Here you can replace 'God' with technology and that's pretty much what you'll see here. Unwavering belief that technology will be their salvation from climate change.
Internet arguing follows the same logic. If I logically out-fence you by being an asshole, what have I gained? What have we gained?
Whereas if I politely and respectfully describe why eating Irish babies is a solution to overpopulation of the lower classes [0], we all feel better about ourselves, even if you decline to agree with me.
The thing is, from a neutral external perspective, when one side claims "there is no climate change, only God's will" and the other side claims "Climate change is man-made and will escalate to the point of irreversibility if nothing is done", then only one side can back up their argument with verifiable facts. And yet, "listen to both sides!!!"-style arguments result in complete bullshit given the attention of millions of people.
Democratic discourse fundamentally needs facts to debate, not lies, propaganda or un-verifiable anecdotes. People who come to a democratic discourse without facts deserve no time of democratic people. Democracy itself is at war with disinformation from all kind of sources, both foreign (Russian and Chinese propaganda) and domestic (corporate or otherwise financially motivated shills, authoritarian politicians willing to grab power).
I disagree. If 95% of the people come to a discourse with no facts, and we follow this guideline, what kind of democracy is that?
IMO it is our responsibility in a democracy to listen and empathize with others, no matter how wrong they are. It is equally my responsibility to convince others, as it is for others to be convinced by reasonable arguments.
This is all notwithstanding the reality that what constitutes "fact" is not at all clear. In this kind of discourse, I place that word into the "thought-terminating cliche" category. Typically what is heralded as "fact" and "100% true" is much more nuanced with caveats, probabilities, normative assumptions, inferences, etc.
If there's no train of logic, no explanation, no underlying data, why are we pretending the individual is trying to engage in a honest discussion?
There is no arguing the authority of papal edicts with a devout papist, modern civilization long ago learned it was fruitless to try.
If someone trades in ungrounded declarations instead of propositions that one can attempt to "ground", there is no argument made and thus no "sides" to discuss.
Many people like to argue for the sake of arguing and it's a waste of time.
How fundamental? Where would you draw distinction (if at all)? So my brother is an anarchist, he is also a drug abuser that has spent time in jail and is a dangerous person to be around physically.
I have yet to ever see him argue in good faith.
He does not tell 99% of people that this is a what he believes, he just argues in person and online whatever can cause the most turmoil and/or positions that point to everyone being selfish and fundamentally evil, or the situation hopeless and that cruelty and power dynamics are not something that often "is", but something we "ought" to embrace.
In a democratic republic people "can" do a lot of things, just like the individual "can" do all kinds of things without dying or being jailed right away.
That doesn't mean they are healthy or good, that doesn't mean every ungrounded belief that exists needs to be engaged or given equal billing in public discourse. It's noise, not signal and if we are intelligent we will reject it as noise instead of rebroadcasting it. It also doesn't mean we ought to abandoned working towards a "grounded" consensus because rejecting factual evidence is somehow "virtuous" or cynically sophisticated.
Increasingly I see that people seem to argue as if rejecting a pragmatic, propositionally grounded and arguable discourse is something to give up on, or to stop advocating for, and I do question the intent behind that as it seems unsustainable and counter to past, evidentially productive, consensus building.
Seeing these arguments in the wild is to be expected when an increasing percentage of the population express a rejection of democracy itself in polls. On pluralistic open forums people/anarchists/my brother will argue orthogonally about how to "do democracy" while advocating positions that epistemologically undercut attempts at consensus, and they'll do this instead of saying "I reject democracy" because in many circles it's not in vogue _yet_ to say you've rejected democratic governance.
The idea that a majority of people in any country can fundamentally disagree that we live in a shared pragmatic reality, one that can be scrutinized, investigated, argued/communicated about and we will somehow still end up with sustainable democratic outcomes seems improbable, and I question anyone saying grounded arguments aren't that important.
I agree. Wholeheartedly. What falsehoods do you hold that keep you from participating in democracy then? Or are you saying that you, above everyone else, uses facts and logic only?
What have you voted for based on emotion?
Sometimes it feels pretty lonely in the group of people that don't expect the near end of the world. Especially annoying in times when policy is often put forward in times of crisis. I don't mean Covid, the last decade was full of that.
You would think religious people and climate scientists could come together to proclaim that the end is nigh, sometimes you have to start at common positions...
Problem is that the both-sides perspective is more often correct than not. People will identify different facts and different instances of propaganda. Especially if said fact rely on nothing more than perfectly compiled statistics. Good ideas must prevail against opposition.
There is also an argument that states have problems to project power against multi billion $ companies, but the answer should certainly not be propaganda.
How much of this is due not so much to some kind of fundamental similarity between their positions but rather to the virtually complete removal of rhetoric from the typical curriculum? Perhaps people argue like children because their thoughts are childlike, but perhaps they’re merely incompetent rhetoricians.
That's what the facts strongly suggest. Implying that people who use facts in argument are being rhetorical is - rhetorical itself.
It’s astounding really, and these data points have helped me recalibrate my expectations of fellow humans, as well as my empathy for them.
Gonna need a link to one of those threads full of citations on this claim, because this is not at all my understanding. Even if we had a magic wand that would reduce anthropogenic CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions to zero overnight, we're already far above historic atmospheric CO2 concentrations and will be paying the price.
Edit: since I'm asking for citations, here's mine[1] showing that according to climate models zero CO2 emissions from 2020 onward would have little effect on the global mean temperature through 2100.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17001-1/figures/2
Many people look at the graph in your citation and see it as a picture of success, because the baseline in their mind is RCP8.5. Note that the graph makes a comparison to RCP2.6, which is not a "do nothing" scenario, it's a pretty optimistic and aspirational future.
I have yet to see a scientific case for luxury communism where every Indian peasant gets their own suburban yard.
edit: and I do see a lot of people saying that technology right around the corner will just solve the problem without anyone having to change their lifestyle in the slightest.
"I didn't want to cut down on drinking/CO2/media pollution/etc so I killed myself instead" - which of these is a winning move?
The biggest problem I see with 'technology will solve everything' beliefs (evidence-based beliefs are still beliefs) is that these solutions are almost always in a people and political vacuum. They assume that there will be nothing stopping or slowing it down or even reversing it from happening, from people not wanting wind farms in their back yard[1], to human nature prioritizing short-term issues over long-term threats[2][3] and voting accordingly[4], the inability for a people to enforce change on a global level (even if the US behaves perfectly, how are they going to get China[5] or India[6] to go to zero emissions without going to war with them...we saw this exact problem play out with the Covid pandemic, although the US was one of those bad actors). And politicians themselves have little-to-no incentives to stop climate change[7].
You even got people like Biden, who says "climate change is the number one issue facing humanity"[8], and yet he's caught falling asleep at the COP26 climate summit[9] (which does not help the image of how seriously the US is treating climate change) as well as approving new drilling permits for oil and gas extraction, at a faster rate than even Trump[10]. And lobbyists are able to kill climate change legislation just by putting some cash in the right politician's hands (Manchin in this case)[11].
There's other issues with the actual feasibility of the technology as well, such as we might not have enough materials for all the solar panels and wind turbine we'll need to build[12] (and the actual study they cite here[13]). But that's really a whole separate thing I don't have time to hunt down the articles for right now.
We wouldn't be in this mess in the first place if it weren't for people's actions, and now fans of the technology think everyone is going to magically do a full 180 on their behavior and fall in line for something they can't even see beyond some wildfires and stronger hurricanes, which they dismiss as freak events just as easily and keep their heads in the sand.
If anything it appears to me that we're going to wrong direction as far as the human and political element is concerned. Yes, some things are getting better, but we need massive global systemic change decades ago and that's clearly still not happening today, despite great progress on Solar and Wind affordability and EV cars (as well as other initiatives).
I'm not saying we shouldn't pursue these technological solutions as much as we can, far from it. I just think because of various reasons it's not going to get us to where we need to be, and more work needs to be done on trying to rewrite the brains and incentive-structures of people and politicians or we're almost certainly not going to meet those goals, and that's being glossed over in favor of saying "well, technically it can still be done!"
[1]: https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2021-4-fall/feature/nimby-...
[2]: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=553048...
[3]: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190109-the-perils-of-sh...
[4]: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/13/the-no-1-esg-issue-for-ameri...
[5]: https://e360.yale.edu/features/despite-pledges-to-cut-emissi...
[6]: https://www.reuters.com/world/india/exclusive-india-may-buil...
[7]: https://theconversation.com/cop26-why-politicians-have-littl...
[8]: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/10/24/joe-biden-climate-change-is-...
[9]: https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/11/02/joe-biden-doz...
[10]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/01/2...
[11]: https://www.npr.org/2021/12/20/1065695953/build-back-better-...
[12]: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a25576543/re...
[13]: https://www.metabolic.nl/publication/metal-demand-for-renewa...
"Even if the world manages to limit warming to 1.5C, some long-term impacts of warming already in train are likely to be inevitable and irreversible. These include sea level rises, the melting of Arctic ice, and the warming and acidification of the oceans. Drastic reductions in emissions can stave off worse climate change, according to IPCC scientists, but will not return the world to the more moderate weather patterns of the past."
"Ed Hawkins, a professor of climate science at the University of Reading, and a lead author for the IPCC, said: “We are already experiencing climate change, including more frequent and extreme weather events, and for many of these impacts there is no going back.”"
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/aug/09/humans-have-...
And actually, here's this direct from the headline statements in the IPCC report itself:
"Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level."
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
When I say solutions are on the roadmap, I mean somewhere down the road we'll be able to stop doing the bad things and save ourselves.