Ignoring reality - Climate change denial

IT is too easy and too dangerous to categorise climate change deniers as ludicrous flat-earthers intent on delaying if not stopping 11th-hour measures to try to reverse or limit the impact of our new reality.

The vast majority of the world’s scientific community, and the great majority of the world’s rational people, have long ago accepted the destructive influence human behaviour — misbehaviour — is having on the planet’s health.

Despite this, as a study involving Trinity College has found, arguments against the science of climate change are increasing and intensifying, especially among conservative think tanks in America. This must be disturbing for a world that recognises that there are ever fewer opportunities to try to turn the tide on this unavoidable challenge. As the prospect of President Trump moves from the bizarre to the entirely possible this denial becomes all the more worrying.

Groupthink, especially when unchallenged, is dangerous too but it is hard not to think that this denial of today’s science borders on the suicidal.