I used to assume that people, on the whole, were rational and reasonable. I now understand that most people can maintain rationality only for the domains in which they have first-hand experience or education, and otherwise will resort to hearsay, fantastical speculations, conspiratorial thinking, and propaganda of all sorts. It is becoming ever more clear to me that the potential genius of a representative system of government is the chance for citizens to put their trust into informed and reasoned individuals to make decisions in their name. We should elect reasoned people, and review their record, not day to day, but bi-yearly, so that our ignorance does not impede their work. Of course, when the representative system has been distorted as it has, we do not trust or respect our representatives.

When you consider people denying the existence of Covid while being in the hospital ICU with it, it is not surprizing. The saddest thing about last few years is finding out easy and effective propaganda is.

> It is incredible to me that climate change is still considered to be nonsense by so many people.

Most will take that denial to their graves. For some, many even, it's part of their cultural identity to reject all indication that their lifestyle isn't the flat-out awesomest and most moral way to live in the whole history of humankind.

More like it's against their cultural identity to ever validate "the liberals".

I blame alarmists like Al Gore. When people don't understand the science they only go by the public claims. Al Gore's movie made claims that failed to happen. It might be that he just got the time scale wrong but he lost the trust of the public.

Climate science uses very hard to understand models it's out of reach of the lay person. So they have to trust the experts. Their only access to the experts is via the media. The current media is untrustworthy as they exaggerate to increase interest and gain click / views. Look at the impact this is having on politics in the US. Left and Right media are telling very different stories with the truth often somewhere in the middle. The resulting fracture is causing huge division.

> It is incredible to me that climate change is still considered to be nonsense by so many people.

No need to be incredulous. Any issue that is politicized by default will cause polarization of beliefs on the subject. If you haven't realized this by now, take a look at covid.

Because climate change is politicized, your political affiliation changes how you view the issue (because your political affiliation affects your trusted sources of information in the world):

Extreme left: "Humanity's only hope for survival is to colonize Mars. Climate change will have apocalyptic consequences for the planet in the very near future, and earth is pretty much doomed. Nothing short of an authoritarian new world government can hope to approach sequestering the amount of carbon we need to reverse the effects."

Far left: "Climate change is THE biggest threat facing humanity. This problem MUST be prioritized at all costs above all other problems, NOW."

Middle left: "Climate change is real, but what can I really do? I already drive a Nissan Leaf and recycle. Our best bet is to transition to renewables/nuclear and hope for technological breakthroughs in the future."

Middle right: "Climate change is probably real, but taking drastic action seems unreasonable considering how long it's taking to see daily life impacted by it. At this rate, society will crumble due to in-fighting before it crumbles due to climate change."

Far right: "Climate change might exist, but the earth's climate has always changed. Just ignore the alarmist/fearmongering liberals, they are always freaking out about stuff that just isn't that deadly for the average person."

Extreme right: "Climate change does not exist. Let's go coal roll some Teslas."

The fact that the right uses probably, might, and not exists is the real problem. When something is an indisputable fact, yet an entire group of people dispute it, that is a cause for alarm.

Nothing in science is an indisputable fact. That's part of what makes it science.

Nothing in science is indisputable if you have an explanation for all the observations. If we pose restrictions on the set of theories allowed, that they are causal and physical (respects thermodynamics, what we know about the behaviour of gases and their absorption spectra, how light works) certain things become indisputable.

If you presuppose something approximating Newton's laws of motion there is no way you can come to the conclusion that repulsion between bodies (that G has the opposite sign) or that there is (even a vector valued) charge responsible for the attraction.

Claiming climate science is not real at this point is equivalent to either alleging a conspiracy involving at least everyone making temperature measurements or that physics we think we understood fully since atleast the 1900s and that didn't even needed (much) correction for relativity.

Yes, and many of those people are scientists. Skepticism is (or should be) a normal part of the scientific method. Controls and reproducible results need to happen before results can be considered conclusive. I understand that sometimes this is impossible in climate science. Climate change is a fact. Humans being responsible for increasing CO2 levels is a fact. Whether the consequences of raising CO2 levels will be more detrimental than beneficial is yet to be seen. There is little that the western world can do to slow CO2 emission growth. Raising taxes doesn't accomplish much.

Also, accurate observations of Greenland (present day and historical) are available here: http://polarportal.dk/en/greenland/surface-conditions/

Even setting aside warming affects of CO2, it’s well-understood that increasing atmospheric carbon leads to ocean acidification which is much more inarguably a massive net negative.

Perhaps, but perhaps not. In the history of the Earth, CO2 levels have been significantly higher for a much longer time. (See here: https://earth.org/data_visualization/a-brief-history-of-co2/ and note that the time-line is on a log scale.)

Worst-case projections show that at our present CO2 growth rate, things will get bad rather quickly, but keep in mind that the Earth's climate cycles have many (not well understood) self-regulation systems. Increased atmospheric CO2 may lead to explosive vegetation growth which may lead to increased carbon sequestration.

CO2 has historically been higher, but life on earth, and ocean life in particular, was completely different that what we have today. The rate of ocean acidification is such that species do not have millennia to evolve to handle increased CO2 levels and are experiencing massive die-offs.

An extremely well-understood effect is that ocean acidification thins the shells of shellfish.

This may seem like a minor effect, but rapidly upsetting the food chain of the ocean seems like an absurdly risky experiment to run on the planet we inhabit.

So obviously the most apocalyptic predictions are wrong. Life on planet earth can and will survive this. My view is life on planet earth can survive most things we're capable of throwing at it, but the question isn't will we sterilize the planet. The questions is will it be a bad time for humans and yeah rapidly changing the composition of the ocean will be bad for humans. How bad I don't know, but pretty clearly bad

Even if all the changes that were happening were entirely natural, there's an argument to be made that we know we do well in the conditions that existed during industrialization, and that we should try to maintain the environment within those bands. If we knew the globe was heading into an ice age naturally, for example, I don't know that I'd be against trying to prevent that. I don't want mass starvation, etc.

Yeah but these levels have never changed so fast without an mass extinction.

Nobody claims it will end life on earth. It might just end life as we know it as a species given we never hunted dinosaurs.

> Increased atmospheric CO2 may lead to explosive vegetation growth which may lead to increased carbon sequestration.

To my understanding this is decently modelled in long term climate simulations. Plants won't save us and the increased absorption rate of plants with higher CO2 levels is well studied in the lab and accounted for.

Note that these are the same simulations that cannot accurately predict future climate based on past/present conditions. At present there is no model in use that can predict current conditions from past data. It's shameful that government policy makers are relying on this junk.

Perhaps not? You clearly are not well versed on climate change. To take something that is already happening and is very bad: massive yearly wildfires in California. I grew up in Washington, and NEVER had a “smoky summer”. Now it’s a yearly occurrence. It’s at best naive and at worse actively evil to be promoting this “oh it might actually be fine” narrative

> In the history of the Earth, CO2 levels have been significantly higher for a much longer time.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

That xkcd comic doesn’t seem to be showing what you seem to think it is showing.

And back when CO2 levels were higher, how many humans were around? Fortunately none.

It shows that the changes were never as fast as now and still could be dangerous if humans were there.

> Whether the consequences of raising CO2 levels will be more detrimental than beneficial is yet to be seen.

Yet, propose something like a $50B government program for renewable energy, and these same people will be up in arms, totally confident in their prediction that it will lead to corruption, unemployment, suffering of the poor, and end of personal freedom.

It's frankly amazing.

skepticism is now wrongthink. either you believe what you're told (even if it contradicts what you were told yesterday), or you're a "conspiracy theorist." healthy skepticism is no longer considered a virtue in popular culture, it's either join the consensus or shut the fuck up. pretty sad state of affairs.

I mean on some level i agree with you, but since skepticism about climate change is likely leading to a massive humanitarian crisis it’s pretty reasonable for people to be angry at those who say “well actually according to MY research…” when there is such an overwhelming body of evidence pointing to disastrous climate change consequences.

You're exaggerating. Skepticism is is a multi dimensional spectrum. Certain flavors of "skepticism" have been abused and, well, society has shifted its trust accordingly.

Don't confuse intellectual contrarianism with true skepticism. a lot of people claiming to be engaged in the later are really just adherents to the former.

A true skeptic applies that skepticism as equally to their own beliefs and to frings beliefs as they do to popular or widely accepted beliefs.

is there any difference between "intellectual contrarianism" and "true skepticism" aside from whether or not you agree with the conclusions being reached (or perhaps the questions being asked)?

The difference is intellectual honesty. If you're truly willing to consider the evidence, and not just seek out things to reinforce your pre-existing conclusion, then you can be skeptical. Otherwise you're just contrarian.

The problem is that if somebody is dishonest, there's no way to convince them that they're being dishonest. Either they know it, and refuse to admit it, or they're so dishonest that they've completely lost track of what it means to objectively evaluate evidence.

So it's the kind of thing that experts in the domain will all be able to discern, while those same experts will be thought of as conspirators by the contrarian (and reinforced by their equally non-expert circle of trusted acquaintances). About the only hope you have at that point is noticing when the conspiracy is so large that it's simply not reasonable to expect it to persist. But since they get reinforcement from their large circle of non-experts, they usually conclude that the same logic applies both ways.

Yes, absolutely. I already explained what that difference is but let me go further since you didn't understand:

If you only apply your skepticism to polular narratives but not to your pet theories, then you are not truely a skeptic.

It doesn't matter what you believe, it just matters that you approach what you believe with an equal or higher level of skepticism than you approach what others believe.

I see, and I agree completely!

I, too, am skeptical that the sky is blue, space is black, and that the planets orbit the sun. I mean, I haven't directly observed space or the planets, so the scientific approach is to be skeptical. I also hold out some tiny hope that electrons aren't real and microprocessors are powered by multi-dimensional hamsters.

It is denialism--really, it's willful, militant ignorance--at this point to go against the consensus on climate change. It's just being obtuse.

All I can say is, buckle the F up, because the effects of climate change are compounding year by year and decade by decade. I am so confident in this, after reading tons on the subject, having been all over the world and seen it, that I'll just leave it there.