Why some people don't believe in climate change

[Mario F.]

According to this YouTube channel that broadcasts science-based educational videos, it is because we humans have the brain of a caveman, we tend to cherry pick, we fear being cast out of our interests groups, we don't perceive future threats as real threats, we don't have space for more worrying and we decide to ignore facts.

...

So people who don't believe in Climate change are dumb idiot self-centered cherry pickers with lots of worrying in their minds. People who believe in climate change are the smart, intelligent ones. That's educational science for you.

[Yarin]

So people who don't believe in Climate change are dumb idiot self-centered cherry pickers with lots of worrying in their minds. People who believe in climate change are the smart, intelligent ones. That's educational science for you.

What do you expect from a channel named "It's Okay To Be Smart"? The narcissism is strong in this one.

Unfortunately, this behavior is common among academically themed publications. You question a doctrine of the Holy Church? Then you must just be mentally inferior. No time to rigorously examine any arguments.

[MutantJohn]

Is man-made fueled climate change that hard of a pill to swallow? Like, America almost ruined itself with pesticides and we developed bombs that can disintegrate the entire Earth. Is it altogether too far-fetched to believe that industrial pollution is having an effect on the planet after like 150+ years?

[Mario F.]

Is man-made fueled climate change that hard of a pill to swallow?

You don't swallow pills in science. Red or blue. It's your choice if you do. But then don't call it science. Call it a belief system.

Me, I prefer to not ignore the fact that while we have some evidence of a climate change pattern, we have no evidence that this is man made. That is what the above video completely ignores. i.e. There's more to not believing in man made climate change than being a brute of a human being. And this particular lack of evidence is terribly important to the overall scientific discussion, because we seem to understand that the steps necessary to avert or slow down climate change would have very important implications on the world economy, even if we don't really know what exactly are these steps and if they will have a meaningful effect.

[phantomotap]

You don't swallow pills in science. Red or blue. It's your choice if you do. But then don't call it science. Call it a belief system.

O_o

The sort of sentiment expressed by the video, at least as you forwarded, isn't even that; the sentiment here is more "You can take the blue pill, but science says your dumb if you go blue. Science says we are smart. Also, we are science.".

I still don't care where people fall on the climate change thing, but the expectation of so many as knowing the answer is discouraging.

Soma

[Mario F.]

I was replying to Mutant John on that particular quote. Not addressing the video.

[MutantJohn]

I don't feel like anyone is really pill swallowing. The general consensus seems to be that it's man-made.

This is a wiki quote :
Scientific understanding of the cause of global warming has been increasing. In its fourth assessment (AR4 2007) the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that scientists were more than 90% certain that most of global warming was being caused by increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases produced by human activities (anthropogenic).[7][8][9] In 2010 that finding was recognized by the national science academies of all major industrialized nations.[10][b]

Global warming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I mean, what else do you want? We can't exactly prove it beyond all doubt but what would be so bad about re-engineering everything? Oh no, everything we have now is super efficient and uses renewable energy that produces zero pollutants!

I don't see how the solutions to global warming (even if it was fake) would have any form of bad consequence.

[grumpy]

I mean, what else do you want?

You might actually want to examine the evidence and the assumptions that led to the conclusions. There are some pretty amazing embedded assumptions in the body of work. Some of them are well justified. Some, however, are simply accepted.

We can't exactly prove it beyond all doubt but what would be so bad about re-engineering everything? Oh no, everything we have now is super efficient and uses renewable energy that produces zero pollutants!

I don't see how the solutions to global warming (even if it was fake) would have any form of bad consequence.

You honestly think that making things more energy-efficient is the only possible outcome? Truly?

It's not always clear what is needed to make some engineered products more energy efficient, so one simple minded approach is to simply make existing products/services uneconomic without providing any replacement. Certainly, a number of the more extreme green movements have advocated exactly that. It is certainly the basis for a number of "green taxes" - make the existing approach less desirable economically. The problem is, making an existing approach less desirable economically does not necessarily make a more efficient approach more desirable - it can just force existing producers of the good or service out of business and not provide any better alternative.

[MutantJohn]

That's the free market, baby. I thought financial incentive was the best one according to capitalism. The taxes will drive ingenuity.

[Mario F.]

Ok. Let's tax the ubiquitous combustion engine, polyester clothes, paper books, furniture, computers, chinese and indian products, and whatnot. Sure someone will quickly come up with alternatives to all these,

[grumpy]

That's the free market, baby. I thought financial incentive was the best one according to capitalism. The taxes will drive ingenuity.

From that, I would not be surprised if you were to inform us of your abiding belief in the tooth fairy.

Tax is a cost. In the business world, increase cost can result in a drive to efficiency, but it can also lead to closing down lines of business. Business is about profit, and too much cost can eliminate profit.

[stahta01]

1. The first reason, I doubt CAGW is the major lack of its supporters saying they support Nuclear Power.
2. The second reason is the many areas where secrets are being kept in the CAGW science.
3. The third reason is the mistakes being made that would have been found faster if the CAGW would stop keeping so much of the data and caluclations secret.
4. The fourth reason when you only look for a single cause of a problem, you tend to miss the other possible causes of a problem.

Tim S.

[Alpo]

I mean, what else do you want? We can't exactly prove it beyond all doubt but what would be so bad about re-engineering everything?

I don't know if this is serious, as a programmer I'm sure you know what's bad about changing an existing system. To answer anyway, the only way to change everything would be to have some sort of enforcement on the change. The outcome could be good or bad, but the method used would be invasive of other people's property.

That's the free market, baby. I thought financial incentive was the best one according to capitalism. The taxes will drive ingenuity.

Taxes are not part of the free market. Actually taxes are one of the main instruments of governmental influence over it. Also, financial incentives don't need to be best, the only thing that matters is that there is an incentive.

So people who don't believe in Climate change are dumb idiot self-centered cherry pickers with lots of worrying in their minds. People who believe in climate change are the smart, intelligent ones. That's educational science for you.

He talks in the video about confirmation bias, while counting on the audiences confirmation bias to keep them from questioning the presenter. It's basically a video of a hipster attempting to use information from his psychology course in a feigned attempt to explain why everyone doesn't believe as he does. I say "feigned" because it's not targeting those who don't believe, it's just back patting . If you have a doubt of this watch the end of the video, where he does the bit about climate change skeptics being conspiracy nuts.

I don't really care where people fall on the question of climate change, I just wish it weren't so wrapped in politics and belief systems. It seems like everything these days is ideologically charged to the point where asking a question is seen as an attack. Maybe the internet extremizes people's opinions by exposing them to differing viewpoints. Crap now I'm psychoanalyzing! Now that I've caught the hipster virus, I must go inform everyone how banal everything is :P.

[MutantJohn]

I googled CAGW and I found a RationalWiki article on it. That site's kind of funny but I highly doubt their objectivity. They do have a list of all the scientific institutions that support AGW though and that's probably real.

[whiteflags]

IIRC taxing the dirty solution to an environmental problem only worked when the clean alternative already existed, was cheap, and government could nudge things in a good direction by taxing. This was how acid rain was handled in the US.

Meanwhile, in 1989, the U.S. Congress passed a series of amendments to the Clean Air Act. Title IV of these amendments established the Acid Rain Program, a cap and trade system designed to control emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

It would have been a failure of a program if there weren't cleaning technologies, scrubbers for smoke stacks, or the ability for industry to switch to natural gas for power.

Solving carbon emissions is a lot harder because you have to replace oil with something. Transportation is most of the problem - assuming we want to keep our modern lifestyle.