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There's no room for moderates in today's political climate. "You are either completely on board or you are against me" so the current zeitgeist goes. Essentiall

There's no room for moderates in today's political climate. "You are either completely on board or you are against me" so the current zeitgeist goes. Essentially you have to align your beliefs and talking points with /r/politics and /r/enlightenedcentrism, or you are just closeted alt right.

Jweb_Guru 7y ago
There is absolutely no point to moderation on climate, correct.
- Mirioron 7y ago
  If you want something to ever actually be done, then there absolutely is a point for moderation. If you just go along with whatever people label as "saving the climate" then you're going to be taken for a ride. People don't like being taken for a ride, thus they resist what makes their life more difficult.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    > People don't like being taken for a ride, thus they resist what makes their life more difficult. I doubt it. People don’t want to reduce consumption. People want their detached houses and front and back yards, they want their international vacations, domestic vacations, they want to drive around without thinking how much it will cost them. People want to see their children live easier lives than them, not harder. Conveniently ignoring their great great grandchildren’s lives, but there’s comfort in plausible deniability of not knowing the future.
    - mistermann 7y ago
      >> People don't like being taken for a ride, thus they resist what makes their life more difficult. > I doubt it. Are you willing to consider it as a possibility though? No doubt the remainder of what you say is true, to an unknown degree (ignore this at your own peril), but if you had god-like omniscience to simultaneously see into the minds (including the subconscious) of all people on the planet, the true reality of their beliefs and what sort of compromises they would be willing to make under certain conditions - might the material aspects play less of a role in the impasse than you and others think? Draw upon the knowledge (personal, and observations of third parties) you have about human relationships, particularly conflict. Have you noticed that sometimes people don't behave completely rationally, sometimes going so far as to even lie to themselves about why they do the things they do? Are there sometimes situations where a minor disagreement finds a way to grow into a full on battle where the original objective disagreement has faded into the background, the fight itself takes on a life of its own, and people revert to their irrational, tribal, caveman roots, seeking no particular goal other than revenge? Might there be some aspect that creeps into the political realm? If it did, what might it look like? Might it look something like irrational, dishonest & disingenuous, hate-filled discussions in social media, as opposed to good faith fact-based discussions where both parties are seeking to achieve a state of mutually beneficial compromise? Do we see any evidence of these two conversation types taking place in social media today? Jonathan Haidt is the only academic I know of that seems to have noticed this aspect of the situation (as related to political polarization, not climate change) and set his mind to studying it. Does anyone know of others?
- tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
  This type of thinking is what gives us more solar and wind farms and less nuclear plants.
cagenut 7y ago
I think you're right in a way you don't mean to be. There was room for moderates in the 90's and 00's. We have unfortunately blown our time window for a moderate response. Think of it like knowing your paper is due at the end of the semester, but not starting till a week before. You don't get to do the paper in a measured and pragmatic way anymore, you already chose not to, your only options now are a sloppy panicked rush, or failure. Yes the sloppy panicked rush may also lead to failure, but the operating margin for moderate solutions is almost entirely exhausted: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM1_figure-final.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM1... edit: yet again i'm downvoted to -2 because I dare explain the shape of the curves in plain english and then link to my source (the canonical authoritative source no less). hacker news is swarming with climate change denalists downvoters.
- pstuart 7y ago
  To carry your analogy further, it feels like we're just going to not hand the paper in and try to hide the report card so that the parents don't find out.
- iudqnolq 7y ago
  Why I think you reach the wrong conclusion, using your analogy: Say you're a week from the paper being due, and need to decide between an A thesis and a B thesis. The A thesis would be great, but you simply can't do the research necessary to prove it in a week. If you went with it your paper would be a complete failure because you'd either spend all your time on research and not have enough time to do the actual writing of the paper, or you decide to spend most of your time writing the paper but it's impossibly to make the arguments because you simply don't have the facts necessary. Instead you pick the B quality thesis, and write a workable paper arguing for it. Sure your paper would be better with a better thesis, but given your position when you started it was your best option. With climate change, if we let perfect be the enemy of the good we might end up doing nothing which is clearly worse than doing something insufficient. Badness scales (nonlinearly) with amount we reduce emissions. We want the best solution we have the ability to implement. (Figuring that out is the hard part, and I don't know enough to do that). Note: Your source is worthless in this forum. No one is going to read through hundreds of pages to figure out if they support your claim. It would be as if I wrote nothing but "You're wrong (cite the Encylcopedia Brittanica)". I'm pretty sure you're right, ironically because of reputable secondary sources I've read that summarized the report.

Jweb_Guru 7y ago

There is absolutely no point to moderation on climate, correct.

Mirioron 7y ago
If you want something to ever actually be done, then there absolutely is a point for moderation. If you just go along with whatever people label as "saving the climate" then you're going to be taken for a ride. People don't like being taken for a ride, thus they resist what makes their life more difficult.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  > People don't like being taken for a ride, thus they resist what makes their life more difficult. I doubt it. People don’t want to reduce consumption. People want their detached houses and front and back yards, they want their international vacations, domestic vacations, they want to drive around without thinking how much it will cost them. People want to see their children live easier lives than them, not harder. Conveniently ignoring their great great grandchildren’s lives, but there’s comfort in plausible deniability of not knowing the future.
  - mistermann 7y ago
    >> People don't like being taken for a ride, thus they resist what makes their life more difficult. > I doubt it. Are you willing to consider it as a possibility though? No doubt the remainder of what you say is true, to an unknown degree (ignore this at your own peril), but if you had god-like omniscience to simultaneously see into the minds (including the subconscious) of all people on the planet, the true reality of their beliefs and what sort of compromises they would be willing to make under certain conditions - might the material aspects play less of a role in the impasse than you and others think? Draw upon the knowledge (personal, and observations of third parties) you have about human relationships, particularly conflict. Have you noticed that sometimes people don't behave completely rationally, sometimes going so far as to even lie to themselves about why they do the things they do? Are there sometimes situations where a minor disagreement finds a way to grow into a full on battle where the original objective disagreement has faded into the background, the fight itself takes on a life of its own, and people revert to their irrational, tribal, caveman roots, seeking no particular goal other than revenge? Might there be some aspect that creeps into the political realm? If it did, what might it look like? Might it look something like irrational, dishonest & disingenuous, hate-filled discussions in social media, as opposed to good faith fact-based discussions where both parties are seeking to achieve a state of mutually beneficial compromise? Do we see any evidence of these two conversation types taking place in social media today? Jonathan Haidt is the only academic I know of that seems to have noticed this aspect of the situation (as related to political polarization, not climate change) and set his mind to studying it. Does anyone know of others?
tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
This type of thinking is what gives us more solar and wind farms and less nuclear plants.

cagenut 7y ago

I think you're right in a way you don't mean to be. There was room for moderates in the 90's and 00's. We have unfortunately blown our time window for a moderate response. Think of it like knowing your paper is due at the end of the semester, but not starting till a week before. You don't get to do the paper in a measured and pragmatic way anymore, you already chose not to, your only options now are a sloppy panicked rush, or failure. Yes the sloppy panicked rush may also lead to failure, but the operating margin for moderate solutions is almost entirely exhausted: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM1_figure-final.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM1... edit: yet again i'm downvoted to -2 because I dare explain the shape of the curves in plain english and then link to my source (the canonical authoritative source no less). hacker news is swarming with climate change denalists downvoters.

pstuart 7y ago
To carry your analogy further, it feels like we're just going to not hand the paper in and try to hide the report card so that the parents don't find out.
iudqnolq 7y ago
Why I think you reach the wrong conclusion, using your analogy: Say you're a week from the paper being due, and need to decide between an A thesis and a B thesis. The A thesis would be great, but you simply can't do the research necessary to prove it in a week. If you went with it your paper would be a complete failure because you'd either spend all your time on research and not have enough time to do the actual writing of the paper, or you decide to spend most of your time writing the paper but it's impossibly to make the arguments because you simply don't have the facts necessary. Instead you pick the B quality thesis, and write a workable paper arguing for it. Sure your paper would be better with a better thesis, but given your position when you started it was your best option. With climate change, if we let perfect be the enemy of the good we might end up doing nothing which is clearly worse than doing something insufficient. Badness scales (nonlinearly) with amount we reduce emissions. We want the best solution we have the ability to implement. (Figuring that out is the hard part, and I don't know enough to do that). Note: Your source is worthless in this forum. No one is going to read through hundreds of pages to figure out if they support your claim. It would be as if I wrote nothing but "You're wrong (cite the Encylcopedia Brittanica)". I'm pretty sure you're right, ironically because of reputable secondary sources I've read that summarized the report.