40 Pics That Show Climate Change Is No Joke

"To me, the biggest challenge isn’t converting those who continue to deny anthropogenic climate change—it’s how to best translate growing acceptance of anthropogenic climate change into political and legislative action. I think that there are a lot of people who now believe that anthropogenic climate change is real, but feel powerless to do anything about it," Dr. Pierre said.

We all have a part to play in saving Planet Earth. However, action on an individual scale is minuscule and needs to be supplemented by multinational corporations radically changing their business models.

"While we can all do some small part as consumers, the reality is that real change has to come from the fossil fuel industry acting against its immediate self-interests in order to steer us away from future disaster," the UCLA professor told Bored Panda. Dr. Pierre believes that companies that contribute to the climate crisis the most are very likely aware of what they're doing but haven't admitted to it yet.

"Like the tobacco industry, there’s good evidence that Big Oil believes that anthropogenic climate change is a reality, but refuses to acknowledge it publicly. That’s not true denial, it’s deception. Which means that change won’t happen unless there’s legislative action on a global scale. If we don’t demand that as citizens and voters, it won’t happen."

According to Dr. Pierre from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, there are different types of climate change denialism. Some of them have different causes. The professor was kind enough to walk us through it all. 

"To start with, research has also shown that attitudes about climate change are related to 'naïve realism' based on our own personal experience of the weather. We tend to be insensitive to data from around the world or what’s going on with glacial melts in favor of what we experience in our own lives."

He explained: "Personally experiencing record-breaking heatwaves and flooding tends to increase belief in climate change, but cold winters can have the opposite effect."

What's more, we're less aware of small changes that happen over long periods of time. Dr. Pierre noted that the comparison to boiling frogs is actually very accurate. "And since we all experience a diurnal variation of at least 20 degrees F’ on any given day, it’s hard to imagine why climate change scientists are saying that a predicted increase of just a few degrees of mean global temperature could spell mass disaster for the planet."

More and more people believe that climate change is real. Unfortunately, there's a hitch. Not everyone believes in the idea that it is 'anthropogenic,' caused by human beings by burning fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. The UCLA professor says that this idea is less widely accepted. And it's all due to a misconception that there's supposed widespread disagreement between scientists on this matter.

"This is partially due to lack of awareness about just how many climate change scientists agree that anthropogenic climate change is a reality and the associated misperception that there’s disagreement on this subject. Reviews of published literature, as well as polls, have consistently shown that consensus among climate change scientists about anthropogenic climate change is 97% or higher," Dr. Pierre noted.

"Although it’s true that some 'scientists' have gone on record refuting anthropogenic climate change, studies have shown that the more expertise on the subject of climate change, the more consensus. In other words, while some who refute climate change might have a science background, most aren’t actually experts—they aren’t climate change scientists who are actively working and publishing research in the field. Note also that the idea that anthropogenic climate change isn’t settled science is a deliberate disinformation strategy that has been funded by the fossil fuel industry going back decades."