I get in arguments, debates and conversations about climate change all the time. I hear a lot of people talk about how they aren't sure if it's real, or how they think it's not really a big deal, or that they think it's already too far along and it's just going to destroy everything and there's nothing we can do about it so we should just live it up while we still can. These are the folks mixing martinis on the deck as the Titanic was going down.

I’m a believer. I believe that the Earth’s climate is messed up and that what we are doing as humans has an impact. My guess is a big one. I can’t be sure either, as I don’t understand the science and I have nothing tangible to point to as a reason for believing in it. I get that the weather today has little to do with the climate of where I’m standing 20 or 50 or 100 years from now. I feel like the denial and brushing off of the damage we do on a daily basis is like a smoker choosing not to think about what’s going to happen down the road, or someone who just drinks and drinks and then runs out of beer late at night and complains about having to go to the store for more at 10:30. Plan ahead, folks- think about the results of your actions. And understand, with climate change, that you can interpret what you are seeing to suit your world view. Indeed, it’s what people have been doing for ever.

In an op-ed today for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman writes:

“Although there remains a mountain of research from multiple institutions about the reality of climate change, the public has grown uneasy. What’s real? In my view, the climate-science community should convene its top experts [NASA, MIT, etc.] and produce a simple 50-page report. They could call it “What We Know,” summarizing everything we already know about climate change in language that a sixth grader could understand, with unimpeachable peer-reviewed footnotes.”

And I think he’s right on. The arguments over statistics in the IPCC report and the crap back and forth around the cold weather in some parts of the country casting doubt on long-range climate science predictions are distracting us from the fact that there is a “mountain of research from multiple institutions about the reality of climate change”.

He continues with a nod to his preference for the term “global weirding,” as much of the current weird weather around the world can be attributed to the early effects of a changing climate. The weather, indeed, has been predicted to become strange and extreme by climate scientists. When those extremes are to the cold or wet end, skeptics and deniers use them to make flimsy, short-sighted temperature and weather- based arguments against the reality of climate change.

Friedman touches on this as well, but all of the debate leads me back to two simpler understandings: 1) the way we create energy now is dirty and destructive. We need to find a way to do it more cleanly. 2) The way we get our fuel makes us dependent on other countries for a basic necessity. We need to remedy that.

Photo Credit: woodleywonderworks (via Flickr under CCL)