I was driving to work this morning with Cindy in the passenger seat next to me. I don’t know who she was referring to when she said, “it annoys me that he doesn’t believe in climate change.”
I found myself responding, “I don’t believe in climate change either.” Then I stopped to consider whether that’s really true.
Yeah, I just don’t believe in it. How could anyone believe in it. It’s not something that warrants belief. The human-caused climate change hypothesis simply reflects a scientific consensus. The balance of evidence, as judged by the significant majority of experts in the field, seems to be that human activity has been causing climate change and, unchecked, that it will cause further climate change. That continued climate change will be catastrophic for life on Earth. Where is the need for any kind of belief in that?
It’s not a black-and-white thing. It’s not true or false. It’s an issue with a large amount of data that has been parsed and statistically analyzed producing a complex, nuanced, and constantly shifting set of conclusions and recommendations. There’s no room anywhere in that for black-and-white beliefs.
This hypothesis, the evidence gathered in relation to it, and the consensus opinion of the wisest next-steps given our best guesses of statistical probabilities is simply what is. On…
