• It always fucking was. I remember the first time I heard of climate change, it was an ad suggesting that planting trees could help counter the greenhouse effect, and that’s when my dad told me that the whole thing was made up to trick people into supporting higher taxes. This was the 80’s.

    • Which is just so insane because the Greenhouse Effect is a very simple, very well-understood phenomenon that anyone who actually wants to understand it (and even conduct experiments to directly test it) very easily can.

      The runaway greenhouse effect leading to climate change is slightly more complex (but is it really?), but simply growing trees to counter the greenhouse effect is like such a basic, simple, scientific concept that even children understand.

      Like… It’s literally the reason greenhouses exist and work. I just… I don’t know what to say anymore to peoples’ ignorance.

    • The first time i tried to talk to my parents about climate change, specifically sea level rise, my dad had us do an experiment where we filled a cup with some ice up to the very tippy top with water. Then, when the cup didn’t overflow when all the ice melted, he noted that there’s still the same amount of water whether it’s liquid or solid (technically true, but obviously ignores some key details, like the fact that not all the ice on Earth is found in the ocean, and that there are impacts of melting ice other than just sea level rise). He concluded that we didn’t have to worry about sea level rise, and it’s all a hoax. I told my science teacher about it, and he simply asked me, “What about all the ice on land? Like Antarctica? That ice isn’t already in the cup.” This was the early '00s.