[legitster]

Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion.

Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded:

"The longer we put off doing something, the harder and more expensive it will be in the future. In a Pascal's Wager sort of way, many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything, and the potential that C02 is not a real culprit is more than made up by danger that it is. Making changes now is the prudent and financially sound decision."

In a large part, this is what the brief ESG trend on the stock market was briefly about before it got co-opted by a dozen different competing messages.

[zzrrt]

> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now.

POTUS tweeted "WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???" a few weeks ago when a record cold wave came in. I suppose you were talking about people you personally know, but it seems like there's a good chance many who voted for him would say it too.

Anyway, I guess there is a growing collective admission that the climate is changing even if the crotchety ones will still quip about it not being warmer at some given time and place. It's unfortunate that "global warming" caught on instead of "climate change."

[ModernMech]

> Anyway, I guess there is a growing collective admission that the climate is changing even if the crotchety ones will still quip about it not being warmer at some given time and place. It's unfortunate that "global warming" caught on instead of "climate change."

Rather than a collective admission, I feel what's happening is the crotchety people are dying off, leaving us millennials and GenZ to clean up the mess. Thinks won't change until a critical mass of them are dead and gone.

[aeternum]

The problem with Pascal's wager logic is you have to change your behavior based on all kinds of crazy low-probability events. You must worship every god, be an AI-doomer, a climate-doomer, a nuclear-doomer.

Pascal's wager is generally agreed to be logically unsound, so it's somewhat insane that we've revived it in all these modern contexts. If you believe in it, at least be consistent and sacrifice a goat to Zeus every couple years.

[circuit10]

Here’s a video called “Is AI safety a Pascal’s Mugging?”: https://youtu.be/JRuNA2eK7w0

I haven’t watched it back but from what I remember the main point of the video is that kind of situation happens when the probability involved is vanishingly small, and all the events you listed don’t have a vanishingly small probability, so they are not Pascal’s wager situations, just a normal rational safety concerns with particularly high consequences

[pablomalo]

Pascal's wager, as it relates to faith, is based on the premise that there is a lot to win in making the wager --but little to lose. In turn, that second part is grounded in the assumption (right or wrong, I won't judge) that living according to Christian principles brings benefits _in this life also_ to the individual who so chooses.

So it seems a mischaracterization to present the essence of the wager as going out of your way to perform random and costly rites in the hope of lifting any ill omen.

[barbs]

In this case, it's not exactly like Pascal's wager because there is plenty of scientific evidence of disastrous consequences of not believing in climate change (and preparing accordingly). There's no evidence to suggest that a non-belief in God will send you to hell.

[legitster]

Yes, and no. I think we actually do this logic a lot in our lives. Do I actually believe whole wheat bread is better for me, or do I just buy it on the chance it is? Do I go with the cheapest toothpaste or spend money on something that might be better? Do I buy an AWD car on the chance I am stuck?

Sacrificing a goat, after all, does sound like a lot of work. But maybe I will wear a lucky hat to a baseball game?

[conartist6]

There has to be infinite torment in play for the wager to apply too! Thus by conclusion you should only give vengeful gods the benefit of the doubt

[perrygeo]

> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now

Same. Empirical evidence is just too hard to ignore.

It's quite amazing watching the "climate change isn't real" folks transition to "climate change is no big deal", then to "climate change is too hard/expensive to deal with".

[georgemcbay]

> It's quite amazing watching the "climate change isn't real" folks transition to "climate change is no big deal", then to "climate change is too hard/expensive to deal with".

At the top level (of government and corporate entities) those people always knew it was real, the messaging just changed as it became harder to keep a straight face while parroting the previous message in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence.

Exxon's (internal) research in the 1970s has been very accurate to the observed reality since then.

They just didn't care that it was real because they valued profits/power/etc in the moment over some difficult to quantify (but certainly not good) future calamity.

You would think they would care at least in the cases where they had children and grandchildren who will someday have to really reckon with the outcome, but you'd be wrong, they (still) don't give a shit.

[legitster]

> Empirical evidence is just too hard to ignore.

Except it's the opposite - empirical evidence is very easy to ignore. Between herding, the replication crisis, and the overall insularity of academia, trust in "studies" has never been lower.

But people still respond very well to demonstrative or pragmatic evidence. Empirically there's nothing special about a keto diet. But demonstratively the effects are very convincing.

[pstuart]

Playbook is The Narcissist's Prayer

  That didn't happen.
  And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
  And if it was, that's not a big deal.
  And if it is, that's not my fault.
  And if it was, I didn't mean it.
  And if I did, you deserved it.

[peyton]

Unaudited empirical evidence is easy to ignore. The problem is one of physics. It should be simple to show with napkin math.

[darylteo]

something something tilt of the earth.

[gzread]

Reminds me a bit of the Narcissist's Prayer:

That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.

[CoastalCoder]

I'm a different kind of crotchety.

I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate it.

I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual countries to pursue a competitive economic or military advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices.

I hope I'm wrong.

[bryanlarsen]

Luckily the effect is much larger in the opposite direction: weaning oneself off of foreign oil is a huge advantage both economically and militarily.

[guelo]

Trump is implementing multi decade right wing fantasies in many fronts. The idea that we can't achieve anything is limiting yourself when you're in a political arena. To win, like Trump, when you get power you have to attack on many fronts, cultural, capital, legal, and approach it as a zero sum scorched earth war where norms are another obstacle in your way.

[pinkmuffinere]

> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now

My family is fundamentalist protestant, very midwestern, and I think about half of them believe that the earth is warming. Not trying to "win", just trying to say that a lot of this depends on the crowd you interact with. I don't know the percentage, but certainly there are still way too many people that don't even believe it. The very tired response is "well i wish it would warm up here slaps knee". Using the phrase 'Climate Change' at least reduces that objection.

[legitster]

My father in law was a massive climate change denier until some trees started dying on his property.

He called out an arborist, and the arborist clearly explained that there wasn't enough rain anymore to support the number of trees on his land, and that the forest was slowly receding as the older/bigger trees took all the water from the other trees.

It finally dawned on him that a place where trees used to happily live to hundreds of years old could no longer support trees.

Still, he thinks CO2 is a con job cooked up by China and that global warming is divine punishment. But it's a good reminder that a lot of denialists are waiting for a personal, practical reason to care.

[smitty1e]

"Climate Change" implies that some sort of "constant climate" is even attainable, irrespective of desirable.

[pdonis]

> many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything

This is the part that seems to vary widely based on which warming alarmist you're talking to. Many of them are not saying there are things we could do that "don't even really cost us anything" that would deal with the problem--they're saying we need to devote a significant fraction of global GDP to CO2 mitigation.

Things that "don't really cost us anything" are probably happening already anyway, because, well, they don't really cost us anything.

Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing that doesn't really seem to be happening right now, that would be an obvious way to eliminate a lot of CO2 emissions. But of course that does really cost us something. But it's probably the most cost effective thing we could do on a large scale.

[nradov]

Among the large set of people who think we should take steps to reduce anthropogenic global warming there are at least two subsets who seem to oppose nuclear power. One is sort of pseudo-religious and believes that any disruption of the natural environment is a "sin" against Mother Nature. The other claims that nuclear power is too expensive and that we can solve the base load power problem more cheaply with battery storage, despite the lack of evidence that we'll be able to scale it up fast enough in the time available. And I have nothing against building more battery storage where it makes sense, but I don't think that's going to be sufficient by itself.

[legitster]

> Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing that doesn't really seem to be happening right now

I mean, this is the clear and obvious one. Nuclear theoretically should be much, much cheaper than it is if it were not for the regulatory costs thrust upon it.

It also harrows out people who are legitimately concerned from "moralist concern junkies". You'd think climate change being a global existential crisis would make people open to nuclear energy or more drastic measures like geo-engineering, but the frequency with which people refuse to compromise undercuts the their legitimacy.

[cosmic_cheese]

Another reframing that may be useful is energy security/redundancy.

If you have a cheap source of solar panels and batteries, the only downside to installing them all over the country is up-front cost (which pays itself off quickly). The upside you gain is a substantially more robust, less centralized power grid that can continue to operate if something happens to impede your supply of fossil fuels or part of the grid gets cut off.

Looking at how things have played out elsewhere in the world the past few years, that's powerful.

[nradov]

Where is this mythical cheap source of batteries? I mean you can go on Alibaba and order cheap 18650 cells in limited quantities but there's an enormous difference between doing that and having enough reliable battery power to keep a nationwide grid supplying a modern industrial economy through several days of bad weather.

[commandlinefan]

> many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything

I hear that often, but it's never followed by details about any of the actual changes that are being talked about. The ones I actually hear (especially politicians) advocate for are catastrophically expensive and dubious in their effectiveness. Banning coal or gas-powered cards might (might) be a good idea in the long run, but it definitely does cost us something.

[wat10000]

Banning coal is a complete no-brainer at this point. Has been for quite a while. Never mind climate change, it's horribly polluting. The only reason it's still remotely economically viable is because the people who burn coal don't bear the costs of their pollution. If they actually had to compensate people for all the cancer, lung disease, poisoned ground water, contaminated seafood, and other such problems they cause, coal would vanish.

It's already to the point where the ridiculous coal fans who infest our government are forcing coal power plants to remain open when their operators want to close them because they're no longer profitable to operate.

[adgjlsfhk1]

banning coal is quite cheap even ignoring the emissions and pollution side effects. England has already shut down their last coal plant and without 6 years of Trump, the US likely would have or would be planning to within the next couple years. Coal is expensive, not flexible, and horribly polluting even compared to natural gas.

[randusername]

I can understand people having their own reasons for dismissing the facts or the rhetoric.

What I can't wrap my head around is the conspiracy thinking around environmentalism.

What's so nefarious about clean air and water? I'll never forget when my grandmother walked out of WALL-E because she said it was government propaganda. She is a regular person, not a coal magnate or anything.

[krapp]

You need to understand the political and cultural history. Environmentalism has been associated with leftist, feminist and communist ideology going back to the hippies and the antiwar movement (which makes it easy for many Americans to mistrust by default.) When Trump said he believed global warming was a Chinese hoax (remember that?) he was echoing a belief amongst the right that environmentalism and "global warming" was a plot to undermine American business and sovereignty, and that climate science supporting anthropogenic climate change was manufactured by "cultural Marxist academics" to push that agenda.

This conspiracy thinking has been pushed by Republicans, right-wing think tanks, coal, oil, manufacturing and like industries attempting to undermine public trust in climate science since at least the 1970s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial

[worksonmine]

> What's so nefarious about clean air and water?

Nothing, but what puts me off is the sale of emission rights etc. Is it a problem or not? I care more about deforestation than a warming climate. There is always some product to buy behind the headlines and it drives me crazy.

The same people asking me to pay climate taxes are trying to tell me infinite growth can exist. I already live like a hermit and if everyone lived like me we wouldn't have a problem. We can't pay our way out of the problem and anyone who tells me we can is only out to make money.

I'm not against a clean planet, I'm against the politicians and businesses finding another way to extract money from their worker bees.

[IncreasePosts]

Yes, parts of my extended family who were anti-climate change and proud went from "Global warming is a hoax", to "So what if global warming is happening" over the past 10 years.

[burnte]

> They just either disagree on the cause or proportion.

And for very specific reasons, too.

One reason is unwillingness to feel like they have to take responsibility.

Another is conceding that would mean they might have to make changes, and laziness is powerful.

The worst reason is that to acknowledge it would be to grant that an alternative political perspective is right about something, and one's own political identity is tied to that other political perspective being always wrong.

"It is easier to con a man than to convince him he has been conned." Too much emotional investment in being right and too much fear of social repercussions simply for changing one's mind. The reality is changing one's mind to new data is the hallmark of integrity.

[mikrotikker]

Well if it was the E without the S and the G maybe it would have been harder to co opt.

[irthomasthomas]

The earth did have warm periods before. it appears to be part of an mini-interglacial period which happens every few hundred years. We had the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman WP and Bronze age warm period. There is a vast body pf evidence in particular for the MWP showing that life on earth got better as the deserts retreated.

[circuit10]

This is a nice graph that makes the problem pretty obvious: https://xkcd.com/1732/

[canadiantim]

I don't think the issue was ever people doubting that the earth is warming. Especially considering we're coming out of an ice age, it would be extremely worrying if the earth wasn't warming!

The main point people disagree on is: how much are humans contributing to this global warming trend?