Where do you stand on climate change?
I'm intrigued to ask Tildes this because people are from all walks of life and from all over the world.
Right now, Europe is being hit with a heatwave that's breaking all records. Last year the UK had it's hottest day ever recorded too. It's pretty crazy and it's messing with crops, animals and humans alike. It's changing our way of life.
The question is: do you believe we're the cause and humans have caused global warming?
Or
We're in a climate cycle the world naturally takes going from ice age to extreme heat and back again?
I ask because I'm of the belief that science is right, humans are causing this. However, a few friends, some of who I believe to be fairly intelligent, are firmly sticking to it being a planet cycle and it's purely natural.
Your views please?
I'm going to be very short in this: it's not a matter of belief. By now it is basically a hard proven fact (yes, I know, nothing is ever 100% proven in science).
Whatever some layman's opinion or belief on the matter is, is irrelevant. Obviously, their belief is relevant if you want them to act on it, so we cannot simply dismiss it.
Exactly.
Either you believe in the scientific method, or you don't. No-one sensible in modern society does not believe in the scientific method, and so there is no option but to believe in the tremendous amount of evidence for anthropomorphic climate change.
This isn't a pick-and-choose situation.
The only disagreements that make sense to have about climate change is how to act, how quickly to act and what technologies to implement at what scale in what order to pass the Earth onto current and future life in a morally defensible condition.
Balancing climate action against hunger, drought, war, the nature crisis etc. is also difficult: We have to think short and long-term at the same time.
Let's be fair to the general population here. People don't believe in the scientific method because they don't understand it. People mostly believe in the authority of science or some other kind of authority.
High school science is all good, but a scientific paper is much more complex if not interpreted beforehand.
I know of scientists or people who were on track to be scientists that are disillusioned with the funding and grant process of most modern day research. One of those same people uses that cynicism to doubt that veracity of mainstream climate science. So it's not just a matter of ignorance at play here.
What are the nature and drought crises, are they not linked to climate action? I don’t know those terms and it’s curious they are listed separately.
Nature crisis: The world is seeing a tremendous decline in nature due to human effects. This is a crisis the UN is concerned about on about the same level as the climate crisis. Here's a short overview.
Drought, hunger and similar crises: We can't just deal with global warming. We have to give aid to people who are in need now (here's a single example affecting/displacing over 20 million people). According to the UN over 750 million people live with hunger. That's a tenth of the world population. We're nowhere near reaching the UN 2030 sustainable development goals.
In other words: We have to balance combatting the effects of climate change, other natural disasters, preventing climate change itself, people displaced by war/other causes, and dealing with other types crises affecting people right now.
It's too easy to say we should help everyone suffering now and do everything to combat climate change and the nature crisis. That's not realistic or possible. We need to balance different types of aid against each other. This is difficult. We have to think both short and long-term for all these different development issues that have to be dealt with.
Thanks for explaining!
If we’re maximising utility then one hypothesis I thought of just now is to favour the currently alive people, food security, health care, and education, that way we get more people able to help solve the long term problems. And we probably need to solve these things within a standard human lifespan starting from now or by 2100 we’ll be toast.
Also if you are hungry and poor you don’t care about using sustainable things you just use whatever you have.
So more wealth equality and education should give people the choice and understanding to make choices based on sustainability rather than just survival.
I think we won’t solve global problems without achieving some kind of global abundance and fair distribution of wealth.
Hypercapitalism is probably to blame in equal parts for my high standard of living in a European county, and simultaneously killing the planet.
Consumerism is, not capitalism. Capitalism is one of the reasons we have such a massive run on renewable energy. The race to be the most cost effective is why we have renewables at the rate we do.
Capitalism also fueled the climate change denial tactics used by oil companies to preserve their profits and set us back decades in the fight. Tactics they're still using today to further impede progress.
Also, while consumers are in part responsible for consumerism, that push has also been driven heavily by capitalism. Consumers aren't the ones that benefit from planned obsolescence, or funding endless marketing constantly trying to get them to consume more.
On a purely theoretical basis, a planned economy with a suitably strong, authoritarian government could have just wholesale banned non-renewables and introduced renewables on any feasibly short timespan. If anything, capitalism did lengthen the process by only backing renewables significantly when it became clear that they will become actually cheaper per kilowatt hour than.
Though at least this latter was a real process and we are not on completely off-path on the energy-generation path.
..just everywhere else.
No they wouldn't have... China is literally building more coal plants right now.
That’s one example of a hybrid economical model, not even quite the one I mentioned. But even if it were so, it wouldn’t contradict my claim.
Capitalism is driving the cheapest the cost for renewables though, that's how it works in capitalism. Why spend money on coal when renewables are cheaper. It's why EVs are gaining traction. In you're utopia example sure, but authoritarian societies exist because some dickheads at the top like power.
Globalization of production to feed thay consumerism.... all those ocean going freighters burning the worst of the worst petrol (bunker fuel) is a major contributor to the problem of emissions
While you can see that I am by no means pro-capitalism/consumerism, at least not their extreme forms, shipping by the sea is still probably the most ecologically friendly way of transport per unit weight per distance. Of course the best course of action would be to severely decrease the needed cargo that is transported constantly, but trucks would be many times worse on longer distances.
Damn, and I thought we had a clear #1 worldwide priority here with this climate problem (both prevention/limiting the problem and, by now, dealing with initial consequences from insufficient prevention). Now there's two problems... somewhat aligned with each other, but still.
*anthropogenic
That post was written in a manner that encouraged adversarial discussion (not really blaming OP or anything) which is why it was full of contrarians and eventually OP asked for it to be locked. One major ingredient in "not getting something" is ignorance so I'm not too surprised.
This thread has a much more focused topic and, while it could have dissolved into a mess, outside a diehard skeptic or two, only people who really care about climate change would post here.
I'm just kinda hopeless about it in general, because the fact we are still having this debate about the existence and cause tells me we'll never actually take the actions needed to mitigate the worst case scenario of projected warming.
I do what I can to reduce the little footprint I produce, but all and all, I just see it as a foregone conclusion and try not to follow any of the news about it. Cause really, short of doing something highly illegal and ruining my life in the process, what action could I take that would make an actual difference rather than just be another act of theatre that ultimately does nothing to help the situation.
At this point I don't care anymore. It's not like I ever wanted kids anyway, planned to retire comfortably, or expected to ever reach the point of prosperity my parents had reached anyway. I just want to enjoy the life I was given to the point I can before humanity cooks itself off this planet.
edit: I was kinda hoping there would be at least some pushback to my pessimism, but the fact this is my most voted for reply kinda makes it sink in that my pov isn't that uncommon anymore. Like in the past, I would get at least some pushback saying there are ways I can do my part, or that there were some reasons to be optimistic. But to be in a position where most people agree with me, it's kinda depressing.
Rolls up sleeves
Ok so here’s the thing. On the one hand, accepting that we’re past the point of “stopping” climate change is the only accurate perspective to have. The amount of climate change that has already happened has locked us in for several inches of sea level rise, heat waves, droughts, etc. This is exhaustingly depressing, and it saps most of my mental energy every time I think about it.
But there is another hand. We, humanity, are constantly churning in and out new people with decision making power. And for the past thirty years, the likelihood that the new decision makers know about and care about and want to make a difference about climate change has steadily increased. At The New York Times, climate coverage has increased massively over the past decade as new reporters and editors have joined the newsroom with clear minds about the necessity of an informed public as a method of change. In my state, I can get massively subsidized home energy efficiency improvements, because the energy officials in my state know that we need to reduce our energy consumption to keep the world from burning. And these changes really do matter, especially in aggregate. They will be the difference between an excruciatingly painful road to relative safety, and a world uninhabitable by humans. And while both of those choices really suck, one is way fucking worse than the other, in my opinion.
It’s possible that none of this matters directly to you, and I’m not really trying to urge you to action, or anything. I’m only addressing the pessimism aspect of your comment. Climate change is, like, really bad, and has already caused massive pain and suffering to humanity, but humanity is capable of astonishing feats, and there are more humans than ever working on this particular problem. Not everyone can or should be focused on solving climate change; as some other folks have said, there are other things going on, too! But even if it’s not your personal battle, there’s still considerable reason for hope, in my opinion.
Thank you. Not just for the realistic yet optimistic response, but for your last point especially
As someone who is feeling overwhelmed with everything going on, and is trying to keep their friends and their family safe from other dangers more immediate to us , this is the thing I needed to hear.
This climate comic kind of condenses your points and might be useful outside of Tildes, out there in the vast wilderness of the internet.
https://rosemarymosco.com/comics/climate/climate-truths
On the other hand, I wonder how does it compare to conservative, climate change denial voices, both in media and corporate social media. Have they risen too? Because observing the crisis of democracy on the Earth makes me think that climate change denialism may alsobe rising.
That's not true! I can't embed images, but look at this graph:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Greenhouse_gas_emission_scenarios_01.svg
Found in this Wikipedia article. It shows that doing nothing would result in a ~4.5°C warmer world by the year 2100, whereas current policies steer us on a path to ~2.7°C warmer. It's not ideal, but there are definitely differences:
For example, another Wikipedia article has a terrible graph which links to an IPCC report as source which has a much better graph on page 18, showing that:
We are steering the world to be a better place than if we do nothing.
We're not doing enough for it to be unchanged, but it is helping!
We are still looking at an optimistic +2 assuming no unknown feedback loops. It's wild how much the goalposts have moved. 20 years ago we thought +1.5 was the maximum we should allow and anything more would be catastrophic. Now +2 is optimistic. The projections of the effects haven't really changed though. We have just become more accepting of a mild catastrophe. I just know that in 10 years time we will have comments saying "well +3 isn't too bad compared to +5..."
For what little it’s worth, I upvoted due to agreeing with the pessimism, but that’s only part of my perspective? We’re locked into destroying human cultures, wiping out vast and diverse ecosystems, and (gasp) doing untold economic damage, but the maximum extent of the devastation is still up in the air.
Er, spun more positively, our actions now determine how much is left in the eventual post-Anthropocene recovery. It’s much less poetic than the relevant tree planting analogy, but I’ve found solace in the idea that — in two to four generations — choices that we’ve made collectively could mean forests surviving, or species existing. Even if the choices seem insignificant in the moment.
We are all beyond asking questions like this, and I feel like the fact that we are means that we are doomed as a society. The science was clear and conclusive in the 90s.
Science was pretty clear in the 70s and hidden from us by the large oil companies. We could choose ot hold Exxon and Sheela responsible but instead we still have people who refuse to believe the science to own the Libs.
I have little hope in us doing anything and just wish to be able to enjoy the rest of my life.
Even just considering basic direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 over the last 60 years and seeing that it's increased by 30% in that timeframe should be evidence enough that humans are responsible for the change. Changes that drastic and that fast simply don't happen in the natural world unless there's some kind of cataclysmic event. The cataclysmic event this time was the industrial revolution.
Heck, and even if it's not, that doesn't mean it's not a problem for us to solve if we want to keep our habitat.
I'm happy for people to believe what they will if that lets them sleep at night (religions also kinda disagree and we've chosen to just treat any religion as legitimate, besides flying spaghetti monster :( ), but that's no argument against action.
I don't understand the people who say "it's just a planetary cycle", because all the science for global warming already takes those cycles into account.
Climate change denialism has never been about the science.
It's a propaganda movement invented to protect corporate profits. Since then, it's been pushed so hard and so effectively that it's become a core belief of many Western Conservatives.
If the science actually mattered, the world would've stopped arguing about climate change decades ago.
Everyone knows that war is bad. In the 1920s and 1930s countries naively tried to agree on never going to war again. The implications that come from actually following through with this policy are too far-reaching for societies to actually deal with.
Similarly, if we take the international promises of emission reductions, protecting large percentages of nature globally within few years at face value, the implications and scale of action required just isn't possible for societies to deal with.
The follow-through for these promises just isn't there. It's easy to blame this on propaganda, but on a subconscious level, how much of a modern lifestyle are people actually willing to give up for the future of the planet? Across all of life, humans are self-absorbed and egotistic.
It's my very clear belief that history will judge these nature and climate agreements and promises of the 1990s through 2020s just as harshly as the blue-eyed peace plans in the era of The League of Nations, if not even more harshly.
I’ll explain it from my dad’s pov. He believes it is all just a bunch of hooey made up cause scientists want to scam a lot of money from grants. Now, add in that he never likes to admit he’s wrong and he has a whole media network and political party who keep feeding him lies he wants to believe In and good luck getting him out of that notion. It is really hard to break people of believing In lies they want to believe in. We are really good at lieing to ourselves when we want to believe in something. The most I’ve seen is he acknowledges that we are seeing effects but now it is, “but this is the earth’s natural cycle”. Which honestly is some movement from him.
If it gives you any hope my stepmom a few years ago let slip she was starting to think global warming was real. She’s as brainwashed as my dad. I have no idea if Fox News has changed her mind again, In general we try to avoid any of his talk cause it just ends up in huge fights.
Considering how (not) well most scientists are paid, this is uniquely hilarious.
Based on the planetary cycles we should literally be entering an ice age, I don't understand why people think this is normal at all
Can you explain what you are basing this on? Is it the more ancient ice age cycles? I've understood the intervals to be 100,000 years for the last 800,000 years. They were 40,000 year intervals before that. The last ice age maximum was some 20,000 years ago. Considering that the pattern for 800,000 years has been the 100,000 year cycle, it would not seem that we are currently going in the direction of an ice age even without human activity.
I was of the understanding that we were near-ish to the peak of the interglazial. And over the next I don't know 10,000 years or 20,000 years or some stupid long time spent it would have cooled back off.
I know back in the 70s the popular media was touting the return to an ice age, but scientists of the time were already disagreeing with that. In fact, they were already talking about global warming back then. I'm specifically thinking of the scientists at NOAA.
While the evidence for human involvement in climate change is overwhelming, I don't think climatologists in general think we were supposed to be headed into an ice age currently.
The popular media talk was just that, popular media talk. We're talking of time ranges like 10,000 years which are not going to affect us in our lifetime.
Without global warming the ice age would be a fun statistic that no one ever has to worry about and it would be so slow the humanity would just sort of instantly adapt to it over the years.
Even though it feels like it, we don't form our beliefs on a basis of facts and reason. First, we have some conviction, which is based on emotions and our place in the tiny part of the world that we can see and influence. Then we rationalize that conviction by twisting and selecting facts, silencing opposition and applying the very, very long list of fallacies as we see fit.
This makes it easier for me to understand crazy opinions. I try to remind myself that I have probably some crazy opinion myself. It is deeply rooted in my personality, and it hurts if someone pulls on it because they think it's weed that must be removed. I haven't maliciously chosen to believe bullshit, I have fallen victim to my own mind, which wasn't made for understanding the world.
I have no idea what to do about this, but it makes me less angry, which is nice.
This is the fun one, because . . . the "planetary" cycle looked to be another mini ice age, the solar cycle supports this.
So here's the thing, we are getting net less solar energy right now than we were 50 years ago . . . and yet we just keep getting hotter. This is all pretty public data, there is no doubt that we have well and truly fucked things up.
I feel like this is by no means consensus and still hotly debated. The points you listed in particular set up nuclear technology as static and project it outwards assuming no advancement. The problems, which there are plenty as you point out, are surrmountable. Nuclear tech can be modified to work on different, more common, fuels. Deployments can be standardized to avoid long deployment delays due to customization. The energy density of nuclear is absolutely second to none. imo, its a marvel and should be harnessed.
TIL, thanks for sharing. Do you work in the field? You seems to have an impressive depth of knowledge on this topic
Isn't this slightly irrelevant for what we're discussing? We're not running out of power, our problem is we don't have enough environmentally sustainable power.
A spear-fishing rod returns wildly more calories per gram of material used than a net. But that's irrelevant, for the overall investment in effort and time required to get that 500lbs fish you could have laid a net and gotten tons of smaller fish to feed yourself with. The energy density is not our concern at the moment, especially since solar panels harness the thousands of terawatts that are freely raining down upon the planet.
It is relevant if you consider nuclear green (I do). It can replace a very sizeable amount of fossil fuel base. Wind and Solar is like death by 1000 cuts (not to mention periodic nature of these alternatives). The amount of land you need to dedicate to wind/solar to replace one coal fired plant is shocking
I understand but we're not lacking land, that's the thing. These advantages, space and energy density do not solve major issues which are efficiency per dollar and speed of deployment.
Solar also has the huge advantage that it can be deployed pretty much at any scale, you can have rooftop solar to take some load off the grid and massive farms or solar plants as well.
I think we're on the same page. It doesn't have to be one or the other right? Both. good. But to be honest, speaking outside of practical realities, in the far future, wouldn't want to see the entire globe covered with energy collection machines. I'd prefer to see highly dense urban dwelling with equally dense energy production. And vast areas of the globe left as forest or other natural biomes. Fission or nuclear fits into my vision of the future as the backbone of energy production. Solar and wind do too of course, but not as the backbone
I think we are. I consider nuclear useful albeit dangerous if mishandled. Ideally I'd want tons of renewables with some very tightly regulated nuclear just in case. For the short term, everything I've read says renewables are much more quickly deployed and much cheaper.
For the far future (say, 200 years) I'd hope we have something better like fusion but we'd still be nowhere near covering the planet.
For the far far far future where we've become Coruscant well, I assume we'd have already solved the energy production issue in order to get there. I doubt we have enough fissile material to sustain such a massive civilization on nuclear power anyway.
Not to speak for OP, but it seemed like one of their points was that, in an alternate universe, widespread development and deployment of nuclear power generation in the 70s and 80s would’ve avoided a tremendous amount of emissions. But that never happened, seemingly because discussing nuclear power became unsavoury.
Wonder what could've caused that
Do serious grid scale solutions to renewables exist right now? If we have billions to dump into radical de-carbonisation, could we start building today? From what I've read I believe we don't actually have viable solutions in this space, yet, but I may be totally wrong(!). I'm absolutely for renewables, we should be aiming at 100% renewables in the shortest timeline possible. But can we have the dream of diverse and extensive renewable sources and baseload provided by batteries filled by these sources, before we can build a ton of reactors, if we started building them as soon as possible?
(We absolutely need to do either at the earliest possible opportunity. This should be treated as the emergency it is and work on the scale and urgency on the level of WW2 Total War. This needs to be started about 20 years ago (or tomorrow))
Yes.
Talking about batteries before the first 50% of renewables is putting the cart before the horse - until we build out tons of renewables, we don't need grid storage and so there's no demand for it - there's no incentive to invest in the R&D until there are some big customers. If we want to accelerate battery investment, then we need to create a market for it by building out the renewables that will use the batteries first!
No, we should be aiming at the fastest rate of reduction of emissions possible, which is subtlely different.
For instance, if you had to choose between:
Then choice #1 would be better even though it would delay "100% renewables" by 5 years, because it would prevent approximately 7 years' emissions compared to choice #2.
We should de-prioritize the last 10% of emissions whenever it blocks the first 90%. Our deadline isn't time, it's the amount of greenhouse gases we've emitted. If we halved global emissions today, we would have twice as long to remove the other half.
I've been a huge proponent of nuclear energy up until last year, but the Ukraine war changed my opinion on it. The Russians took over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, stationed their troops and artillery there and wired it up to blow into a potential disaster. This is the largest nuclear powerplant in Europe.
To anyone that feels that this event isn't relevant to them. Who protects your nuclear plants? Who will protect them in ten years? In one hundred years? The fact that they must be protected against natural disasters, human disasters, wars and terrorism forever is a huge, huge cost that will never go away. It needs to be priced in when we talk about nuclear.
This is one of the most baffling things I've ever had to witness, the anti-nuclear groups are mainly climate activist and green planet types. It just boggles my mind how ignorant they are about this.
Also, maybe we can have a good number of volcanos go off for a few years straight...help cool the planet some.
https://www.usgs.gov/programs/VHP/volcanoes-can-affect-climate
Climate change is real, but I dislike the 'Individuals must change' narrative being used by corporations to shift the responsibility on the consumer.
If anything it's industry and the corporate world that should step up and make changes that make a difference and will cause consumers to adapt.
This is where I am on this topic. Anything I could possibly do as an individual to try and combat climate change would be frivolous.
So then what makes Shell think they need to change, if you keep buying their fuel?
No individual owns these oil corporations and can decide "today, we stop pumping oil". Even if they did, the world would collapse, the people who made that choice are shot and replaced, and the immediate crisis is averted.
Now, if there were less of a demand for oil, then scaling it back and offering alternative products becomes lucrative
I understand it's a chicken-and-egg problem, but if the chickens keep laying eggs then the eggs need to work on spawning different kinds of chickens
Because I have little choice but to buy their fuel. I'm just not given sufficient choice in this particular matter as a consumer. And if you're thinking "electric vehicle", the infrastructure in this area is not sufficient for my vehicular needs if I had an electric car. And my state's electric grid is almost all powered by fossil fuel anyway.
These are global changes that need to come from above. I'm not given the power or options to make a change here.
Absolutely. I'm not footing the bill for the ones actually destroying the earth.
I find it hard to see this as being logical, though. Three aspects come to mind:
The latter obviously conflicts with the former two, but by and large, I do see "us" having a large influence: both as part of corporations and as consumers. We are each individually responsible if we don't at least try to do something.
It feels very unfair to live as a hermit while your aunt flies across the world in a jet, and I cannot bring myself to live as such a hermit even if that is the responsible thing to do. I'm going to take an airplane in two weeks, but at the same time, I at least looked if trains are reasonably possible (a train takes 4 days for a return trip; the plane 4 hours), I will choose not to eat a lot of meat on holiday even if I can easily afford it, and other such choices. Reducing how much money flows into pollutive industries and using alternatives when available, that's what will incentivise better corporations and that is what consumers can and, I think, should do.
What climate friendly alternative is there for daily travel which is as economical as the ICE? Electric? What if you live somewhere where the electricity is generated by fossil fuels? An individual's ability to reduce their carbon footprint without disentangling from society at great consequence to their own lives is impossible. Let me flip it around: The current situation where industrialized nations produce far too much CO2 was not driven primarily by individual choice, but through collective action of governments and industries. To then ask that individuals bear the brunt of the responsibility in reversing society's course is ludicrous.
Walk. Bike. Use public transport. Prioritize closer to home destinations. The necessity of owning private transportation is largely created by car manufacturers propaganda. You can find some households owning multiple cars, which is completely unnecessary.
That's simple - use less electricity.
It's really not. Yes, corporations and governments will have to take drastic actions to combat climate change. It doesn't in any way means individuals shouldn't take actions to lessen it - change their diets, be less wasteful, prefer products with less negative ecological impact, do not overindulge. You can't benefit from industrial society's benefits and then just wait for big corporations to decide to fix it all by themselves - you have to vote with your wallet, and sometimes it's gonna be painful.
Where I live (US; midwest), that is impossible unless commuting multiple hours one-way is acceptable which it certainly isn't for most people. The US is notoriously car-centric and there just isn't the infrastructure locally to make travel around the city feasible without a car. It is hardly propaganda.
This is the very point I'm making. To actually move the needle on climate change, collective action will need to be taken. Phasing out ICE vehicles, reducing fossil fuel utilization in power generation, building train and rail infrastructure to lessen the need to drive, renovating cities to be more urban, dense and walkable, tax luxury items which have terrible ecological impact, remove the subsidies which artificially lower the price of red meat, etc... These are the things which will actually make big differences on global CO2 production.
I have no issue recommending people change their habits to reduce their carbon footprints: handwash dishes, air dry clothing, carpool more, etc... These are moral goods and every bit helps, but to say individual action will solve climate change is like saying not watering your lawn in California will alleviate the water crisis. Yes, such lawns are irresponsible, but if you tabulate water usage, residential lawns are not the lion's share of offending wasteful water use. There's far bigger fish to fry in that case.
My view is pretty simple: do not mess with complex systems. Regardless of your opinion about climate change (though I think denialists to be pretty darn delusional at this point) we can all agree that the wisest course of action here is to listen to the scientists, assume climate change to be anthropogenic, and start making drastic changes to the way we relate to nature.
Agreed on the complex systems part. I've tinkered with a lot of chaotic circuits. I'm just so happy the universe has been kind enough to let me live so far.
I think there's an expectation of some sort of linearity and slowness to climate change. I mean, the big stuff is going to be slow just because the earth is big--average temperature, sea level, etc. But I think people fail to grasp that the slow changes in those parameters don't necessarily translate into slow disruptions of human lives.
You can't just poke at fusion powered nonlinear systems with obscene numbers of feedback loops and expect things to be fine. It's easy to see 1 degree C as an imperceptible change in temperature and forget that represents ~100M Hiroshima nuclear bombs worth of energy going into a complex system we depend on.
The other day on the news they were talking to Nolan about Oppenheimer and the interviewer asked him what he thought about "the other existential risk to humanity" and I expected them to say "climate change" but instead the interviewer said "AI".
We are living in a total clown show. I think part of the problem is that we don't have enough scientists and engineers in charge, and instead lawyers and other humanities students.
I'll be honest.
I work with Scientists and Engineers, they can just be as greedy as the rest of us. They can be argumentative, narcassistic and twisted individuals.
What we need? Is generally more empathy in the world. But that's stymed by shitty capitalistic behaviours that jam us up from caring about each other.
Climate Change? I've got food to buy.
Climate Change? I've got to pay my rent.
Climate Change? I've got my hour of hate to partake in on Facebook!
There's a reason why environmental activism is considered strongest within young adults who are generally more well off.
Young enough to still care, with a level of financial stability that they can be concerned with the very global issue that is the environment.
Pretty much.
I'm considered 'well off' by British standards. But I still worry about making my monthly bills despite it being a fraction of my actual income. I dread to think what it's like for those sub-£35K these days.
But you're kept artificially down so that you can't focus on the big problems. It absolutely sucks. Then you get "Oh, the elites want to change how you live!" of course they do... this way of living sucks.
I wish we had more lawyers and humanities students in charge. We have too many business people in charge who only care about greed.
I wager you a good understanding of humanities would be exactly what we would want, because it would teach people better when and why to listen to who, and they’d actually listen to scientific consensus. Unfortunately, modern society runs on economics and nothing else. That’s why they don’t care; even when they do believe it, it’s irrelevant in the face of more profit.
Humans are generally inquisitive and have been able to write things down over the last 2000 years.
If there was a natural warming of the plane happening in such a short time period then it may have been noted. But it has not.
From the following links I think it more probable that the even shorter period of recorded temperature increases are due to human industrial activity over the last 200 years.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record
https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-change-evidence-causes/basics-of-climate-change/
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate/science/global-temperature-records
Basically since we have been able to burn oil and gas on any meaningful scale, shit has been measurably getting warmer. And before that event, things were not getting warmer at the same rate.
Additionally our impact seems to be additive in that the closer to present day we get and therefore used more resources in the past, the larger the rate of change.
We have over the last 200 years, effectively terraformed the human habitat from organic materials that occur naturally like wood and stone, to energy intensive, man made materials like steel and concrete.
We have created infinitely more constant energy sinks than existed before this time period, from the Car and Jet Engine, to huge generators that need fuels to burn to produce electricity. And at the same time added billions of people who need feeding and sheltering and entertaining, a subset of who have rapidly caught up with the west in terms of energy consumption in the last 50 years.
None of this comes without a cost.
At times humans seem powerless to nature, “how could little people impact our huge planet?” but no other organism has ever impacted the planet in the ways we have.
I’m open to other evidence based viewpoints but it seems people who have dedicated their careers on this topic are in agreement that our Industrial Revolution has also been a Co2 emissions revolution as well.
I am not willing to put in enough time to truly understand the science behind the relevant theories so that I can judge for myself.
Thus I need to rely on other people to tell me. I ignore mainstream media for everything besides trivial announcements and simple human relationship stories, because I try to control for Murray Gell-Mann Amnesia.
There are multiple people who do not specialize in my field, but rather science in general, who when they report on fields I am knowledgeable of I have to nod in agreement with or at least agree that they are basically correct, if simplifying.
They all agree that the cause is pretty much our civilization and they seem to agree on the mechanism as well.
But to be honest, I basically try to stand in shade. Especially now that it's 38°C.
Like passengers scurrying to unflooded parts of the Titanic. Yup. Gentlemen, it has been a privilege playing with you.
I just experienced the worst extratropical cyclone in my whole life. 2016 had something bad, but this was terrible. I felt powerless, it broke records, it destroyed simple people's houses. I really don't care what pseudo-thinkers and billionaires say; our world is changing. And the little people will suffer from it.
The 72 hours of downpour and winds up to hurricane levels. The anxiety of losing your roof, your house. Hundreds did. I was lucky.
I think one thing a lot of Americans don’t get is that climate change also means more extreme weather.
California has long been known for its temperate weather. the majority of the last decade we has been spent in drought, but not too long ago we had so much rain that we had a dam break down, causing major flooding damage. And this is just an extremely minor example. The areas affected by monsoons are expanding, and when they aren’t built for it they can cause a lot of damage.
The changing weather is the only reason my very convervative grandfather accepts that climate change is real. He's always been an outdoorsman and hunting was his favorite hobby. He's made it clear that his land was never this hot or dry in the summer 40 years ago. He seems genuinely worried about what his family will face. After a lifetime of random hateful views on stuff it's nice that he at least recognizes what's happening right out his front door.
If just having to go outside summer after summer isn't enough for people at this point idk what will be.
The problem is that your experience of temperature is subjective and relative. You don't go outside and say "oh, it looks like it's 93.64 degrees hot today", you go outside and say "Oh, it's hot". Your memory is also subjective and unreliable. So if you've already been primed to believe that climate change isn't real and you experience the heat, you're not going to be likely to believe that it was any cooler or warmer in the past than it is now.
Honestly, I’m ready for revolution and I’m fucking tired of defeatist attitudes. It’s not that there’s nothing to be done, It’s that we’re too selfish, lazy, and cowardly to take critical action. We don’t have to stay that way.
The consequences of inaction are clear and we need to overthrow the rich.
First Czechoslovak president T. G. Masaryk once famously quipped "Now that we have the democracy, we just need to get ourselves some democrats."
The trouble is that there is no "we". There is just a bunch of introverted intellectuals, a bunch of misguided leftist wannabies, a lot of scared, confused, overworked people and then the well-oiled exploitation machine.
I feel like that's what groups like Extinction Rebellion and Last Generation are basically express: get off your lazy asses and make the important but difficult changes we need.
This is how that sentiment is being met in Germany:
I agree with you and want to say "Hell yeah!" but it's you, me, and a handful of others that would want to disrupt their comfortable life for a greater good it seems, at least for a purpose that is relatively vague and abstract in most people's minds
Which is not to say that nothing is being done. It's not enough to prevent most of climate change's negative effects, but it's a hell of a lot better than if we had chosen to do nothing.
My position is as such: it's going to be significantly worse than the "worst-case scenarios" because, so far, I've witnessed exactly this happening for the two decades I've been paying attention. The reasons for it are that: the world as a whole will never take responsibility as the parts that try will be economically punished; the poors will hurt the most; Exxon did a phenomenal job making this a false "controversy" and a never-ending "debate". Like this.
I don't understand the logic for why it's going to be worse than the worst case.
The worst case predictions assume we do nothing, but we are doing things. But let's say that the policies being put in place (which make a fairly big difference) are all completely and utterly ignored, so we fall back to the worst case scenario. Why would the result then suddenly be even worse than that worst case scenario?
Because "worst case scenarios" are apparently estimated conservatively or miss some factors, underestimating it. Or I just happened to read such estimates, rather the more pessimistic ones. The how is nebulous to me and perhaps all of humanity. Perhaps there's even a bias towards moderate estimations involved.
I'm saying the last few times I've read a paper claim worst case scenario be "X by year Y", in year Y it turned out it was worse than X, rinse and repeat a few times. I don't expect this trend to change. Somehow, I don't know why, humanity is doing worse than some models allow.
I'm firmly in the "it's real and caused by us" camp, but I've come to realize from my time on social media that I'm nonetheless in a minority viewpoint online in that I am not completely doom and gloom about it. I think there are going to be some momentous shifts that will take place over the next century to be sure, but I am not of the "civilizational collapse" mindset.
I want to be that person too and I always was as a younger person. But now that I'm older and become more familiar with how corporations, governments and foreign policy work, I've become way more pessimistic that we will take action in time. Please tell me how you remain optimistic because our capitalism system does not seem set up for urgent action in the right way. We need to prioritize humanitarian and environmental issues before profits on a global scale.
There is an old adage that I've heard in a dozen different forms, attributed to as many different speakers, but the version I quote is this: "Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources." From my experience and layman's study of history, I believe this to be true.
I feel we are finally at a point now where the world is beginning to get serious about climate change. Yeah, it's probably 30+ years later than it should have happened, but I think it's happening. And it's happening now because people are actually seeing it happen right in front of their eyes. In the 90s we had to trust computer climate models; now we see massive heat waves, wildfires, super-hurricanes, etc. We shouldn't have let it get to this point, but people as a whole are short-sighted and have short attention spans. Most need a problem to smack them in the face every day to motivate action. We have reached that point. I feel we now have the proper stimulus in place to get the world off its collective ass.
Capitalist, corporate control of government is definitely a continual hindrance to change, but it is not insurmountable. Corporations ultimately answer to consumers, and are themselves made up of people who experience the same climate change effects. Those rich executives living in the Hamptons had to breathe dangerous, orange air from Canadian wildfires. Ultra-wealthy coastal Floridians are witnessing their homes get battered and flooded by ever-more-powerful storm surges. Corporations and "the elite" can effect (or at least, get out of the way of) change when properly motivated. There are lots of examples of this, but perhaps most germane to the environmental issue would be the creation of the EPA, or the fixing of the ozone hole and acid rain issue. We have neither an ozone hole nor acid rain anymore because the pressure became great enough to fix it.
Global CO2 pollution is a much bigger issue, granted. But I simply don't see it as a "we're done for" scenario yet. Further, I think doomerism is downright dangerous, as it encourages every bit as much complacence as climate change deniers. What is the point of me calling my representatives and writing to non-green corporations threatening to boycott their products if we're already toast? It's apathetic, which is the exact opposite of what is needed from each of us now. I see evidence of us rising to meet challenges in our past, and have thus decided that we will rise to meet this one. I'm not giving up! :)
I always had that positivity, believing that humans always manage to solve almost any problem that arises. And to a certain extent, I still do believe that. But as per my italics in the previous comment, I'm worried we won't act in time. I think we will eventually work out how to solve and/or live with climate change, but thousands of millions could suffer before we do. It's already started (I live in wildfire county) and yet only this year, when NY and Europe have started to experience what people around me experience every year, has there been a sense of "ok we need to take this seriously". My kids may very well be the generation that solves it, but the next couple of decades could be miserable for many around the world. I haven't given up yet either, but Covid, Brexit and Trump's presidency has rocked my confidence.
I'm at the point where I'm less concerned about climate change and more concerned about the social disruptions that will occur as a result.
The West will be fine. The South won't. The left needs to be okay with that, because if they try to save the world the West will no longer be fine.
While I try to not let doomerism overcome me, I really wouldn’t be as sure about the fate of “the West”. If you includes Europe, then just see how much social change/issues the migrant “crisis” has, is causing, and that’s an absolutely tiny migration, all things considered. If potable water won’t be available in whole regions due to droughts, that will be the real migration crisis, and that is not stopped by any wall or law.
But that's exactly what I mean.
I don't worry about the West's ability to survive climate change, I worry about whether infighting over how much to help the rest of the world will tear apart Western societies and institutions.
All you need is a graph.
I've shown this graph to my students when we cover the topic. I also really like the NASA climate page. It walks you through the gist in like 15 minutes with pretty pictures and animated graphs. https://climate.nasa.gov/
I don’t really understand the logic behind this “stop having children” idea.
If we stop reproducing, who would we save the planet for?
It’s not that one shouldn’t have children — but if someone were to have a children only because of social pressure and is not something they have always, 100% wanted, then maybe it’s not a thing for them and everyone is better off (child included).
Also, if someone already has children and they haven’t been dreaming about a big family, then they may reconsider having more. That’s it.
The logic isn't to stop having children, it's - have less children, there are too many of us already. Humanity won't die out if the world's average fertility rate per woman drops from 2.27 to something like 1.5 for a generation, but it will help stabilize population in the long run. It won't be comfortable to be old in a world with not that many young people, tho.
Yeah, refusing to have children is only "effective" in reducing CO2 because it's assumed that child will use the same technology, infrastructure and social norms which cause us to emit so much carbon into the atmosphere. It doesn't have to be this way. The Earth is nowhere near "full" for humanity and society can, with great effort, transform into a more climate responsible world where having kids doesn't necessarily translate into a huge burden of CO2.
As others have said, it's not a matter of belief, but rather of whatever the evidence shows. The fact that it can be posed here in questions like this shows the success of people trying to cloud the issue.
I feel like the only people trying to deny the evidence have an agenda, such as trying to help industry avoid the costs of new regulations on pollution, carbon, etc. They don't want the changes that they'd have to accept if we acted upon the scientific evidence because it would cost them money and obligate them to sacrifice, so they deliberately flood the channel with fear, uncertainty, and doubt via the modern discipline of political manipulation to try to delegitimize the evidence. The idea that there's a worldwide conspiracy of scientists secretly colluding to advance some nefarious agenda is ludicrous. That's not what scientist do. They'd be the very last group to do that. The whole thing is sad and stupid.
The fact that this is a serious question anyone would entertain is overwhelmingly depressing.
This isn't a question. Anyone who "doesn't believe" in climate change should be conversationally destroyed with prejudice.
Certain viewpoints should be met with derision. If they were, maybe this wouldn't be a question anyone entertains any more.
All my life I have been raised to look up to people that go to universities as well as scientists. In books, in movies, in news media, in social circles: the highest education achievable is obviously for very intelligent people.
Then I made it into a university, having worked my way up from the lowest level of education to a master's degree. I was nervous. Was I going to be able to keep up with the other adult students?
After the first day of classes, I had dinner with two classmates. One said that women shouldn't be allowed to vote: they're too emotional. The other classmate agreed.
I don't know if you maybe doubt that as well, but this statement so blew my mind. Either I had been wrong all my life about women being equal to men, or I had been wrong all my life about people in this school being smart. I had a lot of trouble reconciling either bit of new information with my world view, but the latter won out and I decided these two were nut cases. As it turned out, the rest of the class did not share this opinion, further solidifying my choice, but so yeah: outliers happen, also among smart people.
I think human neural networks (brains) are probably similar to our DNA: formed to be diverse. We need to all be a bit different so that we have a chance to adapt to anything. Even if you train 100 people on the same information (e.g.: greenhouse gas data, climate models) and present them with the same question (e.g.: should we do something about our emissions?), a few of them might draw the wrong conclusion based on randomness or personality or both. Take a few of such misfired-neuron cases and now you got misinformation being created. If you happen to be exposed to that more than average, you wouldn't know any better and not be as exposed to the more solid arguments being made. I believe that, almost always, the correct answer would win out in a vote, but a smaller group of mistaken people are probably always going to be around.
It's not bad to be wrong, though some people will give you shit for it and act as though it is. I sometimes find it hard to be convinced and really turn around, so it can take some time to form a new opinion based on new information. So I'd say: take a look at the information out there and form your own opinion (be aware of confirmation bias while doing searches btw), independent of your friends
I think climate change is for sure real. Beyond that I prefer to talk about it.
I find that it's a waste of everyone's time to get an a debate when at least one side isn't engaged and committed to having a productive discussion.
And climate change is one if those issues where people tell themselves it's too important to waste time worrying about whatever the other person's concerns are, we just need to focus on the REAL issue, which is their issue. And so they stop listening to you or caring about what your opinion was.
I think that attitude leads to worthless discussions where one person is doing anything to change the other person's mind. Even if it means being a bit deceptive or misleading. It's a huge waste of time on everyone's part.
I know what you mean. The most important thing an individual can do to make an impact on a global issue like this is to vote for politicians who want to make legislative changes. Also, have only 1-2 kids max to avoid the population growth (or have no kids at all if that’s your thing)…beyond that, all the handwringing on what a single person can do about global warming is a drop in the bucket and not worth the stress to be freaking out about in your every day life.
In my opinion it leads to a lot of defeatism too - often whenever there are news article of legit good things/changes a company or community is making toward emissions there are tons of comments along the lines of “doesn’t matter” “too late” etc. Why bash groups trying to make an impact just because it isn’t “THE” solution in your mind? Why have so many people resigned to some apocalyptic future that isn’t set in stone? Too much doom scrolling I guess.
I am somewhat pessimistic. I am pretty sure we are already past several tipping points, so I have a hard time taking it seriously with various talks about being CO2 neutral in 2060. Not what we shouldn't do anything but I wish politicians could be more honest about our future prospects. Buying an electric car is not going to stop the heatwaves. We need to use way more resources preparing for rising sealevels, extreme weather and climate refugees. Instead we are spending too much time with pointless debates of whether we should aim for CO2 neutrality in 2055 or 2060 like that is going to matter much.
I believe in science, and thus yes, I believe that humans are responsible for global warming, and we are irresponsible not doing enough to reverse it, so that we are creating a significantly worse world for our children.
Like you, I know people who are smart and educated, and yet are climate change deniers and believe in conspiracy theories and not in science. I do not know how to reconcile this. My own father has a PhD in engineering and yet believes that this climate change is just like before a warming after an ice age. I think it is denial and wishful thinking, part of it is a belief in human progress and that we are right and cannot have been that wrong I think, and part of it is a weird combination of both wanting a better world for the next generation (wishful thinking) while also holding on to old fashioned values and beliefs (and denying that this can harm the next generation).
I'm an evidentialist, a realist, and a science-ist.
Where else could I stand on climate change, but with the reality that it's caused by human agency?
Climate change is real. The climate is changing, the global temperature is rising, and weather patterns are becoming more unpredictable and dangerous. I don't feel like there's any point in getting into arguments with people in whether climate change is real or not. I believe humanity needs to collectively take action by voicing our concerns, making changes in our lifestyles, and holding corporations accountable for their carbon emissions.
Industrial human activity is the cause of our current rapid rise in temperature. Climate change can be a natural cycle of heating and cooling events, but from what I've seen of the data, with how much carbon humans are emitting into the atmosphere by our current industrial practices, I believe humans are definitely driving this latest climate change event and at a much faster rate than the natural heating and cooling events of the past.
I flip flop between total doomer and optimist who believes humans, when really put up against a wall, are smart and resourceful enough that we will figure out a solution even if it seems impossible at the moment.
Whether it’s happening or not? That’s not even a discussion IMO.
I'm quite sure we're resourceful enough to survive as humans. It might seem like we rely on modern technology, and it's not wrong in today's world, but even if everything goes to shit: we still have that brain that absolutely dominates any other animal. Even without writing, it allowed us to conquer nature by speech that allows us much more rapid and complex learning than any animal, as well as the use of tools in logical or complex ways.
Short of an event that causes the earth to become uninhabitable to large mammals altogether (and a +5°C climate is not that kind of bad), I would expect that we're one of the last species to go.
So it's not an extinction threat for humans, but yeah, it's going to be bad for everyone. It gets less bad the more preventative measures we take. It could have been not bad if we had started today's measures back when we learned of the problem... but alas. (And if you say "but then we didn't have today's solar tech": true, but we had today's nuclear tech and that's about as good for greenhouse gases.)
But I also don't think "total doomer". I wrote about evidence for that in another comment in this thread.
I replied to basically this exact comment here. I'd be curious about your thoughts!
Basically, I mostly disagree :) but substantiated
I’d like us to stop screwing around and make some substantive changes as a species, but it doesn’t appear that is going to be happening anytime soon. The corruption and greed of those with wealth, and the desire for ease and comfort amongst the masses, has warped the political processes around the world, and fossil fuels are what powers the easy train.
It’s a scientific fact that we have caused anthropogenic climate change. Has been for decades upon decades. Scientists have literally been talking about it for well over a century in the context of burning fossil fuels. (I like to peg it to Svante Arrhenius’ CO2 climate model from 1896 as the starting point, but of course he was not the first, simply the first to do a fairly good job of modeling what would happen on a global scale.) Link
It’s over, the damage is almost certainly irreversible at this point, in my opinion. The world just experienced a series of record high days (well since we began recording anyways) Link. You know, like we practically do every year now it seems. Forest fires are more frequent and burning more acreage Link. The oceans are rapidly warming and acidifying Link. It’s really just a question of what kind of toll it ends up taking and how long it takes to really start rolling to where it can’t be ignored and starts having noticeable impacts on the majority of the world.
I do think we as a species will survive, ultimately, but I don’t have a lot of hope for modern civilization as it currently exists, and I am sure we’re going to wreak havoc on the rest of the natural world on the way. I just hope we’re able to at least hang on to the vast stores of knowledge we’ve managed to build up and do better in the aftermath.
That depends on what you mean by "substantive changes" though. Is halving our impact as measured by warming in the year 2100 a substantive change? That's the path that current policies are taking us on.
Past emissions are hard to take back. There is things like Climeworks but they're enormously expensive per kg of CO2, compared to the alternative solution: not emitting that greenhouse gas in the first place.¹
Future emissions are still a thing we can prevent. Please consider helping with the effort if you think that a +2°C world is better than a +4°C world (more info on that in another comment I posted here).
¹ we'll still need it, though, because some emissions are easier to capture them on exhaust than to find an alternative for the process that causes them. But we can cross that bridge when we took care of the low-hanging fruit, I'd say...
I’d like to see some evidence that globally we are actually halving our impact by 2100, rather than just saying we will or should. Most of the political climate summits and agreements seem about as effective as the old League of Nations was for preventing war, which is to say not much at all.
But even if we do manage to halve our impact, you’re probably talking about a ~2.5 Celsius rise vs a ~5 degree Celsius rise, something like that? That’s still REALLY bad. And I’m honestly pessimistic we don’t realistically end up more in the 3.5-4 degree Celsius arena, because we’re still all doing the same ecologically destructive shit, and in a lot of cases actually doing these things more! Expanding highways, expanding automobile usage, expanding household and commercial power draws. Poisoning watersheds, decimating forests, filling in wetlands.
And meanwhile the natural world’s positive feedback loops just keep getting stronger and stronger. More ice melting, more permafrost melting, more methane being released, more forest fires releasing CO2. Etc, etc.
As I said, ultimately I think humanity will probably survive, we are extremely adaptable creatures. But I’m not very optimistic about the immediate future. 500-1000 years from now, we’ll see. In my lifetime though? I’ll do what I can in my little corner of the world, because it’s the responsible and empathetic thing to do. But immediate big picture-wise, not looking good.
The one positive thing I see happening is that it seems like the return on investment for oil drilling will eventually get low enough to make it not worth it, which will change the picture considerably. I don’t know how far off that is, but I’m quite confident we can’t keep powering stuff with fossil fuels forever, they’re a finite resource and the ROI just over the past century has already dropped dramatically. Can’t believe I’m essentially relying on market forces for hope, but there you have it.
As other commenters have pointed out this is not a matter of belief.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres 2022 speech
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change overview video
There is not much discourse in Denmark in regards whether climate change is real and caused by humans. Though there are still those that resist drastic change despite acknowledging the problem.
Climate policy has been my primary political issue that decides my election vote for the past 4 years, for every level of government. If a candidate doesn't state it the most important problem in all of human history, then I don't even consider them. (In danish elections we have many candidates we can vote for). I buy energy from only renewable sources. I have cut down meat consumption, and mostly eat chicken for the remaining. I don't have a car, and bike to work any time I can. I donate much of my monthly salary to climate related projects.
I care about it a lot. Don't think it will be the end of humanity or anything, but I do think most of the good in our welfare society will become hard (if not impossible) to maintain as climate caused issues pile up. And then of course the countries that will pretty much collapse entirely.
I'm honestly a little beat down by the whole thing to be honest.
I don't think it's a matter of belief, it's pretty damn incontrovertible as far as I'm concerned.
But, I am pretty exhausted from living in the world where it's still up for debate, and from all the billion dollar corporations making it the everyday citizen's problem, thus furthering the debate.
I live in big oil country, and the oil companies here pump out so much propaganda that our oil is the cleanest ever, and doesn't hurt the environment at all.
And when the government passes laws against non re-usable plastics, all of these companies switch to the cheapest most inconvenient options, and raise their price by 79¢ and say "blame the government". Like the corporations that contribute the most damage per capita instead get to transfer all the costs to the consumer and all the blame to any politician who supports environmental bills.
It's exhausting.
I ybelieve it's cycke and we just happened to be part of it. We may be speeding the things up a bit, but I think the change is inevitable.
Can you share more about how you came to this conclusion?
I don't know that the person making the original comment necessarily feels this way, but this is a sentiment I've seen expressed by people that find William Happer and his ideas to be agreeable (note: I do not agree with William Happer's ideas). You can get some idea of his thoughts in this document here.
I've summarized his basic arguments below:
and the list goes on.
Now, part of what makes his arguments compelling is that, well, he has truth in many of his statements and taken at face value they seem to support what he his concluding. Yes, the Earth did have higher temps and higher levels of CO2 than currently, but factors are very different. My common points in rebuttal include:
I could go on, but at the end of the day, current science does not support people who just say "It's just a current cycle that we may be speeding up". And from a realistic standpoint, how is rising temps a good thing for humans?
People don't want it to be true so they are fighting against it every inch. Change is undeniable at this point. But, models on what that change is going to cause have been wrong in some cases, which allows people to latch on to the points about cause and effect not being "humans and disaster soon".
And don't underestimate people not caring. There's a prevalence in society to optimize for now and assume that means the future will take care of itself. Almost all modern businesses are run this way. Sure, there is some investment in future, but it's absolutely over shadowed by quarterly profits.
"Is there going to be climate catastrophy in the future? Sure, but if I'm rich by then then I'll be able to afford to overcome it."
I din't do any research, but I can agree with some Happer's point from my way of thinking:
While I alsonagree with your coubter points:
So I'm really a mixed bag. I believe we are speeding uo the natural cycle. That is probably the shortest and most precise I can get.
Inner feeling, sixth sense, laziness (to do research), ... I don't have any data to back it up. It's just what I think about it.
I'm not anti-climate change person/denier, I acknowledge the change. I just think that we cannot revert it. We may have sped it up, we may be able to slow it down, but the change of climate is inevitable, I think.
You are far too polite
It's indisputably human accelerated, with human activity making up the single most significant new-ish factor in the entire global energy equation. It has obviously reached a point where it is going to start causing an order of magnitude more critical economic damage year after year. We are warming up while the current Milankovitch cycle (mostly the axial tilt) should be triggering a new ice age. At least we accidentally got that timing right, we could be heading into a new warming epoch instead. The cooling will help offset our shenanigans just a bit longer.
I'm so over it I barely even discuss it anymore. It's good to be past worrying and in full on disaster-schadenfreude mode where the entertainment lies. Every major weather disaster makes me grin, every collapsed supply chain makes me dance a little bit. We are all playing survivor now and it's about damn time. I'm looking forward to the destabilization of various electrical grids, that's when things get real interesting.
We have so very desperately needed anything to kick humanity in the collective balls - hard, twice a day for the next several decades - and finally, it's here. Best part is it's because of our own greed and stupidity, so the effectiveness of the humbling lessons nature is about to embed in our genetic memory over the next century will be even more pronounced.
The stupidity bit that's punishing us is less about the past than the future. For the cost of one stupid war, we can upgrade to grotesque levels of portable energy generation with ease in a mere decade, probably much less if we focus our efforts instead of competing over it. That energy abundance solves all of the other problems. Moving cities gets cheap, and the new ones are better - in fact, the new ones may even be portable themselves.
Getting carbon under control is simple, just plant and harvest several trillion trees in a way that's resistant to wildfires - we've known how to do that for centuries. Volcanoes have done worse than us in that regard and they will again one day. Move the farms indoors where they can crush traditional farming, and turn most of the planet back over to the wild so it can heal. Get some heavy genetic engineering going, expand the amount of temperature variation a coral reef community can handle and make them more tolerant of acid. That knocks down all the existential issues. This set of technologies can best be described as 'getting the fuck off nature's back' and they enable us to live on the moon and mars as a bonus. Next step, moon bases, orbital manufacturing, and orbital colonization.
The only apocalypse here is the one that happens if we remain steadfastly committed to our own stupidity - mainly, the enshrined capitalistic economics we put up with that refuse to do any of these things 'til dere's munny innit'. We'll be crossing the line of a hundred trillion dollars in climate related economic damage by end century, so there's your money - burned up and underwater.
We are obviously a large share of the major causes and its silly not to think so. I used to get very, very stressed about it, because of my personal attempts at doing my part, but honestly don't care anymore for the the sake of my own sanity (although I still make an effort to do most of this when i can). The issue is:
These are just a few things, and Im ranting / going off topic, but I am pretty convinced we are fucked unless governments steps in and starts holding companies accountable and/or making extremely strict waste restrictions on the individual, the latter of which will not go over well but thats what , in my extremely limited view, would need to happen. But of course it wont, while companies make insane money off of cheaply made, wrapped in 3 laters of plastic, made to break, BS products.
I try to be a positive person in most aspects of my life, but this is one where imo there is literally no hope. The world isnt going to burn up in 5 years, were going to spend the next 200+ years with slowly, but surely, increasing food insecurity, civil unrest, and way crazier weather conditions. Think the earth scenes in the movie Interatellar, but probably a lil worse.
We are so incredibly screwed.
As pointed out in nearly every comment, there is no debate about what is happening. The only reason /anyone/ believes there is still a debate is an orchestrated effort by the fossil fuel industries and other monied interests to sew doubt.
Up until relatively recently I truly did hold out hope that humanity would band together to mitigate the worst of climate collapse. That hope went out the window round abouts April 2020.
I hate being a doomer. But that's where I'm at.
That it's 100% a thing, an obscenely bad thing, and half the reason we are still arguing about it is because there's been a bunch of shitty sensationalism to try and convince people it's a thing.
I would rather avoid getting into the nitty gritty of this because god knows there's also been waay more utter bullshit pretending it's not a thing, but taking scientific predictions and exaggerating/misrepresenting them has been something that's happened repeatedly since this hit the mainstream, along with bullshit companies and scams to try and profit off of it. People just don't trust sources and science anymore, and yes some of that is ignorance, but oh boy did researching climate change in 2005 certainly disappoint me when it came to some of it's loudest proponents willfully exaggerating facts.
When these facts are called into question it casts doubt on the entire thing and further erodes the trust between the public and scientific institutes.
I went to high-school in Florida, on the Atlantic coast from 1999-2003. My science teachers hammered into us that the icecaps were melting, and global warming was happening. The problem is, they also told us that it was so dire that the Florida coast would all be under water in 15-20 year. If we wanted beach front property in 2020 we would need to go 30 miles inland. It was terrifying, and it didn't end up happening. Those kind of doomsday predictions don't help, because your right, they make people question everything else.
Trust on all fronts is at an all-time low.
Is it the science you distrust or the reporting? And if we have already gone over a tipping point, was the reporting really exaggerated?
Its the reporting (in 99% of cases), and it's absolutely exaggerated.
If i tell you that you have a terminal disease, but say you only have days to live instead of decades, you're not going to trust me going forward, and that is EXACTLY what has happened.
I've seen too many articles, movies, videos, whatever that try to speedup the timeline on more catastrophic effects for dramatic results. Claims that cities and coastlines will be underwater in Muskian time frames doesn't look good when 5-15 years later things haven't actually gone that way.
An Inconvenient Truth is the seminal example of this kind of exaggeration. There's a bunch of good information in there. There's also claims like Kilimanjaro losing all it's snow "within the decade". Well it's more than a decade later and it still has snow.
Does that mean it isn't a thing? Fuck no. It is still very likely to occur, and you can see evidence that it's already happening right now.
Was this Gore/scientists just misunderstanding something? Also no. Scientists knew then that his timeline was bullshit, and it's not the only one in that film that is.
Gore was rightly criticized for blatantly overstating, if not out right lying, about the data. The IPCC, the group that won the Nobel Prize with Gore, even had some clarifications/criticism about his vast overstatements on timelines as presented shortly after the movie came out.
This kind of stuff is insanely damaging to trust in scientific practice, and is hardly the only case of shady/bullshit practices running rampant or getting a blind eye because they're "on the right side".
I know covid is a thing, I know we should take the vaccines, I still spent time doing extra research BECAUSE of shit like this in the past to be extra extra sure. In something like covid it was too much of an immediate issue to ignore, but in many other things I file the information away as "maybe this is the case, but I can't be sure until I deep dive it" because there's almost no source I routinely trust. The publish or perish mentality mixed with trillions in scientific industry's (ESPECIALLY pharmaceuticals/health care) has not helped, and that's just on top of the classic issues with science (things not changing despite the evidence until the old guard dies out being a classic)
I think for me it all boils down to a very simple idea. The world as I understood it, has failed to ensure its continued existence. The leaders of my country, regardless of their attitudes, ideals, etc, failed to be who are necessary in a time like this. So if I want to continue, and see what happens, I must take on that task myself. I cannot depend on my country, nor can I depend on the idea of being a citizen to mean anything. I can't depend on the idea that money will forever be a force. I need to develop forms of material security which don't depend on the frameworks currently failing us, is how I look at it.
What does mean something, are the bonds I have between people, the relationships I have cultivated. I am spending my time doing more of that; ensuring that when shit hits the fan (it is doing so) I am not having to face that alone. Everything is better with friends.
But as the seriousness of it all grows, and the risks along with that, I'm taking special care to make it plain to folks what I am doing and why I believe it is the best shot at "success". Through that, a network builds, grows, expands. And hopefully, if it works out, that means a community which sustains itself through whatever comes. It is the best shot I can come up with so I'm taking it.
@Deimos Feature request: a separate point score/label for "Hopeful" or "Hopfulness".
Some topics we discuss here are full of despair, for many of us. Climate Change is one of those.
It would be incredibly helpful to optionally sort and/or filter for "Hopeful" comments.
Alternatively, but less wisely, a label/score for "Depressing" and a filter to obscure depressing comments.
Yes, rational discourse requires taking in a broad array of perspectives. But, sometimes, we're not able to do it. And wouldn't it be nice to still be able to participate healthfully?
It seemed to take you the whole comment to arrive at a place of empathy. The "lol" brought me close to a "malice" label.
What does it mean? The opposite of "depressing" or "painful truth".
Or we could go the mastodon route and offer content warnings on post content and titles as optional.
"We're dooomed!" is basically my stance.
I responded to a similar comment elsewhere in the thread and would be really curious about your thoughts on my comment there: https://tildes.net/~talk/185n/where_do_you_stand_on_climate_change#comment-9lf3
Oh my god --- there are so many unknowns in a warming planet we have no idea how this is going to effect so many things
^ my reaction