4 ms·

The ideology of wanting humans to not send themselves to extinction like we're doing to so many other species. How horrible!

monero-xmr 3y ago
Humans will not send themselves to extinction if the earth gets a few degrees warmer. That is the propaganda. We survived ice ages, and with our modern technology we will survive warming. I'm not saying there won't be negatives, but to say we are all going to die, is absurd to the extreme. Unfortunately that is common today, however it is merely one in a long line of apocalyptic movements which have been common in every century in recorded history.
- smolder 3y ago
  I didn't say we are all going to die. I still have hope that despite all the recalcitrant folks constantly bemoaning every attempt at collective action to curb the coming problems that we will survive. But it won't be thanks to said people crying "climate propaganda!" The attitude espoused by OP here is worse than useless. It's thanks to propaganda from ideologues who OPPOSE collective action on climate change that there are huge swaths of people who think it's not an issue at all, or some kind of commie plot. Stop the buffoonery, and stop demonizing people who want to prevent future suffering and ecological degradation.
  - PKop 3y ago
    We can't all make it either, that is utopian thinking. There will be winners and losers.
    - smolder 3y ago
      This is a non sequitur given what I wrote.
    - ta8903 3y ago
      But we can try to minimize the number of losers.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    > I didn't say we are all going to die. But you said: > The ideology of wanting humans to not send themselves to extinction It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy.
    - smolder 3y ago
      The nuance you and others are missing is that I didn't say it was a definite thing. I didn't even say it was likely. I implied that the ideology he was complaining about is made up of people who don't think we should accelerate towards extinction: not an extreme stance at all. Given even a slight, non-zero risk of us doing that, if you have the stance that we shouldn't, it's reasonable to take steps to reduce the risk. I could have been way more succinct and less sarcastic with my original comment, but it hardly seems worth the effort when replying to a post like theirs.
      - vasco 3y ago
        The stance is extreme because it's doomsday speak, of the kind only people on top of a box in the park used to say when I was a kid. Humans will be here, maybe less of us, on boats, in constant air-con personal pods, whatever, we'll figure something out. We're not going extinct any time soon unless someone decides to launch nuclear weapons.
    - bradjohnson 3y ago
      >It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy. It's implying that we are sending ourselves towards extinction, just as if you were sending yourself towards obesity by continually consuming 10,000 Calories per day. What is really crazy is that there are still climate change deniers that exist in this comments section.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    Hyperbole tends to push people away. I was quite active in climate causes about 20 years ago, in large part because I was young and felt that without imminent action the world would face catastrophic damage. This [1] article is just one countless of the time. It was reporting on a Pentagon climate report that the White House was trying to 'keep the public from seeing.' At the top, in bright yellow, the Guardian is reminding viewers that "This article is more than 19 years old." And the lede is "Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years." Other claims include that "by 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war.' It's further suggested that this will also come with "widespread crop failure, famine, disease, and mass migration of populations..." And that's just from "my" era. As you go further back, you will find similar reports. Here's [2] one I dug up from 1982: "Monstafa K. Tolba, executive director of the United States environmental program, told delegates that if the nations of the world continued their present policies, they would face by the turn of the century "an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust." If I could go back 80 years into the past and try to optimize the world for climate action I would make sure that any and all predictions made appealed not to the drama of the high end outliers in order to try to spur on immediate action, but instead did the exact opposite and assumed the low end outliers - so that people would have decades of evidence of my predictions not only coming true, but being far greater in impact. At least in my case, you can thank hyperbolic messaging for the reason I've gone from 'active advocate' to 'meh, I'm somewhat more concerned about nuclear war tbh.' [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t... [2] - https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1982.jpg https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1982.j...
    - js8 3y ago
      IMHO, that sounds just like a burnout from activism, caused by cynical people who are "meh" about the issue. Logically, your claim (that catastrophizing drives people away from activism) doesn't make much sense. If you still think that environment has same value as you did in the past, then you should still support the ecological policies, regardless what people are saying. If you only supported them because of catastrophism and not because you don't inherently value it, then you were misled and shouldn't have advocated it in the first place. What I am saying is you have moral agency, and if you feel misled by other people's factual claims (e.g. exaggerating the impact, regardless of reason), it shouldn't change the validity of your moral stance or your values. But if your values didn't change, you're still an advocate, although perhaps with a different outlook.
- waiseristy 3y ago
  Of course the globe warming 3 degrees isn’t going to cause human extinction. But it will kill hundreds of millions due to inevitable war and genocide over the changing landscape. Thinking that mass famine/flooding/heat events in Africa, India, or South America isn’t going to affect you is incredibly naive. Instability ain’t good, and we can’t just welcome it with open arms. Shit that happens in Wuhan, Donetsk and elsewhere do affect you
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - missedthecue 3y ago
    Global warming is going to increase food supply because carbon is an input to photosynthesis. Several studies have shown that increased carbon in the atmosphere increases crop yields and increases water usage efficiency by reducing plant transpiration. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-study-rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-will-help-and-hurt-crops https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-study-rising-... On social media I've noticed a trend where people attribute every bad thing that immediately comes to mind to climate change. War, extinction, famine, disease and pestilence, I've even seen people confidently throw increases of rape in there when describing the impending hellscape sure to befall humanity in the next x years due to climate change, citing some very dubious chain of correlative logic. The truth is that a warming planet will change things but not all changes are bad for humans, and those that are bad are not all catastrophic or unmanageable. I think it will do everyone some good to take a step back and look at things with an analytical and curious eye, and reject the urge to panic or spread addictive but harmful fear porn.
    - waiseristy 3y ago
      > For wheat and soybean crops, in terms of yield the median negative impacts are fully compensated, and rice crops recoup up to 90 percent and maize up to 60 percent of their losses. That’s quite a buried lede. At best it evens out all the bad effects I honestly don’t know how to reconcile our worldviews here, and I envy your optimism. But “just wingin it” isn’t what brings about good change. Those with curious and analytical eyes should see that our actions vis a vis climate change and other things have consequences. Good or bad, who really knows. But why are we committing ourselves before knowing? Seems pretty dumb
- brewdad 3y ago
  Humans didn't exist during the last Ice Age. We've never survived an Ice Age and you certainly can't say anything for certain about our future. Technology has gotten into this mess. We can hope it also brings our salvation but I wouldn't bet the species on it.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    Yes we did? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period
userbinator 3y ago
That's what they want you to believe. Harnessing fear itself has proven to be a powerful tool of controlling the masses. Realise the truth and it will set you free.
- smolder 3y ago
  This has strong Poe's law vibes. If you're serious: pretend I sent you an eye-roll emoji.
PKop 3y ago
Whichever group/nation abstains from consuming better energy sources will just get run over by the the nations that don't make that mistake. ESG et all are national suicide pacts, look at Europe. They are declining, and will be a weaker power as they use less energy than their competitors. Human history and the human condition is conflict and competition, you have to win the game against others, not voluntarily lose it.
- smolder 3y ago
  This is kind of a shallow take. Building for sustainability makes a nation STRONGER in the face of declining resources. It's investing in the future.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  In a global system like the one we have, is there really only one game to play in order to succeed?
- specialist 3y ago
  Transitioning from natural gas to renewables will make Germany weaker?
  - nixass 3y ago
    No but moving away from nuclear power will.
    - specialist 3y ago
      Just checked and yes indeed, the German govt has and will continue to shut them down. Darn. I really thought they were going to pause and keep them running, for a while longer at least. I don't pay much attention to stuff outside of the USA. We've got so many problems of our own. But, in case you're interested, I did find this episode interesting. "Germany's current energy situation & its past energy choices. A conversation with German energy economist Claudia Kemfert." 2022/11/09 https://www.volts.wtf/p/germanys-current-energy-situation https://www.volts.wtf/p/germanys-current-energy-situation
missedthecue 3y ago
There is no threat of extinction, this is silly.

monero-xmr 3y ago

Humans will not send themselves to extinction if the earth gets a few degrees warmer. That is the propaganda. We survived ice ages, and with our modern technology we will survive warming. I'm not saying there won't be negatives, but to say we are all going to die, is absurd to the extreme. Unfortunately that is common today, however it is merely one in a long line of apocalyptic movements which have been common in every century in recorded history.

smolder 3y ago
I didn't say we are all going to die. I still have hope that despite all the recalcitrant folks constantly bemoaning every attempt at collective action to curb the coming problems that we will survive. But it won't be thanks to said people crying "climate propaganda!" The attitude espoused by OP here is worse than useless. It's thanks to propaganda from ideologues who OPPOSE collective action on climate change that there are huge swaths of people who think it's not an issue at all, or some kind of commie plot. Stop the buffoonery, and stop demonizing people who want to prevent future suffering and ecological degradation.
- PKop 3y ago
  We can't all make it either, that is utopian thinking. There will be winners and losers.
  - smolder 3y ago
    This is a non sequitur given what I wrote.
  - ta8903 3y ago
    But we can try to minimize the number of losers.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  > I didn't say we are all going to die. But you said: > The ideology of wanting humans to not send themselves to extinction It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy.
  - smolder 3y ago
    The nuance you and others are missing is that I didn't say it was a definite thing. I didn't even say it was likely. I implied that the ideology he was complaining about is made up of people who don't think we should accelerate towards extinction: not an extreme stance at all. Given even a slight, non-zero risk of us doing that, if you have the stance that we shouldn't, it's reasonable to take steps to reduce the risk. I could have been way more succinct and less sarcastic with my original comment, but it hardly seems worth the effort when replying to a post like theirs.
    - vasco 3y ago
      The stance is extreme because it's doomsday speak, of the kind only people on top of a box in the park used to say when I was a kid. Humans will be here, maybe less of us, on boats, in constant air-con personal pods, whatever, we'll figure something out. We're not going extinct any time soon unless someone decides to launch nuclear weapons.
  - bradjohnson 3y ago
    >It seems pretty clear you are implying we will literally go extinct because of global warming. This is crazy. It's implying that we are sending ourselves towards extinction, just as if you were sending yourself towards obesity by continually consuming 10,000 Calories per day. What is really crazy is that there are still climate change deniers that exist in this comments section.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Hyperbole tends to push people away. I was quite active in climate causes about 20 years ago, in large part because I was young and felt that without imminent action the world would face catastrophic damage. This [1] article is just one countless of the time. It was reporting on a Pentagon climate report that the White House was trying to 'keep the public from seeing.' At the top, in bright yellow, the Guardian is reminding viewers that "This article is more than 19 years old." And the lede is "Britain will be 'Siberian' in less than 20 years." Other claims include that "by 2020 'catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war.' It's further suggested that this will also come with "widespread crop failure, famine, disease, and mass migration of populations..." And that's just from "my" era. As you go further back, you will find similar reports. Here's [2] one I dug up from 1982: "Monstafa K. Tolba, executive director of the United States environmental program, told delegates that if the nations of the world continued their present policies, they would face by the turn of the century "an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust." If I could go back 80 years into the past and try to optimize the world for climate action I would make sure that any and all predictions made appealed not to the drama of the high end outliers in order to try to spur on immediate action, but instead did the exact opposite and assumed the low end outliers - so that people would have decades of evidence of my predictions not only coming true, but being far greater in impact. At least in my case, you can thank hyperbolic messaging for the reason I've gone from 'active advocate' to 'meh, I'm somewhat more concerned about nuclear war tbh.' [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t... [2] - https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1982.jpg https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2021/11/1982.j...
  - js8 3y ago
    IMHO, that sounds just like a burnout from activism, caused by cynical people who are "meh" about the issue. Logically, your claim (that catastrophizing drives people away from activism) doesn't make much sense. If you still think that environment has same value as you did in the past, then you should still support the ecological policies, regardless what people are saying. If you only supported them because of catastrophism and not because you don't inherently value it, then you were misled and shouldn't have advocated it in the first place. What I am saying is you have moral agency, and if you feel misled by other people's factual claims (e.g. exaggerating the impact, regardless of reason), it shouldn't change the validity of your moral stance or your values. But if your values didn't change, you're still an advocate, although perhaps with a different outlook.
waiseristy 3y ago
Of course the globe warming 3 degrees isn’t going to cause human extinction. But it will kill hundreds of millions due to inevitable war and genocide over the changing landscape. Thinking that mass famine/flooding/heat events in Africa, India, or South America isn’t going to affect you is incredibly naive. Instability ain’t good, and we can’t just welcome it with open arms. Shit that happens in Wuhan, Donetsk and elsewhere do affect you
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- missedthecue 3y ago
  Global warming is going to increase food supply because carbon is an input to photosynthesis. Several studies have shown that increased carbon in the atmosphere increases crop yields and increases water usage efficiency by reducing plant transpiration. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-study-rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-will-help-and-hurt-crops https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nasa-study-rising-... On social media I've noticed a trend where people attribute every bad thing that immediately comes to mind to climate change. War, extinction, famine, disease and pestilence, I've even seen people confidently throw increases of rape in there when describing the impending hellscape sure to befall humanity in the next x years due to climate change, citing some very dubious chain of correlative logic. The truth is that a warming planet will change things but not all changes are bad for humans, and those that are bad are not all catastrophic or unmanageable. I think it will do everyone some good to take a step back and look at things with an analytical and curious eye, and reject the urge to panic or spread addictive but harmful fear porn.
  - waiseristy 3y ago
    > For wheat and soybean crops, in terms of yield the median negative impacts are fully compensated, and rice crops recoup up to 90 percent and maize up to 60 percent of their losses. That’s quite a buried lede. At best it evens out all the bad effects I honestly don’t know how to reconcile our worldviews here, and I envy your optimism. But “just wingin it” isn’t what brings about good change. Those with curious and analytical eyes should see that our actions vis a vis climate change and other things have consequences. Good or bad, who really knows. But why are we committing ourselves before knowing? Seems pretty dumb
brewdad 3y ago
Humans didn't exist during the last Ice Age. We've never survived an Ice Age and you certainly can't say anything for certain about our future. Technology has gotten into this mess. We can hope it also brings our salvation but I wouldn't bet the species on it.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  Yes we did? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Glacial_Period

userbinator 3y ago

That's what they want you to believe. Harnessing fear itself has proven to be a powerful tool of controlling the masses. Realise the truth and it will set you free.

smolder 3y ago
This has strong Poe's law vibes. If you're serious: pretend I sent you an eye-roll emoji.

PKop 3y ago

Whichever group/nation abstains from consuming better energy sources will just get run over by the the nations that don't make that mistake. ESG et all are national suicide pacts, look at Europe. They are declining, and will be a weaker power as they use less energy than their competitors. Human history and the human condition is conflict and competition, you have to win the game against others, not voluntarily lose it.

smolder 3y ago
This is kind of a shallow take. Building for sustainability makes a nation STRONGER in the face of declining resources. It's investing in the future.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
In a global system like the one we have, is there really only one game to play in order to succeed?
specialist 3y ago
Transitioning from natural gas to renewables will make Germany weaker?
- nixass 3y ago
  No but moving away from nuclear power will.
  - specialist 3y ago
    Just checked and yes indeed, the German govt has and will continue to shut them down. Darn. I really thought they were going to pause and keep them running, for a while longer at least. I don't pay much attention to stuff outside of the USA. We've got so many problems of our own. But, in case you're interested, I did find this episode interesting. "Germany's current energy situation & its past energy choices. A conversation with German energy economist Claudia Kemfert." 2022/11/09 https://www.volts.wtf/p/germanys-current-energy-situation https://www.volts.wtf/p/germanys-current-energy-situation

missedthecue 3y ago

There is no threat of extinction, this is silly.