I’d love to have a simple strategy for convincing climate change denialists of their folly, but I think this one would leave me feeling dirty afterwards.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
I’d love to have a simple strategy for convincing climate change denialists of their folly, but I think this one would leave me feeling dirty afterwards.
I don’t think this would work. Some conservatives are already talking about minefields, drones, and lethal electric fences.
I think some folks are actually hoping that climate change will allow them to live out their genocidal fantasies without having to deal with people calling it genocide.
Well that was refreshingly direct.
I’m afraid I agree with Abe Drayton @1.
The disaster capitalists who run the Republican Party will be thrilled to have a “just war” against immigrant hordes. Loss of coastal cities will not cost them anything: they already simply move their capital to any place they like. The real estate losses will be covered by the tax code, excepting maybe for the small players. And increased tropical diseases will simply improve the bottom line o the medical industry.
Simple proof it won’t work : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZoVYl9ltcA
These folks are losing their island
As my late-in-life, born again, Bible thumping almost 90yo uncle would say, “It must god’s will…”
euclide @4: Nice quote from the comments, even if Churchill didn’t actually say it;
Liberals are stealing all the electric cars because they know 10 years from now, electric cars are gonna get all the poon. That way, there won’t be no more gawd-fearing babies borned. Proof? THAT’S what’s being spread by all them aeroplanes. Chemtrails!
That’s how they stop the good people from buying electric cars!
that is a restating in common language of the report by the defense department.
the only part that was left out is how much it will cost in dollars to cope with those changes. just ask cousin Bubba how much taxes he is willing to pay to fight all them problems? How much he is willing to tolerate in raise in food cost?
the grizzly bear is a little crude but it’s bluntness is appropriate in the circumstances.
uncle frogy
@8: Friendly amendment: The grizzly bear is very crude but its bluntness is appropriate in the circumstances.
I always thought that scaring them about beer was a good way to go:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/climate-change-could-lead-widespread-beer-shortages-180970561/
I know that link is to a joke, but yeah, I agree it wouldn’t work. Appealing to people’s self-interest, even crude self-interest like beer availability and favourite beaches, is unlikely to work when we’ve seen the UK vote for Brexit, unemployed factory workers vote for Trump — and then defend his trade war with China that is going to make the manufacturing sector even worse off, the Australian parliament just passed an utterly moronic anti-encryption law with bilateral support…the list goes on. If self-interest was really the major player here then there would be no such thing as coal-rollers as it costs money and pollutes the drivers’ environment more than anyone else’s.
What the marketing gurus realised is that tribalism is an even stronger force than self-interest. So if you paint those who care about the environment as the Other and then demonise them, well, you can get suckers to utterly demolish their own future for the privilege of petty malices to their perceived enemies.
still haven’t figured it out yet?
when dealing with authoritarians, it’s not even WHAT you say, but WHO YOU ARE.
if you could bribe their local pastors to tell them global warming is bad, then they would think global warming is bad.
it really is that fucking simple.
but, nobody on the left is willing to play that game.
That link gave me pleasure. Thanks. I used to visit rude pundit for the chuckles
It still doesn’t address the main problem of making them accept climate change in the first place. To them those dire consequences are like God’s punishment and hell are for me: not relevant because of the premise god/climate change exists.
Coral reef study suggests that the corals that don’t die from bleaching are more resistant to warm water in the future. This presents your average young-earth a real problem: either warming isn’t a problem or evolution is true. Ouch.
It’s okay. No matter what we do to our world there will still be life on Earth that is blissfully unaware that anything has even changed. Or that we ever existed at all.
Scientists identify vast underground ecosystem containing billions of micro-organisms
That’s the part about the anti-environment marketing that always confused me. They want to say it’s about owls and beetles and other endangered species but it has always been about human survival a couple steps further down the road.
and long before the human species is in real danger of extinction society will have collapsed.
what stability we have now within and between nations socially and economically
is completely dependent on some level ecological stability. rapid climate change will cause a lot of disruption to that stability.
That is what amazes me the most about the state of the arguments that I see most often. The issues are often about some biological niche or other that is threatened true enough but without much mention of one of the most fragile elements on earth starting with that most unstable pron to erratic behavior, which is predictable but always takes us by surprise the economy,
the anti-climate warming denialist argument is couched in terms of money, the scientists are in it for the money, it is a plot to wreck or economic competitiveness
the earth and all of its systems are not threatened, the present order however is always a balance and we are riding high on top of it and are completely dependent on the stability of everything “below” on which we rest.
uncle frogy
People have been voting against their own interests for decades now, appealing to them isn’t going to work.
@Matrim #18. This isn’t “appealing to them”. This is just scaring them in their language using their frame of reference.
They might act the way we want but it would not be for reasons that we think are good ones.