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A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

theverge.com

31–40 of 51 posts

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#31
post #7

Remember when telling people that covid escaped from a laboratory was considered Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy and should be censored? And then youtube deleted every single video that posted that theory. I remember.

Remember when that guy crashed his car, but was saved because he didn't buckle up, being tossed from the fiery wreck? I remember.

Don't wear your seat belts kids. /s

The lack of understanding and nuance in approaching topics like this is orders of magnitude more harmful than the mistakes that were made.

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#32
post #28

> There’s overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are causing climate change, that those emissions are supercharging deadly weather disasters, and that transitioning to clean energy is the only way to tackle the problem at scale. I would like to see evidence that climate change is "supercharging deadly weather disasters". I don't believe that evidence exists. Whether climate change has c…

Well said

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#33
post #13

> “The idea that we can make the planet more habitable on an environmental, on the environmental front by impoverishing poor people, by raising energy prices and food prices, is absolutely, it’s not only absurd logically, but I think it’s tantamount to genocidal,” Peterson says in one YouTube video his channel posted in 2022. The problem here, as I see it, is that while I am completely with mainstream science on clim…

Sure, but policy makers are thoroughly aware of that and it's why no policy in the world endorses making energy less affordable or available. It's the entire reason that greening the grid is so slow and expensive because it has to be done without causing blowback or hardship. So, Peterson is very much arguing against a strawman.

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#34
post #7

Remember when telling people that covid escaped from a laboratory was considered Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy and should be censored? And then youtube deleted every single video that posted that theory. I remember.

True. The problem with many people these days is that they think they are so smart and others so dumb that they take it upon themselves to be the saviors of the world by only giving the dumb unwashed masses the types of "truths" they are able to absorb.

All these people seeking to censor fall into this category.

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#35
post #7

Remember when telling people that covid escaped from a laboratory was considered Extremely Dangerous to Our Democracy and should be censored? And then youtube deleted every single video that posted that theory. I remember.

Maybe they deleted every single video you saw that posted that theory, but they didn't delete every single one I saw. Probably because the videos I saw actually included evidence and did not also in the same video offer bogus medical advice.

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#36
The problem with all the discussion around climate change is that we pretend as a species that we are not sophisticated bacteria, consuming all resources to grow at any cost.

I’d go as far to say that if you re-ran the human experiment on 1,000 earths, they would all embrace growth over their environment — it’s why so-called safe AI is impossible and AGI will occur at any cost.

Intelligent species must increase their energy production since they compete with each other’s factions and the “tech tree” if you will inevitably goes through fossil fuels. The only thing that _actually_ changes what we do is the economic factor.

It’s all really just a sophisticated game of Factorio. The reality is that people’s opinions have no effect on what humans actually do. It’s why Texas is full of windmills despite their cultural leanings — the almighty dollar is all we really end up caring about.

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#37
post #28

> There’s overwhelming evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels are causing climate change, that those emissions are supercharging deadly weather disasters, and that transitioning to clean energy is the only way to tackle the problem at scale. I would like to see evidence that climate change is "supercharging deadly weather disasters". I don't believe that evidence exists. Whether climate change has c…

You can read the IPCC executive summary: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/summary-for-polic...

It calls it "likely" that climate change is inducing more cyclones and heavy precipitation but also "virtually certain" that it is causing a increase in frequency and intensity of heat waves. The specific editorial verbiage in The Verge is a bit reductive, but I'd say it's entirely fair.

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#39
post #29
post #13

> “The idea that we can make the planet more habitable on an environmental, on the environmental front by impoverishing poor people, by raising energy prices and food prices, is absolutely, it’s not only absurd logically, but I think it’s tantamount to genocidal,” Peterson says in one YouTube video his channel posted in 2022. The problem here, as I see it, is that while I am completely with mainstream science on clim…

This only works as an argument if you count the change cost but ignore the default cost. Like, if changing the world to stop global warming costs $5 trillion of which much is borne by the poor that's hard. But if doing nothing means $40 trillion in cost and even more lands on the poor, well now what ? It's easy to criticize doing anything at all, but the most likely outcome of making perfect the enemy of good is that…

I more or less agree (though I don't know about blaming the developing world so much given how little they've contributed to the problem in the first place!), and I'm certainly not trying to support Peterson's argument wholesale. But no matter how much it all makes sense in these terms, it's a really tough sell and I can totally see why. We live in a world which has made arguing for collective responsibility, a shared burden, virtually impossible – and that's certainly not down to the politics that I favour.

Re: A new kind of climate denial has taken over on YouTube

#40
post #33
post #13

> “The idea that we can make the planet more habitable on an environmental, on the environmental front by impoverishing poor people, by raising energy prices and food prices, is absolutely, it’s not only absurd logically, but I think it’s tantamount to genocidal,” Peterson says in one YouTube video his channel posted in 2022. The problem here, as I see it, is that while I am completely with mainstream science on clim…

Sure, but policy makers are thoroughly aware of that and it's why no policy in the world endorses making energy less affordable or available. It's the entire reason that greening the grid is so slow and expensive because it has to be done without causing blowback or hardship. So, Peterson is very much arguing against a strawman.

Well I certainly hope changes come to pass in that spirit, world-wide. I can see that happening in some wealthier countries, if you're lucky, and the right government is in power. I'd love to be proved absurdly pessimistic, of course.
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