Maybe We Shouldn’t Be Surprised

Twenty years ago the skeptics said climate change wasn't happening. Scientists, (otherwise known as the experts) proved them wrong.

Then the skeptics accepted that climate change was actually happening, but argued it wasn't man made. Scientists, (otherwise known as the experts) proved them wrong.

Now the arguments made by skeptics (who are never the experts BTW) are that:

1. Scientific consensus is a liberal conspiracy driven by the science community’s need to perpetuate their own employment by making up problems that don’t exist (because there aren’t enough real problems in the world to fully employ scientists).  
2. Yes climate change is happening, but there is nothing we can do about it. 
3. The last thing we need is the government getting involved. Regulations, after all, might slow job growth.

Of course we COULD have spent the past twenty years debating how to change our collective behavior to slow or even reverse the negative aspects of climate change.

But we didn’t.

Instead we wasted the last twenty years by allowing people with zero scientific expertise to have the same credibility in the debate as people with nothing but scientific expertise.

We allowed ignorant Aunt Sarah, obnoxious brother-in-law Rush, and angry Uncle O'Reilly to change the focus of our national conversation when it should have been defined by scientific experts with smart, “science-y” sounding names like Einstein, Hawking, Sagan, or Oppenheimer.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised.

After all, we are a nation that permits people who think the world is 6000 years old to influence what is taught in Biology class.

We give horrible childhood diseases like whooping cough and measles new life because a Playboy Playmate goes on Oprah with pseudo-science doubts about childhood vaccinations.

We allow our high schools to have budgets for football that dwarf the budgets for math and science, combined. Then we complain because our companies have to recruit engineers and analysts from foreign countries.

And in our nation’s colleges, for every 10 students who graduate with a degree in Computer Science, we graduate 9 with degrees in Parks, Recreation, Leisure, and Fitness Studies.