Responding to a Christian Science Monitor article titled "Climate warming skeptics: Is the research too political?" Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Peter Cannavo penned a letter to the editor that appears on the publication's news site today. The original article addressed those who still doubted the findings of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The panel reported that most of the increase in temperatures seen in the last 50 years is due to greenhouse gases produced by human activities. In response Cannavo wrote, "Rather than acknowledge the torrent of evidence establishing global warming and humanity's role in it, they [skeptics] have resorted to conspiracy theories, questionable science, and reliance on marginal uncertainties in climate science.
"Their position is largely motivated by an ideological view that champions human domination of nature, unlimited material consumption, unregulated markets, and the belief that technology can shield us from any environmental problems that might arise along the way. The idea that humanity is now facing global ecological limits that require precautionary action and limits on our resource consumption and waste production is antithetical to this worldview.
"Unfortunately, this ideologically motivated effort to deny anthropogenic global warming is not just the province of a skeptical fringe; it has been behind the refusal of the Bush Administration and many other American politicians to take meaningful action on climate change. The real scientific debate is over; if skeptics still want to debate the issue, they can acknowledge the science and then engage in the more legitimate moral and political debate over the degree to which society ought to address this problem."
"Their position is largely motivated by an ideological view that champions human domination of nature, unlimited material consumption, unregulated markets, and the belief that technology can shield us from any environmental problems that might arise along the way. The idea that humanity is now facing global ecological limits that require precautionary action and limits on our resource consumption and waste production is antithetical to this worldview.
"Unfortunately, this ideologically motivated effort to deny anthropogenic global warming is not just the province of a skeptical fringe; it has been behind the refusal of the Bush Administration and many other American politicians to take meaningful action on climate change. The real scientific debate is over; if skeptics still want to debate the issue, they can acknowledge the science and then engage in the more legitimate moral and political debate over the degree to which society ought to address this problem."
