Data conclusively indicates real-world climate change is tracking the IPCC's worst case scenario.
Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
281–290 of 377 posts
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#282Most smokers are unable to quit. Most fat people are unable to lose weight. I worry that most civilizations are unable to cut carbon emissions.
The difference between these is that stopping smoking and losing weight make your life overall better. Reducing carbon emissions will make life worse for everyone who's already on the lower rungs of humanity. No realistic amount of resource redistribution is going to work here. It's also not enough. We will have to start sucking up that carbon from the atmosphere whether we cut emissions or not.
> We will have to start sucking up that carbon from the atmosphere whether we cut emissions or not.
We will have to start sucking it up faster than we've extracted it... which is about 100 million barrels a day. Ain't gonna happen.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand; why would you post this? Do you think this will help the situation?
Why? Anger and frustration. Probably shouldn't have but the grandparent comment practically invited it. There's so much we can do to mitigate the damage but that won't happen through complacency.
I agree that there is a lot to do to mitigate damage, and that complacency does not help. But posting meme responses neither mitigates damage, or reduces complacency. In my experience these kind of responses tend to reinforce complacent attitudes.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#284I'm glad that social media wasn't around when I was growing up. If the media had the same chance to clickbait me into panic in my day, I'd have been genuinely scared to death about the ozone layer being depleted or acid rain making the planet unlivable by now, yet here we are. It's easy to panic about hot-button issues such as climate change when the media clickbaits you into endless doom and gloom and refuses to rep…
I don't use social media, HN notwithstanding, and it is plainly obvious to me from just looking out the window that climate change is substantial and accelerating. It is the most urgent and dangerous issue facing the planet. I agree social media is awful, but it does not follow that climate change isn't cause to panic. If anything, half of Americans are nowhere near panicked enough about climate change as the result…
hrowaway5752 says " it is plainly obvious to me from just looking out the window that climate change is substantial and accelerating. It is the most urgent and dangerous issue facing the planet."
Golly, that proves it! What could possibly be a more convincing argument?
BTW what do you see out your window? last time I looked there were flaming meteorites falling on the wooly mammoths grazing on the front 40 acres.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't see how someone posting their attitudes to climate change is "getting in the way." It's useful to know that people are starting to feel this way. Maybe you could post your own attitudes and provide some justification for them instead? This may convince the other poster to change theirs. Currently your comment is pointless.
Ok, try this: The money we spent on the Afghanistan and Iraq wars could have paid for true energy independence using renewables. We have a pending budge proposition to try and address it but some say we can't afford it. How can we afford endless war but not afford investing in power that civilization needs but doesn't kill us?
Ok, I "tried this", and thinking about it did nothing to help the problem.
I try to choose the most useful response, which for me is volunteering time in organizations that develop solutions. This way I can use my personal expertise and contribute something, however small. If I find a more useful path, then I will take it.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
Solar is awesome. If you own your own home, and live in a sunny place (I live in Silicon Valley), it is literally free money raining down from the sky. I just got solar and the bill is lower than my electric + gas bill, I have new furnace, new hot water heater and dryer, and air conditioning added in! I never had an AC because using more carbon as a response to carbon caused warming is prima facie a path to disaster,…
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or something... It seems like your "carbon burners" are just people who can't afford a house in SV, solar panels, new appliances, and 3 electric vehicles.
The people that annoy me are my neighbors in SV that can easily afford a (used Leaf, used Model 3), but instead buy a gas guzzling SUV for more money. Even the rental homes, that won't be getting solar panels unless the building owner is somehow incentivized, can do better than the SUV.
The appliances and furnace and so on are part of the solar loan, and so they are effectively free, as the loan payments are lower than the electricity and gas bill.
The solar and new appliances, and the AC, are effectively free, paid for by my ability to sell the energy back into the grid and by the sun.
I know most people can't adopt it yet, or without structural changes to the incentives, but most of my peers and neighbors could but don't. I'm mad at my peers and neighbors (except, obviously, the homes full of young immigrants working hard, and the retirees on fixed incomes and so on).
Also, when I visit my birth place of North Carolina, I get mad at all the people living near the beautiful and fragile barrier islands with their expensive SUVs and trucks and no solar, no electric cars, nothing being done to halt the destruction of such beautiful ecosystems. Not even an idea that the flooding and hurricanes are something they could actually take steps against. I get mad at the elites in these towns that ignore the problem that will end in the destruction of the beautiful islands they are entrusted with the care of.
I'm also a bit mad at my cousins that are resolute anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#287I am always amazed at the level of denial among the people. I speak of the comments to this article, not the young people in question. The IPCC reports are quite conservative. The reason the 2021 reports were so dire is because they began including some of the feedback loop modeling the scientists preparing the report have become more confident in. More is in the pipeline. Somewhere along the line, it got political.…
> The IPCC reports are quite conservative. The reason the 2021 reports were so dire is because they began including some of the feedback loop modeling the scientists preparing the report have become more confident in. More is in the pipeline. And what's even more frustrating is that we've known about these feedbacks for 15-20? years. I've been reading about climate change and feedbacks for the past decade and I'm jus…
Oil companies knew about climate change in the _1980s_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#288They should be (anxious) and they're right (governments have failed them). Unfortunately, we've spent the last few decades ignoring the science and telling people they are the ones that can fix this, by recycling or taking less car journeys or eating less meat. And all of those things do help, but it's akin to fighting WW2 by asking everyone to write a strongly worded letter to Hitler. Climate change is a massive glo…
> I feel bad for anyone under 20. I feel bad for people under 20 due to people pushing this sentiment that they're doomed and they have no future to look forward to. That is currently doing more harm than climate change is. And it does nothing to solve the problem of climate change.
I feel bad for people under 20 due to people pretending there isn't an existential crsis and it'll all be fine if they just recycle.
Unfortunately, that's still doing less harm than climate change actually is (and certainly will be in the future).
And it does nothing to solve the problem of climate change.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sometimes I wonder if people indeed believe climate change isn't real. I have difficulty imagining that there are so many that believe it's a myth. Maybe what is more common is that people do believe climate change is real, but they also think it doesn't really matter in long run - because of maybe something like a black swan event or something - dont know. So they see all this as just fear mongering.
That Upton Sinclair quote "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it". Except here we're talking about upbringings, lifestyles, social position, and career all in one caboodle. So if we buy into that quote, this is an even wider example that perhaps has just as strong if not stronger potential for resistance to change. Also, there's a layered stack of argumen…
> isn't perfect so why bother
Going to stick my neck out here. IMHO the people overzealously pushing green tech when it isn’t suitable isn’t helping.
It just makes people skeptical when these zealots are the face of green tech. People aren’t stupid, they can see that these zealots are only interested in pushing green tech and don’t really care about their needs and wants.
To some extend this bleeds over and tarnishes the reputation of the climate movement.
We need a realistic view of green tech use - not an evangelical one - where its limitations are acknowledged and taken into account when considering for deployment.
Re: Young People Are Anxious About Climate Change, Say Governments Are Failing Them
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The IPCC reports are quite conservative. The reason the 2021 reports were so dire is because they began including some of the feedback loop modeling the scientists preparing the report have become more confident in. More is in the pipeline. And what's even more frustrating is that we've known about these feedbacks for 15-20? years. I've been reading about climate change and feedbacks for the past decade and I'm jus…
Oil companies knew about climate change in the _1980s_ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_cont...
I suspect they knew well before the 1980s. [0][1]