What common sense tells us about climate change

BPSDB After babbling on with a number of factoids about global population, the land surface area of Texas and so on, the ‘Tennessee Conservative Watch (TCW)” asks “Considering that the earth’s atmosphere extends 50 miles up from the surface, how can anyone with half a brain think that humans can do anything to change the atmosphere much less the earth’s climate?”

What the TCW has done is parrot one variation of the popular “common sense” arguments that climate change Deniers like to use. They all include some form of “common sense tells you” coupled with some completely irrelevant, misleading factoids. They are based on an appeal to ‘use your brain’, so let’s try that and see what happens.

“Mankind occupies less than 4 tenths of 1 percent of the surface of the earth.” TCW

Common sense tells you that:

Here, try this logic with any housemates you may have: ‘I occupy less than 4 tenths of 1 percent of the surface of this house/apartment, how can anyone with half a brain think that I can do anything to change the amount of dirt and mess?’ Think that might work? I doubt it, even if your housemates have only half a brain.

It isn’t just the physical space you physically occupy that matters, it’s how much of the space that you use. Our actual use of the Earths’ land surface is 83%, and we have brought the oceans to the point of collapse even without climate change.

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What If There Had Been No Oil Spill?

The Real BP Gulf Tragedy

BPSDB Grist reports that “Gulf oil spill panel urges overhaul of oil industry and safety practices.” Apparently a presidential panel in its final report stated that:

“The central lesson to be drawn from the catastrophe is that no less than an overhauling of both current industry practices and government oversight is now required,” the seven-member panel said in the report released after a six-month probe into the environmental and human disaster in the Gulf.”

That sounds positive, but then Kate Sheppard asks “Did we learn anything from the BP oil spill?” and walks us through some of the political realities of what the recommendations actually boil down to, and the political realities of getting them implemented. She summarizes with:

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