[mbiondi]

For the same reason that in the winter the weather people tell you the temperature, but then are sure to include the windchill factor (which makes it sound worse). In the summer they tell you the temperature and be sure to include the "real feel", which includes the heat index and makes it sound worse. Arguably, in the winter there's still a heat index and in the summer a wind chill, but that would make the news sound good, and mess up the whole strategy.

Bad news sells. Mostly it's totally made up BS. Global warming is another made up tragedy to distract us from real issues like wars, poverty, wealth disparity, care for the elderly and mentally ill, etc.

[netsharc]

> Global warming is another made up tragedy to distract us from real issues like wars, poverty, wealth disparity, care for the elderly and mentally ill, etc.

Here I am contemplating whether to "waste" my time trying to tell someone on the Internet they're wrong, or just shake my head at the "deluded idiot" (my point of view, it could be wrong) and go on with my day. I wonder what the dangers are of people doing the latter and people walking around confidently with "false beliefs" (again, my point of view, could be wrong)

But you mention wars, don't you notice how weather has had a big effect? For example there was a bad Russian heatwave in 2010 which destroyed grain yields. Food prices all over the world went up, and in north African countries this contributed to the Arab Spring revolutions [1]. Is it just a freak weather event? Can we attribute it to climate change? Can't we accept digging up carbon/methane and burning it creates an atmosphere/planet that slowly becomes inhospitable to humans?

Well, I also want to talk about refugees fleeing crisis countries, but I'm too lazy to look up the citations right now. I contemplated just abandoning this reply because of that. This sounds obnoxious but consider it a gift that someone is still willing to tell you that you might be mistaken, rather than shake their head at what you wrote and walking away unnoticedly.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221209472...

[itsoktocry]

>Is it just a freak weather event? Can we attribute it to climate change? Can't we accept digging up carbon/methane and burning it creates an atmosphere/planet that slowly becomes inhospitable to humans?

I think it's all 3. The problem is that, like anything remotely political in our current environment, one side says it's 100% one source, and the other says it's 0%.

The transition is going to be very expensive, and normal people (hardly getting by) aren't willing to get even poorer when they can't be sure it will help in the grand scheme. Our leaders are doing nothing but talk, they're the worst individual offenders. And globally, there's a "tragedy of the commons issue" at the Nation level, where those who continue to burn fossil fuels are going to get ahead.

Until these things are addressed, telling us repeatedly that it's getting warmer falls on deaf ears.

[chimprich]

> Bad news sells.

People often claim this, but I don't think it's true. I think news organisations on average underplay the threat from climate change.

What actually sells is confirming people's world view. Telling people "everything's fine, look at these silly scientists panicking over nothing" seems very popular with a large segment of the population.

[stevenwoo]

I haven't watched recently but at least in the USA, local news is always a parade of crimes, accidents and fires with sports and weather to round out the 22 minute run time, but as you write, climate change was non existent since it's hard to adapt to the few minutes of video and sentences each story got. One would get the impression that there is a lot of crime and fires in the local area from the sampling bias, and my understanding is this where a large percentage of old people and less educated get their news so it sort of reinforces a lack of urgency to these people about climate change.

[drdrey]

That works because polarization sells too