Have you noticed the elephant in the Living Room? It is Heading Your Way. (Part II)

By having a reverence for life,

we enter into a spiritual relation with the world.

                                            ―  Albert Schweitzer

The rules of scientific investigation always require us,

when we enter the domains of conjecture,

 to adopt that hypothesis by which the greatest number of

 known facts and phenomena may be reconciled.

                                                       ―  Matthew Fontaine Maury 

Do not ignore tornado alerts.
When the sirens sound, head for safety.
Don't expect a tornado will go out of its way
to spare you.

The big question is not whether climate change is a real phenomenon or not. It is why do Americans tip-toe around the elephant in the living room? Why is it that in a country that prides itself on its educational system, are there more climate change deniers here than in many others countries?

In June 2014, Time magazine ran an article by Michael Grunwald discussing a global survey Time had done about attitudes toward energy and conservation. On almost every question asked, people in this country were least likely to believe scientific evidence regarding climate change or that anything should be done about it.

The survey reflected how beliefs (or denial) regarding climate change consequences were reflected in people’s behaviors. People in Germany, South Korea, Turkey, Brazil, and India were more likely than Americans to “turn off the lights when leaving a room or power down their computers at night and by far the least likely to walk or take public transit.” More people here were against bike lanes and carbon taxes/carbon limits and were less concerned about “polluted air, higher sea levels and almost every other problem the pollsters asked except higher gas prices.”

Two recently released major reports on climate change support the premise that we are big trouble. Meta-analysis of weather patterns and a variety of other criteria show how much trouble we are in, if nothing is done to address the issues. Grunwald reiterates this position, stating if action depends on Americans “getting outraged . . . we are in trouble.” And our children and our grandchildren are even more so 

A cursory search on the internet describes how huge amounts of money have been devoted to fostering the idea that climate change is a myth. Much of this money comes from oil and coal companies or a tangled network of organizations that funnel funds toward fostering the idea that the scientific evidence is dead wrong. And a considerable amount of those funds have been given to GOP legislators.

The reaction of many people is to shrug their shoulders, before moving to other topics. While weather extremes have been battering the county. One would think the immediacy of damage to one’s property would make it personal – from the flooding of Manhattan due to Superstorm Sandy, rising sea levels for Virginians with homes on the coast, high tide surges swamping streets in Miami Beach, extensive drought in western states to a stuck polar vortex over the center of the country this winter causing so much harsh weather. Doesn’t anyone notice and ask why is this happening?

Part of the difficulty with the data regarding climate change lies in confusing weather and long-term climate patterns. And in misunderstandings about how science works. There are few facts in science. But that not mean that we continue to learn things about the Earth and  its inhabitants. Good science does not begin with theories. It begins with collection of data, analysis of the data, and then looking for patterns that lead to hypothesis. Only the accumulation of data moves us from isolated phenomena to hypotheses and sometimes to theory.

We know the Earth is round, not flat, as earlier people believed and as later astronomers concluded from accumulated viewing the skies with ever-sophisticated telescopes. No danger of falling or sailing off the edge! Beautiful photos of Earth from space have given us precious images of this breath-taking blue marble seeming to float in the void.

We understand that gravity (or some such force) causes things to fall downward, not upward. Drop something and take note when it lands on your foot. Likewise, we have learned how photosynthesis is the powerhouse behind green growing things. It feeds us, gives us gardens for our pleasure (and a continuous crop of weeds to be removed), and forests covering huge areas.

Just as careful research on the conception of human life has taken us beyond earlier beliefs of how life is created.  Babies result from sperm penetrating an egg, not from some mysterious process. Nor as my mother-in-law said, babies come off the sheets.

Yes, climate change is not a fact – such as the roundness of the Earth, the obvious action of gravity, occurrence of green plants, or understanding where babies come from. But the data supporting the reality of climate change is overwhelming.

Hence, the question: why is climate change in this country the elephant in the living room. From my own experience, I know that it is not possible to ignore an elephant’s presence on the dirt road in front of you! Nor is an elephant likely to remain peacefully in anyone’s living room.

Is avoidance of climate change a consequence of the enormity of the problem? An elephant on the road  - who thinks it is her road – requires putting your camera down and backing up quickly. Are the effects of climate change so great that it is hard to get one’s head around the idea or a sense of not having any options? Do many people feel an overwhelming sense of helplessness and hope that humming a little tune is the best they can do, like Winnie the Pooh,?

Or is it that people observe short-sighted big businesses being in control and feel they have no voice in these company strategies and their generation of products for profits? Is people’s frustration and anger at their government’s paralysis so great that some of them join the Tea Party, which demands big government get out of people’s lives and turn control over to local and state government – a Tea Party ironically funded money-wise by the same corporations that preach climate change denial.

Is it the belief that what one individual can do is not enough to matter –even as those same people become better at recycling?  Or are some people so short-sighted that they figure they will “be long gone” before any predicted dire effects are manifest?

No facts here – just questions as to why the general public is not been galvanized to address human causes of the destruction of life as we know it.

Tornadoes and their paths of destruction are visual images for both those who experience a tornado and those of us who view the results either personally or through news media. However, most people have never encountered an elephant in the wild. They think that humans are smarter (or more powerful) than animals and they don’t recognize elephants have their own ideas about territories. - until the massive animal comes charging toward them. 

An elephant heading straight at you indeed is a sight to behold!