Comment by deanCommie | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deanCommie | Hacker News Reader

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What do climate change denialists think about stories like this?

Do they

A) Think it's a complete lie/exaggeraiton, and the Barrier Reef will be fine?

B) Think it's happening but not because of human activity (a massive die off across thousands of kilometers is totally natural, dude)

C) Agree that it's caused by humans, but that it's too late to do anything about (probably true), but that also it's not worth taking action on the REST of our emissions even though it could help prevent extinctions and irreversible ecosystem changes in areas we haven't even discussed yet.

D) Agree that it's caused by humans, but trying to do anything will destroy the economy, and the livelyhood of people that depend on it, so it's not worth doing

E) Agree that it's caused by humans, and renewable energy is cheap enough now that the economy will be fine, but trying to do anything about it will cause a reduction in corporate profits for a couple of companies, so it's not worth doing.

As recently as 10 years ago it feels like most conservatives were in Category A

Looking at the statements of most right-wing politicians, it seems that we are approaching critical mass of entry into group D.

How do people live with themselves knowing the mental gymnastics they are doing to remain "right" and never admit their thinking was flawed in any way shape or form...

I have a different view than captured by your A-E options.

1) The climate, or really the whole earth, has some background rate of change, that itself changes over time.

2) On top of that, there is change, ranging from significant to insignificant depending on the area, caused by humans.

3) This will cause the earth to change at a rate (potentially much) faster than if humans were not here.

None of this, to me, represents a problem in itself. The earth before humans, or at any other point in our history was not some ideal utopia. Humans have inflicted colossal change upon the world since our first day -- we've decimated pests, built cities over forests and dams over rivers, created lakes and removed others, just to name just a few. The world we live in today is anything but "natural".

My primary point of disagreement with those who consider climate change a grave threat is the approach. Rather than setting "reduction targets" and "cutting back", we will, as humans have always done, build solutions to problems as we grow. Whether that's investing in improved desalination technology to provide large quantities of fresh water (due to a demand for water), electric vehicles to reduce localized emissions (due to a demand for clean air), or plant a trillion trees to store carbon (due to a demand for lower temperatures), the key is that for those to be workable options they must represent the growth of humanity, not the decline. There's also vast amount of land in Canada and Russia that at present is undesirable because it is too _cold_.

Humans have survived in horrendously hostile environments and have built upon that the wonderful and wholly unnatural modern lifestyle. Humans have never in history been THIS well resourced to survive despite environmental changes, and I have the utmost confidence we will do exactly that.

I mean I hear what you're saying and it sounds GREAT. It sounds optimistic. And hopeful.

But it also sounds just Option A. "The threat is exaggerated".

For vast amount of land in Canada and Russia to become habitable, vast amounts of land that currently house HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people will become UN-inhabitable.

Either due to sea level rise, or from just heat.

I understand maybe on the scale of our civilization we will survive (Maybe), but not before the unnecessary deaths of millions, maybe billions.

Is that worth it to you? Or do you believe that I am being alarmist, and exaggerating the grave threat?

Your comment is most likely being downvoted because it is ideological flamebait, not because people disagree with your opinion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I can accept that in broader society, climate change is an "ideological" concept.

I cannot accept that it would be inside a well educated circle like hackernews. It should not be any more controversial than flat earth theory or moon landing conspiracies.

So, I think it's reasonable for me to try to understand, anthropologically speaking, the mindset of a modern climate change denialist. My uncharitable and editorialized descript of their perspectives is perfectly justifiable. These people are actively perpetuating information and policy decisions that will cause the deaths of millions in the next century, the displacement of 100s of millions of more, and a reduction in the quality of life of billions.

They are not worthy of my civility. Civility is what is leading to the the status quo where we as a society - both left and right - have just accepted that the great barrier reef will be dead within a decade, and our children's children will only read about coral reefs in textbooks.

A couple of responses:

- Your comment wasn't about climate change, but about your interpretations of people who don't care about it as much as you do. Talking about climate change is not unproductive.

- Your comment did not make a good faith attempt to shine light on the mindset of the people who oppose solutions to global warming. You set up 5 strawman arguments and then beat them down.

- Comments like these are not effective at changing the minds necessary to avoid an ecological disaster. The most likely impact of your comment is that you galvanised the viewpoint of a few climate change deniers and pushed people in the centre away from your point of view.

I think you’re expectations are sadly misplaced. In reality it turns out that a community of people interested in technology doesn’t really equate to it being that much smarter in terms of critical thinking, evaluating science, so forth, than the general population. Liking technology doesn’t automatically mean people have decent critical thinking skills, or are naturally inclined/trained to think scientifically and skeptically. You see people applying motivated reasoning repeatedly, avoiding agreement on the facts because they don’t seem to like the consequences of them, rather than being able to separate how they feel about it, the morals, their values, so forth from what are simple facts. Shows up in lots of topics.

might want to modify your interpretation of what "well educated" people get up to in the world these days huh? HN has long been a bastion of libertarian contrarianism made up of (imo) privileged and extremely "well educated" folks disconnected from large swaths non-silicon society.

you should really just not read the comments here and seriously stop thinking these nerds care that much or would do anything if they did.

The ones that I've read have untouchable sacred cows that shape how they view the world, such as "the market is efficient and self-correcting" or "all/any government/group/societal intervention is bad". These are their holy third rails which cannot be questioned. All other beliefs warp themselves around these sacred faiths until they can satisfiably fit.

It's like how medieval scientists had to use "all scripture is literally true" as their starting point. The actual work is to make reality fit within their required doctrines.

Anecdotally, most I've talked to fall into (B) or (D).

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