Apocalyptic Claims About Climate Change Are Wrong
Personal summation:<p>Reference the IPCC as if it were fact, when the general consensus seems to be much of it is too conservative.<p>&gt;Apocalyptic statements like these have real-world impacts. In September, a group of British psychologists said children are increasingly suffering from anxiety from the frightening discourse around climate change.<p>One day they&#x27;re also going to find out they&#x27;re going to die (unless their rich enough for cryonics, storage tanks that will be incinerated when this planet is engulfed by its sun, (or if they Jameson Satellite themselves, they can look forward to waiting to be evaporated by cosmic dust (or in the really long term, the decay of all the matter in the universe, or the big crunch (but of course the majority of scientists don&#x27;t absolutely agree on any of that, so there&#x27;s still hope))))<p>&gt;And last week, an XR co-founder said a genocide like the Holocaust was “happening again, on a far greater scale, and in plain sight”<p>We don&#x27;t need climate change for this, they&#x27;re already going on in Africa and South America and China, so we&#x27;re good in that department no matter what.<p>&gt;There is good evidence that the catastrophist framing of climate change is self-defeating because it alienates and polarizes many people.<p>The opposite of polarization is uniformity.  We could be uniform changing or staying the same, but since we&#x27;re already here, might a well save the energy.  Stay calm and carry on.<p>&gt;First, no credible scientific body has ever said climate change threatens the collapse of civilization much less the extinction of the human species.<p>Oh.<p>&gt;It’s not like climate doesn’t matter. It’s that climate change is outweighed by other factors. Earlier this year, researchers found that climate “has affected organized armed conflict within countries. However, other drivers, such as low socioeconomic development and low capabilities of the state, are judged to be substantially more influential.”<p>This really seems like an isolated version of climate change, it somehow only effects the climate and nothing else.  (Cue reminder of Australian politician talking about leaking oil tanker having been &#x27;towed out the the environment&#x27;.)  Also, give me an economy long enough and things&#x27;ll move.<p>&gt;That last part may be true, but it’s also true that economic development has made us less vulnerable, which is why there was a 99.7% decline in the death toll from natural disasters since its peak in 1931.<p>More capitalism completely solves the problems that capitalism created, you just aren&#x27;t using enough (also it&#x27;s not pure enough).  (Also it&#x27;s the most powerful force humans have ever created (except we didn&#x27;t create it because it&#x27;s &#x27;natural&#x27;) and it can and can&#x27;t change the world.  Invincible when you need it to be, a drop in the bucket when you need it to be (and, again, with more of it we can fix everything [citation needed].))<p>&gt;Wheat yields increased 100 to 300% around the world since the 1960s, while a study of 30 models found that yields would decline by 6% for every one degree Celsius increase in temperature.<p>What about soil microbes, worms, sourcing the components of the fertilizers that explicitly made that growth possible?  So, yes, temperature alone won&#x27;t do much.  And to pull a Fox news talking point: green houses are hot, plants love green houses, so growing things will be better than ever.<p>&gt;Rates of future yield growth depend far more on whether poor nations get access to tractors, irrigation, and fertilizer than on climate change, says FAO.<p>The more countries and people who do things exactly as we do (aka &#x27;raised out of poverty[1]&#x27;) the better.  Our way of life if the not only the rightest but <i>the</i> right and this must be reproduced across all the corners of the universe (Bezos and Musk will take it to mars and beyond).<p>[1] in the vein of this article: just to be clear: I&#x27;m not pro poverty.<p>&gt;One of the reasons I work on climate change is because I worry about the impact it could have on endangered species.<p>&gt;As tragic as animal extinctions are, they do not threaten human civilization.<p>The world is like a zoo, all of these things are only there for our amusement, to look cute.<p>&gt;Should we worry about koalas? Absolutely!<p>Eh, stinky, perpetually high, walking chlamydia infestations, not cute.  Recommend reject from planet Earth.  (See also mosquitoes.)<p>&gt;“It doesn’t sound like it makes sense. Coal is terrible for carbon. But it’s by burning a lot of coal that they make themselves wealthier, and by making themselves wealthier they have fewer children, and you don’t have as many people burning carbon, you might be better off in 2070.”<p>Didn&#x27;t I already mention something about further the spread of a particular set of ideological dispositions?  I think so.  One might get the idea that, at their core(s), the Republican and Democratic both fundamentally predicated on defending an ideology that shall remain nameless, and that their main disagreement seems to be in regards to <i>how</i> to do that.<p>&gt;Emanuel and Wigley say the extreme rhetoric is making political agreement on climate change harder.<p>All we have to do realize we need a away to talk about climate change while the people making money of the situations that have led to it continue to do so and everyone gets what they want.  (In fact, even better, they should make <i>more</i> money off climate change.  They can exercise Scrooge McDuck style by swimming through the tunnels of their New Zealand bunkers. (After all, prepper fantasy shouldn&#x27;t be something only the lower classes get to access.))<p>&gt;Happily, there is a plenty of middle ground between climate apocalypse and climate denial.<p>The world isn&#x27;t ending, you aren&#x27;t dying.  Won&#x27;t someone <i>please</i> think of the children?<p>---<p>In the future (since we now know there&#x27;s going to be one, thank the god of the market) maybe I should avoid reading Forbes before morning coffee-substitute (which the god of the market also grants me, so thank you).<p>[Addendum]<p>Looking back on growing up in a semi-apocalyptic religious environment, I can&#x27;t ever remember anyone being worried about convincing us that the world <i>wasn&#x27;t</i> going to end.  Maybe that says something.  Maybe Not.