DENIALISM -''CLIMATE CHANGE''- DEPRAVITY

OPINION : Americans who deny climate change are risking civilization for ideology, profit and ego.

The Trump administration is, it goes without saying, deeply anti-science. In fact, it's anti-objective reality.

But its control of the government remains limited; it didn't extend far enough to prevent the release of the National Climate Assessment, which details current and expected future impacts of global warming on the United States.

True, the report was released on Black Friday, clearly in the hope that it would get lost in the shuffle. The good news is that the ploy didn't work.

The assessment basically confirms, with a great deal of additional detail, what anyone following climate science already knew :

Climate change poses a major threat to the nation, and some of its adverse effects are already being felt.

For example, the report, written before the latest Californian disaster, highlights the growing risks of  wildfire in the Southwest; global warming, not failure to rake the leaves, is why the fires are getting ever bigger and more dangerous.

But the Trump administration and its allies in Congress, will, of course, ignore this analysis. Denying climate change, no matter what the evidence, has become a core Republican principle.

And its worth trying to  understand  how that happened and the sheer depravity involved is being  a denialist at this point.

Wait. Isn't depravity too strong a term?

Aren't people allowed to disagree with conventional wisdom, even if that wisdom is supported by overwhelming scientific consensus?

Yes, they are - as long as their arguments are made in good faith. But there are almost no  good-faith climate-change  deniers.

And denying science for profit, political advantage or ego satisfaction is not O.K; when failure to act on the science may have terrible consequences, denial is, as I said, depraved. 

The Honor and Serving of the latest Operational Research on Climate Change, effect and thinking, continues. The World Students Society thanks author and thinker Professor Paul Krugman., for his valued opinion.