I kind of took a step back for a day, to see if things would quiet down, but it seems that didn't happen.
First off, I want to address people who are making snarky remarks about how off-topic all of this is; fair point, except that in that case you'd have to blame OP for starting the topic in the first place, or perhaps for posting it in the wrong forum section. Perhaps "Fun topics" would be better? not that this is particularly "fun", but I can't see any other options, and there is a similar active topic there right now about comparing hobby/science of audio vs dog breeding, but since no one views dogs as "political", I guess that's perfectly fine, right?
It goes right back to what I said in my first post; it's not that people de facto
agree with certain scientific propositions, it's rather dependent on whether those scientific facts run afoul of an individual's privately held beliefs or biases for whatever reason. The reasons differ, but are usually emotional in nature; it could be people who subjectively associate a scientific fact with a particular set of politics, and thus the fact
must be incorrect because it came from
"them". Could also be just that some people are automotive enthusiasts that romanticize the loud roar of an engine, and don't like the idea that their hobby is being associated with something "bad", so they seek to discredit the real science behind climate change.
I think it's important to point out that none of these people are bad people, or anything of the sort. They are subject to the same human biases that we all are, which is precisely why science was developed over centuries in the first place, to try and filter out human bias as much as possible, and get to the truth of the matter.
I will admit, that a lot of my fellow travellers on the political spectrum will often relish the opportunity to mock and ridicule people they disagree with and even go as far as to make fun of their hobbies (to be fair, they get a lot of that treatment from people on the opposing side as well), but I'm not one of those people. For instance, I can appreciate the romanticism people have for cars that I mentioned above, and many of these people may look at an EV future and see that there is no place for their hobby anymore, and that makes them sad, but I don't see it that way; if the enthusiasts were the only ones, with internal combustion cars, then pollution would not be a problem, as those people are a small minority, whereas most people use cars to commute to work. Even the enthusiasts often have a daily driver, and a car that is more for tinkering and fun.
Everyone often assumes that anything we do to solve climate change will require a lower comfort level, or giving up certain hobbies, but this is false. The proposals have mainly been to fund new research
precisely so that we don't have to give
anything up, instead, we'll gain new technologies that will enrich our society; there will only be gains, and no losses here, because economics is
not a zero-sum game.
I want to move on to address a few points made by
@Cosmik in this thread, quoting here:
This idea really interests me. In the concept of the 'somewheres versus the anywheres', it is the anywheres i.e. the supposedly beautiful, educated, open, progressive people who are inherently pro-globalisation. It is the lumpen, thick somewheres who are wedded to backwards, inefficient locally-based economies.
The fragrant anywheres romanticise the middle class local farmers' produce market, recycling, green politics etc. and they say they love the EU, but one of the tenets of the lovely EU is that different geographical places should specialise economically, and the iconic 'free movement' is about workers moving to where their skills are needed. It's more efficient. This is a contradiction in the anywheres' supposed position (in fact I don't believe the anywheres really have a position, except in opposition to the grotesque somewheres).
So this is a perfect example of what I was saying. I actually have tried very hard in this thread (and it's not easy), to be as apolitical as possible, avoiding references to political parties, or terms like "progressive" or "conservative" in my posts, because I want to de-emotionalize the issue as much as possible and just reduce it to the facts we know, which is that 97% of the experts have a consensus on this, those experts
do in fact take solar cycles into account in their research and still conclude that human activity is the cause of climate change, and the only possible way to argue against this large consensus, is to assume there is a conspiracy of some sort to squash opposition, despite the fact that these same exact people dismiss the impact that big oil could have on funding the opposing narrative.
Meanwhile, I'm rewarded for my efforts with some strange made-up words from a random article who's entire goal is to emotionalize the conversation and reduce the entire discussion to "
us vs
them". I've tried to be as polite as possible, but you *are* exposing bias here; if I sit here and just parrot the mainstream scientific narrative, your response is then to talk about how you're afraid of clicking "like" buttons for fear of being a bad person (persecution complex), but meanwhile, it's fair game to strawman anyone you disagree with and assume apriori what their values are without actually having a conversation with them and
asking them.
The alleged contradictions you're pointing out are not contradictions if you're talking about different people. There are plenty of people within the progressive movement that disagree with eachother on many things, but ally when other views are shared. As for the EU, there are actually some on the left that dislike it precisely for the issues you noted, and then there are others who wish to reform it, because pulling the plug now would cause massive economic devastation, which is after all the main point of globalization, to make cooperation fruitful, and isolationism costly, and it's quite successful at this.
Another thing you did later in the thread, is bring up transpeople (
WHY?!) to further skew the conversation in a politically-charged direction; "ah, here's another example of what these crazy progressives are up to nowadays, in addition to trying to take all our cars and cows away".
Another question: if you saw a political shift in a certain direction, and you saw scientists being pressured (positively and negatively) to espouse a certain idea (say eugenics), almost as a symbol for the righteous to gather round and to define everyone else as enemies, and looking in from the outside you could see how 97% of them might be coming to a questionable conclusion, would you just go along with it? It would be almost as though an ideology was being 'laundered' by science.
This "
question" is insanely primed to the max, and inserts a bunch of variables that are not present in climate science, except in your imagination. Science has always been brutal; the way things work, is that there needs to be a check on pseudoscience, otherwise it will run amok, so there is a massive burden in elevating
any theory to the level where it can be colloquially referred to as fact, and once you climb that mountain, you've earned the right to be smug about it, and the right to be derisive to others until such time as they back up their claims and climb that same mountain. There is nothing different or unique with climate science, than in any other field, all theories have advanced through the same process, and occasionally experienced a certain level of rhetorical hazing while going through that process. If anything, I would go as far as to say that climate scientists are actually
far more polite against opponents than scientists in other fields would be, because the issue has been politicized by their opponents, and they understand they have to be politically correct to change the minds of deniers.
Lastly, as mentioned earlier, the only way to make sense of your world view, is to assume a conspiracy is afoot, and again, given that there is
way more reason to be skeptical of "
climate change skeptics" due to the influence of big oil and other multi-billion dollar corporations that collectively have trillions of dollars to lose, I must ask you,
if you're going to chase conspiracy theories and circumstancial evidence,
why chase the one that has the
least amount of circumstancial evidence backing it?! And how is this theory of yours any different from the subjectivists that
constantly accuse us of trying to silence the opposition?!
