When I moved to Florida from Boston, I knew there were be a few cultural differences that I would have to work around. That goes without saying, and one of these differences surrounds the whole issue of climate change and anthropogenic carbon emissions. While I like to think that most people are pretty open minded when it comes to scientific consensus[1], my hopes fall a bit short when I look around at Tallahassee.
One of the first bits of gossip I heard about when I came to tour FSU was that the governor of Florida doesn’t believe in climate change. Being new to the Florida news scene (and being preferential to foreign news sources) I assumed this remarkĀ about the governor to be hyperbole; that was until I looked it up. Turns out that the governor has banned the use of the phrase Climate Change in all official, state documents[2]. Yeah, so this is Florida.
Fortunately these ‘cultural issues’ rarely come up in my day to day work since I’m in an Oceanography department after all. In fact, I am currently grading 150 essays that review an article related to climate change. So I’m in good company… but I didn’t say anything about good writers.
Notes
- Just take for example my modeling work. Few people that I stop on the street argue that staggered-stepping finite difference schemes are more stable than un-staggered!
- See the Guardian, New Republic articles for details.