Climate change denial

[tytlyf]

I came to this conclusion on my own, thank you. Green plants are the basis of our ecosystem(s). If you want more green plants, you don't smother their source of respiration.

Focus on the other pollutants, and let the green plants take care of the CO2.

But you're not addressing the problem. You're repeating a typical talking point used by the fossil fuel industry...
The solution is reducing CO2 pollution. It's simple. Stop fighting the solution.

 

[crossfire]

But you're not addressing the problem. You're repeating a typical talking point used by the fossil fuel industry...
The solution is reducing CO2 pollution. It's simple. Stop fighting the solution.

I disagree with labeling CO2 as a pollutant. Obsessing over CO2 is keeping everyone from addressing the real pollutants.
I'm all for reducing fossil fuel use. Just don't use CO2 as the basis for measuring it. Go ahead and limit methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons. Limit plastic production. Focusing on these will also lower fossil fuel use and address unsustainable agricultural practices, and make more sense than focusing in on CO2.

 

[tytlyf]

I disagree with labeling CO2 as a pollutant. Obsessing over CO2 is keeping everyone from addressing the real pollutants.

What corporations are responsible for the real pollutants?

 

[crossfire]

What corporations are responsible for the real pollutants?

See my edit above.

 

[fantome profane]

I disagree with labeling CO2 as a pollutant. Obsessing over CO2 is keeping everyone from addressing the real pollutants.
I'm all for reducing fossil fuel use. Just don't use CO2 as the basis for measuring it. Go ahead and limit methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons. Limit plastic production. Focusing on these will also lower fossil fuel use and address unsustainable agricultural practices, and make more sense than focusing in on CO2.

CO2 is causing global warming. Do you deny that fact? Or do you deny global warming?

I am all for limiting plastic, but that will not affect climate change. Limiting plastic will help with other environmental problems, but we must deal with climate change.

 

[Guitar's Cry]

It’s not that people are in denial. I think most Christians are aware they will receive a new heaven and new earth when Jesus returns.

There's a saying I like from one of the old Sinbad movies: "Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel."

 

[Jimmy]

There's a saying I like from one of the old Sinbad movies: "Trust in Allah, but tie up your camel."

I don’t litter

 

[Quintessence]

I like English because it doesn't allow metaphors. It's merciless towards metaphorical language, I see.
Destroy is of course, a figure of speech meaning "harmed irremediably". But we use it in our language because saying "harmed beyond repair" is less incisive.
I though it was obvious I didn't mean physically undone.

It's not even that, though. There have been five other mass extinction events. Life evolved into a new array of biodiversity each time. As such, it is apparent that mass extinction events do not result in "harmed beyond repair" scenarios. It would be more accurate to state that recoveries from mass extinction events will likely exceed the existence of the human species on this planet. That is, from a very selfish human perspective it is "beyond repair" but... it really isn't. This is one of my favorite environmental web comics of all time, because it is so very true:

Spoiler: spoilered for mild profanity

 

[crossfire]

CO2 is causing global warming. Do you deny that fact?

Correlation does not prove causation.

Or do you deny global warming?

I don't deny climate change. We are currently in an interglacial period of an Ice Age, so yes, there will be climate change. I don't know if humans can tip the climate change towards a superinterglacial or if it will go back to a glacial period, and which one would be better for humans or the planet. What we can do is to clean things up and preserve ecosystems as the glacial cycle is associated with mass extinctions.

I am all for limiting plastic, but that will not affect climate change. Limiting plastic will help with other environmental problems, but we must deal with climate change.

It will help to reduce fossil fuel use, reduce ocean and other habitat pollution, and reduce other greenhouse gases. Plants are the basis of our ecosystems, and you don't want to smother the respiration of the basis of our ecosystems.

In other words, I'm more concerned with the mass extinctions than anything else.

 

[Heyo]

Correlation does not prove causation.

The climate effect of CO2 (and other gases) is proven beyond mere correlation. Fill a container with CO2, put a heat source behind it and watch with an infrared camera. CO2 is opaque to infrared radiation. That has been known for over a hundred years.
It is also known beyond a doubt that and how much the burning of fossil fuel contributes to the rise of CO2 levels.

One must be completely science illiterate or have ulterior motives to deny anthropogenic climate change.

 

[Estro Felino]

It's not even that, though. There have been five other mass extinction events. Life evolved into a new array of biodiversity each time. As such, it is apparent that mass extinction events do not result in "harmed beyond repair" scenarios. It would be more accurate to state that recoveries from mass extinction events will likely exceed the existence of the human species on this planet. That is, from a very selfish human perspective it is "beyond repair" but... it really isn't. This is one of my favorite environmental web comics of all time, because it is so very true:

Spoiler: spoilered for mild profanity

That comic is very nice...but it may have a point in the short run.
Not in the long run.
It has nothing to do with the soil (Earth). It's all about the presence of an atmosphere which many earth-like planets lack.
No atmosphere, no life on Earth. Because it's the atmosphere that protects Earth from the dangerous UV rays and other deadly radiations.
If we alter the atmosphere, a chain reaction can cause the slow undoing of the atmosphere.

So...yes, we have harmed Earth beyond repair. And people forget that Venus once billions of years ago, was very similar to Earth. Now it's a raging inferno because it lost its atmosphere.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I disagree with labeling CO2 as a pollutant. Obsessing over CO2 is keeping everyone from addressing the real pollutants.
I'm all for reducing fossil fuel use. Just don't use CO2 as the basis for measuring it. Go ahead and limit methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorocarbons. Limit plastic production. Focusing on these will also lower fossil fuel use and address unsustainable agricultural practices, and make more sense than focusing in on CO2.

CO2 sets the thermostat for the planet. Worse yet it has a rather long half life. Methane is a stronger AGW gas, but it has a much shorter half life so it does not accumulate the way that CO2 does. We are at almost twice the normal value of CO2. Too much of anything is a pollutant. Too much oxygen and the odds of fire gets dangerously high. At a healthy level CO2 is a much needed gas. Without any CO2 the planet would be an ice cube. But with too much we will cook everyone.

 

[Arnaud1221]

Climate change is real but it's not what is being said officially.

 

[crossfire]

CO2 sets the thermostat for the planet. Worse yet it has a rather long half life. Methane is a stronger AGW gas, but it has a much shorter half life so it does not accumulate the way that CO2 does. We are at almost twice the normal value of CO2. Too much of anything is a pollutant. Too much oxygen and the odds of fire gets dangerously high. At a healthy level CO2 is a much needed gas. Without any CO2 the planet would be an ice cube. But with too much we will cook everyone.

Do you know of any datasets that have CO2 levels for Marine Isotope Stages? (Specifically for the super-interglacials compared to regular interglacials? MIS 5 and MIS 11 would probably be a great place to investigate.) If CO2 levels differ between them, and we can either nudge towards a super-interglacial or towards a glacial period, which way should we go?

 

[Nimos]

Yes, there is this attitude of those who cannot see how particularly inexorable the destruction of our planet is: through the disappearance of lakes, rivers, and forests, that used to exist even 30,000 years ago, and that now are the result of the overexploitation of our planet.
More people on Earth= more human activities to produce all the electricity we need to support these people.
It's undeniable. We are destroying our planet, and the climate has definitively changed.
Nothing's gonna be the same again.

Why are so many people in denial?

People deny all kinds of things or makeup stuff. We live in the times of misinformation. Think about people arguing that the Earth is flat, how is that possible in modern days?

The problem as I see it with climate change is that it is a global issue, it would be so much easier if one could simply point at one country or one cause and then deal with it.

The second huge issue is that it is working over a long period of time, which humans are notorious for at being bad at dealing with. If there is no immediate threat then we can deal with it later, which usually ends up with things going worse than they have to, before we react.

I think when you add these two things together, "Misinformation + Perception issues" it is very easy for people to reach the conclusion that climate change isn't really happening, or that it is natural.

Even though I think it would be a good idea to somehow reduce the amount of humans on the planet, I still think the number one problem is our economic system.

I think one could sum it up by looking at the fishing industry, people fish to make a quick profit. Not being able to fish will ruin that, therefore little is gained from not fishing, so they won't stop.

So it is a kind of deadlock system as long as everything is linked to a broken economic system. Whether we should stop fishing or not, shouldn't have anything to do with financial gains, but purely whether the ecosystem could handle it or not.

The same goes for climate change, very little is being done because there isn't much of a financial gain compared to continuing what we are doing.

Humans have become slaves to an artificial system we ourselves created and changing that is almost impossible, because it is so innate to us, that the only way to do things is through this broken system. And it is well known that this system isn't designed in any way shape or form to care about the wellbeing of the planet.

 

[GoodAttention]

People deny all kinds of things or makeup stuff. We live in the times of misinformation. Think about people arguing that the Earth is flat, how is that possible in modern days?

The problem as I see it with climate change is that it is a global issue, it would be so much easier if one could simply point at one country or one cause and then deal with it.

The second huge issue is that it is working over a long period of time, which humans are notorious for at being bad at dealing with. If there is no immediate threat then we can deal with it later, which usually ends up with things going worse than they have to, before we react.

I think when you add these two things together, "Misinformation + Perception issues" it is very easy for people to reach the conclusion that climate change isn't really happening, or that it is natural.

Even though I think it would be a good idea to somehow reduce the amount of humans on the planet, I still think the number one problem is our economic system.

I think one could sum it up by looking at the fishing industry, people fish to make a quick profit. Not being able to fish will ruin that, therefore little is gained from not fishing, so they won't stop.

So it is a kind of deadlock system as long as everything is linked to a broken economic system. Whether we should stop fishing or not, shouldn't have anything to do with financial gains, but purely whether the ecosystem could handle it or not.

The same goes for climate change, very little is being done because there isn't much of a financial gain compared to continuing what we are doing.

Humans have become slaves to an artificial system we ourselves created and changing that is almost impossible, because it is so innate to us, that the only way to do things is through this broken system. And it is well known that this system isn't designed in any way shape or form to care about the wellbeing of the planet.

Carbon was the literal lifeblood that made the world go round and got us to where we are now, good and bad. Now we have 8 billion people addicted to a consumer economy and we need to pump the brakes but no one really wants to.

Whether we address or ignore climate change the result is the same, its just how big of a reset in population will we get. The Earth will recover.

I think we should go all in and push for a hydrogen economy and ride the next wave out to space.

 

[Pete in Panama]

CO2 is causing global warming. Do you deny that fact? Or do you deny global warming?

I am all for limiting plastic, but that will not affect climate change. Limiting plastic will help with other environmental problems, but we must deal with climate change.

My interest is in the scientific processes. Wikipedia had

 

[Nimos]

Carbon was the literal lifeblood that made the world go round and got us to where we are now, good and bad. Now we have 8 billion people addicted to a consumer economy and we need to pump the brakes but no one really wants to.

I think it's more of a question of whether it is possible or not. Because we do need a way of distributing goods and to put a value on time, which it is essentially all about. Money is just the means we use for it.

The problem is that money doesn't secure equality, so we end up with some people or even nations being poor while others are rich. And with that comes power and we know what that leads to.

So I highly doubt that those with power and riches are willing to get rid of it, for the good of the planet. And given they are the ones deciding how things should be done, then it's difficult to see how things would ever change.

 

[GoodAttention]

I think it's more of a question of whether it is possible or not. Because we do need a way of distributing goods and to put a value on time, which it is essentially all about. Money is just the means we use for it.

Goods and time need demand and consumerism. How do we maintain demand AND lower emissions?

The problem is that money doesn't secure equality, so we end up with some people or even nations being poor while others are rich. And with that comes power and we know what that leads to.

Default system since the iron curtain.

So I highly doubt that those with power and riches are willing to get rid of it, for the good of the planet. And given they are the ones deciding how things should be done, then it's difficult to see how things would ever change.

Sums up the last 30 years I think. Change is inevitable, it just depends on if it will favour all of us or some of us, and in who's lifetime.

 

[Nimos]

Goods and time need demand and consumerism. How do we maintain demand AND lower emissions?

The system we live in requires these things. That is the mentality that people are raised to believe in, you constantly need the newest and best thing.

But a lot of this could be solved if this artificial demand wasn't there and that is the biggest problem as I see it. We need to produce things smarter than we do now, we should encourage high-quality products, upgradable and repairing things rather than just throwing them in the bin.

You often wonder how things made in the 50-60s can still work today, whereas modern stuff often breaks within a very short period of time, because everything is created from cheap plastic etc. And when it breaks it's done for most of the time.

Sums up the last 30 years I think. Change is inevitable, it just depends on if it will favour all of us or some of us, and in who's lifetime.

There have been lots of changes throughout time, inequality was far worse back in the day than it is now. But still, we have kind of stagnated in the development of the economic and political systems. It's the same old "broken" system being patched, rather than trying to progress it further and improve it.

Change will eventually come, I agree, but it would be preferable if things didn't become worse before that happens, it would be nice for a change to make an intelligent and calm transition rather than through violence and collapse