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100%, it reads like 'I found a clever flaw and followed it up with an unrigorous conclusion because I was blinded by my cleverness'. His conclusion that oh the

by npunt 2y ago

100%, it reads like 'I found a clever flaw and followed it up with an unrigorous conclusion because I was blinded by my cleverness'. His conclusion that oh the soil can recapture carbon also reminded me of generally smart & accomplished but non-expert people online these days that lean on unrealistic tech solutions they just heard about as being an adequate mitigation for climate change. 'Oh just have ships burn bunker fuel again to put sulfur in the air', 'we can seed the clouds', 'we'll surely build technologies like carbon capture that will solve this'. Rather than fall into the nerd snipe trap of trying to analyze these technologies and their deployment and effect, it's far easier to see it for what it really is: cope. People don't want to face up to how existentially scary and out of control things are in our climate, so they rationalize their fears away. It's understandable, but it's also not sound analysis, and can be safely dismissed as such.

acdha 2y ago
I think your last point is really important. Once you accept that climate scientists are right, you start to think about all of the ways your lifestyle depends on cheap carbon emissions and the things you’ll be doing less, not to mention all of the fun ecosystem and disease implications. It’s sooooooo much easier just to hope that the multi-billion dollar campaign saying business as usual will be fine is right, because otherwise you’re pretty much saying your children won’t have a world as good as you did.
- worik 2y ago
  > you start to think about all of the ways your lifestyle depends on cheap carbon emissions Been there Done that. Driving my car. That is it. I do need to get an electric car for taking the dog (and me) to the beech, then I am done. * The vast majority of my food is local * My clothes are natural fibres * My electricity is > 80% from renewables. The real problem is not lifestyle, it is systemic. I think it is bad form to blame people, who unlike me, have no way out of burning fossils. If we stop burning fossils, for most of us, our lives will get better, not worse. Some very rich people will be less rich. That is the real problem
  - acdha 2y ago
    I wasn’t blaming people – it’s systemic (c.f. needing to buy a car) – but rather thinking about the inevitability of change. People like getting imported fruit in the middle of winter. We like taking airplane flights for weekend excursions. Tons of people want to retire to cheap houses next to the beach in Florida, coastal or barrier islands, etc. Entire generations were sold on those being middle class ambitions, and we don’t have a viable path where that’s sustainable. That doesn’t mean we live in abject misery, but most of it is something which most adults were told was a sign of how much better we have it than our predecessors so it feels like failure.

by npunt 2y ago

acdha 2y ago

I think your last point is really important. Once you accept that climate scientists are right, you start to think about all of the ways your lifestyle depends on cheap carbon emissions and the things you’ll be doing less, not to mention all of the fun ecosystem and disease implications. It’s sooooooo much easier just to hope that the multi-billion dollar campaign saying business as usual will be fine is right, because otherwise you’re pretty much saying your children won’t have a world as good as you did.

worik 2y ago
> you start to think about all of the ways your lifestyle depends on cheap carbon emissions Been there Done that. Driving my car. That is it. I do need to get an electric car for taking the dog (and me) to the beech, then I am done. * The vast majority of my food is local * My clothes are natural fibres * My electricity is > 80% from renewables. The real problem is not lifestyle, it is systemic. I think it is bad form to blame people, who unlike me, have no way out of burning fossils. If we stop burning fossils, for most of us, our lives will get better, not worse. Some very rich people will be less rich. That is the real problem
- acdha 2y ago
  I wasn’t blaming people – it’s systemic (c.f. needing to buy a car) – but rather thinking about the inevitability of change. People like getting imported fruit in the middle of winter. We like taking airplane flights for weekend excursions. Tons of people want to retire to cheap houses next to the beach in Florida, coastal or barrier islands, etc. Entire generations were sold on those being middle class ambitions, and we don’t have a viable path where that’s sustainable. That doesn’t mean we live in abject misery, but most of it is something which most adults were told was a sign of how much better we have it than our predecessors so it feels like failure.