some people say the party divide in the US is based on gender. which may be true to some degree but really I think the true divide is intelligence
republicans have literally just become the stupid party
(source: my ass)
This isn’t just stupid. Anyone over 20 remembers that it wasn’t this hot for this long. This requires that they tell themselves that the heat is for some natural reason.
Or they pretend that that one really hot day that made the newspaper in 1972 is perfectly representative for the other 364 days, because it’s always warm in summer.
True, but we need to get them to acknowledge that okay, it was 102° F one day in 1972. Yesterday and today were the first days in 2 weeks or more where the high was less than 100° F where I live.
It was not this hot for weeks in 1972.
hell, you don’t even have to go back to 1972. I remember in my area growing up (90’s), breaking 100 was something that would maybe happen one or two days out of a whole summer, and it was a whole thing - treated in the same way you might treat a really bad storm in winter.
This summer half of every week has been above 100 since July - our “breaks” from the heat are like mid-90’s.
I wonder how bad it’s going to have to get before everyone who isn’t literally mentally ill will have to admit that this isn’t normal
I live in Canada and it feels like half the country has been on fire this summer. The Premier of my province doesn’t even think climate change is real and is currently stripping away environmental protections from our best land so his buddies can build subdivisions and destroy it
The average person, even in the southern US where it’s warmer, seems to understand that it doesn’t snow as much as it used to. I’ve heard numerous people mention it over the years. It’s when you try to get them to consider why that might be the case that their brains start turning to mush.
It’s when you try to get them to consider why that might be the case that their brains start turning to mush
It’s not their brains turning to mush, it’s their rational thoughts bumping right up against decades of propaganda by oil companies, the right wing media, and conservative politicians that have ingrained the idea in them that believing in climate change makes you part of the radical left.
And ultimately it’s easy to get people to (especially conservatives, who - by definition - are resistant to change) not believe in climate change, because it’s scary as fuck, and because solving it will involve huge overarching societal changes. Much easier to pretend it doesn’t exist. That’s not just climate change, that’s just how the human brain likes to deal with unpleasant facts - hell, that’s how most people cope with the concept of their own mortality
We grew up in the south, right on the edge of the Midwest though. I remember one time my wife’s grandpa talking about how when he was a kid they all had ice skates because the ponds would freeze in the winter and the kids would skate. I was like that’s cool but the ponds don’t really freeze that solid in the winter.
Much later I had a moment of realization.
It isn’t that way everywhere though. My part of southeast Ohio has consistently been below average. I know other places have to be extra, extra hot to reach the increased global temperatures, but millions and millions of Americans simply are not extperiencing any kind of increased heat.
It’s neither. It is wilful ignorance. All those studies sorting political affiliations by education, IQ and whatnot never show a difference that is nearly as large as these kind of comments suggest. There are small trends, but not more.
The average IQ of republicans isn’t much lower. They just choose to squander their potential. Never underestimate the potential often human beings to lie to themselves. It is one of our most honed skills.
It’s also probably a factor, that when you pretend global warming isn’t man made, that you can’t do anything against it so you don’t have to change your way of life
Exactly, I think some people use it almost as a self-defense mechanism to avoid feeling in any way responsible.
Probably could have added :
Source: Fox News
Or uneducated. Or actively denying reality. Some combination of the three.
A sizable portion of the population would convince themselves that the sky is green, if that was their party’s official position.
And a sizable portion of politicians, of a certain moral character, would take the official position that the sky is green if someone paid them enough.
On an unrelated note, I wonder which party is heavily sponsored by the oil and gas industry?
The answer, like in most countries, is both of the largest parties.
Can’t have the other party get in and get rid of your subsidies, bad for business, ya know?
Not that the GOP’s positions on climate change aren’t far more deranged, of course, just noting that the Dems are also heavily influenced by lobbying.
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Rodents and insects. (Notably some species of caterpillar.)
Really? I knew of the groundhog, but I thought that was it. Do you, by chance, know where I could learn about the caterpillar oracle?
Woolly Bears: https://www.weather.gov/arx/woollybear#:~:text=Woolly Bear Folklore%3A&text=The longer the woolly bear’s,severe the winter will be.
Crickets and temperature: https://www.almanac.com/predict-temperature-cricket-chirps#:~:text=Just count the number of,approximation of the outside temperature.
Ladybugs and winter: https://www.wdrb.com/weather/wdrb-weather-blog/ladybug-invasion-sign-of-harsh-winter/article_db7aa0e6-fcad-11e9-8155-5fe3b6ba0010.html
Well, science doesn’t care about their opinions.
Elections do care about their opinions, and elections have consequences. Very serious consequences.
Not really in terms of climate change were totally fucked on that one no matter which party’s in power.
But only one party has any interest in doing something about it.
No they don’t. One party says they’re for it, there’s just apparently literally nothing they can do about the people in their party who continuously stop them from doing it. Giving them a conve isn’t scapegoat for why they never do anything.
Relevant xkcd
We have a scientist LARPer in this thread begging for Bitcoin, right now. Does that count?
Social science does.
And when you watched the clown beat the defenseless mime to death you saw it laugh. Then, the clown called the mimes mom’s dirty names, waved a hitler flag and shot the mime. Afterwards calling him a removed and gesturing for his widow to call him later. He then slapped you in the face with a rubber circus dink, called you Ugly Stan and you called him by his first name asking for another.
After all of that, what do you think caused the clown to do such a terrible thing?
GoOp: “I don’t think it was the clown.”
GoOp: “I don’t think it was the clown.”
GoOp: “Akshully, clowns don’t exist, also you just hate clowns!”
Holy shit I am fucking howling at this.
7am and my day is made. Thank you. Legit see BoBo trying to flex that in my head.
Would you rather conform and be right, or think independently and be wrong?
“The majority is always wrong. Me smart for thinking different 🤓”
It’s not even thinking independently though. It’s conforming to the group with the wrong opinion.
1000 flies eat shit. 1000 flies can’t be wrong.
When it comes to bad takes on the internet and crackpot theories, assuming that such things are at least as likely to be true as what is conventionally believed is like wandering into a hospital pharmacy, with no labels on any of the bottles, and taking pills with the assumption that at least some of them will give you superpowers.
Be right, regardless of whether or not it’s conforming to anything.
I think the popular attitude is actually the reverse of that.
Obviously I’d rather think independently and be right?
What an absolutely fucking braindead take
I can’t tell if you didn’t get the joke or legitimately believe that any conformist opinion is braindead. I hope it’s not the latter, because that sounds like a really frustrating way to form a self-identity.
Can one not participate in another’s parody?
GOP’s good at brainwashing stupid and / or dysfunctional people. It’s also good at attracting one issue voters who only care about guns, abortion, immigration, low taxes, etc.
Many people (if not most) are not that smart or caring. If you give them the one thing they want, they’ll support you. Many people (if not most) are also bigots, and hate one group or another and you won’t get them to change their minds by any means.
Republicans know this (they have psychological and media experts on their team who are smart, unlike their voting base) and use their knowledge to manipulate people with lies, and it works, just due to how human nature is.
Democrats also know this, which is why they don’t seriously fight Republicans by compromising on some of their principles or also pandering just enough to get elected in purple / weak red areas. It’s honestly just a power sharing agreement to keep things split 50 / 50 so the corpo donors can get what they want done while the average person gets distracted by the very public binary fight these 2 “parties” are always engaging in.
The only real answer is ranked choice voting and the formation of 2 additional parties. One that’s fiscally and environmentally liberal and socially conservative, and another that’s socially liberal, but fiscally liberal, and hopefully environmentally at least moderate.
People forget that most places on the internet are left-leaning or flat out liberal bubbles. Especially FOSS communities like Lemmy / Kbin. If you go out and engage people in real life, it’s easy to quickly realize that people will keep voting in climate denying, polluting jackasses so they can keep their guns, or make sure abortion’s illegal, etc.
Our best hope is young GOP voters who believe in climate change and want to do something about it, because they’re growing up in this world, and will have to live in it too. Hopefully that Hawaii fire made even the rich realize that shit like that could happen to them during their vacation, and it’ll make them give a shit. Anyhow, our best bet is to try to make deals with the next generation of Republicans, and also introduce ranked choice voting which can create parties and coalitions built around compromise and getting things done as opposed to ideological purity tests, which keep losing us the house and / or senate, even if we win the presidency.
nore worried about the fact that of those that answered that global warming isn’t occurring, only 50% still think that it doesn’t exist in a different question. did the other 50% just suddenly reconsider?
it looks like they got pooled between “doesn’t exist” and “no” to “are oil and gas companies responsible?”. “global warming doesn’t exist and if it does it isn’t their (our) fault”
The other 50% believe in global cooling.
And they’ll be correct once the currents in the Atlantic collapse in the 30’s.
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I’ve known a guy for like 20 years, currently in his 60s, who firmly believes that anthropogenic climate change is entirely false.
He has a bachelors degree in physics, a bachelors degree in mathematics, and a Ph.D in economics. He’s written a handful of high level Econ textbooks, he’s worked as a professor off and on at 3 or 4 respected universities here in the US. He was most recently employed at a supply chain consulting firm, making an ungodly amount of money.
By all accounts, he’s an extremely smart, well-educated, well-read guy. But holy shit if that boomer isn’t constantly reposting the most transparently fake anti-science nonsense on his Facebook page. Think, “New research proves that Climate Change is a liberal myth” - The Religious Conservative Storm.
Just demonstrates how it doesn’t matter how educated someone is if they don’t think critically about information that confirms their expectations.
There be people like that. My dad was a professor for applied mathematics at a top level university in Germany, published books etc. Nowadays he works as an indepentdent business consultants and is insanely successful on an international level. And while he does believe climate change is real he is very, uhm, alternative when it comes to health and nutrition. Think fruit juices and nutrition supplements and sun doesn’t cause cancer and “holding a lazer to your heel makes your rotten teeth unrotten” kinda stuff. (Didn’t work.) Watches weird ass youtube videos by “experts”. Me, having a M.Sc. in Nutrition and Biomedicine, I am in no way an expert like these people or himself when it comes to nutrition, health and medicine, according to him. People can be extremely smart and talented in some parts of their lives and be completely bonkers in others.
Yeah sounds very similar. And weird coincidence, but the guy I’m talking about is also German. Lives in the US now, but his parents don’t speak English, he came here as a kid I believe.
My dad isn’t German but he only became obsessed with alt health and nutrition once he moved to Germany… Coincidence? I think not - there must be something in the air here that turns people crazy
How weird. My sample size is now 2, I think I’m ready to draw a conclusion and only consider evidence that confirms it going forward.
That reminds me how my father loves to tell the story of a doctor who wasn’t convinced that sun causes skin cancer so he went to India for a year and didn’t wear sunscreen once and lo and behold he didn’t get cancer so he disproved that sun causes cancer.
Again, my dad is a mathematician. Granted, analytical and computer algebra, not statistics, but dear Lord.
I know a highly educated seismologist who makes his work his hobby and has been an enthusiast for nature-related pursuits for decades…
And he thinks people have next to zero contributions to the climate. His go-tos are volcanoes and sunspots to explain climate changes, and he blames, I kid you not, the “big green energy hoax” for conflicting data.
He has a bachelors degree in physics, a bachelors degree in mathematics, and a Ph.D in economics
Now, I’m not saying he is or he isn’t–you know this guy and I don’t. But are you actually sure all of these claims are true? Dudes who fall for this shit tend to lie a lot. Just saying don’t take it at face value. Econ in particular seems like an area where it would really be easy to “fake it til you make it”.
No that’s a totally valid question and I’d wonder the same thing.
But he definitely is all of those things, he’s got a dozen published nonfiction books that are easy to find, with a picture of his face on them haha. Listed as faculty/former faculty at Utah State University, CSU Chico, two BYU campuses, University of San Diego, University of Malaysia. Reasonably high profile on LinkedIn.
I used to go on family vacations with this guy’s family as a teenager, his whole family are genuinely some of the best people I know. But he’s a perfect example of the incredible power of the confirmation bias. I just try to remember that someone like him can have such seemingly obvious blind spots, I definitely can too.
Fair enough. The flip side is someone with so many credentials might begin to think of himself as smarter than everyone; therefore anything he thinks is probably right, isn’t it so? And he never questions where the “information” in his head came from. Few of us do.
I’d like to point out that this gets weirder when you realize that logically, they’d only ask someone if oil and gas companies are responsible for climate change if the individual previously answered “yes” or “don’t know” to the question, “is global warming occuring”.
That would imply that anyone in the black on those bars either lied at some point, selected the wrong answer by mistake, or straight up didn’t understand the first question…
Spooky
The first question asked about “global warming”, the 2nd uses the phrase “climate change”, and a significant percentage of the population – and particularly Republican voters – is made up of raging morons and brainwashed suckers.
I can see that happening though.
But then again, do you want to have sb to vote in politics, who doesnt even understand an easy question?
There are far top few meaningful differences between Republicans and Democrats, but stuff like this shows the base (not the leaders) of one party is at least amenable to reality, and the other largely isn’t.
They mainly blame it on the sun or they just see it as “natural warming” just the way ice ages have existed.
For example: here’s one of Germany’s leading right wing populists (and inbred nazi descendant wannabe noble) Beatrix von Storch saying: “Well maybe we need to tell the sun to shine less!” when being asked about how to tackle climate change.
So these people have a choice: they can accept their way of living is a reason for the current catastrophe. They need to stop enjoying cars, that schnitzel mit bratkartoffeln and start building those wind plants also to the south.
Or they can start blaming the refugees and the women with tattoos.
+ stop accepting bribe money from fossil fuels companies (or at least use their bribe money to build up wind & solar)
The sad reality is that they allowed dismantling functioning windmills (which RWE is definitely going to rebuild somewhere else *wink *wink) to expand the Garzweiler lignite pit (with lignite being literally the worst type of coal to burn)…
schnitzel mit bratkartoffeln
Is this a joke I’m not getting? How does a german dish contribute to climate change? Or do you just mean meat in general and that was a specific example
Those are just excuses they come up with on the spot because they feel correctly they are being put on the spot when asked about it. All human actions are about avoiding negative social consequences and that’s what they’re actually worried about.
That they think they need to justify themselves offers at least some hope, however.
I really think it’s ironic that we are risking the destruction of systems that have been stable for hundreds (or even thousands) of years just to save a system that isn’t even stable enough to handle an Elon Musk tweet
Does she have a proposal for how to do that?
Of course not… Those kinda humans never have proposals.
Concrete and steel production accounts for around 20% of co2 emissions, so it’s not only oil and gas companies (although it is still mostly from oil and gas companies).
Steel production at least could be MUCH greener; they’re just choosing less green options because they’re cheaper. We could make co2 emission more expensive, force the entire industry to greener alternatives, and not significantly impact production capacity.
Conflict of interest: I’m an engineer who produces steel using greener (but more expensive) tech than the rest of the industry.
Which, of course, puts you at a competitive disadvantage compared to those who use cheaper but less green tech. Which just goes to show why we need regulation.
Absolutely. Even if our tech was cheaper, we’d just run into the Jevons Paradox as people would end up buying more steel than they do today.
Should probably be “fossil fuel” since the CO2 from concrete and steel production comes from burning coal.
Literally anything done to any fossil fuel lobbyist or executive is an act of collective self-defense.
You heard it, folks! I’m inviting them to a $10K per head campaign dinner where I will sternly suggest they explore the possibility of researching a serious scaling back (5 bps!) of coal mining.
For our self-defense
spoiler
Only if it actually contributes to stopping climate change.
why is the “climate change doesn’t exist” bar for the second question so much smaller than the “no” bar for the first question? am I an idiot or does that just not make any sense?
Death to America
They consider themselves temporarily embarrassed millionaires. So when corporate profits are threatened, they get defensive to the point of changing their beliefs on the spot.
They aren’t just lying to us. They’re lying to themselves.
it exists but… isn’t happening? idk
