It's persistent because oil companies have paid for it to be persistent for decades now. Can't have reality threatening quarterly profits, now can you?
I can tell you that it's starting to feel a bit... postmodern? in South Texas. I'm not sure the right word to describe the feeling. Nearly every year the meteorologists tell us that we're breaking heat records, and subjectively I can feel it having gone from unpleasantly hot in summers when I was a kid to something verging on life-threatening for a few months of the year. I never saw as many trees die as I did this past summer, and a co-worker's well failed; it felt like the start of an apocalyptic movie.
And yet... everyone just kind of kept going, and what else are we supposed to do I guess? Hope some deus ex machina appears and saves us? There is still a fair amount of denial of the phenomena itself, but more than that I think that people think it will all just work out somehow. I don't seem to have that ability; I was mostly just hoping I'd be done with this Earth by the time things get real bad, but it seems like the consequences are moving faster than I had anticipated.
Being a skeptic is not a problem in science until the hypothesis includes the end of the world. Nobody cares if someone questions fluid dynamics, airplanes still fly and boats still float, but climate change is not something that we want to test... and therefore the real problem here is being a skeptic on a hypothesis about the end of the world that will necessitate a specific direction for humanity.
I'm not judging either way. I'm making an observation on the meta-narrative. I think claiming there is no danger and using pseudo-science is just as bad as claiming that an existential risk is already settled science and therefore questioning it poses a threat to humanity.
To more than 50 % of humans, the reason is that the people, who are warning about climate change and are advocating for changes in behavior, are not trustworthy.
Here's a bit: (When I say, engineers, I mean all kinds of engineers _and_ scientists.)
Engineers build products that require customers to fight for a fucking right to repair. Engineers build stuff based on dark patterns. Engineers put things into food that makes people sick and then tell stories about how the lifestyles of the past generations were bad for them. Engineers build companies that exploit people with and without a (higher) education. Engineers invented the volatile prices of oil and gas even though we constantly find new sources, soon, most likely even on other planets. Engineers are responsible for not taking care of the trash their companies used to produce, the trash that has polluted air, water and soil. Engineers don't go into politics to use logic, rationality, facts, THE TRUTH (I'm sorry for being so dramatic), to oust liars and manipulators in order to establish better policies and practices. Engineers work at huge consultancies and create strategies that stretch decades and amount to opiod epidemics and civil conflicts and financial scams that rob almost all the people on the entire planet of the added value they have created with their own hands, their sweat and their blood. We have no reason to believe them because if it was so damn important to them, they'd find the time and space to use their brains to actually do something about all the assholes that are in the way and I can't even say that without worrying that all these Engineers actually fucking think that we, the people who have build and grown EVERYTHING, are the one that are in the way. Because that's what they are leading us to believe and there are billions of people out there who would phraise everything I just said in millions of ways.
I know all the good things Engineers have done and are doing, and I'm trying to convince my father all the time, but the negative things stick because they make the few so much richer than the positive things that make the rest so much richer.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 19.5 ms ] threadAnd yet... everyone just kind of kept going, and what else are we supposed to do I guess? Hope some deus ex machina appears and saves us? There is still a fair amount of denial of the phenomena itself, but more than that I think that people think it will all just work out somehow. I don't seem to have that ability; I was mostly just hoping I'd be done with this Earth by the time things get real bad, but it seems like the consequences are moving faster than I had anticipated.
I'm not judging either way. I'm making an observation on the meta-narrative. I think claiming there is no danger and using pseudo-science is just as bad as claiming that an existential risk is already settled science and therefore questioning it poses a threat to humanity.
Here's a bit: (When I say, engineers, I mean all kinds of engineers _and_ scientists.)
Engineers build products that require customers to fight for a fucking right to repair. Engineers build stuff based on dark patterns. Engineers put things into food that makes people sick and then tell stories about how the lifestyles of the past generations were bad for them. Engineers build companies that exploit people with and without a (higher) education. Engineers invented the volatile prices of oil and gas even though we constantly find new sources, soon, most likely even on other planets. Engineers are responsible for not taking care of the trash their companies used to produce, the trash that has polluted air, water and soil. Engineers don't go into politics to use logic, rationality, facts, THE TRUTH (I'm sorry for being so dramatic), to oust liars and manipulators in order to establish better policies and practices. Engineers work at huge consultancies and create strategies that stretch decades and amount to opiod epidemics and civil conflicts and financial scams that rob almost all the people on the entire planet of the added value they have created with their own hands, their sweat and their blood. We have no reason to believe them because if it was so damn important to them, they'd find the time and space to use their brains to actually do something about all the assholes that are in the way and I can't even say that without worrying that all these Engineers actually fucking think that we, the people who have build and grown EVERYTHING, are the one that are in the way. Because that's what they are leading us to believe and there are billions of people out there who would phraise everything I just said in millions of ways.
I know all the good things Engineers have done and are doing, and I'm trying to convince my father all the time, but the negative things stick because they make the few so much richer than the positive things that make the rest so much richer.