Why Americans don't care about climate change. An interesting theory.

There are a lot of reasons for skepticism.

What do I need to do differently for climate warming? Is that the same action to stop climate cooling?

Dire predictions have not come true.

There have been reports of data being faked.

Warming will help farming and increase the food supply in many locations.

We have been 5-10 years away from running out of oil since before I was born. When we run out of oil, carbon emissions will be drastically reduced and that might solve the problem.

I've never seen a study identifying the best climate that we should target and how I should change my lifestyle to make that happen. Is it 2 degrees cooler? 5 degrees warmer? What is the goal? Why do we think the climate over the last 50 years is the most ideal?

Too many alarmists have huge carbon emissions. Heating my house 1 degree less in the winter would save less than one of their trips to a climate conference. Maybe we'll act differently when the alarmists act differently.

The treaties the US has signed with other countries restricts the US carbon emissions more than other countries. That seems to suggest that the US is being asked to sacrifice more. That doesn't sound like the best way to approach a global problem.

US politicians and the media have lied to us about many issues. How do we know this isn't just another lie? Follow the money and you will see it all goes to support the narrative, which if true, wouldn't need more money to support it.

When ocean levels rise, people on the coast can move to the mountains.

Are you aware that the glaciers started shrinking before the industrial revolution? Really makes you think???

"...because the OBSERVED effects are just not as dire as we are told they are."!! This casual conclusion is not only self-contradictory but it is fatuous and untrue! What a glib piece of b.s.! Maybe you could read and comprehend the 2020 National Geographic special issue, "How We Save The World--an optimist's guide"!

its clear and fair. And lots of pictures! The "Mark Left By Humanity" is "dire" indeed!

Its been said multiple times on this thread - because the people who use the most carbon are unwilling to break their habits, regardless of political party. Most Americans burn carbon driving, heating/cooling their home, and air travel. No one wants to give those up or have someone restrict their use of those three things. Heck, try telling Ivy League professors they can only go to one conference every other year that involves long-haul air travel because of the carbon emissions. You would get just as much pushback as a Don't Tread on Me dude with his giant Dodge Ram that he never uses in any other way than commuting to work 20 miles on paved roads. To me, France is the only major economy that has ever made hard choices - their electrical grid is nuclear-based and they have banned internal short haul plane flights where the TGV provides equivalent service.

uhh OP what in the world are you talking about lol.

Of course Americans care about climate change. It's just that we do have half the country that is totally brainwashed by extremist right wing propaganda to pretend like they live in a fantasy world. Anyone in America who deals in reality and not right wing fantasy worlds cares a lot about climate change.

Could it be that you think Americans don't care about climate change because you are in fact one of those reality denying Americans who lives in an echo chamber where you think nobody cares about it? Cuz based on your post it sure sounds like that is who you are.

Ok, but you seem to think that it actually is a real thing. It is not. This is a rehash of Malthus, or the Population Bomb, or the Club of Rome. Climate change is not a new theory. It is merely a rehash or scarcity arguments made by many others throughout history all of which have proven laughably wrong.

The main reason they are all wrong is because they make assumptions that are not real. The reason people don't react is not because the timeline is so far out, but because the whole principle of the argument is bullcrap. We could go on for hours about how climate alarmism research is funded by groups that benefit from green programs, or how an scientist who disagree with the climate change hysteria are silenced, or how humans have constantly engineered solutions to deal with evolving climate which should make the issue moot.

But the bottom line is this is the exact same Malthusian argument that even Malthus himself later rejected.

I don't know if it's a real thing or not. What seems real to me is that winters here are milder than they used to be, I'm totally fine with that, and summers are a bit more humid. It's not a field I have anything resembling expertise in. I'd be forced to form opinions based on other people's writing and I don't even consider myself knowledgeable enough to do that well. I have observations and questions so I sometimes find these sorts of discussions interesting. The thing about this topic is mostly everyone who's into it has some agenda that they're pushing, some career they're hoping to preserve or advance. So yes, there are research groups that profit from green programs and I don't necessarily see that as always a bad thing. And there are industries that would be far less profitable if not go totally out of business if a massive green agenda. I don't really have beliefs or conclusions here which is one reason why I bothered to read this thread. One thing I am sure is real is that the climate is going to do what it's going to do no matter what I believe.

I disagree, only on the basis that there are tons of illiterate folks that don’t give a damn about climate change, and don’t ever consider the funding of climate research.

I probably could read and comprehend "How We Save the World." I've read and comprehended many such pieces. Some seem convincing. Some don't. Many are contradictory. I'm not sure what seems contradictory to you when I say the I haven't seen any climate change effects in the US that are as dire as the predictions I often see. That's not to say that there aren't many people whose lives and property aren't destroyed by destructive weather. But that sort of experience has been part of life long before anyone knew what petroleum was or how and why to burn it.

Since most posters aren't aware of alternative theories for climate change or the flaws in the computer models to predict future climate, here is a quick primer. You can research this on your own in Bjorn Lomborg's book False Alarm or at Andrew Watts website wattsupwiththatDotCom.

One way, flawed to be sure, to test future computer model predictions is to see how well they worked in the past. CO2 emissions only began to increase dramatically after 1850. As such, they cannot explain the Roman Warm Period, the Maunder Minimum, the rise from 1650 to present day, the decline from 1940 to 1970, or the pause between 1997 and 2016. In fact, the 2009 Climategate email hack revealed the steps scientists took to "hide the decline" from 1940 to 1970, largely debunking Mann's hocky stick theory used by Al Gore in his Inconvenient Truth video.

In short, the models are not accurate. They cannot explain why temperature fluctuated in the past prior to the rise in CO2. After CO2 emissions began to rise, the models cannot explain the decline from 1940 to 1970 or the pause from 1997-2016.

Is there a theory that explains these fluctuations going back to 1600? Yes. Unfortunately, it doesn't generate any money for businesses or power grabs by politicians so it has been attacked by other scientists.

It's the cosmic ray affecting cloud cover theory advanced by Henrik Svensmark 20 years ago. It's too complex to explain in a few words, but here's a short version. Cosmic rays cause an increase in cloud cover. High sunspot activity increases solar wind, which in turn blocks cosmic rays from the atmosphere, which in turn reduces cloud format, which in turn heats the earth and importantly the oceans, which flow in a 20-30 year cycle.

Sunspot activity was very, very low in the Maunder Minimum, but it has been mostly high since 1700.

All the early IPCC climate change reports stated that cloud cover was not well understood. Interestingly, there is no reference to the uncertainties of cloud cover in the most recent IPCC report or a reference that it is understood. It's just omitted.

Cloud cover is also complex. Clouds at night keep heat in. Clouds in the day block heat. Clouds in polar regions keep heat in, etc.

Bottom line: The models don't even accurately predict what has happened in the past 100 years. They cannot be trusted to predict what will happen in the coming 100 years... certainly not to the point that we should be taking some of the actions that are being recommended.

In ten years Miami will be underwater!

Americans don’t care because of this.

en.m.wikipedia.org

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

The Boy Who Cried Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 210 in the Perry Index. From it is derived the English idiom "to cry wolf", defined as "to give a false alarm" in Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and glossed b...

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That city needs a bath

When I was in high school and early college, around 1970, there were climate "experts" predicting that we would have a climate disaster by the start of the next century, millions of potential deaths, parts of the habitable world becoming uninhabitable, and so on. The predicitions were based on computer models and the impending disaster was that we were going to have another ice age. I'm very skeptical of long range predicitons about the behavior of complex systems in those sorts of time frames.

That doesn't necessarily mean I'm denying that the world might be getting warmer. From observation it seems possible. I don't know enough to affirm or deny that our technology is the prime cause but I do know there have been plenty of warm eras long before humans were burning fossil fuels. I've spent much of my life in academia and I know the way you get hired and advance your career is by getting published and when there is a solid consensus around an idea publishing ideas that conflict with that consensus does nothing to advance your career, if you can even get published at all. So it neither surprises nor convinces me that the "experts" in the field are largely in agreement here.

If there was one scientist whose views on this I was influenced by it was Freeman Dyson. He had Einstein's old job at the Institute for Advanced Study so you'd think he was pretty much on the ball. His take was that we really do not have enough information about all this to draw conclusions. He took a lot of flak about this from people who said he's not qualified to comment because he wasn't a specialist in any discipline related to climate science. To me that made his ideas more convincing precisely because he was NOT a "climate scientist" and therefore did not need to conform to their ideas to advance his career.

Bro says this as clearly a rightie who might not even believe in science.

Ps: No disrespect to any right wingers intended.

Do you really have a strong scientific background? They are not games they predict what will happen pretty well.

However there was a careful balance that had ben maintained over the millions/billions of years. The ocean can not absorb the extra CO2 so that is what is causing global warming.

it's basic basic basic facts. weather data is easily available online from NWS. you can compare what temps were where you live 40-50 years ago to now and it's generally up 5-10F. the tempo of storms has also picked up, which leads to longer power outages, increased storm damage, bigger insurance claims, and rising premiums.

the basic basic basic problem is try getting a right winger with a job in the oil industry to listen to any of that. and they are highly programmed through TV and podcasts by what are basically lawyers and PR people with a series of "even ifs" where they never have to think for themselves. it's not getting hotter. ok, it's getting hotter but it's not our fault. ok, it's getting hotter and is our fault but it should actually be getting cooler which is dangerous.

when your home insurance is doubling or tripling the world -- and i mean the business world, ironically -- is trying to tell you to change.

Well if the world gets 2 degrees hotter the coral reefs die. This then means that we will be net losing oxygen as algae and coral reefs produce 50% of the worlds oxygen. Furthermore it will if left maintained cause the polar ice sheet to collapse. This will actually cause the sea level to rise. Droughts will cease rarity and become basically an annual occurrence. If you don't believe me just look it up.