A boring story from a sleep-deprived human. Not recommended reading...

Quite a few years ago, I faced a problem of conflicting information. The subject was climate change, and I kept reading/hearing very different accounts about what supposedly was or was not happening with earth's climate, and whether human activity was or wasn't a factor in that. It's not like I'd never encountered any subject that had some controversy before, but this seemed a bit different.

It quickly became exhausting trying to make sense of the conflicting information. On some level, I was tempted to just ignore the topic for a while, and maybe revisit it down the road. But ultimately, I decided I wanted to know for myself. Sure, it wasn't exactly a viable option for me to go back to college for an additional degree(s), and then spend who knows how long personally going through raw climate data! That would have been way too much for me. But if I could somehow find the right answer, as best as I possibly could, through all of the conflicting information and noise, I was determined to do so. I wasn't looking to get a certain answer. I just wanted to know one way or the other, if it was possible for me to find out...

And so that started a journey of reading, analyzing, comparing, scrutinizing, and pretty much anything I could do to try to solve the problem at hand. And eventually, after a lot of time and effort, a clear answer emerged.

Then, as a bit of a "double check" to my research, I posed another question to myself. I basically ignored all of the research I had just done, and asked myself the following question. If nobody on the planet was even discussing the topic I'd just researched. If not one person had ever uttered the phrase "climate change" to me. If I were just asking myself, for no reason other than my own curiosity. Do I think whatever we're doing as humans has the potential to greatly impact our climate over time, or are the things we do relatively insignificant, and the climate will simply do whatever it will do, regardless of our actions?

Asking the above question was a very different exercise for me versus reading articles about climate change. I forced myself to think through things in very different ways. There was no one on either side of the fence feeding me data or opinions for this part. I blocked out my previous research, and had to ultimately rely on any other knowledge that I had to help me take my best guess. Oddly enough, it was an iconic photo that made the biggest impact on me for this part. I'd seen the photo before, but had never thought about it in this way. From a "data" standpoint, the photo wouldn't mean much of anything. From an "if I had to guess" standpoint, that photo helped give me my "final answer".

My goal in doing all of that work was never to be able to tell other people what conclusions I came to. To be perfectly frank, I can't imagine that anyone would even care. I'm not sure I can remember the last time I talked to someone who didn't just want to tell me about what they already believe, and make sure that I agree with them. Truthfully, there are way, way, WAY better resources than myself for just about any topic anyway. I once took an IQ test, and I'm pretty sure I scored about 10 points higher than a pineapple...

Anyway, I wish I could do more to help the world, but sadly, it's all I can do to get through one of my own days! lol I can't imagine this boring-ass story being very helpful to anyone, but I decided to tell it anyway, since I'm having trouble sleeping. If anyone can get anything out of it, that's great, and if not, maybe typing it has at least exhausted me enough that I can finally fall asleep!