Answering Climate Change Skeptics, Naomi Oreskes

A presentation based off of her recent book, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscure the Truth about Climate Change. Naomi Oreskes, author and professor of history and science studies, University of California, San Diego.

From the University of Rhode Island's Spring 2010 Vetlesen Lecture Series, People and Planet Global Environmental Change. March 2, 2010.

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http://amara.org/v/CCE2/

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[roskkva]

Denial of science is not the same thing as denial of politicians who work with scientists. The technical advisers to the White House may be the most advanced in history, but that by no means guarantees that the decisions made will be the right ones. The Third Reich had the finest nuclear scientists in the world - did that make their military or economic strategy 'right'?

[roskkva]

Other governments did try and increase taxes on fuel etc. years ago -it did not have the effect she claims it will, people just behaved differently and adjusted to the obstacle, then carried on with a course of action that fitted into the wider economic environment that still used fossil fuels.This is why Al Gore wants you to wear more jumpers and stay in doors while he runs a massive mansion and his colleagues in government increase funding to the biggest fuel consumer in the world- the US army

[roskkva]

she's also wrong that scientists need to take part in more touring programs and communicate in the 'right' way -science speaks for itself if it's expressed in a simple language that can become popular science discussed between citizens, educating one another, rather than being lectured to by their superiors. Conspiracy theories result from a perfectly sensible distrust of 'campaigns' -in a true democracy citizens convince one another, science on the other hand simply presents structured evidence

[roskkva]

Reliable science might be a good basis for political action, but what that action is exactly becomes even more important than the initial decision. e.g. academic statistics/'science' have been used to offer 'positive discrimination' policies in University science faculties, leading to the decision to ignore the cause of disadvantage in the first place i.e. poverty, generational malnourishment and lack of school education. The superficial solution hides the root problem which remains and grows.

[roskkva]

There's no net 'cost' to sensible policies. We have massive tax revenues in all western governments - if we stop wasting vast amounts of money trying to save corrupt business models and illegal wars and instead spend that money on updating technology, we remove the need to go hunting about the world for oil and remove the need for extra 'green' programs and as a bi-product create a better more efficient economy. Our work already produces a surplus - it get squandered chasing after debt and wars.

[roskkva]

I went to a technology fair as a boy that claimed we would have electric cars in only 10 years & nuclear fusion shortly after - here we are 20 years later and all we've got is a butt ugly Prius. Instead of arguing over who lies more, why don't the governments independently do what their populations have been asking for for years and encourage businesses to update the technology and make our lives easier. People don't want to be polluters, the culture encourages it as the UN utopians lecture us.

[roskkva]

what an inappropriate quote to end on - Maynard Keynes - the guy who spread the idea of the false impression of a free meal, telling us there is no free meal (no shit) - when we switched over to new technologies in the past like the printing press, not only was there very little social strife, but it actually democratised the ability to make a good living and be informed. Now we're supposed to accept drastic reductions in population and living standards to help one central body update technology

[roskkva]

Merchants of doubt operate in all areas of politics. On one side they promote scientific ignorance -on the other side they promote economic and social ignorance i.e. that the political parties trying to convince you they are enlightened environmentalists have no clear solution to the problem and the schemes they are attempting like Carbon Trading have only so far lead to corruption. The only solution is to stop listening passively and go back to the text books, in this case chemistry & history.

[roskkva]

If you sit in greenhouse covered by dark sheet on a sunny day (like volcanic ash), you cool - if instead you sit in a transparent greenhouse with no dark sheet, you warm up because the air trapped in there heats up and cannot escape anywhere - this is like carbon 12 - its too heavy to escape into the upper atmosphere (above the glass ceiling), so it just sits there heating up. That's why its called the greenhouse effect - the important metaphors are UV light, transparent glass and trapped air.

[roskkva]

the only slightly valid argument that any of the skeptics ever make is the one about fluctuations in solar flares - those can cause sudden temporary spikes in temperature - but unfortunately that does not explain the long term heating of the lower atmosphere and increase in non-volcanic carbon 12, shown by infa-red images from space satellites. Iceland's recent eruptions did not cause lower atmosphere heating in nearby areas - in fact it did the opposite in those areas blanketed in black dust.