So you don't see removal of barriers as part of the solution? What distinguishes the two for you? — Isaac

Removal of barriers to reach an end is not completely separate, but not the same either. In the post I linked to, I touched on some of them. But what was asked about concerned actions and solutions to climate change. So I gave a few, collective and individual. Some areas there's been real progress, others less so.

If we want to go into detail about how to achieve one in particular, we can. Lately I've been focused primarily on unionization and strikes -- we can get into the strategies and methods that work. But there's all kinds of others -- I mentioned public utility commissions, for example. Plenty of work to be done there; worth getting into if you're interested. There's also efforts to mobilize voters, and the most effective ways to do so. I particularly like deep canvassing, of which there are groups you can join that will train you to learn, if that fits your personality.

Happy to have the discussion, but the post to which you're reacting to was mostly confined to general solutions, since that's what was asked -- not about the detailed strategy, methodology, and tactics involved in achieving them.

Happy to have the discussion — Xtrix

Great. Let's take the first issue. We tell people there's global warming, they say it's a hoax. What's your preferred approach there. Seems like people believing there's even a problem is a good place to start solving it.

My preferred approach is to shoot them. Kill them now and safe future generations later. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't have much support.

I see what you mean, although China is presently the largest producer of CO2. — Tate

Not per capita, by a long shot

I don't believe the US has ever been in a position to solve the problem. It's a global, long-term problem — Tate

Indeed but it was in a key position to encourage or discourage the efforts of others, and it did the latter, since the 90's or so until now. Very systematically too. The US owns this crisis. It's made in the USA. While the problem is global, the search for solutions is necessarily local. The US opted to deny the problem.

According to the senator from West Virginia, whether or not civilization as we know it is saved solely depends on next month's CPI report. — Mr Bee

Which is why BBB won't pass with any climate measure in it, and if by miracle it does pass, then it will be knocked down by the next president. The US is not able to do the right thing on climate, nor even to pretend.

My preferred approach is to shoot them. Kill them now and safe future generations later. Unfortunately, that approach doesn't have much support. — Benkei

I can't think why it doesn't have any support. More united action on climate change, and less resource use. Win win.

By coincidence, George Monbiot spoke of this issue a couple days ago, I think worth viewing:



The no "alarmism", meek speak, no difficult demands, incrementalism, approach has achieved essentially nothing.

George Monbiot also points out that while the environmental movement has achieved essentially nothing based, our opponents have achieved system change (implementing neo-liberalism and more extreme oligarchic control).

I think a useful analogy to demonstrate my point is: imagine you were an anti-NAZI activist before the NAZI's gained imperial power, and then NAZI's gain imperial power. Ok, yes, resistance can continue, but it's simply reality that in the the previous goal of preventing the NAZI's from taking over has been defeated. Recognising this defeat is simply reality, and to call it "defeatism" is a category mistake.

If I accept I lost a chess game (because I lost the chess game) this says only that I see reality for what it is, and am not in denial about it, and informs nothing of whether I have a defeatist attitude in chess, or generally speaking, in life.

Of course, yes, people who lose chess games may take on a defeatist attitude and not play anymore; however, to trick them into believing they've won, or maybe tied, when they lost is not a solution to defeating defeatism.

You may say: ok, ok, yes, we've lost a lot of battles but what matters is what we do now.

Which I agree with.

Why I am emphasising the defeat is because if we don't see reality as clearly as possible and don't learn from the past then our next actions will not be very effective.

The environmental movement has been going on a pretty long time spinning the same plans around and around; it is, broadly speaking, become closer to a ritualised mea culpa artistic expression, precisely to avoid effective actions (for it is this non-threatening version of environmentalism that is allowed to not only develop unhindered--as it's not threatening anyone--but provided plenty of resources for marketing purposes of the "Great Firms").

Not only would I argue environmentalism has been soundly and unequivocally defeated since it's inception in essentially every dimension, I also argue that the examples of humanism "wins" were also defeats in the final analysis. Even ignoring that social justice means ziltch if we have no environment in which to have a society: did we really defeat slavery? or simply call it by another name? Do we even have democracy? or do we have a global aristocracy in which "democracy" is part of its self-justification, its sense of superior civilisation, its racism, supporting its imperial control of the entire globe? Have we really accomplished these things? or have we merely built the illusions necessary for global elites to normalise their indifference to the vast suffering required for every one of their comforts, block out every fact that would disturb proper conversation.

Not only would I argue we've lost these battles, every advance merely temporary and somehow subsequently subsumed into a mythological reorganisation of the human spirit to render the defeat of every evil in appearance (in the following moments when our movements rest and congratulate themselves on a job well done) are utilised to transform into a far deeper evil, far more pernicious reality, far harder to fight again: for the defeat of the symbol without the defeat of the substance merely renders what was once fought a nameless entity, continuing as before, truly freed from any scrutiny.

We do not have democracy. We do not have humanism. We do not have literacy. We do not have any single one of the slogans slapped on our citadels of hate and corruption (equality? fraternity? life? liberty? pursuit of happiness? good governance? "peace, dignity and equality on a healthy planet"? are but whimsical fantasies representing the holy grail of tyrannical power: appropriation of the very minds of the oppressed).

For, I would go even further in my analysis. That not only has our cause met with defeat in every single dimension, every single battle waged, but we have now been pressed back to defending our very last refuge: The castle of our own skulls; our consciousness, sense of self and perception of the world. And the enemy is at the gates. The walls are crumbling in. Our gardens of concepts and experience necessary to sustain the very idea of a fight in the first place, are on fire.

Has anybody looked at the climate change issue from a taijitu (yin-yang) perspective? As per Laozi, the founder of Taoism, the solution to a problem is present within the problem itself. Let's wait for the problem to solve itself, oui mes amies?

Let's wait for the problem to solve itself, oui mes amies? — Agent Smith

This is not what Taoism teaches.

Taoism teaches:

A good traveler leaves no tracks,
and a skillful speaker is well rehearsed.
A good bookkeeper has an excellent memory,
and a well-made door is easy to open and needs no locks.
A good knot needs no rope and it cannot come undone.
Thus the Master is willing to help everyone,
and doesn't know the meaning of rejection.
She is there to help all of creation,
and doesn't abandon even the smallest creature.
This is called embracing the light.

What is a good person but a bad person's teacher?
What is a bad person but raw materiel for his teacher?
If you fail to honor your teacher or fail to enjoy your student,
you will become deluded no matter how smart you are.
It is the secret of prime importance. — The holy Tao, Chapter 27

I beg to differ.

↪boethius I beg to differ. — Agent Smith

You beg to differ with a direct citation of the Tao while attempting to claim its cachée and mystique for yourself?

You beg to differ with a direct citation of the Tao while attempting to claim its cachée and mystique for yourself? — boethius

Have you seen climate records, as read from Antarctic ice cores? They tell a story of not one but many CO₂ crises that resolved themselves without any intervention at all.

Have you seen climate records, as read from Antarctic ice cores? They tell a story of not one but many CO2 crises that resolved themselves without any intervention at all. — Agent Smith

You do realise that it's these records that have the scientists that collect and study this data so alarmed?

"Crisis resolving itself" at CO2 levels nowhere near the present (far above anything in the records you cite) does not support the idea we'll stay in the Pleistocene, a long period of glaciation and inter-glaciation to which all life currently on the planet is adapted. These were not crisis but part of the long term natural variation.

Melting the North polar icecap is a completely different scenario than the last 2 million years.

Now, if you mean to say whatever we do we can't kill everything and therefore the situation will be "resolved" in that way. No scientist, and I doubt anyone in the environmental movement, claims that the world's biodiversity will not eventually recover in tens of millions of years if we continue the current mass extinction to it's further extent possible.

The question is if the species currently on the planet have any value and if we have any responsibility to not destroy them for our own amusement (including our own species).

Is it moral that I destroy your painting or a painting of a great master just because someone can paint more later? If I burned the Mona Lisa would you sagely point out that nothing has been lost and the situation will be resolved by more people painting more stuff, just like plenty of paintings have been lost in the past and people just made new ones. Or would you agree I should go to jail for destroying a thing valuable in itself and also part of our cultural heritage? Or should I only go to jail because I destroyed property?

... But is not the earth and all its species and life systems our collective property, and not in an analogous sense, but our current legal framework: states own land, lakes and oceans (and only through this foundational state property does any individual or corporation get subsigned any property rights to what is fundamentally state property, always restricted and always returnable to the state as punishment, requisition or eminent domain purposes) and collectively managed in inter-state legal frameworks even the things "no one owns" as common-property (international oceans, space, antarctic). And people own states; or so I'm told.

However, even so, destruction of the earths life systems damages my property also, far more than if someone put up ghastly window shutters across the way.

I see what you mean, although China is presently the largest producer of CO2.
— Tate

Not per capita, by a long shot
3h — Janus

The climate doesn't really care.

In my humble opinion, the biosphere is able to self-correct any perturbations from the equilibrium point. There's this concept in physiology termed homeostasis and my hunch is a similar mechanism exists for the living world on the global scale as well.

↪boethius In my humble opinion, the biosphere is able to self-correct any perturbations from the equilibrium point. — Agent Smith

First, it's simply a false understanding to say the biosphere is self-correcting.

Ecosystem stability is measured in the variability of biodiversity, but that biodiversity itself is not self correcting but constantly changing with a "background" level of extinctions, invasive species, as well as antigenic drift within species. Self correcting would connote returning the same state, but the biosphere does not do this even in "normal" times.

The biosphere adapts to changes and does not somehow resist changes by self-correcting.

Now, if you want to reformulate that by biosphere you don't mean the biosphere as such but certain abstract variables, then yeah, sure; but "self-correcting" yourself like that only betrays a total lack of knowledge and respect for the subject matter you are discussing.

Of course, far worse mistake, and not a matter of taxonomy in the slightest, is your belief that "self-correcting" mechanisms of the biosphere can simply be assumed to be robust enough to deal with climate change.

There is zero evidence for this vis-a-vis climate change. If your justification is simply that you have a right to your opinion despite having zero evidence and zero analysis supporting it ... sure, yeah, great justification, hats off to you.

The earth's biosphere only has self-correcting mechanisms of perturbations, for short term and limited changes. A limited amount of pollution can be diluted and / or processed and / or simply tolerated by the biosphere, but those buffers only last for a certain quantity of pollution. Enough CFC's and the dilution and processing of CFC's is overwhelmed and ozone gets depleted, enough ozone depletion and life systems cannot tolerate the sudden increase in ultra violet light (protection from which has existed on earth since oxygen).

Geological history does show long periods of stability as no event or series of events exceeded the buffers maintaining stability. Over long periods of time the earth's systems can be remarkably stable, one geological eon, the Archean, lasting a billion and half years.

However, the geological record also demonstrates what happens when buffers are exceeded: mass extinction and recovery of biodiversity over tens of millions of years.

The "Freakonomics" guys thought they had some great insight when they pointed out that what matters is rates of change. They honestly seemed to believe it had never occurred to any physicist that the difference between a car crash and a normal stop is the rate of change of the speed of the vehicle.

It wasn't a new insight, but it is of course true: the difference between a stable ecosystem in terms of biodiversity and a mass extinction, is the rate of change of number of extinctions.

That mass extinctions are "good" or "bad", there are arguments on both sides. Mass extinctions do "shake things up" and send life on a different direction than it was before, but each one could also be simply delaying complex life emerging and a significant risk of some "great filter" event. However, I don't know any position that argues causing a mass extinction the best we can, as thoroughly as we can, is our duty in order for new and better stuff to maybe evolve later.

"The earth will survive" argument I have only ever heard supporting the position of apathy and indifference to other species and other people.

However, if you are apathetic and indifferent, why speak?

Technically they weren't even talking about BBB. He killed that bill because he had problems with it's temporary programs (which were there because he restricted the topline number), and also because it didn't do enough to reverse the Trump tax cuts. The bill Manchin just killed was his very own deficit reduction bill funded by tax increases, which he said was the "best way" to fight inflation. Fast forward several grueling months of bad faith negotiations and then Manchin suddenly "found out" that the tax increases were inflationary and that he was suddenly okay with a bill that consists solely in drug prices and a (temporary) ACA extension instead. At least, he's okay with it now (but given his track record, he'd probably have some last minute "revelation" that drug prices are inflationary or something leaving us with literally nothing).

I'm sure Google can help you out in searching for instances of life's self-correcting feature.

Nevertheless, you're right on the money that this ability of the biosphere to right itself after being knocked over (roly-poly toy like) has limits - beyond a certain point, the point of no return, the system collapses into a death spiral.

↪boethius I'm sure Google can help you out in searching for instances of life's self-correcting feature. — Agent Smith

You did not state life has "self correcting features". There's plenty of self correcting features, from DNA repair to tectonics plats "correcting" mountains by rising to compensate weathering.

You stated self-correcting is a feature of the biosphere so strong that current CO2 changes will be self-corrected like all the others in the ice-core record.

Furthermore, I literally state that the biosphere is self-correcting to short term and limited changes ...

Nevertheless, you're right on the money that this ability of the biosphere to right itself after being knocked over (roly-poly toy like) has limits - beyond a certain point, the point of no return, the system collapses into a death spiral. — Agent Smith

So what are you even debating?

This is why scientists (the ones that produced the data you are talking about) are alarmed. That the changes to CO2 levels (and land-use, fish, etc.) we've caused is far beyond planetary boundaries.

This is why scientists (the ones that produced the data you are talking about) are alarmed. That the changes to CO2 levels (and land-use, fish, etc.) we've caused is far beyond planetary boundaries. — boethius

The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere will be absorbed into the oceans eventually.

The greatest challenge to life on earth so far was low CO2, btw. High CO2 hasn't been been as much of a threat.

Indeed but it was in a key position to encourage or discourage the efforts of others, and it did the latter, since the 90's or so until now. Very systematically too. The US owns this crisis. It's made in the USA. While the problem is global, the search for solutions is necessarily local. The US opted to deny the problem. — Olivier5

Al Gore was American. How many people knew about global warming outside the community of science nerds prior to his work?

You're overstating it. It was not made in the US. It was made by all fossil fuels users.

The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere will be absorbed into the oceans eventually. — Tate

Untrue statement.

Ocean concentration reaches a balance with CO2 atmospheric concentrations, that it is absorbing and releasing the same amount.

Ocean absorption for the atmospheric concentrations we've reached (higher than in millions of years) is a major ecological problem as it changes the PH of the entire ocean than what ocean life has experienced in millions of years, but we are approaching an acidification level in which in which calcium shells simply don't form. A total catastrophe, not the oceans helping out by eventually solving the problem.

CO2 is not eventually all absorbed the ocean, but it removed from the carbon cycle through weathering, reacting mostly with basalt, in a super long process that takes thousands or tens of thousands of years.

Eventually it is all weathered out, but new CO2 is added to the carbon cycle, mostly, through volcanos and a balance is reached.

The greatest challenge to life on earth so far was low CO2, btw. — Tate

Again, untrue statement.

Arguably greatest challenge to life was starting and "holding on" in the first place, and the conditions for that were: "When Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago from a hot mix of gases and solids, it had almost no atmosphere. The surface was molten. As Earth cooled, an atmosphere formed mainly from gases spewed from volcanoes. It included hydrogen sulfide, methane, and ten to 200 times as much carbon dioxide as today's atmosphere" as informed by Smithsonian Environment Research Center.

The very next slide explains: "Three billion years ago, the sun was only about 70 percent as bright as it is today. Earth should have frozen over, but it didn’t. Why not? Because greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, mainly methane and carbon dioxide, trapped enough of the sun’s heat to keep temperatures above freezing."

I think the knowledge you are looking for is that the earth's atmosphere has had a lot of variation and life has not only adapted to but a main cause of these variations.

By pumping billions of tons carbon into the atmosphere every year for over a century, we are pushing the earth into a "hot house" dynamic where snow is largely missing from both poles, changing the climate significantly to one a large part of current multi-celular life is not adapted, cannot adapt in pace with changes, and will go extinct (as is currently already happening from many other human actions, but climate change is a lot worse as it also affects man-made or happenstance refuges for life).

High CO2 hasn't been been as much of a threat. — Tate

What's even the purpose of this statement? Even if true that high CO2 hasn't been much of a threat, obviously doesn't even exclude that it's a threat now. Other species have not dug and pumped up vast quantities of carbon, completely disturbing the carbon cycle balance.

Are you suggesting that running this uncontrolled experiment of what happens when a species does dig up carbon and dumps vast quantities in the atmosphere in a single geological moment, that it's somehow less risky because no species has run the experiment before?

Al Gore was American. How many people knew about global warming outside the community of science nerds prior to his work? — Tate

It has been part of the national curriculum in French highschool since the 70's. I learnt about climate change at school in 1980. With An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore (2006), tried to break the wall of silence in the US, and it was a good thing to do, but outside the US there was no deficit of information. Climate change was not a controversial idea outside of the US by then.It was so well known that all nations of the world had signed the the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 and the Kyoto Protocol in 1997.

has been part of the national curriculum in French highschool since the 70's. — Olivier5

I doubt it. In the 1970s it wasn't clear if the climate was cooling or warming. The effect of the Milankovitch cycle wasn't discovered until the mid 1970s.

In the 1980s it started to become clearer that the climate would warm and, as I said, it was a few science nerds who paid attention.

Untrue statement.

Ocean concentration reaches a balance with CO2 atmospheric concentrations, that it is absorbing and releasing the same amount. — boethius

As the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans will increase. It's Henry's Law.

As the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans will increase. It's Henry's Law. — Tate

You are literally repeating what I stated: a balance is reached.

Your statement was that oceans will eventually absorb all the CO2 ... literally stating:

The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere will be absorbed into the oceans eventually. — Tate

But if you know your chemistry fundamentals, why made such an absurd claim. The idea shouldn't even come to mind.

Or, maybe you had no clue what you were talking about, but have since educated yourself a bare minimum.

Which is good, having a basic respect for the subject matter you're discussing is a step in the right direction.

For example, if you cite data collected by scientists, borrowing their work and credibility to make a point, a basic respect would be at least take their theories, models and interpretations (in terms of politics and ethics) of the data, that they collect and study, seriously enough as to not simply dismiss anything you find inconvenient entirely based on a-scientific, hand-wavy, vague truisms such as "biosphere is self-correcting" or then simply false statements like "The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere will be absorbed by the oceans".

What?

Have you seen climate records, as read from Antarctic ice cores? They tell a story of not one but many CO2 crises that resolved themselves without any intervention at all. — Agent Smith

The fact, or rather the likelihood, that the climate will settle down to an approximate stability fairly conducive to life in a few tens or hundreds of thousands of years, is not the issue. Life goes on and will go on without humans, and you may think that a good thing.

But some of us are so myopic as to want our children and grandchildren to survive, and do not want the coming century to see a mass-extinction event of 60 -80% of species.Some of us are so limited of vision that we worry about half the major cities of the world being under water.

I don't think it is practical to build sixty meter high dams around our cities, and so it is quite important that all the land ice does not melt.


But never mind. The end of humanity is unimportant compared to the prospect of all the inconvenience of preventing it!

↪boethius What? — Tate

You want me to explain it again:

You make false statements that you yourself agree are false:

You say:

The CO2 we've added to the atmosphere will be absorbed into the oceans eventually. — Tate

And then contradict that statement with:

As the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the amount of dissolved CO2 in the oceans will increase. It's Henry's Law. — Tate

Your other statements are not even scientific.

The greatest challenge to life on earth so far was low CO2, btw. High CO2 hasn't been been as much of a threat. — Tate

What "challenges" to life have existed over the past 4 billion years requires a non-scientific teleology for life, a goal to life in which to be challenged about, which pretty much any scientist would point out is non-scientific anthropomorphism ("all life" doesn't have any goals, as far as science goes, other than what we project on to it) as obviously the only goal available to postulate is making sentient and intelligent life (ourselves) and anything that we suppose goes in that directly is a good thing and anything that doesn't is a bad thing.

So, not a scientific statement and the followup of "high Co2 hasn't been much a threat" is not even clear how it relates to your teleology of life: threat to all life and total extinction of everything? or threat to particular ecosystem epochs ... in which case CO2 rise has been a major threat:

Roughly 251 million years ago, an estimated 70 percent of land plants and animals died, along with 84 percent of ocean organisms—an event known as the end Permian extinction. The cause is unknown but it is known that this period was also an extremely warm one. A new analysis of the temperature and fossil records over the past 520 million years reveals that the end of the Permian is not alone in this association: global warming is consistently associated with planetwide die-offs. — Scientific America