Reviewing John Cook’s "Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change"

I was surprised to receive an email from John Cook the creator and driving force behind SkepticalScience.com inviting me to review his new book “Cranky Uncle vs. Climate Change.”  Having received the challenge, I couldn’t refuse.  An easy to read graphic book that at 164 pages frames important climate science and communication lessons within cartoons, artwork and concise sentences.

It reads to me as a light hearted, inoffensive, easy to comprehend look into the conundrum of conveying climate science facts to folks in a world that’s swimming in disinformation.

John Cook doesn’t shout or agitate instead preferring to explain the well understood science, while offering only fleeting glimpses into the past decades of full blown malicious dirty tricks that the contrarian campaigns against climate science understanding are guilty of.

The Cranky Uncle’s opening chapter is “How did Climate Change get so Controversial?” tells the story of a few corporate funded (Republican) political operatives who were able to completely distort how climate science was presented to the public.  

Diary - Musing on a half Century of Climate Science Awareness, 2020-02-22

Given that I’ve reached my half century anniversary of engaged climate science awareness and outreach, a little reflection comes naturally.  I used to be told it’s easy enough to complain, but could I actually define my complaints?  Even better, could I suggest solutions?  

It was a fair challenge and I dare say I’ve spent the past decades striving to meet it.  Now some tell me my blogs are a bit redundant.  Oh well.  I’m not an academic, nor a journalist, I’m an enthusiast and this is my self-assigned research project and homework notebook.  Some pages are better than others and redos happen as I continue improving.  

In truth, I had hoped CSC would develop into a study group, as a few like minded citizens joined in, but that never happened.  Thus this blog could never develop beyond a busy, often distracted, individual citizen’s perspective.  It is what it is.

About that half century.  I started high school in 1969, my already well developed love of nature and deep curiosity had me taking all the science courses I could.  As it happened Earth’s climate system turned out to be an especially important and dramatic topic that captured my unwavering interest.

After graduation I went on to a working life, but curiosity about Earth sciences and history remained central to my existence, the hobby I never tired of.  Of course, courting, raising a family and working multiple jobs put all that on the back-burner for a while.  Still I kept up on scientific discovers and news.  

Kids kept growing and with time my work load diminished.  Then a local snow-bird, Roger Cohen, started peddling the EXXON oil company’s line of “Relax, No Worries, ignore the science!” in an OpEd and letters to local papers, even giving a couple talks up at the local college.  That pissed me off and I funneled that energy into researching Cohen’s claims and writing about what I found.  I helped raise hell about the travesty of FLC hosting a talk filled with known scientific lies and deliberate deception.  After that Roger moved his dog’n pony show to a local hotel conference room.
       

SkepticalScience.com - Climate Myths Sorted by Taxonomy

Of course, it’s impossible to discuss climate science findings without also being confronted with the endless repetitive cross-fire from the bullhorns of naysayers and their bias driven unidirectional skepticism and disconnected-from-physical-reality lies.  

As a result the folks at SkepticalScience.com made a point of studying contrarian claims and then explaining the real science, that climate science “skeptics” consistently choose to ignore.

Republicans have a hubristic confidence in their own self-interest, and because they’ve convinced themselves that they possess God in their back pockets, it’s okay for them to disregard fundamental geophysical evidence and facts.  It's lunatic thinking, still here we are.

The real tragedy is that nobody is interested in learning.  They only know their personal wants and by their actions and words, they appear to lack intellectual integrity, how else could they so easily refuse to listen, let alone learn lessons, all the while shamelessly repeating the same juvenile nonsense over and over and over again.  

What kind of nonsense you ask?  Well, take a look,

SkepticalScience.com, Climate Myths sorted by taxonomy

• It's not happening
• Temp record is unreliable
• Hockey stick is broken
• Tree-rings diverge from temperature after 1960
• Ljungqvist broke the hockey stick
• Dropped stations introduce warming bias
• It's Urban Heat Island effect
• 1934 - hottest year on record
• It's microsite influences
• Satellite error inflated Great Lakes temperatures
• Satellite record is more reliable than thermometers
• It's cooling
• We're heading into an ice age

SkepticalScience.com Archive - August, 2007 to December 31, 2011

A long long time ago John Cook envisioned an internet website dedicated to bringing authentic climate science to an interested lay-public along with publicly archiving easily accessible climate studies.  It took tons of networking and creative effort and determination to realize his dream.  Starting in August, 2007 SkepticalScience.com realized his vision and SkS has been delivering ever since and building up an impressive Archive (for the rest of this introduction link here)

This is part two of SkepticalScience.com Archives

2011

• 2011 Year in Review (part 1)
• 31 December 2011 by MarkR
• Michael Mann, hounded researcher
• 30 December 2011 by Andy Skuce
• A thoughtful conservative perspective on climate
• 29 December 2011 by Tom Smerling
• UAH Misrepresentation Anniversary, Part 2 - Of Cherries and Volcanoes
• 28 December 2011 by dana1981
• UAH Misrepresentation Anniversary, Part 1 - Overconfidence
• 27 December 2011 by dana1981

SkepticalScience.com Archive 2012, 2013, 2014

A long long time ago John Cook envisioned an internet website dedicated to bringing authentic climate science to an interested lay-public along with publicly archiving easily accessible climate studies.  It took tons of networking and creative effort and determination to realize his dream.  Starting in August, 2007 SkepticalScience.com realized his vision and SkS has been delivering ever since and building up an impressive Archive (for the rest of this introduction link here)

This is part two of SkepticalScience.com Archives Dec 31, 2014 to Jan 1, 2012. 

2014

• Another year and glaciers are another metre thinner
• 31 December 2014 by MarkR
• Time is running out on climate denial
• 30 December 2014 by dana1981

SkepticalScience.com Archive - January 1, 1015, February 19, 2020

A long long time ago John Cook envisioned an internet website dedicated to bringing authentic climate science to an interested lay-public along with publicly archiving easily accessible climate studies.  It took tons of networking and creative effort and determination to realize his dream.  Starting in August, 2007 SkepticalScience.com realized his vision and SkS has been delivering ever since and building up an impressive Archive (which I’ve taken the liberty of copying and pasting into the end of this article for your convenience.).  

Considering a Fundamental Cosmic Truth

There is Physical Reality following the Arrow of Time.

We can clearly see that expressed in Evolution’s pageant upon this most unique planet.

Earth's Evolution has, when taken as a whole, been an unrelenting drive towards ever greater cognition and manipulatory abilities, it has crawled back from every setback, adapted, thrived till conditions radically changed again.

This Evolutionary drive created humans during this particularly benign Era in Earth’s ever evolving biosphere.

Emergence is Inherent in Evolution

Four limbs forced the creation of new areas of the brain and new awarenesses.  All the way up to a brain that could observe, learn, remember, reflect and mull over observations combined with memories.  Then communicate those personal thoughts to other brains, then pass those memories onto generations long after it dies and goes away.

In humans, evolution found its most spectacular emergent property yet, the crown jewel of Life’s long striving.  That is, our Mindscape.  

Our mind’s increasing ability to focus on observations: watching, cataloguing, listening to that something inside, that's constantly chattering away to whatever part of our brain is hearing it.  All the while striving to make sense of itself, it’s own inevitable death, its place in the world, and the world in general.

This emergent something in our brain created a self-aware mind, or more accurately, Our Mindscape.  The home of all our thoughts and feelings, fears and convictions.  Something unique in Earth’s Evolution.

Ergo, we can break down human reality to two fundamentals:

The realm of "Physical Reality", and the realm of our "Human Mindscape."

I also believe, none of us can really understand the rest of our world without first coming to terms with and absorbing that simple fundamental “Truth” in one way or other.

      

Reaching back to my essay:

…  Science was so successful that today all too many people believe we are the masters of our world and too many have fallen into the hubristic trap of believing our ever fertile mindscape is reality itself.  Thus the endless reams of fruitless dialogue, where learning is the last thing too many care about.

Which brings me back to Gould’s missing key.