Tell you what, look at the link of the plug-in cars that was helpfully linked early and realize that more and more are putting their money were their mouth is. And many of the ones getting hybrid cars are also helping.
But once again, we already know that you did agree **that that is not the main way to make a big change. **
For the umpteenth time, what you are complaining about is as silly as telling a member of the old British Parliament that they were hypocrites because they were still dirtying the river Thames.
Their real worth was by working for new laws, regulations, funding and planning for systems that all had to be paid at the beginning and maintained later. (** And that includes those members of parliament **. That they were also going to be affected was a given to them.
It is really silly to demand all to be pure before a big change, many do understand that the sacrifice will come right at the time of the change and later, and they are not afraid to face the consequences of that change.
Well, I read on tah Bookface that my niece and many others sez that the CA drought was preventable and man made, there is no such thing as overpopulation of the world, and and vaccines are the devil.
They must be right since they are so vocal.
Setting aside the ignorance being promulgated and fought in this thread, there’s a free online 7 week course on climate denialism being offered at the University of Queensland, Australia. It makes use of inoculation theory, a method of communicating science when the underlying topic is socially contentious. I think the course is self paced, but I haven’t signed up for it yet. The course started on April 28th. I hope to attend it.
Introductory You tube vid, which I haven’t viewed:
I’ve finished most of week 1. The short videos were entertaining. The interface is a little clunky, though I’ve seen a lot worse. But vids are time consuming relative to the written word. Maybe I should poke around the lead professor’s website. Link: Skeptical Science.
97% of all climate scientists accept the consensus on global warming, while about 70% of TV presentations show both sides of the issue. It’s sort of like inviting a moon hoaxer to comment on a NASA launch for balance, or maybe inviting a flat earther every time there’s a plane crash or discussion of shipping.
To be fair, the prestige media does a better job of informing their readers, at least since 2006.
This sounds like what I was describing. You think because someone doesn’t bike to work, they don’t think global warming is serious. If you have a big family, you may need a large car. That doesn’t mean you don’t want to fight climate change, it means electric vans aren’t there yet.
Why, because Al Gore travels via jet instead of hitchiking? That’s a nonsense objection. Who in particular are you castigating here? Anyone that takes a jet? That’s just silly, because 1. No one in any power wants to outlaw jets. 2. The modern world requires important people to fly places.
Agreed. Then why bring up:
It’s nothing but a nonsense objection. And it’s based on a shallow imagining of what someone who wants action of climate change does in his own life. It’s not a profound point, it’s a distraction based on incomplete information.
Thanks for the links, I’ll have a look. If you have access to the New Scientist online archives, you might be interested in checking out the issue of the week of October 29 - November 4, 2011. It’s a special report called “Unscientific America”, subtitle “A dangerous retreat from reason”. One article especially relevant in the context of climate change denial is called “Selling the Truth”. Its premise is that “opponents of science are experts at winning the battle for hearts and minds”, but there’s a lot of other discussion about why there is so much denial in American society of established scientific facts, AGW being certainly the foremost.
No future public crisis rises to the level of extracting current personal sacrifice.
This is the tragedy of the commons.
Nearly everyone cares about global warming. They care about unclothed, unfed, brutalized children as well.
All of the Great Causes have general support because our human nature includes altruism along with narcissism.
To assuage the hypocrisy that we will personally continue to live richly despite the putative longer-term AGW consequence, we choose a variety of approaches.
Live richly; suggest broad sweeping ameliorations which, until implemented, leave us living richly. (Al Gore; )
Live richly; ridicule the idea that humans are very good at predictions (Chief Pedant; Fox News?)
Live richly; earnestly pursue and promote the Science (your_name_here)
Live richly; Preach it Brother! about the coming crisis and the stupidity of the ostriches
Live richly; purchase indulgences such as carbon credits
…etc
It is way too intoxicating to not get caught up in a Great Cause, either by promoting it or fighting it.
We are just not going to personally sacrifice our for a putative greater good for humanity down the road. The personal consequence of current sacrifice is not proximate enough.
We have borrowed trillions from our children in support of living richly. We are chewing up the earth in a thousand ways beyond carbon output. The unborn billions coming online will do the same.
Not because we do not care enough to sacrifice, but because we do not trust everyone else to sacrifice to the same extent.
Most sceptics (aka deniers) would also have agreed with the two (yes, only two) questions from which the fable 97% comes.
The 97% comes from 75 positive answers out of 77 scientists. Not quite a representative sample.
[QUOTE]
Not quite. It’s more of the excess rather than the lack of action. You got 5 kids? Get a van, sure. (Mitsubishi has an Outlander PHEV that looks great, and, of course the Audi Q7 e-tron PHEV is sick). I’m more against getting a V8 F150 to go to Starbucks alone. But, at least get some CFLs, turn off some lights; show me that you care even if it’s in the small stuff.
Again, I haven’t mentioned Al Gore. Evidently, AG has to take a private plane to some places and it may even be the most sensible solution. But, say, sending the plane back home to bring his lucky USB would be wrong. Taking a private jet to fly alone from NYC to DC in a non-emergency would be wrong. Like Bono having a hat sent by plane.
more like, “show me that you care” than anthing else. At least go through the motions. It’s really a minor thing, though.
I’ll retract any statrement that distract from my bigger point: At least do something.
As usual it is important for contrarians to ignore other past and recent research to confuse an issue like that.
[George Carlin]And aWoman [/GC]
O course, like effort like this shows the issue remains, Jefferson was right by warning us that ignorance would undermine a nation. And in this case, not just the USA.
I care, and act to counter warming. Global warming, regional climate change, erosion, water pollution, and many other “causes”, I do shit about it, and before I logged on today I quickly painted part of my black roof white. (pics if you don’t believe it) Part of it, because I am an old fuck, and also money. It cost a lot of money. But mostly because I’m old. And the sun got above the trees, and I had to stop for now. Hence the quickly part.
This is absolute shit work, a hot dirty roof, back breaking shit, up and down the ladder, in a hurry before the sun gets to the area, cleaning, painting, then clean up, and now online. This will make my life under the roof cooler, keep my yard and house cooler, and as the energy secretary said,
Seriously. No kidding.
I painted my last roof white in 2010 after I first heard about it. Yeah, white tiles would be nicer, but it’s really expensive to re-tile just to get it white. But I actually like the look.
You know how many other people painted their roofs in my area? None. I know because google shows it.
How about the new neighborhood? None. People won’t even pick white shingles when paying for a new roof. They “don’t like the way it looks”. I’m not kidding. The hundreds of dollars in savings on AC each year does not matter to them.
People just do not care
They don’t want trees, they don’t want white roofs, they are idiots. Tell em it will help cool the area? They could give two fucks.
It’s maddening. For added irony, a lot of people think I am a denier of science, because I am skeptical of the claims made about climate change. And yet I am the one up on the roof this morning painting my new roof white.
“New” meaning new to me. The roof is not “new”. An added bonus of painting it, besides the energy saving and cooling of the entire yard, is it will last about ten years longer, by blocking the sun and rain damage to the shingles.
But try and get somebody to do it? Good luck. Roofs should be white, or better yet, covered with solar panels. The only black part of a roof should be the solar water heating area.
So, of course there are people that do care, but repeated attempts to undermine science and the efforts that are made to make a very significant change, points actually to those efforts of undermining as having a mostly political reason. As we have seen, huge bones of doubt (debunked to dead many times) are constantly tossed to the mostly rank and file Republicans that do think that nothing is going to happen.
Too many of the contrarian peers and friends need to be supported about the unfounded scepticism they have, it is troublesome for the social life of many loud contrarians that do claim to have an understanding of the problem to suddenly despair and wonder why they have to help support those contrarian friends.
If the people talking about doing something, actually did what they want everybody else to do, it would certainly help. Like making that hot roof white. Like the White House roof. But the people preaching don’t seem to actually do anything, which makes people not care.
Of course some people actually do change things. Of everybody in the world actually did something, like whitening the artificial heat trapping surfaces we create, it would be huge. Simply huge.
But if it costs a dime, or they have to actually lift a finger, forget about it.
Obama has put solar panels, exactly the other option you mentioned. (Not the whole roof, as there are security concerns about covering all the roof with them, and it is very likely that that is also one reason why white paint is not used also).
But as always what people do will not stop you from ignoring what you yourself claimed too.
But this demonstrates that once again the opposition to the changes come mostly from political reasons.
Sure, not even a link to video of the solar panels being added to the WH roof will do it.
And one of the big problems now is that there is a good chunk of the people that are trusting the Republicans (that had their campaigns financed in large part by the fossil fuel industry) on the denial that is being made.
