Would you consider someone who immediately rejects the existence of environmental problems to be 鈥渙pen minded"?

Of course not. It's the very definition of closed minded. Reactionaries outright reject environmentalism as a philosophy for one simple reason - it challenges the status quo. We are being required to re-think our relationship to the natural world. If you consider environmentalism critically you see that it could potentially upend everything - our political and economic systems, even our concept of morality and religious belief. They have every reason to hate and destroy the environmental movement at all cost because it is a threat to our current way of life. The reason we know those who reject environmental problems are close minded is because these problems are now unequivocally apparent and irrefutably caused by human civilization as currently iterated. That is why denialists have moved from denying the problems exist to denying that science is legitimate. They may not accept the truth until their very own well is poisoned, they can't step outside because the air is unfit to breathe, the food they eat makes them sick, they look in the mirror and recognize that pollution is killing them. And I predict that even then they will reject rationality and deny and blame something else, anything else, probably a leftist plot to sabotage the environment in order to get everyone to capitulate to a one world government. Sound crazy? The Supreme Court of the United States is hearing a case right now that involves reactionary right wing fanatics who believe casualties of war are Gods punishment for liberal policy in the US. And anyone who claims to be an environmental scientist yet selectively reject the bits of science they don't agree with is either lying or suffering from a severe case of cognitive dissonance.





edit:





"I'm not closed minded, I just don't think your issue is worthy of any consideration whatsoever."





Yikes.|||Of course it is possible to immediately reject any idea. It could be rejected on a basis ranging from common sense to expert subject matter knowledge. Another factor would be how complex the problem appeared to be. Obviously, more simple problems could be out-rightly rejected whereas complex ones would likely not be able to be immediately dismissed.





If you take every possible existence of a problem or issue and give it a fair, open-minded consideration then you are going to be wasting a lot of your life. There are problems and proposals that don't merit any consideration whatsoever and that includes environmental "problems".





Perhaps you need to re-examine what you think "open-minded" means.|||Anyone that immediately rejects an idea has closed themselves off from the idea, and thus are closed minded.





J. might be right about 1% of CO2 in the atmosphere (He's wrong, it's actually 0.039%). But we live in a world where small differences can have catastrophic consequences.





To bring the argument back to the atmosphere, about 20% of the atmosphere is oxygen. If you drop a little below 20%, advance life, such as humans, can't be supported. If you go a little above 20%, the entire atmosphere would ignite. Therefore, life is supported on a thin threshold between death and death. There's more to a statistic than just the ignorantly assumed implications of the number.





Numbers are irrelevant without an understanding of what the number means in context. (Like the 1% CO2 J. gave.) And, to bring this back to your question, you can only expand on the environmental context if you keep an open mind.|||%26lt;%26lt;Would you consider someone who immediately rejects the existence of environmental problems to be 鈥渙pen minded"?%26gt;%26gt;





Your questuion is not worded clearly.





The answer to what you asked is that it is indeed possible for someone to both be open-minded and reject something fast.





If someone came to me arguing the Earth was flat, I would reject him very fast, even though I am quite "open minded" when it is reasonable to be so.





Ironically, you were not very open minded when I tried to explain to you that short term temperature data is not totally irrelevant, and when I tried to explain to you that I really am not a liberal even though I like Al Gore a lot. (Indeed on the second one you got quite irrational). It is interesting that *you* are preaching about open-mindedness.





Dawei writes to some other poster %26lt;%26lt;Or do you have a conspiracy theory for the scientific journals and the majority of climatologists as well?


%26gt;%26gt;





I think the Deniers are indeed into irrational conspiracy theories, however it is possible for the journals and the climatologists to be off due to reasons less sinister than some evil plot. There is a possible problem with "group think". The irony though is that I do think a group think phenomenon is occurring, but it has led to climatologists being wrong in the other direction--they keep UNDERESTIMATING the magnitude of the warming.





Here is an example--below is a link to an article about a study predicting greater than expected sea level rise. As far as I know, none of the Non-Deniers here posted about it. Why not? It was in a reputable journal, and it was interesting and relevant. But it went againsyt the group think that indications of the warming being more serious than thought be rejected:





http://www.boston.com/news/science/artic鈥?/a>|||No, in fact that's one of the criteria I use to determine if somebody is a closed-minded AGW denier.





Often people who deny AGW will also deny ozone depletion by CFCs, acid rain, ocean acidification, problems associated with the use of DDT, etc. This includes many of the 'skeptic' frequenters of this site. It is a clear sign that they have a bias against environmentalists and environmental issues which clouds their judgment and prevents them from being open-minded and true skeptics.|||I would consider someone who rejects actual science and pretends to know we are causing the world to warm significantly to be a doomsday cultist. I work at cleaning up environmental problems so I don't immediately reject their existence. I wouldnt' be a scientist if I started "believing" the environmental problems were a significant threat to our existence. I would have crossed the line and joined the cultists|||It depends on the problem and knowledge and intelligence level of the person.





Like I can immediately reject Brendan's belief that if oxygen were to go a little above 20% the earth would spontaneously combust, and a little below there's be no human life because I have a little more intellegence and knowledge than to believe such an idiotic statement. No definition of a little can include the increase required to turn the earth into a fireball.|||You can tell a toad in a pot of water on a fire that he has environmental problems, but the toad lacks the cognitive ability to process the information and act on it. Talking with toads is a waste of time; the toad will never meet your criteria of being open minded.|||Yes- because they may have already looked at the same "evidence" and drew a different conclusion than you did.





Perhaps the people who call "Global Warming" a fraud do so because they know it is being promoted by bankers and the families that own those banks. For all the grandstanding you see Prince Charles do, and all the lecturing Al Gore does- would it not make sense that they should change their lifestyle to lessen their impacts? truth is they do not. They want to control you from cradle to grave- every last thing you do, every last thing you consume.





Did you know that Carbon Dioxide comprises just a small fraction of 1% of the atmosphere?





Did you also know that a mere handful of people determine what you will see on TV in the US, and read in the paper or magazines? Do you realize they are answerable to large corporations that own those "news outlets?" Do you realize how sanitized, slanted and agenda driven a typical "news broadcast" is in the US? That handful of people have a vested financial interest in promoting global warming because it makes them rich and you poor.





Once you look at the politics behind the issues you should start questioning the issues- especially when everything seems to be "proof of global warming" when it comes to the scientific community.





Reality is IF it is true- it is a good thing because it increases the food supply by allowing longer growing seasons, and less need for heating fuels.|||Dawie, Many, many times more scientists do not believe in agw than do. That's a fact. What is chosen for publication or the general media does not represent a reality consensus. It's a trick! It's called propaganda, it's very effective, and you fell for it. Don't worry you are not alone. Before you blow off my statement, Stop a minute, consider that it could be true, then do a little more research. You don't want to be called closed minded do you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P2153PnMz鈥?/a>





Dana, the ozone hole scare is a well known scam, but it is another example of this type of propaganda. The facts are out there, but it has been keept out of the mainstream media and people forget all the hype and fear mongering going on at that time. but it worked! and for all the so called science and reasearch done, there was none, virtually. It was all made up. Remember who was the main spokesman for banning cfcs. That's right!!! Al Gore.





For Bubba, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1qGOUIRa鈥?/a>|||Yes. There is to much evidence that the global warming theory is wrong. and that the numbers have been fudged.


http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/鈥?/a>


It also becomes obvious that there are problem with the AGW theory when the best defense that the AGW crowd has to evidence against their theory is to resort to 2nd grade level name calling but they can never address the evidence against their theory directly.|||Doesn't being open-minded mean you have not decide an issue, or can be swayed if reasonable evidence shows your position to be wrong? http://climate.nasa.gov/ This doesn't describe denialist who fail to provide scientifically plausible alternatives to AGW. http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument鈥?/a> As you point out, the scientific literature overwhelmingly supports AGW, but the denialist have a conspiracy theory that covers that. The vast majority of climatologists see AGW as a real problem, as well as every scientific organization in the world, but they have a conspiracy theory about that too. They are just a squeaky minority that most people in the world are too smart to take seriously. Only a few politicians who want them to contribute bother with them.|||"Yes- because they may have already looked at the same "evidence" and drew a different conclusion than you did."





Read the question. Someone who immediately rejects the existence of environmental problems has not and will not look at the evidence.|||Only by the restrictiveness of the given example. Obscurity seems to be a predominate feature when it comes to different levels of susceptibility. I don't think its reserved only for skeptics.|||Nope, unless they have a P.H.D. in some type of science. There's just too much data support and information to make that decision so fast.|||I would consider open mindedness and reflexive rejection of junk science to be totally unrelated.|||Not open-minded but ignorant and foolish; we won't last long if this continues, it's been emphasized over and over again.|||No.|||Yes and smart too!!