Subtle Change in Climate Change Deniers

It is becoming harder and harder to deny climate change and its impacts. In less than a week two very destructive hurricanes have devastated Florida and Eastern Canada. Here is Ottawa a freak May thunderstorm left a third of the city without power, many for over a week. In Europe droughts have impacted crops and dried up rivers and the list goes on.

Recently I have seen a subtle change in the arguments of those who have been denying climate change. While they are not admitting climate change is a problem they are beginning to assert that if it is then we only need to develop the right technologies to adapt to it.

So the argument goes, stop investing in ways to prevent climate change, because it is probably not real, but let's develop new technologies to adapt to it just in case it is.

With such an argument they can demand that the Federal Carbon Price program be eliminated while money should be spent on carbon capture technology and other technologies.

It is a convenient argument and it will probably be the focus of the Conservatives' proposals to "fight" climate change going into the next election. So, I hope their opponents are ready with the arguments against it when it comes.

Because of course they are wrong. Technology is certainly part of the answer. However, it is a simple fact that technology alone will not save us. We have to reduce ghg emissions as well. They will go hand-in-hand and there is not getting around it.

Look at it this way. We are in a boat on the lake and it has developed a substantial and worsening leak. We have a bucket to bail, which is keeping us from sinking but the hole is steadily getting bigger. For the climate deniers their solution is to use the bigger bucket, problem solved. Sounds stupid when you put it that way because, of course, the only real way to solve the problem is to patch the hole and then bail out the water that is still in the boat. 

That is where we are with climate change. We are bailing our asses off and staying ahead of the game but we continue to pump way too much ghg into the atmosphere and eventually it will get to a point where it will overwhelm the balance in our atmosphere with untold negative outcomes for our civilization and maybe our species. If we hope to have any chance to preventing that we need to reduce ghg emissions and develop new technologies that will allow us to adapt to the change in the climate that we are already experiencing. If we choose only one we are probably done.

I welcome climate change deniers at least acknowledging that something needs to be done but they still have some way to go. Hopefully, they get there when we still have the time or the concern about the climate and our future hits critical mass early enough and makes their denial irrelevant.

I continue to be pessimistic that we will either that happen before a global climate catastrophe befalls our civilization.