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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

#181

Post by inigyou »

hnaccount19293 wrote: post #64
tim-star wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at the end of the day 'personal changes' as a fix for climate change are just another lie big corporations fed us to make it feel like the onus was on a personal level. the amount of co2 that industries pollute and that various regulation would be able to change is multiple orders of magnitude compared to regular personal responsibility.

Changes to those corporations will obviously have downstream effects that voters will largely not tolerate.

Even outside of America?

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#182

Post by 40four »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #150
40four wrote: post #51

Okay great. We’re out of time. Fine, we get it. But the problem with this article, and many other similar articles, is it seems like it’s just designed to scare the shit out of us. No call to action, no recommendations in what to do about it. It’s basically insinuating that we, the regular people, are the responsible. As there in-lies the problem, and it makes me furious. The onus to engineer our way out of a climate…

you: >It’s basically insinuating that we, the regular people, are the responsible. the article: >Like all grand lies, “we have more time” takes many different forms, often focus-grouped. [...] There are the queries of “What’s your carbon footprint?,” as if individual people with plastic bags or straws were the problem and not gigantic multinational corporations.

Yeah I probably overreacted a little bit, I got a little fired up :) I re-read it and caught that line as well.

So Adam isn’t directly saying normal people are the problem, he does apparently believe it’s on the mega-corps, politicians, media, etc. But the end result is kind of the same.

Okay fine, maybe grifters and liars in politics and media are subduing the population into caring less about climate change. I don’t really agree with it, but let’s accept it for arguments sake. Okay now what? The thesis here is that nothing is changing because not enough people believe (even though he admits a small minority of people deny climate science), or not enough people are speaking up loudly about it.

So back where we started. Whether in our own accord, or because the media is manipulating us, he believes the crux of the problem is not enough people are getting loud and angry about climate change.

I would argue it’s more likely we’re entering into a period of “climate fatigue”. We’ve been bludgeoned over the head & brow beaten about climate change for so long, and’s seen little to no change in the systems at scale that are at the root, we’re all exhausted.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#183

Post by gumby »

alexk307 wrote: post #176
gumby wrote: post #153

I guess time zones are driving a significantly US-centric response. My company works on climate repair. We're just a four person menlo park startup so far with some pilots in the field but we have a couple of billion in our sales pipeline, entirely based on people who have sought us out. Global spend on climate doubled last year and is on a tear this year. Recent events, from the closure of the gulf of Hormuz to the…

What is Climate repair? What is your company doing to repair the climate?

Climate report is exactly what it sounds like: turning back the clock on temperature rise in the atmosphere and oceans. I’d like to get it to 1750, but really it isn’t really necessary to turn the clock back more than a few decades.

We are working on methane emissions and methane concentrations in the atmosphere (we can destroy methane in gas streams with very high levels all the way down to ones below the current ambient environment (which is about 2 ppm).

We really need to stop using fossil fuels but sadly the drivers of that are not really related to pollution. And we need to clean up the atmospheric damage, which is more than the super pollutant methane, rather it’s primarily CO2. But methane will buy us more time.

Apart from climate repair, people are also trying mitigation strategies (e.g. moving away from low-lying places) but that’s a lot harder than it sounds for psychological and sociological reasons.

Also people are just trying to address the heating problems directly, mainly by changing the earth’s albedo or putting up an umbrella at L1. Nobody really has any idea of the consequences of such approaches even if they were viable, but they are pretty dangerous from both the physics and again sociological factors. And it doesn’t address the underlying problems.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#184

Post by danaris »

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?

It's not—the point is that many people that were claiming climate change is a hoax have shifted, now that it's much plainer that climate change is real, to saying it's too late to do anything about it so we shouldn't try.

It's just finding new narratives to protect the incumbent moneyed interests from ever having their infinitely increasing rate of growth threatened.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#185

Post by b112 »

square_usual wrote: post #163
tejohnso wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The report does include a >50% human mortality extreme category and the author of the article is referring to a separate report suggesting 3°C is much more likely than expected. I think it's pretty reasonable to think that an extreme climate would cause extreme mortality. The report is pretty confusing to digest. But because you think that particular consequence is overstated in the article, you're suggesting that th…

> I think it's pretty reasonable to think that an extreme climate would cause extreme mortality. No, it's not reasonable. They're using the same label, but there's no evidence showing that.

There are entirely different reasons. War.

Make a people's land unliveable, and make it so they cannot grow crops any more, and those people will come for your land. Imagine if 1B people decide to move to where another 1B people live, but are still struggling with climate change? Barely making it by?

So I agree with your point, 100%. You are right in the direct mortality. But also felt a tangential point of "secondary effects" was important, and this seems a good place to put it.

Global warming isn't going to actually kill many people. Instead humans fighting over resources will, I think.

An example. Canada has a population of 40 to 50million. Now imagine if for whatever reasons, much of the Souther US becomes unliveable, and at the same time, Northern Canada becomes viable as a place to live.

Now you have 100M people wanting to cross a border in a period of a few years. How can a country of 50M absorb 100M in that period of time? Chaos.

That won't end well.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#186

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#187

Post by dbdr »

FeloniousHam wrote: post #123
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.

> Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media. Who is this "media"? Is this the same "media" that Trump and his dullards claim is so corrupt and contrary to The Truth? Are you influenced by this "media"? I don't read The Guardian or Jacobin, but I'm occasionally exposed to their headlines and they are certainly reporting on climate change. Are they part of the "media"? The…

The Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of The Guardian free from commercial or political interference". (wikipedia)

This is highly unusual for a newspaper, most media don't have that kind of independence. The Guardian is also unusual in having made a commitment to covering the climate crisis very extensively. I don't think it's a coincidence.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#188

Post by antonvs »

tejohnso wrote: post #152
yorwba wrote: post #82

I wondered where this article got the idea that "half the planet" would die "in 26 years or less" with 3°C of warming. It appears to be a misreading of the table in https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p... "Figure 12: Planetary solvency risk impact and likelihood definitions (illustrative)" qualified by "A risk impact matrix is a methodology for ranking potential impacts, not a prediction or ce…

The report does include a >50% human mortality extreme category and the author of the article is referring to a separate report suggesting 3°C is much more likely than expected. I think it's pretty reasonable to think that an extreme climate would cause extreme mortality. The report is pretty confusing to digest. But because you think that particular consequence is overstated in the article, you're suggesting that th…

> I think it's pretty reasonable to think that an extreme climate would cause extreme mortality.

Classic equivocation fallacy on the word “extreme” in two different contexts.

If our arguments are so transparently wrong, it makes it easier to dismiss climate change.

> So, are you suggesting that we actually have plenty of time to deal with climate change

As Babbage put it, I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#189

Post by [deleted] »

nradov wrote: post #84
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...

The solution will have to come from growth and technical innovations, not personal sacrifice.

[deleted]

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#190

Post by [deleted] »

ericmay wrote: post #97
nradov wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution will have to come from growth and technical innovations, not personal sacrifice.

I agree, because (and I'm being a bit flippant) I sure as hell am not giving up my gas stove while billionaires fly around in private jets and MAGA guys are coal-rolling in their F-250s... It seems to me that carbon capture technology plus renewables and nuclear + dream energy (fission) will be the future but we're probably not going to go off of fossil fuels much, which will necessitate in part the need to suck this…

[deleted]
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