Whoever called it a “climate warming” should be shot in the head. Because yes, yes it is warming in general, but the choice to call it that was terrible. It’s summer, temperature is below 20C today, my neighbors are saying “where the fuck is climate warming? those idiots said it will be hot!”
It should be called climate destabilization, focusing not on hot/cold but on extreme weather.
“Global warming” is the accurate term. So that is what they called it. Science is not now nor has it ever been about branding and populism. The world is, as a whole, becoming warmer and that is leading to the complete destabilization of climate systems across the globe. But the fact is that it is incredibly hard to predict the total outcome of global warming and climate change. So making predictions becomes a very dangerous game. And I would like to add that when they saw that the phrase “global warming” was not getting enough attention they changed it to “climate change” to try to be more accurate in a way that people would understand better (see the dipshit congressman who brought a snowball on to the Congressional floor to “prove that global warming was fake”). But then that backfired too because climate change doesn’t sound quite so dangerous. So most people felt completely comfortable in totally ignoring it.
There’s also the problem of the consequences of global warming and climate change are future problems that people don’t believe they have to worry about right now. There’s a very real “fix it in the future” attitude that has become prevalent in society. And the problem with that is, of course, we can’t fix it in the future. Because once the destabilization of the global climate system starts, there is virtually nothing we can do to stop it. We may be able to mitigate some of the effects. But not the long-term destruction of the environment that we have become so accustomed to living in.
Yea but then some mouth-breather goes “the climate has always changed iver time!” while ignoring the fact that it often came with extinction events, and also happened over a much longer time than a handful of generations.
The fact is that they are just regurgitating what they were told, so they will never take a real stance or think about it. At least the poster in the image is finally breaking out of the trance, even if it is 40 years later than he should have.
They’ve just been lied to again and again and don’t understand the science. I’ve actually managed to change a few people’s minds by pointing out 4 facts that if true mean climate change is real.
CO2 reflects infrared energy
CO2 gets trapped in our atmosphere
Humans have released millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere
It’s getting hotter and hotter.
I generally challenge them to disprove these facts and offer to help them with sources validating them if they’d like. I think understanding the way CO2 works to reflect heat is the thing that usually convinces them, because they just don’t understand how greenhouse gasses could make it hotter.
I wish it was 20C it’s 37 here and it’s unbearable. It definitely is hot, of course it’s not hot everywhere.
It’s not inaccurate per se to say global warming because on a planetary level that is what’s happening. The planet is getting hotter. But it is going to be cool if it’s very windy or after a storm, that’s to be expected.
I’m not saying that a thing’s label doesn’t matter, but there are a couple important facts to keep in mind:
A label is not enough space to fully communicate any idea.
A person’s willingness to disagree is not rational.
If I could pretend to be a conservative, uh… pedophile for a moment, what might I say about “climate destabilization”?
That’s not going to happen; that’s ridiculous.
We go through seasons and extreme weather all the time—what’s “stable” about that?
You’re some alarmist tree-hugger just trying to scare people, aren’t you?
If destabilization is so bad, companies would never let it happen. Why would they when they need the planet too?
“Destabilization”, brought to you by the same irrational, ruled-by-fear people who can’t handle an unloaded gun being in the same room as them—heh heh!
What does destabilization mean, anyway? Like, one more hurricane a year? Just don’t live in Florida.
“Oh no! The climate is destabilizing!”—meanwhile in reality, birds are chirping, nothing has changed.
Everything “destabilizes”; man makes plans, God laughs.
We all have ACs and heaters now anyway, so what’s the problem exactly?
All of these bullet points come from the same place: what you’re suggesting, that climate change is a problem, is both a lot of difficult effort to solve and very scary to think about. So, emotionally, they just refuse to. It’s easier to refuse to. You don’t have to live anxiously if you refuse to.
There are a large number of complicated and diverse sociological reasons why climate change isn’t taken seriously, and making the label scarier would only really be effective if it represented an across-the-board rhetorical tactic to scare the public into action. That means posters, flyers, ads on television, tv programs and movies, fiction and non-fiction, politicians who will not shut up about it, constant news about the worst-case scenarios and what people watching need to do right now to stop it, companies who pollute being depicted as evil and villainous and a threat to us right now and legally blocked from being allowed to advertise for themselves (e.g. tobacco companies).
Climate change needs strong, inciting propaganda, and for the last 50 years has had very piss-poor propaganda, mostly because money doesn’t want it to.
The only problem I see with your explanation is that it seems to boil down to defeatism:
emotional people are more numerous than rational people
emotional people cannot be convinced, any argument will get shot down
politicians in any democratic society will follow majority opinion
So… why bother? It’s a fight minority cannot win and majority does not consider to be worthwhile or even real.
Also - I honestly hate the american meaning of word “conservative”. Conservative should be someone who wants the law of his country to stay as it is, not be changed. Republicans are not conservatives, they are radicals. Conservative is someone who responds to idea like for example “gay marriage” with logic “if this was legal when I was a kid, it should be legal now and in the future”.
In my country when you say “organization of pedophiles” we either think Catholics or Americans…
To be effective at convincing people, you need to get to the core of what is driving their beliefs.
A pessimist, for instance, cannot see a beautiful sunset. Not until they can learn how to see love.
It may be that their life is falling apart right now, and they feel abandoned by what were their friends, and that this isolation makes the sunset feel trivial and stupid to care about when they have real problems to solve.
It may be that they are irritated by crowds and so dislike going outside, and they reject the beautiful sunset because to accept that they cannot see it would make them grieve.
I gave us a solution for action around climate change: strong propaganda. A fight-forward message in a cultural climate that believes in its ability to win. These are things we can build, I’m just describing the nature of the problem.
Conservative should be someone who wants the law of his country to stay as it is, not be changed. Republicans are not conservatives, they are radicals.
Well, Republicans are fascists.
And, a lot of American Conservatives would think that they are exactly what you say a conservative should be. I mean, gay marriage wasn’t legal when they were kids, they think they want to regress to the society of when it was, to conserve those laws—but this is because they are stupid, dumb animals that must be corralled like sheep toward the future.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for any politic in any country that fears change as a concept. It’s honestly anti-intellectual.
they are stupid, dumb animals that must be corralled like sheep toward the future
Hm, this is what Nazis and Communists both said about my countrymen. The idea that fearing change is anti-intellectual… hmm… anti-abortion laws are changes too, introducing mass surveillance is also a change. Not every change is as good as you imply.
You’re really going to have to work with me to not read every comment in the most uncharitable way possible. Nothing about that first comment was “defeatist”, that’s a battle in your mind only.
If you don’t believe in the power to build, then you believe in regression de facto. You don’t get points for being pro gay marriage if you’re also anti-immigration.
Yeah it’s not helped by the fact that there’s no real consensus in climate science about what will happen. I’ve seen models that run from global desertification to an ice age.
Whoever called it a “climate warming” should be shot in the head. Because yes, yes it is warming in general, but the choice to call it that was terrible. It’s summer, temperature is below 20C today, my neighbors are saying “where the fuck is climate warming? those idiots said it will be hot!”
It should be called climate destabilization, focusing not on hot/cold but on extreme weather.
“Global warming” is the accurate term. So that is what they called it. Science is not now nor has it ever been about branding and populism. The world is, as a whole, becoming warmer and that is leading to the complete destabilization of climate systems across the globe. But the fact is that it is incredibly hard to predict the total outcome of global warming and climate change. So making predictions becomes a very dangerous game. And I would like to add that when they saw that the phrase “global warming” was not getting enough attention they changed it to “climate change” to try to be more accurate in a way that people would understand better (see the dipshit congressman who brought a snowball on to the Congressional floor to “prove that global warming was fake”). But then that backfired too because climate change doesn’t sound quite so dangerous. So most people felt completely comfortable in totally ignoring it.
There’s also the problem of the consequences of global warming and climate change are future problems that people don’t believe they have to worry about right now. There’s a very real “fix it in the future” attitude that has become prevalent in society. And the problem with that is, of course, we can’t fix it in the future. Because once the destabilization of the global climate system starts, there is virtually nothing we can do to stop it. We may be able to mitigate some of the effects. But not the long-term destruction of the environment that we have become so accustomed to living in.
That’s why they changed it to “climate change”.
Yea but then some mouth-breather goes “the climate has always changed iver time!” while ignoring the fact that it often came with extinction events, and also happened over a much longer time than a handful of generations.
Nothing you call it will ever satisfy the people who need Climate Change to be wrong to preserve their pride.
The fact is that they are just regurgitating what they were told, so they will never take a real stance or think about it. At least the poster in the image is finally breaking out of the trance, even if it is 40 years later than he should have.
They’ve just been lied to again and again and don’t understand the science. I’ve actually managed to change a few people’s minds by pointing out 4 facts that if true mean climate change is real.
I generally challenge them to disprove these facts and offer to help them with sources validating them if they’d like. I think understanding the way CO2 works to reflect heat is the thing that usually convinces them, because they just don’t understand how greenhouse gasses could make it hotter.
I wish it was 20C it’s 37 here and it’s unbearable. It definitely is hot, of course it’s not hot everywhere.
It’s not inaccurate per se to say global warming because on a planetary level that is what’s happening. The planet is getting hotter. But it is going to be cool if it’s very windy or after a storm, that’s to be expected.
This is why it’s frustrating. It’s not a lie, it’s not wrong, it just fuels anti-climate-change crowd.
During last 30 days my region had:
But because it’s summer, the “below 20C” is the one people usually focus on. “If there is global warming, how come summers are colder?”
In fact ever since COVID my region had much colder summers…
I’m not saying that a thing’s label doesn’t matter, but there are a couple important facts to keep in mind:
If I could pretend to be a conservative, uh… pedophile for a moment, what might I say about “climate destabilization”?
All of these bullet points come from the same place: what you’re suggesting, that climate change is a problem, is both a lot of difficult effort to solve and very scary to think about. So, emotionally, they just refuse to. It’s easier to refuse to. You don’t have to live anxiously if you refuse to.
There are a large number of complicated and diverse sociological reasons why climate change isn’t taken seriously, and making the label scarier would only really be effective if it represented an across-the-board rhetorical tactic to scare the public into action. That means posters, flyers, ads on television, tv programs and movies, fiction and non-fiction, politicians who will not shut up about it, constant news about the worst-case scenarios and what people watching need to do right now to stop it, companies who pollute being depicted as evil and villainous and a threat to us right now and legally blocked from being allowed to advertise for themselves (e.g. tobacco companies).
Climate change needs strong, inciting propaganda, and for the last 50 years has had very piss-poor propaganda, mostly because money doesn’t want it to.
The only problem I see with your explanation is that it seems to boil down to defeatism:
So… why bother? It’s a fight minority cannot win and majority does not consider to be worthwhile or even real.
Also - I honestly hate the american meaning of word “conservative”. Conservative should be someone who wants the law of his country to stay as it is, not be changed. Republicans are not conservatives, they are radicals. Conservative is someone who responds to idea like for example “gay marriage” with logic “if this was legal when I was a kid, it should be legal now and in the future”.
In my country when you say “organization of pedophiles” we either think Catholics or Americans…
I’m actually not saying this.
To be effective at convincing people, you need to get to the core of what is driving their beliefs.
A pessimist, for instance, cannot see a beautiful sunset. Not until they can learn how to see love.
It may be that their life is falling apart right now, and they feel abandoned by what were their friends, and that this isolation makes the sunset feel trivial and stupid to care about when they have real problems to solve.
It may be that they are irritated by crowds and so dislike going outside, and they reject the beautiful sunset because to accept that they cannot see it would make them grieve.
I gave us a solution for action around climate change: strong propaganda. A fight-forward message in a cultural climate that believes in its ability to win. These are things we can build, I’m just describing the nature of the problem.
Well, Republicans are fascists.
And, a lot of American Conservatives would think that they are exactly what you say a conservative should be. I mean, gay marriage wasn’t legal when they were kids, they think they want to regress to the society of when it was, to conserve those laws—but this is because they are stupid, dumb animals that must be corralled like sheep toward the future.
I don’t have a lot of sympathy for any politic in any country that fears change as a concept. It’s honestly anti-intellectual.
Hm, this is what Nazis and Communists both said about my countrymen. The idea that fearing change is anti-intellectual… hmm… anti-abortion laws are changes too, introducing mass surveillance is also a change. Not every change is as good as you imply.
Change as a concept, not any individual change.
You’re really going to have to work with me to not read every comment in the most uncharitable way possible. Nothing about that first comment was “defeatist”, that’s a battle in your mind only.
If you don’t believe in the power to build, then you believe in regression de facto. You don’t get points for being pro gay marriage if you’re also anti-immigration.
Yeah it’s not helped by the fact that there’s no real consensus in climate science about what will happen. I’ve seen models that run from global desertification to an ice age.
That disparity is because there is more than one runaway trigger involved and which one hits first decides the way we go.
Where I am, we’ve been getting pretty heavy rain during 100F/37C heat, and it’s kind of unnerving how quickly it dries up.