Climate Global warming should not be a matter of choosing a 'belief.' It's far more important than that.
Tue, 5. April 2011
Do You 'Believe' in Climate Change?
It is not a question of which party you support (or hate) or whether you are against a particular method of combatting it. It is astonishing that so many people are prepared to disregard the scientists, who overwhelmingly tell us what is happening to our planet. If you want to put your trust in any particular group of people, then it should be the scientists - not the politicians and certainly not church leaders who think that "God" will fix it. Politicians are prone to picking and choosing the facts to suit their argument, whilst church leaders simply begin with a pre-conceived 'stone-age' belief and ignore all subsequent evidence to the contrary. We have to heed the warnings coming from scientists. They deal in facts, it's their job. They are constantly trying to prove and disprove scientific theories until they reach a consensus on a model that is closest to explaining what is going on.
There are three seperate issues:
1 - Is the climate changing?
2 - Are humans contributing to it? and
3 - Is a carbon tax the right way to deal with it?
The answers to the first two questions are: yes, the scientists know the climate is changing and yes, almost certainly we are greatly contributing to it. Two centuries of rapidly increasing human industrial pollution spewed into the atmosphere is unlikely to have no effect, as some are claiming. Anyone who disbelieves what the scientists are telling us is doing a great disservice to the planet and it's occupants, present and future. They are the modern equivalent of the flat-earthers and the geocentric Universe hypothesis.
I can understand people querying the third question about tax because it is going to hurt (and Labor's answer to every problem is always to increase taxation). I have mixed feelings about it and I query why the government can't just regulate the polluting industries. Despite my suspicions, I want the world to attack climate change head-on, so I am at least happy that the government is trying to do something.
Many climate change deniers are pushing their own agendas on this matter. Some are power-hungry politicians. Others are religious nut-cases like Mr. Pell. They all have their followers who believe them - whatever they say - but climate change is too important for old loyalties. If we disregard what the scientists are telling us (loud and clear) on climate change, then we are heading for trouble. We have to trust the overwhelming scientific consensus over vested interests.
Unfortunately. whatever approach we take to resolving climate change is going to hurt. The longer it takes 'non-believers' the more painful it will be for everyone.
See my astronomy images on my website: http://home.exetel.com.au/greybeard/Index.htm