Conditions on Earth may be moving outside the safe operating space for humanity
cnn.com
cnn.com
Both meet the criteria of
- Believe that we are rapidly headed for an end of the world catastrophe
- Believe the only way to avert catastrophe is by everyone in the world suddenly making massive (unrealistic) changes to the way they live and how society functions.
- Seem more interested in evangelizing and catastrophizing than actually convincing people.
- Want to use the power of the state to force others to live in the way that will avert the imminent crises.
- Get incredibly upset when anyone questions, (even well intentioned) their beliefs and proposed solution.
Communism is not based on scientific research.
Racism is real. And crt provides good insight with high degree of predictibility as to how our system of laws work to assist existing racial inequalities.
In any case, this feels like you're building a strawman.
This is like complaining that tidal models are useless because they ignore waves, which have a larger effect on water height than tides.
(The same analogy applies to claims of the form "how can we possibly predict the climate decades ahead of time when we can't predict the weather 2 weeks from now")
Yes, but often “based on science” like biopics are “based on real events.” Activism presents no error margin whereas the actual science does, and very often activism extends into alarmism where it presents end of the world scenarios which the science doesn’t present. Activists too often present the future scenarios assuming no adaptation whatsoever, like a flooded Miami where no one has moved to higher regions. The science itself is increasingly skewed too, such as the recent forest fire study where larger drivers of forest fires like arson are ignored in order to make publication more likely.
But you'll keep brushing it off as not as serious as it is despite the facts saying otherwise. It's pretty frustrating to deal with. Hence the amped up responses.
a) We minimize our impact, keep well within that range, limit global warming, protect biodiversity, don't fish the oceans empty, etc etc. Or
b) We do as we please, f* up things big time, leaving it to future generations to deal with the fallout of an uninhabitable planet.
Don't you think we have at least some responsibility to hand over this planet to future generations via scenario a) ?
Our generation is 8 billion currently. Generations that follow, are some unknown multiple of that. Potentially trillions of people (if humanity survives long enough).
"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" - Spock
So I have considerable sympathy for -especially young- climate activists, given how much we're bashing away at their life support system. And that of their children, grandchildren & great-grandchildren.
We don't own this planet! We're just short-term guests here. Caretakers at most. Even for those who consider humans 'owners' of this planet, it's still shared with other humans & animals.
The latter, without an alternative source of energy, just means people will be worse off. Greenlash is already a thing in many developed countries that have tried to set unrealistic policy goals. In my opinion, the focus on net-zero should really be a focus on a clean, abundant, and cheap energy source -- like fusion, if it can be realized. Instead, it seems like the current focus of net-zero is on how to divide the energy we can currently produce and in what way.
It is immoral to ask or force the global poor living in yet-to-be-developed countries to not raze their forests for agriculture or other use, when it is the same path that every developed nation has already trod; and besides, they aren't going to listen either way, when their own livelihoods are at stake. The way out of the problem is through: through more energy.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2012/04/economist-meets-physicist...
We need high marginal energy prices, preferably progressively increasing with usage. Similar with other types of consumerism.
Jevons paradox does not apply here. All of human progress has basically been about being able to use more energy per capita. You're right that people will always need more energy -- if they want to progress.
A call for higher marginal energy prices effectively means that you're declaring that this is as good as humanity will ever be, and nobody would need anything better (in the sense that "640KB ought to be enough").
If that property can shoot, then they’re qualitatively different. Robotics is, for the first time in human history, threatening to decouple control over a population with force projection capability.
They're absolutely not "buy and forget".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_boundaries
It is just a way to quantify something very elusive. The point is we are doing a lot of harm without any consideration for our actions. Profits over all.
Crossing 6 out of 9 planetary boundaries would not necessarily mean that parts of the Earth have become uninhabitable for humans, but it would signify a very high level of risk for abrupt and potentially irreversible environmental changes. These changes could severely disrupt the Earth's systems that make the planet habitable in the first place.
The concept of planetary boundaries is designed to identify the "safe operating space" for humanity. Crossing multiple boundaries increases the risk of triggering non-linear, abrupt environmental changes on a continental to planetary scale. These could include extreme weather events, loss of freshwater resources, collapse of ecosystems, and other severe disruptions that could make life increasingly difficult for humans and other species.