10 ms·

Most of the deniers I know have shifted from it doesn't exist to either its not man made and just a natural cycle or it may actually be a good thing because pla

Most of the deniers I know have shifted from it doesn't exist to either its not man made and just a natural cycle or it may actually be a good thing because plants like CO2 and warmth...

sva_ 5y ago
Don't forget the camp of people who say "It exists, and we're past the point at which we can do something about it." I have to say, that on some days I almost feel like I share that mindset, as the promise of democracy that I was raised up on does not seem to bear fruits. It feels like people have learned to game the system too well.
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  I'm more or less in this camp. I definitely believe we technically could do something about climate change. But, when I think about the sheer scale of collective action it would take, combined with the fact that we can't even get a sizeable portion of Americans to exercise common sense public health measures to deal with a pandemic, that's when the doom & gloom mentality sets in for me. This is not typically my public stance; I would very much like for us to do something about it. I'm just afraid that even that amounts to wishful thinking these days.
marcc 5y ago
Also have heard folks make an argument that it's more economical to plan to live in the post-climate changed world than to stop climate change. See https://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trillions/dp/1541647467 https://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trillions/...
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  That sounds like an argument made by economists. Economists are notoriously bad at estimating the true, human costs of climate change. See https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-failed https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-... for instance (skip the political commentary at the top and go straight to the next section).
pbuzbee 5y ago
Agreed. I see less overall denial and instead more softening of the denial. "The earth's climate has always changed!" and "Sure climate is changing, but can you even say what an ideal climate is?"
- worldsayshi 5y ago
  I feel that much of the lack of a feeling of urgency comes from people not grasping the inertia and scale of things. I remember when covid started out and there was all those expectations on emissions going down. I got the feeling that some people thought that if we stopped "doing things" emissions would go down to almost zero and if emissions would go down to zero then the problem would be gone almost instantaneously.
- 4ec0755f5522 5y ago
  In Canada, the Financial Post just ran an editorial saying it was a net positive because it will result in fewer deaths from "cold waves" e.g. winter storms. Flooding and other severe weather events were, unsurprisingly, handwaved away. Feedback loops and tipping points were completely ignored. I do not think it was intended as satire, but the idea that we should cook ourselves to death to prevent freezing to death has a very Swiftian vibe to me. https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warming-report-is-more-chill-than-you-have-read https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warmin...
lmilcin 5y ago
The "it's not man made" and "just a natural cycle" is easily disproven by showing historical temperatures change where it does, by pure accident, a hockey stick trick just last century. Or it would if the audience wasn't resistant to proofs altogether...
- SigmundA 5y ago
  Arguing with proofs just ends up leading to Brandolini's law [1]. You can make the most researched argument against any ridiculous point and you just get back a shoot from the hip rebuttal that needs further research that ends need a lengthly explanation why it's also wrong and it just keeps going. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
- edgyquant 5y ago
  To play devils advocate, they could say that they would need to zoom out to a couple thousands years to be sure or (I’ve actually heard this one) that it is a coincidence that temperatures picked up after the industrial revolution since the little ice age ended around the same time.
  - eloff 5y ago
    We've done that though. The climate stayed in a narrow 1 degree Celsius range since the end of the last ice age. It's likely that very stability that allowed agriculture and civilization to flourish. That epoch is called the Holocene. We've left that now and entered a new era. The Anthropocine, where the major driver in the climate is now us.
    - edgyquant 5y ago
      Sure I was merely suggesting a rebuttal that would be pretty common.
    - noobly 5y ago
      From what I understand, the sun has also been getting hotter, hasn't it? I agree that man contributes to climate change, but quantifying this is where I think the conversation gets interesting. I haven't really gone very far down this hole though as it seems too muddled. And then if you do conclude man is primarily at fault, what do you do? The US is only responsible for so much output, for example, and sources like nuclear aren't viewed positively.
headmelted 5y ago
I had to explain this to a relative who started in with the “the earth has always had climate change” jibberish. They tried to tell me no-one knows how the last Ice Age happened. So I explained, but because they didn’t understand any of the concepts involved they thought I was just making it up. It’s a good reminder never to assume malice when plain old stupidity is on the table.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  > It’s a good reminder never to assume malice when plain old stupidity is on the table. We are only in this mess because of this attitude. Don't let evil people get away with evil things just because you think they are stupid. The current groups that believe climate change isn't real all believe that because of decades of misinformation specifically targeted at them, by Exxon and others. Malice is 100% present and 100% at fault for this. Greedy companies wanted more short term money and knew that it would kill millions of people and cause untold chaos and they didn't care.
  - headmelted 5y ago
    Correct. But the reason they believe it is because they’re stupid. The fossil fuel lobby is malicious. Their audience is gullible. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not even saying being a gullible fool on this issue is acceptable. It’s clearly not. I feel the same about this lot as about the anti-vaxxers, which is “read a book before you get anyone else killed”.
    - sherp 5y ago
      I think you're underestimating the role motivated belief (aka 'wishful thinking') plays on the part of the audience. If your livelihood depends on a certain industry, or you simply don't feel like making sacrifices, it's extremely easy and comforting to believe the side of the 'debate' that says the problem doesn't exist, even if their evidence is patently flimsy. This is neither outright stupidity or outright malice, but a pernicious mentality that includes a bit of both. That is why the 'ignorance or malice' question is not a productive framing - the two are not mutually exclusive.
headmelted 5y ago
I think part of the problem is that we started talking about global warming (“nice! More sunshine!!”) to climate change (“cool! We get too much snow here anyway!!”). Maybe instead of talking about climate change, which is a symptom and not the problem, we should talk about “destabilising the atmosphere”. I feel like people will find it harder to use nonsense arguments if they’re confronted with the problem rather than the explanation.
- koheripbal 5y ago
  Semantics aren't going to change anything. You have to provide very specific and likely negative outcomes to specific regions.
  - lhorie 5y ago
    At this point, people are literally dying in heatwaves and houses are burning in forest fires. People are also dying in floods/landslides. But then deniers casually dismiss these as things that have happened in the past. Sometimes I feel like nothing short of a collapse of the agricultural system and a subsequent famine-triggered civil war killing people's immediate family members is going to wake them up. I hear key aquifers like the Colorado river are drying up, so it's probably even a fairly likely scenario within the next decade too...
  - actually_a_dog 5y ago
    It's all right here: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/billions-could-face-temperatures-inhospitable-life-next-50-years-study-n1201471 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/billions-could-face-tempe... Nobody wants to do anything about something that's only going to affect people decades in the future.
- Pet_Ant 5y ago
  > “destabilising the atmosphere”. Sorry, but that is even more opaque. "It looks fine to me!" Try to explain what happens with an unstable atmosphere and why we need it... and you are better off going with global warning. The problem is that we don't know what is going to happen. We aren't great at figuring the weather in two weeks. Then look an credit cards where we know and understand the consequences and penalties... and people STILL act irresponsibly.
crispyambulance 5y ago
Yeah, I heard about that but was skeptical that people could take that position non-sarcastically until recently when driving on the PA Turnpike, I saw this... https://twitter.com/co2coalition/status/1397912884756107269 https://twitter.com/co2coalition/status/1397912884756107269 The cynical dishonesty of an organization creating a billboard like that boggles my mind.
- rtkwe 5y ago
  It's the same thing Exxon did in the 80s when it's own researchers came to the conclusion that climate change was going to happen and then spent several decades clouding the issue to keep from being regulated so they could keep making money on drilling.
- sixstringtheory 5y ago
  This has strong “Brawndo’s got what plants crave” vibes. Good grief.
- munk-a 5y ago
  "Do you want to live in the Altered Carbon future? If not, realize that death is an important part of life. Paid for by People Against Cancer Research"
- colpabar 5y ago
  Haha I drive the turnpike all the time and these ones make me laugh the most. The ones that say "the green new deal is america's off switch" and the ones that were pro coal at least kind of make sense (their message is that people will lose their jobs), but these new pro-CO2 ones are just so absurd.
  - crispyambulance 5y ago
    Yep, did you see the white Trump truck... https://twitter.com/StephLSchmid/status/1417153947031199749 https://twitter.com/StephLSchmid/status/1417153947031199749 It's like they're trying to be a parody of themselves!
- 5y ago
eli 5y ago
I don't think it's worthwhile to spend much time on the reasons people cite to ignore or deny climate change. Hardly anybody is making a genuine effort to look at what's going on and concluding it's not a problem at all. People are against it, often, because of tribalism. They don't like the people who complain the loudest about climate change and the political party they're aligned with says not to worry about it (for a variety of reasons). The climate crisis is also genuinely scary and it is much more comforting to believe that it can't be as bad as they say it is. The number of voters who say climate change is important is growing every year (currently about half say it's a "critical threat") but that increase has come almost entirely from Democrats and Independent in the US.
paulddraper 5y ago
Yes. So now, if you doubt any of (1) it's man made (2) it's terrible (3) it's fixable, you're a "climate change denier."
- paulddraper 5y ago
  Where's the error?
pessimizer 5y ago
There is a severely underestimated group of religious people who think that only God controls the weather, His reasons for what he does with it are not for you to evaluate, and that saying that humans can change the weather is blasphemy. It's easy to make fun of, but the most direct experience that people have of a God who controls the universe would be the weather. These people need to be approached theologically; secular explanations are not going to hack it. The fact that polluters have an easy job getting their support doesn't mean that the ideas that they have about the weather originate from polluters. To preempt a certain type of response, telling them that "climate" is different than "weather" is not going to work unless you can cite a biblical verse that explains that distinction. We (middle-class PMCs) vastly underestimate the number of honest fundamentalists the same way we vastly underestimate the number of English-speaking illiterates. I'm always amused on HN when people in a thread realize that the reference to demonic possession or witchcraft by another commenter was completely in earnest.
- SigmundA 5y ago
  I have never been able to get my head around the religious paradox of God has a plan and free will. Can we make choices that effect the outcome of things or is it all part of Gods plan? It can't be both right? Did God create everything including free will or does it exist outside of his control? I don't blame my program when it does something wrong, I mean I wrote the code that tells it how to behave.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    It is extremely hard for people who are working on facts based stuff to get their heads wrapped around people who are religious, let alone those who are religious and who are working on facts based stuff at the same time (there are plenty of those). Suffice to say that it is very well possible to have different 'modes' of operations, where one moment you are fact based and the next you are belief based. So when you are busy with your fact based work you may see 'the hand of god' in the beauty before you, only to see yourself as part of gods plan in your discoveries and your work. To a person in that position there is no apparent contradiction, to an atheist there may be but they are not in that position themselves so lack a frame of reference that would allow them to appreciate this and to see that it actually isn't a problem. -- So in the end it boils down to something like this: "God has a plan, that plan is for you to have free will. You may question your ability to choose, you may believe that you have or do not have free will and yet even if you act against Gods plan that too is part of the plan". This may sound like nonsense but to a religious person it assuredly isn't. Source of this very much abbreviated conversation, my grandmother, long since deceased with whom I had some interesting conversations on the subject (me: atheist, she: devout catholic).
throwaway894345 5y ago
Personally I'm more concerned about the absolutely tepid response by folks who allegedly believe in climate change. I don't know how we are going to put a dent in climate change without something like carbon pricing (something that incentivizes us to reduce our carbon emissions). Instead the best case is that we're going to write progressives a check for $3.5T and they'll use a little bit of it to create a "civilian climate corps" and rebates for EVs and EV charging stations. Not the response I would expect to an existential threat. Yeah, it's fun to blame Republicans for not believing in climate change (and they deserve a lot of blame), but I have a much harder time with people who profess a belief in climate change but behave like climate policy is a nice-to-have. Downvoters: How are the Democratic reconciliation bill's climate provisions up to the challenge of tackling climate change? Why is climate change a middling priority on the agenda? Or is it all just okay because the Republicans are worse (i.e., we shouldn't let Democratic failure to address climate change distract from the more important work of blaming-Republicans-as-sport)?
- jacquesm 5y ago
  That's because quite a few of them have already simply given up. This oil tanker that we've built is not made to turn on a dime and that's what it would take to solve this. So it's a mitigation action at best at this point, reduce the force of the impact and look after your own. It's pretty sad in a way.
- danaris 5y ago
  You seem to be conflating the broader progressive ideology with the frustrating realities of trying to pass specific policies into law. The reason what we're getting out of Washington doesn't include enough to fight climate change may not be absolutely 100% the fault of the Republican Party, but it's enough that blaming the Democrats for it to any meaningful extent just smacks of disingenuous both-sides-ism.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I'm not talking about broader progressive ideology at all (apart from a belief that climate change is a real existential threat that requires significant immediate action), I'm talking about the priorities of the current crop of progressive Democratic politicians (and/or Democrats more broadly).
generalizations 5y ago
I've been hearing the 'it's a natural cycle' argument for decades. The arguments haven't shifted, it's just that more recently the warmer weather has prompted anecdotal arguments for climate change ("See! It's warmer! Global warming is real!"), and the 'natural cycle' argument is the more relevant rebuttal to that.
bawolff 5y ago
If only we were a plant
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tzs 5y ago
Another shift if from denial to acknowledging it is real, significantly man-made, and should be addressed--but then rejecting any reduction to emissions on the grounds that it might hurt the economy [1]. All they will support are things like planting trees or offering tax credits for recapture. Perhaps most ridiculous in rejecting emissions reduction is Senator Rubio who "said it made no sense for the United States to cut its emissions while other countries like China continue to pollute. But at the same time, he also rejected trade policies that would apply pressure on China and others to curb their emissions". [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/republicans-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/republicans-clima...

Most of the deniers I know have shifted from it doesn't exist to either its not man made and just a natural cycle or it may actually be a good thing because plants like CO2 and warmth...

sva_ 5y ago

Don't forget the camp of people who say "It exists, and we're past the point at which we can do something about it." I have to say, that on some days I almost feel like I share that mindset, as the promise of democracy that I was raised up on does not seem to bear fruits. It feels like people have learned to game the system too well.

actually_a_dog 5y ago
I'm more or less in this camp. I definitely believe we technically could do something about climate change. But, when I think about the sheer scale of collective action it would take, combined with the fact that we can't even get a sizeable portion of Americans to exercise common sense public health measures to deal with a pandemic, that's when the doom & gloom mentality sets in for me. This is not typically my public stance; I would very much like for us to do something about it. I'm just afraid that even that amounts to wishful thinking these days.

marcc 5y ago

Also have heard folks make an argument that it's more economical to plan to live in the post-climate changed world than to stop climate change. See https://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trillions/dp/1541647467 https://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trillions/...

actually_a_dog 5y ago
That sounds like an argument made by economists. Economists are notoriously bad at estimating the true, human costs of climate change. See https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-failed https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/why-has-climate-economics-... for instance (skip the political commentary at the top and go straight to the next section).

pbuzbee 5y ago

Agreed. I see less overall denial and instead more softening of the denial. "The earth's climate has always changed!" and "Sure climate is changing, but can you even say what an ideal climate is?"

worldsayshi 5y ago
I feel that much of the lack of a feeling of urgency comes from people not grasping the inertia and scale of things. I remember when covid started out and there was all those expectations on emissions going down. I got the feeling that some people thought that if we stopped "doing things" emissions would go down to almost zero and if emissions would go down to zero then the problem would be gone almost instantaneously.
4ec0755f5522 5y ago
In Canada, the Financial Post just ran an editorial saying it was a net positive because it will result in fewer deaths from "cold waves" e.g. winter storms. Flooding and other severe weather events were, unsurprisingly, handwaved away. Feedback loops and tipping points were completely ignored. I do not think it was intended as satire, but the idea that we should cook ourselves to death to prevent freezing to death has a very Swiftian vibe to me. https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warming-report-is-more-chill-than-you-have-read https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warmin...

lmilcin 5y ago

The "it's not man made" and "just a natural cycle" is easily disproven by showing historical temperatures change where it does, by pure accident, a hockey stick trick just last century. Or it would if the audience wasn't resistant to proofs altogether...

SigmundA 5y ago
Arguing with proofs just ends up leading to Brandolini's law [1]. You can make the most researched argument against any ridiculous point and you just get back a shoot from the hip rebuttal that needs further research that ends need a lengthly explanation why it's also wrong and it just keeps going. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law
edgyquant 5y ago
To play devils advocate, they could say that they would need to zoom out to a couple thousands years to be sure or (I’ve actually heard this one) that it is a coincidence that temperatures picked up after the industrial revolution since the little ice age ended around the same time.
- eloff 5y ago
  We've done that though. The climate stayed in a narrow 1 degree Celsius range since the end of the last ice age. It's likely that very stability that allowed agriculture and civilization to flourish. That epoch is called the Holocene. We've left that now and entered a new era. The Anthropocine, where the major driver in the climate is now us.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    Sure I was merely suggesting a rebuttal that would be pretty common.
  - noobly 5y ago
    From what I understand, the sun has also been getting hotter, hasn't it? I agree that man contributes to climate change, but quantifying this is where I think the conversation gets interesting. I haven't really gone very far down this hole though as it seems too muddled. And then if you do conclude man is primarily at fault, what do you do? The US is only responsible for so much output, for example, and sources like nuclear aren't viewed positively.

headmelted 5y ago

I had to explain this to a relative who started in with the “the earth has always had climate change” jibberish. They tried to tell me no-one knows how the last Ice Age happened. So I explained, but because they didn’t understand any of the concepts involved they thought I was just making it up. It’s a good reminder never to assume malice when plain old stupidity is on the table.

cryptoz 5y ago
> It’s a good reminder never to assume malice when plain old stupidity is on the table. We are only in this mess because of this attitude. Don't let evil people get away with evil things just because you think they are stupid. The current groups that believe climate change isn't real all believe that because of decades of misinformation specifically targeted at them, by Exxon and others. Malice is 100% present and 100% at fault for this. Greedy companies wanted more short term money and knew that it would kill millions of people and cause untold chaos and they didn't care.
- headmelted 5y ago
  Correct. But the reason they believe it is because they’re stupid. The fossil fuel lobby is malicious. Their audience is gullible. That’s all I’m saying. I’m not even saying being a gullible fool on this issue is acceptable. It’s clearly not. I feel the same about this lot as about the anti-vaxxers, which is “read a book before you get anyone else killed”.
  - sherp 5y ago
    I think you're underestimating the role motivated belief (aka 'wishful thinking') plays on the part of the audience. If your livelihood depends on a certain industry, or you simply don't feel like making sacrifices, it's extremely easy and comforting to believe the side of the 'debate' that says the problem doesn't exist, even if their evidence is patently flimsy. This is neither outright stupidity or outright malice, but a pernicious mentality that includes a bit of both. That is why the 'ignorance or malice' question is not a productive framing - the two are not mutually exclusive.

headmelted 5y ago

I think part of the problem is that we started talking about global warming (“nice! More sunshine!!”) to climate change (“cool! We get too much snow here anyway!!”). Maybe instead of talking about climate change, which is a symptom and not the problem, we should talk about “destabilising the atmosphere”. I feel like people will find it harder to use nonsense arguments if they’re confronted with the problem rather than the explanation.

koheripbal 5y ago
Semantics aren't going to change anything. You have to provide very specific and likely negative outcomes to specific regions.
- lhorie 5y ago
  At this point, people are literally dying in heatwaves and houses are burning in forest fires. People are also dying in floods/landslides. But then deniers casually dismiss these as things that have happened in the past. Sometimes I feel like nothing short of a collapse of the agricultural system and a subsequent famine-triggered civil war killing people's immediate family members is going to wake them up. I hear key aquifers like the Colorado river are drying up, so it's probably even a fairly likely scenario within the next decade too...
- actually_a_dog 5y ago
  It's all right here: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/billions-could-face-temperatures-inhospitable-life-next-50-years-study-n1201471 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/billions-could-face-tempe... Nobody wants to do anything about something that's only going to affect people decades in the future.
Pet_Ant 5y ago
> “destabilising the atmosphere”. Sorry, but that is even more opaque. "It looks fine to me!" Try to explain what happens with an unstable atmosphere and why we need it... and you are better off going with global warning. The problem is that we don't know what is going to happen. We aren't great at figuring the weather in two weeks. Then look an credit cards where we know and understand the consequences and penalties... and people STILL act irresponsibly.

crispyambulance 5y ago

Yeah, I heard about that but was skeptical that people could take that position non-sarcastically until recently when driving on the PA Turnpike, I saw this... https://twitter.com/co2coalition/status/1397912884756107269 https://twitter.com/co2coalition/status/1397912884756107269 The cynical dishonesty of an organization creating a billboard like that boggles my mind.

rtkwe 5y ago
It's the same thing Exxon did in the 80s when it's own researchers came to the conclusion that climate change was going to happen and then spent several decades clouding the issue to keep from being regulated so they could keep making money on drilling.
sixstringtheory 5y ago
This has strong “Brawndo’s got what plants crave” vibes. Good grief.
munk-a 5y ago
"Do you want to live in the Altered Carbon future? If not, realize that death is an important part of life. Paid for by People Against Cancer Research"
colpabar 5y ago
Haha I drive the turnpike all the time and these ones make me laugh the most. The ones that say "the green new deal is america's off switch" and the ones that were pro coal at least kind of make sense (their message is that people will lose their jobs), but these new pro-CO2 ones are just so absurd.
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  Yep, did you see the white Trump truck... https://twitter.com/StephLSchmid/status/1417153947031199749 https://twitter.com/StephLSchmid/status/1417153947031199749 It's like they're trying to be a parody of themselves!
5y ago

eli 5y ago

I don't think it's worthwhile to spend much time on the reasons people cite to ignore or deny climate change. Hardly anybody is making a genuine effort to look at what's going on and concluding it's not a problem at all. People are against it, often, because of tribalism. They don't like the people who complain the loudest about climate change and the political party they're aligned with says not to worry about it (for a variety of reasons). The climate crisis is also genuinely scary and it is much more comforting to believe that it can't be as bad as they say it is. The number of voters who say climate change is important is growing every year (currently about half say it's a "critical threat") but that increase has come almost entirely from Democrats and Independent in the US.

paulddraper 5y ago

Yes. So now, if you doubt any of (1) it's man made (2) it's terrible (3) it's fixable, you're a "climate change denier."

paulddraper 5y ago
Where's the error?

pessimizer 5y ago

There is a severely underestimated group of religious people who think that only God controls the weather, His reasons for what he does with it are not for you to evaluate, and that saying that humans can change the weather is blasphemy. It's easy to make fun of, but the most direct experience that people have of a God who controls the universe would be the weather. These people need to be approached theologically; secular explanations are not going to hack it. The fact that polluters have an easy job getting their support doesn't mean that the ideas that they have about the weather originate from polluters. To preempt a certain type of response, telling them that "climate" is different than "weather" is not going to work unless you can cite a biblical verse that explains that distinction. We (middle-class PMCs) vastly underestimate the number of honest fundamentalists the same way we vastly underestimate the number of English-speaking illiterates. I'm always amused on HN when people in a thread realize that the reference to demonic possession or witchcraft by another commenter was completely in earnest.

SigmundA 5y ago
I have never been able to get my head around the religious paradox of God has a plan and free will. Can we make choices that effect the outcome of things or is it all part of Gods plan? It can't be both right? Did God create everything including free will or does it exist outside of his control? I don't blame my program when it does something wrong, I mean I wrote the code that tells it how to behave.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  It is extremely hard for people who are working on facts based stuff to get their heads wrapped around people who are religious, let alone those who are religious and who are working on facts based stuff at the same time (there are plenty of those). Suffice to say that it is very well possible to have different 'modes' of operations, where one moment you are fact based and the next you are belief based. So when you are busy with your fact based work you may see 'the hand of god' in the beauty before you, only to see yourself as part of gods plan in your discoveries and your work. To a person in that position there is no apparent contradiction, to an atheist there may be but they are not in that position themselves so lack a frame of reference that would allow them to appreciate this and to see that it actually isn't a problem. -- So in the end it boils down to something like this: "God has a plan, that plan is for you to have free will. You may question your ability to choose, you may believe that you have or do not have free will and yet even if you act against Gods plan that too is part of the plan". This may sound like nonsense but to a religious person it assuredly isn't. Source of this very much abbreviated conversation, my grandmother, long since deceased with whom I had some interesting conversations on the subject (me: atheist, she: devout catholic).

throwaway894345 5y ago

Personally I'm more concerned about the absolutely tepid response by folks who allegedly believe in climate change. I don't know how we are going to put a dent in climate change without something like carbon pricing (something that incentivizes us to reduce our carbon emissions). Instead the best case is that we're going to write progressives a check for $3.5T and they'll use a little bit of it to create a "civilian climate corps" and rebates for EVs and EV charging stations. Not the response I would expect to an existential threat. Yeah, it's fun to blame Republicans for not believing in climate change (and they deserve a lot of blame), but I have a much harder time with people who profess a belief in climate change but behave like climate policy is a nice-to-have. Downvoters: How are the Democratic reconciliation bill's climate provisions up to the challenge of tackling climate change? Why is climate change a middling priority on the agenda? Or is it all just okay because the Republicans are worse (i.e., we shouldn't let Democratic failure to address climate change distract from the more important work of blaming-Republicans-as-sport)?

jacquesm 5y ago
That's because quite a few of them have already simply given up. This oil tanker that we've built is not made to turn on a dime and that's what it would take to solve this. So it's a mitigation action at best at this point, reduce the force of the impact and look after your own. It's pretty sad in a way.
danaris 5y ago
You seem to be conflating the broader progressive ideology with the frustrating realities of trying to pass specific policies into law. The reason what we're getting out of Washington doesn't include enough to fight climate change may not be absolutely 100% the fault of the Republican Party, but it's enough that blaming the Democrats for it to any meaningful extent just smacks of disingenuous both-sides-ism.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  I'm not talking about broader progressive ideology at all (apart from a belief that climate change is a real existential threat that requires significant immediate action), I'm talking about the priorities of the current crop of progressive Democratic politicians (and/or Democrats more broadly).

generalizations 5y ago

I've been hearing the 'it's a natural cycle' argument for decades. The arguments haven't shifted, it's just that more recently the warmer weather has prompted anecdotal arguments for climate change ("See! It's warmer! Global warming is real!"), and the 'natural cycle' argument is the more relevant rebuttal to that.

bawolff 5y ago

If only we were a plant

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tzs 5y ago

Another shift if from denial to acknowledging it is real, significantly man-made, and should be addressed--but then rejecting any reduction to emissions on the grounds that it might hurt the economy [1]. All they will support are things like planting trees or offering tax credits for recapture. Perhaps most ridiculous in rejecting emissions reduction is Senator Rubio who "said it made no sense for the United States to cut its emissions while other countries like China continue to pollute. But at the same time, he also rejected trade policies that would apply pressure on China and others to curb their emissions". [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/republicans-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/13/climate/republicans-clima...