The only thing we should be talking about is the climate crisis
latimes.com
latimes.com
Says a reporter living in Los Angeles, the 49th most expensive city in the world to live in. For a lot of people, what they need to talk about is how they're getting their next meal, how they're going to make rent, or survive a current war.
Maybe go to a war zone or a poor area and try to make the same point with a straight face.
The LA times author was making the point that, to him and his readers, nothing matters as much as climate change. While what is happening in Ukraine is absolutely terrible, in his mind it does not reach the level of concern that climate does.
Parents response was “oh you’re so privileged”, and my point is that just about everyone on this site is. Frankly, their comment came across less like empathy and more like standard deflection.
Finally, climate change is only “our problem” in the sense that it’s primarily driven by the global rich and privileged. The people who will bear the worst of it are the poor in the global south who did little to contribute to the problem.
Privileged people arguing with each other about who has standing to put it forward as an issue certainly is though.
I may not be suffering either, but I'm not telling anyone that I know better then them what "the real problem is". I thought this would've been understandable, but maybe the clarification helps.
Saying “oh you don’t suffer therefore you don’t have any right to tell people what to do!” is classic derailing and it is what the opposition has done with climate change for decades. I don’t doubt that you had good intent with your comment, though.
When you're in a war zone, even if you're in the country but far from the action, the only thing you can think about is your immediate survival and the survival of your friends and family.
Literally nothing else matters.
TIL. That was a terrifying read..
I wonder if western propaganda and hype generation for technology, quarterly gains, the latest stuff! could be leveraged intentionally to distract any human then given our shared biology.
That’s a rhetorical point since I know our biology is intentionally used against us like that by industry because marketing and PR execs have explained how it is just so they seek to keep our inner monologues flush with their phrases.
There’s plenty of new perspectives and applications of your agency available. Why not put yourself to them rather than demand others change theirs?
No? Going to sit at screen and PR others into action? Typical rich westerner; externalizing the change they want to see in the world.
What I don't understand is your lack of doubt that they would (or should) care. The conviction is something analogous to religion.
The solution is to emit less CO2. Carbon capture/reclamation will never be enough to actually change things particularly with the current levels of emissions.
So how do we address that? Best way, IMO, is to go after the largest CO2 emitters. That's transportation, electricity, and industrial emissions (mostly concrete and steel AFAIK). Hitting any of those industries with a tax to incentivize reduction will impact standards of living. It will raise the price of goods which ultimately hit the poor and middle class.
You could also subsidize switch over, but that's ultimately a lot harder (and probably less effective) than more general carbon taxes.
And, of course, this has to be done globally, so if we really wanted this to be effective then it'd mean not just fixing your own country but also ideally subsidizing or sanctioning/embargoing bad players.
Furthermore, emissions of methane from LNG production and transportation contribute to global warming - by some estimates at a rate comparable to the CO2 emissions.
The only way we will get real traction against this problem is if we stop framing it around shame and austerity and instead frame it as a problem solvable via technological innovation that also frees us from the constraints of fossil fuel dependence.
That framing is also more correct IMHO, as there are numerous reasons to get off fossil fuels other than climate. The most significant of these is political independence and the fact that fossil fuels are a strictly limited declining resource whose depletion threatens our civilization on the supply side.
This is a technical problem not a moral problem. There is no god that is going to punish us for emitting carbon. It's just physics: more carbon, more retained solar heat, weather changes that will disrupt the food supply and threaten a bunch of major population centers.
It's also a problem about human self-interest not saving some mythical shibboleth of "unspoiled nature." Nature just is and we are only spoiling it for ourselves. As George Carlin put it: "Stop saying save the Earth! The Earth will be fine. We're fucked."
Edit: on a final note: yes it is true that we could probably absorb and adapt to even severe climate change. But the cost of non-carbon-based energy is falling rapidly as technology advances and renewable energy is scaled up, while the deferred cost of climate change is rising. These lines almost certainly intersected some time ago. Getting off fossil carbon is cheaper than continuing to make climate change worse. This effect is compounded by the fact that fossil fuels are being depleted and therefore that the more we invest in them the more fossil fuel infrastructure investment will eventually be stranded as worthless. That depletion will probably bite at about the same time as climate change, draining the economy right when that cost hits. When you consider the depletion and stranded investment angles getting off fossil fuels is probably many orders of magnitude cheaper than the alternative path.
We already have several options available to massively curtail our emissions (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal). While yes new technology would make this transition even faster, a major, MAJOR roadblock is lobbying by fossil fuel industries and related corporate interests.
In terms of the technological discussion though, I am excited by the recent work done in molten salt cathode batteries for scale use (https://interestingengineering.com/molten-salt-12-week-batte...).
What I'm saying is that the shame-and-austerity framing plays right into the hands of fossil fuel industry propaganda.
One of the most insidious bits of fossil fuel propaganda I've seen recently is this whole "moral case for fossil fuels" schtick. They're pointing out that fossil fuels have lifted billions out of poverty, which is technically true, and then using that combined with the "moral panic" framing of the green movement to argue that greens want to push those billions back into poverty.
Personally I think we have historically framed environmental issues as moral because we (meaning the USA) are a culture with puritan roots and the whole protestant moral panic framing is baked into our cultural DNA. It's how we often approach problems, especially collective or tragedy of the commons problems. We approach them by deploying shame to try to change behavior. It very often backfires like it is here, or like it does when we try to shame teenagers out of having sex.
First, I'll note that a lot of poor people IRL have just as much "social conscience" than other people, especially politically. Poor people vote based on the whole range of issues that everyone else votes on.
Second, the "i've got my own problems go away" response is applicable to everything, including poverty.
The older these tropes get, the less thoughtfully they are used.
Your point isn't what you think it is.
However, if this is an existential problem that threatens all of mankind, why is her article locked behind a paywall?
I think there’s a whole generation out there that never read “the boy who cried wolf”.
I compost, watch what I buy and also own an EV. But as someone who went to engineering school I fully acknowledge that my actions basically don't even move the needle. There will always be people with less education or simply less means than me that quite frankly just have bigger issues. I think the big mistake alarmists make is blaming consumers and not huge companies like Exxon.
Even among my educated friends, it's clear that people acknowledge climate change but the ever increasing alarmism of "the world will end in 46 months" is flat out not helping. I barely got through 15 minutes of "Don't Look Up" which was clearly a bizarre politically charged hit-piece.
In the meantime I'll keep working with my local town's redwood conservancy and continue growing redwood saplings in my rural greenhouse :)
I don't want to be that guy, but driving an EV (unless you drive some sort of electric bicycle or scooter) is not that environmentally friendly as the manufacturers and marketing people want you to believe. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_impact_on_the_environmen...
Prolonging life and reducing negative health impacts are another bonus.
Yes, there is still an environmental cost of the production of EVs but these vehicles don’t emit CO2 or greenhouse gases and so their lifetime carbon footprint is much lower.
For example, a recent Reuters study found that a Tesla Model 3 would need to be driven for 13,500 miles (21,725 km) before it does less harm to the environment than a Toyota Corolla:
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lifeti...
“We are probably already dead”
Facing existential suicide is something us Cold War kids remember
It does make a difference to go through the grieving process, denial is a part of it, because it takes radical commitments to break the cycle.
We’re not even close to a radical commitment yet.
We can’t even turn off Russian oil globally, much less fossil fuels as a whole.
But climatetech is (finally) established as a legitimate space.
Now we need govtech to change how we make political decisions.
Because climate change is a symptom of how our political systems work - reactionary & summative instead of proactive & iterative.
There will never be a point where "Oh shit, everything has exploded!". Instead, it will be every year that deserts will get bigger, it will rain a little less, and a few more extreme weather events happen.
This will happen just a little bit more year by year.
There won't really be a point where you can say "This was the year climate change became really bad!" instead it will take looking at the current state and comparing it to the year 2000 or 1980 or whatever. And by that time, you've got a full generation that does not remember what those years were like.
That's the thing that scares me the most about climate change. It won't be something that will hurt all at once, instead it will just be a steady increase of bad events. And by the time it becomes unworkable, it's too late.
I'll add the ongoing extinction crisis that is picking up steam, itself a knock-on effect of us gobbling up all land resources and also climate change, and pollutants. I remember days in the park in the 1980s where the air would be filled with bees and insects of all kinds. The insects are so few and far between. Like, I don't even see moths swarming around streetlights anymore. It's eerie.
When I was born, my hometown would regularly see around 10ft of snow (I've seen the videos).
During my childhood, that reduced down to around 2->5 ft of snow.
Now, my home town is lucky to see 2->3 inches of snow.
This drought has caused major issues for a town that was built around farming. It's driven them to pull more water from the aquifer which itself has been in pretty rapid decline. Everyone just keeps drilling deeper and deeper pumps (30ft used to be enough, now 100+ft is what people are drilling).
These sorts of slow moving collapses are terrifying to watch. And, at the same time, infuriating to hear the deniers throughout my life claim it's a hoax/not real.
Never say never
The Clathrate gun hypothesis pretty much about this where inside one human generation the temperatures can rise beyond any expactations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_methane_emissions
Do something that costs you, and you have better credibility. Here's my litmus test: commit to never flying anywhere ever again.
Environmental concerns didn't factor into my choice at all - far more important to me is the thrill of silent, uninterrupted acceleration and not spending time at gas stations.
Like how Race is involved with climate change: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-03-18/race-enviro...
Also how climate change is itself racist: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-02-13/climate-...
Then also covering anti-climate change politician as black face of white supremacy? You'll have to read the article to understand how a black dude is a white supremacist. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-c...
Dont worry about the title; the article definitely brings up race: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-03-22/what-has...
Not sure why they are so focused on race. Race doesn't really have anything to do with climate change in the rest of the world. Perhaps that's what we are doing wrong?
The climate "crisis" is a slow boil. Ice caps melt a bit, water goes up a bit, a few houses fall in, no big deal. Drought happens, we have less food, we buy it from elsewhere, no big deal. Hurricanes increase, we fix the damage, no big deal. Everything bad about the climate crisis seems to be localized and episodic, on the scale of how we normally report the news. Put together it may well be much, much, worse, and far more expensive, but the way it happens makes a big difference to whether we do anything about it.
I fear that calling it a crisis trips the wrong false alarm override, there should be some other word. We keep getting told this COP is the last chance, and that we have 10 years at most. But we're still here, so we think the warning was overdone, and maybe we should just ignore it next time.
We should call it "the generational inheritance of our planet project" or something like that. I don't want to be the guy who screws up a crisis and the world ends, but I also don't want to leave a slightly shittier planet for my kids, and for them to do the same.
I get it, it's not an immediate crisis for most, so people are like "huh I remember hot summers back in MY day", confusing weather for climate and not seeing a need to act.
I'm pessimistic though. Any change now will be too little, too late; we've passed the point of no return, of climate collapse years ago. Things like: permafrost is melting, releasing sequestered CO2 and methane in the atmosphere at a rate greater than our own pollution. Polar caps and glaciers are not recovering, making the ocean absorb more heat (ice reflects sun rays back into space). Rising sea levels and the like make water push ice up and about, causing large ice sheets to break off of Antarctica and float into warmer waters. The list goes on. I'm not very optimistic. I just hope to die of old age before famine and war strike; given the current instability of existing unions like Europe and NATO, I'm not very positive about that either though.
I mean this respectfully, but there is absolutely no way a nation can 'over-allocate' to the climate crisis. Please provide a precise example or retract your claim.
Edit: I'm getting a lot of down votes for this comment but not a lot of conversation to explain how I have gone wrong here, and I think the request for a precise argument is not unreasonable.
Perhaps one of my critics could enlighten me to my error?
It is possible to overshoot the problem. It seems improbable, but we could overshoot.
(This is not a rhetorical question: I'm not sure one way or another, though my expectation is that it isn't possible)
We should be simple executing what was agreed in the Paris Agreement as it reflects our best evaluation of the cost to benefits ratio.
But current policies are aiming at 1.5 degree higher than what we evaluated as the optimal solution.
If you want to talk about the "climate crisis", I'm going to keep pointing to the lack of good modeling in regard to water vapor and air travel (which has a specific phase relationship with sunshine that must be taken into account). I'll also try to dig up that graph correlating the rise in air travel with temperatures. I'll insist that even if I accept human cause of these changes (which I'm willing to do), it is reasonably likely due to air travel and you can't show otherwise without those models.
Here's a fluff piece: https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set...
Something better, but need to follow references: https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2010/0201...
The jury is still out on this and it seems to have a large effect and can do so in a very short time (on the order of days).
Of course, this translates to democracy; if a sitting government decided to, for example, force a whole industry to shut down, do you think the people working in that industry would vote for the same party again? I mean granted, this issue is bigger than sitting parties and votes and I'm sure some are willing to sacrifice their political career - or the lives and livelihoods of civilians - for it, but you get what I mean.
https://theconversation.com/four-hiroshima-bombs-a-second-ho...
A second! We are basically in a nuclear holocaust of epic proportions and this is nowhere near exaggerating it.
Lookat this way, when jobs that are less efficient and re-structured to be more efficient the tendency is that we have job losses. Those can and will be offset by the re-allocation of resources towards green energy in the form of brand new jobs and career opportunities.
We can either fear the unknown or want to explore it.
Moreover, I'm not seeing what job loss has to do with the parent's statement.
In that respect, I don't think that climate change is solved by 'just give the EV companies all the money ever' but by pro actively addressing and then monitoring those detractive motives, nuclear threat inclusive.
The sort of people who suggest we should only talk about the climate are dangerously foolish. Priority 1 is peace, priority 2 is prosperity (which helps keep the peace). Those two issues take priority over the climate, which is only interesting as a component of them.
Honestly, a huge majority of you need to be honest with yourselves: this kind of thing bugs you because you are business people, founders, people broadly trying to make serious investments in some kind of economic future that will (ultimately) lead to your (continued) success. Your aspirations are not bad in themselves, but neither is reporting about climate change, and the honesty comes in when you recognize there is a conflict of interest between the two here.
Which is HORSESHIT. Doritos bags made of shiny plastic, microplastics in products, pesticides used on crops... All of these things are corporate driven decisions. Those bags are used for chips because they make the shelf life longer, saving them money. Microplastics make it easier and cheaper to produce exfoliating products, which could be done with pumice or other stuff that's more expensive. Pesticides increase crop yield, increasing the bottom line.
So while us consumers are out here fretting over how our single coke can not recycled is killing the planet, large corporations make decisions every day that either make them money or save them money, and do irreparable harm to the world. But instead of fixing these problems, they run ads to tell us to recycle. That highly concentrated soap you use on your dishes that goes into the water supply? It's got a baby duck on the bottle so you can feel better about using it!
We lie to ourselves about all of this. Individual changes in behavior make no difference. The things we litter and don't recycle should simply not be there in the first place. I buy a lot of bacon, but it always comes in an un-resealable plastic bag, so they want you to use a Ziplock on it to put it in your fridge. Shit like that. 100 million decisions made by businesses every day killing the Earth. And we get blamed for it as peons.
Explain to me why we have to fly empty planes around the world just to make sure those airlines don't lose their terminal rights? Everything we do every day is optimized to make money at the expense of every other possible method of worth. We forgo reason, we forgo safety, we give up our world to make money. That's not going to change until there's no money left to earn, and we're all fighting over food.
We know how to fix this. Go to Marin and see their waste reclamation site. There is no landfill in that county. They recycle and compost and handle everything, even hazardous wastes like paint.
We have the tech, we know how to do it. But we don't. This entire comment section is full of the main reason why: y'all want yer money. Gotta make that paper. Fuck the world, I want mine.
Glad I never had kids.
---
I went to a debate between a well-established Republican, Randy Hunt, (who was rumored to replace Senator Warren if she was picked for VP,) and a first-time running Democrat.
The Democrat's response to climate change was to just put solar panels all over the place. He had no knowledge about how we need to store energy for when the sun goes down; no knowledge about how there's more sunlight in the summer, but we need more energy in the winter, ect, ect.
Randy spoke about working with MIT for energy storage, and promoted a local project to build the USA's largest offshore windfarm.
Even though I'm a D, I voted for Randy. When the D's supporters knocked on my door, I told them straight up that I live in a carbon neutral home, drive two electric cars, and that Randy (the R) understood how to battle climate change much more than their candidate.
But even worse, a year later I met some of the D's friends. They had no clue about how renewable energy works, and couldn't comprehend why I'd vote against a D. I tried to point out why you just can't put solar panels everywhere, but their eyes glazed over.
I genuinely don't know here.
> In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.
> Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
> In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we can do.
> Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.
We're already there, current CO2 is 420 ppm and steadily rising. Climate is on an irrevocable trajectory towards a much warmer norm, similar to conditions ~3-5 million years ago during the Pliocene era, before the onset of the ice-age cycle of the Pliestocene. Those who deny this at this point are simply ignorant of the facts.
> "It is sometimes imagined that slow processes such as climate changes pose small risks, on the basis of the assumption that a choice can always be made to quickly reduce emissions and thereby reverse any harm within a few years or decades. We have shown that this assumption is incorrect for carbon dioxide emissions, because of the longevity of the atmospheric CO4 perturbation and ocean warming."
Source: Irreversible climate change due to carbon dioxide emissions, PNAS (2009) (sci-hub_se)
CO2 was 320 ppm in 1960; we're not going back there, it's 420 ppm now, with a current growth rate of 10 ppm / decade. Stabilizing at ~440 ppm might be possible (neglecting slow but steady permafrost outgassing) if the world commits to a 3% reduction in fossil fuel use per year over the next 30 years, about the fastest change I imagine to be feasibly possible. This means zero fossil fuel use globally in 30 years, and of course current oil/gas corporation projections are to maintain current output for the next 30 years. Non oil-gas producers like Germany and China are the ones shifting the fastest to renewables; the likes of the USA, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela etc. are bent on continuing to produce and export.
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
Practically this means human civilization is going to have to spend as much effort on adapting to this new climate reality as on replacing fossil fuel infrastructure with renewable energy sources. Water supply infrastructure will be a major issue, food production will be a major issue, sea level rise will be a major issue, population migration and extreme weather damages will be major issues.
The point has been tipped, the pooch has been screwed, and now we all have to deal with the aftermath.
I highly recommend this video from the wonderful Kurzgesagt science video series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw
Climate change is bad and we need to take it seriously, but there is a lot of reason for hope. A lot of trends are pointing in the right direction and we need to support those trends. Climate policy is still in a bad state, in large part because of the gerontocracy, but younger people are entering politics with a different view.
I just can't imagine world nations are going to accept the catastrophic consequences that are incoming. Eventually, when things look bleak enough, it will become politically viable to propose such strategies. Obviously it is not at the current moment. But a cynical part of me just feels that it is just a matter of time. And that governments know it is just a matter of time, and they are preparing for it.
Asking people to change their habits or drastically alter their economies in a short period of time is, from what I have read, just a complete non-starter. I welcome arguments explaining how I am wrong.
It's just scary b/c we don't have a "QA" planet to test it on :)
The climate crisis ISN'T the only thing we should be talking about. We also have problems with straight up pollution, and other things like countries like China that fish until extinction. There are 1000+ Chinese fishing boats parked in international waters off the coast of South America that are fishing until the point of extinction and then bringing the fish back to China, leaving nothing for the South Americans.
There are companies like Nestle whose CEO doesn't believe water is a fundamental right, and places like California and Canada that let it bottle water for essentially free and then sell it for more than gasoline. We have runoff of PFAS polluting water, we have so much pollution from microplastics, we have plastics polluting the Pacific Ocean, microplastics in our blood, etc.
So, NO. Climate crisis is NOT the only thing we should be talking about. That is utterly crazy, and sounds like something ISIS would say.
Feeling guilty for existence and making things worse - is original sin.
Recycling, putting oneself to trouble and expense - is penance.
Scientist and politicians - are the priests.
Saving the earth - is heaven.
So how about you first?
Sometimes I don't understand how something like that end up on HN...
The climate of the earth has changed for millions of years w/o humans, and while certainly greenhouse gases impact the current trends, they aren't cause for apocalyptic concern.
I realize many people will probably vote this into oblivion, but I do not think there is a climate crisis at all.
> The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms that greatly damaged the ecology and agriculture of the American and Canadian prairies during the 1930s; severe drought and a failure to apply dryland farming methods to prevent the aeolian processes (wind erosion) caused the phenomenon.
from Wikipedia
my point was just that weird weather has been happening for a long time, and if you think about it, if the weather people can't predict whether it will rain or not 2 weeks from now, how can they possibly predict there will be more or less storms 5 years from now, 10 years, etc?
https://theconversation.com/farmers-are-depleting-the-ogalla...
- Residential and commercial buildings with solar panels;
- electric vehicles (albeit, the production of EV batteries is reportedly very dirty);
- more efficient consumption of oil/gas;
- CO2 capture and sequestration;
- backyard farming (raising chickens, composting, vegetable gardening);
- growing preferences for alternatives to red meat;
- work-from-home that reduces use of the roads and highways;
- widespread acceptance of plastics recycling;
and others.
I don't understand the use of the term "crisis" when we're already implementing pretty much every possible solution, and with some other cool solutions in the pipelines such as vastly improved batteries, better and safer nuclear fission reactors, electric aircraft, better and more efficient agriculture; better recycling of plastics, etc.
I would advocate continued and improved support for these approaches through tax incentives, research grants, and education. Also, we should spur economic growth, without which we can't afford to do any of the above. We can solve this without the need to panic.
Scared people are easier to by manipulated and open for new orders. Just a friendly reminder.
Another Y Combinatory article posted recently even remarked that studies indicate gloom and doom detracts from advocacy.
This is happening in the part of the world where I live in.
Furthermore, the countries involved in this war are the biggest exporters of some crops and we could be facing global famines this very same year.
So, no.
The moment is always 10 years away.
Remember global cooling or the mini ice age of the 70s?
Remember Al Gore and global warming? It's an inconvenient truth that nothing has really materialised in the past 15 years following that, despite his hysteria. (He is surely sad that it hasn't, given his environmental investment portfolio).
I've seen nothing to indicate any change at all. The beaches of my childhood are the same, weather does change - but if anything, things seem cooler not warmer to me. There is surely pollution, but I lay all blame for that at the feet of corporations. They should pay, rather than getting their governments to socialise the expense of the population - by making us feel guilty for consuming, even teaching this in schools. Apparently we should feel guilty for merely existing. They can stick it.
I'm afraid that I do not trust the science, the media or politicians to convey truth to us here. They are all self-serving. They can stick it too.
And let's remember that this wasn't an issue until the Club of Rome came up with the idea to make Man the enemy in order to gain greater control of our lives on behalf of the oligarchs:
"In searching for a common enemy against whom we can unite, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like, would fit the bill. [. . .] All these dangers are caused by human intervention in natural processes, and it is only through changed attitudes and behaviour that they can be overcome. The real enemy then is humanity itself."
The Club of Rome, in their 1991 publications The First Global Revolution, under the heading “the common enemy of humanity is Man”.
1966 - Oil gone in 10 years
1968 - Overpopulation will spread worldwide
1969 - Everyone will disappear in a Cloud of Blue Steam in 1989
1970 - World will use up its natural resources by 2000
1970 - Urban citizens will require gas mask by 1985
1970 - Nitrogen buildup will make all lands unusable
1970 - Decaying pollution will kill all the fish
1970s - Killer Bees!!!
1970 - Ice Age by 2000
1970 - Americans will be subjected to water rationing by 1975 and food rationing by 1980
1971 - New Ice Age coming by 2020 or 2030
1972 - New Ice Age by 2070
1972 - Oil depleted in 20 years
1974 - Space satellites show New Ice Age coming fast
1974 - Another Ice Age?
1974 - Ozone depletion a great peril to life
1976 - Scientific consensus planet cooling; famines imminent
1977 - Department of Energy says oil will peak in 90s.
1978 - No end in sight to 30-year global cooling
1980 - Acid rain kills life in lakes
1980 - Peak oil in 2000
1988 - Regional drought (that never happened) in 90s.
1988 - Temperatures in DC will hit record high (no records broken)
1988 - Maldive Islands will be underwater by 2018 (nope)
1989 - Rising sea level will obliterate nations if nothing done by 2000.
1989 - New York City Westside Highway underwater by 2018.
1990 - Cellphones caused cancer
1996 - Peak oil in 2020
2000 - Children won’t know what snow is
2001 - WiFi causes cancer
2002 - Famines if we don’t give up eating fishes, meat, and diary
2002 - Peak oil in 2010
2004 - Britain will be Siberia by 2024
2005 - Manhattan underwater by 2015
2006 - Super Hurricanes!!!
2008 - Arctic will be ice-free by 2018
2008 - Climate genius Al Gore predict ice-free Arctic by 2013
2009 - Climate genius Prince Charles says we have 96 months to save the world
2009 UK Prime Ministers says 50 days to “save planet from catastrophe”
2009 Al Gore moves ice-free Arctic prediction from 2013 to 2014
2010 - 4G cell tower causes cancers.
2013 Arctic ice-free by 2015
2014 Only 500 days before climate chaos
2019 - Hey Greta, we really need you to convince them this time.
2020 - Australian bush fires are caused by climate change.
2020 - 5G cellular towers causes cancers.
2020 - Polar bears could be lost by 2100
2021 - Volcano caldera ready to wipe out civilization
Ummmm, ok. Should I be unjading myself by now?
I might not...
Katrina, Harvey, Betsy, 1915, etc. New Orleans is still there. It's not under sea like all the prophecies foretold.
Hilarious emotional appeal strawman. You can't even stay on topic after being proven wrong. Remember, New Orleans isn't underwater and it's past 2020.
>when it is not visually apparent to an outside observer.
I'm old enough to remember seeing all the pictures and videos of the aforementioned hurricanes. Don't project your ignorance on everyone else.
> Which does make this a good example
Yes, a good example of New Orleans still being there, all the highways are still there, the sports arenas are still there, there are over a million people that live there, etc.
I will work on not talking out of place, and not being so worried about climate change, but I do understand that I am in this position in the first place because of my moral and rational faults.
My best wishes to you and your loved ones, may you continue to find peace and stay dry (well, as you explained, you'll probably stay dry either way, still, the sentiment still stands).
Don’t forget Hurricane Harvey: we spent ~$170B cleaning that up. It’s never that we can’t undo climate at a small scale, it’s that doing so may bankrupt entire states in the process.
Katrina, Harvey, Betsy, 1915, etc. New Orleans is still there. It's not under sea.
I asked about flagging accounts
Meanwhile I got 27 up votes.
Pitch in, accordingly to your needs.
Still get that newspaper delivered to my doorstep from way over there.
https://www.breitbart.com/environment/2019/09/20/nolte-clima...
It's not news that newspapers use sensational headlines to sell more.
So unless you post sources for these, people should assume you are a troll.
EDIT: Also found a screenshot of the list on Reddit. Seems it's been bouncing around for a few years, never with any supporting evidence.
I found a subset of this list here, with links to sources. But most of the sources aren't LA Times: https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/50-years-of-failed-doomsday-e...
But others, I couldn't find at all:
- 4G cell tower causes cancers.
I'm not sure what to think about this list. I would be extremely interested in the source articles, if they're actually out there.
https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-cellphone-5g-health-2...
"X1, X2, X3 are some of Y" means that {X1, X2, X3} is a subset of Y. "Some of X1, X2, X3 are Y" means that {X1, X2, X3} intersects Y. But you said the former!
Your inability to be swayed by Anglo-gibberish is formidable but you’re a non-entity to me and I don’t have to optimize for your preferences.
Sit back down in your bubble and accept on a rock of 7 billion+ you are just one. TL;DR your evidence is insufficient and I’m likewise as unmoved by it as you are from your perspective.
Yes very big strong mtn man effort though cutting and pasting text to reiterate a repetitive rhetorical point as evidence of how stoic you are.
It’s a pet project of mine and a fun one at that (of many hobbies).
Thanks for confirming you understood the sentiment.
[0] https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Volcano+caldera+ready+to+...
> Here are some of the many of Los Angeles Times’ newspaper headlines that they used to help with their circulations:
I'm not a fan of CEI, but you can see scans of some of these articles here: https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca...
I said …”some” …
You wrote "Here are some of the many of Los Angeles Times’ newspaper headlines". A reasonable person would understand that quote to say that the headlines are from the LA Times, but it's only some of the many bad headlines the LA Times has had.
The main article about an ice age in 1971 would have been on October 24th, 1971. The front page of the LA Times did indeed feature the words "Ice Age" on the bottom of the front page in the "articles inside" block. It did not use the words "New", "coming", "by", "2020" or "2030" in the article title.
I would ask for sources on your list.
That's where we are now. More than forty years of denialism and anti-science political pandering brought us here. With all of the calamities happening in the world right now, many people "just want to go back to normal." Unfortunately what was normal sucked.
Normal is advertising, marketing, and campaigning to ensure people feel personally responsible for the climate crisis. Normal is articles and helpful guides on how you can reduce your, "carbon footprint." Normal is green-washing products so that you continue along consuming as much as possible without having to feel like there is anything wrong with it.
Normal is paying lobbyists to prevent any action on climate change from impeding any industry from reaping profits off exploiting the environment. Normal is making sure that coal plants continue to burn, oil continues to be extracted and traded.
Normal is making sure people feel like they ought to take several vacations around the world every year. That they ought to have more than one car, live in a neighbourhood that requires it, that driving to work for an hour and a half each way five days a week is a totally normal thing to do.
Normal is making sure nobody notices how weird it is that we bottle water in plastic and sell it. Normal is making sure nobody notices that big corporations set up these operations on stolen land and avoid persecution for endangering the lives of the people that live there and the environment they operate in.
There's so much more about, "let's get back to normal," that is just gross.
Why do we want to get back to that? Is it even each of us, individually, that want this or is it someone else? Who benefits the most from, "going back to normal?"
If the pandemic has taught us something it should be that we can radically and quickly alter social structures when we need to. I try not to let all of the anti-mask/vaxx pressure from a vocal minority make me cynical. But I haven't forgotten the wild fires, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, record ice sheet loss, missing glaciers, and the thousands of species going extinct and into decline. Going back to normal is going back into the past. That sucked. I think we should be looking to the future. Make a new normal that sucks a bit less.
Does anyone on any side of this issue have anything substantially new to say?
If we have heard it all before, then what more is there to say?
Perhaps we shouldn't be doomsaying 24/7. It isn't healthy for anyone involved.
The whole premise of this opinion piece is to be a "what-about"ism.
I was going to do a point-by-point response, but I can't bring myself to it. This is more of "just trust The Science TM", when the ScienceTM is heavily flawed, the models ever changing, the proportion of disaster predicted ebbs and flows with the seasons, and government funding is the only thing that continues to fuel positive results. Not to mention lack of transparency into the models which makes replication impossible.
The politicians use the fear generated to win elections and erode freedoms and levy more taxes that are uselessly added to the slush-funds of state and federal government.
The solutions offered ("adopt clean energy") are tone deaf -- even elitist -- and if adopted, will kill vulnerable populations all over the world.
I hate fear mongering. Fear is a powerful tool for control and will be exploited by every single sociopath that takes office, whether they intend to or not.
[edit]Removing irrelevant claims.[/edit]
BTW, latimes will be closed in China's solution.
I seriously disagree with this framing. Developed countries have been artificially inflating their quality of life through cheap energy available from burning fossil fuels. This is an unsustainable practice that will a.) come to end due to exhaustion of said fuels b.) have significant, compounding externalities that are subject to incredible levels of reality distortion from entities benefiting from the economies they intentionally structured to be dependent on said energy sources.
The truth is that western countries have developed too fast through the planetary equivalent of roid rage. We've gone massively into debt, dug into a huge reservoir that is emptying, and the waste products produced by our flagrant exploitation of dirty energy reserves are very bad for the planet.
So yeah, I completely disagree with the "lowering their quality of life" framing. It's true that if you've been going into debt your whole life, and suddenly stop spending like a drunken sailor, your quality of life might go down.
What you’re saying isn’t wrong, but it is what it is. This is a political issue, acting as if switching entirely to renewables will not result in some short term sacrifices is well, disingenuous.
Trivially you could just ban those things. I think we’d agree in saying that would be very bad for many.
For example, what would be wrong with preventing developing nations from cheaply industrialising, while also subsidising them to do something else instead?
Subsidies are what we do now already which is why we’re in the situation we’re in.
Educating girls and empowering them on those countries also will make birth rates to decline faster.
- How to be decent human beings to each other, and especially how to not kill each other
- The media has too much power
- Government over-reach
Probably other things, but I don't know, these seem like way better hot-button issues.
This is not climate denialism. I am not going to panic at the whim of a newspaper editor.