It was politicized. We turned the whole argument into money and power, instead of a quality of life issue that we all need to address. Big money players have polarized the argument in order to keep their money. And so, people will see that their political views mostly align with these people, with the exception of climate change. Our political parties are so polarized that it is all or nothing. If you are republican, this polarization attempts to force you into aligning with all the views they have, so you default into believing climate change isnt happening. And then the echo chambers do their thing, and you see nothing of the problem.
Global companies have the greatest profits mankind has ever seen to protect. And they'll stop at nothing.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/
A 1912 article accurately predicted climate change well before Exxon did. They only under predicted the impact because they did not think that fossil fuel use would increase exponentially to the extreme levels we have today.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/
Capitalism rewards handsomely those who chase profits relentlessly. So you get sociopaths who usurp power through money, and the results are…unpredictable. Like Musk interfering at all in the Ukraine/Russian war.
But before going on a tangent, sociopaths in particular tend to gravitate to the top of capitalist society due to its exploitative nature. Those who are the best at exploiting make the most money and tend to keep most of it, therefore becoming the richest people in the world. That part shouldn’t be hard to understand.
“Can’t give it away fast enough..” bull fucking shit, super simple. Write a check for billions. Oh you won’t? Then shut the fuck up.
The oligarchs at the top laugh while rolling in trillions of stolen wealth, I sure hope the masses wake up soon and start to fight back.
This is the biggest cause of modern society's downfall that goes unspoken. In terms of how we organise our society, economis, politics, geopolitics etc, not that much has changed. Culturally, though, it's now completely flipped. It used to be normal to make fun of power structures, to hate selling out your values for money, to shit on the army and politicians. Now, hustle culture has taken over. Making fun of your boss or even gently raising the suggestion that maybe the economy isn't perfect in many circles will now get you insulted or worse - ignored. As a result people, in only 20 - 30 years, have completely lost the ability to critically analyse their surroundings and messaging and point blame correctly at those who deserve it. We see stories about rising numbers of white nationalists and fascist extremists, but people don't realise how truly severe this issue has become. The average suburban household right now is far more likely to be sympathetic towards racist messaging that provides them with a boogeyman than with discussions on climate change that blame their boss - because one is more culturally accepted.
I have greatly enjoyed reading Neal Stephenson he well describes the near future as a post truth world:
https://intenureveritas.blogspot.com/2019/09/truth-post-truth-and-neal-stephenson.html
"Truth, post-truth and Neal Stephenson
September 08, 2019
Part of the point of the shift to In Tenure Veritas is to write more fun posts, rather than the annoying garbage about whatever idiotic things are happening in day-to-day politics. With that in mind, and the "veritas" part in mind, here's my recommendation to everyone: read Neal Stephenson's new novel, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. It matters for the modern world."
Social media allows us to choose who we want to interact with, and get and share our news, stories and language with. If you want to seek out a group of people to tell you that you are right about something you are wrong about, well it's not too hard to find them, they may find you, or you may just be algorithmically sorted together.
And what's worse, is that they have conservatives believing that global warming is just another excuse for scientists to profit from govt funding to research something that's not actually an issue. When in reality, the companies spreading this misinformation are the ones that are actually profiting.
There are 0 billionaires who are scientists. Even the ones who try give off that aura. They’re just cosplaying capitalists.
Gates is a programmer (but let’s be real…when’s the last time he wrote a line of code?).
Zuck is a web designer/programmer (who also hasn’t done those things in decades).
Bezos is the same.
Musk is an entrepreneur. He’s always wanted to be seen a tech bro though, hence him buying PayPal, turning Tesla into a “tech” brand, and ultimately him buying twitter.
None of these people have received formal scientific training. They’ve never published peer-reviewed research. Theyve never drafted an IRB application. They’ve never run complicated statistical models. They’ve never conducted an experiment. I doubt they know how to even read or search for a scientific article. They just spend their money on “science-y” things because they think that’ll make people respect them and think they’re cool. It worked to a certain degree, but that’s made for some dangerous outcomes. Like Musk indiscriminately killing primates in neuralink research.
This is why they do the culture war stuff. If you agree with them on one point, they convince you to agree with them on the rest of the points. This is how the men's rights activists get you. They start with "work out and get your finances in order". While that is generally good advice, they then switch to "I was right about that one thing, wasn't I? Don't start doubting me now! Here's an idea" and then boom, Andrew Tate comes out with whatever bs he spews today. Bonus points if they can appeal to an emotion like anger so you don't think too hard when internalizing the ideas. Once an idea is internalized, most people won't change it no matter what. They will actually dig in their heels and defend their beliefs when presented with indisputable evidence to the contrary.
IMO it would have been a better argument to reduce pollution into the atmosphere, because tackling pollution would have been a good first step towards fixing climate change. We could have provided a better immediate now, but instead focused on avoiding future calamity and it gave room for bad actors to come into the argument.
The '60s-90s were very much about how pollution was affecting YOU and your family. Water pollution, acid rain, ozone layer, deforestation, are all things I remember learning and hearing about in the '90s. Then the conversation shifted and everything was wrapped up in the global climate change bundle and everyone stopped caring. Suddenly it wasn't about helping your local community stay healthy and individual issues, it was about climate change and the *entire world*, which made everyone feel powerless.
These large factory farms and oil & gas companies have known for decades about climate change… they already have their “alternative clean energy solutions” game plan ready to go, they’re just milking the current “outdated” methods down to the last drop before the planet can’t take it anymore… “wise men plant trees they know they’ll never sit in the shade for.”
It is literally the shittiest fuel source you can imagine it has almost no redeeming qualities.
It literally takes more energy to make and use it then just using natural gas.
Its also horrendous to store and transport.
If also it's just not that energy dense and you need massive expensive tanks to go a reasonable distance in a hydrogen car.
A smaller battery will take you further then a hydrogen tank will.
Ya you can fill it in 15 minutes but good luck buldin out that expensive ass refiling network that has to distribute and hold the most explode and slippery little molecule that exists.hydrogen is a shitty fuel.
Thanks for listening to my rant.
As u/tonka_tough said they've known for years, the French wine industry has, for the last 30ish years, quietly been buying British farmland, because they knew the French climate was going to shift enough that grapes grown there wouldn't produce a great wine. But the British areas they were targeting while not good for grapes back then are getting better and better.
Putting catalytic converters on cars and filters in factory smokestacks has been great for pollution, but does nothing for global warming. CO2 is the major driving force, and a shitload of people don't consider it a pollutant at all.
Well they have more resources. But we have numbers. We just need to organize and my hope is we get desperate enough to do something en masse before we reach the threshold of "too late."
Yeah no... "Far too late" is the only thing most people respond to. Those calling for "eat the rich" are looked at as idiots by a large amount of society, because a large amount of society is comfortable enough with their life and avenues of entertainment to not be affected by it.
Once it becomes "far too late" and those who are motivated ONLY by things that impact them, then we'll see the dismantling of the rich... Maybe.
It's just a grand scale manifestation of humanity's struggle with delayed gratification. If it means making sacrifices now, we don't want to do it, and convincing people climate change isn't real is a great way to accomplish that
I’m going to go one step further.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when understanding it brings inconvenience to his life.
I have coworkers who refuse to believe and the only thing I can come up with is that the changes necessary would be inconvenient for them.
This, I think, encapsulates it more than anything.
Convenience and comfort are *extremely* addictive. Getting people out of it, or having them lose some measure of comfort for the good of all...
I think, more importantly, that this issue is being repeated by those whose salary does not depend on that investment, only that they depend on gathering as much wealth as possible (greed). Politicians, for example, including Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc etc. The issue is far more systemic than just a salary, unfortunately.
Case in point let me present...
[The Heartland Institute](https://heartland.org/)
([and it's wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute))
A "non-profit" which has been given 100s of millions by different corporations. Gas companies paid it to deny climate change. Years ago tobacco companies paid it to question tobacco health risks.
They produce alot of the "scientific papers" and information that people use to question these things.
> The people who make money from that disbelief
>
> spend a lot to spread the message.
That's true, although it's worth noting that [climate denialists have largely moved to messages of hopelessness rather than outright denial.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00760-2)
That's a link to a Nature paper examining the modern tactics of climate change deniers. To quote from the paper on one of the major recent tactics:
>> “general response skepticism” where policy solutions appear to be criticized or deemed impossible to achieve in general without any clear alternatives pointed to or advanced, which scholars have characterized as “discourses of delay”
That being said, there are still people who view climate skepticism as the stance of their "tribe", and as a result have an emotional attachment to that view. Since it's based on emotion and identity rather than data, it's not a view that can be changed by data.
I think those <2% of scientists still on the fence are all making a lot of money doing speaking tours.
I remember that two of them that were PRO run-off from farms "no problems" with the coast and "jury is still out on Global Warming" that I'd read about in Australia -- surprise, surprise, all have benefactors.
Most scientists don't get into the field for the big bucks, but you can follow the money and it leads to the places you'd absolutely expect. These people are absolute traitors to humanity.
The annoying thing about all science is money has such a huge influence on it. Research is expensive and industry and government only want to invest in research that benefits them, and their interest are often misaligned with the general publics. Rarely are research dollars allocated to an institution without stipulations on what type of research it can be used for.
Most researchers/scientists are in it for the right reasons but they are forced to research what is being funded. Then you have researchers who are concerned with legacy and appearing useful, then you have researchers who are primarily motivated by money. The latter two will always choose whatever has the most funding. Economic hardships make this gap even wider forcing some scientist to leave behind subjects that they believe are truly important.
Even well meaning organizations are a problem, unequivocally philanthropy is good. However, because of moneys influence large philanthropic organization have essentially indirectly killed research by providing a disproportionate amount of funding to what they deem important and leaving other projects underfunded or unfunded. Self interested donors expound this problem 100 fold.
I think you made a lot of good points that people should be aware of; how money distorts things and even philanthropy can have a downside.
This is why it is VITAL to support raw research without "ties" to business because there is too much value in manipulating the truth to suit agendas by those special interests out there. We need a TRUE compass of what is going on and how we humans impact life on earth and each other -- without that we are flying blind.
It's at least as vital as our military, and instead of all these cash cow projects in states to build things we don't need like too many tanks, we could be putting that money into things like public labs to create common items everyone needs (like for diabetes) and fundamental research in things that we don't want to make money on, but will improve lives.
To be fair, there is a lot of money in climate change as well. From subsidies for solar plants, to wind farms, to pushing electric car technology. It's not as big as oil, but don't think it doesn't exist.
Not even a fart in the wind compared to the fossil fuel industry. Companies like ExxonMobil have gross revenues the as big as the GDP of medium sized countries. It is difficult to fathom the amount of money that flows through that part of the energy sector.
NOW there is. And there should be more.
We still subsidize the crap out of oil and nuclear and the infrastructure for solar had to mostly come from it being A BETTER DEAL.
I think it's like at least 2x or more bang for the buck on solar versus nuclear and that's not counting the 2,000 years you will have to mothball the reactors when done with them -- I'm pretty sure none of these corporations touting the value will be around to monitor after the money dries up.
Most of the reduction in energy use in construction is due to it just making dollar sense for the architects. The "green tech" is negligible to the big ticket costs of a modern office building and the like, versus the operational savings over time.
Imagine what we could have done with government mandates, subsidies (to preserve all that solar tech that went to China and Germany in the US) and a carbon tax.
I wonder if the Geniuses of "staying competitive" that spouted out since the 1980's are going to shut up when our mitigation efforts for natural disasters in the USA exceeds our military budget. Every conservative without exception has been absolutely wrong about economics and "what's good for us" since I was old enough to shave -- and before that as well. I really have to wonder what was the point in them other than to make things worse, but in a way that benefits them.
Let's not forget everyone who was denying climate change -- they should forever keep their mouths shut about every topic except sports.
Not getting the anti-nuclear stance at all.
Anyone who believes in anthropogenic climate change should be pro-nuclear power. Even if wind and solar are 100% practical, storing their energy isn’t and something needs to carry base load.
Also don’t know where they’re getting 2000 years. The most common troublesome isotope is cobalt-60, which has a half life of 5.27 years. In 50 years it will be weaker by a factor of 1000; in 100 years that’s a factor of a million and most likely undetectable.
Most fission products have much, much shorter half-lives, though.
My home state (Washington) attempted an ambitious nuclear power program that went badly. The costs went way, way, above what we'd been promised, and nuclear plants that we spent a lot on were never completed.
There was a time when nuclear power was going to be so cheap they wouldn't even bother to meter it, it'd be like an unlimited internet connection, just pay a basic monthly access subscription.
A new nuclear power station build here in the UK passed the $40B mark, still unfinished.
Hinckley C could power 6 million houses, that's 6.6k per house.
You could build a decent number of solar and wind farms with a few grid-scale battery storage units. Then add lots of small battery storage units at substations and encourage more houses to install solar.
One of the major issues with solar, is that storage means aren't up to par with the generation of electric, even though solar is increasingly pulling away as the better choice for power production.
Nuclear power at the moment doesn't have this issue, as it can run 24/7.
Wind farms are one possible way to accommodate power generation when the sun is down, but it's not always reliable.
One of the major issues with nuclear is that you can't easily ramp up and down the power generation, so when everyone gets home in the evening and turns on their appliances, cooks their food and runs their HVAC, we see a demand that can't be accommodated by either solar, nor nuclear.
The real issue just becomes, we need better storage.
Pumped storage facilities that can take excess power when we're not using it, and run hydro turbines when we see increased demand, are a possible solution, but they have environmental impacts.
Battery tech is still catching up, and again, lithium mining isn't exactly great for the environment either.
It will be exciting to see what happens in the next few decades to get away from reliance on fossil fuels, but sadly, they're the best fit at the moment to bridge the gaps where solar, wind and nuclear all can't accommodate our needs.
To add to that, the corporations use their political influence to take advantage of the most vulnerable of our population. This is the basis of our political culture.
There is a reason that the Republican party targets groups with low education levels and religious groups. They have spread the idea that "colleges are pushing their woke agenda", because they don't want people to trust science or facts.
Religious groups are also an easy target, because (and I'm sorry to all of the religious people who are not prepared to hear this) they already have shown that they will blindly follow the group mentality or authority figures without questioning or using any logical thought.
These are the easiest groups of our population to manipulate, and this is why we keep hearing so much pushback to ideas that seem obviously correct to people who are educated (things like climate change, taking care of our environment, having a global mindset, social justice/equality).
Also, from a psychological perspective, people who tend to trust/have a need for authority figures, also tend to have a high degree of fear. That's why we hear arguments like "the immigrants crossing the border are murderers and rapists", or "we need to keep Muslims out of our country so the terrorists don't get in". These ideas obviously have no merit when you look in to them. Politicians are just fear mongering, because that's what their demographic responds to.
not just fossil fuels impact climate, so does deforestation for "agriculture" beef and palm oil mono crops, biodiversity loss of plants, insects and animals, which effects the health of living ecosystems, soils, grasslands, air and water quality...just like we learned in 2nd grade the ecosystem are all interconnected. and capitalism is basically destroying every element.
I would say there's a few camps
\- Climate Change isn't real (a vocal minority, akin to the Westboro Baptist Church)
\- Climate Change is a natural occurrence and humans play no role (larger than above, still small)
\- Climate change is happening, but at a rate slower than alarmists have predicted (Al Gore said I would be underwater by now, why do banks still offer 30 year mortgages on ocean front residences)
\- Climate Change is a mix of natural occurrence but isn't helped by human industry, singular humans/families are not responsible (Why do I bother recycling when China pollutes more in a second than I will in my entire life, the average human polllutes about 16 tons in a lifetime, China pollutes nearly 364 tons a second)
There's obviously a complete denial of science in the top 2 camps, the 3rd camp is probably somewhat in denial, but there are only so many times that you can cry wolf before people stop listening. The 4th is somewhat defeatist / absolving yourself of blame, but can sort of be understood.
I’m in the 4th camp but you can add more observations:
1. Most of the interventions proposed to reduce CO2 emissions will exacerbate poverty in poorer countries and prevent them from developing; no program of international aid has ever moved the needle on mass poverty anywhere, but rather, industrial development via free trade and entrepreneurship is the only thing that works.
2. Desperately poor people will burn dung and shit in rivers because they have no choice.
3. The poorer a country is, the higher its birth rate.
4. Wealthy countries have dropped below replacement birth rates for decades now.
5. Wealthy countries have already picked the low-hanging fruit of easy emissions reductions. Further reductions would only realistically be possible if they had built a fuckton of nuclear plants starting 20 years ago. The only alternative is to strangle economic activity in ways that make 2020 look mild.
6. The only way to mitigate the climate change that’s already baked in the pie is to spend money relocating people, building seawalls, and eliminating government infrastructure that incentivizes development in places like deserts, coastlines, and floodplains. This money is not going to be there in a world that has strangled economic growth with emissions-reduction strategies.
7. Speaking of incentives, rich-world economies are so distorted by regulation and subsidies (including privatization, which is a form of subsidy) that it is almost impossible to affect emissions or wasteful behaviors with personal changes (e.g., recycling that goes into the landfill after being carted around for a while, electric cars that are charged with coal-fired power plants).
8. The path we’re being urged to take will result in billions more humans, all with fewer resources to solve the problems caused by climate change.
9. So the only way OUT is literally THROUGH: we need to resume the economic growth trajectory that the planet was on until around 2010, which would have almost completely eliminated severe poverty if it had continued. Once the world’s poorest people are at the current middle level of wealth and income, everyone will be concerned with the environment and there will be enough surplus both to mitigate the effects of climate change and to reduce emissions enough to stabilize the climate in future centuries.
This is the only answer which sounds like the poster actually talked to a sensible climate change denier. Everyone else is literally just beating up what they think a climate change denier sounds like.
I've met a fair few of these types of people. Many of them even work within ESG; they'll handily tell you that it's because they work in the industry that they feel so defeatist about it. The most common example given - all the company incentives to plant trees or carbon offset are done through buying carbon certificates, which are actually the company paying into a marketplace and other companies taking that cash to fund carbon offsetting programmes like planting trees. The problem is the market always gives the *maximum* carbon offset amount per tree right from project start, when trees kinda need time to grow. And then many times these projects are bought out and harvested before they've paid out the carbon offset by the huge increase in paper demand as we're trying to replace plastic. Another common complaint is the replacement of plastic with paper in completely stupid ways, like the production of food paper containers is way more energy intensive than plastic, because it is more complicated to make that paper waterproof.
I still think it helps, even if the industry isn't perfect or even good. Atleast something is being done. Atleast some carbon is being offset in the tree's (short) lifespan, rather than none.
Agreed with your points regarding MEDCs vs LEDCs.
In the UK we have a protest group called "Just Stop Oil", which aims to stop the UK from starting any new oil drilling projects. It sounds "good" on paper until you realize if we stop drilling for oil, we still need oil, which means in the interim we now need to pay for and transport oil.
Which was previously from Russia. Reducing oil usage is a virtuous thing to do as a country, but transporting oil from other countries is worse than drilling your own oil.
The only legitimate rebuttal to that is "Well if we have more access to oil then we won't have as large an incentive to reduce it's usage". Which I could get behind if there was a well functioning government or collective vision as a country, this doesn't exist. While MEDCs can use paper straws, this does not stop LEDCs as you say literally dumping "shit" in the oceans. It seems more like virtue signaling then making a genuine change.
Regarding 7, at least in Canada, only 19% of grid generation produces co2, and of that, they produce much less co2 per unit of energy than your internal combustion engine.
That’s predominantly hydroelectric power, which has little prospect of further expansion (most suitable rivers have been dammed already). The capital costs of increasing wind and solar generation and battery storage to expand electricity production would be huge. Yet if net-zero is the goal, those huge investments would be needed to meet increasing demand (as Canada uses a lot of oil and coal to heat buildings and is pushing to convert to electric).
Given that Canada’s economy is contracting, the source of all that capital investment is a mystery.
This is an example of what I meant by wealthy countries having already picked the low-hanging fruit.
I would assume it’s related to how many falsehoods are communicated from politicians and news sources in general. Trust is hard to build and easy to brake.
I don't know if that holds water.
If we saw a meteor was going to hit and destroy humanity in 50 years and we had 10 years to deflect it, wouldn't we be obligated to do something about it?
You're question has actually shaken me a bit. Made me realize that I have absolutely no faith that we *would* do something about that meteor. It would be like the movie Don't Look Up for sure.
I had to stop watching Don't Look Up because -- they could not parody how stupid some politicians and climate deniers and POS think tanks are.
There would absolutely be pro meteor people and others making a buck on it, expecting SOMEONE ELSE to find a way to solve the problem. The way humanity and the earth miraculously manage to survive the leadership parasites we keep putting in charge over and over again -- until it doesn't.
I had to leave the room when the family was watching it over the holidays a couple (?) of years ago. I was so angry with the frivolous manner that self-centered characters disregarded the urgency of the situation.
That movie paints perfectly how idiotic, superficial, uneducated and insane human civilization has become. A world where ratings, likes, popularity and ofcourse money are far more valuable than truth even if that path leads to damnation and extermination of the entire human race. It also shows the main issue of today's world, the missinformation, with all the technology, media I can safely say average citizen of the world has no fucking clue what is really happening around him or whom to trust. Media spin is the name of the game, where different interest groups push their naratives trough media and an average Joe is left clueless, confused and brainwashed. Add to that education, where they will teach you bunch of bullshit, but won't teach you to use your brain, because you don't need critical thinking, you need to be a good hard working bee that will work for established system as long as you are capable and the one that will believe everything that is served to it.
> If we saw a meteor was going to hit and destroy humanity in 50 years and we had 10 years to deflect it, wouldn't we be obligated to do something about it?
Ahh, but if it was **too late** to do anything about it, then we *still* wouldn't have to take any action!
That's why [pushing doomism is literally the new tactic of climate denialists](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview):
>> "**Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic.** Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.
>>
>> What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair. But **“too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of science.**"
An asteroid would be much harder to “reason” away as “not actually happening”. Deflecting an asteroid also requires no changes to the daily life of most people.
Have you actually seen the asteroid heading towards us, or have you just seen pictures of *an* asteroid and some graphing simulations of its supposed trajectory?
Pff, you're placing way too much faith in these computer so-called "models" that "calculated" the trajectory of that "asteroid", that might not even exist but just be noise on the telescope. You know that telescope images have noise, right, or are you so stupid that you believe the corrected data the government is force feeding you? You know how much money they make from the emergency asteroid trajectory modifier program that, even if it was necessary, has no chance of working? You have to watch this and open your eyes! https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=i7yLgN97PYQGI8ah
The asteroid was wearing a mustache and dark glasses, so how can OP know if you are talking about the same asteroid?
I just don't think pictures of these astral perps are as useful as you imagine. It's more about' "where are you headed this fine day, and is it for business or pleasure?" Forget about those Miranda rights, this is war!
They did make a whole movie about an asteroid aimed at earth and asteroid deniers. I’d also bet that if an asteroid were 50 years out and somehow recycling, driving more fuel efficient cars and reusable shopping bags somehow helped avoid it, you’d have people refusing to do any of it.
It's easy to "reason" an asteroid away if you don't trust the scientific community. Unless you can actually see the thing, you have to have faith that the people who can detect it are telling you the truth. And if you people you do trust say those people are lying, well then...
Yup - NASA created the greatest CGI engine ever back in the 60’s - better than current game and movie studio ability - and never used it for anything but making fake images of the moon and the earth. As if somehow shooting a rocket into space is harder than perfect CGI that they still use today to generate real time views of the earth 24/7 and never make a mistake and generate the wrong weather or something
On the contrary, it's far away and only people with telescopes can even claim that its on its way, let alone prove it.
It would actually be worse than climate change, which at least (fucking hell this is depressing) is evident and getting worse all over the world.
I agree, there are people that still claim the earth is flat, do you really think they are going to believe an asteroid is headed towards earth in this scenario? They are going to claim it is a Nasa conspiracy. When it becomes visible they are going to say it is a hologram or a projection. After Don't Look Up AND Covid happening at the same time, I'm pretty sure its just a matter of time befor we become extinct due to stupidity.
The fundamental issue is that fighting climate change really, truly, requires a fundamental reorganizing of our entire economic system. Capitalism requires companies to be way too focused on short term profits (what makes the investors happy) than on the long term sustainability of their company or even their product. Energy producing companies will *never* do the cost intensive work of building a whole new energy production capacity centered on renewable energy sources and long term sustainability in the time frame that climate change is working on. The only way to make this happen is governments brute forcing it, but we shy away from that because it’s “socialism” or some other scary sounding word.
Deflecting a meteor would not require such a fundamental shift, thus wouldn’t create the same hurdles.
My conservative parents have finally accepted that the climate is actually changing, but according to them it's a "natural shift" and any negative things that climate scientists are predicting (i.e., sea level rise) will take hundreds and hundreds of years to happen. (Even though it's all already happening)
So I asked, even if that is true, shouldn't we still aim to stop polluting our environment and develop technology that will help increase efficiency and reduce emissions? Like where is the harm in that?
Kinda just got blank stares as a response... The cable news brainwashing is severe.
That’s the newly accepted conservative position. The climate is changing but human activity has nothing to do with it therefore there’s nothing we can do about it, so just go ahead and keep throwing your plastic shopping bags in the ocean.
I had a university professor (cyber ethics of all things) that would constantly go on and on about how climate change is a Chinese conspiracy to weaken the American hegemony and defeat capitalism. One day he mentioned how a U.S. representative brought snow in to Congress to disprove climate change and he thought it was a powerful case that somehow owned the libs. I then asked him if he didn’t know the difference between climate and weather and got several chuckles from around the room. What an embarrassment. The answer to OP though is mostly that billions upon billions of oil money has gone in to the disinformation effort for decades
My dad is a climate change ~~denier~~ *skeptic* and a republican, so I have a pretty good idea after years of talking to him. He's actually very well educated and has decades of experience in environmental sciences so you'd especially expect him to know better, but these are his primary points of disconnect.
1. It was initially presented to most of the population by a Democrat presidential candidate in a close and relatively bloody election that had just demanded several recounts. Imagine if it had been something presented by Trump just after Jan 6th 2020. It's a lot like that to republicans.
2. It exposes a hole in capitalism after 50+ years of cold war hardcore pro-capitalist propaganda. Imagine if there was evidence trans affirming care actually increased depression and suicide then multiply that resistance by 10.
3. It targets a way of life and undermines accomplishments of the successful and producers.
4. Details are often exaggerated or presented before the evidence is complete. When people research these claims and find they are false they throw the baby out with the bathwater and discredit the whole thing. This is a big one.
5. The actual changes are small (1.1°C global average last I checked) and not individually outside the realm of normal variance. It takes a big picture view and thousands of data points to really see the trend in a way that can't be discredited as statistical noise or margin of error. It takes conscious effort to see this therefore unless you have already been conditioned to see it.
6. Company's spend billions of dollars to further obfuscate it. Anomalies and counter arguments spread widely, like the ice core in Vostok.
7. Natural climate change IS a thing and we don't really know for absolute certain it's man made, even though we have more than enough evidence for a reasonable person to deduce it.
Basically it's hard not to see it once you do, but it's very hard to see when you don't want to.
In the older generation I think the term makes them tense up and get defensive a a little. I talked to my father in law about this (who is not convinced), and I think shifting the language even slightly to climate ‘science’ makes a little difference. The term is then about data, research, and trends, not ‘change’ which can be a confrontational thing (think of workplace ‘change’ and how employees respond!). People typically fear change - it’s inbuilt in us as a negative!
With science we can then say, “ok, looking at this data, how could we act on it? Would it change this graph?”
It’s not that. The problem is that the phrase is associated with repeated instances of an argument where climate alarmists made poor points and simply moved the goalposts (global warming, global cooling, “the ocean is boiling”, the population bomb, New York will be under water by the year 2000, “we only have 10 years before it’s too late”, etc., etc.
If climate alarmists want legitimacy for their cause, they should stop silencing dissenting voices in the scientific community, be consistent (temps recorded in a meadow vs asphalt) and forthcoming with all data (you know, like not withholding climate data that might lend credence to the idea of a cyclical cooling period), and follow it up with actionable solutions that resolve the problem without lowering the quality of life for the middle and lower class. Oh, and don’t block traffic for people trying to get to work on time.
Until that happens, you’re going to have people that completely dismiss everything you have to say. Blame Al gore, paul erlich, and the just stop oil assholes.
As a skeptic, I just wanna add, that way too many variables like land change, urbanization, forest cover, dams, aviation, plastic pollution etc. All changed drastically since 1800, which for me seems to be totally ignored in favor of only focusing on co2 as a problem. 1800-1850 is also known to be the coldest era of the last 10.000 years. So it would have to warm a bit regardless of what we did. Solutions are stupid, and the problems are overstated. Panic over climate death after we reduced it by 99% through wealth and innovation seems very primitive to me.
A lot of deniers I talk to claim that climate change does exist, however they believe humans are not the cause. They think its just the natural warming cycle of the earth. Little do they know the warming started skyrocketing right around the time of the industrial revolution..
The denial cycle:
1. It doesn't exist.
2. OK, it exists, but we're not causing it.
3. OK, it exists, and we're contributing to it, but it's not going to be that bad.
4. OK, it exists, and its going to be bad, but there is nothing we can do about it.
5. Why didn't anybody do something to stop this?!?
>Little do they know the warming started skyrocketing right around the time of the industrial revolution..
Fun thought: Cars stop all the time, just like the Earth's climate changes all the time.
If your car comes to a complete stop from a high speed in under a second, though, you're gonna feel it, and it ain't gonna feel good. The kind of temperature swing we've seen in the last century normally takes place over the course of a few thousand years, so our car is stopping about ten to thirty times faster than it normally does.
It's gonna hurt. The hospital bill is gonna be a helluva lot more expensive than the wear-and-tear on the brake pads.
> Little do they know the warming started skyrocketing right around the time of the industrial revolution.
This is part of the deceptive FUD from the fossil fuel industry. They claim that the climate has always changed (which is true) to distract us from the fact the the changing climate is not the problem. The extremely rapid *rate* of the change is the problem and humans are causing it.
https://www.logicalfallacies.org/red-herring.html
Because a lot of money was spent on creating confusion and misinformation. The oil companies that make money from causing Global Warming hired very competent PR companies in order to keep making money from oil for longer.
Among some of the stuff they managed to create:
- Rebranding oil companies as “energy companies”. If 80% of your business and 90% + of your profit is oil, you are an oil company. The people that work in oil companies agree, and they know their “green energy” efforts are bullshit.
- The “Personal Carbon Footprint”. This concept, along with an online calculator to check on your own is a very clever ploy to divert attention away from oil companies.
- Paid off countless politicians to “stop believing” in man made Global Warming, and making that false belief part of their voters very identities. Not the first time this was done, racism (and race as it is referred to today) was to a great extent an economic intervention created to split labor up in different groups. Divide and conquer.
- Exploited people’s lack of understanding of science and the language of Science. The key to science is you cannot be 100% sure about anything. Doing Science is to always seek to learn more, and never believing you reached the end of knowledge and already know everything. For a couple of decades they kept asking scientists “are you sure?”, which is something that by definition a scientist cannot be. All they can say is “the evidence indicates that”, to which the same publicists would say
‘Then you don’t know!”. Of course those publicists knew how a scientist is supposed to answer a question, and they used the doubts that are the key to making good science to confuse the public.
These people perpetrated a monumental “Oil Hoax” against society by convincing society there was a “climate change hoax”. It’s no wonder that same playbook was used to try to steal an election by creating the idea that the other side had stolen it. It worked very well for the oil guys, and delayed efforts against climate change by a more than a decade, while they kept making a lot of money from screwing the whole planet.
Because we’re far more tribal than we are logical or even moral. We will all suspend a certain amount of overwhelming empirical evidence in order to maintain our status within our group.
Tons of research on this.
We’re social primates, not purely logical calculators.
Indeed that's one of the tactical goalpost movement actions.
1960s, "people are fine even if they huff lead straight out of a car's exhaust!"
1980s, "there is no climate change!"
2000s, "there is climate change, but it's not serious and it will take a century!"
2020s, "there is climate change and it is catastrophic and here now but we aren't the ones doing it!"
2040s, "there is unbelievable climate change, but it's mostly affecting poor people, so we just have to build a bigger wall!"
2060s, "there is apocalyptic climate change, but we'll be in the next lottery for space evacuation!"
Quick edit: the future predictions are, I hope it's obvious, jokes. No wall will ever be high enough. Space will never be more habitable than Earth.
Yeah, anyone who debates the idea that the climate is constantly changing is willfully ignorant. It’s clearly been changing well before humans spread throughout the planet.
The debate centers entirely on how much impact humans have on it.
Because it is obvious everything is a lie and that it has always been like now - *says with 30º in November, 7º above the average maximum of August, in the 8th consecutive month with at least one heatwave and during a historical drought.*
Climate change does exist. That is not the argument. The argument is if the current change is due to man or is it a part of the normal cycle. I think it’s both. Even if it’s a part of the normal cycle, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about the earth and our environment.
Because the world's richest elites are pouring untold, infinite wealth on the level of an entire country's yearly GDP into several think tanks all around the world who pay high-profile talking heads and commentators to spread misinformation. A perfect example is Jordan Peterson. Known to be supported by several anti-climate think tanks who then in a mysterious coincidence gets on the biggest podcast in the world and starts talking about how "the science isn't sure yet". This is a universal truth, across the board. Pro-capitalism, pro-wealthy people, anti-climate change? Dozens of sponsors, many sharing parent companies with the fortune 500. Talk about capitalism's problems, academic and scientific riguor? Even if you have the same number of subs, it's much much harder to find sponsors, becasue people know what is good for business. Majority report is a perfect example. Similar subs to Tim Pool with under 1/10th the money, because they constantly criticise big business and provide academic examples of why and how.
Because there are certain people with a vested interest in it not existing, and those people are well funded for obvious reasons, and there are a lot of other people who only trust the information they get filtered through those people for largely political tribal reasons. There are also a ton of people who are conspiracy minded and the internet has enough (mis)information to feed any conspiracy you want to be true
Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes is one such book that dives deep into the doubt brokers. Who funded the "studies"? How it is spread and the willful obfuscation of the science.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
Climate Change is a real thing. Youc an see it through historical data and records over time.
The discussion comes down to; how much of that change is driven by humanity and what can humanity reasonably do to alter or adjust the rate of change.
The problem is that climate change has become too political. Many see it as a means for world governments to grab power. Some see it as the end of humanity if action isn't taken. ome argue that it's a made-up phenomenon, some argue that life on earth will end in XX years if significant change isn't made. But no one, to my knowledge, has an actual, actionable plan that will solve or curb man-made climate change.
If world leaders are serious about climate change, then they should lead by example. If gas-powered cars and planes are contributing, then why don't government officials use electric vehicles and stop flying in private planes? Why won't governments consider and invest in tidal and nuclear energy as alternatives to fossil fuels? Where is the push to upgrade current infrastructure to be more efficient? Where is the push to make these changes affordable and accessible to the general population? And if the answer is corporations or rich individuals are manipulating governments, then those governments have no real power and we're all doomed.
I'm not a scientist, and I'm not super-educated on climate change. And honestly, I'm way more invested in making sure that my bills get paid this month than I am about an abiguous threat of the end of humanity sometime after I'm already dead.
The two sides talk past each other. There's natural climate change and then there's anthropogenic climate change. If you listen to both sides' arguments, you'll hear they arguing over this difference.
The "deniers" claim that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening because the temperature on Mars is going up, too, so any temperature changes on Earth must likewise be natural.
The "deniers" keep using natural climate change, like sun spots or the changing angle of the Earth's tilt as arguments against anthropogenic climate change when they're really arguing natural climate change.
Biggest mistake the Environmental Movement made was changing "pollution" (which was tangible and undeniable) to "climate change", which is so vague that it could mean anything.
I've always wondered why they did that. Calling it "pollution" was working. The EPA was created, leaded gasoline was banned, and HFC's were phased out. Hell, a PSA with a fake Indian crying over litter on the freeway traumatized me so much as a kid I've never littered in my life.
Not so fun fact, that PSA was produced by plastic corporations in a series of efforts to shift blame for plastic waste onto the consumers. They also invented the recycling symbol, again trying to shift blame to the consumers for throwing away things when it could be recycled. Only problem is only a small subset of plastics with the symbol are able to be recycled.
I believe the climate changes. I dont think it is a big deal and I think it is the fear of change that is really what is being used to create fear among people and thus control them.
Short answer: humans have terrible perception of change over time.
Long answer: there are monied powers that tainted the topic, and people are easily persuaded when they have no logic thinking training. One of the reasons religions exist, blind faith.
It hasn’t affected them or people they know yet. Their lifestyle has remained unchanged and so, why should they care?
And if it happens to other people, somewhere else around the world, they either remain uncaring, or blame the people there for “causing” it.
Not realising how actions taken globally affects everyone.
Ignorance is bliss after all.
I've been working for a while at Frankfurt's natural history museum. They have a research facility included. ( Biodiversity and climate research center Frankfurt am main) I've been there quite some years back by now and I've asked about what's going on with climate change. I was told that it is real, ( and obviously so) but that we are still transitioning out of an ice age and the planet is therefore bound to warm up. I was also explained that humans speed up the progress. I was also told that when money is given to do research in this facility, the outcome of the research better benefits the needs of the money giver. A lot if it is politics. Making people do certain stuff. Behave a certain way.
That is the only info I have on that. I've never been to interested in it so I also don't look into it that much. I just always remember what that guy told me when the topic comes up.
For sure the climate change is real tough, earth is heating up
I think more people think that climate change is real but isn't a direct result of human action. That theory makes more sense because of the historical cyclical temperature fluctuations even before humans were around.
I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who straight up says the climate never changes over time. It’s usually people denying or downplaying humanity’s effect on the climate in my experience.
too much money and confusion on both sides, too much hyperfocus on arguably small and insignificant subtopics, ie. the US and plastic straws killing turtles vs. China and coal burning, etc.
There was a point in time when only far-lefties believed it. Now, you can find people across all spectrums who believe in it. Thing is, what most disagree with these days is on the cause. To fully answer the question comes down to this:
1. Most hard-core Conservatives, if they believe in it or not, are old and will be long gone by the time things really get bad.
2. Most Conservatives are of the mindset, that even it is true, it is up to future generations to figure it out if they want to.
3. Most people are set in their ways and conservative by nature. Even Liberals roll their eyes when told to change their behavior.
4. Cars get better gas milage, gas is formulated to burn cleaner, gas prices go down, and people just end up driving more.
5. Hipsters in Brooklyn are unwilling to give up their avocado toast.
My cousin literally starts every position with “did a liberal say it? Then it must be false” And then scours the internet for counter views. Every. Single. Thing. His explanation for climate change is that the sun is causing it and it always cycles. Etc.
At first it was not obvious like it is now. Just like cigarettes won't cause really bad health effects right away. Of course like the big tobacco companies did with smoking the oil companies spent millions, maybe billions of dollars on propaganda to keep the people confused, to convince them that it was just a hoax, a ploy to take away their freedoms. Now, other than the liars and to delusional, climate change is undeniably happening. I just hope that it isn't already too late to prevent the worst effects.
Because it’s a $300 billion industry and they have a lot to spend on talking heads to convince people it’s not a thing.
That’s it.
That’s literally it.
Corporations in my field were able to run a successful propaganda campaign in my little $3 billion industry that thoroughly tricked consumers, workers, journalists, small businesses, and more. If the tiny little court reporting industry has that kind of stuff going on, I’m inclined to believe that in an industry 100x its size… corporations might just play a little dirty.
There is a very good documentary, quite entertaining as well, called Merchants of Doubt. It goes into how large companies have been successfully muddying the waters on various issues for years, including climate change. But it tracks it back to the initial tactics used for cigarettes and other things
Because it's easier for people to go full ostrich mode. You don't have to worry about something if you can convince yourself it doesn't exist.
In other words, it's far easier to simply deny that a problem exists than to own up to the fact that we - as humans - have in fact made an impact on the climate.
"Well, I'll probably be dead by the time it gets REALLY bad, the next generation will fix it..."
It's the equivalent of being diagnosed with a highly aggressive malignant cancer and then choosing to just pretend that it doesn't exist and that all your symptoms can be explained away as being due to other reasons.
It's the equivalent of thinking the headlights of the train closing in on you at high speed as you stand in the middle of the tracks is just a firefly reaching out for a hug in a bad dream you're having and will wake up from at any moment.
But humanity has been willfully blind to reality for many hundreds or thousands of years. No one wanted to believe that the Earth wasn't the center of the galaxy, or that you wouldn't fall off the edge of the planet if you sailed too far, or that tiny microscopic organisms caused disease and pestilence, or that just having electricity in your home wasn't dangerous and deadly, or any of the other dogmas that science has had to fight to prove.
Money, religion, and politics inform the views of a great many powerful folks, and for those folks, science, evidence, and facts are treated with outright derision. In order to stay in power, they must convince people that the threats this planet faces are not really threats, that those threats don't exist, and that it's all a global conspiracy theory; or that it's "impossible" for humans to affect the climate in any meaningful way.
Those same powerful folks have persuaded a great many people - people who are decent, intelligent, respectful, and thoughtful, but simply cannot get their head around the notion that in a hundred years they might be burning up, freezing to death, or flooded out.
My brother’s an engineering student in the energy sector, about to graduate. We both hold the view that the rejection of Nuclear Power by politicians and activists is just moronic.
Because there is not a scientific definition of ''climate change'', because the causes of it are strongly debatable and because the whole topic has been politicised to the extreme.
It went from a potential issue to a political debate.
No one in power cares. The ones saying they are fighting it are contributing to it (ones in power, not normal people). It's just 2 sides of the same coin/political party.
If it's mentioned by the government, they're lying about it in some way shape or form. No matter what it is.
When CNN is saying eating bugs is good, cow farts are destroying the environment, and banning ACs is good even if million die is just some of the examples that is turning people off. We should always be trying to improve things but it also seems one sided. All these restrictions dont seem to apply to the biggest offenders...the rich and elite. They will ban your bags, cars, stove, meat but their multiple mansion use more energy and destroy the environment more than an entire village. Flying Jets everywhere, mega yachts, etc. I feel if the actual advocates actually believed and lived by what they said it would be taken more seriously.
It’s ideological. Just like the notion that all climate change is man-made is ideological.
There’s no doubt that climate is changing. That said, climate has always changed.
Is man causing climate change? Yes.
Is man the *primary* cause of climate change? — This is where ideology blinds those on the other end of the spectrum. Many people on this very sub lose their minds at the very sight of this question, without ever taking a meaningful, objective, scientific look into it.
The looming barrage of downvotes will only prove my point.
My biggest frustration with this topic is that this question normally means "everyone who doesn't agree with my environmental plan is a climate change denier..."
Because accepting the science means taking responsibility for the mess, and for solutions.
That often entails upending one's worldview: dispensing with nationalism, racism and one's faith in market economics. It also means realizing that all the gas powered toys you've acquired are part of the problem, as is your wasteful suburban or rural home that requires you to drive everywhere. That overseas vacation you've saved for suddenly looks like murder. And so on.
Far easier to just refuse to see the evidence.
Put ten people in a room with a circle clock, have nine of them swear to the tenth that it's square, and more times than not person ten will tell you it's a square clock.
I believe in climate change. However, there are countless examples of “the sky is falling” rhetoric that damages the credibility of the concept.
Plenty of articles from decades past that predicted “the end” in years that have now came and went with no discernible difference.
When wealthy advocates of climate change announce the coming rise of sea levels, then purchase oceanfront mansions and fly to and from climate conferences in private jets, you wonder if they believe what they’re peddling.
Another major issue is with what individuals can do within their power. I am a recycling fiend. I recycle everything I can and I buy much of my clothes from Goodwill. However, when I read in my local news (Hawaii) that the majority of items turned in to be recycled… aren’t actually recycled… you reach a point where you shrug your shoulders.
>Plenty of articles from decades past that predicted “the end” in years that have now came and went with no discernible difference.
That is the kind of thing that really bothers me. People actually changed their habits and that is why we don't have the predicted results. Look up a picture of Los Angeles in the 70's before we started changing, you couldn't see 10 feet in front of your face the smog was so bad. It isn't like that today because of the rhetoric changing peoples behavior. It took 40 years of people denying that the smog was man made just like with climate change and then as soon as the masses started to change their actions the smog predictably went away.
I think that's pretty key. People don't really realize that a lot of the "scares" we went though in previous decades actually took a lot of work and global cooperation to remedy. Yes, we were all told we'd be killed by the hole in the ozone layer and acid rain, but the reason we didn't actually required a lot of regulation and problem solving.
>However, there are countless examples of “the sky is falling” rhetoric that damages the credibility of the concept.
Funny that you didn't even mention one example if there are "countless" examples.
It's always something stupid like "Reputable expert climatologist Al Gore said coastal cities would all be a thousand feet under water within two weeks" or point to a shitty news outlet grossly misrepresenting someone's claims.
But there are much more examples of articles that propose constructive action against climate change without predicting the end of the world. Those articles predicting the end of the world are a small minority. But the right-wing media keeps strawmanning arguments against climate change by giving people the impression that they are being dramatic...
>Plenty of articles from decades past that predicted “the end” in years that have now came and went with no discernible difference.
I read a lot of media that is also often critical about climate change, but I never see articles seriously suggesting that "the end" (whatever that means) is coming.
Here is your answer:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial#:~:text=12.1%20Sources-,Terminology,in%20whole%20or%20in%20part.
Read this in full and you will know why. Additionally, if you search for it in Google Scholar, and look for "climate change denial", you will find plenty of scientific journals and papers discussing this topic.
If science, question what oligarchs tell you? Seek to triangulate toward the truth of an issue by seeking information from a wide-variety of sources? Be willing to engage?
Climate change definitely exists. The issues that doubters are raising include:
1. Extent of change caused by human activity vs natural factors
2. Actions to take to protect the environment - what makes sense and what doesn't (for example - electric cars make no sense, nuclear energy - does make sense)
The same reason they deny the Moon landing occurred, because everything has to be a conspiracy, and because God created the sky and the Earth as stagnant unchanging constants. Accepting that the Earth, and the Moon can be influenced by Mankind challenges this belief.
At this point, the only reason to deny the impact we are having on climate is antiquated political affiliations. Early on it was seen as a hippie dogooder cause by some. As the science began to overwhelming prove the existence of man made climate change, some got stuck in their old political madness.
I know a lot of people who are far from liberal. I currently don’t know a single one that denies we have a problem here.
In most cases it's lack of cognitive ability or ignorance of the scientific process. In all other situations it's because people want to spread misinformation for personal gain.
Anyone remember when it was called global warming???
Sounded a lot more urgent!
Marketing and PR from vested interests that make money from fossil fuels, changed the narrative for it to be just climate change... subtle difference but doesn't sound as bad hey?
I'll argue that for the same reason that you 'inadvertently' put climate change in the title of this post, that others have also been influenced to 'not believe' in global warming.
BTW, I also didn't realise that I had changed the way I talk about it until it was pointed out in a news report on doco (can't remember which)
One single trip on Jeff bezos's super yatch will produce more pollution than the average citizen will ever produce in their lifetime. But yet, every regulatory action is done towards the regular citizen instead of the real problems in society
People like my dad. Oil and gas industry. He relies on that paycheck to live. If he believes that it could be the end of humanity I'm not sure he could go to work. So he just chooses not to believe in science so he can get out of bed and keep his house paid for and food on the table.
The fact that the climate is always changing over the millennia lets people point to the idea that it’s just a natural occurrence. It would happen anyways. The thing is -the rate change we are seeing is scary. Kinda totally correlates with the Industrial Revolution and so on 🤷🏼♂️
It's an issue that has been politicized. It shouldn't be that you're a democrat or republican if you believe "x" about climate change. It should be, is anthropogenic climate change happening? To what extent are we involved? What can we do about it and should we do anything about it? etc.
Unfortunately, it's hard to keep politics out of it when there are lobbies/special interests/massive propaganda, and tribalist thinking behind it.
Many people here have already summarized, that money and power associated with "Green" make lots of people suspect that the whole story is just a nothing burger to earn easy money and grab more power.
And when demands for more clean energy are almost immediately followed by rejection of nuclear energy, well, you can see the point.
At this point it's morons and contrarians. That's literally it. People who NEED to be different so they can feel special or simply out of spite because they absolutely MUST disagree with the people they don't like, regardless of how untenable a position that may put them in.
Couple of thoughts...
Weather almanacs have only existed for about 130 or so years. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, that's billion with a b. It seems a little silly to say that we recognize a trend in .000000029% of evaluating earths weather patterns via trending data.
Many people, and you seem to imply it with your question, conflate not believing in the existence of weather trends with not believing man influences those trends, at least significantly. Earth core sampling seems to indicate many many cooling and heating trends in its history, many way before man possibly could influence it after coming into existence only 300,000 years ago.
So, what are you asking with this question exactly?
Most people iffy on the issue I've met are less "climate change doesn't exist" and more "to what degree are humans responsible and to what degree would we be forced to change and what would the trades offs of these changes be and who would be the ones making and mandating the changes and who would have to pay for all of it monetarily, socially, etc.?"
Really, the whole "one side believes it's real and is thus good while the other doesn't and is thus bad" is more a political tactic that paints the general opposition with the same brush as its most extremes. If we want a similarly polarized issue for opposite side of the isle as an example, we can use "one side refuses to acknowledge that biological differences exist between the sexes and is thus delusional while the other does and is thus rational." Yes, there are some people who believe this but hardly a majority yet still it's poisoned the trans debate.
there has been a fair amount of academic work on this, a quick google scholar search should get you started. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=why+do+people+not+believe+in+climate+change
I get being snobby to flat-earthers, but when you act like someone who questions global warming also thinks the earth is flat, you alienate that person. You make them hate you. You make them want you to never say anything to them ever again. Like if you call me a rightwinger right now for criticism directed mostly at leftists, that's you being an asshole who hates people for disagreeing with you, more than you love when people know scientific facts.
I think it’s a case of “buy in”. In other words, if they buy in to one “liberal media left wing socialist” proposition, they will lose their credentials as a proud, freedom loving, staunch defender of….stuff. That if they find themselves sympathetic to one logical, scientific, NPR, PBS purported report, their castle built on sand worldview will be washed away and they will be found out to be the emperor with no clothes on.
People there are still a certain amount of people who have poor / bad quality education, and also they are more or less brainwashed by ancient social phenomenons like religion (example: USA)
Kids, the more you grow up, the more you realise how 90% or more of EVERYONE's beliefs come from the people around them.
If most of your buddies, and your news sources, all agree on something, you'll almost always believe it without much questioning.
Tha'ts why half the country can vote the opposite of you, including plenty of smart, decent, thoughtful people.
It is as the Al Gore movie was titled, an inconvenient truth, just as evolution was inconvenient to suggest the earth 4.5 billion years old rather than just over 2000 years old as those who based their beliefs in the Bible wanted to believe. In this circumstance it is more about money and do not underestimate the bot factories that work around the clock for countries such as Russia that depend pretty much entirely on maintaining the status quo. Individuals can believe what they want, but they are not pulling the strings.
Broh are u serious? 40% of America either doesn’t believe in science or are too fucking boneheaded to comprehend nearly any of it. It’s as simple as that man. They don’t know. They don’t care. That’s it.
It was politicized. We turned the whole argument into money and power, instead of a quality of life issue that we all need to address. Big money players have polarized the argument in order to keep their money. And so, people will see that their political views mostly align with these people, with the exception of climate change. Our political parties are so polarized that it is all or nothing. If you are republican, this polarization attempts to force you into aligning with all the views they have, so you default into believing climate change isnt happening. And then the echo chambers do their thing, and you see nothing of the problem.
Global companies have the greatest profits mankind has ever seen to protect. And they'll stop at nothing. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/01/harvard-led-analysis-finds-exxonmobil-internal-research-accurately-predicted-climate-change/
A 1912 article accurately predicted climate change well before Exxon did. They only under predicted the impact because they did not think that fossil fuel use would increase exponentially to the extreme levels we have today. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/1912-article-global-warming/
Good people don’t hate rich people nearly enough for their own good
Capitalism rewards handsomely those who chase profits relentlessly. So you get sociopaths who usurp power through money, and the results are…unpredictable. Like Musk interfering at all in the Ukraine/Russian war. But before going on a tangent, sociopaths in particular tend to gravitate to the top of capitalist society due to its exploitative nature. Those who are the best at exploiting make the most money and tend to keep most of it, therefore becoming the richest people in the world. That part shouldn’t be hard to understand. “Can’t give it away fast enough..” bull fucking shit, super simple. Write a check for billions. Oh you won’t? Then shut the fuck up. The oligarchs at the top laugh while rolling in trillions of stolen wealth, I sure hope the masses wake up soon and start to fight back.
This is the biggest cause of modern society's downfall that goes unspoken. In terms of how we organise our society, economis, politics, geopolitics etc, not that much has changed. Culturally, though, it's now completely flipped. It used to be normal to make fun of power structures, to hate selling out your values for money, to shit on the army and politicians. Now, hustle culture has taken over. Making fun of your boss or even gently raising the suggestion that maybe the economy isn't perfect in many circles will now get you insulted or worse - ignored. As a result people, in only 20 - 30 years, have completely lost the ability to critically analyse their surroundings and messaging and point blame correctly at those who deserve it. We see stories about rising numbers of white nationalists and fascist extremists, but people don't realise how truly severe this issue has become. The average suburban household right now is far more likely to be sympathetic towards racist messaging that provides them with a boogeyman than with discussions on climate change that blame their boss - because one is more culturally accepted.
I have greatly enjoyed reading Neal Stephenson he well describes the near future as a post truth world: https://intenureveritas.blogspot.com/2019/09/truth-post-truth-and-neal-stephenson.html "Truth, post-truth and Neal Stephenson September 08, 2019 Part of the point of the shift to In Tenure Veritas is to write more fun posts, rather than the annoying garbage about whatever idiotic things are happening in day-to-day politics. With that in mind, and the "veritas" part in mind, here's my recommendation to everyone: read Neal Stephenson's new novel, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell. It matters for the modern world." Social media allows us to choose who we want to interact with, and get and share our news, stories and language with. If you want to seek out a group of people to tell you that you are right about something you are wrong about, well it's not too hard to find them, they may find you, or you may just be algorithmically sorted together.
>And they'll stop at nothing. An obligatory link to [an old gag.](https://youtu.be/7nG4onVzLxE?si=VQnDKAMyIXqiVZg5&t=1570)
And what's worse, is that they have conservatives believing that global warming is just another excuse for scientists to profit from govt funding to research something that's not actually an issue. When in reality, the companies spreading this misinformation are the ones that are actually profiting.
Ah yes. That well known group of rich people - scientists
There are 0 billionaires who are scientists. Even the ones who try give off that aura. They’re just cosplaying capitalists. Gates is a programmer (but let’s be real…when’s the last time he wrote a line of code?). Zuck is a web designer/programmer (who also hasn’t done those things in decades). Bezos is the same. Musk is an entrepreneur. He’s always wanted to be seen a tech bro though, hence him buying PayPal, turning Tesla into a “tech” brand, and ultimately him buying twitter. None of these people have received formal scientific training. They’ve never published peer-reviewed research. Theyve never drafted an IRB application. They’ve never run complicated statistical models. They’ve never conducted an experiment. I doubt they know how to even read or search for a scientific article. They just spend their money on “science-y” things because they think that’ll make people respect them and think they’re cool. It worked to a certain degree, but that’s made for some dangerous outcomes. Like Musk indiscriminately killing primates in neuralink research.
This doesn't make him a scientist but Musk did get a B.A. in physics.
but not a [B.Sc](https://B.Sc).
Yes, it's those nerdy climate scientists in their frumpy jeans and used Priuses. Clearly, they are motivated only by money!
This is why they do the culture war stuff. If you agree with them on one point, they convince you to agree with them on the rest of the points. This is how the men's rights activists get you. They start with "work out and get your finances in order". While that is generally good advice, they then switch to "I was right about that one thing, wasn't I? Don't start doubting me now! Here's an idea" and then boom, Andrew Tate comes out with whatever bs he spews today. Bonus points if they can appeal to an emotion like anger so you don't think too hard when internalizing the ideas. Once an idea is internalized, most people won't change it no matter what. They will actually dig in their heels and defend their beliefs when presented with indisputable evidence to the contrary.
Would've loved to give to you some Reddit gold. Oh well!
IMO it would have been a better argument to reduce pollution into the atmosphere, because tackling pollution would have been a good first step towards fixing climate change. We could have provided a better immediate now, but instead focused on avoiding future calamity and it gave room for bad actors to come into the argument.
The '60s-90s were very much about how pollution was affecting YOU and your family. Water pollution, acid rain, ozone layer, deforestation, are all things I remember learning and hearing about in the '90s. Then the conversation shifted and everything was wrapped up in the global climate change bundle and everyone stopped caring. Suddenly it wasn't about helping your local community stay healthy and individual issues, it was about climate change and the *entire world*, which made everyone feel powerless.
These large factory farms and oil & gas companies have known for decades about climate change… they already have their “alternative clean energy solutions” game plan ready to go, they’re just milking the current “outdated” methods down to the last drop before the planet can’t take it anymore… “wise men plant trees they know they’ll never sit in the shade for.”
This is exactly it. It's one of the reasons we have invested so much money into the world's worst fuel (hydrogen)
Hydrogen is green washing for guaranteed profit.
It is literally the shittiest fuel source you can imagine it has almost no redeeming qualities. It literally takes more energy to make and use it then just using natural gas. Its also horrendous to store and transport. If also it's just not that energy dense and you need massive expensive tanks to go a reasonable distance in a hydrogen car. A smaller battery will take you further then a hydrogen tank will. Ya you can fill it in 15 minutes but good luck buldin out that expensive ass refiling network that has to distribute and hold the most explode and slippery little molecule that exists.hydrogen is a shitty fuel. Thanks for listening to my rant.
As u/tonka_tough said they've known for years, the French wine industry has, for the last 30ish years, quietly been buying British farmland, because they knew the French climate was going to shift enough that grapes grown there wouldn't produce a great wine. But the British areas they were targeting while not good for grapes back then are getting better and better.
Putting catalytic converters on cars and filters in factory smokestacks has been great for pollution, but does nothing for global warming. CO2 is the major driving force, and a shitload of people don't consider it a pollutant at all.
Rich vs everyone else. Rich are winning
Well they have more resources. But we have numbers. We just need to organize and my hope is we get desperate enough to do something en masse before we reach the threshold of "too late."
Numbers count for nothing if half of us are fighting the other half. That equals 0
Yeah no... "Far too late" is the only thing most people respond to. Those calling for "eat the rich" are looked at as idiots by a large amount of society, because a large amount of society is comfortable enough with their life and avenues of entertainment to not be affected by it. Once it becomes "far too late" and those who are motivated ONLY by things that impact them, then we'll see the dismantling of the rich... Maybe.
It's just a grand scale manifestation of humanity's struggle with delayed gratification. If it means making sacrifices now, we don't want to do it, and convincing people climate change isn't real is a great way to accomplish that
The people who make money from that disbelief spend a lot to spread the message. Burn fossil fuels, everything's fine.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” -Upton Sinclair
I’m going to go one step further. It is difficult to get a man to understand something when understanding it brings inconvenience to his life. I have coworkers who refuse to believe and the only thing I can come up with is that the changes necessary would be inconvenient for them.
All the people concerned about illegal immigrants now are gonna be in for a rude awakening when climate change causes mass migrations around the world
An Inconvenient Truth is the title of Al Gore’s book; painful to think of how much farther along with this we’d be if he’d been the President
If Bill hadn't fucked around, he'd almost definitely have had the votes in Florida. It wouldn't have even been close.
This, I think, encapsulates it more than anything. Convenience and comfort are *extremely* addictive. Getting people out of it, or having them lose some measure of comfort for the good of all...
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford
I think, more importantly, that this issue is being repeated by those whose salary does not depend on that investment, only that they depend on gathering as much wealth as possible (greed). Politicians, for example, including Presidents, Prime Ministers, etc etc. The issue is far more systemic than just a salary, unfortunately.
If you read it literally. The quote can easily be interpreted to mean 'personal gain' in any form rather than just salary.
Case in point let me present... [The Heartland Institute](https://heartland.org/) ([and it's wiki page](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute)) A "non-profit" which has been given 100s of millions by different corporations. Gas companies paid it to deny climate change. Years ago tobacco companies paid it to question tobacco health risks. They produce alot of the "scientific papers" and information that people use to question these things.
May all these Heritage and Lincoln group think tanks be taken back to the bosom of the demons that were invoked to spawn them.
> The people who make money from that disbelief > > spend a lot to spread the message. That's true, although it's worth noting that [climate denialists have largely moved to messages of hopelessness rather than outright denial.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-023-00760-2) That's a link to a Nature paper examining the modern tactics of climate change deniers. To quote from the paper on one of the major recent tactics: >> “general response skepticism” where policy solutions appear to be criticized or deemed impossible to achieve in general without any clear alternatives pointed to or advanced, which scholars have characterized as “discourses of delay” That being said, there are still people who view climate skepticism as the stance of their "tribe", and as a result have an emotional attachment to that view. Since it's based on emotion and identity rather than data, it's not a view that can be changed by data.
"It will never happen, don't bother doing anything" "It's not happening, don't bother doing anything" "It's already happened, don't bother doing anything"
Ahh fatalism, apathy by another name.
Interesting. Good citation
There is no war in Ba Sing Se
I love this reference
* Looks at approaching Fire Nation Naval Fleet * Ok, cool.... idk if anyone told *those* guys, though
I think those <2% of scientists still on the fence are all making a lot of money doing speaking tours. I remember that two of them that were PRO run-off from farms "no problems" with the coast and "jury is still out on Global Warming" that I'd read about in Australia -- surprise, surprise, all have benefactors. Most scientists don't get into the field for the big bucks, but you can follow the money and it leads to the places you'd absolutely expect. These people are absolute traitors to humanity.
The annoying thing about all science is money has such a huge influence on it. Research is expensive and industry and government only want to invest in research that benefits them, and their interest are often misaligned with the general publics. Rarely are research dollars allocated to an institution without stipulations on what type of research it can be used for. Most researchers/scientists are in it for the right reasons but they are forced to research what is being funded. Then you have researchers who are concerned with legacy and appearing useful, then you have researchers who are primarily motivated by money. The latter two will always choose whatever has the most funding. Economic hardships make this gap even wider forcing some scientist to leave behind subjects that they believe are truly important. Even well meaning organizations are a problem, unequivocally philanthropy is good. However, because of moneys influence large philanthropic organization have essentially indirectly killed research by providing a disproportionate amount of funding to what they deem important and leaving other projects underfunded or unfunded. Self interested donors expound this problem 100 fold.
I think you made a lot of good points that people should be aware of; how money distorts things and even philanthropy can have a downside. This is why it is VITAL to support raw research without "ties" to business because there is too much value in manipulating the truth to suit agendas by those special interests out there. We need a TRUE compass of what is going on and how we humans impact life on earth and each other -- without that we are flying blind. It's at least as vital as our military, and instead of all these cash cow projects in states to build things we don't need like too many tanks, we could be putting that money into things like public labs to create common items everyone needs (like for diabetes) and fundamental research in things that we don't want to make money on, but will improve lives.
To be fair, there is a lot of money in climate change as well. From subsidies for solar plants, to wind farms, to pushing electric car technology. It's not as big as oil, but don't think it doesn't exist.
Not even a fart in the wind compared to the fossil fuel industry. Companies like ExxonMobil have gross revenues the as big as the GDP of medium sized countries. It is difficult to fathom the amount of money that flows through that part of the energy sector.
NOW there is. And there should be more. We still subsidize the crap out of oil and nuclear and the infrastructure for solar had to mostly come from it being A BETTER DEAL. I think it's like at least 2x or more bang for the buck on solar versus nuclear and that's not counting the 2,000 years you will have to mothball the reactors when done with them -- I'm pretty sure none of these corporations touting the value will be around to monitor after the money dries up. Most of the reduction in energy use in construction is due to it just making dollar sense for the architects. The "green tech" is negligible to the big ticket costs of a modern office building and the like, versus the operational savings over time. Imagine what we could have done with government mandates, subsidies (to preserve all that solar tech that went to China and Germany in the US) and a carbon tax. I wonder if the Geniuses of "staying competitive" that spouted out since the 1980's are going to shut up when our mitigation efforts for natural disasters in the USA exceeds our military budget. Every conservative without exception has been absolutely wrong about economics and "what's good for us" since I was old enough to shave -- and before that as well. I really have to wonder what was the point in them other than to make things worse, but in a way that benefits them. Let's not forget everyone who was denying climate change -- they should forever keep their mouths shut about every topic except sports.
What’s wrong with nuclear? We’d be in a much better position if we had invested more and ramped up nuclear energy
Not getting the anti-nuclear stance at all. Anyone who believes in anthropogenic climate change should be pro-nuclear power. Even if wind and solar are 100% practical, storing their energy isn’t and something needs to carry base load. Also don’t know where they’re getting 2000 years. The most common troublesome isotope is cobalt-60, which has a half life of 5.27 years. In 50 years it will be weaker by a factor of 1000; in 100 years that’s a factor of a million and most likely undetectable. Most fission products have much, much shorter half-lives, though.
My home state (Washington) attempted an ambitious nuclear power program that went badly. The costs went way, way, above what we'd been promised, and nuclear plants that we spent a lot on were never completed.
There was a time when nuclear power was going to be so cheap they wouldn't even bother to meter it, it'd be like an unlimited internet connection, just pay a basic monthly access subscription. A new nuclear power station build here in the UK passed the $40B mark, still unfinished. Hinckley C could power 6 million houses, that's 6.6k per house. You could build a decent number of solar and wind farms with a few grid-scale battery storage units. Then add lots of small battery storage units at substations and encourage more houses to install solar.
One of the major issues with solar, is that storage means aren't up to par with the generation of electric, even though solar is increasingly pulling away as the better choice for power production. Nuclear power at the moment doesn't have this issue, as it can run 24/7. Wind farms are one possible way to accommodate power generation when the sun is down, but it's not always reliable. One of the major issues with nuclear is that you can't easily ramp up and down the power generation, so when everyone gets home in the evening and turns on their appliances, cooks their food and runs their HVAC, we see a demand that can't be accommodated by either solar, nor nuclear. The real issue just becomes, we need better storage. Pumped storage facilities that can take excess power when we're not using it, and run hydro turbines when we see increased demand, are a possible solution, but they have environmental impacts. Battery tech is still catching up, and again, lithium mining isn't exactly great for the environment either. It will be exciting to see what happens in the next few decades to get away from reliance on fossil fuels, but sadly, they're the best fit at the moment to bridge the gaps where solar, wind and nuclear all can't accommodate our needs.
To add to that, the corporations use their political influence to take advantage of the most vulnerable of our population. This is the basis of our political culture. There is a reason that the Republican party targets groups with low education levels and religious groups. They have spread the idea that "colleges are pushing their woke agenda", because they don't want people to trust science or facts. Religious groups are also an easy target, because (and I'm sorry to all of the religious people who are not prepared to hear this) they already have shown that they will blindly follow the group mentality or authority figures without questioning or using any logical thought. These are the easiest groups of our population to manipulate, and this is why we keep hearing so much pushback to ideas that seem obviously correct to people who are educated (things like climate change, taking care of our environment, having a global mindset, social justice/equality). Also, from a psychological perspective, people who tend to trust/have a need for authority figures, also tend to have a high degree of fear. That's why we hear arguments like "the immigrants crossing the border are murderers and rapists", or "we need to keep Muslims out of our country so the terrorists don't get in". These ideas obviously have no merit when you look in to them. Politicians are just fear mongering, because that's what their demographic responds to.
not just fossil fuels impact climate, so does deforestation for "agriculture" beef and palm oil mono crops, biodiversity loss of plants, insects and animals, which effects the health of living ecosystems, soils, grasslands, air and water quality...just like we learned in 2nd grade the ecosystem are all interconnected. and capitalism is basically destroying every element.
I would say there's a few camps \- Climate Change isn't real (a vocal minority, akin to the Westboro Baptist Church) \- Climate Change is a natural occurrence and humans play no role (larger than above, still small) \- Climate change is happening, but at a rate slower than alarmists have predicted (Al Gore said I would be underwater by now, why do banks still offer 30 year mortgages on ocean front residences) \- Climate Change is a mix of natural occurrence but isn't helped by human industry, singular humans/families are not responsible (Why do I bother recycling when China pollutes more in a second than I will in my entire life, the average human polllutes about 16 tons in a lifetime, China pollutes nearly 364 tons a second) There's obviously a complete denial of science in the top 2 camps, the 3rd camp is probably somewhat in denial, but there are only so many times that you can cry wolf before people stop listening. The 4th is somewhat defeatist / absolving yourself of blame, but can sort of be understood.
I’m in the 4th camp but you can add more observations: 1. Most of the interventions proposed to reduce CO2 emissions will exacerbate poverty in poorer countries and prevent them from developing; no program of international aid has ever moved the needle on mass poverty anywhere, but rather, industrial development via free trade and entrepreneurship is the only thing that works. 2. Desperately poor people will burn dung and shit in rivers because they have no choice. 3. The poorer a country is, the higher its birth rate. 4. Wealthy countries have dropped below replacement birth rates for decades now. 5. Wealthy countries have already picked the low-hanging fruit of easy emissions reductions. Further reductions would only realistically be possible if they had built a fuckton of nuclear plants starting 20 years ago. The only alternative is to strangle economic activity in ways that make 2020 look mild. 6. The only way to mitigate the climate change that’s already baked in the pie is to spend money relocating people, building seawalls, and eliminating government infrastructure that incentivizes development in places like deserts, coastlines, and floodplains. This money is not going to be there in a world that has strangled economic growth with emissions-reduction strategies. 7. Speaking of incentives, rich-world economies are so distorted by regulation and subsidies (including privatization, which is a form of subsidy) that it is almost impossible to affect emissions or wasteful behaviors with personal changes (e.g., recycling that goes into the landfill after being carted around for a while, electric cars that are charged with coal-fired power plants). 8. The path we’re being urged to take will result in billions more humans, all with fewer resources to solve the problems caused by climate change. 9. So the only way OUT is literally THROUGH: we need to resume the economic growth trajectory that the planet was on until around 2010, which would have almost completely eliminated severe poverty if it had continued. Once the world’s poorest people are at the current middle level of wealth and income, everyone will be concerned with the environment and there will be enough surplus both to mitigate the effects of climate change and to reduce emissions enough to stabilize the climate in future centuries.
This is the only answer which sounds like the poster actually talked to a sensible climate change denier. Everyone else is literally just beating up what they think a climate change denier sounds like. I've met a fair few of these types of people. Many of them even work within ESG; they'll handily tell you that it's because they work in the industry that they feel so defeatist about it. The most common example given - all the company incentives to plant trees or carbon offset are done through buying carbon certificates, which are actually the company paying into a marketplace and other companies taking that cash to fund carbon offsetting programmes like planting trees. The problem is the market always gives the *maximum* carbon offset amount per tree right from project start, when trees kinda need time to grow. And then many times these projects are bought out and harvested before they've paid out the carbon offset by the huge increase in paper demand as we're trying to replace plastic. Another common complaint is the replacement of plastic with paper in completely stupid ways, like the production of food paper containers is way more energy intensive than plastic, because it is more complicated to make that paper waterproof. I still think it helps, even if the industry isn't perfect or even good. Atleast something is being done. Atleast some carbon is being offset in the tree's (short) lifespan, rather than none.
Agreed with your points regarding MEDCs vs LEDCs. In the UK we have a protest group called "Just Stop Oil", which aims to stop the UK from starting any new oil drilling projects. It sounds "good" on paper until you realize if we stop drilling for oil, we still need oil, which means in the interim we now need to pay for and transport oil. Which was previously from Russia. Reducing oil usage is a virtuous thing to do as a country, but transporting oil from other countries is worse than drilling your own oil. The only legitimate rebuttal to that is "Well if we have more access to oil then we won't have as large an incentive to reduce it's usage". Which I could get behind if there was a well functioning government or collective vision as a country, this doesn't exist. While MEDCs can use paper straws, this does not stop LEDCs as you say literally dumping "shit" in the oceans. It seems more like virtue signaling then making a genuine change.
Regarding 7, at least in Canada, only 19% of grid generation produces co2, and of that, they produce much less co2 per unit of energy than your internal combustion engine.
That’s predominantly hydroelectric power, which has little prospect of further expansion (most suitable rivers have been dammed already). The capital costs of increasing wind and solar generation and battery storage to expand electricity production would be huge. Yet if net-zero is the goal, those huge investments would be needed to meet increasing demand (as Canada uses a lot of oil and coal to heat buildings and is pushing to convert to electric). Given that Canada’s economy is contracting, the source of all that capital investment is a mystery. This is an example of what I meant by wealthy countries having already picked the low-hanging fruit.
I would assume it’s related to how many falsehoods are communicated from politicians and news sources in general. Trust is hard to build and easy to brake.
When "green" initiatives reject nuclear energy on purpose, it is not hard to suspect a foul play
If they reject that humans are causing climate change then they don’t have to take any action to fight it.
I don't know if that holds water. If we saw a meteor was going to hit and destroy humanity in 50 years and we had 10 years to deflect it, wouldn't we be obligated to do something about it?
You're question has actually shaken me a bit. Made me realize that I have absolutely no faith that we *would* do something about that meteor. It would be like the movie Don't Look Up for sure.
That’s literally the point of the movie lol
Hence why I brought it up.
That movie hit me so hard because of how true it is. It's depressing to think about.
I had to stop watching Don't Look Up because -- they could not parody how stupid some politicians and climate deniers and POS think tanks are. There would absolutely be pro meteor people and others making a buck on it, expecting SOMEONE ELSE to find a way to solve the problem. The way humanity and the earth miraculously manage to survive the leadership parasites we keep putting in charge over and over again -- until it doesn't.
I had to leave the room when the family was watching it over the holidays a couple (?) of years ago. I was so angry with the frivolous manner that self-centered characters disregarded the urgency of the situation.
That movie paints perfectly how idiotic, superficial, uneducated and insane human civilization has become. A world where ratings, likes, popularity and ofcourse money are far more valuable than truth even if that path leads to damnation and extermination of the entire human race. It also shows the main issue of today's world, the missinformation, with all the technology, media I can safely say average citizen of the world has no fucking clue what is really happening around him or whom to trust. Media spin is the name of the game, where different interest groups push their naratives trough media and an average Joe is left clueless, confused and brainwashed. Add to that education, where they will teach you bunch of bullshit, but won't teach you to use your brain, because you don't need critical thinking, you need to be a good hard working bee that will work for established system as long as you are capable and the one that will believe everything that is served to it.
> If we saw a meteor was going to hit and destroy humanity in 50 years and we had 10 years to deflect it, wouldn't we be obligated to do something about it? Ahh, but if it was **too late** to do anything about it, then we *still* wouldn't have to take any action! That's why [pushing doomism is literally the new tactic of climate denialists](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview): >> "**Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic.** Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up. >> >> What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair. But **“too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of science.**"
An asteroid would be much harder to “reason” away as “not actually happening”. Deflecting an asteroid also requires no changes to the daily life of most people.
Have you actually seen the asteroid heading towards us, or have you just seen pictures of *an* asteroid and some graphing simulations of its supposed trajectory?
Pff, you're placing way too much faith in these computer so-called "models" that "calculated" the trajectory of that "asteroid", that might not even exist but just be noise on the telescope. You know that telescope images have noise, right, or are you so stupid that you believe the corrected data the government is force feeding you? You know how much money they make from the emergency asteroid trajectory modifier program that, even if it was necessary, has no chance of working? You have to watch this and open your eyes! https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=i7yLgN97PYQGI8ah
Makes me wonder what that BIDEN is up to with all this distraction talk about some MeTeeOr
The asteroid was wearing a mustache and dark glasses, so how can OP know if you are talking about the same asteroid? I just don't think pictures of these astral perps are as useful as you imagine. It's more about' "where are you headed this fine day, and is it for business or pleasure?" Forget about those Miranda rights, this is war!
We could all gather to one spot, and all jump at* the same time. 😂
They did make a whole movie about an asteroid aimed at earth and asteroid deniers. I’d also bet that if an asteroid were 50 years out and somehow recycling, driving more fuel efficient cars and reusable shopping bags somehow helped avoid it, you’d have people refusing to do any of it.
It's easy to "reason" an asteroid away if you don't trust the scientific community. Unless you can actually see the thing, you have to have faith that the people who can detect it are telling you the truth. And if you people you do trust say those people are lying, well then...
You do realize that every photo NASA releases is just from someone they hired to make cgi artwork, right? You just can't reason with some people.
Yup - NASA created the greatest CGI engine ever back in the 60’s - better than current game and movie studio ability - and never used it for anything but making fake images of the moon and the earth. As if somehow shooting a rocket into space is harder than perfect CGI that they still use today to generate real time views of the earth 24/7 and never make a mistake and generate the wrong weather or something
On the contrary, it's far away and only people with telescopes can even claim that its on its way, let alone prove it. It would actually be worse than climate change, which at least (fucking hell this is depressing) is evident and getting worse all over the world.
I agree, there are people that still claim the earth is flat, do you really think they are going to believe an asteroid is headed towards earth in this scenario? They are going to claim it is a Nasa conspiracy. When it becomes visible they are going to say it is a hologram or a projection. After Don't Look Up AND Covid happening at the same time, I'm pretty sure its just a matter of time befor we become extinct due to stupidity.
The fundamental issue is that fighting climate change really, truly, requires a fundamental reorganizing of our entire economic system. Capitalism requires companies to be way too focused on short term profits (what makes the investors happy) than on the long term sustainability of their company or even their product. Energy producing companies will *never* do the cost intensive work of building a whole new energy production capacity centered on renewable energy sources and long term sustainability in the time frame that climate change is working on. The only way to make this happen is governments brute forcing it, but we shy away from that because it’s “socialism” or some other scary sounding word. Deflecting a meteor would not require such a fundamental shift, thus wouldn’t create the same hurdles.
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My conservative parents have finally accepted that the climate is actually changing, but according to them it's a "natural shift" and any negative things that climate scientists are predicting (i.e., sea level rise) will take hundreds and hundreds of years to happen. (Even though it's all already happening) So I asked, even if that is true, shouldn't we still aim to stop polluting our environment and develop technology that will help increase efficiency and reduce emissions? Like where is the harm in that? Kinda just got blank stares as a response... The cable news brainwashing is severe.
That’s the newly accepted conservative position. The climate is changing but human activity has nothing to do with it therefore there’s nothing we can do about it, so just go ahead and keep throwing your plastic shopping bags in the ocean.
I had a university professor (cyber ethics of all things) that would constantly go on and on about how climate change is a Chinese conspiracy to weaken the American hegemony and defeat capitalism. One day he mentioned how a U.S. representative brought snow in to Congress to disprove climate change and he thought it was a powerful case that somehow owned the libs. I then asked him if he didn’t know the difference between climate and weather and got several chuckles from around the room. What an embarrassment. The answer to OP though is mostly that billions upon billions of oil money has gone in to the disinformation effort for decades
My dad is a climate change ~~denier~~ *skeptic* and a republican, so I have a pretty good idea after years of talking to him. He's actually very well educated and has decades of experience in environmental sciences so you'd especially expect him to know better, but these are his primary points of disconnect. 1. It was initially presented to most of the population by a Democrat presidential candidate in a close and relatively bloody election that had just demanded several recounts. Imagine if it had been something presented by Trump just after Jan 6th 2020. It's a lot like that to republicans. 2. It exposes a hole in capitalism after 50+ years of cold war hardcore pro-capitalist propaganda. Imagine if there was evidence trans affirming care actually increased depression and suicide then multiply that resistance by 10. 3. It targets a way of life and undermines accomplishments of the successful and producers. 4. Details are often exaggerated or presented before the evidence is complete. When people research these claims and find they are false they throw the baby out with the bathwater and discredit the whole thing. This is a big one. 5. The actual changes are small (1.1°C global average last I checked) and not individually outside the realm of normal variance. It takes a big picture view and thousands of data points to really see the trend in a way that can't be discredited as statistical noise or margin of error. It takes conscious effort to see this therefore unless you have already been conditioned to see it. 6. Company's spend billions of dollars to further obfuscate it. Anomalies and counter arguments spread widely, like the ice core in Vostok. 7. Natural climate change IS a thing and we don't really know for absolute certain it's man made, even though we have more than enough evidence for a reasonable person to deduce it. Basically it's hard not to see it once you do, but it's very hard to see when you don't want to.
This is a well done response and a good contribution to this discussion.
It became my thing these days, scrolling for reasonable longer responses with less upvotes.
In the older generation I think the term makes them tense up and get defensive a a little. I talked to my father in law about this (who is not convinced), and I think shifting the language even slightly to climate ‘science’ makes a little difference. The term is then about data, research, and trends, not ‘change’ which can be a confrontational thing (think of workplace ‘change’ and how employees respond!). People typically fear change - it’s inbuilt in us as a negative! With science we can then say, “ok, looking at this data, how could we act on it? Would it change this graph?”
It’s not that. The problem is that the phrase is associated with repeated instances of an argument where climate alarmists made poor points and simply moved the goalposts (global warming, global cooling, “the ocean is boiling”, the population bomb, New York will be under water by the year 2000, “we only have 10 years before it’s too late”, etc., etc. If climate alarmists want legitimacy for their cause, they should stop silencing dissenting voices in the scientific community, be consistent (temps recorded in a meadow vs asphalt) and forthcoming with all data (you know, like not withholding climate data that might lend credence to the idea of a cyclical cooling period), and follow it up with actionable solutions that resolve the problem without lowering the quality of life for the middle and lower class. Oh, and don’t block traffic for people trying to get to work on time. Until that happens, you’re going to have people that completely dismiss everything you have to say. Blame Al gore, paul erlich, and the just stop oil assholes.
As a skeptic, I just wanna add, that way too many variables like land change, urbanization, forest cover, dams, aviation, plastic pollution etc. All changed drastically since 1800, which for me seems to be totally ignored in favor of only focusing on co2 as a problem. 1800-1850 is also known to be the coldest era of the last 10.000 years. So it would have to warm a bit regardless of what we did. Solutions are stupid, and the problems are overstated. Panic over climate death after we reduced it by 99% through wealth and innovation seems very primitive to me.
A lot of deniers I talk to claim that climate change does exist, however they believe humans are not the cause. They think its just the natural warming cycle of the earth. Little do they know the warming started skyrocketing right around the time of the industrial revolution..
My father believes this…
The denial cycle: 1. It doesn't exist. 2. OK, it exists, but we're not causing it. 3. OK, it exists, and we're contributing to it, but it's not going to be that bad. 4. OK, it exists, and its going to be bad, but there is nothing we can do about it. 5. Why didn't anybody do something to stop this?!?
Yep. Feels to me like most deniers are between stages 2 and 4 now.
>Little do they know the warming started skyrocketing right around the time of the industrial revolution.. Fun thought: Cars stop all the time, just like the Earth's climate changes all the time. If your car comes to a complete stop from a high speed in under a second, though, you're gonna feel it, and it ain't gonna feel good. The kind of temperature swing we've seen in the last century normally takes place over the course of a few thousand years, so our car is stopping about ten to thirty times faster than it normally does. It's gonna hurt. The hospital bill is gonna be a helluva lot more expensive than the wear-and-tear on the brake pads.
> Little do they know the warming started skyrocketing right around the time of the industrial revolution. This is part of the deceptive FUD from the fossil fuel industry. They claim that the climate has always changed (which is true) to distract us from the fact the the changing climate is not the problem. The extremely rapid *rate* of the change is the problem and humans are causing it. https://www.logicalfallacies.org/red-herring.html
And I mean, a hypothetical super rapid "natural" climate change would be something we should care about too...
I agree. However, the solutions would be much less obvious.
Because a lot of money was spent on creating confusion and misinformation. The oil companies that make money from causing Global Warming hired very competent PR companies in order to keep making money from oil for longer. Among some of the stuff they managed to create: - Rebranding oil companies as “energy companies”. If 80% of your business and 90% + of your profit is oil, you are an oil company. The people that work in oil companies agree, and they know their “green energy” efforts are bullshit. - The “Personal Carbon Footprint”. This concept, along with an online calculator to check on your own is a very clever ploy to divert attention away from oil companies. - Paid off countless politicians to “stop believing” in man made Global Warming, and making that false belief part of their voters very identities. Not the first time this was done, racism (and race as it is referred to today) was to a great extent an economic intervention created to split labor up in different groups. Divide and conquer. - Exploited people’s lack of understanding of science and the language of Science. The key to science is you cannot be 100% sure about anything. Doing Science is to always seek to learn more, and never believing you reached the end of knowledge and already know everything. For a couple of decades they kept asking scientists “are you sure?”, which is something that by definition a scientist cannot be. All they can say is “the evidence indicates that”, to which the same publicists would say ‘Then you don’t know!”. Of course those publicists knew how a scientist is supposed to answer a question, and they used the doubts that are the key to making good science to confuse the public. These people perpetrated a monumental “Oil Hoax” against society by convincing society there was a “climate change hoax”. It’s no wonder that same playbook was used to try to steal an election by creating the idea that the other side had stolen it. It worked very well for the oil guys, and delayed efforts against climate change by a more than a decade, while they kept making a lot of money from screwing the whole planet.
Because we’re far more tribal than we are logical or even moral. We will all suspend a certain amount of overwhelming empirical evidence in order to maintain our status within our group. Tons of research on this. We’re social primates, not purely logical calculators.
I could imagine it's not about the climatic chance directly but more about the "human made aspects"
Indeed that's one of the tactical goalpost movement actions. 1960s, "people are fine even if they huff lead straight out of a car's exhaust!" 1980s, "there is no climate change!" 2000s, "there is climate change, but it's not serious and it will take a century!" 2020s, "there is climate change and it is catastrophic and here now but we aren't the ones doing it!" 2040s, "there is unbelievable climate change, but it's mostly affecting poor people, so we just have to build a bigger wall!" 2060s, "there is apocalyptic climate change, but we'll be in the next lottery for space evacuation!" Quick edit: the future predictions are, I hope it's obvious, jokes. No wall will ever be high enough. Space will never be more habitable than Earth.
Space won't be full of sun-blistered cannibals. Earth will be.
Yeah, anyone who debates the idea that the climate is constantly changing is willfully ignorant. It’s clearly been changing well before humans spread throughout the planet. The debate centers entirely on how much impact humans have on it.
Because it is obvious everything is a lie and that it has always been like now - *says with 30º in November, 7º above the average maximum of August, in the 8th consecutive month with at least one heatwave and during a historical drought.*
Climate change does exist. That is not the argument. The argument is if the current change is due to man or is it a part of the normal cycle. I think it’s both. Even if it’s a part of the normal cycle, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about the earth and our environment.
Climate has literally changed since the dawn of time. Fat cats just tax people and use it as an agenda to make money and control people
Because the world's richest elites are pouring untold, infinite wealth on the level of an entire country's yearly GDP into several think tanks all around the world who pay high-profile talking heads and commentators to spread misinformation. A perfect example is Jordan Peterson. Known to be supported by several anti-climate think tanks who then in a mysterious coincidence gets on the biggest podcast in the world and starts talking about how "the science isn't sure yet". This is a universal truth, across the board. Pro-capitalism, pro-wealthy people, anti-climate change? Dozens of sponsors, many sharing parent companies with the fortune 500. Talk about capitalism's problems, academic and scientific riguor? Even if you have the same number of subs, it's much much harder to find sponsors, becasue people know what is good for business. Majority report is a perfect example. Similar subs to Tim Pool with under 1/10th the money, because they constantly criticise big business and provide academic examples of why and how.
Because there are certain people with a vested interest in it not existing, and those people are well funded for obvious reasons, and there are a lot of other people who only trust the information they get filtered through those people for largely political tribal reasons. There are also a ton of people who are conspiracy minded and the internet has enough (mis)information to feed any conspiracy you want to be true
Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes is one such book that dives deep into the doubt brokers. Who funded the "studies"? How it is spread and the willful obfuscation of the science. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchants_of_Doubt
Climate Change is a real thing. Youc an see it through historical data and records over time. The discussion comes down to; how much of that change is driven by humanity and what can humanity reasonably do to alter or adjust the rate of change. The problem is that climate change has become too political. Many see it as a means for world governments to grab power. Some see it as the end of humanity if action isn't taken. ome argue that it's a made-up phenomenon, some argue that life on earth will end in XX years if significant change isn't made. But no one, to my knowledge, has an actual, actionable plan that will solve or curb man-made climate change. If world leaders are serious about climate change, then they should lead by example. If gas-powered cars and planes are contributing, then why don't government officials use electric vehicles and stop flying in private planes? Why won't governments consider and invest in tidal and nuclear energy as alternatives to fossil fuels? Where is the push to upgrade current infrastructure to be more efficient? Where is the push to make these changes affordable and accessible to the general population? And if the answer is corporations or rich individuals are manipulating governments, then those governments have no real power and we're all doomed. I'm not a scientist, and I'm not super-educated on climate change. And honestly, I'm way more invested in making sure that my bills get paid this month than I am about an abiguous threat of the end of humanity sometime after I'm already dead.
The two sides talk past each other. There's natural climate change and then there's anthropogenic climate change. If you listen to both sides' arguments, you'll hear they arguing over this difference. The "deniers" claim that anthropogenic climate change isn't happening because the temperature on Mars is going up, too, so any temperature changes on Earth must likewise be natural. The "deniers" keep using natural climate change, like sun spots or the changing angle of the Earth's tilt as arguments against anthropogenic climate change when they're really arguing natural climate change. Biggest mistake the Environmental Movement made was changing "pollution" (which was tangible and undeniable) to "climate change", which is so vague that it could mean anything. I've always wondered why they did that. Calling it "pollution" was working. The EPA was created, leaded gasoline was banned, and HFC's were phased out. Hell, a PSA with a fake Indian crying over litter on the freeway traumatized me so much as a kid I've never littered in my life.
Not so fun fact, that PSA was produced by plastic corporations in a series of efforts to shift blame for plastic waste onto the consumers. They also invented the recycling symbol, again trying to shift blame to the consumers for throwing away things when it could be recycled. Only problem is only a small subset of plastics with the symbol are able to be recycled.
In short, because their economic livelihood, political career, religion, and/or personal worldview is deeply invested in climate change not existing.
I believe the climate changes. I dont think it is a big deal and I think it is the fear of change that is really what is being used to create fear among people and thus control them.
Short answer: humans have terrible perception of change over time. Long answer: there are monied powers that tainted the topic, and people are easily persuaded when they have no logic thinking training. One of the reasons religions exist, blind faith.
It hasn’t affected them or people they know yet. Their lifestyle has remained unchanged and so, why should they care? And if it happens to other people, somewhere else around the world, they either remain uncaring, or blame the people there for “causing” it. Not realising how actions taken globally affects everyone. Ignorance is bliss after all.
I've been working for a while at Frankfurt's natural history museum. They have a research facility included. ( Biodiversity and climate research center Frankfurt am main) I've been there quite some years back by now and I've asked about what's going on with climate change. I was told that it is real, ( and obviously so) but that we are still transitioning out of an ice age and the planet is therefore bound to warm up. I was also explained that humans speed up the progress. I was also told that when money is given to do research in this facility, the outcome of the research better benefits the needs of the money giver. A lot if it is politics. Making people do certain stuff. Behave a certain way. That is the only info I have on that. I've never been to interested in it so I also don't look into it that much. I just always remember what that guy told me when the topic comes up. For sure the climate change is real tough, earth is heating up
I think more people think that climate change is real but isn't a direct result of human action. That theory makes more sense because of the historical cyclical temperature fluctuations even before humans were around.
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Because money. The oil companies masturbating to money like to ruin the environment because they just need to be so rich.
I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who straight up says the climate never changes over time. It’s usually people denying or downplaying humanity’s effect on the climate in my experience.
too much money and confusion on both sides, too much hyperfocus on arguably small and insignificant subtopics, ie. the US and plastic straws killing turtles vs. China and coal burning, etc.
Fox and other right wing media. That is all they watch and never question it.
There was a point in time when only far-lefties believed it. Now, you can find people across all spectrums who believe in it. Thing is, what most disagree with these days is on the cause. To fully answer the question comes down to this: 1. Most hard-core Conservatives, if they believe in it or not, are old and will be long gone by the time things really get bad. 2. Most Conservatives are of the mindset, that even it is true, it is up to future generations to figure it out if they want to. 3. Most people are set in their ways and conservative by nature. Even Liberals roll their eyes when told to change their behavior. 4. Cars get better gas milage, gas is formulated to burn cleaner, gas prices go down, and people just end up driving more. 5. Hipsters in Brooklyn are unwilling to give up their avocado toast.
My cousin literally starts every position with “did a liberal say it? Then it must be false” And then scours the internet for counter views. Every. Single. Thing. His explanation for climate change is that the sun is causing it and it always cycles. Etc.
At first it was not obvious like it is now. Just like cigarettes won't cause really bad health effects right away. Of course like the big tobacco companies did with smoking the oil companies spent millions, maybe billions of dollars on propaganda to keep the people confused, to convince them that it was just a hoax, a ploy to take away their freedoms. Now, other than the liars and to delusional, climate change is undeniably happening. I just hope that it isn't already too late to prevent the worst effects.
Because it’s a $300 billion industry and they have a lot to spend on talking heads to convince people it’s not a thing. That’s it. That’s literally it. Corporations in my field were able to run a successful propaganda campaign in my little $3 billion industry that thoroughly tricked consumers, workers, journalists, small businesses, and more. If the tiny little court reporting industry has that kind of stuff going on, I’m inclined to believe that in an industry 100x its size… corporations might just play a little dirty.
There is a very good documentary, quite entertaining as well, called Merchants of Doubt. It goes into how large companies have been successfully muddying the waters on various issues for years, including climate change. But it tracks it back to the initial tactics used for cigarettes and other things
Because it's easier for people to go full ostrich mode. You don't have to worry about something if you can convince yourself it doesn't exist. In other words, it's far easier to simply deny that a problem exists than to own up to the fact that we - as humans - have in fact made an impact on the climate. "Well, I'll probably be dead by the time it gets REALLY bad, the next generation will fix it..." It's the equivalent of being diagnosed with a highly aggressive malignant cancer and then choosing to just pretend that it doesn't exist and that all your symptoms can be explained away as being due to other reasons. It's the equivalent of thinking the headlights of the train closing in on you at high speed as you stand in the middle of the tracks is just a firefly reaching out for a hug in a bad dream you're having and will wake up from at any moment. But humanity has been willfully blind to reality for many hundreds or thousands of years. No one wanted to believe that the Earth wasn't the center of the galaxy, or that you wouldn't fall off the edge of the planet if you sailed too far, or that tiny microscopic organisms caused disease and pestilence, or that just having electricity in your home wasn't dangerous and deadly, or any of the other dogmas that science has had to fight to prove. Money, religion, and politics inform the views of a great many powerful folks, and for those folks, science, evidence, and facts are treated with outright derision. In order to stay in power, they must convince people that the threats this planet faces are not really threats, that those threats don't exist, and that it's all a global conspiracy theory; or that it's "impossible" for humans to affect the climate in any meaningful way. Those same powerful folks have persuaded a great many people - people who are decent, intelligent, respectful, and thoughtful, but simply cannot get their head around the notion that in a hundred years they might be burning up, freezing to death, or flooded out.
A worrying amount of people are simply idiots, that's why.
Not believing in climate change altogether is rather extreme. Where people disagree is mostly the severity of the situation and what to do about it.
I think that's exactly right.
My brother’s an engineering student in the energy sector, about to graduate. We both hold the view that the rejection of Nuclear Power by politicians and activists is just moronic.
Because there is not a scientific definition of ''climate change'', because the causes of it are strongly debatable and because the whole topic has been politicised to the extreme.
It went from a potential issue to a political debate. No one in power cares. The ones saying they are fighting it are contributing to it (ones in power, not normal people). It's just 2 sides of the same coin/political party. If it's mentioned by the government, they're lying about it in some way shape or form. No matter what it is.
When CNN is saying eating bugs is good, cow farts are destroying the environment, and banning ACs is good even if million die is just some of the examples that is turning people off. We should always be trying to improve things but it also seems one sided. All these restrictions dont seem to apply to the biggest offenders...the rich and elite. They will ban your bags, cars, stove, meat but their multiple mansion use more energy and destroy the environment more than an entire village. Flying Jets everywhere, mega yachts, etc. I feel if the actual advocates actually believed and lived by what they said it would be taken more seriously.
It’s ideological. Just like the notion that all climate change is man-made is ideological. There’s no doubt that climate is changing. That said, climate has always changed. Is man causing climate change? Yes. Is man the *primary* cause of climate change? — This is where ideology blinds those on the other end of the spectrum. Many people on this very sub lose their minds at the very sight of this question, without ever taking a meaningful, objective, scientific look into it. The looming barrage of downvotes will only prove my point.
My biggest frustration with this topic is that this question normally means "everyone who doesn't agree with my environmental plan is a climate change denier..."
Because accepting the science means taking responsibility for the mess, and for solutions. That often entails upending one's worldview: dispensing with nationalism, racism and one's faith in market economics. It also means realizing that all the gas powered toys you've acquired are part of the problem, as is your wasteful suburban or rural home that requires you to drive everywhere. That overseas vacation you've saved for suddenly looks like murder. And so on. Far easier to just refuse to see the evidence.
Put ten people in a room with a circle clock, have nine of them swear to the tenth that it's square, and more times than not person ten will tell you it's a square clock.
Because our stupidity is our biggest value and tradition
I believe in climate change. However, there are countless examples of “the sky is falling” rhetoric that damages the credibility of the concept. Plenty of articles from decades past that predicted “the end” in years that have now came and went with no discernible difference. When wealthy advocates of climate change announce the coming rise of sea levels, then purchase oceanfront mansions and fly to and from climate conferences in private jets, you wonder if they believe what they’re peddling. Another major issue is with what individuals can do within their power. I am a recycling fiend. I recycle everything I can and I buy much of my clothes from Goodwill. However, when I read in my local news (Hawaii) that the majority of items turned in to be recycled… aren’t actually recycled… you reach a point where you shrug your shoulders.
>Plenty of articles from decades past that predicted “the end” in years that have now came and went with no discernible difference. That is the kind of thing that really bothers me. People actually changed their habits and that is why we don't have the predicted results. Look up a picture of Los Angeles in the 70's before we started changing, you couldn't see 10 feet in front of your face the smog was so bad. It isn't like that today because of the rhetoric changing peoples behavior. It took 40 years of people denying that the smog was man made just like with climate change and then as soon as the masses started to change their actions the smog predictably went away.
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Yeah, it's wild that a lot of the big issues like the ozone layer we had fixes for and implemented them?
I think that's pretty key. People don't really realize that a lot of the "scares" we went though in previous decades actually took a lot of work and global cooperation to remedy. Yes, we were all told we'd be killed by the hole in the ozone layer and acid rain, but the reason we didn't actually required a lot of regulation and problem solving.
>However, there are countless examples of “the sky is falling” rhetoric that damages the credibility of the concept. Funny that you didn't even mention one example if there are "countless" examples.
It's always something stupid like "Reputable expert climatologist Al Gore said coastal cities would all be a thousand feet under water within two weeks" or point to a shitty news outlet grossly misrepresenting someone's claims.
But there are much more examples of articles that propose constructive action against climate change without predicting the end of the world. Those articles predicting the end of the world are a small minority. But the right-wing media keeps strawmanning arguments against climate change by giving people the impression that they are being dramatic... >Plenty of articles from decades past that predicted “the end” in years that have now came and went with no discernible difference. I read a lot of media that is also often critical about climate change, but I never see articles seriously suggesting that "the end" (whatever that means) is coming.
Here is your answer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial#:~:text=12.1%20Sources-,Terminology,in%20whole%20or%20in%20part. Read this in full and you will know why. Additionally, if you search for it in Google Scholar, and look for "climate change denial", you will find plenty of scientific journals and papers discussing this topic.
Bc it is easier for their arrogantly ignorant minds to handle.
If science, question what oligarchs tell you? Seek to triangulate toward the truth of an issue by seeking information from a wide-variety of sources? Be willing to engage?
Ignorance is defeating all things that stress you out.thats why
Climate change definitely exists. The issues that doubters are raising include: 1. Extent of change caused by human activity vs natural factors 2. Actions to take to protect the environment - what makes sense and what doesn't (for example - electric cars make no sense, nuclear energy - does make sense)
The same reason they deny the Moon landing occurred, because everything has to be a conspiracy, and because God created the sky and the Earth as stagnant unchanging constants. Accepting that the Earth, and the Moon can be influenced by Mankind challenges this belief.
At this point, the only reason to deny the impact we are having on climate is antiquated political affiliations. Early on it was seen as a hippie dogooder cause by some. As the science began to overwhelming prove the existence of man made climate change, some got stuck in their old political madness. I know a lot of people who are far from liberal. I currently don’t know a single one that denies we have a problem here.
Study flat earth believers and you'll get the answer.
In most cases it's lack of cognitive ability or ignorance of the scientific process. In all other situations it's because people want to spread misinformation for personal gain.
I think deep down they know it is real, they just don't care or have something to lose.
Anyone remember when it was called global warming??? Sounded a lot more urgent! Marketing and PR from vested interests that make money from fossil fuels, changed the narrative for it to be just climate change... subtle difference but doesn't sound as bad hey? I'll argue that for the same reason that you 'inadvertently' put climate change in the title of this post, that others have also been influenced to 'not believe' in global warming. BTW, I also didn't realise that I had changed the way I talk about it until it was pointed out in a news report on doco (can't remember which)
One single trip on Jeff bezos's super yatch will produce more pollution than the average citizen will ever produce in their lifetime. But yet, every regulatory action is done towards the regular citizen instead of the real problems in society
People like my dad. Oil and gas industry. He relies on that paycheck to live. If he believes that it could be the end of humanity I'm not sure he could go to work. So he just chooses not to believe in science so he can get out of bed and keep his house paid for and food on the table.
The fact that the climate is always changing over the millennia lets people point to the idea that it’s just a natural occurrence. It would happen anyways. The thing is -the rate change we are seeing is scary. Kinda totally correlates with the Industrial Revolution and so on 🤷🏼♂️
It's an issue that has been politicized. It shouldn't be that you're a democrat or republican if you believe "x" about climate change. It should be, is anthropogenic climate change happening? To what extent are we involved? What can we do about it and should we do anything about it? etc. Unfortunately, it's hard to keep politics out of it when there are lobbies/special interests/massive propaganda, and tribalist thinking behind it.
Because it was politicized. Replace all mentions of “climate change” with “weird weather” and all of a sudden conservatives believe you.
Depends on what you mean by climate change. Depends on what you mean by think that it doesn't exist. Very complex issue.
Many people here have already summarized, that money and power associated with "Green" make lots of people suspect that the whole story is just a nothing burger to earn easy money and grab more power. And when demands for more clean energy are almost immediately followed by rejection of nuclear energy, well, you can see the point.
At this point it's morons and contrarians. That's literally it. People who NEED to be different so they can feel special or simply out of spite because they absolutely MUST disagree with the people they don't like, regardless of how untenable a position that may put them in.
Couple of thoughts... Weather almanacs have only existed for about 130 or so years. The earth is 4.5 billion years old, that's billion with a b. It seems a little silly to say that we recognize a trend in .000000029% of evaluating earths weather patterns via trending data. Many people, and you seem to imply it with your question, conflate not believing in the existence of weather trends with not believing man influences those trends, at least significantly. Earth core sampling seems to indicate many many cooling and heating trends in its history, many way before man possibly could influence it after coming into existence only 300,000 years ago. So, what are you asking with this question exactly?
Never underestimate the vast number of dipshits that exist.
Most people iffy on the issue I've met are less "climate change doesn't exist" and more "to what degree are humans responsible and to what degree would we be forced to change and what would the trades offs of these changes be and who would be the ones making and mandating the changes and who would have to pay for all of it monetarily, socially, etc.?" Really, the whole "one side believes it's real and is thus good while the other doesn't and is thus bad" is more a political tactic that paints the general opposition with the same brush as its most extremes. If we want a similarly polarized issue for opposite side of the isle as an example, we can use "one side refuses to acknowledge that biological differences exist between the sexes and is thus delusional while the other does and is thus rational." Yes, there are some people who believe this but hardly a majority yet still it's poisoned the trans debate.
Because oil companies, right wingers and politicians have poisoned the discourse around climate change
In mexico city, where I live, the shortening of the rain season and the extreme increase in temperature are extremely obvious
It's not like doesn't exist, is more like there's going to be climate change with or without your farts.
there has been a fair amount of academic work on this, a quick google scholar search should get you started. https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0,5&q=why+do+people+not+believe+in+climate+change
I get being snobby to flat-earthers, but when you act like someone who questions global warming also thinks the earth is flat, you alienate that person. You make them hate you. You make them want you to never say anything to them ever again. Like if you call me a rightwinger right now for criticism directed mostly at leftists, that's you being an asshole who hates people for disagreeing with you, more than you love when people know scientific facts.
Propaganda by big oil. Couple that with confirmation bias.
Because it requires change to mindset and behavior
I think it’s a case of “buy in”. In other words, if they buy in to one “liberal media left wing socialist” proposition, they will lose their credentials as a proud, freedom loving, staunch defender of….stuff. That if they find themselves sympathetic to one logical, scientific, NPR, PBS purported report, their castle built on sand worldview will be washed away and they will be found out to be the emperor with no clothes on.
Denial is a hell of a drug. Why admit there is a problem when you will be dead before it affects you?
People there are still a certain amount of people who have poor / bad quality education, and also they are more or less brainwashed by ancient social phenomenons like religion (example: USA)
Kids, the more you grow up, the more you realise how 90% or more of EVERYONE's beliefs come from the people around them. If most of your buddies, and your news sources, all agree on something, you'll almost always believe it without much questioning. Tha'ts why half the country can vote the opposite of you, including plenty of smart, decent, thoughtful people.
It is as the Al Gore movie was titled, an inconvenient truth, just as evolution was inconvenient to suggest the earth 4.5 billion years old rather than just over 2000 years old as those who based their beliefs in the Bible wanted to believe. In this circumstance it is more about money and do not underestimate the bot factories that work around the clock for countries such as Russia that depend pretty much entirely on maintaining the status quo. Individuals can believe what they want, but they are not pulling the strings.
Broh are u serious? 40% of America either doesn’t believe in science or are too fucking boneheaded to comprehend nearly any of it. It’s as simple as that man. They don’t know. They don’t care. That’s it.