Dunking Tea Bags Over and Over Eventually Dilutes the Message – Climate Change is Real

What’s cool about science’s foundation and what most scientists live for is that the very scientific process applied through good scientific research is based on a principle of trying to disprove a theory, and until a whole bunch of scientists fail at that, the theory is pretty much debunked. It’s about trials and testing and multi-layered experimentation. However, consensus is a powerful weapon of marketers, politicians and those misinformed and dubiously treasonous Tea Party climate change deniers, or even low-hanging fruit grabbers in the Press. On the other hand, the scientific and the multidisciplinary approach to researching climate change relies on an even deeper and troubling understanding of how vulnerable we are on Planet Earth to the very human endeavors of torching and desiccating the land, burning up the planet’s carbon based fuels, and “toxifying” the oceans through our very backward existence and sometimes warped values. Consensus is not a prime concern in the scientific community when it comes to climate change or humans’ role in warming up the planet, the seas, and the ice caps. When it comes to questioning the idea that the sun revolves around the earth, or dismissing typical canards like the one posited by CNBC’s Joe Kernen – “I can’t believe that as old as the planet is these puny, gnawing little humans could change our climate in 70 years” — science is elegant in destroying many closely held and dangerous worldviews. Their job is not to go toe-to-toe with a bunch of ranting, misinformed Tea Party and other loosely aligned global warming deniers and delayers. Science doesn’t do well inside the arena of soapbox rhetoric and street-corner debate maneuvering or raving. However, we’d expect the media – more specifically The Press – to do a better job of prying apart the vacant theories and dubious history of these militia-loving, Boston Tea Party-ascribing, Minutemen-backing, anti-science and anti-government yelling “patriot party” yahoos. The weekly Spokane-Inland Empire newspaper, Pacific Northwest Inlander, has just given lead story status to these folk here in Spokane who are now seen yammering on and on at local events about a United Nations’ conspiracy for one-world government takeover (of Spokane, yes), or that there is a huge hoax being perpetrated by 6 billion scientists, government experts, business owners, educators and legions of common citizens called climate change. All that copy in the Inlander devoted to tea party and patriot party folk is more than disingenuous, but the relationship between the Inlander and Mike Fagan and his ilk is rather blatantly symbiotic – like mistletoe draining the life of a perfectly fine tree. These people are not trained in the sciences, and their worldview is old, outdated, and probably dangerous. They have fabricated lie upon lie when it comes to a critique on North America’s history (or future), on immigration, on race, on fair trade, or on any number of important issues that are not only backed by sound science and research and practice, but are also part and parcel issues the local, state, regional, national and global stakeholders have spent countless human lifetimes on studying and trying to solve. Tea Party joiners tend to out of hand dismiss anything, any legit body, and deep research that might go contrary to their preconceived ideas of right-wrong, science-junk science. Sarah Palin, unfortunately for them, is the face of Tea Party 101 illogic and xenophobia. They seem good at attacking humanists, sociologists, educators, scientists, their own country men and women, and the environment. They tend to believe the FBI can’t do background checks on one guy named Obama. Something about a doctored birth certificate. This political bumbling is not a grassroots organized body of people just coming out to tackle local government and local issues. The so-called tea party movement isn’t this spontaneous grassroots catharsis of pain and intellectual clarity. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman a year ago made it clear where tea party antics really arise from: “It turns out that the tea parties don’t represent a spontaneous outpouring of public sentiment. They’re AstroTurf (fake grass roots) events, manufactured by the usual suspects. A key role is being played by FreedomWorks, an organization run by Richard Armey, the former House majority leader, and supported by the usual group of right-wing billionaires. And the parties are, of course, being promoted heavily by Fox News.” Even this short column of mine now feels artificially bifurcated, or diffused, when on the one hand I want to stay focused on the climate sciences – oh, maybe 1,000 different master’s and doctorate level specialties working on climate change could be covered in 10 lifetimes – but then I have to address the failed media response to uncovering once and for all this so-called tea party movement. Columns published in DTE are supposed to weigh in under less than 900 word, but how’s that possible when the local media fail to do the heavy lifting and powerful critiques? Or when the media fail to actually tap into the vanguard research that could easily swat the Tea Party theses like a drunk fly on a cold bar wall. The tea party story and the Inlander’s interest in perpetuating their lies prove that the news loves public theater, as in tea party activists showing up at town hall gatherings lock and loaded or brandishing foolish signs against sustainability or the U.S. mayors climate initiative. Sure, movements need the media to propagate support and to even affect policy change. But the Inlander and hundreds of other bigger papers in larger markets give way too much press coverage to them while stunting publicity for those Mad as Hell Doctors advocating for single-payer health care coverage. What about the millions in the anti-war movement right before Cheney, Bush, Wolfowitz, Powell and others lead the US into war? That coverage was more than anemic; it was intentionally swept under the rug. The deniers and delayers can’t understand why scientists are worried about CO2 emissions. As famed climatologist Wallace Broecker wrote in Nature in 1995: “The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges.” While I think the IPCC is pretty conservative on its estimation of climate change predictions, there is no refuting that IPCC is leading the charge so that any number of scientists around the world can continue to research climate change and its effects on the planet. The International Panel and Climate Change stated last year that the human connection to climate change was absolutely in full view: “Greenhouse gas forcing has very likely (more than 90 percent) caused most of the observed global warming over the last 50 years. This conclusion takes into account … the possibility that the response to solar forcing could be underestimated by climate models.” Unlike the patriot and tea party movement, the IPCC relies on peer-reviewed scientific literature for its conclusions to reach a pretty discerning audience. On the one hand, Fagan yells in a bullhorn and makes all these factually incorrect statements and bizarre admonitions against science, but the IPCC and millions in hundreds of specialties have to meet rigorous requirements of the scientific method. Then they have to have their work scrutinized by others actually seeking to disprove any theories or claims. It seems fitting to go back to CNBC’s inglorious pundit’s comment about not fathoming how 70 years of human mucking about (make that 250 years) could alter the planet’s climate or atmosphere. I guess he never heard of ozone depleting chemicals, the so-called Ozone Hole, and the Montreal Treaty that actually facilitated in reducing CFCs and repairing the so-called ozone layer. Yes indeed, all that CO2 being dumped into the atmosphere is not only taking down the atmosphere, but is acidifying the oceans (as well as warming them up) according to independent ocean scientists all over the world. Instead of getting all log jammed inside the tea bag party’s stagnating hubris and finding the time to refute each party loyalist’s bizarre claims, maybe the operative phrase should now be – “Pass up on the tea, and pour on the coffee.”