8 ms·

Ironically, those still unconvinced of the human influence on climate change seem to be the sort that would trust the basement randos more than they would reput

Ironically, those still unconvinced of the human influence on climate change seem to be the sort that would trust the basement randos more than they would reputable scientists

rootusrootus 8mo ago
It's a culture thing, nobody on the right would ever be convinced by science, they will shop around until they find what they need to hear. My sister in law sent me a video and told me that she thought it was a really good explainer and had a lot of good facts and figures to support it. To humor her, I took a brief glance at it, and saw that it was produced by Dr. Shiva. I was thinking "no way, it can't be that Shiva, could it, email guy?" Yes, yes it was. We are doomed.
- madaxe_again 8mo ago
  Tell her that you have a greenfield synergistic solution to upscale her big tent.
- BoingBoomTschak 8mo ago
  Because "the left" would be willing to listen to scientific arguments attacking their pet issues, right? It's really not a left/right thing.
  - rootusrootus 8mo ago
    What is a left wing equivalent?
jihadjihad 8mo ago
Because they are practicing the reverse scientific method. They hold a conclusion in their hand, like, man-made climate change is a hoax, and seek to find any threads of "evidence" that support their foregone conclusion.
- blell 8mo ago
  You can apply that too to the “man-made climate change is real” argument.
  - jrajav 8mo ago
    Allegations of cherry-picking scant bits of evidence to support a claim are less effective when that claim is held up by vast quantities of distinct, high-quality evidence.
    - exhumet 8mo ago
      my wife is an actuary, and we always joke that you know climate change has real cause and effect because the actuaries are specifically monitoring and modeling for it lol
      - Forgeties79 8mo ago
        Hell the US military takes it into account
  - virgildotcodes 8mo ago
    Can you apply that too to the "earth is round" argument? The heliocentric model of our solar system "argument"? I guess general relativity is only a "theory" in the end, geodude420 on twitter has an awesome thread debunking that Einstein schlub's whole career!
- funkyfiddler369 8mo ago
  that's cute but you can't blame people for holding opinions based on phenomenal observations before they learn the language and can perform experiments. the fact that so many can't is the sole reason you might be considered somewhat superior or competent. more people with scientific skills and a personal way to explain and adhere to the scientific method would mean that your competence would be no more than average, if at all. how would that make you feel? more importantly though, is the fact that there are enough "critics" that consider Global Warming a cycle that "man" merely accelerated by a few decades. most of these "skeptics" are also perfectly capable of discerning between the amount of energy "wasted" in office buildings and lit up skyscrapers as well as anything at the end of luxury supply chains and markets and what the rest of the world "wastes" or expends. to them, the hoax is the "man-made" part ... it should be "some-man-made climate change"
yfw 8mo ago
Theres a mistrust of government and the establishment. Not saying fringe is better but the behavior of govts, corruption and influence by rich donors doesn't help
- Forgeties79 8mo ago
  It also doesn’t help that anyone with few scruples and a desire to make a buck can quickly monetize screaming about how up is down on YouTube
- scottLobster 8mo ago
  Also scientists generally suck at messaging and persuasion. They think if they just dial up the stakes and consequences a little more, it'll be compelling! Maybe if we make one more documentary with bad CGI disaster movie scenes, that'll do it! Same with the stupid "Doomsday clock" that is somehow always "the closest we've ever been to nuclear war!" whenever it gets trotted out. You'd think people who know what stochastic noise is would realize when they're producing it. They would have made a lot more headway talking about clean air, clean water, jobs, and a bright prosperous future where we manufacture wind turbines, batteries and solar panels in deep red Missouri. A minority tried that, but most stuck with the catastrophizing for decades and now that they've ruined their social credit no one will listen to the message they should have opened with. You need people emotionally invested, and it's a lot easier to get them invested in their lives than in the abstract consequences of computer models that are at least 100 years out if they're even accurate. And most people are not independent enough to direct their own lives. If they make the right decisions on abstract concepts, it was more because the incentives/disincentives in their environment were set up correctly than they actually understood the decision they were making. Message accordingly.
  - virgildotcodes 8mo ago
    Every approach you've suggested above, and others besides, has been tried by scientists, NGOs and government agencies for the last few decades, and largely failed. The IPCC has consistently DOWNPLAYED the negative consequences of climate change, and reality keeps outpacing their worst case predictions year after year. Every attempt to message the reality and consequences of climate change, and the possible avenues for blunting it, has been tried. From the sugarcoating "everything will be rosy and great and abundant, look at all the benefits of green industry" to the milquetoast watered-down try-to-please-everyone messaging of the major political parties, to the desperate attempts to communicate the brutal reality of what we're facing (and still failing to match the reality that is consistently worse). None of it works. 1) People are selfish, myopic, and stupid. They think about their short term personal needs and wants above all else. Large scale coordination on this issue is virtually impossible, see the Prisoner's Dilemma. Human psychology is simply not fit for this task. The satisficing nature of evolution means we are the dumbest possible animal that could otherwise achieve the technological civilization that we have, and this is another example where it really shows. 2) The wealthiest and most powerful people and corporations on Earth have spent decades pushing propaganda attempting to sow doubt about climate change, because genuine action on it is directly against their interests. Those poor multi-trillion dollar industries underpinning all modern society and power structures are the altruistic, honest bastions of truth, it's those evil corrupt post docs on minimum wage that are the truly corrupt and greedy ones, twisting the truth for their own financial gain and machiavellian ends! And they've been far more effective than the cigarette companies of the early 20th century could have ever dreamed.
designerarvid 8mo ago
There’s actually research to support the claim you’re making here (Elaboration Likelihood Model). When forming attitudes in an area where one doesn’t care, one tends to rely more on who is saying it than what is being said. The opposite is true, if you care about [climate change], you listen to the arguments regardless of who is presenting it.
devwastaken 8mo ago
[flagged]
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
- longitudinal93 8mo ago
  While it's true that China is currently responsible for the largest share of CO2 emissions at least their output is trending down: See https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
  - nomel 8mo ago
    And, it's important to understand why they're emitting some of that CO2: Western wallets demanding foreign produced goods, because Western society collectively, and enthusiastically, pushed manufacturing to China.
    - vkou 8mo ago
      It's more important to understand why they're emitting so much of that CO2 - because a lot of people in China need to eat and have a roof over their heads. Any analysis that fails to take per-capita into account is not made in good faith.
      - tartoran 8mo ago
        China has a large population but so does India. Don't forget that China is the world's factory and that's where a very large chunk of CO2 emissions come from.
      - nomel 8mo ago
        My point is that if you pay a factory in China to make something for you, then the CO2 produced in that process would be more appropriately added to your total, rather than theirs, because it was you were the direct and only reason it was produced.
amelius 8mo ago
It depends if they can agree with what they are saying.
ai-x 8mo ago
There are various levels of perspectives - Climate Warming is a hoax - Climate Warming is happening, but not Man Made and part of larger cycles - Climate Warming is Man Made, but drastic De-growth strategies cause more harm. - Climate Warming is Man Made, don't need de-growth strategies because Technology will solve energy efficiency, clean energy growth and carbon capture and humans adapt along the way - Climate Warming is Man Made and we need drastic de-growth strategies and complete ban of fossil fuels. For people in the last group, all other groups look like Climate Deniers because they don't agree to their de-growth/ban plans
- JackMorgan 8mo ago
  You're missing: "Climate is warming, but this is a good thing because it means Jesus will come back sooner and I'll live in endless bliss and not have to go to work anymore, so I'm going to do my part by driving a huge truck and pretend like it's fake."
  - jandrese 8mo ago
    More commonly these days is the message that CO2 is plant food, and climate change is a nefarious plot to kill off the plants by starving them in order to reduce the Earth's population. I can dig up several tweets this week pushing that message. It is a shame that Twitter's algorithm is so damn easy to manipulate that it's basically owned by propaganda firms now. Elon doesn't even care, more outrage == more engagement and that's what feeds the system. It's a feedback loop of crap.
    - virgildotcodes 8mo ago
      It's not even that Elon doesn't care as in he is ambivalent about it, it directly feeds into reinforcing his political preferences. Try to create a brand new twitter account, you'll find that 80+% of the accounts that get suggested to you are right wing propaganda with climate denial being one of their greatest hits.
    - Nevermark 8mo ago
      > It is a shame that Twitter's algorithm is so damn easy to manipulate that it's basically owned by propaganda firms now. Not "basically" owned. Manipulation is the explicitly optimized and financed purpose. The feed is a two-directional manipulation competition, with both directions enhancing each other, with a conflict of interest afterburner, for all parties to maximally control users. Neutrality doesn't exist. (1) An auction for ads/influence to get your manipulative content in front of the most likely vulnerable users. (2) A never ending competition to create addictive content, funded in direct proportion to successful impact on users. (3) And the value in both directions is magnified by the "personalized" leverage manufactured through pervasive logging, beyond service surveillance, dossier collation, psychology hacking and real time feed manipulation. (4) None of this is impeded by any "standards", neutrality, or a concern about external damage. Admittedly great things for users and society, except for the four on that list that are not.
aaron695 8mo ago
[dead]

Ironically, those still unconvinced of the human influence on climate change seem to be the sort that would trust the basement randos more than they would reputable scientists

rootusrootus 8mo ago

It's a culture thing, nobody on the right would ever be convinced by science, they will shop around until they find what they need to hear. My sister in law sent me a video and told me that she thought it was a really good explainer and had a lot of good facts and figures to support it. To humor her, I took a brief glance at it, and saw that it was produced by Dr. Shiva. I was thinking "no way, it can't be that Shiva, could it, email guy?" Yes, yes it was. We are doomed.

madaxe_again 8mo ago
Tell her that you have a greenfield synergistic solution to upscale her big tent.
BoingBoomTschak 8mo ago
Because "the left" would be willing to listen to scientific arguments attacking their pet issues, right? It's really not a left/right thing.
- rootusrootus 8mo ago
  What is a left wing equivalent?

jihadjihad 8mo ago

Because they are practicing the reverse scientific method. They hold a conclusion in their hand, like, man-made climate change is a hoax, and seek to find any threads of "evidence" that support their foregone conclusion.

blell 8mo ago
You can apply that too to the “man-made climate change is real” argument.
- jrajav 8mo ago
  Allegations of cherry-picking scant bits of evidence to support a claim are less effective when that claim is held up by vast quantities of distinct, high-quality evidence.
  - exhumet 8mo ago
    my wife is an actuary, and we always joke that you know climate change has real cause and effect because the actuaries are specifically monitoring and modeling for it lol
    - Forgeties79 8mo ago
      Hell the US military takes it into account
- virgildotcodes 8mo ago
  Can you apply that too to the "earth is round" argument? The heliocentric model of our solar system "argument"? I guess general relativity is only a "theory" in the end, geodude420 on twitter has an awesome thread debunking that Einstein schlub's whole career!
funkyfiddler369 8mo ago
that's cute but you can't blame people for holding opinions based on phenomenal observations before they learn the language and can perform experiments. the fact that so many can't is the sole reason you might be considered somewhat superior or competent. more people with scientific skills and a personal way to explain and adhere to the scientific method would mean that your competence would be no more than average, if at all. how would that make you feel? more importantly though, is the fact that there are enough "critics" that consider Global Warming a cycle that "man" merely accelerated by a few decades. most of these "skeptics" are also perfectly capable of discerning between the amount of energy "wasted" in office buildings and lit up skyscrapers as well as anything at the end of luxury supply chains and markets and what the rest of the world "wastes" or expends. to them, the hoax is the "man-made" part ... it should be "some-man-made climate change"

yfw 8mo ago

Theres a mistrust of government and the establishment. Not saying fringe is better but the behavior of govts, corruption and influence by rich donors doesn't help

Forgeties79 8mo ago
It also doesn’t help that anyone with few scruples and a desire to make a buck can quickly monetize screaming about how up is down on YouTube
scottLobster 8mo ago
Also scientists generally suck at messaging and persuasion. They think if they just dial up the stakes and consequences a little more, it'll be compelling! Maybe if we make one more documentary with bad CGI disaster movie scenes, that'll do it! Same with the stupid "Doomsday clock" that is somehow always "the closest we've ever been to nuclear war!" whenever it gets trotted out. You'd think people who know what stochastic noise is would realize when they're producing it. They would have made a lot more headway talking about clean air, clean water, jobs, and a bright prosperous future where we manufacture wind turbines, batteries and solar panels in deep red Missouri. A minority tried that, but most stuck with the catastrophizing for decades and now that they've ruined their social credit no one will listen to the message they should have opened with. You need people emotionally invested, and it's a lot easier to get them invested in their lives than in the abstract consequences of computer models that are at least 100 years out if they're even accurate. And most people are not independent enough to direct their own lives. If they make the right decisions on abstract concepts, it was more because the incentives/disincentives in their environment were set up correctly than they actually understood the decision they were making. Message accordingly.
- virgildotcodes 8mo ago
  Every approach you've suggested above, and others besides, has been tried by scientists, NGOs and government agencies for the last few decades, and largely failed. The IPCC has consistently DOWNPLAYED the negative consequences of climate change, and reality keeps outpacing their worst case predictions year after year. Every attempt to message the reality and consequences of climate change, and the possible avenues for blunting it, has been tried. From the sugarcoating "everything will be rosy and great and abundant, look at all the benefits of green industry" to the milquetoast watered-down try-to-please-everyone messaging of the major political parties, to the desperate attempts to communicate the brutal reality of what we're facing (and still failing to match the reality that is consistently worse). None of it works. 1) People are selfish, myopic, and stupid. They think about their short term personal needs and wants above all else. Large scale coordination on this issue is virtually impossible, see the Prisoner's Dilemma. Human psychology is simply not fit for this task. The satisficing nature of evolution means we are the dumbest possible animal that could otherwise achieve the technological civilization that we have, and this is another example where it really shows. 2) The wealthiest and most powerful people and corporations on Earth have spent decades pushing propaganda attempting to sow doubt about climate change, because genuine action on it is directly against their interests. Those poor multi-trillion dollar industries underpinning all modern society and power structures are the altruistic, honest bastions of truth, it's those evil corrupt post docs on minimum wage that are the truly corrupt and greedy ones, twisting the truth for their own financial gain and machiavellian ends! And they've been far more effective than the cigarette companies of the early 20th century could have ever dreamed.

designerarvid 8mo ago

There’s actually research to support the claim you’re making here (Elaboration Likelihood Model). When forming attitudes in an area where one doesn’t care, one tends to rely more on who is saying it than what is being said. The opposite is true, if you care about [climate change], you listen to the arguments regardless of who is presenting it.

devwastaken 8mo ago

[flagged]

deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
longitudinal93 8mo ago
While it's true that China is currently responsible for the largest share of CO2 emissions at least their output is trending down: See https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...
- nomel 8mo ago
  And, it's important to understand why they're emitting some of that CO2: Western wallets demanding foreign produced goods, because Western society collectively, and enthusiastically, pushed manufacturing to China.
  - vkou 8mo ago
    It's more important to understand why they're emitting so much of that CO2 - because a lot of people in China need to eat and have a roof over their heads. Any analysis that fails to take per-capita into account is not made in good faith.
    - tartoran 8mo ago
      China has a large population but so does India. Don't forget that China is the world's factory and that's where a very large chunk of CO2 emissions come from.
    - nomel 8mo ago
      My point is that if you pay a factory in China to make something for you, then the CO2 produced in that process would be more appropriately added to your total, rather than theirs, because it was you were the direct and only reason it was produced.

amelius 8mo ago

It depends if they can agree with what they are saying.

ai-x 8mo ago

There are various levels of perspectives - Climate Warming is a hoax - Climate Warming is happening, but not Man Made and part of larger cycles - Climate Warming is Man Made, but drastic De-growth strategies cause more harm. - Climate Warming is Man Made, don't need de-growth strategies because Technology will solve energy efficiency, clean energy growth and carbon capture and humans adapt along the way - Climate Warming is Man Made and we need drastic de-growth strategies and complete ban of fossil fuels. For people in the last group, all other groups look like Climate Deniers because they don't agree to their de-growth/ban plans

JackMorgan 8mo ago
You're missing: "Climate is warming, but this is a good thing because it means Jesus will come back sooner and I'll live in endless bliss and not have to go to work anymore, so I'm going to do my part by driving a huge truck and pretend like it's fake."
- jandrese 8mo ago
  More commonly these days is the message that CO2 is plant food, and climate change is a nefarious plot to kill off the plants by starving them in order to reduce the Earth's population. I can dig up several tweets this week pushing that message. It is a shame that Twitter's algorithm is so damn easy to manipulate that it's basically owned by propaganda firms now. Elon doesn't even care, more outrage == more engagement and that's what feeds the system. It's a feedback loop of crap.
  - virgildotcodes 8mo ago
    It's not even that Elon doesn't care as in he is ambivalent about it, it directly feeds into reinforcing his political preferences. Try to create a brand new twitter account, you'll find that 80+% of the accounts that get suggested to you are right wing propaganda with climate denial being one of their greatest hits.
  - Nevermark 8mo ago
    > It is a shame that Twitter's algorithm is so damn easy to manipulate that it's basically owned by propaganda firms now. Not "basically" owned. Manipulation is the explicitly optimized and financed purpose. The feed is a two-directional manipulation competition, with both directions enhancing each other, with a conflict of interest afterburner, for all parties to maximally control users. Neutrality doesn't exist. (1) An auction for ads/influence to get your manipulative content in front of the most likely vulnerable users. (2) A never ending competition to create addictive content, funded in direct proportion to successful impact on users. (3) And the value in both directions is magnified by the "personalized" leverage manufactured through pervasive logging, beyond service surveillance, dossier collation, psychology hacking and real time feed manipulation. (4) None of this is impeded by any "standards", neutrality, or a concern about external damage. Admittedly great things for users and society, except for the four on that list that are not.

aaron695 8mo ago

[dead]