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The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

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Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#71

Post by Iolaum »

whatifitoldyou wrote: post #50

I think us people do not have the capacity as societies to effectively anticipate and solve problems that we can see approaching but have not become catastrophic yet. We always act shortsightedly and ..hope for the best. Most of the people will just not vote/support anything that might bring them some minuscule pain. Even if we know by logic that the problem is coming, we tend to follow whomever will tell us that it'…

It's not even at society scale IMO. How many times do people at a company deprioritize small-to-medium fixes on things that may/will become a problem later? Sometimes you have to wait until a problem gets "big enough" before you can get buy-in from colleagues to address it.

Of course details matter and what I mentioned above is not a universal truth. It is an often observed pattern though.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#74

Post by galangalalgol »

unsupp0rted wrote: post #19
inigyou wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 90s it was something to deal with later. Now that it's something to deal with right now, of course they won't cover it. In a few decades they'll cover it again, but only to say how it's too late now. Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media.

Why would it be too late?

Some reports indicate it is already to late for emission reduction, or even elimination, to halt the feedback effects that continue the trend. But it won't be too late for active climate engineering until the effects of the climate change prevent our ability to do that engineering.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#75

Post by [deleted] »

GJim wrote: post #28
lukeify wrote: post #6

At this point I’m not sure what to do about it. I already live a low-ish carbon life. I barely ever fly. Only drive when I need to. Try and use items that are non-plastic where feasible. I don’t buy extra clothes. It’s at the point where I wish it were solvable, but I don’t believe it is, so I can’t afford to think about it. Maybe people better than me can, and good luck to them.

Don't have a pet cat or dog. Owning an unnecessary carnivorous animal is rather bad news from a CO2 perspective. A dog can be responsible for higher CO2 emissions than a car. https://impact.ed.ac.uk/research/climate-environmental-crisi... https://www.zerosmart.co.uk/post/the-average-carbon-footprin... (Que outrage from pet owners and people suggesting I'm a crazy vegan.... I'm most certainly not vegan or veggie!)

[deleted]

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#76

Post by everdrive »

glitchc wrote: post #55
Ekaros wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is fundamentally the problem with whole thing. Vast majority of population on Earth is not ready for personal sacrifices needed. And if some government will get to around it, I am pretty sure they will be replaced and most things are rolled back. My guess is that we somehow end up geoengineering it with even more debt...

Why would they be when they see the hypocrisy of the chattering classes? How many celebrities or billionaires have curtailed their own lifestyles while pitching for climate change? Has the number of luxury jets and superyatches gone up or down over time? The average person may seem stupid but they are paying attention to the actions, and it all sounds like "I got mine, screw yours" to them.

Hypocrisy is really not as useful as people think. Imagine if some man, who beat his wife, made a career of talking about the important and harrowing issues of domestic abuse.

People would rightly scratch their heads at such an over-the-top hypocrite. But surely, the man would be correct: domestic abuse is an important issue. And imagine a response from the peanut gallery? "I'm not going to stop beating my _own_ wife until that hypocrite gets his comeuppance!"

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#77

Post by Fnoord »

The people who deny climate change have won, and accepted the [now] inevitable downfall of humanity as we know it. They are enriching themselves to have the financial power to give them the personal power to adapt to climate change. The rest can rot in hell. In essence, they're able to build their own Arc of Noah, and you and 99,999999% of everyone else (nevermind all the animals) aren't on the guest list.

In order to not cause chaos, they lie (by denying climate change, sowing FUD) or ensure the issue isn't mentioned/covered (by owning media, self-censorship). "Keep calm, everything is going extremely well."

I believe Earth isn't badly off with a lot less humans, I just don't like the distribution of survivorship isn't going to be random. Survivorship bias is going to contain heroic stories, but in the end a lot of people without power/money are going to take the shortest straw. And, that wasn't necessary.

The track Extrawelt - Phoebe has an excellent quote on the matter. Paraphrased:

> "We would be the first lifeform that wipe itself out. But what is unique is we did it knowingly. Why didn't we save ourselves from [...]? Is the answer, we weren’t sure if we were worth saving?"

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#78

Post by Iolaum »

marcyb5st wrote: post #48
Synaesthesia wrote: post #2

It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu. What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.

I was reading somewhere that we are already fucked even if we were to completely halt greenhouse emissions today. Apparently we kickstarted some positive feedback loop (I think it was the thawing of the permafrost in Siberia/Canada) which releases enormous quantities of Methane and that with the higher temperatures we already reached we decreased Earth albedo as there is less snow/ice reflecting light into space. I r…

There's an old joke that goes about like:

How do you solve Global Warming? Nuclear Winter ...

I really hope this is not how we end up geo-engineering our way out of Climate change.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#80

Post by rwmj »

glitchc wrote: post #55
Ekaros wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is fundamentally the problem with whole thing. Vast majority of population on Earth is not ready for personal sacrifices needed. And if some government will get to around it, I am pretty sure they will be replaced and most things are rolled back. My guess is that we somehow end up geoengineering it with even more debt...

Why would they be when they see the hypocrisy of the chattering classes? How many celebrities or billionaires have curtailed their own lifestyles while pitching for climate change? Has the number of luxury jets and superyatches gone up or down over time? The average person may seem stupid but they are paying attention to the actions, and it all sounds like "I got mine, screw yours" to them.

What have luxury jets and superyachts got to do with the chattering classes? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chattering_classes
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