I’ve often linked to videos from Pete Sinclair’s Climate Denial Crock of the Week video series, because I think he does an outstanding job of focusing on specific topics in educational and often very entertaining ways. But one of his videos really stands out for me, Climate Science 1956: A Blast from the Past, which I’ve linked to here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdALFnlwV_o .

As Pete points out right at the beginning of this video, deniers like to create the illusion that “climate change” is a new phrase. And we know that they like to pretend that the science itself is some brand new, highly speculative area of investigation, somewhere between cold fusion and abiogenic oil, and that all the “alarmists” are leaping on this untested bandwagon in an effort to scare people or impose a New World Order or (gasp!) raise taxes or some equivalent nightmare. I would dearly love for this warped view of reality to be accurate, which is one of those nasty realities that the deniers never want to admit: Those of us sounding the alarm about climate change and sustainability issues in general don’t like what the science is saying or what it implies for humanity in the coming decades and centuries any more than the deniers do. The primary difference between “us” and “them” is that we’re willing to listen to science and read the numerous, dramatic changes in the real world triggered by warming, from melting glaciers and polar ice to shifting animal migration patterns to changes in the timing of plant and animal cycles to extremes in weather. Take all that evidence into account and it’s even more clear now than it was back in 1956 what was happening and that we were doing it to ourselves.

Anyway, I recommend you spend 10 minutes watching this installment of Pete’s work, and if you then feel compelled to send a few people you know a link to it, so much the better.