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Talking To the Public: the Biggest Enemy To Reducing Greenhouse Emissions
Lasrick writes: "Lucien Crowder is fed up with the notion that solutions for climate change would be easier to enact if only the public (especially the American public) understood the science better. Crowder looks to nuclear disarmament advocates as a model, as the move to reduce nuclear weapons has seen comparatively greater success even without public awareness and understanding: 'Indeed, in the nuclear and climate realms, desirable policy often seems to flow less from public engagement than from public obliviousness. Disarmament advocates, no matter how they try, cannot tempt most ordinary people into caring about nuclear weapons—yet stockpiles of weapons steadily, if still too slowly, decrease. Climate advocacy provokes greater passion, but passion often manifests itself as outraged opposition to climate action, and atmospheric carbon has reached levels unseen since before human beings evolved.'"
I'm not sure that's a very good comparison. Nuclear disarmament is not perceived as effecting people in their daily lives. That's why most average people can't be arsed to give a care.
In order to enact meaningful carbon reduction legislation things have to change for everyone. Things will get more expensive or need to be rationed. People will feel put upon by these regulations. They will be effected by whatever steps are taken.
Note, I don't really want to carry on a debate about it but I do believe in man made climate change and wish my country would do more to be a meaningful part of a solution. My statement above is just my opinion on why there is such a backlash against by the public in the USA.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
Hippies always start with education. But it never takes long for them to turn to laws and court cases to force their point of view on the rest of us. That's why "Let's work together to conserve water!" turned from voluntary to the point where I can't leagally buy a shower-head that doesn't have the power of warm snot.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
What TFA seems to fail at pointing out was that nuclear disarmament isn't happening because of anything the activists or advocates did - it's happening because one of the main cold-war aggressors was forced to give up. When the USSR collapsed, the biggest reason that the US and (let's be honest) China were stockpiling nukes was, well, gone - almost overnight. Without that reason, disarmament could get underway in earnest.
Same story here: until something happens that makes the public at large want to do something about pollution, you're not going to get them to stop polluting as much. In this case, the ideologues aren't going to accomplish jack - like the activists of the 1970's and 1980's, all they'll manage to do is polarize and piss-off the folks whose minds they want to have changed.
Instead, if you want a real solution, how about making a cleaner lifestyle a preferred one? Make green tech cheaper over time, and make it easier to use than the old polluting stuff (and no, not by simply levying a "carbon tax" on the existing stuff, either.) Make the preferred stuff more durable.
For example, look at Germany - they put in some damned nice tax breaks for alternative energies, big enough (and personal enough) for Germans to shingle nearly every damned building and outhouse in the nation with solar panels, and for companies to erect wind farms wherever they could. Make biofuels cheaper than regular gasoline by not charging a federal excise tax on it (and get the states to do the same), and I bet the stuff would suddenly get competitive. Sweeten the deal on alternative fuels a bit by cutting (or eliminating) road use taxes on all vehicles fitted to use only natural gas, electricity, or suchlike.
The idea is to not prohibit, but to entice. To remove the reasons why someone would want to stick with the old, bad ways. If you can do that, you can get somewhere, but I sincerely doubt that activists are going to blaze that trail...
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
well, when deniers talk the science, the believers go into "burn the heretics at the stake" mode. it's hard to have an honest debate with people who have drank the kool-aid. so, when dealing with cults/religions i think it's valid to point out the hypocrisy of the cults leaders. it's also important to show why they want you to believe what they're selling. it's probably not for the greater good, it's most likely to gain more control and power.
it's always about control and power.
this heretic is ready, mod me down.
Drawing down strategic weapons is a part of the "peace dividend" in the public mind. What "dividend" is the public supposed to believe will appear by making energy into an expensive luxury? This analogy is just bogus.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
1) We have care overload. I have to care about global warming, and nuclear proliferation, and school shootings, and AIDS, and breast cancer awareness, and domestic spying, and and and... It's hard to get people to care about thing A when they're exhausted from being told to care about things B-Z.
2) There is very little an individual can do about climate change. I was at Disney's Animal Kingdom once and they had a display about conserving energy and bullshit and I thought I was taking crazy pills. This park wastes more energy in a day than I could in a hundred lifetimes, and they're lecturing me? As if I'm the problem?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The actual physics of Anthropogenic Global Warming (of which anthropogenic CO2 is one but not an exclusive component, and no scare quotes needed as it is fact) is based upon the infrared emissivity of gases and their actual dynamics and concentration in the atmosphere.
This physics is lab validated and confirmed by in-situ objective measurements.
Analogies made to the lay public are imprecise, but the underlying science never was.