One thought on “How To Talk About Climate Change, Adam Adam”

1. Things are currently so polarized in this land that bringing up global warming in public is tantamount to asking for a fight in a lot of venues. The conversations depicted in the video were one on ones. Inter grroup conversation has broken down pretty thoroughly these days, for instance on the internets. Scientific types want to know the truth, and are willing to admit uncertainty or outright ignorance on the road to the truth. They realize that understanding and the process that leads to it is not alway easy. Political types bull their way through with great, almost religious certainty, and want to win the argument and protect and gather power. To them if the truth gets violated, so what?

   Truth has different levels of meaning and importance to different people in different groups. Until or unless the uncertaintly about the effect known as global warming is reduced by easily understandable evidence, I think that the pro and con groups will fight like sports teams or battling armies, without a lot of cerebration.

   There also needs to be a lot of deconvolution of the very complicated interacting parts of this problem. There is, for a start, the basic science of the process, which is pretty robust, going back to Fourier, Tyndall and Arrhenius. Arguing about this is childish or ignorant. Then there is the modern quantification of the evidence. Arguing about this tends to involve conspiracy theories. People who do not trust the scientific method, the media, or the scientific community probably won’t budge an iota on this. Then there are the models. Our whole experience with reality is based on models and representations. Blanket disavowal of the validity of models is ignorant, but it has been used as an effective bludgeon against discussion. Then there is the engineering measures to counter the projected problems. This brings up the question of who is going to pay for the solutions, most of which require the replacement of the biggest chunk of the world’s economy with something else. Dealing with this last convolution of the problem tends to get people’s attention because people who are accustomed to comfort are typically afraid of being uncomfortable. A lot of times, discussions of this problem leap right to religiously held beliefs about economics and how to deal with the biggest problems of our time …. a discussion which is beyond the scope of most, maybe all people.

   So in summary, it looks like the whole climate issue is really tied into everything about us. Our drives to survive. Our beliefs related to those drives. Our levels of comprehension. Our visions of the future. Climate is a topic that, these days, leads right into discussions of religiously held economic and political beliefs, meaning that it is not an easy topic. Since feelings drive and color mosts of what we do, it will be necessary to be a lot smarter about our own and other people’s feelings.

   Reply