I blog about environmental and social justice issues because I am very concerned about the health of the interdependent web of life of which we are a part.

Melting Arctic ice.......beautiful and frightening!

Search This Blog

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

ClimateGate and the Great Glacier Melt

Discussing Climategate and the Himalyan glaciers that wll not melt as fast as predicted in the 2007 IPCC reprot, Gwynne Dyer writes:
People who know science and scientists will be disappointed both by the behaviour of Jones and by the glacier incident, but they will not be surprised. This sort of thing happens from time to time, because we are dealing with human beings. But it does not (as the denial brigade insists) discredit the whole enterprise in which they are engaged. The weight of the evidence rests overwhelmingly on the side of those who argue that climate change is real and dangerous. Ninety-seven or ninety-eight percent of scientists active in the relevant fields are convinced of it; all but a couple of the world’s 200 governments have been persuaded of it; public opinion accepts it almost everywhere except in parts of the “Anglosphere”. The United States, and to a lesser extent Australia, Britain and Canada, are the last bastions of denial. From being the least ideological countries 50 years ago, when much of the rest of the planet was drunk on Marxist theories, these countries have become the most ideological today. Disbelief in climate change has been turned into an ideological badge worn by the right, and evidence is no longer relevant.

http://www.straight.com/article-282021/vancouver/gwynne-dyer-climagegate-and-disbelief
Hmmnnn - read the comments attached to the article.  The commenters prove Mr. Dyer's point about the Anglosphere being a bastion of denial.  I am beginning to think that our society is so addicted to oil that we are all in the first stages of addiction: denial that the problem exists. What to do?  Keep pushing to change the zeitgeist ....appeals to reason and the provision of  evidence are not working.  

No comments:

Post a Comment