this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2023

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'I thought climate change was a hoax. Now I've changed my mind' (www.bbc.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

60 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I spent years doubting the science of climate change and spending time with people who didn't believe in the science either.

When I realised I was wrong, I felt really embarrassed.

To move away from those people meant leaving behind an entire community at a time when I didn't have many friends.

I went through a really difficult time. But the truth matters.

I'm the granddaughter of coal miners in Pennsylvania and my family moved to Florida when I was young.

We have a Polish Catholic background and we attended church regularly, but at the same time we were very connected to science because my mum was a nurse and my dad sold microscopes and other scientific equipment.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (2 children)

My husband didn't get home from work until late, so I would have four or five hours at home by myself every day, always with the kitchen radio on, tuned to conservative stations.

We listened to Rush Limbaugh, a radio host known for his controversial opinions on topics such as race, LGBT rights and women, and I would hear him every day for two hours.

He would talk about how climate change was just a hoax.

Up to that point, I had been exposed to a lot of misinformation about evolution in my church groups, but I had studied the theory of evolution at university, so I was equipped to spot it.

But I didn't have that same skill set for climate change.

My conviction that climate change was a hoax solidified when I heard Limbaugh talk about Climategate. It was a controversy involving research from the University of East Anglia. Only much later did I learn that the material was twisted and taken out of context.

...

I craved intellectual stimulation, so I kept the radio on while I was cooking dinner or while driving in my car. But there were only a few hours of Rush Limbaugh each day.

That's when the big turning point came.

I tuned into NPR, a US non-profit broadcaster. I don't remember which show it was, or the specific news story, but I remember how they described the issue in a completely different way from what I had heard on my usual stations. And it sounded so reasonable.

I realised how much my social network had changed since I had stopped teaching. At school, I was around people from all over the world, gay or straight, conservative and liberals.

Without that school environment, all I had in my social circle was my church group.

[–] [email protected] 38 points 11 months ago (1 children)

"Intellectual stimulation" being "Rush Limbaugh" says everything, doesn't it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago

True, but when you're surrounded by toddlers all day every day, almost every adult sounds like a rational genius.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

So this boils down to, "I stopped listening to opinion and started listening to news." What a revelation.

I'm glad she broke free, but man, it's hard to be sympathetic to someone who willingly poisoned her mind.