Geophysics

On Facebook, from time to time, I run into some fellow who pontificates about climate change, taking the position that climate change is just a theory supported by some scientists and denied by others. This thoughtless approach is often presented as a kind of lecture on uncertainty that may include a list of cases where the science of one era changes in a later era. For example, Newton's theory of gravity was superseded by Einstein's theory of gravity (actually I have yet to run across one of these skeptics who knew that Einstein had a theory of gravity).

Perhaps the best answer to this sort of pronouncement is to point towards the American Geophysical Union, the country's largest association of climate scientists. It recently announced that 700 of its members have agreed to talk to hostile audiences and defend the consensus view that climate change is happening and that in part it is the result of human activity. They are preparing a handbook on the human causes of climate change for use in secondary schools.

There is no way to answer another sort of skeptic, the paranoid who claims that climate change theory is a leftist plot. About 50 of the new Republican members of congress support this view, joining with older members like Congressman Darrel Issa of California. These walking meat tubes are now in a position to speed up climate change, which they will do, acting out their delusions. Anyone--like Ralph Nader-- who argues that it doesn't matter which party controls congress might want--for the sake of a planet humans find habitable--to reconsider.