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.
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
He’s not wrong. Groupthink elevates the most extreme rhetoric, and when people hear that, they disregard the totally valid argument as a whole.
If one person is saying “Hey, this could be bad for our coral reefs, polar bear populations, may cause more hurricanes over time, etc.” they’re going to be completely drowned out by the person saying “THIS IS THE END OF MODERN SOCIETY!” (paraphrased from an upvoted comment under this post)
No he is wrong and he is just mouthing the ipcc party line talking points. They’ve been doing this bs for a long time, demanding that climate scientists tone it down. And the reasoning is appallingly manipulative: if people understand how fucking bad it is going to get they will be paralyzed and ‘people’ won’t act. Meanwhile ‘people’ not acting is pretty much irrelevant when the global economic system itself is the direct cause of the problem, ‘people’ are just consuming commodities with abandon, as they have been trained, and as they must to keep the global economic system functioning.
I mean there was a direct scientific report that the UN released earlier this year which did say we aren’t on the path to extinction – but also that modest increases to temperature are more significant than we originally thought.
I think there’s reason to believe we’re not in the absolute worst case scenario, and regardless of however else the IPCC has been bearish, it’s a good point that we should keep rhetoric in check. You can already see several people giving up and saying there’s no point. Let scientists say for themselves what the data concludes, and leave it there.
It is important to recall of IPCC’s mission to be “policy neutral while being policy relevant and never policy prescriptive”. They try their best to be scientifically accurate, discuss the state and suggest solutions. One can wonder why IPCC won’t take sides and but that’s the way it has always been. The burden of what to do with their message is always upon the commons.
This statement is on a similar vein. While it was possibly guided at consoling common people from climate grief, it has all the risks of being misquoted.
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.
“Don’t worry. You aren’t dying out, just risk the fall of civilization as we know it and then the rest of humanity can live in some post apocalyptic societies. All good!”
Everyone’s already preparing to accept this new norm instead of actually doing something about it.
His statement isn’t really about the severity of the issue, he just says that people are prone to give up
Nuance, the world is filled with it. Who’d have thought?
Hey jackass, people aren’t apathetic because they believe it’s too late to do anything. People are apathetic because people like you haven’t done anything and now it’s too late. The “beneficial actions” you are calling for are half measures that won’t help at all, and the people who care are already doing what they can while the real polluters, the real destroyers of humanity, are building bunkers and hoarding gold to survive the coming storm.
Yeah, any solution to climate change that relies on people of good faith coming together across national boundaries to solve our global problems is a bunch of pie-in-the-sky horseshit and most definitely not something to pin the future of humanity on.
The only thing that’s actually going to reduce greenhouse emissions is cost savings; focus on that, build your models around what we can convince people to do with that, then figure out how to save as much of the human race and the natural world as possible in a scenario where we do fuck-all about climate change except when by doing so it makes some rich asshole slightly richer.
Once the cheap/free labor runs out then socialist programs can flourish because they will have too.
This is where the Porsche fuels come into play beautifully. They capture carbon from the atmosphere to be the carbon in the fuel therefore once run through an engine the emissions are a net zero. And they can run in regular gasoline engines, and is shown to be roughly the same cost of production as current gasoline.
What are people of good faith going to do about even a small fraction of those who disagree?
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Fucking knew it! Their neutrality sickens me
What makes a man turn neutral, Kif
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I hate those filthy neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me.
- That didn’t happen.
- And if it did, it wasn’t that bad.
- And if it was, that’s not a big deal. <- WE ARE HERE
- And if it is, that’s not my fault.
- And if it was, I didn’t mean it.
- And if I did, you deserved it.
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
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Awful bait is awful
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
What an absolute dogshit headline - this old white man certainly needs to better at avoiding giving clippable highlights but the journalist absolutely knows what they are doing.
Old fuck who won’t be around when shit hits the fan says we don’t have serious problem.
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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…
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!?”
This is a lit comment. Thank you! We need to grieve now so we can start moving onto the acceptance and action phase
