Anyone who's still reading something that devoid of any reference to the mass of precise accumulated studies and evidence is beyond discourse, climate denial has become part of their core identity. So send them the latest ipcc report and don't bother with discussions. Also flip low lying Florida housing to them if you can: easy money.

> Also flip low lying Florida housing to them if you can: easy money.

I wonder if there is a reasonable way to short-sell real estate on multi-year timeline (ie beyond shorting REITs with costal exposure).

Inform your neighbor on who the author is: http://www.populartechnology.net/2013/10/who-is-willis-esche...

He has no background in science. Why would you listen to him?

Greta Thunberg was a 16yo with no background in science, why was she given the world stage? Who paid for that anyhow?

Bill Nye has no background in science, he was a mechanical engineer become actor. Why would you listen to him?

AOC has no background in anything scientific or engineering or public policy... do you get the point yet?

People listen to who they want to believe in.

Don’t pretend that “both sides” don’t do this.

They did get the "sciency" bits right, though. They just refer to the IPCC. Your guy's arguments are "here's a bit of data they haven't bothered to fit." I can't even make out if the presented data has any basis in fact.

And England was pretty fucking cold in the 17th century. And after a particularly grim winter in 1709, the thaw "brought widespread flooding. This was a major catastrophe for a largely agricultural economy. The crops were ruined, grain prices soared sixfold and many communities were faced with starvation. Per capita gross domestic product dropped by 23%, and did not fully recover for another 10 years, all from a single terrible winter." (quote from the Guardian).

> They did get the "sciency" bits right, though

So you are willing to eschew any principals of respecting credentials because you want to agree with a predetermined result? Doesn’t sound at all like science to me.

The IPCC report has scientific underpinnings; it's not a predetermined result, but the reflection of continuing research. It's about the best we can do. Of course it's an approximation with errors, such is the fate of all models.

But to just point at a few short-comings, and do so with blatant disrespect for the context, and then conclude everything it says must be false is what I'd call unscientific. The linked article on wattsupwiththat doesn't even try to provide an alternative explanation. There have been skeptics who came up with reasonable objections and alternatives, but that article isn't one of them. It does falsely represent the 1.5°C threshold issue, though, to the point of manipulative dishonesty.

Steven Sloman at Brown University argues there is good evidence showing when people are asked to explain something in depth, their mind can be changed. Basically, it hinges on the idea of "the illusion of explanatory depth". People don't actually understand concepts as well as they think they do. If they come to that realization on their own (with your help, of course) they may wobble on their convictions, at which point you can point them toward better, more empirically driven conclusions.

So, in the case of your neighbor, ask them to explain their anti-climate change beliefs in depth, in a non-confrontational way. "Oh that's interesting, how does that work?". Kind of a 5-why approach. Hopefully as they dig in they realize, "Hey, I don't actually understand this very well." At which point, you point them to strong counterfactuals to their beliefs.

Right--and part of the epistemic closure that they're in is that they have been repeatedly and consistently exposed to memes that enable that kind of whataboutism. Often they're so detached from any sort of objective reality that they will bring even a prepared and knowledgeable speaker to a halt because the only response is "what are you even talking about?".

This is the crux of the ideological problem we're facing: one "side" might be wrong and one "side" makes shit up and the equivalence has been drawn into the mushy middle's brains that pulling people out of the muck requires probably more time and effort than any one person can manage.

A popular rebuttal to the medieval warm period observation is to claim that it wasn't actually warmer...

I can only trust your assertion if he has been certified as a hack and kook by an accredited institution.