Last night my friend Gregor Barnum from Seventh Generation and I served as emcees for an event featuring a speaker from The Climate Project.  The speaker, Dee Gish, did a fine job but there was an audience member who was a climate change doubter who kept bringing up site or time specific events as rebuttals for the accepted role of humans and carbon dioxide in this whole climate change dynamic. 

I suspect that I grew tired as the evening advanced and I could have dealt better with his questions, but his points were ones floating around the conservative talk shows and have to be addressed—tiresome as they are.  In many cases these questions really demonstrate a lack of understanding of the nature of complex systems and the assumption that all actions within a given trend must agree with the trend otherwise it is false.  That is just not the way it is—but it also what makes it hard to describe and discuss these complicated issues.

I chewed on this issue all morning and then went to have lunch by the river.  The babbling water seems to focus me and right in the middle of my sandwich (not literally) it came to me.  I knew how I wished that conversation would have gone last night and here is the re-enactment that never happened.

Climate Change Doubter (CCD):  I think the increase in flow ice near Greenland last year and increases in some Antarctic ice fields indicate that global warming is not happening and that environmentalist are just trying to scare people and make money.

Me:  But natural systems are very complex beasts and trends are not determined or disproven based upon single events or even sets contravening phenomenon.

CCD:  I see these as proofs that the science is fuzzy and because you cannot explain how these conditions fit within global warming you clearly do not understand what is going on and we should not listen to you.

Me:   Hmm.  Let me ask you a few questions.

CCD: Okay.

Me:  Did your mother ever send you to room when you were a child?

CCD:  Certainly.

Me:  Did your mother ever ground you when you were a teenager?

CCD:  A few times.  Sure.  But that happens to every child.

Me:  Did your mother ever hurt your feelings?

CCD:  Yes.  I know now that she did not mean it, but it did happen several times.

Me:  My conclusion is that your mother did not love you.

CCD:  Hey, wait a minute you cannot say that!  You have to also see all the loving things that my mother did for me.  My mother is complex and you cannot properly judge her affection for me by these isolated and seemingly unloving actions.  Most of what my mother did was overwhelmingly loving. 

Me: BINGO

That’s how the conversation would have gone had that fellow joined me for lunch today by the river.  The Earth is a very, very complex set of systems that are overwhelmingly indicating that climate change is happening.  Yes there are anomalies, but those are to be expected in any complex system.  It is more important to keep our eyes on the big picture and the overall trends.

I suspect the mother analogy came to me as I was thinking about Mother’s Day and the increased need to simultaneously honor our mothers and Mother Earth at the same time.  My wife and I did it by hand-making gifts for my mother.   

Bob Ferris

http://bob-ferris.blogspot.com/

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