Why do people not believe in climate change?

The main issue is in the terminology, because while it’s undeniable that climate has been changing steadily over the last 200 years, “believing” in climate change doesn’t mean to actually agree to the suggested solutions.

I’ll try to go through some points:

a) Climate is changing -> yes

b) Climate is changing and it’s, in some percentage, influenced by mankind -> yes. It has been proven that earth goes through natural periods of warming and cooling. The post-industrial sudden increase in the average temperature seems to suggest that mankind influenced it. Saying that it’s 100% manmade is wrong, saying that man had no influence is also wrong.

c) What are the effects going to be? -> this is very tricky. Many scientists for decades has been suggesting that the temperature will keep rising until catastrophe happens. Other scientist suggested that earth is a system that self-balances, and feedback systems will greatly reduce anything caused by mankind. In the case of Co2 emissions and the increase in temperature, the natural result will be an increase in water evaporation, leading to a greater amount of clouds that lead to lower temperature (precipitations + screening from the sun). So far, all the models that forecast the temperature to keep rising have been proven wrong for nearly 30 years, so due to lack of any clear evidence I’m leaning toward the side of a self-balancing system, simply because any study that tried to prove otherwise has been wrong since 1988.

c-part 2) “But 97% of scientist say that…” -> I’ve heard that many times. Quote:

In an analysis of 12,000 abstracts, he found “a 97% consensus among papers taking a position on the cause of global warming in the peer-reviewed literature that humans are responsible.” “Among papers taking a position” is a significant qualifier: Only 34 percent of the papers Cook examined expressed any opinion about anthropogenic climate change at all. Since 33 percent appeared to endorse anthropogenic climate change, he divided 33 by 34 and — voilà — 97 percent!

If a “scientist” has to rely on this kind of tricks to boast the results of his research, I tend to immediately be very skeptic about his results.

d) What is the solution -> reducing Co2 emissions, no matter how much (or even if) it will impact climate change in a significant way, is something we should invest on. Even if someone didn’t give a damn about climate change, reducing air pollution is extremely important.

e) How should we reduce Co2 emissions -> another tricky part. If every country in the world invested a ton of money into reducing Co2 emissions and China + India didn’t, basically nothing would change. It becomes then difficult to evaluate how much each single country should invest into alternative sources of energy, especially for those countries with high energy demands (larger and more populated areas), and those with little/no access to alternative sources.

I wish there were more reliable studies regarding climate change, so that there wouldn’t be the need to talk about “believers” and “deniers”. And I also wish funds towards research were split more evenly, because for decades billions of dollars worldwide has been given to scientist working on climate change models and they’ve been wrong nearly all the time. If all the money that resulted in just hearing people saying:“Yep, climate is changing” had been directly invested into solar/wind energy, we would probably be in a much better position.

Let’s put it this way: if tomorrow it was proven to be 100% correct that climate change is influenced by mankind but will selfbalance itself with no catastrophic events within the next few years (this impending doomsday is something most scientist has been saying for 30 years, and have been proven wrong), wouldn’t it be better? I mean, being able to ignore short term effects and focus on long term and better investments on renewable energy seems like a much more achievable plan than:“WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW OR IT’S WATERWORLD”. This is why I’d like to see funds to be funnelled equally to both sides of the scientific debate, because so far the side that has received all the money hasn’t produce really convincing data regarding the issues I mentioned.

But the reality is often something completely different.

Climate change initiatives in government pick winning and losing sectors and subsidize. No better than subsidizing fossil fuel industries, which I also disagree with. Both are offside of WTO and other agreements.

I agree with resetting public priorities but believe the solution is through better products led by private sector innovation. When government gets involved, in most instances, it means vast sums of money wasted. Climate change initiatives are a perfect example of this. Free allowances in cap and trade? Subsidy. Monitoring cap and trade polluters? Huge hiring needed…Carbon tax is so much easier although I am not a huge fan of tax increases. You put too much faith in man made solutions to the man made problem. :grin:

I feel like lots of people just don’t care, like it doesn’t affect their lives that much for now.

But also, on a side note, I find lots of the self-proclaimed hipsters are extremely hypocritical, like all the green talks and crap yet they travel by air all the time. Sorta like Leonardo Dicaprio, just on a much smaller scale.

I think it goes the other way. Like Andrew says, it’s so easy to grasp, children can do it. Left-wing liberalism is a lot like that, it requires that you “think” with your heart. It only requires that you show that you care. Conservatism requires thinking, because solutions aren’t what they appear on the surface.

Climate change is like following a court case. You have to be able to follow the arguments by lawyers and then judges, there are differences of opinion, you have to thread out who’s arguing out of political bias, who’s arguments don’t measure up logically.

The science of it has to be analyzed, key point is the methodology. This is where they always pull the wool over your eyes. Most people are not educated enough to even follow the science, let alone the logical ratiocination needed to judge methodology.

Most people are incompetent or lazy at these things. For them, it’s just easiest to say I care and leave it at that. And those who disagree with me, simply don’t care.

It’s not scientists per se. That would be more balanced viewpoint. It’s climate scientists. These people go into the field only because they already have a bias, and this before they even learn everything they’re supposed to learn. The whole field is bias. Very few who don’t believe in anthropogenic warming will choose to be a climate scientist and balance the viewpoint of this category of scientists.

It should also be said that there is vast difference in these scientists view of how much contribution gases have on warming. The UN has it around 90% or higher. Most these scientists are between 30 to 90%, which can give a totally different light on the subject. These gases do have a warming function, that is fact that no one denies. But scientists who hold, more responsibly, that it is only 50%, I would say is well within range of climate denial, yet they will count him as part of these scientists who believe it as though it were 90%.

I think, and many scientists as well, it’s more like 30%. Sun is the most important factor, and gases just piddling. Our primary source of heat is the sun. Why wouldn’t fluctuations of the solar cycle not affect the earth? There’s much more correlation here.

Maybe it can be put down to idiots thinking they know more than the experts.

Because (insert politucal reason or conspiracy theory here).

To me, the best science involves questioning the status quo and has since Galileo. Unfortunately, climate change fanatics see only one side of the coin and use smear tactics that make the Inquisition look like a Debutante`s Ball. I really do see a fanaticism that reminds me of religious fervour.

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[quote=“ChewDawg, post:5, topic:158975, full:true”]
First of all, let us both agree that the world is warming. Let us agree it is likely human made. So what to do about it?[/quote]
As you said, there are three different issues here:

  1. Is the climate changing? The answer to this a really, really obvious yes. We no longer even need satellite instrumentation to see it. The man in the street can see it happening with his own eyes. But I think the OP was implying that people still deny this.

  2. Is it anthropogenic? Well, it fits the observed facts and no plausible alternative mechanisms have been proposed, so the methodology of science compels us to accept that, yes, it’s us. This is where most people come unstuck. They think science is like a court case, where men in wigs spar with competing evidence. It isn’t like that at all. The Popperian method hinges on disproof. The AGW hypothesis has simply not been challenged by any alternatives that stand up to scrutiny.

  3. What do we do about it? I completely agree that politicians are not the best people to decide this (via subsidies, taxes, etc). However, they should make room for innovation which might be part of the solution. The vendetta against Uber (whose business model should reduce car ownership and wasted car miles somewhat) is a classic example of this not happening the way it should.

IbisWtf: unfortunately, humans have never been any good at predicting the future. You could actually show mathematically that predicting the results of AGW is essentially impossible. That’s why outcomes are always stated as probabilities.

What irritates me about the whole debate is that fixing AGW is pathetically easy, at least in terms of low-hanging fruit like transport and farming. Solar energy is now much cheaper than gasoline for most applications. But then we get the likes of Trump who think it’s OK to keep entire countries locked in the dark ages because, well, that’s what we’ve been doing for 100 years and dammit we’re going to keep doing it for another 100!

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[quote=“finley, post:16, topic:158975, full:true”]
2) Is it anthropogenic? Well, it fits the observed facts and no plausible alternative mechanisms have been proposed, so the methodology of science compels us to accept that, yes, it’s us. This is where most people come unstuck. They think science is like a court case, where men in wigs spar with competing evidence. It isn’t like that at all. The Popperian method hinges on disproof. The AGW hypothesis has simply not been challenged by any alternatives that stand up to scrutiny.[/quote]
No, I didn’t say science is like a court case, I said the issue of climate change is. Science is evidence all of which must be analyzed, vetted, verified, and then weighed and prioritized. There is good science and bad science, and that’s where methodology is key. Some unscrupulous scientists are like unscrupulous lawyers, they can get you to believe anything and all under the rubric of “science” because you don’t read the small print, which is the methodology.

Second, science isn’t about a consensus of scientists. It is either right or wrong no matter what people believe. Science is 100% correct even if 100% of people disagree with it. Just like economics.

There are very viable alternatives, such as the solar cycle predicting warm and cold spells in the past. Also El Nino-La Nina patterns have been extensively studied as a plausible explanation for climate change, which also is based on solar cycles. Your people ignore it, because they want to believe in what they want to believe in. It doesn’t come down to pure science so much as it does bias. Even scientists opine and are political. They see what they try to see, and don’t see what they aren’t looking for.

[quote]3) What do we do about it? I completely agree that politicians are not the best people to decide this (via subsidies, taxes, etc). [/quote]They are the best people to decide, because they are representatives of the people. Scientists are not above democracy. In mostly English-speaking countries climate change pretty much comes down political lines. Politicians are not above using “science” to promote their own political agendas. The Democrat Party regularly offers grants for research on climate change with the “right” opinion. There are plenty of “scientists” willing to comply with the demand.

But not as predictable, you’ll always want something to back it up. Especially as the sun is getting quieter these days and we seem headed for another cold age, solar power will be even more unpredictable.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/20/solar-slump-the-sun-has-been-blank-for-two-weeks-straight/

[quote=“jotham, post:17, topic:158975, full:true”]
No, I didn’t say science is like a court case, I said the issue of climate change is. [/quote]
What’s the difference? Isn’t climate science supposed to be science?

No. This is precisely how science does not work. The sifting of evidence etc are preliminaries to the development of a hypothesis. Once a hypothesis is solid enough to become a theory (as in “the AGW theory”) then the only thing that can displace it is a competing hypothesis that explains observed facts better. The various alternatives you mention have been examined and discarded, because they simply don’t explain the observed facts very well.

Certainly. But the problem is 90% of the general public - including 90% of politicians - have no scientific education. They know literally nothing about science. And that’s how they end up either being deceived, or deceiving others.

Not really. Science is never “correct” or “incorrect”. Instead, a theory either works or it doesn’t. We don’t really care if the formulae representing the behaviour of electrons are “true” (whatever that even means in this context). All we care about is whether it works: whether the theory accurately reflects what electrons do.

Dunno who ‘my people’ are. I’m not a climate scientist, but I have enough scientific education to read a graph or a research paper and draw my own conclusions.

Oh come on. We all know ‘representatives’ are mostly interested in representing themselves, or their sponsors. My point was, why not simply give The People freedom to create solutions?

You’re confusing predictability with controllability. Solar output is extremely predictable. How do you suppose off-grid solar installers calculate the size of the attached storage?

You only need something to back it up if your load is not matched to the expected output. If, for example, you’re driving air-conditioning, little or no energy storage is necessary, because aircon load is very closely correlated to solar output.

The question is rather: what is more cost effective, to deny the problem and keep on going the same path, or investing a lot in a whole paradigm changer? Which brings more personal benefit? As politicians, the latter is dangerous because any change means loss of power. Hence, opposition to even acknowledge that there is a problem.

Think of the planet as your house. Is the house dirty? Do you feel fine living in a dirty house? If you do not give teh house maintenenca, what happens when it falls apart? If you throw the garbage in your own water supply, will it affect your health? If you put decomposing matter in the fridge, will that make you sick when you eat fresh food?

This has to do with clean energy. It has been on the table since people started questioning if the supply of fossil fuel was infinite and/or harmless.Then, the realization that our bubble of Earth does not clean itself as fast as we humans make it dirty. That is one of the problems.

Just acknowledging that we are responsible for contamination that won’t go away, from plastic to nuclear, is indeed a big step…even though the evidence is right there everywhere we look, taking that step is harder each day.

Then we are asking people to believe that this is not only making us sick, but also making the planet so sick it has a fever. We are destroying our planet piece by piece and we think we are so small we are not really doing anything catastrophic. But we have already destroyed as many species as other natural catastrophes … in less than 100 years. Our technical capacity for destruction surpases any of our creation efforts… simply because most of the stuff we destroy we destroy for good. Once it is gone, it is gone.

Moreover, most people in power are like 70 year olds, from closed priviled environments, who were taught concepts like water and air are renewable resources. If we could guarantee humanity would last 10 thousand years while the land heals, maybe, but some stuff we have broken we keep polluting/destroying. So we are basically probing a wound, keeping it open, and not giving it time to heal… while we go and kill/pollute/destroy other parts of the same body.

All because it was thought that it did not matter, that we were masters of the Universe, hence OK to do as we pleased. The ones in power just close the window and doors and spend more mopney to isolate themselves in a bubble, and do not allow real cleaning action action to take place. Or even discussed. That is a the biggest problem: a small group of old people who will not be there to see the consequences of their actions, taking decisions that will affect generations to come and may even spell doom for many species… including us.

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While most of your points are sound and I agree with, I do want to point out that the solution to AGW is definitely not that easy.

Solar is only cheaper with heavy government subsidies atm. As an example, in Taiwan we have companies that construct solar panel on roof for free if you sign a 20 years contract. This 20 year contract is back to back to a Taiwanese government contract selling electricity to them which is also 20 years (AKA no one else can afford buying solar electricity at current price).

Another thing is that current battery making technology is not very clean (I’m currently working in this industry), and even big names like Tesla has to use materials from other countries because of how much pollution those creates.

Therefor to battle AGW is not build more panels because it will bankrupt the energy department of any country for a long time. Is Trump the voice of reason then? Probably not. But that does not mean the opposite of what he said is true.

Lastly, I think the best way to provide energy in the future is fusion.

[quote=“Icon, post:19, topic:158975, full:true”]
Think of the planet as your house. Is the house dirty? Do you feel fine living in a dirty house? If you do not give teh house maintenenca, what happens when it falls apart? If you throw the garbage in your own water supply, will it affect your health? If you put decomposing matter in the fridge, will that make you sick when you eat fresh food?

This has to do with clean energy. It has been on the table since people started questioning if the supply of fossil fuel was infinite and/or harmless.Then, the realization that our bubble of Earth does not clean itself as fast as we humans make it dirty. That is one of the problems.

Just acknowledging that we are responsible for contamination that won’t go away, from plastic to nuclear, is indeed a big step…even though the evidence is right there everywhere we look, taking that step is harder each day. [/quote]
This is a separate issue from global warming. Everyone and political parties pretty much agree on cleanliness, rivers, air. Polluting our local environment affects us locally and not so much people across the globe, so we endeavor to keep our own environment intact.

Global warming concerns itself strictly with warming gases that can float up in the atmosphere and its effects across the globe, which only sometimes correlates with local pollution. Even carbon dioxide we exhale is a warming gas, but I would hardly call it pollution.

As I said, it depends how you use it. Rooftop (household) PV is probably the dumbest possible way of installing PV. For applications like transport and space heating, solar is 50,60,70% cheaper than fossil fuels, even with government subsidy of the fossil-fuel industry, or would be if it were properly engineered. You can easily do these calculations for yourself.

The problem is that people expect to drop PV into an existing infrastructure that was build around, and for, fossil fuels, and that simply isn’t going to work. Similar kind of thing with electric cars. That’s why it’s best not to have politicians involved in engineering decisions about which they know less than nothing.

The problem with solutions based on unobtainium, or which will be ready “real soon now”, is that we don’t have them NOW. Can you imagine what would have happened if JFK has challenged the American people to go to the moon, like, not right now, but, you know, when we’re good and ready?

[quote=“finley, post:18, topic:158975, full:true”]

[quote=“jotham, post:17, topic:158975, full:true”]
No, I didn’t say science is like a court case, I said the issue of climate change is. [/quote]
What’s the difference? Isn’t climate science supposed to be science?[/quote]
Science is a tool. Anthropogenic warming isn’t proven, there is much debate about it, and fine lines and shades of opinions between scientists. This wouldn’t be the case if it were a strictly scientific phenomena obvious to all. Moreover, the UN isn’t the end-all of what the science is. The UN is a political body.

No. This is precisely how science does not work. The sifting of evidence etc are preliminaries to the development of a hypothesis. Once a hypothesis is solid enough to become a theory (as in “the AGW theory”) then the only thing that can displace it is a competing hypothesis that explains observed facts better. The various alternatives you mention have been examined and discarded, because they simply don’t explain the observed facts very well.[/quote]
This is a matter of rhetoric, like I said before “analyzed,” which you explained well what we all know about science.

[quote]Certainly. But the problem is 90% of the general public - including 90% of politicians - have no scientific education. They know literally nothing about science. And that’s how they end up either being deceived, or deceiving others.[/quote]That’s because textbooks and teachers are teaching politics for science and telling students what to think instead of how to think; this applies to science as well. We don’t leave our logic behind when we approach scientific problems.

Not really. Science is never “correct” or “incorrect”. Instead, a theory either works or it doesn’t. We don’t really care if the formulae representing the behaviour of electrons is “true”. All we care about is whether it works: whether the theory accurately reflects what electrons do. [/quote]
Of course it can be wrong. Scientists thought the sun revolved around the earth at one time, and it worked for them, but it was false, and it certainly wasn’t science, even though it was the best “science” they were capable of at the time of their sophistication. And even when Galilee and Kepler showed a better way, they didn’t want to believe it; they had their science.

…and the gases come from?..

Cows. Our overfarming.
Vehicles. Factories. Our overdependence on fossil fuel.
Etc.

It is like that cartoon: what if we do create a better world, cleaner, to comabt glabal warming, and we find out it is for nought? Well, you end up with a cleaner house and a better life.

Ask about cleaning to a housewife. You clean the house, it becomes dirty again. You cook, you clean teh dishes, you cook again. It is a cycle. We are breaking teh cycle by nailing the garbage to the floor and the leftovers to the dishes. Even if we throw away teh dishes, they are still thrown in our house. Whether they can become a toxic mold that kills us or a chemical that eats through our roof because of teh stacked pile, is our choice.

Local pollution travels, it des not dissolve that much. The problem is that it is taking us too much to calculate how much pollution can we put out until we all end up covered it it and surpass nature’s ability to clean it… especially if we manage to destroy nature, which we are doing very well.

Warming climate is also about air currents and water currents. About the dissappearing forests, mostly because they do not produce that much air nor absorb heat and excess water. it si about floods being more and more catastrophic. More and more draughts. More and deadlier storms. We are helping teh heat by removing trees, digging where we shouldn’t and in te worst possible way.

I do think that our hubris with the environment does come to bite us in teh behind more frequently than we want to admit.

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There is concern about local pollution, such as smog, chemicals in the ground contaminating our water, or in the the air coming down as rain. And warming gases do go up in the air increasingly, these are not debating points.

What the debate is whether these gases are mostly responsible for the warming occurring in the last 100 years, or the sun.

In just the last 18 years, however, the gases keep increasing, but the earth hasn’t warmed that is statistically significant.

Not exactly. So far we’ve been able to clearly prove that climate is changing and the average temperature has been slowly increasing. This has been a negative effect for some areas of the world (less water), but a good one for others (slighty higher temperature → better crops).

The issue is that we still don’t know if the natural feedback systems will balance everything out or not. So far, the feedback theory is the one that matches data recorded during the last 30 years.
If (and that’s a big IF) this theory turns out to be correct, then investing enormous amounts of money attempting to reduce the global warming would be one the greatest wastes of resources ever.

While some of the solutions for reducing pollution and reducing global warming are similar and go hand-in-hand, if we could have more funds sent to the scientists who are researching the effect of feedbacks and confirm that theory is correct, then we could focus all efforts in reducing pollution.

Do we really need all that protocol to reduce pollution?

They’re two different issues, and even though some of the solutions overlap, if climate change is bound to self-balance itself there would be no need to invest into fixing it, funding research etc etc, ad all the money could go towards reducing pollution.