BTW, on a related note, Project Zomboid just added weather effects. I mean, it always had them, but they were minor. Now you evidently need to really pay attention to what season it is and make sure you act and dress accordingly to prevent either freezing to death or succumbing to heat stroke.

I bet you that removing them wouldn't create a topic.

Just to speak to a couple of things. Saying the research on climate change is being directed in a top down fashion suggests a level of international, inter-agency, and inter-disciplinary co-ordination that is just impossible to exist. I do agree that some of the research would be directed from the top down based on how funding is acquired, but this is simply not the case for the research on the whole.

Also, you misunderstand my point. I wasn't saying that the possible outcomes make something true, but that the risk assessment of the outcomes makes them a bad idea to ignore. I never suggested that my point proved that climate change was real or influenced by humans. It's also interesting that you contrast that with religion since that is the basis for Pascal's Wager, which is what I was saying it could relate to in a way.

I also agree that if you are right and that global warming is real but not caused by human activity that it could hinder the required research into the correct long term solution. The problem I see with this though is that is currently being used as an excuse for doing nothing by the people who discount climate change in it's entirety. The other problem is that sometimes peripheral research comes up with solutions to problems that it isn't working on directly and there may still be value in the research being done along the current line of thought regardless of the cause of climate change. It's good for dissenting scientists to create their own hypothesis's and research in parallel. Scientists have been wrong before, and the more research is being done to solve a problem the better. It would be crazy for all the researchers trying to cure cancer to all be running the same tests. It's a waste of resources. I don't think that the research should only be done along one line of thought. Climate change deniers aren't generally calling for additional streams of study though and that's a problem.
That will completely change the game if they have realistic winter weather effects. It's winter, the zombies all froze, the end.

Interesting point.

Of course, weather effects in games aren't attached to any topics that are controversial. It's just a minor gameplay feature. So I assume you're right.

Not really impossible. As much as i think the race-IQ thing is bunk, the research is merely dismissed as racist, rather than actually pointing to flaws. It's hard to get much of a consensus on anything, but for certain things there is definitely some coordination: while not everyone believes, if you fail to follow the status quo you're kicked out. Poor, poor Galileo. Reason being, as i confess i'm religious, Pascal's Wager is dangerous, and has been used to justify bad things in the past. Since it's subject to the overton window, all you need is a big enough boogieman to make really bad things seem justified, like the whole thing with the US and Iraq. Well, that's what happens when you conflate things. I remember talking to a guy (who said his family are politicians, but as a communist he refuses to use their influence to prop up his own arguments, which i could respect) from Ljubljana, Slovenia, and we were talking about global warming. He, having more information than I, said that CO2 in particular has a lower green house gas rating than H2O: that is to say that it cools the planet, which is precisely what the deniers are saying. I asked him why he supported something he knew (or, at least, believed) to be false. His answer was "well, you see, I believe that the correlation to human proximity and violence is the result of higher concentrations of CO2, since I feel more at peace in nature." Let's just say that a similar issue where he supported something publicly that he previously told me he totally didn't believe is precisely why me and him stopped talking. Either way, it illustrates a point: alot of issues today are conflated. Take evolution: to believe in evolution is the rejection of religion, no? Why is it that intelligent design and evolution are a dichotomy? Global warming is real, but we're conflating reality with politics. I'm sure we could come up with a larger list with things like homophobia and transphobia, young earth theory and evolution, old-earth and intelligent design, low testosterone and erectile dysfunction (just to give a totally random example), etc.

If we could deconflate this, i think you would find alot more agreement with the people, especially since this line of thinking is less likely to include the negative impacts of all the global warming politics. We'd much faster find some kind of solution instead of all this stonewalling and fingerpointing.
It's worth saying: this is strictly and only about politics in gaming. There are people here who believe that these worlds do not meet, thus all political discussion should be banned.

Actually, we do. It is a consequence of physical laws that things fall; hence, being aware of the consequence of such physical laws, we can attempt to determine what the laws are. Once we have an idea, we can then do further testing to confirm that the physical laws are what they think they are. If enough experiments contradict the law, we then find a way to modify the law and our understanding of the universe.

Therefore, we do indeed use consequences to determing truth in the sciences.

(I note that mathematics is different, but that's another story. and "truth" ends up being ill-defined in that context.)

Except when the weather effects are affected by in-game climate change. (See what I did there?)

That's like weather effects inception.

I am all for climate change, in Civilization games and elsewhere too.

Why wouldn't I want warmer summers to Finland? Also, having no snow in winter sounds great too, I was kinda getting tired of changing the tires twice a year, to/from winter tires. If the winters are warm enough, I can keep driving with summer tires through the year.

Yeah, climate change, bring it on! In Civ games too.

Not only that, pollution has an effect on global warming too in Alpha Centauri, and can lead to sea level rising.

I could in no way disagree with this statement ;)

god i hope you're being a funny. :P

Yep. Sid Meier clearly had a feeling for what are interesting game concepts that are relevant issues at the same time. Alpha Centauri is a classic that did a lot of things right and would mostly need a user interface and graphics lifting to be on par with Civ V or VI.

It's the 90s. They made objects of art at this time, now it's this streamlined, simplified and also sterile stuff that somehow plays all very similar.

I'm all for loot boxes in Civ VII. That or displaying randomly selected Donald Trumps Twitter messages as witticisms after each save game loading to show they actually can do controversy.

Like the "goody huts" of past Civilization games?

But couldn't you just build cities underwater in that game?

(Also, one effect of pollution is to create more xenofungus, which could actually be to your advantage if you have a good Planet rating and certain wonders.)

With the right technologies you can build cities on ocean (but only one faction can build them in the deeper parts of it), and build pressure domes around your land cities so they can survive submersion. But you wouldn’t build pressure domes on your cities unless they are at a risk of submersion because they take time to build, I think they have a cost to maintain, and they provide no other benefit than the protection agains submersion.
Unless you’re dominating the oceans, sea level rising is pretty bad news in this game.