"And we insist on staying stupid when being smarter is an option"[1]
The ongoing momentum towards renewables may present some cause for optimism, but let’s not forget the magnitude of the task ahead. Recall the sobering catalogue we have encountered:
The Paris targets are pointing in the right direction, but they fall far short of keeping global temperature increases to 1.5 to 2 degrees above pre-industrial times, and even if fully implemented, warming is headed towards 3 degrees or more by the end of this century, and even if we were to achieve the impossible and stop emissions immediately, we would still be locked into warming from the gases we’ve already poured into the atmosphere. The same with sea level rise, which will continue unabated into the next century were emissions to stop tomorrow.
The evidence is there, but why is it not accepted?
We routinely accept advice from our legal and medical advisers because we concede their expertise each in their own field, but in the case of the atmospheric scientists, 97% of whom agree that there is a problem and that human beings are the root cause behind it, we reject their cumulative knowledge and expertise – something like me trading opinions with a brain surgeon about the treatment protocols for removing a brain tumour; or, as Brian Cox recently pertinently observed, the passengers up the back of a Jumbo passenger jet deciding that they’re in just as good a position to land the plane as the pilot.
We willingly accept the benefits that science conveys to make our lives more comfortable in the twenty-first century - qualitative advances in health, weather forecasting, communications, computers, smart phones and other electronic devices to name but a few – yet, on climate change, using a blend of armchair logic and inverted common-sense, scientists pre-eminent in their field just don’t know what they’re talking about.
Or, as Ian Verrender, the ABC's business editor, would say:
"In most facets of their lives, climate sceptics rejoice in scientific advancement and technological breakthrough. There's never any debate about Einstein's theory of special relativity. They never question the revolution wrought by electronics. They revel in high-speed travel. And when it comes to health, they demand the latest and the very best.
"But with climate — or more specifically electricity generation — they blanch at the idea of moving much beyond 1776, the year James Watt improved Thomas Newcomen's steam engine. Setting fire to coal and boiling up a big pot of water so the steam can turn a machine is apparently the pinnacle of modern electricity generation and a point beyond which we shouldn't venture, regardless of cost".
Why is this so? Psychologists have come up with a number of explanations:
Faced with a complex and overwhelming amount of information, our brains take shortcuts, and instead of taking the time to analyse, we defer to someone else’s point of view; or interpret the evidence to fit our own pre-existing beliefs - a phenomenon known as confirmation bias - or accept beliefs that accord with a social or political grouping or other interest group to which we belong or sympathise with[6], or a combination of all three. Others find comfort in climate change myths which have been discredited long ago.
Those belonging to those tribes or clubs we call political parties, especially those on the right of the political spectrum, rigid, rusted-on self-styled “conservatives”, who are unprepared to shift even in the face of a mountain of unequivocal facts to the contrary, live their lives cocooned in their own preconceived worldview or self-concept, cognitive dissonance in other words: a refusal to change the way we think, particularly where it conflicts with a long held world view, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is a good example. He doesn’t even take the time and the trouble to read the Finkel report, relying instead on second hand reports to lambast its contents because it conflicts with his own pre-conceived worldview about the pre-eminence of coal[7].
The laissez-faire economists On yet another plane are those who espouse a political ideology of liberal economic flavour who think that markets and industries should be free to operate unencumbered by restrictive government regulations making the uncontroverted scientific facts of climate change the enemy to be defeated when they contradict their viewpoint[8]. They become sceptical about climate science when they think that the proffered solutions look suspiciously like a wish list or recipe for extensive government intervention[9]. This is especially so in the United States, and indeed, our own country, where support for renewable energy and action on climate change often contradict other key political priorities, such as supporting coal-mining communities and the domestic oil industry[10].
Science vs "my worldview" Researchers have found again and again that attitudes about climate change are shaped far more profoundly by political ideology or by comfort with proposed solutions to global warming than they are by the science itself, and when scientific studies conflict with ingrained political values, it is all too easy to dismiss the scientists themselves as biased or migrate toward a different set of authorities, however marginal, who can poke holes in an inconvenient report[11]. They wear their ignorance like a badge of pride. For them, it’s a case of “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”[12], because the science challenges their perspective and the status quo and renewable energy poses a very significant threat to them.
In these instances, it’s not the actual science many science deniers are adamant about, but the implications of science for their worldview and ideology. When anti-intellectualism rises to the surface, says Katherine Hayhoe, Professor of Political Science at Texas Tech University, it's because there are new, urgent results coming out of the scientific community that challenge the perspective and status quo of people with power, and renewable energy now poses a very significant threat to them. The issue has become tribal and politicised, so much so that “if you're on the left of politics, it's like a statement of faith to say climate change is real. And if you're on the right, it's a tenet to say it isn’t”[13].
This is not an issue which can be solved by armchair reasoning or by surrendering one’s judgment to those who speak with blustering certitude[14] on the airwaves or the more outspoken of our elected representatives. In the US, the dismissive people are really only a very small part of the populace and primarily older white males clustered in Washington, D.C.[15] In this country, we have our own self-styled “conservative” variety in the nation’s capital, and the talk back hosts of Sydney radio. Such people have staked their identity on that denial. It's as much a part of them as their kidneys or heart, and when you're asking them to change their mind, you are literally seen as a threat.[16]
And in yet another corner, we have the not-my-problem brigade those who regard what is happening with complete indifference as we lurch towards the looming abyss[17]. If someone isn’t already on board with climate science or is just disengaged and feels like it doesn’t matter, more information about ocean acidification or attribution of extreme weather events isn’t going to change their minds.[18] And even though most Americans and Australians accept that climate change is happening and that human activities are responsible, most do not think climate change affects them personally. They think it's more a problem for those living in third world countries or for future generations. It's in our psychology to deny an overwhelming problem that isn't immediately bearing down on us[19].
Professor Hayhoe’s technique for dealing with people who are uncommitted but interested is at their own level, the level where we and they live, showing how climate change is affecting their food, water, economy, agriculture, infrastructure, security. People will react when confronted with the reality of consistently high temperatures or the sharp rise in tidal flooding that is already beginning to swamp cities like Hampton Roads, Virginia that affects them personally, even when they do not accept or are indifferent to the philosophical reasons driving climate change[20], and if someone supports the growth of clean energy, does it really matter why they support it? Dealing with the deniers at their own level is only destined to result in frustration and a banging of heads against walls.
A sense of déja vu
Actually, we’ve been through all this before. When meteorologist Alfred Wegener came up with the idea of continental drift in 1912 he was ridiculed. Fifty years later, his ideas were confirmed in the theory, and indeed the reality, of plate tectonics.
Before that, in the nineteenth century, the existence of airborne bacteria was a subject of dispute. No less a personage than Alfred Loomis, one-time president of the New York Academy of Medicine, was moved to comment: “The [germ] theory, which so recently has occupied medical men, especially in Germany, is rapidly being disproved, and consequently is rapidly being abandoned. ….. People say there are bacteria in the air, but I cannot see them.”[21] He did not change his view until shown that the tuberculosis bacterium was indeed visible if you used a microscope. An unfortunate casualty of this intransigence was the American President James A. Garfield, who died with the best surgeons in the land at his bedside because they failed to take the most basic hygienic precautions in their treatment of him after he was shot[22].
The unfortunate casualty of the present intransigence as regards climate change is likely to be not just one person but the planet itself. It is beyond argument that climate change is caused by the presence of too much heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That much was realised in the nineteenth century, even if the existence of air-borne bacteria wasn’t. It is now beyond dispute that the major cause for this is the burning of fossil fuels by human beings. All this is corroborated by a variety of worldwide satellite surveillance devices and other techniques, but there are still a myriad doubting Thomas’s, not the least of which are embedded in government circles, who still insist that man-made climate change does not exist, is “a hoax” or “crap” and not worth worrying about.
"As fires consume large parts of the land, it would appear parliaments – including Australia's – are preoccupied with economics and international conflicts while they hardly regard the future of civilisation as a priority".[23]
All I can say to those who espouse such views, is that if you are wrong in this - and the overwhelming consensus among scientists suggests that is the case - and nothing is done, then your grandchildren and mine and their children and grandchildren are destined to pay a very heavy price.
Elwyn Elms
First draft June 2017
Revised: October 2020
Below:
Appendix A: A new geological epoch, the Anthropocene.
Appendix B: The 97% scientific consensus on global warming.
Appendix C: The main greenhouse gases (GHGs)
Appendix D: The 3%: some well-known climate sceptics
Appendix E: Climate science myths that refuse to die
[1] A quote from Steve Mirsky's paper referenced below at [12]: “None so blind – disregarding new scientific information can be deadly”, Scientific American, February 2017, 70; also at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dirty-doctors-finished-what-an-assassins-bullet-started/ The full citation reads "And we insist on staying stupid when being smarter is an option".
[2] Large passenger vessels can now sail through the previously impassable North West passage: https://www.polarcruises.com/arctic/ships/expedition-ships/ocean-endeavour-arctic/northwest-passage-2018#rates_56
[3] Sydney had 3 instances of unseasonable extended heat waves in Autumn 2018. On 7 January that year the temperature reached 44 degrees: https://www.accuweather.com/en/au/sydney/22889/january-weather/22889 and in early August the temperature exceeded 40 degrees for 3 days in a row: https://www.accuweather.com/en/pt/lisbon/274087/month/274087?monyr=7/01/2018. There were heat waves in the Northern hemisphere across Europe and Japan.
[4] Across California in the northern summer; throughout NSW in our 2018 winter, leading to the earliest fire ban and bushfire warning season in living memory.
[5] https://www.canberratimes.com.au/politics/federal/is-this-a-red-line-for-us-15b-european-trade-deal-doomed-if-australia-dodges-paris-pledge-20180831-p50109.html
[6] Douglas T Kenrick, Adam B Cohen, Steven L Neuberg, Robert B Cialdini, “The science of anti-science thinking”, Scientific American, July 2018, 28-33.
[7] “Mr Abbott said the nation's power system should be run to provide "affordable, reliable energy, not primarily to reduce emissions"”: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-delivers-thinly-veiled-warning-over-climate-change-policy-shift-20170606-gwl9tc.html
[8] Michael Shermer, “How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail - Why worldview threats undermine evidence”, Scientific American, 1 January 2017, 63.
[9] https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/nov/05/a-climate-science-report-that-changes-minds-dont-b/
[10] Ibid.
[11] https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/nov/05/a-climate-science-report-that-changes-minds-dont-b/
[12] Steve Mirsky, “None so blind – disregarding new scientific information can be deadly”, Scientific American, February 2017, 70; also at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dirty-doctors-finished-what-an-assassins-bullet-started/
[13] Ibid.
[14] Professor Brian Cox’s evocative phrase, related in Michael Strom, “Stars in his eyes for the good of science”, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 April 2017.
[15]
[16] Ibid.
[17] Clive Hamilton, “Climate silence: our tragic indifference to the looming abyss”, SMH, 10 May 2017.
[18] This and other citations from the same website are drawn from a piece by Brad Plumer which appeared in the New Your Times on 5 November 2017 following the appearance of the federal government’s Supplemental Climate Assessment Report in November 2017 at https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/nov/05/a-climate-science-report-that-changes-minds-dont-b/
[19] Hayhoe, op cit, 58.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Cited by Mirsky op cit.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Dr Andrew Glikson, earth and climate scientist at the ANU, "The Amazon fires and the dilemma for scientists". SMH 26 August 2019: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-amazon-fires-and-the-dilemma-for-climate-scientists-20190825-p52kiq.html
Next
- rising global temperatures, extremes of heat and rising temperatures across the planet, melting polar icecaps[2], a weakened northern polar vortex, a disappearing polar icecap, uncharacteristic severe storm and tornado activity at lower altitudes, catastrophic flooding in South West India in late 2018, warming oceans, coral bleaching and death, intense heat waves[3], extended droughts, unseasonable bushfires[4] and a myriad of other climatic scenarios of significant proportions.
- in order to keep warming below the dangerous 2 degree Celsius threshold, energy sources such as solar, wind and nuclear that emit low or zero levels of carbon dioxide, along with technologies that can capture and store carbon, must at least triple by 2050, and greenhouse gas emission must fall by 40 to 70% compared with 2010 levels.
- at the present rate, we are on track to miss the 2 degrees C goal by 2 degrees C by the end of the century, reaching a total of 4 degrees Celsius increase. In order to avoid this we’d have to cut 6.2 per cent of our emissions every year for the rest of the century.
- if we continue on a “business-as-usual” basis and burn all the world's known fossil fuels, this would result in the release of the equivalent of 5 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide and drive global temperatures 8 degrees warmer than pre-industrial levels by 2300. As much as 90% of Australia’s remaining fossil fuel reserves will need to remain in the ground, assuming the country does its bit to keep warming to within 2 degrees
- by 2300, global temperatures would range from 6.4-9.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial times with a mean warming of 8.2 degrees. Arctic regions would warm by as much as 19.5 degrees.
- A 2017 report by the United Nations environment program that found Australia’s emissions were set to far exceed its Paris pledge and government data released in January showed Australia's annual emissions had risen for the fourth year running [5].
The Paris targets are pointing in the right direction, but they fall far short of keeping global temperature increases to 1.5 to 2 degrees above pre-industrial times, and even if fully implemented, warming is headed towards 3 degrees or more by the end of this century, and even if we were to achieve the impossible and stop emissions immediately, we would still be locked into warming from the gases we’ve already poured into the atmosphere. The same with sea level rise, which will continue unabated into the next century were emissions to stop tomorrow.
The evidence is there, but why is it not accepted?
We routinely accept advice from our legal and medical advisers because we concede their expertise each in their own field, but in the case of the atmospheric scientists, 97% of whom agree that there is a problem and that human beings are the root cause behind it, we reject their cumulative knowledge and expertise – something like me trading opinions with a brain surgeon about the treatment protocols for removing a brain tumour; or, as Brian Cox recently pertinently observed, the passengers up the back of a Jumbo passenger jet deciding that they’re in just as good a position to land the plane as the pilot.
We willingly accept the benefits that science conveys to make our lives more comfortable in the twenty-first century - qualitative advances in health, weather forecasting, communications, computers, smart phones and other electronic devices to name but a few – yet, on climate change, using a blend of armchair logic and inverted common-sense, scientists pre-eminent in their field just don’t know what they’re talking about.
Or, as Ian Verrender, the ABC's business editor, would say:
"In most facets of their lives, climate sceptics rejoice in scientific advancement and technological breakthrough. There's never any debate about Einstein's theory of special relativity. They never question the revolution wrought by electronics. They revel in high-speed travel. And when it comes to health, they demand the latest and the very best.
"But with climate — or more specifically electricity generation — they blanch at the idea of moving much beyond 1776, the year James Watt improved Thomas Newcomen's steam engine. Setting fire to coal and boiling up a big pot of water so the steam can turn a machine is apparently the pinnacle of modern electricity generation and a point beyond which we shouldn't venture, regardless of cost".
Why is this so? Psychologists have come up with a number of explanations:
Faced with a complex and overwhelming amount of information, our brains take shortcuts, and instead of taking the time to analyse, we defer to someone else’s point of view; or interpret the evidence to fit our own pre-existing beliefs - a phenomenon known as confirmation bias - or accept beliefs that accord with a social or political grouping or other interest group to which we belong or sympathise with[6], or a combination of all three. Others find comfort in climate change myths which have been discredited long ago.
Those belonging to those tribes or clubs we call political parties, especially those on the right of the political spectrum, rigid, rusted-on self-styled “conservatives”, who are unprepared to shift even in the face of a mountain of unequivocal facts to the contrary, live their lives cocooned in their own preconceived worldview or self-concept, cognitive dissonance in other words: a refusal to change the way we think, particularly where it conflicts with a long held world view, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Former Australian Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, is a good example. He doesn’t even take the time and the trouble to read the Finkel report, relying instead on second hand reports to lambast its contents because it conflicts with his own pre-conceived worldview about the pre-eminence of coal[7].
The laissez-faire economists On yet another plane are those who espouse a political ideology of liberal economic flavour who think that markets and industries should be free to operate unencumbered by restrictive government regulations making the uncontroverted scientific facts of climate change the enemy to be defeated when they contradict their viewpoint[8]. They become sceptical about climate science when they think that the proffered solutions look suspiciously like a wish list or recipe for extensive government intervention[9]. This is especially so in the United States, and indeed, our own country, where support for renewable energy and action on climate change often contradict other key political priorities, such as supporting coal-mining communities and the domestic oil industry[10].
Science vs "my worldview" Researchers have found again and again that attitudes about climate change are shaped far more profoundly by political ideology or by comfort with proposed solutions to global warming than they are by the science itself, and when scientific studies conflict with ingrained political values, it is all too easy to dismiss the scientists themselves as biased or migrate toward a different set of authorities, however marginal, who can poke holes in an inconvenient report[11]. They wear their ignorance like a badge of pride. For them, it’s a case of “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge”[12], because the science challenges their perspective and the status quo and renewable energy poses a very significant threat to them.
In these instances, it’s not the actual science many science deniers are adamant about, but the implications of science for their worldview and ideology. When anti-intellectualism rises to the surface, says Katherine Hayhoe, Professor of Political Science at Texas Tech University, it's because there are new, urgent results coming out of the scientific community that challenge the perspective and status quo of people with power, and renewable energy now poses a very significant threat to them. The issue has become tribal and politicised, so much so that “if you're on the left of politics, it's like a statement of faith to say climate change is real. And if you're on the right, it's a tenet to say it isn’t”[13].
This is not an issue which can be solved by armchair reasoning or by surrendering one’s judgment to those who speak with blustering certitude[14] on the airwaves or the more outspoken of our elected representatives. In the US, the dismissive people are really only a very small part of the populace and primarily older white males clustered in Washington, D.C.[15] In this country, we have our own self-styled “conservative” variety in the nation’s capital, and the talk back hosts of Sydney radio. Such people have staked their identity on that denial. It's as much a part of them as their kidneys or heart, and when you're asking them to change their mind, you are literally seen as a threat.[16]
And in yet another corner, we have the not-my-problem brigade those who regard what is happening with complete indifference as we lurch towards the looming abyss[17]. If someone isn’t already on board with climate science or is just disengaged and feels like it doesn’t matter, more information about ocean acidification or attribution of extreme weather events isn’t going to change their minds.[18] And even though most Americans and Australians accept that climate change is happening and that human activities are responsible, most do not think climate change affects them personally. They think it's more a problem for those living in third world countries or for future generations. It's in our psychology to deny an overwhelming problem that isn't immediately bearing down on us[19].
Professor Hayhoe’s technique for dealing with people who are uncommitted but interested is at their own level, the level where we and they live, showing how climate change is affecting their food, water, economy, agriculture, infrastructure, security. People will react when confronted with the reality of consistently high temperatures or the sharp rise in tidal flooding that is already beginning to swamp cities like Hampton Roads, Virginia that affects them personally, even when they do not accept or are indifferent to the philosophical reasons driving climate change[20], and if someone supports the growth of clean energy, does it really matter why they support it? Dealing with the deniers at their own level is only destined to result in frustration and a banging of heads against walls.
A sense of déja vu
Actually, we’ve been through all this before. When meteorologist Alfred Wegener came up with the idea of continental drift in 1912 he was ridiculed. Fifty years later, his ideas were confirmed in the theory, and indeed the reality, of plate tectonics.
Before that, in the nineteenth century, the existence of airborne bacteria was a subject of dispute. No less a personage than Alfred Loomis, one-time president of the New York Academy of Medicine, was moved to comment: “The [germ] theory, which so recently has occupied medical men, especially in Germany, is rapidly being disproved, and consequently is rapidly being abandoned. ….. People say there are bacteria in the air, but I cannot see them.”[21] He did not change his view until shown that the tuberculosis bacterium was indeed visible if you used a microscope. An unfortunate casualty of this intransigence was the American President James A. Garfield, who died with the best surgeons in the land at his bedside because they failed to take the most basic hygienic precautions in their treatment of him after he was shot[22].
The unfortunate casualty of the present intransigence as regards climate change is likely to be not just one person but the planet itself. It is beyond argument that climate change is caused by the presence of too much heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. That much was realised in the nineteenth century, even if the existence of air-borne bacteria wasn’t. It is now beyond dispute that the major cause for this is the burning of fossil fuels by human beings. All this is corroborated by a variety of worldwide satellite surveillance devices and other techniques, but there are still a myriad doubting Thomas’s, not the least of which are embedded in government circles, who still insist that man-made climate change does not exist, is “a hoax” or “crap” and not worth worrying about.
"As fires consume large parts of the land, it would appear parliaments – including Australia's – are preoccupied with economics and international conflicts while they hardly regard the future of civilisation as a priority".[23]
All I can say to those who espouse such views, is that if you are wrong in this - and the overwhelming consensus among scientists suggests that is the case - and nothing is done, then your grandchildren and mine and their children and grandchildren are destined to pay a very heavy price.
Elwyn Elms
First draft June 2017
Revised: October 2020
Below:
Appendix A: A new geological epoch, the Anthropocene.
Appendix B: The 97% scientific consensus on global warming.
Appendix C: The main greenhouse gases (GHGs)
Appendix D: The 3%: some well-known climate sceptics
Appendix E: Climate science myths that refuse to die
[1] A quote from Steve Mirsky's paper referenced below at [12]: “None so blind – disregarding new scientific information can be deadly”, Scientific American, February 2017, 70; also at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dirty-doctors-finished-what-an-assassins-bullet-started/ The full citation reads "And we insist on staying stupid when being smarter is an option".
[2] Large passenger vessels can now sail through the previously impassable North West passage: https://www.polarcruises.com/arctic/ships/expedition-ships/ocean-endeavour-arctic/northwest-passage-2018#rates_56
[3] Sydney had 3 instances of unseasonable extended heat waves in Autumn 2018. On 7 January that year the temperature reached 44 degrees: https://www.accuweather.com/en/au/sydney/22889/january-weather/22889 and in early August the temperature exceeded 40 degrees for 3 days in a row: https://www.accuweather.com/en/pt/lisbon/274087/month/274087?monyr=7/01/2018. There were heat waves in the Northern hemisphere across Europe and Japan.
[4] Across California in the northern summer; throughout NSW in our 2018 winter, leading to the earliest fire ban and bushfire warning season in living memory.
[5] https://www.canberratimes.com.au/politics/federal/is-this-a-red-line-for-us-15b-european-trade-deal-doomed-if-australia-dodges-paris-pledge-20180831-p50109.html
[6] Douglas T Kenrick, Adam B Cohen, Steven L Neuberg, Robert B Cialdini, “The science of anti-science thinking”, Scientific American, July 2018, 28-33.
[7] “Mr Abbott said the nation's power system should be run to provide "affordable, reliable energy, not primarily to reduce emissions"”: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/tony-abbott-delivers-thinly-veiled-warning-over-climate-change-policy-shift-20170606-gwl9tc.html
[8] Michael Shermer, “How to Convince Someone When Facts Fail - Why worldview threats undermine evidence”, Scientific American, 1 January 2017, 63.
[9] https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/nov/05/a-climate-science-report-that-changes-minds-dont-b/
[10] Ibid.
[11] https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/nov/05/a-climate-science-report-that-changes-minds-dont-b/
[12] Steve Mirsky, “None so blind – disregarding new scientific information can be deadly”, Scientific American, February 2017, 70; also at https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dirty-doctors-finished-what-an-assassins-bullet-started/
[13] Ibid.
[14] Professor Brian Cox’s evocative phrase, related in Michael Strom, “Stars in his eyes for the good of science”, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 April 2017.
[15]
[16] Ibid.
[17] Clive Hamilton, “Climate silence: our tragic indifference to the looming abyss”, SMH, 10 May 2017.
[18] This and other citations from the same website are drawn from a piece by Brad Plumer which appeared in the New Your Times on 5 November 2017 following the appearance of the federal government’s Supplemental Climate Assessment Report in November 2017 at https://lasvegassun.com/news/2017/nov/05/a-climate-science-report-that-changes-minds-dont-b/
[19] Hayhoe, op cit, 58.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Cited by Mirsky op cit.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Dr Andrew Glikson, earth and climate scientist at the ANU, "The Amazon fires and the dilemma for scientists". SMH 26 August 2019: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/the-amazon-fires-and-the-dilemma-for-climate-scientists-20190825-p52kiq.html
Next