Observationally, self-serving denial seems to go through steps:
1. It's not happening.
2. Ok, it is happening, but it's not our fault.
3. Ok, it is our fault, but it's too hard to be worth addressing right now.
4. Ok, it would have been worth addressing at the time, but it's too late so we should learn to live with it.
These apply generally across the political spectrum, but specifically with respect to climate change, if people are shifting from step 1 to step 2 and even step 3 as per the article I suppose that is a form of progress in the sense that they are moving closer to reality. Having said that, no step requires that anyone take action or make sacrifices so practically it doesn't matter which step they're on.
Timothy Snyder calls this pattern of motivated thinking "politics of inevitability".
At first you think everything's fine so you don't have to do anything. Then when it's no longer possible to lie to yourself about that you immediately switch to "can't do anything anyway" so you can continue doing nothing.
His main example was the "end of history" when dealing with autocracies around the world. At first we thought they will solve itself because we're on the winning side of the history. Then we immediately switched to "nothing can be done".
there is no accepting it state, people believe in flat earth. There is nothing you can do for them. No fact or reasoning will ever convince them and it only entrenches their convictions.
They want to feel special for figuring out 'the thing' and the reality of it not being 'the thing' means they are idiots and back to being idiots. A largely unacceptable proposition (there are people who do get out).
This goes the other way as well. While even the most basic rules of critical thought denies a flat Earth, no amount of critical thought or science can prove objectively what’s going on with the Earth. Anyone who says otherwise is massively oversimplifying and misunderstanding what science actually is. There is very little that is concrete in science (known as “laws”), everything else is our best guess and can change as time goes on. And especially when corporate interests are at play, it muddies the entire conversation.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
Remember when telling people that covid escaped from a laboratory was considered Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy and should be censored? And then youtube deleted every single video that posted that theory. I remember.
Maybe they deleted every single video you saw that posted that theory, but they didn't delete every single one I saw. Probably because the videos I saw actually included evidence and did not also in the same video offer bogus medical advice.
True. The problem with many people these days is that they think they are so smart and others so dumb that they take it upon themselves to be the saviors of the world by only giving the dumb unwashed masses the types of "truths" they are able to absorb.
All these people seeking to censor fall into this category.
I never saw the upside of so haphazardly pushing the lab-escape narrative. Even if it's true, this approach basically ensures we're not going to get the evidence, and simultaneously exposes the US, Asian Americans, and YouTube to risk and liability.
And a personal level, I never said the lab leak theory was impossible. I simply figured it was a racist dog whistle because Fox News was the one parroting it. Furthermore, focusing on the "suspicious origin" of the "wuhan flu" while broadly ignoring public health advice diminished the credibility of those talking about it.
No, no, no - if they could have pinned it fully on China, it would have been 24x7 on the news.
But the big problem was that funding for the Wuhan Institute of Virology came from the good old U.S. - from Dr Fauci-sponsored EcoHealth alliance. NIH awarded EcoHealth Alliance - who were contracted with the Wuhan Institute of Virology - three grants between 2014-2020 to especially study bat coronaviruses.
So, the original idea was to fully cover up the US sponsorship and there was a LOT of hush up and be silent around the matter. The U.S. does not want to be held responsible after all.
That never happened. Telling people covid escaped from a lab was never a threat to democracy, it was just considered to be baseless speculation. It was also frequently paired with accusation that it was deliberately released or engineered. As of today, we still have no proof it was a lab leak.
We won’t forget despite them wishing we would.
Fact is the scientific community lost a lot of trust in the last few years they had worked hard to earn.
Yeah that’s my biggest issue here. Whatever FAANG wants to decide is the “truth du jour” is set as an unassailable position. To even discuss (and I’m sure there’s both reasonable and unreasonable views here) in a manner that violates the Sacred Truth (du jour) is labeled as dangerous.
Watching one video with a climate change denier won’t make much of a difference being recommended and then watching 10 more will move the needle. Lies online are more memorable and appealing than the truth because they don’t have to worry about being true. Just say whatever gets the greatest emotional response. The truth needs help.
I don't think it's hate speech or climate change denial to say things like:
- developed countries have gone through a period when they developed massively with basically zero care for the environment. Now they demand that countries that are currently under development can do so only with the current standards for environment protection and thus at a much higher cost.
- a lot of policies put the responsibility of climate protection on the back of poor average Joe. Not only you must take the bus and I drive home in my >100k electric car but I want you to pay 10% of said car.
Now I understand that the situation is critical and we can not afford to still do what we did in the past. Drastic measures are required. But how about we have the rich bare the costs for once?
Weird attack on Jordan Peterson in this piece. The quote from him about being concerned about solutions that work "by impoverishing poor people, by raising energy prices and food prices" is a standard part of the discourse among liberal and progressive climate advocates. Lots of people on the far left are very vocal about policy changes which place a burden on people in poverty or on developing countries.
I point this out just to try to resist this "us vs them" mentality and divisiveness that I see growing in many places. One can advocate for addressing climate change, while still being worried about the impacts of policy changes to the most vulnerable. There's a complex, overlapping set of issues here that one could prioritize differently without there being a stark "good guys" and "bad guys" breakdown.
(My own view is that we need very aggressive changes to minimize carbon pollution and also that it's reasonable for rich countries to pay a larger share for those changes than poor countries)
> “The idea that we can make the planet more habitable on an environmental, on the environmental front by impoverishing poor people, by raising energy prices and food prices, is absolutely, it’s not only absurd logically, but I think it’s tantamount to genocidal,” Peterson says in one YouTube video his channel posted in 2022.
The problem here, as I see it, is that while I am completely with mainstream science on climate change (and all other issues it's qualified to speak on), and I think Jordan Peterson is a ridiculous figure, there is a kernel of truth to criticisms like this – the economic structure of this world means that yeah, poor people probably will bear the brunt of any changes, even if they're necessary, and that's deeply unjust.
This only works as an argument if you count the change cost but ignore the default cost. Like, if changing the world to stop global warming costs $5 trillion of which much is borne by the poor that's hard. But if doing nothing means $40 trillion in cost and even more lands on the poor, well now what? It's easy to criticize doing anything at all, but the most likely outcome of making perfect the enemy of good is that no coordinated action happens at all and everyone just acts for themselves. And that's ignoring a lot of ways the developing world have acted to make themselves far worse off, yet then constantly have cried wolf about blaming others. Fatigue even amongst those who cares matters, as does relative advantage and leverage.
I more or less agree (though I don't know about blaming the developing world so much given how little they've contributed to the problem in the first place!), and I'm certainly not trying to support Peterson's argument wholesale. But no matter how much it all makes sense in these terms, it's a really tough sell and I can totally see why. We live in a world which has made arguing for collective responsibility, a shared burden, virtually impossible – and that's certainly not down to the politics that I favour.
By this argument I assume you think the poor will bear the brunt of any changes caused by climate change?
So what's the argument that the interventions will hurt them more than the problem?
Peterson has anbeasy answer, because he's a loon and doesn't believe in the problem or any of the solutions and can just tack concern for the poor on as rhetoric.
But people who understand the problem and the solutions don't have that luxury.
Sure, but policy makers are thoroughly aware of that and it's why no policy in the world endorses making energy less affordable or available. It's the entire reason that greening the grid is so slow and expensive because it has to be done without causing blowback or hardship. So, Peterson is very much arguing against a strawman.
Well I certainly hope changes come to pass in that spirit, world-wide. I can see that happening in some wealthier countries, if you're lucky, and the right government is in power. I'd love to be proved absurdly pessimistic, of course.
> In the past, content that falsely claimed that climate change was either not happening or not a result of humans burning fossil fuels dominated disinformation channels. That’s not the case anymore, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). Instead, the most common lies about climate change now have to do with denying the benefits of clean energy, attacking policies meant to slash planet-heating pollution from fossil fuels, and maligning scientists and advocates that push for change.
The problem with all the discussion around climate change is that we pretend as a species that we are not sophisticated bacteria, consuming all resources to grow at any cost.
I’d go as far to say that if you re-ran the human experiment on 1,000 earths, they would all embrace growth over their environment — it’s why so-called safe AI is impossible and AGI will occur at any cost.
Intelligent species must increase their energy production since they compete with each other’s factions and the “tech tree” if you will inevitably goes through fossil fuels. The only thing that _actually_ changes what we do is the economic factor.
It’s all really just a sophisticated game of Factorio. The reality is that people’s opinions have no effect on what humans actually do. It’s why Texas is full of windmills despite their cultural leanings — the almighty dollar is all we really end up caring about.
i will not talk of the subject as i dont know enough of it.
but in science, there are no authorities. and there is no consensus.
the only thing that matters is truth. numbers, facts, and logical demonstrations. stuff we can read, analyse, reproduce to end up with the same (or not) conclusions.
i am very very annoyed by articles that say "on subject X, we have way too many people not saying Y"
this is totally unaceptable in science.
do i have to remember you that the scientific authorities of their times told us that no human would ever go faster than a horse ? that people taking trains would suffocate ?
that others told the Wright brothers that nothing heavier than air would ever fly ?
that everything there was to discover through science had already been found and there was nothing more to find ?
we don't even know where the covid emanated. we have people that think it's natural, and papers that explain how the protein spike has been inserted because it never has been seen nor did it happen nor could it happen in nature ? i don't know myself what to think of that.
some people will never believe truth, even if we put it in front of them.
we should not spend or lose time with them.
focus on making good science. do not recognize any authority especially if they say "this is true because i am an authority in my field". einstein warned us deerly about those kind of authorities.
good science will use facts and provable facts to advance our knowledge and seek truth. let's focus on that.
in the end, it does not matter how much videos or papers with false content are on internet, or youtube. in the very end, the truth wins and all those false claims, those false articles, those false videos, will end up in the bin of history.
let's focus on making good science and finding truth.
and not spend a single minute trying to fight, if false, that climate denial on youtube. because it's a Don Quixote fight.
On the other hand, with actors as large as YouTube, whatever policies they implement, will have second order effects. It's impossible to be impartial or neutral, whatever you do will tilt the scale one way or the other.
> There’s overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are causing climate change, that those emissions are supercharging deadly weather disasters, and that transitioning to clean energy is the only way to tackle the problem at scale.
I would like to see evidence that climate change is "supercharging deadly weather disasters". I don't believe that evidence exists. Whether climate change has caused (or increased the severity of) "extreme weather events" is a question that has no simple answer.
Also, it absolutely is a concern that developing countries will suffer as fossil fuels become more expensive. It's also a concern that people will simply burn wood or dung if they can't get coal.
It calls it "likely" that climate change is inducing more cyclones and heavy precipitation but also "virtually certain" that it is causing a increase in frequency and intensity of heat waves. The specific editorial verbiage in The Verge is a bit reductive, but I'd say it's entirely fair.
Not quite. The report says it's "virtually certain" that heat waves have increased but only "highly likely" that this increase is caused by climate change.
That aside, I don't believe we have the data or the statistical methods to make the claim that the article does. I would say that the link between climate change and weather events is "frightening plausible" and leave it at that.
1. It's not happening.
2. Ok, it is happening, but it's not our fault.
3. Ok, it is our fault, but it's too hard to be worth addressing right now.
4. Ok, it would have been worth addressing at the time, but it's too late so we should learn to live with it.
These apply generally across the political spectrum, but specifically with respect to climate change, if people are shifting from step 1 to step 2 and even step 3 as per the article I suppose that is a form of progress in the sense that they are moving closer to reality. Having said that, no step requires that anyone take action or make sacrifices so practically it doesn't matter which step they're on.