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>>> “On the bright side, the Asheville branch is just a five-minute drive from the beach now, so the all-hands meeting should be a lot more fun this year.” <<<
by grej 4y ago
>>> “On the bright side, the Asheville branch is just a five-minute drive from the beach now, so the all-hands meeting should be a lot more fun this year.” <<<
As an aside, seeing things like this in climate change articles always bothers me. FYI Asheville being minutes from the beach would imply a 650m+ (2000+ft) sea rise in the next 25 years.
This kind of hyperbole makes it easy for people who deny climate change in totality to say it is based on absurd scenarios which will never happen. The real projections implications are significant enough. Why do people feel the need to resort to pure fiction?
- dixego 4y agoFiction is a tool used by humans to elicit, experience and process feelings under (mostly) safe circumstances. The details (such as how much the sea level would have to rise for this to be accurate) are not quite relevant; the point is to make the reader think about how they would feel if this sort of concern was just a commonplace consideration in their daily life. Is it not shocking? Uncomfortable? Sorta nihilism-inducing? In summary: doesn't it make you want to act towards preventing this from ever being close to happening?
- cmdli 4y agoIt only makes you want to act in the short term. In the long term, it either promotes denial (from those who think that its all hyperbole) or doomerism (from those who think that none of it is hyperbole). Hyperbole does not promote hope, which is the primary motivating factor to solving problems like this.
- switchbak 4y agoI agree with the person above, too much hyperbole makes it easy to dismiss an argument. We're already struggling against a mountain of industry funded FUD, the last thing we need is people stretching the truth in well meaning yet counterproductive ways.
- goatlover 4y agoIt makes me want to question climate activism. I'd want to act to prevent or mitigate realistic scenarios (depending on the tradeoffs), not apocalyptic fictions.