No, They'll Never Believe in Climate Change: How Science Becomes Political
As the southern United States picks up the pieces after being smashed by two insanely powerful hurricanes in under a fortnight, the political discourse is tenser than ever, which is exactly what nobody wanted going into an already terrifying election. Every year there is a brand new “biggest storm ever recorded” and every year the right gets more and more annoyed that scientists keep stubbornly insisting that extreme weather can be caused by changes in the composition of the atmosphere, that the atmospheric composition can be changed by human activity, and that both of those things are currently happening.
This year the discourse has changed, though. This hurricane season represented several firsts. It was the first time in history (that is, since records began) that three simultaneous Atlantic hurricanes have formed in October. With Milton, it was the first time scientists have considered coining a Category 6 for storms until now impossibly powerful. The right can no longer claim in all seriousness that what we’re seeing in terms of extreme weather is a completely natural phenomenon. The storms are too fierce, now, their effects too tragic. The usual bleating about how the climate has always changed and the planet is still coming out of an ice age no longer sticks. The grief of those who are losing their homes if not their lives is just too real. For the first time mainstream conservatives have begun to express belief in man-made climate change.
By which they mean leftist weather machines.
Right on point, professional world champion of being wrong about things Matt Walsh only just got done making a smug victory announcement on his web show that there were no hurricanes this season, a week before Helene and Milton smashed inland.
Oops, Matt. Just fucking, oops.
I’ve heard people often say, as they gesture meekly toward some hopeful concept of justice, that climate science skeptics (or cynics as they’re better described) will one day come to a realisation all too late, when the ice caps melt and the sea sweeps their homes away. And they’ll weep and atone and beg forgiveness, and we’ll whisper “no.”
This bugfuck weather machine discourse is all the proof we need that this will never happen. Even if all of the worst predictions come true, they will never admit the predictions were accurate.
There’s something deeper and more insidious going down in the human psyche here than mere conspiratorial thinking or people’s general die hard resistance to admitting they were wrong. There’s some of that happening here, but a think a more powerful driving force here is that the science of climate change is Political. If you believe in certain scientific phenomena then you’re doing more than just accepting data, you’re choosing a team.
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