
Extreme climate change has arrived in America - moltensodium
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/national/climate-environment/climate-change-america/
======
Arrezz
I still find the fact that Exxon internal researchers knew about the incoming
crisis since 1982. The fact that they didn't act upon the information to me is
mind-boggling, I guess the profit motives were too strong. I wonder how they
rationalized it to themselves, if we don't do it then someone else will?

~~~
fromthestart
>I still find the fact that Exxon internal researchers knew about the incoming
crisis since 1982.

I'll keep posting about it untill this hysteria dies, though I fear that given
social pressures regarding anything representing "denial" will keep it alive
indefinitely. No one knew about an incoming crisis in the 80s. People were
aware about the possibility of climate change in the 80s. It took 30 years of
data collection, research, and computational modeling on increasingly modern
hardware, which allows for exponentially larger and more precise models,
before we had amassed enough evidence in a totally model driven field to
conclude that we may be _terraforming_ on the scale of 100 years.

~~~
mturmon
Your wording is somewhat oblique ("this hysteria"), and you are making
distinctions that are not clear ("no one knew" vs. "people were aware of the
possibility"; "terraforming" as a feel-good substitute for unplanned global
climate change), and claims that are very strong, sweeping, and incorrect
("totally model-driven field").

Let's correct two of these. Of course there are empirical observations related
to climate. There is a definition of 54 "essential climate variables" (ECVs),
see [1]. One of these is greenhouse gases [2]. At the bottom of the link, you
can see observing programs for CO2 and CH4, both in situ and satellite.

These are well-measured variables, with well-characterized error bars, and
models are tested against these observations. For instance, the ~400 ppm CO2
ECV is measured to within 1ppm quite regularly and has been for many years.
This is how we improve the models. The same kind of monitoring/model-
improvement feedback loop is in place for almost all of the ECVs, including
clouds and sea surface properties like temperature and salinity.

Another correction, relating to "no one knew" about a future crisis in the
1980s. Here is a paper [3] from James Hansen in _Science_ magazine, in 1981,
that clearly warns of crisis-level consequences. From the abstract -- In the
21st century, we will see "creation of drought-prone regions in North America
and central Asia, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent
worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage." For
whatever it's worth, this appeared on the NYTimes front page in 1981.

That's just one publication. Throughout the 1980s there were broad-based
studies, mandated by Congress, that indicated the scope of the problem. See
[4], from 1983.

[1] [https://gcos.wmo.int/en/essential-climate-
variables](https://gcos.wmo.int/en/essential-climate-variables)

[2] [https://ane4bf-datap1.s3.eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/wmod8_gcos/...](https://ane4bf-datap1.s3.eu-
west-1.amazonaws.com/wmod8_gcos/s3fs-
public/ghg_ecv_factsheet_201905.pdf?TJO3Z20j79hzWgwL4sT.qEhqWA3rf3Dz)

[3]
[https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html](https://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/abs/ha04600x.html)

[4] [https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18714/changing-climate-report-
of...](https://www.nap.edu/catalog/18714/changing-climate-report-of-the-
carbon-dioxide-assessment-committee)

~~~
fromthestart
>terraforming" as a feel-good substitute for unplanned global climate change),

Not true, please don't put words in my mouth. I use the term terraforming to
emphasize the magnitude of the claim. We are fundamentally changing the
properties of an entire planetary atmosphere, inadvertently.

>and claims that are very strong, sweeping, and incorrect ("totally model-
driven field").

Also not true. The point is that climate science by nature cannot be
experimental. We can only make predictions and then proof amounts to measuring
how well decades of measurements line up with predictions/models.

>Another correction, relating to "no one knew" about a future crisis in the
1980s. Here is a paper [3] from James Hansen in Science magazine, in 1981,
that clearly warns of crisis-level consequences. From the abstract -- In the
21st century, we will see "creation of drought-prone regions in North America
and central Asia, erosion of the West Antarctic ice sheet with a consequent
worldwide rise in sea level, and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage." For
whatever it's worth, this appeared on the NYTimes front page in 1981.

Again, given the non experimental nature of climate science, this was a
massive claim which requires decades of data collection and modeling to verify
before committing to sweeping social and economic policy reform which has
costs of its own.

People underestimate the fact that climate change is one of the most radical
ideas ever proposed by the modern scientific establishment, in terms of the
scale of the changes, the disastrous predicted consequences, and the scale of
societal change required for mitigation. We're talking about a potential
irreversible, runaway global extinction accidentally triggered by humans
100-1000+ times faster than any measured natural rate. Due diligence, in a non
experimental field, limited by 80s modeling hardware, took time. Meanwhile we
all benefited from the fossil fuels we (and our parents) burned.

~~~
mturmon
You said Climate Science is a "totally model-driven field" and I provided
facts correcting that sweeping claim.

It's not uncommon to hear this kind of claim on HN - sometimes people seem to
not really have on-the-ground information about how climate science works, and
are instead going by how they might _imagine_ it works -- a bunch of modelers
working in isolation.

That's not how climate science is done. For more on the relationship of
climate models to observations, see an old comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15613090#15620293](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15613090#15620293)

\--

Your reply says that you meant to say that Climate Science "cannot be
experimental". This, it turns out, is also not true. There are cases where
nature runs the experiment for us.

For instance, the large methane leak recently in the LA area allowed us to
understand the effectiveness of the inversion algorithms that are used to turn
observations of concentrations into observations of the emissions that
_caused_ those concentrations. For instance, to understand the correctness of
wind models.

Wildfires, volcanic eruptions, and ENSO onsets often serve as nature-given
checks on climate science predictions. They basically provide a "step
function" input that is a tool to characterize the system response to a shock.
For instance, we got a lot of science out of the varying climate-system
responses to different volcanic eruptions.

\--

You said that "no one knew" about a possible future crisis in the 1980s. I
supplied links showing that this is not the case -- the science establishment,
the Congress, and the readers of the front page of major newspapers knew.

Your reply counters with "what should we have done". That's another question,
isn't it?

~~~
fromthestart
>Your reply says that you meant to say that Climate Science "cannot be
experimental". This, it turns out, is also not true. There are cases where
nature runs the experiment for us.

>For instance, the large methane leak recently in the LA area allowed us to
understand the effectiveness of the inversion algorithms that are used to turn
observations of concentrations into observations of the emissions that caused
those concentrations. In other words, to understand the correctness of wind
models.

This is exactly what differentiates model driven from experimental sciences.
You cannot go out and define an experiment to confirm your claim, you can only
make observations of natural phenomena. Which can take decades when you're
considering sweeping, global changes, particularly when you're measuring
changes which _occur_ on scales of decades-centuries.

>You said that "no one knew" about a possible future crisis in the 1980s. I
supplied links showing that this is not the case -- the science establishment,
the Congress, and the readers of the front page of major newspapers knew.

Once again you are twisting my words. My point is to differentiate between
knowing that something is happening with certainty, e.g. a consensus that
climate is indeed changing due to human activity, and knowing of the
_possibility_ of something significant occurring, requiring substantial
evidence to match the claim. It took decades to gather enough evidence to
match the scale of the claim of _global_ climate change.

>Your reply counters with "what should we have done". That's another question,
isn't it?

Again I've done no such thing. My point is that we did what we should have -
it is not rational to make sweeping changes to society, culture, and economy
for every alarmist prediction uttered by a scientist, because such changes,
big or small, are not free. One requires a minimum degree of certainty and,
considering the magnitude of the implications of climate change, from the
perspectives of both consequences and mitigation, it isn't unreasonable to say
that 30 years is a relatively short time to establish a rigorous scientific
consensus given the age of the modern scientific establishment and the amount
of data that needed to be collected and analyzed because of the purely data
driven, non-experimental nature of climate science.

~~~
specialist
Do you have the same objections about astronomy, cosmology, archeology, etc?

------
ccbthr77673
What I find quite interesting is that there are numerous high-profile
politicians and media figures, along with vast numbers of trolls, who deny
that climate change exists, and block meaningful action to control it.

At what point do we learn the lesson that’s deeply embedded in our collective
consciousness (Noah’s Ark, the ant and the grasshopper) and decide that modern
states are not capable of dealing with the problem, assuming that climate
change is going to result in serious disruption, and look to make contingency
plans for ourselves and our families?

~~~
checktheorder
Modern nation-states are perfectly capable of dealing with climate change
issues. They're the only entities with the power to properly do so. The
problem lies in industry-bought politicians preventing those nation-states
from enacting effective policies.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Because of the free-rider problem, dealing with it requires international
cooperation between those nation-states. Which is possible, but difficult.

William Nordhaus' Nobel prize winning proposal would make that easier:
[https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-
riding/](https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/)

~~~
munk-a
Honestly, too bad. Even if some countries might fail to contribute their fair
share action just needs to be taken.

If folks can get an equitable system working then that's great - otherwise I
expect the US, India and China to bear the vast majority of the cost since
those three nations all have an immense amount to lose if global warming gets
more extreme.

Both India and China are in extremely weather sensitive areas with large
populations and a government that would be unable to cope if food shortages
became a thing and economic instability happened. America just doesn't want
the hassle of being the golden egg if food shortages break down, it'll
probably fair pretty well for quite some time, but the 40% of Americans that
are obese will be poorly situated to survive in extreme weather events.

~~~
bryanlarsen
You're right. The standard comment I hear is "Why should we do anything, China
isn't doing anything and it's bigger than us"

My response is:

1\. China is doing stuff. Not enough perhaps, but arguably more than we are.
2\. Who are we to say anything? Canada has the highest per capita emissions in
the world. If anybody should be first, shouldn't it be us?

But the free riding problem is still real. "Climate clubs" would completely
demolish the "but China" problem.

------
danans
I recently learned on a trip to the United Kingdom that former hop-growing
areas of the Southern UK have been purchased by French winemakers to grow
grapes, because global warming has made that region amenable to it [1], while
regions in France previously associated with viniculture are finding it
increasingly difficult to grow traditional wine grape varieties [2]

1\. [https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/english-
sparklin...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/08/02/english-sparkling-
wine-will-better-champagne-climate-warms-says/)

2\. [https://www.france24.com/en/20180914-down-earth-climate-
chan...](https://www.france24.com/en/20180914-down-earth-climate-change-
bordeaux-wine-future-merlot-grape-variety-winegrowers)

~~~
Balgair
I've family in Napa, Ca. One of the high schools is literally called Vintage
High and their mascot is the Crushers, after grape crushing machines [0].
Winemaking is as a part of Napa as the soil and air.

Wineries are moving up into Oregon and Washington now, following the climate
[1]. It takes ~7 years for the grapes to get to a point where you can make
wine out of them, hence moving up there now and planting.

This climate crisis is going to ruin Napa and already kinda is. ~81% of the
grapes can't manage in the heat by 2080 [2], that's 4 of every 5 vines just
dying in the sun. Meanwhile, the Napa Valley Vinters Association's head is
firmly in the sand [3] and remains steadfastly confused that climate is
weather.

[0] [https://vhs-nvusd-ca.schoolloop.com/](https://vhs-nvusd-
ca.schoolloop.com/)

[1]
[https://apnews.com/2a2da3558a1c47f6a2aeec8d409e47c2](https://apnews.com/2a2da3558a1c47f6a2aeec8d409e47c2)

[2] [https://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-
locations/napa-...](https://www.climatehotmap.org/global-warming-
locations/napa-valley-ca-usa.html)

[3]
[https://napavintners.com/about/climate_change.asp](https://napavintners.com/about/climate_change.asp)

------
programmertote
Not just in America, but in SE Asia as well. My gf grew up in one of the
largest cities on coastal area in our home country in SE Asia. Her city got
flooded every year for third year in a row now whereas it wasn't the case
before then. This year is the hardest one among three; the water rises up to
chest level and lives were lost.

I worry that poor countries like my home country, which has not much resource
to migrate people in mass, will face serious issues in the near future. Having
said that, I also believe in the resilience of the people there. They have
been through military dictatorship and whatnot, so I have faith that they will
survive albeit with huge cost of lives and property...

Climate change will disturb world's political and economic systems, and I hope
(and kind of believe) that the humanity can survive through this ordeal. In my
honest opinion, it's too late to stop climate change, and the best we can do
is to do our individual parts to mitigate the effects and come up with ways to
cope with it the best we can.

~~~
colmvp
Yeah it's been a while since I've read up about the growing number of refugees
but IIRC climate change has the potential to dramatically increase the amount
of migration to countries which won't have enough resources to properly with
the influx of people and put even more stress on local resources (i.e. water,
food).

~~~
phry
the far-right in Europe is resurgent largely on the back of anti-migrant
racism and hysteria, and that's with a crisis involving 5-6 million people.
now imagine things with 25 million people, or more, and not just focused in
Europe. it's going to be very bad.

------
patientplatypus
[https://www.wsj.com/articles/usda-report-sees-dire-
climate-c...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/usda-report-sees-dire-climate-
change-impact-on-u-s-crops-11563917840)

 _Unchecked climate change could mean that the weather conditions hurting
farmers this year will become increasingly common and result in higher costs
for the federal government, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture
report.

The report, issued by the USDA’s Economic Research Service, found that if
greenhouse gases are allowed to continue to increase, U.S. production of corn
and soybeans—which are more susceptible to extreme heat during growing
season—could decline as much as 80% in the next 60 years._

This is a problem. The US has some of the most fertile growing regions in the
world and if we stop exporting cheap grain there will be global hunger and
strife.

Shits about to get real yo.

~~~
mcguire
Not sure why you seem to be greyed:
[https://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm](https://www.arborday.org/media/mapchanges.cfm)

~~~
patientplatypus
TBH I've been posting stuff warning about climate change and environmental
damage. I think there are corporate propagandists on the site that are down
voting this information as a paid propaganda campaign.

He who controls the Spice controls the Universe.

------
mcfunk
This average increase mark is obviously very useful and important, but there's
another dimension to add on to that when it comes to temperature trends.

In the Twin Cities, for instance, the altered jet stream has greatly increased
both colder-than-usual and hotter-than-usual patterns that stick around for
longer. So although our average increase looks low, for instance this summer
espeially we are having unusually hot streaks followed by unusually cold
streaks (and the winters have been very bad over the past several years, with
two 'polar vortex' years due to arctic air masses displacing on us, which is
greatly impacted by climate change and arctic warming).

TL;DR I'd be very interested to look at the data shifts in temperature more
deeply and see which areas are impacted by both hotter AND colder weather,
which wouldn't show up in an examination of averages.

~~~
cknoxrun
I agree, in my city (Edmonton), the weather forecast even 1 day in advance has
effectively become useless this summer. It has been record breaking in terms
of the amount/days of rain, and I can say with confidence on at least half of
those days rain was not in the forecast.

The system has become completely unstable to the point where weather models no
longer seem to be able to output accurate results.

------
specialist
I like that this article states the warming has been a long time coming.

Filed under believe but cannot prove: Agriculture interrupted the background
warming & cooling cycle.

If humanity is to survive climate crisis, we'll need to actively manage the
entire carbon cycle. aka Garden Earth.

~~~
shanxS
> we'll need to actively manage the entire carbon cycle. aka Garden Earth.

This I agree with.

In all this turmoil and disappointment that we screwed up our ecosystem,
regardless of whoever is at fault, it's about time we step up to evolve into a
specie which can control their home planet's climate to a large extent.

I may be day dreaming but I see controlling climate as next progression in our
evolution. And when I say "controlling climate", I don't mean it at expense of
arresting development or hoping that people will just stop indulging
themselves etc.

------
mattferderer
One challenge is that those in the Midwest seem to welcome the idea of "global
warming" & several Midwestern states seem to be key to winning the
presidential election.*

I think that is a very hard marketing battle to win since the idea of climate
change to many people just means warmer temperatures.

I think a lot of people in colder climates feel they have little to lose. The
actual massive scale effect is extremely difficult to comprehend, even after
watching excellent documentaries. I think it is only something most voting
citizens will care about when it effects them personally & by then it would be
far to late.

* Based on living in the Midwest

\- Edit - Giving this more thought I wonder if these articles need to be less
about temperature changes & reflect more about increases of extreme weather &
effects on farms.

~~~
wott
Isn't the most of the Midwest already in normal times quite hot in the summer?
I mean, in my European eyes looking at weather stations reports and
temperatures maps, 95% of the US land is too hot in the summer, and the
Midwest climate is very continental, i.e. cold winters but hot summers too.

But yes, people have been indoctrinated in associating warmth and heat with
"good". I trace it back to the post-WW2 era, with the development of paid
holidays and tourism in the sun. Before that, the part of population who could
afford holidays would either go to spa resorts in the mountains or to the
North Atlantic shores; i.e. they would go to places which were cooler than the
places they usually lived, not to places that are hotter than those places
where they lived which are already hot in in summertime.

From the 60's to the 80's, sun was promoted as an extremely positive value.
The more sun you could get, the healthier you would be. You'd have to get more
and more tanned.

Previously, people protected themselves from the sun. Hat, scarfs, long
sleeves were worn. Shades were looked after, and large trees were planted
along the roads and most squares. Houses (also for practical reasons) had
smaller windows, unlike the fad of large window bays which make the room
behind unbearable as soon as the sun shows up.

There has been lately a little bit of back-pedalling on a few of those
aspects, but the main principle ("sun, heat, and light are good for you") has
not changed much and remain quite deeply ingrained in most people.

I find it infuriating that in 2019, TV and weather forecast anchors still
always present long streaks of hot, dry and cloudless days as a "beautiful
weather" for which we should rejoice. It doesn't matter if the main news theme
of the previous days has been climate change/warming, or the drought hitting
farmers, nope, 24 h later they use the same wording again. I mean, they could
finish their sentence with "a beautiful weather for those who fancy this or
that activity", that would be fine, but they never do: in their mind it is
must be good and welcome for everyone. At the same time, as a fair scale
gardener I see half of my crops die from the drought or the heatwave, because
it has rained only once in 8 weeks, despite the fact that I am supposed to
live in one of the chamber pots[1] of my country... :-(

I think it indicates a huge cultural inertia, even though this culture was
only (IMO) recently born, in the second half of the XXth century. Despite the
awareness which has been rising in the last 15 years, it hasn't yet translated
into the common mental model.

\--------

[1]: not sure how well it translates in English: a place where it rains very
often.

~~~
mattferderer
> Isn't the most of the Midwest already in normal times quite hot in the
> summer?

The thought is it will translate to less cold winters. I'm not arguing that
this is great logic, just pointing out the common thoughts I overhear.

~~~
wott
Oh yes, I have heard that too.

Following a bit the same kind of logic, I often hear people complaining "Phew,
enough with this bad weather!", when, after a series of 8 dry hot sunny days,
it has been raining only for a half-day (and it will not last any longer)...

Concerning farming, I'd rather have a steadily cold winter, than a warmer
winter with a 1 or 2 days cold spike a month after crops have started growing,
having started early because of a too early and too warm winter period. (We've
had that too this winter here.)

Having lived many years above Arctic Circle, would I have wished for warmer
winters? Shorter ones, yes, a bit, because it gets a bit monotonous in the
end. But warmer, not really.

------
_hardwaregeek
It's insane how many intelligent, thoughtful people I've met who still parrot
the line that "oh our children will be screwed". Or even worse, they make some
random allusion to scientific progress or God and claim it will all be okay.

No.

Science will not save us. God will not save us. It will __not __be okay. And
unless you 're currently on your deathbed, you will feel the effects of
climate change. You will be fucked.

I suspect only drastic, world wide, almost revolutionary political change
could effectively halt the massive carbon generating machine that is human
industry. Except the problem with massive revolutions is that they tend to
cause conflict, which tends to increase emissions (tanks don't exactly run on
solar).

Man, I'm pretty damn close to joining a doomsday cult.

~~~
rhino369
The scientific consensus re climate change isn't anywhere near that gloomy in
the short term range. We've already had nearly 1 degree C increase since 1975
and it hasn't been a disaster yet.

I think the far bigger problem will be that it won't really be that bad for
the next 50 years, leading to complacency, and we will hit the point of no
return before we really feel much impact in the richer western countries.

~~~
Bartweiss
I keep seeing people spread variants of "if we don't act now, climate change
will destroy the world 12 years" and "we only have 18 months to stop emitting
CO2". Not just by random social media users - quite a few journalists and even
members of Congress have said those things. I've even seen a few people
explicitly claim that they're suffering depression, not saving for retirement,
etc, because they expect climate change will kill them personally by 2050. Of
course, none of those claims are backed by science at all.

The 18 month stat is a mashup of two totally different deadlines. First, that
we need strong emissions commitments by 2020, which is not a meteorological
deadline but a political one: UN meeting schedules and the Paris Agreement
call for strengthened emissions plans by 2020, so failing to act by then
implies an overall lack of political will. Second, the IPCC report that CO2
emissions need to peak by 2020 to keep warming below 1.5 C by 2100. That's
important and hard to reach, but "peak" is not "become net negative" and >1.5C
is not "doomed".

The 12 year stat is basically backwards - confusing an emissions deadline with
a temperature peak. The IPCC finding is that we'll reach 1.5 C of total
post-1975 warming between 2030 and 2050, and that major emissions cuts by 2030
(and net-zero by 2050) could limit warming to 1.5C. The worst case described
was 3C by _2100_ , not 2030, and harms arriving some time after their "locked
in" warming thresholds.

None of that means it's not a serious problem, or that rapid action isn't
needed, but I'm really disturbed to see people predicting death and doom for
what are actually emissions deadlines. It seems like an attempt to trick
people into acting fast, but action that fast isn't actually possible. I think
that instead we're going to get to the 2020s and be hearing "you said the
world would end but things are still basically ok, you're full of shit,
clearly we don't need to keep taking action".

------
jbay808
While watching the HBO Chernobyl dramatization, I was struck by the Soviet
government's contradictory response of publicly denying the problem existed
and minimizing its extent, while at the same time giving the science team
almost carte blanche authority to requisition resources to solve the problem.
5000 tons of boron? Helicopters are on their way. The entire country's supply
of liquid nitrogen? It's yours. Robots? If they'll help, sure.

The show made a big deal about how communist secrecy and denial obstructed the
solution, made the problem worse, and even allowed it to happen in the first
place. "A nuclear disaster cannot occur in the Soviet Union".

But when I think about how we're reacting to climate change, it really seems
like we're pretending the problem doesn't exist the same way they did, but
without the corresponding succeed-at-all-costs extreme problem solving.

------
netwanderer3
The physical size of the Earth will never increase, yet human's ability to
multiply ourselves is infinite in theory. Something gotta give.

Going by evolutionary theory, that means the more our total population
increases the smaller average human body size must shrink, so we would consume
less input resources and produce less waste individually. Same reason why
giant dinosaurs went extinct yet little cockroaches survived. Those T-Rex'es
required massive calories consumption to sustain themselves, yet there was no
longer enough resources in the environment to fuel them.

The problem is for any of those biological changes to take place and for human
to evolve (assuming the evolutionary theory is true), that process will be a
slow and gradual one, likely to take hundred thousands or even millions of
years. Climate change certainly doesn't operate within even a remotely similar
time frame. Once it hits, resources will become scarce so in the worst case if
we cannot stop climate change, the only possible solution is to practice
reducing average consumption level to minimum, or to forecast optimal numbers
of the world's total population that can still be accommodated by the Earth at
each level of damage produced by climate change, then find a way to
relentlessly control that number to keep it within limit.

I sincerely hope we will never have to come to that scenario as countries
which own nuclear power will possess massive advantages over others.

~~~
scott_s
Humans are not predicted to grow infinitely. As areas industrialize, more
people have less children. Projections I have read predict we will level off
at about 12 billion people by 2100.

But the areas of the world now with less population growth (such as the US)
also consume much more resources than the areas with higher population growth.
So resource consumption _is_ a big problem. But I think it's not helpful to
frame it as a "population" problem, as we expect the population to level off.

------
444bradly
Anthropogenic warming hypothesis states: 1) Human activities have a net
warming effect 2) that effect is large

I have read 2007 IPPC report and evidence of the above two claims is burried
under mountains of fear mongering and dire predictions about the consequences
of the claims being correct. The actual evidence is barely addressed and comes
down to trusting a handful of computer models that only a few dozen people
understand.

Recent warming amount and rate is not unusual for the earth's recent pre-human
past.

When you add to this the myriad of political causes that have latched on to
anthropogenic hypothesis being true, its pretty reasonable that informed
individual is sketical. Especially with authoritarians calling for violence
and censorship against"climate deniers".

~~~
commandlinefan
I feel the same way - I’m somewhat skeptical partly because it’s good to be
skeptical of most things, especially something that you can’t really see, but
mostly because when I ask the climate change people what I should do in order
to combat climate change, their first and only answer tends to be “vote
democrat and never vote republican!” That being said, I still mostly do what
(I think) the climate change people say I ought to do such as recycle, prefer
energy efficient alternatives, and try to walk when I can. To the extent it
doesn’t hurt us, we all might as well be “environmentally conscious” even if
it turns out we didn’t actually have to be.

~~~
adrianN
You are unfortunate to live in a country with only two parties, one of which
denies that there is a problem.

~~~
DuskStar
One denies there is a problem, the other says there's a problem and the only
solution is to fully fund their (enormously expensive) pet projects and in
other ways give them large amounts of power.

I'd rather have politicians saying "there's no such thing as climate change"
with people fighting back against them then have politicians saying "climate
change is real, and you can help fight it by giving up plastic straws!"
sapping the willingness of people to do anything more - something that might
actually be of use.

