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Communicating the impending doom of man-made climate change had been done in all possible shapes and forms since the 1970s. The approach does not matter, because the truth is too uncomfortable no matter how it's worded. If non-alarmist language is used, then nobody cares. If alarmist langauage is used, people like you compare scientists to flat earthers.

Don't criticise the messengers if you don't like the message.

You're whitewashing the past eco movements. They've been alarmist since the beginning with claims that everyone would be starving by the late 70s or that the air would be unbreathable due to smog or that the global temperature would drop drastically and on and on. It was the same alarmist bullshit that got us into this mess by advocating against nuclear power.

Warning of the problem, recognizing the problem, putting real measures in place to correct the problem is exactly what LA did to reduce smog [1]. In 1952, London had a smog event so bad that it literally killed 12,000 people [2]. That is pretty alarming, and the UK enacted clean air laws. Meanwhile, in 2013 over a third of all deaths in and around Bejing were linked to pollution (unbreathable air due to smog). Alarmists warned of the destruction of the ozone layer, but where are they now? Nowhere, because significant action was taken, and the damage was reversed. Panic over acid rain? Cap and trade restrictions on SO2 and NOx in the US and EU reduced acid rain causing emissions faster and cheaper than predicted [3]. In every single case, big business fought and complained and were forced to comply.

Being alarmist about real issues is like being a fire alarm for a real fire.

[1] https://www.aqmd.gov/home/research/publications/50-years-of-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

If you use alarmist language you can rile up and entice a lot of agreeable people but rarely effective people.

So are we going to ignore the exx-lephant in the room?

This isn't just a debate between normal people and 'eco-fanatics' or whatever you want to call them. On the other side you have multi-billion dollar industries that want to maintain status quo until the rivers are on fire and have learned from the tobacco industry on how to spend millions in 'doubt-seeding' to keep making billions in profits.

I literally alluded to the fact that I could see alarmists being funded by people with interests of seeding doubts. As long as we're ignoring, there is a trillion dollar "green" industry that has just as much skin in the game mining cobalt and lithium as energy companies that pump oil or lfg. This isn't a debate between the "good guys" vs "bad guys", it's trillion of dollars being fought over to dictate how you get your energy.

News people don't like is often dismissed as 'hysterics', 'alarmism', etc, which is a well known cognitive bias. Nearly all people trying to improve the future do so sensibly, following established processes and norms and trying to be nice, but you haven't heard of these people because that's not how change is made in the face of established power that doesn't want the change. Most of that good work gets sunk. Change in the face of vested interests is 'noisy, hysterical, disagreeable', at least to the vested interests.

Step 1: Nobody likes hysterics or alarmism

Step 2: Hey no need to point fingers here or say "I told you so", we're all dealing with this.

> Step 2: Hey no need to point fingers here or say "I told you so", we're all dealing with this.

Are we? It looks like the vast majority of people are looking away and blaming climate change scientists and activists for not doing enough or doing it wrong or whatever else instead. Some of us are dealing with it, the rest don't realize we're all in the same sinking boat.

Step 2 is the "find out" phase, the pattern is consistent for every fuckup I've been a part of. Noone wants to hear how obvious it was.

What change are activists actually making? The only significant change I’ve seen in this field is from green tech

Activist’s goal is to change policy from government, when an activist campaign is successful, the politician takes the credit.

Here is an example of an actual climate activist reacting to an actual policy which he helped influence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw5zzrOpo2s

A big problem is there's no vocal positive or optimistic environmental movement. What gets attention are doomsday prophesies and people using the environment to push their political beliefs. It's almost impossible to get everyone on board with negativity. You just get a base of true believers while alienating everyone else, as you say.

We need to push positive solutions (nuclear power and carbon capture) that aren't thinly veiled religion and politics.

There's solarpunk, at least.

Also, I think there's optimism in people talking about how living a happier, more social life can also be one that happens to be lower in carbon intensity. I currently live in a very car-dependent detached house on an island (so reliant on planes to go anywhere) and am viewing flats now in a place where I can live car-free and go places via train.

And on top of all that, every time I have lived in a place where I could walk, bike, or take public transit, I was happier, healthier, and saw my friends _much_ more. But people have been sold a lie that living near their friends and being able to take a train or bus places is a "downgrade".

There’s stuff people can do. Eat less/no meat. Buy an EV. Etc. But then commentators will refute that with all sorts of stuff “one person can’t make any sizable impact,” “EVs are powered from the grid which isn’t carbon neutral”, “EV tires spread particulate emissions.” Etc.

Thing is, denialism and stopping progress makes people looking for solutions also more extreme.

So who knows. Maybe part of the answer is partially ignoring or severely discounting certain Internet discourse.

Edit-so the early replies to my comment highlight my point.

On thinking further, people do need to talk. But the internet is clearly a noisy channel that props up voices that might not even exist outside of a special interest funding them (through bots and well funded campaigns). And people doing futile (because of bigger, larger problems an individual can’t directly stop) personal efforts might act as a pressure release. So what if they can’t turn off a big container ship or stop a wasteful airliner there’s at least doing what they can do. Especially if it’s relatively peacefully and part of normal process. Better than destroying a piece of art in the name of “awareness.”

Edit2-Unless radicalism from the other side is what commentators against individual emissions choices want? Push down thise concerned about climate change so that they do something radical, point to it, and suggest people should just continue business as usual.

I don’t think that people shouldn’t make individual decisions, but I think their individual decisions should be made in much broader contexts that individual lifestyle adjustments have limited impact. (Eg. Any veganism on one persons part would be wiped away by a non-necessary plane ride.)

It is important to also make broader policy changes, like regulating wasteful plastic packaging in the pipeline (not just at the retail, but storing manufacturing/processing materials).

EV's are a half-assed patch and meant to be a drop-in replacement for ICE's until we can do something better, but sadly they've mostly been an excuse for even bigger, faster, heavier, more dangerous vehicles.

I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips.

> I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips.

If that's what you want, cool, you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible. It's people who want to forcibly make everyone live that way that are the problem.

"you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible"

The opposite, really. Car-dependence is the default and being able to live well without a car, especially as a family, is very challenging. Sadly we've forcibly made everyone live that way (imagine that!) except for the few who can afford well designed places.

Yeah to re-make public spaces across the cities and towns in that image would require probably a 10s to 100s of trillions in infrastructure spending. Enough to make my personal dream of an aqueduct in to the southwest from the Pacific and associated desalination projects (and mineral separation) a pittance.

We already spent trillions bulldozing cities for cars and building speedways everywhere.

An individual cannot make a sizable impact compared to the insurmountable damage corporate greed has already caused. Not to mention the proposed “solutions” only cause further ecological damage and reinforce corporate interests.

We have billionaires like Bill Gates telling us to eat bugs instead of meat to “save the planet” while he forcibly e-wastes billions of devices with Windows 10’s end-of-life. We have EV manufacturers pushing to mine lithium, which like most mining is incredibly ecologically damaging, while simultaneously making repair (and thus the sustainability of their cars) nearly impossible. Petroleum products produced en masse and discarded into literal trash islands in the oceans. The destruction of wildlife habitats such as the rainforests. Hell, entire cities in China are nearly uninhabitable due to mass pollution from corporations moving production there.

While we are all to blame, some are more to blame than others. And no, going “carbon neutral” doesn’t mean anything when you’re still actively dumping waste products onto the Earth.

> We need to push positive solutions (nuclear power and carbon capture) that aren't thinly veiled religion and politics.

What if what we really need to do is wonder what we should do?

The attempts at "real public conversation" led to passive or active mockery anyway. Consider, for example, ManBearPig.

I don't think many people were under the impression Al Gore was having a real public conversation. His books and movies fall squarely into the "alarmist" category.

In what sense?

Didn't he say we would all be underwater by 2010 or something? I didn't see the movie...

If he did, would you mind sourcing it? Until then I don't see a reason to believe you, as you yourself say you didn't watch the movie.

He said sea levels could be 20 feet higher in the near future. Which could only be right if we’re talking hundreds of years…

Hundreds of years is kind of the near future with respect to the ~300,000 years we've existed (H. Sapiens, and tools) and the ~30,000 years since we started to 'civilize' (art, descriptive cave paintings) even relative to agriculture (12,000 BP)

I'd have to imagine for any issue, I can nut pick someone (thanks social media for making this ever easier) and portray anyone who agrees with them as lunatics who are unwilling to have a real public conversation, but I wouldn't consider that honest.

I too enjoy “nut” picking individuals from social media.

Of course, the predicament is what to do when the end times (at least for our civilisation) is one of the plausible outcomes of our current actions.

Too bad that people don't dismiss, as hysterics, the ones who cry that any kind of new green deal will undoubtedly tank the economy.

I feel like it's not about the form of the message, but who has the money to have it framed in his preferred way in the media.

I agree. But we really should be eating less red meat.

Americans really should be eating more grass fed beef.

I agree. But we should limit crop yields by restricting human manufacture of ammonia and return to 1890 levels of population.

Fortunately it becomes easier to reach that goal if you eat less red meat because most crops are grown as animal feed to produce meat.

I think the problem comes to 'return to. Your method sounds rather violent.

We can do it gradually or nature will do it violently.

Every species needs population control. If we want air conditioning, commercial jets, and bottled water, then we need to get global population under a billion people.

>We can do it gradually

Good news, we already are. Most countries now are below population replacement level. Many countries like Japan are near panic because the population is going to drop very quickly in the next 20 to 40 years.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme that feeds on population growth, but dealing with a shrinking population once is better than dealing with a large population forever.

The #1 method of population reduction is to increase education and opportunity for girls and women in developing countries.

okay so don't eat meat, take public transit, don't live in a suburb, never run AC or use gas stoves, and never fly in an airplane. is that about right?

this is such a bad pitch that it makes me wonder if it's actually a conspiracy funded by the energy incumbents.

Eat less meat (especially beef)

live in a well designed suburb (like Houten, NL, for instance https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/16/welcome-cycle...)

use AC powered by solar or wind or nuclear

use an induction stove (they're way better)

build enough excellent rail that flying is unappealing for most options aside from transoceanic journey.

Doesn't sound like a bad life to me. It's the one I'm trying to achieve.

I agree with this.

I don't believe that guys like e.g. Just Stop Oil in the UK are genuine people.

There might be some who got taken in by the movement and have good intentions, but the actual antics that go on just turn off literally everyone I know, to the extent that the entire environmental movement is now seen in a bad light.

> I don't believe that guys like e.g. Just Stop Oil in the UK are genuine people.

The people on the ground are genuine alright. But genuinely useful idiots for the likes of Dale Vince.

They are funded by oil baroness to discredit environmental movements as bunch of crazy freaks and they are not even aware of it. So far it works wonders against environmentalism in the mind of common folk.