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Respectfully, it wasn't a gross simplification. The underlying claims in both directions are already simple. It was just incorrect. > But it serves a purpose.

Respectfully, it wasn't a gross simplification. The underlying claims in both directions are already simple. It was just incorrect. > But it serves a purpose. Purpose? What purpose? Honestly, this stuff really gets my goat. I'm not sure if you're aware of this but around half of the US population doesn't agree that climate changes are driven primarily by humans [1], and over time the proportion of people saying climate change is a serious problem have gone down, not up. This is despite absolutely saturation level messaging by every part society that's allowed to speak. Despite being confined to obscure blogs climate skeptics appear to be winning, and they're doing it through a simple formula: 1. Take a claim made by journalists/politicians/academics/the UN/whatever. 2. Present documentary evidence that the claim is wrong. Sometimes a graph from a government website, sometimes data from a paper, sometimes historical evidence or data they collected themselves. 3. Say it isn't a mistake but rather deliberate lies told in aid of a specific social agenda. So when you say the weather is getting more energetic, I show you it's not getting more energetic, and you accept that you were wrong but say "It serves a purpose", what you're doing is illustrating and to some extent confirming all the worst conspiracy theories of the skeptics. You're saying it's OK to say untrue things about the climate if it's in aid of some (unarticulated) other goal. > Every year is bringing "...est on record" everywhere you look. Given that you just made a claim about storm energy that isn't correct, presumably found in those places that you look, one should consider the possibility that claims we hear about records might also be gross oversimplifications told to serve a purpose. [1] https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/EPIC-factsheets.pdf https://apnorc.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/EPIC-factsheet...

bruce511 2y ago
I hear your concern. To be fair, I didn't say anything about storm energy, I made a comment about energetic weather. In the sense that the weather is "more". Hotter hots, colder colds and so on. So more energetic in the "less placid" sense. And sure, lots of US folks are happy to deny climate change because it suits them. The majority of climate deniers are not doing it because they disbelieve the science, they deny it because their life-style would need to change if they accepted it was real. In other words they rationalise backwards - start with the outcome they desire (I'm not to blame, I don't need to change) and then find a path to that outcome. Or to put it another way, you cannot rationally argue a person out of a place they didn't rationally get into. Which goes back to my original point. I don't think most (rich nations) people want to change, and so we're well past the point of no return. The earth will be a different place for my children and grandchildren. The time for convincing people that this is a problem has come and gone.

bruce511 2y ago

I hear your concern. To be fair, I didn't say anything about storm energy, I made a comment about energetic weather. In the sense that the weather is "more". Hotter hots, colder colds and so on. So more energetic in the "less placid" sense. And sure, lots of US folks are happy to deny climate change because it suits them. The majority of climate deniers are not doing it because they disbelieve the science, they deny it because their life-style would need to change if they accepted it was real. In other words they rationalise backwards - start with the outcome they desire (I'm not to blame, I don't need to change) and then find a path to that outcome. Or to put it another way, you cannot rationally argue a person out of a place they didn't rationally get into. Which goes back to my original point. I don't think most (rich nations) people want to change, and so we're well past the point of no return. The earth will be a different place for my children and grandchildren. The time for convincing people that this is a problem has come and gone.