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Bill Nye: Climate Change Denial Is 'Running Out of Steam,' Thanks To Millennials (mic.com)
An anonymous reader shares with us an article on Mic: Famed science educator Bill Nye has long been an outspoken critic of people who continue to doubt climate change, the main driver of freaky weather patterns, rising global temperatures and sea level rise around the globe. In an interview with Mic, Nye said that despite lingering skepticisms, there is nearly 100% scientific consensus that climate change is happening and is here to stay -- and people are becoming increasingly anxious about its effects on the planet, particularly younger generations. "Almost every person in denial about climate change is older," Nye said. "It's very hard to find a millennial-aged person that is not concerned about climate change. I think the climate denial movement is running out of steam, I guess that's a pun."
I know just being picky, but no one doubts that climate change is behind changes in climate. I don't think anyone doubts climate change. Now perhaps some doubt anthropogenic climate change, technically this summary doesn't mention that.
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Now we just have to wait 30 more years for millennials to get into positions where they can do something about it.
At which time they will act like people who are 30 years older than they are now.
Young people like to get behind causes to save the world, but burn out after a few decades of reality. News at 11.
Is this because Millennials are better at Science, or simply because they believe, what public school teachers told them?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I'm more irked by the claim that it's right because of consensus. It's *probably* right because of consensus; the current understanding seems to suggest correctness; and we've got an open dialogue about the scientific community's consensus about fat, salt, and heart disease being totally backwards.
Massive, highly-publicized scientific consensus has been shown wrong plenty of times--probably because it's such an important political dialogue as to only be right by chance. The harmfulness of saturated fat and salt are the basis of many school lunch campaigns, USDA campaigns, CDC campaigns, and AHA campaigns, right up to the freaking President of the United States and his wife making and publicly speaking on the gravity of such policies. Not simply the fact, but the *extent* of human-induced climate change is a matter of international politics. We're to believe the scientific consensus on one of these was wrong, and the other can't be wrong?
Correctness of consensus about fat and salt failed *because* of its political importance; and correctness and consensus of climate change seems to have succeeded *in spite of* this political dialogue. Even then, an objective observer can't deny that the *extent* claimed seems to be all over the place, and--perhaps to the credit of the climate-change consensus in general--hasn't exactly reached stable scientific consensus. It's not hard to see how someone could be skeptical of the consensus argument; and it's *easy* to see how someone might be skeptical when, in 2007, the IPCC claimed global warming was occurring at 1/4 the speed they previously claimed, and then in 2010 claimed it was happening 10 times faster than they previously claimed--noting they intentionally shaved down the numbers because "nobody would believe the truth"--and then claimed it was just happening 10 times faster than previously predicted.
I want to hear about evidence and models, not "people are dumb for not believing this because me and my nerd friends believe it and you should trust us because we went to school for this stuff and rich people believe us." You and your nerd friends have been wrong *many* times; I believe a lot of the things you say because you insist on explaining *why* you're right in more robust terms than "I take computer science 3; I know what I'm talking about!"
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I want to hear about evidence and models
So, what's stopping you ? You can start with the IPCC reports and all of its references to supporting literature. You can download source code of the models, and raw temperature data. If you don't believe in consensus, that's your right, but don't claim there's no evidence provided, and that it's all based on trust.
Six of the ten biggest companies in the world are in the Oil & Gas Industries. The costs of global warming--literally, one planet--would bankrupt them if they ever actually had to pay for the damage in a lawsuit or under a new law.
It turns out that the dregs of those trillions of dollars buys not only protection from lawmakers, but that the lawmakers and related armies of talking heads will espouse the theories your pet "scientists" prepare as talking points, until even they no longer remember that you started those rumors. The stories about how good you are or how natural global warming is or about how government regulation of environmental protection is bad make it into the press (and your perspective jury pool) free of your fingerprints.
As a result, plenty of good people--even intelligent people who share the political beliefs of your army of lobbied lawmakers--come to believe that it's not your fault.
Poof, the anthropogenic nature of global warming and the needs for action and environmental regulation start going up in smoke. And you can keep burning your oil.
are you seriously using the perfect solution fallacy?
Exactly! Best reply I've read on Slashdot this week, s.petry.
The problem most people have with the climate change issue is that people with expensive agendas are found swirling all around it. There's lots of money on the table, waiting to be swept up by anyone proposing "environmentally Green energy alternatives" their business can supposedly provide. If you want to make sure that gravy train doesn't end, you've got to keep everyone fearful about the future and believing your solutions will save them.
The "carbon tax" thing isn't actually an inherently terrible idea. It falls apart in practice, though, because we simply don't have an equitable way to collect an appropriate amount of tax from everyone polluting and then spending it again on things that actually work to remove that much pollution again. All it does is help a few rich people get richer the more they can encourage people to continue contributing to the problem and then paying them to compensate for it.
The elephant in the room that many people choose to ignore is the fact that we've all collectively gotten so much benefit from the energy produced by the fossil fuels that are so despised. I don't know that it's remotely fair to make the oil, coal or gas company the "bad guy" who must pay for all the environmental damage the use of their fuels caused, when it was all of us willingly buying them or the energy produced by them, the whole time. There needs to be more recognition that fossil fuels helped advance society for everyone on this planet who could take advantage of them. And yes, it looks like that caused downsides we need to examine more closely and start addressing. But doing so may just involve accepting we're in for a slightly warmer climate, and relocating some people and buildings would be a good idea over the next 100 years.
Weather is not climate. For about the millionth time.
And as stated above, yes, the climate is changing.
How much of that is caused by man, and more importantly, how much will be caused by man in the next hundred years or so, has not been established. The models that purport to be predictive disagree with one another; disagree with the actual observed climate; offer no precursor climate event that shores up their ideas; suffer from precursor climate events that contradict their ideas; and are almost certain to be massively disrupted by technological change even if they were spot on WRT today's conditions anyway.
Aside from that, the obvious sane path is to contribute the least that is practical to changes in atmospheric gas mix, particulate levels, and temperature change. Solar and nuclear power are the two technologies that offer the best shot at reducing all of those. Solar is growing and advancing technologically at a very high rate, storage (a required facet of really solid general solar power supply) is behind but changing fast in the right direction, and nuclear... sigh. Nuclear is still suffering various slings and arrows that have little or no actual relevance today. Never underestimate the power of fear-mongering. They ever want to put a nuke in my back yard then PIIMBY (Put It In My Back Yard), I'll bake them a cake and move all my stuff out of the way.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
The game has been about money, which is where people hate and label people deniers. ...
If you're worried about the money before you determine the validity of the science you're already behind the game. If the scientists are right and you are wrong it's going to cost you a whole lot more money and possible cost you other things as well than they are asking of you now. You're just betting the scientists are wrong and that's probably a poor bet to make.
Nobody points out broadly-studied theories and models and historical behaviors when arguing climate change; they just claim arbitrary consensus. They bring nothing to the table but "I have met with the Council and they have rendered their decision!"
Actually, plenty of people have offered this information. Most of us are tired of doing so.
At some point, when the 300th idiot claims, "Einstein's relativity doesn't make sense, and here's my crazy theory about why!" you just want to say, "Hey, go read a textbook." This often comes up around evolutionary theory too among the "skeptics." There are thousand-page long college textbooks on evolutionary theory, but you'll still get morons claiming that "there's no consensus" and "WHERE'S THE PROOF?!?!?"
It's no good to just tell people they can believe you or go look for themselves. That's not a strong argument point; it's a position that suggests you don't actually understand why you're taking a position, other than that it seemed like the one everyone else was taking.
Except we've reached the point now where the evidence has stacked up so much that it's no longer rationally sustainable to argue against climate change. Yes, if you're arguing about a particular theory or a particular model, of course you should cite details, just as in your economics examples
But 90% of the public "debate" for climate change is over whether it exists AT ALL. We can argue about the magnitude of the change or how much various factors contribute to its cause, but for those people who deny it's happening at all, it's really not up for debate anymore.
And that's the problem. At some point you just turn to the lunatic young-earth creationist and say, "Go reader the freakin' college textbook on evolutionary theory. When you've digested it, and you feel like you still can refute all of it point-by-point, maybe come back and we can have a discussion."
But they won't do that. Just like the climate-change denier won't do that. They don't want to have rational debate anymore. They've decided their position a priori, and they'll seek out whatever evidence will support that a priori argument.
At that point, it's no good to debate AT ALL. And that's why many of us stop citing stuff. We're just tired... it's not that we don't understand. It's that the other side is a bunch of people who aren't interested in rational discourse anymore.