The End is Near? Again?

The evidence that weather patterns are changing is overwhelming, as is the evidence that it’s being caused by humans. Or so I’m told. Honestly, I haven’t seen much of this, and I’m hardly in a position to refute or validate the data from which these conclusions are made. If I had a climatologist sit me down and show me the evidence, and I actually understood it, I would still have to trust his interpretations and conclusions.
 

So I kind of understand people who don’t believe Climate Change is real and reversible. I mean, we’re asking them to make some pretty significant changes in their lives based on dire predictions from people they have absolutely nothing in common with. I’ll admit that I’m a little skeptical when people I perceive as tree-huggers go off on the plight of the horny-rimmed frog-beetle. Or something.

But it was this article about “mass extinctions” of ocean life that reminded me of all the times I’d heard the sirens cranked up to full-blast.

·         I remember when I was a kid, many years ago, reading articles about the Killer Bees and how they were going to kill us all. It scared the crap out of me, of course, and that was the point.

·         Then there was the gas shortage. We only had six months of oil left and then society was going to crumble!!!!!

·         Then there was inflation. I remember a teacher telling my class that if inflation kept going the way it was we were all going to have to make $1 million a year just to survive.

·         Then there was Y2K. Apparently we were all just one decimal point away from being hunter-gatherers.

There have been a million of these dire predictions over the years--some true but averted and some just flat-out trumped up. But it occurred to me just today that they have a lot in common with the long line of false prophets who have predicted the arrival of Judgment Day.

In both cases they get tons of attention by scaring the crap out of a lot of people, they put the media into a feeding frenzy, and then, when their predictions are revealed to be untrue, they’re mocked. But that’s not the worst of it.

The worst part of this cycle is that with each false prediction, a little bit of faith is lost. What’s the saying? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me a thousand times, shame on me?

I’m absolutely not saying that Climate Change isn’t real--I’m confident it is. But I am saying that it sounds really, really familiar.