Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now. They just either disagree on the cause or proportion.<p>Some people just naturally resist hyperbole or sensationalist rhetoric, and I find it very helpful to reframe the argument from doom and gloom and fire and brimstone to something more realistic and grounded:<p>"The longer we put off doing something, the harder and more <i>expensive</i> it will be in the future. In a Pascal's Wager sort of way, many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything, and the potential that C02 is not a real culprit is more than made up by danger that it is. Making changes now is the <i>prudent</i> and <i>financially sound</i> decision."<p>In a large part, this is what the brief ESG trend on the stock market was briefly about before it got co-opted by a dozen different competing messages.
<i>> many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything</i><p>This is the part that seems to vary widely based on which warming alarmist you're talking to. Many of them are <i>not</i> saying there are things we could do that "don't even really cost us anything" that would deal with the problem--they're saying we need to devote a significant fraction of global GDP to CO2 mitigation.<p>Things that "don't really cost us anything" are probably happening already anyway, because, well, they don't really cost us anything.<p>Building a lot more nuclear power plants is the key thing that doesn't really seem to be happening right now, that would be an obvious way to eliminate a lot of CO2 emissions. But of course that <i>does</i> really cost us something. But it's probably the most cost effective thing we could do on a large scale.
The problem with Pascal's wager logic is you have to change your behavior based on all kinds of crazy low-probability events. You must worship every god, be an AI-doomer, a climate-doomer, a nuclear-doomer.<p>Pascal's wager is generally agreed to be logically unsound, so it's somewhat insane that we've revived it in all these modern contexts. If you believe in it, at least be consistent and sacrifice a goat to Zeus every couple years.
> Even the crotchetiest and most out-of-touch people I know basically accept that the Earth is warming now<p>My family is fundamentalist protestant, very midwestern, and I think about half of them believe that the earth is warming. Not trying to "win", just trying to say that a lot of this depends on the crowd you interact with. I don't know the percentage, but certainly there are still way too many people that don't even believe it. The very tired response is "well i wish it would warm up here <i>slaps knee</i>". Using the phrase 'Climate Change' at least reduces that objection.
Another reframing that may be useful is energy security/redundancy.<p>If you have a cheap source of solar panels and batteries, the only downside to installing them all over the country is up-front cost (which pays itself off quickly). The upside you gain is a substantially more robust, less centralized power grid that can continue to operate if something happens to impede your supply of fossil fuels or part of the grid gets cut off.<p>Looking at how things have played out elsewhere in the world the past few years, that's powerful.
I'm a different kind of crotchety.<p>I think it's real and potentially catastrophic. But I see very little chance of (sufficient) coordinated action to mitigate it.<p>I.e., I think there's too much temptation for individual countries to pursue a competitive economic or military advantage by letting everyone but themselves make sacrifices.<p>I hope I'm wrong.
> many of the changes we are talking about don't even really cost us anything<p>I hear that often, but it's never followed by details about any of the actual changes that are being talked about. The ones I actually hear (especially politicians) advocate for are catastrophically expensive and dubious in their effectiveness. Banning coal or gas-powered cards might (might) be a good idea in the long run, but it definitely does cost us something.
Yes, parts of my extended family who were anti-climate change and <i>proud</i> went from "Global warming is a hoax", to "So what if global warming is happening" over the past 10 years.
>There is unequivocal evidence that Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate. Human activity is the principal cause.<p>This document was last updated in October 2024, but I am a little surprised to see this still available on a .gov site.
Reposting a previous comment...<p>What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse phase is rare.<p>'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no continental glaciers exist anywhere on the planet... Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history.<p>'Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously... Earth's current icehouse state is known as the Quaternary Ice Age and began approximately 2.58 million years ago.'<p>Modern humans have existed for 60k years, all of which have been in this current icehouse.<p>To cast a different shade on the meaning, this climate period is rare, easily disturbed, and difficult to restore even with vastly more powerful technology.
The more common greenhouse state is unlikely to lead to a Venus runaway, but it will be hostile to us.<p>We might very well require the rare climate, and perish in the common.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthh...</a>
Previous climate changes happened over tens of thousands of years. This one is happening in decades.<p>It's the speed, not the magnitude that matters. Change faster than evolution and migration will destroy ecosystems.
Finally a human with a context window larger than a few hundred years.
Difficult is good. It makes it more competitive. It levels up the game.
We've already lost the battle to prevent catastrophic change:<p><a href="https://davidsuzuki.org/story/is-it-too-late-to-escape-climate-catastrophe/" rel="nofollow">https://davidsuzuki.org/story/is-it-too-late-to-escape-clima...</a><p>And 7 of 9 boundaries have been crossed?<p><a href="https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-bound...</a><p>This is starting to look more like the movie _Don't Look Up_.
Oops, someone forgot to delete or redact it.
Maybe they shouldn’t have the “Do scientists agree on climate change?” link go to 404. ;)
Very exciting to live in an apocalyptical era. I'm looking forward to discover which one of the several global threats to humanity will put us down first.
I wonder if we should move beyond this messaging. It’s well known to the smart half of the population that climate change is happening. There is apparently some debate on the cause. But this point is mostly irrelevant, it is problem-oriented thinking. By keeping the conversation in the problem-realm you invite troglodytes into the conversation to insert their bullshit. Instead, if we move forward with “presumption of truth” solutions-based messaging, we can start to talk about what we’re going to do.<p>Climate control is something more people will be on board with compared to trying to have a conversation about climate science to a person who didn’t graduate high school.
Everyone who can hear this has already heard it. Those who continue to pretend it is not happening are either deliberately deceptive so they can continue to make money from fossil fuels or unable to change their minds when faced by evidence due to identity politics.
My impression is that almost no one denies the warming itself, just the link to greenhouse gasses. That link is unfortunately much harder to prove than rising temperatures by itself. The proof is there nonetheless, but it's easier to cast doubt on it, and that's what certain groups have been doing.
I've seen the full-court denial:<p>- it's not warming, or not significantly<p>- if it's warming, it's not because of humans, (or)<p>- if it's warming, it's beneficial<p>- if it's warming because of humans and that's bad, there's nothing we can do about it<p>ETA: honorary mention for "what about China?"<p>People I've argued about this with will switch interchangeably between these. Press them hard enough on one issue, and they'll just switch to another. It's a game of whack-a-mole.
Or "Why does 2 degrees matter?"<p>Because when were 4 degrees cooler, NYC was under 1000 feet of ice. We really don't want to find out what 4 degrees hotter is like.
Same here. I'd also add "It's warming, caused by humans, harmful, but mitigating it would be even more harmful."<p>Basically, anyone capable of thinking about it logically has at this point reached the conclusion that it's real. Anyone arguing otherwise is therefore necessarily not thinking about it logically, and you have to expect things like shifting claims.
But POTUS 5 months ago:<p>"If you look back years ago in the 1920s and the 1930s, they said global cooling will kill the world. We have to do something. Then they said global warming will kill the world, but then it started getting cooler. So now they just call it climate change because that way they can't miss. Climate change because if it goes higher or lower, whatever the hell happens, there's climate change. It's the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. Climate change, no matter what happens, you're involved in that. No more global warming, no more global cooling. All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong. They were made by stupid people that have cost their country's fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success."<p><a href="https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-speech-80th-united-nations-general-assembly-september-23-2025/" rel="nofollow">https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-...</a>
I didn't even think the link to greenhouse gases is denied any more.<p>The merchants of doubt ran out the clock and what I hear from the former deniers I know is that it is too expensive and too late to do anything now, being warmer will be nicer, and CO2 is a fertilizer.
A friend of mine says he was convinced by <a href="https://xkcd.com/1732/" rel="nofollow">https://xkcd.com/1732/</a>
Even the qualification "in the last 10,000" years gives the doubters something else to dismiss global warming.
There are people that believe the warming, but don't believe it matters because the Earth used to be much hotter at some point in the past so it is a natural cycle. Yet they fail to realize that humans didn't exist then so there is no good reason to believe an Earth that hot can support human life.
>> My impression is that almost no one denies the warming itself, just the link to greenhouse gasses.<p>I fall in that category. My suspicion is that water vapor from air travel is by far the biggest contributor. I saw the blue skys after 9/11. I read the NASA guys that said daily temperature range increased measurably. I saw the blue skys again during Covid19.<p>I'm also of the opinion that anyone looking at historical data only going back 200,000 years or less is missing the larger picture. Sea levels are NOT at historic highs, we should expect them to rise further before receeding. We should expect glaciation again if we don't do anything, but speeding up warming IMHO is more likely to trigger glaciation that to "push through" whatever causes it and break the cycle (which would be a good thing).<p>So as a long-term thinker all this hype is just that. If you don't have a plan to end the glacier cycle you're just making a big deal out of a small change in time-scale due to reasons (CO2 vs H2O) that may well be the wrong ones.
Not to be contrarian, but if you cared, you could easily rule out your suspicions.<p>It's not even worth it to say why or how, since not even doing rudimentary research means that you aren't interested in developing a well-informed opinion.
>> Not to be contrarian, but if you cared, you could easily rule out your suspicions.<p>That's just false. You might try to rule it out yourself to see. My comments here and the responses demonstrate that it's a waste of time to argue against people in the purity cycle of global warming. My position is one of moderation not denial - and I'm downvoted, told I don't care, and I haven't done even the minimum of research. Pffft. HN is not what it used to be.
> My suspicion is that water vapor from air travel is by far the biggest contributor.<p>Have you calculated the water vapor generated from air travel, and compared that to the water vapor already generated by the water cycle? (just normal evaporation from lakes/rivers/oceans/plants)<p>Even as back-of-napkin math, this should be a pretty easy sanity check.<p>I think you're off by a few orders of magnitude here, but I also don't want to discourage you from adopting a "check for yourself" mindset.
>> Have you calculated the water vapor generated from air travel, and compared that to the water vapor already generated by the water cycle?<p>I've SEEN the effects with my own eyes. You can also see contrails seeding cloud formation on some days. Then there's the fact that these extra clouds are formed and dissipate on a 24 hour cycle, so part of the day they let in sunlight and part of the night they trap heat. These effects are significant and there is little research on the bigger picture effects of this (that I've seen).
I’ve given up. I’ve long assumed for a year now we are heading for warming that is even worse than the worst projections and it’s all over. This has given me some peace, like accepting you’re going to die.
Same, sadly. I’ve done far more than my part, and even my direct family hasn’t, let alone the rest of the country, the world.<p>I only hope I can have a decent life until it ends, and I hope it takes slightly longer than I think it will.
I still remain optimistic that the clever folks can avoid the absolute worst outcomes. However, I too am very frustrated that almost nobody gives a shit about the future. We are rapidly reaching the point where WE will live through the effects, and our own children will suffer much worse.<p>I basically see it as a moral wrong and a grave ethical failure to use fossil fuels at this point. Except for home heating, I am now close to directly powering my entire life with clean, renewable energy. It was not hard. It was expensive, but only in the short term; I have effectively prepaid for my power needs for at least the next 25 years, and over than span it is very inexpensive.<p>A modern EV is about the same price as any other car, goes about the same distance, and is only slightly more time to fuel in the worst case. In the typical case, you don’t think about charging at all. The fact that I can’t get my supposedly environmentally conscious family of scientists and engineers to care continues to stun me. Somehow saving money while improving the world is “a waste of money” while buying an expensive hobby vehicle or vacation home is not. Frustrating.
you will age, you will weaken, you will cease, no choice or circumstance will change that. endeavor to create something that will persist through the eons, and that part of your mind will live forever.
Oh wow, a true statement on a government website. I'm sure they'll take it down within a day.
Can’t wait for trump and his gestapo to deport the entirety of nasa for telling the truth
Why did the Trump regime not discover and eradicate this heretical sentence?
I've shifted my mindset to abandon this idea that humanity will survive forever, or that we should strive to live as long as we can.<p>Intelligence is a scarcity and it cannot overcome the majority of people that are incredibly stupid or ignorant. So accepting that we are doomed relieves some of the stress. I won't have children to worry about their future, either.<p>I still live my life in such a way that minimizes my impact on the world as much as possible. I still surround myself with folks that want a better world. But there is no stopping the impending doom and I'm trying not to be miserable with the time I have.
Ultimately I think it will be a self correcting problem, but there is going to be an extremely long period of absolute hell. Global warming is eventually going to cause food and water scarcity on a level that will wipe out a huge percentage of the Earths population. Then the Earth will recover from there being fewer humans.<p>If in 3000 years we discover humans were completely wiped out to the last person I would be pretty surprised.
Toba catastrophe theory:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngest_Toba_eruption#Toba_catastrophe_theory" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youngest_Toba_eruption#Toba_ca...</a>
Agree, this is how excesses always get corrected in nature.
I mean, all of humanity has lived in the period between two glacial eras, I don't expect us to go beyond that. This should be clear even to people who choose to ignore the facts about climate change.
Humans won’t get wiped out, not by global warming atleast. It’s just going to suck and a <i>lot</i> of us will die.
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So what are we going to do about China?
We don't have to do anything about China, "China’s CO2 emissions have now been ‘flat or falling’ for 21 months"<p><a href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-21-months/" rel="nofollow">https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-ha...</a><p>China is building clean energy for a good chunk of the world, including itself.<p>A better question may be: What is the US going to do to make up for its historical emissions? The US got wealthy by creating far more emissions than China, and all those historical emissions are now a problem for the rest of the world.<p>If people in the US try to turn climate action into a blame game, it will end very very poorly for the US.
If the rest of the world wants to still have an industry once we finally decide to seriously use green technology, they should quickly catch up to China - if that's still possible.<p>While China is still very reliant on fossil-fuels, and particularly dirty coal, they're at the same time working on dominating the post-fossil age at astonishing speed. After they already dominate solar and batteries, they're working on doing the same for a number of other future green industries. They are already dominating future technologies like Green Methanol that most people in Europe or the US have never heard of.
Emulate them?<p>PRC solar power production last year conservatively will diplace ~45 billion barrels of oil, or 10%-20% more than total global consumption per year. It's just retarded eco accounting that attributes emissions to renewable manufacturers while fossil exporters don't get any penalties for extracting emissions.<p>Every year of PRC solar prevents doubling of oil, basically they're like the only significant country whose net contribution is negative for how much carbon sinks they manufacture. So the answer for US+co is obviously stop exporting oil and lng, and start exporting renewables.
A troll response I presume. Or perhaps sarcasm without the indicator.
The plan was always to put economic pressure on China to catch up to the rest of the developed world, but we can't exactly tell someone else to stop crapping their pants while we are still crapping our pants.
The same China that, added more new solar capacity in 2024 than the US currently has total? And is currently at 36% of its total energy use from renewable sources compared to the US's 23%? And has ~32GW of nuclear plants in construction compared to the US's 2.5GW?<p>I hope we steal their playbook.
China is going to be fully green in a decade or two. India in 3 or 4.
Nothing? China is solving the problem on their own. They already make substantially less carbon per person that most of the west. If we want to be like China it's a simple proposition: be OK with Manhattan project level investments in power transmission from places that have lots of renewables to places that need renewables.
Climate is determined by total CO2 output, not per capita.<p>That’s a real problem, because China, and all the poor countries in Asia and Africa aren’t going to stop increasing their CO2 output per capita until they reach western standards of living.
we don't need evidence Earth is warming, because it's happened before humanity, and it will happen after we're gone. We need evidence that we're poisoning ourselves and the planet. Global warming's only accomplishment is giving the poisoners a pass when it was debunked. Private jets and climate change, choose one.
I know you're getting dogpiled, but global warming has been validated, not debunked.<p>The science behind it really got going in the 1890s, with Arrhenius' paper predicting climate sensitivity to CO2. That was bounced back and forth with rebuttals and counter-rebuttals until about 1950. Major debate points were how much role water vapor played, how this varied with temperature/altitude/pressure. (You can trace each part of the argument if you're so inclined; there's lots of neat science in there. The concept of "pressure broadening" was my favorite; it explores how spectral bands change with pressure).<p>Around 1950, the science started settling out. Spectrometers had improved, we had clearer view that CO2 and H2O don't fully overlap in their spectra bands through the atmosphere, and we had the computing to do better calculations. By the 1970s, we were getting ice core data showing that the world had gone through huge temperature swings, and how this changed with CO2. Enough data had accumulated that a consensus was forming. In the 1980s, scientists were now concerned enough to form a large body to inform policymakers on this issue (IPCC; 1988). And in the 40 years since then, we've mostly sat on our hands, even as the science just gets clearer and clearer.<p>I share all this long history to explain that the science went through nearly a century of rigorous debate even before politicians got involved. This a scientific issue, not a political one. And I'm glossing over 99.9999% of the detail here. There was an <i>extensive</i> literature debate between the scientists, hashing out any point you can think of. You just have to go to your local uni library and start reading.<p>TL;DR: saying that global warming is debunked is about as incorrect as saying that the Earth is flat. We have <i>extensive</i> evidence showing otherwise.
They predicted a warming planet based on human activity as long ago as the 50s<p>We’ve known about the mechanisms of CO2 leading to atmospheric warming since the 19th century.<p>We know humans are adding CO2 to the atmosphere.<p>We observe higher CO2 and warmer temps<p>The evidence isn’t that complicated.
I'm pretty sure global warming isn't debunked. Yes, we should worry about all the other pollution too. But global warming is happening and we are causing it. What's different than nature doing it is the rate of change. Yes the earth was warmer in the past and would be in the future, but it has never warmed as fast as it is now.