A Message for Children About Climate Change

As much as I admire Scott Adams as an insightful and intelligent cartoonist, I don't agree with his post here. The children who started the Extinction Rebellion were not, for the most part, 'scared into' their action by adults. They started this movement specifically because they learned that adults weren't doing anything. Adams' laissez-faire attitude in this post is exactly the reason why we're in this catastrophic spiral already - nobody is taking any action, there are comforting news reports of new technologies or tree-planting drives, but the overarching truth is that the climate is changing, and rapidly. There is reason to be scared enough to actually do something.

Edit: I would argue this is the single most wrong thing I have ever read:

>Throughout all modern history, when we humans see a problem coming from far away, we have a 100% success rate in solving it.

No, no we really don't. We have a 100% success rate of slapping bandages on broken legs, of being forced into literal do-or-die scenarios before we act in a mildly positive manner. No amount of foresight has ever overcome human stubbornness or stupidity. Both level-7 nuclear disasters had causes known years in advance but were hushed up. We will turn blind eyes to hideous pollution and environmental disaster, to miles and miles of documented scientific evidence, in the name of short-term profit. That is our success rate. And the buck stops with the millenial generation.

He talks about 'informed adults' currently making rational decisions but he himself is not a climate scientist, of which there are a large number, screaming from the rooftops that we need action. CO2 levels are too high. We must do everything we can right now before the spiral is too strong to break out of. Laissez-faire is the worst thing we can do. He's right about nuclear technology and its safety (just about; Fukushima may have happened in 2011 but the plant was 40 years old at the time). It's not profitable to roll back all the stuff generations have invested billions and billions of dollars into - oil, coal, cars, global shipping - so the adults in charge are hesitant and frequently outright hostile to the idea. That's why Greta Thunberg had to make a stand, and that's why others stand with her.

Mr. Adams, if you read this, I wonder if you have become like your characters who are too numbed by the absurdity of their situation to believe they need to do anything about it. And just like your setting, this isn't going to get any better if we all stand around thinking it will.

Rats and humans might be the only un-farmed species left on Earth, but that's OK because the economy will be 5X - 10% the size in a hundred years.

Like you, I think Nuclear power is a viable technology for reducing carbon in the atmosphere. I've been studying developments for the last 15 years, reading deeply in the physics textbooks and listening to technical talks. Sure, the nuclear waste will fill a couple football fields with only a shipping container worth of plutonium, a few pounds of which will level any city. All you need to do is keep people away from it forever.

Also, like you, I know that media shouts bad headlines for attention. I've also been studying developments in climate analysis for the last 8 years.

You seem to think that the real problem is "media shouting". Unfortunately, you don't seem to understand the essential problem. Think of a really massive train. Everyone pushes hard for years to get it to move slowly. Rich people jump on the moving train and encourage others to continue pushing. First world middle class gets on the train and encourage others to push. The thought is that everyone can eventually get on the train because it appears everyone will eventually ride.

If, instead of the shouting press, you bothered to read the science literature, you will see that the train has reached a "downhill grade". It is easier to push, more people benefit, and it is speeding up. But it is becoming clear that the end result of continued acceleration is a crash.

The "speeding up" is caused by global heating causing more global heating (e.g. methane from permafrost). We've been pushing the massive train for a century. It will take at least that much effort to slow it down, more effort if we hope to stop the downhill acceleration.

We don't have a century to stop the train before it crashes.

Is that clear enough for you?