All I know is people are tired of doomday predictions that do not come true such as all humans will die in twelve years, or all ice in the artic sea will be gone in less than a decade, etc, etc, etc,
While predictions like this may call attention to global warming, it just exasperates the problem (i.e the world will end on thursday syndrome) rather than call for solutions on a rational level. Then you have the one percenters telling the rest of us what to do, which begs the question... "Where do they get their information (I do not recall many if any celebrities actually have an environmental science degree) that they are spreading, and why, when they tell the 'common' folks what to do (restrict flying, don't drive etc.) they do the opposite. I think it's called celebrity burn-out (or at least it should be). And yes, that also includes making a climate celebrity out of a twelve year old (or however old Greta Thornburgh was).
And let us not forget that the boomers have lived through the recycle the plastic hoax, which took our glass bottles away from us, and replaced them with plastic in the name of environmentalism.
Buckminster Fuller preached Ephemeralization: to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing," that is, an accelerating increase in the efficiency of achieving the same or more output (products, services, information, etc.) while requiring less input (effort, time, materials, resources, etc.) An optimistic view, and fraught with economic dangers, and utopianism is not the answer, but it is a start. However, what do humans do? We find a new way to make more efficient batteries, and yay, they're perfect for EVs, except they're draining lakes to acquire this metal to mind in third world countries in the case of NIMBY, so it's okay to mine and cause environmental destruction and so is ignored by most.
And while these might be baby steps, to get to where technology gets to where it needs to, there are people who hail things like this (as in plastic bottles diapers and bags) as the savior to the environment. yet look at where and how such things are viewed now.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know doomsayers and listening to celebrities tell us how bad the enviormental crisis is as and we have to do something quickly when the live the lifestyle of consuming more resources (and yes adding more carbon) in a month than most families will in year.
What’s bitterly ironic is that many of the same people who castigate doomers are themselves dooming humanity and the natural world.
Let me explain :
With temperatures already well above 1.5° C the Earth has heated up well beyond the point where any plausible set of human interventions to reduce emissions can avoid temperature significantly higher than we are now experiencing.
Let us not forget that emission reductions alone can only somewhat reduce the increase in temperatures and cannot lower temperatures.
The best science says that if and when humanity eliminates carbon and other GHG emissions - and there is absolutely no sign that that is happening - temperatures will stay sharply elevated over what they are now for literally centuries.
That means that sea level rise and ecosystemcollapse will continue higher than that experienced today.
The best science also shows that largely irreversible catastrophic reinforcing tipping points will likely be activated at or around 1.5° C essentially taking the Climate system out of human hands.
And that is the best case !
Would any one of the people who castigate doomers choose to live or to have their family and friends choose to live in such a world ?
Of course not.
Yet those who castigate doomers are adamantly against intervening into the Climate system in ways that rapidly and relatively safely can actually reduce temperatures such as stratospheric aerosol injection or marine cloud brightening.
So it is a bit rich to hear the Michael Mann’s of the world condemn doomers while also condemning the one intervention that could avoid a doom filled future.
Doomists are what we need more of. We are utterly fucked, and nothing less than the end of capitalism and a degrowth economy can prolong our existence. Doomers are the scapegoats draining ire that ought to be directed at politicians and corporate goons. Here's my two cents - https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/09/18/bring-on-the-climate-doomers-we-need-more-of-them/
>>”The Guardian’s Environment Editor Damian Carrington recently wrote a long piece about how over half the scientists working on the IPCC reports think the temperature rise will exceed 3°C.”
And yet we see as time goes on, more and more scientific papers show a downward trend in the CFR (climate forcing response). Could it be that the people sitting on the UN IPCC report committees have a vested interest in pushing the doomist narrative? After all, we’ve seen from many different individuals—including you, Lloyd—the progression in linguistic terminology to describe the climate problem, having morphed over the years from global warming to climate change to the increasingly dramatic variations of “climate weirding” and now climate “crisis”, all under the presumption that however it was being described it wasn’t sufficiently conveying the imperative nature of adequately addressing “fixing” the issue. So after having sat on the term climate crisis for several years, what could the next iteration of phraseology be?
Seems like an about face is right around the corner, if—as expected—doomsday mentality is no more constructive than complete denialism. Hmm, I wonder how that can be? Surely if things are getting progressively worse then we must necessarily use new language to adequately address our need to avoid collective suffering, right?
Well, no, we don’t … and more importantly, we never should have started down that rabbit hole. You can only cry wolf so many times before the village’s citizens ignore the gnashing of teeth and rending of sackcloth.
Arctic sea ice was supposed to have disappeared four years ago, according to Al (w)Hore … I mean, Gore. It now sits at a 20 year high. Polar bears are at their highest population level since their hunting and harvest was banned in 1970. California reservoirs are back to normal, the Great Salt Lake has increased close to 2 meters in elevation and is on the cusp of being labeled “healthy”, Australia has had some of its wettest years ever in recent years … anecdotal evidence upon anecdotal evidence all suggests that there is no “crisis”, at least not in the sense that doomist voices have been preaching about for literally decades now. And why is that?
Because we can’t predict the future, that’s why.
And so it goes with all things. Life is short. You can either be a pessimist and complain about the glass being half empty, or be an optimist and enjoy the glass being half full, or a realist and recognize that there’s a glass with liquid inside. You get the best chance of a happy life with being a realist.
To be honest, Lloyd, I read this with a smile on my face. You are absolutely spot on that your Doomists have spoiled the Enviro-milk for everyone to see - and smell. Self-caused and self-delusional. And no, they won't stop doing what they are doing any more than the young (and sometimes, not so young) snots that have sided with a terrorist group and, with their two brain cells, have decided that ruining other peoples' days is effective in "raising consciousness".
Instead, the people being put upon are getting angrier and angrier. They aren't pushing back at both types of morons, the "shoving back" has started. Yet, even when being told their tactics are destroying their message (like the Dad who was screaming at the "Free, Free Palestine"-ers" stopping traffic into Disneyworld in Florida that "the rest of us HATE you"", THEY. JUST. DON'T. GET. IT.
Really, trying to destroy the Magna Carta by enviro-wackos?
How about controlling those kinds of folks FIRST rather than the other stuff. That's just plain Marketing 102.
But Marketing 103 is going to have to be spent on a different topic - one that I've been asking about for years... THAT slide deck is gonna be a GLORIOUS thing!
But then we come to the next issue - much more serious.
Obviously, 3° of warming sucks. But 4 or 5 ° would suck even more. So we need to keep working on the problem. And we need to stop electing Republicans (and equivalent, elsewhere) to any office, national.or local.
Spoken like the CCP-style wet dream of tyranny that Democrats long to reestablish by putting free people back into the chains of slavery—no surprise there.
Yup, the governance model I warned about down further.
And Mr. Sheehy is fine and dandy with disenfranchising 50% of the population that is either Republican or Republican leaning.
So only a One Party America, Stephen? How is, as the Left is wont to say, "equitable"? Those of us not of the Democrat / Progressive / Far Left philosophy are to be shut out of participating in the American Experiment in Self-Governance?
So much for the vaunted words, Tolerance and Inclusiveness, bandied about by the Left. Nice to know that when it comes to environmental discussions (and everything else), we are to be excluded by our "betters".
Thank you EVAH so much for putting us into our proper caste of "political untouchables".
I read it; did you? Seems like a lot of uncertainty to their “conclusions” and on time scales up to 1ky ~ 10ky into the future. I wonder if those pencil pushers even put the precession, progression, and obliquity forcings of Milankovitch cycles into their CMIP6-based computer models? Nah, that’d be too inconvenient—you can’t tax and mandate planetary alignment, can you?
Your link is not proof that the data is getting worse or even accelerating, so try again.
The UN IPCC? You mean those climate hustlers that take 46,000 of their closest friends and allies to dine on fancy meat-centric dinners and discuss how we should eschew modern society by turning over control of our own lives to that of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats?
No thanks, they can go fuck themselves. Same thing goes for the WEF.
There is only one answer for the Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion folks - ALL fossil fuels MUST stop tomorrow (today is better). To satisfy their Energy Jones, however, they show us that they can't play chess, not to say checkers. What happens then IF all the spigots were turned off all at once?
Well, their Anarchist wet dreams would be fulfilled. The problem with that, how will they handle the rest of us that want a modern and well ordered Society?
They would be the junkyard dogs that caught the cars and ripped off the rear bumpers - only to find out that the bumpers have a bigger bite.
Lloyd. The probability of doom would be significantly diminished if you and other big-name climate activists would tenaciously promote the following message - mobilize your base - have your base mobilize others - ...
Make varied expansions of the following topic a recurring focus of your messaging. Doing so would be a major contribution to combating global warming.
Consumers (individuals, organizations, businesses, governments) must promptly minimize their greenhouse gas emissions to bridge the gap while we work on long-term green technology and infrastructure. Less heating and less cooling (none between 13C-30C/55F-85F, https://greenbetween.home.blog). Less driving. Less flying. Less meat-eating. Less population growth (2 children max). Do it yourself. Tenaciously encourage others to do it. Tenaciously encourage others to tenaciously encourage others.
Embrace the message and tenaciously introduce the message "business card" to all you encounter. (You can print the business card 12 per 8.5x11 using a file from the Promote page of the website.)
Be a climate superhero - take it to the next level. Promote the message at local events. Files for posters are available on the Promote page of the website.
… except for the elite overlords. And you also neglected “forced euthanasia” which isn’t far off from what Tiny Hitler Trudeau and his Canadian parliament have enacted to our north.
Since most western industrial nations have birth rates well below 2.1 per woman (which is the replacement value for a stable, long-term population) and some, like South Korea, have birth rates of 0,8 … which nationalities are you referring to where a max 2 kids can and will be enforced?
Incorrect, IMHO. While climate may have the final say, that won't be for quite some time to come.
Until that time comes, there will still be a need for a governance model. Will it be as it is? Given the past discussions at TH and those here, and what people at both are demanding, that can only lead to a single style of governance. And it won't be pleasant.
I dryly point out that there is already a considerable amount of pushback on that model (e.g., the Dutch farmers and their political party, the Canadian truckers, the Sri Lankan populace, the rise of AfD in Germany, for just four examples. And of course, the populism starting to really take shape here in the US against all kinds of policies by the Federal government).
… says the guy who liked the “BDSM Subtypes And Their Prevalence” survey results from Knowingless’s website today.
Does the idea of forced pleasure in the BDSM community have any parallels to the supposed forced pleasure that Klaus Schwab at the WEF says we can expect when he said, “You will own nothing and be happy”?
Methinks that the general American population is already discounting the doomism as fewer and fewer of the 18-34 cohort continue to believe that climate <insert your word du jour here> is a serious problem. No do they believe support govt action in this area.
Thanks for raising these questions, Lloyd. I go back and forth on this, it seems daily. Many doomers fall into white supremacist thinking (as distinct from *being* white supremacists). That is, my quality of life is under threat and I don’t personally see a way to stop it. So that means it’s too late. The reality is that worst-case scenarios are and have been happening in the global south and poor communities of color right here in the U.S. it’s as much a matter of ethics as it is one of technology and politics. As you observe, there is plenty we can do. So let’s get on it.
All I know is people are tired of doomday predictions that do not come true such as all humans will die in twelve years, or all ice in the artic sea will be gone in less than a decade, etc, etc, etc,
While predictions like this may call attention to global warming, it just exasperates the problem (i.e the world will end on thursday syndrome) rather than call for solutions on a rational level. Then you have the one percenters telling the rest of us what to do, which begs the question... "Where do they get their information (I do not recall many if any celebrities actually have an environmental science degree) that they are spreading, and why, when they tell the 'common' folks what to do (restrict flying, don't drive etc.) they do the opposite. I think it's called celebrity burn-out (or at least it should be). And yes, that also includes making a climate celebrity out of a twelve year old (or however old Greta Thornburgh was).
And let us not forget that the boomers have lived through the recycle the plastic hoax, which took our glass bottles away from us, and replaced them with plastic in the name of environmentalism.
Buckminster Fuller preached Ephemeralization: to do "more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing," that is, an accelerating increase in the efficiency of achieving the same or more output (products, services, information, etc.) while requiring less input (effort, time, materials, resources, etc.) An optimistic view, and fraught with economic dangers, and utopianism is not the answer, but it is a start. However, what do humans do? We find a new way to make more efficient batteries, and yay, they're perfect for EVs, except they're draining lakes to acquire this metal to mind in third world countries in the case of NIMBY, so it's okay to mine and cause environmental destruction and so is ignored by most.
And while these might be baby steps, to get to where technology gets to where it needs to, there are people who hail things like this (as in plastic bottles diapers and bags) as the savior to the environment. yet look at where and how such things are viewed now.
I don't know what the answer is, but I do know doomsayers and listening to celebrities tell us how bad the enviormental crisis is as and we have to do something quickly when the live the lifestyle of consuming more resources (and yes adding more carbon) in a month than most families will in year.
What’s bitterly ironic is that many of the same people who castigate doomers are themselves dooming humanity and the natural world.
Let me explain :
With temperatures already well above 1.5° C the Earth has heated up well beyond the point where any plausible set of human interventions to reduce emissions can avoid temperature significantly higher than we are now experiencing.
Let us not forget that emission reductions alone can only somewhat reduce the increase in temperatures and cannot lower temperatures.
The best science says that if and when humanity eliminates carbon and other GHG emissions - and there is absolutely no sign that that is happening - temperatures will stay sharply elevated over what they are now for literally centuries.
That means that sea level rise and ecosystemcollapse will continue higher than that experienced today.
The best science also shows that largely irreversible catastrophic reinforcing tipping points will likely be activated at or around 1.5° C essentially taking the Climate system out of human hands.
And that is the best case !
Would any one of the people who castigate doomers choose to live or to have their family and friends choose to live in such a world ?
Of course not.
Yet those who castigate doomers are adamantly against intervening into the Climate system in ways that rapidly and relatively safely can actually reduce temperatures such as stratospheric aerosol injection or marine cloud brightening.
So it is a bit rich to hear the Michael Mann’s of the world condemn doomers while also condemning the one intervention that could avoid a doom filled future.
Where do you stand Lloyd?
Doomists are what we need more of. We are utterly fucked, and nothing less than the end of capitalism and a degrowth economy can prolong our existence. Doomers are the scapegoats draining ire that ought to be directed at politicians and corporate goons. Here's my two cents - https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/09/18/bring-on-the-climate-doomers-we-need-more-of-them/
>>”The Guardian’s Environment Editor Damian Carrington recently wrote a long piece about how over half the scientists working on the IPCC reports think the temperature rise will exceed 3°C.”
And yet we see as time goes on, more and more scientific papers show a downward trend in the CFR (climate forcing response). Could it be that the people sitting on the UN IPCC report committees have a vested interest in pushing the doomist narrative? After all, we’ve seen from many different individuals—including you, Lloyd—the progression in linguistic terminology to describe the climate problem, having morphed over the years from global warming to climate change to the increasingly dramatic variations of “climate weirding” and now climate “crisis”, all under the presumption that however it was being described it wasn’t sufficiently conveying the imperative nature of adequately addressing “fixing” the issue. So after having sat on the term climate crisis for several years, what could the next iteration of phraseology be?
Seems like an about face is right around the corner, if—as expected—doomsday mentality is no more constructive than complete denialism. Hmm, I wonder how that can be? Surely if things are getting progressively worse then we must necessarily use new language to adequately address our need to avoid collective suffering, right?
Well, no, we don’t … and more importantly, we never should have started down that rabbit hole. You can only cry wolf so many times before the village’s citizens ignore the gnashing of teeth and rending of sackcloth.
Arctic sea ice was supposed to have disappeared four years ago, according to Al (w)Hore … I mean, Gore. It now sits at a 20 year high. Polar bears are at their highest population level since their hunting and harvest was banned in 1970. California reservoirs are back to normal, the Great Salt Lake has increased close to 2 meters in elevation and is on the cusp of being labeled “healthy”, Australia has had some of its wettest years ever in recent years … anecdotal evidence upon anecdotal evidence all suggests that there is no “crisis”, at least not in the sense that doomist voices have been preaching about for literally decades now. And why is that?
Because we can’t predict the future, that’s why.
And so it goes with all things. Life is short. You can either be a pessimist and complain about the glass being half empty, or be an optimist and enjoy the glass being half full, or a realist and recognize that there’s a glass with liquid inside. You get the best chance of a happy life with being a realist.
C'mon man, that's just the weather!
To be honest, Lloyd, I read this with a smile on my face. You are absolutely spot on that your Doomists have spoiled the Enviro-milk for everyone to see - and smell. Self-caused and self-delusional. And no, they won't stop doing what they are doing any more than the young (and sometimes, not so young) snots that have sided with a terrorist group and, with their two brain cells, have decided that ruining other peoples' days is effective in "raising consciousness".
Instead, the people being put upon are getting angrier and angrier. They aren't pushing back at both types of morons, the "shoving back" has started. Yet, even when being told their tactics are destroying their message (like the Dad who was screaming at the "Free, Free Palestine"-ers" stopping traffic into Disneyworld in Florida that "the rest of us HATE you"", THEY. JUST. DON'T. GET. IT.
Really, trying to destroy the Magna Carta by enviro-wackos?
How about controlling those kinds of folks FIRST rather than the other stuff. That's just plain Marketing 102.
But Marketing 103 is going to have to be spent on a different topic - one that I've been asking about for years... THAT slide deck is gonna be a GLORIOUS thing!
But then we come to the next issue - much more serious.
Obviously, 3° of warming sucks. But 4 or 5 ° would suck even more. So we need to keep working on the problem. And we need to stop electing Republicans (and equivalent, elsewhere) to any office, national.or local.
Spoken like the CCP-style wet dream of tyranny that Democrats long to reestablish by putting free people back into the chains of slavery—no surprise there.
Yup, the governance model I warned about down further.
And Mr. Sheehy is fine and dandy with disenfranchising 50% of the population that is either Republican or Republican leaning.
So only a One Party America, Stephen? How is, as the Left is wont to say, "equitable"? Those of us not of the Democrat / Progressive / Far Left philosophy are to be shut out of participating in the American Experiment in Self-Governance?
So much for the vaunted words, Tolerance and Inclusiveness, bandied about by the Left. Nice to know that when it comes to environmental discussions (and everything else), we are to be excluded by our "betters".
Thank you EVAH so much for putting us into our proper caste of "political untouchables".
Snicker.
A key point that you seem to have missed: All these scientists are still fighting, so while the outlook is bleak, it certainly isn't hopeless.
The article also states "every tenth of a degree matters a lot – this means it is still useful to continue the fight.”
I wouldn't call the article doomism, it is instead a massive call to action - just one that recognises how bad things are right now
>>” “just one that recognises how bad things are right now”
Just HOW bad are things right now? Can you point to scientific metrics and data for evidence rather than supposition and conjecture?
There is a lot, including for example this: https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.abn7950
I suspect you'll dismiss this paper (and any others I would send you, for that matter), or just ignore this comment
I read it; did you? Seems like a lot of uncertainty to their “conclusions” and on time scales up to 1ky ~ 10ky into the future. I wonder if those pencil pushers even put the precession, progression, and obliquity forcings of Milankovitch cycles into their CMIP6-based computer models? Nah, that’d be too inconvenient—you can’t tax and mandate planetary alignment, can you?
Your link is not proof that the data is getting worse or even accelerating, so try again.
The IPCC reports provide a more general overview I would recommend the IPCC reports - available here: https://www.ipcc.ch/reports/
For a deep-dive, read the full reports, for an overview, read the summary for policy makers
The UN IPCC? You mean those climate hustlers that take 46,000 of their closest friends and allies to dine on fancy meat-centric dinners and discuss how we should eschew modern society by turning over control of our own lives to that of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats?
No thanks, they can go fuck themselves. Same thing goes for the WEF.
To add to this, together with some other people I really respect, you appear to have fallen foul of the trap that is the difference between:
"it's a lost cause, so why bother?" (the doomist view)
and
"Things are really bad, so we need to step up and sort this out ASAP" (the view of this Guardian article and certain groups like Just Stop Oil)
There is only one answer for the Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion folks - ALL fossil fuels MUST stop tomorrow (today is better). To satisfy their Energy Jones, however, they show us that they can't play chess, not to say checkers. What happens then IF all the spigots were turned off all at once?
Well, their Anarchist wet dreams would be fulfilled. The problem with that, how will they handle the rest of us that want a modern and well ordered Society?
They would be the junkyard dogs that caught the cars and ripped off the rear bumpers - only to find out that the bumpers have a bigger bite.
So the question is "what is the solution AND who gets to control that solution AND by what means?".
Lloyd. The probability of doom would be significantly diminished if you and other big-name climate activists would tenaciously promote the following message - mobilize your base - have your base mobilize others - ...
Make varied expansions of the following topic a recurring focus of your messaging. Doing so would be a major contribution to combating global warming.
Consumers (individuals, organizations, businesses, governments) must promptly minimize their greenhouse gas emissions to bridge the gap while we work on long-term green technology and infrastructure. Less heating and less cooling (none between 13C-30C/55F-85F, https://greenbetween.home.blog). Less driving. Less flying. Less meat-eating. Less population growth (2 children max). Do it yourself. Tenaciously encourage others to do it. Tenaciously encourage others to tenaciously encourage others.
Embrace the message and tenaciously introduce the message "business card" to all you encounter. (You can print the business card 12 per 8.5x11 using a file from the Promote page of the website.)
Be a climate superhero - take it to the next level. Promote the message at local events. Files for posters are available on the Promote page of the website.
less driving, less flying, less meat-eating, less birthing.
Summarized as:
Have Less, Do Less, Be Less.
Change my mind.
>>”Have less, do less, be less.”
… except for the elite overlords. And you also neglected “forced euthanasia” which isn’t far off from what Tiny Hitler Trudeau and his Canadian parliament have enacted to our north.
That is complete bullshit and I am here. Just stop it.
Since most western industrial nations have birth rates well below 2.1 per woman (which is the replacement value for a stable, long-term population) and some, like South Korea, have birth rates of 0,8 … which nationalities are you referring to where a max 2 kids can and will be enforced?
Well, that's a really easy question to answer. Clearly, the climate will have the final say.
Incorrect, IMHO. While climate may have the final say, that won't be for quite some time to come.
Until that time comes, there will still be a need for a governance model. Will it be as it is? Given the past discussions at TH and those here, and what people at both are demanding, that can only lead to a single style of governance. And it won't be pleasant.
I dryly point out that there is already a considerable amount of pushback on that model (e.g., the Dutch farmers and their political party, the Canadian truckers, the Sri Lankan populace, the rise of AfD in Germany, for just four examples. And of course, the populism starting to really take shape here in the US against all kinds of policies by the Federal government).
I should have added the Polish farmers. American farmers as well.
Guess I should add "Eat Less" next time.
Exactly. Read Sara Teasdale’s poem, “There Will Come Soft Rains” and why I’m not worried:
https://poets.org/poem/there-will-come-soft-rains
You guys are so dependable 😂
… says the guy who liked the “BDSM Subtypes And Their Prevalence” survey results from Knowingless’s website today.
Does the idea of forced pleasure in the BDSM community have any parallels to the supposed forced pleasure that Klaus Schwab at the WEF says we can expect when he said, “You will own nothing and be happy”?
Methinks that the general American population is already discounting the doomism as fewer and fewer of the 18-34 cohort continue to believe that climate <insert your word du jour here> is a serious problem. No do they believe support govt action in this area.
https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_050624/
Monmouth sometimes gets their political polling really off but in general do fairly well.
Thanks for raising these questions, Lloyd. I go back and forth on this, it seems daily. Many doomers fall into white supremacist thinking (as distinct from *being* white supremacists). That is, my quality of life is under threat and I don’t personally see a way to stop it. So that means it’s too late. The reality is that worst-case scenarios are and have been happening in the global south and poor communities of color right here in the U.S. it’s as much a matter of ethics as it is one of technology and politics. As you observe, there is plenty we can do. So let’s get on it.
Boy, aren’t you just the self-aware racist of the day, huh?
Now climate change is the fault of racism? How many boulders did you have to overturn to find THAT nugget?
I lost count and boy are my arms tired.
heh!