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Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

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Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#251
post #245

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Climate scientists have historically maintained a tacit agreement to not discuss other solutions publicly, because they think reducing emissions is the best way to go and they don't want to distract politicians by telling them about other options. This has changed a bit in recent years ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-geoengineer... ), but the change largely hasn't filtered to the public consciousne…

That article is not about saying it's a solution. It's about saying it merits research, in case it's needed as a result of all of these other efforts being insufficient or poorly managed. Because for all we know, we'll need it and it won't work.

The researchers are emphatic that it shouldn't be framed as a solution, but all of the concerns mentioned in the article (and elsewhere that I've seen) are about potential side effects or moral hazards. There doesn't seem to be any dispute that solar geoengineering could be implemented and would rapidly reduce global temperatures.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#252

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Yes, I disagree with you on many levels. First, solar and wind are not more environmentally destructive, at least in any appreciable way. Second, solar and wind can sustain modern human civilization. Third, clean energy has de facto not been solved because only a small percentage of generation is currently nuclear. Fourth, even what you describe were possible, construction lead time on known scalable reactor designs…

> First, solar and wind are not more environmentally destructive, at least in any appreciable way. There's many reasons that these forms of energy are arguably worse than nuclear environmentally: such as the substantial amount of prime land they must occupy to generate the same amount of electricity to the second order effects of their limited nature in necessitating batteries to store power when the sun/wind isn't w…

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Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a pretty big "if" in your statement. I thought HN was better than this.

From my previous HN post: > Message boards are message boards. You can't take them seriously, including this one.

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Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#254

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I'm suggesting exactly what I said. Would you like me to repeat it? When beef has the 30x the environmental impact of plant based food per calorie, it would be hard to make the statement that fat people are automatically to blame for climate change. The whole argument is just completely ignorant on its face. Dispute what I said instead of making glib replies. Do you think every calorie has the same environmental impa…

> I'm suggesting exactly what I said. Would you like me to repeat it? You're being aggressive and condescending for no reason. To quote you, "I thought HN was better than this." > When beef has the 30x the environmental impact of plant based food per calorie, it would be hard to make the statement that fat people are automatically to blame for climate change. This isn't what anybody suggested. As obesity rises, peopl…

Did you know it is socially awkward to respond to someone who isn't talking to you?

An overweight vegetarian has lower environmental impact that an average weight meat eater.

Basic math, friend.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm suggesting exactly what I said. Would you like me to repeat it? You're being aggressive and condescending for no reason. To quote you, "I thought HN was better than this." > When beef has the 30x the environmental impact of plant based food per calorie, it would be hard to make the statement that fat people are automatically to blame for climate change. This isn't what anybody suggested. As obesity rises, peopl…

Did you know it is socially awkward to respond to someone who isn't talking to you? An overweight vegetarian has lower environmental impact that an average weight meat eater. Basic math, friend.

> An overweight vegetarian has lower environmental impact that an average weight meat eater.

Gallup has the US at 5% vegetarian. Math doesn't add up.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#256

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> You don't have to look very far to see our supply chain impacted by nature. Why would that be a problem? Everything is impacted by nature, always has been. > Pandemics such as COVID were and are predicted to become more frequent. Key word is "predicted". Most of the alarmist predictions tend to be exaggerating either the effect itself, or its impact on us. > My local supermarket doesn't just have higher prices, the…

If you look at the progression of science predictions, they don't have a track record of being alarmist. They have a track record of predicting troubling as heck issues for 2100 or 2050 and now they are already happening.

I don't think that's right. There have been predictions saying ridiculous things that never came to pass since the 80s.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#257
post #165

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I think the point here is panic doesn't solve any problems and probably only makes things worse. We'd all be better off with level heads.

Just a few days ago there was a post about Gen-Z flooding climate science/environmental jobs and the response was pretty similar to here (except for some great discourse on whether these jobs actually make a difference in the first place). Even those taking action are seen as overly concerned/panicked children who are only doing this because of TikTok. I cannot express under this site's guidelines how absolutely grat…

But who sees action takers as any of those things? More sustainable living- things like recycling, biking, better agriculture, cleaner energy, etc. etc- have been all the rage for the last 30 years. Getting funding for research even tangentially related to climate change or clean energy has been easy since the 90s. The stock market goes nuts for clean energy. The idea that people aren't taking it seriously is silly to me. The problem is there are just so many more people every year, not that people don't care.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#258
post #166

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I'm not convinced that climate change has a high probability of ending technological civilisation[0]. Even large-scale climate wars might not end it. The scenarios that fall short of ending civilisation, e.g. losing hundreds of millions of lives to famine or war, are obviously still very bad. This is not to downplay climate change in the slightest. It's just... at some point, people start dying, and that frees up eco…

You think if a billion people lose monsoon water, some of them won't put together a hand-made virus to wreak revenge on the wealthy nations responsible for the carbon burn and for climate denial? I mean, maybe, people have a capacity for good, but also for anger and revenge. Carbon caused climate change isn't a carry-ing capacity / overpopulation / over utilization issue (and is now somewhat dwarfing those issues). I…

What's your estimate of the probability of collapse, and why?

I'd put it in the low single digits or maybe lower, on the basis that a cascade of things need to go wrong: first you need a climate scenario that exceeds the IPCC estimates, then you need significant damage or conflict, then you need a potential collapse event to emerge from the conflict, then the event has to trigger collapse on its own or other events have to occur and combine with it.

Curious to hear your thoughts though, because I haven't put firm numbers on anything or looked deeply into any of the research on collapse specifically.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#259
post #51

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if this is your attitude then at least get out of the way

Damn nice hate. OP was saying how he is losing sleep over climate change. The requirements involved with contributing to slowing (or stopping) climate change do not include worrying about it. If you are losing sleep, you would benefit from changing your attitude towards it. Civilisational decline is a constant. It is coming. Accept it now, and work to delay it if you can make a meaningful change. If not, don't lose s…

In your comment above, the last half semi-conflicted with the first half, which could easily be interpreted to imply that we shouldn’t really worry or do anything about it. Individually, that may be somewhat true / useful. But on a societal level it is quite harmful when it comes to climate change. I think that is why you are taking heat.

Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't regularly find fruit that was plentiful a few years ago at my grocery store. Produce this year was poor quality and wasn't available at the same times.

We've had a shortage of onions in Oregon. A few hundred miles from where they're grown. But the reason is not enough truckers after the pandemic.

There's plenty of food for everyone on the planet but we are very poor at distributing it to everyone. It's terrible seeing fruit rotting on their trees due to lack of migrant workers to exploit and also people deliberately dumping supplies to keep prices high
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