Since when it wasn't an ideological position? The first time, at most, is when shell did research and decided, at that moment, to spread misinformation and fund deniers But even at that time, there were research about it and there already were deniers about it, at least since the begin of 1900s
Yup. All the years and time I've spent on trying to get this across to people hits a wall the second they've got their identity wrapped up in it. Facts don't matter at that point. You've got to get to the heart of the matter and ask what matters to them. Usually, we can find a common thread on saving money, cleaner environment, fairness in taxation, or even, "what are we gonna do for our tomato plants as it gets hotter?"
@@NeilDegrasseTysonWithAKatana Using the best evidence from climate scientists Al Gore claimed in 2006 that there would be no solving climate change if drastic measures weren't taken around the world to reduce greenhouse gases by 2016. So seven years ago it was too late to act.
It was never possible to do anything. The only people that care are white people. A tiny and shrinking percentage of the world population. You would need to establish a global government where white people subjugate all non-whites and enforce climate rules on them. And I'm pretty sure as a climate change believer you find the idea of white people being in charge even more unpalatable than global warming.
Which is a false position too. Odds are that climate change will not wipe out humanity. It will definitely decrease human comfort and lead to a massive cost of human life, but odds are that even if the feedback loops lead to untold devastation worse than any model yet conceived there will still be human settlements and societies with enough population to sustain the species. There's too many of us and anything short of a gamma ray burst or an asteroid impact will still result in the species persisting in some form. And even in a climate ravaged future there will still be value in living sustainably.
If you wanna fool somebody, you gotta fight against their intellect. If you wanna convince somebody that they have been fooled, you gotta fight against their pride.
sometimes if you wanna fool someone you gotta fight With their intellect not against. If you say something in a way that fits in line with what they think they already know and then fill in their blind spots with falsehood you can very easily make a relatively informed person fall for nonsense. It's how you get pilots who are flat earthers, and nurses who are anti vax. (sorry if I misunderstood what the first line meant and basically just explained it >>)
The same people who tell you it's not real will, in the same breath, tell you about how back in the day there used to be snow on the ground all winter every winter. And now we get a few inches a few times, and they miss the snow so much.
Yeah that’s the wild thing to me. It’s not even a matter of ignoring the data, it’s a matter of ignoring your own long term memory beyond a year or two. Like if you have memories of 20 or even 10 years ago living in the same place, it’s pretty obviously getting worse!
...this made me realize that when I was a kid, my mom had multiple videos where it was not uncommon for there to be tons of snow in October, to the point where Trick or Treating sometimes was hampered by a coat over my costume. and last year there was only a smidge of snow in my area, and it happened in like February only, and then was gone. and to top that all off, I'm 33 - this is less than 3 decades of time... this kinda bummed me out lol
You see, they're able to deny it because there will be like one week where it is incredibly cold, and they'll just say that it is proof that there is no global warming, when reality is we're talking about climate change, which causes higher highs and lower lows (albeit it gets more hot than cold in general), not just universal warming all the time.
My dad is a denier (amongst other things) and i spent my adolescence thinking that if i learned enough science and how to debate that i would eventually show him how wrong he was. Eventually it dawned on me that he didn't want the facts he just wanted to be contrarian. So much so that whenever a new discussion entered public discourse that you already knew what his position was. I've learned how to talk to my dad now, by channelling that energy into benign sports or movie talk. My energy is a lot better spent on the next generation.
I know how you feel... In recent years I've learned to just let it pass whenever my parents talk about their shit opinions, because I know my influence will never be enough to counterbalance the 'anti' influence (friends, info sources, their will to be contrarian) if they don't figure it out themselves. There's just no point fighting there.
There is an important psychological and social distinction between "denying" and "refusing to believe" and I think you know enough about motivated reasoning to guess which one is really happening here.
Sure, The climate is changing. How much humans have to do with it is debatable. My problem is you people seem to be on this self-righteous mission to "save the planet". That is not what it is though. For most of this planet's history, it has been inhospitable to human life. Even after life showed up most of that time has been spent inhospitable to human life. You people don't want to save the planet. You want to stagnate the planet. You are selfish and want the planet to stay exactly how it is right now.
guys stop arguing both of our science uncles are here. also how you watch either of these channels and say that type of stuff? somebody hasn’t been staying curious…
Even then, they'll just blame it on natural cycles of warming and cooling. There's no convincing them. They'll always find some nugget of bullshit to latch onto to avoid having to accept that they're wrong. If hundreds of photographs, videos, measurements, and simple experiments can't convince flat earthers that the earth is round, then living in a future of unprecedented warming, rising sea levels, mass extinctions, and drought isn't going to convince climate change deniers either. Because the absolute hardest thing a person can do is to admit they might be wrong.
this is literally their goal. you put up with their policies until they've cashed out by destroying the planet. when the reckoning comes for the rest of us due to their damage, they have enough money to build bunkers and buy the last remaining safe real estate while the rest of people get hit by typhoons and droughts.
@@treyshaffer That's the exact problem! By the time the idiots might finally be convinced we'll all already be dying in droves. And then there are still those who will try to find a scapegoat even when they are starving because of global crop failures. They will say "the elites hoard all the food" or something racist. Just so that they don't have to admit that the warners were right all along.
Never underestimate people's capacity to lie to themselves. Cognitive dissonance hurts and changing your world view is terrifying. They are being expected to admit they have built careers, lives, whole identities on a falsehood and that takes more courage than most have.
"if you dont go in lockstep with the political establishment you are lying to yourself!" or i just dont wanna get scammed by bad people with bad intentions? why do i have to support EVERYTHING the left pushes? seriously what do i get out of it because they tend to be wrong on everything.
Are you on crack? The only people afraid are the ones who have fallen for this bullshit. Humans are insignificant. The earth does what it does and has for billions of years.
Yep, that is why support for climate change is so strong. If people could just ask - where is the testable prediction for this? They would see there is no testable prediction to support climate change and climate change is therefor not a scientific theory.
This is so encouraging to hear. I don't think *MY* 90something year old evangelical grandparents are going to change their minds but I have hope my parents will.
This will sound cruel but their opinion or understanding really doesn't matter. The problem is all the people under 60 who think like them who, in turn, will have to wait another 20 years (when sht is exponentially more fked) to "come to jesus" about reality... Then we have the next group of morons under 60 flying and cruising around the globe voting for republicans... And the cycle continues and then we just die. Can you sense my optimism??
@@elizabethreid5554 mine might if they still lived in texas, but we moved them up to washington and the polar vortex stuff makes it so cool up here that it isn't hitting them yet.
@@SixOThreewell I'm sure the reason it's so hard is because you don't know how to argue, as shown by your strawman of near 50% of Americans you've never spoken to. Maybe learn how to argue and more people might just listen
I’ve also heard another commenter (in a different comment section on another app) suggest when talking about getting off of oil to tell them that oil will still run out either way, and if we don’t make the switch eventually it’ll run out. Since our current consumption of it outpaces the planets creation of it. Not to mention how the human population is increasing.
People who say that they don't think people are causing climate change are REALLY saying "I don't want to deal with this, handle this, or try to fix this".
I personally dont believe we "caused" change. Climat is always changing withing thousands or millions of years. However, we are activly influencing and speeding up the climat and the changes it is naturally going through. And faster then is healthy for the systems we rely on! It doesnt matter if we caused it or not ultimatly. We need to fix the damage we're doing either way! Just like its not the community's fault a person got run over by a bull. We've got to help, fix and help recover the runover person either way.
@@ethribin4188that's essentially semantics. Technically yes we aren't the sole cause of climate change but we have sped it up and arguably are one cause of it. The climate is changing in a way that it normally doesn't and it is our actions that lead to that change. Therefore, we are causing climate change. Or, there are several factors involved in climate change, but normally these are close to equilibrium. We have become another factor much larger than the others, and so our actions are currently driving climate change. No matter how you look at it, it can be argued that we are causing climate, even if we are not the sole cause of it
I’m terrified for this summer. I’m Australian, and it’s predicted to possibly be a worse bushfire season than the black summer bushfires. Every year, it gets worse. Every year, more and more people are displaced and die. I’m seeing it happen as I grow up.
I'm over in Texas, and it's starting to become noticeably worse here too. The winter freezes are gonna get worse and worse and the summers are gonna get hotter and hotter. Grass fires on the side of the road, frozen tree limbs causing insane property damage, casualties from heat and power loss. I bet we'll be in the same boat as you guys in less than a decade.
Yeah if Canada is any indication with their "once in a lifetime ecological disaster" wildfires this last summer, things are just going to keep getting worse.
I'm terrified of how the government uses emergencies to take power and money away from the people and give it to themselves and billionaires; during the last emergency for example, the state gained enormous authority over people and billionaires doubled their wealth while the people lost half their wealth. I'm worried about the environment but the last thing I want is the government to "help"
It’s similar with my home. Bigger and more horrible fires. Herds of animals dead from mosquitoes glaciers disappearing completely. It makes me so angry and sad when I’m told it’s not real
“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?” - Sam Harris
I remember mentioning climate change in my religious high school’s American History class and the teacher gave us a whole lecture on how and why it isn’t real. This was, like, 2010-11.
The comedic tragedy is them dying before we can say “I told you so” as sea level rise drowns the coasts and irreversibly spiraling biosphere into 6th mass extinction. The world burns and they won’t be alive to suffer from the consequences of their actions
People have been lied to a lot, and some people take away from that "The truth is always the opposite of what you're told". Which is perhaps the only strategy worse than believing everything you're told.
This is the crux of the problem. It's completely fine, even good, to be critical of established power structures. But assuming an assertion is bullshit simply because it came from an authoritative source, or government is absolute populist-brain rot. People have become so myopically concerned with potential government/academic propaganda that they've totally became blind to corporate propaganda.
Oh, come on! Fire is hot. Most people like chocolate. Falling off tall buildings can kill you. The Earth is round. WAY less than 50% of "what we are told" is false. @@ShannonBarber78
The oil company’s express strategy was to outright deny, then it slid to “it’s not caused by human activity” and now to “its so hopeless that it’s not worth doing anything about”. That’s their propaganda and they’re VERY good at it. People are confused because over the past decades they’ve been inundated with those three messages and they don’t really think about it enough to have their own thoughts on it.
Deniability is because people are fearful and ignorant to the truth that we do not know enough to make 100% certain assumptions about something we are too stupid to fully understand or do something about. Anyone explains to you they know exactly whats happening and how to fix this issue is lying to you. Fear mongering you with assumptions and fixing a problem they don't fully understand themselves is useless. I hate it when people try and wind people up on these crusades to end up empty handed and a basket full of lies. But lying is the new truth these days.
in 1979 the American Petroleum Institute along with Exxon, BP et al... proved Climate Change is Manmade caused by fossil fuels and decided to hide and obfuscate that information to make as much money as possible before the world economy crashes This information is available, but cultists will not... WILL NOT... read it because of cognitive dissonance.
Why do climate change hysterics always worry so much about what oil companies say? They say what they think will give them the best public image and they change their story accordingly. When they accept climate change, it is not evidence for climate change, they are simply deciding that arguing against it - even if its false - is counter productive because people believe it already.
I just watched highlander 2, an old movie where the earth's OZONE layer was gone and we had to create a force field then I REALIZED climate ZEALOT took 2 decades to comprehend that even my housekeeper has an ozone generator that's just 2 metal plates and a little electric we could replace the entire ozone in a few days and COST A MILLION DOLLARS oh no, better not let people realize we are numbr than a 6th grader but spent billions to do nothing what's the first RENEWABLE resource........carbon, you're a carbon based life form and somehow don't know this carbon is easy AF to capture, it's natural, in fact water vapor it 4 times more of a greenhouse gas than carbon carbon dioxide is 0.04-0'05% of the ATMOSPHERE, below 0.03% plants start to die off to replace the lose carbon how low would you like us to go?! history repeats itself when you are LOW IQ, and the rest of us can do nothing to stop it
So is cognitive dissonance simply the state of holding 2 opposite beliefs or is the discomfort that comes with it? I was always under the impression it was the discomfort factor, but if I'm wrong I'd like to be corrected. I could never live with that discomfort, I've changed my world views drastically twice in my life,bad id rather try to tune my perception to reality as opposed to doubling down. I'm only 23 but I'd hope that I can keep this ability if I come to find I'm incorrect on something important in the future, which I'm willing to bet I am lol
@@lightningmonky7674 I believe you're correct and feel the same way, but in the common vernacular it's taken on a slightly different meaning with respect to people who find ways of ignoring the cognitive dissonance that should, if working properly, be alerting them to the problem of holding contradictory ideas at the same time, or having views that are consistently misaligned with reality.
@@lightningmonky7674It's good to see that at least ONE person in this conversation understands what cognitive dissonance is & doesn't use it to describe people with whom they disagree.
Cognitive dissonance is actually the state of holding two contradictory beliefs and the discomfort that comes with it. It's powerful in that it's uncomfortable enough to cause people to rationalize and excuse, but it itself is not the mechanism by which they do so.
Same. I think he knows this and has a healthy amount of fear - no one wants to see the Alex Jonesification of Hank Green; but it is comforting, and i think gives some of us the permission we needed to ‘Get On With It Already’.
I find it very immature. To inject emotion into a debate like this is to lose immediately. If you can't argue your points calm and rationally, you may as well give up. Alex Jones was right about fertilizer chemicals causing frogs to swap sexes, yet he was made fun of because he was shouting it up and down.
I have learned as i became an adult that humans, me included, are not truth seeking machines, we are validation/emotional seeking. We want to feel happy, we want to feel validated, and having grand narratives about the worl dhelp
Yeah but Its taken me years of pain in my bed and thinking about life to create a belief system around seeking the truth and what we know so far, because I prioritize the latter. But I also have a condition where I can barely understand my emotions and think with logical systems because my brain doesnt autofill with instict
The last point is so true. I’ve had family members have the most insane takes like antivax, climate denial and anti-seatbelt only to completely cha get their mind and then deny they ever thought the opposite! Maybe it’s not important but it’s definitely annoying. Tbf, I was raised religious and could t remember when I had rather homophobic beliefs (they weren’t something I thought about often but they were there). But when I force myself to remember certain interactions I’m like man, I did say or think that huh? It really does feel like a different person.
@@LordZurkov I just watched highlander 2, an old movie where the earth's OZONE layer was gone and we had to create a force field then I REALIZED climate ZEALOT took 2 decades to comprehend that even my housekeeper has an ozone generator that's just 2 metal plates and a little electric we could replace the entire ozone in a few days and COST A MILLION DOLLARS oh no, better not let people realize we are numbr than a 6th grader but spent billions to do nothing what's the first RENEWABLE resource........carbon, you're a carbon based life form and somehow don't know this carbon is easy AF to capture, it's natural, in fact water vapor it 4 times more of a greenhouse gas than carbon carbon dioxide is 0.04-0'05% of the ATMOSPHERE, below 0.03% plants start to die off to replace the lose carbon how low would you like us to go?! history repeats itself when you are LOW IQ, and the rest of us can do nothing to stop it
@@LordZurkov A slight change 1 either realizes what an idiot 1 used to be, or 1 continues to be that idiot. Don't want to encourage humans going around calling others (using 'you') idiots based on what it thinks is idiotic & what is intelligent.
I know someone who doesn't really believe in climate change and they made a remark about "I don't remember smoke season being a thing at the end of every summer. Has that always been a thing?" And I saw them soooo close to the precipice of understanding. It was exciting but scary to realize it's already so bad that it's nearly undeniable even if you actively want to disbelieve.
@TylesBrain a lot of forest fires are started by lightning. You wanna talk to God about this? Maybe you can petition for more planning in where lightning strikes?
My dad doesn't believe in man made climate change and we had a similar exchange about the fires... and he said he believes that climate change activists might be starting the fires.
I was raised in a small Christian denomination that was outside the mainstream of Christianity, and it was interesting to watch the people who joined the church. Some of them joined because they honestly believed the doctrines the church taught, but many of them joined because they enjoyed the feeling of being in a small group that knew the "truth". It made them feel special and important. That kind of person often ended up leaving the denomination and moving to even smaller, more extreme groups. I think that things like climate change denial and flat earth are similar for many people who are looking for something to make them feel special.
Thanks for that input you probably hit the nail on the head because it makes so much sense. It seems like a common pattern people have at some point in there life. Wanting to be the small outcast group to feel important and smart to rebel against the majority but other people probably deny climate change because they’re profiting off the current system or don’t want to change their life for any reason
I read How to Talk to a Science Denier. The author went to flat earth meetings. He came to your conclusion that people just want to belong. As Hank says, it takes a long time to convince people ( from what I’ve read).
@@lillianbarker4292 All people love stories. They want their life to be a good story. They want to be the hero of their story or at least a significant character in a group of protagonists. Sometimes they make that story a wacky sf/fantasy/political thriller because those are compelling stories.
That’s an interesting observation. I watched that Flat Earth documentary on Netflix, and it’s clear those people love believing in that stuff because it gave them influence in that small community and made them feel special. It wasn’t really about the shape of the Earth, it was about their ego.
Ive heard the "whatever happens with climate its gods plan" line before. Of course when it comes to anything else they believe in "personal responsibility"
I'm glad you pointed out the fact that any solution needs to consider people who cannot adapt as things currently stand. I'm not poor by any means, and would love to switch to an electric car, but I frankly cannot afford to get a new vehicle and wouldn't even have a way to charge it. Government subsidies could go a long way to help.
Government subsidies for green renewable energy does exist but loads of private companies abused them in order to get massive tax breaks thus forcing the government to limit or cut off these subsidies altogether. Go look up the case of "DC Solar ponzi scheme" the founder and owner of DC Solar used his company as a front to acquire fake investment from investors and at the same time companies and other entities get massive tax breaks for investing into DC Solar.
Electric cars switch the energy source from the fuel to your country's power plants. If your grid is mostly coal, then your car is powered by coal. Not less pollutant. Also batteries pollute immensely, the whole thing is very bad to produce. We need alternative fuels.
@@Fux704 Obviously we would need a more renewable and less polluting infrastructure before switching to all electric, but my comment was about the cost aspect. It's a lovely thought but meaningless if most people can't afford it.
This is old, but for anyone reading, it is better to keep your old car until it blows up than scrap it for a new care BECAUSE you are creating so much waste by throwing away one car then needing another car to be manufactured using a finite resource. Not to mention just like fuel will run out eventually so will material for batteries. It’s another form of kicking the can down the road. It is better, but it isn’t the solution. We need better transport and to greatly reduce the amount of finite resources currently needed for travel. *cough cough* TRAINS *cough cough*
The thing that always irks me is when a ton of people are bizarrely wrong about a thing, and then an event finally proves it, and then all of those people evaporate. There's never the cathartic moment of hundreds of people saying "Wow, I was wrong. Sorry, guys!" I'd forgive immediately, but I don't even get to. Like when all those people thought the world was going to end in 2012, making a big stink about it, and then it didn't, and poof! Never heard from a single one of them again. It's happened over and over through the decades.
Or like the conspiracy theories surrounding the covid vaccine, so many people saying so many crazy things about it, that people were going to end up dying and kinds of nonsense.
I grew up around a LOT of the "the world is ending in 2012" folks, and while I didn't believe in that, I DID worry that those people in my life (and others like them) would start doing wild crap to, uh, "beat the apocalypse." Having grown up with an uncle who said he'd rather drown his family than wait for the end, I was afraid of that year bc of people like him. So, naturally, I called to check up on my bf in December, when the big bad was supposed to happen. I asked if he was doing ok, if there was any cultist crap, if his neighborhood was safe with all the conspiracy nuts, and he just laughed. He genuinely thought I was being ABSURD even worrying about the doomsdayers, and suddenly I was a little shamed-- from the outside, I didn't look any more tethered than my uncle. I apologized, but that was kind of the nail in the coffin, we broke up right after. For years I was so ashamed of how much fear mongering I had done without meaning to, and it didn't occur to me to publicly post about the context of my shift/sudden silence and moving on. I ultimately did, in the interest of trying to open up lines to people who maybe soft cut ties because I was One of Those People. I only share this bc I imagine a lot of the true believers (and casual worriers) were so embarrassed by how much time they spent in the grift that they still don't know how to acknowledge it without feeling like they're going to lose more face (admitting to being tricked or led on) than by staying silent. It's weird because they really didn't, but it's one of those emotional vs rational responses. People don't want to admit their pride made them marks. But I do think a good portion committed themselves to trying to spot other grifts. Unfortunately I think many others ran to more welcoming conspiracy communities that already had a locked and loaded Other to blame for things not going "according to plan." Eeesh.
Most of the anti climate change rhetoric comes from fossil fuel industry think tanks and front groups, because to address it means lower profits for them. When they say "its costs too much" they mean it would decrease profits too much and that's unacceptable. BP spends and order of magnitude more on green technology marketing than they do on green technology.
I'm surprised not more people are commenting this. It's not like they lie for no reason, there's a lot of money involved, and it would be conceding defeat for people who are super keen on defending free markets.
@@Sodium_Slug The scary thing is, some people ARE lying for no reason. Repbulicans and Fox News constantly downplayed the pandemic and the science we use to combat it (masks, vaccines, quarantine). And for what? What do they gain out of it?
It's hilarious how much of the "skeptic" points are about how someone like Bill Gates (not a particularly good guy despite his philanthropy for the record) is invested in green energy, meat substitutes, and the like - as a gotcha to point out how "they" have a vested monetary interest to push global warming as something to care about. And, like, they have a point in some ways. Climate change should not be something that's monetized for big capital investors solely to improve their bottom line, but like... you're literally regurgitating arguments DIRECTLY BANKROLLED by a much larger and wealthier group of people who hold the reins over our current economic system and energy production. It's like someone scolding you for eating a sausage while they pull out their pack of cigarettes... in the middle of a fireworks-and-petrol factory
Fossil fuel companies are making bank off the climate change industry. Artificial cuts in production inflate their profits. They're likely supporting climate change scientists more than any other industry. Wind and solar are guaranteed losers that ensure Fossil fuel dominance.
Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud. I don't believe for a second the right wing pundits that push climate change denialism believe it as much as they're bought and sold by the fossil fuel industry to create propaganda to protect their market share.
1:15 Climate denial among poor people isn't that important because they don't have much power or choice. However, climate denial among rich and influential people, particularly those strongly financially incentivized to deny (fossil fuel stakeholders, CEOs, and all the politicians they bribe), is important. Note that getting elected mostly has to do with campaign budget, which is determined by how many rich people and interest groups donate to your campaign. Then once elected politicians completely forget about anything they promised to the general public and solely listen to those largest donors.
@@NathaNeil27 I just watched highlander 2, an old movie where the earth's OZONE layer was gone and we had to create a force field then I REALIZED climate ZEALOT took 2 decades to comprehend that even my housekeeper has an ozone generator that's just 2 metal plates and a little electric we could replace the entire ozone in a few days and COST A MILLION DOLLARS oh no, better not let people realize we are numbr than a 6th grader but spent billions to do nothing what's the first RENEWABLE resource........carbon, you're a carbon based life form and somehow don't know this carbon is easy AF to capture, it's natural, in fact water vapor it 4 times more of a greenhouse gas than carbon carbon dioxide is 0.04-0'05% of the ATMOSPHERE, below 0.03% plants start to die off to replace the lose carbon how low would you like us to go?! history repeats itself when you are LOW IQ, and the rest of us can do nothing to stop it
'You' lobby & grandstand & vote for taxes and regulations that do absolutely nothing to solve the problem you claim we have. Why am I then to believe in your superior cogency and that received wisdom?
@@ihatecrackhead That's not how it works, ozone is being constantly generated and destroyed in the upper atmosphere, causing the ozone concentration to converge to some equilibrium value. The ozone layer depletion is caused by certain chemicals that catalyze the active destruction of ozone and/or inhibit its formation, shifting this equilibrium to a much lower concentration of ozone. As these chemicals slowly break down over time, the ozone layer automatically heals. Dumping a bunch of ozone into the upper atmosphere wouldn't really accomplish anything, and it would also be highly impractical to get it there (and ozone in the lower atmosphere is just toxic pollution).
I think a lot of people just really can't accept it emotionally. They just don't want to change their behavior. They don't want their world to change. They want the world to be the way it was when they were 10 years old.
I agree. They want to have single-use plastics and toss them in the garbage can without feeling guilty. They want to drive huge cars at ridiculously high speeds. They want to eat meat at every meal and eat cheese with everything. They want to run their air conditioning at 69 degrees. It they admit the problem then they have to reconcile themselves with their behavior.
Sure, The climate is changing. How much humans have to do with it is debatable. My problem is you people seem to be on this self-righteous mission to "save the planet". That is not what it is though. For most of this planet's history, it has been inhospitable to human life. Even after life showed up most of that time has been spent inhospitable to human life. You people don't want to save the planet. You want to stagnate the planet. You are selfish and want the planet to stay exactly how it is right now.
@@safetinspector2 You also have to recognize that people's behavior isn't gonna change, so why not make single use plastics that will degrade themselves in a year, they cost almost the same, why not have better designed houses so you can have your house at whatever temperature you want without problem (having air conditioning is actually the greener choice BTW, from an energy viewpoint, they use less energy than what the differential in temperature is), going at higher speeds can actually reduce the overall wasted energy, so it is more about the fuel source than speeds. And finally meat consumption, when you put everything on the table, it is not cut and clear, it is much more energy dense, it has much more nutrients, so it is not bad, the over consumption is the problem, we are omnivores, we can survive with only vegetables, but we need meat to have a proper well nourished diet. But most people that eat omnivore do not eat organs, they only eat the worse quality meat, muscle, and overeat, so the protein is not well used and they end up consuming a lot of fat, that is without taking into consideration how much just end up thrown out, so, it is other habits that need to change, habits that vegans also have (but morality speaking, vegans trow out fruit and vegetables, omnivores will thrown out what was once another sentient animal). The industry could be reduced to like half and there will still be enough for everyone that wants meat, just in a normal quantity.
11:33 My problem is those who "love" me stopped trusting me the second I spoke up against their worldview in literally any capacity (no matter how kind/gentle and understanding the approach). In these people's view there are good guys and bad guys, and if even a fraction of a hair on your body falls outside of their comically ridged world view, you are now a bad guy - you are brainwashed, paid off, malicious, etc. This makes having these conversations, in my personal experience, totally impossible. I'm not saying those I've interacted with are a perfectly representative sample, but if they are as common as my availability bias has lead my to believe, as nice as it sounds, this approach is ultimately futile.
Exactly. I can bring my opinions with all the kindness and thought I want, I'll be faced with "show me studies then." So I do, and then I get the "studies are biased". So I get even more studies, and suddenly it's an issue of me using Google even though I also use other search engines. It's never-ending. I'm almost 30 , but I'm seen as an immature child. Anytime I want to argue against pseudoscience or fake beliefs, the story ends like this. It's infuriating.
As someone who was recently displaced by the wildfires in the Northwest Territories in Canada, I have been feeling this frustration a lot lately. I'm one of a few lucky people who was able to get out safely, had fairly substantial emergency savings to fall back on, and family down south to take me in. So many folks from the NWT are in limbo with no funding, no stable shelter, and no support, and there's no way of knowing if or when we can go home. Anyone who denies climate change to my face is, frankly, asking for it.
They aren't really lying. They are scared that reality is not what they want it to be. They are trying to deceive themselves. They put on this whole act for their own sake. They act like they're better than others in one way or another (smarter, braver, tougher, whatever) because they are trying to cover how absolutely terrified they are by reality
No, they are men who lived their life by reading newspapers and listening to corporate news. For DECADES media ignored climate and said environmentalists were 'kooks'. Thats MEDIA. NOW suddenly people on SOCIAL media say 'thats wrong'. But even mainstream media doesn't really talk much about climate change if it can avoid it, because gas companies have so much money. Here in Canada our public broadcaster even now hardly discusses it. When the fires were affecting canadian cities, I looked at canadian media and hardly any even MENTIONED the wildfires.
nah i genuinely know we arent melting the world, and i dont shill for the political establishment like you do. the people you listen to are wrong on EVERYTHING why would they be correct all the sudden? irony is you're the one whos scared. thats why you keep supporting in lockstep the political establishment. because you dont know how to say NO.
Yeah, exactly. I work daily with a bunch of 70 to 90+ yo people, and although they don't deny climate change, they will absolutely question humanity's role in it. Because them and their parents were actually responsible for the start of it all. And the guilt is just way too heavy to handle for them. So they go for the ostrich maneuver
or they just don't believe what a bunch of liars tell them? why are you guys so shocked not everyone follows your radical political agendas.@@GreyPunkWolf
my mother was the kind of person who was "never wrong". she was always very smart, and when data proved that she was wrong, a switch would flip in her head that made her never have the opinion on the wrong side of the facts. so I'm quite familiar with this behavior.
I’ve noticed I do this sometimes and I’ve been trying really hard to make sure I face it when I’m wrong. Like “yup I was wrong, whatever” and move on, because I think it also helps you to better process the new information. What helped me to do it is to recognize that the only realize I think that is because I heard something wrong somewhere, because that is basically every opinion you have it’s built on what you’ve heard. And I’ve found it can be a lot easier to accept when you recognize it’s not really your fault, you heard something wrong and that just go put in your bank of knowledge and was used to form a thought that eventually lead to that opinion. And that’s fine, you aren’t stupid or wrong by your nature or anything, you were just misinformed at some point and now you’re correcting that. I think this mindset could help people to more readily admit they’re wrong, but I don’t really know how you’d actually convince someone to adopt it because I feel like any way you try to tell someone to think that way comes off as condescending, which obviously won’t work. But I think it helps a lot to separate yourself from the opinions you have that are all just based on stuff you’ve heard that may or may not be true, and in fact it can be hard to even trace back the origin of the knowledge so even if you know the source is dubious you might not realize the information came from that source
I had a friend like that. He would argue until you just submitted to get out of arguing. Even if he was proven wrong, he would still argue anything to make you give up. It's like a game to some people.
I should make it clear here that my mother is not vindictive about it and she does not dispute science. She just conveniently forgot that she was ever wrong. As a person with a pseudo-eidetic memory, I found this irritating as a child.
@@bulldozer8950"the king must have been ill-advised" was the backbone of governments the world over for centuries. It's a remarkable ego relief valve.
Also, I can guarantee this: the next step will indeed be people saying "so what, there's nothing we can do about it". But once the effects begin to materially and visibly harm themselves personally... once they are "inconvenienced" and see there's no going back, no way out... the same people who made a pretense of denying it will say with a straight face "why didn't anyone do something about this? Why didn't anyone warn us? It's not fair." This is what comes next. Bank on it.
This reminds me of a little comic(?) I saw where a guy goes “Goddammit, climate change has finally affected me directly. I give up; you guys win. I'll pay a slightly higher marginal tax rate. I'll do whatever you want in order to get this under control. But - and this is key - I will not stop being racist.”
The sad reality is, those group of people simply DO NOT care about anything until it affects them personally or someone they know. Until THEY see it, then it's not happening in their world. The fact is these are people who only believe what they personally see or experience. If it's not affecting them personally, then to them it's as good as nonexistent. Only when it affects them is it suddenly a problem. The sad truth is though, by the time they see it, it will be too late to act.
I had a denier use the dust bowl (a chart showing temperature spiking during those years) as an example that it's been hot before. I informedthem the dust bowl is one of the largest man-made environmental disaster ever.
One of the things that astonishes me the most I think is that so many climate deniers are elderly. As an older person myself, I'm like, you've been alive for so long... how can you not see how much things have changed since you were a kid? I'm only in my 50s, and watching the world physically _change_ over the course of my short life has been pretty alarming.
@@KaotiquaA ton of it is obviously that past a certain age people lose cold tolerance (one of the drivers for old folks moving south to retire). As someone in retail sales, many people make it clear through tidbits in conversation that they want it to be warming up but don't want people knowing they're that stupid/selfish so they deny it instead. Many have straight up said things to me like "good - you guys will figure it out, besides its too damn cold in the winter here anyways." And not to antagonize me or joke - they were perfectly calm and clearly believed that.
Well, then you told them lies. It was warmer in 2003 than today and it was even warmer in 1935 than it was in 2003. You have still a lot to learn, little boy.
@@oldineamiller9007That's patently false. Average global temperature is significantly higher now and still rising. As of 2022, the 9 warmest years on record were exactly the 9 previous years! Use your brain, Google something for once in your life, look at records, quit your bullshit!
For my dad, I see his denial as him purposefully closing his eyes and ears to the problem. He has this perceived notion that he has been wronged and misled by climate change movements in the past, and it has built up this distrust in him. I don’t think he tries to keep himself updated anymore because he finds it easier and more comfortable to just pretend there isn’t an issue. While I have tried in the past to talk him out of this, I’ve found that it always resulted in a bigger rift between us. I still love him, and want a relationship with him, and so although it’s difficult to keep silent, I do it to preserve that relationship. I’ve sort of come to the same realization as you, Hank, that eventually he will be proven wrong, one way or another. In the end, I value our relationship over being right in an argument
Well if you push a climate crisis I can guarantee you made the right choice in not arguing with your dad. It would get you nowhere and on top of that you'd be wrong.
Man if you’re having an existential crisis about your boomer in charge of nothing of import dad not believing in climate change you have an easier life than I. At the end of the day neither of you have a noticeable impact on the issue, unless either of you can shut down the coal plants of China.
My dad is one of these people. One time he was like “I just don’t see how a couple PPM of CO2 can have that much effect” and I was like, “so you don’t believe in climate change because you…. don’t understand the science enough…? 🤨” He also said there are a few scientists who don’t believe it, which also makes no sense. He’s just grasping at straws because he doesn’t want to admit his political party is wrong about it, because that would open the door to question other stances they take
If you told your father that he was being ignorant, that would be a valid point. But your alleged responses use circular reasoning and are simply condescending. Case in point, the proper argument against someone for not believing in something they don’t understand is that they’re sticking their head in the sand, not that they’re wrong because they don’t understand.
My Dad doesn't believe in evolution by natural selection. Partly his problem is that he doesn't really understand the theory - at least in detail - in fact he confuses it with Lamarckism which is a competing theory of evolution that opposes 'natural selection' as the mechanism. I don't think you are necessarily being condescending. Condescension is normally portrayed by tone of voice and facial expression. Often the best way to get people to change their minds is to ask them questions - get them to explain what they think is going on. Help them work through the contradictions in their own position - BUT - of course - you have to be respectful.
I remember being a climate change denier (as well as believing an embarrassing number of conspiracy theories) in my youth. Mostly it was because my high school science teacher had a rich dad "who was in oil" and taught us the propaganda. It wasn't til I was an adult, parroting quotes from climate denial movies that a friend subtly suggested I do some research on certain facts. He didn't debate me, just pointed at one thing and said "You might want to double check that." Being a contrarian make you feel smart, but coming to grips with being wrong is embarrassing. It's no wonder most people's brains just turn off when presented with opposing facts, especially if it's in front of others.
Good on you for being able to listen to your friend. My father in Law, formerly an engineer (aren't they all?) was and probably still is a big time climate change denier. He is/was (he has slight dementia, but he is 96) completely invested in the science of it. Not the real science, but the crap written by other engineers, cooks, economists, etc. (very few climate scientists write denial books). I think that by now, in his moments of lucidity, he realizes that he was wrong. Hell, he lives right below the polar circle in Canada and he bikes in T-shirt for far longer than he used to be able to. However, his pride prevented him from admitting he was wrong. That's true of a lot of people. For my part, the people that really piss me off is not so much the deniers, but those that believe in Human caused climate change, but try to make a buck out of it instead of coming up with real solutions. One that made an impression was some dude that was pulling pollution from the air, to turn it into polymers that he would then use to build smartphone cases. As if those could make any difference at all.
I was just having a conversation with a friend last night about this and said to him: "That's why we're fucked, because the average person is too fucking stupid to grasp the concept of 1,000 years from now or too stubborn to admit they're too stupid to understand it."
That part about talking to someone who's 'on board now' and you literally had a discussion about it before and they claim now they didn't hold that belief before, when they actually said they held that belief at that time. This happens with EVERYTHING in these people's lives. I've literally had to talk to someone close to me about everyday decisions that had to be made or explain why things they did hurt us, and, many times, in seconds, I've pushed on them to accept how reality happened literally seconds ago and they will 'change their mind' 3 different times in 10 seconds, almost as if they're coming up with a new theory about what 'could've happened'. And it's clear from this person's actions and what they end up saying to uphold those actions is that they 'didn't mean to', which means they didn't mean to do that bad thing or that unfortunate thing or failed in that particular way, because they CAN'T fail or be bad. It's not a great way to live, but it's sadly how enough people live that things don't move forward as fast as it can.
As has been said many times, it's hard to believe something when your paycheck depends on your not believing it - but in this case, "paycheck" also means "political identity."
"Wilks was no ordinary pastor. Along with his brother Dan Wilks, he was one of the U.S.’ newest billionaires. And their fortune came from an industry directly related to the planetary changes Wilks described in his sermon: fracking for oil and gas. The previous year he and Dan had sold their fracking company Frac Tech for $3.5 billion and each pocketed $1.4 billion. They now intended to use their new fossil fuel fortune to shift the moral values of the entire country-and the right-wing influencers they enlisted for the cause went on to become some of the world’s biggest purveyors of climate disinformation. In 2013, the same year Farris gave his sermon on “polar caps,” the brothers decided to donate more than $6.5 million to Prager University, which doesn’t have a campus and isn’t actually an accredited university. Founded by conservative talk-radio host Dennis Prager to fight against “liberal bias” in American classrooms, it packages right-wing ideology into viral videos aimed at young people. That model, aided by UA-cam recommendation algorithms, has resulted in billions of views across their digital platforms. “Their contribution essentially enabled PragerU to expand more rapidly,” Prager said of the Wilks brothers in an email to VICE News. In 2015, not long after the donation to PragerU, Farris Wilks provided $4.77 million in seed funding to start the Daily Wire, a right-wing news website and media company co-founded by Ben Shapiro. Then an aspiring conservative influencer, Shapiro would go on to have a personal Facebook following of over 8.6 million followers."
I feel like that may be the case. It's hard for people to accept being wrong. I can imagine it's a lot harder to accept that a large part of your life and actions have been making the planet inhabitable for human and current animal life. (Because let's be real, the planet isn't going to "die." It's survived much worst than humans.) It's easier to dismiss those notions and go on without experiencing cognitive dissonance or dispair. And the longer they're dismissed, the harder they become to accept because at that point many people have done it for so long, they made their stance part of themselves.
As someone who teaches rhetoric, this doesn’t surprise me. People are not persuaded by facts (as much as they think they are and as much as we want to believe that about humans). They have to be in an echo chamber or choose to be open minded or have an emotional/motivating experience. You and I are luckier that our echo chambers are on the right side of issue/are generally with the facts. I think your introspection and honesty is really valuable and this video really fascinating
It can come down to personality type as well. some types are willing and eager to test their own beliefs and assumptions because they want to get better, to improve. Others fear they will become lesser if they admit to being wrong. That's so deep down that they don't realize it.
No, some of us have brains and aren't persuaded by bullshit. We can't change something we have very little impact on. It's cute and fun and all that to blame humans, and while we are *part* of the equation, I'm pretty sick of hearing how "humans are destroying the planet". It's doing what it does in the process of correcting imbalance. Only an absolute *idiot* believes that 8B people aren't going to cause change. And there's *nothing* we can do to reverse it. Well, that's almost accurate. Nobody wants to do or otherwise even just allow to happen the thing that would *actually* help. A certain airborne virus comes to mind
My Brain says this rings true thinking about psycho mechanics, "I" at its basest level is a collection of chemical logic gates, an emergent property of which is relating the output of that collection to some semblance of the input which was processed to produce it (why did I do that?). In so far as my conscience experience of continuous reality is actually just an illusion created by the overlap of segmented reactions (snapshots in time so to speak), "I" is the thing denying that "I" ceased to exist with the passing of the last neural impulse...or something like that...
It's pretty right. I once thought humanities emissions were smaller than natural emissions and that climate change was a small effect that humans didn't have much impact on, this was around 2000 or so. I don't recall exactly when I changed my mind about that but I do recall myself saying that to a guy doing door to door solar sales. At the time it would have been around $30,000 Probably $50,000 in todays money for a 2Kw system. I think I was using that as an argument basically to get the guy to go away. Anyway I think than then that prompted me to go and have a look to confirm and I found out that was wrong. I think I went "hmm" and then had a more open mind to climate change as a whole. I think probably over the course of the next few years I changed as climate change became more of a mainstream topic and my position solidified firmly in the camp of yeah people cause it and it is indeed quite a big deal. I now have a 6.6Kw solar system (that cost about 2 years electricity bill to install, and paid itself off in 4 IE ~$4K) and I have actually helped a few other people change their minds on climate change as a whole. The big takeaway for me is you won't *ever* win an argument with someone on the spot. People will not lose an argument because losing sucks. Being adversarial won't work. Don't even try. You will just hurt both of you. What I found that helped was asking them "how do you think climate change works?" Most people who deny it don't seem to really know. Like *really* know. It's all about CO2 and stuff and whatever. I go with, you know how we get light from the sun yeah? and you can see that right? They go yeah. And you know what infrared radiation is, like how you can hold your hand up to the oven or a fire and you can feel the heat coming off it. Yeah. Well that's why it gets colder at night, because all that heat is getting sent off into space and things cool down. The thing about CO2 is it lets that visible light from the sun in to the earth where it warms it up, but CO2 isn't transparent to that infrared radiation. So the earth instead of sending that infrared radiation out into space and cooling down stays just that little bit warmer. Like how it stays warmer on a cloudy night. (I know this is a gross simplification of the actual process, but it's close enough for most people who don't really know the difference between the solar system and a galaxy) Now, remember you 100% will not get them to change their mind about climate change, but you do get to see the gears turning in peoples heads. Give it a few years and they may change.
@@zyebormI appreciate this. Being judgmental/confrontational tends to make people become entrenched, but just giving up does nothing. Planting a seed of uncertainty gives someone a reason to examine the facts later without anyone hovering over them.
Hey, for what it's worth, I changed. I used to be 100% in the "people aren't causing this, and it probably isn't real anyway" zone, and I argued for it and everything. After, idk, learning about the world a bunch and becoming better informed, I changed my mind. Over time, I was argued out of it. Maybe it's a rare phenomenon, but it happened to me.
I used to be like that, then I actually hung around some people who knew science and made me realize that the existence and cause of climate change is not anywhere near as “controversial” as I was led to believe.
@@parmaxolotl I came to the same realization. I grew up in a context that said, basically, "sure, the scientists say that, but we all know how much you can trust THEM hahaha." Like, it was common sense that most scientists had a major agenda and you had to judge for yourself how seriously you could take them about a given issue.
Interesting, I had the exact opposite experience. I use to believe in and argue for climate change. I had all the facts behind me and armed my rationale with graphs and data and for years I didn't doubt climate change at all. I still find it hard not to believe that the earth is warming given all the data I have seen and friends I have personally known collect the data. The problem is lived experience is starting to undermine that. I can only go thru so many "must just be a cold year this year" years and it's becoming really hard to not view global warming as a good thing when in my lived life I'm almost never uncomfortably hot but yet almost always cold and looking for some source of heat. I'd be happier to fight against global warming if it was actually warm when I go outside 😅
@@jpkellerman7056 I take it you understand that global warming means the average temperature of the globe is going up and that it doesn't preclude some areas not warming or even getting cooler? You change gross weather patterns and certain regions can certainly get colder while on average the whole planet gets warmer
@@thomasdequincey5811 The way Hank just articulated in the video. If they're still deniers, they're acting in bad faith. It's either bad faith because they've retreated into tribalism and their in-group denies it (they are shutting out rational thoughts in favor of still belonging to their group), or it's bad faith because a few dollars of tax money or exchanging the latest Octoburger challenge for eating reasonably is "too much cost" for them (selfishness).
Most of my family are climate change deniers. My understanding is that their beliefs are rooted in 1) scientific illiteracy 2) mistrust in activists on account of unrelated progressive political beliefs they hold 3) attempts to mitigate the anxiety caused by feeling out of control.
I agree. I know a lot of people are saying it's ego but I think that lots of people lie about their past beliefs or pretend new evidence "just" came out when they change their minds about stuff like this, or otherwise protect their ego if that's the problem. I think it's usually that they truly believe they are correct, and that anyone telling them otherwise has underlying motives for doing so.
I think the last one (lack of control) is the one that will stick for the longest. Fear is potentially the most motivating of all emotions. Hell, I've believed the truth of climate change since I was a kid in the 80's and I manage to stifle the existential dread over climate change almost every single day. I *know* what's happening and yet I still manage to block it from my mind 99% of the time because otherwise it's panic inducing. I honestly envy those who manage to completely sink themselves in denial.
Mine too. I think there are a lot of different reasons behind it. For my family, it's like 1) scientific illiteracy/lack of critical thinking skills/lack of curiosity 2) us vs them, their "team" denies climate change and their political opponents support it and 3) religion. The religious part is weird because it swings them along the scale Hank is talking about: from "climate change doesn't exist" straight to "we don't need to do anything about it" ...because "this world is flawed and full of sin and if God decides it's time to end it then I'm ready."
There's also the fact that scientific rigor requires you to update your position. If you get more or newer data, you make new predictions. Or if one of your variables, like human behaviour, changes, you have to update your model. Similar to Covid "oh now the scientists are saying something new, see that's why you can't trust them." So they'll grab onto a prediction that was made in 1983 that didn't come COMPLETELY true (but close enough it's making life really difficult in some places) and never let it go.
I doubt it because people tell me all or the vast majority of scientists agree. But I know for certain I can go to the bank and be approved for a 30 year mortgage on a several tens of million of dollars home in a place that if the dire predictions are correct will be below sea level. Having worked for a bank, I know that mortgage won't see $1 of profit for almost half of its length, and yet every bank is willing to make thousands of these mortgages. I also know banks have teams and teams of people who pour over studies to tell the bank if it's bets are a good idea. Every bank on the planet is betting trillions and trillions that the dire warnings aren't real.
My dad is a skeptic. He likes to think of himself as a very logical, very scientifically minded person. Honestly the only way I’ve been able to make myself understand it is that he refuses to believe in it because once you accept it, it’s really scary. For the same reason people avoid going to the doctor when they know they have a health problem. “If I don’t accept there’s a problem, the problem does not exist.”
I had this mind set a few years ago and yeah it was fear. tbf I was a dumbass high school student and not a grown man but still. The only thing that convinced me was just sitting down and having a chat with myself and being like "do I really not think this is a problem or do I not want to admit that this is a problem" and it turned out its the later.
You should listen to your dad . I was 15 years old on earth day in 1970 not one thing these fear mongers have ever said has come true. They're 0 for 53.
It's probably not fear. The older you become, the harder it is to have a truly open mind about fundamental truths. As an old man, you are comfortable with the opinions and convictions you hold and everyone likes the feeling of knowing better - especially an older man.
@@notlisztening9821 you do know that with climate predictions you don't make any money unless you have dire predictions. I don't believe in predictions that are paid for. They've already caught them cheating on the stats before. Don't get in the climate cult it's just another way of controlling you.. Look up William Harper he's an expert.
14:35 "Our old selves die, and we don't even notice it happened." One of the most soul-churning things I've ever heard you say off the cuff. What is this feeling?
Something that hurts a lot for me is I completely lack the means to make meaningful changes. I'm too poor and too stupid to really help the world with problems like this but just smart enough to understand they exist.
even if you aren’t able to make a huge change like rich companies, any small change is better than none! let’s all do our best to do our part as well :D
Thanks for the motto comments. I definitely threw out an unnecessary whiney complaint here. And I'll do my part both by being a better person and the small changes I can to help the world.
My husband and i had a huuuuuge fight about climate change. I was on the pro side, he was anti. I was able to, after hours of fighting, able to access that he was a climate change denier due to fear. He did not want to accept that it was a reality because that meant some very bad truths that he didnt want to accept yet. He has since come to the acceptance and im very proud of him. Weve talked about it at length.
The fear thing is very real. When I went vegan I had to figure out how to explain why to people. I went vegan because of environmental reasons. Trying to explain to ideological carnivores that their diet contributes to climate change is a really uphill battle because they're really scared to admit that meat is bad. Meat, to them, is a huge part of their personality. It doesn't help that the media has told them that "real americans eat meat". We have to change a lot of how we live our lives, from what we drive to what we eat to the materials we use in our everydays lives. It's daunting, overwhelming, and scary.
@@jackdeniston59"arguing" is not necessarily bad. Letting your feelings bottle up and inevitably explode is bad. Communicating like this is super healthy
there will be a day when "climate change denial" will be on the same level of disrespect to humanity as "holocaust denial", which is also a real thing by the way. it also has some eerily similar "levels" on the scale, like you say (and also has a strangely large overlap of people who are in denial of both).
The irony of course, is that the reason transition costs are so high NOW is because these same people and especially those who spread denialism and misinfo succesfully prevented us from gradually transitioning 40+ years ago! I get the impulse to just let the deniers die out, but our collective failure to stop/convince them is the primary reason we're in this mess.
It is not our failure. It is our politicians failure to time and again were too spineless to stand up to big corporations and force them to adopt a slow transition.
This is exactly right. The success of early denial (not happening, not us) in delaying action made the later denial (too expensive) more compelling, although still very far from true compared to the true cost of inaction. There is no punishment sufficient for the relatively few leaders of this orchestrated misinformation campaign, not that they will ever be punished anyway.
It is our collective failure, as a species, but I can still be mad at the Politicians, Corporations, Rich prats, and any individuals who had the means to make change happen, and chose not to. (especially as you point out, they've had over FOURTY YEARS!! It's inconceivable to me that they can *still* be this hellbent on just destroying the only planet we have, and they have plenty of evidence that is exactly what's happening.)
It’s a phenomenon called willful ignorance. Some people would rather just believe that they are right then do research and face the possibility that they are wrong and they do this all partially subconsciously.
I mean we all do to some extent, some of us just do it a lot more than others. Honestly, it seems for many people, willful ignorance is the defining characteristic of their existence. It sets the path of their life.. in a very straight line.. with no growth. It's pretty sad to think about. Can you imagine living like that? That would be awful :/
He also touched upon cognitive dissonance. Our identities get so wrapped up in our beliefs (especially important beliefs) that we will simply refuse to absorb condridicting evidence, no matter how irrefutable.
That's not completely true. Some of them are just idiots. Others are doing it out of greed. Most are denying reality because they worship a doomsday religion from the ancient world. They believe they're living in the end times and doing anything to solve the problem is the same as denying the existence of God.
@@Alltime2050 I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not a climate change denier. Do you seriously think there’s nothing to be gained by finally convincing everyone else that this is a serious problem?
That bit where you talk about people needing to feel like they know something other people don't. I think a really scary amount of people base their opinions on that mentality. To the point where they will believe almost anything if you sell it as a secret. I've always viewed it as an addiction like gambling.
In speaking to deniers in my own family it seems like the reasons are threefold. If they accept the scientific consensus they have to admit 1) That they were wrong 2) That change to our lifestyles is necessary and inevitable 3) All the catastrophic things scientists have been saying are true. To me it seems like cocktail the anxiety, fear, and vulnerability those admissions create is so strong that in order to protect their self image and sense of stability they are able to simply shut out any information that might bring up those feelings. I kind of get it, all those facts are scary. Averting our eyes from truth and the suffering of others is an ingrained skill many otherwise good people develop to cope with dread and guilt of all sorts. This is a long rant but I've just spent so much time talking to these people in my life and seeing no change whatsoever, it's so depressing and I think about it often
I think you are right, I dont like the "i kinda get it" part :p If you are a kid, sure, you are allowed to "close your eyes" from horrible things, but if you still do that when you are an adult, you are a horrible human beeing. What I think should happen to ppl like that, I think is against youtubes guidlines to write. But I will think it!!!
It’s not necessary and it’s not inevitable. Humans have factually had a very low impact on the climate and most of human damage to the environment was vastly china’s fault. Unless you’re living in or around china then changing your lifestyle isn’t gonna make any difference. Volcanos hilariously enough are the highest contributor to climate damage. But the climate changing in and of itself is a result of the glacial and interglacial warming periods. Something humans have nothing to do with and can’t stop. People need to accept that the government and media and filled with liars who’ll even lie about the colour of the sky being blue. They make money off this and it’s not the first time science and media has completely fabricated evidence to push a narrative, did everybody forget about the 3 years of lying from the government about Covid? Are we just forgetting that happened?
The climate change deniers I talk to say these things: 1) It'll hurt the economy!!! IT's not worth hurting the economy over (And you can explain to them the economy means nothing without no world, but they believe in being economically pragmatic about it over everything else) Another one, 2) "This is just the natural cycle of things! We aren't doing anything! Volcanoes!!!" - The funny thing about this is they act like adding EXTRA CO2 will do absolutely nothing. They act as if there is no consequences to our actions. As if we can just pollute and pollute endlessly and that there is no limit to how much we can because "The Earth is hardy and can take it, and us 'puny' humans can't possibly impact the Earth" - and that is a sentiment that has been expressed to me is basically they don't believe humans are even capable of changing the climate. I guess they don't believe in actions having reactions. I guess they think you can pollute infinitely with no consequences.
Some people just want to be contrary because they enjoy it. They enjoy seeing you get frustrated. Its not worth trying to convince them because they don't actually care about whats true or relevant. They only care about what theyre getting out of it in the moment. Its a power trip because theyre "making you do something"
Yeah, that's me with climate change, civil rights, income inequality, etc. That old me didn't think that humans shouldn't have human rights! Old me didn't think that billionaires worked a thousand times harder than millionaires! Oh shit, I actually did. I was a bit of a monster. Imma go back to forgetting that I was a monster and the silent implication that I might still be a monster in certain aspects of my worldview and actions.
Thanks for the brutal honesty! We need people who will face that truth about themselves, that they are not the same and change and that identity is fluid and not a hill to die on. That we all should strive to become better people and that being better requires having been worse beforehand. People who fight that truth are people who will fight other realities, too, because they don't want to have to admit to themselves that they had to change.@@phillyphakename1255
@@phillyphakename1255 I understand this. I feel like it's really important to see your progress and own the mistakes of your past, though, and to always be challenging the assumptions and beliefs of your current self. We're reborn every day and we don't even notice it happening.
@@phillyphakename1255 Old you = didn't think billionaires worked a thousand times harder.. Also old you = monster Uh. No. Billionaires step on people to get where they are. So do millionaires - but just at a smaller successful scale.
@@mischarowe i think you misunderstood, the commenter was saying that his current self believed that his old self wasn't a monster, but upon reflection, it was.
it's nice to see Hank having faith in humanity to the point that he thinks humans aren't stupid enough to be able to deny something that is right infront of them.
Had a friend who always confused me with his conspiracies admit that he was thinking about becoming a flat earther because the appeal of not believing what everyone else did was strong. And that's when I realized that the human need to feel special was very real and very strong and never to be underestimated.
That’s really what conspiracy theorists are deep down: lonely. Worried that they’re not special. Desperate for attention (even if it’s in the form of ridicule)
There might be some appeal to being right when everyone else is wrong, but there is also appeal in being powerful as part of a large group of like-minded people who in solidarity can quash dissent, punish enemies/outsiders, etc.
I used to be a climate change denier, and I changed my mind. I watched a video series from potholer54 in which he addressed all the talking points I had picked up and debunked them. And he did it in a so clear and logical manner, I couldn't justify continuing to believe them. It's the same logic that led me to become vegan. I wasn't born or raised that way, but when the arguments crossed my way and I thought about it, I had to change my mind.
Potholer54 is honestly I think has one of the best channels out there when it comes to climate science. His logical, scientific method-oriented approach, and touch of British condescending humor I think reaches out to a lot of the same people are otherwise turned off by people like Greta Thunburg and activists who talk about "climate justice" would make the same people double down. Even I disagree with some climate activists on certain points, for example I think emerging economies, particularly in certain cities and countries on the Asian continent where wealth and urbanization (aka: BRIC/authoritarian nations) has gone up exponentially since the 1990s need to be pressured to take up their share of the burden on climate and environmental policy, whereas "The West/NATO/G7 nations have for the most part been putting forth their best effort to reduce carbon annual carbon emissions and are on their way to net-zero, (even if not fast enough).
Potholer has been doing excellent work for years and honestly deserves more recognition (and maybe a professional editor 😅). Thank you for having the courage and honesty to admit that you were wrong, it's a virtue that is sorely lacking in todays world.
To me, someone saying "The costs of fighting climate change are too great" is synonymous with "The cost of ensuring the continued existence of Homo Sapiens is too great".
I actually want to disagree with this, not to defend those people but because I think it's actually worse than this. I think your quote implies that they are being stupid, rather than myopic and self-centered. The reality is, most wealthy and even upper-middle class people will probably suffer much lower consequences as a result of climate change. They have the money to relocate if needed, they have the ability to acquire scarce resources, and they're less likely to be disenfranchised, period. The danger falls disproportionately to the most impoverished and least powerful people. I think when people say, "The costs aren't worth it," they're usually saying, "The immediate costs to me and people like me are not worth preventing the eventual costs to people who aren't like me." I don't think all of those people are consciously being selfish, but I do think they're failing to imagine poor people as being "on their team," if that makes sense.
Actually, the costs are too great. And there is no evidence of any extinction event. The raw materials required for a complete transition do not currently exist. Mining would have to be increased 8 fold. All existing power lines and home supplies replaced and upgraded for heavier load. Conversion of say 50% of homes to electric heat, hot water, and cooking. The cost is too high. We neither have the physical raw materials or labor available to replace all carbon based energy. And add in that the 3rd world is not going to be satisfied being in energy poverty, so they will be upgrading as well, and to whatever energy resource is most affordable.
@@starleyshelton2245 "And there's no evidence of any extinction event." I'm going to assume you meant "there's no projection that the effects of climate change will cause the extinction of our species" which, sure. However, there are projections which show an extremely grim future for tens of thousands of unique plant and animal species as well as the displacement of tens of millions - if not hundreds of millions - of people due to rising sea levels, widespread famine and lack of drinking water. But yeah, I guess I'd rather see some billionaires get another yacht or two than do anything about climate change /s.
@@starleyshelton2245literally every mass extinction in Earth's history has involved an interruption to the carbon-silicate cycle. That is, CO2 release (through volcanos naturally), rain acidification, weathering, runoff, subduction. This is a natural thermostat that essentially takes carbon out of the air, washes it out to the ocean, and buries it under continental plates - only to be belched back up millions of years later through volcanic eruption. It's a cycle like the name implies. Previous extinction events (all of them) involved either arresting some part of that cycle or overwhelming its capacity. You can only suck CO2 out of the atmosphere with rain so fast. The catastrophes require millions or hundreds of millions of years to clean up naturally. We aren't on track to replicate the CO2 concentrations achieved by the worst of these events, which managed to kill off 96% of all species on earth - essentially everything that couldn't get underground. At least not any time soon. However, human CO2 release does outpace the cycle that has proven so vital to life on Earth. There is no escaping it as an eventuality unless we do something. As for "can we afford it", can we afford not to? Killing every man, woman, and puppy on earth is not the threshold for a threat. The economic cost of climate change will be astronomical. Disruption of food production, in particular, will be one of the first and worst consequences, as will population displacement. Unless your answer to all this is "it's fine if lots and lots of people die" then I'm afraid there is no real debate to be had about cost.
As someone in a deep red area, I am convinced that it’s mostly a situation where you can’t get people who are profiting to admit they are wrong. And to be honest, it extends to the “temporarily embarrassed” b/millionaires who believe they too could strike it rich drilling for oil. That and the power of good ole propaganda.
i think it’s just a high population of really stupid people who 1. like being contrarian, like being in the “in-group” (see: conspiracy theorists and q anon) 2. billionaires know theres a high population of stupid people and use their money to manipulate said stupid people 3. once someone who’s dumb enough and egotistical enough to fall for it in the first place believes something like that, there’s no digging them out. we just have to wait until they die.
I'm sorry but liberal tech industries are far more destructive for the planet than anything going on your little "deep red" town. Go to any office space at Google and you'll find a whole bunch of stuff that's dug up by slaves in the worst eco-safe way possible. Yes, because Nike, a super left leaning company, is totally innocent when it has slaves make their shoes. Good try dude
Ya'll said the exact same thing about the pandemic and in the end it turned out we all wore masks that do nothing and took vaccines that don't prevent transmission. Why would anyone believe one of your anxiety-spells again?
Seeing you get positively apoplectic over this is both refreshing and heartening. Even _Hank Green_ , whose general chill factor is pretty legendary, is just f'ing _done_ with this nonsense. Thanks, Hank. For this, and everything else. You're Awesome.
@@adarkimpurity - Packs of angry radical right climate deniers who do not want to talk to you at all about the obvious state of affairs while living in a goo-goo land is most definitely unrelatable to those of us who read, study, and think.
I don’t think it’s that important. I think that, like through the entire existence of earth, it will fix itself someday. The real problem is that humans think they are so important that the thought of the possibility of our extinction is absolutely terrifying to a point where it is all they can think about. The process of life is the embodiment of futility. The wise and the fool likewise, die and are forgotten. If something does not have eternal value, then it is of insignificant value. Edit: I respect your take on this Hank, good video. I just don’t think it’s worth the effort for me because no matter how much I use my gas powered lawnmower, it will never equate to all the damage done by the wealthy with their unnecessary jets, helicopters, super cars, and fancy boats.
I took a workshop a while back about handling Climate Grief. It's very draining to handle climate change denial of any scale, and I urge everyone involved in Climate Activism to check in on their mental health and take care of themselves
I did some psilocybin assisted therapy for my mental health in general, and this was the single most important way it helped me. If you’re struggling with climate grief and you have access to legal psychedelic therapy, I highly recommend it 👍❤️
Wow. I have never run across this term before: Climate Grief. Thanks for both of your posts. You might like the Andrew Millison Channel. It's a permaculture professor doing amazing diagramming explanations also with wonderful video journeys through various cultures and ways that traditional permaculture is met with modern permaculture. He did recent one about using permaculture techniques on the area surrounding your house to lessen its vulnerability during a wildfire. But my favorite stuff is when he meets ancient cultures and shows us the techniques they were using in permaculture and then find somebody in the local area to work with as well.
I'm sure they say the same about you, now where does that get us. 2 different people locking themselves in thier own echo chamber while they talk about how dumb and clueless the other one is.
my mom is so stubborn, she is vocal about how she doesn’t believe in climate change, after she elaborated, gave clear examples of what humans are doing to promote climate change. we’re on the same side but not. i’m not joking, she said “you don’t think the people driving everywhere and everything makes the world hotter?” i think she thinks climate change means it’s just the world getting hot, so it’s not real because it’s humans making it worse.
I've recently been pushing myself to practice 'forgiving' people or being wrong, foolish, or willfully ignorant. Not to condone their actions or beliefs, but to allow myself to let go of the frustration I feel when encountering that type of thinking. It's been helpful for my own stress levels, at least!
Yeah ok, do nothing while the world gets destroyed, such a pragmatic take, people like you are part of the problem, selfish self absorbed individualistic human
"The world is gonna end and if we don't shame all the whores in the town, the plague is gonna get worse." That's what climate change fanatics sound like
@Antonio-Granscithere are a number of things believed by the Republican Party and other right wing parties that are explicitly incorrect. For example, that the climate is not changing.
@Antonio-Gransci Perhaps 'false belief' is more accurate. Regardless, the fact is that a huge amount of politics nowadays (specifically on the right-wing, much less on the left) is based on false narratives intentionally spun to anger the populace or sow false complacency, manipulation to the ends of the rich or powerful. Whether it be to not believe that transitioning away from fossil fuels is a good idea (for corporate interest), or the fear of immigants and sexual minorities (for political interest in getting re-elected). This is not just a US issue, but a global issue. Unlike the other commentator, I am not going to solely point at the Republicans, because they're but one of many examples of this.
@Antonio-Gransci The earth is round, and believing it is a rational belief, and everyone who doesn't believe it is fringe nuts. It absolutely does not mean your politics are terrible if you understand that people who deny obvious facts are on the fringes.
My opinion changed and I'm very open about that. I grew up being taught incorrect things and one of those was that climate change wasn't real. While I did believe it was indeed real, I didn't think it was an issue and people were making it a bigger deal than it actually was. However, I learned that I was wrong and was able to move on from that. Some of my opinions were challenged directly from other people and I can trace it back to certain things they said to me or things that happened. People can be convinced, although few are willing to let that change happen
Unfortunately for you it IS being exaggerated. Literally every claim they have made about climate change since the 1940’s hasn’t come true. In 2015 they claimed by 2021 the Great Barrier Reef would be extinct, never happened. They move the goal post and then people continue to fund exclusively studies in favour of the climate change narrative and nothing to question it. When a scientific consensus is not being questioned by the very same science then science has failed at its very purpose. The current scientific consensus on climate change is filled with so many blatantly exaggerated fear mongering attempts that the entire narrative can’t be trusted. As I’ve said before, even a liar can’t be trusted to say the sky is blue. They’ll find a way to lie about that too. The climate change narrative is a financially beneficial one as well and has provided excuses for the government to replace expensive construction projects with cheaper mediocre ones. I believe in the glacial and interglacial warming periods, a thing that does and continues to happen regardless of human existence. The earth right now is in a better condition now then it was during every interglacial period ever. We’re leaving an ice age now, but we can’t figure out that the global temperature rising very very slowly might be related to that somehow?
Whats also important is not to be condesending towards the deniers. Showing them: "Yes, you were wrong, so what? We all are wrong about something at least once in a while."
@@paisley4092 It was a process, there's a few things that I tie it to but I doubt I remember it all. First was being challenged from my old point of view. I grew up fundamentalist evangelical and viewed it both "God wouldn't let it get out of hand" and "the world will end/Jesus will return before it matters anyway". Some challenged this viewpoint by appealing to the here and now, by acknowledging that God would not want our actions to cause potential harm for others regardless of whether it mattered in the long run or not. Additionally, Biblically God told us to care for the plants and animals in Genesis, it seems unbiblical to just ignore this aspect. Second, looking at the opposite. What are the issues with being more mindful about our waste and greenhouse gasses? Is it valid to discard attempts to prevent it as just political attempts at making money? It's beneficial to address climate change for everyone whereas it's not beneficial to ignore it. Just asking why people are against it is a huge question. If their response is that it doesn't matter or that it doesn't exist, what harm does it cause them for people to try addressing it? Based on my experiences, fewer people actually are against attempts to combat climate change specifically, rather they connect it to some conspiracy regarding people using it to make more money or something similar, or, what I find most to be, they just don't want to actually think of it or have it inconvenience them in any way. Third, presenting actual scientific evidence. This requires the person to actually be open to new information, which luckily was the case for me, but this isn't the case for everyone. Plus you need to be very conscious of their view as well. If you just give them the facts and that's it, they're just going to ignore it and potentially even become more set in their ways. tl;dr/summary, to go about talking to someone, first listen to their opinion in its entirety and see why they think what they think. Make sure you understand what they're saying. Try addressing things from their point of view first if possible, but if not then just address things one step at a time. Try to identify what their main issue with it is and keep asking questions. If they have an opinion on something and if changing that specific opinion isn't going to affect their view, it's likely a non-issue and not one of the main reasons behind their belief. A lot of these people were just misinformed or find it too difficult or lack the motivation to bother thinking about. If you can instill why this is important for them specifically and address the things they were misinformed on in a calm and respectful manner, you'll be surprised how much people will change their mind. But also don't be discouraged if you don't see results right away, many change their opinion on their own time and not during a confrontation. Giving them correct information can at least set them on a better path
There's a wonderful YT documentary made by Dan Olson called In "Search Of A Flat Earth", in which the latter half of it explores and tries to explain why some people; despite everything, adamantly state that they believe in their obviously outrageous claims and worldviews, and how by clinging to those believes; not in spite of, but BECAUSE those believes are so outrageous, they then derive power and control from said believes.
My mum's mental health declined pretty severely during lockdown, and because of that she started to fall for every single maddening conspiracy theory under the sun. With climate change, it's always the same "they measure it different every year" or "They just want to take our freedoms and make us use paper straws". Any time i feel like i'm getting somewhere or manage to convey a convincing argument despite all the incredulity, it turns out i've just been brainwashed by the vaccine, or that it's all the WEF's doing. Really saddening to see this happen to someone you love
I feel like lockdown did that to many 'older' people. My parents and my boyriends parents as well. I think that anti-vaccine conspiracies became an easy starting point for them to start watching/listening to mad people online
I don't know how old your mom is or where she's from. As an American, I've started to try to find a way not get frustrated. My only way is realizing that my mom grew up during decades of Cold War government paranoia and current era corporate awfulness, where every story was about how someone is screwing over the little people with something that sounds good but actually makes things worse. I can't get around a lifetime of her generation hearing about the worst conspiracies that turned out to be even partially true. So all we can do is move on and keep pushing for the best. They're going to need extreme reassurance to change their minds and we can't do that alone
@@neilburton8131have you considered that she isn't? You should trust science and data that was collected by several individual professional institutions instead of trusting some UA-cam commenters conspiracy lead mother.
@@neilburton8131 Even if she isn't. He should really go along with her narrative. Why try to change someone you love for others. Just change yourself to love drama, delusion and urge to destroy others' lives for personal entertainment. It is better than going insane trying to reason. Because just like Hank ( guy in video ) says, or the title of the video. It ain't thet they don't know. They just don't give a dam. Plus, if a majority is ignorant or wrong. They're actually right. If you validate the unethical narrative you are a hero!
I’m glad you reuploaded this, I caught the first upload before it went private and I think you had a lot of good things to say. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I really think people just want to be contrarian.
Imagine your house is burning down and everyone is standing around outside of it complaining about it being on fire and arguing about who's fault it is that it's on fire, and meanwhile your family and loved ones are inside. Are you gonna stand around arguing about who's fault the fire is, or are you gonna go save your family?
Let me ask you a question. What percentage of people do you think end up in a hospital, if they catch COVID, and they also are not vaxxed. What percentage of people under those conditions do you think end up in the hospital?
@@swickens930 Let me ask you a question: what is the lowest percentage chance of horrific, painful death you will accept for any activity? 100% chance it's lower than the answer to your question. I'd also ask what the percentage chance of inflicting that horrific painful death on others is acceptable to you but we both know you give no fcks about anyone else.
@@the_exegete About 1-5% if we're going by historical record for medical stuff that is potentially lifesaving. Higher if we're talking about entertainment, though that's a fact people don't want to be aware of. Your analogy is inaccurate though, according to Canadian reporting between December 2020 and September 2022: 67.7% of COVID hospitalizations were unvaccinated. That answers his first question, the second is subtly much more different. As of mid-September 2022: 5.579 Million were completely unvaccinated accounting for 14.59% of the population. During that timeframe aforementioned there was approximately 993K reported cases of COVID by unvaccinated individuals (accounting for 41.2% of the COVID cases), there was also 55.0k COVID hospitalizations of unvaccinated individuals in that time frame. From this we can conclude that approximately 5.54% of people who reported catching COVID while being unvaccinated were hospitalized. (I imagine that there were a fair number of people who are unvaccinated who chose not to report so this data may not be accurate to *all* infected individuals who are unvaccinated, just the ones that we were aware of during said time period.) As you can see, 5.54% is higher than 1-5%. Your question was far too vague, so if I were to steelman it you would be correct that less people are okay with dying from a lifesaving procedure than unvaccinated people infected with COVID went to the hospital. This was a fun thought experiment, but ultimately says nothing about whether or not you should vaccinate yourself against deadly disease.
I got Covid the beginning of August . I survived. I refuse to live in fear of something I may or may not be exposed to. That’s with a chronic illness already. Even been in a clinical trial before to treat my chronic illness. I made choices based on my experiences to not let fear rule me. And because of my experience with a clinical trial I didn’t get vaccinated and now I lived through getting the virus at least once possibly twice. I have natural immunity which is far superior and it wasn’t the worst I’ve felt
When i am thinking how can people don't believe... It is taking me back in time when people was first introduced to earth globe:denial, aggressivness. And then i thinking what in 500-1000 years will people say about us:same exact thing
It’s because, unfortunately, denying climate change has become tied to people’s identities. They can’t just outright accept climate change without conflicting with their core values and identity. It would also mean not only admitting that you were wrong, but that you were part of the problem, the bad guy in humanity’s survival story. There’s a really great book called Saving Us by Katherine Heyhoe where she talks about this and what you can do to help these people. She’s a professional climate scientist who spends her time actually doing the things she advocates, and with great success.
Sure, The climate is changing. How much humans have to do with it is debatable. My problem is you people seem to be on this self-righteous mission to "save the planet". That is not what it is though. For most of this planet's history, it has been inhospitable to human life. Even after life showed up most of that time has been spent inhospitable to human life. You people don't want to save the planet. You want to stagnate the planet. You are selfish and want the planet to stay exactly how it is right now.
I can say that having something as an opinion tied to your identity is pretty sad in general, I was vegan, but with enough data I came to a simple conclusion, right now is not viable, we will end up malnourished, even with all the effort is hard to be well feed, even with highly nutritious organ meat is hard to be well nourished, that is without even taken into consideration the cost, to be well nourished as a vegan was extremely hard, I depleted some nutrients by year 6, I was over half of my life being vegetarian and then vegan before eating meat again and I was almost fainting, every day, it was extremely hard to be awake for 10 hours, it was harder to be awake for 16 hours, and now I can go 20 without problems, because I did the proper research, and more, I was willing to experiment, if it didn't worked then I would have gone back, but it did, it took 2 weeks to have every negative effect out, as long as I keep the new way of eating I am ok, but the damage is not reverted yet, is is slowly reverting, I can't just eat anything I want and be ok, but every month I have a higher pool of nutrients to cover the times I go out of the correct way of eating. BTW, most people eat worse than vegans and are more malnourished in omnivore diets just because they don't think about what they are eating. The reason I was able to do that is because I don't tie my opinions with my personality, I will be always willing to change my mind and my lifestyle if evidence is presented, I think that is where people need to be changed, otherwise they would be equally toxic, just with a different opinion if it is changed. Also some people told me that I was the only vegan/vegetarian they knew that was not insufferable, just because I didn't try to shove my opinion down their throats (in some cases it is literal with vegans, I see it in one of my sisters)
i mean you can blame the fact people like hank love or hate the man , who KEEPS changing the world is ending date for climate change so when the date comes and goes it looks really fucking bad on them when oh wait the world is still fine. like not saying anything ether way its just pretty clear climate change doom speak is hurting the cause cause hard to take it seroud when one side is screaming the world is ending in 10 years and when 10 years come and go, they change the day again and its been going on for decades. we should move to cleaner power sources but the climate activst types are going about it in a controlling dumb manner. like banning gas and wood stoves when those are what poor people in areas where power goes out use to you know not freeze to death and have a warm meal.
I live in a rural California, with NRA bumber stickers being common, and the amount of people who claim the fires in the North and Hawaii are from "directed energy weapons" is... Frightening.
@Antonio-Granscii think op finds both scary, the fact that those who support the nra are probably too stupid to own lethal weapons (because they believe in these conspiracies) and the fact there’s people in the world that believe these conspiracies
I've seen waaayyyy more lefties make the claim that people think it was energy weapons compared to people who actually think it was energy weapons. Or you're just lying. They probably say stuff like "these fires are caused by humans" which they usually are, like arson or the mishandling of a fire place. I've actually never even met or seen a conservative actually say that they think Lazer beams caused the fires.
"Hard to believe if you're paying attention" is the problem. There's a whole group of people not paying attention who don't want to pay attention because they want to continue believing what they want to believe.
Ah, no. We actually ARE paying attention, logic the data, reading the peer reviewed papers. There are no real trends in extreme weather, nor is there evidence of dramatic sea level rise, and not too surprising, there's been some funky solar flares from the sun this past summer. You're probably experiencing some confirmation bias. Your mainstream echo chamber tells you that it's the hottest summer on record, but you do not check how they compute this record, nor do you check previous records, you just go along with it. The data is pretty clear, it was hotter in the 1930s. Then the weather got darned cold until the 70s and everyone thought we were headed to the ice age. Weather warmed through the 80s and early 90s, plateaued a bit. There are no trends in extreme weather events, the polar bears have quadrupled in population, the coral reefs are just fine (bleaching doesn't kill coral any more that trees die by dropping leaves in the fall). Honestly, this really looks like governments attempting to get control of the energy sector.
@@kayakMike1000 You are paying attention to the ones who align with your assumptions. Scientists have been warning about this issue by the 60's, and governs didn't do anything until now.
@@kayakMike1000”logic” is never a convincing argument Mike, and id like to ask for peer reviewed articles that you’ve been consulting that say that climate change isn’t happening. Gotta have claims for your arguments buckaroo
@@kayakMike1000 Nice reply sir, there is another thing with the rising sea levels. Water expands when it freezes and the excess size floats abover the surface of the water, when it melts it just shrinks again, the level of the water does not rise.
I had a professor say "it's not an argument of whether you BELIEVE in climate change or not, it's whether you understand it or not" emphasizing the difference between unprovable or subjective opinions, and provable objective facts (with anthropogenic climate change being a PROVEN objective fact)
I think the mainstream conservative position will become belief in government weather control machines. (Then get mad if you say that's technically manmade global warming.)
It's a low-return move to argue with climate change denial. Anyone denying it staked their identity or livelihood on the denial, so you aren't going to shake that without adopting them.
Yep. It’s difficult to move someone from the rock of truth because that rock is Jesus! God is in control. Climate change isn’t caused my humans… climate change is caused by God! Fight climate change and we all lose!
I'm a 'climate change denier'. I don't lose sleep over climate change. I'm just bothered by policy that affects me, all in a vain attempt to 'curb emissions'. Swapping from gas powered cars to electric won't do a thing. Shutting down our production plants wont do a thing. Shutting down oil pipelines will only make you poorer. The rest of the world will continue emitting, despite what the Paris Agreement makes you believe. In my opinion, the only solution is to simply cheapen electricity, improve power generation, raise people out of poverty so they could give up coal for nuclear and live in a better world where technological improvements aren't banned in favor of climate policy created by self serving politicians.
@@seafoam6119So basically (if I’m understanding you correctly. Feel free to let me know if I’m not), you are saying that you believe this is the prisoner’s dilemma, where only if everyone chooses the right option will we be in a better place, but if anyone alone tries to “end” climate change, it would be in vain because we are alone and would put us in a worse state. The difference between the real world and the prisoner’s dilemma is that in the real world, we can make small steps and go back if no one else also makes those small steps. I agree with you on the fact that making electricity cheaper would be a great move, however the way to make electricity cheaper is to use easier methods like burning more fossil fuels to generate it, which would completely eliminate the effect of using electric cars. So the reason why I would say to go with people who want to do something about climate change is because if it doesn’t work and no one else joins in, we can go back. If they do join in, we can go further. This video is essentially talking about how most people are actually in your situation rather than a situation where they don’t think climate change is real. If you saw every other country start moving towards preventing climate change, it seems to me like you would join if you felt you would actually be making a difference. I’m not trying to change your mind on what you vote for or what you believe, but hopefully what I wrote gave you a little bit more of the picture that I see that makes me want to do something about climate change.
@@lunarscapes6016 the problem with what you said is that in real life IF on a state level we dont mantain domanice more bad things are going to happen should russia or china refuse to play ball by weaking them selfs but stepping away from oil use
@@ace-kz9idI don’t see how getting off of oil and onto renewables could in any way negatively impact US foreign policy or power. On the contrary, losing the oil and gas addiction would make the US a lot less dependent on OPEC or individual oil producing countries (Saudis…).
One thing that I've been more aware of recently is the discrepancy between conservative politicians and conservative voters. In my mind, the politicians are obviously 'in the know' and just straight up lying for their paycheck. I think it's truly a class divide, the rich vs the poor. It's possible for the poor to believe in climate denialism because they're too focused on just getting by (aren't we all?), the poor tend to believe whichever authority figure they respect, regardless of which side of the political aisle they're on. When Ramaswamy says that the climate change agenda is a hoax, I fully believe he's lying. When some random conservative at a Trump rally says it, I think to myself "Oh you poor soul, must have gotten caught up in the propaganda machine" Thanks for talking about this Hank. I feel like I'm going crazy with all of this going on and no one talking about it. Hearing you give voice to the same thoughts in my head helps me feel more motivated to keep going.
Yeah, I think it really is a rich versus poor issue. The economy is not working for most Americans and hasn't for a long time. Most Americans can agree on that much. Mental health issues are skyrocketing as a result. But the rich are funding one side and rigging the game for them. I think the two party system needs to die at this point. It just feels that the sides exist to oppose each other. Our votes are often based on fear instead of being enthusiastic about the candidates. Plus, politics are so tribal that disagreeing with your side can get you kicked out of the tribe.
Right. It's like, if you have a racist aunt who just, like, states unprompted that India's constitution was never intended to ensure freedom of religion and that the population growth of Muslims will harm Indian society... just, y'know, as a hypothetical example that may or may not be from experience... then it's absolutely not her malice that's causing her to hold those views. It's the increasingly illiberal and media-controlling government that she has no incentive to challenge, it's the content recommendation algorithms that she was never taught to be aware of, it's the mere fact that the world is simply inherently different from the one she always expected to live in. And it's like, you can have one-on-one conversations with that aunt and hope for the best for her, but there are millions of other people who are caught up in that same system of populism that feeds off of their negligence, and the only way to get everyone out of that system is to cut it off at its roots.
Ah, yes, only CONSERVATIVES fall for a propaganda machine. You, who listens to every major media platform and every major government and obey exactly what they tell you to, can't POSSIBLY be falling for propaganda. It's just those evil conservatives who think critically, demand answers to questions that are ignored, point out lies and inconsistencies, and disobey the mainstream that are falling for propaganda.
My dad is an engineer and a GOP supporter. He has always believed climate change was happening but doesn’t think the government is going to have a positive net positive by directly limiting business. He wants them to expand to make it easier to start alternative energy businesses. It’s a government regulation question for him.
love the anecdote about the person whose beliefs changed but they deny they ever believed differently than they do now. that really exemplifies the problem with the way people's brains work.
The human brain is a very sophisticated self-justification machine. This is best exemplified by some individuals with split-brain syndrome. When one of their limbs acts without their conscious awareness and the individual is asked why they did so, they confabulate a justification for their actions rather than acknowledging they didn't move it consciously. As with most human behavior, there is likely some deep-rooted evolutionary explanation for this phenomenon. But as sentient creatures, we are not slaves to our programming. We are capable of overcoming ourselves with conscious effort and reflection.
@@sleeplessdev7204 love the optimism but I don’t think some people are capable of overcoming it with conscious reflection. there’s nothing special about conscious thought that allows it to reach around deeply ingrained biases.
@@marcuskissinger3842 There is though! Not everyone _will_ change, but everyone _can._ Critical thought, self-reflection, and self-regulation can allow us to overcome our biases. It's not easy, but we don't have to be tethered by them
@@sleeplessdev7204 I've realized that it's a part of being in society, it's cultural. Some humans in smaller tribes don't do such things. But those in bigger societies, 1s existence depends on ensuring others have favorable impression of it & always being able to justify what it did was, well, well justified, is crucial. So humans develop such patterns early on in life. Justifying their choices to others so they'll seem valid/fine (to save itself from negative consequences); maintaining them confidently. Even some prisoners deny their misdeed, keep telling others they didn't kill the other (unless there's very accurate footage), or didn't do any wrong, to save themselves from punishment. Admitting that i was deceiving before later would make others view me quite differently as i don't want, so i continue to deny, to save the reputation. So yeah, i think it's due to present culture that's causing this, not only biological. Think of someone using popular narrative of the time to save itself, like "god made me do it, hinted me to do it, ...". Depending on what narrative that binds the society together is, causes such behavior, i suspect. Large societies needs common narrative to keep it together. & narratives are usually false, because we don't yet have understood the reality completely.
I’m only 23 and climate is my life work. I just moved across the US to take a job in the offshore wind industry and bought my first used electric car. I’m not making a lot of money but it’s the right thing to do. Every day I go to sleep knowing I did what I could and I’ll wake up tomorrow trying to deploy more renewables faster. We can do this! We will do this and every day counts.
There's more money to be made especially in offshore wind than there is in coal etc. Friend of mine is doing it now and he is making $$$$$$ like $300k a year or more. He's not in management or anything, his main job is installing the elevators in the pylons. So I hope you'll be in a good place very soon.
I'm twice your age. When it was time to replace a car I couldn't afford an electric. So I bought a used hybrid. It was the best I could do. People criticised my decision because I could have gotten a new "just gas" fuel car cheaper. But less gas burned is better. I bought LEDs when people told me I was stupid because they were "so expensive". But, it was something I was able to do when I didnt know what else I could do. Every little thing helps. Every little thing helps people realize they can also do little things. If everyone did a little thing, and then realized it was easy and then did a second little thing and then a third... we would all make a difference. Start small, grow to big things. We can't all change everything overnight. But we can all change a little each day. And maybe my kid will have a planet to have his own kids. He isn't so sure he will right now.
@@HeartlesSv420We can at least nudge them a tiny bit through our purchasing decisions, though often we lack the ability to make a better choice in our consumption
The thing is that people just want to believe that climate change isn't happening. The reason is secondary. That's why people shift between different contradictory stances on it, to combat counterarguments, not to have a belief built on facts, but emotion
I have a long time friend who has "progressed" through every stage of climate denial. At this point, even he is out of (inane) explanations, as of our last phone call he just flat out admitted what drove him - he doesn't want to change, and he won't be around when things get really bad. Oh, and the planet will recover but we might not, which apparently is acceptable to him. He is also solidly Republican, for what it's worth.
Is he in his 90s? Because if he is not, he's definitely going to be around when things get really bad. The consequences of climate change are accelerating, as most recently demonstrated by Hurricane Idalia being super charged by the too warm ocean water and kicking the sh*t out of Florida.
@@SueorSuzor They've convinced themselves that it won't effect them in their lifetime. It's really that they start with a feeling of "I don't want to change" and then they rationalize why
Hank gives the best rants. I love this unscripted talk. I wholeheartedly agree. Living in rural Virginia I think A LOT of the problem is they're, (especially the older people) taught to be respectful of everyone above them. So they grow up just faithfully believing their parents (who more often than not aren't educated very thoroughly), their doctors, their MINISTERS, literally anyone rather than educate themselves and form their own opinions. So in that mindset, if they allow that climate change is real, that mom and dad, and reverend Smith were wrong that shakes their very foundation. It makes them wonder what else they could have been lied to about and that is too scary. It's too scary to have the idols in your family and community knocked down. These people invest their very personhood in what they're told do, and how to think, and how to behave. Who are they if that was a lie?
So very true. I grew up evangelical in the south. I was taught critical thinking skills by my seminary professor father. I am the one out his four kids who critically thought their way out, but it’s too scary for most people. It’s scary for me too, but somehow I have the inability to stay in denial. Maybe because I love science. Or my anxiety and guilt? All of the above? I’ve always been a seeker and researcher. I think that curiosity with the critical thinking skills might be the combination. 🤷♀️ I totally agree with your explanation and it makes me so sad. Especially because I don’t have children,but so many breeders could care less about the state of the world they’re leaving their offspring. I just can’t understand it.
I didn’t grow up in that kind of insular community so it never even occurred to me not to think for myself. Then I got older and it blew my mind to discover that most people lived these extremely coddled lives where they were told how to think and they never questioned it - because like you said that would mean going against the very support system they’ve relied on their whole lives. Part of me even feels a little sad that I never had that kind of community growing up - that kind of belonging. It must be very comforting when you’re in it. But the part of me that wants to learn the truth even when it’s uncomfortable always wins out
@@vyor8837 go look in the ICCP reports, they have been freely downloadable for more than a decade now. The models are in concordance with measured temperatures. They are pretty accurate if we compare them to conservative denials, if you ask me.
These people are probably the same people who go and say "I don't need treatment, I'm not dying yet" in response to something life threatening infecting them when they're told to go see a doctor because of said threat to their life not being immediately obvious.
I think you are giving some people way more credit for a thinking process they are simply unwilling to commit to, because they kinda know the results and they don't want to accept it. That's horrible and unhealthy and - yeah, that's a lot of people. They will go to the grave believing in the wrong thing and at least they never had to admit it. The question is - what do we do about it? What can we do about it, and what are we *willing* to do about it? Because at some point it's clear the decision making for society is going to need to be taken away from those who refuse to accept reality, and they're not going to want to let that power go, and it's going to be less-than-pretty.
It depends how many people are so. If they are few enough you can win votes against them and then just impose laws they need to follow. But if they are more you have a problem where I don't see a solution.
It's a fringe idea propped up by oil companies spending far more on marketing than green tech research. We don't need to curtail people's rights to vote we need money out of politics so we have a true democracy again.
Alternative solution: We nationalize oil, pull a Mao on the ones who are trying to kill the American people (the oligarchs), and restore legal order. Of course, this poses the major political challenge of fighting Capitalism, but it's all in a days work@@silasstryder
At this point there's also the generational complication of being raised by parents/a community who teaches you that it is false, so having to confront your *actual beliefs* and the idea that your parents lied to you or misled you or maybe aren't the best people/are flawed. And accepting that YOU have been wrong, and wrong in a way that can contribute to harm... so tough
My wife’s 5 year old preschool student said the Earth was flat. She asked where he learned it and he said from his Mom. Of course, she told him to tell his Mom she was wrong. I’m glad she did that. Even proud to an extent.
I am one person who changed my mind about climate change. I was taught growing up that that was something only liberals believed in, and they were bad. Over time I found out that climate change is real. That was a process.
The main issue here is that politics slows everything down. Once it became political, which I suppose it was inevitable, there would be no way to convince people. Honestly our current system can't handle the rate of change that technology and industry are causing.
@@Alec0124 The problem is, climate change isn't an opinion, or a religion, or a philosophy, for people to believe is right or wrong, it's a scientific reality. What's that they're always saying, "Facts don't care about your feelings?" Climate change doesn't care about your politics.
The ultimate fear that conservatives hide deep down in their hearts is that maybe liberals are actually right. That is such an intolerable notion to them that they bury it in an avalanche of comforting lies and delusions. That’s why they’ll never let themselves accept that climate change is real: because if liberals are right about that what else could they be right about?
Once it became an ideological position, people will just deny it because the other side says it's an important thing
Sounds about right for the people who assign a world destroying issue as “the other side wants change and we don’t like it reeeee”
Since when it wasn't an ideological position?
The first time, at most, is when shell did research and decided, at that moment, to spread misinformation and fund deniers
But even at that time, there were research about it and there already were deniers about it, at least since the begin of 1900s
Yup. All the years and time I've spent on trying to get this across to people hits a wall the second they've got their identity wrapped up in it. Facts don't matter at that point. You've got to get to the heart of the matter and ask what matters to them. Usually, we can find a common thread on saving money, cleaner environment, fairness in taxation, or even, "what are we gonna do for our tomato plants as it gets hotter?"
climate change is real, all the news and governments talking points are BS tho
I love this comment. It applies to everything in a general sense, but is also quite specific to the topic at hand.
The narrative is going to slide seamlessly from "it's not real" to "it's too late to do anything"
It already slided from "not real" to "not caused by humans" to "not a bad thing" a whole bunch... "it's too late to do shit" is just the next step
@@NeilDegrasseTysonWithAKatana Using the best evidence from climate scientists Al Gore claimed in 2006 that there would be no solving climate change if drastic measures weren't taken around the world to reduce greenhouse gases by 2016. So seven years ago it was too late to act.
It was never possible to do anything. The only people that care are white people. A tiny and shrinking percentage of the world population. You would need to establish a global government where white people subjugate all non-whites and enforce climate rules on them. And I'm pretty sure as a climate change believer you find the idea of white people being in charge even more unpalatable than global warming.
and if we aren't willing to do violence to the people in positions of power they will continue on this path until they kill us all.
Which is a false position too. Odds are that climate change will not wipe out humanity. It will definitely decrease human comfort and lead to a massive cost of human life, but odds are that even if the feedback loops lead to untold devastation worse than any model yet conceived there will still be human settlements and societies with enough population to sustain the species. There's too many of us and anything short of a gamma ray burst or an asteroid impact will still result in the species persisting in some form. And even in a climate ravaged future there will still be value in living sustainably.
If you wanna fool somebody, you gotta fight against their intellect.
If you wanna convince somebody that they have been fooled, you gotta fight against their pride.
This is so very true. It's what makes being a conman so easy.
This is something about humans that I *despise*. It is the author of so much of our misery.
This is a great quote. Is it yours?
sometimes if you wanna fool someone you gotta fight With their intellect not against. If you say something in a way that fits in line with what they think they already know and then fill in their blind spots with falsehood you can very easily make a relatively informed person fall for nonsense. It's how you get pilots who are flat earthers, and nurses who are anti vax. (sorry if I misunderstood what the first line meant and basically just explained it >>)
you might not be immune to propaganda but me? i'm built different.
The same people who tell you it's not real will, in the same breath, tell you about how back in the day there used to be snow on the ground all winter every winter. And now we get a few inches a few times, and they miss the snow so much.
Yeah that’s the wild thing to me. It’s not even a matter of ignoring the data, it’s a matter of ignoring your own long term memory beyond a year or two. Like if you have memories of 20 or even 10 years ago living in the same place, it’s pretty obviously getting worse!
I mean, I think back like 3 years ago and I remeber how much snow we'd get and how much nicer the summer is, you can barely go outside now
And then blame it on Gen Z.
...this made me realize that when I was a kid, my mom had multiple videos where it was not uncommon for there to be tons of snow in October, to the point where Trick or Treating sometimes was hampered by a coat over my costume.
and last year there was only a smidge of snow in my area, and it happened in like February only, and then was gone.
and to top that all off, I'm 33 - this is less than 3 decades of time...
this kinda bummed me out lol
You see, they're able to deny it because there will be like one week where it is incredibly cold, and they'll just say that it is proof that there is no global warming, when reality is we're talking about climate change, which causes higher highs and lower lows (albeit it gets more hot than cold in general), not just universal warming all the time.
My dad is a denier (amongst other things) and i spent my adolescence thinking that if i learned enough science and how to debate that i would eventually show him how wrong he was. Eventually it dawned on me that he didn't want the facts he just wanted to be contrarian. So much so that whenever a new discussion entered public discourse that you already knew what his position was. I've learned how to talk to my dad now, by channelling that energy into benign sports or movie talk. My energy is a lot better spent on the next generation.
Oooof
Dads, man.
Nope, you didn't learn enough about science.
I know how you feel... In recent years I've learned to just let it pass whenever my parents talk about their shit opinions, because I know my influence will never be enough to counterbalance the 'anti' influence (friends, info sources, their will to be contrarian) if they don't figure it out themselves. There's just no point fighting there.
@@Gobeline78
So you also took the sneek out path. Shame on you.
There is an important psychological and social distinction between "denying" and "refusing to believe" and I think you know enough about motivated reasoning to guess which one is really happening here.
There is a big difference between "refuse to believe" and "to know better".
@@oldineamiller9007shame you don’t know what it is.
@@tonyhakston536
It's exactly the other way around. I know what I'm talking about, you don't. Come on, try to prove me wrong.
Sure, The climate is changing. How much humans have to do with it is debatable. My problem is you people seem to be on this self-righteous mission to "save the planet". That is not what it is though. For most of this planet's history, it has been inhospitable to human life. Even after life showed up most of that time has been spent inhospitable to human life. You people don't want to save the planet. You want to stagnate the planet. You are selfish and want the planet to stay exactly how it is right now.
guys stop arguing both of our science uncles are here. also how you watch either of these channels and say that type of stuff? somebody hasn’t been staying curious…
"If you haven't been convinced so far, then I'll let the future convince you". Well said.
Needs to be on a shirt.
Even then, they'll just blame it on natural cycles of warming and cooling. There's no convincing them. They'll always find some nugget of bullshit to latch onto to avoid having to accept that they're wrong. If hundreds of photographs, videos, measurements, and simple experiments can't convince flat earthers that the earth is round, then living in a future of unprecedented warming, rising sea levels, mass extinctions, and drought isn't going to convince climate change deniers either. Because the absolute hardest thing a person can do is to admit they might be wrong.
But then it'll be too late. Everything about addressing climate change through policies and changes in our lifestyles is a just a massive catch-22
this is literally their goal. you put up with their policies until they've cashed out by destroying the planet. when the reckoning comes for the rest of us due to their damage, they have enough money to build bunkers and buy the last remaining safe real estate while the rest of people get hit by typhoons and droughts.
@@treyshaffer That's the exact problem!
By the time the idiots might finally be convinced we'll all already be dying in droves. And then there are still those who will try to find a scapegoat even when they are starving because of global crop failures. They will say "the elites hoard all the food" or something racist. Just so that they don't have to admit that the warners were right all along.
Never underestimate people's capacity to lie to themselves. Cognitive dissonance hurts and changing your world view is terrifying. They are being expected to admit they have built careers, lives, whole identities on a falsehood and that takes more courage than most have.
"if you dont go in lockstep with the political establishment you are lying to yourself!" or i just dont wanna get scammed by bad people with bad intentions? why do i have to support EVERYTHING the left pushes? seriously what do i get out of it because they tend to be wrong on everything.
Are you on crack? The only people afraid are the ones who have fallen for this bullshit. Humans are insignificant. The earth does what it does and has for billions of years.
Dead right.. The boomers resent they are being told they trashed everything..
Yep, that is why support for climate change is so strong. If people could just ask - where is the testable prediction for this? They would see there is no testable prediction to support climate change and climate change is therefor not a scientific theory.
@@idwtgymn record every day’s temperature for the next five years, have fun man.
This summer has convinced my 86 year old evangelical grandparents that climate change is real. The grift is running out.
This is so encouraging to hear. I don't think *MY* 90something year old evangelical grandparents are going to change their minds but I have hope my parents will.
"THATS WHAT IVE BEEN SAYING THIS WHOLE TIME!"
I hope you are right
This will sound cruel but their opinion or understanding really doesn't matter. The problem is all the people under 60 who think like them who, in turn, will have to wait another 20 years (when sht is exponentially more fked) to "come to jesus" about reality... Then we have the next group of morons under 60 flying and cruising around the globe voting for republicans... And the cycle continues and then we just die. Can you sense my optimism??
@@elizabethreid5554 mine might if they still lived in texas, but we moved them up to washington and the polar vortex stuff makes it so cool up here that it isn't hitting them yet.
When I find people who deny climate change, I remind them that pollution is bad either way. They will usually agree with that.
That’s surprising to me. Because it’s almost impossible to convince a republican that’s it’s bad to poison a lake they themselves fish out of.
@@SixOThreewell I'm sure the reason it's so hard is because you don't know how to argue, as shown by your strawman of near 50% of Americans you've never spoken to. Maybe learn how to argue and more people might just listen
except they agree with you and simply pollute as normal. it's one thing to agree something is bad, it's another thing to do anything about it.
I’ve also heard another commenter (in a different comment section on another app) suggest when talking about getting off of oil to tell them that oil will still run out either way, and if we don’t make the switch eventually it’ll run out. Since our current consumption of it outpaces the planets creation of it. Not to mention how the human population is increasing.
I just googled it, and Aparentally it’s predicted that we will run out of it in roughly a 100 years. Which isn’t long at all.
People who say that they don't think people are causing climate change are REALLY saying "I don't want to deal with this, handle this, or try to fix this".
Yes. Because they want what they want, and don't care what it costs (other people).
I personally dont believe we "caused" change.
Climat is always changing withing thousands or millions of years.
However, we are activly influencing and speeding up the climat and the changes it is naturally going through.
And faster then is healthy for the systems we rely on!
It doesnt matter if we caused it or not ultimatly.
We need to fix the damage we're doing either way!
Just like its not the community's fault a person got run over by a bull.
We've got to help, fix and help recover the runover person either way.
Costs more glucose!
You're underestimating the power of ignorance.
@@ethribin4188that's essentially semantics. Technically yes we aren't the sole cause of climate change but we have sped it up and arguably are one cause of it. The climate is changing in a way that it normally doesn't and it is our actions that lead to that change. Therefore, we are causing climate change. Or, there are several factors involved in climate change, but normally these are close to equilibrium. We have become another factor much larger than the others, and so our actions are currently driving climate change. No matter how you look at it, it can be argued that we are causing climate, even if we are not the sole cause of it
I’m terrified for this summer. I’m Australian, and it’s predicted to possibly be a worse bushfire season than the black summer bushfires.
Every year, it gets worse. Every year, more and more people are displaced and die. I’m seeing it happen as I grow up.
I'm over in Texas, and it's starting to become noticeably worse here too. The winter freezes are gonna get worse and worse and the summers are gonna get hotter and hotter.
Grass fires on the side of the road, frozen tree limbs causing insane property damage, casualties from heat and power loss. I bet we'll be in the same boat as you guys in less than a decade.
Yeah if Canada is any indication with their "once in a lifetime ecological disaster" wildfires this last summer, things are just going to keep getting worse.
I'm terrified of how the government uses emergencies to take power and money away from the people and give it to themselves and billionaires; during the last emergency for example, the state gained enormous authority over people and billionaires doubled their wealth while the people lost half their wealth. I'm worried about the environment but the last thing I want is the government to "help"
OMG FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE SEES THIS
It scares me as well, but I have more hope that Labor will be less corrupt than the Liberals@@mattsierra9653
It’s similar with my home. Bigger and more horrible fires. Herds of animals dead from mosquitoes glaciers disappearing completely. It makes me so angry and sad when I’m told it’s not real
Really wish we would stop saying "Do you believe in climate change?" and start saying, "Do you reject the facts of climate change?"
Then you'll get this: "what facts?" and then they'll take the position of only accepting the 'true facts' on the subject
Yep
@@Jones-pj2jk This exactly. And all the people who do that will deny any facts as "true facts" unless it's a "fact" that agrees with their opinion.
“If someone doesn't value evidence, what evidence are you going to provide to prove that they should value it? If someone doesn’t value logic, what logical argument could you provide to show the importance of logic?” - Sam Harris
Yeah, science is not a religious belief, and saying that gives people the wrong idea
I remember mentioning climate change in my religious high school’s American History class and the teacher gave us a whole lecture on how and why it isn’t real. This was, like, 2010-11.
That's subtly terrifying.
Hopefully they'be been flooded out or struck by lightning by now.
Churches really like to use this as a "this is the end times!!" Which.. lowkey yes but not cause of God, we're just massively fucking up.
And that, kids, is why private schooling is bad.
The comedic tragedy is them dying before we can say “I told you so” as sea level rise drowns the coasts and irreversibly spiraling biosphere into 6th mass extinction.
The world burns and they won’t be alive to suffer from the consequences of their actions
People have been lied to a lot, and some people take away from that "The truth is always the opposite of what you're told". Which is perhaps the only strategy worse than believing everything you're told.
This is the crux of the problem. It's completely fine, even good, to be critical of established power structures. But assuming an assertion is bullshit simply because it came from an authoritative source, or government is absolute populist-brain rot. People have become so myopically concerned with potential government/academic propaganda that they've totally became blind to corporate propaganda.
This goes right past critical thinking and skepticism into oppositional defiance.
Not a single climate model has been accurate in 50 years
@@ShannonBarber78 That is histrionic over-the-top nonsense excuse making for intellectual laziness and getting bad grades in school.
Oh, come on! Fire is hot. Most people like chocolate. Falling off tall buildings can kill you. The Earth is round.
WAY less than 50% of "what we are told" is false. @@ShannonBarber78
The oil company’s express strategy was to outright deny, then it slid to “it’s not caused by human activity” and now to “its so hopeless that it’s not worth doing anything about”.
That’s their propaganda and they’re VERY good at it. People are confused because over the past decades they’ve been inundated with those three messages and they don’t really think about it enough to have their own thoughts on it.
Deniability is because people are fearful and ignorant to the truth that we do not know enough to make 100% certain assumptions about something we are too stupid to fully understand or do something about. Anyone explains to you they know exactly whats happening and how to fix this issue is lying to you. Fear mongering you with assumptions and fixing a problem they don't fully understand themselves is useless. I hate it when people try and wind people up on these crusades to end up empty handed and a basket full of lies. But lying is the new truth these days.
in 1979 the American Petroleum Institute along with Exxon, BP et al... proved Climate Change is Manmade caused by fossil fuels and decided to hide and obfuscate that information to make as much money as possible before the world economy crashes
This information is available, but cultists will not... WILL NOT... read it because of cognitive dissonance.
Why do climate change hysterics always worry so much about what oil companies say? They say what they think will give them the best public image and they change their story accordingly. When they accept climate change, it is not evidence for climate change, they are simply deciding that arguing against it - even if its false - is counter productive because people believe it already.
@@idwtgymnbecause lobbying exists, so they can bribe politicians to say what they want them to
I just watched highlander 2, an old movie where the earth's OZONE layer was gone and we had to create a force field
then I REALIZED climate ZEALOT took 2 decades to comprehend that even my housekeeper has an ozone generator that's just 2 metal plates and a little electric
we could replace the entire ozone in a few days and COST A MILLION DOLLARS
oh no, better not let people realize we are numbr than a 6th grader but spent billions to do nothing
what's the first RENEWABLE resource........carbon, you're a carbon based life form and somehow don't know this
carbon is easy AF to capture, it's natural, in fact water vapor it 4 times more of a greenhouse gas than carbon
carbon dioxide is 0.04-0'05% of the ATMOSPHERE, below 0.03% plants start to die off to replace the lose carbon
how low would you like us to go?!
history repeats itself when you are LOW IQ, and the rest of us can do nothing to stop it
Never underestimate how powerful and flexible cognitive dissonance is.
So is cognitive dissonance simply the state of holding 2 opposite beliefs or is the discomfort that comes with it? I was always under the impression it was the discomfort factor, but if I'm wrong I'd like to be corrected. I could never live with that discomfort, I've changed my world views drastically twice in my life,bad id rather try to tune my perception to reality as opposed to doubling down. I'm only 23 but I'd hope that I can keep this ability if I come to find I'm incorrect on something important in the future, which I'm willing to bet I am lol
Glad someone else said it. If they must go I say we take out religion with them
@@lightningmonky7674 I believe you're correct and feel the same way, but in the common vernacular it's taken on a slightly different meaning with respect to people who find ways of ignoring the cognitive dissonance that should, if working properly, be alerting them to the problem of holding contradictory ideas at the same time, or having views that are consistently misaligned with reality.
@@lightningmonky7674It's good to see that at least ONE person in this conversation understands what cognitive dissonance is & doesn't use it to describe people with whom they disagree.
Cognitive dissonance is actually the state of holding two contradictory beliefs and the discomfort that comes with it. It's powerful in that it's uncomfortable enough to cause people to rationalize and excuse, but it itself is not the mechanism by which they do so.
Honestly it’s very refreshing to see an exasperated Hank. It is very affirming to how frustrating I feel most of the time.
Same. I think he knows this and has a healthy amount of fear - no one wants to see the Alex Jonesification of Hank Green; but it is comforting, and i think gives some of us the permission we needed to ‘Get On With It Already’.
Ditto
I find it very immature. To inject emotion into a debate like this is to lose immediately. If you can't argue your points calm and rationally, you may as well give up. Alex Jones was right about fertilizer chemicals causing frogs to swap sexes, yet he was made fun of because he was shouting it up and down.
I have learned as i became an adult that humans, me included, are not truth seeking machines, we are validation/emotional seeking. We want to feel happy, we want to feel validated, and having grand narratives about the worl dhelp
Oh 100 percent this.
Yeah but Its taken me years of pain in my bed and thinking about life to create a belief system around seeking the truth and what we know so far, because I prioritize the latter. But I also have a condition where I can barely understand my emotions and think with logical systems because my brain doesnt autofill with instict
Yup. The primary objective of our brains is not truth. It is internal consistency. So something needs to flip and then turn everything else.
Fascinating, I totally agree
Being social creatures does that
The last point is so true. I’ve had family members have the most insane takes like antivax, climate denial and anti-seatbelt only to completely cha get their mind and then deny they ever thought the opposite!
Maybe it’s not important but it’s definitely annoying.
Tbf, I was raised religious and could t remember when I had rather homophobic beliefs (they weren’t something I thought about often but they were there). But when I force myself to remember certain interactions I’m like man, I did say or think that huh? It really does feel like a different person.
"You either come to realise what an idiot you used to be, or you continue to be that idiot."
@@LordZurkov I just watched highlander 2, an old movie where the earth's OZONE layer was gone and we had to create a force field
then I REALIZED climate ZEALOT took 2 decades to comprehend that even my housekeeper has an ozone generator that's just 2 metal plates and a little electric
we could replace the entire ozone in a few days and COST A MILLION DOLLARS
oh no, better not let people realize we are numbr than a 6th grader but spent billions to do nothing
what's the first RENEWABLE resource........carbon, you're a carbon based life form and somehow don't know this
carbon is easy AF to capture, it's natural, in fact water vapor it 4 times more of a greenhouse gas than carbon
carbon dioxide is 0.04-0'05% of the ATMOSPHERE, below 0.03% plants start to die off to replace the lose carbon
how low would you like us to go?!
history repeats itself when you are LOW IQ, and the rest of us can do nothing to stop it
@@LordZurkov A slight change
1 either realizes what an idiot 1 used to be, or 1 continues to be that idiot.
Don't want to encourage humans going around calling others (using 'you') idiots based on what it thinks is idiotic & what is intelligent.
I know someone who doesn't really believe in climate change and they made a remark about "I don't remember smoke season being a thing at the end of every summer. Has that always been a thing?" And I saw them soooo close to the precipice of understanding. It was exciting but scary to realize it's already so bad that it's nearly undeniable even if you actively want to disbelieve.
At the end of summer? It’s been smoke season since fucking may
Can’t prove climate change is HUMAN caused without starting forest fires
@TylesBrain a lot of forest fires are started by lightning. You wanna talk to God about this? Maybe you can petition for more planning in where lightning strikes?
My dad doesn't believe in man made climate change and we had a similar exchange about the fires... and he said he believes that climate change activists might be starting the fires.
@@ep7672 did you personally see the lighting. There were many areas with zero lighting leading up to their fires… Quebec an example
I was raised in a small Christian denomination that was outside the mainstream of Christianity, and it was interesting to watch the people who joined the church. Some of them joined because they honestly believed the doctrines the church taught, but many of them joined because they enjoyed the feeling of being in a small group that knew the "truth". It made them feel special and important. That kind of person often ended up leaving the denomination and moving to even smaller, more extreme groups. I think that things like climate change denial and flat earth are similar for many people who are looking for something to make them feel special.
That is a classic reason for conspiracy theories believer. So, you're spot on.
Thanks for that input you probably hit the nail on the head because it makes so much sense. It seems like a common pattern people have at some point in there life. Wanting to be the small outcast group to feel important and smart to rebel against the majority but other people probably deny climate change because they’re profiting off the current system or don’t want to change their life for any reason
I read How to Talk to a Science Denier. The author went to flat earth meetings. He came to your conclusion that people just want to belong. As Hank says, it takes a long time to convince people ( from what I’ve read).
@@lillianbarker4292 All people love stories. They want their life to be a good story. They want to be the hero of their story or at least a significant character in a group of protagonists. Sometimes they make that story a wacky sf/fantasy/political thriller because those are compelling stories.
That’s an interesting observation. I watched that Flat Earth documentary on Netflix, and it’s clear those people love believing in that stuff because it gave them influence in that small community and made them feel special. It wasn’t really about the shape of the Earth, it was about their ego.
Ive heard the "whatever happens with climate its gods plan" line before. Of course when it comes to anything else they believe in "personal responsibility"
Rules for thee, not for me.
Since most of the world has at this point legalized abortion to some extent, it must be gods plan.
@@ShannonBarber78good thing that isn’t happening, huh?
@@ShannonBarber78Yeah. Just Gotta Trudge along and head I to oblivion blindly, because that’s what your god wants apparently.
This is why theism is another problem for society.
I'm glad you pointed out the fact that any solution needs to consider people who cannot adapt as things currently stand. I'm not poor by any means, and would love to switch to an electric car, but I frankly cannot afford to get a new vehicle and wouldn't even have a way to charge it. Government subsidies could go a long way to help.
Government subsidies for green renewable energy does exist but loads of private companies abused them in order to get massive tax breaks thus forcing the government to limit or cut off these subsidies altogether.
Go look up the case of "DC Solar ponzi scheme" the founder and owner of DC Solar used his company as a front to acquire fake investment from investors and at the same time companies and other entities get massive tax breaks for investing into DC Solar.
Electric cars switch the energy source from the fuel to your country's power plants. If your grid is mostly coal, then your car is powered by coal. Not less pollutant. Also batteries pollute immensely, the whole thing is very bad to produce. We need alternative fuels.
@@Fux704 Obviously we would need a more renewable and less polluting infrastructure before switching to all electric, but my comment was about the cost aspect. It's a lovely thought but meaningless if most people can't afford it.
@@Fux704i wont even contemplate EVs just for the batteries alone, it's trading one for of pollution for another and then we have the hazards of them.
This is old, but for anyone reading, it is better to keep your old car until it blows up than scrap it for a new care BECAUSE you are creating so much waste by throwing away one car then needing another car to be manufactured using a finite resource.
Not to mention just like fuel will run out eventually so will material for batteries. It’s another form of kicking the can down the road. It is better, but it isn’t the solution.
We need better transport and to greatly reduce the amount of finite resources currently needed for travel.
*cough cough* TRAINS *cough cough*
The thing that always irks me is when a ton of people are bizarrely wrong about a thing, and then an event finally proves it, and then all of those people evaporate. There's never the cathartic moment of hundreds of people saying "Wow, I was wrong. Sorry, guys!" I'd forgive immediately, but I don't even get to. Like when all those people thought the world was going to end in 2012, making a big stink about it, and then it didn't, and poof! Never heard from a single one of them again. It's happened over and over through the decades.
I don't think they just never talk about things again. I think most of them just go on to being bizarrely wrong about other things
Or like the conspiracy theories surrounding the covid vaccine, so many people saying so many crazy things about it, that people were going to end up dying and kinds of nonsense.
@@joshc5613 Yep and it happens a lot in doomsday predictions. ua-cam.com/video/E1e5HAZo4iw/v-deo.html
I grew up around a LOT of the "the world is ending in 2012" folks, and while I didn't believe in that, I DID worry that those people in my life (and others like them) would start doing wild crap to, uh, "beat the apocalypse." Having grown up with an uncle who said he'd rather drown his family than wait for the end, I was afraid of that year bc of people like him.
So, naturally, I called to check up on my bf in December, when the big bad was supposed to happen. I asked if he was doing ok, if there was any cultist crap, if his neighborhood was safe with all the conspiracy nuts, and he just laughed. He genuinely thought I was being ABSURD even worrying about the doomsdayers, and suddenly I was a little shamed-- from the outside, I didn't look any more tethered than my uncle. I apologized, but that was kind of the nail in the coffin, we broke up right after.
For years I was so ashamed of how much fear mongering I had done without meaning to, and it didn't occur to me to publicly post about the context of my shift/sudden silence and moving on. I ultimately did, in the interest of trying to open up lines to people who maybe soft cut ties because I was One of Those People. I only share this bc I imagine a lot of the true believers (and casual worriers) were so embarrassed by how much time they spent in the grift that they still don't know how to acknowledge it without feeling like they're going to lose more face (admitting to being tricked or led on) than by staying silent. It's weird because they really didn't, but it's one of those emotional vs rational responses. People don't want to admit their pride made them marks.
But I do think a good portion committed themselves to trying to spot other grifts. Unfortunately I think many others ran to more welcoming conspiracy communities that already had a locked and loaded Other to blame for things not going "according to plan." Eeesh.
oh no those people still think the world ended in 2012 and we live in purgatory or a simulation or some other unfalsifiable bullshit.
Most of the anti climate change rhetoric comes from fossil fuel industry think tanks and front groups, because to address it means lower profits for them. When they say "its costs too much" they mean it would decrease profits too much and that's unacceptable. BP spends and order of magnitude more on green technology marketing than they do on green technology.
I'm surprised not more people are commenting this. It's not like they lie for no reason, there's a lot of money involved, and it would be conceding defeat for people who are super keen on defending free markets.
@@Sodium_Slug The scary thing is, some people ARE lying for no reason. Repbulicans and Fox News constantly downplayed the pandemic and the science we use to combat it (masks, vaccines, quarantine). And for what? What do they gain out of it?
It's hilarious how much of the "skeptic" points are about how someone like Bill Gates (not a particularly good guy despite his philanthropy for the record) is invested in green energy, meat substitutes, and the like - as a gotcha to point out how "they" have a vested monetary interest to push global warming as something to care about.
And, like, they have a point in some ways. Climate change should not be something that's monetized for big capital investors solely to improve their bottom line, but like... you're literally regurgitating arguments DIRECTLY BANKROLLED by a much larger and wealthier group of people who hold the reins over our current economic system and energy production.
It's like someone scolding you for eating a sausage while they pull out their pack of cigarettes... in the middle of a fireworks-and-petrol factory
Fossil fuel companies are making bank off the climate change industry. Artificial cuts in production inflate their profits. They're likely supporting climate change scientists more than any other industry. Wind and solar are guaranteed losers that ensure Fossil fuel dominance.
Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud. I don't believe for a second the right wing pundits that push climate change denialism believe it as much as they're bought and sold by the fossil fuel industry to create propaganda to protect their market share.
“Our old selves die, and we don’t even notice it happened”. Good rant, Hank 👌
1:15 Climate denial among poor people isn't that important because they don't have much power or choice. However, climate denial among rich and influential people, particularly those strongly financially incentivized to deny (fossil fuel stakeholders, CEOs, and all the politicians they bribe), is important. Note that getting elected mostly has to do with campaign budget, which is determined by how many rich people and interest groups donate to your campaign. Then once elected politicians completely forget about anything they promised to the general public and solely listen to those largest donors.
A shift in culture among the masses does sometimes help for getting someone in power that will at least try to do something positive.
@@NathaNeil27 I just watched highlander 2, an old movie where the earth's OZONE layer was gone and we had to create a force field
then I REALIZED climate ZEALOT took 2 decades to comprehend that even my housekeeper has an ozone generator that's just 2 metal plates and a little electric
we could replace the entire ozone in a few days and COST A MILLION DOLLARS
oh no, better not let people realize we are numbr than a 6th grader but spent billions to do nothing
what's the first RENEWABLE resource........carbon, you're a carbon based life form and somehow don't know this
carbon is easy AF to capture, it's natural, in fact water vapor it 4 times more of a greenhouse gas than carbon
carbon dioxide is 0.04-0'05% of the ATMOSPHERE, below 0.03% plants start to die off to replace the lose carbon
how low would you like us to go?!
history repeats itself when you are LOW IQ, and the rest of us can do nothing to stop it
'You' lobby & grandstand & vote for taxes and regulations that do absolutely nothing to solve the problem you claim we have. Why am I then to believe in your superior cogency and that received wisdom?
stop the oil is funded by rich people with ties to the oil industry BTW
@@ihatecrackhead That's not how it works, ozone is being constantly generated and destroyed in the upper atmosphere, causing the ozone concentration to converge to some equilibrium value. The ozone layer depletion is caused by certain chemicals that catalyze the active destruction of ozone and/or inhibit its formation, shifting this equilibrium to a much lower concentration of ozone. As these chemicals slowly break down over time, the ozone layer automatically heals. Dumping a bunch of ozone into the upper atmosphere wouldn't really accomplish anything, and it would also be highly impractical to get it there (and ozone in the lower atmosphere is just toxic pollution).
I think a lot of people just really can't accept it emotionally. They just don't want to change their behavior. They don't want their world to change. They want the world to be the way it was when they were 10 years old.
I agree. They want to have single-use plastics and toss them in the garbage can without feeling guilty. They want to drive huge cars at ridiculously high speeds. They want to eat meat at every meal and eat cheese with everything. They want to run their air conditioning at 69 degrees. It they admit the problem then they have to reconcile themselves with their behavior.
Sure, The climate is changing. How much humans have to do with it is debatable. My problem is you people seem to be on this self-righteous mission to "save the planet". That is not what it is though. For most of this planet's history, it has been inhospitable to human life. Even after life showed up most of that time has been spent inhospitable to human life. You people don't want to save the planet. You want to stagnate the planet. You are selfish and want the planet to stay exactly how it is right now.
You're revealing it is a progressive (or more accurately, regressive) political agenda
@@safetinspector2 You also have to recognize that people's behavior isn't gonna change, so why not make single use plastics that will degrade themselves in a year, they cost almost the same, why not have better designed houses so you can have your house at whatever temperature you want without problem (having air conditioning is actually the greener choice BTW, from an energy viewpoint, they use less energy than what the differential in temperature is), going at higher speeds can actually reduce the overall wasted energy, so it is more about the fuel source than speeds. And finally meat consumption, when you put everything on the table, it is not cut and clear, it is much more energy dense, it has much more nutrients, so it is not bad, the over consumption is the problem, we are omnivores, we can survive with only vegetables, but we need meat to have a proper well nourished diet. But most people that eat omnivore do not eat organs, they only eat the worse quality meat, muscle, and overeat, so the protein is not well used and they end up consuming a lot of fat, that is without taking into consideration how much just end up thrown out, so, it is other habits that need to change, habits that vegans also have (but morality speaking, vegans trow out fruit and vegetables, omnivores will thrown out what was once another sentient animal). The industry could be reduced to like half and there will still be enough for everyone that wants meat, just in a normal quantity.
@@alenasenie6928 it’s a UA-cam thread, so trying to exchange links that debunk your points won’t be helpful. You go on and I’ll go on
11:33
My problem is those who "love" me stopped trusting me the second I spoke up against their worldview in literally any capacity (no matter how kind/gentle and understanding the approach). In these people's view there are good guys and bad guys, and if even a fraction of a hair on your body falls outside of their comically ridged world view, you are now a bad guy - you are brainwashed, paid off, malicious, etc.
This makes having these conversations, in my personal experience, totally impossible.
I'm not saying those I've interacted with are a perfectly representative sample, but if they are as common as my availability bias has lead my to believe, as nice as it sounds, this approach is ultimately futile.
My dad always says “this world is black and white, but people want you to think there’s grey”. I’m used to such proudly ignorant mindsets.
@@parmaxolotlin reality it's 99 percent gray.
this is why i don't talk to my family about anything related to politics and religion, it never ends well.
Exactly. I can bring my opinions with all the kindness and thought I want, I'll be faced with "show me studies then." So I do, and then I get the "studies are biased". So I get even more studies, and suddenly it's an issue of me using Google even though I also use other search engines.
It's never-ending. I'm almost 30 , but I'm seen as an immature child. Anytime I want to argue against pseudoscience or fake beliefs, the story ends like this.
It's infuriating.
@GreyPunkWolf this hit home
As someone who was recently displaced by the wildfires in the Northwest Territories in Canada, I have been feeling this frustration a lot lately. I'm one of a few lucky people who was able to get out safely, had fairly substantial emergency savings to fall back on, and family down south to take me in. So many folks from the NWT are in limbo with no funding, no stable shelter, and no support, and there's no way of knowing if or when we can go home.
Anyone who denies climate change to my face is, frankly, asking for it.
Were you the arsonist who started that one?
They aren't really lying. They are scared that reality is not what they want it to be. They are trying to deceive themselves. They put on this whole act for their own sake. They act like they're better than others in one way or another (smarter, braver, tougher, whatever) because they are trying to cover how absolutely terrified they are by reality
No, they are men who lived their life by reading newspapers and listening to corporate news. For DECADES media ignored climate and said environmentalists were 'kooks'. Thats MEDIA. NOW suddenly people on SOCIAL media say 'thats wrong'. But even mainstream media doesn't really talk much about climate change if it can avoid it, because gas companies have so much money.
Here in Canada our public broadcaster even now hardly discusses it. When the fires were affecting canadian cities, I looked at canadian media and hardly any even MENTIONED the wildfires.
nah i genuinely know we arent melting the world, and i dont shill for the political establishment like you do. the people you listen to are wrong on EVERYTHING why would they be correct all the sudden? irony is you're the one whos scared. thats why you keep supporting in lockstep the political establishment. because you dont know how to say NO.
Yeah, exactly. I work daily with a bunch of 70 to 90+ yo people, and although they don't deny climate change, they will absolutely question humanity's role in it.
Because them and their parents were actually responsible for the start of it all. And the guilt is just way too heavy to handle for them. So they go for the ostrich maneuver
or they just don't believe what a bunch of liars tell them? why are you guys so shocked not everyone follows your radical political agendas.@@GreyPunkWolf
Projection in a nutshell.
my mother was the kind of person who was "never wrong". she was always very smart, and when data proved that she was wrong, a switch would flip in her head that made her never have the opinion on the wrong side of the facts. so I'm quite familiar with this behavior.
At least she allowed herself to be convinced by facts, even if she never admitted the change of mind.
I’ve noticed I do this sometimes and I’ve been trying really hard to make sure I face it when I’m wrong. Like “yup I was wrong, whatever” and move on, because I think it also helps you to better process the new information. What helped me to do it is to recognize that the only realize I think that is because I heard something wrong somewhere, because that is basically every opinion you have it’s built on what you’ve heard. And I’ve found it can be a lot easier to accept when you recognize it’s not really your fault, you heard something wrong and that just go put in your bank of knowledge and was used to form a thought that eventually lead to that opinion. And that’s fine, you aren’t stupid or wrong by your nature or anything, you were just misinformed at some point and now you’re correcting that.
I think this mindset could help people to more readily admit they’re wrong, but I don’t really know how you’d actually convince someone to adopt it because I feel like any way you try to tell someone to think that way comes off as condescending, which obviously won’t work. But I think it helps a lot to separate yourself from the opinions you have that are all just based on stuff you’ve heard that may or may not be true, and in fact it can be hard to even trace back the origin of the knowledge so even if you know the source is dubious you might not realize the information came from that source
I had a friend like that. He would argue until you just submitted to get out of arguing. Even if he was proven wrong, he would still argue anything to make you give up. It's like a game to some people.
I should make it clear here that my mother is not vindictive about it and she does not dispute science. She just conveniently forgot that she was ever wrong. As a person with a pseudo-eidetic memory, I found this irritating as a child.
@@bulldozer8950"the king must have been ill-advised" was the backbone of governments the world over for centuries. It's a remarkable ego relief valve.
Also, I can guarantee this: the next step will indeed be people saying "so what, there's nothing we can do about it". But once the effects begin to materially and visibly harm themselves personally... once they are "inconvenienced" and see there's no going back, no way out... the same people who made a pretense of denying it will say with a straight face "why didn't anyone do something about this? Why didn't anyone warn us? It's not fair."
This is what comes next. Bank on it.
You are exactly right
...I live in Houston. When other places start flooding like we do, and they ARE, more people will realize we have a problem.
This reminds me of a little comic(?) I saw where a guy goes “Goddammit, climate change has finally affected me directly. I give up; you guys win. I'll pay a slightly higher marginal tax rate. I'll do whatever you want in order to get this under control. But - and this is key - I will not stop being racist.”
I hate that you're right, but ey u better believe imma be wasted and thinking about you when this time comes.
You ain't alone
The sad reality is, those group of people simply DO NOT care about anything until it affects them personally or someone they know. Until THEY see it, then it's not happening in their world. The fact is these are people who only believe what they personally see or experience. If it's not affecting them personally, then to them it's as good as nonexistent. Only when it affects them is it suddenly a problem. The sad truth is though, by the time they see it, it will be too late to act.
I had a denier use the dust bowl (a chart showing temperature spiking during those years) as an example that it's been hot before. I informedthem the dust bowl is one of the largest man-made environmental disaster ever.
One of the things that astonishes me the most I think is that so many climate deniers are elderly. As an older person myself, I'm like, you've been alive for so long... how can you not see how much things have changed since you were a kid? I'm only in my 50s, and watching the world physically _change_ over the course of my short life has been pretty alarming.
@@KaotiquaA ton of it is obviously that past a certain age people lose cold tolerance (one of the drivers for old folks moving south to retire).
As someone in retail sales, many people make it clear through tidbits in conversation that they want it to be warming up but don't want people knowing they're that stupid/selfish so they deny it instead. Many have straight up said things to me like "good - you guys will figure it out, besides its too damn cold in the winter here anyways." And not to antagonize me or joke - they were perfectly calm and clearly believed that.
Well, then you told them lies. It was warmer in 2003 than today and it was even warmer in 1935 than it was in 2003. You have still a lot to learn, little boy.
@@oldineamiller9007That's patently false. Average global temperature is significantly higher now and still rising. As of 2022, the 9 warmest years on record were exactly the 9 previous years! Use your brain, Google something for once in your life, look at records, quit your bullshit!
@@oldineamiller9007www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/monthly-report/global/202213
For my dad, I see his denial as him purposefully closing his eyes and ears to the problem. He has this perceived notion that he has been wronged and misled by climate change movements in the past, and it has built up this distrust in him. I don’t think he tries to keep himself updated anymore because he finds it easier and more comfortable to just pretend there isn’t an issue. While I have tried in the past to talk him out of this, I’ve found that it always resulted in a bigger rift between us. I still love him, and want a relationship with him, and so although it’s difficult to keep silent, I do it to preserve that relationship. I’ve sort of come to the same realization as you, Hank, that eventually he will be proven wrong, one way or another. In the end, I value our relationship over being right in an argument
Well if you push a climate crisis I can guarantee you made the right choice in not arguing with your dad. It would get you nowhere and on top of that you'd be wrong.
Man if you’re having an existential crisis about your boomer in charge of nothing of import dad not believing in climate change you have an easier life than I. At the end of the day neither of you have a noticeable impact on the issue, unless either of you can shut down the coal plants of China.
That'll happen when he confuses media reports with peer-reviewed studies. Most people don't understand that difference.
@Spincat08 so you are denying the crisis?
"Our old selves die, and we don't even notice it happened ". So accurate. Not just about this but about a lot of things.
My dad is one of these people. One time he was like “I just don’t see how a couple PPM of CO2 can have that much effect” and I was like, “so you don’t believe in climate change because you…. don’t understand the science enough…? 🤨”
He also said there are a few scientists who don’t believe it, which also makes no sense. He’s just grasping at straws because he doesn’t want to admit his political party is wrong about it, because that would open the door to question other stances they take
If you told your father that he was being ignorant, that would be a valid point. But your alleged responses use circular reasoning and are simply condescending.
Case in point, the proper argument against someone for not believing in something they don’t understand is that they’re sticking their head in the sand, not that they’re wrong because they don’t understand.
My Dad doesn't believe in evolution by natural selection. Partly his problem is that he doesn't really understand the theory - at least in detail - in fact he confuses it with Lamarckism which is a competing theory of evolution that opposes 'natural selection' as the mechanism. I don't think you are necessarily being condescending. Condescension is normally portrayed by tone of voice and facial expression. Often the best way to get people to change their minds is to ask them questions - get them to explain what they think is going on. Help them work through the contradictions in their own position - BUT - of course - you have to be respectful.
My response to that one is "if this room were filled with 400ppm carbon *monoxide*, we'd be dead in a few hours.
So basically "I don't see how that could possibly be true." Classic argument from incredibly.
@@jim23mac Buy you do that you'll be accused of "trying to get in their heads" with their trick questions and they won't let you!
I remember being a climate change denier (as well as believing an embarrassing number of conspiracy theories) in my youth. Mostly it was because my high school science teacher had a rich dad "who was in oil" and taught us the propaganda. It wasn't til I was an adult, parroting quotes from climate denial movies that a friend subtly suggested I do some research on certain facts. He didn't debate me, just pointed at one thing and said "You might want to double check that."
Being a contrarian make you feel smart, but coming to grips with being wrong is embarrassing. It's no wonder most people's brains just turn off when presented with opposing facts, especially if it's in front of others.
Climate denial movies?
Good on you for being able to listen to your friend. My father in Law, formerly an engineer (aren't they all?) was and probably still is a big time climate change denier.
He is/was (he has slight dementia, but he is 96) completely invested in the science of it. Not the real science, but the crap written by other engineers, cooks, economists, etc. (very few climate scientists write denial books).
I think that by now, in his moments of lucidity, he realizes that he was wrong. Hell, he lives right below the polar circle in Canada and he bikes in T-shirt for far longer than he used to be able to.
However, his pride prevented him from admitting he was wrong. That's true of a lot of people.
For my part, the people that really piss me off is not so much the deniers, but those that believe in Human caused climate change, but try to make a buck out of it instead of coming up with real solutions. One that made an impression was some dude that was pulling pollution from the air, to turn it into polymers that he would then use to build smartphone cases.
As if those could make any difference at all.
@@jaredlancaster4137 Documentary movies. Eg: "Great Global Warming Swindle"
@@cf3714 gotcha
I was just having a conversation with a friend last night about this and said to him: "That's why we're fucked, because the average person is too fucking stupid to grasp the concept of 1,000 years from now or too stubborn to admit they're too stupid to understand it."
That part about talking to someone who's 'on board now' and you literally had a discussion about it before and they claim now they didn't hold that belief before, when they actually said they held that belief at that time. This happens with EVERYTHING in these people's lives. I've literally had to talk to someone close to me about everyday decisions that had to be made or explain why things they did hurt us, and, many times, in seconds, I've pushed on them to accept how reality happened literally seconds ago and they will 'change their mind' 3 different times in 10 seconds, almost as if they're coming up with a new theory about what 'could've happened'. And it's clear from this person's actions and what they end up saying to uphold those actions is that they 'didn't mean to', which means they didn't mean to do that bad thing or that unfortunate thing or failed in that particular way, because they CAN'T fail or be bad. It's not a great way to live, but it's sadly how enough people live that things don't move forward as fast as it can.
As has been said many times, it's hard to believe something when your paycheck depends on your not believing it - but in this case, "paycheck" also means "political identity."
"Wilks was no ordinary pastor. Along with his brother Dan Wilks, he was one of the U.S.’ newest billionaires. And their fortune came from an industry directly related to the planetary changes Wilks described in his sermon: fracking for oil and gas.
The previous year he and Dan had sold their fracking company Frac Tech for $3.5 billion and each pocketed $1.4 billion. They now intended to use their new fossil fuel fortune to shift the moral values of the entire country-and the right-wing influencers they enlisted for the cause went on to become some of the world’s biggest purveyors of climate disinformation.
In 2013, the same year Farris gave his sermon on “polar caps,” the brothers decided to donate more than $6.5 million to Prager University, which doesn’t have a campus and isn’t actually an accredited university. Founded by conservative talk-radio host Dennis Prager to fight against “liberal bias” in American classrooms, it packages right-wing ideology into viral videos aimed at young people. That model, aided by UA-cam recommendation algorithms, has resulted in billions of views across their digital platforms.
“Their contribution essentially enabled PragerU to expand more rapidly,” Prager said of the Wilks brothers in an email to VICE News.
In 2015, not long after the donation to PragerU, Farris Wilks provided $4.77 million in seed funding to start the Daily Wire, a right-wing news website and media company co-founded by Ben Shapiro. Then an aspiring conservative influencer, Shapiro would go on to have a personal Facebook following of over 8.6 million followers."
I feel like that may be the case. It's hard for people to accept being wrong. I can imagine it's a lot harder to accept that a large part of your life and actions have been making the planet inhabitable for human and current animal life. (Because let's be real, the planet isn't going to "die." It's survived much worst than humans.)
It's easier to dismiss those notions and go on without experiencing cognitive dissonance or dispair. And the longer they're dismissed, the harder they become to accept because at that point many people have done it for so long, they made their stance part of themselves.
As someone who teaches rhetoric, this doesn’t surprise me. People are not persuaded by facts (as much as they think they are and as much as we want to believe that about humans). They have to be in an echo chamber or choose to be open minded or have an emotional/motivating experience. You and I are luckier that our echo chambers are on the right side of issue/are generally with the facts. I think your introspection and honesty is really valuable and this video really fascinating
It can come down to personality type as well. some types are willing and eager to test their own beliefs and assumptions because they want to get better, to improve. Others fear they will become lesser if they admit to being wrong. That's so deep down that they don't realize it.
Some of our understandings of other issues, like how we got in this mess in the first place, are wrong...
What's that saying? To fool an idiot, you need only outstep their intelligence. To convince a fool they've been fooled, you need to outdo their ego.
No, some of us have brains and aren't persuaded by bullshit.
We can't change something we have very little impact on. It's cute and fun and all that to blame humans, and while we are *part* of the equation, I'm pretty sick of hearing how "humans are destroying the planet".
It's doing what it does in the process of correcting imbalance.
Only an absolute *idiot* believes that 8B people aren't going to cause change. And there's *nothing* we can do to reverse it.
Well, that's almost accurate. Nobody wants to do or otherwise even just allow to happen the thing that would *actually* help.
A certain airborne virus comes to mind
@@mobilityproject3485That's because "how we got here" has less to do with us and more to do with the core nature of things 🙄
"I don't think people even get convinced; I think our old selves just die and we don't even realize that it happened"
Holy shit that hit so hard.
My Brain says this rings true thinking about psycho mechanics, "I" at its basest level is a collection of chemical logic gates, an emergent property of which is relating the output of that collection to some semblance of the input which was processed to produce it (why did I do that?). In so far as my conscience experience of continuous reality is actually just an illusion created by the overlap of segmented reactions (snapshots in time so to speak), "I" is the thing denying that "I" ceased to exist with the passing of the last neural impulse...or something like that...
Should be on a T shirt.
It's pretty right. I once thought humanities emissions were smaller than natural emissions and that climate change was a small effect that humans didn't have much impact on, this was around 2000 or so. I don't recall exactly when I changed my mind about that but I do recall myself saying that to a guy doing door to door solar sales. At the time it would have been around $30,000 Probably $50,000 in todays money for a 2Kw system. I think I was using that as an argument basically to get the guy to go away.
Anyway I think than then that prompted me to go and have a look to confirm and I found out that was wrong. I think I went "hmm" and then had a more open mind to climate change as a whole. I think probably over the course of the next few years I changed as climate change became more of a mainstream topic and my position solidified firmly in the camp of yeah people cause it and it is indeed quite a big deal.
I now have a 6.6Kw solar system (that cost about 2 years electricity bill to install, and paid itself off in 4 IE ~$4K) and I have actually helped a few other people change their minds on climate change as a whole.
The big takeaway for me is you won't *ever* win an argument with someone on the spot. People will not lose an argument because losing sucks. Being adversarial won't work.
Don't even try. You will just hurt both of you.
What I found that helped was asking them "how do you think climate change works?"
Most people who deny it don't seem to really know. Like *really* know.
It's all about CO2 and stuff and whatever.
I go with, you know how we get light from the sun yeah? and you can see that right?
They go yeah.
And you know what infrared radiation is, like how you can hold your hand up to the oven or a fire and you can feel the heat coming off it.
Yeah.
Well that's why it gets colder at night, because all that heat is getting sent off into space and things cool down.
The thing about CO2 is it lets that visible light from the sun in to the earth where it warms it up, but CO2 isn't transparent to that infrared radiation.
So the earth instead of sending that infrared radiation out into space and cooling down stays just that little bit warmer. Like how it stays warmer on a cloudy night.
(I know this is a gross simplification of the actual process, but it's close enough for most people who don't really know the difference between the solar system and a galaxy)
Now, remember you 100% will not get them to change their mind about climate change, but you do get to see the gears turning in peoples heads. Give it a few years and they may change.
Ayo philosophy enthusiasts rise up
@@zyebormI appreciate this. Being judgmental/confrontational tends to make people become entrenched, but just giving up does nothing. Planting a seed of uncertainty gives someone a reason to examine the facts later without anyone hovering over them.
Hey, for what it's worth, I changed. I used to be 100% in the "people aren't causing this, and it probably isn't real anyway" zone, and I argued for it and everything. After, idk, learning about the world a bunch and becoming better informed, I changed my mind. Over time, I was argued out of it.
Maybe it's a rare phenomenon, but it happened to me.
I used to be like that, then I actually hung around some people who knew science and made me realize that the existence and cause of climate change is not anywhere near as “controversial” as I was led to believe.
@@parmaxolotl I came to the same realization. I grew up in a context that said, basically, "sure, the scientists say that, but we all know how much you can trust THEM hahaha." Like, it was common sense that most scientists had a major agenda and you had to judge for yourself how seriously you could take them about a given issue.
Congratulations on being thoughtful, open to change human beings.
Interesting, I had the exact opposite experience. I use to believe in and argue for climate change. I had all the facts behind me and armed my rationale with graphs and data and for years I didn't doubt climate change at all. I still find it hard not to believe that the earth is warming given all the data I have seen and friends I have personally known collect the data. The problem is lived experience is starting to undermine that. I can only go thru so many "must just be a cold year this year" years and it's becoming really hard to not view global warming as a good thing when in my lived life I'm almost never uncomfortably hot but yet almost always cold and looking for some source of heat. I'd be happier to fight against global warming if it was actually warm when I go outside 😅
@@jpkellerman7056 I take it you understand that global warming means the average temperature of the globe is going up and that it doesn't preclude some areas not warming or even getting cooler? You change gross weather patterns and certain regions can certainly get colder while on average the whole planet gets warmer
This needed to be said. The energy needed to convince people who are acting in bad faith is better spent moving forward with solutions.
🎯
How do you know, for certain, if someone is acting in bad faith?
Totally agree, but if that crowd is hold back progress then something has to be done.
@@thomasdequincey5811 The way Hank just articulated in the video. If they're still deniers, they're acting in bad faith. It's either bad faith because they've retreated into tribalism and their in-group denies it (they are shutting out rational thoughts in favor of still belonging to their group), or it's bad faith because a few dollars of tax money or exchanging the latest Octoburger challenge for eating reasonably is "too much cost" for them (selfishness).
Unreal problems do not request real solutions.
Most of my family are climate change deniers. My understanding is that their beliefs are rooted in 1) scientific illiteracy 2) mistrust in activists on account of unrelated progressive political beliefs they hold 3) attempts to mitigate the anxiety caused by feeling out of control.
I agree. I know a lot of people are saying it's ego but I think that lots of people lie about their past beliefs or pretend new evidence "just" came out when they change their minds about stuff like this, or otherwise protect their ego if that's the problem. I think it's usually that they truly believe they are correct, and that anyone telling them otherwise has underlying motives for doing so.
I think the last one (lack of control) is the one that will stick for the longest. Fear is potentially the most motivating of all emotions. Hell, I've believed the truth of climate change since I was a kid in the 80's and I manage to stifle the existential dread over climate change almost every single day. I *know* what's happening and yet I still manage to block it from my mind 99% of the time because otherwise it's panic inducing. I honestly envy those who manage to completely sink themselves in denial.
Mine too. I think there are a lot of different reasons behind it. For my family, it's like 1) scientific illiteracy/lack of critical thinking skills/lack of curiosity 2) us vs them, their "team" denies climate change and their political opponents support it and 3) religion. The religious part is weird because it swings them along the scale Hank is talking about: from "climate change doesn't exist" straight to "we don't need to do anything about it" ...because "this world is flawed and full of sin and if God decides it's time to end it then I'm ready."
There's also the fact that scientific rigor requires you to update your position. If you get more or newer data, you make new predictions. Or if one of your variables, like human behaviour, changes, you have to update your model. Similar to Covid "oh now the scientists are saying something new, see that's why you can't trust them." So they'll grab onto a prediction that was made in 1983 that didn't come COMPLETELY true (but close enough it's making life really difficult in some places) and never let it go.
I doubt it because people tell me all or the vast majority of scientists agree. But I know for certain I can go to the bank and be approved for a 30 year mortgage on a several tens of million of dollars home in a place that if the dire predictions are correct will be below sea level.
Having worked for a bank, I know that mortgage won't see $1 of profit for almost half of its length, and yet every bank is willing to make thousands of these mortgages. I also know banks have teams and teams of people who pour over studies to tell the bank if it's bets are a good idea. Every bank on the planet is betting trillions and trillions that the dire warnings aren't real.
My dad is a skeptic. He likes to think of himself as a very logical, very scientifically minded person. Honestly the only way I’ve been able to make myself understand it is that he refuses to believe in it because once you accept it, it’s really scary. For the same reason people avoid going to the doctor when they know they have a health problem. “If I don’t accept there’s a problem, the problem does not exist.”
I had this mind set a few years ago and yeah it was fear. tbf I was a dumbass high school student and not a grown man but still. The only thing that convinced me was just sitting down and having a chat with myself and being like "do I really not think this is a problem or do I not want to admit that this is a problem" and it turned out its the later.
You should listen to your dad . I was 15 years old on earth day in 1970 not one thing these fear mongers have ever said has come true. They're 0 for 53.
It's probably not fear. The older you become, the harder it is to have a truly open mind about fundamental truths. As an old man, you are comfortable with the opinions and convictions you hold and everyone likes the feeling of knowing better - especially an older man.
ahhh, like the violent denial part of cognitive dissonance?
@@notlisztening9821 you do know that with climate predictions you don't make any money unless you have dire predictions. I don't believe in predictions that are paid for. They've already caught them cheating on the stats before. Don't get in the climate cult it's just another way of controlling you.. Look up William Harper he's an expert.
14:35 "Our old selves die, and we don't even notice it happened."
One of the most soul-churning things I've ever heard you say off the cuff. What is this feeling?
Trepidation.
Something that hurts a lot for me is I completely lack the means to make meaningful changes. I'm too poor and too stupid to really help the world with problems like this but just smart enough to understand they exist.
Don’t give up hope. You aren’t too stupid, we just have to work together
@@coolbabbit639 thanks man but I'm not depressed about it as much as aware and it just kinda sucks
even if you aren’t able to make a huge change like rich companies, any small change is better than none! let’s all do our best to do our part as well :D
Most historical changes happened because of individual people coming together.
Thanks for the motto comments. I definitely threw out an unnecessary whiney complaint here. And I'll do my part both by being a better person and the small changes I can to help the world.
baddies know this one has been public before
fr
I got the original notification and saved for later an hour after when I came back it was gone!
@@GaviLazanme too 😭
I saw it too. What happened? Was it under edited or something?
Did he change anything about the video? I rememver seeing it in my feed, but being unable to watch it and then shedding a tear 🥲
My husband and i had a huuuuuge fight about climate change. I was on the pro side, he was anti. I was able to, after hours of fighting, able to access that he was a climate change denier due to fear. He did not want to accept that it was a reality because that meant some very bad truths that he didnt want to accept yet.
He has since come to the acceptance and im very proud of him. Weve talked about it at length.
Enjoy your divorce.
he's fortunate to have such a patient partner. Kudos to you.
The fear thing is very real. When I went vegan I had to figure out how to explain why to people. I went vegan because of environmental reasons. Trying to explain to ideological carnivores that their diet contributes to climate change is a really uphill battle because they're really scared to admit that meat is bad. Meat, to them, is a huge part of their personality. It doesn't help that the media has told them that "real americans eat meat".
We have to change a lot of how we live our lives, from what we drive to what we eat to the materials we use in our everydays lives. It's daunting, overwhelming, and scary.
@@jackdeniston59"arguing" is not necessarily bad. Letting your feelings bottle up and inevitably explode is bad. Communicating like this is super healthy
@@CRneuyes. Let's at least be scared together, I say
there will be a day when "climate change denial" will be on the same level of disrespect to humanity as "holocaust denial", which is also a real thing by the way. it also has some eerily similar "levels" on the scale, like you say (and also has a strangely large overlap of people who are in denial of both).
So in a hundred years we'll have a huge resurgence of climate change denial?
The irony of course, is that the reason transition costs are so high NOW is because these same people and especially those who spread denialism and misinfo succesfully prevented us from gradually transitioning 40+ years ago! I get the impulse to just let the deniers die out, but our collective failure to stop/convince them is the primary reason we're in this mess.
It is not our failure. It is our politicians failure to time and again were too spineless to stand up to big corporations and force them to adopt a slow transition.
This is exactly right. The success of early denial (not happening, not us) in delaying action made the later denial (too expensive) more compelling, although still very far from true compared to the true cost of inaction. There is no punishment sufficient for the relatively few leaders of this orchestrated misinformation campaign, not that they will ever be punished anyway.
It is our collective failure, as a species, but I can still be mad at the Politicians, Corporations, Rich prats, and any individuals who had the means to make change happen, and chose not to. (especially as you point out, they've had over FOURTY YEARS!! It's inconceivable to me that they can *still* be this hellbent on just destroying the only planet we have, and they have plenty of evidence that is exactly what's happening.)
@@page8301 It's a failure somewhere, because the politicians who kept unwinding efforts to get off of fossil fuels were elected.
The problem is that it's not gonna be the deniers suffering the costs but the people who already have it the worst.
It’s a phenomenon called willful ignorance. Some people would rather just believe that they are right then do research and face the possibility that they are wrong and they do this all partially subconsciously.
I mean we all do to some extent, some of us just do it a lot more than others.
Honestly, it seems for many people, willful ignorance is the defining characteristic of their existence.
It sets the path of their life.. in a very straight line.. with no growth. It's pretty sad to think about. Can you imagine living like that? That would be awful :/
He also touched upon cognitive dissonance. Our identities get so wrapped up in our beliefs (especially important beliefs) that we will simply refuse to absorb condridicting evidence, no matter how irrefutable.
When i did my own research i actually found more evidence to refute man made climate change than to support it.
Remember... willful ignorance isn't really "ignorance" so much as it is choosing to be wrong.
One can be intelligent AND ignorant - but, you HAVE to be a little on the stupid side to be "willfully" ignorant...
Sadly it’s become a topic where too many people want to “win” and have no interest in being right.
That's not completely true. Some of them are just idiots. Others are doing it out of greed. Most are denying reality because they worship a doomsday religion from the ancient world. They believe they're living in the end times and doing anything to solve the problem is the same as denying the existence of God.
Ironically for those who do just want to win, if they changed their point of view they could easily win ;)
To be fair, this is not a situation where being right is enough. There *is* something to be won or lost
@@someone7554 So, what exactly is being won or lost in this situation? Other than an argument, that is.
@@Alltime2050 I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re not a climate change denier. Do you seriously think there’s nothing to be gained by finally convincing everyone else that this is a serious problem?
That bit where you talk about people needing to feel like they know something other people don't. I think a really scary amount of people base their opinions on that mentality. To the point where they will believe almost anything if you sell it as a secret. I've always viewed it as an addiction like gambling.
In speaking to deniers in my own family it seems like the reasons are threefold. If they accept the scientific consensus they have to admit 1) That they were wrong 2) That change to our lifestyles is necessary and inevitable 3) All the catastrophic things scientists have been saying are true.
To me it seems like cocktail the anxiety, fear, and vulnerability those admissions create is so strong that in order to protect their self image and sense of stability they are able to simply shut out any information that might bring up those feelings. I kind of get it, all those facts are scary. Averting our eyes from truth and the suffering of others is an ingrained skill many otherwise good people develop to cope with dread and guilt of all sorts. This is a long rant but I've just spent so much time talking to these people in my life and seeing no change whatsoever, it's so depressing and I think about it often
I think you are right, I dont like the "i kinda get it" part :p
If you are a kid, sure, you are allowed to "close your eyes" from horrible things, but if you still do that when you are an adult, you are a horrible human beeing.
What I think should happen to ppl like that, I think is against youtubes guidlines to write.
But I will think it!!!
It’s not necessary and it’s not inevitable. Humans have factually had a very low impact on the climate and most of human damage to the environment was vastly china’s fault. Unless you’re living in or around china then changing your lifestyle isn’t gonna make any difference. Volcanos hilariously enough are the highest contributor to climate damage. But the climate changing in and of itself is a result of the glacial and interglacial warming periods. Something humans have nothing to do with and can’t stop. People need to accept that the government and media and filled with liars who’ll even lie about the colour of the sky being blue. They make money off this and it’s not the first time science and media has completely fabricated evidence to push a narrative, did everybody forget about the 3 years of lying from the government about Covid? Are we just forgetting that happened?
Absolutely correct. Humility, accountability, honesty. These don't come naturally
The climate change deniers I talk to say these things: 1) It'll hurt the economy!!! IT's not worth hurting the economy over (And you can explain to them the economy means nothing without no world, but they believe in being economically pragmatic about it over everything else) Another one, 2) "This is just the natural cycle of things! We aren't doing anything! Volcanoes!!!" - The funny thing about this is they act like adding EXTRA CO2 will do absolutely nothing. They act as if there is no consequences to our actions. As if we can just pollute and pollute endlessly and that there is no limit to how much we can because "The Earth is hardy and can take it, and us 'puny' humans can't possibly impact the Earth" - and that is a sentiment that has been expressed to me is basically they don't believe humans are even capable of changing the climate. I guess they don't believe in actions having reactions. I guess they think you can pollute infinitely with no consequences.
Florida over water
Some people just want to be contrary because they enjoy it. They enjoy seeing you get frustrated. Its not worth trying to convince them because they don't actually care about whats true or relevant. They only care about what theyre getting out of it in the moment. Its a power trip because theyre "making you do something"
"our old selves die and we don't even notice it happening" is so metal, Hank, thanks for that.
Yeah, that's me with climate change, civil rights, income inequality, etc. That old me didn't think that humans shouldn't have human rights! Old me didn't think that billionaires worked a thousand times harder than millionaires!
Oh shit, I actually did. I was a bit of a monster. Imma go back to forgetting that I was a monster and the silent implication that I might still be a monster in certain aspects of my worldview and actions.
Thanks for the brutal honesty! We need people who will face that truth about themselves, that they are not the same and change and that identity is fluid and not a hill to die on. That we all should strive to become better people and that being better requires having been worse beforehand. People who fight that truth are people who will fight other realities, too, because they don't want to have to admit to themselves that they had to change.@@phillyphakename1255
@@phillyphakename1255 I understand this. I feel like it's really important to see your progress and own the mistakes of your past, though, and to always be challenging the assumptions and beliefs of your current self. We're reborn every day and we don't even notice it happening.
@@phillyphakename1255 Old you = didn't think billionaires worked a thousand times harder..
Also old you = monster
Uh.
No.
Billionaires step on people to get where they are. So do millionaires - but just at a smaller successful scale.
@@mischarowe i think you misunderstood, the commenter was saying that his current self believed that his old self wasn't a monster, but upon reflection, it was.
it's nice to see Hank having faith in humanity to the point that he thinks humans aren't stupid enough to be able to deny something that is right infront of them.
Had a friend who always confused me with his conspiracies admit that he was thinking about becoming a flat earther because the appeal of not believing what everyone else did was strong. And that's when I realized that the human need to feel special was very real and very strong and never to be underestimated.
That’s really what conspiracy theorists are deep down: lonely. Worried that they’re not special. Desperate for attention (even if it’s in the form of ridicule)
Cough cough gender dysphoria
How can any large group of people agree on something if there is such a strong appeal to "not believe what everyone else does"?
There might be some appeal to being right when everyone else is wrong, but there is also appeal in being powerful as part of a large group of like-minded people who in solidarity can quash dissent, punish enemies/outsiders, etc.
I used to be a climate change denier, and I changed my mind. I watched a video series from potholer54 in which he addressed all the talking points I had picked up and debunked them. And he did it in a so clear and logical manner, I couldn't justify continuing to believe them. It's the same logic that led me to become vegan. I wasn't born or raised that way, but when the arguments crossed my way and I thought about it, I had to change my mind.
Potholer54 is honestly I think has one of the best channels out there when it comes to climate science. His logical, scientific method-oriented approach, and touch of British condescending humor I think reaches out to a lot of the same people are otherwise turned off by people like Greta Thunburg and activists who talk about "climate justice" would make the same people double down.
Even I disagree with some climate activists on certain points, for example I think emerging economies, particularly in certain cities and countries on the Asian continent where wealth and urbanization (aka: BRIC/authoritarian nations) has gone up exponentially since the 1990s need to be pressured to take up their share of the burden on climate and environmental policy, whereas "The West/NATO/G7 nations have for the most part been putting forth their best effort to reduce carbon annual carbon emissions and are on their way to net-zero, (even if not fast enough).
It takes bravery to admit that- I tip my hat to you
Potholer has been doing excellent work for years and honestly deserves more recognition (and maybe a professional editor 😅). Thank you for having the courage and honesty to admit that you were wrong, it's a virtue that is sorely lacking in todays world.
Potholer is the absolute best and I am glad to hear that his method was effective. It is so frustrating when logic seems to be useless.
I think there's a lot of people like you that get convinced but keep denying as a form of in-group virtue signaling to own the libs.
To me, someone saying "The costs of fighting climate change are too great" is synonymous with "The cost of ensuring the continued existence of Homo Sapiens is too great".
I actually want to disagree with this, not to defend those people but because I think it's actually worse than this. I think your quote implies that they are being stupid, rather than myopic and self-centered. The reality is, most wealthy and even upper-middle class people will probably suffer much lower consequences as a result of climate change. They have the money to relocate if needed, they have the ability to acquire scarce resources, and they're less likely to be disenfranchised, period. The danger falls disproportionately to the most impoverished and least powerful people. I think when people say, "The costs aren't worth it," they're usually saying, "The immediate costs to me and people like me are not worth preventing the eventual costs to people who aren't like me." I don't think all of those people are consciously being selfish, but I do think they're failing to imagine poor people as being "on their team," if that makes sense.
@@trailblazer225they're not on our team, they would rather burn the place down than share a single slice of bread with poor people.
Actually, the costs are too great. And there is no evidence of any extinction event. The raw materials required for a complete transition do not currently exist. Mining would have to be increased 8 fold. All existing power lines and home supplies replaced and upgraded for heavier load. Conversion of say 50% of homes to electric heat, hot water, and cooking.
The cost is too high. We neither have the physical raw materials or labor available to replace all carbon based energy. And add in that the 3rd world is not going to be satisfied being in energy poverty, so they will be upgrading as well, and to whatever energy resource is most affordable.
@@starleyshelton2245 "And there's no evidence of any extinction event."
I'm going to assume you meant "there's no projection that the effects of climate change will cause the extinction of our species" which, sure. However, there are projections which show an extremely grim future for tens of thousands of unique plant and animal species as well as the displacement of tens of millions - if not hundreds of millions - of people due to rising sea levels, widespread famine and lack of drinking water. But yeah, I guess I'd rather see some billionaires get another yacht or two than do anything about climate change /s.
@@starleyshelton2245literally every mass extinction in Earth's history has involved an interruption to the carbon-silicate cycle. That is, CO2 release (through volcanos naturally), rain acidification, weathering, runoff, subduction. This is a natural thermostat that essentially takes carbon out of the air, washes it out to the ocean, and buries it under continental plates - only to be belched back up millions of years later through volcanic eruption. It's a cycle like the name implies. Previous extinction events (all of them) involved either arresting some part of that cycle or overwhelming its capacity. You can only suck CO2 out of the atmosphere with rain so fast. The catastrophes require millions or hundreds of millions of years to clean up naturally.
We aren't on track to replicate the CO2 concentrations achieved by the worst of these events, which managed to kill off 96% of all species on earth - essentially everything that couldn't get underground. At least not any time soon. However, human CO2 release does outpace the cycle that has proven so vital to life on Earth. There is no escaping it as an eventuality unless we do something.
As for "can we afford it", can we afford not to? Killing every man, woman, and puppy on earth is not the threshold for a threat. The economic cost of climate change will be astronomical. Disruption of food production, in particular, will be one of the first and worst consequences, as will population displacement. Unless your answer to all this is "it's fine if lots and lots of people die" then I'm afraid there is no real debate to be had about cost.
This showing up on my feed in the middle of a record-breaking heatwave.
Mine is the 5th largest wildfire 🔥 ever in my state known for wildfires
Oh and the hottest average temperature 🌡 ever. Highest day ever in the world 🌎
@@scottstonebarger2361 there were a few areas that broke their record every day for a week straight. Terrifying.
As someone in a deep red area, I am convinced that it’s mostly a situation where you can’t get people who are profiting to admit they are wrong. And to be honest, it extends to the “temporarily embarrassed” b/millionaires who believe they too could strike it rich drilling for oil. That and the power of good ole propaganda.
People whined when one weapon replaced another--crossbows vs. longbows, Telephone vs. telegraph. Coal vs. renewable.
that, and anything a democrat believes must automatically be wrong because party politics
i think it’s just a high population of really stupid people who
1. like being contrarian, like being in the “in-group” (see: conspiracy theorists and q anon)
2. billionaires know theres a high population of stupid people and use their money to manipulate said stupid people
3. once someone who’s dumb enough and egotistical enough to fall for it in the first place believes something like that, there’s no digging them out. we just have to wait until they die.
I'm sorry but liberal tech industries are far more destructive for the planet than anything going on your little "deep red" town. Go to any office space at Google and you'll find a whole bunch of stuff that's dug up by slaves in the worst eco-safe way possible. Yes, because Nike, a super left leaning company, is totally innocent when it has slaves make their shoes. Good try dude
Ya'll said the exact same thing about the pandemic and in the end it turned out we all wore masks that do nothing and took vaccines that don't prevent transmission. Why would anyone believe one of your anxiety-spells again?
I don't like how they could easily go from "it's not real" to "it's too late anyways" without changing anything they actually do.
Otherwise known as the "four stage strategy": ua-cam.com/video/nSXIetP5iak/v-deo.html
The true belief is closer to "the right people are dying" but they need to be drunk and coaxed to say it.
@ploopploopploopboop1887 If humans as a group have done a thing, humans as a group can undo it.
Saying "It's too late to do anything about climate change" is just another stalling tactic. See The New Climate War, by Michael Mann.
After "it's too late" comes "we could have fixed it, but liberals made it divisive and political, wasting any chances we had"
Seeing you get positively apoplectic over this is both refreshing and heartening. Even _Hank Green_ , whose general chill factor is pretty legendary, is just f'ing _done_ with this nonsense. Thanks, Hank. For this, and everything else. You're Awesome.
Getting angry because you can't argue in a debate is a losing strategy.
@@adarkimpurity however, getting angry at idiocy and ignorance is relatable
@@dufflitplaysgames Clusters of angry, projecting neo-leftists is not that relatable to most.
@@adarkimpurity - Packs of angry radical right climate deniers who do not want to talk to you at all about the obvious state of affairs while living in a goo-goo land is most definitely unrelatable to those of us who read, study, and think.
I don’t think it’s that important. I think that, like through the entire existence of earth, it will fix itself someday. The real problem is that humans think they are so important that the thought of the possibility of our extinction is absolutely terrifying to a point where it is all they can think about. The process of life is the embodiment of futility. The wise and the fool likewise, die and are forgotten. If something does not have eternal value, then it is of insignificant value.
Edit: I respect your take on this Hank, good video. I just don’t think it’s worth the effort for me because no matter how much I use my gas powered lawnmower, it will never equate to all the damage done by the wealthy with their unnecessary jets, helicopters, super cars, and fancy boats.
I took a workshop a while back about handling Climate Grief. It's very draining to handle climate change denial of any scale, and I urge everyone involved in Climate Activism to check in on their mental health and take care of themselves
I did some psilocybin assisted therapy for my mental health in general, and this was the single most important way it helped me. If you’re struggling with climate grief and you have access to legal psychedelic therapy, I highly recommend it 👍❤️
Wow. I have never run across this term before: Climate Grief. Thanks for both of your posts.
You might like the Andrew Millison Channel. It's a permaculture professor doing amazing diagramming explanations also with wonderful video journeys through various cultures and ways that traditional permaculture is met with modern permaculture.
He did recent one about using permaculture techniques on the area surrounding your house to lessen its vulnerability during a wildfire. But my favorite stuff is when he meets ancient cultures and shows us the techniques they were using in permaculture and then find somebody in the local area to work with as well.
cool story bot
People: deny climate change
Hank: I deny you
Hank is that powerful
🫰
Perfect summary of this video :)
That's the best response. When someone spouts a fringe theory, just go, "Hey, did someone say something? Nope, there's no one there. Okay."
@@vigilantcosmicpenguin8721 Yep, that's the standard tactic of a cultist. Just deny that there are opposing ideas rather than try to debate them.
We ALL need to normalize walking away from a conversation when we can tell someone is trolling us or arguing in bad faith.
Yes. I've been done with engaging these kinds of people for a long time now. It's a waste of time.
I'm sure they say the same about you, now where does that get us. 2 different people locking themselves in thier own echo chamber while they talk about how dumb and clueless the other one is.
Won't they then even more then before think that they're right?
The optimal CO2 level for plants is around 1200 ppm so we have a long way to go before CO2 is a problem.
@@kathleenrobertpogue6818 is it an echo chamber? I think facts and data make it more than an echo chamber.
my mom is so stubborn, she is vocal about how she doesn’t believe in climate change, after she elaborated, gave clear examples of what humans are doing to promote climate change. we’re on the same side but not.
i’m not joking, she said “you don’t think the people driving everywhere and everything makes the world hotter?” i think she thinks climate change means it’s just the world getting hot, so it’s not real because it’s humans making it worse.
I've recently been pushing myself to practice 'forgiving' people or being wrong, foolish, or willfully ignorant. Not to condone their actions or beliefs, but to allow myself to let go of the frustration I feel when encountering that type of thinking.
It's been helpful for my own stress levels, at least!
it's the place to be.
"allow yourself to let go of the frustration" that's beautifully put.
It's okay to be wrong or ignorant. Staying that way is not.
Oh, but this is beyond just being wrong.
Yeah ok, do nothing while the world gets destroyed, such a pragmatic take, people like you are part of the problem, selfish self absorbed individualistic human
"A fringe belief held by a surprisingly large percentage of people" kinda sums up a lot of contemporary politics
"The world is gonna end and if we don't shame all the whores in the town, the plague is gonna get worse."
That's what climate change fanatics sound like
@Antonio-Granscithere are a number of things believed by the Republican Party and other right wing parties that are explicitly incorrect. For example, that the climate is not changing.
@Antonio-Gransci Perhaps 'false belief' is more accurate. Regardless, the fact is that a huge amount of politics nowadays (specifically on the right-wing, much less on the left) is based on false narratives intentionally spun to anger the populace or sow false complacency, manipulation to the ends of the rich or powerful. Whether it be to not believe that transitioning away from fossil fuels is a good idea (for corporate interest), or the fear of immigants and sexual minorities (for political interest in getting re-elected). This is not just a US issue, but a global issue. Unlike the other commentator, I am not going to solely point at the Republicans, because they're but one of many examples of this.
@Antonio-Gransci The earth is round, and believing it is a rational belief, and everyone who doesn't believe it is fringe nuts. It absolutely does not mean your politics are terrible if you understand that people who deny obvious facts are on the fringes.
@Antonio-Gransci i have a hard time believing you’re actually a leftist. if so, you’re the first leftist i’ve met that’s this stupid. congrats.
My opinion changed and I'm very open about that. I grew up being taught incorrect things and one of those was that climate change wasn't real. While I did believe it was indeed real, I didn't think it was an issue and people were making it a bigger deal than it actually was. However, I learned that I was wrong and was able to move on from that. Some of my opinions were challenged directly from other people and I can trace it back to certain things they said to me or things that happened. People can be convinced, although few are willing to let that change happen
Can you recall some of the things they said?
Unfortunately for you it IS being exaggerated. Literally every claim they have made about climate change since the 1940’s hasn’t come true. In 2015 they claimed by 2021 the Great Barrier Reef would be extinct, never happened. They move the goal post and then people continue to fund exclusively studies in favour of the climate change narrative and nothing to question it. When a scientific consensus is not being questioned by the very same science then science has failed at its very purpose. The current scientific consensus on climate change is filled with so many blatantly exaggerated fear mongering attempts that the entire narrative can’t be trusted. As I’ve said before, even a liar can’t be trusted to say the sky is blue. They’ll find a way to lie about that too. The climate change narrative is a financially beneficial one as well and has provided excuses for the government to replace expensive construction projects with cheaper mediocre ones. I believe in the glacial and interglacial warming periods, a thing that does and continues to happen regardless of human existence. The earth right now is in a better condition now then it was during every interglacial period ever. We’re leaving an ice age now, but we can’t figure out that the global temperature rising very very slowly might be related to that somehow?
Whats also important is not to be condesending towards the deniers. Showing them: "Yes, you were wrong, so what? We all are wrong about something at least once in a while."
@@paisley4092 It was a process, there's a few things that I tie it to but I doubt I remember it all.
First was being challenged from my old point of view. I grew up fundamentalist evangelical and viewed it both "God wouldn't let it get out of hand" and "the world will end/Jesus will return before it matters anyway". Some challenged this viewpoint by appealing to the here and now, by acknowledging that God would not want our actions to cause potential harm for others regardless of whether it mattered in the long run or not. Additionally, Biblically God told us to care for the plants and animals in Genesis, it seems unbiblical to just ignore this aspect.
Second, looking at the opposite. What are the issues with being more mindful about our waste and greenhouse gasses? Is it valid to discard attempts to prevent it as just political attempts at making money? It's beneficial to address climate change for everyone whereas it's not beneficial to ignore it. Just asking why people are against it is a huge question. If their response is that it doesn't matter or that it doesn't exist, what harm does it cause them for people to try addressing it? Based on my experiences, fewer people actually are against attempts to combat climate change specifically, rather they connect it to some conspiracy regarding people using it to make more money or something similar, or, what I find most to be, they just don't want to actually think of it or have it inconvenience them in any way.
Third, presenting actual scientific evidence. This requires the person to actually be open to new information, which luckily was the case for me, but this isn't the case for everyone. Plus you need to be very conscious of their view as well. If you just give them the facts and that's it, they're just going to ignore it and potentially even become more set in their ways.
tl;dr/summary, to go about talking to someone, first listen to their opinion in its entirety and see why they think what they think. Make sure you understand what they're saying. Try addressing things from their point of view first if possible, but if not then just address things one step at a time. Try to identify what their main issue with it is and keep asking questions. If they have an opinion on something and if changing that specific opinion isn't going to affect their view, it's likely a non-issue and not one of the main reasons behind their belief.
A lot of these people were just misinformed or find it too difficult or lack the motivation to bother thinking about. If you can instill why this is important for them specifically and address the things they were misinformed on in a calm and respectful manner, you'll be surprised how much people will change their mind. But also don't be discouraged if you don't see results right away, many change their opinion on their own time and not during a confrontation. Giving them correct information can at least set them on a better path
@@MoreImbaThanYou Absolutely. And make sure to listen too! If they don't feel heard they won't hear you either
There's a wonderful YT documentary made by Dan Olson called In "Search Of A Flat Earth", in which the latter half of it explores and tries to explain why some people; despite everything, adamantly state that they believe in their obviously outrageous claims and worldviews, and how by clinging to those believes; not in spite of, but BECAUSE those believes are so outrageous, they then derive power and control from said believes.
My mum's mental health declined pretty severely during lockdown, and because of that she started to fall for every single maddening conspiracy theory under the sun. With climate change, it's always the same "they measure it different every year" or "They just want to take our freedoms and make us use paper straws". Any time i feel like i'm getting somewhere or manage to convey a convincing argument despite all the incredulity, it turns out i've just been brainwashed by the vaccine, or that it's all the WEF's doing. Really saddening to see this happen to someone you love
I feel like lockdown did that to many 'older' people. My parents and my boyriends parents as well. I think that anti-vaccine conspiracies became an easy starting point for them to start watching/listening to mad people online
I don't know how old your mom is or where she's from. As an American, I've started to try to find a way not get frustrated. My only way is realizing that my mom grew up during decades of Cold War government paranoia and current era corporate awfulness, where every story was about how someone is screwing over the little people with something that sounds good but actually makes things worse. I can't get around a lifetime of her generation hearing about the worst conspiracies that turned out to be even partially true. So all we can do is move on and keep pushing for the best. They're going to need extreme reassurance to change their minds and we can't do that alone
have you ever thought she's right
@@neilburton8131have you considered that she isn't?
You should trust science and data that was collected by several individual professional institutions instead of trusting some UA-cam commenters conspiracy lead mother.
@@neilburton8131 Even if she isn't.
He should really go along with her narrative.
Why try to change someone you love for others. Just change yourself to love drama, delusion and urge to destroy others' lives for personal entertainment.
It is better than going insane trying to reason. Because just like Hank ( guy in video ) says, or the title of the video. It ain't thet they don't know. They just don't give a dam.
Plus, if a majority is ignorant or wrong. They're actually right.
If you validate the unethical narrative you are a hero!
I’m glad you reuploaded this, I caught the first upload before it went private and I think you had a lot of good things to say. I’ve been thinking about this a lot and I really think people just want to be contrarian.
Yeah! The problem was that that other video cut off early and I had to re-export and I only just now got the chance to fix it!
@@hankschannelshould’ve just deleted the damn thing. Liberal nonsense
@@Unknown-eo2nfthese types of people are the ones we should ignore. I've saved the rest of you guys the trouble. Don't interact with him.
Imagine your house is burning down and everyone is standing around outside of it complaining about it being on fire and arguing about who's fault it is that it's on fire, and meanwhile your family and loved ones are inside. Are you gonna stand around arguing about who's fault the fire is, or are you gonna go save your family?
@@ItsDreamplay No, interact with him. But only to help the algorithm and support the channel.
I think it’s just like COVID: people deny what is happening because they don’t want to be inconvenienced by the truth.
Let me ask you a question. What percentage of people do you think end up in a hospital, if they catch COVID, and they also are not vaxxed.
What percentage of people under those conditions do you think end up in the hospital?
*Al Gore has entered the chat*
@@swickens930 Let me ask you a question: what is the lowest percentage chance of horrific, painful death you will accept for any activity?
100% chance it's lower than the answer to your question.
I'd also ask what the percentage chance of inflicting that horrific painful death on others is acceptable to you but we both know you give no fcks about anyone else.
@@the_exegete About 1-5% if we're going by historical record for medical stuff that is potentially lifesaving. Higher if we're talking about entertainment, though that's a fact people don't want to be aware of.
Your analogy is inaccurate though, according to Canadian reporting between December 2020 and September 2022: 67.7% of COVID hospitalizations were unvaccinated. That answers his first question, the second is subtly much more different.
As of mid-September 2022: 5.579 Million were completely unvaccinated accounting for 14.59% of the population. During that timeframe aforementioned there was approximately 993K reported cases of COVID by unvaccinated individuals (accounting for 41.2% of the COVID cases), there was also 55.0k COVID hospitalizations of unvaccinated individuals in that time frame. From this we can conclude that approximately 5.54% of people who reported catching COVID while being unvaccinated were hospitalized. (I imagine that there were a fair number of people who are unvaccinated who chose not to report so this data may not be accurate to *all* infected individuals who are unvaccinated, just the ones that we were aware of during said time period.)
As you can see, 5.54% is higher than 1-5%. Your question was far too vague, so if I were to steelman it you would be correct that less people are okay with dying from a lifesaving procedure than unvaccinated people infected with COVID went to the hospital. This was a fun thought experiment, but ultimately says nothing about whether or not you should vaccinate yourself against deadly disease.
I got Covid the beginning of August . I survived. I refuse to live in fear of something I may or may not be exposed to. That’s with a chronic illness already. Even been in a clinical trial before to treat my chronic illness. I made choices based on my experiences to not let fear rule me. And because of my experience with a clinical trial I didn’t get vaccinated and now I lived through getting the virus at least once possibly twice. I have natural immunity which is far superior and it wasn’t the worst I’ve felt
When i am thinking how can people don't believe... It is taking me back in time when people was first introduced to earth globe:denial, aggressivness. And then i thinking what in 500-1000 years will people say about us:same exact thing
It’s because, unfortunately, denying climate change has become tied to people’s identities. They can’t just outright accept climate change without conflicting with their core values and identity. It would also mean not only admitting that you were wrong, but that you were part of the problem, the bad guy in humanity’s survival story.
There’s a really great book called Saving Us by Katherine Heyhoe where she talks about this and what you can do to help these people. She’s a professional climate scientist who spends her time actually doing the things she advocates, and with great success.
Sure, The climate is changing. How much humans have to do with it is debatable. My problem is you people seem to be on this self-righteous mission to "save the planet". That is not what it is though. For most of this planet's history, it has been inhospitable to human life. Even after life showed up most of that time has been spent inhospitable to human life. You people don't want to save the planet. You want to stagnate the planet. You are selfish and want the planet to stay exactly how it is right now.
You sound like a religious cult leader.
I can say that having something as an opinion tied to your identity is pretty sad in general, I was vegan, but with enough data I came to a simple conclusion, right now is not viable, we will end up malnourished, even with all the effort is hard to be well feed, even with highly nutritious organ meat is hard to be well nourished, that is without even taken into consideration the cost, to be well nourished as a vegan was extremely hard, I depleted some nutrients by year 6, I was over half of my life being vegetarian and then vegan before eating meat again and I was almost fainting, every day, it was extremely hard to be awake for 10 hours, it was harder to be awake for 16 hours, and now I can go 20 without problems, because I did the proper research, and more, I was willing to experiment, if it didn't worked then I would have gone back, but it did, it took 2 weeks to have every negative effect out, as long as I keep the new way of eating I am ok, but the damage is not reverted yet, is is slowly reverting, I can't just eat anything I want and be ok, but every month I have a higher pool of nutrients to cover the times I go out of the correct way of eating. BTW, most people eat worse than vegans and are more malnourished in omnivore diets just because they don't think about what they are eating. The reason I was able to do that is because I don't tie my opinions with my personality, I will be always willing to change my mind and my lifestyle if evidence is presented, I think that is where people need to be changed, otherwise they would be equally toxic, just with a different opinion if it is changed. Also some people told me that I was the only vegan/vegetarian they knew that was not insufferable, just because I didn't try to shove my opinion down their throats (in some cases it is literal with vegans, I see it in one of my sisters)
Climate change is going to happen whether humans are here or not and if we are accelerating it it's not by much in the grand scheme of time....
i mean you can blame the fact people like hank love or hate the man , who KEEPS changing the world is ending date for climate change so when the date comes and goes it looks really fucking bad on them when oh wait the world is still fine. like not saying anything ether way its just pretty clear climate change doom speak is hurting the cause cause hard to take it seroud when one side is screaming the world is ending in 10 years and when 10 years come and go, they change the day again and its been going on for decades. we should move to cleaner power sources but the climate activst types are going about it in a controlling dumb manner. like banning gas and wood stoves when those are what poor people in areas where power goes out use to you know not freeze to death and have a warm meal.
I live in a rural California, with NRA bumber stickers being common, and the amount of people who claim the fires in the North and Hawaii are from "directed energy weapons" is... Frightening.
So sad
@Antonio-Granscii think op finds both scary, the fact that those who support the nra are probably too stupid to own lethal weapons (because they believe in these conspiracies) and the fact there’s people in the world that believe these conspiracies
I've seen waaayyyy more lefties make the claim that people think it was energy weapons compared to people who actually think it was energy weapons. Or you're just lying. They probably say stuff like "these fires are caused by humans" which they usually are, like arson or the mishandling of a fire place. I've actually never even met or seen a conservative actually say that they think Lazer beams caused the fires.
@Antonio-Gransci are you insane.
That is the Jewish space lasers conspiracy, I presume? We will have to move the targeting a little south, thanks for your help. (Joking!)
"Hard to believe if you're paying attention" is the problem. There's a whole group of people not paying attention who don't want to pay attention because they want to continue believing what they want to believe.
Ah, no. We actually ARE paying attention, logic the data, reading the peer reviewed papers. There are no real trends in extreme weather, nor is there evidence of dramatic sea level rise, and not too surprising, there's been some funky solar flares from the sun this past summer. You're probably experiencing some confirmation bias. Your mainstream echo chamber tells you that it's the hottest summer on record, but you do not check how they compute this record, nor do you check previous records, you just go along with it. The data is pretty clear, it was hotter in the 1930s. Then the weather got darned cold until the 70s and everyone thought we were headed to the ice age. Weather warmed through the 80s and early 90s, plateaued a bit. There are no trends in extreme weather events, the polar bears have quadrupled in population, the coral reefs are just fine (bleaching doesn't kill coral any more that trees die by dropping leaves in the fall).
Honestly, this really looks like governments attempting to get control of the energy sector.
You sound like a cult leader
@@kayakMike1000 You are paying attention to the ones who align with your assumptions. Scientists have been warning about this issue by the 60's, and governs didn't do anything until now.
@@kayakMike1000”logic” is never a convincing argument Mike, and id like to ask for peer reviewed articles that you’ve been consulting that say that climate change isn’t happening. Gotta have claims for your arguments buckaroo
@@kayakMike1000 Nice reply sir, there is another thing with the rising sea levels. Water expands when it freezes and the excess size floats abover the surface of the water, when it melts it just shrinks again, the level of the water does not rise.
I had a professor say "it's not an argument of whether you BELIEVE in climate change or not, it's whether you understand it or not" emphasizing the difference between unprovable or subjective opinions, and provable objective facts (with anthropogenic climate change being a PROVEN objective fact)
It's getting harder to deny when every year is a "heat record year", and it's become the norm to expect that next year will continue the trend.
I think the mainstream conservative position will become belief in government weather control machines.
(Then get mad if you say that's technically manmade global warming.)
Except it isn't heat record year, like, never. The heat record year was a few billions ago.
@@r-gart It is a record year since the arrival of humanity. If you dont count for human conditions you are right.
"it was hotter than we could ever make it 65 million years ago when an asteroid hit the earth so our current numbers don't matter actually"
And yes I know they said billions but exact same mentality
It's a low-return move to argue with climate change denial. Anyone denying it staked their identity or livelihood on the denial, so you aren't going to shake that without adopting them.
Yep. It’s difficult to move someone from the rock of truth because that rock is Jesus! God is in control. Climate change isn’t caused my humans… climate change is caused by God!
Fight climate change and we all lose!
I'm a 'climate change denier'. I don't lose sleep over climate change. I'm just bothered by policy that affects me, all in a vain attempt to 'curb emissions'. Swapping from gas powered cars to electric won't do a thing. Shutting down our production plants wont do a thing. Shutting down oil pipelines will only make you poorer. The rest of the world will continue emitting, despite what the Paris Agreement makes you believe.
In my opinion, the only solution is to simply cheapen electricity, improve power generation, raise people out of poverty so they could give up coal for nuclear and live in a better world where technological improvements aren't banned in favor of climate policy created by self serving politicians.
@@seafoam6119So basically (if I’m understanding you correctly. Feel free to let me know if I’m not), you are saying that you believe this is the prisoner’s dilemma, where only if everyone chooses the right option will we be in a better place, but if anyone alone tries to “end” climate change, it would be in vain because we are alone and would put us in a worse state. The difference between the real world and the prisoner’s dilemma is that in the real world, we can make small steps and go back if no one else also makes those small steps. I agree with you on the fact that making electricity cheaper would be a great move, however the way to make electricity cheaper is to use easier methods like burning more fossil fuels to generate it, which would completely eliminate the effect of using electric cars. So the reason why I would say to go with people who want to do something about climate change is because if it doesn’t work and no one else joins in, we can go back. If they do join in, we can go further. This video is essentially talking about how most people are actually in your situation rather than a situation where they don’t think climate change is real. If you saw every other country start moving towards preventing climate change, it seems to me like you would join if you felt you would actually be making a difference. I’m not trying to change your mind on what you vote for or what you believe, but hopefully what I wrote gave you a little bit more of the picture that I see that makes me want to do something about climate change.
@@lunarscapes6016 the problem with what you said is that in real life IF on a state level we dont mantain domanice more bad things are going to happen should russia or china refuse to play ball by weaking them selfs but stepping away from oil use
@@ace-kz9idI don’t see how getting off of oil and onto renewables could in any way negatively impact US foreign policy or power. On the contrary, losing the oil and gas addiction would make the US a lot less dependent on OPEC or individual oil producing countries (Saudis…).
One thing that I've been more aware of recently is the discrepancy between conservative politicians and conservative voters. In my mind, the politicians are obviously 'in the know' and just straight up lying for their paycheck.
I think it's truly a class divide, the rich vs the poor. It's possible for the poor to believe in climate denialism because they're too focused on just getting by (aren't we all?), the poor tend to believe whichever authority figure they respect, regardless of which side of the political aisle they're on.
When Ramaswamy says that the climate change agenda is a hoax, I fully believe he's lying. When some random conservative at a Trump rally says it, I think to myself "Oh you poor soul, must have gotten caught up in the propaganda machine"
Thanks for talking about this Hank. I feel like I'm going crazy with all of this going on and no one talking about it. Hearing you give voice to the same thoughts in my head helps me feel more motivated to keep going.
Yeah, I think it really is a rich versus poor issue. The economy is not working for most Americans and hasn't for a long time. Most Americans can agree on that much. Mental health issues are skyrocketing as a result. But the rich are funding one side and rigging the game for them.
I think the two party system needs to die at this point. It just feels that the sides exist to oppose each other. Our votes are often based on fear instead of being enthusiastic about the candidates. Plus, politics are so tribal that disagreeing with your side can get you kicked out of the tribe.
Right. It's like, if you have a racist aunt who just, like, states unprompted that India's constitution was never intended to ensure freedom of religion and that the population growth of Muslims will harm Indian society... just, y'know, as a hypothetical example that may or may not be from experience... then it's absolutely not her malice that's causing her to hold those views. It's the increasingly illiberal and media-controlling government that she has no incentive to challenge, it's the content recommendation algorithms that she was never taught to be aware of, it's the mere fact that the world is simply inherently different from the one she always expected to live in. And it's like, you can have one-on-one conversations with that aunt and hope for the best for her, but there are millions of other people who are caught up in that same system of populism that feeds off of their negligence, and the only way to get everyone out of that system is to cut it off at its roots.
Ah, yes, only CONSERVATIVES fall for a propaganda machine. You, who listens to every major media platform and every major government and obey exactly what they tell you to, can't POSSIBLY be falling for propaganda. It's just those evil conservatives who think critically, demand answers to questions that are ignored, point out lies and inconsistencies, and disobey the mainstream that are falling for propaganda.
My dad is an engineer and a GOP supporter. He has always believed climate change was happening but doesn’t think the government is going to have a positive net positive by directly limiting business. He wants them to expand to make it easier to start alternative energy businesses. It’s a government regulation question for him.
love the anecdote about the person whose beliefs changed but they deny they ever believed differently than they do now. that really exemplifies the problem with the way people's brains work.
The human brain is a very sophisticated self-justification machine.
This is best exemplified by some individuals with split-brain syndrome.
When one of their limbs acts without their conscious awareness and the individual is asked why they did so, they confabulate a justification for their actions rather than acknowledging they didn't move it consciously.
As with most human behavior, there is likely some deep-rooted evolutionary explanation for this phenomenon.
But as sentient creatures, we are not slaves to our programming. We are capable of overcoming ourselves with conscious effort and reflection.
@@sleeplessdev7204 love the optimism but I don’t think some people are capable of overcoming it with conscious reflection. there’s nothing special about conscious thought that allows it to reach around deeply ingrained biases.
even simpler than forgetting they believed differently: it's too embarrassing to admit they used to be a denier, so they lie about it
@@marcuskissinger3842 There is though!
Not everyone _will_ change, but everyone _can._ Critical thought, self-reflection, and self-regulation can allow us to overcome our biases. It's not easy, but we don't have to be tethered by them
@@sleeplessdev7204 I've realized that it's a part of being in society, it's cultural. Some humans in smaller tribes don't do such things. But those in bigger societies, 1s existence depends on ensuring others have favorable impression of it & always being able to justify what it did was, well, well justified, is crucial. So humans develop such patterns early on in life. Justifying their choices to others so they'll seem valid/fine (to save itself from negative consequences); maintaining them confidently.
Even some prisoners deny their misdeed, keep telling others they didn't kill the other (unless there's very accurate footage), or didn't do any wrong, to save themselves from punishment. Admitting that i was deceiving before later would make others view me quite differently as i don't want, so i continue to deny, to save the reputation.
So yeah, i think it's due to present culture that's causing this, not only biological.
Think of someone using popular narrative of the time to save itself, like "god made me do it, hinted me to do it, ...". Depending on what narrative that binds the society together is, causes such behavior, i suspect. Large societies needs common narrative to keep it together. & narratives are usually false, because we don't yet have understood the reality completely.
I’m only 23 and climate is my life work. I just moved across the US to take a job in the offshore wind industry and bought my first used electric car. I’m not making a lot of money but it’s the right thing to do. Every day I go to sleep knowing I did what I could and I’ll wake up tomorrow trying to deploy more renewables faster. We can do this! We will do this and every day counts.
There's more money to be made especially in offshore wind than there is in coal etc. Friend of mine is doing it now and he is making $$$$$$ like $300k a year or more. He's not in management or anything, his main job is installing the elevators in the pylons. So I hope you'll be in a good place very soon.
Right on!
I'm twice your age. When it was time to replace a car I couldn't afford an electric. So I bought a used hybrid. It was the best I could do. People criticised my decision because I could have gotten a new "just gas" fuel car cheaper. But less gas burned is better. I bought LEDs when people told me I was stupid because they were "so expensive". But, it was something I was able to do when I didnt know what else I could do.
Every little thing helps. Every little thing helps people realize they can also do little things.
If everyone did a little thing, and then realized it was easy and then did a second little thing and then a third... we would all make a difference. Start small, grow to big things.
We can't all change everything overnight. But we can all change a little each day. And maybe my kid will have a planet to have his own kids. He isn't so sure he will right now.
I'm glad you're doing what you can. Everyone should. However, none of it will matter if we can't get the corporations to do THEIR part.
@@HeartlesSv420We can at least nudge them a tiny bit through our purchasing decisions, though often we lack the ability to make a better choice in our consumption
It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
They’d say the same about us though
Whose to say you aren't the fool? Skeptics don't make silly predictions about the future, that get proven wrong.
The thing is that people just want to believe that climate change isn't happening. The reason is secondary. That's why people shift between different contradictory stances on it, to combat counterarguments, not to have a belief built on facts, but emotion
I have a long time friend who has "progressed" through every stage of climate denial. At this point, even he is out of (inane) explanations, as of our last phone call he just flat out admitted what drove him - he doesn't want to change, and he won't be around when things get really bad. Oh, and the planet will recover but we might not, which apparently is acceptable to him. He is also solidly Republican, for what it's worth.
Is he in his 90s? Because if he is not, he's definitely going to be around when things get really bad. The consequences of climate change are accelerating, as most recently demonstrated by Hurricane Idalia being super charged by the too warm ocean water and kicking the sh*t out of Florida.
"It doesn't affect me, so I don't care." That seems to be the motto of the GOP.
@@Alverant And then when it affects them? Conspiracy theories blaming the people they already hate for it.
@@SueorSuzor They've convinced themselves that it won't effect them in their lifetime. It's really that they start with a feeling of "I don't want to change" and then they rationalize why
Fuck yours got mine.
Hank gives the best rants. I love this unscripted talk.
I wholeheartedly agree. Living in rural Virginia I think A LOT of the problem is they're, (especially the older people) taught to be respectful of everyone above them. So they grow up just faithfully believing their parents (who more often than not aren't educated very thoroughly), their doctors, their MINISTERS, literally anyone rather than educate themselves and form their own opinions. So in that mindset, if they allow that climate change is real, that mom and dad, and reverend Smith were wrong that shakes their very foundation. It makes them wonder what else they could have been lied to about and that is too scary. It's too scary to have the idols in your family and community knocked down. These people invest their very personhood in what they're told do, and how to think, and how to behave. Who are they if that was a lie?
So very true. I grew up evangelical in the south. I was taught critical thinking skills by my seminary professor father. I am the one out his four kids who critically thought their way out, but it’s too scary for most people. It’s scary for me too, but somehow I have the inability to stay in denial. Maybe because I love science. Or my anxiety and guilt? All of the above? I’ve always been a seeker and researcher. I think that curiosity with the critical thinking skills might be the combination. 🤷♀️ I totally agree with your explanation and it makes me so sad. Especially because I don’t have children,but so many breeders could care less about the state of the world they’re leaving their offspring. I just can’t understand it.
I didn’t grow up in that kind of insular community so it never even occurred to me not to think for myself. Then I got older and it blew my mind to discover that most people lived these extremely coddled lives where they were told how to think and they never questioned it - because like you said that would mean going against the very support system they’ve relied on their whole lives. Part of me even feels a little sad that I never had that kind of community growing up - that kind of belonging. It must be very comforting when you’re in it. But the part of me that wants to learn the truth even when it’s uncomfortable always wins out
+++
@@studiodsr I agree and feel all of this.
@@AndreaCrisp I'm so proud and happy you escaped that mindset. ❤️
The longer we wait to pay the costs, the steeper those costs will be.
Sincerely,
Someone that won't be able to survive those costs full stop
Show me an accurate climate model.
Evidences for this claim, anyone?
@@vyor8837 People like you will be denying the science even after Florida floods over for good. I mean, no amount of data can fix that kind of stupid.
@@vyor8837I expected higher intelligence for a Warhammer fan. You let us down.
@@vyor8837 go look in the ICCP reports, they have been freely downloadable for more than a decade now. The models are in concordance with measured temperatures. They are pretty accurate if we compare them to conservative denials, if you ask me.
These people are probably the same people who go and say "I don't need treatment, I'm not dying yet" in response to something life threatening infecting them when they're told to go see a doctor because of said threat to their life not being immediately obvious.
I think you are giving some people way more credit for a thinking process they are simply unwilling to commit to, because they kinda know the results and they don't want to accept it. That's horrible and unhealthy and - yeah, that's a lot of people. They will go to the grave believing in the wrong thing and at least they never had to admit it. The question is - what do we do about it? What can we do about it, and what are we *willing* to do about it? Because at some point it's clear the decision making for society is going to need to be taken away from those who refuse to accept reality, and they're not going to want to let that power go, and it's going to be less-than-pretty.
It depends how many people are so. If they are few enough you can win votes against them and then just impose laws they need to follow. But if they are more you have a problem where I don't see a solution.
It's a fringe idea propped up by oil companies spending far more on marketing than green tech research. We don't need to curtail people's rights to vote we need money out of politics so we have a true democracy again.
Alternative solution: We nationalize oil, pull a Mao on the ones who are trying to kill the American people (the oligarchs), and restore legal order. Of course, this poses the major political challenge of fighting Capitalism, but it's all in a days work@@silasstryder
Self projection
At this point there's also the generational complication of being raised by parents/a community who teaches you that it is false, so having to confront your *actual beliefs* and the idea that your parents lied to you or misled you or maybe aren't the best people/are flawed. And accepting that YOU have been wrong, and wrong in a way that can contribute to harm... so tough
My wife’s 5 year old preschool student said the Earth was flat. She asked where he learned it and he said from his Mom. Of course, she told him to tell his Mom she was wrong. I’m glad she did that. Even proud to an extent.
I am one person who changed my mind about climate change. I was taught growing up that that was something only liberals believed in, and they were bad. Over time I found out that climate change is real. That was a process.
you're lovely for having the courage / humility to realise, and to talk about your experience there. I wish more people had that quality.
The main issue here is that politics slows everything down. Once it became political, which I suppose it was inevitable, there would be no way to convince people.
Honestly our current system can't handle the rate of change that technology and industry are causing.
@@Alec0124 The problem is, climate change isn't an opinion, or a religion, or a philosophy, for people to believe is right or wrong, it's a scientific reality. What's that they're always saying, "Facts don't care about your feelings?" Climate change doesn't care about your politics.
The ultimate fear that conservatives hide deep down in their hearts is that maybe liberals are actually right. That is such an intolerable notion to them that they bury it in an avalanche of comforting lies and delusions. That’s why they’ll never let themselves accept that climate change is real: because if liberals are right about that what else could they be right about?
Same here, it's satisfying to let go of the fear and hate.
The trouble thst far too many politicians treat getting elected as the endgame, rather than just one step towards their real job.