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Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

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Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#111

Post by the_gastropod »

rayiner wrote: post #73
the_gastropod wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perfect is the enemy of good. Of course we can't instantly solve global carbon emissions. But we can do our (very large) part here in the U.S. By shifting where our dollars go. By moving from carbon to renewable sources, we'll drop the price of renewables, helping small economies afford to do the same. Progress is virtually always incremental. We need to begin by stopping dragging our feet.

That’s like saying we should try to bail out the boat with spoons because “progress is incremental.” It’s not only pointless, but actively dangerous, because it’s a distraction. The “Green New Deal” is a great example. A jobs program obviously won’t do anything to seriously address climate change. Worse, it wastes money and political capital on things that could have more utility. If you spent that money on nuclear e…

Spoons? The U.S. is responsible for a whopping 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. China is the only country on the planet that emits more than us, and they have ~4x the population.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#112

Post by fallingfrog »

Junk_Collector wrote: post #98
fallingfrog wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conservatives will never support addressing climate change honestly, because they are getting too much money from the fossil fuel industries. I mean honestly, that’s like saying, I won’t believe that we are spending too much money on the military until I hear it from Northrop Grumman. So you’re going to be waiting a long time if that’s what you’re waiting for. None of those people care at all about you or your ki…

Perhaps instead of assuming a position that he didn't actually state and calling him "confused" you could have addressed his larger point that the vocal proponents of climate action alienate large portions of the population by painting them as ignorant or stupid instead of attempting to engage with them.

No, his central point was that he would never listen to anyone on the issue that didn’t have specific ideological positions, which turn out to be the least likely people in the world to accurately represent the science due to blatant conflicts of interest. It’s in impossible request.

To my knowledge the only major political party anywhere in the world to deny the science of anthropogenic climate change is the Republican Party in the United States, and those are the only people he will listen to. It’s an absurd situation.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#113

Post by TeMPOraL »

esotericn wrote: post #67
chiefalchemist wrote: post #62

Wouldn't it be nice it it were something as simple as setting a timeline. The reality is, it's a combination of two things (mainly): 1) We can't afford to undermind the economy. That is, any plan that cuts back on consumption (even in the short term) is going to hurt an already hurting economy[1]. However, there aren't any "leader(s)" who want to be pinned with such things so the buck gets passed. 2) Along the same l…

> We can't afford to undermine the economy. Heh. This is such a brilliant phrase that perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong. We can't afford to not afford things. :D

No, it's actually very much right.

We can push the economy a bit. We can try to replace the more emission-intensive aspects of it. But we cannot do it too hard - because if we break the economy, that's quite literally game over. After humanity emerges from ensuing wars, famines and starvation, the survivors will be left stuck with medieval-era technology on a thoroughly broken planet.

I have this feeling that people forget that economy isn't just zeroes on the accounts of bank executives; it's the food on the table of everyone, it's the medicine and the running water, and everything that keeps civilization together.

Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater, and even more so, let's not replace the bathwater with gasoline and set it on fire.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#114

Post by depressedpanda »

spaginal wrote: post #75
fallingfrog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the people predicting climate change isn’t the club of Rome, it’s an entire scientific community, who have been double, triple, and quadruple checking every measurement and assumption for 50 years. This is not some hysterical group of panicked hippies. We’re talking about broad consensus among all the most educated and intelligent members of our civilization. Please show a little respect and listen to them.

You are missing the fact that the salesmen of climate change have been politicians, and politicians lie, and politicians propose political solutions, they want more and more of my limited money, and browbeat people who already don’t like or trust them, and frankly that is a bad combination of tactics if the solution is needed that badly across the broad spectrum of the population. If climate change stops being sold a…

I understand your point, though I can't help but think that if the US had more than only two viable parties, maybe things wouldn't be so polarized?

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#115

Post by esotericn »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #113
esotericn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We can't afford to undermine the economy. Heh. This is such a brilliant phrase that perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong. We can't afford to not afford things. :D

No, it's actually very much right. We can push the economy a bit. We can try to replace the more emission-intensive aspects of it. But we cannot do it too hard - because if we break the economy, that's quite literally game over. After humanity emerges from ensuing wars, famines and starvation, the survivors will be left stuck with medieval-era technology on a thoroughly broken planet. I have this feeling that people…

Sure, but the idea that it's untouchable is absurd.

Everything changes. The economy was different last year, in 2010, in 1950 and so on.

The country I grew up in is very different to the one that exists today.

Change is constant. No-one is talking about burning it down, the idea is more that the exceptional growth of the past few decades has likely overshot what is sustainable.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#116

Post by Ensorceled »

PeterisP wrote: post #33
RubenSandwich wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not doing something because "you'll be dead before it happens" is pure selfishness. My personal observations from those close to me who don't want to act on climate change seem that their reasons have changed within the last 5 years. They no longer claim that it isn't real or happening, they now dismiss it on grounds of losing the personal liberty provided to them by our over consumption lifestyle. (If you live in th…

If you want to figure out how to do something, you have to take pure selfishness as granted - that's how people and society works; huge parts of sociology, economics, political science, etc are about structures and processes that allow to get large scale coordination and results despite lots of pure selfishness involved. If any proposed solution (to climate change or anything else) relies on huge numbers of people no…

> People trying "to hold on tighter to their already disappearing lifestyle" is a very important factor that needs to be taken into account for any calls to action.

This is what concerns me, calls to action that require our better nature to override our immediate self-interest require thoughtful and inspired leadership.

We have a real leadership vacuum right now: Boris and Donald, lightweight leaders in many countries (my own country, Canada, included), rise of Dictators and Fascists. We are not solving this problem with this team.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#117

Post by radford-neal »

gjm11 wrote: post #92
radford-neal wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? "Declared dead?" Here's a BBC report from a few days ago that says that it's in danger, but certainly "not dead yet". https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-49520949?SThisFB Since the BBC is now officially a climate alarmist organization, I think one can be sure that this report is as alarmist as one can be without blatantly disregarding easily verifiable facts.

> now officially a climate alarmist organization What exactly does that mean? (The BBC report is summarizing a report from the Australian government, and unless it's just lying its level of alarmism will pretty much track those of that report itself. So whether the BBC is "officially a climate alarmist organization", whatever that means, matters less than whether the Australian government is one. Regardless, it would…

See, for example, https://www.carbonbrief.org/exclusive-bbc-issues-internal-gu...

Even when reporting on a report, it's possible to emphasize certain aspects, or misleadingly paraphrase its conclusions. I haven't looked at the original report to tell whether that has happened here.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#118

Post by chiefalchemist »

esotericn wrote: post #115
TeMPOraL wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's actually very much right. We can push the economy a bit. We can try to replace the more emission-intensive aspects of it. But we cannot do it too hard - because if we break the economy, that's quite literally game over. After humanity emerges from ensuing wars, famines and starvation, the survivors will be left stuck with medieval-era technology on a thoroughly broken planet. I have this feeling that people…

Sure, but the idea that it's untouchable is absurd. Everything changes. The economy was different last year, in 2010, in 1950 and so on. The country I grew up in is very different to the one that exists today. Change is constant. No-one is talking about burning it down, the idea is more that the exceptional growth of the past few decades has likely overshot what is sustainable.

" the idea is more that the exceptional growth of the past few decades has likely overshot what is sustainable."

So you're running for office?, what's your tagline: "Vote for me, because they got it wrong. I'll fix the economy so that relative to expectations it underperforms like I believe it should."?

Wall Street with not donate to your campaign. No one will vote for you.

I'm not disagreeing with you. Simply pointing out We The People have a history of not supporting such things.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#119

Post by TeMPOraL »

esotericn wrote: post #115
TeMPOraL wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's actually very much right. We can push the economy a bit. We can try to replace the more emission-intensive aspects of it. But we cannot do it too hard - because if we break the economy, that's quite literally game over. After humanity emerges from ensuing wars, famines and starvation, the survivors will be left stuck with medieval-era technology on a thoroughly broken planet. I have this feeling that people…

Sure, but the idea that it's untouchable is absurd. Everything changes. The economy was different last year, in 2010, in 1950 and so on. The country I grew up in is very different to the one that exists today. Change is constant. No-one is talking about burning it down, the idea is more that the exceptional growth of the past few decades has likely overshot what is sustainable.

I'm not saying it's untouchable, just that it needs to be handled with care.

Think of it as doing live repair on a running engine of your airplane, mid-flight. You can do it if you're careful, but if you break it, we all die, and the airplane isn't going to fly anywhere anytime soon.

In particular, ideas like "we need to halt economic growth ASAP" I sometimes see in climate change threads are essentially suicidal.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#120

Post by excessive »

fallingfrog wrote: post #90
SaasDeveloper12 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and they are repeatedly wrong in their predictions. We can't accurately forecast the weather a few days out. All our great hurricane model forecasts are off and that's typically a day or two out in the future. There are just far too many variables at play that we don't even know about for us to accurately forecast anything climate related that far into the future.

You don’t have to be able to predict weather to predict climate. Think of it this way: it’s impossible due to quantum uncertainty to predict the path of a single particle in a gas. Yet out of the chaos, you can still draw out nice mathematical rules like the ideal gas law PV=nRT

I think you have it wrong. Gravity and momentum are very well understood, but a double pendulum or three body problem is chaotic such that prediction past a certain point is useless.

So is the climate well behaved like the ideal gas law, or are there complicated sources of feedback like clouds, plant growth, and albedo which make it chaotic? There are quasi-periodic alternations between the fairly cold periods of the current ice age and the interstitial we're now in, so you should recognize it's substantially more complicated than just averaging the speeds of all the molecules.

I'm all for a cleaner better world, but I'll never believe someone who says they can usefully predict a chaotic system.

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