In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.
He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.
Well by all means, let’s make it seem less serious than it is! That’ll get people moving
Signed, an actual fucking climate scientist
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The exact same thinking can be applied to the other side though. Guy says it’s not an imminent threat, so we don’t have to do anything right now. Worry about it next year. Which is arguably what’s been happening for a long time now
His whole point is that we should think that way. Not “this side” versus “the other side”. There’s an endless space between “we’re already fucked no matter what” and “everything is perfectly fine no need to act”. And that’s the point.
And you can very much notice what he worries about already. People are already utterly numb to news about climate disasters. We need a better way to show issues and showcase solutions that makes people motivated and hopeful to keep everyone pulling in the same direction.
Yeah exactly, you can already see a “welp we’re fucked, no point in anything” opinion that’s becoming more pervasive.
A good question is if not wanting kids because of climate change falls into this nihilistic thinking or if it’s reasonable. Certainly, life will get more difficult. We have more stake in changing the future however if there’s young people we care about.
I’m just rambling now. I think regardless of all else, the point is that things are not irreversibly fucked, and we should do what we can to unfuck it.
I can agree with that
What we need is politicians to fucking listen to their citizens who want them take real action on climate change.
What we personally think means jack shit if the capitalists in charge don’t want to hear it.
Maybe liberal democracy isn’t so democratic.
We need something like the doomsday clock but with the degrees C change forecast based on current emissions and efforts.
We have this:
But I think it would be useful to have the current trajectory (in degrees C) along with a table showing the consequences of each 0.5 to 1C
Well, do you want companies to spin “Eh not a big threat right?” or “Look at these crazy guys”
I think it’s harder to win attention if people think you’re wearing tinfoil.
I’d prefer to stop trying to win over unwinnable people. Whether they join or not, the problem exists. Climate change doesn’t care that we may want to placate the more dense-skulled in society. The problem marches on whether they have changed sides or not.
The science is in, has been in, and continues to be in.
I think if you consider that group unwinnable, you should move on to whatever the next step is in your mind. I think anyone who would join from that already has.
It just doesn’t sound like you have any desire to win over anyone else anyway.
I have no desire to continue trying to win over those people. There are absolutely still people to discuss these matters with. But we can’t abide by the lowest common denominator.
I don’t think there is such a thing as “unwinnable people”. They’re unwinnable from a single conversation with a single person, sure. But they’re not unwinnable if the currently ongoing concerted effort by climate-denying mass media were instead directed towards delivering climate science.
Tldr: the problem isn’t the people who are brainwashed, the problem is the people doing the brainwashing.
Millions of people think Kennedy is still alive and running the deep state with Trump as his appointed and anointed by god successor to the kingdom of America and Heaven.
There are absolutely unwinnable people
I disagree. I recently saw a video of someone saying “if the Bible said 1+1 is 3, I’d be finding ways to make the math work so that 1+1=3.” How is anyone supposed to have discussions with someone who’s views subsist in that mindset?
There are absolutely unwinnable people, to me. Additionally, they may be winnable, but we’re on a clock, and we can’t wait until it’s done to decide to leave them behind.
I do agree that there are factors larger than them causing the issue, and that needs dealt with as well.
Where did he say it’s not an imminent threat? All he’s saying is that it’s not extinction level and the worst outcomes are not yet inevitable which are both true statements. I do actually see a lot of climate apathy around and focusing on solutions and policy rather than doomerism seems like a good thing to me.
Also shout out Climate Town on YouTube for good solutions-focused and entertaining climate videos!
Probably more motivation than the half century preceding where climate change was largely denied and inaction was the go-to solution.
Let’s say I’m motivated. Wtf can I do that will actually. Make a difference. I could live off the grid or I could just spend all my money buying gas to literally just burn.
In the end, the planet will be exactly the same.
The only way to get real change is through large governments and beyond voting or talking to peers, hoping to convince them to vote for climate action, I just don’t see what I can do.
get organized with people and bring fear to the people who won’t change policies. YOU cannot do anything, but WE can. No one can fight climate change alone.
He’s technically right, though; climate change isn’t going to drive us to extinction. Yes, it’s going to cause the total collapse of modern society in our lifetimes and more death and sufferring than any other event in recorded history, but there will almost certainly be tens or hundreds of millions of survivors. Maybe even billions.
It would only take between 50 and 500 people to save the human race. We had a population bottleneck event back during the Toba eruption that reduced humans to about 10,000 people and we were fine afterwards. 500 is the limit for genetic drift and 50 is the limit for severe inbreeding.
We’re we fine afterwards, are you sure about that?
Give it to me straight Doc, how much money do I need to survive the apocalypse?
$3.50
God damn Loch Ness monster creating global warming so he can get my tree fiddy!!
No joke, there are billionaires scouring the futurist community looking for a reassuring answer to that question.
Douglas Rushkoff wrote a whole book about it.
https://rushkoff.com/books/survival-of-the-richest-escape-fantasies-of-the-tech-billionaires/
Yes, technically it’s not really about the planet or the environment, or society. It is about finding a solution of an optimum between money spent and living conditions for the majority of people. I actually think we should start talking about it more from that angle.
We could go to almost zero emissions tomorrow but it would wreak absolute havoc and billions of people would die. We could go full zero carbon emissions in our energy grid, but it would cost an absolute shitton, which means the living conditions go down. More realistic is a mix of investments between avoidance and adaptation. And I don’t think there is any realistic chance without nuclear energy.
Too many people can only think in binary. They see your argument and decide that doing anything would result in higher prices, lower living standards, etc. they don’t seem to be able to grasp a goal of riding that line for best results
Nuclear power takes a long time to build which is a problem because action should have started 40 years ago.
Why would living conditions have to go down?
People need to get it through their thick skulls that we cannot dig ourselves out of this hole without hurting ourselves in the short term. It’s decades too fucking late for that. Fixing this will cause unavoidable suffering; not accepting that is going to cause exponentially more suffering. Suffering that has already begun. We as a global society had every opportunity to avoid it, but we chose not to. There is no painless solution anymore. We can all suffer now and mostly make it through to the other side, or we can try to cling to our cushy lives of excess and convenience while the vast majority of us die. Pick one; those are the only choices.
Yet I don’t see why we need any suffering - we have the technology to take us a lot of the way.
While you can argue the focus on cars, EVs will make a big difference, are available for essentially no lifestyle change, and getting close to price parity. We are at the point where scaling up will tip us past. While it’s too little, too late, this is only 10-15 years. The only losers are companies that can’t change but at that rate the global car companies will be Tesla, Hyundai, and a couple Chinese brands
While you can argue storage, renewable energy generation is growing even faster. It’s 20 years behind what we need but it is getting there
For my part,I just paid ridiculous amounts to an electrician, a plumber, and an appliance retailer, to convert my cooking from gas to induction (one small step to reduce my carbon impact and improve my respiratory health). The technology exists, it should not impact my lifestyle, but at least here in the US, it needs people willing to pay more to establish the market
I think he means that doomsaying is going to make even more people not take it seriously…
I think there are loads of people who take it seriously but can’t do anything about it. The biggest CO2 polluters are mega corporations and things like airplanes and cargo ships. Ordinary people can’t fight that. One family living off the grid and producing zero CO2 won’t help anything.
Ergo, most people are apathetic, as they should be. You’re not going to change the minds of governments and mega corps.
Exactly. At least 70% of emission are caused directly by corporate and military activity, and that’s just the sanitized, conservative, government/corporate approved statistic. Realistically, the number probably much higher.
Using paper straws, sorting your recycling, and turning the hallway light off does fuck all for climate change, and it will never make a meaningful difference without a harsh crackdown on, if not a total overthrow of global corporate hegemony in this decade. We all know how likely that is…
We all know how likely that is…
Probably because people give up
Probably because people give up
As opposed to what, Soviet style revolution? People today don’t have the same mettle as their forebearers, it’s not going to happen. Occupy Wall Street and the George Floyd protests showed to the powers at be that people aren’t willing to embrace violent protest for change.
The 70% that comes from corporations comes from people. The people who use the products that the corporations provide. So, if Exxon is one of those major polluters, that is based largely on the people who purchase Exxon products and use them.
This 70% number comes from a 2017 study that measured emissions from 1985-2015. So while those corporations are selling the product that pollutes, when we order some stupid shit from Amazon and it has to come from China on a ship to get here, we are responsible for using that product. When we get UberEats delivered, we are responsible. Ordinary people can fight that by not buying stupid shit we don’t need from China and in so many other ways. Yes, the corporations produce those products, but it is US that consumes it and we are ultimately responsible for the emissions. It’s a fun way to try to say “it’s not me, it’s them,” but the fact is, it’s all of us.
People buy the shit because corporations make it and, at best, tell us we want it, and at worst, design our entire infratstructure and society around it so that we more or less have to buy it.
Nobody was asking for cars, or at least very few were, until companies started pushing them on people. Same goes for the vast majority of shit we own.
Well if everyone is just buying shit because corporations tell them to and the world is that fucking stupid, then we deserve what’s happening.
The biggest CO2 polluters are […] cargo ships.
No, this is a misunderstanding. Cargo ships are a major source of sulphur pollution, not carbon. Cargo ships use the cheapest fuel they can. Cheap fuel is rich in sulphur. They can do this because there are no emission regulations on the open sea. A commonly cited figure is that a single cargo ship release more sulphur than all the cars in North America.
This figure is then misinterpreted by people who failed basic chemistry to mean that cargo ships are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the opposite is true; cargo ships are one of the most efficient ways to move stuff over large distances. Only electric trains are better, and only if the source of the electricity is not fossil.
Perhaps I too failed basic chemistry, but I do believe you are grossly incorrect – maritime shipping is a massive contributor to CO2 emissions:
Ships release about 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, according to the IMO, roughly equal to Texas and California’s combined annual carbon output.
Marine transportation is one of the contributors to world climate change. The shipping industry contributes 3.9% of the world’s carbon dioxide output equivalent to 1260 million tons of CO2 and this is one of the large sources of anthropogenic carbon emitters.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484722020261
I do believe you are grossly incorrect
What makes you think that? None of the sources you provide disagree with what I wrote.
This figure is then misinterpreted by people who failed basic chemistry to mean that cargo ships are a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. In reality, the opposite is true;
Perhaps it’s just poor word choice or phrasing, but it reads like you mean that “the opposite is true” in that they are NOT a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, when in fact they are a huge contributor, more than California and Texas combined.
This is why you don’t substitute social media for primary sources if you want to learn anything.
Ships and planes ARE NOT the biggest CO2 emitters. Random big corporations ARE NOT the biggest CO2 emitters.
Transport (I.e driving your car) and energy (I.e. running the AC) are the biggest CO2 polluters by far, with over 50% of emissions from those 2 sectors.
Everyone can make a difference very easily by driving less and using less power…with the happy side effect of sticking it to the corporations you say are the biggest polluters.
Because - no surprise - the biggest corporate polluters are almost all oil and energy companies.
My guess is you’re quoting this? https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
The problem with your statement is fragmentation. Yes, “transportation” is the biggest single CO2 polluter followed by electricity, but there are billions of individual cars and lorries out there, across many different nations and laws, so the marginal effect of any single car is infinitesimal, and too difficult to go after. But things like maritime shipping, aviation, and railroads are monolithic, and transnationally regulated, so much easier to make an impact. Commercial transport also accounts for a way, way larger chunk of the 28% than residential transport.
In terms of most bang for buck, we should be targeting electricity generation and industry, as these are not nearly as fragmented, and easier to directly regulate and enforce regulation. If you immediately outlawed the top 100 corporations on the planet, you’d make a way bigger impact on CO2 than say, every residential house in America giving up their personal automobiles. Commercial lorries pollute far more than residential autos.
There’s also another big reason why fixing energy generation is top priority: the way to fix maritime shipping, aviation and personal transportation is to move them to electric trains, which needs more electric power.
And heating, and cooking
My brother from a “red” state just relayed the latest conspiracy theory he heard: electrifying everything is just a way to trap us so “they” can raise rates and we have no options
Did you even read the article, Mr/Ms climate scientist?
He’s asking people not to talk like the world is going to catastrophically end once we hit that 1.5 degrees milestone, because it’s making people feel hopeless and apathetic, which is actually slowing our efforts to change.
And he’s totally right. If the government told people a meteor the size of Texas was going to impact earth in 12 hours, there would be effectively zero effort to stop it. If you tune in to a lot of the conversation around climate change from people who are not climate scientists, but who want to leave a better world for their kids and believe climate scientists, they feel hopeless. It feels like a foregone conclusion that we are going to go over the 1.5 degree goal (probably because it is), and if we think the biosphere is going to collapse when it does, it is really, really hard to take action.
It’s not saying to undersell the risks, he’s saying to be truthful about the risks. We can definitely still salvage complex life on earth with optimistic, consistent effort, but recent media coverage has been giving the impression that it’s too late. This is bad and counterproductive.
Keep on fighting the good fight brother/sister.
because it’s making people feel hopeless and apathetic, which is actually slowing our efforts to change.
That’s the thing I don’t get. How to come to such a conclusion?
If you ever have been on a sinking ship, you know how suddenly even the worst enemies will cooperate willingly quite well in face of time pressure and a life threat. Some might even be willing to sacrifice themselves when in such a situation, even a few minutes gained can make a huge difference. But aswell if the situation seems hopeless.
It’s totally atypical for most humans to just accept fate and relax in any life threatening situation. Humans tend to die fighting/ defending.
climate change unstoppable != scary life threatening consequences
Those are two entirely different narratives.
(And I didn’t get past the paywall.)
Homie I’m trying to explain what you’re obviously not understanding about this, and you keep responding with arguments about how you’re correct to not understand or something?
Guy said “don’t be hyperbolic about the 1.5c goal because if people feel hopeless they are less likely to act.” We shouldn’t be acting like the scary life threatening consequences of climate change are unstoppable. That is one narrative, you silly goof.
Guy said “don’t be hyperbolic about the 1.5c goal because if people feel hopeless they are less likely to act.”
He’s wrong.
My guy I can only imagine how hard it must be to go through life completely illiterate.
“The belief that climate change is unstoppable reduces the behavioural and policy response to climate change and moderates risk perception.”
they want a slow boil, keeps the panic down and diminishes the odds there will be a ‘bastards up against the wall’ moment for the ones responsible.
Yes but my point is that the world is already burning… People are dying… Homes are sinking into the ocean… Countless species are being lost. Pray tell, when is it bad enough that it is no longer sensationalistic?
Oh, if only people were as passionate about abortion. I mean, they’re not killing that many babies, right? Why the fuss?
Millions will move or die
So not an existential threat to humanity, then.
This person was picked for the job because their job is to encourage effective means of fighting climate change, and encouraging hopelessness is not effective.
We are likely to see 1.5C. The world will go on, because it has to. Being prepared to deal with 1.5C means not assuming 1.5C is the end of the world.
I’m glad you’re fortunate enough not to live in a place where climate change does threaten your very existence…your family… Home… Livelihood
I guess it’s just tough luck for people whose homes are falling into the sea or the tens of thousands who are dying from record heat across Europe
If that’s what you took away from my post, it’s an even better thing you’re a junior scientist and not running the IPCC.
I’m sorry, do many people dying not constitute an existential threat to all of humanity? Like, are you seriously arguing the semantics?
All I’m saying is that a gentle hand at the wheel hasn’t worked. It isn’t working currently. What we have now is a moderate response to an existential threat. We should have done a lot more a lot sooner. I guess 2 becomes the new 1.5…then 3 becomes the new 2… And if we lose a billion or so peeps, that’s ok. Just the cost of ensuring we’re not all wringing our hands bc the head of the IPC said not to… Whew!
And thanks for taking a dog at my credentials. I’ll have you know my h index is looking mighty fine 😘
People always died during heatwaves and now, according to data, they are dying less because of air conditioning being standard in homes, etc.
“Homes are sinking into the ocean”, except they’re not. You’re quite an alarmist. Exactly what the article is about. Also, you’re completely ignoring mitigation tactics that will be implemented - one of them being migration, just like you said. And it won’t happen in a year or two, but in several decades. So no, people won’t extinct, calm down.
Good luck buying homeowner’s insurance in Florida …Oh wait…
Or just move to California… Oh shit…
Yeah these effects are “isolated”
And I’ll drop this nugget here:×but by 2070, extremely hot zones could make up almost 20 percent of the land, which means that a third of humanity could potentially be living in uninhabitable conditions.
If that’s just the way it goes… Maybe they can move in with you?
So their is more than just storm issues in fl that cause issue with finding home insurance. Don’t get me wrong storms are a part of it, but the rampant and ease of ability for contractors to commit insurance fraud and get away with it among several other issues also was heavy aspects in it as well.
This is true, thanks. Increasingly however, insurers are going to cite storms and sea level rise as justification for not insuring homes. See : the outer banks, NC for a preview
PH yeah that is definitely going to happen with global warming.Ieitger everyone’s premiums increase drastically or they need to drop those that are higherrisks.Itss why states like fl and Cali have government backed companies for those that are high risk
“could make” and also by 2070 (if). It will not happen at once. It will take time and people will migrate. Also, technology will change radically in 50 years. All of you alarmists, although I share your concerns, act like nothing else but temperature/climate will change.
I hope, greatly, for the future. But know that any real change will have to include everyone, everywhere. Even the chuds that drive jacked up pickups covered in skulls and toting firearms. And they will never change willingly. The oil industry will continue to sow doubt and enable these idiots with cheaply available petrol, so it’s not likely we’ll even be able to get serious mpg regulations, much less a renewable transportation network. When florida’s coast is under water, maybe that’ll change a few minds… but I’m sure they’ll turn it into some kind of conspiracy to persecute them even then.
Really hope I’m wrong tho.
The chuds driving jacked up pickups aren’t contributing very much to global CO2 emissions actually.
The tendency of individuals to place far more blame on passenger vehicles (of which medium and heavy trucks constitute less than 1/4th in the US- likely far less elsewhere) as a contributor to global warming than they are actually responsible for actually had a name; The Transportation Fallacy.
Exact numbers vary by year and country, but it seems like passenger transportation accounts for about ~7% of global CO2 emissions. To put that in perspective, the same source indicates that we can remove the same amount of CO2 by eliminating food waste as we would by taking every passenger vehicle on earth off the road.
The auto manufacturing lobby wants you to sell your current working vehicle and buy a Tesla or a Prius, even though the carbon debt of manufacturing that vehicle won’t break even with an IC engine for ~300,000 miles. And even when it does break even with your current vehicle, if everyone on earth did the same thing, it would barely dent our global emissions.
They want you to feel satisfied about doing your part in a way that earns them revenue, instead of focusing your energy on things that will cost the energy lobby money but actually have an effect.
Sorry, long rant, but I wish more people realized how convenient of a scapegoat the type of car someone drives is. Yes, a more fuel efficient car is better than a gas guzzler, of course. But that’s such a small part of the problem, yet it gets such a huge amount of the mental energy that people spend trying to reduce personal emissions. Eat less meat, push for nuclear power generation, make sure your home is well insulated and uses efficient appliances, fight for working from home where possible, switch from grass to native plants. Drive less. The chuds rolling coal are idiots, but they’re a very, very small part of the problem. So many better ways to spend our energy.
They want you to feel satisfied about doing your part in a way that earns them revenue, instead of focusing your energy on things that will cost the energy lobby money but actually have an effect.
What a perfect way to phrase it.
I see what you mean about those gas guzzlers. While they do make me irrationally upset, a much bigger problem is forcing millions upon millions of workers on daily commutes. This isn’t just about WFH, which would be a solution, but also of insisting on putting almost all employment opportunities at the end of the same clogged roads miles away from where anyone lives.
I think you’re right to point out that the argument against individualising the problem/solution should be applied evenly. It’s easy to individualise the problem when someone seems to be doing the exact opposite of helping.
That said, I’ve one challenge, which is about insulating your home. I’ve heard that a good air source heat pump will save more emissions than insulation (some leaky homes might be the exception) and at much lower overall cost to the consumer. They have to be set up right, though. Maybe it depends on building materials? It might be different for timber framed houses that have some insulation built in, anyway. Makes sense to put in better stuff during ordinary construction and maintenance of those.
You seem to think that just because someone didn’t specifically cite lifetime investment in each platform that it negates their premise.
I disagree.
Stop apologizing for people who have gone far outside the norms, intentionally, simply to pollute more.
Don’t confuse it with someone who bought a 2005 honda and are simply getting their useful life out of the vehicle. The US Truck fetish is counterproductive to the needs of actual trucks, and wasteful in resources and disgusting in motivation.
This is conspicuous, intentional overconsumption that not only consumes valuable resources but emits much, much more exhaust products than it should, for the exclusive point of intentionally polluting by reducing combustion. To own the libs, they like to call it.
Is it equal to air carriage or maritime transport? No. No one asserted these things.
But it’s more pollution dumped into everyone’s atmosphere, more consumption at the pump, all for the purpose of being assholes. Those emissions aren’t hypothetical, they’re real. Really unnecessary too. A fucking kei truck is more useful than the average american lifted dipshit hauler. Much more efficient too.
But knowing there are people ready to jump in and snipe apocrypha peripherally related to the premise reinforces my doubts that humanity will get it’s shit together before we’re doomed (if not already). Have a good one.
I’m not apologizing for anyone, I’m suggesting that we would be better served by focusing our efforts on major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions instead of getting personally butthurt over a globally tiny number of individuals who are contributing an extra fraction of a percent of global emissions relative to their peers.
Yup, read you loud and clear, there’s no reason to stop the chuds because it’s only a tiny fraction - and this why we can’t have nice things, like an ecosystem.
see sport, the tiny percentages add up over time. acting like it’s not a consequence is merely shitting even more on the next generation.
You must be one of those goofballs who thinks millennials can’t by houses because they keep buying coffee.
See sport, enormous percentages add up way faster than tiny ones. Pissing your pants over how bad your feelings are hurt when you see a scary bad man in a truck while you are eating meat 10 meals a week and driving your Corolla to and from work instead of biking is just shitting even more on the current, and every future, generation.
Sad how many people put their personal feelings ahead of objective data, and hold back meaningful progress in the process.
You forget those clowns buy new gas guzzling trucks in large part to spite the left and climate efforts as a whole, which negates your point.
That absolutely does not negate any of the points that I made but god bless you for trying buddy.
New large trucks actually get way better gas mileage than older ones.
I think he is just saying people shouldn’t doom post. I think there is a fine line because a lot of zoomers i interact with are hopeless and have given up. This is a generation who never experienced a functional (American) government who worked for the people. So they just don’t care and you can see it reflected in their memes.
I don’t know the rhetorical path we should take. We need to get people motivated and fired up but not apathetic and despairing. I mostly want to see politicians crumble and the rich eaten and i think that’s messaging many will get behind.
It’s not even that Gen Z doesn’t care. Many of us just hit a point where everything feels numb. You can only get so upset/depressed/etc until your brain just kind of shuts down a bit.
There’s grief over everything that we’ll probably never get to see/have. There’s grief over the backsliding of progress that actually seemed real to us at one point. There’s grief over the many people who just die, everywhere, for terrible and avoidable reasons. There are many animals we will already never get to see.
Everywhere you look, people almost seem to feel pride in not knowing things. One member of Gen Z managed to have her voice heard about the planet, and she was ridiculed by grown adults. Multiple governments are now trying to decrease education, and some people somehow see that as a good thing. Wildfires are blazing like never before, the smoke is totally hazing new areas, yet people still refuse to see. Why is Gen Z expected to be the magical cure to global warming? People won’t even listen to Greta! We’re just as human as any other generation. Of course we’ll try, but the focus on solving the climate problem should have already been happening generations ago. Just THINK of all the progress we could have already made!
Lucky us, huh? We’re also regularly encouraged to shove all of these emotions down because we could not possibly have similar problems to older adults. Fuck that, respectfully.
Yeah, I’ve got to say, sometimes it’s damn hard to have any hope.
I do think more of us need to vote, even if it only feels like there’s a 3% chance that something actually changes for the better…
I prescribe reading this list until you feel better. Yes the worst of humanity was the noisiest as usual, but there was also a lot of recognition
— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greta_Thunberg#Honours_and_awards
No one expects Gen Z to be the magical cure to climate change. Rather, it is expected that Gen Z will continue and escalate work that is already being done.
That’s a pretty normal thing to expect of upcoming generations.
Was the pressure the same, though?
The pressure isn’t on you. The pressure is on older generations right now, and things are moving. Your job there is to continue the work.
Ideally by the time Gen Z is 40, they’ll have a whole new crisis. Nearly every generation does.
Right, we got the plastics/forever chemicals crisis lined up
You lazy idiots aren’t about to demand anything of a young kid. Shut the fuck up, grow up, and do it yourselves.
Never experienced a warm summer day nor a windshield full of dead bugs.
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The political agenda of… checks notes making the world a better place to live.
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I already feel helpless. I try to use my vehicle less and use public transport. I just moved somewhere walkable so there are days that I don’t use my vehicle (will be weeks eventually when I get used to it). I try to buy local and reduce my waste.
I live in a southern state though so my vote doesn’t do shit. Even if I did, this feels like a political issue at this point and neither the right or the left of the country has the will to “do what needs to be done”.
Capitalism is exploitative by its nature and the market will never solve the problem until we have extracted all the fossil fuels in the earth.
I know it is not your problem, but how can we NOT feel helpless?
Literally “This is fine.”
Ignore the triple digit temps in the ocean, that’s not apocalyptic! Relax!
So what if a few people died of heat exhaustion just by… Walking outside for a few minutes. Normal. Not apocalyptic.
So what if regular rains are delivering hurricane levels of flooding. That’s just nature doing it’s thing, dude. Quit overreacting.
Malaria is in NJ, but like, mosquitos fly so that was probably bound to happen.
And really, like, 110 isnt that hot, especially if it’s not humid.
Relax.
I understand his sentiment. I have an overwhelming feeling of powerlessness because most CO2 emissions aren’t even made by normal every day people but the entities that do create a majority of it don’t care. This means anything we attempt to do is as a whole is only a drop in the bucket compared to what these entities are producing. I purchased a hybrid vehicle to curve my driving emissions and I recycle. I planted grass and a tree in my yard to prevent run off and produce oxygen. I am looking into getting solar power for my home but I am not a rich man so the price is a little beyond me right now. Things I can do I try to do but in the end regardless of what I do entities are polluting our water and air, producing plastics, and are trying to place the blame on normal people. It can be a little heavy on the soul.
Add a few wildflowers to your grass, it’s better for insects!
Honestly I think we should stop trying to stop climate change and start adapting to it.
Because at individual scale all actions to limit climate change are almost meaningless, whatever we do we will not see the consequences of it. On the other hand we can adapt to climate change at individual and community level.
Start planting trees in our community, build a way of life that does not require fossil fuel since we are running out of them, installing solar panels and improving home insulation to help during externe weather events, buy less products and focus on repairing them instead …
All of that can directly improve our life, present and future, without relying on everyone doing their share
AND, as a side effect, all the action we do to prepare yourself to live in a post growth world are also great to reduce our CO2 emissions.
I’d love to install solar panels, I have a flat rubber roof with no tree coverage that’s perfect for it. A $35,000 upfront cost is an absolute nonstarter for me. I have it, but that’s basically my entire emergency fund. If someone would pay me to have them installed, hell yeah, let’s do it.
You can only adapt so much before you just fucking die though, corporations are not going to stop pumping out carbon and if things don’t change, we won’t be able to survive as a people.
That’s a good and healthy way to approach this. Nicely put.
Bettering the world’s situation is a legislative/political issue. Bettering you and your immediate community is something you can help with, even if it’s only at the margins.
The problem with all this, however, is that there are a lot of the things that you can do to help your personal situation that are definitely not helping the overall situation. For example installing air conditioning, watering your lawn, etc. They might make things more comfortable for you, but they’re by no means better for the world. We still need to incentivize the right things through the right tax breaks and financial/industry incentives, which lead us back to politics being the actual thing that we need to make meaningful personal and global change possible.
I don’t know lemmy’s demographics, but I imagine it skews overwhelmingly north American, white, and with a reasonable and stable income. I.e., The people who are most capable to “adapt”
We must also focus on unreserved communities, those without the means to make life comfortable, or to repair their homes or to move to avoid sea level rise or hurricanes or other damaging impacts of climate change.
Hang in there. It will eventually get so bad it will mandate action. Humanity is resilient. But I do feel for the many people who have died and will die, or be left homeless, or without a country to call home on the way there…
Also, put pressure on your elected officials, vote in every election, encourage your friends and peers to vote. Run for local office where a lot of decisions are made that can help
I live in Colorado and I feel we have a fairly good turnout for elections and the state is move quickly to renewables. However, this does not stop other state and companies from polluting to their hearts content. Companies need the hammer brought down on them.
God that must be depressing work.
What really got me worried ? was a warning (warning collapse per 2025 considering an earlier projected collapse of the Atlantic Gulfstream.
“The Gulf Stream system could collapse as soon as 2025, a new study suggests. The shutting down of the vital ocean currents, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (Amoc) by scientists, would bring catastrophic climate impacts.”
That would be very bad news for Europe and The Atlantic and other sea currents in general.
No. It wouldn’t. Yes, it would get colder in Europe, but there are lots of ways and means to deal with that. Heck, European homes generally are optimized for the cold and not the heat - which is where a lot of the issues and deaths regarding heat stroke come from. Also, European homes are not getting blown away by some heavy gusts.
Florida will get the most shit and probably will cease to exist. Though, one could argue that that’s not such a bad thing…
And the Gulf stream has stopped a few times in earth history, it isn’t the only current.
Stop fear mongering, FFS, and do things differently. Yes, it will get uncomfortable for a lot of people and we have to ask ourself as a society if we deal with it properly - or not and face the consequences, but even 2°C won’t collaps humanity at once. It all depends what we do with the cards we are going to get dealt.
I think the issue here is who you’re looking at for the audience. At this point, we can agree that anyone who doesn’t think there’s a problem is delusional, and it’s a waste to time to convince them otherwise.
If we assume the audience is all people who believe this is an issue, then this message makes sense. It’s trying to convince people that they should still care and not be nihilistic about it.
Exactly. It’s not like this is an existential threat to human civilisation and the current ecosystem of the planet… oh wait, that’s exactly what it bloody is!
The reason for all the apathetic people is because they see the writing on the wall. It’s not too late now, but by the time the assholes up top actually pull their heads out, it will be.
Lol, what do you disagree about? Is a 1.5°C rise apocalyptic?
There are quite a few hypothetical tipping points where the climate can go catastrophically wrong. We don’t understand them as well as climate change, can’t as easily predict how likely they are or when they’re inevitable, but we’d like to avoid them.
The 1.5°C target is where we expect significant disruptions to society, expensive impact, hardship for the most vulnerable. But we can deal with it if it stops there. However as we shoot past that target, those disruptions get bigger and more expensive but also those tipping points become more likely. I really really hope we can avoid them
I think climate change is a big fucking problem, full stop.
That being said, do you know how much of a relief it is to read “we’re not going to turn into Mars, just keep trying to fix the problem we got this humanity”? I legitimately have had existential dread due to the messaging around climate change. At least now I can continue trying to do my best to fix it without asking “what’s the fucking point?”
Title rage baited?
What’s weird is you claim to be a scientist yet don’t understand fundamental social science.
Any scientist worth their weight has a basic understanding and any effective scientist understands how to use the field to their advantage. He is not wrong at all.
LOL WUT
So first off, climate science is data driven. Social politics should play no part in how to interpret the result that shit is getting hotter and people are dying… That’s pure statistics baby
But in terms of communication, sure, understanding psychology helps. But look where a poor understanding of social psychology got us…
And social science is not the same as psychology. Social science means integrating diverse perspectives into environmental decision making. Which many in this thread are failing to do
No youre not
While I understand the intention here is to reassure people that not all is lost and there’s still time for action, a take like this is going to be paraphrased into “climate change is overblown and isn’t something to worry about” by Big Oil and other major polluters.
I have not seen a single piece of evidence that we’re going to do anything about climate change unless we come up with some magical solution that somehow: doesn’t upset the status quo and also makes existing rich people even more rich.
The status quo is the problem, so it would have to be some basic logic defying magic.
Exactly but talk to anyone, even the enlightened internet people who share climate change articles on here, and they seem convinced that the only way to fight climate change is to literally do nothing and wait for corporations to have their hearts grow like the grinch. They will aggressively atrack any suggestion that we are going to have to actually do something and also change out lifestyle.
It is going to take massive change, collective effort, and organizing. As well as individual changes to our daily lives. Even if those corporations and politicians all had a magic change of heart. The policies and economic changes would still result in a massive upheaval of our daily lives.
Wow, what a ridiculous straw man.
I haven’t heard anyone referring to 1.5 C as apocalyptic. I HAVE heard it described in terms of being a threshold at which climate scientists predicted a certain set of consequences.
What’s apocalyptic about the situation is our acceleration towards even greater climate change, and world governments’ unwillingness to take the situation seriously.
In the US, for example, Biden passed the greatest climate mitigation law of all time … and it’s grossly inadequate. They’re treating it much the same way that the Obama administration treated health care. They patted themselves on the back for passing the ACA, which still left the country in a health care CRISIS, because it was a half measure.
In many ways the absolute worst way you can respond to a crisis is with these types of half measures. Why? Because it acts as a pressure valve, removing all the momentum for real, meaningful change.
Much like the ACA, Democrats will pretend that this is a stepping stone for the next set of reforms… But we only need to look at the ACA to see how flawed that reasoning is. We have not built on the ACA. We have spent a decade watching Republicans chip away at it.
Now we’re playing the same game with climate change mitigation. And the price will be hundreds of millions of climate change refugees, war, and famine.
To be 100 percent clear: while the Democrats are incompetent here, the real villains are the Republicans, who are WILLFULLY ignorant of the science, and are the ones forcing either impotent compromise or no mitigation at all.
4° is apocalyptic. 1.5° C is still catastrophic.
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Yeah, I don’t see what he’s getting at. There has absolutely been alarmist rhetoric surrounding climate change, and I see it all the time. Hell, I’ve seen people who think we’re already too late, even if we were to stop releasing CO2 today itself.
Part of me wonders how much the other side has benefitted from the sense of apathy this could create. After all, there’s real value in making stupid people give up entirely, in some ‘we’re doomed’ scenario.
I think I do. So much in terms of doom and gloom is being shouted in terms of climate change that many are becoming numb to it, which is dangerous.
He is wrong about 1.5C not being an issue, however. 1.5C != “every place will raise only by 1.5C”. It means localized temperatures in many areas will be much, MUCH higher, as parts of the US are beginning to find out.
I know 1.5 is dangerous; after all, we’re already seeing a slew of weather disasters all around the world. This is why now is the time we should scream off the rooftops that it’s not too late, that we can still fix this, because people are starting to wake up just a little more.
Now is the worst time to give into apathy, and to tell people who’re just starting to wake up that we can’t do anything.
I think the issue is that some of us know this, but most are getting blasted by the media non-stop, and some of the messaging is even outright denying climate change exists. After a while people get tired of hearing about it.
I don’t have an answer for how to solve that one except to say that regardless of who is saying what or how loud, governments around the world aren’t doing enough. It is amazing to me because at the end of the day, money can slow and eventually stop/reverse climate change. We have the technology, we just need to invest in the required infrastructure and technology to make it happen.
Climate change isn’t political. It will kill all of us if left unchecked.
Problem is that climate change is political. Worse, it’s geopolitical. It’ll take the will of the people to just tell governments to stop plodding along doing the bare minimum and take some real action for once.
What’s happening right now is terrible, but it’s also a chance to wake up the masses in time. I just hope the impetus isn’t lost to apathy.
It’s not straw man, you just reenforced his point, good job.
It’s fundamental social science.
- That didn’t happen.
- And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
- And if it was, that’s not a big deal. <- WE ARE HERE
- And if it is, that’s not my fault.
- And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
- And if I did, you deserved it.
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it’s a slow boil folks, nothing’s really wrong, it’ll be fine… don’t hold anyone responsible or try to change the path…
Imho, we’re not going to change anything big enough to make a change. We’re going to adapt to whatever consequences will arise. At least the ones that have the resources to do so. Let’s not talk about the poor countries…
For real. What a joke. Trying to temper the already absurdly tempered response to the dangers of climate change? Wow. What a noble cause.
Not to mention, every lame attempt humanity under the spell of capitalism takes to limit our carbon output doesn’t “help.” It just…hurts the tiniest amount less. Because we are still pumping out insane amounts of co2 and the rate we’ve slowed down is nominal at best.
And another thing! Saying “the world will not end at 1.5c” is, I mean, technically true. If humanity dies, the world doesn’t end. If humanity is almost entirely wiped out and all that’s left are a few stragglers surviving in a hellscape of our own making, the world hasn’t ended. But 1.5c has long been a significant step, and one at which the snowball effect of warming very well may kick in. “Don’t worry about what these sCiENtiStS have been saying is a significant milestone! I’m the figure head of a feeble organization that blusters on about this vitally important issue! Listen to me now. A 70 year old with little skin in the game! When have my people ever steered you wrong!?”
This is a lit comment. Thank you! We need to grieve now so we can start moving onto the acceptance and action phase
The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.
Maybe for humans. Animal and plant species are disappearing faster than ever. Fuck you Jim Skea!
Humans cannot live without a healthy ecosystem.
1.5 degrees can mean the collapse of entire marine ecosystems, widespread shift in farmable land and water shortages like we have never experienced. will every single human be wiped out and our species end? no. Could billions (with a B) die and society as we know it irrecoverably collapse? quite possibly. And thats not just dooming
Not with that attitude.
Hey jackass, people aren’t apathetic because they believe it’s too late to do anything. People are apathetic because people like you haven’t done anything and now it’s too late. The “beneficial actions” you are calling for are half measures that won’t help at all, and the people who care are already doing what they can while the real polluters, the real destroyers of humanity, are building bunkers and hoarding gold to survive the coming storm.
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Fucking knew it! Their neutrality sickens me
I hate those filthy neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.
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Christian, is that you? If so, thanks for all the years with your amazing app.
Yeah, any solution to climate change that relies on people of good faith coming together across national boundaries to solve our global problems is a bunch of pie-in-the-sky horseshit and most definitely not something to pin the future of humanity on.
The only thing that’s actually going to reduce greenhouse emissions is cost savings; focus on that, build your models around what we can convince people to do with that, then figure out how to save as much of the human race and the natural world as possible in a scenario where we do fuck-all about climate change except when by doing so it makes some rich asshole slightly richer.
What are people of good faith going to do about even a small fraction of those who disagree?
This is where the Porsche fuels come into play beautifully. They capture carbon from the atmosphere to be the carbon in the fuel therefore once run through an engine the emissions are a net zero. And they can run in regular gasoline engines, and is shown to be roughly the same cost of production as current gasoline.
If they actually get the cost down to that point then yes, it’ll be fantastic, but IIRC they’re not close to there yet - it’s just a hopeful projection.
Speaking to weekly magazine Der Spiegel, in an interview first published on Saturday, Skea warned against laying too much value on the international community’s current nominal target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared the pre-industrial era.
“We should not despair and fall into a state of shock” if global temperatures were to increase by this amount, he said.
In a separate discussion with German news agency DPA, Skea expanded on why.
“If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” he said.
“The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees,” Skea told Der Spiegel. “It will however be a more dangerous world.”
Surpassing that mark would lead to many problems and social tensions, he said, but still that would not constitute an existential threat to humanity.
(…)
Skea predicted that one difficult area might prove to be changing people’s lifestyles. He said that no scientist could tell people how to live or what to eat.
“Individual abstinence is good, but it alone will not bring about the change to the extent it will be necessary,” Skea said. “If we are to live more climate consciously, we need entirely new infrastructure. People will not get on bikes if there are no cycle paths.”
Skea said he also wanted to adapt the IPCC so that it could provide better and more targeted advice to specific groups of people on how they could act to combat climate change.
He named groups like town planners, landowners and businesses: “With all these things it’s about real people and their real lives, not scientific abstractions. We need to come down a level,” he told DPA.
The headline is actual ragebait considering the more reasonable context of his message
His statement isn’t really about the severity of the issue, he just says that people are prone to give up
1.5C was never a threat, it was a target. The IPCC produces simplified “stakeholder” report, it would be a superior use of one’s time to just give it a skim than spend time reading clickbaity website titles. https://www.ipcc.ch/assessment-report/ar6/
Policymaker summary report: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGIII_SummaryForPolicymakers.pdf
People aren’t apathetic because “it’s too late”, it’s because right now is the time humanity needs to act, yet all that’s really happened is governments making promises to act in 10, 15, 20 years time if at all.
Oh, but there are pollution targets… that are routinely unmet, or are met through dodgy use of carbon credits, all with no punishment.
well. 1.5C° maybe not an existential threat, but I don’t see a single sign it would stop there, and not going further into 4.0C° ya know
I don’t recall seeing anyone saying that 1.5 degrees warming was an existential threat to humanity. That said, its already killing some humans at less than 1.5 and that will only get worse
I get what you’re saying and you’re not wrong that it will definitely get worse, but I just want to caution that while more people may be dying from extreme heat, any figures to that end should be contrasted with the number of people dying from extreme cold.
Seems like everyone forgets that a nontrivial number of humans die from freezing to death every year… While it sucks that x% more are dying from heat, if more than x% fewer people are dying from the cold, then the point is moot. Though more people are dying from heat, fewer people are dying from environmental exposure throughout the year, and so, over all, the heat can be argued to be a good thing.
Climate change affects both points of the spectrum, so no the heat can’t be argued to be a good thing.
Yes it does, but average global temps are going up, not down.
Omitting the environmental deaths by cold only tells some of the story. If both are going up, that’s far worse than any other scenario. Fact is, we have no idea either way. So from this assessment we only have half the picture, and that’s the problem.
The argument that it’s good is if 10% more people die from exposure in the summer, but that also means 10% fewer die in the winter from exposure, but 10% that 10% represents more people for the winter numbers, then fewer people are dying from exposure overall, which is where it could be argued that it’s a good thing.
I’m of the mind that it’s easier to give people sweaters, blankets, jackets, scarves, mittens, etc, to keep them alive during the cold months, than it is to somehow make them not die in the summer from the heat, so if we want these numbers moving at all, we want them to go towards the winter, because we can’t exactly air condition the outside in the summer.
Just because I see that the argument can be made, doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that I agree the argument should be made. We should be doing everything we can to slow down, prevent, and otherwise reverse the damage from pollution, including, but not limited to, preventing it from continuing, cleaning up the environmental pollution that’s possible to be cleaned, and finding new ways to do the things we need to without creating a new source of possibly worse damage to the environment, as well as doing what we can to restore the environmental areas that have been lost from the damage we have done.
Some things are extremely difficult or impossible with our level of technology, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s not like we have a good way to find and remove radioactive elements or oil that has escaped containment and have been floating around in the ocean… At least, we can’t right now. But keeping things like that from being repeated, using better, clean, energy sources, and advanced and ecologically friendly ways of storing and using that power will be key to preventing the need for things like oil to be dug up from the ground.
As you’re probably aware, there’s a laundry list of things we can and should be doing, and the majority of the time, that’s not what is being done… We have to fix it, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a lot of powerful people with deep pockets have an investment and interest in keeping things as they are, keeping people reliant on fossil fuels and dirty practices that result in pollution so they can keep making more and more money, so that they can simply have more money. It’s a difficult fight, but knowing the arguments people might make against that progress is going to be important to our future; so we can be prepared when those arguments are made by people opposed to a better, more environmentally friendly future, so those without the vision to see how damaging things are, can be convinced to make the right decision for everyone.
It’s going to be a long, tough, battle to fight.
And yet the both of you seem to be arguing the point, or the meta point. Take my upvotes, the both of you! ;-)
There was a prediction by a UN climate panel earlier this year thankfully that we would stay below 4 C.
oh look people in the comments who are missing the fucking point. I’m honestly so sick of this shit. You either have rainbows and unicorns and “we’ll just figure it out”/climate deniers to “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH” apathetic fucks who won’t do shit* because “what’s the point we are all doomed anyway” which…causes the same problem as denying does.
honestly i’ve delt with more people who refuse to change anything because “what’s the point” than I deal with outright deniers anymore.
*not sure if anyone in the comments is an apathetic "do nothing though tbf and honest. So there is my disclaimer don’t @ me.
I see this all the time on social media, and it’s frustrating. I don’t want to dampen anyone’s passion for combating climate change (because I agree!), but it’s like a feedback loop for rhetoric that gets more and more extreme.
Something that starts out as:
“There was a wildfire in _____. This could be part of a larger trend related to climate change.”
Turns into:
“This fire was caused directly by climate change.”
Turns into:
“The world is on fire! Take shelter!”
Turns into:
“Don’t plan for the future. Don’t have children. Move somewhere cold and start prepping for the apocalypse.”
You can literally watch this same process happen with every issue that gets traction on social media or cable news. Then one side looks at the most extreme comments from the other side and easily dismisses the whole thing.
I literally has a convo with two friends this weekend about how they won’t have kids because they think it’s irresponsible to raise them in a world “that might not exist when they’re adults”. The doomsaying and hyperbole is absolutely real.
What worries me about that thinking is that historically children have been the big reason for people to care about the future and what they’ll leave behind.
Yes, but you can also still care about doing that without having children. I hope that this doesn’t follow those trends.
People can also love nature, animals, history, the arts, and lots of other things. They might want other people to still be able to enjoy the things that they love in the future. I would still care regardless of if I have kids or not, personally.
Ok, sure. Please tell me what I can do that will actually make a difference other than having it be a major influence in the way I vote?
This is a problem that only governments can solve and voting is the only way average people can hope to really influence them.
One person recycling or driving an EV makes no difference to the entire planet.
honestly i’ve delt with more people who refuse to change anything because “what’s the point” than I deal with outright deniers anymore.
But most of the people who express that opinion aren’t saying it because they think that climate change is unstoppable.
They are saying it because the changes that we know can help fight climate change, that we’ve known about for years, that international leaders can implement, aren’t being done.
And this statement, from someone with a lot influence on global carbon emissions than the average person, seems very out of touch. He is telling off the people whose house is burning down, while ignoring the arsonists.
actually, a lot of them do think climate change is unstoppable in some way shape and form, I know cause i get told that almost every day. There are people doing it in these comments right now.
Also, I read the article, he is not ignoring the issue here, and honestly, i think this is directed at the leaders too. Who do you think is spreading this gloom and doom in the first place? Who benefits from people giving up and we just live in a worst world when there is much we can do to fight? The fossil fuel-backed “leadership”.
There are plenty of ways to fight, you just can’t do it alone. No one can fight climate change alone. Our individualism has warped our brains so that we cannot even fathom what to do at first when we ourselves cannot fix a problem by ourselves. Another outcome of hegemony and our corrupt society.
only through building community and threatening the power structure can we effectively fight for real change. “leadership” (aka people with power who are all corrupt to a certain extent) will do nothing if they do not have a legitimate fear of the people, and that will not come without community building and throwing off the shackles of individualism.
The news;
- we are fucked
- just kidding no we are not
- yes we are
- no we are not
Don’t even know what to believe anymore. All I know for fact is what I can see and trend myself. I know about 7 years ago or so I definitely noticed more wildfires than I ever have. Never had I had memories of every summer being smoked out. This summer I’ve felt autumn chill in some mornings when I normally would not have. Heat domes… Didn’t even know why that was until last year or the year before.
I think shits fucked.
IMO whether we’re fucked or not is not a constructive argument.
In either case, the interpretation of climate change can lead to the same conclusion: a) we’re fucked up to the point of no return. So we can keep our wasteful society as is until we extinct, because changing our society will not achieve anything. b) we’re not in that bad situation so we can keep our wasteful society as is until the situation gets really bad and requires change.
Anything could be used to justify not making changes and majority of society/indistry ppl in power are super resistant to it (which likely reduces their profit).
In reality, it’s not black and white. Even if the ‘no return’ scenario is real, we can still lessen the climate change effect or delay catastrophic end if we make changes now.
pretty sure we’re fucked.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/30/world/antarctic-sea-ice-winter-record-low-climate-intl/index.html
when the AMOC goes, we’re gonna see ecosystems collapse. When the ice shelf breaks off into the sea, we’re gonna see sea levels climb rapidly.
can human civilization survive? perhaps if we can get everyone to work together. ww2 levels of mobilization and federalization of resources.
I think this would require the UN to have a no-bullshit-session with the worlds top climate and systems folks, then each and every country declaring a national emergency to address the climate crisis. Which means we’re going to finally have to get the assholes rolling coal in their giant pickup trucks festooned with trump flags to give up their bullshit. And everyone will have to cut their energy consumption and face changes to their lives and diets that will help us prepare for the really hard times ahead and feed the starving that are already resulting from mass drought & the war in Ukraine.
I doubt we’ll ever get the rolling coal big truck assholes to give up their bullshit, so… No, we’re fucked, we’re going to die badly in most cases, and it’s almost entirely our own fault. I let the last few generations off because they didn’t enjoy the excess, they’re simply going to get stuck with the bill.
Cheers, hope I’m very very wrong.
…Changes which will never happen and will themselves cause untold suffering and millions of deaths, so no one will ever support them.
What we need is a method that would not negatively impact human standard of living. Human expansion into space would do it; we’ll require the energy and resources up there to geoengineer in a non-stupid way and get the energy and resources to get off Exxon-Mobil’s oily cock and undo ocean acidification anyway.
So let’s do that instead. We can prevent the civil war that would erupt from climate austerity too.
Dude - I’m really sorry, an escape hatch for the rich people who can pay to be onboard isn’t a solution. We’ve been living unsustainably - this, by definition, can’t be sustained. We need to change now so we can make that change as comfortable and human as possible; otherwise we’re going to be stuck reactively responding to each successive disaster, or crop failure, or ecosystem collapse, or climate migration wave etc.
We need to get ahead, now.
Human expansion into space is anything above that and the idea that it is is just meaningless capitalist propaganda. Human expansion into space consists of:
-
Building space solar power stations (SSPSes) to beam power down to the Earth 24/7 to replace the coal plants
-
Mining calcium and magnesium from the Moon and near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) to bind with the excess CO2 in th oceans to stop and reverse ocean acidification
-
Mining rare-Earth elements from NEAs to mass-produce electric cars and batteries down here ln Earth to replace gas vehicles
-
Build O’Neill cylinders to preserve and rebuild ecosystems in safe places where poachers will never be able to reach
Among other things.
-
What we need is a method that would not negatively impact human standard of living.
we need to turn this ship around without altering course, lol.
sure thing buddy, that would be great. not gonna hold my breath on that.
We don’t have time for that.
The way I see it, we have 3 main paths
We cut everything we’re doing, go local and human powered, and adapt to conditions as they change.
Super-intelligence and/or full automation (whichever comes first, we soon get both). It makes capitalism pointless, it lets us expand into space scaling geometrically, and it tells us exactly how we can change things here to maximize habitability
We keep doing what we’re doing until the “just in time” supply chains we use to minimize costs collapse. Either the US military’s plans for this are good and we minimize loss of life, or we starve. Industries collapse immediately, and maybe we lose the ability to produce higher technology - at the very least it won’t be nearly as common. Hopefully we can still work on AI and robotics or there’s no real way out of it
Path 1 is probably not happening. Path 2 and 3 are just a race between the next revolution in technology and the climate. It’s looking pretty close right now - so doing anything to tip the scales, however slightly, is a great idea
It would take 5, maybe 10 years at most to build a Lofstrom loop making it possible to send out unmanned mining craft en masse, and then have the craft process minerals in zero g and then dump the calcium into the ocean. Furnish the magnesium into rebar and run a current theough it when it’s stuck in the deep sea. We could even build nice seasteading islands at the same time with that approach – create more living space while undoing the damage we’ve done to the oceans. Win-win.
Governments are running experiments on SSPSes now, in no small psrt because of climate change.
We absolutely can and should take the space approach now while we still have time.
Speaking of time, we can and should launch a solar shade up there to immediately stop the warming to give us the time we need to decarbonize, and clean up the oceans and forests. A solar shade will cool the Earth without the baggage and environmental problems associated with dumping sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere as the U.S. and EU are considering.
Of all the options, the solar shade might be the most mandatory, and would be very doable cheaply with a Lofstrom loop.
Climate change? Pfft. My fridge has been a steady 3°C for the past 10 years.
Most wildfires are caused by arsonists/accidents.
Most stupid comments are caused by typing before thinking.
How is it stupid? It’s true and not even contradicting OPs experience.
Its missing the forest for the trees. A bit like saying the main cause of shooting deaths in the US is due to bullets hitting people.
Lets assume that most wildfires are indeed caused by arson/accident. But first the environmental conditions must allow such activities to have the impacts they have. i.e. higher temperatures and drier dry-seasons caused by climate change, resulting in a more combustible environment.
For US - https://phys.org/news/2017-02-humans-percent-wildfires-season-decades.html
And it’s the same for almost every country that is on fire now, like Greece for example or Italy:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/28/greece-fires-arsonists-extreme-weather
I’ve linked BC wildfire stats case anyone is curious. The US might be an exception?
The current 10-year average, taken from 2012 to 2022, is 1,483 wildfires from April 1 to March 31 the following year. On average, 42% of these are human-caused and 58% are lightning-caused.
So your opinion is that as it gets warmer and drier, more people choose to set fires? And not that the same number of people behave in the same way, but the conditions changing is what makes the fires worse?
There are no upticks in number of fires, only percentage of acres they consume. US data, for example (below). Now, you can ignore the data and continue drumming that climate change is causing more fires, but that is not a fact.
I don’t think you actually read what I said. You are arguing a completely different thing. And your data is supporting my point, not yours. I was specifically saying that it isn’t more fires. That each fire is just worse because the conditions are worse. It’s drier and warmer causing the fires to spread faster. Global warming is indeed the cause of that.
I’m not sure what kind of point you’re trying to make here. Obviously every wildfire ultimately originates from an ignition source, be that a human made fire, some glass focusing the sunlight, a cigarette or whatever other source you can think of. They don’t spawn into existence.
Drought caused by extreme heat makes it much easier for these small fires to spread into an actual wildfire though. It’s not mutually exclusive.
The point that we are not fucked as there is no significant increase in numbers of wildfires and most of them are not caused by climate change.
This is critical. We need to be careful, alert and active in mitigating climate change (and putting massive pressure on our governments to do the same) but we cannot give in to alarmism; all it’ll lead to is apathy, and a all that’ll lead to is inaction.
Climate change is real, it’s dangerous, and it’s happening. However, as long as we have commitment, it is not beyond our capabilities to mitigate. We still have time, and we can still fix this.
