@DoomsdaysCW @rmblaber1956

My dad told me a few weeks ago, our local ski resort used to regularly have 24 feet of snowpack when he was a kid.

This winter, it barely had 24 INCHES.

I can stand on our porch and look at that mountain in the summer, and not only does it look so NAKED, brown dirt exposed all the way to the top, even from twenty miles away it's mighty obvious the big glacier on its northeastern flank is maybe HALF the size it used to be. Glaciers like that aren't supposed to fucking shrink visibly on a human timescale!!

I was maybe 10 when we went for one of our regular hikes up around the alpine lakes and the frogs were just GONE. A place that always used to have so many thousands the whole edge of the water was black with tadpoles in a band at least 3' all the way around the lake, and so many adult frogs it was impossible to walk without stepping on some-- gone. I've seen this coming my whole life, any actual scientists who study anything related to this for a living and somehow still manage to be surprised have been living with their heads jammed WAY up their own asses.

@violetmadder @DoomsdaysCW @rmblaber1956 This is what confuses me about climate change denialism. We have all witnessed big changes just in our own lifetimes. I realize that rule number one of being on the right is deep compartmentalization and lack of awareness but even so, it has to be hard to just... not remember back to our own childhoods...

But then again, I guess most of these people just walk around brain off these days. Let Fox and FB fill the blanks.

@nazokiyoubinbou @violetmadder @DoomsdaysCW @rmblaber1956

I am not a psychologist but I do a lot of research on weird groups with fringe beliefs. My understanding of the psychology here is that denialism comes from a specific place: the desire to not have to take action.

Decades ago, there were many excuses people could use to avoid having to take action. We're not sure yet, it could be a number of things, it won't interfere with business, it'll only affect other countries, the believers are just a bunch of reds.

Over time the excuses dropped away until now the only way to avoid having to take action is to go for straight-up total denialism. That's why more people are doing that.

We are not seeing denialists increase in number because fewer people believe the scientific evidence; we're seeing them increase in number because every position but those two is becoming untenable, and a lot of people just don't want to take the actions that they would have to take if they believed in the scientific evidence.

It's kinda the same pattern that we saw with creationists over the course of the 20th century.