Climate Change: Another Puzzle with Missing Pieces

I was discussing snow with one of my friends recently – frustration with the current lack thereof, to be frank, since he was so kind as to start singing “Do You Want to Build a Snowman” at me – when the conversation took a serious turn towards global warming and our fears in terms of Trump’s plans regarding them. My friend was telling me about how ridiculous it was that people blatantly ignored the statistics regarding the rise in global temperatures, and even laughed about how stupid it was to deny that there was any change whatsoever.

So, maybe I misunderstood what climate-change-deniers believe. Or maybe he did. Or maybe we had both been ignoring that it isn’t a black-and-white topic?

I’ve been operating under the impression that the deniers understood that the temperatures have been rising drastically, but that their denial was of the theory that humans are causing it. After all, global temperatures have fluctuated before, so at least it makes mild sense that they would at least be accepting the data while drawing their own interpretations of it. Sure, “Overwhelming scientific consensus says human activity is primarily responsible for global climate change”, but there are also over a thousand scientists who disagree with that conclusion. It’s like the “vaccines cause autism” argument, in that people latch on to a few sources out of thousands to the contrary.

But there are actually people who ignore it altogether? That’s something I hadn’t witnessed.

Unfortunately, this lack of foresight on our parts is apparently more common than we’d realized. A few minutes of internet searching revealed forums we hadn’t discovered, stances we hadn’t considered, and we came to realize that both of us had been ignoring perfectly rational – even if occasionally flawed – beliefs held about this topic. And I do mean both of us; there are even arguments that my version of deniers held which I hadn’t considered.

All of this may seem like a long-winded and irrelevant anecdote, but the point here is that even when we think we know every counterargument, there could always be something that we’re missing. By dismissing what we know without digging to discover what we don’t, we effectively diminish our own ethos. The easiest way to find out what we’re missing from the puzzle is to sit down and ask, respectfully, rationally, and readily willing to listen and discuss.

Find out more about the opposing stances on climate change, and decide for yourself where you stand by checking out this website in depth.