A Heated Issue

This topic is one that has been plaguing me since the last time that I went home. My parents are informed, well-educated, individuals who each feel a personal connection to the environment and to nature in different ways. However, it came to my attention in a heated debate about politics that my step-dad views the climate change issue as something that is open to debate. Yes, of course all science is open to debate, but isn't there enough science behind climate change? For him, the argument wasn't about the science, it was about who was behind the science in his eyes. He saw the country's left as supporting climate change, where the right was still skeptical. When I tried to put up a case that the right was skeptical because of ties to religious themes that deny human capabilities to destroy the environment (something he knows can happen) and their unwillingness to sacrifice corporations that are part of the problem, he pointed to the left and said that they had money to make off of this scare with energy transitions and technology. For him, climate change is a political issue that clouds over the science so thickly that he is unwilling to take sides.

In evaluating these sites, I thought of my step-dad's skepticism in comparison to my stubborn belief that climate change exists and we have to deal with it NOW and perhaps someone I went to school with in Kansas, who firmly believes that climate change is a part of God's natural cycle. At first glance I thought that the Friends of Science site might be a backup for those in staunch opposition to climate change and environmental issues in general. Although, as I read on, I found that Friends of Science is a group of retired scientists from multiple disciplines who are more concerned with water and air pollution and think that global warming is a current obsession fueled by politics. So, guess this is more my step-dad's crowd. When addressing Copenhagen, FoS explains that this conference will do little to address environmental issues, but will do a lot to give the UN more power. Hm, maybe there is something to be said here. It has been true that national and international leaders have not addressed climate change in a satisfactory manner and perhaps the focus on global warming has led them to distance themselves from other environmental issues. Yet, I am still stuck on logic that tells me what we put into the air in copious amounts that was not there before must have some effect.

Grist's How to Talk to a Climate Change Skeptic is a punchy and effective way to group common questions linked to the debate with answers supported by science, logic, and history. The method here is about roping together concerns and addressing them with arguments that fully refute them, a common debate technique to show how your overpowering evidence defeats their paltry concerns. And, while I am right there with grist and want to print some of these out to use in my personal defense arsenal, I am still left wondering how to convince people who do not want to see this. Even more important, what do you say to someone who accepts climate change as fact and burden about how we are going to fix it? Or why we haven't already? Also, who benefits from climate change issues? Perhaps the UN will use this as an opportunity to gain more power in the name of human survival. If so, is that a horrible and scary thing? I am not sure about this. All I do know is that climate change is a heated issue (hahahaha, intentional pun) because it points at big business, and therefore implicates governments, as well as religion, energy sourcing, and even our daily lives. With all of these players accused of participation, how do we assume our guilt in a dignified manner and make a more to ameliorate the situation?