Every time we get a cold spell or a massive snow storm, people start quipping, 'hey what the heck happened to climate change?' If you're joking around to make light of the difficult weather, fine. However, there seem to be a lot of people who say this with real conviction. These are the folks who view non-scientific anecdotal episodes of a cold or snow as concrete proof that climate change is a farce.
Hopefully you know that this argument is absurd. Yet when I see 1000s of blog posts, Facebook comments, and news articles questioning the validity of climate change after a big snow storm like the one that rocked the Northeast yesterday -- I'm beginning to think that logic is losing and idiocracy is ubiquitous. If we are living in an idiocracy, then Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity are the king and queen of the idiot box: Listen to Hannity's response to the snow that DC got:
I'm not a violent man, but I've got a hockey stick half cocked to knock this fucker's teeth out.
I don't mean to get off on a rant here, but I feel the need to make a mini-documentary that explains in simple terms so anyone can understand that weather is not the same as climate. Bill Nye, The Science Guy, explained it best on Rachel Maddow's show: Weather is a small scale phenomenon: what happens day to day, climate is big phenomenon: the average weather in a region over a long period of time. In fact, record breaking snow and precipitation is completely in line with climate science. The IPCC predicted long ago that a rise in global temperatures would increase water vapor levels, elevating the frequency and severity of storms. If these storms are indicators of anything, it's simply that we are seeing an upward trend of record breaking storms over the past decade. Hats off to Maddow for producing this piece (and tip of the hat to Jeanne for posting this to FB):
So I am looking for a few volunteers to help produce a short 2min youtube video that gives a compelling, logical, and science based argument about why these record setting snowfalls do not refute climate change. I haven't seen anything like that. There are a few decent authors (and bloggers) who make the argument, but I just don't think they're getting through. Not many people read TIME magazine anymore, unfortunately... this is a great article:
Another project I'm working on, Change: The Documentary Series has a much broader scope with a documentary about the human impacts of climate change...but perhaps this mini-doc could be a supporting segment? What do you think?
0 comments:
Post a Comment