NC SPIN:

July 24, 2016 at 7:50 am
Gregory Wlodarski says:

Beck Gray today was perturbed that liberal legislators attacked certain organizations for their climate change stance, describing the attack as an attack on free speech. There are two things wrong with her complaint.

First, free speech that is used to form public policy is not protected speech and deserves all the scrutiny that reason and critical thinking (i.e. science) can muster.

Second, the evidence for climate change and the evidence against arguments put forth by deniers is so overwhelming, that denial of climate change is akin to thinking the world flat. Denial of climate change, then, is at best ignorance, at worst is self-deception or fraud, and governing a city, state or nation are not served by these warp thinking processes.

The current Co2 level have just risen above 400 from a level of 280 ppm in 1880; (for hundreds of thousands of years, the level ranged from 250-280). Initial elevations from 1880 have been at 1 ppm per year, then 2 ppm and now Co2 is increasing 3 ppm per year. Scientits have long known that Co2 is a greenhouse gas. Even the TV show Mythbusters had an episode showing the heat retaining properties of Co2 on an atmosphere.

If you wrap your body in more and more layers of clothes, at one point they will prevent you from dissipating the heat you make, and your temperature will rise. Similarly, as Co2 levels rise, the planet retains more heat that is formed from sunlight hitting the ground. Unlike the body that has a single medium, blood, to circulate heat evenly throughout, the Earth has a hot equator and cold poles and ocean and atmospheric currents that distribute heat unevenly.

Furthermore, heat does not simply increase air or ground temperature. Heat affects the water retention properties of the atmosphere. And, because water in the atmosphere acts much like rechargeable battery that affects temperature and wind, climate change is more about more extreme weather patterns than "just" high temperatures.

This is just a small sample of the science involved with climate change. Deniers on the other hand have been searching wherever they can for any purported evidence against climate change that include sun cycles hundreds of years long, sun spots, volcanoes, the medieval ice age 300 years ago, and even the presence of snow. None of these stand up to scientific scrutiny.

The issue of climate change is not an opinion, it is not free speech issue. It is a rational public policy issue.