Is Climate Change Even Real A Social Media Experiment
when the pandemic hit
my entire country went into a lockdown
unfortunately we
had to give a paid leave to the house
help and the burden of the chores came
upon my mother and i
it was fine for the first month both of
us enjoyed doing our jobs
and the whole house was clean however
the lockdown was extended
multiple times and over time we started
getting fed up with our chose
and started doing them a little less
frequently
it was still clean enough for us to live
there but the house kept getting dirtier
with each passing week
frustrated by the mess that we lived in
my mother and i
started fighting more frequently
becoming inherently
unhappy we kept passing our chores to
each other
finally last month my grandmother
offered to host
my toddler brother and i for a week and
my mother used that opportunity
to get rid of the clutter in our house
and go back to blog zero
it was on returning that i realized
amidst the gradual progression of
uncleanness in our house
we never really realized how dirty it
had become till we cleaned it up
now during the lockdown locked inside
the four walls of my house
i spent most of my time in the virtual
world the majority of which
is admiring others perfect lives on
social media sites
however i received the shock of my life
in a place where
no person should ever go the youtube
comment section
after an elaborate argument with a
gentleman from kentucky
i was introduced to a social group that
i thought was an urban myth
people who did not believe in climate
change coming from an
environment where climate change was
taught to us from the age of seven
i found it difficult to believe that
people could bluntly deny scientific
facts
then the teenage sleuth went on an
undercover operation
under the fake persona of monsieur ross
eric
and played with the algorithm of various
social media platforms
to truly understand the other side of
the coin
the way social media works is that a
person sees
more of the type of posts which they
engage with
so i purposefully engaged with posts
that disproved or discredited climate
change
i noted down a few of their beliefs and
i am going to present
them with a little paraphrasing just to
remove colorful and descriptive language
that most sane people would find
derogatory pay attention to the parts
that are in green
and the parts in yellow disclaimer
irrespective of how eccentric or
exaggerated they may sound
none of this is made up by me so here we
go
number one climate change is a
conspiracy theory
that one political party created to
control the parliament
there was a historic story that followed
it and the discourse
just accelerated downhill from there the
problem with this theory
is that human beings are not one note
characters in a badly written movie
just because a controversial person
endorses something
does not mean that the thing is wrong
adolf hitler endorsed vegetarianism
during the war
that does not insinuate that
vegetarianism was a conspiracy theory
made by adolf hitler
debatable human beings can often support
positive things
number two the climate change that we
see right now
is a natural cyclic process and human
beings have little to no effect on it
the thing to notice with that statement
is that the first part of it is actually
true
climate change is a cyclic process but
the changes are slow
and subtle if the natural climate cycle
was a pleasant family drive
up a hill the current climate change
scene is a whole
roller coaster ride according to nasa
atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were
less than 280 parts per million before
the industrial phase
370 parts per million in 2000 and is 412
parts per million now
to give some context to these random
numbers carbon dioxide levels are higher
now than any time in the past 800
000 years number three
global warming and carbon dioxide levels
only have a high
correlation to each other and no cause
effect relationship has ever been
established between the two
sometimes you have to refute a fact with
a fact
if you think that a link or a
correlation between global warming and
carbon dioxide levels
is not as serious as a causation let me
remind you that the same analogy is
applicable to another pair of phenomena
there is indeed a very high correlation
between smoking tobacco
and lung cancer but there is no cause
effect relationship there either
so we can smoke our lungs away with no
fear of cancer
just like we are smoking the atmosphere
to ruin our planet’s lungs
the problem is that we can have multiple
pairs of lungs experimented on to
establish that cause-effect relationship
but we only have a single planet number
four
scientists created climate change and it
is their headache to solve it
well if you think hard enough about it
that does make sense it’s not like the
world
heating up and making the planet
uninhabitable directly affects any of
us honestly let us assume this was
real despite the lack of any evidence at
all
what could possibly be better than the
global society uniting to save our
planet
number five people are so gullible how
can they fall for the climate change
trap when even scientists don’t agree on
it
this argument is built on the fact that
three percent of scientists
do not agree with climate change three
percent
how do you ignore the 97 scientists who
do agree
that human causes are significant and
only follow the opinions of those three
percent of them who deny it
look how thin the slice of the pie is
number six and the most common one any
effort made by the human race is futile
because all it takes is one volcanic
eruption to nullify our efforts
while there is no quantitative measure
of how much human efforts have helped
curb climate change
this bold statement confidently states
it
for argument’s sake if we assume
that our efforts were indeed nullified
the fact that we
may have nullified a volcano which could
cause changes in weather patterns for
many years is a massive achievement in
itself
and that volcano was nullified by the
efforts of the few
imagine what the many can achieve
imagine what would have happened
had we not taken those efforts at all
according to the ted speech template
yes there is a template and no it is not
rigid
i am supposed to give a call to action
from this whole incident
but there is no human way that i can
condense it to one
takeaway here is one thing whenever
people wish to spread misinformation
there is always one piece of news that
is true
and baits you to believe the rest of it
this was evident
in the political party supporting
climate change climate change being a
cyclic process
there being no established cause effect
relationship scientists working on
climate change
scientists disagreeing with climate
change and
volcanic eruptions influencing the
climate
however the misinformation that relied
on this information
is indeed difficult to get a hold of
moreover
another pattern that i noticed is the
fault in political opinion
building people need to decide their
favorite politician
to suit their opinions and ideologies
instead of forming their opinions and
their whole belief system based on their
favorite political entity
ignoring all my counter-arguments for a
second
what if the other side is correct how
big of a loss would we be at
as nihilistic as it may sound there is a
slim possibility
that everything is meaningless and what
is the worst thing that could happen
to answer that question i worked year
long with
top tier scientists to get a simulated
image of a world
where climate change is not real and we
still take efforts
i’m just kidding however if climate
change is indeed real
and we don’t do anything about it covet
19
may just be the beginning of the end
there is a real possibility
that the novel coronavirus is one of the
pathogens
ancient and unknown that are frozen in
permafrost in the glaciers of the poles
once those melt a disaster of unknown
proportions may take place
finally i would like to urge everyone
out there to be independent thinkers
think for yourselves do not believe
either side blindly
observe what is happening about you and
see what is happening in the world
around you
listen to what different scientists have
observed the improvement that we have
made
till today is just the fruit of the
efforts of a few
imagine what we as a society can
possibly achieve with a united effort
let us clean the earth and finally
realize
how polluted our living conditions had
actually become
consider this your formal invitation to
bring small changes
a small change by many is better than
big changes by a few
and this change starts with you thank
you