Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

If you have prominient climate change deniers in your town,  ask them to sign the global warming skeptic's declaration.  You can download a copy from the site below. 

http://www.prairiedogmag.com/archive/?id=317

Commentary form the site:

Bravo, gentlemen!  Thanks to your efforts, support for climate science is sliding and the hopes that there’ll be any global action in time to slow the planet’s heating are all but lost. Good thing I’m heavily invested in hip waders.  Nice work! But I have to ask: why’d you do it?  Why do all you climate deniers risk your reputations defending positions utterly at odds with science and reason?   Much has been made of your ties to the oil and coal lobbies, but can you really be doing it just for the money?“Climate science suggests [people’s] behaviours are destroying the earth,” says Kasser. “If they accept that climate change is real, they also have to accept that they’re engaging in behaviours which conflict with their conception of themselves as good, caring people.”   To overcome all this psychology, Kasser believes scientists and environmental advocates are going to have change the way they communicate with the public — that is, if they’re serious about drowning out the misinformation.   Making the science even stronger isn’t going to cut it anymore. “What we need to do is pay more attention to the emotional state that people are in when they’re hearing our data,” he continues, “and recognize that this data is scary and when people are scared they’re not more likely to listen to the data but less.”   But Kasser notes that if changing western society’s core values fails, there’s one last way in which people will ultimately be convinced that the climate is changing.  “Once Florida is under water and once we’ve got droughts threatening our food system and all the rest — eventually there comes a point where even the most die-hard identity falls to the data,” he says.

Let's hope we don't have to wait for Florida to be under water before we generate the political will to act.   And let's hold deniers accountable: get them to sign the global warming skeptics paper  now .   Dr. Lotta Hitschmanova (for you Unitarian Universalists out there) did something very similar trying to get governments to assist displace persons after WW II.  She would ask leaders if they were concerned about the plight of dispalce persons - of course - they always answered yes.  She would note the fact in a little notebook with the date - and if they later attempted to not fund her efforts, she'd whip her notebook out and point out that opn such and such a date  - they had said they were concerned.  . 

One could use the skeptics declaration in the same way - if the denier won't sign, note the date and time and use their refusal to press them to support greenhouse gas reduction initiatives later.   If they are sure enough of their denial to sign, well.... at least you will have written proof once all hell has broken out that they were deniers.