For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

I agree that journalists suck and are easily manipulated. But the overwhelming scientific evidence seems to point in one direction and it's not good.

It's ok to disagree on policy, but the global warming "skeptic" game plan has been to disagree on reality.

The vagueness here is problematic. Not all "particular perspectives" are the same. It matters if the "particular perspectives" were rational and respectful of the science.

References please.

No, the "debate" they want to have is not on what to do but rather if science is to be trusted or not.

There's really no other option though, there are pretty solid reasons rooted in basic physics why CO2 capture/scrubbing are not feasible at a large enough scale to really matter, geoengineering proposals are unproven, expensive and high risk, and the cost of attempting to adapt to the sorts of temperature and sea level changes expected to take place over the next few 100 years if we don't reduce emissions would be measured in innumerable human and non- human lives. Actually we'll likely need all 4 strategies, but replacing fossil-fuel energy sources with largely carbon neutral ones is almost certainly the simplest and cheapest, and if we'd started doing so 30 or 40 years ago there'd probably be little to worry about by now.

Honestly that sounds like a pretty good model of my life so far.

For example, SA presents as a contradiction:

> It depicts elites as simultaneously incompetent and omnicompetent.

But this is exactly what we see in the real world. Take the iPhone for example: a marvel of technology with a cretinous supply chain and amoral-at-best business model. Or VW, great cars but we could do without the emissions scandal. Or the tech industry, great tech (mostly) but they turn around and have a that "no poaching" scandal. Bankers have their LIBOR scandal, etc. Really, "simultaneously incompetent and omnicompetent" is the order of the day, yeah?

Like, I'm fine to say that I'd be OK to see this planet burned to the ground once I've had my fun with it. I mean, I feel a bit sorry for the humans who might come after, but that's a problem I'm not going to contribute to, so whatever. This seems to be the mainstream opinion as well, based on our current trajectory and actions, but it's gauche to say it plainly and so we create rationalizations to see ourselves as better people.

It's worse than that: it's as if people voted the worst of middle managers into office!

No, making the topical "political" really mean partisan and it's not pointless.

It's a deliberate tactic to stifle conversation and delay changes of policy.

There are enormous financial benefits for many companies in delaying the adoption of sustainable economy.

In the 80s in the UK acid rain was hyped up, in the 90s it was 20 years of oil reserves in the education system. Both now have generated adults distrusting education because they're not an academic and they just remember what a fool told them at face value without nuance.

One of the biggest recently being reports that we will have millions dead unless X which doesn't match reality which is just going to create more anti intellectual fear

We fail to plan even for hurricanes adequately or proportionately.

Hurricane disaster response isn’t simply ineffective, it is subject to outside pressures which should never be a part of the process. Governments which intentionally obscure how many deaths have occurred, how costly the damage, all made worse as preventive actions are deemed too costly.

Prevention needs to include building standards which refactor building codes to survive the conditions of their particular environment.

Zoning, preventing new construction in areas which need to be rebuilt every time hurricane knocks them over.

Insurance companies pressure local governments and organizations to score category 5 hurricanes as 4 to avoid paying out their customers. Governments overly concerned with minimizing the damage in order to hide incompetence and save face.

Developers charm local, state, and federal officials to keep building costs low and keep producing structures which are cheaply made and begin to fall apart the minute they are finished being built.

Developers who discourage or minimize transparency concerning risks.

People have their dream homes built believing they will last longer than a 30 year mortgage when in reality these homes will need significant interventions within 10 years.

Often the dialog prioritizes who is at fault before and above actually fixing or responding to the events and helping the people effected.

There is a time for blame and a time for action. When and directly after a disaster is the time for action, blame must be analyzed during response, post mortem must taken seriously, organizations, governments, and corporations must be held to account once those affected are relieved, stabilized.

Blame however is usually addressed during the crisis this allows the framing to be controlled by private interests.

One problem that must be overcome in the US are inappropriate cabinet departments. We saw many examples of this during the pandemic. Some goals are too important to have leadership that is subject to change every 4-8 years. Some departments must be shielded from administration instability issues.

Reactive approaches to a crisis are expensive, more expensive than adequate planning. Certain areas in Florida are repeatedly rebuilt at great cost, costs which could be much lower when proactive planning is prioritized equally with response.

Bad at response and no planning seem to be accepted as too ingrained to change. This is not of course true.

Or continued serious drought, or climate migration, or massive heat die-offs, etc. Better to face reality and prepare SOME kind of response, and the earlier we do, the better we can mitigate it.

I think you've yourself been misled. Mitchell accepted global cooling was really happening and the world was indeed cooling since 1940. See for yourself, here's one of his papers published in 1975:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-010-1729-9_...

"In balance, the net thermal impact of all global-scale pollution (including thermal pollution) is likely to be one of warming, perhaps increasingly so after 2000 A.D. It is concluded that the cooling of climate since 1940, apparently still in progress, is a natural phenomenon plausibly related to an enhanced stratospheric loading by volcanic dust in the period"

The fact that the world got colder between 1940 and 1975(ish) was never really in dispute up until climatologists realized that they couldn't explain the contradiction between that and the greenhouse gas nature of CO2. At that point they started re-calculating old temperatures to make the cooling trend disappear, and telling people that all the stories published about their agreement in the 60s and 70s were just awful terrible journalists somehow getting what they were saying entirely backwards. To finish it off they claim that anyone who points out that this isn't true is an immoral denier who should be silenced. It's very much 1984 in real life.

I don't really see why lack of familiarity with the historical facts in some parts of the world should reflect badly on the people who do know them. At any rate, it's not a big surprise. English is the de-facto language of science, the English speaking world has a stronger tradition of free speech and simply has more people who can research obscure topics vs most languages.

Also, look at where the global temperature datasets are produced - it's all US and UK universities and agencies. Historical temperature data for much of the 19th and 20th centuries comes primarily from US sources, because for much of the 20th century the rest of the world wasn't running organized weather station networks at all - rest of the world was either dirt poor, being ravaged by world wars or undergoing communist revolutions. The USA has a large scale weather station network dating back to the Victorian era. It also launched lots of weather satellites in the 70s.

It seems we had 5 mass extinction events on earth so far, one caused by an asteroid, and the 4 others by climate change. Sure, something will survive, regrow or be newly created.. if we go for 4°C expectations for earth to recover on its own to something similar we had now are just another 30 million years ;)

I'd really be more empathetic to the ones who will need to inhabit this future and not turn this into ridicule, even if you won't be there then..

(Also known as the 'environmentalist' take on tackling climate change)