Could you be with a partner who doesn't believe in climate change?

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DH doesn't really think it's all that bad. He thinks we should be recyling more and caring for the planet as makes sense and is just the right thing to do - but that climate change as a disaster is an exaggeration and not based in science. And that people are utilising it for their own agenda, woke brigade & so on.

We have young kids.

AIBU to find this position increasingly problematic?

People are going to say people are allowed different opinions but he seems geniunely unconcerned about future of planet for our kids - and I find that hard to swallow.

My DH is like this but he got a first class degree from Oxford so I'm not sure the "thick as mince" comments are valid. He's a good guy to me and DD.

He’s not stopping you or the kids from recycling. He’s not encouraging you to create more pollution. He’s entitled to an opinion. I hate this move we’ve made culturally where anyone who reads wider than the accepted opinion or asks further questions is deemed
as stupid.

There are loads of scientists, DH is one though I don't think I have ever mentioned him on a thread in a science way, DS did a physics degree so also science, why would people not be married to scientists.

The earth has had 7 major ice ages ans many little ones, whatever we do isnt going to change this.

this years weather all over the europe is normal
summer if anything cold in scandinavia,baltics and the uk. The fires ir greece were arson. Stoo getting carried away by red colored maps,they used to be green with same temps 10 yrs ago.

@DontEatCrisps "Sad that the people pretending to be married to scientists don’t have the confidence to pretend to be scientists themselves."

Don't be silly. Women can't be scientists!

@DontEatCrisps im a half scientist

Not really seeing the problem since he still thinks caring for the planet is important. My Mum doesn't think it's real, it's annoying but it doesn't really affect our relationship.

Ha ha ha! Favourite comment by a mile

Blimey you're naive

Do you know anything about what subsidies there are for 'green' energy and where its going and how effective it is?

Is that aimed at me? If it is, I've been very open in my 10+ years on MN about my DH being a scientist. Lots of MNetters have had direct contact with him for advice due to his field (nuclear chemistry and industrial recycling). It's not my fault if that makes you feel inadequate.

It's important to remember that being one sort of scientist doesn't mean you know anything about another sort of scientist. My dp(to join the club) has a PhD in Physics. Doesn't help him in the Chemistry or biology rounds in University Challenge where I, with a PhD in English literature, have as good a chance of being right!

After the Covid reporting I am sceptical of all mass media reports in particular the BBC who receive funding from all sorts of external Corporations which compromise/bias their reporting. I make sure I check other sources and assume all intelligent people would do the same (as my Cambridge educated DH also does). OP's DH seems very sensible.

Absolutely. It's the climate scientists we need to trust. Maybe they're all crying out to tell us that really it's not man-made, but they're all scared (99% of them) to write papers about it. None of them want to write a book about it or start a journal about it. They must be a v docile bunch.

He isn’t wrong. Most media outlets are exaggerating the climate change issue in one way or another because the more clicks they get, the more money they make. So a sensationalist catchy title gets clicks. I’ve also read biographies of journalists who have said they were forced to falsify facts to fit a narrative that the editor or owner of the media outlet wanted to push.

The whole Gulf Stream collapse, the world will end recent articles are a clear example of climate doomism.

Which, is worse than climate denial because the psychological impact of despair is people stop being energy efficient, they stop caring about the planet and they start viewing life as a cash and grab, make hay while the sun shines every one for themself exercise.

Could you be with a partner who doesn't believe in climate change?

Yes, absolutely.

Could I be with a virtue signalling climate change bore who can't deal with anyone else having a different opinion to them. Definitely not.

This has made me remember that DP is a neuroscientist, I must ask him his views on the climate crisis.

I didn’t “read” it anywhere these are bald facts. And it is my opinion so many people are pissed off at JSO that yes they will vote for the party that is going to stop those twats and that means set backs on the green movement. Caused by JSO. If JSO had not done their idiotic shenanigans that pumped tonnes more CO2 in the air, worsening climate change, the PM would likely not have felt a need to take a stand against them and by proxy everything they claim to stand for (but don’t really).

If you look at our record in terms of fighting climate change as a county, there is no party more green than the other so this isn’t a Tory vs Labour thing. The PM’s u-turn isn’t to get on over on labour at all. It’s all about being tough on eco-fascists that are crippling the capital and various refineries and major depots around the country- and that gets the votes from everyone pissed off at JSO.

It was primarily inspired by EmilyBrontesGhost, who has taken a break from posting anti-vax stuff on one of the covid threads to come here and explain to everyone how science funding works (not sure whether she's actually claimed to be married to a scientist, to be fair).

It's just such a weak and spurious appeal to authority and one which often crops up on threads on subjects I'm an expert in- "well, my husband is an X and he says..." followed by some garbled, half-understood thing. And it's so easy to lie about- after all, no one can question the poster because it's not her who knows anything.

It's very striking on this thread how many people are claiming to be married to scientists who are all apparently climate sceptics, and yet there's no one claiming to be a scientist who's a climate sceptic herself. It's odd. Perhaps it's partly that people are happier to claim authority on behalf of a non-expert spouse than that spouse would be to claim authority for himself (there's someone up the thread presenting her geologist husband as an expert, ffs- hard to imagine a geologist joining a debate on climate change by announcing "well, I'm a geologist..." as if that carried any weight). Partly it's people making stuff up.

Yes. For example, I see people thinking books like “Uninhabitable Planet” as scientific fact regarding climate change & the state of the planet, that it is a peer reviewed reference book written by a qualified climatologist when it isn’t.

It was a popular science book published by a journalist who dabbled in climate change for a couple years before deciding to cash in by writing a sensationalist climate doomism book that cherry picks and misstates the actual science while going on on wild speculations that he peddles as ‘scientific consensus’ when it’s not- it’s his own imaginings. Popular science books don’t have to be peer reviewed. They don’t have to be factual. They don’t have to not be misleading. The only requirement is that they be not entirely fictional.

It would depend on their reasons and their agenda. If their point is that the climate has constantly changed, that's fine. If they don't care about climate change, that's fine. If they think that climate change is part of a global Jewish conspiracy to take over the world and that incidentally 9/11 and the moon landings never happened, and JFK wasn't only not shot, he never even existed, that would be a problem because the climate change opinion is part of a pattern of them either being an idiot or a total twat.

I don't think the narrative surrounding climate change is very helpful. It's pushed on us that it's our fault but that we can improve things by changing our behaviour. This is unhelpful because it's not true, nothing we do as individuals will make a big enough difference. Nothing we could do as an entire country would make a big enough difference. Only extreme radical measures like eliminating several billion people (and the "right" people, those in countries with far worse climate changing emissions than us) would make a difference and that idea isn't acceptable. Once you start talking about genocide, climate change seems like a much smaller deal.

That's the thing. People don't want to accept that they can't make a difference. They're arrogant enough to assume that because they want to make a difference, because we need to make a difference, that it must somehow be possible to make that difference. It's not, not without taking obscene measures resulting in the destruction of huge numbers of people and entire countries.

We'd be better off long term to embrace climate change and work on developing things to help us cope with it - shields to deflect the sun's heat back into space, coastal defences to cope with rising sea levels, the idea I have to dig a massive fucking hole in the Sahara and flooding it with seawater to lower sea levels.

If only protesters would take out their anger on the people who could potentially make a difference - the scientists - humanity might actually have some hope. But tell a Just Stop Oil thug to demonstrate outside the homes of prominent scientists instead of irritating the general public and they'll look at you contemptly and go and block another person trying to get to a hospital appointment.

Most media outlets may be exaggerating what they are presented with

But being a scientist in the field I can tell you that things are probably much worse than the bbc reports-

• told to avoid scaring people because it won't help action
• told to paint a positive picture and never present anything that could damage businesses who make the right noises

As an example - radiative forcing - the problems of water released by airplanes on the upper atmosphere- for decades this wasn't included in the scenarios made public and used to drive policy

An an example - look how many climate scientists are being arrested and jailed for action - they are the most scared

@Tribute219 does it count as virtue signalling on an anonymous forum?

“I don't think the narrative surrounding climate change is very helpful. It's pushed on us that it's our fault but that we can improve things by changing our behaviour. This is unhelpful because it's not true, nothing we do as individuals will make a big enough difference. Nothing we could do as an entire country would make a big enough difference. Only extreme radical measures like eliminating several billion people (and the "right" people, those in countries with far worse climate changing emissions than us) would make a difference and that idea isn't acceptable. Once you start talking about genocide, climate change seems like a much smaller deal.”

While it is true that the contribution of each of us is a drop in the ocean, and the contribution of the entire U.K. (all 70 million of us) is less than 1%, this doesn’t mean that only extreme radical measures like genocide or collapsing civilisation back to a romanticised pre-industrial Stone Age are the answer.

The reason why climate change is so difficult is because we need all 7 billion of us to be contributing our drops, and we need every nation doing their bit to beat this. And even though the U.K. being so small can’t make a major difference we can still be a role model and example of how it is done. Which we have been doing for decades now-we have invested in green technologies and infrastructure and much of our foreign aid revolves around sharing that with other countries. The issues right now are that countries more powerful, richer, and more populous than us are not doing their bit. In that sense nothing we do will make a difference UNTIL they start doing their bit too. We are not going to sit and say that Qatar or Russia or Australia or USA or Canada or China you go first…we are out there with a few others who are going first. Because it is the right thing to do for the planet, for all the animals and children depending on us to sort this out.

So far global CO2 emissions have not started to go down even though we have cut ours almost in half, the only progress is that their growth has slowed to a snails pace. I hope every year when the data is published that we have passed the peak and there will be a decline. I hope one year we will get there. The more countries that join our ranks of cutting CO2 emissions and pushing for this at COP & UN meetings and the more likely it will happen. I think it might have if it weren’t for Putins stupid Ukraine war which pumps as much CO2 as we emit in a year every two months.

From the Met Office this morning.

If he is not capable of properly evaluating evidence or the quality of the sources of information, it’s concerning. What’s to stop him believing batshit racist or antisemitic conspiracy theories?

I would try to get to the bottom of his thought process, because it could drive a wedge between you.

@spitefulandbadgrammar "This has made me remember that DP is a neuroscientist, I must ask him his views on the climate crisis."

If he's got a moment, could he have a look at my ankle? I think I might have broken it.....