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> But what we really need is to build more renewables and to simultaneously scale down our energy use. To put it bluntly our energy using industry has to take a

by Luc 7y ago

> But what we really need is to build more renewables and to simultaneously scale down our energy use. To put it bluntly our energy using industry has to take a small hit. This is why the Green parties in a lot of countries need to be politically opposed. They attract people who care less about the environment than about changing our way of life. Case in point: in Antwerp they're about to spend a cool billion to put a roof on the ring road, to put some plant pots and bicycle paths there.

adrianN 7y ago
As opposed to the conservative parties who care more for today's profit than for a liveable tomorrow?
- roenxi 7y ago
  Conservative parties obviously care about a livable tomorrow too. Children and a love of family aren't restricted to one branch of politics. Conservatives disagree that today's profit is inconsistent with a livable tomorrow.
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Unfortunately reality disagrees with the conservatives here. Even the green parties want less radical change than the scientists recommend.
    - roenxi 7y ago
      Reality disagrees with most political groups, they aren't necessarily the most cogent of mobs. You can attribute whatever motivations you like to conservatives, but if you claim they don't want a bright future you are wrong. Just because you don't agree with them doesn't mean they are evil or stupid. At absolute worst they have different priorities for what they think a bright future looks like. They are just as good at planning ahead as progressives, and stereotypically more organised albeit less passionate about achieving their goals.
      - kerkeslager 7y ago
        > At absolute worst they have different priorities for what they think a bright future looks like. The conservative bright future seems to be "My family will have enough money to buy safety and comfort in whatever dystopia global warming creates".
        enraged_camel 7y ago
        Yep. Basically: "my family will be OK, to hell with everyone else's."
        rjf72 7y ago
        I assume your position was rhetorical since you clearly don't think all or even the majority of any meaningfully large political group are wealthy, but what might be driving the divide otherwise? I think this failure to consider others' positions, largely because we all tend to just surround ourselves with voices that agree with "our" side, is one of the biggest causes of the increasingly sharp wedge being driven into society today. If you'd like to know the realistic reason, it's because of past experience. This [1] was published back in 1989. "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said [director of UN Environmental Program] Brown." 30 years from the date of that article's publication is 6 days from now. Temperatures have increased 0.52 [2] degrees since then. He may have meant fahrenheit since he was the director in New York and so was likely speaking with an American demographic in mind. But even then that's still only about 0.9 degrees - still under his "most conservative scientific estimate." The article was full of plenty of other alarming hyperbole which also turned out to be completely false. The problem is that that article is not an outlier. We've now had several decades of alarming climate predictions. The reason this timing is relevant is because we've now reached the point to where we go back to these predictions and see how they have played out. And in general the quality of predictions has been quite poor. Of course the response here is that 'well climate science is hard, and they're at least getting the general trend right - up.' The problem with this is that this general trend goes back long before even the industrial revolution. And so predicting heating to continue is about as meaningful as me predicting that in 30 years the stock market will be higher than it is today, which it almost certainly will be. What really matters are the specifics. So this drives people into two groups. People that think that the mistakes of times past are something we've overcome and the predictions of today are now meaningful. The other group tend to think that the past 30 years of predictions will be representative of the next 30 years of predictions. People can view similar data and come to radically different conclusions. And only to preempt the typical mass-level ad-hominem that generally mentions here I'd mention individuals such as Richard Linzen [3]: MIT atmospheric physicist, member of the National Academies of Sciences, Fellow of American Geophysical Union, fellow of American Meteorological Society, lead author on the IPCC's 2001 climate report, etc. He also falls into the latter group. I would emphasize that this is not an appeal to authority (which I think is generally a very foolish idea), but rather a preempting of the exact same. [1] - https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 [2] - https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen

by Luc 7y ago

adrianN 7y ago

As opposed to the conservative parties who care more for today's profit than for a liveable tomorrow?

roenxi 7y ago
Conservative parties obviously care about a livable tomorrow too. Children and a love of family aren't restricted to one branch of politics. Conservatives disagree that today's profit is inconsistent with a livable tomorrow.
- adrianN 7y ago
  Unfortunately reality disagrees with the conservatives here. Even the green parties want less radical change than the scientists recommend.
  - roenxi 7y ago
    Reality disagrees with most political groups, they aren't necessarily the most cogent of mobs. You can attribute whatever motivations you like to conservatives, but if you claim they don't want a bright future you are wrong. Just because you don't agree with them doesn't mean they are evil or stupid. At absolute worst they have different priorities for what they think a bright future looks like. They are just as good at planning ahead as progressives, and stereotypically more organised albeit less passionate about achieving their goals.
    - kerkeslager 7y ago
      > At absolute worst they have different priorities for what they think a bright future looks like. The conservative bright future seems to be "My family will have enough money to buy safety and comfort in whatever dystopia global warming creates".
      - enraged_camel 7y ago
        Yep. Basically: "my family will be OK, to hell with everyone else's."
      - rjf72 7y ago
        I assume your position was rhetorical since you clearly don't think all or even the majority of any meaningfully large political group are wealthy, but what might be driving the divide otherwise? I think this failure to consider others' positions, largely because we all tend to just surround ourselves with voices that agree with "our" side, is one of the biggest causes of the increasingly sharp wedge being driven into society today. If you'd like to know the realistic reason, it's because of past experience. This [1] was published back in 1989. "The most conservative scientific estimate that the Earth’s temperature will rise 1 to 7 degrees in the next 30 years, said [director of UN Environmental Program] Brown." 30 years from the date of that article's publication is 6 days from now. Temperatures have increased 0.52 [2] degrees since then. He may have meant fahrenheit since he was the director in New York and so was likely speaking with an American demographic in mind. But even then that's still only about 0.9 degrees - still under his "most conservative scientific estimate." The article was full of plenty of other alarming hyperbole which also turned out to be completely false. The problem is that that article is not an outlier. We've now had several decades of alarming climate predictions. The reason this timing is relevant is because we've now reached the point to where we go back to these predictions and see how they have played out. And in general the quality of predictions has been quite poor. Of course the response here is that 'well climate science is hard, and they're at least getting the general trend right - up.' The problem with this is that this general trend goes back long before even the industrial revolution. And so predicting heating to continue is about as meaningful as me predicting that in 30 years the stock market will be higher than it is today, which it almost certainly will be. What really matters are the specifics. So this drives people into two groups. People that think that the mistakes of times past are something we've overcome and the predictions of today are now meaningful. The other group tend to think that the past 30 years of predictions will be representative of the next 30 years of predictions. People can view similar data and come to radically different conclusions. And only to preempt the typical mass-level ad-hominem that generally mentions here I'd mention individuals such as Richard Linzen [3]: MIT atmospheric physicist, member of the National Academies of Sciences, Fellow of American Geophysical Union, fellow of American Meteorological Society, lead author on the IPCC's 2001 climate report, etc. He also falls into the latter group. I would emphasize that this is not an appeal to authority (which I think is generally a very foolish idea), but rather a preempting of the exact same. [1] - https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://apnews.com/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 [2] - https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/ [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen