Climate change is real. That doesn’t mean we should halt economic growth. Unfortunately this is another area that gets so wrapped up in political power and incentives where: Democrats have factions and groups that want to implement world changing measures and redirect billions of dollars in a way that benefits their interests, and climate scientists seem to weigh the climate costs far higher than the economic devastation a hard switch would bring, so naturally there’s a level of skepticism at the whole affair.
There should be level headedness about it: climate change is real, it’s not world ending yet but we should get ahead of it, we need to make investments in changing our societal behavior to get on a track that balances mitigating the harms while keeping the real economic boon that comes with our current approach.
I've never seen "halting economic growth" as a suggestion for dealing with climate change that was being taken seriously. There might be some crackpots out there insisting that we need to being the economy to a halt and move into caves or something, but I think the vast majority understands that it isn't going to happen. That said, there are things that could be done which would hurt the profits of the ~50 companies who are responsible for most of the global CO2 emissions and/or trillions in climate related damages without causing the entire global economy to grind to a stop or collapse (as much as they'd love for us to believe otherwise).
The greatest societal behavior that needs to be changed is the way we allow a very small number of people get away with making insane amounts of money by causing insane levels of harm. Until that changes, the harmful systems that those people have created for themselves to profit under won't change either.
If you care about solving climate change: instead of yelling at climate change denialist you should direct more effort into advocating for policy and messaging that acknowledges and mitigates the harms while keeping you expect people to endure
But if you want me to, I could, sure.
It doesn't sound to me like you contribute any valuable argument that would improve the "PR" for the goal of protecting environmental living conditions for humans though.
> it’s not world ending yet but we should get ahead of it,
Sure there are fanatics spouting end-of-the-world-is-nigh stuff but fundamentally I think the problem here is it's unknown - both in terms of the physical changes [1], and perhaps more importantly second order effects due to mass migration. It might become a real problem a lot sooner than you think - we simply don't know - but I think it's certainly wrong to view the effects as a gradual rise - that average hides a lot of local/temporal variation.
[1]in terms of potential for positive feedback loops like methane release, or compensating stabilising effects like cloud cover. [2] For a region to become uninhabitable, you don't need it to be uninhabitable every day of the year - just one or two days a year may be enough - enough to kill people or crops. What's important is the occurrence of extremes during the year, not the average gradual rise.
The CO2 hypothesis was made in the 50s, long before there was conclusive evidence, and yet we are right on the predicted trajectory.
EDIT did some more searching and have not been able to finding anything supporting you claim. People have not been very alarmist about sea levels.. 7500m by the year 2500 in Waterworld does not count.
> Here we show that the mid-range projection from the Second Assessment Report of the IPCC (1995/1996) was strikingly close to what transpired over the next 30 years, with the magnitude of sea-level rise underestimated by only ∼1 cm.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025ef00...
I believe people have influenced the climate, but the far left is using it as a political football to get Their Guy elected, not to actually stop it. The idea of a rising sea is a perfect disaster they can sell you the solution for. If they actually cared, 1) the Democrats would be fighting AI tooth and nail, unless it was 100% powered by renewables (not nuclear, remember their version of science denialism is no nukes.). 2) they would be worshipping Elon for bringing us EVs. Instead they take all that silicon valley AI money and tell us to save the ocean. No way San Jose!
And I'm not sure we want to put our heads in the sand and say La-La-La, against the real possibility that everything is actually going to shit.
> the Democrats
You have shown that you don't understand what Leftist politics means. Democrats are center-right. The USA hasn't had a meaningful Leftist party since the first half of the last century.
But the tendency is showing: in my country, we're getting records in extreme temperatures, forrest fires and storms.
But a study 1% can be dismissed, some random in a basement 99% off can be believed. This just says: many people are just looking for a confirmation of their beliefs, not evidence. And many companies play this game (supporting the right politicians, spreading disinformation aka lies, etc), because there are billions at stake.
The heliocentric model of our solar system "argument"?
I guess general relativity is only a "theory" in the end, geodude420 on twitter has an awesome thread debunking that Einstein schlub's whole career!
more importantly though, is the fact that there are enough "critics" that consider Global Warming a cycle that "man" merely accelerated by a few decades. most of these "skeptics" are also perfectly capable of discerning between the amount of energy "wasted" in office buildings and lit up skyscrapers as well as anything at the end of luxury supply chains and markets and what the rest of the world "wastes" or expends. to them, the hoax is the "man-made" part ...
it should be "some-man-made climate change"
Most climate change denial arguments eventually boil down to social assertions about the change believers having perverse incentives, like being greedy for grants to go on sailing vacations to Antartica or feather their academic nests.
In fact, we have records from not that long ago that at some point climate became colder after it had been warmer for a bit.
It's obvious human civilization has an impact, but the real question is more, can we actually do anything about it that is not just letting go of a comfortable life? Because that option is a pretty stupid proposition, and game theory pretty much guarantees that if you make that choice, you will be the ultimate loser no matter what.
Climate activist make it look like it's a settled issue, but the problem isn't the science; the problem is trying to use the science to enforce decision that are highly political in nature and are not to be left only to the designated god scientist, no matter how hard they cry...
Uh? Ultimate loser? When I read comments like this I'm basically confronted with the following implication "Human civilization isn't worth preserving. If you disagree, then the problem is with you, namely because you believe humanity to be redeemable".
The ultimate loser is the person who thinks that a small or almost nonexistent reduction in quality of life is a small price to pay in comparison to a large and permanent reduction in quality of life.
The ultimate winner is the person who will see his quality of life decline before his eyes.
Crazy.
Yes, no doubt! And actually doing something about it will impact our lives much less than trying to continue as usual. If we would have started 30 years ago, the transitions would have been smooth, but now it is going to be harsher. The problem is that doing something about it will affect the profits of some very big and influential corporations, and they are doing everything they can to sow FUD.
Unnecessary but moving past that: I understand where you’re coming from but a hallmark of people like that is they are not willing to learn or be swayed no matter how you try to educate them. They have decided what is real and it often dovetails with their social/political views in a way that is very hard to disentangle.
The number of critics of Anthropogenic global warming who actually have expertise on climate change and actively publish on the subject can be counted on one hand. If 99.9% of astrophysicists agreed that a meteor was going to hit your house next Tuesday you wouldn't wait around for the few crackpot holdouts before you to agree to leave.
