Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion.
Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded:
"The longer we put off doing something, the harder and more expensive it will be in the future. In a Pascal's Wager sort of way, many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything, and the potential that C02 is not a real culprit is more than made up by danger that it is. Making changes now is the prudent and financially sound decision."
In a large part, this is what the brief ESG trend on the stock market was briefly about before it got co-opted by a dozen different competing messages.
nabbed 1 hours ago [-]
>There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.
This document was last updated in October 2024, but I am a little surprised to see this still available on a .gov site.
chasil 11 minutes ago [-]
Reposting a previous comment...
What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse phase is rare.
'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no continental glaciers exist anywhere on the planet... Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history.
'Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously... Earth's current icehouse state is known as the Quaternary Ice Age and began approximately 2.58 million years ago.'
Modern humans have existed for 60k years, all of which have been in this current icehouse.
To cast a different shade on the meaning, this climate period is rare, easily disturbed, and difficult to restore even with vastly more powerful technology.
The more common greenhouse state is unlikely to lead to a Venus runaway, but it will be hostile to us.
We might very well require the rare climate, and perish in the common.
Difficult is good. It makes survival more competitive. It levels up the game. The heat is on.
bvan 18 minutes ago [-]
Oops, someone forgot to delete or redact it.
layer8 14 minutes ago [-]
Maybe they shouldn’t have the “Do scientists agree on climate change?” link go to 404. ;)
declan_roberts 34 minutes ago [-]
So what are we going to do about China?
hannob 3 minutes ago [-]
If the rest of the world wants to still have an industry once we finally decide to seriously use green technology, they should quickly catch up to China - if that's still possible.
While China is still very reliant on fossil-fuels, and particularly dirty coal, they're at the same time working on dominating the post-fossil age at astonishing speed. After they already dominate solar and batteries, they're working on doing the same for a number of other future green industries. They are already dominating future technologies like Green Methanol that most people in Europe or the US have never heard of.
BigTTYGothGF 2 minutes ago [-]
The same China that, added more new solar capacity in 2024 than the US currently has total? And is currently at 36% of its total energy use from renewable sources compared to the US's 23%? And has ~32GW of nuclear plants in construction compared to the US's 2.5GW?
I hope we steal their playbook.
legitster 9 minutes ago [-]
The plan was always to put economic pressure on China to catch up to the rest of the developed world, but we can't exactly tell someone else to stop crapping their pants while we are still crapping our pants.
doug_durham 34 minutes ago [-]
A troll response I presume. Or perhaps sarcasm without the indicator.
declan_roberts 28 minutes ago [-]
Not a troll comment. China produces as much or more CO2 as much as the next 5 countries combined.
It's logical to start with the king of greenhouse emissions if you want to stop global warming.
renjimen 24 minutes ago [-]
Not per capita. The US is still the worst large country. If you account for offshoring manufacturing then the US looks even worse.
Why should should per-capita be most important? If country A keeps their population stable and emissions under control, but country B of the same starting population, keeps doubling their population and doubling their emissions, why should country A have an increasingly declined allowance of emissions when they were more responsible in keeping their total emissions down (by not having as many people)?
shoxidizer 1 minutes ago [-]
If country B splits into countries C, D, E and F, all of which emit less than country A, has it found an effective way to reduce emissions? Should all countries adopt the Monaco lifestyle to defeat global warming? I guess if you want to find a fair way to measure administration of land you could emmisions per hectare or rainfall.
layer8 10 minutes ago [-]
China has a declining population, and had a one-child policy for many years.
Also, you don’t want all the low-population countries to each start contributing as much to global warming as the US.
hiccuphippo 10 minutes ago [-]
Because some countries pay others to pollute in their stead?
China's emissions were 10 billion tons CO2 in 2017 and have increased every single year to 12.29 billion tons CO2 in 2024. Meanwhile, US decreased from 5.22 to 4.9 in the same time
laffOr 25 minutes ago [-]
There is no need for ordering right? All countries can start acting at the same time.
idiotsecant 10 minutes ago [-]
Nothing? China is solving the problem on their own. They already make substantially less carbon per person that most of the west. If we want to be like China it's a simple proposition: be OK with Manhattan project level investments in power transmission from places that have lots of renewables to places that need renewables.
dyauspitr 24 minutes ago [-]
China is going to be fully green in a decade or two. India in 3 or 4.
lwansbrough 25 minutes ago [-]
I wonder if we should move beyond this messaging. It’s well known to the smart half of the population that climate change is happening. There is apparently some debate on the cause. But this point is mostly irrelevant, it is problem-oriented thinking. By keeping the conversation in the problem-realm you invite troglodytes into the conversation to insert their bullshit. Instead, if we move forward with “presumption of truth” solutions-based messaging, we can start to talk about what we’re going to do.
Climate control is something more people will be on board with compared to trying to have a conversation about climate science to a person who didn’t graduate high school.
michaelmrose 2 minutes ago [-]
Maybe those who didn't graduate shouldn't get to vote?
gaigalas 21 minutes ago [-]
Very exciting to live in an apocalyptical era. I'm looking forward to discover which one of the several global threats to humanity will put us down first.
excalibur 15 minutes ago [-]
I think the smart money is still on nuclear war, but the competition is getting fierce these days.
gaigalas 3 minutes ago [-]
I think there's a strong argument for generalized systems collapse. It's a silent civilization killer, could be happening right now!
tim-tday 50 minutes ago [-]
Everyone who can hear this has already heard it. Those who continue to pretend it is not happening are either deliberately deceptive so they can continue to make money from fossil fuels or unable to change their minds when faced by evidence due to identity politics.
mr_mitm 46 minutes ago [-]
My impression is that almost no one denies the warming itself, just the link to greenhouse gasses. That link is unfortunately much harder to prove than rising temperatures by itself. The proof is there nonetheless, but it's easier to cast doubt on it, and that's what certain groups have been doing.
degobah 30 minutes ago [-]
But POTUS 5 months ago:
"If you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said global cooling will kill the world. We have to do something. Then they said global warming will kill the world, but then it started getting cooler. So now they just call it climate change because that way they can't miss. Climate change because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, there's climate change. It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country's fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success."
> "that have cost their country's fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success."
This is a weird statement coming from Trump. I wouldn't think his base would care for improving the lives and economies of other countries, specially undeveloped countries.
Windchaser 40 minutes ago [-]
I've seen the full-court denial:
- it's not warming, or not significantly
- if it's warming, it's not because of humans, (or)
- if it's warming, it's beneficial
- if it's warming because of humans and that's bad, there's nothing we can do about it
ETA: honorary mention for "what about China?"
People I've argued about this with will switch interchangeably between these. Press them hard enough on one issue, and they'll just switch to another. It's a game of whack-a-mole.
tencentshill 36 minutes ago [-]
Or "Why does 2 degrees matter?"
Because when were 4 degrees cooler, NYC was under 1000 feet of ice. We really don't want to find out what 4 degrees hotter is like.
dyauspitr 26 minutes ago [-]
Wait really? 1000 feet is insane.
mikkupikku 4 minutes ago [-]
It was actually about 2000 feet. The Laurentide ice sheet, it was 3 kilometers / ten thousand feet thick in some parts.
wat10000 34 minutes ago [-]
Same here. I'd also add "It's warming, caused by humans, harmful, but mitigating it would be even more harmful."
Basically, anyone capable of thinking about it logically has at this point reached the conclusion that it's real. Anyone arguing otherwise is therefore necessarily not thinking about it logically, and you have to expect things like shifting claims.
mattgrice 37 minutes ago [-]
I didn't even think the link to greenhouse gases is denied any more.
The merchants of doubt ran out the clock and what I hear from the former deniers I know is that it is too expensive and too late to do anything now, being warmer will be nicer, and CO2 is a fertilizer.
phkahler 24 minutes ago [-]
>> My impression is that almost no one denies the warming itself, just the link to greenhouse gasses.
I fall in that category. My suspicion is that water vapor from air travel is by far the biggest contributor. I saw the blue skys after 9/11. I read the NASA guys that said daily temperature range increased measurably. I saw the blue skys again during Covid19.
I'm also of the opinion that anyone looking at historical data only going back 200,000 years or less is missing the larger picture. Sea levels are NOT at historic highs, we should expect them to rise further before receeding. We should expect glaciation again if we don't do anything, but speeding up warming IMHO is more likely to trigger glaciation that to "push through" whatever causes it and break the cycle (which would be a good thing).
So as a long-term thinker all this hype is just that. If you don't have a plan to end the glacier cycle you're just making a big deal out of a small change in time-scale due to reasons (CO2 vs H2O) that may well be the wrong ones.
16bytes 18 minutes ago [-]
Not to be contrarian, but if you cared, you could easily rule out your suspicions.
It's not even worth it to say why or how, since not even doing rudimentary research means that you aren't interested in developing a well-informed opinion.
tonylemesmer 41 minutes ago [-]
Even the qualification "in the last 10,000" years gives the doubters something else to dismiss global warming.
There are people that believe the warming, but don't believe it matters because the Earth used to be much hotter at some point in the past so it is a natural cycle. Yet they fail to realize that humans didn't exist then so there is no good reason to believe an Earth that hot can support human life.
Havoc 46 minutes ago [-]
Can’t wait for trump and his gestapo to deport the entirety of nasa for telling the truth
declan_roberts 37 minutes ago [-]
Why does NASA even have to do this? Build some cool rockets and get us to mars.
retrac 23 minutes ago [-]
NASA launches and operates Earth-observing satellites for measuring the weather and climate.
SoftTalker 33 minutes ago [-]
Living on Mars long-term is a practical impossibility. Certainly much, much harder than living on even a climate-changed Earth.
RIMR 51 minutes ago [-]
Oh wow, a true statement on a government website. I'm sure they'll take it down within a day.
deadbabe 34 minutes ago [-]
I’ve given up. I’ve long assumed for a year now we are heading for warming that is even worse than the worst projections and it’s all over. This has given me some peace, like accepting you’re going to die.
girvo 9 minutes ago [-]
Same, sadly. I’ve done far more than my part, and even my direct family hasn’t, let alone the rest of the country, the world.
I only hope I can have a decent life until it ends, and I hope it takes slightly longer than I think it will.
rolph 10 minutes ago [-]
[delayed]
doener 1 hours ago [-]
Why did the Trump regime not discover and eradicate this heretical sentence?
rebolek 51 minutes ago [-]
It will now.
webdood90 39 minutes ago [-]
I've shifted my mindset to abandon this idea that humanity will survive forever, or that we should strive to live as long as we can.
Intelligence is a scarcity and it cannot overcome the majority of people that are incredibly stupid or ignorant. So accepting that we are doomed relieves some of the stress. I won't have children to worry about their future, either.
I still live my life in such a way that minimizes my impact on the world as much as possible. I still surround myself with folks that want a better world. But there is no stopping the impending doom and I'm trying not to be miserable with the time I have.
izzydata 33 minutes ago [-]
Ultimately I think it will be a self correcting problem, but there is going to be an extremely long period of absolute hell. Global warming is eventually going to cause food and water scarcity on a level that will wipe out a huge percentage of the Earths population. Then the Earth will recover from there being fewer humans.
If in 3000 years we discover humans were completely wiped out to the last person I would be pretty surprised.
Agree, this is how excesses always get corrected in nature.
dyauspitr 25 minutes ago [-]
Humans won’t get wiped out, not by global warming atleast. It’s just going to suck and a lot of us will die.
hxbdg 2 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
16 minutes ago [-]
shoobiedoo 12 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
0ckpuppet 21 minutes ago [-]
we don't need evidence Earth is warming, because it's happened before humanity, and it will happen after we're gone. We need evidence that we're poisoning ourselves and the planet. Global warming's only accomplishment is giving the poisoners a pass when it was debunked. Private jets and climate change, choose one.
softwaredoug 13 minutes ago [-]
They predicted a warming planet based on human activity as long ago as the 50s
We’ve known about the mechanisms of CO2 leading to atmospheric warming since the 19th century.
We know humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
We observe higher CO2 and warmer temps
The evidence isn’t that complicated.
mempko 18 minutes ago [-]
I'm pretty sure global warming isn't debunked. Yes, we should worry about all the other pollution too. But global warming is happening and we are causing it. What's different than nature doing it is the rate of change. Yes the earth was warmer in the past and would be in the future, but it has never warmed as fast as it is now.
Rendered at 21:43:02 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded:
"The longer we put off doing something, the harder and more expensive it will be in the future. In a Pascal's Wager sort of way, many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything, and the potential that C02 is not a real culprit is more than made up by danger that it is. Making changes now is the prudent and financially sound decision."
In a large part, this is what the brief ESG trend on the stock market was briefly about before it got co-opted by a dozen different competing messages.
This document was last updated in October 2024, but I am a little surprised to see this still available on a .gov site.
What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse phase is rare.
'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no continental glaciers exist anywhere on the planet... Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history.
'Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously... Earth's current icehouse state is known as the Quaternary Ice Age and began approximately 2.58 million years ago.'
Modern humans have existed for 60k years, all of which have been in this current icehouse.
To cast a different shade on the meaning, this climate period is rare, easily disturbed, and difficult to restore even with vastly more powerful technology. The more common greenhouse state is unlikely to lead to a Venus runaway, but it will be hostile to us.
We might very well require the rare climate, and perish in the common.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthh...
While China is still very reliant on fossil-fuels, and particularly dirty coal, they're at the same time working on dominating the post-fossil age at astonishing speed. After they already dominate solar and batteries, they're working on doing the same for a number of other future green industries. They are already dominating future technologies like Green Methanol that most people in Europe or the US have never heard of.
I hope we steal their playbook.
It's logical to start with the king of greenhouse emissions if you want to stop global warming.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-greenhouse-gas-emissions
Also, you don’t want all the low-population countries to each start contributing as much to global warming as the US.
China's emissions were 10 billion tons CO2 in 2017 and have increased every single year to 12.29 billion tons CO2 in 2024. Meanwhile, US decreased from 5.22 to 4.9 in the same time
Climate control is something more people will be on board with compared to trying to have a conversation about climate science to a person who didn’t graduate high school.
"If you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said global cooling will kill the world. We have to do something. Then they said global warming will kill the world, but then it started getting cooler. So now they just call it climate change because that way they can't miss. Climate change because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, there's climate change. It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country's fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success."
https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-...
This is a weird statement coming from Trump. I wouldn't think his base would care for improving the lives and economies of other countries, specially undeveloped countries.
- it's not warming, or not significantly
- if it's warming, it's not because of humans, (or)
- if it's warming, it's beneficial
- if it's warming because of humans and that's bad, there's nothing we can do about it
ETA: honorary mention for "what about China?"
People I've argued about this with will switch interchangeably between these. Press them hard enough on one issue, and they'll just switch to another. It's a game of whack-a-mole.
Because when were 4 degrees cooler, NYC was under 1000 feet of ice. We really don't want to find out what 4 degrees hotter is like.
Basically, anyone capable of thinking about it logically has at this point reached the conclusion that it's real. Anyone arguing otherwise is therefore necessarily not thinking about it logically, and you have to expect things like shifting claims.
The merchants of doubt ran out the clock and what I hear from the former deniers I know is that it is too expensive and too late to do anything now, being warmer will be nicer, and CO2 is a fertilizer.
I fall in that category. My suspicion is that water vapor from air travel is by far the biggest contributor. I saw the blue skys after 9/11. I read the NASA guys that said daily temperature range increased measurably. I saw the blue skys again during Covid19.
I'm also of the opinion that anyone looking at historical data only going back 200,000 years or less is missing the larger picture. Sea levels are NOT at historic highs, we should expect them to rise further before receeding. We should expect glaciation again if we don't do anything, but speeding up warming IMHO is more likely to trigger glaciation that to "push through" whatever causes it and break the cycle (which would be a good thing).
So as a long-term thinker all this hype is just that. If you don't have a plan to end the glacier cycle you're just making a big deal out of a small change in time-scale due to reasons (CO2 vs H2O) that may well be the wrong ones.
It's not even worth it to say why or how, since not even doing rudimentary research means that you aren't interested in developing a well-informed opinion.
I only hope I can have a decent life until it ends, and I hope it takes slightly longer than I think it will.
Intelligence is a scarcity and it cannot overcome the majority of people that are incredibly stupid or ignorant. So accepting that we are doomed relieves some of the stress. I won't have children to worry about their future, either.
I still live my life in such a way that minimizes my impact on the world as much as possible. I still surround myself with folks that want a better world. But there is no stopping the impending doom and I'm trying not to be miserable with the time I have.
If in 3000 years we discover humans were completely wiped out to the last person I would be pretty surprised.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngest_Toba_eruption#Toba_ca...
We’ve known about the mechanisms of CO2 leading to atmospheric warming since the 19th century.
We know humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere.
We observe higher CO2 and warmer temps
The evidence isn’t that complicated.