Head or Heart the logic of Climate Change

I was talking recently to a friend about the way that some people are in denial about climate change. However it is not just on this topic but on many aspects of life, as most people don't think. I am not saying they are thoughtless, its just that they think with their hearts and not their head.

If we take Evolution as an example, no matter how much proof there is placed before creationists, they will not accept that we, human animals, are the result of evolution. Because of their blind faith they can not see, or are not prepared to see that rational thought shows the logic of natural selection to be true. They are thinking with their hears and not their heads. The most wide spread manifestation of this phenomena is in sport, where millions of people get all fired up over adults playing children's games.

When it comes to climate change there are those who deny the evidence and have blind faith that it has to be natural. While others have their head in the sand, and don't want to acknowledge the reality of a human induced changing climate as it would mean them changing their behaviour.

The reality is that we will all get a shock when the level of the seas rise. While the IPCC predicts a rise of up to one metre by the end of this century, that forecast is simply wrong. As the IPCC, to get agreement only included the science where there was no dissent. This was done for political reasons but by excluding all the other quality science then available, it effectively watered down the degree of the effects we will see from Climate Change.

Therefore much of the planning and policy derived by governments from that report doesn't go anywhere near implementing the changes that will be required to survive a hotter planet.

The aspect of a changing climate that most people have the greatest mistake about is that of melting polar ice. It was always assumed that the ice had to melt off of Greenland and the Antarctic to cause a rise in sea levels, not so as we already have over one foot of rise, and with tidal action and summer surface melting draining to the base of glacial lubricating their flow, a modest rise in sea level of less than a foot is all it will take to break up the Ice and float the ice off the land. All this adds to the rise in sea levels that in turn speeds up the loss of ice from the land.

This will not be a slow occurrence but swift and dramatic. When it does happen then denial of climate change will disappear, but then so will we.