I have seen the enemy, and he is complexity

Introduction
One of the biggest challenges a modern American government faces is explaining complex political ideas in ways that they can be easily understood. In many cases, political parties take short cuts through simplifying the idea. Often that over-simplification takes on the form of a moral maxim.

Example:
Each party is right now trying to boil their ideas on Iraq down to this simplification: BLANK is the best way to support our troops.
If you're a Republican, insert "Staying the course".
If you're a Democrat, insert "Bringing them home."

In each case, the argument is much more complex, but in a word of sound bites and 30-second attention spans any argument that can't be conveyed in 10 words or less is worthless.

Oversimplification and Climate Change
My pet issue of climate change is a major battlefield in the war of over-simplification. Being a largely scietific debate, it is easy to take numbers out of context in order to argue for or against it. In this debate, scientists produce data, and then politicians sift through that data to find information that will support their side.

The following are a number examples out-of-context information that global warming deniers roll out in defense of their argument:

The Arguments and Reality
1. The world has gone through climate cycles in the part, this is just part of nature

Reality: The world does go through cycles, but very gradually. The reality is that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have shot upwards much, much, much faster than ever before. There is no precedent for this big a change this quickly, except for catastrophic events like astroid strikes.


2. Scientists have been wrong about climate in the past so we shouldn't believe them now.

Reality: This is akin to arguing that we shouldn't believe in computers becase some scientists once believed in alchemy. The fact of the matter is that in the last half century the data that we have on the climate has grown exponentially, as have computer modeling programs. Citing scientific blunders in the past is an avoidance of arguing the facts.

3. The temperature is only projected to increase a few degrees. What's the big deal?

Reality: "A few degrees" may not sound like much, but consider the fact that the last time glaciers covered as far south as Ohio it was only 9 degrees Farenhieght different than the temperature today. Seemingly minor shifts have big effects, and worse: once the counter balances are overwhelmed, the increase will continue to grow unabated.

4. There isn't complete consensus within the scientific community. Why jump to conclusions if they don't know what's going on?

The news media has become so sensitive to being accused of having a bias that they have to make sure that all their articles are "balance". What "balanced" means is that you have to give equal treatment to each side. This apparantly remains true even if one side represents 95% of the scientific comunity. If you want useful information, read journals like "Science", and "Nature". These magazines are peer-reviewed, meaning any article that they publish is subject to scrutiny, and must meet fairly rigorous standards in order to make it in. And you will never see an article by a global warming skeptic make it into one of these journals.