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.
