4 ms·

I'm not saying it's right or useful, but I think a lot of people (especially young people) are just really sick of climate change denial-ism. I know I am. I'm

I'm not saying it's right or useful, but I think a lot of people (especially young people) are just really sick of climate change denial-ism. I know I am. I'm nearly half a century old and the handwriting has been on the wall my whole life. I don't want to quash discussion (interesting and informative discussion is the main reason I use HN) but, yeah, it's not a bad thing to differentiate yourself from the climate deniers, if you want people to hear you these days.

bheadmaster 4y ago
Being really sick of a certain group of people just because they hold different beliefs than you is exactly what causes the division. Why are you sick of them? That's a fairly strong emotion. Do you hold resentment because they are the ones who are going to bring the apocalypse to the world? Is it annoyance from hearing too many incorrect opinions? Or something else entirely? Honest question - why are you, personally, sick of them? I'd really like to know.
- bloaf 4y ago
  1. Their existence is the political justification for inaction. 2. They form an unholy alliance with other anti-empiricist groups (e.g. anti-vaxxers, young earth creationists) to undermine reality-based policies, including in education. 3. Their denialist opinions are typically held in bad faith. That is, they are held because if they were true they would confirm some pre-existing belief (e.g. that scientists are tools of a global elite cabal), not because an independent evaluation of the facts has led them there. This reinforces their hostility towards whatever group they think is lying. 4. Denialists typically engage in a perverse form of virtue signaling. The greater and more well evidence a claim is, the greater the "cred" they get for denying it. This creates a fertile field for sham experts to sell lies to members.
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  the existence of santa claus is a "belief" climate change isn't
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    Knowledge is just a belief that turned out to be true.
    - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
      is it? I'm not so sure about that it could also be a non-belief that turned out to be true, so that kind of shoots down that theory yep, "belief" is definitely the wrong word to use here, "truth" or "reality" would work since climate change is true & real, and having "different beliefs" is definitely not the same thing as having your own truths and reality, which is why climate change deniers generally get mocked by people
- carapace 4y ago
  Honest answer (and thanks for asking): First, I want to make it clear that I don't think of "climate deniers" as a group per se like a race, creed, or nation. There's a lot of detail and nuance in the world and I want to explore that, not abrogate it. I just want to elucidate on that a little before I get to answering your question. You have folks like the people in the oil companies who knew about the science of the greenhouse effect and still spent lots of money casting doubt on it in public to protect their profits. You also have people who have honest doubts and questions. I'm even one of them. I've heard that global warming and climate change might have more to do with changes in the Sun's energy output than human chemical emissions, and I'd like to talk more about that, but ooo yeah not in public, eh? You would have to be all like "but I'm not a climate denial-ist" like OP. So, just to repeat, I'm not being tribal here. (For instance the Chinese Communist Party creeps me out, but I still give them credit for e.g. fixing the Loess Plateau, etc. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409 ) I'm not against a group, I'm sick of certain behaviors. To answer your question "why [am I], personally, sick of [certain behaviors]?" It's simple. When I was a kid in high school I found my parents' copy of the Next Whole Earth Catalog which was a kind of hippie how-to guide from the 70's. I have no idea what happened to the people who made and bought and read this thing. My parents didn't talk about it or anything like that. But it became, for awhile, something like my bible. I left my textbooks in my locker and carried it around instead (it's like four feet wide and weighs six or seven hundred pounds!) In it I learned about people like Christopher Alexander, Bucky Fuller, and Bill Mollison, and I began to see, or think that I saw, a better world. A world where humans and nature were in harmony, and "no one had to get nailed to anything." That was about thirty-five years ago. So, from my POV, everybody has been running around enacting "Idiocracy" instead and, yeah, I'm sick of it.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    Thank you for the honest response. It reflects your perspective in a vivid and relatable way. I understand you in some manner - I grew up watching Captain Planet and similar eco-oriented shows that have instilled in me some feeling of "importance" of the whole subject. And seeing other people trample upon what are some of our most sacret beliefs, developed for decades, can make us sick of them. The only criticism of those beliefs I would have is that they come from sentiment, not (only) reason - so, in theory, if instead of eco-literature, you read, say, the Bible, you would most likely have equally strong beliefs towards Christianity, and they would be supported by more-or-less same number of arguments derived from years of studying. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it's really hard to separate ourselves from our sentiment. I guess that the world is doomed to stay a divisive place, because humans are, in their essence, emotional creatures with reason added.

bheadmaster 4y ago

Being really sick of a certain group of people just because they hold different beliefs than you is exactly what causes the division. Why are you sick of them? That's a fairly strong emotion. Do you hold resentment because they are the ones who are going to bring the apocalypse to the world? Is it annoyance from hearing too many incorrect opinions? Or something else entirely? Honest question - why are you, personally, sick of them? I'd really like to know.

bloaf 4y ago
1. Their existence is the political justification for inaction. 2. They form an unholy alliance with other anti-empiricist groups (e.g. anti-vaxxers, young earth creationists) to undermine reality-based policies, including in education. 3. Their denialist opinions are typically held in bad faith. That is, they are held because if they were true they would confirm some pre-existing belief (e.g. that scientists are tools of a global elite cabal), not because an independent evaluation of the facts has led them there. This reinforces their hostility towards whatever group they think is lying. 4. Denialists typically engage in a perverse form of virtue signaling. The greater and more well evidence a claim is, the greater the "cred" they get for denying it. This creates a fertile field for sham experts to sell lies to members.
ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
the existence of santa claus is a "belief" climate change isn't
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  Knowledge is just a belief that turned out to be true.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    is it? I'm not so sure about that it could also be a non-belief that turned out to be true, so that kind of shoots down that theory yep, "belief" is definitely the wrong word to use here, "truth" or "reality" would work since climate change is true & real, and having "different beliefs" is definitely not the same thing as having your own truths and reality, which is why climate change deniers generally get mocked by people
carapace 4y ago
Honest answer (and thanks for asking): First, I want to make it clear that I don't think of "climate deniers" as a group per se like a race, creed, or nation. There's a lot of detail and nuance in the world and I want to explore that, not abrogate it. I just want to elucidate on that a little before I get to answering your question. You have folks like the people in the oil companies who knew about the science of the greenhouse effect and still spent lots of money casting doubt on it in public to protect their profits. You also have people who have honest doubts and questions. I'm even one of them. I've heard that global warming and climate change might have more to do with changes in the Sun's energy output than human chemical emissions, and I'd like to talk more about that, but ooo yeah not in public, eh? You would have to be all like "but I'm not a climate denial-ist" like OP. So, just to repeat, I'm not being tribal here. (For instance the Chinese Communist Party creeps me out, but I still give them credit for e.g. fixing the Loess Plateau, etc. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20537409 ) I'm not against a group, I'm sick of certain behaviors. To answer your question "why [am I], personally, sick of [certain behaviors]?" It's simple. When I was a kid in high school I found my parents' copy of the Next Whole Earth Catalog which was a kind of hippie how-to guide from the 70's. I have no idea what happened to the people who made and bought and read this thing. My parents didn't talk about it or anything like that. But it became, for awhile, something like my bible. I left my textbooks in my locker and carried it around instead (it's like four feet wide and weighs six or seven hundred pounds!) In it I learned about people like Christopher Alexander, Bucky Fuller, and Bill Mollison, and I began to see, or think that I saw, a better world. A world where humans and nature were in harmony, and "no one had to get nailed to anything." That was about thirty-five years ago. So, from my POV, everybody has been running around enacting "Idiocracy" instead and, yeah, I'm sick of it.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  Thank you for the honest response. It reflects your perspective in a vivid and relatable way. I understand you in some manner - I grew up watching Captain Planet and similar eco-oriented shows that have instilled in me some feeling of "importance" of the whole subject. And seeing other people trample upon what are some of our most sacret beliefs, developed for decades, can make us sick of them. The only criticism of those beliefs I would have is that they come from sentiment, not (only) reason - so, in theory, if instead of eco-literature, you read, say, the Bible, you would most likely have equally strong beliefs towards Christianity, and they would be supported by more-or-less same number of arguments derived from years of studying. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), it's really hard to separate ourselves from our sentiment. I guess that the world is doomed to stay a divisive place, because humans are, in their essence, emotional creatures with reason added.