Eh. Charles, the reason why people deny AGW is because they're hearing a persuasive argument from somewhere that speaks to their own bias or prejudice. While this might make one of those people think again, the instant and overwhelming flood of reactionary bullshit from the denier crowd will probably swing them back the other way. There just aren't many people who haven't heard about AGW and haven't read enough to make their mind up already who would actually watch this and form a conclusion.
I'll have to look up the source, but secularism is on the rise across the US population as a whole. Much like global temperatures! While there are examples of specific people exhibiting nutty religious beliefs, polls show that the population in general is slowly moving away from that sort of thing.
No, opinions like this are the problem: You will never convince anyone if your initial argument is "You are crazy." That video of that woman is exactly what I think can happen. Even knowing that the glaciers are melting and we are in a likely unavoidable downward spiral of destruction, the movie brought me to tears multiple times. I am not an emotional person, but what brought me to tears wasn't any of the human stuff, it wasn't any of the talking, it wasn't any of the charts or predictions; it was simple pictures of massive amounts of ice just vanishing. The beauty and the horror, all at once. I think everyone in this thread who is on the side of "deniers are crazy and evil" are simply exacerbating the problem. If I told you you were crazy and evil for an opinion you held, you would shut down immediately and refuse to hear anything else, and these people, like this woman in the youtube vid, are coming from years of being treated that way, when their initial problem was simply their choice of news source.
So atheism is causing global warming which will eventually turn earth into the FIRES OF HELL!!!!!!111!! Someone call Lamar Smith. Congress needs to act.
This article seems pertinent to the discussion: http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/strong-opinions-on-climate-change-are-self-reinforcing/
It seems to me the next stage in climate change denial will be founded on the US natural gas bonanza as proof that between the free market and Jesus the corporations of the world will overcome any obstacle that climate change throws their way, assuming the government and the communists stay out of their way. Once again, a grain of truth becomes a pearl of pure bullshit.
The next stage that I heard from the right wing members of my family yesterday was, "Everyone knows the big polluters are China and India, but the environmentalists want to stop us from doing anything here where we would produce cleanly and responsibly. Instead, they force businesses to go overseas where they manufacture using dirty methods." I didn't have the willingness to even enter that debate...
Oh, that's a classic, an evolution of "the developing world is the real problem, and if they can't fix themselves right away, then there's no point in losing our competitive edge". I'm talking the cutting edge of bullshit, here, with actual recent headlines rather than just crazyland economics.
So I saw this tonight. I liked it quite a bit. It's short -- running at around 70 minutes but it doesn't feel short. It has some breathtaking shots of glaciers and an overall sense of sadness and loss. Also, great music by J Ralph. It maybe feels slow for 5 minutes when it's doing obligatory talking heads about climate change, but for the most part it focuses on the images themselves and the setup required for the photos the doc is about. Verdict: 60 of 69 shitboners
A lot of status quo arguing from talking heads in Australia comes down to, "We're only a comparatively small emitter and why should we disadvantage ourselves when China and India won't? It'll cost local jobs!". Actually, it often seems a lot of inaction at the global political level - at least among developed nations - is that unless everyone cuts CO2 at the same time, there's no point for their particular country to do anything.
