Growing Public Apathy on Climate Change Topic Worries Scientists
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That's actually not the case at all. The IPCC (one of the few groups whose predictions actually mean anything) predictions for ocean temperature have been quite accurate, especially considering the difficulties in modeling such an incredibly complex system. We can't even predict the weather accurately beyond a week or so, and predictions from 20 years earlier are doing pretty well, all things considered.erbkaiser said:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/contary-to-contrarians-ipcc-temp-projections-accurate.html
http://tamino.wordpress.com/2012/12/20/fake-skeptic-draws-fake-picture-of-global-temperature/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2012/02/2011-updates-to-model-data-comparisons/
Carbon dioxide is heavier and more dense, and sinks to the ground. It's partly why smog exists, and tends to cling to valley-based cities. It simply doesn't form a greenhouse-like dome. It's what frustrates me about global warming theorists: you have to ignore chemistry and physics to accept their peer review, and how the hell did that happen? Also, fun fact, sea life has so much impact on the carbon-oxygen cycle that we could clearcut all of Europe and the global standard content would change little in comparison. In fact, temperatures change before instances of carbon drops or spikes. But the UN and NASA fire people who claim such things.Yabba said:
I'm kinda old, and I remember when the population explosion would have people falling off into the ocean due to over-crowding by now, and all the oil was supposed to be gone, and the interest rate was like 20% (it's like 1% now)and remember aids was going to have killed us all by now? And acid rain was killing our lakes and dissolving our buildings, and there was probably a lot of other media-darlings over the last 40 years that I forget just now, all supposed to bring civilization to an end. Yes, global warming is real and a huge threat to civilization, but the media makes a living out of making people freak out. So, stay calm, and just ignore those reporters. And try not to produce CO2.
IT'S JUST LIKE THE REAPERSDragonbums said:
(Sorry, I've been on a Mass Effect Kick lately)
But in all seriousness, I don't understand the "I don't care because it's not going to effect me" Argument.
Well, they have a point. To be frank, I don't care. I used to, and now I don't. Despite all the predictions of doom, the world keeps turning. I have other problems going on in my life right now, Climate Change doesn't even register with me anymore. Is it real? Probably, but I just can't be bothered with it anymore. I guess that makes me a bad person.
I took a marine science class last semester. That was enough for me. I learned about how the ocean handles some of the CO2, absorbs it. I learned about how increasing temperature and acidity (which is part of that) dissolves calcium carbonate. I learned that most of the little critters in the photic layer (the bit that gets sunlight) have shells made out of calcium carbonate. I learned how important they are to the rest of the ocean. I learned that even a liiiitle bitty bit of heat change results in coral bleaching, which is when coral gets stressed and spits out all of its little symbiotic buddies that gives it its color.
I learned about thermohaline circulation, and how some of the weather is reliant on that hot-cold current conveyer belt. Scientists are theorizing that without the cold of the arctic to help drive that circulation, those currents will weaken, and bye bye the ocean-regulated weather you have today, western europe. Meanwhile, east coast US weather will change too, as the ocean temperature is part of what drives all those lovely storms.
I learned how all of this is feeding itself. The warmer it gets, the more ice melts. The more ice melts, the less nice shiny white stuff is reflecting the sun's light and stuff back out. The ocean absorbs more heat.
And more, and more, and more.
I used to think that hey, what did it matter, climate change happens anyways so if it happens sooner, what's so bad? Well, yeah, for the planet it probably isn't that bad. Life is remarkably resilient. The problem is, the life that is most resilient is all the little stuff. The bigger stuff, stuff that we sort of depend on for our food, yeah, that's not quite so resilient.
I mean, the planet has undergone mass extinctions before and has turned out just fine. Just sayin'. Not doom and gloom or anything, but to look at it, I mean, if nothing changes we're going to have to make some major adaptations to keep pace. Yeah, sure, it likely won't effect me too badly in my lifetime. Hopefully. But the planet won't be the same that it is now, that's for sure.
(the chapter on calcium carbonate was an 'ummmm, wait a second, isn't that bad?' moment for me in the worst way. Neither book nor teacher really had much to say about it except a brief sentence here and there to the effect of 'which is why scientists are worried about global climate change')
But yeah, the fact still remains that I have no clue what to do. I carpool. I try to be energy efficient. Maybe there's more I can do.
Looking at the whole giant world though, and this big huge problem, I feel rather insignificant.
I learned about thermohaline circulation, and how some of the weather is reliant on that hot-cold current conveyer belt. Scientists are theorizing that without the cold of the arctic to help drive that circulation, those currents will weaken, and bye bye the ocean-regulated weather you have today, western europe. Meanwhile, east coast US weather will change too, as the ocean temperature is part of what drives all those lovely storms.
I learned how all of this is feeding itself. The warmer it gets, the more ice melts. The more ice melts, the less nice shiny white stuff is reflecting the sun's light and stuff back out. The ocean absorbs more heat.
And more, and more, and more.
I used to think that hey, what did it matter, climate change happens anyways so if it happens sooner, what's so bad? Well, yeah, for the planet it probably isn't that bad. Life is remarkably resilient. The problem is, the life that is most resilient is all the little stuff. The bigger stuff, stuff that we sort of depend on for our food, yeah, that's not quite so resilient.
I mean, the planet has undergone mass extinctions before and has turned out just fine. Just sayin'. Not doom and gloom or anything, but to look at it, I mean, if nothing changes we're going to have to make some major adaptations to keep pace. Yeah, sure, it likely won't effect me too badly in my lifetime. Hopefully. But the planet won't be the same that it is now, that's for sure.
(the chapter on calcium carbonate was an 'ummmm, wait a second, isn't that bad?' moment for me in the worst way. Neither book nor teacher really had much to say about it except a brief sentence here and there to the effect of 'which is why scientists are worried about global climate change')
But yeah, the fact still remains that I have no clue what to do. I carpool. I try to be energy efficient. Maybe there's more I can do.
Looking at the whole giant world though, and this big huge problem, I feel rather insignificant.
1. For a lot of the older generation, who've been hearing the story change for 40 years or so now its well worn out the welcome.
2. Younger folks need a cause to get behind that is flashy and hip. Yesterday's cause is tomorrow's joke.
3. Media outlets give two shits about the environment when compared to money. If a story is old and tired and no real sensational results have appeared, no one will watch the show.
4. Enough attention has been drawn to the dire predicitons of doom and gloom that didn't happen. 2012 is gone, we didn't perish in a cataclysm so you don't hear about the Mayan calendar any longer, same thing when you tell people bad shit will happen and nothing does within a relatively soon amount of time.
5. We're impatient as a crowd. Stand in line anywhere, you'll see how many people get fed up when the line doesn't move after a certain amount of time.
2. Younger folks need a cause to get behind that is flashy and hip. Yesterday's cause is tomorrow's joke.
3. Media outlets give two shits about the environment when compared to money. If a story is old and tired and no real sensational results have appeared, no one will watch the show.
4. Enough attention has been drawn to the dire predicitons of doom and gloom that didn't happen. 2012 is gone, we didn't perish in a cataclysm so you don't hear about the Mayan calendar any longer, same thing when you tell people bad shit will happen and nothing does within a relatively soon amount of time.
5. We're impatient as a crowd. Stand in line anywhere, you'll see how many people get fed up when the line doesn't move after a certain amount of time.
A good chunk of pollution is caused by oil industries and power companies. We, as individuals, can't change who provides our electricity. Like, "yeah, global warming sucks, but what do you want us regular people with no power or money to do about it?"
We'd go to alternative energy sources if they were readily available, but they're still far too expensive and uncommon for everyday people, and power companies will do whatever they can to squeeze money out of people. And there's not a whole lot of money for them in clean energy.
It's not that interest is declining, it's just that we've given up because there's nothing regular people can do to stop it, and the people who can stop it directly benefit from not doing so.
We'd go to alternative energy sources if they were readily available, but they're still far too expensive and uncommon for everyday people, and power companies will do whatever they can to squeeze money out of people. And there's not a whole lot of money for them in clean energy.
It's not that interest is declining, it's just that we've given up because there's nothing regular people can do to stop it, and the people who can stop it directly benefit from not doing so.
The painful irony here is that, in denouncing an organization as a "propaganda arm" of a different organization, you look just like the zealots you claim to be fighting against. Seriously. It doesn't do you any favors.synobal said:
I think the problem in the US is that it all got turned into a political debate, rather than a scientific one. Actual scientific research is generally quite nuanced, with many factors considered and taken into account, and the actual results are almost never as simple as 'we expect it to be x temperate by x year.'
But politicians (and news media outlets) can't make any use of this kind of nuanced data, so they turn it into alarmist, attention-grabbing lines like the ice caps will have melted completely by 2023! And then, when the ice caps don't melt by then, everyone's like 'oh, the scientists must have been completely wrong then'.
Eventually, the sheer amount of misinformation and stupidity from basically every angle just means that people get bored of the entire topic.
But politicians (and news media outlets) can't make any use of this kind of nuanced data, so they turn it into alarmist, attention-grabbing lines like the ice caps will have melted completely by 2023! And then, when the ice caps don't melt by then, everyone's like 'oh, the scientists must have been completely wrong then'.
Eventually, the sheer amount of misinformation and stupidity from basically every angle just means that people get bored of the entire topic.
This is such a pernicious myth and I don't know why. It's so easy to prove wrong. It has always been climate change and it has always been global warming. I'm 24 and so the IPCC (thats the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has been around my whole life. There was a paper in 1956 by Gilbert Plass called the Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change. This isn't hard to get rightLightknight said:
Also, people are still commonly using the term Global Warming to this day. See this [a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm"] website [/a] for more on what the distinction actually is.
Or perhaps people actually have memory. if i looked up stuff about global warming and found out how it works, im not going to repeat the procedure every year because i have a thing called memory.
It does not matter whether you have a job next month or not if your going to drown anyway though.
Reactors dont use uranium for years anymore actually. the fuel has changed drastically in last decades and is now actually incapable of nuclear explosion. The last nuclear explosion capable power plant is currently being shut down since 2010 (it takes years for reactors to cool down).
Thorium is so far not a good choice. it needs feding to react because its not a self sustaining reaction, and while it ahs a positive side of not able to do a meltdown, it also has a negative side of being very inefficient.
except that sea levels have rise and temperature has gotten warmer and deserts are expanding pushing wildlife into cities as well as drying up wells that stayed wet for milliosn of years at the edges of said deserts. the great sacharan migration is happening right now.erbkaiser said:
Wast parts of Icecaps are actually gone. Its estimated that icecap size has shrunk around 40% if i remember correctly.Super Not Cosmo said:
2008 is when it all went to crap really. but if we look at the big picture, its the 60s when it all went to cra and has been steadily getting crappier, at least in US.Eleuthera said:
It does not matter whether you have a job next month or not if your going to drown anyway though.
living in second world i do believe we care far more even on governmental level. what with actually banning inefficient lighting and enshrining recycling in law and actually fining people that dont sort thier trash and all.Nimcha said:
nuclear is only contraversial for stupid. Its the safest power source we know. it also has no emission. the amount of waste created in modern reactors is a joke (a teaspoon per year).Zato-1 said:
Reactors dont use uranium for years anymore actually. the fuel has changed drastically in last decades and is now actually incapable of nuclear explosion. The last nuclear explosion capable power plant is currently being shut down since 2010 (it takes years for reactors to cool down).
Thorium is so far not a good choice. it needs feding to react because its not a self sustaining reaction, and while it ahs a positive side of not able to do a meltdown, it also has a negative side of being very inefficient.
which is exactly why we have a problem. this kind of thinking leads to using enviromentaly worse methods. No, if you cared about earth you would be saying you are willing to pay more for green energy. but all you do now is care about yourself, planet be damned.MrHide-Patten said:
It's so stupid when people just throw their arms up and say "what can poor little me do about this? It's out of my control!". Umm, no it's not. This whole thing is about awareness and a change of attitude. Society as a whole needs to re-evaluate how we live our lives. A minimum of 10.000 species are going extinct every year. Whole ecosystems are disappearing because of our interference. And people are really ok with this? Before you know it, humanity won't be far off from what is being depicted in "Wall-E".
Want to know how you can make a difference? Vote for the political parties that take climate change seriously. Start eating WAY less meat. Get an electric car. Start flying less. But some of these are well loved things that people would never want to give up. It's a pity really, because if more people REALLY cared, the politicians would have more incentive to take action. As it is now, a lot of the tough choices that would have to be made are just political suicide, and that falls on us common people. As long as we don't care, the decision makers won't care either.
Want to know how you can make a difference? Vote for the political parties that take climate change seriously. Start eating WAY less meat. Get an electric car. Start flying less. But some of these are well loved things that people would never want to give up. It's a pity really, because if more people REALLY cared, the politicians would have more incentive to take action. As it is now, a lot of the tough choices that would have to be made are just political suicide, and that falls on us common people. As long as we don't care, the decision makers won't care either.
Except the majority of time when someone is quoting a doom saying scientist, it's actually a misquote from a paper or magazine that didn't read the journal or study well and took something out of context.erbkaiser said:
Or they got the 1 scientist that said there was doom coming in the immediate future despite all of his peers saying his predictions were far too short in scale.
Plus the sea level has risen a good 20cm and is rising at a pretty steady rate, and are continuing to rise at levels of 3.3mm (+/- .4mm) per year since 1993. Make of that what you will.
Ah yes, the 'Doomsayer' problem.erbkaiser said:
When everyone blabs on how he world is going to end, and doesn't, should scientists really be surprised when people stop caring?
I've listened to both sides of it, and to be honest I'm not convinced. Understand I'm also a guy who has in the past invoked environmental issues as a reason for needing to greatly reduce the human population and keep it at a lower level, based on resource depletion and the like. If I believed there was something here I'd say so, as there are a lot of issues I go across party lines for. As a general rule "global warming" seems to be a political construct that has been used as an excuse by the left wing to attack businesses that it does not like, many of which are supporters of political rivals. As a result it's gotten bursts of positive attention from people who hate those businesses, or otherwise go along with that side of the political debate, but without any real truth or evidence behind it, it's lost
a lot of inertia. It hasn't exactly turned a lot of people against the left wing, but it's no longer a rallying cry, or something that is going to bring undecided over the fence until something concrete materializes. There is no evidence that what we're seeing has anything to do with humanity at all, and frankly there have been just as many competing theories that are just as valid for the few things that have been noticed. Larry Niven for example wrote a book called "Fallen Angels" which mocked the entire idea, and was based on actual science that counters global warming (he made a lot of points about this in his afterwards). I won't get into that entire thing because I have no idea how true any of that is either, but the point is there is just as many scientists argueing against this entire thing as there are for it... at the end of the day nobody can really prove anything or tie humanity to it, and what side is embraced largely comes down to political agendas.
Right now I'd imagine the big concern is that a lot of big votes are about to happen, and despite how the media spins things the Republican party isn't close to "Dead" or "dying" any more than the Democrats were during their last downward slump. Outside of rhetoric the guys at the top know all the BS about scared old men dying out, is just that. Right now one of the big things the left wing wants to push for is alternative energy, which is a noble goal, but rather than developing it and slowly building an infrastructure it wants to drive other energy businesses out. One rallying cry towards this end has been "global warming" which is no longer working at a time when the left most needs the rallying point. A recent "environmental bill" based heavily on global warming bunk was recently shot down because one thing it did was attack coal fired power plants. The coal industry being one of the big things a lot of states like Kentucky heavily rely on, with few other alternatives. Even if the jobs in "alternative energy" such a bill created materialized it wouldn't help the people put out of work, or magically create that infrastructure in the states that rely on things like coal mining, or retrain the population for that matter. The general consensus among liberals who support it (looking at sites like "Huffington Post") is that somehow the workers hurt by this will be magically taken care of, or that opportunities will suddenly appear for them, or in many cases what seems to be a rather disturbing attitude that "who cares what happens in the flyover states". You read the responses and you sort of see the problem. Ideas like this previously being stronger because a lot of moderates could be brought in by saying "we need to do this in order to save the planet because we're all doomed" but people aren't buying it anymore. At the end of the day the people in a lot of these states and their reps provide strong basic opposition, and of course there is the whole issue of the working class as a whole not liking the willingness of the government to strike down entire industries (no matter which ones) without there being alternatives already present for those that rely on them, especially in this economy. While the left still has a lot of support among the working class, for things like this it can lose that support and has needed other things like environmental scares to help push their agenda. At the end of the day though it all comes down to kickbacks though, and the bottom line is that a lot of liberals are heavily invested in alternative energy and have a lot to gain from it's success (financially) while of course the right wing has a similar relationship with the established industries and the people in it benefit directly from their continued dominance. At the end of the day it's all slap fighting over money and personal power. The left wing doesn't really care about the environment (which is why they spout bunk about it) and the right wing doesn't really care about the working man, but your typical person still has to pick sides based on what they feel will hurt them the least.
All this rambling aside, my basic attitude is that what they need to be doing is actually establishing this alternative energy infrastructure, and spend the next decade or three actually building the plants and such in the states like Kentucky connected to the old forms of energy trade, so the people that lose jobs will be able to move into other ones. That's not generally how things are happening though. I personally am all for alternative energy, but in this crappy economy we can't decimate what industries we still have that people rely on. What's more I also feel that before we seriously innovate, test, and implement anything, never mind build plants and such to manufacture it, we should be damn sure we can control the technology and profit from it. That means taking strong action against nations like China, including military action, to protect our IPs. There was some big thing on TV not long ago about how Chinese hackers connected to their government stole solar power technology from US businesses which has had a crippling effect economically and on the development of these technologies. The response by the government was to have the FBI issue warrants for the arrest of Chinese officials, which they promptly ignored, while predictably laughing at us (like usual), never mind erasing the technology/halting production and development and paying damages...
a lot of inertia. It hasn't exactly turned a lot of people against the left wing, but it's no longer a rallying cry, or something that is going to bring undecided over the fence until something concrete materializes. There is no evidence that what we're seeing has anything to do with humanity at all, and frankly there have been just as many competing theories that are just as valid for the few things that have been noticed. Larry Niven for example wrote a book called "Fallen Angels" which mocked the entire idea, and was based on actual science that counters global warming (he made a lot of points about this in his afterwards). I won't get into that entire thing because I have no idea how true any of that is either, but the point is there is just as many scientists argueing against this entire thing as there are for it... at the end of the day nobody can really prove anything or tie humanity to it, and what side is embraced largely comes down to political agendas.
Right now I'd imagine the big concern is that a lot of big votes are about to happen, and despite how the media spins things the Republican party isn't close to "Dead" or "dying" any more than the Democrats were during their last downward slump. Outside of rhetoric the guys at the top know all the BS about scared old men dying out, is just that. Right now one of the big things the left wing wants to push for is alternative energy, which is a noble goal, but rather than developing it and slowly building an infrastructure it wants to drive other energy businesses out. One rallying cry towards this end has been "global warming" which is no longer working at a time when the left most needs the rallying point. A recent "environmental bill" based heavily on global warming bunk was recently shot down because one thing it did was attack coal fired power plants. The coal industry being one of the big things a lot of states like Kentucky heavily rely on, with few other alternatives. Even if the jobs in "alternative energy" such a bill created materialized it wouldn't help the people put out of work, or magically create that infrastructure in the states that rely on things like coal mining, or retrain the population for that matter. The general consensus among liberals who support it (looking at sites like "Huffington Post") is that somehow the workers hurt by this will be magically taken care of, or that opportunities will suddenly appear for them, or in many cases what seems to be a rather disturbing attitude that "who cares what happens in the flyover states". You read the responses and you sort of see the problem. Ideas like this previously being stronger because a lot of moderates could be brought in by saying "we need to do this in order to save the planet because we're all doomed" but people aren't buying it anymore. At the end of the day the people in a lot of these states and their reps provide strong basic opposition, and of course there is the whole issue of the working class as a whole not liking the willingness of the government to strike down entire industries (no matter which ones) without there being alternatives already present for those that rely on them, especially in this economy. While the left still has a lot of support among the working class, for things like this it can lose that support and has needed other things like environmental scares to help push their agenda. At the end of the day though it all comes down to kickbacks though, and the bottom line is that a lot of liberals are heavily invested in alternative energy and have a lot to gain from it's success (financially) while of course the right wing has a similar relationship with the established industries and the people in it benefit directly from their continued dominance. At the end of the day it's all slap fighting over money and personal power. The left wing doesn't really care about the environment (which is why they spout bunk about it) and the right wing doesn't really care about the working man, but your typical person still has to pick sides based on what they feel will hurt them the least.
All this rambling aside, my basic attitude is that what they need to be doing is actually establishing this alternative energy infrastructure, and spend the next decade or three actually building the plants and such in the states like Kentucky connected to the old forms of energy trade, so the people that lose jobs will be able to move into other ones. That's not generally how things are happening though. I personally am all for alternative energy, but in this crappy economy we can't decimate what industries we still have that people rely on. What's more I also feel that before we seriously innovate, test, and implement anything, never mind build plants and such to manufacture it, we should be damn sure we can control the technology and profit from it. That means taking strong action against nations like China, including military action, to protect our IPs. There was some big thing on TV not long ago about how Chinese hackers connected to their government stole solar power technology from US businesses which has had a crippling effect economically and on the development of these technologies. The response by the government was to have the FBI issue warrants for the arrest of Chinese officials, which they promptly ignored, while predictably laughing at us (like usual), never mind erasing the technology/halting production and development and paying damages...
But doesn't the sun rays still go though the carbon dioxide even if it is on the ground and still get trapped as the reflected rays cant escape? Also, I thought the reason the greenhouse effect was called that way not because it forms a dome, but it acts similar to a greenhouse, which is letting sun rays in and keeping the reflected rays in. I'm not looking to start a debate, I'm just curious about it.Nieroshai said:
The media and published paperwork all pushed the global warming bit. It isn't a myth, it was absolutely at the fore-front of the debate. They have since leveled out and brought climate change to the forefront.Suhi89 said:
Do you honestly disagree with that? As far as I can tell, the only reason to object to such a statement is for people somehow pointing to that to discredit climate change in general, which also doesn't follow because it not only being global warming doesn't mean other things don't also exist.
That the term everyone ran with as the story exploded was Global Warming is fact. The claim that that somehow negates any new information or focus since then is the only thing that would be pernicious. A rose by any other name, if you will.
Just because we've been aware of climate change doesn't somehow negate that the word being used the most was global warming. Or, do you actually think I was saying that climate change as a term didn't exist until recently? That'd be hilarious.