Nothing. You can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t use logic to get to in the first place. There’s way more unmotivated and un-mobilized people out there that believe in human caused climate change that are more worth your time and energy.
If your house is too warm and you’re running 20 electric heaters but for some reason think it’s something else causing the heat, it’d still pay to turn off some of those heaters to compensate for the external cause since you actually have control over the heaters.
If you really think that anything you say will have any impact on them then maybe it doesn’t matter what the cause is as long as you can get them onboard with the solution. The two are inextricably linked so if they’re really adamant about this you’ll probably not be successful in this endeavour but it’s worth a try if you have some faith in them. If they think it’s all long term cyclical solar patterns or some other non anthropogenic cause it might be worth pointing out that it’s still happening and causing consequences. The trouble will be not implying too heavily as I have in my heaters example, that the solution is obviously linked to the cause, even if it is. Otherwise they will not believe you have common ground.
What if that person think CO2 is good for life?
So… where’s the extra heat coming from? If you acknowledge it exists where’s it from?
Is it a problem? If it is shouldn’t we prevent or prepare for it?
We have people like this running Egypt. They’re constantly cutting down trees!
Trees in Egypt?
Yes for sure, it’s not a desert
Save your breath. It’s honestly not worth it.
Exactly, just say “you are too stupid to understand the explanation” and walk away.
Do research. Give them that. Walk away and never think or talk about it with them again.
You can’t fix stupid.
Slap them in the face. If they complain, tell them the pain is real but human activity didn’t contribute to it.
I came to post pretty much the exact same thing 🤣
Just show them that one xkcd about how abrupt the current warming is and how nicely it lines up with industrialization. The comparison between the natural slow shifts in global climate vs. what’s been happening the last century or so is the clearest counter to “but the climate has always been changing”.
The other times that things have changed in comparable timescales, it’s been caused by supervolcanoes or other such calamities.
Edit: Oh yeah one caveat: The xkcd is ten years old and we’re now actually already around +1.5°C.
I was about to find that same xkcd. 😅
It really is a good way to portray that.It also shows quite well that shit is hitting the fan, almost horizontally, in a time period where we have proper temperature measurements from all around the world. Even if humans were not at fault, we need to do something about it.
Yeah, as if “Mass extinctions are a natural occurence!” were an excuse to carry on business as usual :D
You’re not going to convince anyone with a shitty drawing of the “Earth Temperature Timeline” and then start at 20000BC.
Why not? In my opinion it’s doing an excellent job at showing the speed difference between the slow preindustrial climate changes and the sharp acceleration of the human made postindustrial climate change
It looks like a cherry picked tiny fragment of earth’s time to make a simplistic point.
“Look how never anything happened for all this time you’re scrolling down and then wow!”
20000BC in itself is only a small portion of a percent of earth’s time.
Yes the speed is remarkable but it has still been much warmer or colder over a longer period.
Leaving this out is not the best way to make a point IMO.
Certainly when there have been cases where people have exaggerated or plainly lied on these matters.
It’s doesn’t help with credibilityYes the speed is remarkable but it has still been much warmer or colder over a longer period.
This is precisely the point that comic is making tho. Yes, our planet has been a lot warmer than it is now, but as far as we know the changes we’re currently making to the climate are by far the most rapid in human history and this is bound to cause some civilization-scale issues. Even ignoring all the usual problems that will happen again due to a warmer climate (sea level rise, desertification etc), there are some novel ones. There will be no time for ecosystems and societies to adapt to different agricultural conditions, leading to widespread ecosystem and crop failures, cascading down to every aspect of human life.
You’re a jerk
🤣
This seems to have worked with my boomer mom: “be that as it may, wouldn’t we all be better off by reducing pollution?”
I told my dad that even if climate change isn’t real, or if it is humans don’t contribute… what’s the harm in doing something about it? What’s the harm in doing something to help your grandkids have a world to grow up in and enjoy?
He installed solar panels a few years ago and now likes to talk about how he heats and cools his home without paying ConEd
Maybe show them this:
Just be like, “Okay, what about the pacific garbage patch? Did human activity cause that? Should we be trying to fix it?” It’s pretty hard to argue that the fish made all the used water bottles themselves.
I tell people that burning a 100 million barrels of oil a day, everyday, has to have an impact.
Imagine how much exhaust that is everyday.
The idea that burning a million barrels of oil everyday would not have an impact on the atmosphere is absurd.
I think CO2 is good for life, but cement in cities, deforestation and the heat produce by burninf fuel must be bad.
I don’t trust too much the CO2 crisis, we got other pollution like micropastics and eternal chemicals I believe are more serious.
Anyways I still commute by public transport even though I have a company car with petrol, everyone can help.
Well without a real sense of the size of the atmosphere (which most people don’t have), that doesn’t really mean anything, other than it being a big number. Any impressively big number can be insignificant in relation to something big enough to easily absorb it.
However, we’ve added to the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by 50%. I think that says it really is significant.
Nothing. You benefit more from having someone who will help you plan and prepare for the effects of climate change than you do from having someone who agrees with you about the causes.
The reason for that is you and your comrade can’t do anything impactful about the human sources of climate change.
