Oil companies’ own scientists predicted the warming in the 1970s. Carbon isotopes now prove the extra CO2 is ours. And still, in the country that has emitted the most, many call climate change unreal. This is not a gap in knowledge. Denial is a defence: every doubt we keep alive gives us a safe place to hide, because accepting the carbon means accepting that our own desire is heating the planet. What are we protecting when we refuse to know?
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[From a session on climate denialism, held beside a live demonstration: a block of ice standing for the Himalayan glaciers, slowly melting into a tank of water.]
Questioner: One interesting argument I saw that they make is that the Eemian interglacial period happened about 125,000 years ago, and during that the temperature rise was about 3 to 6 degrees. Now, the logic is that there were no humans then and temperature increased, so temperature can increase without humans being there, and that too at that level. So how do we know that the temperature increase right now is by humans? It can clearly be like the Eemian interglacial period, not increased by humans.
Acharya Prashant: This is again such a bad argument. A school kid knows how to answer this. In eighth or ninth, you’re taught of isotopes, right?
The objection is: similar temperature rise or worse temperature rise happened in the past also, and when it happened, there were no human beings. So this time when it is happening, how are you blaming human beings? Last time it happened in a bigger way, in a worse way, even without human beings, so this time also it is possible that human beings are not responsible. That’s the argument. “Why are you unnecessarily blaming us? We are little cute, innocent babies. We are doing nothing, just playing around. Needlessly telling us that we are destroying the Earth. No, we have not done anything.”
