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How do you approach people who doesn't have trust in science? It feels so surreal that the science is settled, but some people still don't believe climate chang

How do you approach people who doesn't have trust in science? It feels so surreal that the science is settled, but some people still don't believe climate change is real.

cs02rm0 7y ago
Stuff like this. Although there's an argument you don't have to, you just have to convince a relatively small number of politicians. I think sites like this help. Quite a poor job has been done of pushing the data to the front and keeping publishing it without changing the metrics or methodology and I'd imagine most people will respect that eventually. You can't win everyone. That said, I'd have been crucified in school for starting a graph from a number other than zero (CO2 PPM) because of the impression it creates, I'd probably have got away with the route round that the difference graphs employ though.
moduspol 7y ago
Probably the same way you approach people who don't trust every claim of "soft" sciences, like human psychology. You do the best you can with what you have, and continually work to improve the science.
simonsarris 7y ago
> It feels so surreal that the science is settled ???????? Is the global mean temp for the earth hotter: 1. Right now 2. During the Bronze Age ? What parts of the entire field of psychology from the last 50 years have not failed to replicate? What parts of nutrition science from the last 50 years are useful, or at least predictive? What assumptions were we certain about in anthropology and history 50 years ago that we now know are completely wrong? It feels so surreal that people think science is something you settle, at all. I cannot imagine the confusion that would lead an educated person into in thinking that.
- akuchling 7y ago
  Yeah, but climate change rests upon radiation absorption, thermodynamics, and a bunch of other 19th century science that was largely unaffected by the 20th century's upheavals in physics.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- paulddraper 7y ago
  Also, the actual questions are not just "Has Earth's average surface temperature increased 0.8 degree Celsius since 1880?" but: * What is humanity's effect on global warming? * What meteorological and ecological effects does global warming have? * What is the magnitude of impact of hypothetical changes to human behavior?
  - matthewmacleod 7y ago
    1. Lots 2. Very 3. Extensive I know this is flippant, but the answers are all generally pretty well-known
    - Bantros 7y ago
      The poster should not ask such silly questions, just trust the science!
    - superqwert 7y ago
      This answer is more flippant than you can imagine. #3 Is the worst - if we have learnt anything in the past century, it is that our attempts at behavioural changes rarely work[i], and even when they do they often result in the opposite effect[ii]. [i] - My favourite book that points this out is Behavioural Adaptation and Road Safety. Well worth a read. Examples are many, such as in the case of criminalising texting while driving, which results in "crotching" (texting from a phone on your lap) and has resulted in increased accidents. [ii] - Plenty of examples of this already on the environmental scene: - let's use plastic bags to save trees! oh no plastic bags are worse! - let's use diesel rather than petrol! Here, have subsidies! Oh no, it's making everything worse - let's improve energy efficiency! oh no, now more energy is used! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      Within orders of magnitude perhaps. In 2008, computer models from Naval Postgraduate School, NASA, Institute of Oceanology, and Polish Academy of Science predicted ice-free Artic summers by 2013. [1] The study was prominently cited in Al Gore's acceptance of the Noble Prize, which was awarded for his dedicated advocacy of climate change science. In 2013, the US Dept of Energy and US Navy predicted it would be gone before 2019. [2]. For more ice-free Artic science, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-free_summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-fre... Complicated systems are complicated. Science knows as much about climate change as it does about cholesterol. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/09/us-navy-arctic-sea-ice-2016-melt https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/d...
- andrepd 7y ago
  This is not a discussion about nutrition, or psychology, or anthropology. It's a discussion about two very concrete questions: 1. Is global warming happening right now? 2. Are humans responsible for it? The answer to those two questions is absolutely unreservedly settled: it's "yes". It's as settled as any question in science can be, it's as settled as the fact that electrons exist.
  - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
    There's nothing "settled" about question #2. The extent to which humans are responsible for climate change, comparative to external factors (such as the sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life), is very much debatable. You can use adverbs like "absolutely" and "unreservedly" but that doesn't make your statement greater than an opinion.
    - whatisthiseven 7y ago
      "such as the sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life" Yes, that event will cause the sun to start burning helium instead, and will swell to a red giant approximately the radius of the orbit of Mars. In about 4-5 billion years.
      - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
        Yes and in the meantime it's burning steadily hotter.
        aplummer 7y ago
        Completely irrelevant on the timescale of all human history, and delusional on the 100 year time scale of clear anthropogenic climate change.
        rubbingalcohol 7y ago
        Anthropogenic? People keep throwing out terms like "clear" and "settled" and when asked to elaborate give responses like "it's in the science." So what specific conclusion in the science is now beyond questioning? Citation needed.
- screye 7y ago
  It is nearly impossible to construct randomized control trials in Nutritional science and Psychology. Both are about average impact of specific things many entities, and even measurement itself is a nightmare (self reporting, placebo) On the other hand, climate science has a control, which is climate measurements from all the years when humans were not polluting. Additionally, the measurements are actual mathematical levels of atmospheric properties or compound concentrations. The statistics here is a lot more solid. Philosophy, Anthropology and History are unfortunately not sciences in the rigorous sense. Additionally, as looked down upon as anecdotes are, there are way too many of them to ignore. This year it has continued raining my home town into November. In my 25 years alive, it had never rained past Sept there. As much as anomalies do happen, these micro-level trends have only helped strengthen the case for climate change. Sure, no science is ever settled. There is always a non-zero chance of even the most settled science being false. All of modern medicine can be bogus and homeopathy can be the real solution. Yes, there is a non-zero probability of that. Skepticism is healthy, but when the odds of the contrary stance are so low, it helps to ask if deserves to be the level of questioning when the opposite stance offers almost zero evidence of the contrary. (apologies for weird sentence constructions. It sounded right in my head)
mistermann 7y ago
> It feels so surreal that the science is settled, but some people still don't believe climate change is real. If you're genuinely curious, I'll give you some insight into the mind of a natural skeptic. I am very suspicious of movements based on expressions like "the science is settled" - in this context, what does "the science" and "is settled" even mean, precisely? No doubt, you and many others can provide a reasonable and plausible answer to that question, but do the explanations match up, and is this science? I personally believe climate change is real, but based on a wide variety of reasons I am not convinced all players in this movement are informed and acting completely in good faith. When large masses of humans seem to start thinking the same, without really thinking (their opinions being based on propaganda, not science - signs of this already showing up in this page), I get nervous. YMMV I also perceive that being downvoted every single time I honestly express this genuine sentiment, or dare to point out uncomfortable facts, further strengthens the resolve of my resistant attitude, and based on an extensive reading of forum discussions on these and other contentious topics I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way. Human psychology is a hell of a drug - ignore it at your peril, social engineers.
- aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  Yup, the fact that if you dare to study the science objectively and ask, e.g. how much of the warming we’re seeing right now is attributable to humans? You’ll get effectively socially ostracized, meanwhile that’s literally the most important question in the whole climate debate.
  - kaybe 7y ago
    Why do you think this is the most important question?
    - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
      Because it's entirely plausible that most of the warming is natural and not anthropogenically forced. If that's the case, then we're doing real harm to the poorest people in the world by needlessly raising the price of energy.
Bantros 7y ago
What science in regards to climate change is settled?
- dls2016 7y ago
  The greenhouse effect, for one. It's essentially the blackbody effect along with spectral properties of constituent atmospheric gases.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    This is a straight up mathematical measurement and would account for ~.2C warming per decade and is regarded as an uninteresting question in climate science. The actual questions being asked are what feedbacks are there that would drastically increase/decrease this number.
    - dls2016 7y ago
      Uninteresting... settled... tomayto... tomahto... If you dismiss anything uninteresting as no longer being climate science, then we end up in a no-true-Scotsman loop. I was responding to the question "what climate change science is settled", not "what are active research topics".
      - merpnderp 7y ago
        I wasn't really disagreeing with you, only pointing out that CO2 energy absorption has been settled science of over a hundred years and really isn't considered climate science. It's just basic physics.
- atoav 7y ago
  I think what helps is to keep two things strictly seperated: observation and explaination. Our observation is, that in the last 200 years the earth warmed faster than ever in its history. The fastest warming cycle before that took 4000 years for the same temperature. So what really is settled is that there is scary fast warming that coincides with population growth and industrialization. This is not a theory, this is measurements. Because a temperature rise this fast is kinda scary and we might wanna stop it if there is even the tiniest chance it is our own fault, scientists started to create models that try to explain the climate ever more acurrately. Because they are models of a (in the true sense of the word) global system that is inherently chaotic in nature deriving very accurate predictions is hard, but the measurements are warming while we are at it and most predictions haven’t been that far off. People who argue against men made climate change honestly just have no idea about the climate usually and often not even about the consequences. This is why you will get xenophobes arguing against climate change although they should be against it, if they are afraid of big amounts of foreign people fleeing their countries. In the end the question is: if you are not sure whether climate change is manmade — how much of a chance would you take? Or is it that these people don’t want it to be real?
chewz 7y ago
> the science is settled, but some people still don't believe The science of basic probability math is settled for a few hundred years now but people still buying lottery tickets and playing roulette. What is so surprising about that?
- adrianN 7y ago
  People can perfectly understand the math and still feel like spending ten bucks on a lottery ticket is a good investment, because hope and excitement with a tiny chance of winning something is worth ten bucks to them. It' much harder to justify dooming future generations to a much harsher life so that you can life a little bit more comfortably today.
CalRobert 7y ago
Increasingly, I don't. There comes a point where it's clear the best ROI is on organizing and rallying the people who do listen to science instead of trying to convert those who aren't interested. For instance, which sounds more feasible - a compagin to convince a climate denying politician of the error of their ways and to change how they do things, or a campaign to just vote them out by ensuring the highest possible turnout among people who already agree with you?
- fdsonvbno 7y ago
  Especially here on HN. While HN may be more educated than most, the class interests here mean they will see the most impact of higher taxes and controls on consumption that are necessary to fight climate change, and will likely fight in kind. Political organizing is rarely about finding the best tactics, but showing up with the bigger army.
- perfunctory 7y ago
  Agree. With one little caveat - voting is not gonna help. We need a radical cultural and socioeconomic change, and historically these kind of changes were never initiated by the parliament. Think about suffragette, civil rights movement, anti war movement, gay rights etc. We need direct action.
  - CalRobert 7y ago
    True, thus XR. Or maybe running for office. This is also why individual action is a bit of a red herring - it's all well and good to limit your footprint but as they say, the avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.
systemtest 7y ago
I think most people agree with climate change, they just don't think it will affect us in the current century. In the Netherlands we cut the construction of new buildings in half, the livestock is about to get cut in half, the speedlimit is cut by 25%, gas prices for heating homes is going up significantly, flights are cut, a new airport is at the risk of never opening. Those are actions that impact people significantly. We are about to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs and a lot of people are going on welfare, will have to trade their paid-for home for small social rental housing and will not have money left for anything besides food and maybe going to a cinema twice a year. The actions mentioned above are necessary but I don't blame people for resisting those changes. If you are not seeing any chance in the climate but the government is pushing for you to lose your job over it, I can understand that you will get angry. 27.000 people in construction are about to lose their job[1]. Many of them are contractors who are not eligible for welfare, and many of them are too poor for unemployment insurance, so they will probably end up homeless. [1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2306987-stikstofcrisis-raakt-veel-meer-bedrijven-onze-frustratie-is-enorm.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2306987-stikstofcrisis-raakt-veel-mee...
- radicalbyte 7y ago
  This situation is all about nitrogen emissions, not carbon emissions. It has been caused by mismanagement, particularly of the dairy industry. As for the airport: as someone who lives under the flight route I really do hope that it isn't going to be opened. These planes are going to be flying really low and adding to the already bad air pollution. All so someone can fly short haul with a budget airline.
- komali2 7y ago
  That's a shame that they're going to lose their job but arguably they were going to eventually anyway from automation. That the Netherlands is doing this early just means we all get to benefit from learning through observation when the "what do we do with our citizens when we can't find work for them to do" crisis hits our countries.
LessDmesg 7y ago
Except that the science is anything but settled: https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3022136/china-scientists-warn-global-cooling-trick-natures-sleeve https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3022136/chin... Lots of scientists dispute man-made climate change and find discrepancies or outright cooked up data in IPCC's output.
justaguyhere 7y ago
There are people who are misinformed (for whatever reason) and then there are people who don't want to be informed As I grow older, I am more and more convinced that the second category of people (most anti vaxxers, hard core religious types etc) cannot be convinced of anything, and that includes usage of hard facts and science. Even if they could be, the amount of time and effort would be enormous, so we are better off talking to the first category of people instead. The problem though - the people who tend to close their eyes and ears to anything other than what they already believe in, also usually tend to be the loudest :(
lopmotr 7y ago
Who doesn't think climate change is happening? Even the hardest skeptic acknowledges natural longer term climate change. Others acknowledge recent history as shown in these graphs but doubt the causation. Causation is very difficult to prove without a controlled experiment, so that's a reasonable doubt. Others accept the causation but doubt the predicted future changes, which absolutely are not settled, so they're right to doubt. Others accept predictions but doubt the cost to society will be great enough to warrant some expensive measures proposed to reduce it. That's absolutely not settled either.

How do you approach people who doesn't have trust in science? It feels so surreal that the science is settled, but some people still don't believe climate change is real.

cs02rm0 7y ago

Stuff like this. Although there's an argument you don't have to, you just have to convince a relatively small number of politicians. I think sites like this help. Quite a poor job has been done of pushing the data to the front and keeping publishing it without changing the metrics or methodology and I'd imagine most people will respect that eventually. You can't win everyone. That said, I'd have been crucified in school for starting a graph from a number other than zero (CO2 PPM) because of the impression it creates, I'd probably have got away with the route round that the difference graphs employ though.

moduspol 7y ago

Probably the same way you approach people who don't trust every claim of "soft" sciences, like human psychology. You do the best you can with what you have, and continually work to improve the science.

simonsarris 7y ago

> It feels so surreal that the science is settled ???????? Is the global mean temp for the earth hotter: 1. Right now 2. During the Bronze Age ? What parts of the entire field of psychology from the last 50 years have not failed to replicate? What parts of nutrition science from the last 50 years are useful, or at least predictive? What assumptions were we certain about in anthropology and history 50 years ago that we now know are completely wrong? It feels so surreal that people think science is something you settle, at all. I cannot imagine the confusion that would lead an educated person into in thinking that.

akuchling 7y ago
Yeah, but climate change rests upon radiation absorption, thermodynamics, and a bunch of other 19th century science that was largely unaffected by the 20th century's upheavals in physics.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
paulddraper 7y ago
Also, the actual questions are not just "Has Earth's average surface temperature increased 0.8 degree Celsius since 1880?" but: * What is humanity's effect on global warming? * What meteorological and ecological effects does global warming have? * What is the magnitude of impact of hypothetical changes to human behavior?
- matthewmacleod 7y ago
  1. Lots 2. Very 3. Extensive I know this is flippant, but the answers are all generally pretty well-known
  - Bantros 7y ago
    The poster should not ask such silly questions, just trust the science!
  - superqwert 7y ago
    This answer is more flippant than you can imagine. #3 Is the worst - if we have learnt anything in the past century, it is that our attempts at behavioural changes rarely work[i], and even when they do they often result in the opposite effect[ii]. [i] - My favourite book that points this out is Behavioural Adaptation and Road Safety. Well worth a read. Examples are many, such as in the case of criminalising texting while driving, which results in "crotching" (texting from a phone on your lap) and has resulted in increased accidents. [ii] - Plenty of examples of this already on the environmental scene: - let's use plastic bags to save trees! oh no plastic bags are worse! - let's use diesel rather than petrol! Here, have subsidies! Oh no, it's making everything worse - let's improve energy efficiency! oh no, now more energy is used! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    Within orders of magnitude perhaps. In 2008, computer models from Naval Postgraduate School, NASA, Institute of Oceanology, and Polish Academy of Science predicted ice-free Artic summers by 2013. [1] The study was prominently cited in Al Gore's acceptance of the Noble Prize, which was awarded for his dedicated advocacy of climate change science. In 2013, the US Dept of Energy and US Navy predicted it would be gone before 2019. [2]. For more ice-free Artic science, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-free_summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-fre... Complicated systems are complicated. Science knows as much about climate change as it does about cholesterol. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/09/us-navy-arctic-sea-ice-2016-melt https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/d...
andrepd 7y ago
This is not a discussion about nutrition, or psychology, or anthropology. It's a discussion about two very concrete questions: 1. Is global warming happening right now? 2. Are humans responsible for it? The answer to those two questions is absolutely unreservedly settled: it's "yes". It's as settled as any question in science can be, it's as settled as the fact that electrons exist.
- rubbingalcohol 7y ago
  There's nothing "settled" about question #2. The extent to which humans are responsible for climate change, comparative to external factors (such as the sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life), is very much debatable. You can use adverbs like "absolutely" and "unreservedly" but that doesn't make your statement greater than an opinion.
  - whatisthiseven 7y ago
    "such as the sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life" Yes, that event will cause the sun to start burning helium instead, and will swell to a red giant approximately the radius of the orbit of Mars. In about 4-5 billion years.
    - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
      Yes and in the meantime it's burning steadily hotter.
      - aplummer 7y ago
        Completely irrelevant on the timescale of all human history, and delusional on the 100 year time scale of clear anthropogenic climate change.
        rubbingalcohol 7y ago
        Anthropogenic? People keep throwing out terms like "clear" and "settled" and when asked to elaborate give responses like "it's in the science." So what specific conclusion in the science is now beyond questioning? Citation needed.
screye 7y ago
It is nearly impossible to construct randomized control trials in Nutritional science and Psychology. Both are about average impact of specific things many entities, and even measurement itself is a nightmare (self reporting, placebo) On the other hand, climate science has a control, which is climate measurements from all the years when humans were not polluting. Additionally, the measurements are actual mathematical levels of atmospheric properties or compound concentrations. The statistics here is a lot more solid. Philosophy, Anthropology and History are unfortunately not sciences in the rigorous sense. Additionally, as looked down upon as anecdotes are, there are way too many of them to ignore. This year it has continued raining my home town into November. In my 25 years alive, it had never rained past Sept there. As much as anomalies do happen, these micro-level trends have only helped strengthen the case for climate change. Sure, no science is ever settled. There is always a non-zero chance of even the most settled science being false. All of modern medicine can be bogus and homeopathy can be the real solution. Yes, there is a non-zero probability of that. Skepticism is healthy, but when the odds of the contrary stance are so low, it helps to ask if deserves to be the level of questioning when the opposite stance offers almost zero evidence of the contrary. (apologies for weird sentence constructions. It sounded right in my head)

mistermann 7y ago

> It feels so surreal that the science is settled, but some people still don't believe climate change is real. If you're genuinely curious, I'll give you some insight into the mind of a natural skeptic. I am very suspicious of movements based on expressions like "the science is settled" - in this context, what does "the science" and "is settled" even mean, precisely? No doubt, you and many others can provide a reasonable and plausible answer to that question, but do the explanations match up, and is this science? I personally believe climate change is real, but based on a wide variety of reasons I am not convinced all players in this movement are informed and acting completely in good faith. When large masses of humans seem to start thinking the same, without really thinking (their opinions being based on propaganda, not science - signs of this already showing up in this page), I get nervous. YMMV I also perceive that being downvoted every single time I honestly express this genuine sentiment, or dare to point out uncomfortable facts, further strengthens the resolve of my resistant attitude, and based on an extensive reading of forum discussions on these and other contentious topics I suspect I'm not the only one who feels this way. Human psychology is a hell of a drug - ignore it at your peril, social engineers.

aldoushuxley001 7y ago
Yup, the fact that if you dare to study the science objectively and ask, e.g. how much of the warming we’re seeing right now is attributable to humans? You’ll get effectively socially ostracized, meanwhile that’s literally the most important question in the whole climate debate.
- kaybe 7y ago
  Why do you think this is the most important question?
  - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
    Because it's entirely plausible that most of the warming is natural and not anthropogenically forced. If that's the case, then we're doing real harm to the poorest people in the world by needlessly raising the price of energy.

Bantros 7y ago

What science in regards to climate change is settled?

dls2016 7y ago
The greenhouse effect, for one. It's essentially the blackbody effect along with spectral properties of constituent atmospheric gases.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  This is a straight up mathematical measurement and would account for ~.2C warming per decade and is regarded as an uninteresting question in climate science. The actual questions being asked are what feedbacks are there that would drastically increase/decrease this number.
  - dls2016 7y ago
    Uninteresting... settled... tomayto... tomahto... If you dismiss anything uninteresting as no longer being climate science, then we end up in a no-true-Scotsman loop. I was responding to the question "what climate change science is settled", not "what are active research topics".
    - merpnderp 7y ago
      I wasn't really disagreeing with you, only pointing out that CO2 energy absorption has been settled science of over a hundred years and really isn't considered climate science. It's just basic physics.
atoav 7y ago
I think what helps is to keep two things strictly seperated: observation and explaination. Our observation is, that in the last 200 years the earth warmed faster than ever in its history. The fastest warming cycle before that took 4000 years for the same temperature. So what really is settled is that there is scary fast warming that coincides with population growth and industrialization. This is not a theory, this is measurements. Because a temperature rise this fast is kinda scary and we might wanna stop it if there is even the tiniest chance it is our own fault, scientists started to create models that try to explain the climate ever more acurrately. Because they are models of a (in the true sense of the word) global system that is inherently chaotic in nature deriving very accurate predictions is hard, but the measurements are warming while we are at it and most predictions haven’t been that far off. People who argue against men made climate change honestly just have no idea about the climate usually and often not even about the consequences. This is why you will get xenophobes arguing against climate change although they should be against it, if they are afraid of big amounts of foreign people fleeing their countries. In the end the question is: if you are not sure whether climate change is manmade — how much of a chance would you take? Or is it that these people don’t want it to be real?

chewz 7y ago

> the science is settled, but some people still don't believe The science of basic probability math is settled for a few hundred years now but people still buying lottery tickets and playing roulette. What is so surprising about that?

adrianN 7y ago
People can perfectly understand the math and still feel like spending ten bucks on a lottery ticket is a good investment, because hope and excitement with a tiny chance of winning something is worth ten bucks to them. It' much harder to justify dooming future generations to a much harsher life so that you can life a little bit more comfortably today.

CalRobert 7y ago

Increasingly, I don't. There comes a point where it's clear the best ROI is on organizing and rallying the people who do listen to science instead of trying to convert those who aren't interested. For instance, which sounds more feasible - a compagin to convince a climate denying politician of the error of their ways and to change how they do things, or a campaign to just vote them out by ensuring the highest possible turnout among people who already agree with you?

fdsonvbno 7y ago
Especially here on HN. While HN may be more educated than most, the class interests here mean they will see the most impact of higher taxes and controls on consumption that are necessary to fight climate change, and will likely fight in kind. Political organizing is rarely about finding the best tactics, but showing up with the bigger army.
perfunctory 7y ago
Agree. With one little caveat - voting is not gonna help. We need a radical cultural and socioeconomic change, and historically these kind of changes were never initiated by the parliament. Think about suffragette, civil rights movement, anti war movement, gay rights etc. We need direct action.
- CalRobert 7y ago
  True, thus XR. Or maybe running for office. This is also why individual action is a bit of a red herring - it's all well and good to limit your footprint but as they say, the avalanche has already started, it is too late for the pebbles to vote.

systemtest 7y ago

I think most people agree with climate change, they just don't think it will affect us in the current century. In the Netherlands we cut the construction of new buildings in half, the livestock is about to get cut in half, the speedlimit is cut by 25%, gas prices for heating homes is going up significantly, flights are cut, a new airport is at the risk of never opening. Those are actions that impact people significantly. We are about to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs and a lot of people are going on welfare, will have to trade their paid-for home for small social rental housing and will not have money left for anything besides food and maybe going to a cinema twice a year. The actions mentioned above are necessary but I don't blame people for resisting those changes. If you are not seeing any chance in the climate but the government is pushing for you to lose your job over it, I can understand that you will get angry. 27.000 people in construction are about to lose their job[1]. Many of them are contractors who are not eligible for welfare, and many of them are too poor for unemployment insurance, so they will probably end up homeless. [1] https://nos.nl/artikel/2306987-stikstofcrisis-raakt-veel-meer-bedrijven-onze-frustratie-is-enorm.html https://nos.nl/artikel/2306987-stikstofcrisis-raakt-veel-mee...

radicalbyte 7y ago
This situation is all about nitrogen emissions, not carbon emissions. It has been caused by mismanagement, particularly of the dairy industry. As for the airport: as someone who lives under the flight route I really do hope that it isn't going to be opened. These planes are going to be flying really low and adding to the already bad air pollution. All so someone can fly short haul with a budget airline.
komali2 7y ago
That's a shame that they're going to lose their job but arguably they were going to eventually anyway from automation. That the Netherlands is doing this early just means we all get to benefit from learning through observation when the "what do we do with our citizens when we can't find work for them to do" crisis hits our countries.

LessDmesg 7y ago

Except that the science is anything but settled: https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3022136/china-scientists-warn-global-cooling-trick-natures-sleeve https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3022136/chin... Lots of scientists dispute man-made climate change and find discrepancies or outright cooked up data in IPCC's output.

justaguyhere 7y ago

There are people who are misinformed (for whatever reason) and then there are people who don't want to be informed As I grow older, I am more and more convinced that the second category of people (most anti vaxxers, hard core religious types etc) cannot be convinced of anything, and that includes usage of hard facts and science. Even if they could be, the amount of time and effort would be enormous, so we are better off talking to the first category of people instead. The problem though - the people who tend to close their eyes and ears to anything other than what they already believe in, also usually tend to be the loudest :(

lopmotr 7y ago

Who doesn't think climate change is happening? Even the hardest skeptic acknowledges natural longer term climate change. Others acknowledge recent history as shown in these graphs but doubt the causation. Causation is very difficult to prove without a controlled experiment, so that's a reasonable doubt. Others accept the causation but doubt the predicted future changes, which absolutely are not settled, so they're right to doubt. Others accept predictions but doubt the cost to society will be great enough to warrant some expensive measures proposed to reduce it. That's absolutely not settled either.