Why do people still deny climate change despite worsening heat waves?

Question

Heat waves are become more and more intense, frequent, and longer every year. There are well-documented upward trends in heat-related deaths, fires, and impact on our environments and wildlife. But, after seeing and hearing and experiencing these themselves, why do some people still deny climate change and global warming?

For those that do believe in climate change and global warming, why do most of us not take action?

… are we doomed?

msc545 · Accepted Answer

I think one of the more interesting questions about climate change is why so many people continue to deny it even as the evidence becomes increasingly difficult to ignore. We are seeing more extreme heat, longer heat waves, warmer nights, and temperature records being broken with increasing frequency. Yet for some people, none of this seems to make much difference.

Part of the problem is that climate change stopped being simply a scientific question a long time ago. It became a political and cultural issue. Once that happened, people's views began to reflect their political identity as much as, or sometimes more than, the evidence itself. Changing one's mind can then feel like agreeing with the other side rather than simply acknowledging what the evidence shows. People with right-wing political views are notorious for denying any changes in climate due to human activity, mainly because this has become a critical issue for industry, at least in the United States.

There is also the very human tendency to accept information that supports what we already believe and to find reasons to dismiss information that does not. If accepting climate change also means accepting government regulation, changes in energy policy, increased costs, or other policies someone strongly opposes, it becomes much easier to question the science than to reconsider those other beliefs.

Another problem is that people remember individual experiences rather than statistical trends. Someone can quite reasonably say, “I remember 100-degree days when I was a child.” Of course they do. The question is not whether extremely hot days existed 40 or 50 years ago. The question is whether they occur more often now, whether they last longer, whether nighttime temperatures are higher, and whether the overall temperature distribution has shifted. That is a very different question.

The distinction between weather and climate also creates confusion. No particular heat wave proves climate change, any more than one cold winter disproves it. What matters is the long-term pattern and whether events that were once unusual are becoming more common. That is where the evidence becomes much harder to dismiss.

Distrust probably plays an equally important role. There are people who simply no longer trust government agencies, universities, scientists, or the news media. Once a person reaches that point, presenting additional evidence may accomplish very little. Every new study can simply be interpreted as further evidence that the institutions they distrust are all saying the same thing.

It is also difficult to ignore the effect of decades of organized efforts to emphasize uncertainty about climate science. Scientific uncertainty always exists, but uncertainty about the details is not the same thing as uncertainty about whether the basic phenomenon exists. Those two things have often been deliberately confused.

Finally, climate change is an unpleasant thing to accept. It is enormous, potentially very costly, and largely beyond the ability of any individual person to control. There is a certain psychological comfort in believing that the problem has been exaggerated or does not exist at all.

That does not mean that everyone described as a climate skeptic holds the same position. There is an important difference between saying that the planet is not warming, saying that it is warming but humans are not responsible, and accepting both of those propositions while disagreeing about what should be done about them. The last of those is a legitimate policy disagreement. The first two are primarily questions of evidence.

What I find most striking is that increasingly extreme weather does not necessarily settle the matter. You would think that repeated, record-breaking heat would eventually make the argument largely academic. But once a factual issue becomes tied closely enough to political identity and distrust, people can apparently become remarkably resistant to evidence that they can quite literally feel when they walk outside.

shish_kebab · Accepted Answer

I challenge you to post a similar question that I asked Kelly to post.  
 This will help you understand why nobody cares about global warming.  
 
 As for your question being changed, you have to hit the microscopic toggle a couple of times to turn that shit off.

Kelly6 · Accepted Answer

@avatarx  Because many government and corporations have used this for their own benefits rather then earths benefits.

GothEgg · Accepted Answer

Why did people question the earth being flat?

Anonymous · Answer

There are very few people who deny the climate is warming. We know if has been warming since the last ice age. The problem people have with the liberal narrative about climate change is the notion that humans caused it. Earth has been warming and cooling cyclically since the dawn of time. Seems pretty arrogant to think that somehow we are the reason for it, doesn't it.

The reality is that democrats want control so they can abuse it. That's the bottom line.

DonaldDarko · Answer

No one's denying climate change. People just aren't falling for the scam that if you pay billionaires money they can stop it.

exitseven · Answer

the last thousand years have had periods of extreme heat followed by cooling. During the Industrisl Revolution there were hundreds of coal burning factories spewing tons of pollution into the air, so much that cross sections of very old trees will show when the Industrial Revolution happened. There was no heat wave then.
It is a big hoax to rip off citizens.

slatyb · Answer

Because it would mean admitting they are wrong.

Pterodon · Answer

Two reasons. Because it’s natural and not man made. Because nothing can be done to slow, stop or reverse it

KostasKouvalis · Answer

They don't deny it. They deny that it's caused solely by humans

moddy_the_mod · Answer

Remember you dopes tell us that weather isn’t climate when we have freezing ass winters.

jahaims · Answer

The earth is never a constant temperature

Why do people still deny climate change despite worsening heat waves?

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Why do people keep trying to deny Global Warming is even happening, and why deny man is causing it?

Why do people still deny climate change despite worsening heat waves?

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Why do people keep trying to deny Global Warming is even happening, and why deny man is causing it?

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