3 ms·

I'm not educated in this area to be able to make conclusions, but one thing I wonder is if in N years if all the disaster dates pass and much less or nothing ha

• lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Its impossible to be precise and measured many years into the future, sometimes the situation is too complicated to be able to be modeled accurately. But trends are visible, and things are happening. We just ignore them to prevent reducing consumption.
• o-__-o 7y ago
  10 years ago we had a financial crisis. 80 years ago a Great Depression and world war. So far it seems like N > (generation age) is the minimum before we forget. No one seems to care about the Panic of 1907 for instance. The issue with the future is that data granularity is greater so more precise measurements can be made. We would likely have more exact (something a little bit closer than what we guess today) models which should spur us into action no different than it did yesterday, except maybe with more urgency...... Maybe.
• aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  Couldn't agree more. I think climate change is taking too much of the political oxygen out of the room, leaving no awareness for the plethora of other environmental problems that we can actually all agree on and solve. EDIT: Unfortunately there's little room for nuance and discussion when talking about environmental problems in today's political climate. People are just downvoting me because I implied not everyone agrees on climate change, which shouldn't be a controversial fact to state, but alas it is. I would appreciate if the people downvoting me would provide a substantive reply though, because otherwise the downvotes without replies seems to simply just prove that people are unwilling/unable to have a nuanced discussion about environmental problems.
  • agar 7y ago
    I don't know who downvoted you or why (not me), but I find your point to be a bit nonsensical. Someone is pouring gasoline in our house and you're suggesting that we talk less about a catastrophic house fire and more about how they're ruining the carpet. How does that help? Besides, what are these "environmental problems that we can actually all agree on"? We should have clean water? No, the same people denying climate change have overturned basic protections. Protection of endangered species? Also overturned. Protection of national parks? Nope, acreage removed from the park system and existing reserves opened for drilling. Increasing fuel economy standards? No. Common sense reductions in coal usage, which is now more expensive than solar and wind (not even including carbon externalities)? No. Both sides have extremists. But right now, an "economic growth at all costs" extremist regime is making policy. That is undeniable. If a left-wing "criminalize eating meat, eliminate fossil fuel overnight, outlaw corporate farming and force people to live in yurts" extremist sat in the White House, do you think we should not talk about the risk of global economic collapse?
    • aldoushuxley001 7y ago
      There's always going to be some people who agree and some people who disagree on anything, but I'd argue that there's less polarization on a couple of the things you mentioned. E.g. clean drinking water, I'd argue that we can all very much agree this is a priorty. I'm not sure what basic protections you're talking about which were overturned, but atleast here in Canada we have towns and reserves that still don't have access to clean drinking water. also yes, protection of endangered species, but even more broadly just biodiversity in general (often we focus only on saving the cute ones, which is also a bit of a travesty). This topic is more polarized than clean drinking water but arguably less polarized than climate change and has much more realistic and attainable solutions. The problem being that we're in the midst of the sixth mass extinction event and it's caused by humans (not human-induced climate change, though that may be a contributor, but it started much earlier than the industrial revolution). Much of the problem is that we destroy habitats e.g. through mass deforestation, pollution, etc. We're currently in the midst of a massive insect apocalypse which is the result of the aforementioned deforestation and pollution, largely insecticides herbicides, etc. from bad agricultural practices. I would much rather we focus on reforming forestry, fishing and agricultural practices using less destructive to the environment methods, which are very attainable, than focusing on mitigating climate change, which is largely out of our hands or would require such unattainable changes to society. I think we are by and large wasting our time and effort on dubious climate change efforts which would be much better focused on real environmental problems that we can actually solve, like e.g. ovefishing, mass deforestation and habitat loss, mass pollution in water and terrestrial ecosystems. That's my point. I do believe human-induced climate change is happening, but also not neaarrlly to the degree that alarmists and doom and gloomers would have people beleive. It's a question of how much are humans contributing to climate change change not if, but there's too many extremists that claim the apocolypse on very dubious grounds. I honestly believe the extreme alarmists are being incredibly harmful to science in general because people are liable to dismiss all science when inevitably a too-extreme climate model is proven wrong yet again. So yeah, my point is that there's many more attainable solutions to environmental problems we can mostly all agree on that we should be going after, rather than focusing our efforts on just fighting climate change which is an extremely polarizing topic and has largely unattainable solutions.
• groby_b 7y ago
  The problem is, if it's indeed a catastrophe, being "precise and measured" means you're too late. And really, the question here isn't "will this happen at all". It's "if we do nothing, will it be year N or N+1" And really, if we still need to convince people of the risks of climate change, we should not prioritize these people - convince if possible, but they're not the focus. Climate change is here. By now, even ~65% of Americans actually understand that, and industry and politicians here have worked really hard to maintain ignorance. The effects are felt in daily life on a regular basis - increased hurricanes, increases wildfires, droughts, rapidly dropping water tables etc. We're living unsustainably. We can now drive off the cliff in a precise and measured way, or we can choose to change how we live.