That's fair. When I'm being precise I try to be clear that I both understand and believe the science of climate change due to human activity is valid, and I believe and understand the science that says the climate changes due to non-human activity as well. I know people who take the position that climate has always changed and that humans are not a part of that (or I think even more perversely that humans are part of nature so any climate change they create is 'natural') which avoids the agency that humans have to be rational in the face of their own actions.
If you can find posts of mine from 10 years ago you'll see that my position hasn't changed a whole lot.
What I have never believed however is that it was possible to communicate the impacts humans are having to a large enough portion of the population that set priorities to change the eventuality that Al Gore warned of in "An Inconvenient Truth."
I've talked about this sort of self denial in my own journey to getting my weight under control where it is easy to say, ""These calories aren't making me fat, it is all those other calories I've already eaten that made me fat. Not eating this tasty treat would just deny me a treat and not change my weight one bit." It is true, and it was what I wanted to believe, but within that truth was that my actions, my habits, and my choices led me to place where I was fat.
It was hard work to get me to a point in the way I think about things to consciously change my day to day activities and change the way I thought about my "relationship" with food, to get to a reasonable weight. Do that for 7 billion people with regard to their cars/energy consumption? It is inconceivable![1]
That said, it also annoys me that the science says seeding the oceans with iron [2] could potentially remove massive amount of CO2 from the air, and yet we don't even allow people to try. Either it is an existential threat (which I think it is) so everything is on the table, or it isn't.
Sorry to hear about the weight struggle. My personal experience is that it's a very habit dependent and hard to conquer thing.
And yes, we can’t possibly convince everyone. We shouldn't try. Long term thinking is really hard.
We need top down public policies informed by science. Heavy tax incentives and disincentives.
We should definitively try seeding the oceans, but planet scale engineering is some scary shit. The stakes are as high as can be and calculating all possible outcomes is next to impossible. It's also hard to start small and scale. So, very much needed and terribly dangerous.
If you can find posts of mine from 10 years ago you'll see that my position hasn't changed a whole lot.
What I have never believed however is that it was possible to communicate the impacts humans are having to a large enough portion of the population that set priorities to change the eventuality that Al Gore warned of in "An Inconvenient Truth."
I've talked about this sort of self denial in my own journey to getting my weight under control where it is easy to say, ""These calories aren't making me fat, it is all those other calories I've already eaten that made me fat. Not eating this tasty treat would just deny me a treat and not change my weight one bit." It is true, and it was what I wanted to believe, but within that truth was that my actions, my habits, and my choices led me to place where I was fat.
It was hard work to get me to a point in the way I think about things to consciously change my day to day activities and change the way I thought about my "relationship" with food, to get to a reasonable weight. Do that for 7 billion people with regard to their cars/energy consumption? It is inconceivable![1]
That said, it also annoys me that the science says seeding the oceans with iron [2] could potentially remove massive amount of CO2 from the air, and yet we don't even allow people to try. Either it is an existential threat (which I think it is) so everything is on the table, or it isn't.
[1] And yes I do know what that word means :-)
[2] https://edu.rsc.org/feature/iron-ocean-seeding/2020176.artic...