Climate change denial is irrationality beating reason – opinion

The extreme summer of 2018 in Germany and most of Europe has prompted climate change deniers to hastily announce that the exceptional heat and drought are merely normal weather phenomena and do not testify to the human effect on the global climate, Joachim Müller-Jung writes in an opinion piece in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “This kind of thinking is alive and kicking – and it is a tragedy,” Jung says. “It bears testimony to the fatal tendency to sacrifice one of the greatest achievements of the modern age, namely the victory of reason over irrationality, and thereby the painstakingly researched truth itself.” Right-wing populist politicians like Alternative for Germany (AfD) spokesman Jörg Meuthen attempt to play down the obvious evidence that the incidence of extreme weather situations is increasing across the globe, and to negate the plausible conclusion that human activity plays a substantial role in this development, Jung writes.

Read the opinion piece in German here. 

For background read the CLEW dossier The energy transition and climate change.