What do you believe and how do you believe something? What threshold of facts do you need to have in order to say something is true? Maybe you’re undecided about climate change or you’ve heard it all before and it’s just a bunch of lefty tripe. Even the extremely honest and self-proclaimed stable genius US President Donald Trump has said global warming is all a hoax. But whether you stand with the right or with the left, there’s the science behind climate change which stands up by itself. There are many people who believe in common everyday facts, eg. the Earth is round, and use wide-spread technology eg. computers and smartphones, yet remain skeptical on climate science. What makes climate science so unique among the masses that it isn’t nearly as readily accepted compared to other day-to-day facts, sciences and technologies? Let’s break it down.

On a practical basis, most things we do everyday we typically accept for granted without question. When we drive a car for example (for the vast majority of us who don’t yet own a Tesla :p ), we expect the car to work. The steering wheel turns the car, the brakes slow the car down and the petrol tank generally doesn’t all of a sudden blow up for you or for anyone else. Yes, cars break down and need repairs and maintenance but it’s something we understand and is widely accepted as something that just works and a trusted asset for most people in their daily lives.

As another example, we are told we need to have food and water to stay alive. Humans typically cannot live without food or water for more than a few days and of course, it can vary slightly depending on the person. From experience, we know we get hungry if we don’t eat but for most of us, we haven’t tested (and rightly so) the length of time to go without sustenance till the point of death. We simply are told and by conjecture of our hunger experiences that we will perish if we don’t eat or drink for long enough.

Now apply this to other scientific facts for things like the shape of the Earth and then onto climate science, where we don’t necessarily have the conjectural experience and knowledge to verify the facts. For those of us who aren’t conspiracy theorists or flat-earthers, we know the Earth is a round sphere and not flat. We know this from school and educational textbooks which contained the relevant Earth photos taken from outer space. More specifically, our sources of information include school teachers, textbooks and photos, news media and general confirmation among friends and family or people we associate with. Pre-Internet, this was it but in the Internet age, the game changes with personal websites, social media, youtube and blogs and so on. The source of information you receive is now exemplified by personal opinion and unfettered expressions of personal freedom. I’m all for freedom of expression but there is a point where it becomes dangerous and runs contrary to scientific facts. By the way, the issue that we’re talking about here goes for anything and not just climate science. Ever since Trump’s 2016 election win, we now live in a post-truth era where anything is true as long as you say it is and have enough support for it.

Now back to climate science. If we are simply told by 97% of all global climate scientists that man-made climate change is real and has destructive consequences, shouldn’t we believe it? If we are simply told the greenhouse effect is a thing, that carbon dioxide traps heat from the Sun, and that excessive amounts of (human-produced) carbon dioxide is causing global warming, shouldn’t we accept this? Major and reputable organisations around the world including NASA, the United Nations, government agencies, major universities and research institutions such as MIT, all have an unanimous agreement on the facts of climate science. Shouldn’t we also agree? To say these major organisations (or employees of) are wrong or misinformed about climate change is actually pretty stark because if that’s the case, those organisations or individuals should be dissolved or fired from their jobs for gross incompetence and falsehood.

Similarly, when was the last time we immediately and persistently challenged a professional in their assessment or diagnosis such as a medical doctor? Not to say professionals always get it right, but to completely deny a professional assessment straight from the outset and substitute it with our personal explanations is something we generally don’t do. I’m yet to meet someone who outright denies medical advice from at least say 20+ independent doctor assessments who all provide the same unanimous conclusion and then give a contrary self-diagnosis for their own illness. Furthermore, people generally don’t rely on a random blogger or a friend’s Facebook post for a medical diagnosis but we seem to do it a lot for climate science. Maybe doctors are more respected than climate scientists, who knows but fair enough, the average person probably has never made (or ever will make) an appointment to consult a climate scientist for anything in their life.

There also comes a point where sitting on the fence about climate science becomes untenable because indecision about a fact ultimately still means the fact is rejected. You wouldn’t sit on the fence about wondering whether you’d die if you didn’t eat or drink for more than a few days. In the end, people either don’t accept the climate science out of ignorance or simply because you don’t want to. But hey look, people do what they want.

Anyway, one last thing I want to mention with regards to this whole to believe or not to believe thing is prejudice and ulterior motives. The right attack the left and the left attack the right over climate change but one thing to emphasise is the objective facts of climate change shouldn’t be a right or left issue, but rather just a science issue. However, it is easy to see why it has become a right vs left issue and it’s because climate change relates to our entire economic structure. As the world slowly moves to a carbon-neutral economy, purely based on the cheaper economics of renewable energy, there will be winners and losers. You may not have a job if a new coal mine was forbidden to open for example or you may need to pay a government enforced carbon price as part of goods and services transactions. So it’s understandable why big oil or big coal want to push back against going renewable. No one wants to be on the losing side and maybe this is our true dilemma: who’s going to lose and by how much? But if it’s worth preserving our natural world and way of life for generations to come, then we should relinquish the past and work towards a post-carbon future for everyone. 🙂