Climate workshop issue | Letters

Published 4:20 pm Tuesday, July 28, 2015

There’s something creepy – and offensive – about the upcoming workshop hosted by the National Park Service called Connecting to Climate.

According to coordinator Raena Parsons, “The focus of the workshop isn’t on climate change science, but more of the behavioral side of how people create beliefs of climate change and the psychology of it.” You report that “the workshop is aimed at educators who can urge people into action, instead of shutting out the negative feelings that discussions of climate change can bring.”

Simply put, the point of this workshop is that anyone who doesn’t agree that climate change is real, man-made and dangerous isn’t merely wrong, but crazy. Dismissing your opponents as crazy — and thus not even worth listening to — is an old and dirty political tactic; the Nazis and the Soviets turned it into an art form. This tactic of trashing and discrediting those with whom you disagree has no place in the modern world, and certainly no place here in the San Juan Islands.

I’m not a scientist, so my own view on this issue is of absolutely no value. But I read a great deal about this issue. I can report to you that within the scientific community today there’s a huge debate under way. While some scientists believe that climate change is, indeed, real, man-made and dangerous, other scientists disagree. And there’s a third viewpoint that seems to be gaining traction called the “lukewarmer” school, which contends that climate change is real, partly man-made and not dangerous. (Read Matt Ridley’s essay in Quadrant for a detailed summary of this ongoing debate.)

Will anyone who attends this upcoming seminar even be told that such a debate is under way? I doubt it, which is why this seminar looks more like an exercise in political ideology than Earth science.

Herb Meyer

Friday Harbor