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Comment by xupybd | Hacker News Reader

Maybe trying to win over republicans would be better? The culture wars don’t help this issue.

Fox News is the a major barrier to that happening. There are those on the right that believe in climate change and think that we need to take action but they are vastly underrepresented on Fox. With that being the case most Republican voters will believe that its a worldwide leftist conspiracy and few Republican politicians will dare defy this orthodoxy.

That's why we have Republican congressional leaders saying things like people can't change the climate only God can (Inhofe), that sea level rise is caused by rocks falling into the ocean, and that increasing atmospheric CO2 levels are the result of more people exhaling.

Short of one of Murdoch's children changing the Fox line, only losing elections will change this behavior.

The issue here is that this more or less blames the messenger and not what I see as the root cause.

For a long time (1980s-2000s for sure), major fossil fuel companies and other extraction industries -- famously ExxonMobil and Koch Industries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...), but quite a bit of others as well, have spent a lot of time funding and backing climate change denialism. The extraction industries tended to align to the Republican side, so these scientifically unsound opinions have tended to trickle up through conservative think tanks (eg Heartland Institute) and eventually down to the populist outlets (like Fox News and Rush Limbaugh and the like).

It does seem like that some of the oil companies are kind of weakly coming around to the fact that climate change is not something you can simply misinformation away. Maybe the lawsuits against extraction companies (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/mar/20/can-clim...) are helping here. Regardless, it is not nearly enough to me at the moment. This is the pipeline that needs to be shut off in order for the message to be clearer on the right wing side in America.

Unfortunately, the concept of climate change denial has taken hold on the "conspiracy theory" side of American politic, so the concept is going to be floating around out there for a while (there are 18th century conspiracy theories still active after all). But what I'd hope to see if the extraction industry misinformation stops is that the more rational side of conservative American politics realize that this is a problem. Unlike most of Europe, it is difficult to think of many conservative politicians and personalities in the United States who are not denialists. (Arnold Schwarzenegger's one of the few I can think of immediately that is strongly convinced that climate change is a huge problem.)

What would win over republicans? I mean, if the survival of human civilisation isn't enough, what can you propose?

Republicans (and the equivalent rich conservatives in other countries) believe that climate change is happening anyway, and that anyone who doesn't try to make money off it is an idiot. They don't buy the survival of the human civilization bit - they think it'll affect only poor people, and that the rich will be safe. And honestly, they're right, at least for what we'll see in their lifetimes. Poor people are going to die in their millions in the coming decades, and rather than seeing themselves as the cause of this they see themselves as protecting themselves and their friends and families against it by insulating themselves with money.

That's my theory anyway.

Well there is a lot of false information out there about climate change and it's probable influence on the planet. Things have gotten out of hand with how polarised this issue is. Many people on the right don't believe in climate change. A little of this is because the time scales were off in some early predictions such as An Inconvenient Truth. This was a good wake up call to many but it also exaggerates the rate of change to the point that many of the predictions should have already had massive negative impacts. This leads people to think they've been lied to. Screaming at them and telling them they're ignorant climate change deniers does little to encourage this. To think they don't care about the survival of the human race is not accurate. They just don't think it's at risk. IMHO the truth without the us verses them stuff is the key. I think 13 Misconceptions About Global Warming by Veritasium on YouTube is a perfect example of this. Yes it's easy to get mad at people when the fate of the world is on the line but that's not as productive as trying to understand them and reaching out to them.

This seems a bit like the Y2K problem. Even if we collectively get our sh*t together and manage to avert the worst effects of the crisis, there are always going to be people who will wonder what all the fuss was about.

And conspiracy theorists will have fodder for the next 50 years.

jogjayr, you are probably right. But if enough of the voting public can be convinced they might be able to help effect change.

if the survival of human civilisation isn't enough, what can you propose

Tell them the magic elves demand doing your bidding? Because both things are on the same level of rationality? Civilization, as such, is in no danger.

...

To OP: The problem will solve itself if the population of the world goes down enough, whether naturally or through some actual catastrophe. Indeed most of the world's birth rate is low enough that we are well on the way of a solution. Look up which parts of the world still have massive population growth and then see how many liberals you can get on board with trying to reduce that. Good luck.

i hope population of the world goes down a lot in your region in particular

Stop crying wolf (about this issue at least) for a start.

1. Guardian: "President Obama has four years to save the Earth" (2009)

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/jim-hans...

Barack Obama has only four years to save the world. That is the stark assessment of Nasa scientist and leading climate expert Jim Hansen who last week warned only urgent action by the new president could halt the devastating climate change that now threatens Earth. Crucially, that action will have to be taken within Obama's first administration, he added.

2. The Independent: "Snowfalls are now a thing of the past" (2000)

According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.

“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/12/one-of-the-longest-ru...

You can read more about the endlessly repeated warnings about "tipping points" that never come in this fairly partisan but well-researched blog article: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/08/the-ever-receding-cli...

Regardless of the end times arriving for President Obama, he surely had as much meaningful data available as we do now regarding climate....and what did he do?

Eventually we will have a Democrat President...get ready for a deafening wave of silence when that President does as little or maybe even less than our current one. Rest assured if that President is elected during a recession, putting people to work will override climate concerns.

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