Where are the climate deniers now?

I haven't heard any arguments coming from climate deniers in the past week trying to tell us that Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Jose, and Katia -- all coming so close together is just a matter of coincidence and has nothing to do with warmer sea water and higher sea levels.

Nevertheless, Neil deGrasse Tyson, astrophysicist, author, director of the Hayden Planetarium and the American Museum of Natural History, shot down one of their favorite arguments anyway:   that scientists are in cahoots with each other to make up this story about global warming.   And they find a few odd outliers to quote that make a name for themselves by questioning the consensus findings.

Tyson's tweet:   "Anyone who thinks scientists like agreeing with one another has never attended a scientific conference."

What deniers fail to understand is that, for scientists to agree as much as they do on climate change (like 97%), is phenomenal and rare.   It's almost in the realm with believing in gravity.  Tyson has taken on the argument before, just recently over the total eclipse.

"I don't see people objecting to it.  I don't see people in denial of it.   Yet methods of science predict it," Tyson said on "The Daily Show."  So when the same methods and tools of science predict an eclipse, which people believe, but reject the same methods and tools about climate change, it doesn't add up.

Another, earlier tweet from Tyson:  "I'm so disappointed that the country that I grew up in -- that put men on the moon, that developed the internet, that invented personal computers and smartphones -- that people are debating what is and what is not scientifically true."

And, even more recently:   Most people listened to weather news to learn from scientists when and where -- and which -- hurricane was going to come their way.

I think the answer is pretty simple.   The eclipse was an event that would soon be over and would not require a great expenditure to do something about.   The inventions Tyson mentioned are conveniences that people are willing to spend money on personally for their personal convenience.  It doesn't require an act of congress or tax money.

But climate change is a calamity that we have to do something about -- and it is going to be very expensive, at least initially.  And it involves special interests of some very wealthy people (the oil and petrochemical industry) that are going to have to accept change.

The consequences of not doing anything are simply unthinkable.

Ralph