Climate change is happening. So what? I'm not denying that. I'm saying we should burn more fossil fuels anyway. — Kasperanza

:chin:

Yeah, and I'm not denying that smoking causes cancer. I just think we should all smoke as much as possible. Because I'm smart.

It's climate CHANGE not climate destruction.

Change is neither good nor bad.

It's climate CHANGE not climate destruction. — Kasperanza

Change is neither good nor bad. — Kasperanza

Then you really don't know what you're talking about, and I suggest taking literally 10 minutes, type in "climate change" in Google, pick one result -- whether from NASA or NOAA or the Royal Academy or MIT or anything you like -- and read about it. Because you're making an utter buffoon of yourself.

When you get hot, what do you do? Turn up the air conditioning or try to stop summer from happening?

I might be wrong on this, and may I be corrected if I am, but I think you’re missing @Kasperanza's crucial background issue of us not being deprived of our freedoms on account of mitigating a global calamity. Like one’s freedom to benefit from all that society has provided without the taxing requirement that one contributes back to it in return. Or maybe the freedom to grab vaginas non-consensually as one pleases on account of it being empowering, with recently elected presidents as our role model in so doing. To keep this short, last but not least, our right to freedom from the despotism of nature, be this from the evils of a corporeal death, from the tyranny of gravity in not allowing us to spontaneously fly by sheer will, or, most importantly to this discussion, our freedom from nature’s absurd injunction that we need a sustainable environment in order to continue living. We are free in our isolationist individualism to not give a damn about the rest of humankind; their present or future plight is their problem, not ours, and our helping them out in their plight as best we can is our own self-enslavement. As I said, I might be wrong about this, but the concern of losing freedoms in the name of mitigating global warming has been brought up more than once. And I deem it to be a widespread concern.

It’s like parents losing their lifelong freedoms once the kids are birthed. Its not just! So, to hell with the kids’ well-being; our freedoms to do as we please come first.

Thinking of Johnathan Swift, this is my little "modest proposal" for the day.

Mitigation and adaptation. The former requires worldwide commitments. The latter can be dealt with by individual nations. Which do you think has the better chance of succeeding?

we're both aware of the basic reasons behind why many reasonable and scientifically well supported policies aren't enacted by governments around the world — Echarmion

Indeed, and yet above we were talking about 'popular and sought after' policies, not 'reasonable and scientifically well supported' ones. That the two are not the same is the crux of the problem.

A government has three main priorities - to remain in power, to benefit from the privileges that being in power bring, and to make necessary decisions about the running of the country (I think it would be excessively cynical not to at least include that last, but let's not pretend it's a priority). So what of those three does a protest scare them into thinking is at risk? Remain in power? Well, unless the various jugglers and street performers of the protest movements swap their batons and guitars for Kalashnikovs, I don't think their power (mandated by a very specific demographic of swing voter) is a risk. Benefit from privileges? Obviously not. Make decisions about the running of he country? Well, here the one thing we don't want them to do is listen to the hysterics of the latest fad, so why would we encourage such a course of action?

Protests need to properly threaten the group they are protesting against, otherwise they're nothing more than virtue signalling. Governments have some quite well-developed means of gauging the mood in their key demographics - sophisticated multi-metric tools. Do you think they're going to throw those away because they see a few hundred hipsters having a street party?

The "It's not practical to make the necessary changes" excuse is a fairly limp one. That there are limits to what can be done by individual choice is incontestable, but equally incontestable is the fact that most people are absolutely nowhere near those limits, sending the various governments a very clear message indeed that issues like climate change score slightly below issues like who's going to make it to the next round of the FA cup (swap in your sport/cultural event of choice).

So the question should not be "how do we make governments listen to the scientists?" - that's a cause we lost four hundred years ago, governments listen to the people (or at least a key sub-section of them). we quite deliberately designed the system that way. The question should be "Why, when faced with such an obvious prospect of harm to the next generation, do people still consider their replacement Disney-themed electric toothpaste dispenser to be more important?" That's not even a political question, and I suspect it has more to do with the very same reason why people join protests than it is actually opposed by protest.

Mitigation and adaptation. The former requires worldwide commitments. The latter can be dealt with by individual nations. Which do you think has the better chance of succeeding? — jgill

Why pit one against the other? Last I checked economy is dependent upon resources. When resources vanish, economy plummets. Our economy is now global. Individual nations won't be able to adapt acclimate economically when our resources become unsustainable due to lack of mitigation. To address this in only economic terms.

Depends on the level of analysis. But on the whole, aspects of human nature -- in the case, greed -- that have been magnified by a system that prioritizes private power -- namely, capitalism. — Xtrix

A couple of statements that one might (might've) encounter(ed) in one's life.

1. It was completely out of character for him to have done that.

2. It's not in his nature to talk like that. Something's wrong!

Statement 1 is comforting. We're not slaves to human nature - we can put up a fight against it and, on occasion, hopefully these being critical to our welfare, win!

Statement 2 also suggests if not demonstrates that we have, loosely speaking, free will - a silver lining on the edges of an ominous dark cloud (human nature). What dampens my spirits is that when people behave atypicially, the immediate reaction is, "something's wrong!" As if we expect ourselves to be in line with our nature, deviations are perceived as wrong instead of right. It's almost like, may be is, taking offense, being deeply distressed, by free will. Odd that! On the one hand, we've built our civilization around free will and when someone does display it, we're taken aback, even suspicious (something's wrong!). A paradox in its own right!

How does climate change fit into all that I've said? All I can say is, it's totally in charater, typical! Of humans. If we're to do anything about it, we need to offend, surprise, shock even, as many people as possible, make them utter, "it's not in faer nature to think/say/do like that!" but the follow up statement should be not, "something's wrong!" but "something's right!" As you might've noticed, "something's right!" is harder to say than "something's wrong!" - it just doesn't sound right, it feels like a mistake. Thereby hangs a tale...

It looks like, taking climate change as the holotype of all of our problems, the world's problems by extension, it's ultimately about free will! Choices! We must convert must (necessity/no free will) into may (possibility/yes free will).

People who are opposed to fossil fuels, are against a cheap, reliable, and powerful source of energy. — Kasperanza

And when the fossil fuels run out?

If corporations knew they could never be held liable for it, then moving past the propaganda into collective reality might be attainable. — Cheshire

What do you mean? Of course corporations know they could never be held liable.

You think it's unlikely that anything gets done. So essentially we're doomed, in your eyes. Interesting perspective. — Xtrix

Well Things are already being done. Just not nearly enough things, though we're slowly getting better as the catastrophes are becoming more obvious.

Extrapolating from the CoViD response, it seems likely to me that drastic action will only occur once it's undeniably obvious that a lot of people are dieing, and a lot more people will die in the short term (and if we're being realistic it probably helps if they're white or chinese). Something like a major food shortage that is felt even in European stores

Are we doomed at that point? We've certainly doomed a lot of species on our planet. Unlike most, we have a lot more capacity to adapt though. Apart from recognising the stakes, I prefer to be optimistic about our ability to throw resources (and we do have access to tremendous amounts) at the problem until we stabilise. I don't think there's much use in fatalism either way.

Does the science really say that all climate change is bad? — Kasperanza

Yes, it does. Though it's not so much the direction of the change as the rate of change that is the problem.

Indeed, and yet above we were talking about 'popular and sought after' policies, not 'reasonable and scientifically well supported' ones. That the two are not the same is the crux of the problem. — Isaac

I didn't really talk about what's popular. I only said that individual consumer level actions are unlikely to be adopted by enough people on their own initiative to make a difference. You could take that to mean such measures aren't popular enough.

As for measures in general, I think it's pretty hard to establish how popular exactly they are. There are broad majorities for robust action on climate change in many democracies, but I suspect most people don't have anything very specific in mind.

Protests need to properly threaten the group they are protesting against, otherwise they're nothing more than virtue signalling. Governments have some quite well-developed means of gauging the mood in their key demographics - sophisticated multi-metric tools. Do you think they're going to throw those away because they see a few hundred hipsters having a street party? — Isaac

I think you're discounting the psychological effects that very visible movements have. The first goal would of course be to get enough critical mass going that the protests shift the general mood of the electorate. This has already happened with e.g. Fridays for Future. Of course a backlash is also possible, but I think would be unlikely.

A large part of the reason why there isn't more electoral push towards dealing with climate change is that people are constantly being distracted by other, seemingly more immediate, issues.

The "It's not practical to make the necessary changes" excuse is a fairly limp one. That there are limits to what can be done by individual choice is incontestable, but equally incontestable is the fact that most people are absolutely nowhere near those limits — Isaac

I agree with you here, but I guess my question would be how you would address that if not by mass protest?

we quite deliberately designed the system that way. — Isaac

I don't think that's a very accurate analysis of current democratic systems. Noone designed those systems to deal with Billionaires running influence campaigns on Facebook.

The question should be "Why, when faced with such an obvious prospect of harm to the next generation, do people still consider their replacement Disney-themed electric toothpaste dispenser to be more important?" — Isaac

Don't we know the answer to that? I thought the psychology behind that was pretty clear, and it is your field.

That long-winded rant was really good. 10/10

Why pit one against the other? Last I checked economy is dependent upon resources. When resources vanish, economy plummets. Our economy is now global. Individual nations won't be able to adapt acclimate economically when our resources become unsustainable due to lack of mitigation. To address this in only economic terms. — javra

You can't have economics if you take away people's freedom.

We have centuries before fossil fuels run out. I'm sure we'll come up with reliable green energy by then.

Yes, it does. Though it's not so much the direction of the change as the rate of change that is the problem. — Echarmion

I mean how fast is too fast? Why not just burn more fossil fuels? Oh, things are too hot? Blast the air conditioning. Things are too cold? Turn up the heat. I don't really see why it matters what the climate does. As long as we have technology and fossil fuels, let the climate do what it wants.

I mean how fast is too fast? Why not just burn more fossil fuels? Oh, things are too hot? Blast the air conditioning. Things are too cold? Turn up the heat. I don't really see why it matters what the climate does. As long as we have technology and fossil fuels, let the climate do what it wants. — Kasperanza

And where are you going to get food? We do not have replicators running on gasoline yet.

Well this is why I asked if all climate change is all bad. I imagine that colder climates that didn't allow crops, would allow crops. When some opportunities go away, new ones come up.

Well this is why I asked if all climate change is all bad. I imagine that colder climates that didn't allow crops, would allow crops. When some opportunities go away, new ones come up. — Kasperanza

And that would generally be true, if the rate of change is slow enough to allow ecosystems to adapt. But imagine what happens if 90% of all remaining fish in the oceans die off within a couple of years. Sure new fish will eventually repopulate the oceans, but that will take hundreds of years. Meanwhile millions of people rely on daily catches of fish to survive.

I didn't really talk about what's popular. I only said that individual consumer level actions are unlikely to be adopted by enough people on their own initiative to make a difference. You could take that to mean such measures aren't popular enough. — Echarmion

That's right. It's kind of where I was going. If the measures necessary are not popular enough, then protesting to persuade a democratic government to adopt them is self-defeating, especially given the recent rise in populism, but even without it...

The government already know that a vocal minority are willing to shout about climate change, they also know their key demographic are unwilling to adopt the measures necessary to combat it, so 'awareness' - the metric protestors are so enamored with raising - is not what's lacking, willingness is.

Protest would, therefore, only be useful if it were to raise willingness. So...

I think you're discounting the psychological effects that very visible movements have. The first goal would of course be to get enough critical mass going that the protests shift the general mood of the electorate. — Echarmion

... We'd need to look closely at those effects. Studies on the effect of protest give mixed results. The key takeaway seems to be that some protests work and others don't, but that very few change people's minds simply by virtue of the awareness raised. The best study I've seen recently was this one https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/13457753/TeaParty_Protests.pdf?sequence=1 which undermines Lohmann's informational idea of protest effectiveness in favour of a more social group theory (which, full disclosure, is my specialism, so I'm going to be a bit biased). So the issue then with any protest is the effect it has on local social groups, particularly on criteria for membership (what one has to do to be accepted as a member). There's a good study here https://www.cell.com/trends/cognitive-sciences/fulltext/S1364-6613(18)30017-2, though I think it might be paywalled for most, which goes through some of the ideas.

Briefly, membership criteria are signalled by the protest group and when this is something like attending political rallies, voting, or (especially) hustling others to do so, one cannot gain membership without actually taking part, non-members are freely encouraged to join by the very token of membership.

Contrastingly, movements which identify an outside actor whose actions they seek to alter, whose membership criteria and hierarchy are measured by the degree to which one is willing to take that actor to task, create barriers to entry, and very little normative pressure to join (so long as you're not personally that outside actor, membership seems entirely optional). High entry barrier and little reason to join. Not an appealing recipe for attracting members.

Hence the appeal of the Disney-themed toothpaste dispenser - high membership reward, little expense in joining. The expense in joining bit is insurmountable - what we want to achieve with something like climate change is going to require sacrifice - whether that's in terms of reduced consumption or in spending to fund community solutions. So social pressure to become a member needs to be higher. What we see in protest movements around climate change is the exact opposite. Basically, unless you're a government minister or the CEO of BP, you're not the target and so membership is optional. Middle class householders only need to take one glance at the giant leap they'd need to take feel members of the circus troop protesting outside their window, realise that non-membership will have no impact on their lives at all, to sit comfortably and watch the show.

What we're seeing at the moment, is high risk - high reward membership (arrests, violence, etc) where the high risk membership criteria are unrelated to the sacrifice the cause actually requires (reduced consumption, increased community spending) or low risk - low reward membership (so called clicktavism) where membership is easy but membership is disconnected from the actual cause. These are basically useless as engines of social change.

Both are, however, extremely useful engines of consumer management...

You can't have economics if you take away people's freedom. — Kasperanza

China.

discomfort is the primary disease, followed closely by lazy.

Most people will do a great deal to avoid discomfort and a reduction in lifestyle. Combine that with a pronounced level of laziness and poof! A great deal of no change is the result.

Now if we eliminated people...likely things would rebalance after a century or so. However, from a planet history perspective, the earth has undergone repeated heating and cooling cycles. Vast mostly desert regions to vast mostly green verdant forests and vegetation. Likely humans have increased the rate of change of this process, for a little while. Once we are gone the world will spin onwards and move into the next cycle. We may or may not be around, and outside of our opinion, does that matter?

The dinosaurs had a good run and now we use them to fuel our cars. What will the bulk of humanity's remains be used for in 250,000 years. Likely, nothing. But hey, you never know.

It’s like parents losing their lifelong freedoms once the kids are birthed. Its not just! So, to hell with the kids’ well-being; our freedoms to do as we please come first. — javra

So what passes for modern parenting for most of those under 50. Yeah!

121 degrees F, 49.6 C, in Canada, more associated with moose and permafrost. More than 500 deaths associated with heat, and the village of Lytton BC totally destroyed by fire.

'Climate emergency' is not political rhetoric, it describes exactly what is happening.

discomfort — Book273

lazy. — Book273

Lazy :point: Global Energy Consumption. We're lazy more or less and so we use machines. Machines consume energy and the earth is more active than ever. Human laziness manifests as global activeness.

Discomfort, via our instincts to relieve it, maybe either a contributory factor or an independent alternative pathway to skyrocketing global energy consumption.

Deadly duo! Double trouble! Twin Threats!

I say we burn more fossil fuels, since that's the only thing that powers air conditioning, water irrigation, and generally allows us to create the proper climate. Let the earth change; it's ridiculous to assume that we can stop it. I'm not going to let this new religion of the left convince me that the planet as a whole matters at the expense of my immediate environment. That I must save the planet with petty, trivial actions like recycling and turning off the lights. — Kasperanza

I say we stop using fossil fuels altogether - and drill for magma heat energy, near to magma chambers and subduction zones in the earth's crust. We line the bore holes with pipes - and pump water through to produce superheated steam, to drive turbines - to produce limitless quantities of clean electrical power.

I believe this form of energy is more than sufficient to meet the world's current energy demand, and the surplus could be used to capture carbon, desalinate and irrigate, and recycle - so that it would not be necessary for you to 'pay more and have less' to save the world, or feel guilty every time you turn on a light!

In the tropics, there was a traditional form of agriculture called 'slash and burn'. You create a clearing in the jungle by chopping everything down and having a bonfire. The ash makes the ground fertile for a few years to grow crops, and then when it is depleted, you move on and make a new clearing. On a small scale (relative to the jungle) there is no problem and the jungle will heal its wound in a hundred or two years. The problem, environmentally, is always one of scale. The global economy is still slash and burn, and move on, but there is nowhere left to go.

The name of nowhere is "Brownfield land".

Climate change, though has already baked in sea level rise; the current rate is about 3cm per decade, and the seas continue to warm and the land ice continues to melt even if we stop burning fossil fuels today. The best agricultural land is low-lying flood plains. This will not be affecting us drastically for probably a hundred years; people will starve and drown in Bangladesh as they always do, but in larger numbers, St Louis will become more dangerous. The frog will slowly boil, but not notice.

Weather becomes more violent and unpredictable - we adapt. Trees do not. A hundred years is a very short time in forest migration, but a very long time in deforestation.

The question being asked by most people is entirely human centred; will we survive, will we lose our freedom, will we suffer? Meanwhile, the frog is boiling. I mention, not really for discussion, but for consideration, a strand of environmentalism that actively welcomes the climate apocalypse as the cure for the disease that is humanity en-mass. Top predators need to be few in number for a balanced environment. But the question for philosophy is not, is it happening or is it going to be bad, but how do we need to reimagine ourselves and our societies to include our dependencies on environment? The top of the tree must feed the roots.

The irony that the main concern is to find 'alternative' sources of energy to solve a problem of excess energy is amusing and pathetic. The conversation is more than 50 years old already, and it might be worth folk's while to catch up a little with what has already been discussed.

Is it already too late? — Xtrix

Having lived through the northern heatwave just now of 40+C temperatures, pretty much yeah. Most conversation isn't even about stopping climate change altogether but adapting and mitigating it. The ship has already sailed, and humanity is gonna feel some pain these coming years even if they do eventually get it together.

If so, will we reach tipping points no matter what policies we enact?

Depends on what tipping points you're talking about. There's a 1.5C limit and the 2C limit according to the Paris Accord, but things could get much more worse if we don't do anything right now. Even if climate change is already here I'm firmly against defeatist attitudes and frankly find them irrational. Action is important as it's always been, since it will allow us to get this under control.

If it's not too late, what exactly can we do to contribute to mitigating it?

Plenty of things, though I'm pretty sure you're aware of some of it. Switching to renewables, adopting EVs, planting trees, building carbon capture plants, building more climate resilient infrastructure, getting off meat, reducing methane producing waste, etc.

There's also geoengineering, which I fear will be the political right's "easy" response to the crisis once they can no longer ignore the asteroid that they've been downplaying for decades, but I don't think we're at that phase yet for them.

Is there ANYONE out there who still doesn't consider this the issue of our times?

See above.

China. — Banno

That is a country.

I say we stop using fossil fuels altogether - and drill for magma heat energy, near to magma chambers and subduction zones in the earth's crust. We line the bore holes with pipes - and pump water through to produce superheated steam, to drive turbines - to produce limitless quantities of clean electrical power.

I believe this form of energy is more than sufficient to meet the world's current energy demand, and the surplus could be used to capture carbon, desalinate and irrigate, and recycle - so that it would not be necessary for you to 'pay more and have less' to save the world, or feel guilty every time you turn on a light! — counterpunch

I'm all for clean, green, and hip energy if it can be sustained under capitalism and not through government intervention.

Oh, things are too hot? Blast the air conditioning. Things are too cold? Turn up the heat. I don't really see why it matters what the climate does. — Kasperanza

That’s because you’re completely ignorant about this topic. If you continue to choose not to take 10 minutes to read about it, please stop trolling this thread.

From a scientist hired by Exxon in the 80s to study the effects on climate:

“We were doing very good work at Exxon. We had eight scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals, including a prediction of how much global warming from carbon dioxide buildup 40 years later. We made a prediction in 1980 of what the atmospheric warming would be from fossil fuel burning in 2020. We predicted that it would be about one degree celsius. And it is about one degree celsius.

It never actually occurred to me that this was going to become a political problem. I thought: “We’ll do the analyses, we’ll write reports, the politicians of the world will see the reports and they’ll make the appropriate changes and transform our energy system somehow.” I’m a research scientist. In my field, if you discover something and it turns out to be valid, you’re a hero. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to convince people, even when they saw objective evidence of this happening.”

https://apple.news/A2Kt3kfswQ6WuG3CulrN58Q