I don't have a link to the clip I saw years ago by a Thatcher aide who explained it was an anti-coal strategy. I've had a search on YouTube and a Google, and here's some related stuff:

Margaret Thatcher: How PM legitimised green concerns

How Margaret Thatcher came to sound the climate alarm

Margaret Thatcher - UN General Assembly Climate Change Speech (1989)

But even these, I guess, do highlight a big issue -- science can study the objective world, and identify problems, but what people then choose to do about those realities, people then use their own ethical and moral and ideological models to decide what to do.

Thatcher was happy to talk about global warming when it could serve her own ideological techno industrial right wing progress ideas, but didn't like it being used to promote a global socialism.

And many people who are obviously asking for a climate justice to be implemented in ways which seem more about picking technologies which slow human progress, even reverse it ideally, because humans are a "cancer" on the planet -- I mean they'd not be happy if a truly clean abundant energy source was discovered, as that would allow more humans to prosper.

Anyway, I digress!

Since we're not taking about infinitesimals, I fail to see the relevance.

Can one CEO, jock or movie star actually make that much of a difference? Maybe... and with the jocks it is actually measurable to a degree. So it will be with these employees.

The internet may be bad in some ways, but I have to wonder how Joseph Stalin managed to kill millions of his own people, and whether that would be possible today with normal people having access to the internet.

Although I have to wonder -- people on this article's thread seem to be really uninformed about what the authorities did under covid -- things which have been highlighted by a large number of scientists, doctors, public health experts, etc. It's fine if people don't agree with what they're saying, it's just weird that there's still people who don't even seem to have heard about it.

But it is a big planet, and billions of people, and I guess despite the internet, things are still fragmented.

There's a statistic that about 60 or 70 percent of USA people are still mentally very conservative (and can be like that whether they identify as liberal, right wing, religious, scientists, scientifically minded, etc.) -- they still have a quite inflexible mindset and can only accept one simple story and everyone else is wrong. Especially whatever story their social group has decided to adopt. The peer pressure kicks in, and especially if it is framed as a moral issue, then the group will pile on with accusing you of being despicable.

So then it is just a matter of which particular public message, propaganda, subgroup, vested interest, or troll in the basement, happens to get their "truth" out first to that social group. We the as the group make snap judgements like, well that organisation is to be trusted -- so then that organisation is a prime target for corruption because they are generally trusted.

Critical thinking is hard. It's hard because it is self directed -- I have opinion X, but how do I know my opinion even approximates reality? What am I basing it on? What assumptions have I made? How do I actually know something? There's a discomfort with uncertainty and complexity. There's a discomfort with recognising the world is made of systems and these can create unintuitive impacts. Simplistic truisms like "it's science" are used to try to jump to an answer. Inconsistencies are ignored, even big ones. All this critical thinking is hard work and most people have their normal busy lives to get on with.

Thank you, I think that's a very good point -- all the talk around whether we should lie to people because they're too stupid to understand science, plays right into the power games of the powerful, who want to just manipulate things for corrupt reasons.

Here's $100 million, now go write some papers that support some policy which ultimately gives our corporation more power and profit. And if any other scientists question it, just tell them that they're not in the field. And if that doesn't work, we can think of other methods to discredit their criticism.

One of the other comments mentioned how Margaret Thatcher was a scientist. It's a hilarious one to mention because there are people out there who point out that Thatcher deliberately chose global warming as a scientific reason to break up the coal industry and basically defeat the miners unions and strikes. The story goes that she chose global warming because it was science and therefore no politician would be able to question the reasoning for the policy. Which I think is an example which shows that there are layers of manipulation and if you really want to, you can take any piece of science and manipulate it to support your own interests, and then claim that the policy you want to institute is "because of science" when actually, there could be all sorts of other options, but if anyone questions and asks for options, you call them anti-science.

Did science explain that subtle difference between relative risk and absolute risk?

Because if they didn't, then they still weren't telling the public the honest picture.

There's a pernicious habit that, because the majority of people are stupid, we have to convince them using dumbed down arguments.

This new law/policy is justified because of scientific facts...

and then anyone who questions not just the quality of the science but even whether the policy is a reasonable response, gets called a flat earther.

It's entirely dumb, because it really doesn't help anyone. Anyone with half a brain senses they are being lied to.

So yes, if you think the scientific issue is nuanced and based on a best effort of what data can be measured, and all the limitations, and the existence of counter evidence, then the only answer is to help the public to think harder.

Trust is processed at emotional levels and it is a form of thinking, albeit nonverbal. Even "stupid" people notice when others are being economical with explaining the situation. All anyone has to do is avoid answering a question. Everyone sees it. Oh but we're scientists and you're not... trust blown.

So seems like a good and sensible point from some scientists.

Maybe when third-parties stop nominating nutballs and cranks.

Because they watched Mr Robot and hence knew it was normal for extra Raspberry Pi's to be laying around.

Trump took the EU to the woodshed. They had to drop all of their protectionist tariffs they have against AmeriKKKan goods(I thought protectionism was ad?) and in return America puts a 15% tariff on all of theirs. Moreover they had to write a check to us for hundreds of billions. The tariffs will bring in a shit-ton of money. We can use this to replace the income tax and repeal it entirely.

The usual TDS sufferers are screaming it's a tax on AmeriKKKans but it's not. When's the last time an American bought anything made in Europe? I mean one of us, not the CA/NY American passport holders who write the media articles describing what happened.

Hey, I've got an idea - make things in America and there are no tariffs. It's weird but worth a shot, it could work.

Trump wasn't the first... The EU lowered the de minimis threshold ages ago. On a lot of imports we have to pay duty now... and worse: the shipment will languish for weeks in some warehouse, and then the carrier will charge €50 for "customs fees".