You missed “Climate change is real and caused by humans but it’s the responsibility of individuals to fix it.”
Thank you BP
Why should our profits go down to save the world?
Well, I mean, companies don’t buy their own products.
Blaming it on the individual is just a strategy to delay regulation. Yes, it is lots of individuals, who buy the climate-killing products. But regulating the company does nothing else than prevent those individuals from buying the climate-killing products.
In particular, this is also in the interest of all individuals to solve via regulation, because it creates a new baseline, where companies will scale production and push down prices. If it’s up to the individual to buy eco-friendly, then eco-friendly comes at a premium price. If it’s the default, it’s going to be commodity price.
Regulation without public backing is not possible. You need people to show that it’s possible to live without burning fossil fuels or eating meat. If the government would just ban them there would be riots.
You don’t have to ban them. The strategy I usually see recommended by researchers, is a tax for companies releasing CO2-equivalents into the atmosphere (“carbon tax”) + giving that tax money to consumers.
This increases the price of products proportional to how bad they are for the climate, but on average does not decrease how much money consumers have in their wallets.
It means that people consuming lots of climate-unfriendly products need to pay more or switch to more climate-friendly alternatives. This will lead to some resistance, but on the flipside, people consuming lots of climate-friendly products will be rewarded. This tax is also usually introduced gradually, so companies and consumers can adjust to it.
A company doing something bad every time they make a sale doesn’t make it the purchaser’s fault. The company is performing the bad action and is accountable for that action.
I think you mean should be accountable for that action. Clearly they are not held accountable in any meaningful sense.
Burning the fuel is the problem, and the consumer does it. The companies paid politicians to force us into it.
They do buy each other’s a whole lot though, and they’ve been relying on subsidized, cheap oil to send it overseas to each other, and to the end consumer as well
Except they do to produce other products. Customers can’t be expected to know every step of every supply chain, but the companies already do, they just don’t care.
Or just “Climate change is real, but it is to late to do anything about it”.
“It’s not the company’s fault that you didn’t recycle. Grow up!”
Soon in theaters “climate change is real, caused by humans, but it’s too late now and there’s nothing we can do about it anymore”
deleted by creator
Red on yella, you’re a dead fella
Better rule of thumb, if you see a snake, don’t pick it up. If you can’t tell what kind of snake it is definitely don’t pick it up.
my right or fuck’s right ?
Progress 🙄
“STOP FUCKING WITH MY DIVIDENDS, YA GODDAMNED COMMIES!”
You forgot the “yes it is real and it’s the consumers fault” phase
There is the doomerism timeline. “Well, it’s too late now, no reason to change anything now!”.
Doomerism is just an evolution of binary thinking.
That’s a strawman of doomerism. There’s as many different opinions as there are “doomers”, but most are probably in the realm of “do what we can to reduce the damage, but the science and math is saying we’re way past any great solutions.” I guess some would call that realism to separate it from the doomer label, but whatever it’s called, that’s where we are.
I can’t believe the straight up science denial in these comments lmfao.
Actual, real scientists that have been studying this for decades all agree. Within 50 years, the Earth will witness a mass die-off of all current life forms directly due to runaway climate change.
And you have lemmings calling this shit “doomer”, so they can feel good in their little liberal bubble about their metal water bottle and paper straws like that’s making any fucking difference.
“Drastic change in the current human way of life” is not just switching to recyclables. It’s fucking over and the liberals, in predictable fashion, are doing nothing to stop it besides feel-good band aids that don’t actually do anything.
Except that’s not true.
What most scientists had not foreseen with an eye so fixated on the artillery of denialism, was the sustained and one would presume well-intentioned misuse of science from the other end of the spectrum, by those who do accept the reality of climate change. When Extinction Rebellion began in England, it conveyed a sense of being witnesses to the cascade of plant and animal extinctions that are escalating around the world as many habitats become less habitable. There is no scientific quibble with that. However, the narrative soon escalated to human death on a massive and imminent scale. As the prominent co-founder Roger Hallam saw it, the burning question had become: ‘How do we avoid extinction?’
…
I get people coming up at my talks, or sending in an email, then being disappointed when I tell them that I only partly buy into the fears stimulated by prominent alarmists. Because I say I’m sticking to consensus science – even knowing that it can never be bang up to date and that its expression will be sure but probably cautious – I suspect they sometimes think that I’m the denier. A climate model researcher in Sweden dropped me a line, saying that he gets the same disappointed reactions, adding that ‘some teenagers are distraught on this, so the alarmism of such actors is taking a heavy and unjustifiable psychological toll on others.’ Those who work with young people warn of the consequences of growing ‘climate anxiety’(27).
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Michael Mann concurs. He sees ‘doomism and despair’ that exceeds the science as being ‘extremely destructive and extremely influential’. It has built up ‘a huge number of followers and it has been exploited and co-opted by the forces of denial and delay’. ‘Good scientists aren’t alarmists,’ he insists. ‘Our message may be – and in fact is – alarming . . . The distinction is so very, very critical and cannot be brushed under the rug.’(30)
Mann actively tried…sorry, still tries to shift blame for not doing anything on so many of these “alarmists” who are waving their arms pointing at the problems getting worse (yet agrees that the facts are alarming - which is it Michael?) I note that the author uses the term “alarmists”, almost lock in step with how “doomer” is used as a negative. Jesus, the house is on fire, AND we’re trapped in the house, and everyone is asking what’s for lunch. Yes, I’m alarmed and shouting! I guess at least the alarmist name doesn’t imply pacifism or apathy, it “only” paints the guy screaming things are worse and we’re still not doing much as crazy.
I turned doomer/alarmist when the IPCC showed their true colors and not only lagged way behind the breaking science evidence (which I realize has some reasons, but there are some like methane that should have had footnotes back then), but in the last major announcement decided that we’re probably going to shoot past the limit they had set as a “we don’t dare go past this” mark, but it’s okay because we’ll just use technology we have then in the future to draw things back down. They really think the average science-aware person is this stupid. But it made
their string-holderseconomists and politicians feel better, so it’s all “scientific”.We’re in the process (maybe/likely already done) of pushing the environment into a totally different pattern that would lead to a new and hotter planet for millennia. The ice age cycles are gone. Past such disruptions led to mass extinctions while other species adapted and changed, but those gave time to do that adaption. We’re doing it geologically as fast as a meteor impact, however what we’re doing is far more than such an effect.
But this is alarmist. I guess part of that label is not because such observations aren’t wrong, but they don’t give some solutions to keep doing what we’re doing and fix the problems. Worse…some say that even if we try and do things, it will still likely be that bad. I guess seen one way that is apathetic and doomer…but does that make it necessarily wrong? Just because you see the train heading towards the stalled car and say, that’s going to be bad, doesn’t make you a doomer and your point should be discarded. It’s just morbid and it’s more comfortable to not watch and hope no one was in the car. Or to be like the IPCC and figure that the car will magically start right before it’s hit, or maybe will start rolling off the track on its own accord.
I wear the labels thrown at me proudly, because I know that even though I can’t provide any answers to those it upsets, at least I’m not pretending it’s fine.
I’m sure even after what I said I’ll get a reply asking “then what should we do?” I can only say to think locally what you can change about your life to make yourself more self-sufficient and knowledgeable of how to get by if you can’t go get something from the store. Know your neighbors and who you can rely on in times of crisis. Reduce what effects you have, not because it will help the planet, but it will help you adapt to a worsening one. Some may say don’t have kids…I think it’s too late for that mindset, and the population will go down on its own once food becomes scarce anyway. There’s the philosophical problem of bringing someone into a setting where it’s bad and going to always be worse, if that’s fair to them, but I’ll let each wannabe parent work that out themselves.
Adapt and mitigate. It’s all we have left. We aren’t going to stop or even slow what’s already baked in, which is much more than that 1.5C limit that was proposed to make us feel better about continuing our society as-is.
That’s a whole lot of words without a single reference to a climate scientist who thinks doomerism is correct.
It was my opinion. You are quite welcome to toss it out and continue the hope. As for what I said about Mann and his take on alarmists, that’s easily found. It’s in the article even.
I wasn’t trying to convince anyone of anything, just ranting. I’m done already after decades of thinking maybe something could or would be done. How does one cite evidence of one’s experiences? Whatever, sorry to have wasted the enormous amounts of time I’m sure you spent skimming over the text for some links.
You started this thread with “I can’t believe the straight up science denial in these comments lmfao” and now it’s “just like my opinion, man”.
…
If entrenched capital hasn’t moved off of oil by now they’re just asking to get their lunch eaten by the green push. Can we move off the doomsday juice already? Nothing but laggards and bored investors hanging on at this point
Currently we’re in the “It’s real, but it’s not the end of the world” phase of their arguments.
Climate change deniers changed their tune. They re-branded themselves as “climate skeptic”, and from outright denialism they shifted to “climate change is happening, but it happened before and this one will not be as bad.”
A lot of O&G industry has pivoted to “Only we can fix climate change!” then started mopping up federal grants and subsidies to build quixotic hydrogen fuel cell, carbon capture, and “clean” carbon projects that consistently fail to pay dividends.
Their Republican enablers then point to these failures and announce “climate change is a hoax! We should go back to Drill Here, Drill Now!”
We go back into a debate, while O&G profits surge and temperatures continue to rise. Then everyone in the economy panics when a foreign power takes the lead on battery and nuclear technology.
For the vast majority of humanity - this is probably the coolest summer for the rest of our lives.
I have an idea that might work for solving climate change. It has no scientific basis but hear me out, I think it’s worth at least trying. We should try sacrificing some oil execs in a volcano. Maybe tie them to a barrel of oil so that the earth understands we are trying to return what we took and make up for it a bit, so please chill out. Probably won’t actually do anything but it wouldn’t hurt to at least try it for a few decades, right?
I like it. I mean, people won’t go into the lava, as it’s liquid stone, everyone thinks they’ll just dive in but no, it’d be like falling onto solid rock; but you’ve solved that with the oil barrel - well done.
This comment was reported for advocating violence. I’m chalking it up to venting. I share similar frustrations, but let’s make sure we aren’t pushing the envelope too far.
I’ve made similar comments, but I’m trying to take my mod duties (and reports associated with them) half seriously.
Kind regards
TS
Is a blood sacrifice violence?
Myeh. Kinda
Moderating online forums is hard and thankless. You giving thought to such things and not “just following rules” is laudable. Thank you :)
I’m new to moderating, but I’d like to do right by the users.
Yea no harm no foul if it doesn’t work out. But we should at least try.
I’d add an overlapping step sponsored by BP in 2004: “Climate Change is real, and here’s a calculator to show you, that we have nothing to do with it.”
For the uninitiated: The Carbon Footprint Calculator was introduced by BP in 2004 as what can only be described as a successful attempt to shift attention and blame to the general public.
Like…why would anyone believe a company whose interest is enmeshed with their claims?? A company isn’t a person with morals. It’s a Machiavellian machine with the sole purpose of maximizing profits. They will never ever intentionally make a claim that hurts their profits. It would make absolutely no sense for a company to reduce demand of its product. That would be soooooo counterintuitive. If you sold lemonade, would you publish a study that showed that lemonade harms people? If yes, then your company would stop selling lemonade and disband while every other lemonade seller would flood the market with the benefits of consuming lemonade.
no dispute there. The thing is, it wasn’t advertised like that. It was advertised as: Here’s this scientifically sound tool to measure your impact and judge what you can do. Which in and of itself wouldn’t be a bad thing if it wasn’t burying the lead.
I’ve talked personally to climatologists. My mother minored in meteorology. I’ve read the articles, I’ve watched the documentaries, I’ve seen Bill Nye. The “evidence” can point to many conclusions. Also, from personal experience, I’m not at all convinced we are causing global warming. And I’m not even convinced the earth, on average, is warming rather than cooling.
What is a fact is that people/politicians (those with power) have agendas, and they will steer beliefs about our climate/atmosphere with all their might to meet these agendas. There are many sheep that will buy into these beliefs and repeat them as if it were an original idea of their own. Don’t be sheep, don’t let them make you into a solder for their agenda. Be careful, be discernful. Stay beautiful.
Yeah, it’d be a real shame if we made the world a cleaner place for no reason!
Wasn’t my point at all… but ok.
Your opinion on climate science (or any science for that matter) can be disregarded out of hand. Your comment history reveals you are a far-right conservative troll who makes far-right conservative statements and then claims to be a centrist who “hates politics” because they are so divisive.
Every word uttered by a conservative is deception or manipulation. Every word.
- You’re obviously an idiot… that’s all actually, idiots aren’t worth the time.
Coming from the person who said
And I’m not even convinced the earth, on average, is warming rather than cooling
… did you have anything intelligent to add? Nevermind… I don’t even know why I asked…
I’ve talked personally to climatologists. My mother minored in meteorology. I’ve read the articles, I’ve watched the documentaries, I’ve seen Bill Nye.
Is this satire? It has to be satire.
The first paragraph was candid self evaluation and my personal speculation. The second paragraph was commentary on politicians and political agenda. I could have written the 2nd paragraph better. The sheep I meant to represent are those who adopt the narratives of these political agendas without realizing that that is what they have done. They have unknowingly joined a political agenda. And it’s absolutely both sides, left and right.
The topic of climate change has unfortunately become a tool for politicians, whether it be the right or left. This is bad. It is bad because it muddies the water, it muddies the the real scientific facts, what what those facts suggest. I honestly didn’t mean to only suggest that those who subscribe to global warming were sheep. Rather, it’s both sides pushing a narrative for an agenda. To buy into a narrative because “the experts said so” isn’t always a good idea. Personal exploration, research, and observation are very important. Even “scientific consensus” needs to be weighed and judged soberly. Very much, “Scientific consensus” can, and does change over time.
There was “scientific consensus” in that 80s that because of the polar ice caps melting, newyork would be underwater by now…
Hey. This comment was reported due to climate change denial-ism. I get the sentiment in wanting this comment removed, but there is good discussion attached to. I also abhor an echo chamber.
You’re very rightly crucified in the comments below, anyway, so me removing this isn’t going to do much. Climate change is very real, regardless of your experiences or self-directed ‘research’.
A person on the internet whose mother minored in meteorology doesn’t agree with scientific consensus! How do we move forward now?
Note, that in writing down this post, you haven’t brought forth any objective argument to justify your skepticism. Your argument that because people have agendas, you should be skeptical could be ok if the goal is to get objective information, not form a reactionary opinions.
A strong scientific consensus over this topic is not the result of some political agenda but of the scientific method. One of the central parts of it, is that any claim must be falsifiable through experiment. When anyone comes with a claim, others will try to reproduce or falsify it. Depending on the results the claim is either rejected or used in further research. With vasts of experiments explaining the effect or verifying the effect to better explain what was previously known, a consensus is formed. Politicians are only involved when it comes to appropriating public funding for research. That doesn’t corrupt the research itself, but hinders it if research can’t be done. When industry funds it though, then it does degrade the research very often (see tobacco industry in the 1920s-1980s, the food industry until today, or oil&gas industry which have known about the effects for at least the 1970s through their own research and have not published it).
For some more factual things you can read up on:
That CO2 gets warmer when subjected to light is known since the 1850s when Eunice Foote did experiments with water vapor and CO2 and made this observation and roughly quantified it.
John Tyndall did incorporate this effect into a first, very rudimentary, climate model of the atmosphere in 1862. The global temperature projections of that model for 1950 aren’t perfect, but still astonishingly precise.
Planck in 1900 formulated the Planck Postulate as part of his work concerning black body radiation. Quantization he thought of as a mathematical quirk. Einstein a few years later proposed that the energy of light or photons to be more precise is itself quantized. Einstein got his Nobel Prize in 1923 adopting this to not only explain the Plack Postulate (radiation) but also the photoelectric effect, i.e. that a molecule such as CO2 can absorb energy from the electromagnetic radiation interacting with it.
The scientific community was not convinced of the anthropogenic nature of the warming of the climate until in 1957 Roger Revelle and Hans Suess use the C14-method to show that the ratio of C-isotopes in the atmosphere is shifting towards those of fossil fuels. Since then more measurements have been done using this method to date things and reconstruct atmospheric composition (e.g. through ice-coring).
Since then technology such as satellites have improved the overall quality of measurements. And all of them show a clear tendency. With more computational power climate models have become more powerful and the projections are very good. The differences to measurements, when they happen are usually underestimating because the models are conservatively developed. You can refer to the IPCC reports which show you the data pretty clearly. If you want, then look at data from your local weather station, if it existed over 100 years ago, but even if only 50 years and you’ll probably see a difference even locally. Do that for all stations in the world and you can see a clear trend.
These are only a fraction of topics which anybody can read up on to form an informed decision, rather than opposing something just because it is consensus.
edit: A word.
Yeah, it’s called an opinion. I used to have the opinion that global warming was a serious concern. After learning more and more life experiences, my opinion has changed.
The only fact I claimed is that politicians have political agendas, and that is a fact. Some politicians promote that the earth is getting warmer, some say that it isn’t, but if it comes from a politician, it comes from an agenda.
I appreciate that you came with some scientific facts, surely. And you’re right I brought forth no objective argument, it was subjective. Maybe I should have started my comment with “IMO”. I assumed everyone would catch on to that since I was relating my own personal experience with the topic.
I aim to motivate understanding, not assign blame. So I apologize if the tone was a bit aggressive here or there.
Please understand though, that personal and local experience with something so complex and global is the analogue of using anecdotal evidence to then ignore all quantifiable and statistical evidence. E.g. Because it snows where I live, the planet can’t be warming. Because Aspirin give me nausea, it must be bad… And from that standpoint hurling the accusation of being sheep blindly following some agenda driven group (of which I’m not disputing the existence), well, it’s not very scientific to say the least. And cementing that with that you have done your due diligence with talking to climatologists, and reading articles etc. can lead one to not see this as “just an opinion” but that you add alot of weight to it.
Please help me understand, how you formed the opinion, that climate change isn’t “a serious concern”. What kind of evidence led you “to different conclusions”? And what suggests the earth be cooling?
Sidenotes: Science in its essence is a pursuit of objective truth. Politics is not. Neither is the economy. And even if the scientific community faces its challenges, let me illustrate this over the mask issue during the last pandemic. We were faced with a new virus on which we didn’t have data, hence why there were things believed true at first, which got corrected later, when more data was available. Add to that, that mutations changed properties of what we initially had to deal with. Opposed to that are politicians. In more than one country, the health ministers lied intentionally to the people, claiming at first that masks don’t work, because they didn’t want a run on that limited resource due to their failings in preparation. The data didn’t suggest it. When availability improved, we then had mask mandates. It was not because of science, but politics which have to weigh several interests at the same time and where the agenda comes into play.
Journalists in today’s sensationalist and outrage culture also misrepresent studies to generate clicks. This is why one can get the impression, that studies contradict themselves until one goes to the original text and sees that the claim being made in a news article (probably its title) is mentioned as one, that explicitly cannot be made without further research.
This is so well written. Thanks for posting this, really.
I am saving this for the next time someone tries to deny climate change just to try and seem smart or be a contrarian. You explained it so much better than I could have.
The “evidence” can point to many conclusions.
Not when reviewed objectively.
Also, from personal experience, I’m not at all convinced we are causing global warming. And I’m not even convinced the earth, on average, is warming rather than cooling.
Global average surface temperature has been rising since 1850. The ten warmest years in the historical record have all occurred in the past decade.
The earth is getting hotter. This is an objective fact. Facts don’t care about your feelings.
Yall are tiresome…
Better then being ignorant
Well, I do agree, but alas, it’s kinda both.
