“So much snow, how can this be global warming!?”
The world is bigger than your back garden, you know.

“It was such a long and cold winter two years ago, how can there be such a thing as global warming?!”
For the same reason that a drizzle of snow into April does not mean that summer’s cancelled.

“Scientists are only doing it for the money.”
Even in the decades before there was any significant political or media attention about the global climate?

Oh, yeah, those postdocs are /really/ living the sweet life with fat paycheques they get from their plentiful for research grants on their desks year in and year out!

“Climate and environment and all that stuff is only something lefties talk about.”
That’s because ‘lefties’ are the only ones who give a damn when scientists have something of concern to say.

“Green energy schemes and such just makes us poorer.”
The same way that sandbagging your house does when the levee is about to break? Sandbags are expensive, you know.

“Curtailing carbon energy use will crash the economy!”
Right, because a, say 0.5% short-term drop in GNP growth will spell permanent doom for society.

“Ending coal use causes unemployment!”

As if employment in a danky coal mine is just dandy. Miners lung and tunnel collapses are after all just is something that comes with the job, and better stick with the devil you know, right?

Yeah, okay. And mountaintop removal also gives the wife and kids the sorely needed food supplements since foodstuffs are generally deficient in lead and mercury. We don’t want to rob you of those benefits either, do we? Fecking environmentalists.

“I know that it’s all a hoax! I can prove it, I have years of expertise in <this or that field of engineering>”.

Then why the damn are you spending your time in this debate forum then when you could be out there harvesting fame and Nobel prizes left and right? Oh, wait.

“Climate is chaotic and can’t be modelled. So all these models are just bunk and useless!”

The movement of water molecules in a pot of boiling water on your stove is also chaotic, yet that doesn’t mean that you won’t be certain to scald your hand by plunging it into it.

“Government should stay out of this!”

Right, because all private economic decision makers that operates on a for-profit basis will spontaneously and cooperatively can be trsuted to act in the best interest of the global society and curtail their use of carbon fuels.

“There isn’t a problem, you or the goverment have nothing to do in this regard.”

Keep saying that when I’m opening up a landfill in front of your house. You got a problem with that? Tough.

“NASA just can’t be trusted.”

You have an alternative source of data and analysis of this data, then? If that is the case, why should we trust them with anything?

 

“You don’t get to take my money!”

I don’t give a feck about your money. Spend it on whatever you like. But DO care about what eventually happens  when you put to use whatever you buy with your money.

Buy yourself a buzzsaw, tear down the old pines in the back of the garden and have yourself a good time with the buddies. Lovely. Fine with me. But when you throw on some old tires on just for the hell of it, with me living right next door and having a garden party as well, then it’s not fine with me anymore.

I don’t care about you buying plenty of bourbon, but I DO care if you go on a merry drive in the city after having a generous sample of it.

Buy all the guns and ammo that you’d like and get to it at the firing range; I haven’t a care. In fact, that’s great! But the day your rounds start land on my grounds, then I start caring – a lot.

 

You get the point.  You got it before you read this far. Its likely that you even got it before you came to read this.

 

So, if you come up on a bunch of guys pissing in the big swimming pool where everyone else are spending their time, do you call them out on it* or tell yourself “nah, its probably lemonade”?

*) I was about to add “…and tell them to piss off”, but I caught myself.