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Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong

• Junk_Collector 7y ago
  Some discussion from when it was last posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21630333 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21630333
  • paulddraper 7y ago
    Looks like HN dup detection didn't prevent it because the this has #7b9cacd212d6 on the end of the URL. Even though there is no anchor tag with that value...
• ilikehurdles 7y ago
  Forbes is a hosted blogspam platform. You pay them, they publish you, and folks permanently stuck in the 90s think they're reading something that legitimate journalists and editors were involved in. In this case, we have the pleasure of reading an anti-renewable campaigner's entirely siloed views of the impact of climate change and an argument for how everything will be ok and all the scientists are wrong. But articles involving mis-targeted casual skepticism make us feel nice and ok with the status quo so we share them, because articles about the need to act are uncomfortable to digest.
  • hmwhy 7y ago
    I'm not sure why this comment is downvoted (at the time I started writing this) without any comments at all. To me it presents an alternative view and interpretation on the article. Even if I don't necessarily agree with some of the sentiments and/or how opinions are phrased, they do remind me that I should read things with caution, which is probably something that even the most cautious of us need to be reminded of every now and then. I'm not entirely sure at what point one can start downvoting but I vaguely recall that it's a privilege that's given for having been recognised for a certain amount of contribution (presumably due to points). For this reason it seems irresponsible to downvote something, without commenting, just because it doesn't match your worldview and that you are too lazy to think of it as an opportunity to at least think about why there are people thinking differently.
    • leftyted 7y ago
      The post doesn't engage with the article, dismissing it as "blogspam" and claiming that the author is a "anti-renewable campaigner". It also pushes the claim that all scientists agree about the consequences of global warming, which is clearly not the case. What I find really irritating, though, is the idea that the media should make people scared and angry and push them toward action. That seems cynical, manipulative, and will probably backfire.
    • shkkmo 7y ago
      I suspect it is downvoted due to tone and lack of actual informative content. The comment doesn't bother to challenge any of the assertions of the article but to attack the author and the publication. Those attacks would be much less likely to garner downvotes if informative counter points were also made.
  • alexandercrohde 7y ago
    All of that may be true, but I think doesn't address the claims of the article. The article says " Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ... said, “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don't address climate change.” " That's unscientific claim by Cortez. I think the point that exaggeration undermines your credibility is an important fact. I believe that those of us who push a cause so hard that we lose sight of facts actually hurt the cause, because we alienate all the objective-truth-seekers.
    • noelsusman 7y ago
      Objective truth seekers aren't alienated by hyperbolic comments from individuals. If they were then by definition they wouldn't be objective truth seekers.
      • zug_zug 7y ago
        Sure they are. Every now and then somebody says something so hyperbolic I have to ask "Am I really a democrat?" If somebody asks do I believe in global warming I want to be able to answer "Yes" not "Yes but"
    • dv_dt 7y ago
      If we don't lock in the difficult to start climate mitigation efforts in 10 years, then yes, the world as we know it will locked in the opposite way for change in irreversible in our lifetime ways. For one spending to realign infrastructure will cost massive amounts, crop yields will be lower than before due to extreme weather this will be locked in in 10 years if we don't act.
  • Aunche 7y ago
    >we have the pleasure of reading an anti-renewable campaigner's entirely siloed views of the impact of climate change and an argument for how everything will be ok and all the scientists are wrong. The author explicitly quotes scientists and says that climate change is a problem.
• Vysero 7y ago
  Suggested title alteration: "Why Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Not Helping" As far as I can tell there is accredited and reliable science both for and against the idea that global warming will bring about seriously consequences if left unchecked. That being said, I agree with the authors sentiment that polarizing people on the issue isn't helping. Fear mongering and alarmism is not the answer as far as I can see. If we want to get the world motivated a different approach is needed; you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar, as they say.
  • Lutger 7y ago
    I've stopped believing that, we’ve done this approach for 30 years now and it had no effect. It would be foolish to think continuing on the same path will give the same result. A better approach would be to start with the truth.
    • Vysero 7y ago
      "A better approach would be to start with the truth." If someone had this down to brass tacks I would agree but they don't. There is immense contradiction here even among the brightest minds in the world.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• holstvoogd 7y ago
  ok boomer
  • dang 7y ago
    Please don't do this here.
• bryanlarsen 7y ago
  Apocalyptic claims about climate change from both sides are wrong. As the article says, climate change won't destroy human civilization. Halting climate change won't destroy the economy, nor would it significantly affect it. It'd cost on the order of a trillion dollars. That's a crazy amount of money, but the US can and will spend that kind of money regularly. For instance, it's comparable to the Iraq War or the Apollo project. It's less than WWII. And it's not like the trillion would disappear; it's being spent in the economy. And via the broken windows measurement fallacy of economics, it would likely increase our GDP rather than decrease it.
  • devonkim 7y ago
    I usually argue against conservative colleagues that are primarily business minded that climate change is demonstrable risks to our private sector economy and national security. Is there a private sector solution towards a global problem that's possible when it's an international policy problem? No, there isn't, especially when so many interests are disincentivized to do anything about the problem. I hate to use increasing GDP arguments either - GDP is a measure of activity and _what_ it's used for is completely out of the picture. If every American was on payday loans and would be dying immediately after having spent their last dollar on basic needs and capital efficient goods & services our GDP would soar - this is clearly not something that should be optimized for except it's the path we're heading toward right now.
    • shkkmo 7y ago
      > If every American was on payday loans and would be dying immediately after having spent their last dollar on basic needs and capital efficient goods & services our GDP would soar While the GDP per capita might soar, the GDP itself would plummet. When you kill off productive workers (all else being equal) you lower your GDP.
  • wavepruner 7y ago
    Assuming the trillion dollar claim is true, there would still be a huge amount of disagreement on how it is best to spend it.
• drdeca 7y ago
  Misread the title as “which claims”, not “why claims. The title that I imagined seemed more intriguing, as it seemed to suggest (a belief that) that some of the apocalyptic claims were true, but that some were false (and a desire to clarify which ones those are, perhaps in order to make the true ones more believed?).
• joshypants 7y ago
  Three things are true: * We cannot let despair prevent us from acting. The big changes needed are possible, and we need to accelerate them. * We actually don't know with certainty how bad it is going to get. * People, in general, are not scared enough right now.
  • Clubber 7y ago
    >We cannot let despair prevent us from acting. When people feel a problem is hopeless, they cease to act. Climate alarmists trying to scare people into action with improbable outcomes, I feel, are being counter productive in this regard. But the damage is already done. More alarmism (which is almost guaranteed) will be even more counter productive where people will just tune out.
    • breakyerself 7y ago
      I find it hard to believe the real damage is from alarmism and not denialism and luke warmerism
    • bryanlarsen 7y ago
      People oversimplify to a binary. Yes, it's pretty much impossible to halt climate change at 1.5 degrees. So therefore they think we should do nothing -- why bother if it's going to happen anyway? But it's not anywhere close to binary: the more we do the less change that happens - we can't stop it from happening, but we can definitely stop it from getting worse.
    • SuoDuanDao 7y ago
      I quite agree. I'm a longtime environmentalist, and when climate change first became a major story I was all for it because CO2 emissions are an excellent proxy for pollution and resource depletion. Now I feel like what should be an integrative approach to a hairball of multiple wicked problems has been simplified to an obtuse marketing campaign, driven by the idea that if enough people agree on the scope of the problem they'll suddenly all pull in the same direction and we'll be most of the way to a solution. I hate to say it, but I feel that climate change has become a distraction from doing real and necessary environmental work.
• refurb 7y ago
  Wow. That was a remarkably balanced article on climate change.
  • malpighien 7y ago
    Is it, he constantly mixes aspect of climate change that are unrelated to each other and claims they are the same to say that concerns about the long term effect of climate change are overblown.
  • Lutger 7y ago
    Not really, its full of mistakes and half truths. I'll try to post some after I'm on a proper machine.
  • ncmncm 7y ago
    Sarcasm should be labeled.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• chunkyslink 7y ago
  The climate change issue is not isolated. It is intrinsically linked with ecocide, species extinction and the poisoning of all natural environments. The slide into an apocalyptic state will be caused by all of these together. So viewing it in a silo is dangerous and incorrect. IMO.
  • Lendal 7y ago
    What's dangerous about a person focusing on a single issue? I focus my attention on single issues all the time. That's how I get things done and collect a salary. It's not possible for someone to hold all the myriad problems of the world in their head at once and keep them all in perfect balance, advocating for each issue according to its scientific importance. It's just not possible. For starters, the brain processes language in serial, not parallel. For that reason alone, focus on one thing at a time is necessary. So the author is wrong. Who is this guy to say that people shouldn't bring attention to any one issue simply because there are other issues which are also important? That seems to be the gist of this article.
  • breakyerself 7y ago
    I agree. There is a lot of risk in the coming decades ecologically and climate change is just one component of that. There is also ocean acidification, topsoil depletion, habitat destruction, oxygen reduction in the oceans, collateral damage from pesticide and fertilizer use, etc. We are putting harmful pressure on the natural world from every conceivable direction.
• davidw 7y ago
  Just saw this today, which is extremely relevant in the US: https://www.sightline.org/2019/11/27/end-apartment-bans-to-save-the-planet-un-climate-report-says/ https://www.sightline.org/2019/11/27/end-apartment-bans-to-s...
• adrianN 7y ago
  IMHO we don't understand enough about ecology to say what will happen if global temperatures change as rapidly as they're forecast to change. It never happened before on such a short timescale, afaik. For example many humans rely on fishing for a large part of their protein, but marine ecosystems are already collapsing from overfishing. What will happen if climate change also negatively affect them? Insects are also rapidly declining everywhere, how sure are we about their importance for our food supply?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• BurningFrog 7y ago
  Some say exaggerated alarmism is justified because people need to be scared to act. But I wonder how many suicides it provokes :(
  • Jamwinner 7y ago
    It provokes more distrust when people arent fooled, and it harms your case with the very people you seek to convince. It seems right to you, because it is preaching to the choir. But skeptics see the huge amount of (well intentioned) misinformation and make judgements, right or wrong.
  • 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
    Yes, some say that lying to achieve their goals is good. Fuck that, especially when it comes to trying to shift society.
  • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    I’m not sure about suicides. But just think of how much people are willing to lock out any information once they are set on a specific idea. IMO that’s the only way the gloom and doomers are effective; to radicalize their base.
• DocSavage 7y ago
  From the article: All of this helps explain why IPCC anticipates climate change will have a modest impact on economic growth. By 2100, IPCC projects the global economy will be 300 to 500% larger than it is today. Both IPCC and the Nobel-winning Yale economist, William Nordhaus, predict that warming of 2.5°C and 4°C would reduce gross domestic product (GDP) by 2% and 5% over that same period. Question: Aside from what I assume are massive error bars on projecting economic growth due to scientific models 80 years in the future, I read that most of the models do not assume climate change impacts actual growth and therefore is exempt from compounding. On the other hand they use compounding to extrapolate growth. It seems odd that escalating climate damages as outlined in the reports would not impose a sizable tax. Anyone with more detailed knowledge of long-term economic projections care to comment on this?
  • js8 7y ago
    See also this response to Nordhaus claims by Steve Keen: https://theconversation.com/4-c-of-global-warming-is-optimal-even-nobel-prize-winners-are-getting-things-catastrophically-wrong-125802 https://theconversation.com/4-c-of-global-warming-is-optimal...
  • ncmncm 7y ago
    All these compounding projections assume business-as-usual. What will be the effect of global thermonuclear war on projections? How about megadeaths from famine? Or global transition to fascism in response to mass migration? What about all the frozen methane at the poles thawing, and the permafrost decaying, causing a runaway vicious cycle? All of these things make the sedate trend predictions nonsense, so all are routinely discounted as part of the projection. But in sum the risks of these events make the probability of the projection's accuracy nil.
• bsenftner 7y ago
  Clear as daylight, journalism is in crisis. This article is primarily about how our climate change reporting is exaggerated to dangerous levels. I'd go further and say journalism's purpose to society is in danger of everyone loosing faith in our ability to honestly self report. If we don't believe the news, everyone is operating on an unknown assessment of any given situation. Given the necessity to "fill in the blanks" when you don't trust reporting, people quickly exaggerate themselves away from reality. As respect and accuracy of news reporting drops, we all become blind. Seems like a very difficult nose dive to pull out of: our news media is how society talks to itself, that is in crisis.
  • ghostbrainalpha 7y ago
    And the "journalism in crisis" article is posted by an unpaid contributor, disguised as legitimate reporting, and the author who is basically a lobbyist for the nuclear industry doesn't have to disclose their motives for writing the article.
• tyre 7y ago
  The threats of climate change are not that some biblical flood rises up to swallow humanity. The danger of climate change is that incremental sea level rise would put tens of millions of people underwater. Could they move? Absolutely. And we clearly have enough land to move people around, both globally and in many countries. The danger is whether we can make those migrations without civil unrest. What land is taken for them to move to? What about Vietnam, where most of the country is projected to be underwater by 2050? We’re going to just move millions of Vietnamese and no one is going to be upset? If we look today at the relatively tiny migration of people into the United States and Europe, we can see how quickly voters swing far right as The Other settles in. The trickle down of these effects is tremendous.
  • Cthulhu_ 7y ago
    Not to mention famine; it's not so much natural disasters that'll kill a lot of people (after all, we're pretty good at moving out of the way, building shelters / dikes, etc), but it's going to be failed crops. This is already happening, and has happend in the past - all it takes is one hot / dry summer for a country and millions of people to be at risk. Climate change means the chance of a hot / dry summer (or long / cold winter) will increase. Sure, at the time it seems like a fluke, and sure especially the more wealthy countries will be able to survive well enough, but at the same time it will cost lives. The poorest and disadvantaged will likely be the first to go, those that can't afford the gradually increasing prices of food. And the problem will become bigger as the climate change becomes more widespread. We can (as a collective) survive a year of famine well enough, but what if crops fail two or three years in a row?
    • marcyb5st 7y ago
      Agreed. Some studies link climate change as the trigger of famine/conflicts that lead to the Arab Springs [1]. Those events also generated few millions refugees and, here in Europe, we are already unable to act. I can see that when this phenomenon will get 100s or 1000s time more severe wars will be fought for securing food/land (IMHO likely it will happen in south-east Asia at some point [2]). [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378018301596?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937801... [2] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/8/e1603322 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/8/e1603322
• DennisP 7y ago
  Scientists are not saying we'll all die in 12 years. What they are saying is that if we're not rapidly reducing emissions by then, we're unlikely to avoid a tipping point where the planet is emitting its own greenhouse gases, and will take things several degrees further with no more help from us. A great book on the effects of climate change is Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on climate change and summarized them, with extensive references. It was published in 2007 but from what I've seen it's holding up well. Four degrees is grim; it won't make us go extinct but it's a horrible mess nonetheless. One claim in the article was that food production will be fine. In fact, there are agricultural areas feeding hundreds of millions of people which are dependent on glacier melt during dry seasons. Those glaciers are going away. Another issue is that prime areas for growing grain are moving towards the poles; the new "best" areas are smaller and have poorer soil. We're also losing topsoil, from a combination of droughts with occasional torrential rainfalls. I can't think of any other problem that people think is fine because it's not bad enough to make us go extinct. "Bad healthcare system? Well, it won't wipe us all out, we're fine." And we're experiencing effects of climate change already, e.g. with the forest fires in California.
  • esarbe 7y ago
    Why the downvotes? Deny much?
    • Supermancho 7y ago
      The strawmaning is obvious. ie "scientists say".
      • DennisP 7y ago
        I didn't think it was necessary to google up a source for something so widely reported, but ok. I did oversimplify a bit, and corrected that in the comment above. Here's an article on the 12-year limit: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082019/12-years-climate-change-explained-ipcc-science-solutions https://insideclimatenews.org/news/27082019/12-years-climate... And here's some information on the "tipping point" being somewhere between +1.5C and +2C: https://climatenexus.org/international/ipcc/ipcc-1-5c-report-planet-nearing-tipping-point/ https://climatenexus.org/international/ipcc/ipcc-1-5c-report... Right now we're around +1C, though we hit +1.2C in 2016: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/2016_hottest_year_on_record_wmo_12_degrees_c https://e360.yale.edu/digest/2016_hottest_year_on_record_wmo...
• Vinnl 7y ago
  > What about sea level rise? IPCC estimates sea level could rise two feet (0.6 meters) by 2100. Does that sound apocalyptic or even “unmanageable”? It's not really the thought that sea levels might rise that makes it feel apocalyptic; it's the fear that the change becomes irreversible. We've always been told that if temperatures rise too much (possibly from 2 degrees onwards), the effect will become self-enforcing: as the ice caps melt, less heat is reflected back into space, which will cause temperatures to rise, which causes more ice caps to melt, etc. I have no idea about the validity of those fears, but it would be nice if the article addressed it. (And w.r.t. the Netherlands adapting to sea levels 400 years ago... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea_flood_of_1953)
• cfv 7y ago
  Forbes needs a swift reminder that you cannot breathe money.
• throwaway5752 7y ago
  The author Shellenberger is a somewhat controversial figure and is launching a political career. I don't have time to write more but people should read about him and make up their own minds for what it means when reading his oped.
• xwowsersx 7y ago
  Wow. That clip of Andrew Neil interviewing Extinction Rebellion is quite telling https://youtu.be/pO1TTcETyuU https://youtu.be/pO1TTcETyuU
• empath75 7y ago
  I want you all to read this article he wrote on wind energy and tell me seriously that he is arguing in good faith: https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/26/why-wind-turbines-threaten-endangered-species-with-extinction/#6517461f64b4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/26...
  • 6gvONxR4sf7o 7y ago
    Okay, I read it. I think he is arguing in good faith. Why don't you?
  • SmirkingRevenge 7y ago
    I'm not terribly informed on research about wind farms and the damage they may - or may not - do to birds, bats and insects, so its not really obvious to me here what is clearly bad faith, in that article.
  • abvdasker 7y ago
    Another comment points out that he basically works for the US nuclear lobby (not that I think there's anything wrong with Nuclear). It's pretty clear reading this that he has a hidden agenda.
  • johnmorrison 7y ago
    Wind energy is not a good idea, I think Mike is arguing in good faith here and absolutely right. Nuclear, solar, hydro, even natural gas are all better solutions in the ways that matter. Wind is the least reliable resource of out of them all and we seriously shouldn't be generating our energy from intermolecular kinetic interactions, that is the lowest level of density. There's a reason the whole world adopted fossil fuels - the breaking of chemical bonds allowed us to harness unprecedented amounts of power. Not to mention wind turbines, as the industry stands right now, rely on an increasingly ridiculous amount of sulfur hexafluoride being placed in effective GHG landmines, posing an unknown threat to global temperatures. They also aren't exactly safe to humans. People die trying to fix burning wind turbines. The physics are bad, the economics are bad, and the tech is bad. We really don't need wind.
• Akababa 7y ago
  I feel like posting this on HN is preaching to the choir. Anyone with an ounce of critical thinking skills is not going to take claims that "the world is ending" at face value, nor dismiss evidence of climate change. On the other hand, there will always be incentives for politicians and journalists to sensationalize issues. It's just that HN isn't their target audience.
• robomartin 7y ago
  EDIT 2: On top because it belongs here. I always find it really disconcerting when something like this is down-voted on HN rather than discussed at the appropriate intellectual level. To me this is an indication of the deep-rooted brainwashing that has permeated this issue. People simply refuse to think. I have had this discussion with PhD level researchers in the field. Not one of them over the last, say, ten years, was able to refute the super-simple science and logic of this argument. In fact, what most will admit to me in private is that this conclusion would make grants evaporate, and so nobody is talking about it. It's far easier to make money and secure grants if you stick with the bullshit that's floating out there. <end edit> What frustrates me the most about the climate change mess is that it is now a religion, on both sides of the argument. The truth isn’t being covered by anyone because they are all making money or gaining votes with the nonsense. First truth: We can’t do a thing about climate change. Nothing will “fix” it. This is very easy to understand. Go dig-up the last 800,000 years in atmospheric CO2 data from ice core samples. Curve fit lines to the large up and down cycles of approximately 100 ppm. Measure the down slopes in years per 100 ppm. The numbers you’ll get are in the range of 25,000 to 75,000 years for a 100 ppm drop. Let’s call it 50,000 average. Now add a graph of total human population to this 800,000 year chart. Identify the period when humanity represented less than 1% of current world population, say, 70 million or less. Calculate the down slope during that period. Still about 50,000 years for a 100 ppm drop. Conclusion: If 99% of humanity and all of our technology evaporated from this planet next Monday, it would take in the range of 50,000 years for a 100 ppm drop in atmospheric CO2 concentration. In other words, the rate of change is in the tens of thousands of years per 100 ppm. We cannot “fix” this even if we all left earth. Anyone proposing a solution has to explain how this would be better than leaving the planet. Example claim: No more planes, trains, autos or motorcycles to fix climate change in 50 years. Ridiculous. This claims a ONE THOUSAND FOLD improvement on the rate of change corresponding to all of humanity leaving the planet. That’s preposterous. In fact, this will do nothing and might even make things worse. If you claim a “fix” you have to explain how it will perform a thousand times better than if seven billion people committed mass suicide next Monday. We desperately need to start talking about reality and leave fantasy behind. Climate change is real, and we are not going to fix it. EDIT: Here's a link to the ice core sample atmospheric CO2 data. I urge you to go through the steps I listed above and engage in some critical thinking before commenting or down-voting this comment. If you disagree, explain why and how we can do a thousand times better than if humanity left the planet. https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical.jpg https://cdiac.ess-dive.lbl.gov/images/air_bubbles_historical...
• allovernow 7y ago
  >But in saying so, the XR spokesperson had grossly misrepresented the science. “There is robust evidence of disasters displacing people worldwide,” notes IPCC, “but limited evidence that climate change or sea-level rise is the direct cause” This has been bothering me a lot lately, journalists/reporters are running wild, blaming all kinds of droughts, wildfires, and migrations on climate change, particularly on NPR, but the truth is that these claims are no more valid than deniers claiming unusual snowfall to be evidence against climate change. Only long term, aggregate statistical data is a valid proxy for the effects of climate change - one cannot cherry pick events for a phenomenon which really has relatively tiny observable features on local time and space scales.
  • js8 7y ago
    IPCC itself is conservative, but IMHO there have been scientific studies establishing the link. Of course you cannot attribute a single event to it, but a single event can still serve as a warning.
  • jmull 7y ago
    > Only long term, aggregate statistical data is a valid proxy for the effects of climate change It's not like it's hard to find. You can quibble about how certain media outlets or stories make the point, but the overall point is both true and important: climate change is real.
    • allovernow 7y ago
      > but the overall point is both true and important: climate change is real. That doesn't excuse bad reporting, which is my point.
  • SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    Yes. The gloom and doomers hurt “the cause”, some of us have been saying that this for years. There are many in this thread. And YES, it’s crazy frustrating when “weather is not climate - unless I’m trying to prove climate change”. Many religious believers who argue they’re interested in “the science” are just as stubborn and bull headed as the deniers. But, anyone who questions whether a global tax designed to keep a specific group in power and really just call for global socialism is the only solution is automatically “a denier”, so there is that too. I’m with you, I find the die hards on the topic to be highly ineffective in convincing me of their point let alone actual skeptics.
• squidsurfer 7y ago
  The problem is the false religion of climate worship. Even prominent democrats are letting the cat out of the bag and admitting it. Climate for these folks is the vehicle that will let them bring their greater vision of socialist change to America. Take a look at the green new deal - much of its focus was on reshaping the economy in a socialist direction. https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/12/democratic-sen-mazie-hirono-believe-in-climate-change-as-though-its-a-religion/ https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/12/democratic-sen-mazie-hi...
  • throwawaysea 7y ago
    I agree. There is a disturbing abuse of actual issues, primarily from the progressive far-left, where words like 'justice' are used in a vague manner to tie topics like climate change to racism, alleged economic oppression, and other unrelated topics. This is true of the Justice Democrats' platform (the PAC behind AOC, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, etc.), as well as fringe groups like Extinction Rebellion. For example see Green New Deal details, which pushes for "justice" and equity (equality of outcome) and other policies unrelated to climate change, at https://www.factcheck.org/2019/02/the-facts-on-the-green-new-deal/ https://www.factcheck.org/2019/02/the-facts-on-the-green-new...: > Promote justice and equity by stopping current, preventing future, and repairing historic oppression of indigenous peoples, communities of color, migrant communities... For another example see https://extinctionrebellion.us/demands-principles https://extinctionrebellion.us/demands-principles, which asks for reparations: > We demand a just transition that prioritizes the most vulnerable people and indigenous sovereignty; establishes reparations and remediation led by and for Black people, Indigenous people, ... As such, to me it does seem like these issues are being taken over and misappropriated as carriers for unrelated policies, in order to build a deceptive coalition or false consensus on the more controversial points.
• projektfu 7y ago
  "I'm passionate about climate change." -- every person who is not a conspiracy theorist but wants to kick the can down the road.
• request_id 7y ago
  https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/853/exposing-misinformation-michael-shellenberger-and-environmental-progress https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/853/exposi...
• vpribish 7y ago
  Forbes is worthless, post from another source
• jellicle 7y ago
  The "apocalyptic claims" about climate change are actually consensus minimums from large numbers of climate scientists. Headlines should generally read something like this: "Thousands of climate scientists come together and agree that the minimum amount of climate change we can expect is XXXXXX" That's what consensus means, of course. The minimum that everyone agrees on is what is published. If you look at, say, median predictions of the group, it will probably be much worse than these IPCC reports describe (and indeed, the IPCC reports get much worse with each new edition as even the climate sluggards can no longer deny the weight of incoming evidence). That should put the overall problem into very stark relief.
• jorblumesea 7y ago
  The issue is many of those arguing against the severity of climate change are generally bad faith actors. I think we can all agree the world will not end, but the ramifications are huge.
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    Yeah, there are a few comments in this thread that reek of bad faith acting. How do we objectively examine the physics and chemistry of our planet's heat and atmosphere when we have GOP denialists and shills sharking around in all of society's public squares? On the one hand, we have concerned, career-scientists who want to help animals and plants and their home planet; on the other hand, we seem to have those looking to make a buck or be contrarian or take denialist views because that's what the GOP does, and people seem to take all the views of their side these days.
• rihegher 7y ago
  Yes they are wrong but what about apocalyptic claims about ressources depletion?
• ptah 7y ago
  nitpicking like this is a waste of time
• halfjoking 7y ago
  There are plausible scenarios where billions can die in less than 10 years: http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/extinction.html That's why we need geoengineering solutions right now. But there's no funding to test geoengineering solutions because the IPCC is so conservative and has a long track record of always underestimating the rate of climate change. Like the article says IPCC claims that major changes are years away. They've been consistently wrong every 5 years, and the speed at which their predictions diverge from reality is accelerating. If we put real effort in limiting carbon emissions and investigating geoengineering there are almost no downsides... on the other hand if the IPCC is wrong we're all dead. Which option would you rather have?
  • GVIrish 7y ago
    Yes we really need to invest heavily in exploring geoengineering solutions while we still have time. Those solutions may have major trade offs, but the sooner we have an idea of what those are, the better. But I think the reality is that we're going to need geoengineering to either reverse or delay off some of the worst effects of climate changes. Meanwhile we still need to reduce emissions as much as we can.
• major505 7y ago
  Is good to read some common sense. It`s a rare ting to see these days.
• braindead_in 7y ago
  The author seems to approach climate science as exact science. It is not. Predictions could be just way off the mark. There might be just a catastrophic failure and the food chain might collapse. The 6% drop in crop yields might just become a 50% drop. Climate scientists don't know shit. If they knew, they would be proposing solutions.
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    Climate scientists do know many things, the problem is it's hard to accurately quantify the rate at which changes will occur, which is so important to us because we only have a limited amount of time to change our energy system. Look at the IEA for example, they attempted to model the energy mix going forward and have been wrong about how quickly renewables would be adopted...basically every single year, they get it wrong. It's just very very hard to forecast and predict, but you're throwing out the baby with the bathwater saying they "don't know shit." And they ARE proposing solutions by the barrelfull, the problem is politicians and many corporations simply don't listen and don't act.
• throwawaysea 7y ago
  Cliff Mass, Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington, recently wrote a similar blog post about climate alarmism: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-global-warming-existential-threat.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-global-warming-exi... > Global warming is a real issue and we are going to slowly warm our planet, resulting in substantial impacts (like less snowpack in the Cascades, increased river flooding in November, drier conditions in the subtropics, loss of Arctic sea ice). But the world will be a much richer place in 2100 and mankind will find ways to adapt to many of the changes. And there is a good chance we will develop the technologies to reverse the increasing trend in greenhouse gases and eventually bring CO2 concentrations down to previous levels. > Global warming does not offer an existential threat to mankind, and politicians and decision makers only undermine their credibility and make effective action less likely by their hype and exaggeration. And their unfounded claims of future catastrophe prevents broad national consensus and hurts vulnerable people who are made anxious and fearful. And just as bad, all this end of the world talk results in folks turning away from the issue, both out of fear and from intuition that a lot of hype is going on. He also wrote a VERY disturbing post about how the university has tried to censor him and retaliate against him because he would not kowtow to the pressures of student and faculty activists, who are polluting universities with their ideological fervor. I highly recommend that anyone interested in protecting scholarly attitudes, academic rigor, and neutrality give this a read: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-university-of-washington-should-not.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-university-of-was...
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    Someone who calls it global warming is a bit behind the times, and that's typically how the GOP describes it. Sure, if certain areas just got a little warmer, it'd be easy to adapt to. The problem is CLIMATE change, we rely on our climate for crops, fish, lack of natural disasters, lack of drought, lack of polar vortex, and on and on. Unfortunately, I could believe a university atmosphere promotes ideological fervor and suppresses neutrality in this cancel-culture, overly PC society. But we really do need to stop using the term "global warming" in a serious way, this is bad science.
• beardedman 7y ago
  Should read: Why Apocalyptic Claims About Anything Are Wrong
• apocalypstyx 7y ago
  Personal summation: Reference the IPCC as if it were fact, when the general consensus seems to be much of it is too conservative. >Apocalyptic statements like these have real-world impacts. In September, a group of British psychologists said children are increasingly suffering from anxiety from the frightening discourse around climate change. One day they're also going to find out they're going to die (unless their rich enough for cryonics, storage tanks that will be incinerated when this planet is engulfed by its sun, (or if they Jameson Satellite themselves, they can look forward to waiting to be evaporated by cosmic dust (or in the really long term, the decay of all the matter in the universe, or the big crunch (but of course the majority of scientists don't absolutely agree on any of that, so there's still hope)))) >And last week, an XR co-founder said a genocide like the Holocaust was “happening again, on a far greater scale, and in plain sight” We don't need climate change for this, they're already going on in Africa and South America and China, so we're good in that department no matter what. >There is good evidence that the catastrophist framing of climate change is self-defeating because it alienates and polarizes many people. The opposite of polarization is uniformity. We could be uniform changing or staying the same, but since we're already here, might a well save the energy. Stay calm and carry on. >First, no credible scientific body has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species. Oh. >It’s not like climate doesn’t matter. It’s that climate change is outweighed by other factors. Earlier this year, researchers found that climate “has affected organized armed conflict within countries. However, other drivers, such as low socioeconomic development and low capabilities of the state, are judged to be substantially more influential.” This really seems like an isolated version of climate change, it somehow only effects the climate and nothing else. (Cue reminder of Australian politician talking about leaking oil tanker having been 'towed out the the environment'.) Also, give me an economy long enough and things'll move. >That last part may be true, but it’s also true that economic development has made us less vulnerable, which is why there was a 99.7% decline in the death toll from natural disasters since its peak in 1931. More capitalism completely solves the problems that capitalism created, you just aren't using enough (also it's not pure enough). (Also it's the most powerful force humans have ever created (except we didn't create it because it's 'natural') and it can and can't change the world. Invincible when you need it to be, a drop in the bucket when you need it to be (and, again, with more of it we can fix everything [citation needed].)) >Wheat yields increased 100 to 300% around the world since the 1960s, while a study of 30 models found that yields would decline by 6% for every one degree Celsius increase in temperature. What about soil microbes, worms, sourcing the components of the fertilizers that explicitly made that growth possible? So, yes, temperature alone won't do much. And to pull a Fox news talking point: green houses are hot, plants love green houses, so growing things will be better than ever. >Rates of future yield growth depend far more on whether poor nations get access to tractors, irrigation, and fertilizer than on climate change, says FAO. The more countries and people who do things exactly as we do (aka 'raised out of poverty[1]') the better. Our way of life if the not only the rightest but the right and this must be reproduced across all the corners of the universe (Bezos and Musk will take it to mars and beyond). [1] in the vein of this article: just to be clear: I'm not pro poverty. >One of the reasons I work on climate change is because I worry about the impact it could have on endangered species. >As tragic as animal extinctions are, they do not threaten human civilization. The world is like a zoo, all of these things are only there for our amusement, to look cute. >Should we worry about koalas? Absolutely! Eh, stinky, perpetually high, walking chlamydia infestations, not cute. Recommend reject from planet Earth. (See also mosquitoes.) >“It doesn’t sound like it makes sense. Coal is terrible for carbon. But it’s by burning a lot of coal that they make themselves wealthier, and by making themselves wealthier they have fewer children, and you don’t have as many people burning carbon, you might be better off in 2070.” Didn't I already mention something about further the spread of a particular set of ideological dispositions? I think so. One might get the idea that, at their core(s), the Republican and Democratic both fundamentally predicated on defending an ideology that shall remain nameless, and that their main disagreement seems to be in regards to how to do that. >Emanuel and Wigley say the extreme rhetoric is making political agreement on climate change harder. All we have to do realize we need a away to talk about climate change while the people making money of the situations that have led to it continue to do so and everyone gets what they want. (In fact, even better, they should make more money off climate change. They can exercise Scrooge McDuck style by swimming through the tunnels of their New Zealand bunkers. (After all, prepper fantasy shouldn't be something only the lower classes get to access.)) >Happily, there is a plenty of middle ground between climate apocalypse and climate denial. The world isn't ending, you aren't dying. Won't someone please think of the children? --- In the future (since we now know there's going to be one, thank the god of the market) maybe I should avoid reading Forbes before morning coffee-substitute (which the god of the market also grants me, so thank you). [Addendum] Looking back on growing up in a semi-apocalyptic religious environment, I can't ever remember anyone being worried about convincing us that the world wasn't going to end. Maybe that says something. Maybe Not.
• tempsy 7y ago
  Who said the world is ending in 10 years? IIRC this timeline refers to the number of years we have to curb C02 emissions below a certain threshold to give us a 50/50 chance of reducing a level of warming that would be detrimental to humanity.
• jmull 7y ago
  Ah, the modern approach to climate change denial: OK, climate change is real and caused by people [ya think?], but it's more of a problem of koalas and gorillas and not a big problem for people. And what we really need to do is burn more coal. Complete BS. E.g. the rationale of burning coal is that if India burns more coal they'll become wealthier faster and that will push the birthrate down, which will result in fewer people using less energy. That obviously makes no sense since wealthier nations have much higher per-capita carbon emissions which far more than offsets lower population growth. E.g. the US has ~8x the per-capita carbon emissions of India. (Now a constant change in the rate of population growth will overcome that difference in enough time -- but there's no reason to expect the difference to be constant. In fact, no exponential phenomenon holds a constant rate of growth for long since it must soon outstrip the environment that allows it.) The only reason an intelligent person would make such a easily refutable untrue claim is because it's in their personal self interests to do so... It's a con and they are making money. (It's not too hard to guess where the money might be coming from, BTW) Of course these guys love the environmentalist lunatic fringe. They are easy to dislike and easy to argue against. And as long as you can keep the focus on them you don't have to address real objects. The idea that climate change will have a minor impact on GDP is also terribly wrong. The essential dynamic of the climate change crisis is that we are "borrowing from the future" -- we're emitting a lot of carbon now for short term gain vs costs that won't come due for the long term. But the GDP projections are based on the effect of climate change on our GDP in the recent past. It's like taking cash advances on a 40% no-minimum payment credit card and saying: "this won't screw up my financial future, look at how much money I've had in my pocket over the last week... At this rate, I'll always have money in my pocket." But the reality is the bill is going to come due.
  • titzer 7y ago
    > E.g. the US has ~8x the per-capita carbon emissions of India. Thank you for pointing out the very obvious elephant in the room: both China and India, nearly 3 billion people, cannot live like the United States, but they are on a trajectory to do so, and we in the west have no moral high ground to tell them no. This is the #1 reason we are totally hosed in the long run.
• LifeLiverTransp 7y ago
  What i do not get is, why we do not speed the environmental adaption up.. Just take a one door open greenhouse, and put climatzone migration plants in it- if the climate change never comes, they never venture outside. If it comes, they whole ecosystem can expand from that little cell.
• Xixi 7y ago
  After reading Merchants of Doubt, I always read any article about the environment with a pinch of salt. Going through the author list of articles published on Forbes: he definitely has a clear pro-nuclear bias, and a strong anti-renewable bias. Digging further, his organization, Environmental Progress, is indeed largely considered to be little more than a pro-nuclear lobby group. Michael Shellenberger himself is largely perceived as a nuclear salesman. At a personal level I used to be rather pro-nuclear, but certainly not anti-renewable. In any case, I think it can be helpful for the readers to have a little bit of background when reading such articles.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • jacknews 7y ago
    Indeed, Shill-enberger's articles attack a straw man. No-one is reasonably claiming the world will end due to climate change, or even that climate change is directly causing fires etc. But it is helping alter habitats and will over time have quite large impacts on habitat and diversity, and particularly the water cycle, to which humans and agriculture are particularly sensitive. And we are at a point where it could get quite out of control, with positive feedback loops kicking in (permafrost, clathrates, etc), unless we take serious action now. Simply counting the (human) economic impact of climate change seriously ducks our moral responsibility to take care of the planet.
  • slantaclaus 7y ago
    His background doesn’t qualify him to speak on environmental issues anyway, in my opinion. No more than any well read layman anyway. Shellenberger was raised in Greeley, Colorado and attended college at Earlham College, a Quaker school in Richmond, Indiana.[79][80] He went on to receive a master's degree in Cultural Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
• jillesvangurp 7y ago
  There's only two questions you should answer regarding risk assessments: - how certain are you that you are right? 100% is not credible answer for anyone in this debate. - can you afford being wrong? The difference between the two sides here is that of one the answer to the second question is yes and for the other one it's no. If you are a climate change skeptic you might lean to being probably or very probably right about that but not 100%. The consequence of not acting because of that if you are wrong is that we mess up the planet. Vice versa, the risk is much lower and we are looking at maybe doing things at a bit extra cost that don't do long term harm.
  • GVIrish 7y ago
    That's how I try to frame things too. We have basically four possibilities. -We do nothing about climate change -> Climate change is actually not a problem. No money wasted -We do nothing about climate change -> Climate change is real and devastates civilization -We address climate change and switch to renewables -> Climate change is actually not a problem and we wasted money/resources -We address climate change and switch to renewables -> Climate change is real and we avert disaster through our action In my mind, even if expend the effort to switch to a more sustainable economy and somehow climate change was overblown, that's not a terrible outcome. We'll have cleaner air, less waste, and won't have to worry about oil so much. But if we don't make the switch and we're wrong, it is absolutely ruinous for the future of humanity. It's like when someone gets bitten by a possibly rabid animal. Yeah, the vaccine shots are painful and it would suck if you took them when they weren't necessary. But if you were actually bitten by a rabid animal and don't get the shots you will die.
• socialdemocrat 7y ago
  It is not that Michael Shellenberger is wrong, he is mostly right and I also like to point out to people that we are not facing extinction. However I have a major issue about how he goes about presenting this message. He is unnecessarily provocative and dismissive in a way where he ends up being a useful tool for climate deniers. While his nuclear power advocacy is absolutely a relevant alternative to discuss, he spends so much energy attacking renewable energy solutions such as wind and solar that all he really ends up doing is providing ammunition for climate deniers. Far too many of the nuclear fans don't actually believe in climate change. They push nuclear as a way to dismiss efforts to introduce wind and solar power. Michael Shellenberger simply cannot read his audience. And civilization collapse is absolutely possible. The way he reasons about numbers is wrong. It is the equivalent of arguing that the 1929 crash was irrelevant because hey were were richer afterwards than in 1900 and we managed just find back then. He thinks just in terms of absolute numbers, when relative change is usually MORE important. If you suddenly get a 50% cut in your income from one year to another that will have huge impact on your family. It makes no sense to argue that 10 years ago you made 50% less and managed just fine. Back then you had adapted your lifestyle to those costs. Now you are paying for a bigger house, car, college for your kids etc. A sudden 50% drop in income is a big hit to adjust to. Germans in the 1930s were much better off than poor people in Africa. Yet the decline in income they experience radicalized the population and led to the rise of Hitler. France on the eve of the French revolution was richer than in classical times. But crop harvest failures due to climate change radicalized the country and led to the French revolution. This is the danger of climate change. Sudden changes in living conditions in various countries can tip the scales and spark revolutions.
  • DennisP 7y ago
    I agree, just want to mention that a fair number of actual climate scientists are also fans of nuclear. One example is James Hansen, who spent a chapter advocating advanced nuclear in Storms of My Grandchildren.
  • GVIrish 7y ago
    > It is not that Michael Shellenberger is wrong, he is mostly right and I also like to point out to people that we are not facing extinction. I think he is wrong on this in that if we don't address climate change, we are on the road to extinction. It won't happen in our lifetimes but on a timescale of hundreds of years or a few thousand it may indeed happen. The CO2 released in the atmosphere can stay there for thousands of years, and once we cross certain temperature thresholds there are feedback loops that will make things hotter still. We're talking about 2 degrees C by the year 2100, but what about 2200, 2300, 2500? If we don't get things under control, at some point modern civilization is going to start breaking down, and at that point carbon sequestration or geoengineering measures that could fix things, simply won't be possible. After that point, humanity would just be a passenger on a ride to a planet inhospitable for human life. > And civilization collapse is absolutely possible. The way he reasons about numbers is wrong. It is the equivalent of arguing that the 1929 crash was irrelevant because hey were were richer afterwards than in 1900 and we managed just find back then. > He thinks just in terms of absolute numbers, when relative change is usually MORE important. If you suddenly get a 50% cut in your income from one year to another that will have huge impact on your family. It makes no sense to argue that 10 years ago you made 50% less and managed just fine. Absolutely. I think he fails to account for the fact that climate change makes it much more likely that parts of the world will experience devastating collapses that will be difficult, if not impossible to recover from. There are parts of the world now that are unstable and poor, what's going to happen to them when wide scale weather disasters and resource shortages hit entire regions?
• bastardchild 7y ago
  I see a lot of claims in there that sound reasonable, but with others I just don't know how to take them. We won't have a problem with growing crops because we don't have now? That's a nice idea you got there, but we fail at distributing food as needed right now. Why would we get any better at it when growing it as before is getting harder? I'm also not sure where these estimates of growing food supply are coming from. I mean, maybe? But certainly not by growing the same kind of crops in the same regions as now, cause at least in central Europe we are feeling the issues with that already. The last summers and falls just grew continuously worse with last year being an utter disaster. If we don't want to continue artificially watering everything, I guess we have to set for crops that need less water and more sun.
• perfunctory 7y ago
  > no credible scientific body has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization WWII didn't lead to the collapse of civilisation either. I wouldn't envy anyone who lived through it though.
• jokoon 7y ago
  I'm not sure climate change would not be felt by billions. Food prices, drought and heatwaves are big threats.
• rsclient 7y ago
  Hey -- weirdly, the "koalas may go extinct" comment is being made by Forbes magazine itself! Here's the chain: The current article is by Michael Shellenberger. It references a tweet by Bill McKibben. Bill's tweet directly quotes a Forbes article by Forbes writer Trevor Nace.
• rebuilder 7y ago
  Here's the scenario that gives me the willies: Wet bulb temperatures in South Asia and the Persian Gulf reach dangerous or outright fatal levels. Depending on the location, two degrees of warming is enough. This alone results in the displacement of hundreds of millions of people. That it would happen in India is very worrying because of the tensions with Pakistan, and the danger of nuclear war between the two states. As for the Gulf, well, that area is not exactly stable even today. So what happens if several hundred million people relocate, while at the same time different lower-key consequences of climate change such as rising sea levels, increasing storm damage and the economic upheaval of having to give up fossil fuels contribute to instability and international tensions? Europe went nuts with the Syrian refugees we got recently, a real crisis will topple governments. Will we somehow rally and discover a co-operative spirit in ourselves, that will let us manage the various crises peacefully through treaties and diplomacy? It sure doesn't seem like that is the kind of political paradigm that's being built now. Not to put too fine a point on it, how do we avoid WW3 in the above scenario?
• AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > “It doesn’t sound like it makes sense. Coal is terrible for carbon. But it’s by burning a lot of coal that they make themselves wealthier, and by making themselves wealthier they have fewer children, and you don’t have as many people burning carbon, you might be better off in 2070.” This is craziest thing in this article. You obviously burn less carbon by switching fully to alternatives and burning no carbon at all than any reduction you could get by reducing the birth rate. Even cutting carbon emissions per person in half would do more than you could get from any plausible decline in birth rates, and an implausibly large decline in birth rates would bring its own set of very serious problems. And the fertility rate in India is now at the population replacement rate and falling. It's now below the population replacement rate in First World countries. Which is already problematic for efforts to switch to non-carbon fuels, because of the economic consequences -- a larger number of retirees per working person leaves fewer resources to spend switching to alternative fuels.
• carapace 7y ago
  (I was going to write a heartfelt cry for the Monarch butterfly. But if you can't see the horror of extinction I don't know how to make you. "We have no law to fit your crime.") One way or another, our civilization is going to change radically in the next couple of decades. We will have to make radical changes to how we grow food: https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/11/water-could-limit-our-ability-feed-world-these-9-graphics-explain-why https://www.wri.org/blog/2019/11/water-could-limit-our-abili... > There’s an anthropologist friend of mine, a guy called Steve LeBlanc–he runs the Peabody Museum in Harvard–who wrote a book once called “Constant Battles” about pre-civilized human beings and how they actually lived. Not the fantasy version, where they lived in, you know, the Garden of Eden and wore flowers in their hair, but the real ancient world where food shortages, including ones that you could die from, were a regular occasion. And his rule of thumb is “people always raid before they starve.” https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geopolitics-in-a-hotter-world-ubc-talk-transcribed-sept-2010/ https://spaswell.wordpress.com/2016/11/18/dr-gwynne-dyer-geo... > “We shouldn’t be forced to choose between lifting people out of poverty and doing something for the climate.” That's not the issue. The question before us is whether or not to rejoin Nature after our divorce or continue on the exploitative blind path and crash, hard. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_and_Thou Nature is I-Thou not I-it https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18736698 We have the technology (applied ecology) to "save" ourselves in a fun and graceful way: http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with-permaculture/ http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with... Including carbon-neutral fuel production: http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/ http://alcoholcanbeagas.com/
• peterashford 7y ago
  It's not like XR represent the scientific consensus. I really don't know why people exercise their time worrying about what groups like them say. We don't seriously worry about what your climate change denying uncle thinks about climate change so why worry about what non scientists on the other side of the debate think?