It always fucking was. I remember the first time I heard of climate change, it was an ad suggesting that planting trees could help counter the greenhouse effect, and that’s when my dad told me that the whole thing was made up to trick people into supporting higher taxes. This was the 80’s.
The first time i tried to talk to my parents about climate change, specifically sea level rise, my dad had us do an experiment where we filled a cup with some ice up to the very tippy top with water. Then, when the cup didn’t overflow when all the ice melted, he noted that there’s still the same amount of water whether it’s liquid or solid (technically true, but obviously ignores some key details, like the fact that not all the ice on Earth is found in the ocean, and that there are impacts of melting ice other than just sea level rise). He concluded that we didn’t have to worry about sea level rise, and it’s all a hoax. I told my science teacher about it, and he simply asked me, “What about all the ice on land? Like Antarctica? That ice isn’t already in the cup.” This was the early '00s.
Which is just so insane because the Greenhouse Effect is a very simple, very well-understood phenomenon that anyone who actually wants to understand it (and even conduct experiments to directly test it) very easily can.
The runaway greenhouse effect leading to climate change is slightly more complex (but is it really?), but simply growing trees to counter the greenhouse effect is like such a basic, simple, scientific concept that even children understand.
Like… It’s literally the reason greenhouses exist and work. I just… I don’t know what to say anymore to peoples’ ignorance.
It’s so ironic because we even have an inferno planet next door with a runaway greenhouse effect that everyone can use as an example. With an average surface temperature of 464 degrees, Venus got through to me as a small child. But knowing the type of ignorant person we’re talking about, Venus would just be held as further “proof” that Earth’s climate change isn’t caused by human activity.
A trove of internal documents and research papers has previously established that Exxon knew of the dangers of global heating from at least the 1970s, with other oil industry bodies knowing of the risk even earlier, from around the 1950s. They forcefully and successfully mobilized against the science to stymie any action to reduce fossil fuel use.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/12/exxon-climate-change-global-warming-research
To an ignorant person, the greenhouse effect isn’t simple. Not because the idea itself is complex, but because it implies we can and should do something about it.
And ignorant people would rather tell themselves it’s not man-made because that would mean we can’t fix it and, therefore, don’t have to.
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It always fucking was. I remember the first time I heard of climate change, it was an ad suggesting that planting trees could help counter the greenhouse effect, and that’s when my dad told me that the whole thing was made up to trick people into supporting higher taxes. This was the 80’s.
The first time i tried to talk to my parents about climate change, specifically sea level rise, my dad had us do an experiment where we filled a cup with some ice up to the very tippy top with water. Then, when the cup didn’t overflow when all the ice melted, he noted that there’s still the same amount of water whether it’s liquid or solid (technically true, but obviously ignores some key details, like the fact that not all the ice on Earth is found in the ocean, and that there are impacts of melting ice other than just sea level rise). He concluded that we didn’t have to worry about sea level rise, and it’s all a hoax. I told my science teacher about it, and he simply asked me, “What about all the ice on land? Like Antarctica? That ice isn’t already in the cup.” This was the early '00s.
Which is just so insane because the Greenhouse Effect is a very simple, very well-understood phenomenon that anyone who actually wants to understand it (and even conduct experiments to directly test it) very easily can.
The runaway greenhouse effect leading to climate change is slightly more complex (but is it really?), but simply growing trees to counter the greenhouse effect is like such a basic, simple, scientific concept that even children understand.
Like… It’s literally the reason greenhouses exist and work. I just… I don’t know what to say anymore to peoples’ ignorance.
It’s so ironic because we even have an inferno planet next door with a runaway greenhouse effect that everyone can use as an example. With an average surface temperature of 464 degrees, Venus got through to me as a small child. But knowing the type of ignorant person we’re talking about, Venus would just be held as further “proof” that Earth’s climate change isn’t caused by human activity.
And then there is also this:
To an ignorant person, the greenhouse effect isn’t simple. Not because the idea itself is complex, but because it implies we can and should do something about it.
And ignorant people would rather tell themselves it’s not man-made because that would mean we can’t fix it and, therefore, don’t have to.
See Ian Danskin (if you haven’t): https://youtu.be/dF98ii6r_gU