Climate Change Denial in the Age of Trump | Michael Mann

The era of Donald Trump has caused an eruption of climate change deniers coming forward, directly in the face of the overwhelming consensus of the world’s scientists that climate change is real and human-caused. This type of belligerent denial has now infected the very highest level of our government. The official policy of the U.S. government is distraction, denial and delay, and doubling down on our headlong exploitation of dirty fossil fuel energy. This talk explores the scientific evidence of climate change, why we should care about climate change denial, and the often absurd efforts by special interests and partisan political figures to confuse the public, wage a war on science, attack scientists, and deny that a problem even exists. Despite the monumental nature of the challenge we face, particularly in the era of Trump, we remain cautiously optimistic in prevailing in the greatest battle human civilization has ever faced—the battle to avert catastrophic and irreversible climate change impacts. Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science and Director of the Penn State Earth System Science Center at Penn State. He is the author of, "The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial is Threatening our Planet, Destroying our Politics, and Driving us Crazy", which he co-authored with Tom Toles, the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post. This talk took place at CSICon Las Vegas on Friday, October 2017. Comment below with your thoughts on this talk. Agree? Disagree? Let us know. Be sure to share this talk with others. The Center for Inquiry is a non-profit advocacy group that for over 30 years have brought together communities and leading thinkers to promote science, atheism, freethinking, and humanism. Find out more information on how CFI is working to protect reason and science: https://centerforinquiry.org