Climate Change - increasingly horrible disasters loom

This is the problem.

Neither do you. Earths climate has changed many times over millions of years, from times much warmer than now to times much cooler. It is true that rapid climate change will most likely cause much of the mega flora and fauna in the world today to go extinct, because they wont be able to adapt/evolve in time. But because of technology this is less of a concern for humans, and we dont actually know it will result in the doomsday scenarios for humans climate scientists warn of.

Geologic history (and a high school level understanding of chemistry and biology) indicate higher CO2 and warmer temperatures will result in higher levels of rainfall and plant growth, all else being equal. There is a lot of evidence the Sahel/Sahara have actually been greening the last couple decades, for possibly this reason.

If your internal value system causes you to believe it is important there are lions and koalas and salamanders around in the wild in 100 years then this is a reason to support efforts to slow climate change. But it isn't some universal truth this is important, and if Lucium recognizes mass extinctions in the wild will probably happen if CO2 levels in the atmosphere continue to rapidly rise and doesn't think this is important that is valid.

It is true that human activity is causing environmental degradation. But it isn't obvious that continued burning of fossil fuels and releasing CO2 in the atmosphere, as has already occurred many times in earth's history, is that large a cause for concern.

And anyone who is absolutely certain it is, is operating off of faith and not science, IMO.

As far as Lucium's Germany example, my understanding is German's hold a lot of value in their forests, and it is likely a rapid increase in temperature would kill off the forests. So for that reason alone Germans might specifically be against global warming, even if it made winters more pleasant. Someone living in poverty on the borders of the Sahel that can now farm in areas they couldn't 20 years ago might have a different assessment. Like I said, it is a matter of what one values.

So better not to assume it's all going to be for the better and sit back and not actually actively try and stop significant change in a complex system. There are concepts in ecology called robustness (ability to function whilst subject to change) and resiience (ability to return to normal function after disturbance) and ecological systems demonstrably have a tipping point where they will never return to the previous state. Weather systems are somewhat similar. To try and play guess on these is extremely difficult, so better to try and reduce such major, ongoing disturbance as much as possilble

PS ecological robustness and resilience are somewhat tied to the complexity of the system, which, is really about species diversity. So it isn't about koalas and lions and salamanders, it's about trying to not let diversity keep reducing.

by jalfrezi P

This is the problem.

Yet Democrats really do not seem to care about a ton of folks either. Many of their climate policies illustrate that

Yes I quite agree.

Again, you are imposing your own value system that the previous state is desirable. Which is fine, but you should recognize this is what is going on. Science itself is agnostic. The environment is always changing, and life adapts or dies out/evolves. When the environment changes quickly a lot of species die and diversity goes down, and then new lifeforms evolve to fill abandoned niches. This has all happened several times before.

Missed this, will answer now.

I completly disagree with the notion that a warmer world automatically means a world with more frequent and intense adverse events overall for human beings.

That part of "science" is very far from being settled (unlike the actual warming having happened and having human causes), especially because right now at 1.2/1.3C over the 1850-1900 average it's absolutely not obvious that we are seeing stronger and more frequent adverse climatic events.

Except of course heat waves, those are more frequent & intense. But cold waves are less frequent and less intense. And cold waves *kill a lot more people than heat waves historically*, worldwide, and especially in europe, like it's not even close at all.

So while ofc unpredictable, it might very well be the case that warming aside, the frequency and intensity of events that kill human beings DECREASES for Germany in a warmer world. Absolutely not obvious it's "surely going to be a lot worse than now", not at all, nor eason to believe that.

And btw it's not climate scientists who can claim anything about quality of life of human beings in a warmer world (and place by place, by country, at that), they have absolutely no skills to deal with that topic. It's mostly economists, at least for the quantifiable parts.

And there are plenty of papers, including papers used in the IPCC report, that CLAIM NORTHERN EUROPE WILL BE ECONOMICALLY BETTER OFF IN A WARMER WORLD.

So who are the trolls ? i think the trolls are the science denialists who insist to claim that a country that is FAR colder than the optimal for human beings, where you can easily *freeze to death* absent heating for months every year, will be worse off with 2, or 3 , or 4 , or 5 celsius because of made up, scaremongering nonsense.

1) i am not against the TOTALITY of possible remedial actions. I am against the absurd focus on emission reductions vs mitigation , and against any emission reduction effort which isn't predicated on the only acceptable principle , which is "the most emission reduction with the smallest sacrifice for citizens".

There is almost no 1 on the left working on the "how much exactly does this cost, how much exactly does this reduce emissions, this is the list, we go with the first things first".

It's all moral grandstanding, religious fervour, and the possibility of achieving more socialism with the excuse of emissions reductions.

How ******ed can policy makers be to cover germany in solar panels while closing nuclear plants? in which world is that a sensible way to address emission reduction with the lowest possible sacrifice from citizens?

After they do that and they aren't annihilated politically, canceled forever, criticized as the worst possible and so on (wrt climate change remedies), you start to understand they (=most climate activists on the left) are in bad faith.

Anyone who is not super-in-favour of nuclear for example is clearly a bad faith actor motivated only by nefarious intents. And that's a lot of climate change activists, especially a lot of green parties. They fought tooth and nail (losing narrowly) trying NOT to count nuclear energy as clean (=emission free) even if it is by far the cleanests source, in the emission sense (yes by far).

Once it's 100% transparent they are completly in bad faith, and i explained why that's the case, they can't be interlocutor about the topic anymore. Everything published by anyone linked to them automatically loses any intellectual credibility, any paper they use or cite to make a point loses all credibility and so on. It's not science anymore.

2) I don't give a damn about my own citizens mostly, imagine how much i care about foreign people. I dislike welfare and the only rationale for it is to avoid those citizens voting for something that damages me even more. If someone can't vote against my freedoms i am not up to sacrifice for him in any way in general.

There might be exceptions for some causes sometimes but in general, as all rational people do (the revealed preferences, through actions, prove that), i dont give much of a **** about people who aren't my family or friends.

That said even if climate warming is clearly going to be more damaging for currently-already-hot countries than for cold ones, and many of them are already poor, they are still going to be better off than today even accounting for climate warming because of baseline economic growth by far, UNLESS we suicide the glocal economy.

So the collapse of the global economy & trade is a far bigger threat to Bangladesh (possibly the big country that loses the most from warming) than climate warming. And what risks causing the collapse of the global economy? leftism in general winning and having it's way.

If people actually cared about residents in Bangladesh, the purported reason why someone in Berlin should consume fewer fossil fuels, they would first guarantee that the technocratic, capitalistic, global order of Pax Americana lasts another century, then perhaps discuss emissions.

But as far as emissions go, lying completly is unacceptable anyway. I know for the radical left it is, they have no moral principle in pursuing their agenda. But lying to Germans inventing the most insane possible negatives of global warming FOR THEM, while the reality would be at most to reduce emissions to make life even better for people in Bangladesh, Mexico and so on, is unacceptable.

But the point stays that in 2050 , even if the world is 1 celsius hotter than today, life in Bangladesh would be better than today if their economy grows as per the past 30 years trend. Same is true in 2100 even in the "bad case" warming scenarios.

So all the "climatic refugees" nonsense is just that. I completly made up scare. People wanting to move might increase in numbers, but not because they "die from the heat".

People come to europe from Africa today MUCH MORE than they did in 1970. And objectively life in Africa in 1970 was far far far far worse than it is today.

It's very silly to disregard the risks associated with burying highly toxic radioactive material for a long period of time and call people voicing those concerns "bad faith actors", which is an example of the things you say that cause people to not take you seriously.,

Ridiculous. Bangladeshis aren't the only reason why people who can should reduce their carbon footprint.

Have you ever seen nuance in anything in your life? If you toned back some of the extreme, black-and-white rhetoric, you'd be more convincing (and more correct!).

what's more nuanced than asking for a list of emission-reduction options with associated costs and work from there?

It's fairly complex to claim which would be the first best option for example, because cost assessment requires utilitarianism which is morally bankrupt yet is the only way to quantify aggregated non monetary costs (that i know of).

But the fact that many things are unclear in how best (and how much) to reduce emissions doesn't remove the very clear elements of the picture, like the fact that nuclear is awesome for the task (and to be less dependant on foreign non democratic countries) and indispensable.

Nuclear is the only clean (emission-free) energy source that can provide energy 24/7/365.

A decent amount of baseline energy production is indispensable for now. It might not be the case anymore once we get to the "weeks of electricity stored in meg-batteries" stage, but we are decades away from that.

You know what comes after nuclear? hydro. Which... a lot of environmentalists oppose as well roflmao.

Then there is geo-thermic but that's not something you can use everywhere unfortunately.

THEN there is wind/solar with all their known problems. Ofc in some places solar/wind can be pretty good already for a portion of electrical needs. But lol at "100% solar/wind is the plan".

Oh and environmentalists sometimes have problems even with that, with solar because "we cover precious land" for wind because "poor birds die"

I mean even freaking GRETA had to admit, of course through her teeths and for now only for the "transition phase", that nuclear can play a part. Greta, whose supporters are some of the most radical violent activists in environmentalism, many of whom want 0 nuclear.

With nuclear it IS black & white, at least up to the "20-30% of electrical needs" of a country. There can be debate about going up to France levels, or staying much lower (i think France level or even more is best), that's less obvious.

But it is black & white that Germany closing down nuclear plants was an environmental disaster. They had to fire up again dismissed coal plants ffs

Hydro is probably the cleanest most green way to generate electricity and we are tearing down dams the taxpayers were billed billions of dollars for to save some fish. Fish that we kill with chemical enriched sewage.

The earth deserves her vengeance, and we deserve to die.

I think nuclear is better because it's green the same in terms of emissions, more in terms of general environment, and most importantly it's generation doesn't depend on rain and related stuff

nuclear plants use a huge amount of water, literally billions of gallons.

'We are moving into a different climate era'

I will try to find it, but there was some study on opinions of nuclear energy in the western world that indicated that it was mostly females that opposed it. So there may be some gender based evolutionary psychology going on.

I dont think it is accurate to dismiss concerns over nuclear as bad faith, even if you believe concerns are scientifically illegitimate and dangerous.

At least in Italy afaik it's mostly because women vote left more, and the left is more often anti-nuclear here.

I dismiss concerns over nuclear as bad faith *when* it's "climate activists" having them, people who insist emission reduction is a life or death priority and so on

In the UK women have traditionally voted more right wing than men, but that might have been from before women having more equal access to further education.

Married women with children vote right a lot more than unmarried and/or childless women in general and that has been true in most countries for a lot of time (i think since women had the vote basically). Fewer people marry , and fewer women have children, that moves them leftward (reason is straigthforward, one of the tenets of leftism is substituting what family was about with the state).

For women generally some scholars think it was also because the main propulsory force of the left in some countries for a while were unions, and women had union jobs (or any job at all) far less than men.

British women moved left later than most, perhaps because your "rightwing" party is not very rightwing and your "leftist" party is not very leftist

https://theconversation.com/women-used-t...

From your link:

which is what I said.

Maybe you should go out and study to earn more money than grinding online poker because it might open your mind.

they also are married less and less often have children which is what explained leftism in women almost everywhere

People generally are having fewer children than before whether married or not.

But I agree that, freer from the demands of child-rearing, women are more able to find time to pursue further education and immerse themselves in politics, leading them leftwards.

or maybe women are just more caring....and smarter

Or maybe that exposure to ideas in depth and critical thinking rather than the superficial sound bites and binary thinking so characteristic of the far right leads people to be more left wing.