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I was very much a skeptic until I started seeing more and more real world (as opposed to just models) evidence. I am pretty convinced now. My skepticism was ro

• ancientworldnow 5y ago
  If anything, politicians globally are hugely downplaying the risks of climate change and betting on being out of office before the worst effects manifest.
• imoverclocked 5y ago
  Did the plethora of scientists claiming that it was an issue not factor in at all?
  • passivate 5y ago
    We should listen to the scientists because they're the best we've got. But at the same time, we need to be humble and leave room for them to be wrong. This is where science shines - we should always feel comfortable shedding incorrect models/theories and embrace new ideas that might better explain the data. So yes, ACC is real, but we should still encourage honest people to investigate and propose a better explanation if there is one. Drowning out honest voices makes the entire scientific community look bad. (Certainly, we should not give a platform to dishonest, known frauds)
  • api 5y ago
    The scientists seemed to have a single political leaning, which made me more skeptical. I saw it as religious apologetics for green ideology. The presence of any strong uniform ideology makes me extremely skeptical just like political interest does. I'd summarize as: I assume that strong ideological beliefs or political motives make people irrational, dishonest, and untrustworthy.
    • sebular 5y ago
      You assumed that there was a strong uniform ideology because scientists aligned with one political party, when in fact there was a strong uniform body of data which caused the scientists to agree. They aligned with one political party because it supported an objectively correct stance, while the other did not. Your heuristics utterly failed you, leaving you blind to a devastating truth at a critical moment. While you seem to be on the road to acknowledging the truth about climate change, I can only hope that you are also ready to let go of the flawed reasoning that set you so far back.
    • CydeWeys 5y ago
      It's a scientific issue though, not a political one. You shouldn't ever have been evaluating it through the lens of politics. You fell into that one side vs the other political trap.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • imoverclocked 5y ago
      I'm not sure why you are being down-voted for voicing your position. Thanks for sharing it. I think that if we (as a society) can't find a way to communicate basic truths to all of us, we are probably doomed; There has to be a way for everyone to be able to say "1 + 1 = 2" and not have endless debate about it. Trusting the leaders that we elect is probably part of that equation... but that also means those leaders need to understand these basic truths (as truths) as well.
      • User23 5y ago
        > I'm not sure why you are being down-voted for voicing your position. The climate zealots here are extremely aggressive with the downvoting. And yes the description zealot is fair. Denier is their word for heretic. Another sign of zealotry is the inability to recognize nuance. For example my pointing out that climate zealots act like zealots is observably true, but their brains will shut down and immediately label me as a “denier” even though I’m entirely agnostic on the subject. I really don’t care. I have better things to spend my intellectual energy on than learning enough to evaluate whatever evidence there is for a problem I can’t solve. But there’s no greater offense to a zealot than saying you consider his particular obsession irrelevant. Yet another sign of zealotry is an extreme desire for others to publicly affirm one’s beliefs. This should help you understand why gp is poorly received. Edit: As for why I bothered to post about zealots, it’s because I believe zealotry of all sorts, including climate zealotry, is far more likely to cause mass harm than whatever issue the zealots are obsessed with. For example climate zealots are actually seriously planning to blot out the sun. What could possibly go wrong?
  • edgyquant 5y ago
    To be frank the science is way less apocalyptic in nature than certain politicians and people tend to be rhetorically speaking. Climate change isn’t going to wipe out humanity or all life on Earth and I’ve never seen a legit paper even come close to suggesting this. Yet I hear it from Joe blow all the time.
    • imoverclocked 5y ago
      While science does tend to keep estimates and language neutral to focus on hard facts, I would argue that those facts have pointed to catastrophe for a long time [1]. The language of fact is often dry and what most people (myself included) naturally pay attention to are loud/charismatic/flashy presentations of topics. Visualization [2] of data helps understand just how much area we can expect to lose around the coasts. These kinds of datasets are available and scientists do their best to publish them but what the public ultimately gets are articles filtered through journalists who often "translate" what they hear. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/26/world/scientists-urge-rapid-action-on-global-warming.html https://www.nytimes.com/1990/05/26/world/scientists-urge-rap... [2] https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/slr/10/-13585575.604734166/4504014.1542522935/12/satellite/none/0.8/2050/interHigh/midAccretion https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/#/layer/slr/10/-13585575.60473416...
      • edgyquant 5y ago
        I’m not saying that climate change isn’t a problem or that it isn’t going to effect a lot of people. But millions of refugees fleeing the coastal areas and crazy weather patterns are not the same as the end of all life on earth or the end of humanity. Those last two are the common rhetoric from non-scientist who doomsay about climate change and it turns people off or in the worst case makes them think it’s all lies.
    • baron_harkonnen 5y ago
      Have you read anything by Peter Ward? He's a fairly well respected paleontologist who has argued convincingly in both papers and popular books (most notably "Under a Green Sky"), that sudden rises in CO2 have been linked to the majority of major (and many minor) mass extinctions throughout history. He's not alone in scientists out there who believe that rapid climate change is a serious existential risk to humans and many species on Earth. We are already likely in the 6th largest extinction event. If you relax from "extinction" to "collapse of industrial civilization" the number of people who have studied and argued this academically grows quite a bit. I agree that no one seriously believes the extinction of "all life on Earth" is possible, quite a bit survived the End Permian. But existential risk to humans an much life on Earth is not out of the question based on geological evidence. Additionally scientists are humans too, and it is hard for any of us to seriously consider existential threats as realistic. If there's been a bias in past IPCC reports it's been for optimism, frequently ignoring feedback while assuming large scale carbon capture and storage.
• jacquesm 5y ago
  So why listen to the politicians in the first place, instead of to the scientists who have been as united about this as they have ever been about any major subject? There is some fringe but the consensus is extremely clear.
  • lmilcin 5y ago
    And wouldn't it be reasonable to assume, if entire scientific community was involved in some kind conspiracy, that somebody somewhere would find some kind of smoking gun? And who would exactly benefit from peddling that kind of conspiracy?
    • api 5y ago
      I never suspected a conspiracy. I suspected ideological bias and groupthink, neither of which requires any explicit conspiracy.
  • cogman10 5y ago
    The problem isn't listening to politicians, the problem is listening to talk show hosts with vested interests in the fossil fuel industry. The problem is you can tune into those hosts with a simple AM radio. Getting access to the scientific literature is somewhat more difficult, especially if you are a tech illiterate.
    • jacquesm 5y ago
      If you are tech illiterate then it doesn't matter if you have access or not to the scientific literature, it is hard enough to follow for people that are tech literate and this doesn't always seem to be by accident. Almost every paper that I've seen could have been more direct, less obtuse and more transparent, especially when it comes to the presentation of evidence that is in doubt or marginal. If you read papers from the beginnings of science they are such a breath of fresh air compared to the stuff that is produced today. There are some exceptions but they are few and far between. Obviously science itself has developed, things have gotten far more complex and so on. But that's not really my point, the point is about the language used itself, which seems to be more related to attracting the next round of funding than it is to moving the needle in a scientific way. And those papers that do end up moving the needle tend to be remarkably blunt and precise in their findings. There is a parallel here between scientific papers and start-up decks. Those start-ups and those scientists that know they have a live one don't need to fluff it up or polish the numbers, they can just present the cold hard truth and you will know it for what it spells out when you read it without any kind of embellishment.
• majormajor 5y ago
  Politicians were also saying "there's nothing to worry about." Shouldn't you be at least equally skeptical whenever someone in power promotes maintaining the status quo? Seems like a rather useless razor, since politicians often both say pro- and against- arguments for things. But here especially, "politicians" or "the media" trying to scare you about it is a bit of a red herring. E.g., the media was talking about it because scientists were making claims. Scientists have been wrong before, of course, but discounting the claim because "the media" picked up on it instead of looking into things like "how many scientists" "how long is the trend" "what is the reasoning" is just foolish.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • wonderwonder 5y ago
    Unfortunately its not that politicians were warning people about it, its that the politicians of the other side were. So many of us automatically discount the opinions of anyone in power if they have the wrong letter next to their name.
    • api 5y ago
      No, it wasn’t the letter. I have usually voted D for other reasons, and Republicans say lots of things that trip the same heuristic like trying to scare me about immigrants or “critical race theory.” It was because someone in power was saying it was a looming catastrophe that could only be solved by doing radical things. That makes me think it’s a cynical power grab. Sort of like how we had incontrovertible proof there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Green ideology also triggered my skepticism since ideology blinds people to reality. Like the political party, the ideology doesn’t matter. Any time a bunch of believers in an ideology are harping on something that others are not I get real skeptical. These days it’s hard for me to believe anything unless I see the same information coming from multiple sources with different biases. If it’s all coming from the same sources with one consistent bias it’s probably bullshit.
• monocasa 5y ago
  I've found that a better model is to ignore politicians. They don't care about you, true, but that means that what they're saying is orthogonal to your wellbeing not opposite. Assuming the opposite still lets them define the playfield and works to their advantage.
• nemo44x 5y ago
  OP was voted down by others but I respect their honesty about it. And the point about their perception of fear being used as a motivator and resulting skepticism. I think a lot of people feel this way. I think people are "crisis hardened" at this point. So much news and opinion about most everything is framed as a "crisis" and people are just sort of tuned out to it and they're sick of being made anxious about everything. It feels a whole lot better to have someone else say "don't listen, they're just trying to scare you to get power" and people will tune into that eventually. I think people see hypocrisy all over the place as well, especially in the climate issue and people hate being preached to. People hate hearing that they shouldn't have meat, they shouldn't have a car, they shouldn't fly, etc. They fear the currently proposed solutions like taxing these heavily or rationing it. Simply put, people at large will not get behind a massive project like this politically until it is sold as something that makes their lives better. That they don't have to give these things up but that we should work towards doing them better. It's especially difficult with this issue too since it's been sold poorly (global warning, then why is it freezing today?!) and it's a very slow process when considering a human's life. Yes, the data we have and the models we have are compelling. However, denial is a powerful thing especially when people are told to listen to an authority that wants to take their pleasures away. I just don't think going around calling other people idiots or asking why they didn't just listen to scientists (science and especially scientists are not infallible.) is very useful. To get a super majority behind this we need to sell it as a project to not take away anything but to find new ways of doing it without putting excessive CO2 into the atmosphere. That you can have a steak, and a car, and un your AC, and travel but that we also need to agree to finance projects in making these things sustainable. That engineering ourselves a better future is possible and that stopping doing things doesn't have to be the way. I don't know, I just think psychology of how it is being sold is ineffective. Unlivable conditions, death, the Earth's destruction should motivate people but the threat just isn't imminent enough for people to sacrifice. I think it does the opposite and sends people looking for a safe place where it's going to be OK and anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to pick your pocket. Our style of government is not great at unifying around big projects and unless the threat is clearly imminent and/or in progress. We need persuasion to win and positive visions for the future to get there.
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• lm28469 5y ago
  > I was very much a skeptic until I started seeing more and more real world (as opposed to just models) evidence. I am pretty convinced now. There is an enormous momentum, by the time the model predictions are here in the """real world""" you already have both feet in the grave...
• ajross 5y ago
  > My skepticism was rooted in the fact that politicians, pundits, and the media were trying to scare me about it. I'm sorry, but this excuse borders on a clear lie. There were "politicians, pundits, and media" lined up on both sides of this issue. And there had been going all the way back to the dawn of the issue in the 70's. What happened was that you chose to believe one side. And it was wrong. But rather than admit that "your side" was wrong you're blaming the "other side" for, I guess, making you distrust them on a subject where you should have trusted them. > I still think that should be a default suspicion, but that means you have to dig and check the details and check multiple sources. Which is exactly what you did not do! You get that, right? Rather than check details and multiple sources, you chose to walk away from the people who were telling you the truth.
  • UnFleshedOne 5y ago
    > you chose to walk away from the people who were telling you the truth. To be fair, a combination of heuristics that say "distrust people with proven record of lying" and "ability to detach your opinions from reality is a significant advantage when getting and maintaining power" and "lacking external corrections, any ruling system will accumulate exclusively those who spend most of their effort on power games" strongly promotes automatic distrust for any an all politicians. And I can't say those heuristics are wrong. Then if is up for individual to become an expert in all areas of life or be left to their natural biases...
    • ajross 5y ago
      > strongly promotes automatic distrust for any an all politicians. But... it wasn't politicians. It was never politicians, really. It started with scientists! Left leaning politicians got on board only once their electoral base started moving, they are a lagging indicator. Again, this is excuse-making for having deliberately ignored people who were telling you the truth.