Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All
forbes.com
forbes.com
This is an article encouraging you to calm down and sit down. It's a careful cherry-pick of data, something that the IPCC report is not, and something that is extremely common in contemporary opinion pieces.
We should not be rosy about climate change or other pollution related issues. There exists massive quantities of evidence that can be covered at hacker news, and seeing this disinformation here when we have access to actual scientific information about climate change shocks me.
He does far more damage than good, and you basically can't trust a word he says or cites.
You need a base load capability for smoothing in an electrical grid. Most renewables are the exactly opposite. The exception is biogas or other gasification plants a these cannot handle the required load at all. Not even hydropower.
Look at what happens in Australia if you push too much solar energy (same with wind) on the network.
Solar and wind need to be paired peaker plants. Conventional nuclear doesn't provide peaking ability.
Battery powered peakers are quite expensive, but the need for them can be reduced drastically through over-provisioning and interconnection.
Nuclear reduces the need for peakers exactly because it can overprovision reliably.
You could also make nuclear peakers if you wanted reasonably easily too. Nuclear plants have tunable output to a point, they're just slow and hard to fully stop, so you would make a design optimized for very tunable output and high peak power. (0)
Solar and wind cannot suddenly overprovision. The sources either exist or not, you can at most ground them instead of collecting power.
0) IAEA - Non-baseload operation of nuclear power plants: https://www.iaea.org/publications/11104/non-baseload-operati...
Not surprising it brought consequences, they seem intent on approaching it really chaotically. :)
Everyone is already behind the schedule with making the energy grid zero emission.
All over the last 15 or 20 years.
Sure, I'd like everyone to go that fast, or faster, but trying for the speed of Australia's solar rollout seems to be asking for trouble. Don't know enough to say if there was anything unavoidable, or unique to Australia in their problems...
But if you want to fight climate change, surely any cost is worth it? Otherwise you're not serious about it. Subsidize it, do whatever it takes to save the planet. Renewables are a false solution, they're quicker to build but cannot produce energy reliably, need to be replaced often, take too much space etc. If they could replace coal, surely Germany would've done so already.
Renewables are part of the solutions but what makes up the rest will depend on where you live. The solution for Sweden won't be the same as the solution for Hawaii. It's hard to talk generally on the internet about this because it only makes sense to discuss power generation in a particular place.
Nuclear should stand on the reality of the proposition, and indeed should have a place in any low carbon solution if done properly.
He mostly cites the IPCC and climate scientists. Or are you saying those sources aren't trustworthy?
I read the article. Every word of it is true. It can be summed up as:
Lots of people, especially teenagers, are starting to suffer mental health problems because they think the world is about to end. The world isn't about to end, this is a lie. The people claiming it is are mostly making it up, or misquoting other people, or in one case a journalist misheard "eight billion" as "a billion" and other comedies of errors. It's important that people understand what climate science really says before a teenager does something they can't come back from.
Can you source this?
> It's important that people understand what climate science really says before a teenager does something they can't come back from.
Are you saying that climate change is so widely accepted and feared that it's causing the rate of suicides to increase? Wouldn't a better indicator of the acknowledgement of (supposedly-overblown) effects of climate change be, you know, individuals and governments taking action to curtail those effects instead of walking out of global accords [1], or actively contributing to the acceleration of those effects [2]?
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40127326 [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/18/world/americas/brazil-ama...
The first paragraphs of the article give both direct quotes from people saying they had that experience, and then cites a report from British psychologists saying they'd observed this effect at scale. Did you read the article?
Are you saying that climate change is so widely accepted and feared that it's causing the rate of suicides to increase.
It risks doing exactly that:
"Studies from around the world document growing anxiety and depression, particularly among children, about climate change."
People aren't scared of climate change as actually observed, they're scared of what they're being fed by people like Greta Thunberg, who is lying about the expected scale of the impact. The fact that journalists, politicians and even a few scientists are saying this despite it being false is what the article is about.
And why do you include "pro-geoengineering" in that list of "bad things BTI believes"? If we aren't going to significantly reduce emissions (and after 40 years of political inaction that should be obvious to everyone), geoengineering may be our best response to climate change.
We should not default to geoengineering. We should default to reduction of carbon pollution, obviously, then when it isn't enough, start geoengineering, which will probably also be necessary.
The start with geoengineering faction is just a few steps away from the "it isn't happening" crowd.
And the article contains something similar:
“One of my friends was convinced there would be a collapse of society in 2030 and ‘near term human extinction’ in 2050,” said Jeffrey. “She concluded that we’ve got ten years left to live.”
Which is significant of nothing at all - mere hyperbole. The only claims based on 12 years I have heard are based on reality of the IPCC reports and their assorted scenarios to track particular temperature changes by 2100. On that there have been claims we have 12 years to get on track - very different to the world ending in 2031. On a Tuesday at 14;00.
In order to meet an arbitrary mark chosen primarily because people like round numbers. Nonetheless, the IPCC report was reasonable, and didn't conclude with "we're all going to die".
But then celebrities and social media oversimplified that and people who get most of their information from celebrities or social media came to believe that they're going to die, soon.
That's alarmism.
And the author called out alarmism, not the IPCC, so pointing out that the IPCC aren't alarmists isn't relevant.
So XR + The Guardian. So it is very much in the article.
If the author means literally everyone dead, planet gone, then obviously it won't be "apocalyptic", but the science is suggesting it's likely to be really bad. It seems pretty unreasonable to say "not apocalyptic? oh then that's not so bad, what's all the fuss about" when the situation is this dire. We could avert a lot of it if we actually did anything about it.
No, the science doesn't imply that climate change is going to mean literally everyone dead, only a massive cost to maintain things as they are today. Contrawise, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said "the world will end" by 2030 if we don't stop climate change. (Source: https://thinkprogress.org/we-dont-have-12-years-to-save-the-...)
So, yes there are people being absolutely, ridiculously, unscientifically hysterical about the effects of climate change. Unscientific alarmism is just as harmful toward efforts to properly manage the global ecology as the unscientific denial of changes.
We've already witnessed extreme political radicalisation within Western countries as a result of displacement of people from Syria: numbers in the order of a few million. It seems likely that displacement from climate change would be a significant percentage of world population (8+ billion soon). The reaction to that will be apocalyptic.
It tries to counter claims of "4 billion casualties".
This kind of statements is exactly what this article is about.
He asked an IPCC scientist about what was unmanageable about a 3 ft+ sea level rise, and after said scientist explained the numerous serious scenarios his glib conclusion was:
"In other words, the problems from sea level rise that Oppenheimer is calling “unmanageable” are situations like the ones that already occur, such as in the days following Hurricane Katrina, where societies become temporarily difficult to manage. (Katrina killed over 1,800)."
This is a really bad hot take. Number one, Hurricane Katrina was a one-time weather event. Sea level rise means you're always going to be dealing with trying to hold back the sea. In parts of the world that are already struggling with poverty, how are they gonna come up with the billions of dollars to engineer, build, and maintain sea walls and dykes?
And that's not even getting into the fact that if you're starting out with much higher sea level, storm surge is gonna cause that much more damage. On top of that, significantly warmer seas are going to cause much stronger storms.
People displaced by said consequences of climate change are going destabilize governments and/or cause conflicts. There are many hot spots in the world where long standing tensions could burst into open conflict if a climate-related disaster or crisis hits.
I do appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. But it seems to me we are not competent to solve such things when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's Creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.
And we can be OK. Related thoughts at http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html , a simple site w/ no javascript or sales).
The book is quite information dense, intellectually honest with regard to the likelihood of various outcomes, and offers the clearest and broadest assessment I've yet read of where we are and what lies for us in the future.
Describing the contemporary climate discourse as "alarmist" denies the severity and scale of the problem we face.
> "I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists, and I want you to unite behind the science, and then I want you to take real action."[1]
She's even been asked to make specific recommendations, and she says to follow the science.
1. https://www.axios.com/greta-thunberg-testimony-climate-chang...
https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/853/exposi...
https://theecologist.org/2018/sep/20/nuclear-power-lobbyist-...
https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/michael-shellenbergers-slo...
The article in question gives many citations, interviews with original sources and is in general an excellent piece of journalism. It's also arguing against a ridiculous, extreme position whose prime proponents have frequently admitted they're lying. Trying to suppress this article because it's written by someone in favour of nuclear power is exactly what makes people suspicious of all environmentalist narratives because how do they know they're getting the full picture?
One reason is if the argument is made in bad faith by a paid shill, as is the case here.
There are lots of discussions happening now about nuclear vs. renewables vs. fossil fuels. There's no need to waste anyone's time broadcasting a piece like this that presumed its conclusion when a check was signed.
Even on this site, you'll see many people say that they don't want to have kids because of climate change. I don't recall people in the 80s saying they wouldn't reproduce due to the future threat of nuclear war.
I'm not sure what the exact cause is but I suspect it has something to do with the how the different generations process authority and media messaging. Earlier generations being much more skeptical of what they are told.
The big difference is that the current generation gets it's information from Instagram/..., from peers, not authority, thus at the same time they can be skeptical of authority while totally believing whatever circulates on Instagram (for example the recent fake fact how "Amazon, the lungs of the planet, are burning", the fake fact being that Amazon generates 20% of the world oxygen)
Which is an issue, because it's best if as much of the Amazon is preserved as possible, but not the apocalyptic one of the entire rainforest going up in smoke.
Only for an odd definition of “your”.
The fact that we're in a global mass extinction event is somewhat troubling as well, even given that not all of the extinctions are caused by climate change.
It's not the one-meter sea level rise (optimistic case). It's the one meter plus more hurricanes with more storm surge. Yes, we can managed retreat. But people really don't want to do that, and then one day you have your sewer system under water.
That could have happened with a big enough hurricane anyway, but climate change just makes a lot of problems bigger. It's almost never a prime mover, it's a statistical problem, which in the short term makes the numbers a little worse for all of us. But enough of those numbers are changing that we should be alarmed. Life expectancy decreasing a year or two, as it is in the US right now, should be alarming, even if it is statistics, and climate is not really that different.
And if you're using "15 if statements", it doesn't usually mean you're wrong, it just means you need to refactor your code.
How do you explain the hundreds of thousands of scientists worldwide who have studied the environment professionally for, collectively, millions of person-years?
What is their self-serving motive? Surely a biologist would still have funding and things to study either way. The same is true for physicians, geologists, physicists, and many of the other specialties who have confirmed the finding that there is a climate crisis.
The same is not true of 100% of the climate-crisis denial, where you can see multi-trillion-dollar businesses actively astroturfing their side of the conversation.
The core problem is that humans (and most other living things on earth) evolved to live in a certain climate. For each organism, the tolerance for change differs. If we lose an intolerant, important organism (let's say plankton, for example) and it goes extinct, then there's a chain reaction that ends up making the planet uninhabitable for us.
> Are the apocalyptic warnings anywhere close to reality?
It depends on the warning. Will human life on earth end in 10 or 50 years? Probably not. But will we have a mass migration crisis that will threaten every wealthy country? Yes, and it will happen in less than 50 years as natural disasters and poor crop output drive people from their birth countries.
Climate models from Exxon and public-sector scientists have been pretty accurate at describing the current state of our climate, so predictions from sober, professional scientists are worth paying attention to.
The rest of your arguments fall into a few categories:
A) Attacking a straw man. No one seriously things that going meatless would instantly solve the problem. There is no single solution. It requires many large changes to small aspects of our lifestyles. Eating less meat (not zero meat) for people who can afford it is helpful.
There is a helpful list and rank of different approaches[1].
B) "Green energy (excluding nuclear) is too expensive and can't compete with fossil fuels in an open market." This is not true[2].
C) "Nuclear must be part of the answer." I think this might be true or might not. It's another huge prediction, isn't it? Why are you skeptical of some predictions about 2050, but not others?
D) "Celebrities are hypocrites." Yes, they are. But it has nothing to do with the argument environmentalists are making. I find them irritating too, but it doesn't make environmental concerns any less reasonable. Celebrities are a tiny fraction of environmentalists.
E) "Taxes are bad." Taxes in the US have rapidly gone down in the last few decades, but increasing them is a separate argument from the environment. Taxing carbon producers is a serious proposal, but that's not taxing Gates or Bezos -- it's forcing companies to pay for the damage they do to the air and environment the rest of us need to survive.
1. https://www.drawdown.org/solutions-summary-by-rank
2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/dominicdudley/2019/05/29/renewa...
How are movements like the Extinction Rebellion, Great Thunberg, being funded ? How is she getting all the money to do her travel ? How did she go from doing strikes by herself at the school to the UN in less than a year ? I have heard of fairytales, but please don't tell me that she got there because of organic, viral support from people. There is BIG MONEY behind this. And how did she get so many celebrities to endorse her and have so many meeting arragned ?
I just don't see the people behind these protests and that makes me super skeptical of how "organic" these movements are.
Before someone accuses me of conspiracy theories. James Cameron produced a movie on How Vegan athletes are rewriting nutrition science (haven't watched it). Applying my "follow the money" universal rule, I came across an article that points out tothe fact that James Cameron has invested a lot of money in Vegan food corps
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-03/-avatar-d...
This is the kind of propaganda hiding real intentions that irks me to no end.