And yet the climate change deniers will find a way. I don’t see why this has to be made into such a political issue when we have hard numbers and objective facts to back up the claim that we are causing global warming, it’s clearly observable. The situation gets worse every passing year and we’re still trying to appease the “doubters”. Concrete and drastic measures need to be taken, it is high time.
In my experience, the reason climate change doubters are so opposed is because of the “concrete and drastic measures” proposed. It has very little to do with “hard numbers and objective facts”. People are reluctant to give up their lifestyle or lose a job for the sake of “global warming”, so they focus on the possibility of it not being real instead.
I think climate change and the human factor are very easy to accept. Although, some years ago after listening to Freeman Dyson on the topic, I became aware that acknowledging the phenomenon doesn't imply that we necessarily also know where it will lead and what to do about it. Yet, many of the proponents are acting exactly as such, pushing their own agenda. Hence all the ensuing politics.
That's an overwhelming majority. The 'doubt' is media-created FUD being replicated to pretend to be an issue. The issue is not the population, who overwhelmingly agree this is a problem. The problem is the ruling class does not want anything sudden to be done that would endanger their investments, and rapid change away from fossil fuels and other climate-change causing investments is a danger to their interests.
A huge amount of issues in the world are manipulated to look like issues by the media. Don't fall for it!
So what about China and other Asian countries who demonstrate by their actions that they've 'found a way'? They say one thing but do another, using many means to encourage the West to adopt policies that will increase energy costs while continuing to build coal-fired power plants themselves. Now why would they do that? In 2020, China brought 38 gigawatts of new coal-fired power into operation, more than three times what was brought on line everywhere else.
Seems they're not quite on board with the idea that 'concrete and drastic measures need to be taken'. Clearly they don't think there is an existential threat. And they can hardly be accused of being ignorant of the science.
There wasn't any doubt for decades. Normal thinking people understand cause and effect. Understand basic science of greenhouse effect. Understand if energy is not reflected to space it is stored and that you can't do that forever with impunity.
I mostly agree, but I think this falls under the Black and White fallacy. Just because we understand the mechanism doesn't mean that the magnitude is large enough to matter. It could be that clouds or normal volcano erruptions have such a large impact on trapping energy that greenhouse gases don't matter. What you also have to show is that the basic cause is actually sufficient to explain the effect, and that's difficult when it's on a (planet) scale most people never think about.
Many times I see experts spend lots of time explaining the simple casue and effect relationship, only to gloss over the large amount of work they've done to convince themselves that it actually is significant. University PR departments and ads-driven media aren't helping.
It's fun to be able to know if the cause is man made, or just bad luck (happening naturally), but what is more important either way is what can we do to reverse or mitigate the negative impact of the changes to the climate?
Now I don't think there's many left who deny that the climate is changing at all. But I think there are still some who aren't sure the changes to the climate will have a negative impact on humanity. I think this aspect I don't often hear discussed, after all, the climate changing could be good, or it could be bad, or it could be a mix of those in different places or different use cases.
And once we start to agree that some of the changes will be bad, it also becomes important to discuss what could be done to mitigate the negative effects?
The actual cause being man-made isn't that important, except possibly as a way to understand how to remediate the change. Like if we stopped all CO2 emissions would it really help?
Off course, this is where things will get political, because any policy to attempt to mitigate the negative effects (current or predicted) will inevitably affect someone's bottom line (their money). So expect a lot of push back from the people who'd lose money, and a lot of promotion from the people who would make money. That political dance will make it really hard to figure out which are the actually good solutions and which aren't.
Edit: It's true, beyond just financials, policies could also have an impact on people's lifestyles and life affordances and conveniences, that will also play a lot in the political dance.
You can’t “solve” climate change via mitigation as the simple act of building infrastructure has an associated cost. The only thing you can do is minimize cost. Canadians buying air conditioners for example would reduce the numbers of dead in coming heat waves, but they’re not free.
It’s not even just about economic impact. Mandating all roofs be painted white for example has a tiny mitigating effect, but while the economic cost is low enough to justify people don’t want to be forced to paint their roofs white.
Groups and people who oppose climate change apparently do so because their livelihood depends on fossil fuel being produced and sold without much restriction.
Then, there's too much money to be made from the effects of climate change. It's already a booming business. Supplying water and air purifying systems, sheltering, organizing future population movements, securing the affluent from the needy masses, etc.
While the naïve worry about saving the planet, most people just think about saving their own arses. And for the moment, they are winning.
One group of scientists, who can't imagine that their self invented model could be wrong, can't imagine any other reasons than man made changes for the results of their model simulation.
How you get from that to "removes almost all doubt" is beyond me. Such hyperbole does more damage than good.
I don't know anything about those scientists, I don't know anything about their model and their assumptions, so I am sorry, but for me it doesn't remove "almost all doubt".
It’s unfortunate when we glom onto the headline and start arguing from there, because (assuming that NBC follows the traditional newsroom workflow) the scientists didn’t write the headline, and the journalist didn’t write the headline, the news editor did, and the news editor wrote the most attention-grabbing (a.k.a. “clickbait”) thing they could.
Now maybe if we dig into the article and the paper we’ll see that the headline is really an honest reflection of the content, but I’ll bet it’s not.
Edit: The words “remove all doubt” do not occur in the article, just the headline.
>I don't know anything about those scientists, I don't know anything about their model and their assumptions
So you didn't read the paper, you don't know who wrote it, and you're commenting on a paraphrase in the headline. What exactly are you contributing to the discussion?
This is how deniers argue - latch onto trivial language in the title, and spew doubt. Instead of trying to understand, which would probably scare the pants off of them. So they put blinders on instead.
The hottest/coldest day matters but the timescale matters too. Ecosystems (and probably humans) can adapt when those changes happen slowly. But human-made climate change happens way too fast.
[+] [-] asaddhamani|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] celeritascelery|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] OrvalWintermute|4 years ago|reply
I'm not sure if you're going to convince people about the correctness of a position if you utilize name-calling with negative connontations.
That kind of approach is frankly unproductive.
[+] [-] mekoka|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gadjo95|4 years ago|reply
"So you're telling me there is still a chance" - Dumb & Dumber
[+] [-] sprafa|4 years ago|reply
That's an overwhelming majority. The 'doubt' is media-created FUD being replicated to pretend to be an issue. The issue is not the population, who overwhelmingly agree this is a problem. The problem is the ruling class does not want anything sudden to be done that would endanger their investments, and rapid change away from fossil fuels and other climate-change causing investments is a danger to their interests.
A huge amount of issues in the world are manipulated to look like issues by the media. Don't fall for it!
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] vixen99|4 years ago|reply
Seems they're not quite on board with the idea that 'concrete and drastic measures need to be taken'. Clearly they don't think there is an existential threat. And they can hardly be accused of being ignorant of the science.
[+] [-] lmilcin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tommiegannert|4 years ago|reply
Many times I see experts spend lots of time explaining the simple casue and effect relationship, only to gloss over the large amount of work they've done to convince themselves that it actually is significant. University PR departments and ads-driven media aren't helping.
[+] [-] didibus|4 years ago|reply
Now I don't think there's many left who deny that the climate is changing at all. But I think there are still some who aren't sure the changes to the climate will have a negative impact on humanity. I think this aspect I don't often hear discussed, after all, the climate changing could be good, or it could be bad, or it could be a mix of those in different places or different use cases.
And once we start to agree that some of the changes will be bad, it also becomes important to discuss what could be done to mitigate the negative effects?
The actual cause being man-made isn't that important, except possibly as a way to understand how to remediate the change. Like if we stopped all CO2 emissions would it really help?
Off course, this is where things will get political, because any policy to attempt to mitigate the negative effects (current or predicted) will inevitably affect someone's bottom line (their money). So expect a lot of push back from the people who'd lose money, and a lot of promotion from the people who would make money. That political dance will make it really hard to figure out which are the actually good solutions and which aren't.
Edit: It's true, beyond just financials, policies could also have an impact on people's lifestyles and life affordances and conveniences, that will also play a lot in the political dance.
[+] [-] Retric|4 years ago|reply
It’s not even just about economic impact. Mandating all roofs be painted white for example has a tiny mitigating effect, but while the economic cost is low enough to justify people don’t want to be forced to paint their roofs white.
[+] [-] haskaalo|4 years ago|reply
I assume yes. Right now CO2 emissions outnumbers the rate plants transform CO2 to O2.
[+] [-] 8jef|4 years ago|reply
Then, there's too much money to be made from the effects of climate change. It's already a booming business. Supplying water and air purifying systems, sheltering, organizing future population movements, securing the affluent from the needy masses, etc.
While the naïve worry about saving the planet, most people just think about saving their own arses. And for the moment, they are winning.
[+] [-] AtlasBarfed|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] biasedbrain|4 years ago|reply
How you get from that to "removes almost all doubt" is beyond me. Such hyperbole does more damage than good.
I don't know anything about those scientists, I don't know anything about their model and their assumptions, so I am sorry, but for me it doesn't remove "almost all doubt".
[+] [-] jt2190|4 years ago|reply
Now maybe if we dig into the article and the paper we’ll see that the headline is really an honest reflection of the content, but I’ll bet it’s not.
Edit: The words “remove all doubt” do not occur in the article, just the headline.
[+] [-] alecst|4 years ago|reply
So you didn't read the paper, you don't know who wrote it, and you're commenting on a paraphrase in the headline. What exactly are you contributing to the discussion?
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickthemagicman|4 years ago|reply
But what's interesting is that the average temperature right now is estimated to be among the coolest the Earth has ever been.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hotte...
Just because something is happening doesn't automatically make it a scary big deal.
[+] [-] runlevel1|4 years ago|reply
Humans have only been around for about 300k years and have only had permanent settlements for about the last 10k of them.
[+] [-] it_citizen|4 years ago|reply
Here's a great way to visualize things: https://xkcd.com/1732/