Why do people say that climate change is a theory....?

[greenisgoodbitch]

as if it's a bad thing??

Gravity is also a theory. It cannot be seen, but it also cannot be disproven. 99% of scientists believe that climate change is real.
And why are people so defensive about it? When I tell certain people that I believe that climate change is real, they act as if I insulted them.

Unless I missed the "Scientists are evil!" memo, shouldn't we be coming together to look at their research and do something about it?
I actually did accumulate a whole lot of knowledge in 2 semesters of earth and space class, in which I learned the simple fact that increases in carbon dioxide, naturally occuring or man-made, eventually raises temps. Simple.

 

[ike]

It's because the republican party (who cater to the interests of -and actually are- big business) need to deny there's a problem so they can keep exploiting whatever resource they've been gouging us for, untill it's all gone, ..they are NOT worried about what will result, not in the slightest..they are simply some individuals who have BOUGHT the power to make the rules in our society, and have used that power to make rules which say that they can gut everything(not just environmental resources, and safety, but also the economy, and the economoic well-being of the future) -just so they can be rich in their lifetime, and the heii with what it causes in the future, they dont care about that in the slightest

so the short answer is that its denial (lying) on the part of those who are making PROFIT by polluting and using up the finite resources

they dont want to be stopped from doing that


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...If they acknowledged publicly that there's a need to be environmentally responsible with what technologies we use, then they wouldn't be able to get away with doing BS like digging up Alaska senselessly as they just did, and other nonsense like disobeying the rules the rest of the world is RESPONSIBLY following.

We live (Im asuming you're in the US) in a currently evil country.
Its run by theives who lie to get to do it,
and even go mass murdering in other countries.

the people who support them are generally younger people who really know nothing about government ("politics") and how it actually works, they just heard some hateful propoganda (like Rush Limbaugh's hatemongering lie and smear campaigns, where he'd denegrate the segments of the populace who tend to vote mosty democrat, like environmentalists, gays and even women (remember? he popularized the terms "tree hugger", "liberal" "feminazi" ALL just to get people to parrot the hateful sayings till the stupider people in life think they're true because they've heard them so often




I bet I wandered a bit,but the "us versus them" way we run things requires a bit of explanation.



your short answer is, there is a problem with what industry is doing to the environment, everyone knows it, but people who want to seize control and ,make themselves rich go into denial about it, so they can pursue those things
in other words--in the early 90's the knowledge about climate change was introduced,
but it quickly became POLITICIZED

which is everything I've been describing here, to politicize a thing is basically to lie about it, in order to trick people so they'll vote you in (so -in the republicans case)they can then rewrite the laws of the country to exempt themselves from having to obey laws, or pay taxes

they even rewrote the laws to not have to keep us safe (it was called "deregulation", it started in th 80's with Reagan, a senile pupet figure who actually siggested that we should reduce the minimum wage to 1.80 per hour, and also declare ketchup a vegetable to save money being "wasted" on buying actual tomatoes, to put in school kids lunches)
anyway
he "deregulated"
so now we have no protection
and the environment doesnt either
and since they own and script the media, if you state any6 of this as I've laid oiut, or if you denay any of the vast lies that are nbeing parrotted about, it will not be heard publicly
and you will get hated at buy republican sympathisers

I deeply wish this all was not so

splitting ourselves into "us versus "them, imaginarily, only means reality doesnt get attended to (like the environmental needs), attention all goes to lying and counter lying

this is why you occasionally hear a politician say "I'm not a DIVIDER, I'm a uniter"(George Bush Junior)..what a lie that was, eh?


my advice is to speak your mind, dont try to correct anyone who parrotts tyhings that are hateful and untrue, just show them they are wrong by your behavior being better thasn theres...just do the right things yourselves, and encourage otyhers who are receptive

change takes time

we are an industrial economy (or were) and unless the money powers that be see profit in it, they wioll not change

so thats advice #2---show that there's profitability in healthier ways of handling waste energy and production needs

but -once again- dont show it by admonishing anyone, just act out the example (start a business!)..


If you cant join them, replace them, I say!

 

[David B]

Gravity is a scientific law, i.e. the *law* of gravity not the theory of gravity, theories are things such as relativity and evolution, that is things that are not (at this point) reproducible to an extent. We don't have another planet just like earth to experiment on so it delays the passing of the theory of AGW into law, if it ever will.

@Dawei: you're absolutely right, thank you for the correction.

 

[theediblespoon]

Gravity is not a theory. "Laws" and "theories" are different. A theory explains why something happens, and a law says that something happens. We don't know WHY gravity happens...we just have the law of gravity that says that it DOES exist and it functions a certain way. That's why we have a "Law of gravity" but not a "Theory of gravity"

Some THEORIES are considered scientific fact. The Theory of Evolution, for example, is pretty widely considered to be true.


What do you mean by "Global warming"? No one denies that the earth is changing temperature. That is proven. The controversy is over how much of an impact human action is having on it, and whether regulations can negate that impact enough to be worthwhile. No one denies that the earth's temperature is changing, they're just arguing that humans are not the main cause.

And the idea that humans are the main cause of climate change is FAR from proven. There's a HUGE number of things that impact temperature on earth, and the degree to which all these factors affect climate change is still hotly contested. Nothing has been proven.