Tuesday, May 02, 2006

State of Confusion

Thank goodness lunch was almost over when my co-worker started to tell me about Michael Chrichton's new novel State of Confusion. With eyes wide with enthusiasm she began to tell me about her latest read, and how global warming was a myth created by extremists to propagate fear to control "us". She talked about how it opened her eyes with the ease of someone just out of a confessional

Well I have gotten better with my self editing, so I listened as my skin crawled with the realization that an educated woman (with progeny) could so easily dismiss the environmental movement. So I waited a few minutes before I started to say, better to be cautious and wrong than....Nope! She wasn't having any of it. Argument or discussion- denied. No, it's in this book, and he's got footnotes...

I went a surfing on the subject afterwards and came across a great site on climate science by climate scientists RealClimate. I especially like the comment section- comments 14, 19, 33, and 34 spoke to me respectively. Gavin Schmidt did a great job reviewing "problem areas", and if you're going to read this book, have had a similar conversation with a friend or are just interested in the science behind global warming check it out. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=74

The reservations I had about her apparently were there for good reason. Kind of disappointing, but as selfish as it may seem to me it's her opinion and she's entitled to it. Fuck.

1 Comments:

At 5/02/2006 09:28:00 PM, Blogger Vivec said...

One reason many people would prefer to be in willful denial about global warming is because it absolves them of responsibility. Oh! It was just a scientific misperception - my Dodge Durango isn't really destroying the ozone layer.

pfft. You are personally responsible for killing fish, and making the air dirtier whether you're sitting there, farting, or whether you're the chief technician of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Step up and do something, that's the only legitimate way to relieve guilt. Doing something could involve doing nothing - like not buying a car, or not building a big new house on the edge of wetlands. Or it could be active - I want to volunteer for an electronics recycling program when i'm finished my math class.

 

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