Slashdot Mirror
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.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
That's not actually a ringing endorsement.
ran out of steam 20 years ago.
Do you have ESP?
Now we just have to wait 30 more years for millennials to get into positions where they can do something about it.
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.
... explained this as "Science advances one funeral at a time." The longer version is more like, "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."
The game has been about money, which is where people hate and label people deniers. Everyone is supposed to pay a carbon tax to some unknown entity to sustain their current standard of living. In fact, the demand has not just been for paying off some unknown entity, but wealthier countries like the US, UK, Germany, etc.. all need to pay for previous generation of carbon.
We have massive amounts of pollution. We know it, but nobody will do anything. It's cheaper to dump and pay off people to look the other way than fix the problem. People making big piles of cash are not held accountable, and the politicians with greasy palms are not either.
Until we have a better solution than "give money to the people in shadows" people will argue and nothing will get done. Except that people like Bill Nye will still get paid very well to keep us arguing.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Deniers don't give a shit whether climate change is happening and don't care whether the science is correct. What 'deniers' are angry about, and what they are objecting to, is the obscene waste of public funds, the use of climate change as a justification for social engineering projects, and the utterly incompetent handling of the situation by governments. The term 'denier' is essentially used as a condescending replacement for 'objector'.
Climate change could have been addressed decades ago had we invested heavily in nuclear power, but the people who are frothing at the mouth ranting about climate change are the same people who have prevented the expansion of nuclear power. The very people who have created the climate change issue are chastising us telling us we need to destroy our economy and society by spending countless billions on inefficient, inconsistent and obscenely expensive renewable. 'Deniers' are sick of the idiocy, the hypocrisy and the waste, and rather than denying climate change, we're just not listening and we don't care.
The situation we have is basically this:
Environmentalist: Climate change is going to destroy the world! We must reduce our carbon output!!!
'Denier': How about we build some carbon neutral nuclear power plants? They're cheap, consistent and will solve the problem.
Environmentalist: No! We won't tolerate those filthy things! We'd rather burn coal and gas than have the satanic nuclear power!
'Denier': Fuck off then. If you're not going to be reasonable about this I just don't care any more.
For politicians and environmental groups aren't interested in solving the problem but instead just want to push forward their ideology. They want renewable energy, not because it will be effective at reducing climate change or because it's cheap, but for idealogical reasons. Politicians, particularly in the EU, want to use it as an excuse to bring tens of millions of people from Africa and the Middle East to Europe because they say that land will be unusable. Politicians want to use climate change as an excuse to raise taxes, because they believe in high taxation.
'Deniers' are sick of the whole situation. We're sick of effective solutions being rejected. We're sick of the abuse in the name of climate change. We're sick of your endless ranting about climate change but total inaction. We've reach a point where we're simply not listening. You've abused this situation to such an extent that we don't want to hear anything you have to say and we certainty won't do anything to help with your stupidity.
If you want to build nuclear power stations to resolve the problem, I'm all for it. With them in place we could take our time to develop efficient, cost effective renewable sources of energy. However, if you want to generate energy by hugging trees, if you want to tax the life out of us, if you want to destroy our lifestyle, if you want to destroy our nations by bringing "victims of climate change" into the country by the boat load, then fuck you! We will actively oppose anything you say or do!
ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH!
Sick of making the same tired old post.
WE GET IT.
WE BELIEVE YOU.
Now what the FUCK would you like us to do about it that we're a) not already doing, b) will provably (or probably) make a measurable difference within a reason time, c) doesn't cost the (non-literal) Earth, d) that will get approval from those parties that need to do it?
Ignore all the name-calling and shit, let's assume we ALL agree it's happening. I'm of scientific mind, I can do that for any subject that I agree with or not.
But... Now what?
Why is that? They all claim to be "concerned" about it.
It's called the Tragedy of the Commons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Even if you know and understand the concept, and you want to fix the problem, it's pointless to do it by yourself, because somebody else will pick up your slack. The only effective solution is to impose mandatory controls for everybody.
Social and financial pressure to agree (or at least pretend to agree). Everyone is now too concerned about "getting Eich'ed" to take a stand against any of the typical left-liberal talking points. So, of course, the same left-liberals are going to harp on the consensus that they willed into existence through terror to defend their righteousness. In the end, they might be right...maybe. But undoubtedly the way the treated people on that road makes them pieces of shit.
Bill Nye is an entertainer, not a scientist. Millennials are, by definition, young, inexperienced people. That young people believe what a TV personality tells them is not exactly a news flash.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
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?
Bill Nye (along with Al Gore) got caught faking a experiment to "prove" climate change - the results were totally not reproducible in any way and the footage he had was cut to make it look like it proved his claim (google "bill nye fake experiment" to see it exposed). Since then, I don't see why anyone listens to the guy. He's Bill Nye The Propaganda Guy
It seems every time there's 'proof' of man made global warming, the data is cooked, the experiments are not reproducible, the predictions don't materialize. Not sure how that state of affairs became the standard of "science".
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.
What troubles me is the suddenness at which that phrase seemed to have been dropped by the media and "believers" in favour of the more generic term "climate change" that does not, somewhat conveniently, attribute a possible cause.
Do I believe "climate change" is happening? Yes, according to geological evidence it's happened at least four times before during planetary Ice Ages, we're probably about due a fifth Ice Age.
Do I believe man is the cause? Unsure, I don't think we've been able to measure our potential impact on the planet over a long enough period to make too many assumptions - we'd probably need to compare temperature measurements over the century before industrialisation to temperature measurements after industrialisation to make any reasonable assumptions. But we don't have that data.
Do I think burning less fossil fuels, recycling more and being green are worthwhile? Not everyone who smokes gets cancer but not smoking reduces the risk of cancer. I don't smoke because I want to minimise my risk of cancer, in the same way I am happy to be greener *in case* my carbon emissions are having a big impact on climate.
I don't see the above as being a doubter, I am happy to proceed with caution until empirical evidence proves things either way - and I don't think the proof exists for either way except that we are very confident that this planet went through at least four cooling/warming cycles before man was ever here. Therefore my opinion at the moment is climate change is more than likely natural, whilst keeping an open mind.
Windows 10 is great - I used it to download Linux.
It's very hard to find a millennial-aged person that is not concerned about climate change.
Of course Millennials are concerned about it. Modern school systems and society have basically indoctrinated Millennials in the belief of man-made climate change. Society often considers them to be fools or ignorant for even questioning the belief, instead of encouraging them to ask "why" and search for truths and data that supports or refutes climate change theories. Furthermore, Millennials have never been taught or seen the things that make some of the older people doubt the validity of claims related to global climate change.
The fact that Millennials believe in things related to climate change really has nothing to do with greater acceptance of scientific research. It is just a product of their upbringing.
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.
It's not a fallacy in this case, because only a perfect (or at least nearly perfect) solution will actually make a difference.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Imagine having people that used to own slaves still being able to vote today
You mean as opposed to having people that used to force people with black skin at the back of the bus still being able to vote today?
computer models that rely on dat athat stops prior to 1976 isn't evidence. That's a broken model.
Well, I guess it's a good thing that there are also people running models with modern data. But that wasn't even my point. The point is that all the tools and data are there to show how the consensus is wrong. And yet, nobody's doing that. If you think the model is broken, please fix it, and show your results. You'll be famous.
There is a middle ground between the consensus being wrong and the models being right.
We KNOW the last century has been warming.
We KNOW that CO2 concentration has been increasing.
We KNOW that CO2 is coming from our activities.
We KNOW that increased greenhouse gases will trap more energy and cause warming.
That's the consensus. Things like how bad things get by 2100 and what impact our changes in emissions will have are NOT well understood. It's the IPCC that says so too, so again that's also the consensus.
The models do NOT have strong evidence to help us predict the impacts of climate change. This is because the models CAN NOT realistically hind cast the global energy imbalance, let alone predict it. The IPCC states as much in the fifth AR: ...maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system
It's fundamental that the entirety of the physics beneath global warming is more energy being trapped leading to higher temperatures. When the models can NOT accurately hind cast this without being hand tuned, they are NOT able to predict the future impacts either.
That isn't saying models are worthless. Models are terrifically valuable in furthering our understanding of climate functions, and iterative improvements to this will get us to the point where they CAN hind cast energy imbalance on their own. Until they reach that benchmark though, we do not have a strong understanding of what impact future emission and change scenarios look like. We are vastly over stating our understanding to suggest otherwise.
Instead of pointing out the problem I suggest we start pointing out solutions.
Why are coal miners even in business? I mean if global warming is a problem, and burning coal makes it worse, then shouldn't we see coal miners find something else to do? We see coal miners in business because people want cheap electricity. Without something that can provide electricity as cheap as coal we will burn coal.
We don't burn coal because we want global warming. We burn coal because we like hot pizza in the winter, ice cream in the summer, air conditioned movie theaters, computers, cell phones, and all the other things that cheap electricity can bring us. What alternatives do we have? Wind is cheap but we can't rely on the wind to blow. Solar power costs double or quadruple what coal power costs. If we burned wood for electricity then we'd have made the land barren long ago.
Bill Nye is an engineer, he's studied this stuff in school and for his job. For a product to sell it must be on time, on budget, meet fit/form/function, and be better than the other guys' products. Do we have anything that can do that? Yes, nuclear fission.
Instead of saying the same thing over and over again about how climate change is "undeniable" I say we start talking about how to fix this. Barring some leap in technology the only solution we have is nuclear fission. So I say we need to talk about how we are going to build nuclear power plants at a rate sufficient to replace coal and meet future demand.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.