Why is climate 'doomism' going viral - and who's fighting it?

[hunter]

Climate "doomers" believe the world has already lost the battle against global warming. That's wrong - and while that view is spreading online, there are others who are fighting the viral tide.

--more--

https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-61495035

It bothers me that so many things sold as "good news" solutions to environmental problems are not.

Plastic recycling immediately comes to mind. I put my used plastic packaging in the recycling bin and it magically goes away to be recycled, right? Unfortunately most plastic is not recycled, it goes into the landfill, or worse in some places, it's incinerated.

The mandatory "good news" illustration is often wind turbines on the hillsides. Unfortunately those, and large solar projects in the deserts, will only prolong our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas. Desert solar projects destroy fragile natural environments that will take hundreds or thousands of years to fully restore.

Batteries and electric cars are more false hopes.

Today's sophisticated electric power control systems are tomorrow's e-waste.

It's obvious I'm not a fan of Elon Musk, he's marketing false hopes to people with money who want to do "the right thing." But it's merely consumerism.

Buy more stuff! Be happy!

I'm more interested in restructuring our cities and society so that car ownership is unnecessary for most people. This planet cannot sustainably support an automobile for every adult human, fossil fuel or electric. It makes me optimistic that some cities are already imagining a future with fewer automobiles.

Another thing that makes me optimistic is advanced water treatment plants that can turn sewage back into potable water, or with suitable zero-carbon energy sources, salt water into potable water. These technologies, in combination with plastic pipe, can bring clean water and indoor plumbing to everyone in the world. (We can't all have copper water pipes in our walls, there's simply too many of us.)

Once factory-built Small Modular Nuclear Reactors (SMRs) are commercialized I'm optimistic that industry will grow rapidly, eventually spreading to nations that currently reject nuclear power. These will replace fossil fuel power plants, not some combination of wind, solar, and absurdly infeasible batteries.

On a planet with 8 billion people, the vast majority of us dependent upon high density energy sources for our basic needs, and nuclear is the only power source capable of displacing fossil fuels entirely.

An electric grid built of nuclear reactors, steel, and aluminum can bring reliable electric service to everyone in the world. No other carbon-free energy source can do that. The experiment has already been done.

I like to believe we'll develop the societal skills to relocate people displaced by climate change without a lot of trauma or drama. The U.S.A. will be forced to deal with those problems internally, as well as at its borders. We usually think of people seeking refuge in the U.S.A., but if we don't hold our own nation together it doesn't seem likely Canada and other developed nations will be welcoming refugees from the U.S.A. with open arms.

[CrispyQ]

1. The author of this piece is wearing some heavily shaded rose colored glasses, IMO.

She even links to an article about the IPCC report that isn't nearly as optimistic as she is.

Climate change: IPCC scientists say it's 'now or never' to limit warming
Matt McGrath
4 April

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-60984663

UN scientists have unveiled a plan that they believe can limit the root causes of dangerous climate change.

A key UN body says in a report that there must be "rapid, deep and immediate" cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

Global emissions of CO2 would need to peak within three years to stave off the worst impacts.

Even then, the world would also need technology to suck CO2 from the skies by mid-century.

CO2 would need to peak within three years...I'd laugh if it weren't so tragic. I don't think one country, much less the big emitters, have made their climate goals. Sure doom & gloom don't help but sticking your head in the sand doesn't help either. Personally, I think we're fucked & billions are going to die. "Six billion miracles is enough." I bought that bumper sticker around the turn of the century.

[xocetaceans]

2. You almost mentioned overpopulation.

Do you think that is a problem for the planet, too?

[hunter]

3. We humans know how to deal with that as well.

Realistic sex education, easy access to birth control, and the economic and political empowerment of women greatly reduce population growth rates.

I also look at per capita carbon footprints.

The per capita carbon footprints of U.S. Americans and Canadians are three times those of the rest of the world.

Maybe we should put more effort into cleaning up our own messes, and less effort into criticizing the messes of others.

It seems almost impossible for an affluent North American to significantly reduce their environmental footprint.

I think we should be paying people to experiment with lifestyles having very small environmental footprints. We'd judge the success of these experiments in terms of happiness and sustainability, not any false measure of productivity. Presumably these happy lifestyles would be widely adopted. Everybody wants to be happy, right?

And then we have that asshole Elon Musk praising Chinese workers for "burning the 3am oil."

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/may/12/elon-musk-praises-chinese-workers-for-extreme-work-culture

I'll have a little party when that guy crashes and burns.

This thing we now call economic "productivity" isn't productivity at all. It is, in fact, a direct measure of the damage we are doing to Earth's natural environment and our own human spirit.

[xocetaceans]

4. True...

There are more than enough resources and space to try to set up a sustainable culture here.

Everything you've mentioned is opposed by about (at least) 40% of the country. They also seem to believe that the
externalized costs disappear from reality. Maybe, they can be convinced to change their views.

Such an experimental lifestyle program could be framed in a similar manner to the environmental program from which
farmers who do not put their land into crop production benefit yearly.

Perhaps, they should confine Musk to the Tesla Giga-factory floor in China, and let him do "996" physical labor
until he collapses. It would be interesting to see how long he lasts. (What's good for the goose is good for the gander.)

[oioioi]

5. "The Newsroom" Commentary

[hunter]

6. I must confess my attention span for these sorts of videos is about 30 seconds.

So I gather the scenario presented by the fictional climate scientist in "The Newsroom" (which I haven't seen) was prescient?

Here's McPherson's blog:

https://guymcpherson.com/

As someone whose life has always been chaos, I can't really sit around in my high tower regarding the situation with any sense of impending doom. I can only look at the numbers. Global warming is already throwing the lives of millions of people into chaos and some of them will not survive. But this kind of chaos is nothing new in the human experience. The scale is larger because there are more of us.

I'm an evolutionary biologist by natural inclination and some formal training. I tend to write from that perspective. When some say "The sky is falling!" I'll probably think, "The sky is always falling."

In a few million years our civilization will be an odd layer of crud in the geologic record. If there's anyone around who recognizes that crud as the remains of a high energy industrial civilization I'm not sure how much they'll have in common with me.

If I was Emperor of the Earth, I might say, "Look, humans, you have fifteen years to quit fossil fuels. After that I will start destroying all your fossil fuel facilities from the high ground of my impenetrable space fortress."

Sort of like the Enterprise in the first episode of Strange New Worlds.

I'm not Emperor but I can still emphasize the necessity of quitting fossil fuels in my writing. And I can be kind. Sometimes.

Perhaps the same Cosmic Beings the dinosaurs pissed off are, at this moment, sitting around lazily waiting for us to destroy ourselves so they don't have to send a big rock our way...



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event

So let's not destroy ourselves and let's not piss them off.