<story><title>July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded</title><url>http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201507</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>Has anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched from &amp;quot;global warming doesn&amp;#x27;t exist so we don&amp;#x27;t have to do anything&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;global warming isn&amp;#x27;t caused by people so there is nothing we can do&amp;quot;?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sanderjd</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve always found it incredibly frustrating that &lt;i&gt;both&lt;/i&gt; sides focus so much on &amp;quot;is it caused by people&amp;quot;. It makes things personal, it sounds to many people like an accusation – &amp;quot;&lt;i&gt;you&amp;#x27;re&lt;/i&gt; ruining the world just by living your life&amp;quot; – which (understandably!) makes people defensive, and it&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;completely&lt;/i&gt; beside the point. There are only two relevant questions: 1. Is it happening? and 2. What can we do right now to fix it? The answer to (1) seems to be &amp;quot;yes&amp;quot;, but while I do hear lots of discussion about different answers to (2), I hear even more about all this stuff that&amp;#x27;s happened in the past and can&amp;#x27;t be changed. Don&amp;#x27;t get me wrong, it is definitely important for scientists to understand how our behavior impacts the climate, in order to make intelligent proposals about how to fix things, but it&amp;#x27;s purely a distraction in the policy discussion. Even if we determine that humans have had nothing to do with the looming crisis, we still need to figure out how to fix it, if we want to survive. If lived in an era with an impending but completely naturally occurring ice age, we (or, at least, many of us) would still be trying to figure out how to stop it, or survive it.</text></comment>
<story><title>July 2015 was warmest month ever recorded</title><url>http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/summary-info/global/201507</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jedberg</author><text>Has anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched from &amp;quot;global warming doesn&amp;#x27;t exist so we don&amp;#x27;t have to do anything&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;global warming isn&amp;#x27;t caused by people so there is nothing we can do&amp;quot;?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jellicle</author><text>And don&amp;#x27;t forget &amp;quot;global warming is inevitable now, so there&amp;#x27;s nothing we can do&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;In my experience a good Fox News segment can use all three of these, at the same time, and switch back and forth among them, with no cognitive dissonance apparent.  I don&amp;#x27;t think any of them are really being phased out, it&amp;#x27;s just that if any particular one is defeated in conversation, the arguer switches to one of the other arguments.&lt;p&gt;EDIT: Indeed, there are several HN comments in this thread to that effect.</text></comment>