Oh brother!

I was just perusing the Drudge Report  and clicked on a link to an article from Reuters about the pyschological barriers that are preventing the American people from taking action on preventing climate change. “Psychological Barriers Hobble Climate Action,” shouts the headline.

But first, here’s a photo to get you in the mood to take action: Monument Valley. Looks pretty dry and hot doesn’t it? I think it was only in the upper 90’s when we drove through. Unlike Tucson which was 107 when we left…

Yes, I’ve digressed a bit, but in so doing I’ve simulated the delay as I waited for the page to come up…

I started reading. Right off the article merely hinted as to what the barriers were (“insecurity, mistrust and denial”) before rushing to say that policy makers, scientists and marketers will need to look at these barriers in order to figure out how to circumvent them and persuade people to become more “urgent” about this matter. For some reason, even though scientists have warned people that unless they do something the sky is going to fall — Or burn up. Or evaporate. Or something — people remain relatively indifferent and non urgent. This is a travesty!

And then four paragraphs in it says this:

“Numerous psychological barriers are to blame, the task force found, including: uncertainty over climate change, mistrust of the messages about risk from scientists or government officials, denial that climate change is occurring or that it is related to human activity.”

So, uncertainty that climate change is real is a psychological barrier???

Doubt that the scientists’ and government’s warnings are legitimate is a psychological barrier? Disbelief that climate change is related to human activity? A psychological barrier?

Those aren’t psychological barriers but legitimate disagreements as to what the facts in the case are and what a reasonable conclusion based on those facts might be.

Are facts no longer relevant? Is truth no longer the issue? Is it all about marketing and presentation and “psychological barriers” to being persuaded?

Hmm. Why, yes, in some quarters I believe it is. And, oh look! They didn’t report the conclusion that climate change is not something humans can change as “doubt” but as “denial.”  As if the facts were already set in stone, it’s a wrap, all the evidence is in and supports anthropoecentric global warning and people are just deliberately turning a blind eye.

When that’s not it at all. The evidence does nothing of the kind. More and more scientists from climate related fields are challenging AlGore’s theory with actual facts and evidence, and critiquing the faulty collection methods of some of the data he uses to support it.

For example, the temperatures gathered by weather stations in various locations — eg, Russia — that were irregularly manned and so the temps from one month (September) were just written in for the next month (October) which would not surprisingly raise the average for the year.

Even aside from this, the temperature fluctuations over the past decades don’t track at all with a rise in carbon dioxide (produced by plants, animals, humans, even the ground; to say nothing of volcanoes) but it does track very closely with sunspot activity, as I think I’ve blogged on before. There isn’t a whole lot we’re gonna do about altering sunspot activity.

So the people are starting to hear the other side of the story, the one with the facts. They’re starting to hear that a whole passel of scientists aren’t buying into the party line about man-caused global warming and naturally are beginning to doubt the whole thing, yet here they’re reported as being in “denial.”

Wow.

How about another picture from Monument Valley? This time coming in from the north:

Read the article: Psychological Barriers Hobble Climate Action