That's right. We have heard it time and time again, have we not?
You know people in your personal life that deny climate change, or at least that human being caused climate change.
I make that distinction, of course, because a couple of decades ago, people would mock me, and my position with the Environmental Club in my school, because they said, back then, that there was no such thing as global warming/climate change. It was all one big scam, a hoax.
Of course, then, we saw some huge storms. Epic storms, the likes of which we have never seen before, and we could not explain it any other way but that something weird, something huge, was happening.
Something like....well, the effects of climate change.
A tsunami that is a few days away from reaching its 10 year anniversary, and that killed people by the hundreds of thousands, back in 2004. In 2005, we saw Hurricane Katrina lay New Orleans to waste, and I do not believe that city has fully recovered yet. Then we had the epic storm in Japan, and nightmarish images that we had seen in movies associated with climate change, such as rushing waters flooding the shores and taking everything in it's path with it, and that caused the nuclear meltdown at Fukoshima. Most recently, we saw the impact of Hurricane Sandy, and the devastation that had on coastal areas, as well as the weeks of inconvenience that residents of the affected areas had.
Plus, of course, we have seen epic floods in certain places like the Mississippi River, with water levels not seen in many, many decades, as well as in central Europe last year. Right now, there are epic floods occurring in Europe close to the Mediterranean, such as in southern France. And the rain keeps coming. Extreme winters have been seen in Europe and North America, as well as ridiculously hot summers. On the flip side of the floods were the record droughts. California had an incredibly long drought earlier this year, and now, they have just had record rainfall to answer, and the rain just keeps on coming, adding yet another chapter in the growing list of incredible flooding incidents.
It all hit a little too close to home with the dire predictions that scientists had long warned about for inaction on climate change.
Suddenly, it was beginning to get hard denying that climate change did not exist. Even George W. Bush, long a denier, conceded that there was apparently something to this global warming "theory."
Those who denied it, however, simply turned to the next convenient argument. They were wrong about climate change existing, so now, they turn to the next big lie: that human beings have nothing to do with it.
And they are sticking with it...at least until they are proven wrong.
Again.
Only this time, it would likely take a lot longer to prove that human activity is responsible for climate change.
Also, the focus among deniers is always, always on something other than the fact that an overwhelming majority of scientists, to say nothing of the mountain of scientific evidence, that suggests that human activity indeed has an impact on climate change, and apparently an enormous one.
I remember one particularly angry and incensed conservative (I wonder why so many of them are always angry and incensed - there has to be something to that) telling me that it was all one big lie so that a few elites could make huge money off of it. He mentioned Al Gore, the man that most detractors (at least American detractors) find particularly loathsome. If you are like me, you probably heard those arguments time and again as well.
It seems, sadly but yet admittedly typically, that Americans once again stand alone in just the sheer amount of people here that are climate change skeptics, even now.
The thing is, I feel that this is a huge gamble. They believe that they are right, but they have been wrong before. After all, when even the Bush White House admits that climate change is apparently real, then you know that the evidence is apparently stacked on that side.
Yet, if you listen to the skeptics, everything is just fine. Nothing is wrong, so keep on moving, nothing to see here. Let's just keep fracking, let's just keep invading the arctic for oil. Let's just keep building pipe lines and, most importantly, let's keep on making and selling irresponsible gas guzzlers and wasting as much energy as possible, so that we continue to live the lazy lives without a moment's worry about future generations. After all, the world's energy sources are infinite, right?
That is why it seems to me like such a huge gamble. Because ultimately, if the scientists and environmental activists are wrong, the worst that we have is a healthier planet, with less pollution and less waste.
If, on the other hand, the climate change deniers have their way, the worst that happens are the dire projections of irreversible damage caused by human activity.
And it bears repeating: they have already been proven wrong once. If they are wrong with this whole thing, yet we continue to empower them to do as they please, it's our planet, and our future generations, that are at stake!
The People Have Spoken: This Is The Most Brazen Lie Of 2014
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/12/18/3605076/climate-hoax-politifact-lie-of-the-year/
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