Grist: We have met the deniers, and they are us
Via reader Gail:
By Adam Sacks James Inhofe.
Marc Morano.
Richard Lindzen.
Bjørn Lomborg.
George W. Bush. Names of shame, ignominy, criminals against humanity, against planet Earth itself. Agents of the lethal delays in our response to escalating, accelerating, catastrophic global warming. Yet, as deniers of climate change, they’re amateurs compared to us. Us activists, environmentalists, scientists, and certainly Copenhagen politicians. Even though we’re believers, not skeptics, our denial is far more insidious and subtle. So subtle, in fact, that we’ve managed to convince ourselves that we’re not in denial at all. Quite the opposite. Why, the thought is too absurd even to contemplate. But it’s true. We’re deniers every time we say “80 percent by 2050,” or even “80 percent by 2020”; every time we refer to tipping points in the future tense; every time we advocate substituting “clean” energy for “dirty” energy; every time we buy a squiggly light bulb or a hybrid vehicle; every time we advocate for cap-and-trade, or even a carbon tax; every time we countenance the mention of loopy geoengineering schemes; every time we invoke the future of our children and grandchildren and ignore the widespread suffering from global climate disruption today. Every time we say these things and more, we’re promoting denial of dire climate reality, the reality that’s spinning out of our grasp so fast that we conduct our frenetic climate “solutions” efforts in a kind of stupor, obsessing with parts-per-million statistics, keeping desperately busy to ward off our own utter collapse borne of despair. The reality we’re denying? We’re denying that we’ve put so much carbon into the atmosphere already that positive feedback loops are well on their way to amplification hell.[1] We’re denying that time lags between carbon emissions and their effects are frighteningly relevant, and that the disastrous effects we’re seeing now are from emissions of 30 years ago. We’re denying that non-linear responses of physical systems cannot be calculated and therefore are perilously ignored. We’re denying that our consumption and waste have far exceeded planetary capacity, possibly irreparably so.[2] …
I've been reading this blog for several months now and every time I come back to it to review the latest scientific findings about climate change, I am terrified anew; what we are collectively doing to the planet is the scariest possible thing imaginable by a great margin. There is nothing in any horror movie that can compare to the abject despair that I feel when I read about what we are doing to the world.
Keep it up. I'd much rather read this blog for my quota of fear and depression than pay money for the likes of Saw VI.