Global Warming:A moral issue?

Question

Why is it that there are still some people out there who do not believe Global Warming is real despite the fact the international scientific community (I think the IPCC?) has came out and said they are 95% certain it is due to humans? How can people say the scientific community just wants to profit off this? How would a scientist profit off this when they are payed by organizations for their research and their reputation (which is vital to scientist) relies on it? Is it just a moral issue? Do people simply not care? If so how can they not care? Socrates said "one can not know and then not do the morally right thing." So is it simply a lack of knowing which keeps us from doing the right thing?

In other words, explain to me how it is possible humanity ignores which we know is most likely true (according to the scientific community-im trying to be unbiased here)?

I have been reading a lot of responses and I would like to bring up another point:If Global Warming was fake then why are the leaders of many countries coming together to discuss making a better Kyoto Protocol before the first one ever ends? Just check out news websites for confirmation of this.

Answer 1

What Socarates meant is personal knowing, the concept, as I understand it of self realization, rather than Knowledge as such. There is a massive difference between knowledge and 'to know', the two do not necessarily ever become aggregated in any person.

Taking it on the basis of 'knowledge' then there is often cognitive dissonance present: for example a smoker who refuses to stop smoking although he 'knows' that it increases his risk of lung cancer. On a mental or cognitive level the smoker understands the facts. However, he is not making rational decisions based on those facts; he continues to smoke by totally ignoring that HE may get lung cancer as a result. To know reality/truth whatever you want to call it, he must have both the knowledge, our man does, and the acceptance or belief that it increases his chance of lung cancer significantly. He is not arguing against the fact that lung cancer risk is significantly increased by smoking, he will find other, reasons to justify his smoking that do not include risk to him. 'My Grandad smoked all his life sixty cigs a day, and was knocked over by a bus aged 96'. It takes the risk away from the person.

These other reasons become the primary focus, the facilitators to justify his smoking habit. Facts and information is found to support those beliefs that are supporting the habit.
So in your GW example above it may be fear of change, fear of harm that are the motivators for GW deniers. The above is a very simplified explanation of 'knowledge', cognitive dissonance and risk taking behavious. Perhaps oversimplified but we lack room.

Many people have become divorced from the natural world. We see ourselves as separate from nature, so do not respect nor understand the costs of our behaviours. We do not recognize the 'oneness' of the Earth, that we are part of that web.

'To Know' as Socarates describes is perhaps better to think of as self realization ??? It could be argued not. It is an intrinsic recognition of your part in the whole eco system, part of a complex web of life. Equal to all other living parts but not superior to it.

Each INDIVIDUAL must come to their OWN philosophy that recognizes this 'oneness' of all living things. This 'morality' needs to be central to every being, automatic, inbedded in every action, thought and deed.

Many individuals need to reach this 'oneness' in order for any of the above man made/accellarated problems to change. This may be done through education, interaction with the enviornment, spiritual practice like in Buddhism. In Buddhism the concept for me is a 'feeling: spirituality?' put into words it would be 'Cherishing all living things equally' and tread lightly.

Answer 2

First, a bit of a rebuttal to your assumption that global warming MUST be caused by humans:

1. Science is NOT a democracy. Its a dictatorship of the facts. Whether or not 95% of people believe it is irrelevant. At one point, people said the Earth was flat. Is it?

2. There is NOT a consensus. There is conflicting data.

3. Much of the science behind the crisis is bad!
a. False Positive Pattern Recognition: Seeing shapes in the clouds or patterns in the data, whether or not theyre there or not.

b. Confirmation Bias: People that think global warming is caused by humans will prove it does, while ignoring conflicting data.

c. Lack of controls: It is not possible to control the climate, therefore the methodology is dubious at best, invalid at worst.



Segundo, in response to how scientists can profit from global warming.

1. Scientists receive grant money from organizations that often have agendas. If a lobbying organization wants to show that humans cause global warming, they can find scientists to say so. Scientists that do so will continue to get grants. Those that don't won't.

Saying what people want you to is profitable. And if likeminded people control the media, it helps your reputation too. Look at Al Gore. Global warming is trendy and releasing a good paper on it is reputable.

Scientists are not nearly as noble as we hope. I am in the trenches of science, so I get to see bits and pieces first hand.



Basically, here is how I see your argument:

You: "There is global warming! And it is man's fault! Everyone knows!" [Common Knowledge rhetoric]

Me: "I disagree."

You: "You must be ignorant or a morally drained person" [Ad Homenim Attack]

I would be interested in further discussion to clear up these issues, but I am afraid that yahoo answers does not permit such things.

Answer 3

The consensus is not as comprehensive as you assert. The fact that many scientists are ostracized or denied funding because they are not on the bandwagon of thought is the real immorality here.

Nobody is certain of the extent of our contribution to this so called climate change. One thing is certain and that is that the Earth has been doing a pretty amazing job of playing with the climate controls of the planet for over a billion years.

This is not to say we should never waste matter or energy.
To waste and to take everything for granted (and not in gratitude), always wanting more is often a sin that Earth can do without! The quantity of true man-made poisons, and not CO2, which incidentally is not a pollutant, can be mitigated by creating less waste.

Answer 4

Your question makes certain assumptions that are incorrect.

First, you are assuming the scientific community is being accurately represented by the IPCC report. It is not. The IPCC has a number of biases and some scientists have resigned because of it. Roger A. Pielke, one of the world's most prolific climate scientists, has written about this repeatedly. See some of his links in his latest contribution on this topic http://climatesci.colorado.edu/2007/09/01/the-2007-ipcc-assessment-process-its-obvious-conflict-of-interest/

Second, you are assuming the scientists who are being accurately presented by the IPCC do not have their own motivations. You need to understand how money, research funding, drives research. If scientists get a hold of a real scary scenario, they can drive billions of dollars in research funding into their field. Evidence indicates that some of these scientists have not reported facts contrary to their conclusions and have intentionally biased their results.

Someone once said "There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics!" When they want to, scientists know how to make statistics lie. Read the article on "Kyoto Treaty Based on Flawed Statistics" at http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/Climate_L.pdf

Third, you are assuming the global warming scientists are not making well intentioned mistakes. Scientists are supposed to be skeptical about the research of other scientists. Science is all about reproducing the other fellow's work to see if he is making mistakes or not telling the truth. If a researcher will not give you access to his data, methods and source code, it is not science and can never be science. It is pseudoscience. Much of climate science is pseudoscience because these guys do not want others to check their work.

Do you remember the scene from the Wizard of Oz - "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!" - the wizard did not want anyone to know his tricks. That is pseudoscience. But that is exactly what many climate scientists do. Stephen McIntyre is a statistician who audits climate research. But climate researchers often do not give him their data because they are afraid he will find errors. I have attached just one posting by McIntyre regarding his attempts to get certain data. See http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1240 This kind of thing is repeated over and over again.

Skeptics will forever be skeptical until the research data, methods and code are turned over so it can be reproduced. The data that has been obtained (sometimes through Congressional subpoena) has always had errors in it.

Answer 5

is survival of the species a moral issue you tell me amoral behaviour by people who have followed amoral Alien philosyphies as regards to Nature makes it more of an amoral issue the only moral solution might be to sacrifice the amoral elements to the gods ,to take the pressures of food production,water shortage and stop the destruction of Nature ,using the remains to fertilize the lands destroyed by the agro chemicals used by mono culture farming the Gods would be over the Moon and those who love the environment may be able to recover something, after those who ¨owned ¨everything have gone Ooops i forgot global warming is a Natural process ,Man had nothing to do with it, still it would solve a lot of problems

Answer 6

If they knew for sure, they wouldn't have to give a percentage on how certain they are. What they are telling us is that they are taking a guess, they do not know if man is the cause of so called global warming.

We shouldn't act on guesses or hunches as rushing to solve problems we don't fully understand causes bigger problems.

Imagine forcing people to pay more for a problem that didn't really exist. In a couple of years the Sun will get cooler and so will our climate. We don't need to do anything now.

Answer 7

People deny it because they're lazy. It's much easier to be wasteful and live luxuriously so they embrace the "data" from the well-paid "scientists" who say global warming is a hoax, and write off the vast amounts of supporting evidence as incomplete or false. They don't want to believe it, so they tell themselves that everything is okay.

Answer 8

Many believe propagandas that distort the truths

Some elements of society ,have downplayed the facts because solutions or changes are expensive and to admit to the reality ,means having to change .
,
Change effects many peoples incomes,and upsets profit margins

We may be kept in the dark of the real things that are going on for political , economic and even religious reasons

Global Warming disagrees with what was written

Many People are used to fiction and they feel more comfortable with fairy tales instead of the truth.

Many believe that our fate is in Gods hands ,and they prefer to focus on the beautiful heaven that awaits.

It would be Ironic ,if Hell came to Earth instead ,and we would NOT have to die to get there including those who did not deserve it

like me
help

Answer 9

Some ignorant narrow minded people choose to remain in denial. Even though it's staring them in the face they choose not to see it. They are the same kind of people who only hear what they want to hear, and then they stop listening. I also believe there are those who feel like "it won't affect me in my lifetime, so why should I worry about it". So short sighted. Then there are those who are too stupid to even understand the concept of global warming, and unfortunately you have those who simply do not care, they think it is somebody Else's problem.

I think global warming is real. It is part of a natural cycle that has been radically accelerated by mankind. It is now up to us, to slow it down, by realizing how it happened, which we do, and now doing something about it.


I think I've covered all the bases here.

That's why Al Gore calls it an "Inconvenient Truth"

Added 10/7/07: I base my thinking on common sense. We are polluting our air and water like crazy, we continue to bulldoze the rainforests, where a lot of our oxygen comes from, we continue to overfish the oceans, upsetting the balance of nature, we continue to use non renewable resources, fossil fuels, and we aren't recycling enough. We also continue to waste water and energy like it will never run out. I won't even go in to the weather problems, but to me, all of these things combined with the natural warming cycle we are in, are speeding up the process. We need to learn to live in harmony with the earth, not waste her resources, not pollute the air and oceans, not take her for granted. Why would we want to continually bite the hand that feeds us? so to speak.

If we all do our part in keeping the earth healthy, it can only be a good thing. Why wait for disaster, before we act?

Answer 10

Because if we replaced all those coal power plants with nuclear power plants all the coal miners would be finding new jobs and even more importantly all those companies that own coal mines would be out of business.

So they pay people to claim that global warming isn't happening (and as a backup they try to make it look like power sources that can't replace fossil fuels will be the solution to the problem).

Answer 11

People know but they don't care because by the time it all goes to hell, they won't be around anyway.

They don't think that saving the world for future generations is any of their responsibility. It is such a huge problem that I think most people don't believe that any of their actions alone will make a difference, so it is easier to just ignore the problem altogether. That is what keeps them from doing the right thing..not: not knowing, cuz we all know.