Climate Change Denial

[CyberGus]

Here's a good example of human intervention gone wrong: the elimination of wolves in the west to protect livestock. It worked, but it also caused the populations of wild herbivores to explode, which then chomped away all the vegetation, which led to soil erosion and flooding, etc.

Instead of trying to control the flooding, or plant more vegetation, or hunt down all the herbivores, the solution was simple: undo the mistake and reintroduce the wolves. Voilà.

Transitioning from a fossil-fuel energy system to a sustainable one is undoing the mistake. There are many ways to cope with an undesirable deep hole, but the first step is to stop digging!

 

[Nrkl]

Here's a good example of human intervention gone wrong: the elimination of wolves in the west to protect livestock. It worked, but it also caused the populations of wild herbivores to explode, which then chomped away all the vegetation, which led to soil erosion and flooding, etc.

Instead of trying to control the flooding, or plant more vegetation, or hunt down all the herbivores, the solution was simple: undo the mistake and reintroduce the wolves. Voilà.

Transitioning from a fossil-fuel energy system to a sustainable one is undoing the mistake. There are many ways to cope with an undesirable deep hole, but the first step is to stop digging!

Great example. Or the one where glyphosates that do not affect any mammalian pathway affect gut microbes that at the time weren't known to be a big part of who and what we are. We have many unintended consequences of our actions that we will most likely never know the true cause of, because we change things way too fast. When designing a scientific experiment, the essential thing to do is to NOT change more than one variable because otherwise you have no way of knowing what causes what. This is what fast, and large interventions lead to.

Sustainability is just destroying the world less fast as Neal Spackman wisely says in

Nowhere have I advocated for continuing fossil fuel use, I object the replacement of FF with just another energy source. It's really just an excuse to keep doing the same extractive things we've done for all of industrial era, just with a different energy source.

Oh and wrt to glyphosates, they were of course introduced in order to be more efficient by being able to kill the weeds and not the crop. Not that that really works out either since it will over time select for weeds that are resistant. People really need to properly internalize how complex the world is, and how little we do and CAN understand.

 

[Nrkl]

So you have zero solutions at all, and all your complaining has zero to do with the real need to move ourselves to sustainability. Maybe this will allow you to relax a bit:

A large solar storm could knock out the internet and power grid — an electrical engineer explains how

Every few centuries the Sun blasts Earth with a huge amount of high-energy particles. If it were to happen today, it would wreak havoc on technology.

www.astronomy.com

Just because you don't like the solutions don't make them valid. Isn't your point about AGW literally that we shouldn't relax? You are making very little sense my friend.

 

[ohmman]

Sustainability is just destroying the world less fast

I think we can agree that's an improvement, which is what people are trying to say in this thread. Perfection is not going to happen as long as humans continue to inhabit the earth. We're all going to die someday, and humanity is absolutely going to be extinguished at some point. The goal is to destroy all of it less fast. I think you're arguing the semantics of how much less fast we should destroy it.

 

[JRP3]

Nowhere have I advocated for continuing fossil fuel use, I object the replacement of FF with just another energy source. It's really just an excuse to keep doing the same extractive things we've done for all of industrial era, just with a different energy source.

You haven't provided a single solution or even a hint of one. "Just do something different" is meaningless.

Just because you don't like the solutions don't make them valid.

You have shown no solution at all, so no I don't like the complete lack of solutions you try to present as "something different". The simple fact is you have no solution at all. The rest of us are at least advocating that we stop doing what we know is harmful. You are just typing words to argue with no point at all.

 

[Nrkl]

You haven't provided a single solution or even a hint of one. "Just do something different" is meaningless.

You have shown no solution at all, so no I don't like the complete lack of solutions you try to present as "something different". The simple fact is you have no solution at all. The rest of us are at least advocating that we stop doing what we know is harmful. You are just typing words to argue with no point at all.

I have no idea what you are on about

 

[Nrkl]

I think we can agree that's an improvement, which is what people are trying to say in this thread. Perfection is not going to happen as long as humans continue to inhabit the earth. We're all going to die someday, and humanity is absolutely going to be extinguished at some point. The goal is to destroy all of it less fast. I think you're arguing the semantics of how much less fast we should destroy it.

The video of regenerating a piece of desert in Saudi Arabia that I linked, where I got that quote is really something I would recommend watching. It embodies the things what I would like to see in our future. Local, low technology solutions that not only regenerate the land but also provide means to the people living on that land. Inspiring stuff.

 

[eevee-fan]

Just turn on the AC! Why didn't we think of that? LOL

 

[CyberGus]

Just turn on the AC! Why didn't we think of that? LOL

Are you saying that when my mom screamed at me about leaving the front door open, that I actually was heating the whole neighborhood??

 

[mspohr]

Why aren’t we more scared of the climate crisis? It’s complicated

Despite extreme heat and weather in the US, most Americans aren’t cowering in fear. There’s a psychological reason for it

www.theguardian.com

This summer in the United States, millions of people have experienced the intense effects of the climate crisis. The “heat dome” that has gripped the south-west for the past three weeks is expanding into the south-eastern states. Catastrophic flooding in the north-east has claimed lives and wiped out farmers’ crops. And the worst wildfire season in Canadian history has not only caused tens of thousands of Indigenous people to be displaced, but the accompanying smoke has also billowed over into the north-eastern and midwest US, setting records for poor air quality. In many cases, these events have caused irreparable damage and trauma to those directly affected, and can certainly feel like they’re encroaching on those people on the periphery. And yet despite the fact that we’re living through a climate disaster, most Americans aren’t cowering in fear every day about the future of our planet. There’s a psychological reason for that.

Instead, humans tend to adapt to our stressors, which happens in one of two ways, according to Susan Clayton, a psychologist who studies the relationship between humans and nature. When faced with a fear, for instance, Clayton told me that there are two things we can address: the situation or our reaction to the situation. Since the climate crisis is not something we can deal with in the moment, and most people don’t even understand it fully, we often choose to ignore it as a way to protect our emotional selves. “We’re really, really good at avoiding things that bother us in many cases,” she said. “It’s denial.”

Instead of spiraling, Lickel said it’s important to take care of our own mental health as we go through these scary times. One way to do that if you’re worried about the climate crisis might be to figure out life changes you can make that are good for you and for the planet, such as installing a heat pump if you live in a smoky area or a place with extremely hot summers, or switching your car commute to a bike commute where possible.

 

[SummerlinChiro]

I see the climate cult echo chamber here continues unaware and ignorant of reality.

So gullible.


So let's bring some facts back into the discussion:

First of all, in our best temperature database shows that it was significantly warmer 100 years ago vs. today, despite much lower CO2 levels. For those of you who want to scream that is North American, not the globe, just go and read the newspapers of that era - the entire hemisphere was suffering heatwaves. This alone disproves the CO2 "control knob" hypothesis.

Secondly, burn acreages are FAR lower than they used to be:

Thirdly, here the USA, timberland acreage has been stable since about 1920:

Fourth, meat does not damage the environment.

Most cattle is raised on land that does not compete with other crops, in other words too rough to be tilled.

Most cattle never reach a feed lot, they are an essential part for of the ecosystem, just like wolves.

In fact cattle are essential restore and renew land has turned to desert.

See Allan Savory:

Holistic Management ⋆ Savory Institute

 

[mspohr]

The lesson from the Greece wildfires? The climate crisis is coming for us all | Nesrine Malik

The developed world needs to be shocked out of its complacency about our warming world, and the unexpected effects that will follow, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

www.theguardian.com

The tourists get to go home, eventually. But the extreme heat and weather events that have characterised this summer in southern Europe, the internal displacement they caused and the disruption to tourism and the local economy they are wreaking, brings the continent ever closer to what is now a global experience. Over the past decade, almost 22 million people have been displaced every year by weather-related events. The projection is even more staggering. By 2050, the forecast is that 1.2 billion people will join the ranks of climate migrants, most of them from the countries with the lowest capacity to deal with the fallout from global heating.

They will not all be fleeing a fire or a flood. The climate crisis is not about a single photogenic weather event. The climate crisis is war, it is poverty, it is radicalisation, it is the disappearance of the habitat families have lived in for generations, and it is the geopolitical and security fallout of collapsing ways of making a living. The result is a movement crudely summed up as a “refugee crisis” – a description that makes a constant churn of displacement sound like an exotic temporary phenomenon that will abate, or can be quarantined to other countries, if only the barriers are raised high enough. But people displaced due to the climate crisis are rarely fleeing a temporary weather-related event – rather, the complicated, permanent repercussions of these events. In the Sahel, dwindling rainfall in Cameroon drove cattle herders into competition for water sources with fishing communities, triggering armed conflict that instantly sent thousands of people across the border to Chad, and ultimately created a stream of migrants making their way northwards to the Mediterranean and its perils.

 

[mspohr]

Emergency viewing: 15 must-see films about the climate crisis

These unflinching documentaries, indie thrillers and anime fables for kids can help us to understand the climate emergency, and how to respond

www.theguardian.com

We are rapidly becoming the all-star cast of the biggest disaster movie of all time, and tragically it’s a global success. Towering infernos blaze over Canada, the Canaries and Rhodes, Bangladesh, China and even northern England have had their own devastating Poseidon adventures while the whole world continues to reel in the socioeconomic chaos of the Covid contagion and in fear of an H1N1 outbreak. Only the dramatic effects are no longer computer-generated, they are real, and people are really dying. I went to the Odeon in the 1970s and was terrified and wowed by the disaster film genre. Since the late 1980s I’ve been watching the real world’s climate effects department ramp up its protests to our wholesale inactivity and disregard for the science that says, with increasing accuracy, that humanity is facing Armageddon. But there’s been another competing genre, the conspiracy/disinformation movie, the creepy corrupt B-movies released, not by Hollywood, but by big oil, not X-rated at the multiplex but woven insidiously into our lives as extras in this catastrophe… and the repeats, re-streams, re-runs orchestrated by those fuelling the flames.

 

[mspohr]

‘These are not canaries in the coal mine, the canaries died a long time ago.’

By now, I’m guessing everyone reading this has had their own life impacted somehow by global warming. Whether it be from this summer’s sizzling heat dome, or mega-droughts, wildfires and smoke, and monster storms, or even seeing fewer backyard birds or...

www.dailykos.com

Despite the dead canaries, we’re still mining coal. The global coal demand is set to remain at record levels in 2023, the International Energy Agency reported this week. “Global coal demand is estimated to have grown by about 1.5% in the first half of 2023 to a total of about 4.7 billion tonnes, lifted by an increase of 1% in power generation and 2% in non-power industrial uses.” The IEA projects that the continued increase in coal burning by “China, India and Indonesia [will] more than offset declines in the United States, the European Union and Japan… Whether coal demand in 2023 grows or declines, will depend on weather conditions and on the economies of large coal consuming nations.”

The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived,” António Guterres, UN secretary-general, said this week. Lost in his hyperbole, is the fact the “world is shifting towards a superheated climate not seen in the past 1 million years, prior to human existence.” The climate catastrophe is already here. “Civilization, which emerged and grew over the past 10,000 years thanks to the temperate climate conditions that allowed for the development of agriculture, is now threatened in ways never before known.”

 

[nwdiver]

First of all, in our best temperature database shows that it was significantly warmer 100 years ago vs. today, despite much lower CO2 levels.

Do you understand the principle behind how a liquid thermometer works? How liquids generally expand as they get warmer. The Earth conveniently came with a giant thermometer we call 'the oceans'. If the average temperature of the Earth (not some random cherry-picked selection) was actually warmer 100 years ago... why are average sea levels higher today?

 

[mspohr]

Mike Huckabee’s “Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change” Shows the Changing Landscape of Climate Denial - Inside Climate News

Beverly Grimmett thought the kids magazines she saw stacked on a coworker’s desk this spring were perfectly innocent, until she picked one up. “My stomach turned,” Grimmett said. The guides were decorated in bright colors and cheerful cartoons, with titles like “The Kids Guide to Socialism,”...

insideclimatenews.org

The company launched its children’s guide to climate change this spring, and has spent thousands of dollars on TV and social media advertising that prominently features Huckabee himself. The guide argues that the climate crisis is not as dire as mainstream media would have you believe, but it does not list its authors or what their credentials might be. And though its title claims to present the “truth,” science educators and climate researchers have found the guide to be full of factual inaccuracies.

“It’s propaganda,” said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting fact-based science education, including about evolution and climate change. “It’s highly slanted with a clear ideological message, and it’s very unreliable as a guide to climate change for kids.”

 

[eevee-fan]

Texas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing Heat

(Bloomberg) -- Texas power prices for Sunday surged more than 800% as searing heat pushes demand toward record levels and strains supplies on the state grid.Most Read from BloombergTexas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing HeatNetanyahu Seeks to Change How Judges Are Named, Then...

finance.yahoo.com

 

[mspohr]

The Big Myth About “Free” Markets That Justified History’s Greatest Heist

The book ”The Big Myth” by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway details how the top 10 percent stole $47 trillion via intellectual warfare.

theintercept.com

As Oreskes and Conway explain, “The Big Myth” grew out of their previous book. While writing “Merchants of Doubt,” they discovered that the groundwork of global warming denialism had been laid in the 1980s by prominent scientists who understood the reality of the situation quite well. However, these scientists were convinced believers in what Oreskes and Conway call “market fundamentalism” (borrowing from George Soros, one of market fundamentalism’s loudest critics). This is a system of belief that holds that political and economic freedom are indivisible.

In other words, government interventions in the economy — such as laws removing lead from gas, carbon taxes, or mandated cooling-off breaks for people working in 100-degree heat — not only make us all poorer, but also put us on the road to Stalinist tyranny.

This worldview is such incoherent drivel that it’s hard to believe anyone with a functioning brain stem can buy into it. Meanwhile, market fundamentalists are oddly unconcerned with government intervention that’s profitable for large corporations.

 

[bruce4000]

Texas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing Heat

(Bloomberg) -- Texas power prices for Sunday surged more than 800% as searing heat pushes demand toward record levels and strains supplies on the state grid.Most Read from BloombergTexas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing HeatNetanyahu Seeks to Change How Judges Are Named, Then...

finance.yahoo.com

Seems like if Tesla ever started advertising, it would make a good basis for an ad for people getting solar and a powerwall.

 

[CyberGus]

Texas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing Heat

(Bloomberg) -- Texas power prices for Sunday surged more than 800% as searing heat pushes demand toward record levels and strains supplies on the state grid.Most Read from BloombergTexas Power Prices to Surge 800% on Sunday Amid Searing HeatNetanyahu Seeks to Change How Judges Are Named, Then...

finance.yahoo.com

While the wholesale prices fluctuate, I'm getting fixed-rate electricity from Austin Power. This heat spell is not impacting my bill, outside the cost of running my A/C compressor 22 hours a day.