I think you and GP are both presenting a very narrow and biased view here.
The thing is, there’s a huge propaganda machine behind climate change. Backed by Hollywood, politicians everywhere on the left, universities.. there have been lots of distorted and hyperbolic claims made over years and years that didn’t turn out to be true. Lots of politicians making extreme claims that are just obviously false. I’ve personally seen nearing the order of hundreds of exaggerated claims that fall apart if you look in any detail, especially on MSM news sites.
Tons of pressure is put on scientists to match the narrative (multiple Climate scandals over decades where scientists were blackballed for misalignment or caught colluding to fudge numbers to paint a picture they admit they are trying to paint).
Just this year you have two books being published by left leaning scientists who basically say climate change has become a force beyond itself. Both cite data heavily. Both were attacked heavily by the press, or ignored. One was a former activist and leader in the cause originally, used to get a lot of attention and now has his posts literally deleted from Facebook.
To me it’s like this: when you hear the “dumb Americans” going on about climate change and you can’t believe how dumb they have to be to be skeptics... what you need to realize is they saw a lot of smoke, less fire, and they basically are tired of the left puffing the flames of everything they touch. Sure, there’s probably fire there. But how much can we tell? Our universities, the media, a lot of core institutions are actually not trustworthy. Skepticism is not irrational in the face of that.
I’m sure a lot of them would come around to admit some portions of climate change are legit, but it would take some really careful accounting. But they are in their own way calling out what they see as a bigger and more dangerous phenomenon: the distortion of fact gathering and science itself towards political gain. It’s an unfortunate reality. And really it’s hard to argue that isn’t true.
For reference, I am absolutely not a climate denialist but I would say I’ve burst my bubble that it’s so black and white after carefully looking at a lot of research. The main posts are likely true, the models have consistently overestimated our impact, and we focus on the wrong things more often than the real harms.
I totally get why people would be skeptical. Even smart people who have been right in contrarian ways have said exactly what I’m saying (look at Thiel).
So to simplify it down to “stupid righties” is always an error.
I challenge you to present your best single source of evidence to support your argument.
After you have presented that, you are not allowed to come back with more evidence. It was what you consider the best and most rock solid. Something you hang your credibility.
Usually the opinion like yours is just 'general attitude' and some individual instances of scientific fraud that is not evidence of anything being consistently biased.
I'm not a climate change denier in any way but, did any of the predictions (the ones with dates and numbers) of Al Gore in "An inconvenient truth" become reality? There has been a non trivial amount of hyperbole going on in this subject.
Again, I'm making the claim that it's been exaggerated/politicized (to what degree is hard to tell, due to so many bad incentives). I can absolutely cite many cases of missed models, corruption[0] (btw if you disagree on this one, there are many more cases like this) and fear-mongering going from the IPCC to politicians to university research that's all been shown to be anywhere from misleading to outright fudge - but - it's not some single thing. So your desire for "one piece of evidence" is not the right way to discuss this. A case has to be made.
If you want a case, here's one of the books I mentioned [1]. It's not entirely perfect, but an example of how you can absolutely make a very valid, science-based attempt at a world-view that refutes many of the central tenets of modern climate change ideology.
Don't confuse me: carbon emissions are an important problem, one we need to solve. But you have decades of people like Gore to AOC to celebrities to even legit scientists, all on the left, who make claims like "we're X years from Y major catastrophe", and they end up wrong. Then you have corruption scandals, inaccurate models and stories of suppression of non-narrative-fitting data, and the democrats beating it over everyones heads constantly.
All I'm saying is this: it's very understandable that the Average Josephine on the right is skeptical. Any claim that says "the righties are dumb / purposefully ignorant" is missing an important piece of socio-cultural dynamics and rational game theory - having a distrust of an institution thats been intensely politicized is... fairly rational.
The thing is, there’s a huge propaganda machine behind climate change. Backed by Hollywood, politicians everywhere on the left, universities.. there have been lots of distorted and hyperbolic claims made over years and years that didn’t turn out to be true. Lots of politicians making extreme claims that are just obviously false. I’ve personally seen nearing the order of hundreds of exaggerated claims that fall apart if you look in any detail, especially on MSM news sites.
Tons of pressure is put on scientists to match the narrative (multiple Climate scandals over decades where scientists were blackballed for misalignment or caught colluding to fudge numbers to paint a picture they admit they are trying to paint).
Just this year you have two books being published by left leaning scientists who basically say climate change has become a force beyond itself. Both cite data heavily. Both were attacked heavily by the press, or ignored. One was a former activist and leader in the cause originally, used to get a lot of attention and now has his posts literally deleted from Facebook.
To me it’s like this: when you hear the “dumb Americans” going on about climate change and you can’t believe how dumb they have to be to be skeptics... what you need to realize is they saw a lot of smoke, less fire, and they basically are tired of the left puffing the flames of everything they touch. Sure, there’s probably fire there. But how much can we tell? Our universities, the media, a lot of core institutions are actually not trustworthy. Skepticism is not irrational in the face of that.
I’m sure a lot of them would come around to admit some portions of climate change are legit, but it would take some really careful accounting. But they are in their own way calling out what they see as a bigger and more dangerous phenomenon: the distortion of fact gathering and science itself towards political gain. It’s an unfortunate reality. And really it’s hard to argue that isn’t true.
For reference, I am absolutely not a climate denialist but I would say I’ve burst my bubble that it’s so black and white after carefully looking at a lot of research. The main posts are likely true, the models have consistently overestimated our impact, and we focus on the wrong things more often than the real harms.
I totally get why people would be skeptical. Even smart people who have been right in contrarian ways have said exactly what I’m saying (look at Thiel).
So to simplify it down to “stupid righties” is always an error.