This post is inspired by google maps new sea level simulator, which includes a blurb predicting a rise in sea level of up to 5m by 2100.
Ever since I read State of Fear I have been a bit of a nut about global warming. I don't actually know very much about global warming predictions, but I do know something about weather models and fluid mechanics. I recently attended a conference entitled Waves in the Atmosphere and Ocean, at the University of British Columbia, where more than one of the speakers discussed the latest models for the atmosphere. What I got from this and other similar conferences is that we don't understand the weather yet, from which I infer that we don't understand the climate either. Whenever I try to tell this to people everyone looks at me like I am crazy. "How can you not believe in Global Warming!?" as though I were saying that the world is flat or that you can grow mice from a burlap sack with some wet grain in a dark corner. I don't think that the earth's climate isn't changing (in some direction). The point I try to make in this conversation is that the general public's knowledge is hearsay. Almost no one has read any literature on global warming, yet most everyone believes its happening.
I recently read an essay by Alan Lightman about this idea in a different context. He explains that everyone believes the earth is round, but almost no one has verified this simple fact for themselves. He explains that we have lots of second hand evidence, pictures, books etc. However, if you aren't an astronaut, probably you have no first hand experience which verifies the roundness of the earth. He goes on to explain how Aristotle argued that the Earth was round, and the simple experiments you can do yourself to verify it.
Although I don't propose everyone should go out and start measuring temperatures all over the world, I am an advocate of questioning the "knowledge" handed to us by mass media. Political topics are often presented as facts in insidious ways. Not necessarily as newspaper headlines, but sometimes as new toys on our favorite search engine. In 350 BC everyone thought Aristotle was a nut for not thinking the earth was flat. Now we laugh at the idea. I wonder what people will laugh at in 2100. Google's sea level simulator?
1 comment:
I don't believe in global warming either. They also look at me like I'm crazy.
At least, I don't believe that global warming is as immediate a danger as they make it seem. People point to temperature changes as evidence. I point to the psychological phenomenon known as an availability heuristic and that 10 years ago, the media and everybody else was attributing odd temperature to El Nino.
I suppose though, making the public care more about the impact we have on the environment through fear of global warming is better than say making the public care about where Saddam Hussein is currently hiding through fear of weapons of mass destruction.
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