- cross-posted to:
- YUROP@feddit.org
You must log in or # to comment.
You know what would help this situation?
AI
Lots and lots of AI.
Also more religion.
Don’t forget more Trillionaires
Isn’t Ai a religion already ? 🤔
More religion? So just all, okay…guess the “life in balance with nature”-type of religions are also evil and protecting nature is cutting down trees
There’s been a 73% decline in global vertebrate populations since 1970. We’re in the beginning of a very serious mass extinction and it’s kinda like we don’t care which is interesting.
Well that’s because we are the mass extinction event.
Yup, second organism to cause a mass extinction but the first to self proclaim it’s intelligent.
The curse of interesting times strikes again.
I’m still pretty solid on the idea we’re in an ancestor simulation or at minimum definitely not in base reality.
Whatever helps get you through it. Functionally it makes no difference. The simulation runs particles smaller than atoms and the maximum speed is still light. Our universe is too vast for us to explore and there’s probably other life forms on planets too far away to matter. Our experience is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, yet the only thing we will ever do. Make it count while you’re here.
I mean the probability isn’t in our favor. As for us, yeah it doesn’t change much. Same for a lot of epistemological arguments. Last Thursdayism, Descartes demon, Plato’s cave, Chung Tzu’s butterfly, solipsism, Boltzmann brains could all be bang on right on the money. I see you’re taking the more so physical reality approach, even then if something like the holographic universe or some variation is correct then maybe distance doesn’t exist like we think it does. If for instance we’re in a black hole then there’s a one to one representation of all information here in what we consider 3D space on the black hole’s surface.
All the fun ideas aside I agree with you although maybe our definitions of fun may be different. That is I think the first goal is to reduce needless and avoidable suffering for all minds anywhere in existence whenever possible. Like even if it is a simulation of sorts or reality just started ten seconds ago or what I’m experiencing is a Boltzmann brain it still doesn’t stop the first goal from at least being the best goal I’ve found so far.
Yeah that’s pretty much where I landed too.
That’s because a lot of money is being spent to keep us oblivious about it.
Not saying you’re wrong but I don’t see the point in letting the population collapse. It will just bounce back later and probably be far greater assuming humans don’t go extinct before achieving sufficient space travel and colonies. That is also assuming we’re the only ones here and this isn’t like a controlled demolition of the human species by some other entity or force.
people can really just say anything they want on the internet huh?
I haven’t even ruled out last Thursdayism. Reality is strange, even in the most mundane interpretation.
no no you don’t understand, the billionaires want more money, the number simply must go up. and maybe they would care about the world if any of their workers would inform them of the consequences of each of their actions, but none that do stick around so the number keeps going up, fuck the consequences
Possible but they’re holding summits trying to figure out how to maintain control in their bunkers when money no longer has value. I think they’re pretty aware of the situation at hand.
yeah but you just said it, they feel safe with their bunkers, the rest of the world be damned
Safe until there’s a revolt and they become the bunker bitch or in a worse case tomorrow’s dinner. You see the issue? Can’t control people with money if money no longer has value.
of course, though i bet they’re working under the assumption that their defences are enough, or that they will be the last remaining humans out there. basically, hubris
greed and hubris are a powerful combo, unfortunately
Sociopathic billionaires with all of the power to do something about it absolutely don’t care if the world ends. They only care if they were on top before the game ended.
I’m not absolutely sure if. That’s true, seems to be more so a function of their age. Like if i’m 92 and the world ends then not so bad, but if I’m like 38 and the world ends then that’s sad.
You’re very right. We’re dealing with mostly rich old people who never cared about others while they were young and certainly don’t now that they’re about to die.
People like elon musk will be around for a good while longer and I think people need to not underestimate just how mentally ill these people are. They’re not capable of caring about other people as much as themselve like normal people are. This is a key feature of sociopathic narcissism, and people like that are well equipped to traverse our economic system more successfully than anyone else because they have no morals or empathy holding them back. After enough decades of capitalism, the only ones on top are people like this and then it devolves into neo-feudalism.
If any billionaire regardless of age cared about humanity, they would use their massive power and influence to help humanity and they simply choose not to.
Climate change deniers: “I’ll be dead by 2050, why do I care?” or “Fuck you, I got mine already.”
Reality: FAFO.
Oh good we are ahead of schedule
Nobody cares anymore now that datacenters and AI exist.
Corporations have never cared, it’s always deflection and distraction.
Example: the myth of recycling
Apt observation, user scrotumnipples
I keep wanting to make “we are flocked” signs with arrows pointing at the cameras, but I don’t know if I should worry about putting them up.
Faster than expected, and worse than anticipated. It will get much faster and much worse. Practice growing your own food and stay in shape.
Actually, in line with what was actually anticipated and taught in science classes in 2000. People decided to go with the best case scenarios as if global emissions would go down for some reason. No one who has been paying attention should be surprised.
Yeah limits to growth I think was in the 70s. Seems pretty accurate so far.
Global emissions did go down. https://climateactiontracker.org/media/images/CAT_2025-11_Graph_ParisProgress.width-777.png
That graph doesn’t show that emissions gone down, that shows the estimated effect on temperature growth based on targets agreed on by the Paris agreement. Neither the targets nor the temperature estimates in this graph have been met.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions
Per capita emissions growth has slowed, not reversed but the population has INCREASED. Not only is industry emitting more per person, but there are more people.
Every single type of GHG has increased as well.
We’re fucked.
Every time the IPCC publishes a report it’s like: oh yeah may have gone way past the most pessimistic option this year, yet again, for the seventh time in a row, so here’s a new set of predictions that will surely not be overly optimistic this time round.
It’s designed to keep us passive while we continue to fail.
We could really use a covid-style lockdown for a few years.
But this time no cure until we wipe out all the anti mask/ anti vaccine idiots first
And “AI” idiots who insist on burning entire areas just to generate shrimp Jesus memes
And the fascist oligarchs. Maybe lock em in submarines and drown the lot of em.
We don’t need a covid-style lockdown to do that. Just saying.
i know the perfect company for that one, im sure they still use a logitech controller.
Ai data centres used about 0.5% of global electricity production last year. Electricity production is about 26,000 TWh annually, versus total energy production of 185 TWh annually, so AI was about 0.07% of all energy consumption. Energy production causes the bulk of greenhouse emissions: 73.2%, putting AI on 0.05% (this is unfair to AI, because electricity is cleaner than the average energy production which includes just burning gas for heat).
In comparison, trying to find something small on https://ourworldindata.org/ghg-emissions-by-sector my favourite comparison is that energy for making paper consumes more than 10x as much as does AI.
A large TV might consume about 100W while on, so 100Wh to watch for an hour. To reach the same consumption with AI, you’d need to run about 55 expensive (the upper estimate I found was 6700J - I assume this means long coding answers, research or image generation) chatgpt queries.
Personally I think it unlikely that someone would reach that 1 prompt per minute at that expensive estimate, so ask yourself: is AI really “burning entire areas” compared to just watching TV?
It has its problems but this is a moral panic.
If you’re downvoting, leave me a comment to say why.
It all well and good comparing data centre energy usage with global production. But you miss out the important reality that a good chunk of the data centres running today and in the near future are using fossil fuel power on-site, without a grid connection, which is so much worse.
Be honest. Even if every single data centre did that, would it worse enough to really change the picture? It’s still going to be less than paper production by a long way for a long while.
You’re fighting a losing battle here, some people just have decided that AI is bad no matter what. There are quite many here on lemmy, which is a shame because there are good and bad sides about AI, but IMO it for sure is here to stay, so discussions would be interesting, again IMO.
some people just have decided that AI is bad no matter what.
Correct, because outside of scientific and medical applications (run by actual scientists and medical professionals), all AI is bad no matter what.
Nothing it can possibly do for you justifies the harm it does, and your reliance on it atrophies your cognitive skills.
AI is bad, but it’s bizarre to point to its energy usage, out of all things. It’s really missing the forest for the trees. As top commenter’s data shows, even gaming on a gaming PC is so much worse (considering a 650W PSU, which is 6.5 times the TV example).
Yep, I’ve not had a productive discussion about it that I remember. It’s not just that people have made their minds up; they also will not hear anything that is misaligned with their belief, even if ultimately compatible: you don’t need to think that ai is useful or good to realise its energy use is not especially important. But if it’s bad everything about it must be bad.
I mean you’re talking to a guy who has halved his total energy usage over the past four years including watching fewer shows, playing fewer games, and sharing more books with friends from our already existing libraries. Trying to convince me that AI isn’t that bad because it only adds a little more energy usage is a real lost cause when I’m constantly trying to push things to less energy usage in every way I can because I hear climate scientists sounding all the alarm bells.
It’s an extra 0.5% that didn’t need to exist on top of everything else we need to reduce.
Do you complain that everyone is being immoral for continuing to watch TV? Or do you accept that energy usage for entertainment is allowed?
How do you compare the relative moral value of using AI, watching TV, driving 10 miles, eating a steak and catching a flight?
If I wanted to halve my carbon footprint I’d further reduce my meat consumption. I would do nothing about gaming, safe in the knowledge that it’s basically irrelevant.
Everyone should be doing what they can was more my point. I went for the biggest things for myself. I already was mostly vegetarian and didn’t drive much so nothing to change there. Most of my carbon footprint was gaming, TV, and AC. Things I was able to work on easily. I do understand I’m fortunate enough to be able to add more insulation to my house and get more efficient appliances and so on. I do know we need to tackle things at the industrial level for best effect.
My point, again was that adding more power consumption and heat generation is definitely not the way.
Sure, but everyone needs to stay sane and alive - so whether someone is generating a slop meme, or watching TV - or using Claude to keep their boss happy, or whatever, these are relatively morally equivalent things. Yet here, AI is singled out as if it were uniquely damaging, when in fact it’s similar. Just more hated.
They seem to be talking more about reliability than capacity. And you’ve not commented on the numbers, and comparison with other activities, which I’d take as more reliable and significant than the pronouncements of a damn lobbyist.
However there is sharp growth in demand being predicted and I don’t see any sign of humanity trading in some other power usage to get their data center power allocation. Even if we’re are greening the grid it is all for nothing if the extra capacity has to be filled in by more fossil fuels.
Yes, about 12% per year these days. Not enough to really change the picture for a long time, though.
The anti-mask/no jab people were convinced to be dangerous by billionaire propaganda.
So? Matrix rules motherfucker, I don’t care if you’ve been manipulated into trying to kill me, I just care that you’re trying to kill me and it’s not my responsibility to deprogram your death cult ass. Fuck em, every last one.
And also made to be susceptible to that level of stupidity by capitalists & their owned politicians gutting education / failing to fund it adequately to begin with. (For US anyway.)
Yeah, the people with the blood clots, myocarditis, infertility, and skyrocketing rates of ass cancer are the smart ones.
They knew that COVID is stopped by a mask, except you’re sitting down at a restaurant.
They get COVID again and again because the vaccine works!
Hmm. The Lemmy antivax crowd.
“Crowd” being, in this case, one guy lol
Decades of doctors, researchers, and Nobel prize winning immunologists willing to endure endless derision and destroy their careers.
Hundreds of thousands of parents with identical stories.
But we’re just the antivax crowd. Smart people believe the ads on TV.
Decades is a way to count people now? I think the number you’re looking for is 2%.
I don’t know where you got the 2% number and I think the real number is probably a lot higher, but let’s assume that number is right for a moment. I know what you’re probably thinking because I used to think the same thing. IF vaccines were not as safe and effective as claimed, that number would be a lot higher than 2%. Four vaccines to cause SIDS, cancer, autoimmune diseases, autism, etc. that would mean that a massive amount of very smart people we’re either dumb or lying.
It seems inconceivable. But, the pharmaceutical industry is incomprehensively, wealthy and powerful in part because they own or effectively own pretty much every major scientific and medical journal and every med school and medical textbook. And they have a government that mandates their products and protects them from lawsuits. You can’t sue a vaccine manufacturer.
Under those circumstances, at least one and 50 medical professionals is screaming from the rooftops that vaccines are not safe, even when the industry is dedicated to destroying their careers and reputations for doing so and is willing to throw essentially unlimited money at it.
And there’s the fact that every study done that truly compared vaccinated and unvaccinated, such as the recent Henry Ford health study, has found that the vaccinated had significantly higher rates of every disease studied. Whereas the unvaccinated had close to zero.
I didn’t take the vaccine at first because they pushed it as having “no potential risks”. Every medical procedure has risks, so I knew they were bullshitting and was therefore unwilling to risk it. Mind you I worked through the entire pandemic as essential medical personnel (running a weed dispensary lmao)
Eventually, accurate risk information about the myocarditis / etc became available. That actually made me more comfortable because at least it was fucking honest. So I could evaluate, what is likely to cause me more harm, the vaccine or COVID?
The clear, science-based answer is COVID. You aren’t a free thinker, you just opted into a different lane of dogma.
You know that phrase when people show you who they are believe them? You knew they were lying. They told you they knew for sure it was safe and you knew they couldn’t know that. Then they admitted a little bit that it might be a little bit unsafe, and suddenly you trusted them?
Imagine a wife, who knows that her husband has cheated on her with dozens of women. She knows that he is currently sneaking out behind her back again and confront him. After some arguing and denial, he eventually admits that he did see another woman, but insists that they only kissed. Should she believe him?
That’s
not a remotely comparable analogy lol
The vaccine did not work well for me: I got COVID at least 3 times. Was wearing N95 masks from the start (happened to have some). Stayed at home except for vital shopping. Grew my hair out. Social distanced the best I could. Played a lot of Animal Crossing. But interacting with work and family is unavoidable, and that’s who I believe I got it from every time, as they were generally not taking it seriously.
From what I read, when I got the shot and boosters I should have had some kind of mild reaction. Felt bad for a day or at least a few hours, something like that. But that never happened to me. However, others I talked to did have a reaction, and they also didn’t seem to get COVID. So I’m inclined to believe that the vaccine probably did work, for at least some segment of the population, just not for me for some reason. It was a rush job, so it not working for everyone isn’t a conspiracy, to me it’s somewhat expected. And maybe one of the other brands would have worked, but I don’t think you were allowed to mix them.
The conflation of antivaxxers with tin foil hat conspiracy theorists is the product of huge marketing and PR budgets. I read that Pfizer had something like 112 employees just dedicated to Reddit.
It’s not a grand conspiracy theory. It’s just money and perverse incentives.
People like Biden and Fauci went on TV and said “when you get vaccinated, the virus stops with you… you can’t get it and you can’t transmit it.” They forced people to get the vaccine or lose their jobs.
And as you noted, it didn’t work, or at least not well. The data shows that it offered some protection to the initial variant, but the protection waned quickly, and once it wore off, your immune system was primed for a variant that no longer existed, which meant that you were actually at increased risk for new variants.
I know vaccinated people who have been hospitalized with COVID multiple times, and unvaccinated people who can’t seem to get COVID if they tried. It didn’t work. They lied and made billions on that lie.
Now think about what else they’re lying about.
Genocide is cool so long as it’s targeting the people I think are vile and sub-human.
Disingenuous bullshit for 300 Alex.
Nationalise essential services and rotate people in and out of those jobs for three months at a time, like jury service
Naaah. Get your lazy asses back to the office… so its market value doesn’t decrease.
Also, no wind turbines or any such humbug in our neighborhood… so we can keep increasing rents. Which we, the boomers, decided ourselves, through collective hypnosis. Also, what’s with this freeloader mentality? Imagine if any of the hoi-polloi could simply use wind and sun. Like, for themselves.
I expect climate change to be consistently worse than the mainstream predictions.
There’s a huge political incentive to err on the side of downplaying than to exaggerate, and those models should have been bad enough to make the point.
About a decade ago a group did a study on it.
They first created a simplified model. That model was still a fairly good match with the fully featured models. They then varied the parameters around reasonable possible values. If scientists were using most likely assumptions, you would expect a 50/50 split of better/worse predictions.
In practice it was 93% worse. Scientists were (unconsciously) using a lot of best case figures, not expected case.
When I read about that, and the complete lack of follow-up coverage, I knew we were fucked.
Which I don’t blame the original scientists or studies for. Their predictions were bad enough that we should have done something then. It’s been clear for at least 30 years.
They did what they thought would have the most traction and not get them dismissed as crackpots. And, to be clear, they were still within a margin of error. They weren’t generally wrong, considering their margins. It’s just that they’re not going to be perfect and they made the better choice.
Even now it would be easier to dismiss climate change if the reality ended up better than predicted, even if it was still bad.
I came to the same conclusion after reading papers and articles for years and every year it got a little bit worse and a little bit sooner. Just following the trajectory of the changes in their expectations told me that we would hit ~+6°C by 2100.
One simplified model is not the reason for this. They’ve been expected to use a number of different climate scenarios in their work for a long time. Stop making shit up.
The point was to test for human bias in the data. The initial complaint was that scientists were cherry picking the data to make it look worse than it was. By looking at the spread, it showed they were minorly cherry picking to understate the problem. A fact that is now more and more obvious as it plays out.
Funny you say that, my wife does climate change mitigation research. She definitely isn’t cherry picking data. Climate change is just very uncertain.
It wasn’t deliberate. It was more likely scientists being overly cautious about overstating their case. The end results pushed the normal agreed values closer to best case predictions rather than middle.
This was back when the main models needed weeks of super computer time, so only a few were run, and everyone else analysed the shared results.
We’re sitting in our rooms agitated, causing life long issue with sleepless nights, all while these fuckers that did this for greed sake are building climate controlled bunkers.
Fuck rich removed
see you next Tuesday is sencered? What else can we call them…
I’ve said it before, we need to announce the revolution so all these idiots go into their bunkers, and then brick them up or something.
The concept of hiding out bunker is idiotic, if the world is truly dying then what are you going to do in a bunker? Sit there for the rest of your life, and then what, have your descendants emerge a century later to devastated world, what’s the point? The sort of people who hide out in end of the world shelters are not the sort of people who want to get their hands dirty rebuilding civilisation.
Far apart from anything else it’s going to be incredibly boring if you’re used to the jet setting lifestyle.
They probably think the “cattle” will tire themselves out with revolution after a decade or so, and then they can reemerge to retake the reins of society.
It doesn’t make the most sense but these people have more money than sense, almost definitionally.
“cattle” is neither capable of starting a revolution, not is it capable of sticking with it for more than half a year.
Tested and true in most first world countries
A cow can trample you, and a herd can absolutely stampede, if you agitate them enough.
For that the cow must start to move.
.ml has a profanity filter for some reason
Then why didn’t it filter profanity?
only some of it not all
Just attach a link to mudrat…
That’s my work out song
Idk how to convince people anymore. I am tired and sad
That’s the hit.
Drink lots of water and try to di most of your errants and activity by night or early morning when temperatures are at the coolest.
I am convinced all the climate change predictions were WAY too generous and reality is gonna be far worse.
They were
Scientists always were afraid to be too alarmist and be ignored, so they always went conservative with their estimates.
Now we are here
Even when trying to be the most realistic, the climate is too difficult to accurately model, due to many variables and interactions between them, like feedback loops, which tend to make our models err on the generous side
Yep that’s my fear
It will be even worse than what you’re expecting right now
Doesn’t matter what your intentions are.
Doesn’t matter what earnings you posted this quarter.
Doesn’t matter if you believe in climate change.
Doesn’t matter if you need this truck.
You’re on this rock of wind and water and it’ll do what it needs, to get back to it’s equilibrium. That might be at a level we don’t exist anymore nature is emotionless and you can’t control it.
Humans existed in harmony with nature for a very long time, and in many places still manage to, despite the increasing challenges posed by climate change.
The human species isn’t what’s throwing the planet out of equilibrium. It’s capitalism and the closely-related evils of white supremacy and war.
We can survive this if we kill capitalism, kill the notion of whiteness (and Zionism), return to listening to nature if we have strayed, and avoid war.
Though the human population is projected to begin shrinking very soon even without major environmental pressures, so “surviving this” might not look like the society we have today. Maybe we’re maintaining our own equilibrium, at least a little bit.
While I agree that the capitalist requirement for unceasing exponential growth is at the heart of modern climate change, it is slightly disingenuous to claim that humans have been living in harmony with nature prior to the industrial revolution. There is a lot of evidence for pre-modern humans clear cutting swathes of land, wiping out megafauna, and treating the environment as an object for exploitation long before the notion of infinite growth became commonplace.
If we really want to get to the heart of it, it is the monotheistic notion that the world was created for us, that there is another (better) world for us after we die, and that therefore it is our birthright to use this land in any way we see fit. Capitalism and industrialisation have provided humanity with the tools to proliferate to such an extent that the scale of the damage we are causing is far greater than anything we were capable of previously, but the Christian imperative to reap the land has been around far longer.
More animistic cultures/religions tend to emphasise the importance of balance with nature and recognise humanity’s place in the larger ecology, but they are therefore also less likely to propogate widely and become a dominant global force.
Fair point with megafauna, but my counterpoint would be that we were struggling to exist, like any other animal, and extinction is a part of nature. Driving things extinct isn’t inherently unnatural.
But then you could say, “Yes, but the same applies to climate change. The earliest oxygen-exhaling plants poisoned the atmosphere and lead to the extinction of more ancient plants.” (Or was it the giant fungus? I forget.) And you’d have a point there too.
But I think the key difference is having a viable alternative and being aware of the suffering we’re causing. We know what we’re doing; the plants did not, they just evolved that way. We have alternatives to farming and hunting animals until their extinction; early inhabitants of Aotearoa, who drove the Moa to extinction, probably didn’t. I will pick preserving megafauna over having my hypothetical preferred megafauna dinner, but I can’t pretend I’d pick preserving megafauna over preventing my family from starving to death.
If we really want to get to the heart of it, it is the monotheistic notion that the world was created for us, that there is another (better) world for us after we die, and that therefore it is our birthright to use this land in any way we see fit. Capitalism and industrialisation have provided humanity with the tools to proliferate to such an extent that the scale of the damage we are causing is far greater than anything we were capable of previously, but the Christian imperative to reap the land has been around far longer.
I agree so strongly that that philosophy definitely makes it much worse. My main issue with Abrahamic religions is the notion that god resembles man (and vice versa) instead of resembling forces of nature.
But I don’t think monotheism was a prevailing philosophy when the megafauna were driven to extinction. Animals (and sometimes even plants) have driven each other to extinction many times in our planet’s history, and we’re just animals. I think the only thing that gives us the potential to rise above that status is knowledge, and that acting as caretakers to all other living beings on this planet is the highest application of that knowledge in the short-term. Long-term, the highest application is extending the reach of life to other planets, even if it’s as simple as intentional panspermia with extremophile microbes.
Lots of good points here and well articulated. I agree that the critical difference between homo-sapiens and ancient forms of speciocide lies in our understanding of the consequences of our actions, and therefore (at least theoretically) having cognitive some control over our actions. I also agree that in most cases megafauna extinctions weren’t driven by a monotheistic philosophy, however, I would argue that in those cases we were likely ignorant to the full consequences of our actions thereby mitigating culpability to some extent. Either way, I wanted to push back on the notion of preindustrial humans being in harmony with nature (and perhaps the idea of harmonious nature more broadly) as I don’t think there is a lot of evidence for that beyond a few isolated examples.
I completely agree that we should be aspiring to the role of caretakers of this planet we’ve all found ourselves on, and to me the greatest tragedy of the human condition is the recognition of how much we’ve perverted that role. I find it hard to look forward to any kind of future for humanity when we are currently so at odds with that goal, and with seemingly no desire to alter course as a collective.
Doesn’t matter what earnings you posted this quarter.
That actually matters quite a bit. If you have enough money you can easily deal with the consequences of climate change until you’re dead.
And people continue to deny that global warming is real…
No, that was plan A.
Plan A: tell people there’s no climate change
Plan B: tell people climate change is natural, not man made
Plan C: tell people climate change is man made but there’s nothing we can do about it
We’re at plan C now.
But not too much man made. Can’t risk be sued
A lot will admit it’s real but then shift blame to China while overlooking the facts that chinas pollution is largely made by western countries outsourcing the dirtiest parts of their supply chain to China and that China is vastly outperforming and outspending literally every country in considerably bringing down their emissions
Sadly, most people are incapable (or unwilling) to think beyond maybe 2 links in the causal chain, the “in your face” immediatelly visible stuff and a simple explanation for it (generally of the “people I don’t like did it” kind).
Faced with “this is happening” (or, worse, “somebody is telling me this is happening”), they’ll generally accept whatever “explanation” they’re fed and can’t just keep asking themselves “Why?” (“Why are you telling me this (what’s in it for you)?”, “why would those people do this (what’s in it for them)?”, “is that the only reason?” and so on).
For example, if you dig down, in most countries in Europe the increase in immigration can be traced back to locals not having enough kids and thus the population is aging and you need to let in working age people to pay for retirement pensions of the locals, and that in turn digs down to massive realestate bubbles and stagnating salaries so that the profits of the fatcats are high (at the unspecialized level immigration does put downwards pressure on salaries, though the picture is less clear above that) making life way harder for young people so they have fewer children, and that in turn leads to how the parties in government (mainly the “mainstream” ones) have reliably enacted policies to favor very rich people (mainly making the income from Work be less and less whilst the income from Asset Ownership is more and more) and realestate investors and even the “fringe” “left” has just blindly parroted pro-immigration slogans from the American and British liberals (and ended up punished at the ballot for it, to the gain of the Far-Right), and that in turn leads us to just how many of those politicians have “realestate investestor” as their main source of wealth increase and to the massive levels of Corruption in the modern era (and on the “fringe” “left” parties we dig down to how those heading them grew up in the Neoliberal era, don’t really have coherent leftwing ideologies unlike in the old days and thus think the moral liberalism of the Neoliberals is what being “leftwing” is all about).
IMHO Populism works because it just points at some issue (or makes one up) and then provides a single-layer immediate explanation (generally of the “they’re bad people” kind), and all wrapped up in a nice bow and that totally satisfies many if not most people. The simplest way to disassemble that is just to ask “Why do you want me to believe that?”, but those people refuse to do it.
Some have stopped denying the warming. But they’ve moved on to “humans can’t cause enough pollution to affect the entire earth” and “It’s god’s will to bring the end times” fml
In the UK they’ve moved on to “we’re too small to make a difference, it’s like pissing in the wind”…
Canada is the same. Always the what about China. But they make the stiff for us what do people expect. We have outsourced our pollution.
seems like they are still ignoring BREXIT’s fallout too.
It’s not happening.
It’s happening, but it’s not our fault.
It’s our fault, but it’s too late to do anything about it…
Tell them to fuck their gods. ATP There should be forced climate action whether other people like it or not.
My favorite is “it’s real, but it’s the sun, so…what are we gonna do? Besides, humans can’t possibly affect the earth!” as if things like aerosolized lead blanketing the planet for 60 years simply didn’t happen.
Well its not the whole globe, just Europe here. There are people there I care about, but there’s plenty of space for them over here when Europe becomes uninhabitable, and switching to renewables seems like kind of a pain.
Of course if Europeans refugees DID start fleeing here, they’d change their mind about how much space there is.
The cynic in me imagines that the media purposely promoted the longer timelines to lull people into thinking we had more time, and so there was no rush.
I think it’s more about scientists being extremely conservative with their estimates, because they know they’ll get impaled over being ‘alarmist.’
And then (effectively) fired from their job.
Also, you should check out conservative coverage. There is no timeline compression, its strait up cynicism, hostile denial.
EDIT: I forgot hand wringing. A perfect example: fairly scientific family showed me a WSJ article about how future geoengineering is going to make climate change a non-issue.
“Offended” did not begin to describe my reaction.
I’ve been reading geoengineering research papers for years, and they amount to things like:
Well, if we redirected a significant portion of the global economy to custom airplane and chemical production, we could rain sulfuric acid over the poles and wipe out all life beyond a certain latitude, and maybe counter the warming some if we keep it up… ecological implications aside, its still rather impractical, but an order of magnitude cheaper than previous proposals. Shows table.
I feel like some counters should immediately banish the speaker to sitting in the corner. “Alarmist” and “divisive” are the top two that come to mind. It’s almost always idiots not engaging with the material in good faith who pop those out.
I dunno about “divisive.” Sometimes thats a legitimate criticism, and pot-stirrers are little shits, IMO.
If someone is just trolling, sure. But usually I hear it when someone’s like “gay people should be allowed to live” and someone else goes “you’re being diViSiVe”
Well there’s no retort to that. If you’re in a debate environment where an acceptable critique is “well, these people existing is not part of our beliefs, so its not okay,” then the whole debate is rigged from the start.
The thing is each individual issue feeds the speed of the rest. Sun melting ice from above, rising sea temp melting from below and both speed the other up. There’s thousands of things like this. I’m not an expert or anything I just remember reading something like this.
