terrbear.org

So, from reading nonsense on the intertubes, to seeing Republican debate watching parties “boo” when a candidate said global warming is (a) happening and (b) caused by humans, to hearing a few family members deny that the Earth is even warming up, it’s time I say something.

For all of you in similar situations (my condolences), I hope that you can use this post as an answer to people who would turn a blind eye to research and science and instead rely on Rush Limbaugh for “facts.”

Look. I know it’s hard to accept that the world is really big, and that there are billions of people in it. I can’t even conceptualize a billion anything, there’s 1, 100, 1000s, and “a lot.” But let’s just think about it. Each of us contributes a little, through our energy consumption and waste, to creating these invisible gases. Burning gasoline, coal, and oil are big contributors to this. It’s ok. We all do it.

Scientists noticed this several decades ago, and had also noticed a trend, that the temperature of the Earth was slowly (but steadily) going up. After tossing the ball around, they realized that greenhouse gases (a product of burning fossil fuels) could refract light in such a way that it doesn’t reflect off most of our planet the way that it should, essentially trapping heat. This has a compounding effect, that over time has the potential to be disastrous and really damn hot.

Now, let’s take a little step back and talk about science before I proceed any further, and why going off a consensus is a good idea for most of us. The goal behind scientific research isn’t to be “right.” The goal is to understand how the world works, and to help us control how the world will continue to work. To this end, millions of competing ideas are offered up every year, and bad ones are shot down, and good ones are tested, and some of those help describe the rules by which our universe operates.

There is no agenda here. Sure, a handful of scientists will have an agenda, but when they offer bad ideas and put them in peer-reviewed journals, they’re torn apart like the rest of us. Keep in mind that there’s always a bright, new guy on the scene looking to not only make waves, but to rip to shreds any ideas with flaws.

The spectacular thing about this whole operation is that it allows people to work into specialties, builds on centuries of knowledge, and means that we don’t have to figure out everything for ourselves. For example, I don’t know much about how the body works. I know what I learned in high school (which wasn’t much), but I wouldn’t advise anyone to ask me for medical advice; I’d advise going to a doctor, who keeps up on research and has several years of schooling under his or her belt.

So, to that end, it’s valuable for the rest of us who work in different fields to rely on scientific consensus. Doctors say “vaccines prevent diseases,” and we go with that (and it seems they’re right). Computer security experts recommend using a router as a hardware firewall, and it prevents lots of problems.

So, back to global warming. People will argue that it’s not happening with a slew of questionable evidence. Like, “the Earth isn’t getting warmer,” or “Paul Harvey said this,” or “Al Gore and the scientists just have a hidden agenda to offer a new religion instead of Christianity” (not joking, I’ve heard conservative pundits spout that bullshit).

You can proceed here with one of two questions. The simple one, “Are you a climatologist? And if not, on what grounds are you basing your alternative theory that you think hasn’t been shot down by the thousands of actual climatologists in the world?” Or the Patented Terrbear Dot Org one: What’s more likely, that you came across a piece of peer reviewed, legitimate evidence that blows global warming out of the water, and that Paul Harvey has the scoop over the thousands of climatologists in the world who study this kind of behavior for a living, and that ALL of academia has gathered up and decided that it’s time to supplant Christianity with a motivation to use less energy, or you’re woefully wrong, the peer reviewed evidence and studies point one way, and the media - once again - isn’t out to get you?