Kansas City will likely suffer 'off the charts' heat in the next 30 years, new study predicts

[TheLastGentleman]

[phuqueue]

I don't think Highlander is off base here. Just speaking anecdotally, I have run into denialists who swear that "scientists" predicted that by the 2020s sea levels would have already risen by several feet, and now it's the 2020s and the sea has not (permanently) taken Wall Street or Miami or wherever, so clearly it's all a myth. I would ascribe that viewpoint more to current right-wing media claiming that's what scientists once predicted than to actual reporting back then (and since) leaning excessively on outlier scenarios to drum up interest, but the latter does happen as well (David Wallace Wells is one example of a journalist who has pretty explicitly and intentionally done that), so it's not necessarily easy to untangle. The reality of climate change should be plenty alarming as it is, but plenty of people are content to shrug it off as long as the Day After Tomorrow remains a work of fiction.

And Highlander is spot on that neither party has shown any genuine interest in actually addressing climate change (though the differences between them are still notable in that Republicans agitate for policies that would actively accelerate it further). There is no easy solution to climate change that preserves the essential features of modern American life and our throwaway culture of consumer capitalism, but there is no appetite for any action more onerous than giving people tax credits to buy electric appliances and install some solar panels on their house. Nobody wants to be the one to take away free next-day shipping and cheap flights to Paris.

[mean]

Yeah, pretty much, although it is a little disingenuous to claim that nobody is saying climate change isn't happening or that it's not anthropogenically driven. Maybe nobody here is saying that (right now) but those claims are kind of hard to miss out in the wild.

[Highlander]

Yeah, pretty much, although it is a little disingenuous to claim that nobody is saying climate change isn't happening or that it's not anthropogenically driven. Maybe nobody here is saying that (right now) but those claims are kind of hard to miss out in the wild.

By nobody, I meant nobody here (and in particular - myself). I occasionally post on another forum where 95% of the posters believe that climate change is not even happening or is happening but not linked to man's activity. They are also almost entirely part of the MAGA world. We live in a world dominated by cause and effect and if you put enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, it would be remiss to think there would not be an effect.

I spent my career in scientific modeling, not in climate modeling but there are still similarities between what I did and climate modeling. I guess it's human nature but many would key in on the more extreme outcomes not knowing or at least acknowledging that the greatest magnitude of every variable would have to combine to hit that case. Needless to say, those outcomes were never achieved. Not rarely - NEVER. That's what I expect is going on to some extent in climate science. Journalist don't know that a particular scenario is just one of thousands of outcomes while other less dire outcomes dominate the distribution. But it's the dire and imminent prediction that sells.

[beautyfromashes]

Can you really blame the public for skepticism of, especially, their elected leaders with topics like this? It seems major issues are always used to fill certain people's pockets or the issue/war was created as a means to get more $s out of each worker. And, even then, if the result of the legislation drives up costs on US suppliers so that corporations move to much more dirty manufacturing countries like Vietnam or China, how is that not just throwing money in the trash? Of course, people who are wholeheartedly on board with stopping a climate catastrophe are doing so little, patting themselves on the back if they recycle their dirty pizza boxes. There's never been any real push of the first two Rs of Reduce and Reuse. Corporations on the other hand tout their Energy Star marketing which makes every major appliance last half the amount of time they did in the "dirty" 1950s and filling our landfill with twice as many "clean" refrigerators, washing machines and dishwashers. It's all so ridiculous.

[FangKC]

The future of the Midwest includes hazardous heat, and most of our homes are not ready

https://www.kcur.org/news/2023-09-13/t ... -not-ready