We'll be talking about climate change the next couple of weeks.
Prior to our next class, I'd like you to spend a little time comparing the "Friends of Science" website with Grist's "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic."
Consider, why is there such fierce competition around the science of climate change? How should we make sense of and evaluate the scientific claims these two competing websites make? Is one of the sites more convincing than the other? If so, why?
I'd like to preface my response with noting that people don't like change. Because of this,the basic idea that there could potentially be permanent change to the way we live can send many people into a state of denial. The beauty of independent thinking is that there are always a variety of opinions. People can find information to support just about any opinion or thought they have just by interpreting the information in different ways. Unfortunately, this doesn't always mean they are correct. I think that there is such controversy over the study of climate science and climate change because people see and hear what they want to be seeing and hearing. Somehow, people find a way to interpret data and craft arguments that end up supporting their feeling of denial about change in the world. Whether it is regarding climate change, relationships, family matters, friendships or basic conflict, people find a way to see what they want to see. Humans seek information that is a part of their framework of knowledge because it is comforting and familiar.
ReplyDeleteBoth Grist and Friends of Science touch on similar, if not, identical controversial issues surrounding climate change. However, Grist lists these topics: Stages of Denial, Scientific Topics, Types of Arguments, and Levels of Sophistication, as scientifically unsupported arguments that stand in the way of proper interpretation of the plethora of scientific data that has been collected across various disciplines. Friends of Science heightens the small scientific incongruities based on a lack of a COMPLETE set of scientific data. Most of the arguments are both fact-less and overly speculative, and are based on nothing but personal bias and the affinity for ones own personal dislike for change. I think that the way many climate change skeptics make their arguments can be very convincing to people who are unsure or to people who believe that their is a higher being who's "in control". Also, they take the commonly chosen scientific graphs and data that show a trend for climate change, and they manipulate it to then, instead, show that there is no trend and that it is all somehow "coincidental".
I honestly don't know if there is a way to bridge the "scientific" gap for those people who are climate change skeptics. I think the first problem is that people talk about it as a "belief" rather than proposing it as a scientific truth. The very nature of studying science is that there is never anything that's 100% proven, there is only 99% accuracy. This begets the notion that people can either believe or NOT believe in something like Climate Change or Evolution. "Believing" science is not really like taking a "leap of faith" like it is to believe in religion, it's the closest thing we will ever have to fact.
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