In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.
He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.
This is critical. We need to be careful, alert and active in mitigating climate change (and putting massive pressure on our governments to do the same) but we cannot give in to alarmism; all it’ll lead to is apathy, and a all that’ll lead to is inaction.
Climate change is real, it’s dangerous, and it’s happening. However, as long as we have commitment, it is not beyond our capabilities to mitigate. We still have time, and we can still fix this.
People aren’t apathetic because “it’s too late”, it’s because right now is the time humanity needs to act, yet all that’s really happened is governments making promises to act in 10, 15, 20 years time if at all.
Oh, but there are pollution targets… that are routinely unmet, or are met through dodgy use of carbon credits, all with no punishment.
Finally some levelheadedness. Wholeheartedly agree. There is much to be done. But elements of the movement have ecome somewhat cultlike unfortunately.
Old fuck who won’t be around when shit hits the fan says we don’t have serious problem.
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Imho, we’re not going to change anything big enough to make a change. We’re going to adapt to whatever consequences will arise. At least the ones that have the resources to do so. Let’s not talk about the poor countries…
For real. What a joke. Trying to temper the already absurdly tempered response to the dangers of climate change? Wow. What a noble cause.
Not to mention, every lame attempt humanity under the spell of capitalism takes to limit our carbon output doesn’t “help.” It just…hurts the tiniest amount less. Because we are still pumping out insane amounts of co2 and the rate we’ve slowed down is nominal at best.
And another thing! Saying “the world will not end at 1.5c” is, I mean, technically true. If humanity dies, the world doesn’t end. If humanity is almost entirely wiped out and all that’s left are a few stragglers surviving in a hellscape of our own making, the world hasn’t ended. But 1.5c has long been a significant step, and one at which the snowball effect of warming very well may kick in. “Don’t worry about what these sCiENtiStS have been saying is a significant milestone! I’m the figure head of a feeble organization that blusters on about this vitally important issue! Listen to me now. A 70 year old with little skin in the game! When have my people ever steered you wrong!?”
it’s a slow boil folks, nothing’s really wrong, it’ll be fine… don’t hold anyone responsible or try to change the path…
This is a lit comment. Thank you! We need to grieve now so we can start moving onto the acceptance and action phase
Speaking to weekly magazine Der Spiegel, in an interview first published on Saturday, Skea warned against laying too much value on the international community’s current nominal target of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared the pre-industrial era.
“We should not despair and fall into a state of shock” if global temperatures were to increase by this amount, he said.
In a separate discussion with German news agency DPA, Skea expanded on why.
“If you constantly communicate the message that we are all doomed to extinction, then that paralyzes people and prevents them from taking the necessary steps to get a grip on climate change,” he said.
“The world won’t end if it warms by more than 1.5 degrees,” Skea told Der Spiegel. “It will however be a more dangerous world.”
Surpassing that mark would lead to many problems and social tensions, he said, but still that would not constitute an existential threat to humanity.
(…)
Skea predicted that one difficult area might prove to be changing people’s lifestyles. He said that no scientist could tell people how to live or what to eat.
“Individual abstinence is good, but it alone will not bring about the change to the extent it will be necessary,” Skea said. “If we are to live more climate consciously, we need entirely new infrastructure. People will not get on bikes if there are no cycle paths.”
Skea said he also wanted to adapt the IPCC so that it could provide better and more targeted advice to specific groups of people on how they could act to combat climate change.
He named groups like town planners, landowners and businesses: “With all these things it’s about real people and their real lives, not scientific abstractions. We need to come down a level,” he told DPA.
The headline is actual ragebait considering the more reasonable context of his message
well. 1.5C° maybe not an existential threat, but I don’t see a single sign it would stop there, and not going further into 4.0C° ya know
There was a prediction by a UN climate panel earlier this year thankfully that we would stay below 4 C.
I don’t recall seeing anyone saying that 1.5 degrees warming was an existential threat to humanity. That said, its already killing some humans at less than 1.5 and that will only get worse
I get what you’re saying and you’re not wrong that it will definitely get worse, but I just want to caution that while more people may be dying from extreme heat, any figures to that end should be contrasted with the number of people dying from extreme cold.
Seems like everyone forgets that a nontrivial number of humans die from freezing to death every year… While it sucks that x% more are dying from heat, if more than x% fewer people are dying from the cold, then the point is moot. Though more people are dying from heat, fewer people are dying from environmental exposure throughout the year, and so, over all, the heat can be argued to be a good thing.
Climate change affects both points of the spectrum, so no the heat can’t be argued to be a good thing.
Yes it does, but average global temps are going up, not down.
Omitting the environmental deaths by cold only tells some of the story. If both are going up, that’s far worse than any other scenario. Fact is, we have no idea either way. So from this assessment we only have half the picture, and that’s the problem.
The argument that it’s good is if 10% more people die from exposure in the summer, but that also means 10% fewer die in the winter from exposure, but 10% that 10% represents more people for the winter numbers, then fewer people are dying from exposure overall, which is where it could be argued that it’s a good thing.
I’m of the mind that it’s easier to give people sweaters, blankets, jackets, scarves, mittens, etc, to keep them alive during the cold months, than it is to somehow make them not die in the summer from the heat, so if we want these numbers moving at all, we want them to go towards the winter, because we can’t exactly air condition the outside in the summer.
Just because I see that the argument can be made, doesn’t and shouldn’t imply that I agree the argument should be made. We should be doing everything we can to slow down, prevent, and otherwise reverse the damage from pollution, including, but not limited to, preventing it from continuing, cleaning up the environmental pollution that’s possible to be cleaned, and finding new ways to do the things we need to without creating a new source of possibly worse damage to the environment, as well as doing what we can to restore the environmental areas that have been lost from the damage we have done.
Some things are extremely difficult or impossible with our level of technology, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s not like we have a good way to find and remove radioactive elements or oil that has escaped containment and have been floating around in the ocean… At least, we can’t right now. But keeping things like that from being repeated, using better, clean, energy sources, and advanced and ecologically friendly ways of storing and using that power will be key to preventing the need for things like oil to be dug up from the ground.
As you’re probably aware, there’s a laundry list of things we can and should be doing, and the majority of the time, that’s not what is being done… We have to fix it, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and a lot of powerful people with deep pockets have an investment and interest in keeping things as they are, keeping people reliant on fossil fuels and dirty practices that result in pollution so they can keep making more and more money, so that they can simply have more money. It’s a difficult fight, but knowing the arguments people might make against that progress is going to be important to our future; so we can be prepared when those arguments are made by people opposed to a better, more environmentally friendly future, so those without the vision to see how damaging things are, can be convinced to make the right decision for everyone.
It’s going to be a long, tough, battle to fight.
We’re definitely nowhere near “fuck it” levels, as the article says, we sure can make things a lot more awful if we decide now that we can’t do anything about it anyway.
But maybe we need a stronger example than… Bike lanes… Though I get the point he’s making.deleted by creator
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I was told the trolls stayed at Reddit. This one is such a low effort too. Try harder, troll better.
How to self-report for brain damage without mentioning you have brain damage
Awful bait is awful
oh look people in the comments who are missing the fucking point. I’m honestly so sick of this shit. You either have rainbows and unicorns and “we’ll just figure it out”/climate deniers to “WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH” apathetic fucks who won’t do shit* because “what’s the point we are all doomed anyway” which…causes the same problem as denying does.
honestly i’ve delt with more people who refuse to change anything because “what’s the point” than I deal with outright deniers anymore.
*not sure if anyone in the comments is an apathetic "do nothing though tbf and honest. So there is my disclaimer don’t @ me.
Ok, sure. Please tell me what I can do that will actually make a difference other than having it be a major influence in the way I vote?
This is a problem that only governments can solve and voting is the only way average people can hope to really influence them.
One person recycling or driving an EV makes no difference to the entire planet.
I see this all the time on social media, and it’s frustrating. I don’t want to dampen anyone’s passion for combating climate change (because I agree!), but it’s like a feedback loop for rhetoric that gets more and more extreme.
Something that starts out as:
“There was a wildfire in _____. This could be part of a larger trend related to climate change.”
Turns into:
“This fire was caused directly by climate change.”
Turns into:
“The world is on fire! Take shelter!”
Turns into:
“Don’t plan for the future. Don’t have children. Move somewhere cold and start prepping for the apocalypse.”
You can literally watch this same process happen with every issue that gets traction on social media or cable news. Then one side looks at the most extreme comments from the other side and easily dismisses the whole thing.
I literally had a convo with two friends this weekend about how they won’t have kids because they think it’s irresponsible to raise them in a world “that might not exist when they’re adults”. The doomsaying and hyperbole is absolutely real.
This isn’t uncommon now, and it’s sad. Social media algorithms pushing doom and gloom for clicks are scaring people out of living their lives.
The whole thing feels very similar to how Fox News scares old people for viewers, except maybe less intentional.
What worries me about that thinking is that historically children have been the big reason for people to care about the future and what they’ll leave behind.
Yes, but you can also still care about doing that without having children. I hope that this doesn’t follow those trends.
People can also love nature, animals, history, the arts, and lots of other things. They might want other people to still be able to enjoy the things that they love in the future. I would still care regardless of if I have kids or not, personally.
I personally don’t want kids, and while that may be a bit of hyperbole, kids being born now are going to be living in a vastly different world 35+ years from now. I think people denying the impacts and going “eh, we’ll figure it out” are worse than the doomers.
Wow, what a ridiculous straw man.
I haven’t heard anyone referring to 1.5 C as apocalyptic. I HAVE heard it described in terms of being a threshold at which climate scientists predicted a certain set of consequences.
What’s apocalyptic about the situation is our acceleration towards even great climate change, and works governments’ unwillingness to take the situation seriously.
In the US, for example, Biden passed the greatest climate mitigation law of all time … and it’s grossly inadequate. They’re treating it much the same way that the Obama administration treated health care. They patted themselves on the back for passing the ACA, which still left the country in a health care CRISIS, because it was a half measure.
In many ways the absolute worst way you can respond to a crisis is with these types of half measures. Why? Because it acts as a pressure valve, removing all the momentum for real, meaningful change.
Much like the ACA, Democrats will pretend that this is a stepping stone for the next set of reforms… But we only need to look at the ACA to see how flawed that reasoning is. We have not built on the ACA. We have spent a decade watching Republicans chip away at it.
Now we’re playing the same game with climate change mitigation. And the price will be hundreds of millions of climate change refugees, war, and famine.
To be 100 percent clear: while the Democrats are incompetent here, the real villains are the Republicans, who are WILLFULLY ignorant of the science, and are the ones forcing either impotent compromise or no mitigation at all.
It’s not straw man, you just reenforced his point, good job.
It’s fundamental social science.
4° C is apocalyptic. 1.5° C is still catastrophic and will result in massive floods and global famines.
I haven’t heard anyone referring to 1.5 C as apocalyptic. I HAVE heard it described in terms of being a threshold at which climate scientists predicted a certain set of consequences.
In this speech by the UN Secretary-General, the climate crisis is stated to be an existential threat to the world and already past the point of no return. I think the latter statement exemplifies the kind of rhetoric that Jim Skea believes to be counter-productive.
Yeah, I don’t see what he’s getting at. There has absolutely been alarmist rhetoric surrounding climate change, and I see it all the time. Hell, I’ve seen people who think we’re already too late, even if we were to stop releasing CO2 today itself.
Part of me wonders how much the other side has benefitted from the sense of apathy this could create. After all, there’s real value in making stupid people give up entirely, in some ‘we’re doomed’ scenario.
I think I do. So much in terms of doom and gloom is being shouted in terms of climate change that many are becoming numb to it, which is dangerous.
He is wrong about 1.5C not being an issue, however. 1.5C != “every place will raise only by 1.5C”. It means localized temperatures in many areas will be much, MUCH higher, as parts of the US are beginning to find out.
Responsible messaging is important, but the looming catastrophe cannot be understated. You or someone you know will likely die from global warming, if it hasn’t happened already.
I know 1.5 is dangerous; after all, we’re already seeing a slew of weather disasters all around the world. This is why now is the time we should scream off the rooftops that it’s not too late, that we can still fix this, because people are starting to wake up just a little more.
Now is the worst time to give into apathy, and to tell people who’re just starting to wake up that we can’t do anything.
I think the issue is that some of us know this, but most are getting blasted by the media non-stop, and some of the messaging is even outright denying climate change exists. After a while people get tired of hearing about it.
I don’t have an answer for how to solve that one except to say that regardless of who is saying what or how loud, governments around the world aren’t doing enough. It is amazing to me because at the end of the day, money can slow and eventually stop/reverse climate change. We have the technology, we just need to invest in the required infrastructure and technology to make it happen.
Climate change isn’t political. It will kill all of us if left unchecked.
Problem is that climate change is political. Worse, it’s geopolitical. It’ll take the will of the people to just tell governments to stop plodding along doing the bare minimum and take some real action for once.
What’s happening right now is terrible, but it’s also a chance to wake up the masses in time. I just hope the impetus isn’t lost to apathy.
The news;
- we are fucked
- just kidding no we are not
- yes we are
- no we are not
Don’t even know what to believe anymore. All I know for fact is what I can see and trend myself. I know about 7 years ago or so I definitely noticed more wildfires than I ever have. Never had I had memories of every summer being smoked out. This summer I’ve felt autumn chill in some mornings when I normally would not have. Heat domes… Didn’t even know why that was until last year or the year before.
I think shits fucked.
pretty sure we’re fucked.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/30/world/antarctic-sea-ice-winter-record-low-climate-intl/index.html
when the AMOC goes, we’re gonna see ecosystems collapse. When the ice shelf breaks off into the sea, we’re gonna see sea levels climb rapidly.
can human civilization survive? perhaps if we can get everyone to work together. ww2 levels of mobilization and federalization of resources.
I think this would require the UN to have a no-bullshit-session with the worlds top climate and systems folks, then each and every country declaring a national emergency to address the climate crisis. Which means we’re going to finally have to get the assholes rolling coal in their giant pickup trucks festooned with trump flags to give up their bullshit. And everyone will have to cut their energy consumption and face changes to their lives and diets that will help us prepare for the really hard times ahead and feed the starving that are already resulting from mass drought & the war in Ukraine.
I doubt we’ll ever get the rolling coal big truck assholes to give up their bullshit, so… No, we’re fucked, we’re going to die badly in most cases, and it’s almost entirely our own fault. I let the last few generations off because they didn’t enjoy the excess, they’re simply going to get stuck with the bill.
Cheers, hope I’m very very wrong.
…Changes which will never happen and will themselves cause untold suffering and millions of deaths, so no one will ever support them.
What we need is a method that would not negatively impact human standard of living. Human expansion into space would do it; we’ll require the energy and resources up there to geoengineer in a non-stupid way and get the energy and resources to get off Exxon-Mobil’s oily cock and undo ocean acidification anyway.
So let’s do that instead. We can prevent the civil war that would erupt from climate austerity too.
We don’t have time for that.
The way I see it, we have 3 main paths
We cut everything we’re doing, go local and human powered, and adapt to conditions as they change.
Super-intelligence and/or full automation (whichever comes first, we soon get both). It makes capitalism pointless, it lets us expand into space scaling geometrically, and it tells us exactly how we can change things here to maximize habitability
We keep doing what we’re doing until the “just in time” supply chains we use to minimize costs collapse. Either the US military’s plans for this are good and we minimize loss of life, or we starve. Industries collapse immediately, and maybe we lose the ability to produce higher technology - at the very least it won’t be nearly as common. Hopefully we can still work on AI and robotics or there’s no real way out of it
Path 1 is probably not happening. Path 2 and 3 are just a race between the next revolution in technology and the climate. It’s looking pretty close right now - so doing anything to tip the scales, however slightly, is a great idea
Dude - I’m really sorry, an escape hatch for the rich people who can pay to be onboard isn’t a solution. We’ve been living unsustainably - this, by definition, can’t be sustained. We need to change now so we can make that change as comfortable and human as possible; otherwise we’re going to be stuck reactively responding to each successive disaster, or crop failure, or ecosystem collapse, or climate migration wave etc.
We need to get ahead, now.
Human expansion into space is anything above that and the idea that it is is just meaningless capitalist propaganda. Human expansion into space consists of:
-
Building space solar power stations (SSPSes) to beam power down to the Earth 24/7 to replace the coal plants
-
Mining calcium and magnesium from the Moon and near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) to bind with the excess CO2 in th oceans to stop and reverse ocean acidification
-
Mining rare-Earth elements from NEAs to mass-produce electric cars and batteries down here ln Earth to replace gas vehicles
-
Build O’Neill cylinders to preserve and rebuild ecosystems in safe places where poachers will never be able to reach
Among other things.
-
Most wildfires are caused by arsonists/accidents.
Most stupid comments are caused by typing before thinking.
How is it stupid? It’s true and not even contradicting OPs experience.
Its missing the forest for the trees. A bit like saying the main cause of shooting deaths in the US is due to bullets hitting people.
Lets assume that most wildfires are indeed caused by arson/accident. But first the environmental conditions must allow such activities to have the impacts they have. i.e. higher temperatures and drier dry-seasons caused by climate change, resulting in a more combustible environment.
But first the environmental conditions must allow such activities to have the impacts they have.
Exactly. There might even be the same amount of arsonists/stupid people as in the 80s but it just burns better now. Incidents were no fire developed in the 80s can now spread to huge wildfires with a much higher chance.
Still the claim is true and probably has consequences for hikers, people who live in the woods, settlements near to forrests etc.
For US - https://phys.org/news/2017-02-humans-percent-wildfires-season-decades.html
And it’s the same for almost every country that is on fire now, like Greece for example or Italy:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/28/greece-fires-arsonists-extreme-weather
So your opinion is that as it gets warmer and drier, more people choose to set fires? And not that the same number of people behave in the same way, but the conditions changing is what makes the fires worse?
I’m not sure what kind of point you’re trying to make here. Obviously every wildfire ultimately originates from an ignition source, be that a human made fire, some glass focusing the sunlight, a cigarette or whatever other source you can think of. They don’t spawn into existence.
Drought caused by extreme heat makes it much easier for these small fires to spread into an actual wildfire though. It’s not mutually exclusive.
The point that we are not fucked as there is no significant increase in numbers of wildfires and most of them are not caused by climate change.
If there is one fire that set the entire Amazon on fire, that wouldn’t be a big deal because it’s only one fire?
The whole point is the severity of fires due to climate change has made it so we’re fucked. As you’ve said, the same number of fires are occurring, they are just significantly worse. I would argue that 3 small fires in a fairly wet forest that goes out relatively quickly is favorable to 3 enormous fires that burn a significant percentage of a forest over several weeks due to that forest being dried out (caused by climate change). Your position seems to be “well, it’s the same amount of fires, so it’s not climate change.” It doesn’t make any sense.
IMO whether we’re fucked or not is not a constructive argument.
In either case, the interpretation of climate change can lead to the same conclusion: a) we’re fucked up to the point of no return. So we can keep our wasteful society as is until we extinct, because changing our society will not achieve anything. b) we’re not in that bad situation so we can keep our wasteful society as is until the situation gets really bad and requires change.
Anything could be used to justify not making changes and majority of society/indistry ppl in power are super resistant to it (which likely reduces their profit).
In reality, it’s not black and white. Even if the ‘no return’ scenario is real, we can still lessen the climate change effect or delay catastrophic end if we make changes now.
Climate change? Pfft. My fridge has been a steady 3°C for the past 10 years.
aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction,
things aren’t perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate.
Those statements are contradictory.
These fucking jackasses are running our offices and industries. If something isn’t done about this then it will kill ALL of us.
It’s a 1.5C increase in a very, VERY short period. What happens if we get another 1.5C increase?
And another
And another
And another
You get the point.
Nuclear energy is the key to saving this planet. It would solve any energy problem we would have for hundreds if not thousands of years, and that’s just uraniam. Don’t even get me started on thorium, we would have energy for longer than we could ever comprehend. All readily available, yet we keep burning up dinosaur shit because “muh coal companiez!”.
What happens when we run out of oil? You bastards are going to go out of business anyways, why not just INVEST IN NUCLEAR ENERGY?
Nuclear energy is expensive and takes a long time to plan and build. Investing in solar and wind might be the better option short term.
Nuclear takes too long to build out and costs way more than renewables + storage. Why advocate for wasting money?
I think we should take these people and (gently mind you) press their faces against the asphalt for 5 minutes. See if they still believe there’s no extreme heat afterwards.
Hey there, casual violence. It’s been a bit
