I often wonder where climate change deniers get their scientific information. It can't be science magazines and journals. If you are convinced that humans couldn't possibly be responsible for our current warming, you must avoid magazines like Science News.
Science News has been around for 90 years. It is an American science publication that comes out twice a month and is "devoted to short articles about new scientific and technical developments, typically gleaned from recent scientific and technical journals."
Science News was first published "1922 by Society for Science & the Public, a non-profit organization founded by E. W. Scripps in 1920," the same organization that publishes the Record Searchlight.
I've subscribed to this magazine for a few years now along with New Scientist and Scientific American. I received the August 25th issue of Science News in the mail today. The cover story is about melting glaciers in the Himalayas but there were several other interesting articles inside.
For example, there is a story about how circumcised males are less likely to get AIDS than uncircumcised males. Another story described an apparent connection between night lights and depression. Another story focused on how to drastically increase kidney donations to hard-to-match patients.
Most of us would have no problem "believing" these stories. I mean, why not? They are stories summarizing published scientific studies from refereed science journals. But what about this one about how stronger storms are destroying the ozone in our atmosphere? Can you "believe" this one? Yes, if you trust science. Yes, if you think logically and rationally. But no, not if you are a climate change denier.
The first line is a problem for our denier friends: "Climate change may spur the destruction of ozone in unexpected parts of the globe."
But it gets worse for the deniers: "In a warming world, many scientists believe, severe weather will become more common. That could be a problem in part because powerful rainstorms have the potential to erode ozone above the United States, researchers report online July 27 in Science."
If you are a denier, you must have a knee-jerk reaction to this article. Your brain is willing to accept any and all science about AIDS, circumcision, night lights, depression and kidney transplants. But all science about human-caused climate change must be a lie. Am I right, deniers? Can't be true.
And even though, you have no proof, you have to believe these scientists must be part of some conspiracy to defraud the public and create a world government. Am I correct? You must develop and maintain irrational and illogical beliefs about a purely scientific topic and rigidly hang onto your fantasies even though you lack a shred of science in support of your position.
In the same issue you can read about the massive warming in Greenland last month. Now I guess if you are denier, you either need to deny that Greenland is melting or you need to come up with a scenario where the melt is natural. The fact there isn't any science to support this denier fantasy is irrelevant. The deniers have never needed science to substantiate any of their claims.
The article describes "A heat wave, possibly the biggest in a century," that "washed over the frozen island in mid-July" and caused "around 97 percent of the surface ice" to melt temporarily. "Slush even appeared at Greenland's highest, coldest spot."
Overall, more of Greenland's ice melted in June and July than in any previous year during the satellite era, says Marco Tedesco of the City University of New York."
But repeat after me deniers: this has nothing to do with human activity. You must never stop believing.
It seems "Tedesco and other ice experts" had just predicted "that an island-wide thaw could happen within the decade." And then it happened. Team leader Jason Box, a glaciologist at Ohio State University, said, "We could kind of see it coming. It's not hard to make these predictions, because the odds are stacked in favor of warming."
But if you are denier, you can't believe this. Your denialism requires that you come up with an alternative explanation that makes no sense from a scientific perspective. But deny you must. Making sense has never been required and never been necessary for you.
Richard Alley, a glaciologist at Penn State University, said, "Nature could have caused this [year's] melt event by chance but humans made it more likely with greenhouse gases."
Every single year, Greenland loses "close to 300 billion metric tons of ice" but this does not mean the world is getting warmer, deniers. Ice can melt when it gets colder, right?
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