For 110 years, climate change has been in the news

I don't actually care about the social dynamics of scientists, because since the start of COVID I've developed a strong cynicism about all academic reliability, and so really wish that No True Scientist type arguments would go away. They're boring and even if an academic consensus did exist (it doesn't) I wouldn't care anyway.

But look at my other top level post in this thread. It makes two points. One is a technical point about ECS ranges. The other is about the way the article tries to make it seem like there's been a century-long consensus of scientists. The first is more important, but the replies and arguments are all about the second. Nobody seems to care about ECS. They're all about what some random guy whose data was cited in an article thinks, and whether I'm trying to deliberately mislead people.

So, arguments about what scientists as a group do/did believe are unavoidable because so many people have developed extreme views like Net Zero on the back of reading in the Guardian that all scientists agree on . You can argue about the scientific details of the claims, and that's really important, but it's of limited use because most people aren't basing their views on science anyway. For people who say look, just give me the 10 second summary of what the experts think, the only thing that can shift their view is by showing that the experts actually aren't expert at all.

The global cooling thing is therefore important, not because people aren't allowed to be wrong or change their mind - they are and they can - but because when that happens on a large scale, we'd expect to see some sort of post mortem where they collectively study why so many bold predictions were made that they later recanted. No such reflective learning process has ever happened. This raises questions about how genuine their expertise really is. Instead, as I and others document elsewhere, what they actually did is try to rewrite the past to claim global cooling was never a thing at all. They even edited temperature graphs to erase the cooling entirely. Then when it's pointed out that this isn't true using archival evidence, the claim changes to be that journalists were - inexplicably, as a group - engaged in a vast conspiracy to s/warming/cooling/g in everything scientists said. This claim is implausible, it's also literally a conspiracy theory, except one with no motive and no proof that it's real.

So yeah it'd be great to talk about the science more but there's little appetite for it here. They want to talk about social dynamics.

W.R.T. virology, how many virologists objected to the famous Lancet Letter in which dozens of scientists said "We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that COVID-19 does not have a natural origin ... Scientists from multiple countries .... overwhelmingly conclude that this coronavirus originated in wildlife"? Zero? One? A consensus of people and institutions like that is worthless.

This default reactive stance causes pointless arguments and discussion as I'm trying to demonstrate.

Yes there were 200% valid concerns. But this lead more to something close to hysteria than actual communication.

These concerns turned into teaching kids that the environment is going to die. The "unless nothing changes" gets lost in the discussion with 90% of non science teachers. In the same way that "emmissions have fallen" is on page 23 and is not front-page news.

The net result of this, although well intended. Is that most people are taught the headlines which turn into "watch out for acid rain". And now 40 years on they are even more confused and distrusting given the inconsistent messaging around this.

(News flash the oceans are still getting more acidic, almost no effort has been made here imo, but I digress)

Bad communication on these topics is more dangerous than not getting public approval. Bad communication around fossil fuels spreads distrust on the topic of conversation. (Again I remember well meaning teachers saying fuels would dry up by 2010 when I was in school)

Bad communication on climate change or global warming (notice how they don't use that latter phrase in outreach now) causes distrust here. Same goes for healthcare, 5G and the list goes on.

There will always be people who disagree. Trying to reach 100% is also futile. The communication should be straightforward clear and consistent and it's falling short of that by a long way.

The "just trust the science" is exactly the same call to authority as "this book says throw them off buildings". It helps nobody. But it happens at _all_ levels of outreach and bad education because people get afraid to say "good point, I don't know".

Unfortunately I'd have to agree with the original author here.

People gest and make empty vacuous statements on social media _a lot_. People are also unwilling to change or take on a small amount of responsibility. These 2 things are in direct conflict.

Again my strongest condemnation of this is people only now care about power and fuel efficiency at a large level now that Putin has caused the price to rise. Putin by his actions in the last few months has done more to sway public ACTION here than 30 years of social media posts and politicians. This is a damning sad statement on how much people honestly care about impacting change in the world.