"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Fair assesment for the politicians and lobbiest.
What about their supporters, is defunding of education plus the governments doing nothing against misinformation enough to justify their actions?
*lobbyists.
For the supporters, in Alberta, where almost a quater of gdp is oil and gas, and culturally the pride is in their meat production, you can't imagine why they don't want to believe in climate change?
There's a distinction between believing something exists and ignoring it's long term ramifications vs "celebrating carbon".
If people want to run things into the ground I can't imagine someone be called anything other than a idiot if you don't have a exit strategy. Also something to be said about the division of profits .
Money is the exit strategy. I hear this kind of misunderstanding a lot when conservatives double down on something that seems against their self interest, like "they're still Albertans, they want a prosperous future for their children too, they just disagree on how to get it"
That's true for the average uninformed propaganda regurgitating voter, but it's not true for the people actually making money from conservative policies. The money they collect makes them hyper mobile. If Alberta crumbles in the future from doubling down on oil and gas they'll just... leave. When you have millions nothing ties you to where you live. They can ditch their property and move to another province, another country, no big deal. That's why they focus on extracting as much value as possible from the land and the populace, because it's expendable to them. They just want to make the most money now while they can.
So they use the idiots, but I don't think the people pushing this line of thinking are the idiots.
Fucking UCP government just deep in the pockets of Big Oil. Just rename yourself The Oil Sands Political Party and at least be honest about it, ya fucking loser assholes.
Of all the places on earth that might conceivably come out slightly ahead on climate change, Canada and Russia are two of the biggest.
Can't help but feel these two countries consistently being some of the worst on per capita emissions isn't a coincidence.
Canada was created as a colonialist apparatus, that exists to facilitate the extraction of natural and human resources, and transfer them to private ownership. It's literally the reason the country exists, and it has never been reformed. We just cover it up with PR. We don't emit greenhouse gasses because we are trying to terraform the planet, it's just the most profitable way to exploit our resources right now.
They're not so much in the pockets of big oil so much as they literally are big oil. At least a part of it.
Let's just release some extra CO2 into these people's homes for a few weeks and see how they handle such an abundance of such a "foundational nutrient" on their health. Not too much, maybe a little over 5000 ppm or so should be good, I'm not suggesting we kill them or anything.
It's not even breathing that's the problem, it's the claim that higher CO2 is great for plants. It can be, however the plants that grow from higher CO2 levels (particularly crop plants) produce their plant mass differently than with less CO2 unless compensated for, like in a controlled greenhouse. Directly because they are getting a different ratio of nutrients and gases.
Add that to all the other factors that threaten food supplies thanks to warming. Someone at some point saw that plants get green at high CO2 levels and thought it would work as an argument against climate change, not understanding the details (or not caring because it suits their purpose).
Also, plants don't grow well in floods, or when on fire, or in 50° C.
Flooding and fires are in fact exploited by many plants, even necessary for some.
Oxygen is necessary for animal life.
It can also explode.
Also, faster and more voluminous growth =! better quality growth. See: new vs old growth lumber.
Are humans not part of "All life on earth"?
Not for much longer.
Yes, but plant growth reactions to higher CO2 happen at much lower levels of increase than your example of being harder to breath.
"I think this reminds us that the base of the UCP is host to a pretty substantial group of people who do not believe that climate change is real, or they don’t believe that it is driven by human activity, and they think that any actions taken to transition away from fossil fuels are unnecessary."
Or they're just jerks who know it's real, but don't care and are looking to virtue (vice?) signal their right-wing bona fides.
I have a coworker that says we need more CO2 in the atmosphere. 🙄
If these were the kinds of people who also planted a thousand trees a year and are seriously into conservation, I'd believe it, but they usually aren't.
It's like anti-abortion people who run maternal- and children's-welfare agencies and give a ton of money to help orphans, work school-lunch programs, etc. They're about the only ones who are allowed to have that opinion, and they're vanishingly rare, dwarfed by the kind that just a) hate women and/or b) want to vice-signal.
you know, you really are a moron
usually puts a damper on all future interactions with those kind of people.
What happened to those facts over feelings?
My thought process:
"Hah! The Beaverton really went beyond silly this time.
Oh, fuck..."
“CO2 is presently at around 420 ppm, near the lowest level in over 1,000 years.”
They mean the lowest over the next 1000 years
Ok, I'm convinced, let Alberta separate.
Just nuke the whole province and start over
Sincerely, An Albertan
The CO2 day balloons are gonna suck. They just lay there on the ground.
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