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We have to acknowledge the fact that the denialism concerning climate change extends from it being strongly linked politically. That's the reason we see so much effort in this thread concerning "valuing other opinions" or "people believed the earth was flat". Since the naysayers aren't interested in coming up with legitimate alternative models, the only refuge is to downplay "consensus" and fight to have uninformed individuals on the same level of discourse as the climatology community. So while the science is solid, you aren't going to get someone to believe something they are against from the onset.

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> Since the naysayers aren't interested in coming up with legitimate alternative models, the only refuge is to downplay "consensus"

It's important to note that this pattern plays out for many issues. It's reactionary politics and rhetoric, which is simply against things and for nothing - to deny: climate change, covid, racism, etc.

It's important to note that this pattern plays out for many issues. It's progressive politics and rhetoric, which is simply for any change and refuses to admit that anything is ever good enough, has natural causes, or is a completed process - to blindly accept claims of: climate change, covid, racism, etc.

Strange that both the coal and oil industries (independently) produced internal documents in the mid 1960's agreeing that climate change science was sound and thus it was a particularly serious threat to their business.

Are you saying that they have not supported climate change denial?

This cute comment would have more bite if you'd actually managed to write in a straight logical line like the parent comment. Of course, imitation-but-worse is a reactionary staple.

This is probably my favorite response, because I literally made the exact point as the original comment. Any difference in the quality of the argument, such as it is, is purely invention on your part.

Which of course, is the point: it's a stupid argument however you look at it. If you up vote it, it's only because it confirms your priors, not because of the quality of the point (non-existent).

“Non-movement is the same and as valid as movement!”

Sure, good luck with that, but why impose it on others?

This is a well known PR tactic, described in Merchants of Doubt and most recently in The New Climate War by Michael Mann.

Interesting enough, this tactic can also be deployed on strong believers in climate change in several ways. For example, the very idea of a carbon footprint is invented by BP in order to shift responsibility towards the consumer, which deflates pressure on corporate action and regulation. The gun lobby, tobacco companies and softdrink industries have employed similar campaigns - such as inventing recycling.

The very term 'climate change' is a friendlier and successful rebranding of global warming by the way. It suggests something natural, maybe even benign. That's why I prefer climate crisis.

Another example is the idea that renewables are not 'green', like wind turbines kill birds, EV requires lithium etc. The proposed alternative is always either some future technology or a complete non-starter like dismantling capitalism and just stop using electricity.

Yet another tactic is to make the case that we are doomed and no action can be taken.

All these serve the interests of the fossil barons very well as they divide, cast doubt on, delay or otherwise frustrate the efforts to genuinely decarbonize our economy.

Thus, one needs to be careful to distinguish between actual science and marketing disguised as science, or more insidious: bits of science employed in a psyop campaign.

If anyone is interested in the details of the history and mechanics of fossil fuel propaganda, this [0] podcast is a good resource.

[0] https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/drilled/id1439735906?i...

I would argue that the recyling example is one that they're still winning the PR war on, very similar to the carbon footprint one.

Recycling is green and economic. This is the scientific consensus and also blatantly logical. Anyone arguing otherwise has consistently been in the pocket of big business or political parties that thrive on letting big business do whatever they want. We have decades of evidence of that.

But the most common story you hear about recyling is that it's a pointless greenwash and the alternative is ..... the status quo. Constant stories of how it went wrong in some case, or got subverted by those same big companies and the moral always seems to be "don't try to do green stuff, it's all a scam and/or silly hippies who do more damage than good", which is exactly the "doomed" strategy you mention.

Almost certainly a whole bunch of people reading this comment have a direct mental connection of "recycling" -> "scam", "waste", "not even good for the planet" similar to what has been cultivated for wind turbines, solar, EVs etc though most of those seem to be losing steam faster, probably only because those industries have their own lobby groups now.

My comment about recycling needs more nuance. Of course recycling as a mechanism is part of a sustainable economy. But much better to recycle a material is to reuse a product, and even better is for the thing to not have been produced in the first place.

Recycling plastic for example is very limited. It's very hard to get everybody to perfectly recycle, then we can still only recycle a limited amount of plastic a limited number of times. Clearly, recycling plastic isn't green. It's only ever so slightly less harmful.

We have been recycling plastic for a long time and we are still choking in it's waste.

I still recycle myself though, even as I'm trying to reduce my consumption of (single-use) plastics, which isn't easy at all. But I also support a ban on as much plastic products as possible, since recycling is a non-solution and the problem unacceptable. I think such bans are gaining public support, at least in Europe. Just like the public is starting to become aware that individual action on reducing footprint isn't enough and even distracts from holding the right actors accountable. Landmark cases here in the Netherlands such as the Urgenda case and the case against Shell help spread that awareness.

I urge you to examine where you got the idea that recycling plastic is such a bad idea.

"Biomass is so bad it's worse than coal" "EVs are so bad you're better of with an ICE" "Recycling is so bad you're better off not bothering"

Notice a pattern there? Attacking alternatives that are better, but not perfect (nothing is) is an obvious tactic to fall back on once the more blatant denial starts to falter.

Meanwhile, if you looked up a study about recycling, including specifically plastic, you'd see the consensus is that it saves energy, and carbon and money.

There's definitely nuance but plastic is unavoidable in modern society. No one is going to ban it entirely, even if they do ban most disposable uses. And if they don't ban it, then the people who create products with it should be forced to pay for the recycling and someone should check it actually happens. There is no downside to this. The extra cost being borne by the producer even makes it less attractive to people who only care about money.

Ignoring that easily achievable collective goal in favour of an impractical personal achievement of avoiding plastic is exactly the kind of thing people seem to be waking up to these days.

Reduce reuse and recycle. Yes they all matter, but not bothering to recycle the stuff you don't reduce or reuse is obviously only beneficial to the people who sell the fossil based input materials.

You are pulling a straw man I've even been careful to avoid since I noticed it:

> you're better off not bothering"

Nowhere in my comments did I say that it's better to not recycle. I've even made the same argument as you did regarding EV elsewhere, debunking the idea that because EV isn't perfect, it's not worth the effort.

I've said "I still recycle myself" and "Of course recycling as a mechanism is part of a sustainable economy". I do not have, expressed or implied, anything like that recycling plastic is a bad idea. I don't know how to make that point clearer. My point however, is that it isn't a solution and convincing the public that it is, was a deceptive corporate propaganda campaign by the leading beverage and packaging corporations, designed to avoid taking responsibility and more drastic actions.[1] It's painful, but the green movement must recognize it has been misled and that recycling is really not enough, not by a long shot.

> plastic is unavoidable in modern society

This doesn't mean we can't significantly reduce our consumption of single use plastic and avoid a substantial amount of plastic usage, which is only increasing.

[1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec...

I know you understood this for EVs and renewables, that's why I pointed out that I think you have fallen for it when it comes to recyling plastic.

You said this:

> Clearly, recycling plastic isn't green. It's only ever so slightly less harmful.

You didn't need to emphasise how little you think recycling helps. I take it to mean "it's better to just not use plastic" and agree but as I said, on a society wide scale that is simply not happening so advertising that attitude to other people, who certainly will not stop using plastic, spreads the meme that recycling is basically useless and that is a bad strategy. Which coincidentally is the same message that fossil fuel providers push.

Collectively we need to use less and recycle the stuff we do use efficiently. As I said, there's no downsides to this, nor any conflict between those two things any more than saying we should use both wind and solar.

You don't use solar when wind makes more sense nor vice versa. But if you personally decide to install solar panels because that works well for you, it's not helpful to say "wind is not green, just ever so slightly less harmful". We need both, both are better than the status quo.

The difficulty is that recycling is a mixed bag. Recycling of aluminum is a resounding success environmentally and economically. Steel recycling seems to be a pretty good deal for everyone, and last time I checked glass was environmentally good and economically break even.

Unfortunately the term and concept of recycling covers all of these plus plastics, which have been largely a failure. This confuses both consumers and policy makers.

This is a "motte and bailey" rhetorical trick they use.

The people against any kind of market regulation will argue that all recycling is inherently inefficient if the market doesn't do it spontaneously.

This is obviously undermined by the obvious success of many metal recycling schemes where the regulations created a market.

So they then flip from recycling to "plastic recycling". If you then point out the many plastic recyling successes they'll jump to specific plastics and ways of using plastics that make it harder to recycle them. The obvious solution of using further regulation to get people to update their processes to use the easily recyled plastics is mysteriously avoided even though it has literally been done for decades across the globe, sometimes led by corporate co-operation (e.g. milk in various countries is in semi-standardized containers).

If you have a gut reaction that recycling, or just plastic recycling is a bad thing, you've been conned by fossil fuel producers who compete with recycled plastic as a feedstock.

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