Tag Archives: climate change

Morning in America, 2017 (part 2)

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According to my interpretation of the data, the impact of house fires is both small as well as beneficial. For example, we could be roasting marshmallows over there right now.

To get the wording of this comic just right, I Googled “climate change deniers” and found the wiki, which is chock full of mind-bogglingly specious reasoning and really has to be read to be believed. What is clear is that, for some years now, certain factions have achieved leverage in their fight against reality by accusing their opponents of doing the things they themselves are doing. For example: stating that the 97% of scientists who have studied the phenomenon are lying for their own personal profit (clearly bunkum: anyone who knows a decent sample size of scientists knows that scientists very rarely profit off of anything) when in reality, the people behind climate change denial (ahem…the fossil fuel industry) personally profit from squashing good science.

When I was a little girl, in the early ’80s, I remember reading about anthropocentric climate change for the first time. “Hmm,” thought little Dragon, “this looks like something that requires more data.” By the ’90s, data trends indicated, to me, a reasonably skeptical person, that there was something going on with greenhouse gases and the environment. By the ’00s, there existed enough information that no rational human being could dismiss the danger. But, instead of shrugging and turning away from a small percentage of irrational ostriches behaving in a dangerously self-centered, ignorant, and short-sighted fashion, we gave them a seat at table and an equal voice in a discussion that had been settled to the satisfaction of everyone who bothered applying rationality and logic to the question years earlier.

Guess what? Just because they let you talk on TV does not mean your argument possesses validity.

Admittedly, there’s a little Fox Mulder to me. I want to believe. I’d love to believe that there are aliens, fairies, and beautiful golden carp that grant wishes to those who pull them from the water but spare their lives. It would be wonderful to live in that world. I’d love to believe that, in the next 20 years, we won’t see the continued melting of the ice caps, the continued rising of the ocean, the continued trend in extreme weather, or the continued dying off of countless species (including large numbers of our own species dead as a result of climate based disaster).

I want to believe that so bad. But there’s. No. Evidence.

The house is on fire. Whether or not you believe fire exists, whether or not you believe the fire was started by bad wiring or an anomalous lightning strike or spontaneous combustion, whether or not you think there’s any point to fighting the fire, the fire will still burn.

This comic should probably link to my other comic about climate change denial and my other comic that uses a house on fire as a metaphor for people being married to their irrational beliefs.

Queen of Hearts Mandala

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Off with her head. Off with all their heads.

I’m starting to suspect that posting mandalas actually decreases the traffic on my blog, but goddamnit I have all these freaking mandalas and they need to be uploaded and I’m going to post them on the Internet. So there.

In other news, I read that the standard style book is changing and “Internet” will no longer be capitalized come this summer. That makes zero sense to me. That’s like saying that we’re going to stop capitalizing “America” or “Europe.” The Internet is like its own country and deserves to be a proper noun. Sigh. /end nerd rant.

This weekend was a wreck. I’ve been sick all week. I thought it was just a combination of allergies and the residual stress of my bullshit nightmare journey at the beginning of the month, but The Man, who also thought it was just allergies, has had all the same symptoms, but 2 days in advance of mine, so clearly he caught a weird cold and then gave it to me. And I’ve probably given it to everyone I’ve hung out with since I got back, because our friends are all pretty casual and we sharing drinking vessels and other things that touch your face. Sorry guys. It’s really just a mild cold. But still annoying.

Also, it rained all weekend, which is just completely ridiculous. I didn’t move to the goddamn desert to watch it rain constantly. On the plus side, in 50 years when the entire east coast is under water, climate change may very well turn the desert verdant and arable. If the Big One hits California and it falls into the ocean, Arizona could be the next Garden of Eden. Still, it wasn’t what my brain needed.

I’m writing a sad comic for Tuesday. It’s about my life.

Microclimate Change Deniers

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Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting of anti-vacuumers to get to.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a meeting of anti-vacuumers to get to.

Back in elementary school, in the very early ’80s, I remember hearing about global climate change for the first time. I was probably in second grade, and our class was talking about the future. (Speculating about the year 2000 was a popular diversion in the ’80s.) My project for this unit was building a model of the moon base that we were supposed to have by 2000, and just thinking about such a distant time was very exciting.

Even back then I was a skeptic, and I recall listening to the discussion of how industrial pollution combined with the greenhouse effect could raise the temperature of the earth by a noticeable amount and thinking, “Well, I’m going to wait and see before I believe that one.”

After 30 years of observation, I’ve determined that global climate change is undeniable to me, and I don’t get how anyone who’s been alive more than 20 years can pretend that things haven’t changed. Do you know how hard it is to get 97% of scientists in a particular field to agree on any new idea? I mean, you can wave the correlation-does-not-equal-causality flag all day if it pleases you, but you have to admit that hurricanes, tornados, blizzards, earthquakes, floods, and heat waves are happening with greater frequency/intensity. You don’t even have to admit that this has anything to do with human activity, but you do have to admit that it’s happening.

And yet some people don’t.

This is baffling to me. A recent issue of National Geographic addressed what seems, in America, like a basic war on science, but the concept that a person’s religious faith or political belief could dictate their perception of observable phenomena remains perplexing. Large freighters are navigating the Northwest Passage. The entire population of an island in Papua New Guinea was forced to relocate because their home is now underwater. Sugar maple production in New England has dropped measurably.

If you honestly believe that there is no such thing as climate change, you’re hanging your laundry in the rain.