Climate scientists and smear campaigns

The article exclusive to CNN by Michael Mann details the more than decade-long assault on reputable scientists as they work their way through the research on climate change. The science is solid and scary: we are in for a very long rough ride. The klaxon has been sounded warning of the role human activity plays in the process.

Still there are people, mostly industrialists and politicians who insist that the problem isn’t real, or isn’t our fault (so don’t do anything about it) or is a “natural” event (so don’t do anything about it again). Anything but agreeing we have screwed up the world and now are poised to totally ruin it. And they have a receptive audience for their ravings. Not surprisingly the majority of this audience are Americans in the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Many of them also conservative religious followers. The logic and reasons for this are obvious but fodder for another essay later.

My point here is this: The people who expound on the falsity of the climate science will suffer just as much as the rest of us, and they, their children and grandchildren, along with the rest of us will be ruined by the coming avalanche of destructive global climate changes. By denying the process they are not gaining immunity to the outcome. On the contrary they are guaranteeing a swifter and deeper crisis.

I wish I would be around to see them wringing their hands and screaming “SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING!!

And Who Might That Be?

CNN citation: http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/28/opinion/mann-climate-change-email-attacks/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Image: http://mariovittone.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/drowning.jpg

Hate and Hope

Somewhere along the way I think some of us may have missed the point. In the fuss over Obama’s mentioning that if he has a son he would look like Trayvon Martin a bigger truth was lost: to some bigot, every son looks like Trayvon. Not the color or the dress, but the stereotyped image of whomever they hate. Young white kids, yellow kids, red kids, brown kids, queer kids, different kids of all kinds; it doesn’t matter to the “eye of the beholder”. If you hate a group you hate their kids too. And kids make an easy target.
So don’t think your kids are immune because they aren’t exactly like Trayvon: they are not. All our kids are at risk in a society that tolerates the levels of hatred we seem to tolerate. At the core of hatred there is fear. And I must admit I fear for my kids every day. And I hate the people that hate them. Not enough to kill them, though. That probably distinguishes us from “them”. They hate and kill, we just hate and hope.
It may be that using the term “hate” is not quite what I mean. What I don’t mean is being consumed by hatred. What I do mean I don’t quite know. When I think of homophobes, anti-Semites and retardophobes (maybe just coined a new word, not PC but understandable) and all the other -phoebes in the world I feel pity for them because of the wonderful people they will never really know, and I feel sorry for the hatred that burns within them, and I feel afraid that they will strike an innocent. So maybe hatred isn’t the right word. Revulsion? Disgust? Maybe just plain hate would be easier. Another sad truth is that some of us also look like Zimmerman sometimes.
Image: http://newsone.com/files/2012/03/million-hoody-march-trayvon-martin.jpg