How to Tell the Average Person About Global Warming

Post Reply New Topic

Hi everyone. Let's talk about global warming.

Global Warming is not just something that will raise the temperature and the sea level. It is something that could de-oxygenate the world's oceans. I have proof.

Some of you are probably going to make "The sky is falling!" jokes. HAR HAR HAR For some reason, climate deniers never make corny jokes when they are talking to people who believe in the "Mexican invasion" or the Biblical apocalypse. Isn't that funny?

Now, let's talk about the nature of politics. Politics is the art of communicating with Average Joe. It doesn't matter how many facts and sources you have. You won't make any changes unless the average person listens to you. How should we tell the average person about global warming? I don't know exactly ... but I have some suggestions.

1. Know Your Audience

Think about the person you are talking to before you start talking. If you are talking to someone who lives in a coastal area, focus on the effects of global warming on tropical cyclones. If you are talking to a farmer, tell him that global warming will lead to global crop failure.

2. Blame Someone Else

Human beings are narcissistic by nature. They are always more willing to accept the existence of a problem if they can blame someone else. That's the main reason why Trump got elected. Lately, the left has spent a lot of time talking about all the terrible things that white people do. Sometimes they are right ... but that doesn't matter. Focusing on the awful things that white people do is political suicide. You aren't going to win any elections by telling the majority of people that they're evil.

Be sure to say "Exxon Mobil is the source of the problem!" or "Shell is the source of the problem!" Portray the average American as a victim of corporate manipulation ... not a lazy bum. Be sure to blame the beef farmers and not the people who actually eat the beef.

3. Acknowledge that being green is hard ... and blame someone else for this.

Eco-friendly products are often expensive. We should blame the corporations for this and push for more market regulations. Being green is hard ... so we need a government that will make it easy.

Overall, we need to speak to Average Joe in his own language. We don't have much time left.

What you have is an opinion. Here is another one.



It's amusing that you perceive that there's a blanket stereotype for people who are skeptical of Chicken Little's claims.



Politics is the business of gaining and wielding power over people. Do you wish to solve problems, or is it your desire to dictate?

I wish to solve problems.

I read through most of the paper you posted and they never explicitly said the concept of possible ocean deoxygenation was wrong or invalid, just that a greater degree of scrutiny may be required to root out catastrophism and bias in the community on the more difficult to study problems, such as the aforementioned issue. I've also never heard of ocean deoxygenation before I came to this thread and I'm a geologist so I probably should of heard of it before. I'm slightly skeptical of the concept just like ocean acidification, which may adversely affect some organisms, while allowing others to thrive. This is nothing new.



Such a terrible film

Global warming / climate change has many aspects to it. It's a major political issue. It's an economy issue as in there's big bucks that can be made from made from it and big bucks industry can lose from it. And of course all the money that goes to researchers, who have to come up with new aspects of it to stay in business. There's the social 'do-gooder' aspect, up to 'trash police' who go through their neighbors garbage to insure they are separating their trash - which leads to the fanatical aspect of it. I think it appeals more to liberals, because it's one more area where they can attempt controlling social conformity. I live in a metroplex that's permanently liberal and I never saw so many lookalike, do alike, act alike, activists.

So there's the scientific aspect and then there's all that other baggage and all the hyperbole that goes along with it. As to the scientific aspect, there are those who believe all of it is man made and then there's who believe it's nature taking its course. Tools for gauging the ozone layer and oceans de-oxygenating, are very new, especially in comparison to the age of the Earth. The ability to gauge and measure this sort of stuff has only been around for a teeny fraction of the Earth's 4.5 billion year history. Many would ask if a couple of hundred years of industry is actually capable of wiping out a planet that's survived untold cataclysms for billions of years.

And then there's this man's theory on the subject:

Much like the spread and extinction of species.......heh



Heh, those greedy researchers should have picked more lucrative careers.



I resent the concept of social unity. You'll never find me living in a cookie cutter neighborhood.



No one intelligent believes that all of it is man made, there are obviously natural fluctuations. It's arrogant to think that we can just pump out the emissions at the rate that we do and not have an impact on the chemistry of the atmosphere. The effects of altered atmospheric chemistry are a bit more dicey and the rates that those effects may occur at.



I'm going to have to call that lack of education on your part. There's no way I can summarize the methods for obtaining all the data or why said data is considered valid. You're going to have to either take courses or research it online yourself. A good place to start for understand the fields consensus would be the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
A summary can be found here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report
And here is the page that leads to the full report:
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_report_synthesis_report.htm


No one that is intelligent thinks that climate change will "kill the earth". It's just going to cause some very slow migrations of people and poorly planned coastal cities. This could cause some conflicts and possibly destabilize some regions, but on the whole humans will be fine. It will also probably cause the extinction of many complex ultra specialized species that have basically run their evolutionary course and are at a dead end. Basically a lot of these species in the current radiation were going to go extinct anyways.



George Carlin, while humorous, is also just a comedian. He doesn't have a theory, he has an opinion. A very nihilistic one at that, but I enjoy it.

the way i see it, this is...implying that evolution is "intelligent" and that it has a goal, neither of which is true. either the change in the frequency of alleles allows organisms to develop traits that are advantageous in their changing environment, or they do not and go extinct. what's to keep "ultra specialized" species from becoming even more specialized, or differently specialized?

it's certainly true that much of our current biodiversity is headed towards extinction for non-anthropogenic causes, but it can't be denied that human activity is still a major factor.

I'm looking forward to global warming because there's a chance it will cause human extinction which will mean the end of all the people I don't like. Especially those annoying overachievers who think they're better than me.

That assessment was on more current readings. I sometimes read that they are basing things on readings taken maybe 20 years ago. But there's no way to compare those same readings over the course of millennia because such readings didn't exist. They only have a very tiny window from which to operate. I'm not saying that's a flaw in science, just that it's something to consider. Most everything else I wrote was also along the lines of something to consider, rather than me taking a stance.



Which I agree with.

I don't believe in the determination of life. I just use complex to describe organisms that exist in niches higher in the food chain. I use specialized to describe that have animals that have acquired adaptions to fill very specific niches. This makes them more vulnerable to climate/habitat change.

We are the primary factor in the extinction of most species these days. You caught me in a bad mood last night.

We are sending many species on the road to extinction,adaption takes time.Most don't have the time to adapt.
http://www.livescience.com/51280-the-ne ... aphic.html

The amphibian are really the ones suffering right now,many frog species are already gone forever.

I don't need science to tell me that the human population/infestation is having an effect on the planet. How could it not be? But at the same time, I don't think it's anything we can do all that much about. Worth giving it a try, I suppose, but I suspect any changes we make will have a small impact on the Earth's progress.

This poem,the Golden Toad is gone.None of us will ever have a chance to see a real one,just a photo.
This poem always makes me feel very sad,I usually only read it once a year.


The Last Golden Toad
by SYBIL SMITH

He (it was a he)
emerged in early May,
shedding his coat of mold-stitched leaves,
stretching out a hind leg
to scrape each bright flank free.
He was ready —
he had been ready for eons —
to join his kind
beside the mountain pools,
alert for movement;
ready to leap astride a mottled female
and, holding her with his spongy feet,
writhe against her till some shudder
told him it was done.
It was as if there were a map
in his head,
though he couldn’t read,
did not know his name was Bufo periglenes,
did not know of Newton, Einstein, Darwin.
He couldn’t reason like you and I,
with our impure desires,
but he could feel — yes, he could feel;
don’t think he couldn’t!
And his desire was pure and shining,
golden like his skin, part of some complex design
so intricate, so labyrinthine,
that we could not grasp it
till it slipped from our hands.
There was a scientist who had watched the toads
for years, sometimes so thick and eager
they flung themselves upon her hiking boots.
And she saw him two years in a row,
in 1988 and 1989.
He sat there,
a solitary “Day-Glo orange jewel”
against the forest floor,
and he did not move.
He sat still and waited for a vessel
that never came,
because there was none, or if there was,
she was far away up the mountain,
alone by her own pool,
and she had no song or scent to fling
across the treacherous atmosphere
as a calling card
to conception.
It was not the earth that betrayed them;
it was us,
with our engines and emissions,
blow-drying our hair,
eating peaches out of season,
taking long showers, and
talking endless nonsense
about the meaning of life.
Would we have given all that up
for the golden toad
who sat alone
for two long springs,
peering into the stillness,
then burrowed into the earth
with a sense of something undone
and never came back again?

[quote="DarthMetaKnight"]Hi everyone. Let's talk about global warming.

Global Warming is not just something that will raise the temperature and the sea level. It is something that could de-oxygenate the world's oceans. I have proof.

That last time the oceans were de-oxygenated was during the eruption of the Siberian Traps.

Nothing like that condition exists now or is likely to exist.

In the past CO2 levers were has high as 3000 ppm which is 7.5 times the current level and life in the oceans thrived.

CO2 is necessary for life on this planet. W.O. CO2 1. The average temperature would be below freezing and 2. plants could not exist which means neither could animals.

Too much CO2 could cause an increase in temperature along with a rise of ocean levels but not nearly as bad as the IPCC models (which are piss poor science, btw) would indicate. Ten years ago we were told if we don't get CO2 levels down we would turn into Venus (aka tipping point). Ten years have passed and the panic stricken are still saying the same thing.

I think we should have started work on the CO2 overload problem 20 years ago. We should pave North America with fission generating plants. They would produce more than the electrical power we need and not produce a single molecule of CO2 overload in the atmosphere.

So ... you're willing to let me and my descendants die horribly because you want to be an adolescent edgelord?

You're saying that if it's a bad thing.