Something that I will never understand are people who don’t believe in climate change. I find that, more often than not, the same people who don’t believe in climate change are the same people who turn out to be anti-vaxxers or flat-earthers. Now, I don’t have a problem with people who have different opinions than me; if there is something to be discussed, believe me, I will be the first person to ask your opinion on the matter. However, there are some things that are just not up for discussion.

We are homo sapiens, the earth is a sphere, the climate is changing, and vaccinations are an essential piece of the human race not dying out. Period. Those things are not up for debate, and if you think they are, then you are either not doing your research or you’re ignoring the facts.

There is this thing that a lot of people do called selective research where they will do a cursory google search and ignore all the resources that go against their opinion and move straight to the one blog by Janet and her PTA team that validates what that person is already thinking. Now, I’m not sure what sort of grounds you think Janet has for making those claims that make her a reputable source but I guarantee that the fact that it snowed at her house in the winter is not a legitimate claim against global warming.

It just seems so against any type of logic that people would ignore the experts in the matter. I guarantee that doing research on the internet for a couple months on vaccinations is not the same as an advanced degree in toxicology, virology, biochemistry, or any of the other potential degrees that you might see in someone who develops vaccines. There is just something so self important about individuals who think that with no training, no experience, and no idea what they’re talking about that they have anywhere near the level of expertise as the people who spent years studying and working in the field.

Again, I don’t have anything against healthy debate, and I think that a good amount of skepticism is healthy. There are certain things that I have had opinions on in the past that I didn’t fully understand, but once I took the time to ask the questions I had to someone who knew about the subject, I was open to changing my mind when presented with facts. The issue that I take primarily is with people who have these opinions and are unwilling to listen to reason because they are so stuck in their ways; because if they did, I think they’d find that they didn’t actually know what they were talking about.

When it comes to climate change, I have heard every kind of argument against it in the book. But I think that the most prevalent one is the “earth naturally heats and cools all the time, we’ve already seen it in history” argument. And yes, that is correct, but once again what we are seeing here is cherry picking facts to fit a certain narrative. The truth is that, the earth does naturally heat up and cool down but the heating is happening at a much faster rate than it ever has before and it is causing problems.

It is no different than trying to cook an egg, if you want to cook an egg in it’s shell, you are going to want to bring water up to a boil, drop the egg in, and let the internal temperature of the egg come up to a point where it will cook; then voila, hard boiled egg. But if you were to put a raw egg in the microwave and try to heat it up that way, it would explode. That is because, the speed at which on object is brought to a certain heat or cold is important.

Another example is for anyone who has gone scuba diving; if you are at the bottom of the ocean and you need to get back to the surface, any skilled diver will tell you that you need to be careful about heading up to the surface too quickly. Your internal pressure needs time to regulate or you will get sick, and the great thing about this example is that it really doesn’t matter what your opinion is on it. Go on, try it, try and explain it away when you get sick; it won’t matter because the reason for it is backed up by science, experience, and expertise.

It’s the same thing with climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers; but the only difference is that instead of just making themselves sick, they seem determined to take us all down with them, and this is why it matters and why it needs to be discussed. If it were just a matter of one person doing something stupid because they didn’t believe in one thing or another, that would be fine because they would only be hurting themselves. I am a firm believer in science and believe you me, natural selection would take its course and we wouldn’t have to worry about them anymore. But unfortunately for us, we are all in this one together and if they go down, they’ll take us all with them.

That is exactly why it is so important to have these discussions and educate people on the facts of science. I think that a lot of people avoid these subjects because they’re afraid of starting a fight or making people feel stupid, but maybe they should feel stupid. Because we are at a point in our existence where we are a decade, maybe less away from irreparable damage to our climate and we have diseases like measles and the plague popping back up because our herd immunity is weakened. We do not have time to be protecting feelings of the people who are putting us all at risk.

Now, I never advocate for bullying or being cruel to people, but I also don’t think that we should treat these opinions as benign and let people continue to spread misinformation. Maybe I will end up deleting this blog post, maybe it is too mean, but I get the feeling that its not. I would love to have conversations with anyone who disagrees with any of the points that I’ve made in this article because at the end of the day, the most important thing is discourse and sharing the knowledge that we all have so we can all continue to live the best quality of lives that we can.