Five (5) Reasons Global Warming Concepts are Resisted by the Uninformed

Why don’t people accept global warming?

Essay on Global Warming, S. Tom Bond, March 28, 2017

When 97% of the scientists (that is, the people who have studied the problem with training) agree it is happening and will continue to happen, why do people deny it is going on? As the poet says, “Let me count the ways.”

1.  Many simply follow the news. With its “on the one hand, and then on the other hand” coverage (to avoid driving off advertisers and readers) it is hard to distinguish which approach is correct if you don’t remember and follow up the arguments. The facts are there, melting glaciers, decline of arctic ice, average world temperatures rising year after year, range inhabited by many species moving North, changes in weather, melting permafrost. The mass media rarely shows sufficient evidence to be convincing, and never explains why changes small compared to what our bodies experience are important.

2.  Another common reason is that many people are unwilling to accept new ideas. Many folks don’t have a view that extends beyond their home, job and family. They are reluctant to accept new ideas. They have difficulty accepting a new paradigm, and new framework of understanding. One thinks of the change when the earth was thought flat, then was recognized to be a very large sphere, or when the sun was thought to cross the earth, then it was recognized the earth went around the sun. When new ideas are incorporated into the public discourse, it takes a while for these folks to adapt.

Today there are a few people dedicated to older ideas, such as the earth is cooling, or that a warming earth produces a higher carbon dioxide content in the earth’s atmosphere, rather than the other way around. If someone has ideas based on earlier science, it may be hard to accept global warming.

3.  Some think God wouldn’t allow global warming. It is his creation and it will end in fire when He is good and ready. It doesn’t fit the plan. Don’t argue with them.

4.  This is the simplest to understand and one of the most commonly discussed: cupidity. The petroleum industry is an elite sector because of its wealth, which purchases political power.

There is extensive information on situations where the business elite has interests that gives them an advantage that is contrary to the long-term interest of the society. The business elite persists until the society no longer has some resource it needs to continue, so it crashes. One of the most famous of these is the deforestation of Easter Island, which caused a population crash and an abrupt change in culture.

Of course, training in a science does little to help in business.. So this peculiarity of omission of understanding of other areas is not one sided. My point is that all of us need to recognize our limitations and trust experts. It must be a much greater temptation for a businessman with millions at his disposal to ignore or deny science that will hinder his success than for a scientist with almost no disposable wealth to ignore business ideas opposed to his success.

But the future of the earth depends on future climate, not someone’s ego or financial success. That future should be determined by those with data and training who take time to think about it.

5.  Finally, there is another reason that is a bit abstruse, but vital. This is the separation of modern man from the biological world of which he is a part. Primitive man was close to his environment. Getting food was a daily preoccupation. If times were good, this took two or three hours a day. If times were bad, 24 hours weren’t enough. He/she was subject to danger from animals, floods, droughts, disease, the next village over and much other uncertainty. Everything including trees, rocks, or storms had a spirit. Many of these had to be appeased. But this religion was his connection to survival.

Domination of earth and nature became a way of life. Increasingly, urban man became separated from the biological world from which he came. Dominion over others became increasingly important. And man was dominant over things, apparently supreme. That included the biological world, reverence for which was eliminated from his culture and religion.

Now the whole earth is occupied, and our industry is so linkd together and powerful it is possible to destroy civilization. The supremacist attitude toward the biological world, our environment is not viable. There is no “other” to avoid destruction of global warming or atomic warfare or over population or resource exhaustion.

We need rational understanding of our world and rational control if civilization, and perhaps human life in any form, is to continue.

>>> Tom Bond is a retired chemistry professor & teacher, now a resident farmer in Lewis County, WV

Tagged as: climate change, coal mining, drilling, fossil fuels, fracking, global warming, greenhouse gases, marcellus shale, public opinion