Munted:
(1) adj. refers to the property of an object (or person) as broken, ruined, significantly damaged, disfigured or deformed, often to the extent that it is not reversible or repairable.
(2) adj. an extreme state of intoxication by way of drugs or alcohol such that the subject’s ability to perform basic tasks such as walking and talking are significantly impaired.
Source: Urban Dictionary
Have you ever met someone so munted they adamantly deny the earth’s climate is changing? They tend to justify this with arguments such as:
- Winter still exists
- New York isn’t underwater, so it can’t be happening
- Even if it were, only yuppie-liberal “intellectuals” would die so it’s not that bad
- Sun cycles
Or possibly:
- The earth is only 5000 years old, so your “science” is bullshit
If these arguments grind your gears as much as mine, then prepare to lube up.
I know that it feels about as difficult to reason with climate change deniers as it is to get turned on by someone wearing a Nixon mask, but the editors of The Evening Look are here to help. With bleeding edge techniques tested on our interns, we’ve discovered a slew of effective means by which to explain climate change to “independently minded folks,” aka “Head-asses.”
1. Take a statistics class
If your friend uses the argument that “it still gets cold in Michigan so how could the globe be getting warmer,” then I would strongly advise them to take a stats class. Within the first week or so they should learn about the concept of averages, assuming they don’t drop the class due to the syllabus being too hard. It is by learning this concept that your friend will hopefully realize that, if you take the aggregate of all temperatures on the globe, we can still have equally cold winters in Michigan while Indonesia increases in temperature causing the entire globe to warm.
Alternatively, if the concept of averages is too galaxy-brain for them, you can just start using the term “climate change” while they’re trying to figure out standard deviations and hope it confuses the fuck out of them. This is easily the most entertaining option.
2. Teach them about the diversity of New York
Many climate change deniers are those blessed to live in “Real America” (the middle of fucking nowhere), so the concept of a coast seems foreign and scary to them. Thus, they willingly believe the false narrative that the coasts are hedonistic orgies of liberals and Jews on Broadway. Now I am blessed to live in New York and, while all the above is true, I am ashamed to say that there are in fact degenerates in this city. If you start educating your friend about the glorious bastion of backwards-thinking that is Staten Island you may find them gaining a little sympathy for the East Coast and maybe making a couple friends. They may also be marginally more willing to fear rising sea levels, given that Staten island is probably going to be the first part of NYC to go. (Thank God)
3. Astronomy
Yes, I must admit that I had to ask my STEM-major friends about this one, but at least I checked with a reliable source unlike most deniers would. The sun does in fact have cyclical patterns of increased and decreased sunspot quantity, but the conclusion that sun cycles are causing our current warming is not only false but reveals that the skeptics do in fact believe that the earth is currently warming. The problem with this is that the current sunspot trends are showing a decline in activity, while the earth is still as hot as Ryan Gosling. If the deniers made it past averages in their statistics class, then they might be familiar with the concept of correlation, which hopefully means they should see that the solar cycles and global warming are not correlated and thus this argument is munted as hell. It’s so bad that scientists at Stanford had to dispel repeated miscalculations of data to show that “the apparent strong correlations displayed on these graphs have been obtained by incorrect handling of the physical data” (Damon, Laut 2004). Case fucking closed.
4. BuT tHe BiBlE saYs sO
The earth is not 6000 years old. So help me God if I hear one more “biblically literate” fuck cite this as “proof” that modern earth science is bullshit I will mount a new crusade. Given the thousands of years of archeological evidence, million-year-old fossils, and the billion years of geological data we have, the earth is definitely NOT 6000 years old, and Adam and Eve definitely WERE monkeys. To those who still feel that their opinions are stronger than hurricane Harvey: even if the earth was only 600 years old, we’d still have fucked it up so bad due to our ancestors undying addiction to gasoline and cows. I honestly don’t know how to convince someone who believes in this to do otherwise, as that might only be achieved through non-consensual CTE.
In conclusion, the excuses for ignoring the slow death of our earth stem from the common root of attempting to justify the past instead of looking at the here and now or *gasp* looking toward the future. The fact of the matter is that the earth is dying and it’s our fault. We will also be one of the first species to go in the long run, so fixing this is wholly in our best interest. If convincing non-believers of this fact was as simple as enrolling them in a stats class and taking them on a trip to Staten Island, then we would be in a much better situation right now.
I am excited to live in a world where significant number of people across the aisle recognize the importance of stopping climate change, but there still remain certain individuals who are too blinded by ego, religion or money to see the truth. This is a problem. What we need in these times is to have enough character to take ownership of what we’ve done and have the courage to move forward together to fix this. Debates may be had on how to go about this process but should never be had on why.
– B. Bunny
My citation because I am competent:
Damon, Paul E., and Peter Laut. “Pattern of Strange Errors Plagues Solar Activity and Terrestrial Climate Data.” Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union 85, no. 39 (September 2004): 370-74. doi:10.1029/2004eo390005.
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