What's wrong with being warmer?

Competition about climate change is a simple question of blame and change. No one wants to be guilty, and no one wants to deal with the implications and necessary changes if climate change is the phenomenon that environmentalists claim. CO₂ emissions are something that we as a species have been very good at for our entire existence; it seems incomprehensible that it would become a problem now. The changes would include everything in our everyday lives from travel to food, as well as huge renovation to our government and the global economy. The scale is simply too grand. And, because it’s so impossibly difficult to change, no one wants to take responsibility. Admitting fault at this point is admitting defeat – it would be an admission that our entire system is a failure and that we are slowly killing ourselves. That’s a pretty big mistake to take the fall for.

Both the websites examined for today used very scientific rhetoric, making them slightly incomprehensible to the average reader. It also makes them both sound very well informed though. Either side seems to present clear scientific evidence that they are correct and, without the necessary background knowledge, the reader has to take the interpretation of the data at face value. Sadly, that is one of the things that makes this such a challenging topic. Essentially, one has to choose a side to believe and then run with it because comparing the two websites is like reading a chemistry text book – pretty boring.

Interestingly, I actually find myself more drawn to the climate skeptic webpage “Friends of Science.” The website itself was better designed and more easily navigated. It used a lot of graphics and charts (which made me feel like I was interpreting meaningful data, despite the fact that I couldn’t decipher it). Finally, it was less scary and came off as less accusatory. The climate skeptics “suggest that adaptation should be emphasized rather than misguided attempts at control.” That’s a message I can actually feel myself getting behind – I mean seriously, every environmentalist should really acknowledge that we can’t control Mother Nature. Overall, the message was just more comfortable.

The “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic” website offered scientific data but definitely came off as being on the defensive. The data was presented as argumentative, not simplistic. The message was not about being impartial or interpreting “unbiased” data, it was set up specifically to change people’s minds. I do believe in climate change, but I don’t feel that it was well marketed by this particular website.