Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2014/07/02/map-which-states-governors.html
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The people who made that map may need to reevaluate the governor of Kansas. He’s a goof, but this list says that he’s one of the champions of the climate change movement. The eight champions of climate change in the US in 2013 | Guardian sustainable business | The Guardian
Appears that skepticism is a winning position.
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It’s not “skepticism” if 97% of the people who’ve chosen to devote their lives to researching and collecting data on the atmosphere and climate are drawing completely the opposite conclusion from you.
When you’re that much in the minority in the scientific community, you’re not a ‘skeptic’, you’re a denialist, on about the same level as the people who still try to claim AIDS isn’t linked to HIV. (Yes, some people STILL think that.)
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Alas, the deliterious effects of climate change are not determined by the Law of Irony. If it were we could be treated to SyFy-channel TV-movie act three-like incidents where the pompous mayor (or governor) who dismissed the outspoken scientist’s warnings gets sucked into the ionosphere by the FlameTwister. Or a Nascar track gets levelled by a Mantee Derecho.
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People spit out that “97%” number, but it’s a recursive claim, not a fact–people quote people quoting people saying 97%. I’m a “denier” because the claims don’t match the data. I am not a climate scientist, but I prefer to risk some vague, unproven potential future change to the absolute certain damage that misguided, ineffective, and overreaching government action brings.
97% may not be completely utterly totally correct down to the third decimal place, but it’s ‘wrong’ in the way that describing the earth as a sphere - rather than, say, an oblate spheroid - is ‘wrong.’ In other words, it is more than good enough to be going on with, and far better than the alternate (i.e., modelling the earth as a flat plane, or pretending that AGW is a hoax.)
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I took Wynn’s post to mean that skepticism (or ‘skepticism’) is a good position for politicians to take if the only thing they care about is getting elected.
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Posing misinformation like this is not doing the cause of mitigation of global climate change any good. The vast majority of scientists believe that recent observed global warming has a detectable anthropogenic signal (usually around 50%) and that the anthropogenic component will increase in the future. They do NOT believe that “global warming” in general is primarily caused by humans. That is because the current warming trend has been going on for about 10,000 years. They DO believe that the recent increase in the warming RATE is likely caused by human activities.
When you post nonsense like this, you do far more harm than good.
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I find it rather interesting that the denialism is inversely related to the level of impact that climate change may have on the state. One would have thought the states with the most to lose would be at the forefront of taking action on the matter.
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I would watch those…
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I thought it was generally accepted that the first major impact Humans started having on the climate was rice patty farming in Asia, which releases large amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere, warming the climate. The effect wasn’t strong enough to counterbalance the little ice age during the middle ages, but it was detectible.
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If you don’t believe in climate change it doesn’t matter where you live.
Really though, that map could have been “political affiliations” and it would have looked almost the same, with just a couple of outliers (Maine for instance). Climate change from a scientific standpoint is not controversial. The science is in and it’s happening. That chart is measuring climate change as a political issue, which is far from settled. The science really doesn’t matter, many of those people are opposing it because that’s what their team is doing and because it makes them different than those filthy drug using dreadlocked liberals.
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Well said, very well said.
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Look, I’m not trying to convince you, you’ve looked into this for yourself and have come to your own conclusion, I take you at your word here.
Granted, the term “denier” while meant to be descriptive is now pejorative, who would want to be labeled like that?
I don’t care to defend the accuracy of 97%, but you do still fall into the camp of people who do in fact deny the claim that climate change is a certainty with disastrous consequences.
See, its not a future change, its future catastrophe, the change has already happened. You are denying that the change is happening and has been building up for some time now.
You’re unconvinced of course, but its not your consensus that’s needed to affirm or deny this is happening. The need for you, me or politicians to be convinced is not needed to affirm climate change, it is only needed to take action in the face of climate change.
I’m not picking on you, I’m not even going to suggest you’re wrong.
I’m just addressing how it is that you are responding to the perceived attack of being labelled a “climate change denier” by actually denying climate change.
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[citations needed]
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“Oh noes! We might have to pay more for fossil-fuel based energy! That is literally the worst thing I can imagine!!”
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…if 97% of the people who’ve chosen to devote their lives to researching and collecting data on the atmosphere and climate are drawing completely the opposite conclusion from you.
That’s not what the survey your are citing claimed to show.
Of course, who knows since even the data for the survey is pending a law suit against making it public. Which reminds me of the Climategate problem. How can anything be peer reviewed when the data is on lockdown?
“Climategate” was a manufactured controversy involving exchanges of emails between individual scientists, not a lockdown of the data or methodology relating to any peer reviewed study. Eight separate committees investigated the issue and found no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. If that’s the best evidence you have to refute the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change then that says a lot about your position.
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