The issue is that we don't have any experience with "caring" on the temporal and geographical scale of climate change. — frank

That is because it is not something that is experienced. It is an "idea". And there is no moral imperative to believe or agree with an idea. If an idea cannot compel assent on the weight of its own merit but requires coercion and ridicule to enforce, there is an obvious problem with the idea, and a bigger problem with the people that want to impose ideology upon others.

"Why should I care about what happens to other people in other places and times, such as after I am no longer alive?" — kudos

"Why should I?" is the devil's question. If someone doesn't care about other people, they don't care what other people say. So there is no answer worth giving.

Humanity as a whole stands in judgement of itself, and it looks like our judgement is that we might as well die in our own shit. So it goes. I am rather sad about this, to the extent that I sometimes hide it in anger. Both equally futile reactions.

But I do wonder, if people really don't care about others, why they bother to come here and argue about all this, back and forth? It's almost as if they are trying to convince themselves that they don't care, rather than just berate those of us that do care a little.

This isn't a question about caring for others at all.

Attempts to frame it as such is simply a transparent attempt at claiming a moral high ground by smearing the other side as being selfish and immoral. It's intellectual poverty.

That would be a stronger argument if it were not the sceptics that framed it that way.

That is because it is not something that is experienced. It is an "idea". And there is no moral imperative to believe or agree with an idea. If an idea cannot compel assent on the weight of its own merit but requires coercion and ridicule to enforce, there is an obvious problem with the idea, and a bigger problem with the people that want to impose ideology upon others. — Merkwurdichliebe

Read what you wrote as if you were talking about money. Money is a successful social technology. So is the legal apparatus that allows us to do rule of law. We just don't have any social technology for orchestrating events beyond about a hundred years.

What would you do if you had to either save two strangers or your wife or daughter? I'd choose wife or daughter. It's a question of the type of history that brings us to this moment of choice. — kudos

Exactly.

We just don't have any social technology for orchestrating events beyond about a hundred years. — frank

That's not entirely true. By and large, democratic governments cannot afford to look very seriously beyond the next election, but not everything is democratically controlled. The notion of aristocracy, on the other hand, unfashionable as it is, does rely on long-termism. Noblesse oblige. Thus in medieval times, multi generational projects like the construction of cathedrals were possible. The sense of lineage gives one a longer view that allows one to plant broadleaf woodland that will come to maturity in a couple of centuries, because there is a genuine feeling that one is not the owner, but the custodian of one's property. This might make sense to a Native American sensibility, but I suspect is entirely foreign to US culture.

That would be a stronger argument if it were not the sceptics that framed it that way. — unenlightened

I don't think that's an accurate way of describing the skepticism expressed in this thread at all.

True.

I don't think that's an accurate way of describing the skepticism expressed in this thread at all. — Tzeentch

Of course you don't. But if you look, you will find that climate science has been accused of "grift" of regiousity, of ... oh never mind, I cannot be bothered with fending off your projections any more.

None of that has anything to do with what I said, though.

↪unenlightened None of that has anything to do with what I said, though. — Tzeentch

So calling people grifters is not taking the moral high ground? Literally, you will make any idiotic accusation not to engage with the rather serious threat to your own way of life. So it goes.

So calling people grifters is not taking the moral high ground? — unenlightened

No, not really. Recognizing something is as a grift has nothing to do with morality.

If you say so.

Consider the death, betrayal, and theft that brought most of the individuals involved this discussion right now into existence. Can it be ignored if it is a question of lying to oneself for a cause versus being honest? If so, it's a question of if the ends justify the means.

:up: :up: :up:

If you can explain please, I'll consider. What death betrayal and theft?

I guess my point, if there is one, is that most of us are a result of imperialist empires such as Roman, Greek, British, German, Ottoman, Byzantine, Mongol, and countless others. These empires took over large quantities of resources, killed and dispersed large quantities of people, and in many cases – Roman in particular – found themselves upon narratives of deceit and betrayal. The people who survived during these times were less the ones that were un-paranoid, non-aggressive, and fully altruistic. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to suddenly be in 'happy bunny hour' all holding hands.

There isn't any question at present in the Western scientific community about whether the greenhouse effect is a real phenomena. You can test this in your own backyard. The majority of esteemed universities around where I live offer full courses about the effects of it and the US, Canada, Europe, China, and India, have already pledged trillions of dollars towards solutions. If you still have doubts, you can easily express your concerns to a professor and not a philosopher. If you win that argument, then you can approach ordinary citizens here with your scientific proof. However, it being scientific knowledge doesn't automatically mean it's true. After all, the sun revolving around the earth was previously common held as science. But conversely, it is a common logical error to think proving something is untrue proves its opposite to be true.

Read what you wrote as if you were talking about money. Money is a successful social technology. So is the legal apparatus that allows us to do rule of law. We just don't have any social technology for orchestrating events beyond about a hundred years. — frank

Energy is also a social technology that is a real experience for people. People depend on it as much as money and law. It is ridiculous that people are willing to experiment with this highly impractical social technology for orchestrating events beyond about a hundred years at the cost of crippling our capacity for producing cheap avaliable energy in the present. "That the wise men should gaze up at the sun and moon and yet fail to see what lies beneath their feet." (Diogenes)

Im sure it will be really nice when Western countries become dependent on the coal power of countries like China and India to fuel their unproven green energy infrastructures.

This is false — mcdoodle

:nerd: :nerd: :nerd: "Eeeerm- I just fact checked this on Cheeseburgersville's grandmas Facebook group and actually there is this one little article by the PolyAmoryNews talking about microplastics"
It does not matter. Microplastics are not nearly talked about as much as the climate. That is what I said, and it is a fact.

but it's a popular misconception that he said or even implied that the underwater events would happen 'by 2000 — mcdoodle

I did not say that. You are just "debunking" an opinion that was never stated.

Climate scientists are alarmists, dogmatists, zealots. Funny so much quasi-religious accusations get thrown about when so much of this comes from evangelicals, who themselves are largely young-earth creationists. — Mikie

The great god Science has pronounced our doom, and your faith or lack of faith changes nothing. — unenlightened

Humanity as a whole stands in judgement of itself, and it looks like our judgement is that we might as well die in our own shit. So it goes. — unenlightened

You have neither listened nor inclined your ears to hear, although the Lord persistently sent to you all his servants the prophets, saying, ‘Turn now, every one of you, from his evil way and evil deeds. . . Yet you have not listened to me, declares the Lord, that you might provoke me to anger with the work of your hands to your own harm. — Jeremiah 25:4

I guess my point, if there is one, is that most of us are a result of imperialist empires such as Roman, Greek, British, German, Ottoman, Byzantine, Mongol, and countless others. These empires took over large quantities of resources, killed and dispersed large quantities of people, and in many cases – Roman in particular – found themselves upon narratives of deceit and betrayal. The people who survived during these times were less the ones that were un-paranoid, non-aggressive, and fully altruistic. It is unreasonable to expect everyone to suddenly be in 'happy bunny hour' all holding hands. — kudos

Yes. We are probably more chimp than bonobo, and on top of that we inherit trauma from the traumatised of the previous generation. And as I have already said and others have also attested, it is a difficult process just to come to terms with the personal and cultural loss we are facing. And of course I sound like some modern Jeremiah because on a smaller scale, societies have had to face such calamities many times, and folk have each time divided between the doom merchants and the sceptics.

I am not expecting much happiness.

I am expecting over the next couple of centuries a sea level rise of 10 - 50 metres submerging most of the major cities and a huge percentage of the world's arable land. Add in the mass extinction caused by a climate change too rapid for environments to adapt, and the usual human instinct to blame Johnny Foreigner for their problems, and happy bunnies are going to be thin on what's left of the ground.

Denial is a normal psychological response - 'The Titanic is unsinkable, tell the band to keep playing.' One might hope that philosophers were in a position more to face reality, and start to think about the most meaningful way to respond to the situation. But here it seems that name calling and ridicule is about all they can manage. *shrug*.

But happy Christmas everyone.

Due to the Only If It’s In My Own Back Yard mindset, the prevailing collective attitude, however implicit or subconscious, basically follows: ‘Why should I care — my family is immediately alright?’ or ‘What’s in it for me, the taxpayer?’

While some people will justify it as a normal thus moral human evolutionary function, the self-serving OIIIMOBY can debilitate social progress, even when such progress is so desperately needed — notably, trying to moderate manmade global warming thus extreme weather events.

Although societal awareness of and concern over man-caused global warming is gradually increasing, collective human existence is still basically analogous to a cafeteria lineup consisting of diversely societally represented people, all adamantly arguing over which identifiable person should be at the front and, conversely, at the back of the line.

Many of them further fight over to whom amongst them should go the last piece of quality pie and how much they should have to pay for it — all the while the interstellar spaceship on which they’re all permanently confined, owned and operated by (besides the wealthiest passengers) the fossil fuel industry, is on fire and toxifying at locations not normally investigated.

And if the universal availability of green-energy alternatives will come at the profit-margin expense of traditional 'energy' production companies, one can expect formidable obstacles, including the political and regulatory sort. If it conflicts with big-profit interests, even very progressive motions are greatly resisted, often enough successfully.

As a species, we can be so heavily preoccupied with our own individual little worlds, however overwhelming to us, that we will miss the biggest of crucial pictures. And it seems this distinct form of societal penny-wisdom but pound-foolishness is a very unfortunate human characteristic that’s likely with us to stay.

I am expecting over the next couple of centuries a sea level rise of 10 - 50 metres submerging most of the major cities and a huge percentage of the world's arable land. Add in the mass extinction caused by a climate change too rapid for environments to adapt, and the usual human instinct to blame Johnny Foreigner for their problems, and happy bunnies are going to be thin on what's left of the ground. — unenlightened

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future. — Niels Bohr

You are ruining your life worrying about something that might never happen. Even if it happens it will be long after you are dead.

Let’s think back to people in 1900 in, say, New York. If they worried about people in 2000, what would they worry about? Probably: Where would people get enough horses? And what would they do about all the horseshit? Horse pollution was bad in 1900, think how much worse it would be a century later, with so many more people riding horses?

But of course, within a few years, nobody rode horses except for sport. And in 2000, France was getting 80% its power from an energy source that was unknown in 1900. Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Japan were getting more than 30% from this source, unknown in 1900. Remember, people in 1900 didn’t know what an atom was. They didn’t know its structure. They also didn’t know what a radio was, or an airport, or a movie, or a television, or a computer, or a cell phone, or a jet, an antibiotic, a rocket, a satellite, an MRI, ICU, IUD, IBM, IRA, ERA, EEG, EPA, IRS, DOD, PCP, HTML, internet, interferon, instant replay, remote sensing, remote control, speed dialing, gene therapy, gene splicing, genes, spot welding, heat-seeking, bipolar, prozac, leotards, lap dancing, email, tape recorder, CDs, airbags, plastic explosive, plastic, robots, cars, liposuction, transduction, superconduction, dish antennas, step aerobics, smoothies, twelve-step, ultrasound, nylon, rayon, teflon, fiber optics, carpal tunnel, laser surgery, laparoscopy, corneal transplant, kidney transplant, AIDS. None of this would have meant anything to a person in the year 1900. They wouldn’t know what you are talking about.

Now. You tell me you can predict the world of 2100. Tell me it’s even worth thinking about. Our models just carry the present into the future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s thought knows it. — Michael Crichton

You are ruining your life worrying about something that might never happen. Even if it happens it will be long after you are dead. — Agree-to-Disagree

No I'm not. I am not worried. I will be dead, indeed before very long, but I do not make my life a misery by imagining that my life has any great importance. That would be rather foolish considering how very fragile and impermanent an individual human is.

Prediction is indeed difficult, but if scientists were to predict with increasing certainty over some time that a large asteroid was going to hit your state and nothing could be done now because it was too late to divert it, you might be inclined to take a holiday somewhere far away, rather than arguing with complex calculations.

I am giving you my best guess based on the consensus of model predictions augmented by proposed explanations of why these models have proved so far to be underestimating the effects of climate disruption.

Our models just carry the present into the future. They’re bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment’s thought knows it. — Michael Crichton

Of course. Yet every purposeful act is future directed and functions in exactly that way. In crossing the road, one waits for a gap in the traffic and hopes there is not an invisible car there. One eats a burger and relies on the fact that so far one's burgers have not been too poisonous. Everybody who gives it a moment's thought knows that predictions are the best one can do in preparing for the future, and that though the weather forecast is sometimes badly, wrong, and always wrong to some degree, it is still worth attending to, and preparing for.

Think for a second about what you're asking a skeptic to do. A person is a skeptic for a reason. You don't know what that reason is tied up with. It could be guilt about how they treated their parents, or gratitude to someone who helped them when they really needed it. Point is: you don't know how much you're asking. You want them to take it all and put it to the side for a second in order to listen to something new.

If you can't do that yourself, why are you asking someone else to do it?

Watching people bend over backwards denying what’s happening before their eyes (accurately predicted by scientists— in fact underestimated) is pretty funny.

“It’s a hundred years from now! Models are always wrong!”

Except this was known over a hundred years ago. Eh, denial runs deep.

Prediction is indeed difficult, but if scientists were to predict with increasing certainty over some time that a large asteroid was going to hit your state and nothing could be done now because it was too late to divert it, you might be inclined to take a holiday somewhere far away, rather than arguing with complex calculations. — unenlightened

Some things are easier to predict than others. The path of an asteroid hurtling through space is relatively easy to predict. There are not many factors affecting its motion.

Predicting what will happen to the earth is much more complicated. We don't have complete knowledge of its history and the accurate data that we have is from a relatively short time period. There are many more factors affecting it, and some of those factors involve human choices (individual and group decisions).

Committing to a major change to the way that humans live is a risky experiment (as is continuing to use fossil fuels). People like Mikie concentrate on the risks of continuing to use fossil fuels, but choose to ignore the risks and problems that might be caused by moving away from fossil fuels. A more balanced view would be better.

We don't have complete knowledge of its history and the accurate data that we have is from a relatively short time period. — Agree-to-Disagree

800 thousand years isn’t short.

Not hard to predict the future in this case. More emissions of greenhouse gases, more warming. Climate deniers desperation to find faults is pathetic, as always.

Latest analysis of monthly averages:



https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/26/climate/global-warming-accelerating.html

So hard to predict what will happen in the future! Despite the fact that this was indeed predicted — decades ago. And understood over 100 years ago.

Asteroid hurtling towards earth. Those in denial: “You have failed to consider the risks of PREVENTING the asteroid from hitting us!”