4 ms·

I’m sympathetic to both sides of the ranting here. It is simultaneously true that (1) man made climate change exacerbates these things (2) california state an

by mlsu 2y ago

I’m sympathetic to both sides of the ranting here. It is simultaneously true that (1) man made climate change exacerbates these things (2) california state and local government is a bottomless wellspring of incompetence And also, it is true that we will adapt to man made climate change. But many things in the biosphere (e.g. corals in the GBR) cannot adapt on these timescales. Extinction is forever, it is an incomprehensible loss.

robomartin 2y ago
> But many things in the biosphere (e.g. corals in the GBR) cannot adapt on these timescales. Extinction is forever, it is an incomprehensible loss. In many ways that's the other red herring. Extinction = bad. More generally, change = bad. I think I can say more things have gone extinct on this planet than exist today. Some 200 million years ago all the continents were fused into one. I can't even imagine the cataclysmic losses and changes this brought over time. Yet, life and the planet evolved, adapted and survived. Sure, the time scale was millions of years. I posit that there is no difference here and today. We, humans, and a very small number of us at that, are the ones who are exaggerating the importance of time. A thousand years ago we would not have known anything about changes happening all over the globe. We did not have the kind of global visibility into things we have today. It is quite possible that many things changed massively during the centuries and we had no idea. If we didn't have politicians and cultists constantly pounding us with climate change as the cause for everything, people would not think life was different in any meaningful way. And that's the fact for everyone on this planet, except for a few who are being driven into irrational panic by the cult. We even have child abuse, with Greta Thunberg perhaps being the most visible example. In many ways this is no different from what religious extremism does to people. Using such things as the fear of going to hell to justify anything and demanding uncontested belief and obedience, sometimes under threat of punishment. Climate change is a new religion in this sense.
- mlsu 2y ago
  Extinction is permanently destroying genetic information. An analogy might be spending 100,000,000 years and countless trillions of kJ to train a neural network, and then simply rm -rf the weights. On the concrete example of corals, scientists are investigating compounds found only in corals that could help with treatment of asthma, cancers, and HIV. This has no value to us? And again, corals. Many mass coral die-offs have occurred over the last several millions of years. Coral species, even sensitive ones, survived without going extinct, because the die offs were relatively slow, taking place over tens of thousands of years. This is not true today, specifically because of the speed and extent of ocean warming and acidification. Many examples like this. It's the speed. Continents moved centimeters per year; temperatures have moved whole degrees in decades. We have scientific evidence on biosphere stability 1,000 or 100,000 years ago. It was more stable than it is now! It was more stable because we did not have anthropogenic climate change! (among other things, habitat loss, pollution, etc). People focus on climate change because it is caused obviously and directly by many things we do day to day, like driving and eating red meat.
  - robomartin 2y ago
    > People focus on climate change because it is caused obviously and directly by many things we do day to day, like driving and eating red meat. I think people focus on climate change because it is being pushed through political and business narratives from every angle. Without this type of ideological carpet bombing the average person would tell you everything is fine. Aside from that, I submit that our contribution to climate change is a small part of it and not, as you put it, caused by many things we do. Your statement makes it sound like we are the one-and-only cause. I am not sure that's the way you meant it. I am not attacking your comment, simply pointing out that being precise with language can be important. Here's an interesting read: https://www.dailyhistory.org/What_is_the_history_of_wildfires_in_California%3F https://www.dailyhistory.org/What_is_the_history_of_wildfire... They talk about 1.2 million acre fires in the 1800's and how fire suppression policies backfired. The argument presented is that letting forests burn through is healthy, whereas allowing diseased, old and dead trees to remain actually increases risk factors. One of the key things various climate change narratives tend to ignore is that these massive fires, which occur in many parts of the world, contribute very significant amounts of CO2 and other matter to the atmosphere. It isn't uncommon for a two-week fire to produce an amount of CO2 that is equivalent to or greater than all the CO2 produced by road transportation in California. So, the culprit is always cars and cows and not the reality that such things as fires are here to stay. This is where mismanaging our forests can have truly negative and deadly consequences. There are other fires that have been burning for hundreds of years (mines). Here's one: https://www.iflscience.com/the-worlds-oldest-fire-has-been-burning-for-6000-years-69009 https://www.iflscience.com/the-worlds-oldest-fire-has-been-b... None of these things fit the narratives needed by politicians (who use climate change as a tool for votes), business (to make money) and academia (to grab grant funding). Instead they reduce a complex multivariate problem into a silly "human = bad" narrative to keep the ball rolling. If we were truly honest about most of these things the entire cult would collapse. BTW, none of this means we should not clean up our act. Of course we should. We simply need to stop claiming we are all going to die and we have to save the planet. We are not going to die. The planet does not need saving. And, if it did, we would never be able to do it.

by mlsu 2y ago

robomartin 2y ago

> But many things in the biosphere (e.g. corals in the GBR) cannot adapt on these timescales. Extinction is forever, it is an incomprehensible loss. In many ways that's the other red herring. Extinction = bad. More generally, change = bad. I think I can say more things have gone extinct on this planet than exist today. Some 200 million years ago all the continents were fused into one. I can't even imagine the cataclysmic losses and changes this brought over time. Yet, life and the planet evolved, adapted and survived. Sure, the time scale was millions of years. I posit that there is no difference here and today. We, humans, and a very small number of us at that, are the ones who are exaggerating the importance of time. A thousand years ago we would not have known anything about changes happening all over the globe. We did not have the kind of global visibility into things we have today. It is quite possible that many things changed massively during the centuries and we had no idea. If we didn't have politicians and cultists constantly pounding us with climate change as the cause for everything, people would not think life was different in any meaningful way. And that's the fact for everyone on this planet, except for a few who are being driven into irrational panic by the cult. We even have child abuse, with Greta Thunberg perhaps being the most visible example. In many ways this is no different from what religious extremism does to people. Using such things as the fear of going to hell to justify anything and demanding uncontested belief and obedience, sometimes under threat of punishment. Climate change is a new religion in this sense.

mlsu 2y ago
Extinction is permanently destroying genetic information. An analogy might be spending 100,000,000 years and countless trillions of kJ to train a neural network, and then simply rm -rf the weights. On the concrete example of corals, scientists are investigating compounds found only in corals that could help with treatment of asthma, cancers, and HIV. This has no value to us? And again, corals. Many mass coral die-offs have occurred over the last several millions of years. Coral species, even sensitive ones, survived without going extinct, because the die offs were relatively slow, taking place over tens of thousands of years. This is not true today, specifically because of the speed and extent of ocean warming and acidification. Many examples like this. It's the speed. Continents moved centimeters per year; temperatures have moved whole degrees in decades. We have scientific evidence on biosphere stability 1,000 or 100,000 years ago. It was more stable than it is now! It was more stable because we did not have anthropogenic climate change! (among other things, habitat loss, pollution, etc). People focus on climate change because it is caused obviously and directly by many things we do day to day, like driving and eating red meat.
- robomartin 2y ago
  > People focus on climate change because it is caused obviously and directly by many things we do day to day, like driving and eating red meat. I think people focus on climate change because it is being pushed through political and business narratives from every angle. Without this type of ideological carpet bombing the average person would tell you everything is fine. Aside from that, I submit that our contribution to climate change is a small part of it and not, as you put it, caused by many things we do. Your statement makes it sound like we are the one-and-only cause. I am not sure that's the way you meant it. I am not attacking your comment, simply pointing out that being precise with language can be important. Here's an interesting read: https://www.dailyhistory.org/What_is_the_history_of_wildfires_in_California%3F https://www.dailyhistory.org/What_is_the_history_of_wildfire... They talk about 1.2 million acre fires in the 1800's and how fire suppression policies backfired. The argument presented is that letting forests burn through is healthy, whereas allowing diseased, old and dead trees to remain actually increases risk factors. One of the key things various climate change narratives tend to ignore is that these massive fires, which occur in many parts of the world, contribute very significant amounts of CO2 and other matter to the atmosphere. It isn't uncommon for a two-week fire to produce an amount of CO2 that is equivalent to or greater than all the CO2 produced by road transportation in California. So, the culprit is always cars and cows and not the reality that such things as fires are here to stay. This is where mismanaging our forests can have truly negative and deadly consequences. There are other fires that have been burning for hundreds of years (mines). Here's one: https://www.iflscience.com/the-worlds-oldest-fire-has-been-burning-for-6000-years-69009 https://www.iflscience.com/the-worlds-oldest-fire-has-been-b... None of these things fit the narratives needed by politicians (who use climate change as a tool for votes), business (to make money) and academia (to grab grant funding). Instead they reduce a complex multivariate problem into a silly "human = bad" narrative to keep the ball rolling. If we were truly honest about most of these things the entire cult would collapse. BTW, none of this means we should not clean up our act. Of course we should. We simply need to stop claiming we are all going to die and we have to save the planet. We are not going to die. The planet does not need saving. And, if it did, we would never be able to do it.