Here We Go: How To Talk To Your Climate Cult Family Members

Just walk away. Give their capitalistic gifts to other people. Do not allow them to eat meat. Turn the heating vents off in their room. Only allow them a 3 minute shower. But, of course, this is really climate cultists dealing with their “denier” uncle

How to talk to climate change-denying relatives at Christmas

Ah Christmas. Food. Presents. Films. And those relatives you’ve managed to avoid for the past 364 days.

There’s no denying it, Christmas is fraught with familial tensions – whether it’s your 98-year-old granny constantly setting off Alexa or that annoying uncle who thinks Donald Trump ‘has some good ideas’.

Throw some climate change into the mix, and things can start to get explosive.

So, to help you knock back some of the more common myths spouted by climate change deniers, the team at the Rainforest Alliance have put together some ready-made answers to shut down any potential arguments and keep the peace at the dinner table.

Let’s be honest, 99% of the time the relatives won’t bring up the climate crisis scam, because they do not care. Unless they are trying to wind up their climate cult relatives, where they lean over to another relative and go “hey, watch this, it’s button time.” Though, you might get a little talk now about not being forced into an EV and how the Fascists are trying to make Everyone Else take the train. Otherwise, no one really cares, and has other things to talk about.

Fortunately

Climate anxiety: Why we won’t be flying home for Christmas

For most of us, there isn’t much that would keep us away from family over the festive period.

But some people, like activists Aliza Ayaz and Sean Currie, have made the choice to put the environment above everything else.

They won’t be seeing their relatives this year after they decided to drastically limit or stop flying altogether.

Aliza tells BBC Newsbeat thinking about flights brings “the anxiety of ‘Oh my God, I can’t do it because of the carbon footprint’.

OK, so, 2 doomsday cultists are forging flying. Whatever. Of course, she had no problem flying to Dubai for COP28 (where I be she saw her parents), and, um, she’s Muslim, she doesn’t celebrate Christmas.

Skip ‘Die Hard’ this Christmas and watch these 5 films to better understand the climate crisis

The holiday season is, for many, a time for cherished rituals and down time, including watching movies like It’s a Wonderful LifeElf or Die Hard.

But this season is also a time for reflection on our lives and the world around us beset by conflict — and the worsening climate crisis.

Here are five film recommendations to help combine ritual and reflection. These films are analyzed in a forthcoming special issue of the Canadian Journal of Film Studies on “Climate Change and Cinema” that I co-edited with my colleague André Loiselle, a professor of film studies at St. Thomas University.

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21 Responses to “Here We Go: How To Talk To Your Climate Cult Family Members”

  1. CT Ginger says:

    The climate certainly is changing, it has always been in the process of changing, It may actually be improving, I cannot say. There is no amount of taxation or government action that will affect the climate much despite the hot air emanating from government everywhere. Relax, it’ll all work out.

    • Zachriel says:

      CT Ginger: The climate certainly is changing, it has always been in the process of changing

      What will those crazy scientists come up with next?!

      The problem is that humans are having a significant impact on the climate, causing it to warm at a faster sustained rate than at any time since human settlement began, with warming expected to continue for decades.

  2. Dana says:

    The very lovely Amanda Marcotte told us, in 2019, how her POSSLQ and she would not head home to El Paso for Christmas:

    For me, it’s personal. My family is mostly a bunch of Trump voters, sucked up into a vortex of propaganda and lies, unable even to admit basic facts about the world that run contrary to what their tribal politics dictate. That sort of thing is stressful on a normal day, but makes a mockery of the idea of familial love and harmony.

    This isn’t a matter of political differences that can be set aside for the sake of the holiday. This is about not being able to make merry with people who think nothing of voting for a man who is on tape bragging about sexual assault, a man who cheats in elections and runs concentration camps on the border. A man whose racism has inspired a wave of terrorist violence, including in my hometown of El Paso, Texas.

    To be sure, my partner and I had already, for the sake of our sanity, given up visiting relatives back in Texas for the holidays. Getting to my mother’s place in rural Texas is a nightmare at normal times — a flight to Dallas, followed by a smaller plane to a four-gate airport, and then driving an hour and a half to her house — and during the holidays it’s pretty much hell on earth. The one time we’ve made the trek after moving to the East Coast, a snowstorm grounded our flight for four days, and we ended up renting a car and drive from Cincinnati all the way to New York. After that, we told our families that we loved them, but we would be celebrating Christmas from the safety of our own home.

    But now the part about “celebrating” has fallen off over the past few years. It seems a little silly to make a big thing out of a holiday that just reminds me how my own family and so many other people in America have been sucked up into the Trump cult. I’d rather just read a book or binge-watch some TV.

  3. Jay Dee says:

    OK. You know so much about Climate Change. Explain how humans caused the Pliocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) when humans didn’t exist at the time?

    Or another.
    If carbon dioxide is bad, why do greenhouses increase carbon dioxide to promote plant growth?

    Or.
    Why is 1.5 degrees temperature increase bad when paleoclimatologists conclude the temperature was 5 degrees warmer 2,000 years ago?

    Please explain.

    • Zachriel says:

      Jay Dee: Explain how humans caused the Pliocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) when humans didn’t exist at the time?

      Scientists have traced the PETM to outgassing of carbon due to volcanic activity over a period of about 20,000 years. The carbon was eventually sequestered by burial of organic matter. See Gutjahr et al., Very large release of mostly volcanic carbon during the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, Nature 2017; McInerney & Wing, The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum: A Perturbation of Carbon Cycle, Climate, and Biosphere with Implications for the Future, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 2011.

      The historical event shows the importance of carbon to the global climate.

      Jay Dee: Why is 1.5 degrees temperature increase bad when paleoclimatologists conclude the temperature was 5 degrees warmer 2,000 years ago?

      The current warming trend is higher and faster than anything in the last 24,000 years.

  4. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    Global warming didn’t come up last night in our gathering. Nor did politics. Or religion.

  5. Elwood P. Dowd says:

    What makes you believe that humans caused the PETM some 55 million years ago? You seem cognizant of the fact that human beans are fairly recent species. Anyway, the PETM was a “rapid” (50,000 years!) temperature increase superimposed on a broader 20 million year warming period.

    It’s a common (and intentional!) misperception that burning fossil fuels is the ONLY way that atmospheric CO2 increases. This is just one of the specious and cynical arguments that science deniers proffer.

    The men and women who study such things (scientists!) attribute the “rapid” warming called PETM primarily to volcanism (CO2).

    One of the leading candidates for the cause of the observed carbon cycle disturbances and global warming is volcanic activity associated with the North Atlantic Igneous Province (NAIP), which is believed to have released more than 10,000 gigatons of carbon during the PETM based on the relatively isotopically heavy values of the initial carbon addition. Mercury anomalies during the PETM point to massive volcanism during the event. On top of that, increases in ?199Hg show intense volcanism was concurrent with the beginning of the PETM. Osmium isotopic anomalies in Arctic Ocean sediments dating to the PETM have been interpreted as evidence of a volcanic cause of this hyperthermal.

    Although it upsets Mr Teach when scientists refer to “carbon”, note it encompasses both CO2 and methane (CH4).

    Of course, the unsaid part of the science denier “argument” is that why haven’t volcanism (or orbital changes, or ocean current changes etc) been investigated??? The answer is that, “They have but the evidence supports CO2 being the most likely cause, by far”.

    We hope science deniers appreciate the difficulty in studying the proxies that help explain the Earth’s 4 billion year history.

    If CO2 is bad…? No one claims CO2 is “bad”, just that humans burning fossil fuels, releasing CO2, is causing the Earth to warm.

    5C warmer 2000 years ago… It was? Please explain.

  6. Jl says:

    The climate change much faster earlier in the Holocene. DansgaardOeschger events they were called. Abrupt changes of 10C or more occurred in the span of decades, recorded at over 170 locations worldwide.

    • Zachriel says:

      Zachriel: The current warming trend is higher and faster than anything in the last 24,000 years.

      Jl: The climate change much faster earlier in the Holocene. DansgaardOeschger events they were called.

      Dansgaard-Oeschger events are not global. They are warming in the North Atlantic with a push-and-pull pattern between the North and South Atlantics, probably due to perturbations in the Atlantic circulation pattern. See Rasmussen et al., North Atlantic warming during Dansgaard-Oeschger events synchronous with Antarctic warming and out-of-phase with Greenland climate, Nature Scientific Reports 2016.

      • Jl says:

        Sure they were-Stefan Ramstorf noted alarmist: “the dramatic DansgaardOeschger events were indeed genuine and also large scale climate changes, not limited to only Greenland. Since then, these events have been further confirmed by data from more than 170 locations, including New Zealand and Antarctica”.
        The National Academies Press-2002: “Large abrupt climate changes have repeatedly affected much of all of the earth, reaching as much as 10C in ten years. We do not yet understand abrupt climate changes well enough to predict them. The models used to predict future climate changes and their impacts aren’t especially good at simulating the size, speed and extent of past changes, casting uncertainties on assessments of future changes”. Richard Alley, Jonathan Overpeck, Raymond Pierre Humbert, Peter Rhines, Thomas Stocker, Lynne Talley, J. Wallace, Jochem Marotzke, William Nordhaus.

      • Zachriel says:

        The effects of the abrupt climate changes were out-of-phase responses in the two hemispheres (Blunier 1998; Landais 2006), which indicates that they are not primarily changes in global mean temperature. Changes in global mean temperature are much smaller than the localized effects mentioned above, on the order of 0.5-0.9°C. Even then, much of the change in global mean surface temperature is due to changes in ocean heat content, i.e. internal variability, though some change in total heat content occurs due to changes in oceanic CO2, as well as changes in ice albedo.

        • Jl says:

          From NASA- “D-O events had a global footprint. During cold phases large areas of North America and Eurasia became colder and drier. Benson 1996, Genty 2003, Wagner 2010, Asmerom 2010. “A southward shift in the tropical rainbelt caused drier conditions in the NH while moistening many parts of the SH.” Brook 2005. The NASA article then lists studies used for the global footprint. Bond 1992 North Atlantic, Grootes 1993 Greenland, Benson 1996 California, Allen 1999 Italy, Wang 2001 China, Genty 2003 France, Brooke 2005 West Antarctica, Cruz 2005 Brazil, Leduc 2005 Pacific Ocean, Asmerom 2010 New Mexico, Kanner 2012 Peru, to name just a few added to the 170 locations mentioned by Ramstorf, who said they were “large scale climate changes”, as opposed to localized events

        • Zachriel says:

          Jl: “large scale climate changes”, as opposed to localized events

          Ignoring the comment doesn’t constitute an argument. The question concerned the claim that the current change in global mean temperatures is larger than anything in the last 24,000 years. You pointed to Dansgaard-Oeschger events as a counter-example.

          While Dansgaard-Oeschger events caused large scale climate changes, the change in global mean temperature was an order smaller than certain regional effects. The current change in mean global temperatures exceeds that of Dansgaard-Oeschger events, and the trend is expected to continue over the next several decades.

          • Zachriel says:

            By the way Dansgaard-Oeschger events show how rapidly climate can change under certain circumstances. While Dansgaard-Oeschger events are unlikely in the current climate, they can’t be ruled out completely.

            Also, because Dansgaard-Oeschger events are similar in scale to the current warming trend, they allow us to constrain greenhouse forcing.

  7. drowningpuppies says:

    Skip “Die Hard”? On Christmas?

    I don’t think so.

    Bwaha! Lolgfy https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_cool.gif

  8. drowningpuppies says:

    The Earth’s Temperature

    Currently: 57.95°F/14.42°C
    Deviation: 0.75°F/0.42°C
    Stations processed last hour: 54817
    Last station processed: Winner, United States
    Update time: 2023-12-25 23:13:43 UTC

    https://temperature.global/

    https://www.thepiratescove.us/wp-content/plugins/wp-monalisa/icons/wpml_cool.gif

  9. H says:

    All international flights, with a few exceptions have had a carbon offset charge since 2022
    You probably didn’t notice it
    It is only about 2% of the total ticket price

    • Genocide Joe the commie says:

      Exactly who gets that money? More theft it’s a tax. Frankly I think the DNC should be charged all those offset prices. Their cult let them support it.

  10. h says:

    Greenland covers only 1% of the Earth’s surface. I am unsure how much we should extrapolate from this one site.

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