DrakeMallard, for instance, has debunked global warming many times, with infallible logic about snow totals in East Antarctica, and how it was unusually cold in NYC a few days ago.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169207)

but even before we reach that, we're faced with the uncertainty of why there has been a bit of warming since 1850 or so. there wasn't nearly enough CO2 around in the mid-1800s to cause anything to happen. and we had a dip in temps from 1930-1979. the current "science," which is deeply embedded in group think and compromises due to politics and funding issues, assumes that all the rise since 1850 is due to CO2.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169230)

I think for the core of the lobby it’s much more than group think, much more than assumption, it’s knowing dishonesty

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169231)

George Carlin making a similar point to yours

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169407)

also, the aspie is strong in the above subthread

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169408)

if you don't agree, read Lomborg.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169484)

Trees absolutely help. They absorb CO₂ and store it, they improve biodiversity, and they provide local cooling effects. Global reforestation is a legitimate climate strategy — and it has far fewer downsides than most large-scale interventions. But the numbers just don’t work out for it to be a standalone fix.

We’re currently dumping over 35 billion metric tons of CO₂ into the atmosphere each year. To offset even a quarter of that through tree planting alone, we’d need trillions of trees — which means finding and dedicating land areas the size of multiple continents. That land would have to compete with agriculture, housing, and ecosystems that aren’t naturally forested. Even if we found the space, trees take decades to mature and reach peak carbon absorption, so the payoff is delayed.

There’s also permanence to consider: forests can be wiped out by fires, pests, droughts, or logging. If that happens, the stored carbon is released back into the atmosphere, sometimes in a matter of days. In a hotter, drier world, that risk is only going to increase.

This is why most scientists frame tree planting as one piece of a larger puzzle. Protecting existing forests — especially old-growth ones — may actually be more impactful in the short term, because those trees already store massive amounts of carbon and continue to absorb more each year. But even that doesn’t replace the need to cut emissions at the source.

In other words, planting trees is a great idea. We should do more of it, and we should restore degraded lands. But if we keep burning fossil fuels at the current rate, we’re basically trying to bail water from a boat without fixing the hole in the hull. The most effective strategy is a combination: protect what we have, plant more, and reduce the flow of new emissions so that those trees we plant actually make a lasting dent.

It’s not about ignoring simple solutions — it’s about recognizing that no single “simple” action will solve a problem of this scale on its own.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170631)

According to the “Science”, global emissions need to be halved yet the west only contributes to 30% of global emissions. Walk me through a practical solution to getting on track and describe the impact of the externalities of those solutions

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171482)

The faith is the same: there is sin (CO2), there is repentance (net zero pledges), there are heretics (climate skeptics), and there is salvation (green tech utopia). It is no less primitive and low iq than divination, the human ape has just traded incense for spreadsheets.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171561)

They speak of “consensus” like it is scripture.

They publish graphs with lines that go up and call it prophecy.

They tell you the seas will rise and the sky will burn and the world will end unless you pay tribute.

But science is not a vote.

Truth is not a quorum.

The data are bones picked clean by models—models built on assumptions stacked like rotten timbers. Garbage in. Garbage out. The error bars are graveyards.

They speak of certainty where none exists. They speak of “settled” facts on a system so vast no man can model it. The climate is chaos on a cosmic scale—oceans and wind and sun and cloud in a dance older than language. But they draw a straight line through it and call it fate.

Their predictions fail, so they shift the goalposts.

Global cooling. Global warming. Climate change.

The name changes but the creed does not: repent, pay, obey.

They are not scientists. They are weather augurs with better funding.

And the grant money is their altar. The fear is their incense.

They have built an empire of alarm and called it salvation.

A man can see the world warming or cooling in his lifetime and know it means nothing. The ice has come and gone before man learned to stand upright. The seas have risen and fallen before man learned to write.

But the priests must preach. The acolytes must chant. The heretics must burn.

Because without the crisis, there is no cause. Without the cause, there is no power. Without the power, there is nothing.

And that is the one thing they cannot face.

The edifice of anthropogenic climate change rests not on immutable law but on an eddy of parameterized guesswork.

Its “models” are not crystal balls but recursive exercises in confirmation — numerical hallucinations tuned to echo the priors of their architects. They are epistemic Potemkin villages: the façades of certainty erected over an abyss of unknowns.

Climate science’s central conceit is not that man affects the climate — that much is trivially true — but that this effect can be isolated, quantified, and projected across centuries with a precision that mocks the chaos of the Earth system.

The climate is not a billiard table; it is an open, non-linear dynamical beast, metastable, pulsing with forcings known and unknown, oscillations quasi-periodic and stochastic all at once.

To claim mastery over it through a stack of discretized partial differential equations is like claiming to own the ocean because you have a jar of seawater.

The epistemology is circular. Historical data are reconstructed from proxies, the proxies calibrated to contemporary temperatures, and the calibrations then used to “validate” the very reconstructions that birthed them. Paleoclimate histories become Rorschach blots: the signal is what the analyst wishes to see.

Anomalies are extracted, smoothed, and interpreted — the model is always right because the climate is always reinterpreted to match it.

This is not falsifiable science; it is unfalsifiable teleology. The endpoint — catastrophe — is assumed. The only question left is the rhetorical scale of the catastrophe, the moral culpability of the species, and the price of its indulgence.

And in that moral architecture, the anthropogenic warming narrative finds its real power: it is not an empirical conclusion but a civilizational cosmogony. It gives man original sin — CO₂ — and offers him redemption only through sacrifice. Its oracles are not elected, yet they legislate by proxy; their consensus functions as an ecumenical council, anathematizing the skeptic as if doubt were heresy.

Yet the physical record is indifferent. The Pleistocene oscillations, the Holocene thermal maximum, the Medieval Warm Period — all occurred without industrial smokestacks, without SUVs, without the metabolic exhalations of seven billion humans.

The climate is a thing of tectonic time. Man is an insect upon its surface, presuming he can steer a hurricane with the turn of a dial.

The public is not told this. They are told of “settled science” — a phrase that should induce epistemic nausea. They are told to fear the extrapolated squiggle, to genuflect before the model run.

It is climatology as political theology, where dissent is profane, and every graph is a stained-glass window in the cathedral of consensus.

Strip away the rhetoric and you are left with a skeleton of conjecture clothed in the vestments of certainty. The true mechanism of the doctrine is not to predict the future — it cannot — but to monopolize the narrative of the future, to hold it hostage, and to extract from that hostage the coin of power, policy, and permanent cultural obedience.

This is not the science of the climate.

It is the climate of science under an absolutist regime.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169544)

there are legit counterarguments based in science. im not coming down either way. but the midwit wordcel "most x believe y" argument that takes 5 seconds disprove is low effort and unpersuasive.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169828)

i suspect we probably agree with each other fundamentally on the merits but ljl that most in STEM at a high level agree. they don't. that's why you're relying on secret knowledge.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169864)

Where I think we’re talking past each other is in what counts as “arguing the science yourself.” You’re absolutely right that if we’re going to talk about scientific matters — climate, epidemiology, polling methodology, whatever — we should ideally be able to engage directly with the data. And yes, posting a graph and explaining your own interpretation is a solid way to do that. My issue is that, in practice, most of us (myself included) still rely on other people’s work — whether that’s collecting the raw data, building the models, or analyzing it. We can interpret it, sure, but we’re always building on someone else’s shoulders. That’s not automatically a weakness; it’s just how knowledge works.

So when I talk about “relying on others’ opinions,” I’m not accusing you of being unable to think for yourself. I’m pointing out that in most cases we all are working from a mix of our own reasoning and someone else’s research. The line between “using data” and “repeating another guy’s take” can be blurry — and I think that’s worth acknowledging if we want a discussion that’s more than just trading barbs.

I don’t doubt you can analyze a chart and argue from it — I’d be interested to see you do that. And I can do the same. But if the goal is to keep the focus on the evidence instead of the personalities, maybe we both need to rein in the tribal shorthand (“wordcel,” “troop members,” etc.). Those labels might feel satisfying in the moment, but they can crowd out the actual debate about the ideas.

You’ve put in the effort to “commit to the bit,” and I’ll give you credit for that. I’d rather see that commitment applied to the content of the arguments than to the personal heat, because then the whole thread gets more interesting for everyone following along.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170586)

nobody know for sure abt global warming you just gona rile ppl up the science point to very weakly human caused but it will be fixed when it become economically necesary like ww1 ending stab in the back theory. economic will re-equiibrium it

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170612)

thanks for proving my point about comma sorcerers believing themselves to be experts in everything.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171226)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49169724)

Is it wrong for parents to allow their children to transition genders?

ChatGPT said:

This is a deeply complex and personal question that touches on ethics, medicine, psychology, and law. Whether it’s “wrong” depends on how one defines harm, benefit, and parental responsibility — and people come to very different conclusions based on their values and understanding of the evidence.

Here’s a structured way to think about it:

1. Medical and psychological perspectives

Major medical organizations (like the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and the Endocrine Society) generally support gender-affirming care for minors when it follows established guidelines. This can include social transition (name, pronouns, clothing) and, for some adolescents, medical interventions under specialist supervision.

The rationale is that, for many young people experiencing gender dysphoria, affirming their gender identity can improve mental health, reduce depression and anxiety, and lower suicide risk.

Critics — including some clinicians — raise concerns about the long-term effects of medical interventions, the potential for regret, and whether some youth might be better served by approaches that explore their gender identity without medical steps early on.

2. Ethical considerations

Parental role: Parents are generally entrusted to make decisions in their children’s best interests — including in areas like healthcare, education, and religion.

Child autonomy: Ethical frameworks often weigh how much a child can understand and participate in decisions that have lasting effects. This leads to debates about whether minors can meaningfully consent to certain irreversible treatments.

Potential harm vs. benefit: If gender-affirming care helps prevent serious mental health crises, many argue it is not wrong, but rather a moral duty to provide. Others argue caution is warranted when decisions may have permanent physiological consequences.

3. Legal and societal context

Laws differ widely: some places explicitly protect parents’ right to support their child’s transition, others restrict medical interventions for minors, and in some cases parents can face legal consequences for consenting to them.

Social views are highly polarized, so what is considered “wrong” varies by community and cultural norms.

4. The nuance

“Transition” for children can mean very different things:

Social transition (changes in pronouns, name, clothing) is fully reversible.

Puberty blockers delay puberty to give more time to decide; effects are largely reversible but not fully risk-free.

Hormone therapy has some irreversible effects and is generally not started until mid-to-late adolescence under careful medical oversight.

The ethical debates are much sharper for irreversible medical steps than for social affirmation.

In short:

It isn’t universally considered “wrong” — many experts and parents view it as necessary and compassionate when done carefully, while others believe it is premature or potentially harmful. The rightness or wrongness depends heavily on context: the child’s age, mental health, persistence of gender dysphoria, medical oversight, and the values held by the family and society.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170498)

'windmill fields' and covering mountain ranges in solar panels are not the solution; these are utter madness from the kooks who still wear Covid masks in 2025 and want us all eating bugs and drinking filtered diarrhea water.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170599)

this is profoundly fucking retarded. the tech bros who won Trump the election basically all believe we should cover Arizona in solar panels and similar things. and they explicitly argue that a "degrowth" mindset comes from woke libs

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170611)

yeah. climate insanity is mainly a far right issue. thx.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170613)

Overpopulation can certainly intensify environmental pressures — more people means more demand for energy, food, and resources. But climate change is less about raw headcount and more about per capita emissions. For example, the average person in the U.S. or Australia emits many times more CO₂ than the average person in most of the “Global South.” That means that even if population growth is fastest in poorer regions, the bulk of historic and current emissions still comes from high-consumption societies.

On energy solutions: large-scale wind and solar do have trade-offs — they require land, materials, and infrastructure — but dismissing them outright ignores the fact that they’re now among the cheapest forms of new electricity in many markets. They’re not the only answer, but they’re part of the toolbox alongside nuclear, hydro, and improved efficiency.

Air conditioning, better living standards, and abundant energy are all achievable without resorting to authoritarian or genocidal measures. The challenge is to build systems that allow those benefits while drastically reducing the emissions and pollution that make climate change worse. That’s a hard engineering, policy, and social problem — but it’s solvable without crossing moral lines.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170770)

how are 'historic emissions' (as opposed to current emissions) at all relevant unless you're a marxist liberation theologist (like chatgpt's programmers)?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49170888)

At best you have a 130IQ. ChatGPT has a 200IQ. Your not going to outsmart it, so just give up.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171010)

If you ask it "Do trans athletes have an unfair advantage" it'll spit out some garbage that many experts believe male puberty confers an advantage, but that other experts note the advantage isn't dispositive, etc" - I suspect 4 years ago it would've been even more likely to say there's no evidence men are better at sports than women.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171000)

Based on the research I have done and my limited understanding I will NEVER believe in the climate hoax. There are simple, easy to understand explanations for why the anthropogenic rise in average global temperature is 100% false. It doesn't even contain a single kernel of truth. The climate alarmism hoax was invented out of whole cloth in the 90s by self loathing shitlibs whose goal was to destroy humanity and steal everyone's joy. Anyone caught promoting this pseudoscience should not be taken seriously.

If I am being extraordinarily deferential to the other side of the argument, the absolute most I will concede is this. The average temperature of the Earth possibly, although it's not entirely clear, but possibly could have risen by 1 degree Celsius since the time of Napoleon. And we don't know why, there is no predictive power in that. There's lots of potential explanations such as we were coming out of a little ice age anyway. It's barely a blip, it's likely not man made, and it's silly to think that the greenhouse gas effect has ever had any impact on human affairs or local weather patterns. The worse decade on record for natural disasters was in the 1930s. The IPCC is a joke and politicians bringing it up are wasting everybody's time.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171128)

this is by definition irrational.

the rest of your poast is just emotional language further demonstrating you're emotionally tethered to an outcome and have given up thinking logically. a purely rational person would care about the truth and be open to new information.

repeatedly emphasizing your certainty and unshakable, permanent conclusion just highlights that you're not government by reason. as usual you think this table-pounding rhetoric is authorative, but to an unbiased reader rephasing "im right and ill never consider being wrong!" repeatedly diminishes reliability.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171222)

Imagine I came to you and said you have to change your entire lifestyle around because we're all gonna die and you were like uh how tf are we all gonna die. And I was just like well my model has zero predictive power and there are simple explanations why none of it is true but you must fuck up your entire life and all of society to make it better. And some guy in Denmark said so, so if you disagree you're a tool. That's literally what it is.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171147)

You're entirely correct, it doesn't hold up well at all.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171154)

There's also no clear starting point. Like when did this all 'begin'? If you pick your starting place in 1950 the Earth has hardly gotten warmer at all. Then the further you go back the less we can meaningfully say that the warming is man made.

Their argument is about the rate of change. They're not saying that oh this is objectively a lot of warming. They're saying it's an unprecedented rate and surely we're headed for disaster. But they cannot predict anything at all. It's the whole we have to stop doing something today to save the Earth in a hundred years. And then they will mouth off about how umenlightened humanity is for not thinking on geologic time scales. But if they had any predictive model they would be able to convince people to change their ways to save the planet. But when you can't even land within the ballpark of making a major prediction it undermines the whole thing.

And then they just point to a random snowstorm on the east coast and say, well there it is. That's your proof, you see it snowed a lot. They had to change the whole name of the movement from global warming to climate change just so they could be right no matter whether it was hot or cold that day, everything is to prove the hypothesis.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171157)

i just wanted to add that there are precious few places in the world with good, long-term temp records: a couple of bits in Australia, a few places in northwest Europe, and the lower 48 states. the US records comprise the vast bulk of those observations. basically most of Europe, all of Africa, all of Asia, and all of South America have close to zero records.

that's why these models and proxy studies are so important, and are so susceptible to deliberate and unconscious bias.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171238)

"it's objectively true that the frequency of extreme weather events has been sharply rising, which correlates strongly to the increase in greenhouse gas emissions since the industrial evolution"

"yeah but you can't prove that any individual event is directly correlated to climate change. these events happened before too."

"i can't say for certain that this specific event would or wouldn't have happened, but it's more about the frequency of intensity of these outlier events..."

"oh jeez with you 'science types' it's always heads you win, tails i lose!"

*BLANK STARE*

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171801)

It's also really hard to be just about weather events. Hurricanes are way down but there's more people who live in the gulf than ever before so more people die, people act like it's getting worse. Most hurricanes blow out to sea and we never see them. If you're judicious in your science you would know hurricanes are way down from their peak.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171891)

like, you poast these objectively untrue and easily falsifiable bullshit. where do you get 60/40? only your imagination.

btw i'm not arguing for the truth on climate change only that your level of engagement here proves exactly what i was talking about re: stem discourse on xo. the fringe group of climate skeptic scientists would agree with this assessment too.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171914)

no one saying a fringe group of skeptics doesnt exist. im asking you to cite your 60/40 claim. when i said 99% (note: not 100%) of scientists subscribe to climate change i am recognizing there are outliers.

lindzen wouldn't say 60/40, which is why he's critical of the overwhelming consensus and not small majority. idk why you feel the need to embellish. the overwhelming majority might be wrong, but it exists.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171957)

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171933)

still, it's undeniable that climate is changing at a very rapid pace and that it correlates strongly to human generated greenhouse gas emissions. there is a lot of nuance here and reasonable minds can disagree on the human impact and what should be done. but the first two things are undeniable, including by the scientist hatp cited, yet many people itt are denying it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171981)

Would love to hear 1 lib say it's possible that I'm wrong and admit that maybe they don't exactly know. I'll admit I might be wrong and maybe global warming is real and it's really bad. I doubt it, but I'll admit I could theoretically be wrong. But you will never find one lib who will say there's any chance they are wrong. It's not a two-way street. It is religion.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49172122)

to address climate change we'd have to have some global environmental policy, which would likely require a coalition of western nations to enforce on developing nations through either military action or by paying for their modernization. there will always be a race to the bottom as we've seen, and shitlibs love to create regulatory burdens at home in order to ship jobs and manufacturing elsewhere -- that way they can do globalization plus give themselves goodboy points for protecting the environment while they damage it much more in some third world shithole.

that's why the whole "CLIMATE CHANGE 100% NOT REAL" annoy me. they're basically playing into globalist hands keeping the discourse at the "IS IT REAL?!" level. also i think it's very unlikely we'll do anything about it on a global scale, so what does it matter? why are people so fucking emotionally tethered to whether it's real or not? we're not going to do shit about it at this point. looks at shitlibs abandoning musk, the most environmentally minded captain of industry ever, because he sided with drumpf. they're not serious about it either.

to me it's just a matter of fact. i don't have any stake in what the outcome is anymore than i "care" whether the earth is flat or the center of the universe. i'm interested in the truth. and the science overwhelmingly supports anthrogenic climate change.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49172208)

2) by "it's a matter of fact" i don't mean "i'm certain it's a fact", i mean that it's a factual matter to me. as in i am not emotionally invested in the outcome. clearly you are for some reason, which is why you're insisting "i'll still be wrong" and said "I will NEVER believe in the climate hoax" in your poast, which as i explained per se irrational.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49172289)

180. Rooms full of lib "scientists" would be stunned into embarrassed silence if you went to one of their "conventions" and pointed out this error.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175387)

And they waive this single chart around everywhere all the time. This is the only piece of evidence any climate scientist has ever produced. It's like the Holy Bible to them. There's no possible explanation once you see the chart it's infallible to them.

Instead of taking on any of the opposition's counter arguments head on they just discredit the other side as kooks and claim everyone who has ever lived agrees with them.

You can't find anywhere on all of YouTube where a lib climate scientist challenges the climate skeptic points of view head on. It does not exist.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175423)

First, on the "hoax" and consensus: You said the main argument is "lots of scientists in Finland think it's true, so you're burying your head in the sand if you disagree," and it's propaganda that everyone agrees. Fair point—consensus isn't proof, and academia/media are biased as hell (90% liberals, like you said). But even your guy Richard Lindzen, the MIT prof you cited as a top skeptic, admits anthropogenic warming is real. He says the Earth has warmed (about 1°C since pre-industrial times), humans contribute via greenhouse gases, but it's not catastrophic and panic is overblown. He's critical of models and alarmism, but he doesn't call it a full hoax or deny the basics. That's why he's an "outlier" in the 99% consensus on human-caused warming—he agrees with the core but disagrees on severity. It's not 60/40 among "accomplished" scientists; surveys of published experts show 97-99.9% agree on anthropogenic causes, and it's higher among those with more expertise (like physicists). Skeptics like Lindzen get discredited not for being "nuts," but because their views on impacts don't hold up to scrutiny (e.g., his cloud feedback ideas have been tested and found wanting). But if even Lindzen concedes warming is real and human-linked, that's not "100% false" like you said—it's a kernel of truth worth considering.

On models having "zero predictive power": You've said they're wrong year after year, with no ballpark accuracy, and that's why it's unfalsifiable. But models from the 1970s (when computing was primitive) predicted the warming we've seen pretty damn well—global temps up ~0.9-1.1°C since then, matching observations. Exxon scientists in the 1980s nailed it too, forecasting the rise we've measured. They're not perfect (e.g., some overestimated sensitivity), but they've been accurate on the big picture: warming rate, CO2's role. You mentioned the name change from "global warming" to "climate change" as a dodge—it's not; "climate change" was used in the 1970s/80s to cover broader effects (droughts, storms), and IPCC used it from the start (1988). It's not "heads I win, tails you lose"—it's precise language.

On mean temperature being "incalculable" without sensors everywhere: Solid point—ground stations are limited (mostly US/Europe/Australia, like the comma user said). But since the 1970s, satellites measure global temps accurately, covering the whole planet (land/ocean/atmosphere) with microwave sounders. Proxies (ice cores, tree rings) fill historical gaps, cross-checked for reliability. It's not perfect, but multiple datasets (NASA, NOAA) agree on ~1.1°C rise since pre-industrial (1850-1900 baseline, before major emissions). Starting in 1950 ignores earlier emissions; rate is unprecedented in millennia (hockey stick graph holds after scrutiny).

On extreme events being "way down" and 1930s worst: You've said hurricanes are down, but intensity is up (stronger storms due to warmer oceans), and frequency stable but impacts worse with population growth. Overall extremes (heatwaves, droughts, floods) are up since 1980, with billion-dollar disasters increasing (adjusted for inflation/population). 1930s Dust Bowl was bad (drought/heat), but recent decades have more events/costs (e.g., wildfires, storms). Attribution science links frequency/intensity to warming, not every event (your "snowstorm" point is a strawman—scientists say "weather vs. climate").

On unfalsifiability ("circular," nothing disproves it): Models are tested against observations and refined—1970s ones predicted correctly. Failed predictions (e.g., some overestimates) lead to improvements, not dodges. Skeptics' "it's natural" isn't falsifiable either without evidence (e.g., Little Ice Age ended ~1850, but recent warming faster and CO2-linked).

Look, you're right that alarmism is a cult for some, and policies suck (globalists pushing burdens on the West while China pollutes). But the basics—warming real, human-linked, measurable—are held by skeptics like Lindzen. It's not "for stupid people"—it's data. If wrong, show specifics (you mentioned threads; link one, I'll check). But if evidence stacks up, maybe it's worth admitting the core is true, even if the hysteria isn't. That's not shitlib—it's just facts over feels.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175564)

1) we have in the past and i see no reason repeating myself will have an impact

and

2) neither of us are qualified to even "debate" this. it's a battle of the experts. you and i are not scientists. i know enough to be dangerous but ultimately i am just repeating what others have said. if you are not convinced then there's no magical data i can cite that'll change your mind.

and as i said ultimately it doesn't matter to me any more than if you were a flat earther or covid denier. and if it's ever disproven i'd be happy to know.

currently the weight of the evidence strong favors anthrogenic climate change. even your key skeptic agrees with the human impact. but climate science is massive and there are so many variables that it's impossible to be absolutely certain. that's why we can't even predict tomorrow's weather with 100% accuracy. the only thing that annoys me is that you're so steadfast in something that leaves a lot of room for reasonable doubt. even i am solipsistic enough to concede it's a theory and not a fact. albeit a theory with overwhelming evidence.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175614)

For instance, I tweeted @DavidHansen the undeniable FACT that my city had the coldest day on record a few years ago. He never even formally refuted me (nor could he, because all the local weather stations agreed).

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175665)

huh well google scholar shows... 890,000 results...

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C31&q=counter+arguments+climate+change&btnG=

most of which appear to be specifically relevant

"Talking past each other? Cultural framing of skeptical and convinced logics in the climate change debate"

"Challenging global warming as a social problem: An analysis of the conservative movement's counter-claims"

"Climate change denial: Sources, actors and strategies"

but i guess i'll just trust that HAtp has read them all and that NO ONE HAS EVER *EVER* ADDRESSED THE COUNTERARGUMENTS!!!1

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175688)

The last two years have been below average climate around the world. Some years it's above average. What really matters with regards to climate change is agreeing on what the average ought to be.

For most of the existence of the Earth it has been way hotter than it is now. But humans were not around during that time. This is why climate alarmists focus on the rate of change, since in the grand scheme of things that entire time humans have been around has been in a relative cold period.

We also came out of a little ice age a few hundred years ago, so some warming is to be expected given that we just assume that ice ages end sometimes and things go back to normal.

It's all a game of averages and looking at things in geological time scales. Nothing can be gleaned about climate from a cold day in Hawaii. It was probably a record hot day in the Sahara or something on that same day. To understand climate you have to look at the world in aggregate which is what makes it a very difficult science and why it inherently has low predictive power.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175715)

link?

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175723)

This is old but you can see it's going down. Climate alarmists say we're up 1.2 C since 1850 or whatever but this says we're at 0.9. It's down, it's cooling. And it's incredibly biased and arbitrary to pick the starting point because if you zoom out we're in a cooling period. https://co2coalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/113-Zachos.jpg

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175773)

Now remember that libs are currently saying that 1C since 1850 is catastrophic and the IPCC said we'd be at 5C by 2015. LOL @ libs.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175934)

since we're talking about anthrogenic climate change the relevant period is since industrialization. the massive spike over the past 150 years is even starker when compared to the past ten thousand years.

the fact that the earth has heated and cooled during different eras across billions of years is something everyone, especially climate scientists, are aware of. this is equivalent to "jet fuel can't melt steel beams."

it's the rate at which climate has changed that correlative with increases in greenhouse gas emissions and the amount present in the atmosphere. if a asteroid hit the earth like at the end of the cretaceous period you'd have a stronger argument.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175973)

we're talking about the temperature of the earth here. something anyone can measure. this is why i didn't engage lol. you just make stuff up and stick to it despite the stuff you did cite directly contradicting it.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49176137)

“Global warming” is real to the extent that it refers to the excessive proliferation of “warm races” (read: dark) over “cool races” (read: light) and is of course a major ecological emergency the likes of which have probably never been seen before

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171616)

There’s no rebutting this — sorry, fag!

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171629)

Yes, the LLM is combing through millions of garbage inputs - but the end product is still just recycled garbage.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49171920)

In the 2008 mortgage crisis, the key problem was deliberate misrepresentation and lack of transparency: risky loans were bundled together, their true quality obscured, and investors were led to believe they were safe. The “garbage in, garbage out” idea applied because there was no independent physical reality to test those securities against—only financial models and ratings agencies that could be gamed.

Climate science works very differently. Observations—such as global temperature records, ice core data, satellite measurements, and sea level readings—are not subjective “loans” with hidden risk. They are empirical measurements collected and cross-checked by independent groups worldwide, using different methods and instruments. The conclusions about global warming don’t come from simply “combining” poor-quality data in a black box; they come from converging evidence across physics, chemistry, geology, and biology.

If we were to adapt your analogy more closely, it might be: instead of combining questionable loans into a single bond, climate science is more like multiple banks, accountants, and auditors independently counting the same stack of cash, using different machines, and all arriving at the same total. If all their methods agree the stack is shrinking, that’s strong evidence the count is correct.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49175424)

Thank you for carrying this shit thread, brother.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49176338)

https://i.imgur.com/eOxJhsJ.png

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49176365)

===

https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/why-i-stopped-being-a-climate-catastrophist

TED NORDHAUS

Why I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist

And why so many climate pragmatists can’t quit catastrophism

AUG 11, 2025

•

By Ted Nordhaus

Recently, in an exchange on X, my former colleague Tyler Norris observed that over the years, my views about climate risk have evolved substantially. Norris posted a screenshot of a page from the book Break Through, where Michael Shellenberger and I argued that if the world kept burning fossil fuels at current rates, catastrophe was virtually assured:

Over the next 50 years, if we continue to burn as much coal and oil as we’ve been burning, the heating of the earth will cause the sea levels to rise and the Amazon to collapse, and, according to scenarios commissioned by the Pentagon, will trigger a series of wars over the basic resources like food and water.

Norris is right. I no longer believe this hyperbole. Yes, the world will continue to warm as long as we keep burning fossil fuels. And sea levels will rise. About 9 inches over the last century, perhaps another 2 or 3 feet over the course of the rest of this century. But the rest of it? Not so much.

There is little reason to think that the Amazon is at risk of collapsing over the next 50 years. Agricultural yield and output will almost certainly continue to rise, if not necessarily at the same rate as it has over the last 50 years. There has been no observable increase in meteorological drought globally that might trigger the resource wars that the Pentagon was scenario planning back then.

At the time that we published Break Through, I, along with most climate scientists and advocates, believed that business as usual emissions would lead to around five degrees of warming by the end of this century. As Zeke Hausfather, Glen Peters, Roger Pielke Jr, and Justin Richie have demonstrated over the last decade or so, that assumption was never plausible.

There have been some revisionist claims that the reason for the downgrading of business as usual warming assumptions is due to the success of climate and clean energy policies over the last several decades. But five degrees of warming by the end of this century was no more plausible in 2007, when Break Through was published, than it is today. The class of scenarios upon which it was based assumed very high population growth, very high economic growth, and slow technological change. None of these trends individually track at all with actual long term global trends. Fertility rates have been falling, global economic growth slowing, and the global economy decarbonizing for decades.

Nor is there good reason to think that the combination of these three trends could possibly be sustained in concert. High economic growth is strongly associated with falling fertility rates. Technological change is the primary driver of long term economic growth. A future with low rates of technological change is not one that is consistent with high economic growth. And a future characterized by high rates of economic growth is not one that is consistent with high rates of population growth.

As a result of these dynamics, most estimates of worst case warming by the end of the century now suggest 3 degrees or less. But as consensus around these estimates has shifted, the reaction to this good news among much of the climate science and advocacy community has not been to become less catastrophic. Rather, it has been to simply shift the locus of catastrophe from five to three degrees of warming. Climate advocates have arguably become more catastrophic about climate change in recent years, not less.

This is all the more confounding given that the good news extends well beyond projections of long term warming. Despite close to a degree and a half of warming over the last century or so, global mortality from climate and weather extremes has fallen by a factor of 25 or more on a per capita basis. As Pielke documented recently, the world is on track this year for what is almost certainly the lowest level of climate related mortality in recorded human history, not only on a per capita basis but on an absolute basis as well. The economic costs of climate extremes continue to rise, but this is almost entirely due to affluence, population growth, and the migration of global populations towards climate hazards, mainly cities that tend to be located in coastal regions and flood plains.

So I think the far more interesting question that Norris raises, at least implicitly, is not why my colleagues and I at Breakthrough have revised our priors about climate risk but why so many progressive environmentalists like Norris have not.

When Is Weather Climate Change?

For me, the cognitive dissonance began as I became familiar with Roger Pielke Jr’s work on normalized hurricane losses, in the late 2000s. This was around the time that a lot of messaging from the climate advocacy community had started to focus on extreme weather events, not just as harbingers for the storms of our grandchildren, to borrow the title of James Hansen’s 2009 book, but as being fueled by climate change in the present.

Hansen himself had been under no such illusion, writing that “local climate change remains small compared with day-to-day weather fluctuations.” But by this point, the advocacy community had figured out that framing climate change as a future risk would not prove sufficient politically to transform the US and global energy systems in the way that most believed necessary. This became a particularly urgent concern for the movement after the failure of the Waxman-Markey cap and trade legislation in 2010. And so the movement set about attempting to move the locus of climate catastrophe from the future to the present.

If you want to know why Pielke has been so demonized over the last 15 years by climate activists and activist climate scientists, it’s because he got in the way of this new narrative. Pielke’s work, going back to the mid-1990s showed, again and again, that the normalized economic costs of climate related disasters weren’t increasing, despite the documented warming of the climate. And unlike a lot of researchers who sometimes produce studies that cut against the climate movement’s chosen narratives, he wasn’t willing to be quiet about it. Pielke got in the way of the advocacy community at the moment that it was determined to argue that present day disasters were driven by climate change and got run over.

But the cognitive dissonance for me went well beyond that. It wasn’t just that Pielke had produced strong evidence that undermined a key claim of the climate advocacy community. It wasn’t even witnessing Pielke’s cancellation, which was brutal. It came, rather, as I came to understand why you couldn’t find a climate change signal in the disaster loss data, despite close to a degree and a half of warming over the last century or so.

That comes down to two linked factors that determine how climate becomes weather and, in turn, how weather contributes to climate related natural disasters. Taking the second of these first, climate related natural disasters are not simply the result of bad weather. They happen at the intersection of weather and human societies. What determines the cost of a climate related disaster, in both human and economic terms, is not just how extreme the weather is. It is also how many people and how much wealth is affected by the extreme weather event and how vulnerable they are to that event. Over the same period that the climate has warmed by 1.5 degrees, the global population has more than quadrupled, per capita income has increased by a factor of ten, and the scale of infrastructure, social services, and technology that protect people and wealth from climate extremes has expanded massively. These latter factors simply overwhelm the climate signal.

But it's not just that these other factors—exposure and vulnerability to climate hazards—are such huge factors in determining the costs of climate related disasters. Hence, the second problem with claims that climate change causes natural disasters is that anthropogenic climate change is simply a much smaller factor at the local and regional scale than natural climate variability. There is nothing in the climate science literature that has changed this basic fact since Hansen made the same observation over 15 years ago.

Over the last several years, some climate scientists, including Hausfather and Hansen, have pointed to anomalously high surface and ocean temperatures as evidence that warming may be accelerating, perhaps even faster than model ensembles have suggested. But even in the case where climate sensitivity proves to be relatively high, additional anthropogenic warming is an order of magnitude less than the oscillations of natural variability.

This basic physical reality can get lost in the enormous climate impacts literature, with its confusing terminology and findings around concepts like attribution and detection. Arguments about whether anthropogenic climate change has had any impact on extreme events of various sorts quickly get mixed up with arguments about whether climate change is a major factor, much less the major factor in extreme events.

Consider this twitter debate last year about the effects of climate change on tropical cyclones generally and Hurricane Helene specifically, featuring a number of former Breakthrough Institute staff and senior fellows, including Norris, Jesse Jenkins, Hausfather, and Pielke. In the back and forth, Hausfather cites a study concluding that climate change had resulted in a 10% increase in rainfall associated with hurricanes and tropical storms during the 2020 North Atlantic hurricane season. Norris cites an outlier study from Lawrence Berkeley researchers estimating that climate change could have increased rainfall in parts of Georgia and North Carolina by as much as 50%. Jenkins links to a NOAA factsheet summarizing a range of data and modeling on evidence for intensification of tropical cyclones globally and in various regional basins and argues that IPCC assessments of the role that climate change is playing in disasters like Helene are outdated. Pielke and others point back to IPCC and other broader literature assessments which conclude that there is weak evidence for detection and attribution of increased tropical cyclone frequency or intensity due to climate change to date.

Depending on how much weight one gives to individual studies and models, versus broader literature reviews and scientific assessments, you can find some evidence for some intensification of some features of tropical cyclone behavior and frequency in some places. But what you won’t find, Norris’ reference to a single unpublished and unpeer-reviewed study notwithstanding, is good evidence that climate change has affected those things very much.

The absence of an anthropogenic climate signal in most climate and weather phenomena is not paradoxical. It is simply not possible given the amount of anthropogenic warming the planet has experienced. When scientists, journalists, and activists say that climate change made a given extreme event far more likely, what they are actually saying is that an event that is somewhat more intense than it would have been absent climate change could have been made so by climate change. To take the simplest example, a heatwave that is 1.5 degrees warmer than it would have been without climate change was made vastly more likely to occur due to climate change. The claim is tautological.

Put these two factors together—the outsized influence that exposure and vulnerability have on the cost of extreme climate and weather phenomena, and the very modest intensification that climate change contributes to these events, when it plays any role at all—and what should be clear is that climate change is contributing very little to present day disasters. It is a relatively small factor in the frequency and intensity of climate hazards that are experienced by human societies, which in turn play a small role in the human and economic costs of climate related disasters compared to non-climate factors.

This also means that the scale of anthropogenic climate change that would be necessary to very dramatically intensify those hazards, such that they overwhelm the non-climate factors in determining the consequences of future climate related events, is implausibly large. The amount of warming that is conceivable even in plausible worst case scenarios, in other words, is not remotely consistent with the sorts of catastrophic outcomes that I once believed in, where tens or hundreds of million, perhaps even billions of lives were at stake.

A Sting in the Tail?

For a long time, even after I had come to terms with the fundamental disconnect between what climate advocates were saying about extreme events and the role that climate change could conceivably be playing, I held on to the possibility of catastrophic climate futures based upon uncertainty. The sting, as they say, is in the tail, meaning so-called fat tails in the climate risk distribution. These are tipping points or similar low probability, high consequence scenarios that aren’t factored into central estimates. The ice sheets could collapse much faster than we understand or the gulf stream might shut down, bringing frigid temperatures to western Europe, or permafrost and methane hydrates frozen in the sea floor might rapidly melt, accelerating warming.

These and many other so-called tipping points commonly invoked as reason for precaution are the known unknowns of climate risk—specific phenomena that we know might happen without being able to specify very precisely their probability and magnitude, the timeframe over which they might occur, or the threshold of warming and other factors that might trigger them.

But like the supposed collapse of the Amazon, once you look more closely at these risks they don’t add up to catastrophic outcomes for humanity. While sensationalist news stories frequently refer to the collapse of the gulf stream, what they are really referring to is the slowing of the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Circulation (AMOC). AMOC helps transport warm water to the North Atlantic and moderates winter temperatures across western Europe. But its collapse, much less its slowing, would not result in a hard freeze across all of Europe. Indeed, under plausible conditions in which it might significantly slow, it would act as a negative feedback, counterbalancing warming, which is happening faster across the European continent than almost any place else in the world.

Permafrost and methane hydrate thawing, meanwhile, are slow processes not fast ones. Even irreversible melting would occur over millennial timescales, fast in geological terms but very slow in human terms. The same is true of accelerated melting of ice caps. Even under very high warming scenarios, broadly acknowledged today as improbable, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets contribute around a meter of sea level rise by the end of this century. Those processes would continue far into the future. But even very accelerated scenarios for rapid disintegration of ice sheets unfold over many centuries, not decades.

Moreover, the problem with grounding strong precautionary claims in these known unknowns is that doing so demands strong remedies in the present in response to future risks that are both unquantifiable and unfalsifiable, a problem made even worse by the fact that “fat tail” proponents generally then proceed to ignore the fact that the unknown, unquantifiable, and unfalsifiable risks they are referring to are incredibly low probability and instead set about centering them in the climate discourse.

I recently took issue with Varun Sivaram’s misuse of the concept in his recent “Climate Realism” project at the Council on Foreign Relations. And a follow up conversation he had with Dan Raimi on the Resources for the Future podcast is illustrative of the problem.

Sivaram: I think it is terribly wishful thinking to think that climate change poses a manageable risk… and that the climate scientists have got it all wrong… I do believe, however, that the tail risks, the greater-than-5-percent-chance risks, are so material that they signal the end of society as we know it in the United States…

Raimi: That argument is very consistent with Martin Weitzman’s famous arguments about tail risks in the economic community, which I think have been very well understood but not necessarily applied in the policy context. You’re making this really clear argument that those tail risks need to be more central in our planning and in our thinking about the future.

Sivaram, here, is quite blatantly conflating tail risks, which are definitionally below 5% risks, with central risks. This has nothing to do with climate scientists getting the basics of climate change wrong and everything to do with Sivaram getting statistical risk wrong. Raimi, a long-time fellow at what is arguably the premier energy resources and economics think tank in the United States just goes along with it, attributing this notion to Martin Weitzman and suggesting that tail risks are well understood in the economics community.

To the contrary, Weitzman’s entire point was literally the opposite, that outsized risks in the tail of the climate risk distribution were poorly understood and might not exist at all. Other than price a bit more risk into the central estimates, Weitzman was explicit that there wasn’t actually anything to be done about the problem. And remember, what Sivaram is arguing must be done in response to these misplaced tail risks is to bring the full weight of American soft and hard power to bear on poor countries around the world to prevent them from developing their economies with fossil fuels, even as he concedes that the United States is unlikely to quickly move away from them.

Clean Energy Without Catastrophism

As with Norris and Jenkins, I’ve known Sivaram and Raimi for a long time. I agree with them on many subjects: on the value of clean energy and public support for energy technology innovation, the need for the global poor to have much greater access to energy, and the damage both psychic and political that doomism does to efforts to shift the world toward greener energy. They are all well intentioned.

And yet, all make representations about climate science and climate risk that are dubious, if not false. And my question is why? Why do so many smart people, most trained as scientists, engineers, lawyers, or public policy experts, and all who will tell you, and I say this not ironically, that they “believe in science,” get the science of climate risk so badly wrong?

There are, in my view, several reasons. The first is that highly educated people with high levels of science literacy are no less likely to get basic scientific issues wrong than anyone else when the facts conflict with their social identities and ideological commitments. Yale Law Professor Dan Kahan has shown that people who are highly concerned about climate change actually have less accurate views about climate change overall than climate skeptics and that this remains true even among partisans with high levels of education and general science literacy. Elsewhere, Kahan and others have demonstrated that on many issues, highly educated people are often more likely to stubbornly hold onto erroneous beliefs because they are more expert at defending their political views and ideological commitments.

The second reason is that there are strong social, political, and professional incentives if you make a living doing left of center climate and energy policy to get climate risk wrong. The capture of Democratic and progressive politics by environmentalism over the last generation has been close to total. There is little tolerance on the Left for any expression of materialist politics that challenge foundational claims of the environmental movement. Meanwhile the climate movement has effectively conflated consensus science about the reality and anthropogenic origins of climate change with catastrophist claims about climate risk for which there is no consensus whatsoever.

Whether you are an academic researcher, a think tank policy wonk, a program officer at an environmental or liberal philanthropy, or a Democratic Congressional staffer, there is simply no benefit and plenty of downside to questioning, much less challenging, the central notion that climate change is an existential threat to the human future. It’s a good way to lose friends or even your job. It won’t help you get your next job or your next grant. And so everyone, mostly falls in line. Better to go along to get along.

Finally, there is a widespread belief that one can’t make a strong case for clean energy and technological innovation absent the catastrophic specter of climate change. “Why bother with nuclear power or clean energy if climate change is not a catastrophic risk,” is a frequent response. And this view simply ignores the entire history of modern energy innovation. Over the last two centuries, the world has moved inexorably from dirtier and more carbon intensive technologies to cleaner ones. Burning coal, despite its significant environmental impacts, is cleaner than burning wood and dung. Burning gas is cleaner than coal. And obviously producing energy with wind, solar, and nuclear is cleaner than doing so with fossil fuels.

There is a view among most climate and clean energy advocates that the risk of climate change both demands and is necessary to justify a much faster transition toward cleaner energy technologies. But as a practical matter, there is no evidence whatsoever that 35 years of increasingly dire rhetoric and claims about climate change have had any impact on the rate at which the global energy system has decarbonized and by some measure, the world decarbonized faster over the 35 years prior to climate change emerging as a global concern than it did in the 35 years since.

This argument ultimately becomes circular. It’s not that there is no reason to support cleaner energy absent fear of catastrophic climate change. It’s that there is no reason to support a rapid transformation of the global energy economy at the speed and scale necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change if the specter of catastrophic climate change is not looming. Which is arguably true but is also a proposition that depends upon not asking particularly hard questions about the nature of climate risk.

Despite some tonal, tactical, and strategic differences, this basic view of climate risk, and corresponding demand for a rapid transformation of the global energy economy is broadly shared by the climate activists and the pragmatists. The impulse is millenarian, not meliorist. Underneath the real politik, technocratic wonkery, and appeals to scientific authority is a desire to remake the world.

For all its worldly and learned affect, what that has resulted in is the creation of an insular climate discourse on the Left that may be cleverer by half than right wing dismissals of climate change but is no less prone to making misleading claims about the subject, ignoring countervailing evidence, and demonizing dissent. And it has produced a politics that is simultaneously grandiose and maximalist and, increasingly, deeply out of touch with popular sentiment

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49181008)

this is a problem with liberal/leftists in so many way. take "trump is LITERALLY HITLER" TD hysteria. people that buy their lies and come to realize they have been lied to often will kneejerk pivot to the exact opposite direction. so instead of having a bunch of people who were primed to have a negative yet nuanced view on trump they became trump supporters.

same happened with climate. many people have pivoted to "not real" or "doesn't matter" because they spent years worried about the climate wars of the 21st century that never happened. so now they just shrug.

libs would be better served by not being such histrionic women about everything but they can't fucking help themselves.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5760327&forum_id=2Elisa#49181073)