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Climate change: How to talk to a denier(hurl alert)
BBC News ^ | 23rd July 2022 | By Merlyn Thomas & Marco Silva

Posted on 07/24/2022 5:18:57 PM PDT by Ennis85

What can you do when the people closest to you believe climate change is a hoax?

It was during school pick-up a few years ago that Lance Lawson first asked his father about his views on global warming.

"He basically told me something along the lines of 'It's nonsense'," Lance recalls.

His dad spoke of unscrupulous politicians "fearmongering" for electoral gain. Climate change, he told Lance, was completely "overblown".

Lance, now 21, lives with his father, Brian Anderson, in the US state of Florida. He was just a teenager when that conversation happened, but it made a huge impression on him.

"My father is a very smart man," he says. "So I assumed that, if my father is telling me this, then it must be true."

But, as time went on, Lance started realising his father's views weren't backed by scientific evidence - and he decided to challenge him.

"Whenever he drove me to school, I would give my own argument, and he would downplay the evidence. It would force me to acquire new evidence, and that cycle helped expand my own understanding."

If someone close to you believes climate change is a hoax, you may find it hard to do what Lance did.

Maybe you fear confrontation, maybe you simply don't know how to explain the basic science of global warming.

But Gail Whiteman, professor of sustainability at the University of Exeter, says it's important to talk: "If we don't tackle climate denial and climate indifference, then the uphill battle to find a safer future is lost.

"We need to tackle our teachers, our neighbours... All of us have to become vessels for communication."

But how exactly do you go about starting the conversation?

Reciting the facts isn't always the answer

Sander van der Linden is professor of social psychology

(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous; Science; Society; Weather
KEYWORDS: alternativefacts; bbc; climatechange; climatechangehoax; climatehoax; dnctalkingpoint; fakenews; globalwarming; globalwarminghoax; greennewdeal; junkscience; mediawingofthednc
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To: Ennis85

“It would force me to acquire new evidence...”

Too bad that the so-called evidence for global warming is assertions based on models, which are themselves nothing but assertions based on incomplete and usually biased data.


21 posted on 07/24/2022 5:48:30 PM PDT by HartleyMBaldwin
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To: Ennis85

Laughable. The Left has some really poor ‘’experts’ trying to figure out how to manipulate without being caught. But they aren’t good enough at it, as this silly Lance story illustrates. Guy’s father wants to find common ground with his son, and the manipulators think they found a secret way to brainwash people.


22 posted on 07/24/2022 5:48:40 PM PDT by hinckley buzzard ( Resist the narrative.)
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To: lizma2

There was a Green Revolution involving fertilizer and GMO seeds. Undo that at the risk of policy driven genocide.

Then there is the fact that that Erf’s living biomass has apparently increased over the last couple of decades of increased atmospheric CO2.


23 posted on 07/24/2022 5:56:57 PM PDT by Paladin2
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To: cp124

Geologist have found river beds in the Saharra desert, that most of the Mediterranean Sea had dried up, land bridges from Europe to Britain, Asia to Japan and Eurasia to North American and The Great Lakes were formed by a massive glacier. Recently a pre-historic shark fossil was found in the Peruvian desert

And now it’s our fault?

It was in the 60’s this garbage started with “The Ice is Coming!!!!!”. I wasn’t even going to get to graduate from high school.

Fear for control


24 posted on 07/24/2022 5:57:46 PM PDT by lizma2
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To: Ennis85

1)Get all the facts on your side
2)Convert skeptics
3)By censoring opposing viewpoints
4)Declare victory


25 posted on 07/24/2022 5:59:45 PM PDT by Toddsterpatriot (TANSTAAFL)
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To: Ennis85

Dear BBC,

Nobody denies climate change. We all know the climate changes.

Please try again, using real words instead of the standard leftist pseudo-religious anti-science verbiage that, at its core, has no actual meaning.


26 posted on 07/24/2022 6:02:23 PM PDT by cockroach_magoo (“Sure we’ll have Fascism here, but it will come as an anti-Fascism movement.”  - Huey Long)
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To: Ennis85

Please... recite your “facts”

(not you Ennis85- the writer)


27 posted on 07/24/2022 6:07:15 PM PDT by Mr. K (No consequence of repealing obamacare is worse than obamacare itself)
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To: Ennis85
I like to bring up historical photographs of the ocean.

Say, that lighthouse landscape looks really close to the one in this old photo. In fact the ocean is right where it should be!

28 posted on 07/24/2022 6:21:32 PM PDT by broken_clock (Go Trump! Still praying.)
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To: Ennis85

They aren’t interested in debate. They are doing it to “fix you”.

Which is really the only reason socialists talk to you.

It also shows why you have to 100% eradicate socialists one way or another, because they will never leave you alone, they simply can’t just let you live peaceably with different views and opinions than theirs.


29 posted on 07/24/2022 6:21:37 PM PDT by Secret Agent Man (Gone Galt; not averse to Going Bronson.)
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To: Ennis85

I always just ask, “What do you think is the ideal temperature for the earth? Hotter than now? Colder than now? Now?”

Most can’t answer the question.


30 posted on 07/24/2022 6:31:11 PM PDT by struggle
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To: Ennis85

From the “Pocket Encyclopedia of Cacti” by Edgar and Brian Lamb:

“in Worthing, in the south of England...during the winter of 1962 we experienced three months of freezing weather, in which time the temperature only rose above freezing for an hour or so on two days!”


31 posted on 07/24/2022 6:32:24 PM PDT by Brian Griffin
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To: Paladin2

Weird huh?


32 posted on 07/24/2022 6:35:19 PM PDT by rktman (Destroy America from within? Check! WTH? Enlisted USN 1967 to end up with this? 😕)
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To: struggle

As Mr Climate Change if he supports Nuclear Power. Or Hydro Power.


33 posted on 07/24/2022 6:41:33 PM PDT by kaktuskid
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To: Ennis85; All

No mention of 60+ years scores of “Only Ten Years Left to Save the Planet” headlines.


34 posted on 07/24/2022 6:41:38 PM PDT by A strike (LGBFJRoberts)
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To: Ennis85
What can you do when the people closest to you believe climate change is a hoax?

Applaud them!
35 posted on 07/24/2022 6:49:26 PM PDT by eyeamok (founded in cynicism, wrapped in sarcasm)
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To: rockrr

You can remind them that odds are 50% either way from the get-go; it’s not stagnant.

Then ask them: how would it be better if it got cooler?


36 posted on 07/24/2022 7:11:35 PM PDT by tsomer
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To: jdsteel

Leftards live with Dad because they’re stupid. I stopped asking money from my parents once I hit 19 because I knew how hard they work and didnt want to be a burden.


37 posted on 07/24/2022 7:19:37 PM PDT by max americana (Fired leftards at work since 2008 at every election just to see them cry. I hate them all.)
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To: Ennis85
Reciting the facts isn't always the answer

Well yeah. It only works when they don't know the real facts.

38 posted on 07/24/2022 7:48:49 PM PDT by AndyTheBear
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To: nralife

Crud! Thought the Earth was further away from the sun than that.


39 posted on 07/24/2022 7:50:07 PM PDT by AndyTheBear
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To: Ennis85

I tell the ecofreaks, “What about the medieval warming period, when the Earth was six degrees warmer than it is now? There wasn’t a single internal combustion engine in the world back then.”

Shuts them right up.


40 posted on 07/24/2022 9:27:19 PM PDT by july4thfreedomfoundation (My body, my choice....but not when it comes down to unconstitutional "vaccine" mandates.)
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