Wednesday 4 May 2011

"Place-based people" and climate change

Stories told by "place-based people" are now cited as "scientific" proof that human induced global warming is happening. Science Now  reports about "the largest study of its kind, Bawa and his graduate student Pashupati Chaudhary interviewed 250 households in 18 Himalayan villages that are between 2000 and 3000 meters above sea level.":

 A group of women told the researchers that all their lives they had washed their food containers every 3 or 4 days. But recently, they found that they had to wash them every 2 days: a few degrees increase in temperature was causing food to spoil more rapidly. In addition, villagers who lived at higher altitudes spoke of unusually hot summers and early springs. At lower altitudes, they complained of mosquitoes that had never before infested the area, the team reports online today in Biology Letters.
Villagers also noted that common plants such as rhododendrons had moved upward into cooler areas and that other species had disappeared

Susan Crate, an anthropologist at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, says there is much to be learned from what she calls "place-based people," who "watch the weather closely and know the signs, smell rain in the air, tell the direction of the wind, the way the animals act. These people," she says, "are incredible experts on their environments."
The study, says Crate, is fantastic in that it shows how local perceptions are consistent and can be verified scientifically. The beauty, she says, is how local peoples' stories can help us understand the diverse ways that climate change affects different parts of the earth.

Read the entire article here

PS

"Place-based" Americans have another "fantastic" story to tell:

Despite years of warnings, scientific consensus, global treaty negotiations and the appearance of predicted increased instances of violent weather and climate refugees, nearly half of Americans don't worry about global warming. According to Gallup, the number of Americans who worry "a great deal" or "a fair amount" about climate change has decreased from 63% of respondents in 2001 to 51% today.

And there are more "fantastic" stories from "place-based" people in France and the UK:

Not only do Westerners express a statistical disregard for the dangers of climate change, but the number of those who believe there is something to fear from the weather is declining. In France, for example, the poll numbers indicate that the percentage of respondents who consider global warming “a serious threat” has declined from 75 percent to 59 percent since 2007.
In the United Kingdom, home of the “Climategate” scandal, the percentage has fallen from 69 percent to 57 percent over the same period.

Regrettably, Susan Crate and other alarmist scientists show little interest in these stories of millions of "place-based people". And the reason is obvious: Most ordinary Americans and Europeans are knowledgeable enough to realize that the entire alarmist "story" is too weak to be beliavable. That is why it is safer for Crate et consortes to travel to exotic places, where indoctrinating indigenous "place-based" people is easy.

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