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Comment by struct | Hacker News Reader

We are so screwed.

Edit: we've known about the greenhouse effect since Victorian times, why is this still so controversial?

Shankar Vedantam when on vacation to Alaska recently and realized how people think about climate change and decided to a podcast about why its hard to make people aware of it. [1]

Basically, its in the future, its complicated, its costly if I recall correctly and our brains will turn off those kinds of things so its a trifecta of the worst characteristics if you want people to pay attention.

[1] http://www.npr.org/2016/11/08/501073160/climate-change-the-f...

> why is this still so controversial?

IMHO, this theory explains that and many other mysteries of the beliefs of the right wing: A large segment of U.S. society now prioritizes ideology over fact. Climate change is fact, but fails their ideological test. Thus, they reject it.

This is shallow and is part of the reason Trump won.

They prioritize culture, heritage, tradition, community, and stability (economic and social) over academic knowledge, mobility, novelty, etc.

They are not dumb or more dishonest on average than anyone else, and the cognitive biases and blind spots they have are identical to yours. They are 99.99...% genetically identical to you.

What they have is a different goal function.

If you want to solve a monster global problem like climate change, part of it is finding solutions that can be viewed as positive from the perspective of the many operating goal functions in the world. The world is huge so this is hard. One sided answers that try to herd the rest through shame will fail, as they have for the right on other issues like abortion.

My comment didn't assert most of the things you attribute to it.

The existence of climate change is not an issue of priorities, but of facts.

> academic knowledge

It's just knowledge about reality; reality doesn't change depending on where the knowledge comes from. Academia happens to have far smarter people and far more resources for examining the world; it's a pretty good resource. Rejecting knowledge because it's from academia is exactly what I described, putting ideology (anti-intellectualism) over fact.

> stability (economic and social)

They voted overwhelmingly for massive change and some made calls for revolution if they don't get it. The policies they favor, including radical changes to government and social programs, would greatly reduce stability.

People who make money on the status pro control media specifically targeting people to change their opinions. Those opinions include hate for the 'elite', which is code for intellectuals, academics and environmental activists who are exactly the people warning of climate change. This is easier of course because of the social cultural divide between those peoples.

And before you say I'm calling people 'dumb' to be influenced by media that they are consuming; I think people at every level of intelligence are influenced by the media they are consistently consuming. That's why I don't like watching Fox news -- I started realizing that I will subtly adopt their way of thinking, even if I'm consciously critical of everything they're saying.

> I think people at every level of intelligence are influenced by the media they are consistently consuming

Indeed. I think the Wall Street Journal is Fox News for the 'elite' (and both are owned by the same people).

Because: money

Because: externalized costs

And general apathy.

Because: we understand that there is a relation, but we're having a hard time actually quantifying it (the models predict a wide range of possible future temperatures, and they themselves are super complex and change often so we cannot fully even trust those ranges). Without a solid prediction model, it's very hard to justify financial decisions - let alone global, trillion dollar ones.

Because of politics. You can win votes in coal country if you promise them jobs. You can win votes in Alaska, Texas if you let them drill.

And the people who make the real money, reinvest it by buying a pretence of scientific ignorance from politicians.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Dont-Even-Think-About-Clima... is a really interesting book on why we can't fix it.

Because you want people to pay for something they don't see any benefit for. It's like trying to get a company to invest in better security, except harder because there is little in the way of the climate change equivalent of security breaches.

Because of the socio-economic momentum of fossil fuels.

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