Stop telling kids that climate change will destroy their world
vox.com
vox.com
As I’ve written about before, climate change is going to be bad, and it will hold back humanity from thriving as much as we should this century. It will likely cause mass migration and displacement and extinctions of many species.
The global tropospheric temperature has been steadily increasing at a rate of only 0.13C per decade over the last forty years[0].
[0] https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/06/uah-global-temperature-...
RSS has their own data from their own satellites. Here's Spencer's remarks on the discrepancy between the satellite measurements[0].
I have no opinion on Spencer's theology, since it is irrelevant and does not appear in his climate science work. Your slur of "creationist" is likely no more valid than calling him a "denialist".
[0] https://www.drroyspencer.com/2019/04/uah-rss-noaa-uw-which-s...
I'm sure he's a perfectly decent person though. And you know, some of the hype is overblown, like that uninhabitable earth book, which I'm pretty sure most scientists disagree with.
To say, "nearly all people who doubt climate change are fundamentalist christians" is a pretty sweeping statement. I'm not a Christian myself, and I don't actually know any fundamentalists. Yet, about 80% of the older crowd I hang with are negative about the actuality of human-caused global warming (and 80% of the younger crowd, e.g. HN, are very worried).
I believe that only perhaps one percent of people have any personal exposure to climate science, in the sense that they have at least scanned the IPCC reports, read some of the refereed papers presenting alternate views, and formed their own opinions. The other 99% in the US are divided into two tribes, whose members form their opinions by listening to the tribal influencers. In the resulting polarization, if I know someone's opinion on a specific issue, I can pretty well predict their opinion on many other issues, including global warming.
I'm personally a "luke-warmer", like Spencer. My position is that we are still coming out of the last ice age - there was ice a mile thick where I sit only fifteen thousand years ago, so some warming is expected. My background is physics, and I've been following climate science pretty closely for over twenty years. It's increasingly apparent that the tropospheric temperature record, as measured by satellite, is not in agreement with the computer models that are the source of all the excitement. It's also apparent that the official position on global warming is gradually being adjusted downward.
Getting off fossil fuels is a very good idea. We need to switch to solar and nuclear energy. Personally, I get about half my heat from burning locally grown wood, including from my own property. We grow a good part of our own food and keep chickens. I don't have any high energy toys, and I believe in treading lightly on the earth. I'm an independent thinker, and I don't fall into either tribe.
There is an interview with Spencer, done following Google's demonetization of his website for spreading disinformation[0].
I'd recommend at least reading the preface to his short book[1], which is part of the Kindle sample on Amazon. I'll include a paragraph from the book's conclusion:
Given that CO2 is necessary for life on Earth, yet had been at dangerously low levels for thousands of years, the scientific community needs to stop accepting the premise that more CO2 in the atmosphere is necessarily a bad thing. Global greening has been observed by satellites over the last few decades, which is during the period of most rapid rises in atmospheric CO2. The benefits of increasing CO2 to agriculture have been calculated to be in the trillions of dollars. Crop yields continue to break records around the world, due to a combination of human ingenuity and the direct effects of CO2 on plant growth and water use efficiency.
Spencer, Roy. Global Warming Skepticism for Busy People (pp. 126-127). Kindle Edition.
[0] https://youtu.be/CZy8mgD05QA
[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H57WVYJ/ref=dbs_a_def_r...
for grown ups, of course it is more nuanced - we know that we lack power to solve the issue or else we would have done it. instead we put hopes and expectations on our kids - that they will rise to meaningful power, where they can change things.
The longer you wait, the harder it's going to be do deal with it. The messaging gets louder because the situation gets worse. By the time today's kids are in a position to do anything about climate change, we will have sailed through the 1.5C level that is widely thought to bring serious, expensive damage.
Climate denial is the dominant force today, and kids are learning a lesson that goes far beyond the distant prospect of climate disasters. It's telling them that science denial is effective. It's already working with the pandemic -- there is a ton of ideological overlap between climate denial and vaccine denial.
The best way to teach children that something can be done is to do something. Changing the words will never be as clear a message as the fact that we're not doing anything.
This. As a a person who has dedicated most of my young to adult life to environmental activism, it's been eye opening to see just how many people are feckless and apathetic. I've lost respect for so many people, especially those who demand it from me, because of their inability or out right refusal to do anything about this issue.
In short, I realized that their are seldom any grown ups, just people who never grew up and assumed roles of responsibility in which they could diffuse responsibility in a way that makes them look inculpable.
I've literately seen TEPCO shame themselves and deny until they couldn't and accepted that Fukushima was avoidable, I've seen the NRC acquiesce to powerful corporate power to the detriment of everyone within a 100 mile radius of San Onofre, I've seen lower management at Syngenta double down on their use of crops that require more inputs 'because f those hippies.'
I could go on, and make this an essay, but in short: I don't expect much from most people anymore, what I think is more vital is making the youth more proactive than all the generations before: as a millennial I knew my standards of living would not be like my parents after 2008 so I deluded myself to change things within the system only to realize the system I was in was Cancer Inc. and business was good, and I was the problem.
I decided that if I could channel my energy into the things I cared about I could lose myself in a way that I could stop caring about materialism and focus on the things that mattered most. Stability was never in my cards, and rather than fear this reality I embraced it and I lived a Life that I couldn't have planned better as opportunities that I thought impossible began to emerge as I got to work with amazing people on great projects.
The media are saturated 24/7 with climate alarmism. If anything happens that can be blamed on the "climate", from wildfires in California to a flood in Bangladesh, we hear about it on the evening news.
1.5C is the new 4C. First it was +4C in the coming century, then 1.5C before 2100 (the lower end of the climate models), and now 1.5C since the start of the industrial revolution. To me, it looks like we will be able to declare "climate victory" in a couple of decades. Getting off fossil fuels is a good thing, because they are limited. We are rapidly doing that. But - we need better energy sources. Wind isn't the way, hydro is tapped out. Solar and nuclear are the future. The next generation should work on that.
I don't know where you're seeing that, all I've been hearing for decades is how we're all going to be underwater in a few years, and starving and wet bulb temps will kill millions etc. It's a non-stop doomer cult for as long as I can remember.
And I absolutely believe in climate change. But call it what it is. It's alarmism that is giving kids no hope for the future, and then we wonder why they're so depressed. Well, we keep telling them they'll be dead in a few years. Bang up job.
Got this one backwards. Climate denial is the dominant force today. People are losing hope because of the dominance of denial and inaction. Depression follows naturally from such a scenario.
People you don't believe tell you there is nothing wrong - you would be more motivated to prove them wrong. OR
People you do believe tell you there's nothing you can do - you would be demoralized.
But if you think that the root of the problem is CO2, then you'd better take it up with China and India. The EU and the US are doing a good job in reducing CO2 output and will continue to do so.
And that's the good news?