I haven't heard much denial of global warming lately from those in my vicinity, short of Pavlovian outbursts whenever I poke one of them with a stick.
"They just want to ruin our great economy!" "The science is flawed!" "It's the Sun warming up!" "It's cyclical! Look at all those Ice Ages!"
Yes, Earth goes through regular cycles of cooling and warming. Serbian mathematician Milutin Milanković worked out many of the problems of our planet's motion and the resultant climate changes 70 years ago. But there is nothing in his work to lend any support to the wingnuts' claims of natural explanations for what is happening so rapidly. Scientists continuing his research speak of warming and cooling cycles that last from 19,000 to 50,000 years.
There is another way of looking at what is happening, not in terms of temperature but moisture. The poles are supposed to be arid, two of the driest places on Earth. So what shall we make of this?
One scientist came back from the North Pole and reported that it was raining there, said David Carlson, the director of International Polar Year, the effort to highlight the climate issues of the Arctic and Antarctic. "It makes you wonder whether anyone has ever reported rain at the North Pole before."
Paradox is maybe the hardest philosophical concept for conservatives to grasp, the biggest one being "Why should we keep doing things the way we always have?" Perhaps rain recorded falling for the first time at the North Pole is another...
Al-Fali looked at Jessica. "Once it was the land where nothing grew. Now there are plants. They spread like lice upon a wound. There have been clouds and rain along the belt of Dune! Rain, My Lady! Oh, precious mother of Muad'dib, as sleep is death's brother, so is rain on the belt of Dune. It is the death of us all."
--Frank Herbert, Children of Dune (1976)
Cross-posted at Water on the Moon.