some people say the party divide in the US is based on gender. which may be true to some degree but really I think the true divide is intelligence

republicans have literally just become the stupid party

(source: my ass)

A sizable portion of the population would convince themselves that the sky is green, if that was their party's official position.

And a sizable portion of politicians, of a certain moral character, would take the official position that the sky is green if someone paid them enough.

On an unrelated note, I wonder which party is heavily sponsored by the oil and gas industry?

Well, science doesn't care about their opinions.

And when you watched the clown beat the defenseless mime to death you saw it laugh. Then, the clown called the mimes mom's dirty names, waved a hitler flag and shot the mime. Afterwards calling him a removed and gesturing for his widow to call him later. He then slapped you in the face with a rubber circus dink, called you Ugly Stan and you called him by his first name asking for another.

After all of that, what do you think caused the clown to do such a terrible thing?

GoOp: "I don't think it was the clown."

nore worried about the fact that of those that answered that global warming isn't occurring, only 50% still think that it doesn't exist in a different question. did the other 50% just suddenly reconsider?

GOP's good at brainwashing stupid and / or dysfunctional people. It's also good at attracting one issue voters who only care about guns, abortion, immigration, low taxes, etc.

Many people (if not most) are not that smart or caring. If you give them the one thing they want, they'll support you. Many people (if not most) are also bigots, and hate one group or another and you won't get them to change their minds by any means.

Republicans know this (they have psychological and media experts on their team who are smart, unlike their voting base) and use their knowledge to manipulate people with lies, and it works, just due to how human nature is.

Democrats also know this, which is why they don't seriously fight Republicans by compromising on some of their principles or also pandering just enough to get elected in purple / weak red areas. It's honestly just a power sharing agreement to keep things split 50 / 50 so the corpo donors can get what they want done while the average person gets distracted by the very public binary fight these 2 "parties" are always engaging in.

The only real answer is ranked choice voting and the formation of 2 additional parties. One that's fiscally and environmentally liberal and socially conservative, and another that's socially liberal, but fiscally liberal, and hopefully environmentally at least moderate.

People forget that most places on the internet are left-leaning or flat out liberal bubbles. Especially FOSS communities like Lemmy / Kbin. If you go out and engage people in real life, it's easy to quickly realize that people will keep voting in climate denying, polluting jackasses so they can keep their guns, or make sure abortion's illegal, etc.

Our best hope is young GOP voters who believe in climate change and want to do something about it, because they're growing up in this world, and will have to live in it too. Hopefully that Hawaii fire made even the rich realize that shit like that could happen to them during their vacation, and it'll make them give a shit. Anyhow, our best bet is to try to make deals with the next generation of Republicans, and also introduce ranked choice voting which can create parties and coalitions built around compromise and getting things done as opposed to ideological purity tests, which keep losing us the house and / or senate, even if we win the presidency.

I'd like to point out that this gets weirder when you realize that logically, they'd only ask someone if oil and gas companies are responsible for climate change if the individual previously answered "yes" or "don't know" to the question, "is global warming occuring".

I’ve known a guy for like 20 years, currently in his 60s, who firmly believes that anthropogenic climate change is entirely false.

He has a bachelors degree in physics, a bachelors degree in mathematics, and a Ph.D in economics. He’s written a handful of high level Econ textbooks, he’s worked as a professor off and on at 3 or 4 respected universities here in the US. He was most recently employed at a supply chain consulting firm, making an ungodly amount of money.

By all accounts, he’s an extremely smart, well-educated, well-read guy. But holy shit if that boomer isn’t constantly reposting the most transparently fake anti-science nonsense on his Facebook page. Think, “New research proves that Climate Change is a liberal myth” - The Religious Conservative Storm.

Just demonstrates how it doesn’t matter how educated someone is if they don’t think critically about information that confirms their expectations.

They mainly blame it on the sun or they just see it as "natural warming" just the way ice ages have existed.

For example: here's one of Germany's leading right wing populists (and inbred nazi descendant wannabe noble) Beatrix von Storch saying: "Well maybe we need to tell the sun to shine less!" when being asked about how to tackle climate change.

There are far top few meaningful differences between Republicans and Democrats, but stuff like this shows the base (not the leaders) of one party is at least amenable to reality, and the other largely isn't.

Concrete and steel production accounts for around 20% of co2 emissions, so it’s not only oil and gas companies (although it is still mostly from oil and gas companies).

Literally anything done to any fossil fuel lobbyist or executive is an act of collective self-defense.

why is the "climate change doesn't exist" bar for the second question so much smaller than the "no" bar for the first question? am I an idiot or does that just not make any sense?

Death to America

All I know is that I keep my oven and stove running with the AC on and the windows open. I'm doing my part by wasting as much energy as possible. Wait… did I miss the point? /s