Addressing Climate Change Skepticism in Online Communities

Last episode, I talked about how my community was exposed to its vulnerabilities to lots of rain, which is basically a climate change consequence. We're seeing more humidity, higher temperatures, more cloud cover, crazy rain, squalls, major storms and major flooding. And I talked about how we're vulnerable and how our city and our politicians and our engineers and our planners, we need to start changing the way we're designing our cities to

accommodate for that, adapt to that. Now today I want to talk a little bit, and I alluded to it a little bit in the last episode, but I want to talk about some of the responses from my community in terms of Facebook and social media posts, which is always interesting, you know, in terms of what happens. You get a lot of interesting comments from extreme political comments to sort of just great, like,

this sucks, I'm in a really bad situation, can somebody help me out kind of comments. So we're going to cover a lot of those, but we're going to cover how I started to respond to some of those and why I started to respond to some of those, even though I knew there was going to be some blowback. So we're going to talk about that on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey,

everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. It's been a hard couple of

weeks, I'm not going to lie. I talked a lot about it in the last episode in terms of the flooding that's been going on, watching people in my city and friends go through some tough times with their homes, with their properties, with their apartments, with their cars being flooded out and all this kind of stuff it's it's difficult it costs a lot of money i'm sure it's going to cost the city a lot of money uh in the region in the province and you know it sucks it

definitely sucks and when you have people who are going through some things you start to get opinions on social media uh which is always interesting uh and you start to see how people are reacting to the travesty, the trauma that people have gone through. So from people who are directly affected and have to evacuate their homes or had to, they found out their insurance isn't covering the

damages from these storms, that's devastating. And that's a lot of money that they have to put into it, probably go into debt or get a loan from the bank. Who knows if they'll be able to get it. There's a lot of stress that goes into that as a family, losing belongings, losing photographs, things like that. It's stressful. It's something that you have problems with

years down the road. And when I talk about these types of traumas, it's not as bad as losing lives, mudslides and things like that, that other places around the world go through. You know, this is a nice community where, you know, it costs a lot to live in this community, we pay a lot of taxes, we expect certain things back from the government and protection in

designing the city. And we may not always agree with how certain cities or how certain politicians go about, you know, designing or working on the communities, but when it comes down to a thing like this where People can be driven from their homes or, you know, lose possessions that cost a lot of money that they need. That is concerning, you know, for us. And so things need to

change. And to get change and to see change, you hear people speaking out, which I fully for, you know, I'm not against the, you know, what that people are allowed to speak out. Sometimes I am concerned about the messages that come out and the problems that that go on with those messaging, with that messaging. And, you know, that's just sort of like, I'm gonna go over today what I do in terms of work with the community, like work with comments on social media. And to do that,

you have to be in the right set of mind. You have to be, you

know, your mental health has to be good because you know you're gonna go through it. If you start commenting and responding to other people's posts that you may not agree with, you have to be, you know, Understanding that they may not like that you responded and you don't know how where the place that they're coming from or the place They're in and you don't know how aggressive they're gonna come back and you don't know what that's gonna put you through emotionally So

there's a there's a there's a thing that you have to stay focused. You have to be ready You have to get a good amount of sleep. You have to be healthy for like mentally to help to do that and stay focused I use magic mine. I use magic mine every day. It's like a little elixir. It has a lot of great like a lot of great things in it. It's got some like different types of mushrooms. It's got, you know, it's got this caffeine sort of, I like to call like balanced type of release.

So, you know, when you like, I'm not a coffee drinker, so I'll have a pop that has a lot of caffeine in it. I'm not gonna name the pop, I don't wanna give it a bad name necessarily. but I rely sometimes on that pop to get up, you know, in the headspace, but, and it gives me that kick of caffeine to stay focused and to stay on my tasks and everything like that. And then all of a sudden I'm like, Oh, what do I do now? Like I'm about to crash because that caffeine fix is released all

at once. You know, my, my, uh, my synapses are like, okay, we're gonna ignore how tired you are and we're just gonna let you be free and you feel like you've got this boost and then it just goes away like right away and you're just sitting here and you're like man this sucks like this is no no good in any kind of way of of what is is happening with you know What's happening? Like, I don't want to see this. Like, I don't want to have this kind of feeling.

I feel like I'm less focused. And so I need to make sure that I have, you know, MagicMind to stay focused. Because what MagicMind does, it actually releases the caffeine nice and slow. So, you're going to feel it over a longer period of time and you're not going to crash after you have it. So, to be honest, I have it usually around midday. I take this little shot and it has got some ginger in it. It's got all these different types of ingredients that really kind

of make me feel good about myself. I don't know about you guys, but when I put bad things in my body, like sweets or things like that, which I love. I feel terrible after. I don't know if it's the guilt feeling or if it's just like the actual like content. But when I put this, like when I shoot this down, it's great. Like I shoot it down

like a shot. It's wonderful. And I want you to have that same feeling. So if you're commenting on comments where, you know, people are denying climate change and they're going really political and all that kind of stuff, I want you to have this type of elixir to be able to use. And if you want, you can get access to it. I talked to Magic Mind, said, hey, you know, my listeners may need this as well. Can

I get a deal? They're like, yeah, absolutely. Your first subscription, you get 48% off your first subscription or 20% off a one-time purchase with the code TheOceanBlue20. When you put that in, theoceanblue20, all one word, at checkout, the website is magicmind.com. Use the link magicmind.com forward slash theoceanblue and put in theoceanblue20 to get 20% off the one-time purchase and 40% off your first subscription. Highly recommend it.

It's great for you. It'll help you focus and get you ready for these comments that I'm about to talk about today. So I'm a part of a number of different groups. on Facebook. And I know, yeah, Facebook, like Andrew, you're old. Yes, I am old. I'm part of Facebook. I'm on Instagram. I'm on TikTok. I'm with it. I'm with it, guys. I'm hip to the things. I know that sounds awful. It drives my kids crazy when I say that. But I'm in this Facebook group, which is, I love this group. It's called the

Facebook Burlington Dads Group. I love this group. I'm also part of the Oakville group. That's a dad's group as well. A lot of people, you know, that when I first joined, it was like, hey, you know, we're all dads here. We're trying to do our best. We might complain sometimes, but we might do our, you know, we're looking at sharing resources for helping our kids, helping

each other, mental health things. And it's really great to be a part of a group like that, where everybody's kind of like on the same track mind, you know, dads from all over the city, you know, trying to figure out what to do with their kids or, you know, different like sports, or do you have, you know, experience in rep sports and this and that, it's really great to see.

Over the last few, I'd say over the last year, maybe the last couple years, maybe since COVID, we've seen a little bit of a change in the types of posts that we see. And I have a feeling it's due to a lot of frustration, but there used to be no political posts allowed in this group. If you started talking about politics, it would get axed, and it's like a reminder, hey guys, let's keep politics out of this group, let's just share resources,

let's just have some fun. There's some fun, hey, where's a good beer place to go? Where's a good restaurant to go? Anybody got ideas? Just local stuff like that. I love it. It was really great. There's some jokes going by, some memes going by, and it was a lot of fun. However, like I said, since COVID, there's been some more political posts and, you know, people who are not particularly happy with different governments, local, provincial,

and Canadian, like, federal governments. And that's fine, right? Everybody has, like, if they're starting to let it out, you know, let all the things fly, but you get responses of people who may disagree with you or may not disagree with you, but you get responses. And I've always had this policy for myself that I will only post if I think it's of value to anybody. I'm not necessarily posting if I disagree with something. I'm not necessarily posting to try and change that person's mind.

That's not up to me. That's not my job. My job is to kind

of just inform. So when I see a post that's really related towards something that I know more about, especially if I disagree with it, Start to want to react to it and and I have to like look at how I react to it I got to take the emotions out, you know, if people are calling each other names and stuff like that Maybe I'm not going to post but if a post continues to come up So as an example this past week, I saw a lot of posts with the flooding I saw

a lot of posts with the damages and you started to see posts about climate change denial and and making fun of climate change, like, oh, they're going to call this climate change problems, and they're going to call it this, and they're going to call it that. And Trudeau, as they like to call our prime minister, Trudeau, is going to do something about it. He's going to tax us more, and then the carbon tax comes up. Nobody wants to pay tax, and especially the carbon tax. And everybody's talking

about these different things. And then you sit there, and you're like, huh. This seems to be a narrative that keeps coming up. And a lot of people don't want to comment on those posts and on those comments, because they don't want to get into it with the person, knowing that they're probably not going to change their mind. And I get that. Like I said, I don't want to change anybody's mind. But that seems to be the narrative. As more and more people talk about it, more

and more people come out the world like, yeah, that sucks. Like, why do we have to pay tax? And it's not showing like, you know, it's the common article, the common sort of comment about, The carbon tax here in Canada is like, well, we're paying our carbon tax. We've been paying it for four years, and we're still seeing wildfires. We're still seeing this damage. Shouldn't it stop? Obviously, that's not how it works. But that is a common comment that politicians have made, business leaders have

made, and local people have made. Just sort of like your everyday people who live in a city. And they've made that. And I get it. It's frustrating. Like I said, nobody wants to pay a tax. I don't want to pay a tax, especially a carbon tax. It's good for, it's supposed to help. It's one of the solutions, one of the many solutions that we're putting into place and it's supposed to help. It's really supposed to help disincentivize you from doing things like driving

a huge truck when you don't necessarily have to. So you pay more in gas and you pay the carbon tax on that gas. So I went out, this is not to brag, I went out and I got an EV and now I don't have to pay gas but I pay electricity so now I gotta be careful of my electricity. So there's all these different ways of incentivizing and disincentivizing and that, the carbon tax is

one. You don't have to agree with me here, although I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here, but there are people out there who don't want to pay this tax, who are far against paying this tax, and they think it's affecting inflation, they think it's affecting our cost of living, and everything like that, even though it's proven not to.

But, with that said... That narrative continues to come up and come up and come up, and nobody's responding to it because they know what they're going to have to go through with social media and commenters. People are very quick to defend aggressively their stance. So if I went in, I'm like, hey, you're an idiot. You shouldn't do this. Climate change is real, and you're wrong. That's really aggressive. So I kept seeing that narrative come up where it's like climate change is bad, like being

sarcastic. And sometimes the joke, you never know, it's hard to see tone in a Facebook post or a Facebook comment. But I started to feel the need to start to comment. And I'm not commenting to prove anybody wrong. I'm commenting for the person who's listening or watching these posts and reading these posts and starting to say, huh, a lot of people believe in this. maybe there's something in this. If so many people are saying something, maybe there's something

to it, right? So for instance, as an example, like just kind of not climate change related, the political race that's going on in the US right now between President Biden and former President Donald Trump as the two major candidates, you know, there's a narrative going around this weekend as I record this that you know, the President Biden might withdraw from the race. He's getting a lot of

pressure from Democrats to withdraw from the race. And right before the weekend started, I started to hear rumors that, you know, President Biden is going to drop out of the race and put somebody else in. It's his decision, his decision alone, apparently. And even though he's denied it and he says he's going to stick with the race and he's going to put a great campaign, he's going to beat Donald, former President Donald Trump. there seems to be a lot of talk between different news media about

this happening. And as more and more people talk about whether it's going to happen or not, you start to believe that there's something there. And I feel like the same thing with the climate change denial and all this stuff, as more and more people read about the people kind of crapping on the idea, They tend not to believe it, or they tend to say, hey, there might be something in this, as so many people are against it, or so many people have something to

say about it. Maybe there's something there, and maybe I should rethink what everybody else has been telling me, no matter who it is. It could be the actual person. Biden could come out and be like, no, I am not dropping out of the race. But then all these media outlets are like, huh, he's saying that, but there's a lot of pressure for

him to do it, and he might do it this weekend. People are like, well, maybe it will happen this weekend, or they wouldn't be surprised if it did, or maybe they're expecting it to happen. Whereas, you know, with climate change, it's like, well, enough people say no, or it's not happening, then eventually, you know, politicians are like, look, this is the most of my people. This is most of the people that I represent. So maybe I shouldn't do anything about

climate change. Or maybe people reading this, like, maybe there's something in it. That's dangerous. That becomes dangerous, and that's when I start to respond. It's to respond to the people who are reading it, who are kind of on the cusp of the idea, and they start to see their fellow, you know, in this case, you know, Burlington dads, start talking about this denial, and how talking about it's a joke, and how talking about the carbon tax isn't working, even though there might

be stats to show different. This is a problem. So I start to comment. And I went a little, kind of a little aggressive. I was like, look, the ignorance in this group about climate change is really scary. And then somebody responded. And I kind of expected, I was kind of baiting someone to respond. And we went into this conversation, which I have to admit, it wasn't as aggressive as I thought. And I kind of know the person from the past. Not well, but I kind of know the person. And I

don't know if he remembers me, but we used to work out at the same gym. And so the rhetoric got a little better. He started to talk about how climate change, and he mentioned politics and things like that. I took politics right out. I said, look, you may not agree with the solutions proposed by the government. Totally get that. Totally understand that. But the fact is that these storms had to do with climate change. Hurricane Beryl was a climate

change consequence. We started to see increase in ocean temperatures above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, continued for quite a long time. A hurricane that's a Category 5 that happened in late June, early July, coming in through the Caribbean, devastating a lot of communities within small island states, coming up through sort of middle America. right into Canada, like right into Ontario. We got those rains and then flooding happened

because of those rains. That's a climate change consequence. You cannot deny that that didn't happen. You cannot deny that that hurricane started earlier. because of the consequences of climate change. And these squalls have happened more and more because it's hotter. It's hotter every year. We're breaking records. And we're starting to see the consequences of that rainfall when we break these types of records. And we start to see more

humidity in the air. That humidity has to go somewhere. And it comes down in rain. in major storms, and it comes down to rain in short periods of time, and a lot of it. And so I started to say that, and then the guy responded, well, it's like, now we're worried about a plastic straw. Why are we to save a sea turtle, and this and that? Why do we care about saving the sea turtle? So I responded to that. I said, that's a separate issue. But while you're on that, 30% of plastics made by

the phosphate industry is 30% of the greenhouse gas emissions. You know, the plastics industry is made from petroleum. It's a petroleum product. And so 30% of that is turned into like greenhouse gas emissions. That's a scary thought. You know, that's a significant portion, you know, of greenhouse gas emissions. And to make these plastics, and then when they break down, they become problems. Like

they're problems for humans. They're problems for animals. You know, I said, yes, a plastic straw was taken out of a sea turtle, and it's become the inspiration, like a sea turtle's nose, and has become an inspiration of the single-use plastic movement, of trying to decrease single-use plastic. It's actually inspired governments, including my own, Canada, and our own, to ban single-use plastics because of the major problem. That was an inspiration. It is not the fact that straws are causing

the plastic problem. It's a fact that it's a tool that we use as inspiration to say, hey, look, this is, like, we caught this in hand. I said, four months later, there was a plastic fork that was dislodged from a sea turtle in the same area, like 70 kilometers down south of that area, a sea turtle had, you know, all over the sea turtle had a fork in its, like, lodged in its nose. You know, same kind of problem. Actually, it was the same scientist who took it out. you know, these are, they

become tools of an inspiration to, for a movement. And, and I've heard this before, where it's like, oh, who cares about a plastic straw? Well, we need to care about the plastic, you know, and how much stuff we use as plastic. There has to be changes that happen. That's a separate issue, although it's kind of similar, because the fossil industry is responsible for making

these plastics the way that they're made now, even though they keep, they can be different. So when we look at these types of comments, you have to inform. And that's what I'm doing. I'm informing. Not necessarily to change the mind of the person I'm talking to. I don't need to change that person's mind. What I need to do is inform people who are reading this who may not see another side. And that's sort of the way I do things, the manner in which I roll on social media,

to put a little slang into that. I'm showing how uncool I am in this episode, regardless. Look, that's my method, and that seems to work because it didn't turn into aggression. I highly thank the person I was working with or going back and forth with, and it's fine that we disagree on something. However, other people got to see another side and you start to see likes on my comments and I'm not insulting somebody. I'm not coming out and saying hey you're an idiot or I think you're an idiot. I

don't. This is somebody who I feel is not correct in what they're saying. and how they're going about it. I'm trying to take politics out of it because I don't care if you're, if you don't like the Prime Minister or if you do like the Prime Minister or their methods, is that climate change is climate change. You may not like the way we manage things, same with COVID. We may not like some of the ways that were,

it was managed. There's some things that the provincial government and the federal government that did that I didn't like in that situation, but You have to look at the overall situation that we're in, and this is what the government decided to go to. If you don't like it, vote him out. That's fine. That's not the issue here. The issue is that you are denying what's happening. You're

denying that it's a climate change issue, and it's a climate change issue. If we continue to deny it and our politicians read those comments and look at, well, most of the people that are speaking up are against climate change. So why am I going to run on something that says, hey, we're going to do something about climate change when you're highly against it? I'm not going to get voted in. That's

a concern. That's a concern that we see happen over and over again when politicians get into, whether it be local, provincial or national governments, they don't do the things that we would hope that they would do to protect us, to make sure that our community is resilient so that we become climate change resilient.

Right? That's sort of the issue. So the comments matter. And if you're somebody who is adamant about trying to inform people like I am, you make comments not for the people you're arguing against or debating against, you're making comments for the people who are watching, who want to see another side and are okay, like feel scared. Because sometimes saying what you think and saying what you believe in and saying whether they're fact or not is very difficult on

both sides of any issue, because you never know how people are going to react. And if you don't want the aggression, That's scary, especially if it's in person, right? And so being able to speak up and being able to comment on certain things, not to change somebody's mind and not to get personal, but to inform people. is the way I go about it, and maybe you can do that too. But I'd love to hear your method of going at people when

you see something you don't agree with. I'd love to hear it, especially when it comes in the context of climate change or ocean conservation and ocean science. Love to hear your thoughts. Hit me up on Instagram, at howtoprotecttheocean. That's at howtoprotecttheocean. And if you are interested in MagicMind, you can go to magicmind.com forward slash theoceanblue. That's magicmind.com forward slash

theoceanblue. And if you want 48% off, 48% off your first subscription or 20% off your one-time purchase, you can put in the code theoceanblue20. That's theoceanblue20 for your first subscription. Taste of magic mine. It won't be your last. I highly recommend it Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew