More on the climate change debate and the myth that predictions of a short period of global cooling by some scientists undermines the whole weight of evidence for long term global warming trends. Are we just victims of our evolved short term brains? That many “just don’t get it” seems to prove it.
This New Scientist http://bit.ly/NZLTb article explains the myth and my take on it is bellow.
We seek constant reassurances about our personal safety and we look around for information, hints and clues that we are safe. This is part of our natural defences, a throw back to a time when we would stalk the prey we needed to eat or foraged in places often occupied by animals that would prey on us.
In the 21st Century our senses key to our environment and its stability, we lookout for extreme weather and financial and job security rather than tigers, snakes and crocodiles. This in part explains why we both fear global warming and many at the same time deny it.
How can we feel safe or spurred to action when one set of experts are telling us that the world climate is changing and getting warmer and another is telling us its getting colder? Even our own senses seem at odds with the global warming advocates, I even had to put my central heating on briefly in August!
Global Warming is a long term problem that needs us to act now if we are to have any chance to prevent the dire consequences. However, to do so will have a significant effect on our lifestyle and possibly even our jobs and financial security.
We are conditioned to react to the immediate threats and as Global Warming does not seem to offer an immediate threat we can easily dismiss it if we chose. In contrast the immediate threat to our lifestyle, jobs and financial security comes from the proponents of action on Global Warming and climate change. Ironically we spend billions on preparing for a future war we hope never comes and we spend billions on insurance to pay for disasters which again we hope will never happen to us.
Global Warming on the other hand is a threat that we can reasonably scientifically predict will happen and we can estimate the timing and costs to some degree, yet we fail to grasp this and fail to provide the billions necessary to prevent it happening and prepare for the worst case scenarios. This is illogical but a function of our short term brains. Wars have happened and natural disasters have happened in our lifetimes and we remember them but Global Warming has not.
If we dont watch out we will become labelled by future historians as the civilisation that had the short term vision and inadequate action plan on Global Warming that led to its demise. When it did see day to day evidence of a Global Warming crisis it was just too late and too expensive to fix. Sad.
