Climate Change: A Growing Skepticism

It&#x27;s hardly surprising as amelioration starts to hit, the economic losers bring out the army of voices to try and head off things. And, it would be foolish to assume this is not what&#x27;s going on, because every single prior case of regulatory end of life for an industry has included this kind of &quot;growing skepticism&quot; -including well meaning skeptics who independently voice positions which are leveraged into &quot;told you so&quot; positions in opposition. (see a well known UK &quot;alternative energy cannot scale&quot; website by a now dead statistician which is very well written but is also now 15-20 years behind improvements in science)<p>I am completely not shocked that this is being seen, and more importantly being reported on. I would be amazed if it&#x27;s not picked up and carried by News Ltd which has a significant AGW amplification posture, despite its denials.<p>If you want a clear signal of change, look to the Insurance industry and defence. Both have a requirement to consider 20-50 year window investment consequences. Both are pretty confident that AGW has costs they want to start to understand. They started this posture several decades ago. I don&#x27;t see the insurance or re-insurance industry as a bunch of Kumbayah singers, nor defence-materials industry and strategic investment. If they see a problem, then its pretty damn real.<p>I think the insurance industry is going to declare parts of Louisiana and Florida an insurance free zone. If you want to live there, be super rich and self-insure, or be very poor and wear the loss. The middle ground is told to go elsewhere.

I know a lot of people that are skeptical of climate change. Not a single one denies it. It&#x27;s more a along the lines of &#x27;how big a deal is this actually&#x27;?<p>They view a lot of messaging from the government and regulatory bodies as alarmist. Which honestly is fair given the fact that most of them have much bigger day to day problems with healthcare, economics, and housing playing out in the short term. It&#x27;s all relative right?

&gt; <i>Populations are not reacting in the same way everywhere. 55% of Australians (+24 pts) mentioned the flooding that hit their country this year. Nevertheless, their sense of being confronted with climate change is still lower than elsewhere and is not growing.</i><p>Australia is often hit with floods and fire events almost every year so they have a &quot;everything just as it should be&quot; feel, even if they are getting worse.<p>I think Australia will often be skeptical but we do have a baby state mentality so gradual changes just need to be implemented and made for us.<p>Just this year there&#x27;s some takes of banging single use plastic for instance. (Not saying it&#x27;s an effective rule or that it works, just that we&#x27;ve implemented it and seem to be following it)

This is analog to when we are dealing with the losing side of a war.<p>It is obvious that the existing Oil&amp;Gas industry, Petro-states, Coal industries (and to an extent many in the Auto industry) will absolutely put up a fight for as long as they can and by whatever means they can _including_ shaping public opinion.<p>We need to have honest discussion at government level on a plan to allow these companies an off ramp out of Fossil fuels. Be it with Hydrogen markets, geo-thermal drilling, Algae cultivation, sequestration, whatever, but something that allows these companies to accelerate a financial exit instead of holding on for as long as they can until regulations eventually sunset them.

Donning my armchair psychologist hat, I feel a lot of it is denialism and knee-jerk &quot;Stupid government!&quot; reaction to governments &quot;lecturing&quot; (in their view) about climate change. Maybe the left-vs-right political question is too simplistic, I wonder what it would look like if the pollsters asked &quot;Do you trust or distrust the current government?&quot;.<p>Even with something that could kill you within 2 weeks, there were a lot of denialism. Something that could kill you in 50 years? A lot of people are probably thinking &quot;If it&#x27;s making my life harder now (higher prices for more climate-friendly options) for something &#x27;they say&#x27; will kill us in the future, I&#x27;d rather focus on making my life more bearable now rather than save the future.&quot;

If humans someday become extinct, what&#x27;s the big deal?<p>An asteroid could wipe us out as well.<p>Or Nuclear Armageddon.<p>Climate change boondoggle spending is one of the biggest drivers of inflation right now under the Biden administration. Epidemic of retail theft that goes largely unpunished in many US cities is another.

This is just a dressed up &quot;some people are saying&quot; puff piece.

I think more people would be convinced if we push to adapt to climate change rather than stop or reverse it, which may not be possible.

I feel most of the skeptics are forced to assume that position because they cannot say what they truly think:<p>“We will all be dead by the time it becomes serious enough to worry about it”<p>People don’t want to say that to pollsters and so they say they are skeptical about the warming and CO2 emissions being the culprit in the first place