People working on climate solutions are facing a big obstacle: conspiracy theories
People working on climate solutions are facing a big obstacle: conspiracy theories
23 comments
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I had a guy from Florida tell me that the oil wells just fill up again after you empty them, so the whole oil shortage is a scam.
I mean, they do, for a while anyway... but it's like that last little bit of a milkshake that you never quite get through a straw. There's no new oil - it's just the stuff that is just now making it into the well. He thought you just waited a handful of years and you'd have another gusher.
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Worse are the nuts who insist that God gave us the natural resources needed to get us through the end times, so when we run out, Jeebus comes back! Use faster!
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It strikes me that, sort of ironically, "infinite" is only a difficult concept to grasp if you're smart enough to understand it.
Stupid people just sort of take it for granted. "Finite" is the thing they can't seem to wrap their heads around.
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They drink your milkshake.
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The problem is not oil shortage, because there is no oil shortage. The shale boom gave the US plenty of oil and gas to pump up. And there is plenty of coal too. Enough to last us for at least several decades. The problem is that, in doing so, we would destroy our climate.
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There is a shortage of cheap oil.
Time was you could find it bubbling up on the surface. Then you had to dig for it. Then you had to frack. Then oil was expensive enough to justify going back to the old oilfields and pumping water down some of them to push it into the others.
Sure, there's oil there, but it's harder and harder to get. That's why protected areas that still have easy oil are a target for the oil companies.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
Julia Simon: Climate disinformation in the past — sometimes paid for by fossil fuel interests — often related to false ideas that global warming is a scam or that the threat is overblown.
Earlier this week the U.K. transport minister Mark Harper used some of the language of conspiracy theories when talking about 15-minute cities at the conservative Tory party conference.
Huo Jingnan: The false narrative surrounding 15-minute cities is but one part of a larger sprawling conspiracy theory called the Great Reset.
Back when he was on Fox earlier this year, Tucker Carlson made utterly unsubstantiated claims about dead whales coming ashore on New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts beaches.
Folkenflik: But you hear versions of it from former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — once it passes audition, it makes the rounds.
Simon: I met with Carlos Moreno, a Franco-Colombian professor who developed this idea of the 15-minute city — these more walkable, bikeable neighborhoods that conspiracy theorists think are preludes to open-air prisons.
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23 comments
People working on climate solutions areEveryone is facing a big obstacle: conspiracy theoriesThe real obstacles are anti-intellectualism and extremist right wing propaganda.
I think it is religion and economists. One tells people that life is shit and the other makes sure that it is.
Yea I was going to comment how it's a big problem with healthcare. We saw it during covid but even in regular day to day care it's a bigger problem these days
And German public health insurance still pays homeopathy...
Diseases not really being a part of life really messed up the perspective of many people. Measles, mumps, polio all are making a comeback because of these idiots.
It sucks but given the situation I am not sure if it could be otherwise. People are justified in not trusting so-called experts. Seems like every week there is yet another scandal of paid shills from some group. From the trivial like film critics being bribed to the terrifying Andrew Wakefield vaccine stuff it is everywhere. The lesson is simple: question the motivations of every speaker and institution.
No one blinks an eye anymore when they hear a doctor recommend horse dewormer for Covid, or a geologist for the oil industry denying global warming, or an internal investigation of a shooting that determined the officers did nothing wrong, or a conservative saying the Ukraine has gay Nazi zombie legions. Think it is limited to public statements? Think again. It is everywhere. It is systematic and well documented impacts of being a minority and going to the hospital. It is people dying from contaminated babypowder that was known to contaminated. It is banks seizing homes and misrepresenting the terms of mortgage. It is paid Russian shills accounts on social media.
Building a world of influence peddlers with the impact that no one should trust anyone, click bait article by click bait article.