Human-induced climate change is the most serious issue facing humanity this century. There can be no doubt any longer about the science – the continued release of greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial and agricultural processes is already leading to severe and potentially catastrophic changes in the earth’s climate, some of which will be irreversible.
Undeniable scientific data proves the crisis of global warming is becoming more acute with each passing day. Only decisive and rapid action can prevent societal upheaval on an unprecedented scale. The effect on human populations, particularly those in developing countries, could be disastrous. Without immediate action, the impacts of climate change will include a rise in sea levels, mass extinctions and migrations, and increased incidence of flooding, droughts and tropical storms.
Because our worst-case scenarios are becoming more likely it is vital that we reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent within ten years. This appears to be the least traumatic, most cost-effective way of ensuring a global transition to sustainable lifestyles. Furthermore, it can probably be realized by using readily available technologies. But only if we can overcome the deranged polemic of global warming naysayers together with the inability and unwillingness of elected representatives to lead.
Denial is no longer valid. The scientific evidence is beyond dispute. Urgent action has become essential. The only impediment to change is our capacity to conceive of the danger should we fail to act wisely or fast enough.
Even so, while most people are convinced of the damage climate change could wreak, a highly vocal cadre of attention-grabbing sceptics continue to lay waste to reason, opposing climate change legislation and raising doubts on the scientific legitimacy of anthropogenic climate change.
The motives of these global warming deniers and ideologues are overtly political: their goal is to preserve toxic industrial practices arising from the outmoded ideology of economic growth at any cost. Blind to factors that warp dynamically complex systems in such capricious ways and with such astonishing speed, they resort to intellectual dishonesty to confuse and contradict.
Their mission is quite simple: to undermine policies we so desperately need to avoid the catastrophic consequences of global warming and adapt to the more extreme conditions that are certain to impact us. In order to promulgate their delusions of business-as-usual they heap scorn on scientific evidence, treating facts with disdain and disregarding long-term trends.
Backed by narrow corporate interests (typically mining and older smokestack industries that have had free reign to pollute the environment) these sceptics rely on cherry-picking small amounts of data to give credence to misleading conclusions. Armed with half-truths, emotive claims and blatant manipulation of the facts, they resolutely lie and spread deceit.
One such denier is Australian newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt, another is US television 'shock-jock' Rush Limbaugh. Common to both is a knack of creating dissent by expressing conservative views with a moral indignation that would be hilarious were it not so destructive to intelligent discourse.
To debate these important issues on their terms requires us to abandon logic, disregard visible evidence, ignore scientific method, dumb-down climate science, confuse short term weather events with long-term climate patterns and pay no heed to the dire warnings of scientists around the world whose appeals for action are becoming increasingly strident.
Latest surveys and modelling tell us that the ice and the permafrost are melting everywhere from the Antarctic to Greenland, the Andes and the Himalayas. Some ice sheets are melting almost 100 years ahead of IPCC projections. The amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is continuing to rise to levels that may spiral out of control. Sea levels, too, are projected to rise up to two metres by the end of the century causing widespread devastation.
On almost every measurable environmental factor over the past two decades the situation is deteriorating rapidly. To assert the opposite is simply a travesty of the truth.
This is not a Hollywood movie script. It is the world we consciously created. A year ago Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, warned, “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future.”
The public at large knows this to be true. Several recent polls in the US found that the community supports strong climate action in spite of aggressive and widespread fear-mongering about energy prices, bankruptcies, costs of adaptation, and the loss of jobs.
Reputable economists have concluded that tackling climate change now will cost far less than delaying it further. Even strong action on climate change is less costly when compared with the incalculable cost of catastrophic global warming on future generations.
Naturally most scientists believed humanity would never be so stupid as to ignore their warnings by simply continuing on its self-destructive path. That we have has a lot to do with the impact of a conservative minority who commit everything to denial and delay and refuse to accept the truth. These sceptics appear willing to stake the future of humanity on their stubborn ignorance.
In mobilising global action around climate change it is clear we are waging a crusade on two fronts — against the ever-accelerating reality of climate change itself and against the unyielding fictions of anti-science conservatives.
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