Something weird is going on in Australia. They’re gonna fry in a few years. Must be that problem with populism I was talking about. — Punshhh

They will fry, yes. But their economy relies on fossil fuel extraction and export, especially to China — so they’ve delayed and continue to delay, although some steps have been recently taken.

devil is in the details. — Agree-to-Disagree

Lol. Yeah, please keep talking as if you understand the “details” — evidently in this case meaning “googling for an article, posting it, and pretending it proves something.”

You don’t know what you’re talking about. You haven’t known what you’re talking about since the time you started trolling this thread with your thinly veiled denialism.

So here’s an assignment: while you’re googling, google the problems and “details” about oil, coal, and natural gas extraction — the environmental damage, the health damage, the industry practices and lobbying, the destruction left in its wake, its transportation, the effects on workers, the effects on respiratory problems, its expense, how governments subsidize the industry, the externalities that aren’t paid for, etc.

It’ll be good for you. You might learn something. Then you can get back to your pro bono work as an industry apologist, following their playbook of amplifying the “risks” and “problems” associated with a green transition. “They don’t work well in cold climates!” (Wrong) “They aren’t cost effective!” (Wrong) …etc. Take a break.

Something weird is going on in Australia. They’re gonna fry in a few years. Must be that problem with populism I was talking about. — Punshhh

It is nice to meet somebody who knows more about Australia than Australians do.

Why is it that many Australians are willing to "fry" despite the calamitous bushfires?

It is nice to meet somebody who knows more about Australia than Australians do.

Why is it that many Australians are willing to "fry" despite the calamitous bushfires?

From your post;

The number of climate deniers in Australia is more than double the global average, new survey finds

This is interesting. From 1982, Exxon scientists:



Stunningly accurate.

And knowing this, Lee Raymond and other executives, caring about their grandkids and the future of humans on earth and being the good patriots they are, immediately started on carbon capture technology, aiding the research and development of alternative energy, encouraging the government to put in place stricter industry regulations and efficiency standards and an across-the-board carbon tax to fully reflect the cost vis-à-vis externalities.

Just kidding.

Instead they started a massive propaganda campaign and hired the same people tobacco companies used to downplay the harm of cigarettes.

Cost the country and the world decades of progress. But I’m sure it was awesome have those profits. Yachts are fun and God will handle the rest.

Yes, because so far you’ve proven yourself credible to make such a judgment. :roll: — Mikie

"Et tu?" Yes, more than any of you here who want to suspend society. You all have shown not to know basic statistics and physics as I have shown before several times (do I have to go quote all those times?), yet you want to talk about "the science™" as if such a phrase is not the utmost insult for centuries of development of natural philosophy. I, at the very least, still remember Bhaskara.

Why not go troll somewhere else. — Mikie

Sorry, I did not know this was a safe space for the religious. With this realisation I will now leave.

you here who want to suspend society — Lionino

:lol:

You all have shown not to know basic statistics and physics as I have shown before several times — Lionino

:rofl:

(do I have to go quote all those times?) — Lionino

Please! I could use another good laugh.

If you're doing satire, you're doing it well.

On the one hand:—

Reanalysis products indicate that the present-day AMOC is on route to tipping.

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk1189

And on the other hand:—

Our results indicate that, by neglecting calving-front retreat, current consensus estimates of ice-sheet mass balance4,9 have underestimated recent mass loss from Greenland by as much as 20%. The mass loss we report has had minimal direct impact on global sea level but is sufficient to affect ocean circulation and the distribution of heat energy around the globe

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06863-2

A case of 'Many hands make light stop working.'

Quite, time to stock up on thermal clothing.

And a boat.

The bad news is that if some bits of the world are going to get colder but overall its going to get warmer, the bits that get warmer are going to get a good deal warmer than the "average". And whether it gets hotter or colder, trees cannot stock up on thermal clothing or bottled water, and forests can only move a matter of meters per year under their own steam.

Exxon CEO blames public for failure to fix climate change

:lol:

Exxon CEO blames public for failure to fix climate change

:lol: — Mikie

Mikie, are you laughing out loud to cover your embarrassment over the fact that the Exxon CEO makes good sense?

From your link:

This spring, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will release its finalized rule on companies’ climate disclosures.

That much-anticipated rule will weigh in on the key question of whose responsibility it is to account for emissions — the customer who burns them (Scope II), or the fossil fuel company that produces them (Scope III).

Exxon has long argued for Scope II, based on the idea that it provides a product and is not responsible for how customers use it.

Last week, Reuters reported that the SEC would likely drop Scope III, a positive development for the companies.

Woods argued last year that SEC Scope III rules would cause Exxon to produce less fossil fuels — which he said would perversely raise global emissions, as its products were replaced by dirtier production elsewhere. — Saul Elbein (The Hill)

The headline not withstanding; he's right. Most people want something to be done as long as other people pay for it. If people would start paying the true price of most of what they consume, there would be revolt. Take his example of aviation fuel. They could produce it and then every airline will turn around and buy regular aviation fuel from Shell, BP, etc. So it's self-defeating. Then if you could get all the fuel companies aligned then everybody is going to complain because their trip to Spain all of a sudden costs 5 times as much. NIMBY all the way unfortunately.

It’s just hilarious coming from an oil shill who lobbies and propagandizes for delaying any and all efforts to address the issue. We know they’ve known it’s a problem for decades, and we know they continue to block legislation while claiming they want a carbon tax.

Yeah, sorry if his words mean exactly nothing to me.

Yeah Exon Mobil was there right at the beginning of climate change denial. They played a big part in spreading the denial and disinformation.

From the highway into Vanderbijlpark, you can see the heavy veil of smoke that cloaks Africa’s biggest steel mill. To the southeast, near the town of Vereeniging, the Lethabo coal power plant, whose name means “happiness,” joylessly belches out ash and toxic sulfur dioxide. Further south, outside a petrochemicals plant in Sasolburg, an adjacent neighborhood regularly reeks of rotten eggs from hydrogen sulfide in the air.

The plants offer steady work for residents at a time when one in three South Africans are unemployed, yet they’re also pumping out harmful emissions at levels so high that Vereeniging is by some measures the most polluted city in the world. The toxins are causing hundreds of premature deaths every year across the Vaal Triangle, and respiratory disease for many of those still breathing. The situation is a stark reminder of the toll the world’s dependency on steel, oil and coal is having on human health – and the difficulty a green transition faces if it costs the livelihood of the workers who depend on old economy jobs.

https://apple.news/AuadVxyMFSHG6_svjlnIj4g

This is great. Just released yesterday.



“There’s been an uptick in arguments claiming that any or all solutions are expensive, harmless, and ultimately pointless. Like Madame Web.”

Yes, in the U.K., the government is pushing the line, that adapting to climate change, net zero policies are expensive. That the poor will end up paying more and due to the severe economic circumstances, they are going to have to move more slowly to help out the poor. We are helping the poor by not addressing climate change.

Yes, that's a good video on what's going on right now. Maybe if the people who can still use their brains could stop focusing on spending their time on so much trash culture and lazy attitudes towards politics and philosophical thought; they might be able to help change the course instead. But people aren't interested, even if they're on the right side of history.

The problem isn't really the climate deniers or the climate doomers, they're mostly just irrelevant since they're not nearly enough of a democratic force to stand in the way of necessary change. Or, that's how it should be at least. The problem is that democracies are tilted to such an extreme balance between decent and absolute trash that they've become relevant without really being a large democratic force; all because the rest of society consist of lazy people who "can't find the time to involve themselves in these issues".

It's this lazy attitude, this "I don't have time to think about..." that is the real problem. There's not enough demand on politicians and parties, so politicians fall back into playing into populism in order to keep their power.

People who acknowledge the problem and agree with the need for solutions, still just don't give a shit about voting for those who actually push for necessary change and they don't seem to care to speak up when necessary.

This is why shifting the social sphere into climate denying and doomerism should be considered immoral. Something equivalent of being a racist, spitting on the poor, abusive behavior etc. Society needs to change towards treating people who talk and act within such attitudes to be unwelcomed, totally ok to be fired from jobs, kicked out of restaurants, unwanted in social situations etc. And if someone would talk like that in media it should be equivalent of uttering the n-word in public; not as an opinion that's treated equal to everything else.

If so, if pushed in that direction of social culture in society, it would gather a greater momentum towards action. It would lead to politicians being careful not to cater to such voices and the social consequences would be too severe for people to go around shouting such opinions and statements.

Since the consequences of not doing anything to mitigate climate chance are so far away in time, we need to have consequences here and now that people want to avoid. Producing a culture of more severe negative social consequences as direct results of promoting or uttering climate denial and doomerism would help change the lazy attitude into being more active and proactive. It would force people to be more verbal in order to keep their social moral status and in doing so keep the focus on working towards solutions higher on the list for politicians as it's part of the cultural atmosphere they want to cater to in order to gain votes.

Right now, people who, in social situations, talk a lot about climate change and the required need for solutions are often viewed as "bad at parties", while people who are deniers or doomers just get eyeroll reactions. That makes the issues and the topic dead in politics and something left for Reddit brawls, rather than part of core societal topics. Forcing a harsher moral environment around the topic could push people to "show their moral stance" more openly since they surely don't want to be viewed as possible deniers or doomers.

If people can't take actions on their own, then make it customary immoral not to. The sad truth is that status and social structures are more important for common people than saving the planet. And so shaping a social construct of morality around the subject into being more extreme could help steer the ship in a better direction faster.

It may not be advisable to talk on LinkedIn about the time I was fired by #ExxonMobil. But here goes.

I am a #climate scientist. I can identify with both climate researchers featured in this worth-your-time article.

I started out as Ms Rebecca Grekin, a climate scientist who earnestly, naively believed that the ExxonMobil of today is a trustworthy actor in the energy transition. I spent more than a decade working for ExxonMobil, occasionally (but not often enough) advocating for combatting #climatechange .

In 2020, I was fired—yes, fired—by ExxonMobil because I reported what amounted to a $10 billion fraud. To put it mildly, that experience fundamentally altered my opinion of whether present-day ExxonMobil can be considered an honest broker in anything, but most especially in the realm of the energy transition, which is a far-greater-than-$10-billion threat to the Exxon's bottom line. I have become the article's more cynical and wiser Mr Kashtan.

Despite what smooth-talking spokespeople will tell you, ExxonMobil continues to fund and be an active member of organizations that are—today—working to decrease political support for government action to curb climate change and decrease the public’s access to and trust in readily available replacements for #oilandgas. They fund PhDs and national labs to burnish their reputation and influence what questions researchers address. #industry lobbyists have convinced large swaths of the public (and most of their own well-meaning employees) that technologies like carbon capture and storage are legitimate recipients of billions of taxpayer dollars earmarked for combatting climate change. Those taxpayer dollars are urgently needed for existing, proven, ready-right-now solutions but instead are funding a massive campaign to enhance oil recovery. Carbon capture and storage is, at its core, a technology for producing more oil. It requires more carbon to be expended to inject #co2 at pressure than it keeps out of the atmosphere. It is not and will not be a viable solution to climate change.

ExxonMobil executives can continue this deception in large part because so many useful idiots, myself included, willingly lend their personal reputations to the propping up of a lie. They can continue this deception because they make an example of people like me (I’m not the only one) to ensure that their employees are afraid to truly challenge the ethics of the company line.

I wish I could tell my younger self that the cynical Mr Yannai Kashtan is right. That idealism and/or a paycheck can lull you into trusting those who say one thing and do another. That we must stop allowing ourselves to be used by a few people who care more about their reserve shares than about doing the right thing. And, most important, that we must, without delay, find the unflinching political will to turn off the #fossilfuels tap as fast as we possibly can. — Lindsey Gulden, geophysicist

Of course ...

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/05/us-banks-leave-esg-finance-climate-crisis

I think one error that media and climate scientists make when trying to communicate the problems is to use terms like "point of no return". I think this has been negatively helping the legitimizing of the shifting goal posts for climate science denier's "doomer stance" of "yes, the climate is shifting and yes we might be responsible but there's no point in doing anything since we're already doomed".

If we can leave out terms like "point of no return", we won't play into their newest but equally stupid position against mitigation projects.

If we can leave out terms like "point of no return", we won't play into their newest but equally stupid position against mitigation projects. — Christoffer

There’s plenty we can do to mitigate even worse effects. Some warming is locked in— and we’ll likely blow past 1.5 — but it’s not too late for 2C. Anything that can be done should be done.

When scientists warn about catastrophe, they’re mostly talking about tipping points. There’s potential that if these are triggered, we’re toast. There’s a lot of denial about that, even on these very pages, similar to those arguments about how nuclear war isn’t an “existential” threat because, after all, some human beings would survive.

But ignoring moronic stuff like that, it’s important to acknowledge the level of threat we face. But doomism and defeatism isn’t the answer.

Yes, that's my point, the threat is real, the science is real, but the language used in media play into an ideal of everything being too late, when it's not. Or rather, the complexity gets lost and the doomer climate science deniers just point towards singular words as sources and reasons for their cause.

We already had to change using the term "climate change" to "climate crisis" as deniers leaned into arguments about the "change" having happened before in earth's history and there's no proof for human actions being the reason. So changing it to "climate crisis" have helped push back against those kinds of stupid arguments from them. And now when most of them have shifted into acknowledging human causes, but changed the narrative into that we're doomed so there's no point in changing, then we need to adjust the language to push back against that kind of doomer rhetoric.

Maybe push terms like "mitigation efforts" and "mitigation strategies" into the mainstream in order to push the concept that it's not too late and there's still time to do stuff. That way the debate instead goes into a debate against deniers and doomers with the frame of reference being a question of "why would you oppose mitigating the effects of this crisis?"

Change in language works best on people who can't understand information on their own and who instead rely on other authorities to form opinions (authority in terms of group think clusters and populistic influencers pushing their agendas rather than upholding facts).

Since we have the problem of these people having enough democratic power to push elections in the direction of leaders who would halt mitigation strategies, then the only democratic strategy to use is rhetoric to persuade them.

The other option is for UN to declare a form of global marshal law on the topic of climate change and that no democratic nation can oppose or work against global mitigation strategies. But I doubt UN can have enough power to shift anything through that.

Alex Honnold ("Greatest athletic feat of all time") and scientists pull their sleds over the Greenland ice cap in a recent Nat'l Geo offering. I wasn't paying a lot of attention as they slogged over the ice, but at some point a scientist remarks that the sheet (glacier) is in good shape, not melting away as suspected. I probably have it wrong. Any others watch this?

Among the things that peeped up from the dirt in my woodland garden this spring is a... tropical houseplant. Dude.

it’s important to acknowledge the level of threat we face. But doomism and defeatism isn’t the answer. — Mikie

Oh if only I could find the right way to talk. 'Crisis' good, 'catastrophe' bad; 'tipping point' good, 'point of no return' bad; 'Houston we have a problem', good, 'The rocket has exploded' bad.

The main thing is to get the talk nuanced just so, and then everyone will act and no one will despair. Or possibly not.

A weird response, given the 5 years worth of my posts. But have your strawman if you wish.

Oh if only I could find the right way to talk. 'Crisis' good, 'catastrophe' bad; 'tipping point' good, 'point of no return' bad; 'Houston we have a problem', good, 'The rocket has exploded' bad.

The main thing is to get the talk nuanced just so, and then everyone will act and no one will despair. Or possibly not. — unenlightened

Language matter, especially in media headlines for the part of the masses who are stupid enough to only read the headlines; but who carry enough democratic power to vote people into power who actively act against mitigation strategies.

Modern capitalism has pushed media in many nations to compete in the attention economy of who can write in the most bold, underlined ALL CAPS text ending with the most exclamation marks; for the purpose of reaching the absolute most extreme eye catching DOOM rhetoric possible.

Ignoring how such media behavior affect the population who aren't intellectual enough to do anything but follow the most shallow interpretation of reality is to ignore how group think and cult mentality shape and form the upper most deciding factors of democratic elections.

Today, almost every election balances right at the mid point between two sides and elections become essentially decided by a very small group of people who are pushed and pulled by people in power using any kind of algorithmic weapon they can muster.

In the end, the intellectual and educated masses stand firm on each side in an election and has to hope that their side had the highest marketing budget to sway that sheep herd in the middle towards their direction.

If anyone calls that kind of "democracy" our peak of society and spearhead of civilisation, they're delusional. Democracy today is just a sports game of sheep herding into winning and gaining power for the next four years. It's not about what's good for society or about solutions to problems.

So, language matter; language can sway that middle herd towards or away from mitigation strategies. But since commercial media isn't playing a game of morality or truth, but rather profit, the truth gets pushed to the small fine writing underneath the profit-gaining headlines, and the headlines always focus on doom, it's what sells the most ads and grabs the most attention, and attention is today's most valuable currency, more precious than saving the world.

Narcissus gazing into his reflection in the water; so mesmerized that he can't hear the deadly tsunami up the river.

Among the things that peeped up from the dirt in my woodland garden this spring is a... tropical houseplant. Dude. — frank

Dude, you are so lucky. Soon you will be living in a tropical paradise. :up:

Up-front costs are a major reason why people are not electrifying their houses and buying EV's.

Is there a realistic solution to this problem?