61–70 of 523 posts
> We have 12 years to prevent a climate catastrophe I don't know how old you are, but those of us over 20 remember that we had '12 years' 20 years ago. Somehow the prophesied catastrophe never arrives and the date gets perpetually pushed into the future. Looks like a secular Seventh Day Adventists.
Though I imagine you will shortly be deluged with comments advising you that you simply don't understand the seriousness of the situation. Etc
So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…
You speak of this as if space migration is going to be scalable.
So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…
> Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to dollars per kilogram. You speak of this as if space migration is going to be scalable.
The thing about the that is that it's not high tech. It's an engineering problem not a science problem. A massive engineering solution I'll grant you. I'll also concede that there are going to be a lot of steps on between.
Can’t see it happening when a large portion of the population insists that climate change isn’t real.
Yes - education, lobbying and advocating would all have to be part of the plan. Edit: look at https://transitionnetwork.org - grassroots network in the UK that seems to be doing well at getting people to engage.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/10/09/richard-lindzen-lectu...
So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…
I think the biggest counter to that optimism is that while those necessary technologies are being developed, civilization will perhaps be going through major disruption that causes lots of suffering and death. Humans will almost certainly not go extinct, and may even get some great technological advancements out of the ordeal, but at the scale of human lives there will be a lot of suffering.
My point is that this is unfortunately what human nature is and I don't see any great change tool that unless we get to some kind of post-scarcity situation but I'm reasonably optimistic about that.
Does anyone have any views on buying carbon offsets through services like TerraPass and Carbonfund? I drive a pickup truck so I'd like to reduce my impact, but don't know if the efficacy of carbon offsets have really been evaluated.
I guess that they mostly finance re-forestation. Then, you have to ask yourself:
Would the new forest happened anyways and they are just taking your money as a bonus? Is the new forest going to be permanent or will it be removed and re-forested again in 30 years?
> We have 12 years to prevent a climate catastrophe I don't know how old you are, but those of us over 20 remember that we had '12 years' 20 years ago. Somehow the prophesied catastrophe never arrives and the date gets perpetually pushed into the future. Looks like a secular Seventh Day Adventists.
^ Though I imagine you will shortly be deluged with comments advising you that you simply don't understand the seriousness of the situation. Etc
The predictions might've been wrong about the rate of change (and I'm assuming this was a reputable source making the prediction, not cherry-picking the most extreme doomsayers). I hope more than anything they're still wrong today. But they weren't wrong about the actual direction of the change. People 20 years ago ignored the warnings, we must do better.
So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…
Exactly. You can spread doom as much as you want and it won't help. You won't get a critical mass to listen to you. They won't change their behavior based on some event that will most likely happen in the far future. Sad, but true.
As a species, we don't have a history of planning and preventing. Instead we have always been adapting to change as things happen. This is essentially the same.
If technology caused a problem, technology can also solve it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Those responses seem like something from the people who don't believe there's an actual problem. Scientists are pretty much universally convinced, the only ones who aren't are paid by big oil and the Koch brothers - that means they are lying for money. We don't debate whether the earth is the center of the universe or is the earth flat, because debating that would be a false equivalence of equal chance, but one side…
> Scientists are pretty much universally convinced, the only ones who aren't are paid by big oil and the Koch brothers - that means they are lying for money. Thats actually just wrong and shows how closed minded people are to how science works. Even if they were paid by big oil, shouldn't their evidence stand on it's own merits? Just like the claims made by scientists? And no, I don't buy your false equivalence becau…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Maybe trying to win over republicans would be better? The culture wars don’t help this issue.
What would win over republicans? I mean, if the survival of human civilisation isn't enough, what can you propose?