Though I’m young, over the last few years I’ve noticed that facts matter less and less to people when forming their opinions. Not only that, but opinions are becoming so strong-held that people are calling them and arguing them as facts — without any reputable or considerable evidence to back it up. Don’t worry, I’ve got examples.

Global warming.

This started becoming a big deal about 10 or so years ago — for me, the concept of global warming entered my life with Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006. At the time, this was a relatively new idea with more limited research. Many people back then argued that we were simply emerging from another one of Earth’s ice ages, but that things were okay, and we’d be fine in the future, too.

A few years after that, a small majority of scientists agreed that it was happening— the Green House Effect was real, founded in cold, hard evidence, and sea levels were in fact rising (though minimally compared to what we’re seeing now). Even so, there were still a good handful of scientists arguing against the existence of global warming. I Googled (very aggressively) and couldn’t actually find scientific reasoning behind their disagreement. I’m not kidding. Try it yourself.

Fast-forward to 2016. An overwhelming majority of scientists agree that global warming is a thing, every year has had more numerous catastrophic natural disasters like insane floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, the entire country (minus the Northwest, shoutout to Seattle) is experiencing a crazy heat-wave, and sea levels are rising so much that islands in the Pacific are being evacuated and communities are losing their homes (though, scientists argue that it’s not entirely due to climate change). And yet, there’s a decent portion of our population that still says global warming isn’t real. Almost half of the initial GOP presidential candidates said global warming was fake, and the Republican Presidential Nominee (he-who-will-not-be-named) tweeted this below:

It’s actually insane to me that despite the overwhelming evidence of global warming and its increasing threat to us, a presidential candidate in 2016 (!!!) has denied that global warming is real and cites freezing temperatures in certain cities as his proof, even though crazy weather conditions, not just warming, is entailed in global warming.

Donald Trump is racist.

To me, and in my social circles, this seems incredibly obvious because it is. There are numerous articles out there that cite ridiculously racist things that he says and does, and yet there are still people that argue that he’s not racist. Here, a Reddit user compiled a long list of legitimate receipts on Donald Trump’s racism. I do understand that people will support Donald Trump no matter what, especially because they hate Hillary too much, but one thing you cannot argue against is the fact that he is racist.

This is not an opinion to have. Racism is a well-studied subject at numerous universities all over the world. There are facts about what is racist and what is not. Most of the statements that come out of his mouth are in-fact racist. You can believe many things about Trump, but factually, you shouldn’t believe that he isn’t racist. Facts tell you that he is.

Planned Parenthood is not just an abortion provider.

Though many people may be against Planned Parenthood because they provide abortions at their clinics, the fact is that abortions make up less than 5% of the all the services that they provide. As of 2013, that number was only 3%. Yes, you read that right, three percent. And it’s still only 3%.

45% accounts for STD testing and treatment. 31% accounts for contraceptives. Roughly 13% accounts for other women’s health services, and 7% accounts for cancer screening and prevention.

And, Planned Parenthood educates a whopping 4.9 million men, women, and young people on sexual and reproductive healthcare every year.

You can hate abortion all you want but contrary to (un)popular belief, defunding Planned Parenthood is not an attack on abortion. It’s an attack on prevention, STD testing and treatment, cancer screenings, and educational services that can teach people how better to avoid an unwanted pregnancy in the first place. This is a fact.

Which way is faster, which stores are cheaper…

The other two things above are much bigger issues, with much more contention between the opposing sides, though facts support only one side. In my own life, I’ve noticed people don’t give a crap about facts in really small situations, too.

My dad takes really stupid backroads everywhere, and he always argues that they’re faster than the normal route that Google maps would likely suggest. Yet when I take them, they’re much slower for me despite the fact that I drive well-over the speed limit (sorry, Dad). I will tell my dad, “hey, I timed the two routes, and yours isn’t faster at all” and he will still insist that it is. I’m not kidding you.

My friends and I are all broke college students so we try to save money every chance we get. However, some of my friends still argue that QFC is cheaper than Safeway and Fred Meyer, even though there is actual data on which stores are cheaper (and Yelp tells you, too). According to a survey done in Puget Sound, “QFC’s prices were 12 to 16 percent higher than … Safeway and up to six percent higher than Fred Meyer” — and yet, my friend still shops at QFC. I don’t get it.

I know we say that ignorance is bliss but honestly ignorance is just stupidity at this point because of how easily we could become well-informed. We’ve never had more access to information and knowledge than we do today, and yet people seem to want to hold dangerously strong yet unfounded “beliefs” about things, contrary to actual facts.

You can have an opinion about anything in life, but not if it is contrary to actual fact, because then it’s not an opinion anymore, it’s just crap.