Why climate ‘doomers’ are replacing climate ‘deniers’
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
1) Climate change isn't happening
2) Climate change is happening, but we didn't cause it
3) Climate change is happening, we caused it, but it can't be stopped.
If you believe any of the above statements then you will not get in the way of oil companies profits. That is the intended goal.
The reality is that there's loads you can do at both the personal and public policy level.
Don't believe the lies, climate change can be mitigated.
Oil companies real motivation was to manufacture scarcity, not produce as much oil as they can.
Oil companies only have good margins when there's artificial scarcity, from geopolitical turmoil, from climate change dumb policies.
It is taken for granted that oil companies lose from the climate change agenda - but when you look at the actions, they don't lose, they win.
If the climate change agenda didn't stop their competition, if geological turmoil in the middle east and Venezuela didn't reduce the oil supply, oil would be pretty cheap. The U.S. got oil independence under Trump, but then the climate change agenda under Biden rolled it back and the oil prices soared. If oil prices are higher when climate agenda and policies are implemented, it seems like we've got it backwards.
We also have it backwards regarding our control of climate change. China has 30% of global emissions. The same China that stopped it's economy for COVID. If they believed climate change is a risk to them, they would do something.
But China hardly cares. Maybe, China doesn't see it as a risk. If China isn't going to be serious about it, the only rational decisions are either that it's inevitable and out of our control or that it's not that bad. There's no future where the west miraculously turns the ship around by itself out of a disaster that's 30% out of its control. That's the real lie.
Graphic history of the ads they run, showing a change in message over the last 60 years.
"In contradiction to the science of stopping global heating, big oil asserts that fossil fuels will be essential for the foreseeable future."
which is stupid. There isn't even such a thing as the "science of stopping global heating", that's something the Guardian made up. People (not just "big oil") are pointing out the blatantly obvious with this statement, even greens agree with that which is why so many talk about ideas like geo-engineering.
As for their earlier ads, they are stating things that were and still are true. Fanatics have created a culture in which people are punished for pointing these things out but climatologists did in fact claim during the 60s and 70s there would be a new ice age, for example, and they still don't understand the physics of the climate by their own admission hence the hot model problem.
But even still, it doesn't really change what the best course of action is.
We should electrify everything, deploy renewables, EVs and heat pumps widely, tax carbon etc.
We'll live happier, richer, healthier lives right up until when (if?) doom overtakes us.
Feel free to be a doomer, but don't be a sucker and let yourself be manipulated by obvious lies.
When we see a large scale push for more nuclear power, mass transit, opposition to car-centric neighborhoods, shifting of focus to stopping industrial emissions, acceptance of ideas like geoengineering, as well as various other "unacceptable" ideas, then we will have become serious about climate change. If we want to stop doomerism, we'll have to make a massive shift on how we view the problem. Until then, doomerism is a logical conclusion of how we're actually attempting to solve the problem.
Eg, a mystery entity blew up the nord stream 2 pipeline and caused so much methane to be released, that years worth of past and future carbon progress have been erased.
When people see that no one important cares about that because Russia is naughty, and people are still going on about your neighborhood design, what else is there to conclude?
That said, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it, I just want to make sure we're at least also attacking the root causes as hard as we can as well.
Geoengineering is likely to be the same type of fight. We pretty much have to do it. There's no way around it at this point. It's biggest enemy are environmentalists who demand ideological purity. It's heading towards the same story as anti-nuclearism.
It should also be noted that people who are pro-nuclear or pro-geoengineering are not fanatics and are not obsessed with their ideas in the way radical environmentalists are. No one is suggesting that they replace all other ideas. Radical environmentalists who suggest that is the case are basically projecting. As if their opponents are as crazy as they are with their ideas.
If electricity produces heat through resistance and the earth loses heat to space, if the rate of heat produced by electricity is more than the rate we lose heat to space, won't that warm the earth over time?
If that's the case, wouldn't it then be wise to shut down all electricity production, world-wide?
Please note I'm not advocating this as a "solution" because obviously there are a huge number of problems with throwing humanity back into the stone age.
What you're describing is a runaway greenhouse effect, which depends on the composition of the atmosphere. Venus hit one without electric cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Venu...
> A runaway greenhouse effect involving carbon dioxide and water vapor likely occurred on Venus.
Carbon dioxide is also responsible for global warming on Earth, so putting more of it into the atmosphere with fossil fuels would be the thing to stop/mitigate.
Heat is actually the limiting factor for our growth on this planet. We can grow food off planet, we can't really increase our heat radiation rate.
That doesn't apply to fossil fuels or nuclear power, though.
But really, the biggest factor by far is how easy it is for long-wave radiation to escape the earth. One thing that isn't intuitive is that every particle of heat radiation that escapes the earth is likely to have "tried" lots of times before, but been reflected back by greenhouse gases (or has bounced around in the atmosphere a lot, being absorbed and re-emitted by CO2 or methane or H20). Basically, only a tiny fraction of the heat radiated from earth actually makes it to space instead of being reflected back. So changing that balance is really what causes the climate to warm, not generating more heat on earth.
And this heating would continue even if we produced no more electricity. Stopping fossil fuels is about stopping the rate of increase of heating, not stopping the heating itself (though there is an equilibrium as increasing temperature will eventually cause more heat loss to balance out the heat gain. This will still take a century or so to settle though). it's effectively a low interest but very long debt: continuing to generate electricity with fossil fuels is essentially piling on more warming over a long enough time period.
Also as mentioned in other commends renewable sources like wind and hydro don't actually contribute to heating anyway. Solar does (because panels generally will absorb more radiation than most surfaces on the earth), but only by a fraction of the electricity generated.
It is worth a moment of your time to understand.
At 82kgs of copper per vehicle
1.5 billion vehicles, doubling every 20 years
80 million cars produced annually.
Even if we only made EVs starting today. It would take almost 20 years to replace the cars on the road, by which point, the number of cars being utilized would have doubled. With all the copper produced on earth.
So that doesnt take into account large trucks or the windings for the transformers to charge the vehicles, nor does it take into account increases in output. Nevertheless, it is no small feat. Our lives will not be happier, richer or healthier as a result any time soon.
Yes:
> fossil fuels require much more mining and drilling than clean energy technologies. Today the world mines 8 billion tons of coal every year, whereas the clean energy transition is estimated to require around 3.5 billion tons of minerals in total over the next three decades.
https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/blog/are-clean-technol...
Guess what the concentration of coal is when mined. Clue: 100.
Guess the concentration of metal in ores when mined....
Please don't be misled by these types of fallacious arguments.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak
Stage 1: We say nothing is going to happen.
Stage 2: We say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.
Stage 3: We say maybe we should do something about it, but there's nothing we can do.
Stage 4: We say maybe there was something, but it's too late now.
The linked Twitter thread in the article suggests warming between 2.4 and 3 degrees.
Noah Smith being relentlessly stupid is par for the course, but trying to prevent doomerism by suggesting "There is a decent chance civilization won't end in the next 100 years" is a bit much even for him.
The second sentence, about "a good chance that we can hold warming below the 2 degree level" links to a different tweet, with different data [1].
I don't think there's any risk of "civilization ending" below 4 or 5 degrees.
In the future, before calling someone "relentlessly stupid", you probably should check whether you've understood correctly what they're saying. But this is the sort of emotionally charged rhetoric that happens when people are primed for the apocalypse! That's why doomerism is a problem! It's cathartic, but not helpful.
[0] https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1425504599167827968 [1] https://twitter.com/hausfath/status/1465330361077018634
There are still plenty of people who are and who are becoming “deniers”. It’s not really hard to imagine given how much hyperbole comes from the climate “enthusiasts” (if we must slap labels on people)
The “doomers” are actually people who a generation ago would have been the enthusiasts, but because the hyperbole and often outright deception was so strong they have been disenfranchised to the idea that anything can be done.
And how can you blame either the deniers or the doomers? The movement is full of charleston’s who will say anything to get more power and wealth for themselves. The people with the most money and power live in lavish palaces flying private jets around the world to lecture us plebs that heating our homes is killing the planet. There’s more farce than truth and the result is everyone’s in a camp of nihilism because of it
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/al-gore-history-climate-pre...
My hunch is that yes, a human-made global warming is happening but I still don't have a complete conviction.
Also what about these reports that are talking about a change on the solar cycle that will produce an ice age. How much can one believe these reports?
While there is a small amount of uncertainty, since the future is uncertain, that uncertainty continually decreases as you approach a point of no return.
Companies have propagandized this to protect profits following the MIT Study "Limits to Growth", under the business as usual.
While that doesn't mean we'll all die in this doom scenario, fatalistic as it is, there likely will be a lot of death ahead of us because of failures to act at a time when such action could have been much more moderate. Exponential curves are a bitch.
1. There is no climate change. 2. There is climate change but it’s not caused by humans. 3. There is climate change and it’s caused by humans but it’s not bad for us. 4. There is climate change, and it’s caused by humans, and it’s bad for us, but it’s too late to do anything.
Not being one means believing our institutions, politicians and corporations are a force for good. I would not trust anyone born after the 1970s that believes that's the case, because they're either frighteningly naive, borne from privilege or just lying to themselves.
Oil companies with continue lobbying, politicians will continue to promise absolute nonsensical green dreams to get voted in, people will continue to vote the next guy in because he's gonna do something about it, and rinse and fucking repeat. In fact, the same applies to any major issue affecting the Western world.
I am sure I am the minority and the lunatic here, but I do not trust anyone that does not see modern politics (which includes corporate capitalism and all that circus) as a net negative for humanity as a whole. We need action, yesterday, yet all we can do is tell Joe Average their steak is causing climate change, and Unilever will save us with their plant-based burger, with ingredients shipped from overseas because it's cheaper.
But sure, the next party is definitely gonna do something about climate change. "It's just a matter of setting the right economic incentives," I can hear, over muffled laughter.
(I am aware I sound like a loon in this comment, but I am from the austerity and economic crisis generation, I have no belief whatsoever in our institutions.)
The political system has no interest or even real incentive to fix climate change. Money has corrupted our governments too deeply to alter course in time.
There's nothing that you, I, or any individual can do to affect our current trajectory. Not at any scale that actually matters.
The only answer is to stop producing fossil fuels right now full stop, no conditions, no "phasing out". And that is simply not feasible because of money. Because we've spent the last half a century ignoring the problem.
What do we do? No amount of voting or recycling or buying new cars is going to make any change. It hasn't for 20 years. By the time our society gets its collective head out of its ass enough to vote for political change, we'll already be deep into global famine.
I predict two general scenarios:
1. Status quo. Nothing changes, world governments will attempt a massive last ditch effort far, far too late to make a difference. A huge portion of all species die. From there pick your favorite post-apocalyptic movie.
2. The people wisen up and overthrow their governments, string up oil execs, and force decarbonization at any cost.
We are currently, right now, TODAY at the stage where we must decarbonize at any cost. Literally no cost is too high. If we shut down oil today, it will be hugely disruptive and destructive to global society. A lot of people will die and many, many more will suffer. This will go on for decades most likely. But the alternative is most likely an extinction level event. Global famine and plague, entire species going extinct, loss of coastlines, entire ecosystems collapsing en masse.
Fundamentally, I don't think human psychology at scale can handle that. I expect that nothing barring miracle technology is going to save us, and in our current socioeconomic system, that might be even worse than nothing.
So yeah, I think we're doomed. We let capitalism go on for too long and it's too late to change direction. Those with power have systematically taken it from the rest of us so that the people with the incentive to survive longer than their career don't have the power to. The rest have the power to build nuclear bunkers under a mountain, or a rocket to Mars.
All because some men wanted to see a number go up.
Maybe we'll crack fusion and suck all the carbon out of the atmosphere, but that again simply buys us another few generations until our industrial waste heat boils the oceans. Until then, rich men will attempt to use carbon capture as leverage to extract even more money and power. "Pay me or I turn the climate up another degree" is not far off from what they're doing today.
The only thing that can save us is widespread revolt, strikes, overthrowing governments and forcing action. We've given the political system nearly a century to sort this out, and they are very clearly not interested. It's going to kill us if we don't do something.
I think it might be possible to take an absurdist attitude, we're pumping out solar panels and wind turbines at a furious clip, it's possible that capitalism will incidentally save us, just like it's incidentally almost killed us up to now.
The problem is that this would require our senators and judges and representatives to not be old and decrepit. They would need to actually live long enough to be affected by climate change. They would need to stop selling out thanks to $10k checks from gas companies and oil companies.
The problem is ultimately the country is ruled by rich old people wanting to extract more riches before they die no matter the consequence. And by the time the consequences do come to roost, the only thing that can be done is pissing on their grave.
You say 10 years but you also say instantly.
I bike to work and walk to the grocery store. I've reduced my meat and processed food intake(stop shipping preserved foods to me from across the country please). I recycle. I attempt to avoid plastic packaging. All my light fixtures use LED bulbs and I'm pretty good at turning off the lights when I leave a room. I keep the thermostat at 60 in winter and use heating blankets to keep me warm if I'm resting. I have an A/C window unit that is set to 80 in the summer, if I close the office door I only need to cool down 80sqft of me and my computer. I hope to switch to a electric or push mower, but I'm keeping my gas powered lawn mower that came with the house to avoid excess waste, I go weeks between mowing and I never water the lawn explicitly, only my trees; a pine that blocks most of the midday sun until the middle of summer, and a box elder maple the blocks the worst of the summer evening light. I turn off my computers at night, even the computer at the work office I remote into. I sew the holes in my clothes. I repair my dog's toys, OK the dogs are a huge negative on my footprint, but they're rescues at least.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
It's not much, but it's honest work. But every American has become so passionate about politics, they are infecting the whole world with their blue-v-red bullshit, and single-handedly keeping the charade alive. Even kids, who should strive for idealism or just ignore that game for old men, are nowadays eager to fit themselves into those two neat boxes. It's a disgrace.
To answer you directly: whatever I am doing and is in my power to do, is too small to move the needle one way or the other. I eat steak, but it's from organic farms. I enjoy motorsports, but I do not own a car. I'm probably not carbon-negative, but my contribution is towards the bottom of the scale.
AIUI all emissions scenarios required a massive removal of BILLIONS TONNES of CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it somewhere. I imagine this will be a problem.
Doomerism seems like blasphemy on a site for Techno Venture Capitalists :)
Something on the order of 2003 estimates of global petroleum reserves and also of gas reserves.[2]
Sounds hopeless, but it's also a fraction of a percent of one year of total global insolation: about 12 hours' worth.[3]
1 trillion trees will also absorb roughly that much in about 30 years[4].
So not completely beyond the scope of physically possible human endeavour, but also probably substantially larger than any previous single endeavour.
There's also nothing actually to stop the species doing something other than "it's expensive and hard and I get a better return from making an app for dog manicures". But money is a made up number and were actually not very short on human effort[5] or most materials or even usable energy[6].
[1]: in 2021, humanity operated 366 GW of installed nuclear capacity with 411 reactors. The line is currently going down (2020 had 369 GW and 415 reactors). The concrete and other materials presumably used in the reactors would mean there's a zero in the right half-plane: it'll get worse before it gets better, but nuclear is far from alone in this and by some estimates 50 times better than wind on a per-TWh basis.
[2]: considering where the problematic carbon comes from, that's probably not a coincidental similarity in scale!
[3]: and that shows in solar installed capacity: about 1TWh. Build about 10 times more than that, dedicate it all that new capacity to CO2 splitting, run it for 20 years, and party like it's 1499. It would need only 50 million acres: 10% of Saudi Arabia or Mexico would do, 1/3 of Texas or basically all of Great Britain (and a bit on the side to compensate for the latitude). Roughly 30m^2 per human: about $3000 worth of installed GW-scale solar power using an estimate of $2 billion/GW, plus the chemistry machinery and op-ex for 20 years. You might even negotiate a price break at the first trillion?
[4]: but the wood has to stay in the tree or otherwise not be burned or rotted. Obviously avoiding burning down what trees we already have is probably a good start.
[5]: other then then what will you do with all the "operationalised" humans needed to do it? Training that much of humanity would subvert a lot of existing political structures. If anything, this is why I think it won't happen under our current systems.
[6]: and you'll get much if the material back afterwards, and what you definitely wouldn't be short of would be energy capacity!
Thinking the future will be hard times no matter what, but that something can be done to make it survivable may be pessimistic, but it is not being a doomer.