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So, blame China?  I think you pretty much have to give up selling climate change to the oldest two generations. But wait, there's more! In Australia, as in other First World countries, the demographic is heading for a big boomer bubble at the grey end, so their political influence will probably wax instead of wane. Add to that the estimated rise in dementia: according to this scary little projection for Europe, the sky's the limit. Add to that the likely energy crisis, and it's going to be fun times in 20 years.
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Dec 9, 2011 03:11
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VideoTapir posted:How much do you think that accounts for the political climate in the US? It's instructive sometimes to look for what isn't being talked about. The boomer demographic is the elephant in the room everywhere. It has to contribute to government's thinking on getting anything done.
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Dec 9, 2011 08:56
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Stephen Harper posted:"Canada only emits 1% of emissions. China emits way more! Therefore we should do nothing." gently caress I hate that line of logic. It's the number one argument finisher in the denier playbook right now in Australia. Even politicians feel safe enough to spout it. That refusal is the big "shut up and go away", which needs to be overturned. I just wonder what kind of threat will galvanize these people.
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Dec 9, 2011 09:02
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MeLKoR posted:I dunno man, that system worked pretty well for them during feudalism? One of the most farsighted science fiction writers was a bloke called John Wyndham. Some of us older goons had to do his books in high school, but I've never forgotten The Chrysalids. The plot isn't as interesting to me as the background, where survivors of our civilization (Wyndham suggests a nuclear disaster) are so traumatized by that history, they're determinedly feudal, terrified they will start the cycle all over again. He had a habit of writing good world-ending books, you might remember The Triffids. This rings true, and will probably be the result once we've bounced against the planet's limits and it puts us back our place, if we survive. And speaking of that demographic elephant I mentioned previously as being in the way of mobilizing ourselves, today's xkcd gives a hint of the problem.
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Dec 9, 2011 12:15
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Morose Man posted:The time to start is now, with what we can do, and then push on to influence institutions. The more people behave in an environmentally conscientious way the easier it becomes to affect institutions. If it's normal in your country to separate recyclables in your rubbish it's a lot easier to persuade the management of a chemical company to stop polluting a river - the people you're talking to already act to preserve the environment at home. The energy controversy of the moment in Australia is coal seam gas exploration and frakking. Now, it wouldn't even rate as an issue if the demand for natural gas wasn't worth the commercial risk despite the process being a terrible idea. Not even the NIMB factor is having sufficient leverage to slow the sector down, the last map of proposed CSG sites I saw is incredible, it's all over the place. Without getting into the irony of requiring supertankers to transport this all over the globe, you've got a set of processes that not even state governments feel able to deny. And you're talking about populist pressure on institutions? You really don't know the half of it. I'm sure our science nerds could list hundreds of bad industrial processes for which there are better alternatives NOW but will never be phased out because commercial inertia ignores them. What about the massive inefficiency of the power grid (estimated at 15% in Australia)? Or the growing salinity of arable land? My point is, there's heaps of known problems with hard scientific evidence behind them, and if they don't initiate a response, climate change is just not in the race. quote:There's no real difference between the attitude that I don't have to improve my behavour because it's up to individuals and the attitude that our country doesn't need to improve its behaviour because China is worse. The attitude isn't the problem. The problem is the habit of externalizing problems. Unless that gets changed, no amount of public anguish will change anything because the system externalizes that away. edit: speling
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Dec 10, 2011 04:45
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duck monster posted:Part of the problem here is that in Australia, mining changes everything. Australians seem obsessed with the idea that mining is the only reason we're not a third world hell-hole, when in reality it contributes maybe 10-15% at best to the economy at best. You could eliminate all mining in the country and the economic hit would be barely noticable to most people. But the old idea that Australia is rich because we "rode the sheeps back" and now ride the excavators back is so strong even people opposed to mining believe it. I wish this was more generally known, but even if it was I'm not sure it would be internalized. I live in a region still dominated by its history of mining. You look at the landscape and all the trees (I'm talking huge areas) are stunted little eucalyptus scrub that hasn't changed since the 1930's because there's practically no topsoil left after the mining and every bushfire prunes them back. And that was more or less small to medium-scale gold mining, nothing like open-cut or sand mining. There are cyanide sands all over the place, god knows what other toxic stuff is buried around here. Culturally, we're still deep believers in terra nullus. We don't think any of this will come back to bite us because its a big country and you can bury anything; of course, until it does bite us and the buried past disinters. Your mining anecdotes don't surprise me: WA in some ways is a odd cultural analogue to Queensland, where a former Premier couldn't actually understand why his interests in coal might appear to outsiders as a conflict of interest, much less anything more improper. Currently, North Queensland fisherman are bemoaning the latest reservation of the Barrier Reef. That frankly annoys me; everyone has known for decades that the future of seafood is fisheries, their excuses are particularly thin given the history of prawn fishing up there. We're a microcosm of the issues of the North in these ways.
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Dec 10, 2011 12:12
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duck monster posted:Its all about looking for code words, like "sustainability" which actually means "homocommunist global dictatorship" and uh also secret symbols in logos since for some wierd reason evil doers like putting arcane symbols in the letterheads. Read Merchants of Doubt. It pretty much explains a lot of the ideology and symbolism of denialists, who turn out often to be the same people and organizations since the 1970's tobacco campaigns. It appears that the big motivation for the contrarian scientists involved is their Cold War obsession with communism. Once the actual communism ended in the 1980's they had to invent it elsewhere and it's a bit spooky to see bits of their campaigns echoed by the loopier fringes of the deniosphere.
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Dec 11, 2011 11:23
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:At this point I'm really hoping that the oil runs out. That isn't going to be any fun for anyone at all, but it will definitely end all the moneyed interests in not dealing with this and other issues in a hurry, and I fear those fucks just aren't going to go away or be reasoned with in less than 30 years otherwise. We did pass peak oil already, right? They'll deal with it by war first, which is easier. Climate change will force resource wars on its own in any case; you can guess between who pretty easily.
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Dec 11, 2011 23:32
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Back to the real world, it seems Durban decided something. Not everyone is joyous.
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Dec 12, 2011 01:43
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For Aussies, an interesting overview of the CSG situation on the ABC's site here. The industry hates it already.
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Dec 12, 2011 08:10
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And on the subject of geologists, Ian Pilmer got a mate to help with his book release.
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Dec 13, 2011 00:20
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MeLKoR posted:They'll be dead long before your children (more like grandchildren) really start getting it. Would you punish their grandchildren? Noone will subscribe to that black armband view of history  More likely the guilty will seek to be forgotten and will be, if recent history is anything to go by. It's remarkable how quickly people switch sides of an argument and the lengths they will go to backdate their switch.
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Dec 14, 2011 09:57
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Dreylad posted:Even if you maintain that there is some infinitesimal possibility that the sceptics are right and everybody else is wrong, the potential cost of not doing enough when we need to do something is much greater than the cost of doing more than is necessary to fight global warming. Yet the cost/benefit argument is not getting any traction. Even arguing the benefits of overhauling our industrial and energy systems on their own merits gets nowhere. Lots of good and interesting ideas, noone wants to spend the R&D on them. It's hard to resist the inference that "climate change is harmful education-wise to your belief-structure".
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Dec 15, 2011 03:23
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Given a choice between the cost of space exploration and a resource war, resource wars will win every time.
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Dec 15, 2011 14:16
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TyroneGoldstein posted:Ok, I think we need to reiterate for posterity that not everything is some kind of super relative 'both parties are guilty' type equivalency fallacy. The argument is poo poo because it comes from a vested interest in the first place. It's a false equivalency to try and play up the "balanced debate" to journalists who'll then muddy the waters on your behalf. Governments usually have a buck each way, it's nothing like the kind of R&D spending that's actually needed to open new markets up. Industry would just prefer there to be no dissenting voices.
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Dec 16, 2011 02:30
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So is Jared Diamond right?
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Dec 17, 2011 14:55
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a lovely poster posted:I don't think we need to shift away from prevention, we just need to be honest about it and stop pretending like energy efficient light bulbs, "green" products, hybrid cars or any other bandaids are a part of the solution to this problem Not solutions, marketing opportunities. Maybe we need a B ark.
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Jan 2, 2012 01:49
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killer robot posted:The rest of the world is the point ...so make them build the nuclear reactors?
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Jan 7, 2012 09:53
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Killer robot posted:Thankfully, signs are that they are! China and India will develop cheaper and more efficient nuclear reactors whether or not the rich nations keep hand-wringing about them, then sell them to other countries in need. It just won't be as quick or offer as many options if they're the only ones doing it. Still, it's a technology and development that's good wherever you put it: the more practice and refined the methods become the cheaper and more reliable the plants are, boosting availability worldwide. What a coincidence! We're selling them uranium! Well that's settled.
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Jan 7, 2012 10:46
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You're forgetting the ultimate externalisation factor: lifespan. It's the endgame for short-term thinking. Who cares how the corporation is doing after we retire? Who cares about the planet after we die? That's why there is no time; a generation has to be out of the way before real action is taken and by then it's too late to avoid serious consequences. Then you have to get people to think beyond their lifespan anyway to bring the climate back into balance while they're freaking out about resources. We are so screwed.
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Feb 4, 2012 09:58
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This guy knows how I feel. No, I didn't watch it either.
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Apr 28, 2012 04:28
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Fatkraken posted:
This will not stand. 
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May 5, 2012 05:17
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V. Illych L. posted:Being iffy about climate engineering has less to do with "it's unnatural" and more to do with "we're going to flood a complex system with some chemical and we can't be sure what's going to happen". Take it from an Australian, we're the graveyard of bioengineering. We have our victories, but we are still surrounded by our failures. Not saying it isn't worth trying, but we can't defeat the cane toad, and engineering the climate is a task of greater magnitude.
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May 21, 2012 16:11
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Holy Calamity! posted:So..uh, isn't that methane leak kind of a huge loving deal? I just caught up on this thread but why wasn't that more heavily publicized? People just want to continue ignoring it for their own mental wellbeing? We don't know exactly what effects it will have, that uncertainty plays into the inertia, so deer in headlights time.
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May 21, 2012 17:48
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duck monster posted:The major problem with primitivism of the anarchist form, is that I'm not a fan of the post-left stance. As much as I actually really like Zerzans analyses of historical authoritarianism and alienation (although some of its loving nuts) I really don't think we CAN untangle our alienation from capitalism and class. We've built a society premised around stupid consumerist excess that drives absurd profits for the bourgoise along with a loving mess of environental problems for the rest of us. Its all well to strap on the black hipster gear, stick on a backpack and try and live communally in a squat out eugene way, but its not going to do poo poo whilst the rest of the world still thinks happiness comes in touchscreen form gouged from conflict mines in a wrecked corner of africa. Or, to put it another way somewhat fitting to the discussion of the last few pages, as humans we're addicted to matching "good enough" patterns and groupthinking them out of realistic boundaries. Our limitations make it incredibly difficult to move groups in any direction out of their existing inertia. Even a cursory study of behavioural economics leaves you with the strong impression that we're hosed because we're hosed because someone sold us a hosed idea and we love it. The chances of someone finding and then selling us a non-hosed idea to get out of this predicament is possible, but low due to the aforementioned group inertia. Jared Diamond was on the right track I think, and Paul Gilding is very persuasive: we keep bumping up against our ecological limitations because its what we do and we're incapable of doing anything else unless we suddenly evolve out of it. We make unsustainable structures and defend them while they burn us to death.
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Jun 8, 2012 15:25
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Your Sledgehammer is still in denial. You are falling into the same traps as the other denialists if you think primitivism is an appropriate response. There is no appropriate response. Given past history, I don't doubt that some form of civilization will rise again and fall again. Humanity as a whole is a blind, non-evolving and incompatible part of any ecosystem it touches. There is no form of idealism to combat this. Primitivism has the same air of romanticism as some forms of anarchic government did decades ago, and with about the same realism. It may comfort you, that's fine. Don't confuse it with any kind of answer.
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Jun 14, 2012 10:29
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A lot of the argumentation I'm seeing in different forms in this thread are to do with some people's inability to distinguish between technology and civilization, which strongly reminds me of the subject matter of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. You can't "fix" technology by ignoring it, you have to understand its limitations. Many of our industrial processes are problematic because either a) its cheaper to do it that way b) its easier or c) a bit more efficient; even when we know we can do it cleaner or safer. We tend to be lazy and go with 'good enough is enough', and then build on top of that. Civilization isn't an enemy: its just the result of improving the efficiencies that comes from having lots of people in cities, and we're still learning how to manage that. Unfortunately we're now in the grip of 'more money is barely enough' thinking and its getting in the way of dealing with those issues. That kind of thinking is more emergent behaviour rather than anything fundamental, and what we think of as capitalism these days is nothing like actual capitalism. McDowell posted:...nature is not a collection of circuits in a perfect balance, it is a chaotic and unstable thing. No it isn't, but its not pure chaos either. It's that word again, emergent behaviour which in a locality appears to be self-contained, but is temporarily stable. More a question of time-scale and point of view.
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Jun 23, 2012 20:16
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MaterialConceptual posted:This is an article on the intellectual bankruptcy of the "smart growth" mainstream environmentalists. It focuses on the "rebound effect" (Energy savings lead to more energy consumption) and how renewable energy does nothing to address all the other environmental problems we face. What an excellent read, much better than the  we've recently been subjected to in this thread. While errant philosophy can lead to unfortunate conclusions, it is the conclusions that will drat us, not the relative impurity of one's philosophy, viz:quote:In other words, while energy efficiency fails to be good for the environment because it leads to economic growth, we should still pursue it because…it leads to economic growth, and this is good because it will make us richer. Oh the  quote:As if that were not enough, the next problem is the way in which Nordhaus and Shellenberger concentrate solely on one element of the environmental consequences of economic growth—carbon emissions. In this they perform intellectual sleight of hand. They are quick to criticize other environmentalists for arguing that there are limits to economic growth, but the only limit they pay attention to is atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. About a range of other limits—such as biodiversity, availability of freshwater, and soil nitrogen—they have nothing to offer. This is unsurprising: these wider limits cannot be overcome, even in theory, by investments in low-carbon technologies financed by ongoing growth. This is a key method of denialists to frame the debate also. What can you do about the oceans temperature or the shift in currents except by denial and redirection? Like the Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott, whose principal pronouncements on climate change are "CO2 doesn't weigh anything" and "we will get behind other economies with this great big tax based on a lie".
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Jul 7, 2012 05:30
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MaterialConceptual posted:Wait, are you accusing the author of being a denialist? The only denialists here are the "smart growth" people who insist that some technological improvements taken BY THEMSELVES will solve all our problems. Please read what I wrote. I'm not accusing the author of anything, I was making a link between progressive environmentalists who restrict the conversation to CO2 and denialists, because it's a simple talking-point that ignores the totality of climate change. It's an obvious commonality: when they can't argue the science of one indicator, they jump to another until they exhaust that, or a new study is done which they can attack. The author is actually being generous in not making that specific link, but he's close to implying it. I can't even work out how you jumped to that conclusion. 
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Jul 8, 2012 06:12
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TheFuglyStik posted:Even more maddening is the development of what I'll call mainstream environmentalism. From what I've seen, it's a "buy this, drive that, pat yourself on the back and brag about how green you are" philosophy. I may be committing the same offense I talked about above, but I don't think an environmental movement rooted in consumerism can solve anything when it is based upon the underlying problem itself. It doesn't do anything of real consequence, other than make yourself feel noble and drain your pocket more in the checkout line at Wal-Mart. It's part of a marketing (by now a cultural) syndrome which is always feeding in whatever concerns consumers have to the next advertising campaign. It seems to be a cognitive dissonance to force environmentalism into consumerism and to claim the two are opposites. The argument they want to avoid is that consumerism should be rooted in environmentalism. It's bizarre when you think about it. The whole sustainable environmentalism meme is, as the article points out, merely code for business-as-usual with a figleaf. Simplify the message, reduce it to your comfort zone and go back to sleep. quote:I've debated free-market environmentalists in the past, and the common thread is that the free-market part of their belief system carries more weight than the environmental side when forming opinions. I believe it firmly ignores the fact that corporations as they exist now have a primary duty to produce profit, environmental concerns be damned aside from putting a leaf on packaging for buying a carbon offset or sourcing 20% of our cardboard from recycled materials. Corporations recognise no environment outside of a regulatory one. By now I hope people are aware there's no such thing as a free market, but there is a persuadable authority. I don't see much hope of getting anywhere unless the authority persuasion game is won on the environmental side.
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Jul 8, 2012 08:45
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Re the Watts-Muller hoohaa: Crikey reports that neither scientist had their studies peer-reviewed and went publicity-hunting before even publishing. Our own village idiot Andrew Bolt even claims Muller was never a sceptic. Hilarity ensues.
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Jul 31, 2012 07:22
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gradenko_2000 posted:Pardon me if this is too stupid a question, but aren't we going to run out of fossil fuels to burn, and THAT would constitute the drop-off in emissions, or is that point of hitting the bottom of the barrel too far off before the environment is permanently and irreversibly damaged (relative to how damaged it already is)? Whether or not we have enough fossil fuels is actually a moot point. It's more of a question of economics, where we get to the point where it's not profitable (not merely feasable) to keep extracting. The economists that matter are still externalizing the environment until they're lined up against the wall and shot (I can dream). At some point an energy conversion might take place or the privileged decide its for them and not for the rest of us, or we storm city hall and take the power back, who knows.
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Aug 9, 2012 04:40
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Interesting overview of the Arctic sea ice issues and implications. It's brown trousers time.
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Aug 27, 2012 09:06
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Climate doesn't care about you silly arguing humans. If nothing else, this thread demonstrates just what does go through a rabbits mind as the headlights advance. It's really confounding and sad to watch. You've got the mental equipment to get out of the way, but is that spot in the road so incredibly comfortable you'd prefer to be run over? The current affairs shows are beginning to throw up various mind-bending schemes to alter the climate from mirrors to sulphite rockets; the tone is "certainly possible, make the the climate manageable". It has the same air of unreality the rest of this "debate" has. So much for long-term solutions. So please do continue Drusz et. al. Good bunnies.
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Nov 25, 2012 04:57
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bgaesop posted:These seem like a good idea to me. Like a lot of proposed solutions, the devil is in the details. The problem with such reports is that it can encourage people to think the boffins have things in hand, and not seek solutions that change the way we think about industrial processes. Uranium Phoenix posted:To extend this metaphor, the car is also hurtling towards you. I don't know why the fact that the car will also hit other people leads you to criticize efforts to remove the bunny from the road. I also don't think you're actually reading what some of the solutions proposed in this thread are. Hint: It's not just geoengineering. The bunny doesn't see the car, only the headlights. That was sort of the point. I was going to do an effortpost explaining why but I really can't be bothered. Good luck with your revolution, you're going to need it.
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Nov 26, 2012 02:06
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From Reuters:quote:"Global warming has not slowed down, (nor is it) lagging behind the projections," said Stefan Rahmstorf, lead author at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research that compared U.N. projections to what has actually happened from the early 1990s to 2011. Goodbye you lizard scum.
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Nov 28, 2012 10:44
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The Ender posted:More seriously, I imagine something like the descriptions in The Grapes of Wrath. Only, y'know, permanent this time. That's what I've imagined, only crueller. It's a very apt story (and we've just seen some good stats on the Dustbowl), because very large numbers of people aren't simply going to stay put and suffer where they are. They're going to move.
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Dec 2, 2012 02:03
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An interesting discussion about geoengineering that's worth spending some time to watch. Some good debate and just illustrates why Uranium Phoenix's POV is flawed. You just aren't going to coax those bunnies away from the headlights, pal. The comments are what you'd expect from angry old white men. I'd not bother reading that.
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Mar 20, 2013 15:05
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Oh dear me posted:It doesn't help. Climate change deniers are typically old white men, who are more likely to be scientists than the population as a whole. It was exactly those type of deniers that thought up the whole denier strategy in the first place. And the tobacco strategy etc etc. The problem with the hopeful solution in your linked story is that its very difficult to talk to specific audiences to apply that "cultural filleting". For instance this thread.
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Jul 5, 2013 10:27
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Oh dear me posted:Yes, I didn't mean to endorse the 'solution'. Another problem with it is that it suggests environmentalists had better shut up, because we're putting people who don't like us off. It's a kind of triangulation, which dooms you in the long term. The deniers tactic, turning the science argument into an authority argument, is for me the decisive point. This has been extremely damaging not just in the climate change issue but demonstrates fundamental misconceptions about science that are very hard to overcome. After that, the only way back is to overturn the authority, and of course that creates its own problems. You have this split between those who are convinced by evidence and those who are convinced by authority and you can't unify them.
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Jul 7, 2013 03:20
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