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Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion.

Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion. Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded: "The longer we put off doing something, the harder and more expensive it will be in the future. In a Pascal's Wager sort of way, many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything, and the potential that C02 is not a real culprit is more than made up by danger that it is. Making changes now is the prudent and financially sound decision." In a large part, this is what the brief ESG trend on the stock market was briefly about before it got co-opted by a dozen different competing messages.

aeternum 8mo ago
The problem with Pascal's wager logic is you have to change your behavior based on all kinds of crazy low-probability events. You must worship every god, be an AI-doomer, a climate-doomer, a nuclear-doomer. Pascal's wager is generally agreed to be logically unsound, so it's somewhat insane that we've revived it in all these modern contexts. If you believe in it, at least be consistent and sacrifice a goat to Zeus every couple years.
- legitster 8mo ago
  Yes, and no. I think we actually do this logic a lot in our lives. Do I actually believe whole wheat bread is better for me, or do I just buy it on the chance it is? Do I go with the cheapest toothpaste or spend money on something that might be better? Do I buy an AWD car on the chance I am stuck? Sacrificing a goat, after all, does sound like a lot of work. But maybe I will wear a lucky hat to a baseball game?
- conartist6 8mo ago
  There has to be infinite torment in play for the wager to apply too! Thus by conclusion you should only give vengeful gods the benefit of the doubt
- circuit10 8mo ago
  Here’s a video called “Is AI safety a Pascal’s Mugging?”: https://youtu.be/JRuNA2eK7w0 https://youtu.be/JRuNA2eK7w0 I haven’t watched it back but from what I remember the main point of the video is that kind of situation happens when the probability involved is vanishingly small, and all the events you listed don’t have a vanishingly small probability, so they are not Pascal’s wager situations, just a normal rational safety concerns with particularly high consequences
- barbs 8mo ago
  In this case, it's not exactly like Pascal's wager because there is plenty of scientific evidence of disastrous consequences of not believing in climate change (and preparing accordingly). There's no evidence to suggest that a non-belief in God will send you to hell.
- pablomalo 8mo ago
  Pascal's wager, as it relates to faith, is based on the premise that there is a lot to win in making the wager --but little to lose. In turn, that second part is grounded in the assumption (right or wrong, I won't judge) that living according to Christian principles brings benefits _in this life also_ to the individual who so chooses. So it seems a mischaracterization to present the essence of the wager as going out of your way to perform random and costly rites in the hope of lifting any ill omen.
  - joquarky 8mo ago
    Exactly. For example, what if making such wagers is key in determining that you belong in "hell" for not being genuine?
  - aeternum 8mo ago
    I disagree. If doing thing x brings benefits, then you have reason to do thing x regardless of the wager. Utilitarianism is sufficient. The wager is only interesting on those rites where the expected-value is uncertain or unknowable.
  - johsole 8mo ago
    > living according to Christian principles brings benefits _in this life also_ It does, in this life and the next.
cosmic_cheese 8mo ago
Another reframing that may be useful is energy security/redundancy. If you have a cheap source of solar panels and batteries, the only downside to installing them all over the country is up-front cost (which pays itself off quickly). The upside you gain is a substantially more robust, less centralized power grid that can continue to operate if something happens to impede your supply of fossil fuels or part of the grid gets cut off. Looking at how things have played out elsewhere in the world the past few years, that's powerful.
- nradov 8mo ago
  Where is this mythical cheap source of batteries? I mean you can go on Alibaba and order cheap 18650 cells in limited quantities but there's an enormous difference between doing that and having enough reliable battery power to keep a nationwide grid supplying a modern industrial economy through several days of bad weather.
  - adriand 8mo ago
    > Where is this mythical cheap source of batteries? They’re made out of rocks. Yes, you have to take steps to acquire and refine the materials, then turn them into batteries. However, the process for doing that is not mysterious.
    - nradov 8mo ago
      Not mysterious, just slow and expensive.
      - defrost 8mo ago
        Across the world, according to BNEF, the cost of grid scale battery packs has fallen another 45 per cent in 2025 following a 40 per cent fall in 2024. The UK-based energy think tank Ember has now also reached the same conclusion, underlying its unexpected impact on solar power. from: https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-plunging-cost-of-battery-storage-and-how-its-changed-the-grid-and-saved-the-day-for-big-solar/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-plunging-cost-of-battery-sto... citing: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-... and similar reports. Resource prices for batteries did spike at various times in the past, this had more to do with opening and then closing a lot of production sites by mining companies than with any real meaningful supply issue. Urban grid scal battery parks are on the rise globally, industrial parks have always had special status and can still concentrate modern efficient peaker turbines and buffer storage to bridge, if applicable, and use any general daytime excess.
CoastalCoder 8mo ago
I'm a different kind of crotchety. I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate it. I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual countries to pursue a competitive economic or military advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices. I hope I'm wrong.
- bryanlarsen 8mo ago
  Luckily the effect is much larger in the opposite direction: weaning oneself off of foreign oil is a huge advantage both economically and militarily.
  - nradov 8mo ago
    Is it though? For developing countries, having a large supply of fossil fuels has always been a huge accelerator for industrialization and overall economic growth even if that fuel has to be imported. There really is no substitute, especially when you consider that it's not used only for transportation and power generation but also for manufacturing as an industrial heat source and chemical feed stock.
    - eldaisfish 8mo ago
      fossil fuels were a proxy for energy. China continues to show the world that energy independence can come via electricity that you generate within your borders, and that it can be cheaper than importing foreign oil.
      - nradov 8mo ago
        China is in no way energy independent. Their fossil fuel imports are extremely high and not decreasing.
        bryanlarsen 8mo ago
        China's gasoline use is down substantially. Industrial use is up, but much of that is re exported via plastic etc.
commandlinefan 8mo ago
> many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything I hear that often, but it's never followed by details about any of the actual changes that are being talked about. The ones I actually hear (especially politicians) advocate for are catastrophically expensive and dubious in their effectiveness. Banning coal or gas-powered cards might (might) be a good idea in the long run, but it definitely does cost us something.
- wat10000 8mo ago
  Banning coal is a complete no-brainer at this point. Has been for quite a while. Never mind climate change, it's horribly polluting. The only reason it's still remotely economically viable is because the people who burn coal don't bear the costs of their pollution. If they actually had to compensate people for all the cancer, lung disease, poisoned ground water, contaminated seafood, and other such problems they cause, coal would vanish. It's already to the point where the ridiculous coal fans who infest our government are forcing coal power plants to remain open when their operators want to close them because they're no longer profitable to operate.
- adgjlsfhk1 8mo ago
  banning coal is quite cheap even ignoring the emissions and pollution side effects. England has already shut down their last coal plant and without 6 years of Trump, the US likely would have or would be planning to within the next couple years. Coal is expensive, not flexible, and horribly polluting even compared to natural gas.
pinkmuffinere 8mo ago
> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now My family is fundamentalist protestant, very midwestern, and I think about half of them believe that the earth is warming. Not trying to "win", just trying to say that a lot of this depends on the crowd you interact with. I don't know the percentage, but certainly there are still way too many people that don't even believe it. The very tired response is "well i wish it would warm up here slaps knee". Using the phrase 'Climate Change' at least reduces that objection.
- smitty1e 8mo ago
  "Climate Change" implies that some sort of "constant climate" is even attainable, irrespective of desirable.
  - mithr 8mo ago
    It doesn't; that's kind of a first-glance reading of the phrase without really thinking about it. Something can said to change from a certain standard even if it wasn't perfectly constant to begin with. For example, if I always kept my house at 65-75 degrees for the past year, and now it's 85 degrees inside, I could certainly say that the temperature in my house recently changed and gotten warmer. That might lead me to check whether my AC's working, rather than say "well I guess the temperature has never really been constant, and 85 is within the range of possible non-constant temperatures, so everything's perfectly normal and nothing has changed."
    - alt227 8mo ago
      Your analogy doesnt work, becaue the earth has been warmer than it is now several times in the past. so the increased temperature is within the range of normal temperatures. The problem is not that the earth is warming, it is that it is warming at an artificially increased rate.
      - mithr 8mo ago
        It's not meant as a perfect analogy for global warming, but rather an illustration of how a constant state isn't necessary for something to be said to be "changing", which was OP's claim.
IncreasePosts 8mo ago
Yes, parts of my extended family who were anti-climate change and proud went from "Global warming is a hoax", to "So what if global warming is happening" over the past 10 years.
pdonis 8mo ago
> many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything This is the part that seems to vary widely based on which warming alarmist you're talking to. Many of them are not saying there are things we could do that "don't even really cost us anything" that would deal with the problem--they're saying we need to devote a significant fraction of global GDP to CO2 mitigation. Things that "don't really cost us anything" are probably happening already anyway, because, well, they don't really cost us anything. Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing that doesn't really seem to be happening right now, that would be an obvious way to eliminate a lot of CO2 emissions. But of course that does really cost us something. But it's probably the most cost effective thing we could do on a large scale.
- legitster 8mo ago
  > Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing that doesn't really seem to be happening right now I mean, this is the clear and obvious one. Nuclear theoretically should be much, much cheaper than it is if it were not for the regulatory costs thrust upon it. It also harrows out people who are legitimately concerned from "moralist concern junkies". You'd think climate change being a global existential crisis would make people open to nuclear energy or more drastic measures like geo-engineering, but the frequency with which people refuse to compromise undercuts the their legitimacy.
  - triceratops 8mo ago
    > Nuclear theoretically should be much, much cheaper than it is if it were not for the regulatory costs thrust upon it Solar and wind theoretically would also be much, much cheaper if not for the regulatory costs. [1] Everything is regulated and all regulations have costs. I'm not morally opposed to nuclear energy. Is there a comprehensive study on which specific safety regulations are unnecessary and the LCOE if they were removed? 1. https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as
    - bryanlarsen 8mo ago
randusername 8mo ago
I can understand people having their own reasons for dismissing the facts or the rhetoric. What I can't wrap my head around is the conspiracy thinking around environmentalism. What's so nefarious about clean air and water? I'll never forget when my grandmother walked out of WALL-E because she said it was government propaganda. She is a regular person, not a coal magnate or anything.
- krapp 8mo ago
  You need to understand the political and cultural history. Environmentalism has been associated with leftist, feminist and communist ideology going back to the hippies and the antiwar movement (which makes it easy for many Americans to mistrust by default.) When Trump said he believed global warming was a Chinese hoax (remember that?) he was echoing a belief amongst the right that environmentalism and "global warming" was a plot to undermine American business and sovereignty, and that climate science supporting anthropogenic climate change was manufactured by "cultural Marxist academics" to push that agenda. This conspiracy thinking has been pushed by Republicans, right-wing think tanks, coal, oil, manufacturing and like industries attempting to undermine public trust in climate science since at least the 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
  - randusername 8mo ago
    Interesting. So it's a guilty by association thing. I get that propaganda plays a big role, it just never made sense to me why it worked. So a green energy revolution sounds exciting to me, but to my grandma it would be a green energy _revolution_, the scary and unstable connotation.
- worksonmine 8mo ago
  > What's so nefarious about clean air and water? Nothing, but what puts me off is the sale of emission rights etc. Is it a problem or not? I care more about deforestation than a warming climate. There is always some product to buy behind the headlines and it drives me crazy. The same people asking me to pay climate taxes are trying to tell me infinite growth can exist. I already live like a hermit and if everyone lived like me we wouldn't have a problem. We can't pay our way out of the problem and anyone who tells me we can is only out to make money. I'm not against a clean planet, I'm against the politicians and businesses finding another way to extract money from their worker bees.
canadiantim 8mo ago
I don't think the issue was ever people doubting that the earth is warming. Especially considering we're coming out of an ice age, it would be extremely worrying if the earth wasn't warming! The main point people disagree on is: how much are humans contributing to this global warming trend?
perrygeo 8mo ago
> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now Same. Empirical evidence is just too hard to ignore. It's quite amazing watching the "climate change isn't real" folks transition to "climate change is no big deal", then to "climate change is too hard/expensive to deal with".
- darylteo 8mo ago
  something something tilt of the earth.
- junofan 8mo ago
  Unaudited empirical evidence is easy to ignore. The problem is one of physics. It should be simple to show with napkin math.
- pstuart 8mo ago
  Playbook is The Narcissist's Prayer That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
  - datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
    Narcissism is America’s greatest vice, imo. Not surprising to see it take center stage on what may be the nation’s greatest challenge: ensuring our future in the face of climate change.
- gzread 8mo ago
  Reminds me a bit of the Narcissist's Prayer: That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
- georgemcbay 8mo ago
  > It's quite amazing watching the "climate change isn't real" folks transition to "climate change is no big deal", then to "climate change is too hard/expensive to deal with". At the top level (of government and corporate entities) those people always knew it was real, the messaging just changed as it became harder to keep a straight face while parroting the previous message in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence. Exxon's (internal) research in the 1970s has been very accurate to the observed reality since then. They just didn't care that it was real because they valued profits/power/etc in the moment over some difficult to quantify (but certainly not good) future calamity. You would think they would care at least in the cases where they had children and grandchildren who will someday have to really reckon with the outcome, but you'd be wrong, they (still) don't give a shit.
burnte 8mo ago
> They just either disagree on the cause or proportion. And for very specific reasons, too. One reason is unwillingness to feel like they have to take responsibility. Another is conceding that would mean they might have to make changes, and laziness is powerful. The worst reason is that to acknowledge it would be to grant that an alternative political perspective is right about something, and one's own political identity is tied to that other political perspective being always wrong. "It is easier to con a man than to convince him he has been conned." Too much emotional investment in being right and too much fear of social repercussions simply for changing one's mind. The reality is changing one's mind to new data is the hallmark of integrity.
zzrrt 8mo ago
> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. POTUS tweeted "WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???" a few weeks ago when a record cold wave came in. I suppose you were talking about people you personally know, but it seems like there's a good chance many who voted for him would say it too. Anyway, I guess there is a growing collective admission that the climate is changing even if the crotchety ones will still quip about it not being warmer at some given time and place. It's unfortunate that "global warming" caught on instead of "climate change."
- legitster 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - standardUser 8mo ago
    > The issue seemed to completely drop from public discourse during the Biden presidency Biden signed into law the largest investment in clean energy in US history, dwarfing everything that came before. Half the economy was trying to get their hands on some of that stimmy.
    - legitster 8mo ago
      Both were true, the IRA handed out a lot of money to green projects at the same time the administration quietly greenlit a massive boom in oil production. (The Biden administration issued more new drilling permits than either Trump administration).
      - triceratops 8mo ago
        > at the same time the administration quietly greenlit a massive boom in oil production Hard to get re-elected when gas is expensive. Voters are uninformed but you have to work with what they are, not what you wish they would be.
- ModernMech 8mo ago
irthomasthomas 8mo ago
The earth did have warm periods before. it appears to be part of an mini-interglacial period which happens every few hundred years. We had the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman WP and Bronze age warm period. There is a vast body pf evidence in particular for the MWP showing that life on earth got better as the deserts retreated.
- circuit10 8mo ago
  This is a nice graph that makes the problem pretty obvious: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
  - irthomasthomas 8mo ago
    I accept radiative physics. I question whether we have correctly quantified the system's natural noise floor, and whether adaptation might outperform mitigation for human flourishing.
mikrotikker 8mo ago
Well if it was the E without the S and the G maybe it would have been harder to co opt.

aeternum 8mo ago

The problem with Pascal's wager logic is you have to change your behavior based on all kinds of crazy low-probability events. You must worship every god, be an AI-doomer, a climate-doomer, a nuclear-doomer. Pascal's wager is generally agreed to be logically unsound, so it's somewhat insane that we've revived it in all these modern contexts. If you believe in it, at least be consistent and sacrifice a goat to Zeus every couple years.

legitster 8mo ago
Yes, and no. I think we actually do this logic a lot in our lives. Do I actually believe whole wheat bread is better for me, or do I just buy it on the chance it is? Do I go with the cheapest toothpaste or spend money on something that might be better? Do I buy an AWD car on the chance I am stuck? Sacrificing a goat, after all, does sound like a lot of work. But maybe I will wear a lucky hat to a baseball game?
conartist6 8mo ago
There has to be infinite torment in play for the wager to apply too! Thus by conclusion you should only give vengeful gods the benefit of the doubt
circuit10 8mo ago
Here’s a video called “Is AI safety a Pascal’s Mugging?”: https://youtu.be/JRuNA2eK7w0 https://youtu.be/JRuNA2eK7w0 I haven’t watched it back but from what I remember the main point of the video is that kind of situation happens when the probability involved is vanishingly small, and all the events you listed don’t have a vanishingly small probability, so they are not Pascal’s wager situations, just a normal rational safety concerns with particularly high consequences
barbs 8mo ago
In this case, it's not exactly like Pascal's wager because there is plenty of scientific evidence of disastrous consequences of not believing in climate change (and preparing accordingly). There's no evidence to suggest that a non-belief in God will send you to hell.
pablomalo 8mo ago
Pascal's wager, as it relates to faith, is based on the premise that there is a lot to win in making the wager --but little to lose. In turn, that second part is grounded in the assumption (right or wrong, I won't judge) that living according to Christian principles brings benefits _in this life also_ to the individual who so chooses. So it seems a mischaracterization to present the essence of the wager as going out of your way to perform random and costly rites in the hope of lifting any ill omen.
- joquarky 8mo ago
  Exactly. For example, what if making such wagers is key in determining that you belong in "hell" for not being genuine?
- aeternum 8mo ago
  I disagree. If doing thing x brings benefits, then you have reason to do thing x regardless of the wager. Utilitarianism is sufficient. The wager is only interesting on those rites where the expected-value is uncertain or unknowable.
- johsole 8mo ago
  > living according to Christian principles brings benefits _in this life also_ It does, in this life and the next.

cosmic_cheese 8mo ago

Another reframing that may be useful is energy security/redundancy. If you have a cheap source of solar panels and batteries, the only downside to installing them all over the country is up-front cost (which pays itself off quickly). The upside you gain is a substantially more robust, less centralized power grid that can continue to operate if something happens to impede your supply of fossil fuels or part of the grid gets cut off. Looking at how things have played out elsewhere in the world the past few years, that's powerful.

nradov 8mo ago
Where is this mythical cheap source of batteries? I mean you can go on Alibaba and order cheap 18650 cells in limited quantities but there's an enormous difference between doing that and having enough reliable battery power to keep a nationwide grid supplying a modern industrial economy through several days of bad weather.
- adriand 8mo ago
  > Where is this mythical cheap source of batteries? They’re made out of rocks. Yes, you have to take steps to acquire and refine the materials, then turn them into batteries. However, the process for doing that is not mysterious.
  - nradov 8mo ago
    Not mysterious, just slow and expensive.
    - defrost 8mo ago
      Across the world, according to BNEF, the cost of grid scale battery packs has fallen another 45 per cent in 2025 following a 40 per cent fall in 2024. The UK-based energy think tank Ember has now also reached the same conclusion, underlying its unexpected impact on solar power. from: https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-plunging-cost-of-battery-storage-and-how-its-changed-the-grid-and-saved-the-day-for-big-solar/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/the-plunging-cost-of-battery-sto... citing: https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-review-2025/ https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/global-electricity-... and similar reports. Resource prices for batteries did spike at various times in the past, this had more to do with opening and then closing a lot of production sites by mining companies than with any real meaningful supply issue. Urban grid scal battery parks are on the rise globally, industrial parks have always had special status and can still concentrate modern efficient peaker turbines and buffer storage to bridge, if applicable, and use any general daytime excess.

CoastalCoder 8mo ago

I'm a different kind of crotchety. I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate it. I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual countries to pursue a competitive economic or military advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices. I hope I'm wrong.

bryanlarsen 8mo ago
Luckily the effect is much larger in the opposite direction: weaning oneself off of foreign oil is a huge advantage both economically and militarily.
- nradov 8mo ago
  Is it though? For developing countries, having a large supply of fossil fuels has always been a huge accelerator for industrialization and overall economic growth even if that fuel has to be imported. There really is no substitute, especially when you consider that it's not used only for transportation and power generation but also for manufacturing as an industrial heat source and chemical feed stock.
  - eldaisfish 8mo ago
    fossil fuels were a proxy for energy. China continues to show the world that energy independence can come via electricity that you generate within your borders, and that it can be cheaper than importing foreign oil.
    - nradov 8mo ago
      China is in no way energy independent. Their fossil fuel imports are extremely high and not decreasing.
      - bryanlarsen 8mo ago
        China's gasoline use is down substantially. Industrial use is up, but much of that is re exported via plastic etc.

commandlinefan 8mo ago

> many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything I hear that often, but it's never followed by details about any of the actual changes that are being talked about. The ones I actually hear (especially politicians) advocate for are catastrophically expensive and dubious in their effectiveness. Banning coal or gas-powered cards might (might) be a good idea in the long run, but it definitely does cost us something.

wat10000 8mo ago
Banning coal is a complete no-brainer at this point. Has been for quite a while. Never mind climate change, it's horribly polluting. The only reason it's still remotely economically viable is because the people who burn coal don't bear the costs of their pollution. If they actually had to compensate people for all the cancer, lung disease, poisoned ground water, contaminated seafood, and other such problems they cause, coal would vanish. It's already to the point where the ridiculous coal fans who infest our government are forcing coal power plants to remain open when their operators want to close them because they're no longer profitable to operate.
adgjlsfhk1 8mo ago
banning coal is quite cheap even ignoring the emissions and pollution side effects. England has already shut down their last coal plant and without 6 years of Trump, the US likely would have or would be planning to within the next couple years. Coal is expensive, not flexible, and horribly polluting even compared to natural gas.

pinkmuffinere 8mo ago

> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now My family is fundamentalist protestant, very midwestern, and I think about half of them believe that the earth is warming. Not trying to "win", just trying to say that a lot of this depends on the crowd you interact with. I don't know the percentage, but certainly there are still way too many people that don't even believe it. The very tired response is "well i wish it would warm up here slaps knee". Using the phrase 'Climate Change' at least reduces that objection.

smitty1e 8mo ago
"Climate Change" implies that some sort of "constant climate" is even attainable, irrespective of desirable.
- mithr 8mo ago
  It doesn't; that's kind of a first-glance reading of the phrase without really thinking about it. Something can said to change from a certain standard even if it wasn't perfectly constant to begin with. For example, if I always kept my house at 65-75 degrees for the past year, and now it's 85 degrees inside, I could certainly say that the temperature in my house recently changed and gotten warmer. That might lead me to check whether my AC's working, rather than say "well I guess the temperature has never really been constant, and 85 is within the range of possible non-constant temperatures, so everything's perfectly normal and nothing has changed."
  - alt227 8mo ago
    Your analogy doesnt work, becaue the earth has been warmer than it is now several times in the past. so the increased temperature is within the range of normal temperatures. The problem is not that the earth is warming, it is that it is warming at an artificially increased rate.
    - mithr 8mo ago
      It's not meant as a perfect analogy for global warming, but rather an illustration of how a constant state isn't necessary for something to be said to be "changing", which was OP's claim.

IncreasePosts 8mo ago

Yes, parts of my extended family who were anti-climate change and proud went from "Global warming is a hoax", to "So what if global warming is happening" over the past 10 years.

pdonis 8mo ago

> many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything This is the part that seems to vary widely based on which warming alarmist you're talking to. Many of them are not saying there are things we could do that "don't even really cost us anything" that would deal with the problem--they're saying we need to devote a significant fraction of global GDP to CO2 mitigation. Things that "don't really cost us anything" are probably happening already anyway, because, well, they don't really cost us anything. Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing that doesn't really seem to be happening right now, that would be an obvious way to eliminate a lot of CO2 emissions. But of course that does really cost us something. But it's probably the most cost effective thing we could do on a large scale.

legitster 8mo ago
> Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing that doesn't really seem to be happening right now I mean, this is the clear and obvious one. Nuclear theoretically should be much, much cheaper than it is if it were not for the regulatory costs thrust upon it. It also harrows out people who are legitimately concerned from "moralist concern junkies". You'd think climate change being a global existential crisis would make people open to nuclear energy or more drastic measures like geo-engineering, but the frequency with which people refuse to compromise undercuts the their legitimacy.
- triceratops 8mo ago
  > Nuclear theoretically should be much, much cheaper than it is if it were not for the regulatory costs thrust upon it Solar and wind theoretically would also be much, much cheaper if not for the regulatory costs. [1] Everything is regulated and all regulations have costs. I'm not morally opposed to nuclear energy. Is there a comprehensive study on which specific safety regulations are unnecessary and the LCOE if they were removed? 1. https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as https://www.volts.wtf/p/how-to-make-rooftop-solar-power-as
  - bryanlarsen 8mo ago

randusername 8mo ago

I can understand people having their own reasons for dismissing the facts or the rhetoric. What I can't wrap my head around is the conspiracy thinking around environmentalism. What's so nefarious about clean air and water? I'll never forget when my grandmother walked out of WALL-E because she said it was government propaganda. She is a regular person, not a coal magnate or anything.

krapp 8mo ago
You need to understand the political and cultural history. Environmentalism has been associated with leftist, feminist and communist ideology going back to the hippies and the antiwar movement (which makes it easy for many Americans to mistrust by default.) When Trump said he believed global warming was a Chinese hoax (remember that?) he was echoing a belief amongst the right that environmentalism and "global warming" was a plot to undermine American business and sovereignty, and that climate science supporting anthropogenic climate change was manufactured by "cultural Marxist academics" to push that agenda. This conspiracy thinking has been pushed by Republicans, right-wing think tanks, coal, oil, manufacturing and like industries attempting to undermine public trust in climate science since at least the 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial
- randusername 8mo ago
  Interesting. So it's a guilty by association thing. I get that propaganda plays a big role, it just never made sense to me why it worked. So a green energy revolution sounds exciting to me, but to my grandma it would be a green energy _revolution_, the scary and unstable connotation.
worksonmine 8mo ago
> What's so nefarious about clean air and water? Nothing, but what puts me off is the sale of emission rights etc. Is it a problem or not? I care more about deforestation than a warming climate. There is always some product to buy behind the headlines and it drives me crazy. The same people asking me to pay climate taxes are trying to tell me infinite growth can exist. I already live like a hermit and if everyone lived like me we wouldn't have a problem. We can't pay our way out of the problem and anyone who tells me we can is only out to make money. I'm not against a clean planet, I'm against the politicians and businesses finding another way to extract money from their worker bees.

canadiantim 8mo ago

I don't think the issue was ever people doubting that the earth is warming. Especially considering we're coming out of an ice age, it would be extremely worrying if the earth wasn't warming! The main point people disagree on is: how much are humans contributing to this global warming trend?

perrygeo 8mo ago

> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now Same. Empirical evidence is just too hard to ignore. It's quite amazing watching the "climate change isn't real" folks transition to "climate change is no big deal", then to "climate change is too hard/expensive to deal with".

darylteo 8mo ago
something something tilt of the earth.
junofan 8mo ago
Unaudited empirical evidence is easy to ignore. The problem is one of physics. It should be simple to show with napkin math.
pstuart 8mo ago
Playbook is The Narcissist's Prayer That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
- datsci_est_2015 8mo ago
  Narcissism is America’s greatest vice, imo. Not surprising to see it take center stage on what may be the nation’s greatest challenge: ensuring our future in the face of climate change.
gzread 8mo ago
Reminds me a bit of the Narcissist's Prayer: That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
georgemcbay 8mo ago
> It's quite amazing watching the "climate change isn't real" folks transition to "climate change is no big deal", then to "climate change is too hard/expensive to deal with". At the top level (of government and corporate entities) those people always knew it was real, the messaging just changed as it became harder to keep a straight face while parroting the previous message in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence. Exxon's (internal) research in the 1970s has been very accurate to the observed reality since then. They just didn't care that it was real because they valued profits/power/etc in the moment over some difficult to quantify (but certainly not good) future calamity. You would think they would care at least in the cases where they had children and grandchildren who will someday have to really reckon with the outcome, but you'd be wrong, they (still) don't give a shit.

burnte 8mo ago

> They just either disagree on the cause or proportion. And for very specific reasons, too. One reason is unwillingness to feel like they have to take responsibility. Another is conceding that would mean they might have to make changes, and laziness is powerful. The worst reason is that to acknowledge it would be to grant that an alternative political perspective is right about something, and one's own political identity is tied to that other political perspective being always wrong. "It is easier to con a man than to convince him he has been conned." Too much emotional investment in being right and too much fear of social repercussions simply for changing one's mind. The reality is changing one's mind to new data is the hallmark of integrity.

zzrrt 8mo ago

> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. POTUS tweeted "WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???" a few weeks ago when a record cold wave came in. I suppose you were talking about people you personally know, but it seems like there's a good chance many who voted for him would say it too. Anyway, I guess there is a growing collective admission that the climate is changing even if the crotchety ones will still quip about it not being warmer at some given time and place. It's unfortunate that "global warming" caught on instead of "climate change."

legitster 8mo ago
[flagged]
- standardUser 8mo ago
  > The issue seemed to completely drop from public discourse during the Biden presidency Biden signed into law the largest investment in clean energy in US history, dwarfing everything that came before. Half the economy was trying to get their hands on some of that stimmy.
  - legitster 8mo ago
    Both were true, the IRA handed out a lot of money to green projects at the same time the administration quietly greenlit a massive boom in oil production. (The Biden administration issued more new drilling permits than either Trump administration).
    - triceratops 8mo ago
      > at the same time the administration quietly greenlit a massive boom in oil production Hard to get re-elected when gas is expensive. Voters are uninformed but you have to work with what they are, not what you wish they would be.
ModernMech 8mo ago

irthomasthomas 8mo ago

The earth did have warm periods before. it appears to be part of an mini-interglacial period which happens every few hundred years. We had the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman WP and Bronze age warm period. There is a vast body pf evidence in particular for the MWP showing that life on earth got better as the deserts retreated.

circuit10 8mo ago
This is a nice graph that makes the problem pretty obvious: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- irthomasthomas 8mo ago
  I accept radiative physics. I question whether we have correctly quantified the system's natural noise floor, and whether adaptation might outperform mitigation for human flourishing.

mikrotikker 8mo ago

Well if it was the E without the S and the G maybe it would have been harder to co opt.