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still, I see no serious action being taken to tackle the climate crisis. Current governments are just putting some dates by which we’ll stop doing x or y, but i

still, I see no serious action being taken to tackle the climate crisis. Current governments are just putting some dates by which we’ll stop doing x or y, but in really almost nothing concrete is done to stop the worst scenarios.

canal-crab 5y ago
Whatever current event you're concerned about, have you looked for historical precedent? Suppose you were to discover that the same kind of event had happened in, say, the early 1900s, and/or the late 1800s, before humans had emitted any appreciable amount of CO2. Would that change your opinion about whether we're in a crisis?
- AlexAndScripts 5y ago
  Well, has it?
  - canal-crab 5y ago
    Are you asking me if heatwaves have happened before? Edit: Again, I'd love to hear some justification for this comment to be flagged. Are there any rules on this forum, or do we just get censored by anonymous people with special authorities?
- saagarjha 5y ago
  You're looking at this the wrong way: extreme weather is not a predictable, one-off event. With climate change, we would expect to hit the extremes more often, and statistically the data has been showing us moving in this direction for years. Is it a crisis? Well, it only looks like it's going to get worse from here, and it's already not looking good…
- adrianN 5y ago
  The current event I'm concerned about is the increase in average global temperatures caused by the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. To the best of my knowledge Earth has never warmed as quickly as it's currently warming and CO2 levels haven't been as high since before humans were around.
- Barrin92 5y ago
  you gotta explain the logic to me that should make anyone less concerned about climate crises just because people also used to die of them 200 years ago. We're not reinventing any phenomena because we're emitting CO2, we're just putting the foot on the gas pedal, both literally and metaphorically. Same argument occasionally crops up during the pandemic. Yes, we've had them before, but that doesn't make this one any less bad, and interacting with animals that spread zoonotic diseases any less dangerous
  - canal-crab 5y ago
    Well, if the current events tell us we're in a crisis, were we also in a crisis a century ago? Two centuries ago? Three centuries ago? We can look in history books and see the same kinds of events happening back then. If they indicate a crisis now, don't they also indicate the crisis was happening back then?
    - adrianN 5y ago
      You're arguing that it's not a big to deal to kick asteroids onto orbits intersecting with Earth's because in the past Earth also was hit by asteroids.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      No. Frequency of conditions intense enough to constitute ‘a disaster’ has gone up.
    - polotics 5y ago
      How is it that green user names always are climate-drift negationists? Should they not be red instead?
      - raverbashing 5y ago
        Tells you a lot of how they stand by their values
        5y ago
- fwsgonzo 5y ago
  Generally, those who believe in science don't look for anecdotes to form opinions from.
raverbashing 5y ago
"Nooo, but climate change was all made up by Al Gore, that's what I heard on Fox News" /s Until their house burns spontaneously due to the heat, of course This will get worse quickly, because the averages change, but the variance changes as well.
nicbou 5y ago
It's a really hard pill to swallow. It will require expenses and sacrifices far beyond those that covid required, and for far longer. I have zero hope of it happening. People won't stop driving, flying or eating meat. They won't even drive smaller cars. As I understand it, that would just be the start. Looking at how we handled the pandemic, I don't think we'll manage.
- ben_w 5y ago
  I’m a lot more optimistic. The American idea of a compact car is the British idea of a big car (judging by labelled parking spaces in Davis CA), so that’s culture or fashion, and those can shift fast. And all the big companies are shifting to electric now, so even big isn’t as important. Vat meat is starting to get on the market, and while we’ll have to wait and see if this is a iPhone moment or a Sinclair C5 moment, the prices have come down rapidly since the first attempts. Flying is going to be a hard thing to totally green, but it’s not impossible either, merely low priority. Yes, there will be those that reject everything — I’ve encountered those who think a self-driving car will take away their freedom, instead of regarding it as a chauffeur — but when the economics are against them, when they have to pay extra to be eco-unfriendly instead of paying less? History shows most people follow the money, not just for ill but also for good.
  - nicbou 5y ago
    But culture is heading the other direction in America. Cars get larger every year. Culture won't get us decent public transportation.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      You’d have to ditch low density housing to make public transport affordable. But don’t be so hasty to dismiss culture as an opportunity: Musk turned electric cars from a joke into something the rich wanted to show off with.
      - nicbou 5y ago
RandomLensman 5y ago
Most governments might be trapped because reducing emissions does not help to solve the problems people have now or in the near future from climate change. "Inflicting" hard policies on the electorate without benefits in even the medium term is tough. So governments will need to start with actions mitigating the effects climate change with at least equal effort than emission reduction. Don't see that realization happening at the moment as most policy and international discussions are about emissions. In the end, might even be that adaptation wins out over reduction in terms of effort.
lordnacho 5y ago
Because the climate crisis is missing one of the key ingredients of a proper crisis: there's never a reckoning time that forces the decision makers to the table, and forces all other things off the agenda. If there was an asteroid coming, there would be some deadline imposed by the astronomical observations. If it's a pandemic, there's a time when all the politicians have to stop thinking about Brexit and start thinking about lockdowns. In economic crises there's that Lehman moment when the government needs to decide right then and there what to do about the economy. In pure political crises, there's a vote of no confidence in the government and the politicians have to think about how to form a new one immediately. With the climate, there's just never a time when you absolutely have to do something. People have even tried saying "we have to do something by x date" but you can't manufacture a crisis point, in fact those kinds of deadlines seem to have the opposite effect to what was intended. That slowly boiling frog analogy is somehow quite appropriate. I think part of it is the nature of noise. Once you see an asteroid, you don't doubt that it's there. Government falls, you need a new one. People get sick in large numbers, better not let it grow. But if it rains a lot or gets hot, that will pass. Once it passes we're relieved and we go back to normal. Even if storms get bigger and more frequent, the day after is sunny. My last point goes back to the first: a proper crisis forces everything else out of your attention. 9/11, Lehman, Pandemic, those were all things that blocked out the news. That has never happened with the climate. When did you ever have a news day where all they talked about was climate? Where all the talking heads on TV were climate scientists/commentators/lobbyists? Where you could see politicians going from meeting to meeting with only one topic being asked of them?
lm28469 5y ago
That's what happens when politicians are in charge for 4 to ~10 years. They all vote for deadlines in 2025 - 2030 - 2040, which, on their timeline, means "never" Most politicians are more concerned about their carrier and personal gains than their country, let alone the world.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  So then a lifetime dictator should have a very green awesome success record? Well, I don't know of any data to support that assumption. Also, most politicians are indeed concerned about their heritage in the history books, so they have motivations to do something beyond their office time. But what should they do? There is not really a broad concensus on how to transform the whole worlds industry into CO2 free. Because that is not really easy. I believe it is doable and I actually see much more change into that direction, than I thought possible a few years ago. But when a vast amount of the population of the earth still struggles to survive - how can they save on CO2. They need to eat now.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    I believe it's an unsolvable problem, too many variables, too many incompatibles interests/goals. Humans aren't made to solve world wide / very long term issues. The covid pandemic showed we're not able to handle any kind of global stress collectively. We're apes trying to live like ants, but we lack the organisation and selflessness. We'll do what we do best, wait until we have our backs against the wall and find some half assed solution, it's going to be a free for all until some kind of reset event happens. It feels like we're at the beginning of one of these Hollywood "end of the world" movies in which you can see TVs in the background of early scenes showing crazy reports about climatic/social/war events while the heroes are focused on their meaningless daily struggles.
    - thirsty-coucal 5y ago
      > It feels like we're at the beginning of one of these Hollywood "end of the world" movies That's very deliberate. We've all been saturated with doom propaganda for decades. Many people believe it, despite virtually all metrics of human well-being improving.
Traf444 5y ago
A politician will not act on anything unless it will hurt their chances of getting re-elected. Humans in general are very short term creatures and we fail at having a long term perspective on most things. That's also the reason why I believe that any concrete things set in motion will probably focus on fixing the symptoms of climate change, the short term quick fix, rather than fixing the underlying issues that have lead to climate change. Sadly...
BLKNSLVR 5y ago
Australia had a carbon price a decade ago. It lost that government the next election, the incoming government repealed the carbon price and have retained government since. Even now, the current government is resisting any policy that could be considered threatening to fossil fuels. The voting majority of Australians don't give a fuck about climate change action.
- mrlonglong 5y ago
  It is my belief that Australia will become unhabitable by the 2050s. Cattle cannot survive high temps and droughts.

canal-crab 5y ago

Whatever current event you're concerned about, have you looked for historical precedent? Suppose you were to discover that the same kind of event had happened in, say, the early 1900s, and/or the late 1800s, before humans had emitted any appreciable amount of CO2. Would that change your opinion about whether we're in a crisis?

AlexAndScripts 5y ago
Well, has it?
- canal-crab 5y ago
  Are you asking me if heatwaves have happened before? Edit: Again, I'd love to hear some justification for this comment to be flagged. Are there any rules on this forum, or do we just get censored by anonymous people with special authorities?
saagarjha 5y ago
You're looking at this the wrong way: extreme weather is not a predictable, one-off event. With climate change, we would expect to hit the extremes more often, and statistically the data has been showing us moving in this direction for years. Is it a crisis? Well, it only looks like it's going to get worse from here, and it's already not looking good…
adrianN 5y ago
The current event I'm concerned about is the increase in average global temperatures caused by the increased concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. To the best of my knowledge Earth has never warmed as quickly as it's currently warming and CO2 levels haven't been as high since before humans were around.
Barrin92 5y ago
you gotta explain the logic to me that should make anyone less concerned about climate crises just because people also used to die of them 200 years ago. We're not reinventing any phenomena because we're emitting CO2, we're just putting the foot on the gas pedal, both literally and metaphorically. Same argument occasionally crops up during the pandemic. Yes, we've had them before, but that doesn't make this one any less bad, and interacting with animals that spread zoonotic diseases any less dangerous
- canal-crab 5y ago
  Well, if the current events tell us we're in a crisis, were we also in a crisis a century ago? Two centuries ago? Three centuries ago? We can look in history books and see the same kinds of events happening back then. If they indicate a crisis now, don't they also indicate the crisis was happening back then?
  - adrianN 5y ago
    You're arguing that it's not a big to deal to kick asteroids onto orbits intersecting with Earth's because in the past Earth also was hit by asteroids.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    No. Frequency of conditions intense enough to constitute ‘a disaster’ has gone up.
  - polotics 5y ago
    How is it that green user names always are climate-drift negationists? Should they not be red instead?
    - raverbashing 5y ago
      Tells you a lot of how they stand by their values
      - 5y ago
fwsgonzo 5y ago
Generally, those who believe in science don't look for anecdotes to form opinions from.

raverbashing 5y ago

"Nooo, but climate change was all made up by Al Gore, that's what I heard on Fox News" /s Until their house burns spontaneously due to the heat, of course This will get worse quickly, because the averages change, but the variance changes as well.

nicbou 5y ago

It's a really hard pill to swallow. It will require expenses and sacrifices far beyond those that covid required, and for far longer. I have zero hope of it happening. People won't stop driving, flying or eating meat. They won't even drive smaller cars. As I understand it, that would just be the start. Looking at how we handled the pandemic, I don't think we'll manage.

ben_w 5y ago
I’m a lot more optimistic. The American idea of a compact car is the British idea of a big car (judging by labelled parking spaces in Davis CA), so that’s culture or fashion, and those can shift fast. And all the big companies are shifting to electric now, so even big isn’t as important. Vat meat is starting to get on the market, and while we’ll have to wait and see if this is a iPhone moment or a Sinclair C5 moment, the prices have come down rapidly since the first attempts. Flying is going to be a hard thing to totally green, but it’s not impossible either, merely low priority. Yes, there will be those that reject everything — I’ve encountered those who think a self-driving car will take away their freedom, instead of regarding it as a chauffeur — but when the economics are against them, when they have to pay extra to be eco-unfriendly instead of paying less? History shows most people follow the money, not just for ill but also for good.
- nicbou 5y ago
  But culture is heading the other direction in America. Cars get larger every year. Culture won't get us decent public transportation.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    You’d have to ditch low density housing to make public transport affordable. But don’t be so hasty to dismiss culture as an opportunity: Musk turned electric cars from a joke into something the rich wanted to show off with.
    - nicbou 5y ago

RandomLensman 5y ago

Most governments might be trapped because reducing emissions does not help to solve the problems people have now or in the near future from climate change. "Inflicting" hard policies on the electorate without benefits in even the medium term is tough. So governments will need to start with actions mitigating the effects climate change with at least equal effort than emission reduction. Don't see that realization happening at the moment as most policy and international discussions are about emissions. In the end, might even be that adaptation wins out over reduction in terms of effort.

lordnacho 5y ago

Because the climate crisis is missing one of the key ingredients of a proper crisis: there's never a reckoning time that forces the decision makers to the table, and forces all other things off the agenda. If there was an asteroid coming, there would be some deadline imposed by the astronomical observations. If it's a pandemic, there's a time when all the politicians have to stop thinking about Brexit and start thinking about lockdowns. In economic crises there's that Lehman moment when the government needs to decide right then and there what to do about the economy. In pure political crises, there's a vote of no confidence in the government and the politicians have to think about how to form a new one immediately. With the climate, there's just never a time when you absolutely have to do something. People have even tried saying "we have to do something by x date" but you can't manufacture a crisis point, in fact those kinds of deadlines seem to have the opposite effect to what was intended. That slowly boiling frog analogy is somehow quite appropriate. I think part of it is the nature of noise. Once you see an asteroid, you don't doubt that it's there. Government falls, you need a new one. People get sick in large numbers, better not let it grow. But if it rains a lot or gets hot, that will pass. Once it passes we're relieved and we go back to normal. Even if storms get bigger and more frequent, the day after is sunny. My last point goes back to the first: a proper crisis forces everything else out of your attention. 9/11, Lehman, Pandemic, those were all things that blocked out the news. That has never happened with the climate. When did you ever have a news day where all they talked about was climate? Where all the talking heads on TV were climate scientists/commentators/lobbyists? Where you could see politicians going from meeting to meeting with only one topic being asked of them?

lm28469 5y ago

That's what happens when politicians are in charge for 4 to ~10 years. They all vote for deadlines in 2025 - 2030 - 2040, which, on their timeline, means "never" Most politicians are more concerned about their carrier and personal gains than their country, let alone the world.

hutzlibu 5y ago
So then a lifetime dictator should have a very green awesome success record? Well, I don't know of any data to support that assumption. Also, most politicians are indeed concerned about their heritage in the history books, so they have motivations to do something beyond their office time. But what should they do? There is not really a broad concensus on how to transform the whole worlds industry into CO2 free. Because that is not really easy. I believe it is doable and I actually see much more change into that direction, than I thought possible a few years ago. But when a vast amount of the population of the earth still struggles to survive - how can they save on CO2. They need to eat now.
- lm28469 5y ago
  I believe it's an unsolvable problem, too many variables, too many incompatibles interests/goals. Humans aren't made to solve world wide / very long term issues. The covid pandemic showed we're not able to handle any kind of global stress collectively. We're apes trying to live like ants, but we lack the organisation and selflessness. We'll do what we do best, wait until we have our backs against the wall and find some half assed solution, it's going to be a free for all until some kind of reset event happens. It feels like we're at the beginning of one of these Hollywood "end of the world" movies in which you can see TVs in the background of early scenes showing crazy reports about climatic/social/war events while the heroes are focused on their meaningless daily struggles.
  - thirsty-coucal 5y ago
    > It feels like we're at the beginning of one of these Hollywood "end of the world" movies That's very deliberate. We've all been saturated with doom propaganda for decades. Many people believe it, despite virtually all metrics of human well-being improving.

Traf444 5y ago

A politician will not act on anything unless it will hurt their chances of getting re-elected. Humans in general are very short term creatures and we fail at having a long term perspective on most things. That's also the reason why I believe that any concrete things set in motion will probably focus on fixing the symptoms of climate change, the short term quick fix, rather than fixing the underlying issues that have lead to climate change. Sadly...

BLKNSLVR 5y ago

Australia had a carbon price a decade ago. It lost that government the next election, the incoming government repealed the carbon price and have retained government since. Even now, the current government is resisting any policy that could be considered threatening to fossil fuels. The voting majority of Australians don't give a fuck about climate change action.

mrlonglong 5y ago
It is my belief that Australia will become unhabitable by the 2050s. Cattle cannot survive high temps and droughts.