[ahnberg]

Sadly the fact that it HAS been written about for so long just fuels the fire (no pun intended) for the sceptics.

Something I often hear when trying to talk to people who refuse to believe the impact we have: "See these domsday prophets have been ranting about this for over a century and we're still here enjoying life!"

[rullelito]

The same with "we only have 10 years left". After 30 years this doesn't carry much weight.

[rob_c]

This just makes the problem worse because little remember this 30 years later and think you're a liar or idiot because you pushed exaggerated claims.

In the 80s in the UK acid rain was hyped up, in the 90s it was 20 years of oil reserves in the education system. Both now have generated adults distrusting education because they're not an academic and they just remember what a fool told them at face value without nuance.

One of the biggest recently being reports that we will have millions dead unless X which doesn't match reality which is just going to create more anti intellectual fear

[AlexandrB]

Acid rain was hyped up because it was a real problem and was fixed by tighter emissions standards[1]. Same with the ozone layer hole, an issue I heard a lot about as a kid, which was fixed by regulating CFCs[2]. These are examples of successfully tackling an issue and largely solving it, not "panicking over nothing".

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

> Overall, the program's cap and trade program has been successful in achieving its goals. Since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976.[43][44] Conventional regulation was used in the European Union, which saw a decrease of over 70% in SO2 emissions during the same time period.[45]

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

[rob_c]

I am not saying there was concern over nothing.

This default reactive stance causes pointless arguments and discussion as I'm trying to demonstrate.

Yes there were 200% valid concerns. But this lead more to something close to hysteria than actual communication.

These concerns turned into teaching kids that the environment is going to die. The "unless nothing changes" gets lost in the discussion with 90% of non science teachers. In the same way that "emmissions have fallen" is on page 23 and is not front-page news.

The net result of this, although well intended. Is that most people are taught the headlines which turn into "watch out for acid rain". And now 40 years on they are even more confused and distrusting given the inconsistent messaging around this.

(News flash the oceans are still getting more acidic, almost no effort has been made here imo, but I digress)

Bad communication on these topics is more dangerous than not getting public approval. Bad communication around fossil fuels spreads distrust on the topic of conversation. (Again I remember well meaning teachers saying fuels would dry up by 2010 when I was in school)

Bad communication on climate change or global warming (notice how they don't use that latter phrase in outreach now) causes distrust here. Same goes for healthcare, 5G and the list goes on.

There will always be people who disagree. Trying to reach 100% is also futile. The communication should be straightforward clear and consistent and it's falling short of that by a long way.

The "just trust the science" is exactly the same call to authority as "this book says throw them off buildings". It helps nobody. But it happens at _all_ levels of outreach and bad education because people get afraid to say "good point, I don't know".

[random314]

Are you aware that acid rain problem was solved by regulatory action? It didn't automatically disappear.

[rob_c]

Yes, Im painfully aware of this. Christ I wouldn't be making the point of I wasn't this aware of it! (My own personal anger aside here)

I have a strong educational background and a head on my shoulders. However from the mainstream public perception it just "disappeared one day" and transformed into "fossil fuels will be gone" which turned into "global warming" which is now "climate change".

This is obviously complete nonsense to anyone with a science background but is the result of decades of broken outreach combined with poor public education.

[origin_path]

Why do you think it's nonsense? There are at least two competing narratives about climate change:

1. It's huge, an emergency and we're all basically fucked, in fact there's nothing we can do the problem is so vast.

2. It's actually not that big of a deal, most of the warming is natural cycles, a bit is human made but we're not sure how much, a mix of changing power sources and adaptation is entirely possible and if anything the path we're already on. There are likely bigger environment problems to focus on.

The second is the position you'd expect people to take having seen environmental problems be fixed without much fuss in the past. And obviously not every academic "crisis" is fixed via regulation. Think about Limits to Growth and all the claims that the world would run out of food that were popular in the 70s and 80s, or really for much longer than that. Governments didn't do much there and yet there was no crisis in the end, in fact we ended up with a crisis of obesity.

[rob_c]

Sigh.

I'm not talking about the "narratives" around the "conversation".

The first problem is that this changes as it's almost 110% political.

The comment I'm making is that bad education causes problems 10-20 years down the line. Inconsistent exaggerated stories which are not presented in context are dangerous and in the case of multi-genrrational issues undermine the whole effort to get anything done.

Talking about the "we'll run out of food" as another example is showing how people don't trust the people saying this. The problem here is that the word "academic" often has to be put in quotes. It's so doo-gooder pro science but who shouts a lot and causes more problems for researchers. (For another example most of my time doing outreach is undoing the damage caused by fools "explaining" the highs boson)