“The climate is a common good, belonging to all and meant for all,” wrote Pope Francis in his recent encyclical or papal letter.
The pope’s letter focused international attention on climate change, and he called on developed countries to limit use of non-renewable energy and help poorer nations deal with the impacts of global warming.
A “very solid scientific consensus,” he wrote, indicates a warming of the climate, mainly due to human activity.
Predictably, Pope Francis’ message was cheered by climate scientists and jeered by “climate skeptics.”
Global warming, or climate change, has become one of the polarizing issues of our time. Many consider it the most serious threat to mankind while others dismiss it as a natural fluctuation in our planet’s climate cycles that requires no corrective action.
What the debate means for ordinary folks often is confusion over what to believe.
This confusion is entirely understandable, said Dr. Eric Chivian, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and former Harvard professor.
According to Dr. Chivian, “Our brains are wired to see what is happening right in front of us right now. We don’t do very well with seeing things that are not obvious, that happen incrementally or that occur over large areas or in other parts of the world.”
Dr. Chivian was among a group of physicians, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for their efforts to prevent nuclear war. But, as he noted at a New Jersey land conservation conference in March, it’s much harder to convince people to take action against climate change than to persuade them to stop nuclear war.
“Global environmental changes, unlike explosions, can be very hard to see. They often occur slowly or intermittently, sometime almost imperceptibly and on global scales,” Dr. Chivian said. What’s more, they can be obscured by normal swings in temperatures and rainfall.”
It doesn’t help, Dr. Chivian said, that climate scientists often speak in technical language and discuss probabilities, based on observations, rather than certainties. However, the “climate deniers” are always 100 percent certain, he said.
Climate change also is seen by some people as hypothetical since it relies on computer models and projections.
“Some will say, for example, ‘How can you tell what the climate will be in 2100 when we can’t even tell with any certainty what the weather will be like next week?’ ” he said.
Then there’s the human tendency to avoid unpleasant news.
“The storms and floods, drought, fires, famine, extinctions and epidemics associated with changes to the global environment are too frightening and overwhelming for most people to think about,” Dr. Chivian said, “and seem too large and difficult to solve, making them feel hopeless and helpless, feelings we all will do anything to avoid experiencing.”
Finally, Dr. Chivian said, there has been a “widespread, well-funded, sophisticated and highly effective campaign, much as there was by the tobacco industry, to cast doubt on the science of global environmental change and to discredit the scientists.”
All these factors have combined to create confusion and paralysis.
Dr. Chivian didn’t claim to have all the answers, but he suggested global warming may be understood better if explained in terms of human impacts instead of average global temperature or concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
In a way, that’s what Pope Francis did — pointing out the massive human suffering that will result if nothing is done to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
What remains to be seen is whether the pope’s powerful words about saving “our common home” will help change public thinking about climate change and lead to action.
Find reliable information about climate change at http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence, www.climatecentral.org/, www.who.int/globalchange/en/, http://climatechange.rutgers.edu/resources/state-of-the-climate-new-jersey-2013 and www.environmentalsciencedegree.com/climate-change/.
Michele Byers is executive director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. For more information, contact her at info@njconservation.org or visit NJCF’s website at www.njconservation.org.
