In short, we aren’t on track to an apocalyptic extinction, and the new head is concerned that rhetoric that we are is making people apathetic and paralyzes them from making beneficial actions.
He makes it clear too that this doesn’t mean things are perfectly fine. The world is becoming and will be more dangerous with respect to climate. We’re going to still have serious problems to deal with. The problems just aren’t insurmountable and extinction level.
Did you even read the article, Mr/Ms climate scientist?
He’s asking people not to talk like the world is going to catastrophically end once we hit that 1.5 degrees milestone, because it’s making people feel hopeless and apathetic, which is actually slowing our efforts to change.
And he’s totally right. If the government told people a meteor the size of Texas was going to impact earth in 12 hours, there would be effectively zero effort to stop it. If you tune in to a lot of the conversation around climate change from people who are not climate scientists, but who want to leave a better world for their kids and believe climate scientists, they feel hopeless. It feels like a foregone conclusion that we are going to go over the 1.5 degree goal (probably because it is), and if we think the biosphere is going to collapse when it does, it is really, really hard to take action.
It’s not saying to undersell the risks, he’s saying to be truthful about the risks. We can definitely still salvage complex life on earth with optimistic, consistent effort, but recent media coverage has been giving the impression that it’s too late. This is bad and counterproductive.
Keep on fighting the good fight brother/sister.
I hope, greatly, for the future. But know that any real change will have to include everyone, everywhere. Even the chuds that drive jacked up pickups covered in skulls and toting firearms. And they will never change willingly. The oil industry will continue to sow doubt and enable these idiots with cheaply available petrol, so it’s not likely we’ll even be able to get serious mpg regulations, much less a renewable transportation network. When florida’s coast is under water, maybe that’ll change a few minds… but I’m sure they’ll turn it into some kind of conspiracy to persecute them even then.
Really hope I’m wrong tho.
The chuds driving jacked up pickups aren’t contributing very much to global CO2 emissions actually.
The tendency of individuals to place far more blame on passenger vehicles (of which medium and heavy trucks constitute less than 1/4th in the US- likely far less elsewhere) as a contributor to global warming than they are actually responsible for actually had a name; The Transportation Fallacy.
Exact numbers vary by year and country, but it seems like passenger transportation accounts for about ~7% of global CO2 emissions. To put that in perspective, the same source indicates that we can remove the same amount of CO2 by eliminating food waste as we would by taking every passenger vehicle on earth off the road.
The auto manufacturing lobby wants you to sell your current working vehicle and buy a Tesla or a Prius, even though the carbon debt of manufacturing that vehicle won’t break even with an IC engine for ~300,000 miles. And even when it does break even with your current vehicle, if everyone on earth did the same thing, it would barely dent our global emissions.
They want you to feel satisfied about doing your part in a way that earns them revenue, instead of focusing your energy on things that will cost the energy lobby money but actually have an effect.
Sorry, long rant, but I wish more people realized how convenient of a scapegoat the type of car someone drives is. Yes, a more fuel efficient car is better than a gas guzzler, of course. But that’s such a small part of the problem, yet it gets such a huge amount of the mental energy that people spend trying to reduce personal emissions. Eat less meat, push for nuclear power generation, make sure your home is well insulated and uses efficient appliances, fight for working from home where possible, switch from grass to native plants. Drive less. The chuds rolling coal are idiots, but they’re a very, very small part of the problem. So many better ways to spend our energy.
You seem to think that just because someone didn’t specifically cite lifetime investment in each platform that it negates their premise.
I disagree.
Stop apologizing for people who have gone far outside the norms, intentionally, simply to pollute more.
Don’t confuse it with someone who bought a 2005 honda and are simply getting their useful life out of the vehicle. The US Truck fetish is counterproductive to the needs of actual trucks, and wasteful in resources and disgusting in motivation.
This is conspicuous, intentional overconsumption that not only consumes valuable resources but emits much, much more exhaust products than it should, for the exclusive point of intentionally polluting by reducing combustion. To own the libs, they like to call it.
Is it equal to air carriage or maritime transport? No. No one asserted these things.
But it’s more pollution dumped into everyone’s atmosphere, more consumption at the pump, all for the purpose of being assholes. Those emissions aren’t hypothetical, they’re real. Really unnecessary too. A fucking kei truck is more useful than the average american lifted dipshit hauler. Much more efficient too.
But knowing there are people ready to jump in and snipe apocrypha peripherally related to the premise reinforces my doubts that humanity will get it’s shit together before we’re doomed (if not already). Have a good one.
I’m not apologizing for anyone, I’m suggesting that we would be better served by focusing our efforts on major contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions instead of getting personally butthurt over a globally tiny number of individuals who are contributing an extra fraction of a percent of global emissions relative to their peers.
Yup, read you loud and clear, there’s no reason to stop the chuds because it’s only a tiny fraction - and this why we can’t have nice things, like an ecosystem.
see sport, the tiny percentages add up over time. acting like it’s not a consequence is merely shitting even more on the next generation.
You must be one of those goofballs who thinks millennials can’t by houses because they keep buying coffee.
See sport, enormous percentages add up way faster than tiny ones. Pissing your pants over how bad your feelings are hurt when you see a scary bad man in a truck while you are eating meat 10 meals a week and driving your Corolla to and from work instead of biking is just shitting even more on the current, and every future, generation.
Sad how many people put their personal feelings ahead of objective data, and hold back meaningful progress in the process.
Pointless waste is the most egregious. Nothing would be more pointless than wasting more time on you and you incorrect, but I suspect, personal projections. I’m a cyclist. I eat mostly fish and veg. I don’t drive a car unless it’s going out of town, and it gets decent mileage. Thanks for over-sharing, it’s like you strive to be wrong and sadly ridiculous with each new reply.
Gonna help you with that problem and block you.
Please, for the love of God, block me. It seems like that’s what it is going to take to get you to stop obsessing over this wild pissing contest that you’ve manufactured.
You forget those clowns buy new gas guzzling trucks in large part to spite the left and climate efforts as a whole, which negates your point.
That absolutely does not negate any of the points that I made but god bless you for trying buddy.
New large trucks actually get way better gas mileage than older ones.
I don’t care if you feel convinced or not. It’s the truth. New large trucks will always put out more CO2 than electric cars, even considering manufacturing, and that doesn’t change just because you don’t want to hear it. And that’s the end of the debate.
Who in this conversation do you think is claiming that large trucks don’t emit more greenhouse gasses than electric cars? That’s an impressive strawman you’ve got there. It looks really good right next to the goalposts that are speeding towards the horizon.
And I’m happy to hear that you’re done debating with yourself in a conversation that you can’t seem to keep up with.
Yes but my point is that the world is already burning… People are dying… Homes are sinking into the ocean… Countless species are being lost. Pray tell, when is it bad enough that it is no longer sensationalistic?
Oh, if only people were as passionate about abortion. I mean, they’re not killing that many babies, right? Why the fuss?
Edit: also, 1.5 C is catastrophic. Millions will move or die. Refugees will be pouring out of countries in numbers like we’ve never seen. Food production won’t keep up with demands. Entire ecosystems like corals will be decimated and survive in only tiny pockets. Stop me if I’m being too hyperbolic and making anyone feel paralyzed with inaction though. Better we gently sweep it under the rug as we have done since the 1970s, because then it’s not a problem!
So not an existential threat to humanity, then.
This person was picked for the job because their job is to encourage effective means of fighting climate change, and encouraging hopelessness is not effective.
We are likely to see 1.5C. The world will go on, because it has to. Being prepared to deal with 1.5C means not assuming 1.5C is the end of the world.
Stop.
I hate to break it to you, but things don’t just work the way you want them to simply because you need them to. Reality is in no way obligated to meet your needs or conform to your sensibilities
I’m glad you’re fortunate enough not to live in a place where climate change does threaten your very existence…your family… Home… Livelihood
I guess it’s just tough luck for people whose homes are falling into the sea or the tens of thousands who are dying from record heat across Europe
If that’s what you took away from my post, it’s an even better thing you’re a junior scientist and not running the IPCC.
I’m sorry, do many people dying not constitute an existential threat to all of humanity? Like, are you seriously arguing the semantics?
All I’m saying is that a gentle hand at the wheel hasn’t worked. It isn’t working currently. What we have now is a moderate response to an existential threat. We should have done a lot more a lot sooner. I guess 2 becomes the new 1.5…then 3 becomes the new 2… And if we lose a billion or so peeps, that’s ok. Just the cost of ensuring we’re not all wringing our hands bc the head of the IPC said not to… Whew!
And thanks for taking a dog at my credentials. I’ll have you know my h index is looking mighty fine 😘
No, some people dying is not an existential threat to humanity. “Existential” means that the threat will make humanity extinct.
These are not meaningless semantics. This is core to the message of the article.
You may in fact be some form of scientist, but you are completely incapable of a realistic discussion of mitigation of and solutions to climate change.
You may find this article illuminating, if reading is your thing: Even if humanity does reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough to stave off the worst effects of climate change—and learn to adapt to some warming that is already inevitable—Setiya says that climate change remains an existential threat to a host of human cultures, traditions, and languages
You might want to avoid the preceding paragraph though, as it states “There is a genuine possibility that within the coming century, we will hit temperatures that are deeply incompatible with the continued existence of human life.” Such rampant fear mongering will make you too scawed and make peepee
I am a literal climate lobbyist, so you don’t need to worry about either my knowledge or my inaction due to fear.
What are you doing about this problem? If the answer is “doomposting on Lemmy,” thanks for proving everything I’m saying correct.
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[Without climate change we wouldn’t see this at all or it would be so rare that it would basically be not happening] (https://www.npr.org/2023/07/25/1189837347/u-s-european-heat-waves-virtually-impossible-without-climate-change-new-study-fi)
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Good luck buying homeowner’s insurance in Florida …Oh wait…
Or just move to California… Oh shit…
Yeah these effects are “isolated”
And I’ll drop this nugget here:×but by 2070, extremely hot zones could make up almost 20 percent of the land, which means that a third of humanity could potentially be living in uninhabitable conditions.
If that’s just the way it goes… Maybe they can move in with you?
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