[hitsurume]

I don't think they believe its a hoax. A lot of it is also hoping someone else will solve the problem for them. Or because climate change hasn't dramatically changed their normal lives yet that forces them for action. People are not really good at preventing problems, hence why history tends to repeat itself.

[jfengel]

I cannot vouch for what is going on in their heads. But they tell pollsters it's a hoax. They vote for politicians who say explicitly that it's a hoax. They tell each other, and everybody else, that it's a hoax on social media.

Maybe deep in their hearts somewhere they don't believe it, but it's so deep that it's impossible to locate.

[blunderchief]

I can speak to this, at least anecdotally.

Some of my family are conspiratorial thinkers, trumpy types. They’re in Texas, where the power grid is continuing to slowly buckle, and they will happily agree it’s hotter than it used to be, even getting too hot. They also agree that pollution is bad.

But they simply don’t connect the two. They don’t think we can possibly be the sole reason for climate change, but why they think that is fluid — it’s gods creation and we can’t mess with that. Or if we can it doesn’t matter because we’re destined for a heavenly kingdom and this planet will pass away. Or they say more “grounded” things like we’re getting closer to the sun or the sun itself is hotter. Or they buy into the idea for a while that it’s just a natural oscillation. We’re actually headed towards an ice age!

My theory is they’re inconsistent because they do accept it, but accepting it means they have to understand consciously that shit is bleak and it makes all the work they’ve done in their lives potentially meaningless. They don’t want to face the reckoning of disillusionment so they close their eyes to it.

Or maybe they just don’t believe it. I don’t know, I’m not in their brains.

[Paul-Craft]

Oh, they do. 14% of American believe the Earth literally is not getting warmer. Another 26% believe it is getting warmer, but due mostly to natural weather patterns and not human activity.

11% of people believe the US federal government should literally not be doing anything about climate change.

The article I'm getting these numbers from literally uses the word "hoax" several times: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2023/08/09/why-some-amer...

[Loughla]

No, many people believe it's a hoax. Either from our government (for control) or China (for money and control) or some other sort of total world government (for control).

[LorenPechtel]

The basic problem here is that people prefer to hear positive news.

"It's a hoax" is a lot more palatable than "It's a serious problem that requires major action to be taken." Denying the problem is much easier and they'll do some substantial mental gymnastics to avoid having to take the hard path.

[crazygringo]

What are the wrong predictions about climate change that the media has forgotten? I assume you're referring to mainstream media stuff, not fringe predictions.

Also I'm curious -- you seem to accept the planet is warming. Are you denying that CO2 from fossil fuels is the principal cause, or you accept that but just think it's pointless to do anything about it?

Or are you denying warming and/or the increase in atmospheric CO2 entirely?

[LorenPechtel]

Red flag: "mainstream media". Anything complaining about this is virtually certain to be way, way off track.

There have been plenty of nonsense predictions from *non-scientists*. Where have the climate scientists gotten it wrong, though? The only question is one of speed/size.

And denying that change is harmful is another aspect of the problem. Sure, we have survived it. We "survived" the late Permian extinction event (believed to be about 8C)--but the majority of species did not and most of the Earth was basically uninhabited. In the other direction we don't have enough data to figure out what percent of species was lost in the snowball. Note that the worst-case estimates I have seen for warming are 14C. (6C from CO2 plus 8C from methane hydrates.) The methane hydrate numbers are uncertain enough they aren't even included in the IPCC estimates at all.

As for having skin in the game--they're humans even if they aren't our direct descendants.

The pathological belief is the denial of what's happening.

[simbolit]

"I am physically and mentally capable of reading each of the words in this [comment], in sequence, and I understand every one of them having either learned them in school or from context at some point in my life. And yet when I attempt to, an overwhelming feeling of stupidity envelopes me." --You, two days ago.

I know my comment won't likely change your mind, but given your "start listening to the skeptics" stance, perhaps this is a tiny impulse.

Genuinely hope you get better.

[lemmsjid]

I've read a version of this line of thinking many times.

You do realize that if a scientist could put up a reputable set of studies that disprove the central climate change theories that they would be set for life under a cavalcade of fossil fuel sponsorships. Not to mention that they would be a hero to most of the planet. They would be singlehandedly responsible for major policy shifts on the part of entire countries. There's a massive incentive for someone to convincingly disprove the negative effects of climate change.

If there is such a complete and totalizing suppression of actual inquiry in climate science, then why are there climate skeptics with positions in major universities? Why are major journalistic publications skeptical? It seems to me that there is quite a bit of a forum for debate on climate science, because everyone, including, probably, many climate scientists, would love for it to be wrong.

Your argument is based on your being completely convinced that a very large swath of people, many if not most of whom are parents like yourself, are acting in utter bad faith. Certainly any academic field, like any human endeavor, is subject to group think, but if you look at the very real scientific progress that's happened in the last several hundred years, you can see that the scientific approach, empirically, does lead to success, or at least disproves the notion that groupthink is likely to wholly capture a scientific field.

The politicization of the whole thing ("liberal morality") is also intriguing. I'm an unabashed liberal. If you put a convincing argument about how the climate would be fine in front of me, I would thank you a thousand times over.

As it stands, I've read so many arguments from climate skeptics, and they roughly follow the following templates:

* a wholesale belief that climate science is operating under a special kind of bad faith

* misunderstandings of things like the second law of thermodynamics (e.g. ignoring the atmosphere itself acting as a heat sink)

* belief that Professor Q is somehow right and all the other professors are wrong (probably because of the bad faith part), ignoring that Professor Q might also be subject to such things

* belief in government or corporate control over the discussion, ignoring the truly massive financial incentive to ignore climate science

* citations, usually exaggerations, of how many "climate predictions" have gone wrong, ignoring that science journalism and activists will often simplify and/or incorrectly cite studies in any field, because the public doesn't, in the end, understand the language of probability