Tuesday, July 15, 2014
"Global Warming" (This is Not About Partisan Politics)
I have cousins whose politics are diametrically different from mine. There are a few recurring topics of debate, and one of them is "global warming." My cousins are "climate change deniers."
There are three arguments made by people who do not want climate change addressed. One is that climate change is not caused by people. The second, and related, is that people cannot reverse or even impede climate change. But the real stalwarts of the anti-climate change argument assert that there is no climate change. There is no global warming. It's all made up, and the assertion that there is climate change is invented by people who either want to profit from this assertion, or they just want to make a name for themselves. Actually, one of my cousins even sent an article that argued that there is global cooling.
This is how this debate regularly goes. The closest either of my cousins has come to acknowledging what appears to most of us to be painfully obvious is to cite observations of an average global temperature increase of about 1.5 degrees F in the past century. Apart from that one tentative accession, the debate never moves. Until today. One of these guys sent me the following link:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/11/miami-drowning-climate-change-deniers-sea-levels-rising
I don't know why he sent it. I don't know if he thinks the article is tongue-in-cheek. It's very unlike him-- unheard-of, actually-- to concede any point about anything. But he did send this link. Maybe he was making tangential fun of me, almost like a non sequitur, for living in Miami. He lives in Connecticut. I replied, telling him it was an interesting article. Which it is. And that's all I wrote.
The fact is I like my cousins. I'm very fond of them. As much as our political debates unnerve all of us, it's personally reassuring and pleasing to have a little conciliation like this. Mostly, I am branded as a lefty, a socialist, sometimes a Communist, I'm accused of failing to listen to reason, and I am declared disqualified. It's nice to find out they themselves, or at least one of them, can keep an open mind.
I forgot to comment on this post, your new post reminded me, heh.
ReplyDeleteI won't comment on your family's goings but I think it may be a good first shot from your cousin.
To me the most significant part of the sea level rise for us living here is not the flood but the contamination of our fresh water supply, that will come a lot faster than actual inundations. From the article:
""Nor will south Florida have to wait that long for the devastation to come. Long before the seas have risen a further three or four feet, there will be irreversible breakdowns in society, he says. "Another foot of sea-level rise will be enough to bring salt water into our fresh water supplies and our sewage system. Those services will be lost when that happens," says Stoddard.""
I have been seriously considering moving while I am still young enough and before there is a noticeable deterioration here :(
Jorge,
DeleteIf I had to be completely honest here, I would have to say that this post was not only not about partisan politics, it wasn't about global warming, either. It's about polemics and how people who don't agree about something deal with each other.
I'm proud to say that whenever I think my cousins, or anyone else, are right about something, I grant it to them, and I try to be graceful about it. When someone's right, he or she is right.
Fred