Four alarming charts that show just how extreme the climate is

I’m not a skeptic but I’m not sure I would pick these for the most alarming charts. Crossing 1.5 is arbitrary. The sea surface spike looks less ominous with the higher 2016 anomaly in the same chart. Arctic sea ice hasn’t hit a new low for 11 years.

For 2023 I would go with Antarctic sea ice, Canadian wildfires, Great Lake snow cover, and record-breaking heat waves…

Clever might be the right word here. As we programmers know being clever sometimes leads to really stupid solutions.

As someone who read quite some of the reports and also occasionally into underlying studies I have to say that this is unarguable happening. The amount of research that went into this topic is so deep and so wide that arguing against it is basically the equivalent of closing your eyes, putting your fingers into your ears and going "Lalalala".

Being unable to do comprehensive reading and understanding basic physical processes is not a good starting points in 2023.

Lots of research[1] has been done about why changing people's minds is hard, e.g: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-risky-is-it-real...

Or a more complicated one where studies where done: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/02/27/why-facts-dont...

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=why+arguing+won%27t+change+people%...

I feel like there's a really unfortunate effect where we see someone else's tribal beliefs when they say stuff that's unhinged from our collective available understanding, like blanket calling all climate change information "fake news", and it results in us strengthening our own beliefs because we know this person with the opposite belief has totally garbage methodology on the topic.

But it's not actually evidence for our beliefs, and we don't notice how it strengthens our own tribal beliefs, and so we don't notice that it's also unhinged to causally talk about "global total destruction" in this context, and only validated by tribal effects. And then our "fake news" friends notice our garbage methodology and take it as evidence for the correctness of their beliefs.

> I've given up on changing their minds. No matter how deep I analyze their data and point out the flaws, they won't budge an inch.

I think it's easy to oversimplify their views. There's a pretty good scale of belief that some would call "denial" that isn't quite that.

1. Is it because they distrust the people talking about it? Have those people been wrong previously?

2. Is it because they distrust the proposed solutions to it? Do they feel there is an ulterior agenda behind those solutions? Or do they simply feel the proposed solutions are too expensive and unreasonable [1]?

3. Is it because they distrust the idea that humans cause climate change, not just nature?

4. Do they feel that it is an important issue; but believe it is a much lower priority issue than solving food, housing, education, safety, and other issues [2]?

And so forth. I think that very often; it is distrust of the people talking about it more than the idea. Remember that the World Economic Forum talks about climate change, but also bragged about how "You will own nothing, and be happy" which was the biggest self-own of the millennium. There aren't many people I run into who say "there is no climate change, period," but there are plenty who think that it's exaggerated, meant to benefit a political cause, meant to change social behavior to benefit somebody's agenda, etc. I can't say that is 100% unwarranted. Claiming "the world is going to end unless we do my solution X" is kind of like using vinegar to attract flies.

[1] And while I'm on the "unreasonable," it's vague but extremely hard to change and quantify. We could theoretically end child molestation if we had cameras in every room of every house; but that's not reasonable even if you could scientifically prove it to be effective. We could theoretically end illiteracy if we locked every child in a room with a book 24/7 until they learned to read, but that's not reasonable even if you could scientifically prove it to be effective. They could easily just feel that the climate change "solutions," regardless of the science, even if they are effective, just aren't at their level of reasonable. The reasons for that could be as different and varied as grains of sand on a seashore.

[2] California doesn't do themselves any favors when they scream about climate change while having severe homelessness, housing affordability, high taxation, and other issues that affect people personally on a day-to-day level. In my personal opinion, people would be much more sympathetic to solving climate change if they had their other ducks in a row. You can't convince people to think about the future if the present is a mess. You can't convince somebody to save 20% of their income for retirement when they've got $20K in credit card debt.

In an effort to find coming ground, I’ve found it’s better to argue the idea that humans should do everything we can to control climate.

Most people I know who reject the evidence of climate change seem to be into consuming and building lots of stuff, so this angle seems to appeal to that mindset.

It makes me think—maybe it’s a complete waste of time to try to “convince the other side” or “change their minds”. What if instead we agree on an outcome, like complete and total control over the earths climate? Would that help getting folks to run in the same direction?

If you think about it; the logical conclusion of humanity in our solar system is building a Dyson sphere around the sun and controlling climate for a huge population.

4 degrees by 2035? Where did you get these absurd extrapolations? Even the IPCC's consensus claims roughly 1.5 degrees by 2100.

Any reason why the specific transatlantic flights? I mean, I can understand the need to avoid frivolous flights, but if there’s a justification to fly, I would guess the transatlantic one would be less wasteful than other kinda of flights that can be served by alternative means.

You realize atmospheric CO2 is driven by china? What do you think the charity is doing to stop that?

“ Sad to see it's just circle jerking of fake intellectuals going "YA BRO ANYONE WHO DOESN'T AGREE IS DUMB, UNEDUCATED" or "Being unable to do comprehensive reading and understanding basic physical processes is not a good starting points in 2023." - atoav , or "I've basically given up on anything drastic happening until the dipshit conservatives in the US stop their moronic crusade on this topic. I give my money monthly to a carbon sequestration company and mostly use my bike and mass transit, but offsets for flights." - Sporkland, truly the greatest sanitation engineers of our time.”

You do understand that this paragraph paints you as exactly the same type of person you’re mocking, yes?

(B) is an interesting take. Who is to say "the other" guy is not already polluting to their max. If one country lowers its emissions,it is what aboutism to then suggest it must be a zero sum game and that other countries would increase their pollution. (It doesn't really matter what China does, the world needs to lower emissions and one country not doing so is not reason to then do nothing. That same line of reasoning caused the US to lose the solar panel industry to china)

(A) arguments around this are pretty over. I think that is why so little time is spent on it now. The Anti-science & big oil crowd win so long as nothing happens. Reading a list like A, B, C certainly sounds like someone talking themselves out of getting shape (A) I can't get in shape,(B) even if I can, someone else will be in better shape, (C) by the time I need to worry about being in shape, there will be a technology that makes it easy for me anyways.

Obviously someone has learned a lot about communication in the Corona crisis, because in this climate thingy the communication continues exactly the same way:

* Presenting models, which allegedly can determine the coming weeks/months/year exactly in advance (I remember "Either you are vaccinated or dead until Christmas") and must never be questioned, because they are consensus in THE science (tm).

* One must fight misinformation and fake news (that is, everything that contradicts these models in terms of facts).

* THE science (tm) is only supplied by a handful of actors in the media.

Actually, every self-thinking person would have to be aware of this Wuhan virus origin theory disaster, which was first defamed as a conspiracy theory and has since been confirmed by the US intelligence services.

Any lessons learned?

And just as little as all unvaccinated people died before Christmas, just as little as the prophecies in the 80s that the children of today would no longer see trees and forests, just as little as all seals and polar bears are slaughtered and extinct, just as little arctic would be ice free 2022 - and the list could go on and on - just as little should one trust models of THE science (tm) that these accurately represent reality and should therefore be considered religious truth.

The basis of any science is critical discourse. Who defames the participants of this critical discourse from the beginning as idiots or being dumb having because of a different opinion, should rather consider whether (s)he speaks here of science or religious fanaticism.

P.S.: 2007 the "Polar View" project adjusted the original model predicting Arctic to be ice free 30 to 40 years to 15-20 years. So today. Oh no - it's still not ice free. But now WWF predicts that the Arctic is not going to be ice free in 30 years but already in 15 years. 16 years later - still predicting the same stuff over and over.