7 ms·

Cop/Out

13 points by MaysonL 5y ago

mathlover2 5y ago
This is why I listen to climate scientists and not science fiction writers. (Michael E. Mann and Climate Feedback are among my favorite sources.) Yes, global warming is very, very bad and it will cause death and destruction, and vastly more so if insufficiently much is done about it. But some of the predictions here are out of line with the science, particularly as far as timelines are concerned, and the whole undercurrent of nihilistic fatalism is not helping.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Who cares if the author is off by a few years/decades? The fact is our entire planet is pretty much fucked because of industrial capitalism. That the next generations will struggle for finding drinkable water, because our generations have polluted all of the sources. That depending on where you are on the planet, it's gonna get much warmer or colder, and take away much of your local ecosystem along the way. Who needs realism when we need a sense of drama and urgency to take action? Literal decades of friendly scientists and smiling politicians going on TV to "explain" changed nothing.
  - mathlover2 5y ago
    First, you blame scientists for this?! Because last I checked they weren't the ones spreading denialism and other lies. That has always been the province of politicians and businessmen. A person blaming scientists for being "too friendly" about global warming is like a smoker with lung cancer blaming doctors for not screaming at him enough about not smoking when he knows damn well that he wasn't even going to his medical appointments in the first place and was just listening to tobacco executives on TV saying nicotine is not addictive. Second, there is a huge difference between drama and urgency and nihilistic fatalism. Watts indulges in more of the latter than I am comfortable with at times, and when he isn't, his musings about hurting the children of politicians to get his way is not only not productive (such a measure would absolutely backfire) but also frankly disturbing. Third, the timeline actually does make a difference. Saying society will collapse in, say, twenty years when the scientific evidence points to something longer than that is a recipe for people dismissing scientists in twenty years when nothing happens and being much more likely to not take action needed to avoid later collapse.
    - southerntofu 5y ago
      > First, you blame scientists for this?! I don't blame scientists for climate change. I blame the scientific community at large for having trust in broken institutions which other scientists (sociologists/anthropologists) have known to be broken (and against the interests of the people) for decades, and for encouraging people to fuel this trust by asking nicely of politicians to do something about climate change. Fortunately, some scientists aren't so dull and actively take part or encourage sabotage operations and guerilla warfare against exploitative industries. > Watts indulges in more of the latter than I am comfortable with at times I'm personally really uncomfortable with nihilism or fatalism, and i certainly read neither of those in the linked blog post. I read a lot of urgency and anger, but no "nothing matter" or "nothing to do about it" vibes (which are my approximate definitions of nihilism and fatalism, respectively). I personally find it very disturbing to threaten the families of the people responsible for this massacre, too. I would personally advocate for assassinating/kidnapping industry shareholders/CEOs (the people directly responsible, not their loved ones) and sabotaging installations. However when i rationalize it and realize all of them (and all of the rest of us!) are about to die due to these fuckers destroying our entire planet, it sounds way less crazy than on the first read and kidnapping children starts to sound like a gentle act compared to what these people are doing to humanity and other species. [0] > is a recipe for people dismissing scientists in twenty years when nothing happens I agree with you in principle, but it's been over 50 years of polite and informed warnings from the scientific community, and hell is already running loose. It's already happening. It's not gonna be a binary "is civilization up or dead?" but an evermore hell-ish situation. Just look at how many hurricanes/droughts and other extreme weather conditions we're facing: the first waves of climate refugees are here, today, and the people in power are still dismissing the issue. So what are governments doing about it? They're securing borders and ramping up their military is what they're doing. These people are insane and need to be removed by any means necessary. [0] Also it's important to note that kidnapping for political motivations doesn't have to be a violent and traumatizing experience. The historic "stockholm syndrome" for instance is famously not a psychological condition but a case of people held hostage sympathizing with the actual motivations of their holders (who did nothing to hurt them).
jeffreyrogers 5y ago
> When the grid goes down and stays that way, when the coastal cities are flooded and the flyover towns all Lyttonised, when we’ve exhausted the world’s arable land (about thirty years from now, last I heard) and civilization itself begins to collapse (twenty); we’ll be out there with our Molotov cocktails and our boards-with-the-nails-through-‘em. It’s how societies collapse. It's not how societies collapse though. Collapse takes a long time and it's a slow process. We might already be in it in much of the developed world. Working age population sizes are already beginning to come down and I don't know of a historical example of a society that continued to grow while working age population shrunk. I guess the anger that a lot of people have around climate change is normal, but what do you expect to happen? You can't keep fitting more and more people on a planet the size of Earth and expect to increase energy consumption forever. Even with the most optimistic forecasts about energy storage a world that reduces CO2 emissions to minimize global warming is a world where people are using a lot less energy. That means less vacations, less stuff, less high end services.
- mathlover2 5y ago
  I'd argue that the shrinkage of working age populations is at most an indicator of decline rather than collapse, and given the rise of automation, there really isn't a good historical precedent to predict this from.
  - beaconstudios 5y ago
    The rise of automation, so far, is nothing. The rise of offshoring is. Its not like we automated away the production of consumer goods - we just get China or Taiwan to do it.
    - mathlover2 5y ago
      True, but the possibility of increasing automation, particularly as a response to a future decline in the size of the working population, is one that hasn't been present in prior historical eras where the working population shrank.
- 5y ago
Supermancho 5y ago
> when the coastal cities are flooded and the flyover towns all Lyttonised, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytton,_British_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytton,_British_Columbia, ie reach casual 120F+ and possibly are burned out.

13 points by MaysonL 5y ago

This is why I listen to climate scientists and not science fiction writers. (Michael E. Mann and Climate Feedback are among my favorite sources.) Yes, global warming is very, very bad and it will cause death and destruction, and vastly more so if insufficiently much is done about it. But some of the predictions here are out of line with the science, particularly as far as timelines are concerned, and the whole undercurrent of nihilistic fatalism is not helping.

southerntofu 5y ago
Who cares if the author is off by a few years/decades? The fact is our entire planet is pretty much fucked because of industrial capitalism. That the next generations will struggle for finding drinkable water, because our generations have polluted all of the sources. That depending on where you are on the planet, it's gonna get much warmer or colder, and take away much of your local ecosystem along the way. Who needs realism when we need a sense of drama and urgency to take action? Literal decades of friendly scientists and smiling politicians going on TV to "explain" changed nothing.
- mathlover2 5y ago
  First, you blame scientists for this?! Because last I checked they weren't the ones spreading denialism and other lies. That has always been the province of politicians and businessmen. A person blaming scientists for being "too friendly" about global warming is like a smoker with lung cancer blaming doctors for not screaming at him enough about not smoking when he knows damn well that he wasn't even going to his medical appointments in the first place and was just listening to tobacco executives on TV saying nicotine is not addictive. Second, there is a huge difference between drama and urgency and nihilistic fatalism. Watts indulges in more of the latter than I am comfortable with at times, and when he isn't, his musings about hurting the children of politicians to get his way is not only not productive (such a measure would absolutely backfire) but also frankly disturbing. Third, the timeline actually does make a difference. Saying society will collapse in, say, twenty years when the scientific evidence points to something longer than that is a recipe for people dismissing scientists in twenty years when nothing happens and being much more likely to not take action needed to avoid later collapse.
  - southerntofu 5y ago
    > First, you blame scientists for this?! I don't blame scientists for climate change. I blame the scientific community at large for having trust in broken institutions which other scientists (sociologists/anthropologists) have known to be broken (and against the interests of the people) for decades, and for encouraging people to fuel this trust by asking nicely of politicians to do something about climate change. Fortunately, some scientists aren't so dull and actively take part or encourage sabotage operations and guerilla warfare against exploitative industries. > Watts indulges in more of the latter than I am comfortable with at times I'm personally really uncomfortable with nihilism or fatalism, and i certainly read neither of those in the linked blog post. I read a lot of urgency and anger, but no "nothing matter" or "nothing to do about it" vibes (which are my approximate definitions of nihilism and fatalism, respectively). I personally find it very disturbing to threaten the families of the people responsible for this massacre, too. I would personally advocate for assassinating/kidnapping industry shareholders/CEOs (the people directly responsible, not their loved ones) and sabotaging installations. However when i rationalize it and realize all of them (and all of the rest of us!) are about to die due to these fuckers destroying our entire planet, it sounds way less crazy than on the first read and kidnapping children starts to sound like a gentle act compared to what these people are doing to humanity and other species. [0] > is a recipe for people dismissing scientists in twenty years when nothing happens I agree with you in principle, but it's been over 50 years of polite and informed warnings from the scientific community, and hell is already running loose. It's already happening. It's not gonna be a binary "is civilization up or dead?" but an evermore hell-ish situation. Just look at how many hurricanes/droughts and other extreme weather conditions we're facing: the first waves of climate refugees are here, today, and the people in power are still dismissing the issue. So what are governments doing about it? They're securing borders and ramping up their military is what they're doing. These people are insane and need to be removed by any means necessary. [0] Also it's important to note that kidnapping for political motivations doesn't have to be a violent and traumatizing experience. The historic "stockholm syndrome" for instance is famously not a psychological condition but a case of people held hostage sympathizing with the actual motivations of their holders (who did nothing to hurt them).

jeffreyrogers 5y ago

> When the grid goes down and stays that way, when the coastal cities are flooded and the flyover towns all Lyttonised, when we’ve exhausted the world’s arable land (about thirty years from now, last I heard) and civilization itself begins to collapse (twenty); we’ll be out there with our Molotov cocktails and our boards-with-the-nails-through-‘em. It’s how societies collapse. It's not how societies collapse though. Collapse takes a long time and it's a slow process. We might already be in it in much of the developed world. Working age population sizes are already beginning to come down and I don't know of a historical example of a society that continued to grow while working age population shrunk. I guess the anger that a lot of people have around climate change is normal, but what do you expect to happen? You can't keep fitting more and more people on a planet the size of Earth and expect to increase energy consumption forever. Even with the most optimistic forecasts about energy storage a world that reduces CO2 emissions to minimize global warming is a world where people are using a lot less energy. That means less vacations, less stuff, less high end services.

mathlover2 5y ago
I'd argue that the shrinkage of working age populations is at most an indicator of decline rather than collapse, and given the rise of automation, there really isn't a good historical precedent to predict this from.
- beaconstudios 5y ago
  The rise of automation, so far, is nothing. The rise of offshoring is. Its not like we automated away the production of consumer goods - we just get China or Taiwan to do it.
  - mathlover2 5y ago
    True, but the possibility of increasing automation, particularly as a response to a future decline in the size of the working population, is one that hasn't been present in prior historical eras where the working population shrank.
5y ago

Supermancho 5y ago

> when the coastal cities are flooded and the flyover towns all Lyttonised, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytton,_British_Columbia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lytton,_British_Columbia, ie reach casual 120F+ and possibly are burned out.