Thursday, December 29, 2022

Current climate change denial memes




 #ClimateScam has been trending on Twitter for a few days.

A scam is a fraudulent business scheme.
The #ClimateScam is the conspiracy theory promoted for 40 years by fossil fuel business corporations, spreading doubt about climate science in order to protect their profits at the expense of the stability of humanity’s wellbeing.

Meanwhile, if you are seeing climate change denial memes, here is a little list of current climate change denial memes:


1 It’s cold outside my house therefore the whole world is cold
1a Extreme weather events are recorded in old newspaper articles therefore climate is not changing

2 Climate always changes therefore climate sensitivity is very high. (See 8)

3 Greenies have computers and some go to conferences, therefore they are all hypocrites

4 Climatologists get paid, therefore climatology is a money making scam

5 Climate change is a conspiracy involving [insert people here] in order to tax us into oblivion

6 No point in our decarbonising, because China won’t*

7 As an old man, I do not like Greta Thunberg therefore all climate science is wrong

8 The changes we are making to Earth's greenhouse effect do not matter because Climate Sensitivity is very low (see 2 above).
9 "It's the Sun!" (No it isn't, see the image at the top of this post)



*Climate: the China gambit


6 No point in our decarbonising, because China won’t.
No 6 in my #climatedenialmemes
Of the first six memes, 6 is the one where it begins to get interesting.

Deniers have a genuine struggle with China, because deniers are mainly individualists, which means that they do not understand that humans are social animals, and therefore that we have the ability to act collaboratively. They cannot see that if the world decarbonises, China will want (so some extent) to join in the decarbonisation - not least because it will find a market for its decarbonising products.

China is aware of the risks that climate change poses for China, and is already taking steps to decarbonise its economy, even while it builds coal fired power stations. China leads the world in solar power, wind power, and electric vehicle deployment, but also in coal consumption 

Part of the cause of China’s increase in coal consumption is that China has taken on the manufacturing of a great part of the world. So the UK has off shored its manufacturing, which lowers UK CO2 emissions, but increased Chinese emissions.

China may end up decarbonising faster than the West, because its history of a command economy may give it an advantage in changing away from carbon.



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