctly) that the evidence is either not there or has been faked, or manipulated, or… whatever. There’s a long list.
I have no issue talking with people about their point of view. I like it. It’s my way of getting out of my own echo chamber that’s so easy to fall into. The only thing that I ask is that if you want to debate this, bring your science to the table. Otherwise it’s bringing a chihuahua to a badger fight. It’s not going to be pretty and it’s not going to last long.
What I continuously find is that the people who want to discuss it have no science, but a metric (expletive)-tonne of belief. I get told that the planet’s been cooling for the last 10 years, or that Climategate is still a thing. Or that Michael E. Mann’s graph has been debunked. Sources for this information are almost inevitably a blog post or a web page. It’s almost never credible peer-reviewed journals; which constitute the gold standard for science.
It’s the exact same tactics I practiced in my wildlife biology undergrad, but substitute evolution for climatology. The same lack of real science, the same conspiracy theory tactics, the same Gish Gallops, it’s all there again.
I don’t believe in evolution either. I accept the overwhelming evidence for it. Scientific truth isn’t something you “feel”. It doesn’t depend on your political preferences.
Science is the single most powerful method humans have ever come up with to get as close to “truth” as possible.
And I for one, am not going to let it be destroyed because some people don’t like its conclusions.
This is my line in the sand.
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