Why I don't believe in climate change (as someone who isn't a republican or conservative)

The climate is changing. You can feel it.

I don't buy anecdotal arguments.  Most people who believe in climate change don't put their money where their mouth is (otherwise they would buy solar panels or wind turbines).

I totally agree with you that many people are either being hypocritical (they believe but don't act) or they are bullshitting (saying not truth but what serves their interests).

However when we consider evidence the climate is changing as a matter of fact, the scientific consensus is clear on this topic.

I believe in climate change. I’m not buying solar panels or wind turbines.

There is a big difference between recognizing what is best for society vs what is best for the individual. I vote for politicians who push policies that will benefit society, because then we all have to chip in. I’m not putting my money in the bucket for you to take advantage of it while I grow poorer.

I do the same, because I know that the benefit of my expenses would be lost to me as an individual. I recognize the dangers, but I am not a perfect drone for society.

The climate changes on a daily basis.

Perhaps even more frequently than that.

And perhaps over a longer period of time too.

Belief is unnecessary.

As is a chosen political club.

And I would never pay for an argument,

Anecdotal or otherwise.

Here you are claiming that solar panels will make you poor and that's not worth it even if you do your part to help the planet.  If you can't convince climate change believers to get solar panels, how are you going to convince people that don't believe in climate change to get them?

This is like someone claiming that we should go vegetarian to help the animals (while not going vegetarian themselves).

If you don't own solar panels or wind turbines, don't advocate for them as public policy.  If you don't own clean energy sources, then you don't think climate change is a big enough deal to make sacrifices on YOUR END.  (As an example) At least most of the people wanting to reduce abortions don't get them.  Most of the people that want to reduce CO2 emissions pollute about as much as everyone else.

My document justifies why I don't believe in the scientific consensus.  If you have the brain for it, I recommend you check out my document.

Corals reefs didn't just decide to start dying during the industrial age after millions of years of thriving... That humans r causing climate change is irrefutable

Also there's a difference in pointing out the climate hypocrites and establishing climate change as a hoax

How do u explain coral reefs dying?

Why do you consider yourself more capable at interpreting the available body of knowledge than everyone whose literal jobs it is to report science accurately?

IF your analyses is correct, THEN you should publish it in a scientific journal and change climate science forever

ELSEWISE, why do you you trust a document from a dubious source that isn't even peer-reviewed?

In other words: Occams razor tells us that a single unqualified individual disagreeing with well-established science is most likely wrong, rather than the science.

I’m pretty sure I just explained all of this. Let me try this, again.

Your argument is analogous to conservatives who tell liberals if they want to pay higher taxes they are free to write a check to the government themselves. This is of course stupid because it misses the entire point;

We live in a society where everyone is trying to get ahead and everyone benefits from the collective good. Therefore, it is inherently unfair for any one individual to sacrifice their personal well being for a society where other individuals refuse to do the same.

Are you ok with chipping in for a pizza, only to have people you don’t know and didn’t put in any of their own money come along and grab a few slices? Are you ok taking a road trip where you and one other person split the gas bill while others who came along for the ride don’t chip in a cent? Imagine you’re at a diner with a group of friends who all ate but none of them wants to pay the bill, then when you get upset they tell you “if paying the bill matters so much to you then you can pay it”. You would instantly understand how simple this is.

Specifically regarding solar panels and wind turbines, I have no idea whether they are economically beneficial to the individual, but that is completely irrelevant. Provided they are produced at home, the jobs they would create combined with the benefits of not having to send our money to other countries to power our society benefits us all. That is how you decide what public policy should be.

Contention 1

This contention acknowledges rising co2 levels, acknowledges the role of co2 in heat capture - so it must acknowledge the world is heating up.

It’s hard to untangle the logic; but it seems the contention is that humans are not adding much co2 to the earth, so the contribution must not be due them.

This a particularly bad argument.

The carbon cycle has huge volumes of transfer from the air to other reservoirs. Too and from the sea, to and from trees, many of these are short term; for example carbon captured by trees and grass is returned when they decompose.

The issue with your logic is that it’s clear that the capacity for the earth to remove co2 from the air, exceeds its ability to remove it.

Natural sources adding and removing carbon have generally been in reasonable equilibrium - until humans started dumping vast quantities of co2 from long term stores into the air.

If, say, a river flood plain can only drain the volume of water from typical rainfall, but not much more; only a fairly small rainfall event in comparison to total river flow is necessary to cause flooding. The same way with humans - the volume of carbon releases naturally is huge; but human activity has pushed the earth beyond its ability to remove it. A big part of preventing the flood, or reducing its severity, is to improve river flow, or decrease the amount of water going in by an equivalent amount (which itself is an issue, as going too far will cause global cooling)

Given that we can neither prevent trees from rotting when they die, or stop volcanoes exploding - targeting carbon reduction to the places we can have the biggest contribution is automatically the most appropriate solution.

Note: the biggest source of long term carbon release is volcanos ; the remainder is short term exchange between oceans, plants and animals. We can meaningfully tell our contribution to this carbon in the atmosphere is going up, as the carbon in oil and gas has a different isotopic ratio than carbon cycling in the air; the ratio in the air is changing in a way that reflects higher content from fossil fuels



Contention 2

A collection of individuals not acting in a way you feel is consistent with their ascribed belief does not - in any way, shape, form or manner - indicate whether the thing they believe in is true.

For the conclusion to follow, humans would need to be physically unable to follow any path of action in consistent with a given belief if there were any other possible alternative. 

We know that is definitively untrue

What the hell are you even talking about you indescribably weird person? If you are talking about a multi-million dollar wind/solar farms then yeah, most people don't go about doing that in their day to day lives because most people (and you can fact check me on this) aren't multi-millionaires. If you are talking about throwing a few solar panels up on your roof to reduce your energy bill, that actually is very common even among climate deniers because (and you can fact check me on this too) people like paying less in utility bills.

If Covid has proved one thing beyond a reasonable doubt, it's that there are things other than the climate that can immediately deprive you of life liberty and happiness much sooner than the climate changes ever will in your lifetime.

Is it 7 or 8 years from now that we’re all gonna be dead according to AOC?

Depends on whether you can sell your beach house in time as the sea rises by inches.

Do you have a big document?

We also r putting more co2 than we've had for millions of years, there's twice as much as we've had for u hundreds of thousands. And we know it has a greenhouse effect, so do the math

Underdog is getting spanked in this debate...

Something fundamental to understand about left-wing political theory is that left-wingers conclude that the natural process of free market economics is that members of society will become selfish and ruthless. Thus, it is actually not hypocritical for them to want the government to be responsible for both welfare of the poor (instead of random spur of the moment charity donation dispensing) and environmental protection.

That said, I do understand where you are coming from. Personally, I avoid using cars if I can, preferring public transport (well, Covid made me scared but I'm overcoming it now as I'm vaccinated and beginning to venture out there physically again, very cautiously). I also have personally given a small amount to a charity fighting deforestation and will give more when/if I'm well-off enough to with enough disposable income. However, I do not claim to run a carbon-free life, it's not easy to get renewable energy for my mains electricity and such at an affordable price just yet in most countries.

The Earth has had more CO2 in the atmosphere and has been warmer before (google Permian age). Polarcaps have melted many times.

All of the current doomsaying is pure guesswork and divination since we have no past data to rely on regarding human meddling. But what we do know is that Mega asteroid impacts that drastically changed the Earth's climate in a matter of hours didn't destroy all life, so it's safe to assume the people claiming that a drastic climate change over 150 years could cause the total extinction of life are full of bullshit. Absolutely.

If you still believe that lie, you need to go read some more books on Earth history.

As far as humans go, we survived a great dying due to a drastic climate change shift about 80,000 years ago with zero technology, so there's zero reason to think humans would or could go extinct today.

Don’t worry about climate change: the earth has gone through major climate change and extinction events. The earth has been warmer before with higher carbon dioxide levels at the Permian-Triassic boundary - 30% of species survived that. Even the chixulub impact spared 25% species. Even when the majority of humans on the planet were wiped out by a super volcano, some still survived.

The bottom line here, is there is absolutely no need to worry or do anything about impending climate change that threatens our way of life or uproot life as we know it through scarcer food and water resources, extreme weather events, or wars resulting from changing climate - simply hope that you are one of the lucky few who always survive such events; and plan accordingly  by storing up old dune buggies, rusty metal and bondage gear so that you can be properly prepared to prance around the desert if society collapses.

This debate just boils down to climate sensitivity estimates tbh.

It never ceases to amaze me listening to people use information they learned from climate scientists to argue against the findings of climate scientists.

What "Climate scientist" says all human life is going to end in 8 years? Lol.

Let's take a gander at those "findings"

What r ur thoughts on why coral reefs r dying during the industrial age after millions of years of thriving?

Coral reefs have always been growing and dying all throughout earth history for billions of years. It's not a new thing.

They're going extinct now. This is different than the normal cycle of life and death they've been doing for millions of years. Why did they pick the industrial age to decide to die? Big coincidence?

I love your pfp!