As the Earth’s temperature continues to rise, climate change remains a lower priority for some Americans, and a subset of the public rejects that it’s happening at all. To better understand the perspectives of those who see less urgency to address climate change, the Center conducted a series of in-depth interviews designed to provide deeper insight into the motivations and views of those most skeptical about climate change.

My conclusion: these people are beyond help.

  • BeefaloEnglish
    3•9 months ago

    Because they live near the Great Lakes, which tend to soak up temperature spikes and average them out, and they just had a maybe 90-degree F June and July, perfectly normal summer temperatures, while the rest of the world just got fried in a fuckin skillet.

    It’s much easier for them to believe the lies that they like the taste of. The people old enough to remember when winter meant WINTER in the 70s are all dying, so the younger conservatives think this is normal. Who’s complaining about no snow shoveling? Not them.

    Somebody Non-American very casually pointed out that the great divide in opinion on this is between the Red States, which all have economies based on carbon emissions, versus the Blue states, that do not. Obviously California’s main export is entertainment and software, they don’t depend on mining (or trucking, or coal, or manufacturing, or agriculture, or, or), like a lot of Midwest states do.

    Ag is a huge greenhouse gas emitter, especially meat production, so anybody who makes their money off of meat doesn’t want to hear any of this global warming talk. Even soybeans are grown in the US and shipped to Asia, so there go the boats, belching CO2 from bunker fuel, even if the combines are electric. Somehow even the damn soybeans manage to emit a fuckton of CO2.

    Blue states won’t see much economic hindrance from low-carbon policies, as their wealth is mostly “knowledge economy” type stuff, while Red states would have to take huge hits, one after the other, to bring national CO2 and methane emissions down.

    The Red voter doesn’t know any of that, on average, but the wealthy Reds do, and they control the propaganda the rest of them consume.

    I don’t see much of a solution, here.

    • @EssentialCoffeeEnglish
      4•9 months ago

      Because they live near the Great Lakes, which tend to soak up temperature spikes and average them out, and they just had a maybe 90-degree F June and July, perfectly normal summer temperatures,

      I’ve lived in Michigan my entire life and I can tell you that the summers here aren’t normal and haven’t been for a few years and no one around here thinks the weather is normal either.

      90s is not normal June/July weather. August, sure, maybe the occasional July day, but constant 90s in both June and July? No, this is weird, my person. We don’t have a spring. We don’t have a fall. It’s all fucking weird.

      The people old enough to remember when winter meant WINTER in the 70s are all dying, so the younger conservatives think this is normal. Who’s complaining about no snow shoveling? Not them.

      Yeah, I wasn’t alive in the 70s, but I still know that winter isn’t supposed to have snow on the ground for a day and absolutely no snow hills in parking lots for months and the folks around me, who also weren’t alive in the 70s, or are too young to remember much know it’s all off too. Get off with that ageist shit.

      We’re supposed to have a January thaw. It’s supposed to last a couple days, maybe a week. The entire month of January isn’t supposed to be the ‘January thaw’. Some years,we might warm up early then frist again We’re not supposed to warm up to the 70s for weeks and have two hard weeklong frosts. That’s weird af. No one thinks this is normal.

      • BeefaloEnglish
        2•9 months ago

        Oh WE know it’s weird, but the simple fact is that the GL states all stayed under 100 this year while the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, took the hottest weather on record, ever, in human history, right to the face. We got off LIGHT this year. But if you’re looking for reasons to justify your denialism, it’s enough. When I said “maybe 90s”, honestly, I haven’t seen it push above 85 this year, and now in August it’s given up. It’s 70s down here in Northern Ohio. THAT’s weird. We really should be sweating harder, but nah, it’s downright crisp in the evening.

        I think the End of Winter has shaken some of the old timers. They know. They know this isn’t right. They know that snow is supposed to hit the ground in November at the latest, and stay there until March. Not this. All we get now is Mud Season. Snow doesn’t even hit the ground, really. Everyone has kinda given up on Christmas, because it’s not really Christmas if the weather is in the 50s and damp.

        When the snow went away, I feel like they weren’t quite so confident about their bullshit anymore.

        So it’s been the winter that’s been getting hotter and hotter up here in the Great Lakes region. But the summer? We keep getting mercy, mercy we have not earned. And the only thing that makes sense is the Lakes getting hot so we don’t have to. Then when it cools down they release the heat and Christmas is muddy and shitty.

        But if you’re looking for every possible reason to deny, it’s enough. That’s the problem. Everyone who trusts the data knows that things are insane, but we aren’t talking about those people.

        • @EssentialCoffeeEnglish
          4•9 months ago

          The article doesn’t say anything about the Great Lakes being a determining factor that I can find and there were 7 interviews from the entire midwest, which is a lot more than just the Great Lakes region.

          Got any actual data that people from the Great Lakes states are more in denial than other people in the country?