This is just a post of personal opinion, not science. Each post is me trying to work out why I think what I think, and what I think in the first place. Written in haste as I tour, and rarely proofread, grouchy grammarians beware.
If the idea of the Higgs Boson meant an urgent requirement of big business to change its thinking and its profits, would we frequently hear Nigel Lawson on Radio 4 stating that there is much uncertainty about the work at CERN and the scientific consensus gives much room for debate.
“We should approach these latest findings with scepticism, the jury remains out and it would be hasty for governments to bring in any restrictions based on the possibility of any boson”.
This is not a post of facts and evidence, just an emotional one concerning my confusion over our reaction to climate change science. How can something so possibly devastating for human life be played with as if its just a parlour game for contrarians vent dummies popping out of the silk pockets of CEOs? Why is this the science that is more doubtful than most despite an impressive body of evidence? Instinctually, it seems it is because it is currently the branch of evidence based thinking that most urgently calls for a change in our consumerism and others’ profits.
Is Slavoj Žižek right that it is easier for us to imagine the end of the world than a change in global capitalism?
Are we losing our anticipatory animal instincts that made us what we are? Is anything beyond the immediate just a blurry imagining to be batted away?
I think I’ll be alright, I’ll be gone before it really kicks in. I’ll just have put up all the Guardian posters of the undersea creatures that became extinct during my lifetime, some amateurish blu tacking before the apocalypse. I imagine my heart will have burst on stage during an overly zealous Brian Blessed impersonation (and I imagine Brian Blessed will still be alive, outliving me by many years despite doing the impersonation for so much longer).
As I close my eyes and feel the blood slowing to a standstill, will I hear the thunder and think, “well, I’ve left a right mess for my son. Will he find the plans I started for that ark?”
I don’t know much about climate change. I have read a couple of books by climate change scientists and Greg Craven’s What’s the Worst The Could Happen? I have talked to scientists, both generalists and those in the climate field, and on this limited information, I have decided to believe that something needs to be done.
I am prepared for a world where we must cut down our consumption and look at the costs to our planet. I am sure I may swear when I realise that I forgot to have a hot shower during the allotted time and maybe I will look back with nostalgia at 24 hour TV and budget flights. I don’t wish to imagine a future like The Road, but I presume I will have to imagine a world that may not be quite as well-lit and devil may care as my first 40 years (I was never really that devil may care, but my surroundings were).
I think our problem is the speed we become acclimatised, life was always like this wasn’t it? Will we be the last that can be the truly selfish ones?
“excuse me, why did you screw it up for all of us?”
“because we liked shiny things and pigging out, bad luck”
Why did I smoke? I used to wake up every morning with a sore throat and think, “oh no, that’ll be tonsil cancer, it’s curtains for me. You bloody fool, you killed yourself with your foolish Freudian oral fixation. Did you learn nothing from the man himself and his prosthetic jaw?”
Then an hour or so later I’d start smoking, all ready to face my imminent death the following day and the next one and the next one, but ambivalent until daylight and groundhog regret. The slow trudge and barriers thrown up that slowed the acceptance of cancer and cigarettes being linked is frequently used as a case study in what is going on with climate change now. The possible ramifications of being stymied by big business and interest groups are far greater here.
When we are young we mix up feelings indestructibility and not giving a jot if we die (though if facing it head on may soon change our mind), maybe we are too young as a species to have come up with the technologies we have. Our minds, or some people’s minds, have created machines and conceits that are too complex for most of us impulsive juveniles. Are we toddlers with hand grenades?
Science requires doubt, but if we wait until all semblances of doubt are gone on the causes of climate change, there may be few us left in that bunker and that small procreative gene pool underground may lead to some lumpen oddities in the next stage of evolution.
In the end, I think of Joel Pett’s cartoon – “what if it’s all a big hoax and we make a better world for nothing?”
Is a world without the level of joys and comforts some of us have got used to in the last few decades, just not worth existing at all?
My Darwin/Feynman/Blobfish related stand up tour is coming to Sheffield, Brighton, Manchester, Birmingham, Isle of Wight and many more. Also putting on two more shows with Brian Cox this Christmas. All details HERE
Happiness Through Science DVDs are HERE
Robinince's Blog 
I think one of the reasons we can blow hot and cold about climate change (ho ho!) is a form of denial. End result is I think we are participants in an intergenerational ponzi scheme: http://jamesgdyke.wordpress.com/2012/05/21/the-intergenerational-ponzi-scheme
Can I suggest some listening to accompany this article? In “Songs From The Floodplain” Jon Boden has contemplated the question of how society may change following a climate/fuel related change
So now global warming is the contrarians fault! You people!
Whenever I hear the average reaction to climate change from others who are in denial I am always reminded of the speech given by Agent Smith in The Matrix.
“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply, and multiply, until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet, you are a plague, and we are the cure.” (Agent Smith in the Matrix)
I have a relative whom shall not be named, who once said to me around the dinner table while the gathered were talking climate change, “Climate change is not happening”…she said, “On what evidence are you basing your conclusion?” I replied, To which she said “I don’t need evidence, I just don’t believe it”.
I am afraid this is what we are up against, denial! It is the same logic kids base the, if I shut my eyes you can’t see me, idea. If I think it is not happening, then it won’t be.