Climate Change Skepticism - Why It's Healthy and Necessary

If climates around the globe are changing as a result of human-caused carbon emissions it has to be some of the worst news ever. I mean depressing news. I mean every time we are reminded of it we should all cringe and wish for a time when human activity was not so harmful to the environment.

In the past, humans have adjusted their behavior to mitigate pollution. We learned that reducing sulfur emissions from coal-fired power plants would stop acid rain. We learned that pouring petroleum products into the ground would harm wildlife and public water supplies so we started recycling it. We saw whole communities develop birth defects from the dumping of toxic chemicals so we created standards for proper disposal. Never before have we faced a foe like global warming. It is a problem that trumps all others because it means dramatically scaling back the consumption of fossil fuels - our primary energy resource. It also means we must radically change our behavior.

Unlike previous environmental challenges that were isolated and more manageable, decreasing carbon emissions is a much more daunting task because we cannot simply make our smokestacks cleaner, have higher fuel efficiency standards, or switch from coal to natural gas. Addressing climate change will involve huge American sacrifices, a change of lifestyle, bigger government intervention in business and private life, cooperation with other nations, and at least a temporary economic recession. If we do not act a warmer climate will disrupt entire ecosystems, change ocean currents, melt ice caps, raise sea levels, increase temperatures further away from the equator (rendering more areas on Earth uninhabitable for humans), and much else.

A global problem with such dire consequences should prompt every individual to wonder what they can do to make the planet sustainable in the long term, for themselves and their children. Curiously, consensus among the US population is difficult to find. The very existence of climate change is doubted by many. But how can there be deniers when 97% of scientific papers agree that global warming is happening and that humans are responsible(1)? The human population in the 20th century grew from 1 billion to 6 billion and a cursory glance at the data shows a direct relationship between explosive population growth in the industrial age with an increase in carbon emissions. With mountains of empirical evidence affirming the existence of human caused warming, why is there still such a divide among the population regarding these facts?

When the United States Supreme Court denied candidate Al Gore the presidency in the 2000 presidential election he decided to use his free time to write a book on competitive eating, which required copious amounts of first person research. He also continued his lifelong investigation into the impending doom ushered in by global warming. A speaking series about the subject was made into a documentary film in 2004 titled An Inconvenient Truth.

An Inconvenient Truth cannot be credited with discovering the next big environmental problem. Climate change had been investigated by scientists for decades so Gore's observations were nothing new. His notoriety and extensive research did draw the world's attention to the issue and environmental groups latched on.

Gore's Democrat party tends to favor environmentalism more than Republicans. While Democrats are known for regulating industries to reduce pollution with the end goal of sustainability, Republicans are known for deregulating industries in the name of economic growth. Climate change was no different. The more Democrats called for action on reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the US, the more Republicans dismissed the need for action, claiming Gore's cause was backed by phony science, hyperbole, and scare tactics.

Since the documentary's release in 2004 the world has been barraged with meteorologists, scientists, Democrat politicians, professors, and the news media with stories about the impending doom the world faces from the growth in human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change deniers are outcast as backward and living under a rock. I call the deniers a healthy part of our democracy.

It is unfortunate that climate change should be announced to the world through a boring liberal politician through a documentary riddled with exaggerations. This method of delivery caused the issue to be more politicized than it would have otherwise been if presented by a well known scientist like Stephen Hawking. Politicization clouds the field of debate by causing each side to argue with a mix of genuine and false motives. Rather than hear a liberal and a conservative position on how to tackle the agreed upon problem, Democrats have to both defend the issue as legitimate while providing solutions as Republicans spend their efforts denying the issue while scrambling to defend why.

So why do I call climate change deniers a healthy part of our democracy?

Reason number one: Climate change is not easy to understand. Anything that is not easy to understand should not be accepted purely on the authority of experts. One should form one's own conclusions about a difficult problem after an investigation of the facts.

Reason number two: There are too many people in positions of influence who benefit from climate change being a big problem. These people in the order of those who stand to gain the most are politicians, the news media, climate scientists, and meteorologists.

I will not elaborate on reason number one because it is self-explanatory. I am more concerned with reason number two - the kind of people who stand to gain from it being true. I am not a conspiracy theorist. There is no way Democrats are colluding with the UN who is colluding with the Academy who is colluding with weather stations who are colluding with the news media to feed the world a message they agree on. It is purely coincidental that these groups benefit. I would argue that they are not doing enough to challenge each other and that is where I applaud the climate change skeptics.

The ones who stand to benefit the most from climate change being real and man-made:

1. Politicians. The government is only as powerful as the amount of power we yield to it. We appoint politicians to represent us in matters of law, defense, public policy, diplomacy, etc., but the power can be taken too far. Every day we see evidence of the government creeping itself further into our private lives through NSA wiretapping, healthcare mandates, illegal immigrant amnesty, nation building abroad, corporate welfare, among many other issues. If man made global warming is happening the United States is one of the biggest culprits because of our per-capita consumption. This means that the US with the encouragement of other nations would have to lead the way in taking large-scale, non market-based initiatives to curb greenhouse gas emissions. This would make the EPA essentially one of the most powerful institutions in the world. Taken to an extreme the government could use technology to track each person's consumption and fine people for forgetting to turn out a light. Politicians want this power. And once they have it, taking it back will be nearly impossible.

2. News Media. The media loves tragedy because it boosts ratings. CNN made millions from the disappearance of the Malaysian airline this year. The more climate change can be reported, and the higher the number of political actions that must follow, the higher the ratings will be for these news outlets.

3. Meteorologists. Hand-in-hand with the news media are meteorologists. What is more interesting, a weather reporter standing in the middle of a field on a calm day saying the temperature is exactly average for that time of year and nothing unusual is occurring? or a meteorologist pointing extreme weather that is tied to a global problem of climate change?

4. Scientists. Scientists exist to discover why the natural world works the way it does. They are in the business of discovering facts and disproving the theories of everyone around them to come up with better explanations for what is happening in our world. How many scientists have concluded in their mind that climate change is man-made before doing any investigating? How likely is their paper to be peer reviewed and published if it makes a case against the findings of the majority? I am not saying they will just fake data to reach pre-determined conclusions. I am saying the mentality impacts which experiments get conducted, how papers are written, and what papers get the most attention.

The problem is that we are relying on these groups to give us unbiased, accurate information yet there are too many incentives for them to look the other way when presented with any evidence that is contrary to the generally accepted viewpoint. Let me repeat that I do not believe in a climate change conspiracy; nor do I think that climate change is not happening. In fact, I think it is happening and humans are partly responsible.

First, let us assume that climate change is not occurring, that the planet is not getting warmer. Those who believe this must believe that all of the aforementioned groups are conspiring to fake the problem. These are the crazy deniers whose help I appreciate in their skepticism, but since their skepticism is probably based solely on the opinions of Rush and Hannity, I dismiss their conclusions out of hand.

It is much more plausible that climate change is occurring based on the findings of scientists and the rigorous process they must face to have their findings published. The part where I encourage skepticism is exactly when we hear the argument extend beyond the mere existence of climate change to a full fledged conclusion about its man-made cause. Even worse is when I hear alarms sounding for the need to act immediately or else face sudden destruction.

Politicization has made this skepticism nearly impossible because so many conservatives deny the very existence of climate change. So once a person says they are skeptical about some aspects of climate change they are immediately lumped into the conservative political camp as another crazy, unscientific climate change denier.

These are the kinds of questions we need to be asking to make real progress on the issue:

- How much of our human activity is directly responsible for the problem?
- How did humans handle major climate changes throughout our history?
- Given the answer to the last question is it reasonable to assume humans can act to reverse the current process?
- If we can act to reverse the process are we willing to sacrifice what is necessary to bring us to greenhouse levels we had in the past? or is it worth it to lose the coastal cities, move north and accept different climates everywhere for the long term?

These are the questions we should be asking. This is the way the discussion should be taking place. Instead, we have politicians arguing with each other over how much power they want to exert over us while news outlets are making fortunes reporting the findings of catastrophic events in the weather.

(1) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/05/17/97-percent-of-scientific-studies-agree-on-manmade-global-warming-so-what-now/