Climate Change

There is so much competition centered about the science of climate change for many reasons. The first of these reasons is economics. Validation of climate change means that there will need to be modifications to the current economic system. In an economy that prioritizes growth above all else, this makes climate change seem anti-capitalist to many people. What must happen is a re-prioritization of our goals. Rather than prioritizing more production, we need to prioritize well-being for humans and for the planet.

In addition, people fear climate change's validity because it indicates that we have done something wrong. We don't want to be told that what we are doing is harmful and must be stopped, so we like to pretend that everything is OK. It's time to open our eyes to the science behind global warming and climate change and it is time for us to make a change in our lifestyles.

Evaluating the science is important for understanding the consequences of our actions. We need to look for hard evidence, facts, correlations (while understanding that a correlation is not necessarily a causation), relationships between data, and our impacts on those data. Both of the sites that we looked at this week try to use the scientific data to bolster their arguments. This is important, because arguing without science is unsubstantial.

To evaluate their claims, we need to read what they say. The "Friends of Science" website mostly says that what is happening now is standard for the planet's history, while the "How to talk to a Climate Skeptic" describes the ways that things have been changing. I find the "How to talk to a Climate Skeptic" website to be more convincing, perhaps because I am already of the persuasion that global warming is factual.