crazypenguin posted:

Climate change pessimists are a plague. Don't worry too much about the Eeyores.

How bad things will get depends on how much we're able to avert (by acting, the sooner the better), how much we can mitigate, how much we can adapt, and how much we can repair. All of these things are up in the air, and all of them are something we can do something about. They're up to us, not at all out of our control.

Pessimists extrapolate climate trends a hundred years in the future, and then assume human civilization will be identical to today, and portent doom. This century has the potential to be one of the wildest rides for human progress since the industrial revolution. Predicting the future like that is just plain not a sensible thing to do.

Arkane is wrong about a lot of things in this thread, but I think he's right to be optimistic. He's just self-defeating when he argues against taking action now. Our ability to take action now is one of the reasons to be optimistic!

I'm afraid I don't have any helpful links for you either, since I partly agree that trying to predict the far future is futile. However, worrying that the future will suck isn't rational, that's just depression. The best thing to do is find a way to create a better future (however small your own role), and to then do it.

khwarezm posted:

A plague? Look I was pretty optimistic a few years ago but I can't say that recent efforts have filled me with hope. I often see worrying stuff like this and it makes me suspect that the real efforts to combat it will only come when it starts to clearly pinch most of the world's population. Besides its not really the doomsday scenarios that get to me so much as the thought that we're degrading the earth's awesome biosphere and likely letting an awful lot of people hang out to dry, I don't really want a situation where I'll be explaining to my children that X animal was pretty awesome but, welp, its dead now, or the Maldives were once a fascinating place to visit, but, welp its drowned now and its inhabitants aren't going to ever get home.

computer parts posted:

It is extremely likely that any species that goes extinct will not be something you heard of or something you will find interesting if you did.

Plus, having kids is the most ecologically damaging thing a single person can do anyway.

Kurnugia posted:

You mean the it's up to the people with the power to do something about it. Which isn't "us". I can't help but to be pessimistic about our chances to do very much about climate change because I know I have no power to do anything about it, and the people who do have the power are not interested in doing much anything but spout rhetoric and get re-elected.

khwarezm posted:

A plague? Look I was pretty optimistic a few years ago but

crazypenguin posted:

Believing you're powerless isn't sense, it's just depression.


Well, sure. See? You've been infected!

But seriously, did you do anything with that optimism? (I don't mean to insult with this question. It's not like I've done, well, much.)

I recently read a meh book by a meh person, but it had one interesting idea I hadn't seen before. "Definite" versus "Indefinite" optimism. The first are people who want to make the world a better place, and they find a way to do it, no matter how small. The second are people who think the world will get better. Somehow. Probably? Other people will do it, right? Who knows how... but they believe it's coming.

I think there's a lot of former indefinite-optimists in the "depressed about climate change" camp. They get distracted by the sheer scale of the problem, and don't think their small efforts could do anything at all. Which is wrong, really. Everything starts small.

khwarezm posted:

Well the usual stuff really, support Nuclear, try to live somewhat sustainably (cut down on meat, stop driving, stop using so much power that sort of thing), convince others that its an issue (re: gruelingly long and stupid conversations with my dad) I mean I'm not a slave to total depression and inaction and I really do recognize that that's nothing but self defeating but, well... as you can see from my above post I'm pretty enthusiastic about the natural world and I've studied marine biology and really things sort of suck in that regard in way I think a lot of people are unaware of and that gets to me.

And add to that the fact that it really seems very difficult to prevent a lot of people from suffering at this point and its... daunting to say the least.

Trabisnikof posted:

Few of these things would actually do anything to help mitigation or adaptation besides convincing the ignorant. Only concerted effort from powerful actors will work now. That means organizing and political action. The "everybody do their small part" is an engagement myth.

Trabisnikof posted:

Few of these things would actually do anything to help mitigation or adaptation besides convincing the ignorant. Only concerted effort from powerful actors will work now. That means organizing and political action. The "everybody do their small part" is an engagement myth.

Salt Fish posted:

Living well is its own reward and it DOES help. It might make the problem .000000000001% better but our choices do matter.

Trabisnikof posted:

I'm just saying giving up air travel will do more than giving up meat or angrily shaking your fist at grid planners ever will.

But the I can't escape to my tropical fantasy and why would I do that?

ToxicSlurpee posted:

One thing I need to keep reminding people of is that one person's actions matters simply because there are 7 billion one persons on this rock. If everybody in America each individually recycled one more can every year that's 300,000,000 more cans getting recycled. How much effort does it take for a single person to recycle one can? Not much, really, but it gets even bigger if it gets into the multiples. Suddenly that one tiny bit of effort from each person compounds into a massive change. It can even be as simple as "I turn lights off in rooms I'm not using" or "I do not live alone in a three bedroom house."

The issue is that Americans really, really hate being inconvenienced at all. Some people refuse to put forth the effort to put recyclables into a separate container while others simply must eat meat every meal of every day. Then you get people that don't care how inefficient their gigantic SUV is "because I feel safe in it." Even so, a tiny effort is better than no effort and people doing little things really, really adds up. Even so, it isn't all that hard to convince most people to think about things they normally don't. If memory serves a neat statistic is that recycling one aluminum can saves enough electricity to power a television for a year. That's pretty big when a poo poo load of people recycle more cans.

crazypenguin posted:

I think it's a bit of a mistake to focus too much on sacrifices. It's part of why deniers... deny. It plays into the pessimism. By all means, go vegetarian yourself to reduce environmental impact, but don't insist its absolutely necessary for everyone. It's almost certainly not.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Except that rampant, unrepentant consumerism is actually a major part of the problem. Americans are frequently absolutely gluttonous about the resources we consume and a significant portion of the rest of the world wants to consume as much as we do.

Trabisnikof posted:

Are we talking about climate change or something different? Because American consumerism isn't a major part of the climate problem. We can be as consumerist as we are now and meet all our carbon goals.

Trabisnikof posted:

Are we talking about climate change or something different? Because American consumerism isn't a major part of the climate problem. We can be as consumerist as we are now and meet all our carbon goals.

A big flaming stink posted:

it's more a symptom of the actual problem, the system of capitalism and its inability to account for externalities. which is a bit of an issue when the externalities threaten worldwide devastation

Trabisnikof posted:

Except since we don't have a pure capitalism we can force it to account for externalities. A tax is an example.

We just don't have time to finish global socialism before we start dealing with climate change.

A big flaming stink posted:

look i'm well aware that socialism and capitalism have gone at it and capitalism won. i'm simply highly skeptical that government reg will not be subverted by capital interests. which it kind of has been so far.

quote:

Results suggest that global upper-ocean warming has been underestimated by 24 to 58 percent.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Except that rampant, unrepentant consumerism is actually a major part of the problem. Americans are frequently absolutely gluttonous about the resources we consume and a significant portion of the rest of the world wants to consume as much as we do.

crazypenguin posted:

Hmm, sort of agree. But rather than talking about how we'll have to make sacrifices, we should be talking about accurately pricing externalities.

The thing is, the tradeoffs people will want to make won't be the same tradeoffs you want to make. When you pick one particular tradeoff, and argue that it has to go one way, you're never going to convince people who refuse that tradeoff, and would prefer another one.

There's absolutely some price for meat that accurately prices in externalities, that is fully sustainable, and a whole lot of Americans will much prefer to pay over going veggie.

rivetz posted:

Arkane, you seem to know an awful lot about the oceans, but you of course are not an oceanographer. On the off chance that you missed my question somehow: are you aware of any scientist or researcher whose primary area of focus is the world's oceans who disputes the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change (namely, that the planet is warming, the predominant cause is human activity, and the consequences are potentially severe)?

How about the International Glaciological Society, the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences, or the World Glacier Monitoring Service?

The combined membership of the organizations I've listed (if you include Scripps, from my previous post) has to be over a thousand; adhering to the 97% rule would mean dozens of dissenters at the absolute least, and if you don't buy Cook 2013 it's almost certainly higher, yet it's not clear that skeptics can name even one or two folks don't consider the trend in ice loss a matter of grave concern.

Is it your position that these researchers are all

a) intentionally doctoring the data on our world's glaciers and polar ice;
b) just "wrong, wrong, wrong" and misinterpreting all the data;
c) know perfectly well that everything's hunky dory and are afraid to say anything for fear of losing "grants"?

Arkane posted:

Not aware of any, no.

What is it about ice loss that you think is a "grave concern"? There are physical constraints on how fast ice can melt such that it'll be decades or in the case of Antarctica hundreds of years before it becomes a concern (at least with respect to land ice that would contribute to sea level rise).

Myotis posted:

Pricing externalities [...snipping a long and excellent post...]

1. ...discounting ... costs
2. ...inequality...
3. ...a significant portion of future emissions are already "committed"...

Kurnugia posted:

Why should I, as a Finn, give a poo poo about Climate Change when the largest economy on Earth is doing nothing about it?

Radbot posted:

Why should I, as an American, give a poo poo about raising the Global Poor's wages when mine are decreasing?

Trabisnikof posted:

Don't poo poo on the EU that hard, its hard getting that big a group of people to do anything!


This fundamental attitude is basically why the globe was never going to respond to climate change quickly enough. Why should Canada, Russia, Finland, et al care? Why should the US, Europe, China pay now instead of paying later? Sure Vanuatu wants to stop climate change , but more people live in Anchorage AK, and this "global warming" idea doesn't sound too bad to them.

Kurnugia posted:

quote:

"Our military leaders have for years warned of the serious threat climate change poses to our national security," Sen. Whitehouse told VICE News. "The military's new climate adaptation roadmap presents another opportunity for Republicans in Congress who deny or ignore climate change to reassess their priorities. They face a simple question: Do they trust the big polluters, or do they trust our nation's military sworn to defend us from harm?"

i am harry posted:

Thought this little blurb was an interesting point, given the Pentagon's recent report.


Maybe it's time to get some use out of that old "You're Not Patriotic Enough" flag we put away after everyone agreed to invade Iraq.

Sheldon Whitehouse, a member of Congress who actually loving gets it posted:

To say the government is colluding…that’s a fairly tough word to use.

Let me tell you some of the government agencies who areso called colluding together – who believe that climate change is real and that carbon pollution is causing it. How about NASA? We trust them to send our astronauts to space, to deliver a rover the size of an SUV to Mars safely, and drive it around, sending data and pictures back from space. You think these people know what they’re talking about?

We trust NOAA with weather predicting. And that’s what they tell us. Nobody’s saying that they’re incompetent about weather predicting, and don’t listen when they warn you about storms. But somehow when they’re talking about climate change, they are colluding.

How about the United States Navy? The Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet Admiral Locklear has said the number one threat we face in the Pacific comes from climate change. Is he colluding when he says that? This is a career Navy man, who the people of America have trusted with the security of our Pacific theater. And it’s exactly consistent with what to Department of Defense Quadrennial review said last time – four years ago and most recently.

And if you want to ignore the federal government, if you live in a world where you believe the federal government colludes with itself to make up things that aren’t true. Okay. But look at the property casualty insurance and reinsurance industry. They’re the people with the biggest bet on this. They have billions of dollars riding on getting this right. And they say climate change is real, carbon pollution is causing it, we’ve got to do something about it.

So does the US Congress of Catholic Bishops, because they care about the affect this will have on people who have the least. And so does every major US scientific society. Every single one.

So you can take a poll or petition and say it has 30,000 names on it. I’m told the names on that petition are the Spice Girls. People from MASH like Dr Frank Burns. It’s almost a comedic effort. And when you say they are 9000 who have degrees. That’s what? 0.00003% of our population of 300 million? Maybe I got a zero wrong there? The idea you can’t find 9000 people who think the earth is flat is a bit of stretch. And the idea we should base policy on a petition that imaginary people are on…rather than on what NASA, NOAA, the US Navy and every single scientific society and the entire property casualty reinsurance insurance industry are telling us is just extraordinary.

And if you want to go to the private sector you have to look no further than Coke, Pepsi, Walmart, Mars. Go over to the candy drawer and you can get wonderful Mars products. It’s a huge company – they’re going carbon neutral and they are desperately concerned about climate change. Look at Nike. Google. Apple. American company after American company.

The only place, other than of course the 9000 people who joined the Spice Girls and Major Frank Burns, where denial is credible any longer is here in Congress, where the money from the fossil fuel industry still has such a pernicious effect. But even among the Republicans – they are losing their young voters on this – people know better. People know better. You poll republicans who are under the age of 35 and a majority of them will say that somebody who believed in climate denial is ignorant, out of touch, or crazy. That’s what the young Republicans think.

i am harry posted:

Thought this little blurb was an interesting point, given the Pentagon's recent report.

Maybe it's time to get some use out of that old "You're Not Patriotic Enough" flag we put away after everyone agreed to invade Iraq.

Nevvy Z posted:

They are a pretty experienced at training nuclear engineers.

Uranium Phoenix posted:

Last I heard, Kirk Sorensen and his company trying to get LFTR reactors off the ground were trying to sell their idea of reactors to the military to bypass the huge amounts of crap they'd have to deal with trying to market a civilian nuclear reactor.