As an environmentalist … No. Stop. Not environmentalist; I hate that word. (Thinking out loud again, sorry)
Ok. Take 2:
… As an advocate of the movement to save this planet and everything on it from extinction due to climate change; pollution; deforestation; drought; famine; irresponsible multinationals; GM food; banks; nuclear proliferation; media moguls; desertification; Audi drivers and oceanic acidification, I often find myself embroiled in a heated debate over climate change with people I like to refer to as The Denialists.
Occasionally, I will manage to have a meaningful, in-depth, well-researched, enlightening discussion with one of these people. All too often, though, most denialists just seem capable of coming up with the same tired arguments and replies regarding the realities of climate change and environmental degradation. Below are the five that I hear time and again:
Stupid quote#1: “Man-made climate change isn’t real: Earth’s climate has always gone in cycles”
Answer#1: Yes agreed, the earth’s climate has always gone in cycles – hot, cold, hot, cold, hot, cold, etc. Well done. However, what we are doing by polluting the atmosphere with too many additional greenhouse gases is interrupting the delicate process that causes these cycles thus pushing the whole system into overload. Ironically, we are jeopardising the precise mechanism that denialists so love to wave in our faces.
The earth has maintained an intricate balance over the last few billion years because it had all the tools it required: sunlight, clouds, ice, forests, gases, minerals, plants, animals, etc, etc. What we’ve done over the last few centuries is come along and thrown some truly momentous spanners in the works. Still; the unbelievers think that we should just let the Earth get on with it while we do the same. Ok. What an interesting experiment…
Stupid quote#2: “What’s the point in curbing carbon emissions when China and India are building a coal-fired power station every week?”
Answer#2: Yes, yes, yes. That’s the attitude. Why bother? We’re buggered anyway.
Geeeeez people, since when did two wrongs make a right? Of course this makes the task before us even harder, but we’re tougher than that, aren’t we? This life we currently enjoy must be worth fighting for, if not for us, then for our children and our grandchildren.
An analogy that springs to mind here is that it’s like the guy who goes to the gym and is then perceived to undo all the good work he’s just done by having a burger and a cigarette afterwards. Yes, you could argue that there’s no point in going to the gym if he continues to eat junk food and smoke. I would argue, though, that whether or not he eats badly and smokes, he’s still ultimately doing himself more good by going to the gym than if he’d stayed away.
If by curbing our destructive ways of life we are – at best – just cancelling out what China and India are doing; well then at least we’re doing something.
Dr Jorge Argibay also added this valid point: “It is precisely by doing something about carbon emissions that we can acquire the authority to ask China and India to do the same!” Exactly, thanks Jorge.
Quote#3: “The Earth will survive no matter what we do to it”
Answer#3: Perhaps. But we’re talking about our survival here, aren’t we? Excusing inaction by offering this quote is dumb at best. Surely we want to protect this planet’s ability to sustain life so that our ancestors can also enjoy life… don’t we? To say something like that shows up a selfish streak a mile wide.
Anyway, how do we know the planet will survive? Has it ever been tested like this before? I agree, that it’s managed to thaw its way out of an ice-age or two, but let’s remember: the earth has at its core a massive nuclear fusion reactor that’s hot enough to melt rock. So it’s not really surprising it has the capacity to thaw itself. But to cool itself when so many of its cooling mechanisms have been stripped away, altered or poisoned? Who really knows?
Stupid quote#4 “We’re not running out of fossil fuels. We have loads of oil, gas and coal left”
Answer#4: Agreed, but this oil and gas is continually getting harder and more expensive to find and extract. This also comes at great risk.
I’ll just sum up with these three words: Deep. Water. Horizon.
Stupid quote#5 “Climate change is a myth fabricated by the big corporations and governments of the world so that they can increase profits and raise taxes on the back of it”
Answer#5: So the entire world’s scientific community is on the payroll of the corporations? Oh please. That’s as silly as saying that George. W. Bush planned and executed 9/11. Admittedly, there are plenty of vested interests in keeping the climate change debate alive, but the fact that it’s made up simply to make money just doesn’t ring true.
As for the governments; well, they don’t need excuses to raise our taxes, let alone an excuse that costs as much as concocting something as big as climate change. Get real people.
In summary then…
So then, if like me, you find yourself confronted by climate change denialists who seem intent on spouting these ever-used quotations to back up their arguments, then please feel free to call upon the answers above, if like me, you also find that you can only ever think of a suitable repartee once the debate is over (usually around a week later in my case).
Of course you are probably clever enough to counter to these dumb-assed quotes for yourself. If you do have cleverer, wittier or shrewder answers to these arguments than mine, then please let me know and I’ll add then to this post (and also use them myself, if I may). Thanks.
GR
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Photos courtesy of Arvind Balaraman, Valerij Dedkov, An Apollo astronaut and Kostas Tsipos
#1 by Jorge Argibay on October 24, 2011 - 4:01 pm
Good to have all arguments together since this kind of discussion comes out frequently. May I add something to Answer #2?
It is precisely by doing something about carbon emissions that we can acquire the authority to ask China and India to do the same!
#2 by Gareth Eynon on October 25, 2011 - 4:48 am
Very true. Thanks Jorge. I’ve added your comment into the post (along with you your title for added credibility – hope you don’t mind)
#3 by Robbie on November 26, 2012 - 8:14 pm
These quotes are all pretty stupid yes. But what about the skeptics who agree with greenhouse theory, and that we are having an affect, but do not agree that it is settled to what extent we have an affect? The warming over the past 30 years has been attributed to man made CO2 because they couldn’t find anything else that could cause it. Climate Science is still in its infancy, and so they cannot be sure that other factors couldn’t have had an impact too. And CO2 alone is not a particularly powerful greenhouse gas, and causes mild warming by itself. It is the predicted positive feedbacks resulting from CO2 that have such a massive impact. But there are hundreds of peer reviewed articles with evidence that there is actually a net negative feedback, which could explain why temperatures have been dropping over the past decade despite constantly rising CO2 levels. It certainly could explain why the models have been so inaccurate at predicting the temperatures over the last decade. I will agree with you that it is important to try and use more renewable sources of energy, and to cut back on pollution, but I believe that it is better to devote time and money to adapting to the potential future changes in the climate, rather than reducing technologies and therefore killing millions if not billions of people in order to stop something which quite likely cannot be stopped.
#4 by Gareth Eynon on November 27, 2012 - 11:16 am
Hi Robbie,
Thanks for your comments.
First of all, I would love to know your sources for the climate not warming for the last decade. You didn’t get this from the blogosphere or the mainstream media did you? (Daily Mail I’m looking at you…). Also, if the consensus is that the climate has cooled over the decade, can we then open up the bigger picture to show us that it has not had the general trend of increasing over the last 100 years?
I agree that we cannot blame man for the changes on his own. The warming has been attributed to a large damaging contribution from mad-made greenhouses gases – not just CO2 which, as like you say is not that strong a GHG on its own, unlike methane for example.
I don’t think anyone would argue that climate science is uncertain. But so are weather forecasts, which are essentially the same thing on a much smaller scale: of course they get it wrong all the time but the general trend they predict is usually right.
I’m a little confused why you think I argue that we should reduce technologies and I would be very interested to know how my avocation of this would kill billions of people.
And adaptation over mitigation? Ask the people of New Orleans or New York how our position as Masters Of All We Survey has managed to save us from billions of dollars of damage and untold disruption to our lives. I’m not saying that climate change per se caused these dramatic weather effects, but if we give up on prevention and concentrate on the cure we could find ourselves trying to turn back the tides like that other guy who thought he had the power to do so.
Thanks again for your comments,
Gareth
#5 by Robbie on November 27, 2012 - 8:53 pm
Hi
The graphs all show that over the last decade there has been little or no increase in the warming trend. Yes the long term trend is still warming, but the climate models are already overstating the level of warmth that should be occurring given that CO2 is constantly increasing.
Yes methane is a stronger greenhouse gas, but there is about 200 times less of it in the atmosphere than CO2, so it contrbiutes far less warming. And rises in the levels of methane have levelled off, and that is direct from an alarmist website.
No they don’t, but they certainly do overstate the level of certainty. When there are hundreds of peer reviewed articles that contradict the positive feedback theory, which is the main basis for the dramatic temperature rises, I think we can safely say that there is a huge deal of uncertainty for that. The fact that temperature rises are lower than predicted supports this.
I’m sure you didn’t mean that, but being realistic, in order to be effective enough in reducing CO2, just converting to sustainable resources wouldn’t be enough. We would need to completely stop using cars that release CO2, shut down all industrial plants that produce CO2, and the effects that this would have on productivity would be catastrophic. We can barely sustain the worlds population as it is, so millions of people would die, and depending on how serious the changes were, potentially billions. I agree that we should be moving towards renewable energy, and reduced pollution in the future, but we are not scientifically able to make the changes currently, while still retaining our ability to provide for the world.
And yes, I’m sure they would feel that. But lets remember that there is no scientific evidence for those being caused by global warming. Scientists determined that global warming may create storms, and now every storm is labelled as proof of climate change with no real evidence. In fact has been no general increase in the number of powerful storms as a result of climate change. And once again I say that in order to have a significant effect in stopping it (if we even can) we would need to make sacrifices in technologies that we currently cannot afford. Is it worth trying to save the world by effectively killing millions as a direct result of our policies?
I am by no means a climate change denier, I fully agree with you that it is ridiculous to deny that the climate is changing, or that we have an affect. All I am saying is that we currently do not have a great enough understanding in order to make these changes that will guarantee the deaths of millions.
Thanks
#6 by Gareth Eynon on November 28, 2012 - 1:31 pm
Yes, I agree that we need a greater understanding and that a solution is nowhere in sight. However, in the face of that, I think we should be doing everything we can to reduce our emissions if there’s even a slight chance we are damaging the planet.
I’m all for the precautionary principle and think that we should still be looking for solutions as opposed to just rolling over and saying, “oh well, that’s it; we’re all buggered anyway, let’s see how we can get ourselves through this.” I know that is a much harder (if not impossible) road to travel but, hey, when was anything worth doing ever easy?
Thanks again