5 ms·

"The problem with climate change is that it creates a reality distortion field" Very much so! "Anyone who would honestly try to think about it would give up o

"The problem with climate change is that it creates a reality distortion field" Very much so! "Anyone who would honestly try to think about it would give up on life" Not at all. There are lots of people who studied this stuff carefully, thought honestly about it, and came to realize that the claims of doom and armageddon are woefully over-exaggerated. They realize that the people claiming the world is going to end because of climate change have been making those very same predictions for 70 years+ now and were always wrong, because their 'science' is flawed and agenda-driven. Of course you aren't allowed to listen to such people, let alone be one, lest the sandwich-board wearers have a meltdown about it, so the mass hysteria gets worse every year, and the predictions get ever more extreme and less connected to reality. "Meanwhile the world is less organized than ever." Excellent! That is how it should be. The sort of people who want to "organize" the world have a terrible track record of causing hundreds of millions of deaths when their organized plans go awry and they can't admit it. The world needs much less organization a.k.a. central planning, and way more people being honest about climate science.

wizofaus 4y ago
> There are lots of people who studied this stuff carefully, thought honestly about it, and came to realize that the claims of doom and armageddon are woefully over-exaggerated Name two (that aren't Bjorn Lomborg).
- origin_path 4y ago
  Only two? Isn't that kind of unambitious, given that "lots of people" doesn't even restrict it to specific classes of people? Oh well, have five names and I'll restrict it for you to published scientists who specialize in climate/atmospheric science. Nic Lewis, Roy Spencer, Judith Curry, William Happer, Richard Lindzen There are many more of course. Dr Spencer's page is a good introduction to some of the issues (but by no means the only ones) that cause scientists to disclaim armageddon predictions: https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/ https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    Yes, there's a few contrarian scientists still around, some of whom may genuinely believe they are actively working to contribute towards better human understanding/knowledge of how the earth's climate works. I honestly hope they're right, but their failure to convince the vast majority of working climatologists and governments that avoiding catastrophic climate change isn't worth attempting speaks volumes. It's also not hard to compile a list of working climatologists who are quite critical of the IPCC for being overly conservative and dismissing the probability of even more extreme outcomes. Personally I'm of the view most people don't take it seriously because human brains aren't properly triggered by distant and largely invisible threats whose worst effects won't occur in their lifetime. If we had taken it seriously 40 years ago then by now there'd be nothing much to worry about (and our standard of living would quite likely be better than it is now).
    - origin_path 4y ago
      What you've done here is retreat from a motte (I couldn't even name two people who disagree) to a much stronger bailey (OK maybe they exist but they're only in a minority). But how do you know if there's a consensus or not? How do you know they're a minority? Did some journalist tell you that? Or a scientist who has taken the doomer position? Nobody is really trying to properly measure this and it'd be meaningless to do so because we see what happens to scientists who disagree with end-of-the-world claims - they mysteriously can't get papers published anymore whilst counterclaims sail through peer review and straight into the front pages of national news. Academia doesn't have the systems needed to do something as hard as establishing the truth of things. That's why there's so many nonsensical or fraudulent papers out there. So people don't take it seriously for a whole lot of reasons: 1. There's no penalty associated with making end-of-the-world predictions that turn out to be wrong, not even in the short term. We saw this with COVID. Scientists made predictions that were totally invalidated just weeks later, repeatedly, with no visible consequences or even any admission that anything had gone wrong. Indeed they routinely lied about their own predictions that were made in writing, and got away with it! 2. This is 100x more true in the long term. Climate predictions have a long history of being wrong. One dramatic example is Stanford Professor Paul R. Ehrlich who in 1969 was saying we'd all "disappear in a cloud of blue steam" within 20 years. He predicted America would be subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980. He said "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people". He was claiming the threat was global cooling before switching to claiming the opposite. What happens to people who make such expensive claims (for society) and yet turn out to be wrong? Nothing - they pretend they were right all along and the parts of our society most dependent or in hock to academia goes along with the fraud rather than call it out (which is anyway pointless because universities are basically impervious to accountability for their output). But people see it, they remember, and they tune it out. I think this is why skepticism is more common amongst the elderly population. They're old enough to remember the long history of bad claims. They see that getting it wrong never matters, that wrongness is rewarded. And they stop believing. The young haven't seen that so swallow it all. 3. Scientists who predict doom often don't act like they believe it. The famous discovery that climatologists attend more foreign conferences than many other types of scientists, the way Prof Ferguson insisted lockdown was impossible to avoid and then broke his own rules to see his married lover, etc. These people invariably claim everyone must submit to terrible hardship that mysteriously vanishes the moment it might get in the way of something they want. And so on.
imtringued 4y ago
Enjoy your central planning by private corporate interests, the entire point behind a carbon dividend is to decentralize pollution rights and decentralize decision making in the hands of more people.
- origin_path 4y ago
  Carbon trading is a great idea in principle, but the amount of carbon emissions available on the market is set by governments, so it comes back to down to central planning. Albeit a less aggressive and much preferable kind to EU style "ban high powered kettles" micro-management.

wizofaus 4y ago

> There are lots of people who studied this stuff carefully, thought honestly about it, and came to realize that the claims of doom and armageddon are woefully over-exaggerated Name two (that aren't Bjorn Lomborg).

origin_path 4y ago
Only two? Isn't that kind of unambitious, given that "lots of people" doesn't even restrict it to specific classes of people? Oh well, have five names and I'll restrict it for you to published scientists who specialize in climate/atmospheric science. Nic Lewis, Roy Spencer, Judith Curry, William Happer, Richard Lindzen There are many more of course. Dr Spencer's page is a good introduction to some of the issues (but by no means the only ones) that cause scientists to disclaim armageddon predictions: https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/ https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/
- wizofaus 4y ago
  Yes, there's a few contrarian scientists still around, some of whom may genuinely believe they are actively working to contribute towards better human understanding/knowledge of how the earth's climate works. I honestly hope they're right, but their failure to convince the vast majority of working climatologists and governments that avoiding catastrophic climate change isn't worth attempting speaks volumes. It's also not hard to compile a list of working climatologists who are quite critical of the IPCC for being overly conservative and dismissing the probability of even more extreme outcomes. Personally I'm of the view most people don't take it seriously because human brains aren't properly triggered by distant and largely invisible threats whose worst effects won't occur in their lifetime. If we had taken it seriously 40 years ago then by now there'd be nothing much to worry about (and our standard of living would quite likely be better than it is now).
  - origin_path 4y ago
    What you've done here is retreat from a motte (I couldn't even name two people who disagree) to a much stronger bailey (OK maybe they exist but they're only in a minority). But how do you know if there's a consensus or not? How do you know they're a minority? Did some journalist tell you that? Or a scientist who has taken the doomer position? Nobody is really trying to properly measure this and it'd be meaningless to do so because we see what happens to scientists who disagree with end-of-the-world claims - they mysteriously can't get papers published anymore whilst counterclaims sail through peer review and straight into the front pages of national news. Academia doesn't have the systems needed to do something as hard as establishing the truth of things. That's why there's so many nonsensical or fraudulent papers out there. So people don't take it seriously for a whole lot of reasons: 1. There's no penalty associated with making end-of-the-world predictions that turn out to be wrong, not even in the short term. We saw this with COVID. Scientists made predictions that were totally invalidated just weeks later, repeatedly, with no visible consequences or even any admission that anything had gone wrong. Indeed they routinely lied about their own predictions that were made in writing, and got away with it! 2. This is 100x more true in the long term. Climate predictions have a long history of being wrong. One dramatic example is Stanford Professor Paul R. Ehrlich who in 1969 was saying we'd all "disappear in a cloud of blue steam" within 20 years. He predicted America would be subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980. He said "By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people". He was claiming the threat was global cooling before switching to claiming the opposite. What happens to people who make such expensive claims (for society) and yet turn out to be wrong? Nothing - they pretend they were right all along and the parts of our society most dependent or in hock to academia goes along with the fraud rather than call it out (which is anyway pointless because universities are basically impervious to accountability for their output). But people see it, they remember, and they tune it out. I think this is why skepticism is more common amongst the elderly population. They're old enough to remember the long history of bad claims. They see that getting it wrong never matters, that wrongness is rewarded. And they stop believing. The young haven't seen that so swallow it all. 3. Scientists who predict doom often don't act like they believe it. The famous discovery that climatologists attend more foreign conferences than many other types of scientists, the way Prof Ferguson insisted lockdown was impossible to avoid and then broke his own rules to see his married lover, etc. These people invariably claim everyone must submit to terrible hardship that mysteriously vanishes the moment it might get in the way of something they want. And so on.

imtringued 4y ago

Enjoy your central planning by private corporate interests, the entire point behind a carbon dividend is to decentralize pollution rights and decentralize decision making in the hands of more people.

origin_path 4y ago
Carbon trading is a great idea in principle, but the amount of carbon emissions available on the market is set by governments, so it comes back to down to central planning. Albeit a less aggressive and much preferable kind to EU style "ban high powered kettles" micro-management.