The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5), is a Great Rorschach Test, Results: 'Believing is Seeing'

The release of IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) a couple days ago provided a nearly perfect scenario to test the 'beauty in the eye of the beholder' hypothesis. Turns out the IPCC's Summary for Policymakers is a great Rorschach test. Those folks who agree with the vast majority of the scientific community and the basic global warming theory automatically click on, read and agree with stories like this one from Canada's 'TheStar'. Contrarian folks slide on over to places like another Canadian 'news' outlet. 'SunNews' to read and agree with its perspective on the report.

As Walter Cronkite said every night, "And that's the way it is...", especially in the connected now, a person can live and learn from within a silo of agreement, no need for messy questions from those who disagree. The silos allow folks to follow the echo and hide from a larger issue. Global warming and climate change are just a symptom of the much broader diseases that our environment faces. The psychotic human diseases of materialism and conspicuous consumption are at the root of all of our environment's problems of which global warming is one.

Somehow though the broad environmental movement lost its way when it allowed CO2 pollution driven global warming to become the 'issue'. Environmentalists fell into the trap of mistaking a symptom for the disease, well maybe they got pushed a little too by the opinions on Easy Street. .Nonetheless, confusing the definitions of symptoms and diseases has led the broader environmental movement into a dead end of endless debate between believers in opposite worldviews. This confusion has allowed the entire environmental debate, which should be about the broader causes of the disease, to be hijacked by one narrow controversial issue - the role of human CO2 production in today's observed climate change.

Jorge Majfud wrote, "Trying to reduce environmental pollution without reducing consumerism is like combating drug trafficking without reducing the drug addiction." It's important to notice that Majfud refers to the broad issue of environmental pollution, not just to global warming. There is un-debate-able empirical evidence of so many depredations the bio-sphere has suffered at the hands of the consumer culture we should be focusing on as our proof on the interconnected-ness of the causes instead of debating the significance of .1 degreeC per decade.

There's two great articles here and here about the changes happening around us every moment. There's new stories like them all the time that confirm the effects of extractive capitalism's widespread destruction in pursuit of profit, profit earned by fulfilling the demands of the demanders, those very same folks that silo thinking suits so well.

Searching any of the issues on list below will show that though fossil fuels and global warming are part of the disease created by the demands of the consumer culture they aren't alone or even the most immediately catastrophic. Only when the focus shifts back to the causes, back to consumerism, will there be even a slim chance of meaningful change for the broad environment.

1. Contamination of Drinking Water
2. Water Pollution
3. Soil Contamination
4. Wildlife Conservation
5. Air pollution
6. Biological pollutants
7. Carbon footprint
8. Climate change and global warming
9. Consumerism
10. Dams.
11. Ecosystem destruction
12. Energy conservation
13. Fishing and over-fishing.
14. Food safety
15. Genetic engineering including GMO foods.
16. Industrial farming
17. Land degradation, desertification and soil and land pollution.
18. Urban sprawl and habitat destruction
19. Logging and deforestation
20. Mining pollution including toxic emissions and heavy metals.
21. Nanotechnology
22. human induced 'natural' disasters
23. Nuclear issues
24. Other pollution issues like light light pollution and noise pollution
25. Overpopulation
26. Ozone depletion
27. Resource depletion
28. Non-Sustainable communities
29. Human introduced toxins - a long list
30. Waste such as litter, landfills, incineration, marine debris...