Slap them in the face. If they complain, tell them the pain is real but human activity didn’t contribute to it.

I came to post pretty much the exact same thing 🤣

Ozon. 🤷

“Fuck you!”

Personally, now I would say ‘fine, it doesn’t matter what you believe. We are severely fucked and we are going to be lucky to survive. Making one person accept reality is not going to change anything.’

I’ve become more and more pessimistic… simon Clark on YouTube has a bunch of accurately hopeful climate content that helps a bit, but so much hinges on ‘if we don’t actively make it worse’ which is exactly what is happening.

My one hope is we will have enough mortally devasting weather before it’s too late so that doubters will convince themselves.

My one hope is we will have enough mortally devasting weather before it’s too late so that doubters will convince themselves.

I’m sorry to say that but it’s kinda “too late” already, to some definition. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels right now, human societies will not escape unharmed, there will be more crop failure leading to more famine leading to more war, even ignoring the “minutia” such as heat-related deaths and so on. Of course that’s not to say we shouldn’t fix our shit right now, because we still can reduce the impact and try to save our global “civilization” (or whatever you want to call the sum of human knowledge, connections, industry, material culture etc).

On a more hopeful level, I also think that pretty much whatever happens, homo sapiens as a species will probably survive. As primates, we are excellent at organizing in small groups and adapting our environments to suit us, however hostile they may be. Earth is huge, its flora and fauna is diverse, and even at +6-8℃ there will be some areas with ecosystems sturdy enough to sustain small populations of hunters-gatherers and even basic agricultural societies. And then, in a few thousands or tens of thousands of years, as the nature recoils from the shock and more and more land becomes habitable for humans again, they will rebuild. Since there won’t be any easily accessible oil or gas in the ground anymore, the new industrial revolution will naturally have to be more sustainable than ours.

Don’t. Nothing you could say is going to change their mind. They’d need to hear it from new sources they trust and their peers and then it still wouldn’t be guaranteed they’d reconsider their position. Confirmation bias and a whole host of other brain stuff makes changing someone’s mind incredibly difficult. Save your breath.

Just show them that one xkcd about how abrupt the current warming is and how nicely it lines up with industrialization. The comparison between the natural slow shifts in global climate vs. what’s been happening the last century or so is the clearest counter to “but the climate has always been changing”.

The other times that things have changed in comparable timescales, it’s been caused by supervolcanoes or other such calamities.

Edit: Oh yeah one caveat: The xkcd is ten years old and we’re now actually already around +1.5°C.

I was about to find that same xkcd. 😅
It really is a good way to portray that.

It also shows quite well that shit is hitting the fan, almost horizontally, in a time period where we have proper temperature measurements from all around the world. Even if humans were not at fault, we need to do something about it.

Yeah, as if “Mass extinctions are a natural occurence!” were an excuse to carry on business as usual :D

You’re not going to convince anyone with a shitty drawing of the “Earth Temperature Timeline” and then start at 20000BC.

Why not? In my opinion it’s doing an excellent job at showing the speed difference between the slow preindustrial climate changes and the sharp acceleration of the human made postindustrial climate change

It looks like a cherry picked tiny fragment of earth’s time to make a simplistic point.
“Look how never anything happened for all this time you’re scrolling down and then wow!”
20000BC in itself is only a small portion of a percent of earth’s time.
Yes the speed is remarkable but it has still been much warmer or colder over a longer period.
Leaving this out is not the best way to make a point IMO.
Certainly when there have been cases where people have exaggerated or plainly lied on these matters.
It’s doesn’t help with credibility

Yes the speed is remarkable but it has still been much warmer or colder over a longer period.

This is precisely the point that comic is making tho. Yes, our planet has been a lot warmer than it is now, but as far as we know the changes we’re currently making to the climate are by far the most rapid in human history and this is bound to cause some civilization-scale issues. Even ignoring all the usual problems that will happen again due to a warmer climate (sea level rise, desertification etc), there are some novel ones. There will be no time for ecosystems and societies to adapt to different agricultural conditions, leading to widespread ecosystem and crop failures, cascading down to every aspect of human life.

You’re a jerk

🤣

Nothing, having arguments with people that lack basic critical thinking skills is a waste of time.
A simple google search can give you all the data and numbers and you can show it to them but it doesn't matter if they believe they know better than actual scientists.
There are people out there that believe the Earth is flat.

Met a director of my company in the UK that made a joke about vegans. I said, say what you want but they’re good for the climate! He went off on me about how climate change was fake. I tried my best to just move onto a different topic but he just kept going at me and ended it with: “you started it” … to which I said, “yes and let’s move on shall we?”

They’re not worth the effort.

ha... I'm vegan, me sitting at a table to eat is enough for people to feel the need to defend themselves and their choices without me saying anything other than kindly answering their questions from a conversation they start. It forces one to train the skill of not engaging with people like that.

Also he's the one that started it with the (likely bad-taste) joke, not you, but good on you for taking one just to end it. Some people just can't deal with their cognitive dissonance because it would mean facing their actions not matching with their idealized version of themselves, you can't have reasonable conversations with them.

I had that happen with some random guy over the Iran war where I just made an offhand comment about how bad the US was doing and he starts going on a tirade about how America is #1 and yadda yadda. Anyway I kinda laughed and said I wanted to move on and was uncomfortable. A couple days later I saw him again and he said, “I looked it up and you were right about that one thing you mentioned but I’m still right about most of it.” Like sure buddy.

Seems like that company doesn’t have very good direction

Ideally? As little as possible.

What do they think caused it? Just time passing?

Basically yes.
Nothing in nature stays the same.
What changed it the 99.999% of time (and waaay more drastically) the humans weren’t there?

Climate does change over time however what WE are experiencing is a change beyond the norm - Human Activity Accelerated Climate Change. We are causing the climate to change at a greatly accelerated rate.

Yes both things are true.
The comment I reacted to sort of implied nothing would happen unless humans.
While it has been much warmer or colder and at far greater levels.

Try telling them that indeed the term “climate change” is not quite right. The correct one could be “human accelerated climate change”

I tell people that burning a 100 million barrels of oil a day, everyday, has to have an impact.

Imagine how much exhaust that is everyday.

The idea that burning a million barrels of oil everyday would not have an impact on the atmosphere is absurd.

Well without a real sense of the size of the atmosphere (which most people don’t have), that doesn’t really mean anything, other than it being a big number. Any impressively big number can be insignificant in relation to something big enough to easily absorb it.

However, we’ve added to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 50%. I think that says it really is significant.

Nothing, there’s no use in making him feel bad for something he has no control over.

Don't be ridiculous, maybe not in the same measure of all of Exxon etc. , but individuals can and do contribute to pollution and climate change.

I’m not going to feel one bit guilty about contributing a tiny fraction.
It’s like wanting an individual to pick up a can lid while companies dump truckloads of garbage.
And they, or the governments they own have zero intention of changing, on the contrary.
who’s ridiculous here?

I would generally expect of people not to litter, yes

that is totally not the point

How conveniently lazy of you.

Ask them what prompted them to be a geologist.

Highlight the speed of change now, since industrial revolution, compared to historical data.

Maybe show them this:

This seems to have worked with my boomer mom: “be that as it may, wouldn’t we all be better off by reducing pollution?”

Tell them you’re proud of them, they seem to be a high functioning mentally disabled person and are doing great in life.

I told my dad that even if climate change isn’t real, or if it is humans don’t contribute… what’s the harm in doing something about it? What’s the harm in doing something to help your grandkids have a world to grow up in and enjoy?

He installed solar panels a few years ago and now likes to talk about how he heats and cools his home without paying ConEd

Just be like, “Okay, what about the pacific garbage patch? Did human activity cause that? Should we be trying to fix it?” It’s pretty hard to argue that the fish made all the used water bottles themselves.

I tell them their brain is fried and I move on. Nothing will convince these people.

They’re convinced by the arguments and evidence they’ve been presented with & whatever evidentiary standard or lack of standard to accept the belief. Presenting clear, concise evidence that disagrees with their position may not convince them immediately, but if they are willing to be honest it will effect their confidence and more evidence over time should be more convincing. If it’s similar to deprogramming cult members being confronting or mocking isn’t recommended compared to actively listening, encouraging better standards for evidence and media literacy, and presenting good evidence and why it’s considered good evidence.

Nothing. Just walk away. I don’t understand why people would willingly engage in completely pointless arguments at all… it’s a huge part of why I left Facebook and Reddit and come here now instead. People on there literally just to argue and pick fights with other people.

I don’t care if it’s my dad, my neighbour, or an old friend from school … if they believe that, they believe that, and nothing I can say is going to change their mind - and it’s not my place to change their mind.

If my son said that to me, yes, it is my place to make sure he is properly educated, so we’d go through some Wikipedia articles and/or watch a couple documentaries about it, so people who understand all of it a hell of a lot better than I do can explain it to him properly. I am not a climate scientist.

Save your breath. It’s honestly not worth it.

Exactly, just say “you are too stupid to understand the explanation” and walk away.

Nothing. You benefit more from having someone who will help you plan and prepare for the effects of climate change than you do from having someone who agrees with you about the causes.

The reason for that is you and your comrade can’t do anything impactful about the human sources of climate change.

We have people like this running Egypt. They’re constantly cutting down trees!

Do research. Give them that. Walk away and never think or talk about it with them again.

You can’t fix stupid.