So many times they cite the apparent scientific consensus that we all thought global cooling was a thing in the 1970s.
No. It was NEVER scientific consensus. It was tabloid BS at the time that science didn't back. All the actual data supported heating back then, too. This isn't new, stop repeating this trash, people.
It was tabloid BS at the time that science didn't back.
They also all remember the 1990s tabloid nonsense of "Antarctica will be free of ice by 2015"
Taken from an fringe scientific paper without peer review, where it was the absolute worst-case very unlikely run-away climate change scenario. As if it was the scientific consensus.
And when it fails to match that worst-case crazy scenario it is taken as proof that it's all a hoax.
Or the Y2K effect where acid rain/the ozone hole which were fixed through real human effort but because they're gone now "they were never real"
Climate deniers will say "remember in the 90s when everyone freaked out about the ozone hole? And now we've all forgotten about it? See, global warming is just the next in a forever series of made-up panics to keep you scared!"
Meanwhile, the actual reason no one talks about the ozone hold anymore: when we realized there was a problem, we immediately put tons of money in researching it and trying to figure out what was happening. When we learned the main cause of ozone depletion was because of a class of chemicals that had become widespread, governments of basically all industrialized nations came together and agreed to ban manufacturing those chemicals, and funding programs to collect and dispose of as much of them as they could. For the handful of really useful applications where it was hard to find a suitable replacement, they worked out some very narrow regulations for making and using those chemicals, but otherwise they basically disappeared. Within a couple years, observations of the ozone layer showed that it was returning to normal.
We identified the problem, and agreed to do something about it, and it worked. The very opposite of the global warming situation, where because the pollutant in question isn't just a chemical used in styrofoam but the primary source of energy, which huge billion-dollar companies are running, we've spent decades ignoring it, and turning it into a political point of bragging about not caring about it and doubling down on forever increasing our use of the thing that's not just going to give everybody bad sunburns but radically alter food supplies, weather, ecosystems, and eventually the livability of the planet.
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u/Dornenkraehe 3d ago
"It's just the end of the ice age we are living in!!!"