[teameat]

When I was in college back in 1978, a friend of mine who was studying Environmental Science explained it to me, calling it the greenhouse effect. He said that within 40 to 50 years it would cause severe environmental events, droughts, fires, heat waves and so on. I thought, well, 40 to 50 years, we have a lot of time, we won't have to worry about that for a long time. Funny how fast 50 years goes by.

I would say, everyone should listen to the environmental scientists.

[gameswithgo]

Yeah in the 1978s you could say that climate scientists were pretty sure this would happen, not fully understood yet, by the mid 80s it was certain. All of the typical objections you hear from friends or see in articles or think tank pieces are issues that were sorted out in the 1980s. ("it's the sun!, it is natural cycles!, it is happening but not because of humans!") all of that, reasonable questions in the 1970s, figured out by the mid 1980s, still tossed around today by people who think or pretend to be seriously thinking about this.

[throwawaynumber]

I never see those objections, instead I see the objections "I literally cannot afford the cheapest electric car and will be homeless and starving without a vehicle", "I need to heat my home to keep it habitable in sub zero temperatures in the winter", "I want to eat and not starve to death", "I want to cook food", etc.

i.e. people still need energy, and the renewable options have only very recently been viable for an individual to use, and only in some places, and often at great cost.

The objection to global warming isn't that it isn't real, it's that without fossil fuels most of us will die sooner than the worst case climate change effects ever will and so we have no choice.

[barbazoo]

> "I literally cannot afford the cheapest electric car and will be homeless and starving without a vehicle", "I need to heat my home to keep it habitable in sub zero temperatures in the winter", "I want to eat and not starve to death", "I want to cook food", etc.

Obviously we talk to different people but I've actually never heard anyone use this as a justification for our behavior. It's either non-acceptance of environment-scientific facts or acceptance.

> The objection to global warming isn't that it isn't real, it's that without fossil fuels most of us will die sooner than the worst case climate change effects ever will and so we have no choice.

The political debates I'm following, North America and Europe make me believe that actual climate change denial is very much a real thing. More so the more rural and/or the more dependent on the oil and gas industry you get.

[rufus_foreman]

>> Obviously we talk to different people but I've actually never heard anyone use this as a justification for our behavior. It's either non-acceptance of environment-scientific facts or acceptance.

There was a poll done recently that asked people about whether they though climate change was a problem, and also how much they would be willing to spend to help solve it:

"A strong majority of respondents said they were somewhat or very concerned about the issue of climate change. However, one of the most interesting follow-up questions was this: “How much of your own money would you be willing to personally spend each month to reduce the impact of climate change?”

The vast majority of voters were only willing to make very minimal financial sacrifices.

About 35 percent said they wouldn’t be willing to spend anything, with another 15 percent saying they’d only sacrifice $1-$10. Another 6 percent were willing to give up $11-$20, while 5 percent said they’d sacrifice $21-$30. In all, a whopping 75 percent of respondents were not willing to pay more than $50 a month."

-- https://fee.org/articles/new-poll-americans-aren-t-willing-t...

That doesn't sound at all like "non-acceptance of environment-scientific facts or acceptance". That sounds like people think it is real but have other priorities for their money, which is what the parent poster was saying (a bit histrionically).

[ZeroGravitas]

Are you intentionally linking to obvious propaganda?

Click on the "climate change" tag at the top of that story and have a glance at what stories they think are worth telling about climate change.

[rufus_foreman]

"Online survey among 1,200 registered voters nationwide conducted April 15 – 18, 2021. Respondents were selected randomly from optin panel participants. Sampling controls were used to ensure that a proportional and representative number of respondents were interviewed from such demographic groups as age, gender, race, and geographic region. Gender breakdown: 48% men – 52% women ±2.83% overall margin of error at the 95% confidence interval for overall survey. M.O.E.s for subgroups are larger."

You can find other polls that find the same results:

People agree that climate change is an issue. Most of them are willing to pay taxes to do something about it. They're just not willing to pay very much.

You'll get a budget of maybe $10 a month per taxpayer if you want majority approval.

[throwawaynumber]

while I ma be histrionic, the only time I ever encounter any climate science denial is when it is brought up as an insult in a "oh those people who beleive this nonsense" way. I have never encountered it "in the wild", so to speak. Not once.

This is why I am sceptical that it is anything other than a fictional bogeyman to obfuscate rich climate change believers unwillingness to sacrifice luxuries, and poor climate change believers inability to live above absolute crushing poverty [without fossil fuels].

[dragonwriter]

A poll conducted on behalf of an advocacy group with unpublished actual question format that conveniently aligns rather exactly with the preexisting position of the advocacy group can't safely be assumed to be a anything other than a push poll.

[jacobolus]

“Global warming is real but I cannot personally afford to be carbon-neutral in the society as it is set up” is a fine position to take, but folks making that objection should be aiming to see large-scale structural changes to the society so their descendants don’t end up living through the end of civilization. The problematic part is “... but I like how things are going and nothing should change even though it is grossly unsustainable.”

Personally I have not heard this per se. Everyone I know who is opposed to climate science / energy policy changes is a wealthy person living in material excess, largely for social signaling purposes (e.g. buying more and larger houses and cars than they need for any practical purpose), and their denials are fed by right-wing propaganda and self-serving delusion.

[throwawaynumber]

I don't know those people. I would like to own a car and maybe a house one day so perhaps that influences my own perspective. I would rather my descendants were able to inherit property in an industrial society with a severe climate crisis, than have them be property-less peasants with no prospects and utterly dependant on their socioeconomic "betters" for handouts in a world with diminishing global warming.

[nitwit005]

> The objection to global warming isn't that it isn't real

No, that's usually the objection. There's a reason "climate denier" is a phrase.

I don't think anyone would mind a purely technical discussion of how to provide power, mitigate impact to the poor, etc. Instead you get claims the scientists are part of some global conspiracy.

[wk_end]

I see or hear all of those objections regularly. Facebook, Twitter, Conservative or Republican politicians. Literally on this very thread there are people claiming global warming isn't real.

[faefox]

The objection was absolutely "global warming isn't real" for literally decades. Only more recently, now that that the evidence is too overwhelming for those with even the slightest shred of integrity to ignore, has the argument shifted to "okay fine, it's real, but it's too late and/or we can't afford to do anything about it anyway."

[gumby]

> I would say, everyone should listen to the environmental scientists.

I am fascinated by the people who claim, “well those scientists are just saying that for the money”. They plainly have no idea what the financial life of a research scientist is like.

[bayesianbot]

Or how they can't see how much oil companies would be willing to spend if they could prove them wrong.

Or how the basic problem is so simple physics, you'd have to bribe either a significant percentage of the population or actual laws physics to succeed in this conspiracy.