Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Extreme Weather in a Hotter World

In last month's edition of Scientific American, they had an article that says Americans trust scientists above all other professions, save the military. But when it comes to specific findings, people often choose to reject scientific consensus. A few pages later, they reminded us of one of those examples, as climate models have predicted more instances of extreme weather in a hotter world. The article explains that you can never point to one storm and say "that's global warming" but that there's been a dramatic rise in the total number of extreme weather events just as the climate models said there would be. Then it gives a few famous examples: abnormal floods in Pakistan, and Nashville, blizzards in the US, the epic heat wave and fires in Moscow, drought in China (and the article didn't even mention the record year of tornados in the US or flooding on the Mississippi).

So it's here, climate change. The scientists have been warning us of these consequences for a while now. And while we trust men of science to land men on the moon, diagnose and treat our diseases, and process the crime scenes on our TV shows, we selectively don't trust them when they tell us we're killing the planet and endangering ourselves. Makes sense. So considering the collective action needed to save us from our world's fate, and considering that these deniers are not letting us listen to the experts attempt to warn us from our calamity, I propose a way to let climate deniers suffer their own downfall. Every denier of climate change should not be allowed to listen their doctor's medical advice. From now on, they must only get their diagnosis and treatments from organizations secretly funded by the oil industry, the Bible or Fox News.

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