Celebrating the official passing of the first tipping point.



And a short discussion of the psychology of climate activism.

Hmm. 2 months since my last post, and 4months since anyone else's.

There really is nothing to discuss is there? It's all our funerals, and so no one will attend.

There will likely be hotter temperatures globally and intense storm activities.

It might help you to know that our times are still one of the cooler ones geologically speaking: there have been periods of time on earth that had flourishing life and much hotter temperatures.

It's also possible that our activities will lead to mass extinctions, which isn't 100% a bad thing, since these cycles dominate the universe.

It's also possible that our activities will lead to mass extinctions, which isn't 100% a bad thing, since these cycles dominate the universe. — ProtagoranSocratist

Yeah, I was at school during the Cuban missile crisis, so I've been expecting to go extinct for over 60 years now. But I think it is 100% a bad thing; I think humanity has some potential.

Downunder, our agrarian National Party just dropped its net zero emissions policy, while record-breaking storms dropped 9cm hail on some of the richest farmland in the country.

And so it goes.

Hmm. 2 months since my last post, and 4months since anyone else's.

There really is nothing to discuss is there? It's all our funerals, and so no one will attend. — unenlightened

Heavy is the head that wears the climate...

Hmm. 2 months since my last post, and 4months since anyone else's.

There really is nothing to discuss is there? It's all our funerals, and so no one will attend.

Well at least the troll (don’t mention him by name) has left the thread.

Maybe we can now get back to serious discussion.

Downunder, our agrarian National Party just dropped its net zero emissions policy, while record-breaking storms dropped 9cm hail on some of the richest farmland in the country.

And so it goes. — Banno

Meanwhile Bill Gates shifted his position from advocating for climate change mitigation to focusing more on improving human welfare. Katharine Hayhoe, who is (or at least was, last time I had heard of her) a Republican climate scientist, argues much more sensibly than Gates:

"People often think of climate change as a separate bucket at the end of a long row of other buckets of problems we're trying to fix that are wrong in the world," Hayhoe told Axios.

"This includes poverty, disease and access to clean water."

"Climate change is not a separate bucket," Hayhoe said. "The reason we care about climate change is that it's the hole in every bucket." (My emphasis)

Meanwhile Bill Gates shifted his position from advocating for climate change mitigation to focusing more on improving human welfare. Katharine Hayhoe, who is (or at least was, last time I had heard of her) a Republican climate scientist, argues much more sensibly than Gates: — Pierre-Normand

I think adaptation is becoming the mainstream focus. Just in case our heroic efforts to reduce CO2 emissions fail, we can try to protect the most vulnerable.

I think adaptation is becoming the mainstream focus. Just in case our heroic efforts to reduce CO2 emissions fail, we can try to protect the most vulnerable. — frank

That seems to miss Hayhoe’s excellent point. It’s like saying that, in case our heroic efforts to prevent a global nuclear Armageddon should fail, we ought to divert some of our precious diplomatic resources from defusing the conflict toward setting up a trust fund for the survivors of the fallout. If something must be diverted, perhaps we could start with the colossal subsidies still flowing to fossil fuel companies (currently over $1 trillion/yr).

Yes. But this is the problem:

"People often think of climate change as a separate bucket at the end of a long row of other buckets of problems we're trying to fix that are wrong in the world," Hayhoe told Axios.

"This includes poverty, disease and access to clean water."

"Climate change is not a separate bucket," Hayhoe said. "The reason we care about climate change is that it's the hole in every bucket." — Pierre-Normand

And the reason we can't get off of fossil fuels, is because without them we wouldn't even have buckets.

Yes. But this is the problem: — frank

If you really think about it, either from a global or from a U.S.- or Western-centric perspective, the problem that this chart highlights appears to support Hayhow's buckets argument.

Climate change isn’t a separate problem competing for attention with poverty or development. It’s what makes all those other efforts leak. If Asia-Pacific coal consumption is surging because of poverty alleviation and industrial development, then mitigation isn’t optional. It’s the condition for those gains to be sustainable. With no mitigation, alleviation efforts become attempts to refill increasingly rapidly leaking buckets.

In other words, the very process of filling other buckets (economic growth, poverty reduction) is widening the hole (climate destabilization). This makes Hayhoe’s metaphor vivid, not refuted.

our times are still one of the cooler ones geologically speaking: there have been periods of time on earth that had flourishing life and much hotter temperatures. — ProtagoranSocratist

Geologically we are speaking in million-year or even billion-year time frames. Civilization only goes back thousands of years which on this time scale is hardly noticeable. Geologically we are and we are not, no matter. Global warming is only an issue to us because humanity, in a broad sense, is endangering its very frail short-lived outlier existence on a temporarily hospitable planet.

And the reason we can't get off of fossil fuels, is because without them we wouldn't even have buckets. — ChatteringMonkey

That’s a bit like saying the reason you can’t put out the fire in your kitchen is that, without fire, you wouldn’t have a stove.

Well at least the troll (don’t mention him by name) has left the thread.

Maybe we can now get back to serious discussion. — Punshhh

Kind of funny how anyone using this message board would imply they are really doing some serious work while "the trolls" are not...

Just to let you know, *hint* *hint* mentioning someone isn't as graceful as you think it is, because you have no idea who reads these conversations.

Not sure you will do about the climate, the biggest abusers are militaries, and they tend to not listen to arguments for change. You can guilt trip yourself and others about their piddily squat emissions, but i'm confused about the scientific or philosophical justifications for such behavior.

Geologically we are speaking in million-year or even billion-year time frames. Civilization only goes back thousands of years which on this time scale is hardly noticeable. Geologically we are and we are not, no matter. Global warming is only an issue to us because humanity, in a broad sense, is endangering its very frail short-lived outlier existence on a temporarily hospitable planet. — magritte

Yes, that's very possible, but there's still a lot of unknown, which makes this all more interesting.

In other words, the very process of filling other buckets (economic growth, poverty reduction) is widening the hole (climate destabilization). This makes Hayhoe’s metaphor vivid, not refuted. — Pierre-Normand

In 2022, the Chinese government approved plans to build about 100 coal burning power plants. Their use is accelerating in the face of what I'm sure they know about climate change. Coal is the CO2 source that most significantly impacts the future of climate change because there's still so much of it left to burn.

Hayhoe does make a great point, but it doesn't seem to be having any effect at all on human CO2 production. Nothing seems to have any effect. Thus adaptation.

In other words, the very process of filling other buckets (economic growth, poverty reduction) is widening the hole (climate destabilization). This makes Hayhoe’s metaphor vivid, not refuted. — Pierre-Normand

Aren't you essentially making the same point here, that resolving our problems (growth and poverty reduction etc) makes the problem worse (cause more warming because of CO2)?

Aren't you essentially making the same point here, that resolving our problems (growth and poverty reduction etc) makes the problem worse (cause more warming because of CO2)? — ChatteringMonkey

It’s more like saying that giving financial help to homeless addicts might lead them to buy more drugs, and concluding, therefore, that we shouldn’t just help them financially, but should do so while also supporting their efforts to get sober and addressing the deeper causes of homelessness and addiction.

Hayhoe’s point is similar: we must improve welfare, yes, but not by diverting funds from mitigation, the equivalent of cutting detox and prevention programs to make the handouts bigger. That would only make all the buckets leak faster.

Yes ok you were making another point indeed, namely that improving welfare would be hindered by not also making the mitigation efforts.

My point was that the goal of improving welfare is itself something that goes against the goal of mitigation, because in practice you end up using more fossil fuels, illustrated by the graph @frank posted.

If Asia-Pacific coal consumption is surging because of poverty alleviation and industrial development, then mitigation isn’t optional. It’s the condition for those gains to be sustainable. With no mitigation, alleviation efforts become attempts to refill increasingly rapidly leaking buckets. — Pierre-Normand

I can see how one gets to this conclusion, the reasoning makes some sense. It does assume however that we can increase welfare and reduce the use of fossil fuels at the same time, which seems like a big leap considering that the whole system we build after the industrial revolution is build on the energy from fossil fuels.

Isn't the more straightforward conclusion that increasing welfare for 8 billion people isn't possible without destroying the earths biosphere (which would eventually also destroy our welfare)?

Accepting that conclusion is a big ask however, because it is essentially incompatible with progressivism.

That is a misleading graph. The problem is not just coal, and not just the last 40 years, and furthermore, the slight decline in consumption in the West is the result of the export of manufacturing to Asia and China. Show the graph for the whole of the last century, and things would look very different. Show the consumption as weighted by population size and it would also look very different. Include oil and gas, and it would look very different.

Blaming the developing world for climate change is hypercritical nonsense. The West is still the main culprit, and has the wealth, education and responsibility to be the leaders and helpers in both adaptation and mitigation. But it is in fact Asia and especially China that is really leading the development of green energy technology.

I wasn't fixing the blame. I was pointing out the main obstacle to fixing the problem: China and the West march to different drums. There's no coordination of effort.

But it is in fact Asia and especially China that is really leading the development of green energy technology. — unenlightened

That's never been true, but it became profoundly untrue after 2022. China isn't exactly a developing nation, though. It's categorized as semi-peripheral to the global economy.

I was pointing out the main obstacle to fixing the problem: — frank

Yes and you were pointing in entirely the wrong direction.

The largest generator of renewable energy by a country mile is China. In 2023, clean power made up 35% of China’s electricity mix, with hydro the largest single source of clean power at 13%. The growth of renewable power generation in China has been colossal since 2000, far outpacing other countries worldwide. For example, China installed roughly as much solar capacity as the rest of the world combined in 2022, then doubled additional solar the following year. However, China’s position as a country heavily dependent on fossil fuels cannot be overlooked.

https://energydigital.com/top10/top-10-countries-using-renewable-energies

Fine. They just built 100 coal power plants, but they're going to give those up in favor of solar.

Have you read the posts and exchanges by Agree to Disagree?
Not just in this thread, but all climate change threads.

thanks for being specific, ill check it out.

I updated myself on the thread beginnings and the behavior of that user so that i can form some opinions on where they're coming from:

-Moliere has erased at least one of their posts. Nothing wrong with this, as they have been a good deal more open about it than a lot of moderators i have been "graced to know" in some shabbier and less well-maintained corners of the internet. However, knowing that makes the situation harder to judge, as that user's first post in the thread was among the posts to be erased.

-The problem with that kind of attitude they have towards this thread is that the basis of the whole thing was concerns about the awful things that almost undoubtedly are going to happen.

-I didn't really sympathize with any of their statistical approaches against the alarmism, it's just "fact-vs-fact" instead of philosophy discussion.

I appreciate naming the things we are referring to in discussion overall, just because i literally did think you were hinting that maybe i was "the troll" since I responded to unenlightened in an almost opposite way. You all can worry about inevitable global warming from behind a computer screen (sometimes i do since the wildfires create air pollution, and GW could lead to extra crop failures and water shortages), but talking about it through computers is not really addressing the problem, or coming anywhere close to lowering the carbon emissions.

For example, it's important to know that militaries disproportionately create carbon emissions. Why this tends to stay out of news media discussions is beyond me, except maybe it doesn't mesh with the profit motive of the news industry. The U.S. military in particular is massive, i've read that it produces equal carbon emissions as the rest of the people in the united states do through normal consumption. So what exactly can anyone whatsoever do, given that the worst polluters are the least likely to change their behavior? Other people were bringing up the fact that the less dirty sources of energy would still require a lot of fossil fuel consumption to get fully operational (or at least that's how i interpreted the conversation).

The problem with that kind of attitude they have towards this thread is that the basis of the whole thing was concerns about the awful things that almost undoubtedly are going to happen.

Yes, he/she was always attacking general comments about climate related issues, within a philosophical overview with badly researched data. It became pointless to debate them and it put people off posting.

I appreciate naming the things we are referring to in discussion overall, just because i literally did think you were hinting that maybe i was "the troll" since I responded to unenlightened in an almost opposite way.

There’s a difference between countering what someone is saying in a confrontational way and the continuous trolling of everyone who posts on a thread with walls of copy and paste data, for months on end. You’re not trolling at all.

You all can worry about inevitable global warming from behind a computer screen (sometimes i do since the wildfires create air pollution, and GW could lead to extra crop failures and water shortages), but talking about it through computers is not really addressing the problem, or coming anywhere close to lowering the carbon emissions.

Yes, you are right, but what can an individual do, other than make some ethical choices in what they buy and reducing their fossil fuel use where they can?
There is a serious problem of Malaise, feelings of powerlessness, reluctance to make big changes in one’s lifestyle, while most other people, or governments don’t. In some ways, the problem is just too big, too far away in the future for people to cope with, or grasp the urgency. In many ways, it’s already too late and we’re all just running with our eyes shut and our hands over our ears towards a cliff edge like lemmings.

For example, it's important to know that militaries disproportionately create carbon emissions. Why this tends to stay out of news media discussions is beyond me, except maybe it doesn't mesh with the profit motive of the news industry

Yes and right wing populists taking advantage of people’s fears, economic and political instability and war mongering are the very worst things we could be doing and yet the worse these things become, the more the populists and oligarchs thrive.

↪unenlightenedFine. They just built 100 coal power plants, but they're going to give those up in favor of solar. — frank

↪unenlightened I wasn't fixing the blame. I was pointing out the main obstacle to fixing the problem: — frank

No; you were pointing the finger and setting it up as an excuse to do nothing and claim innocence. And it's not fine, it's reprehensible, that you are distorting the facts in order to do so.

A country that builds 100 power stations of any kind in short order clearly is a developing nation: your denial is false. Fortunately they are developing so fast as to be already past the heavy industrial revolution and well into the electronic and green revolutions, to the extent that they have overtaken the West.