As British Conservative Members of the European Parliament threaten to vote tomorrow against a resolution demanding substantial cuts in carbon emissions across the European Union, news emerged this week of a growing scientific consensus that finally links disasters such as the recent American tornadoes and the record-breaking drought in the Horn of Africa to the process of climate change.
In the sceptical Daily Mail this week an article reported that scientists are now prepared to link extreme weather events to global warming for the first time.
But its readers were having none of it. Their comments included:
"I guess when they examined rocks over many Millions of year, before man, these extremes must be only down to the weather. When humans appeared it seems there are people, who want us all to carry a whip, when something strange happens we should beat ourselves, for causing it."
"It would appear the doom mongers are struggling to hold the lie about how the climate changes, We all know the governments only jumped on this bandwagon because of the tax raising opportunities..."
"Well of course it is, a brilliant excuse for yet more green taxes"
"They have to blame global warming else they'll lose their funding. "- Roy, Southend, UK, 1/7/2011 17:49
"These "scientists" are giving the decent ones a bad name. Paid-for-science is an advertisement for a product. Products are advertised when they aren't selling so well."
"A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."
Sarah Palin, Newsmax, Sep. 2008"Carbon dioxide is portrayed as harmful, but there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows that carbon dioxide is a harmful gas… It is a harmless gas"
Rep Michelle Bachmann, 2009 (Candidate for 2012 Republican Presidential nomination)
"They’re saying to us [that climate change is] going to be a big problem because it’s going to be warmer than it usually is; my farmers are going to say that’s a good thing since they’ll be able to grow more corn."
Rep Collin Peterson 2009
"Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human-induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus."
Rep Paul Broun, 2011
These are the words of senior American politicians, Republicans and Democrats. They argue that Governments should do nothing about global warming because there is no evidence for it and scientists are not agreed. If change is needed, somehow, humanity will find an answer in time because we always do, allegedly.
But the problem for everyone else is - they are wrong.
For the science refuting all of the claims above, click here
But denial is a powerful thing; an emotional desire that touches every human when faced with danger. How much more easy it would be to think it away, to wish it gone, to put faith before reason, and carry on.
We have been here before, when faith plunged Europe into a thousand year dark age.
(from "The Closing of the Western Mind" by Charles Freeman)
Fighting global warming will demand huge changes of our world, our societies and ourselves. It would be great if it was a myth, or even a huge global conspiracy to get research grants for supposedly left wing scientists. But it's not. It's real, And it's now. And we have choices to make - from faith or from reason. It's up to us. Will we act, or close our minds again?
So welcome, my friends, to the end.
The final page...., of the new dark age.
