Climate change was never going to be reversible with behavioral measures. Even if everyone had followed the Kyoto protocol to the letter starting in 1992 that wasn’t going to avert climate change, because nobody contemplated how quickly China and India would develop. There is no calculus where you can significantly limit climate change through behavioral measures that also allow the third world to have comfortable, modern lives. There will be 400 million people in Nigeria by 2050 and there is no political regime to address climate the change that’s workable unless it allows them to live a life at least as decent as say Eastern Europe. The west could reduce GHG emissions to zero and it wouldn’t do the trick.
People have viewed climate change as a political issue and its not. It’s a scientific issue. It’s the astroid hurtling toward earth in the movie Armageddon or the aliens in Independence Day. The solution to climate change is not governments and politicians and lawyers. It’s engineers. It’s always been engineers.
It _is_ a political issue. The technology already exists--courtesy of the scientists/engineers of course. Whether that technology is deployed is a problem of politics.
For example, if the price of fossil fuels reflected its true cost to society--think climate change, extreme weather, stronger storms, droughts, ocean acidification, etc--then fossil fuels would be prohibitively expensive compared to renewable or nuclear energy. This is what a carbon tax is, and it's what many scientists and economists have been pushing for decades now. But they've been fighting a losing battle against the oil and gas lobby, and one party in particular that is wholly captured by them.
In fact, James Hansen, NASA scientist and head of the Goddard Institute, got out of the science to focus specifically on the politics. He urges people to join the Citizens Climate Lobby, which has lobbied for carbon pricing legislation for over a decade now: the Energy Innovation Act has bipartisan support in Congress right now (https://energyinnovationact.org/). Many other scientists are involved in the politics these day as well (Katherine Hayhoe [atmospheric scientist], Michael Mann [climatologist]).
> The solution to climate change is not governments and politicians and lawyers. It’s engineers. It’s always been engineers.
I like the sentiment, and we're always going to need newer, better tech. Part of it will be engineering, but part of if also has to be pure science, which I suspect won't be profitable enough for the private industry to pursue. Government needs to fund such efforts. I think this applies generally (not just to climate).
Appealing to government isn't just about trying to go from no help to some help. It's also about getting them to stop doing harm. The Guardian claims that the US subsidises the fossil-fuel industry to the tune of $20B each year.
The United States is enormously influential throughout the world. We have the highest per capita emissions. If we make changes, it has ripple effects across the globe. We define what it means to live a wealthy, “middle class” lifestyle. Also, Nigeria and just about the rest of the world is part of the Paris accord, the US is not. China is poised to enact carbon taxes on a significant chunk of global emissions...
We might be left with no choice but to experiment with a technological “hail mary” — but so far, none are very attractive.
Two decades ago we could have solved the problem at a relatively low cost compared to what we’ll pay now, or what we’ll pay if we do nothing. Every year it gets more expensive.
It’s like the old adage, fitting to this discussion: the best time to plant a tree is five years ago. The next best time is today.
I don’t know what to make of your comment. One of the politicians during yesterday’s CNN climate change debate said the following:
"No individual can be expected singlehandedly to solve this problem. It's going to require national action. And by the way -- this is why we invented government. It's for dealing with issues that are too big for each of us to do on our own."
This is a humanity scale problem and government, by way of politicians and lawyers, and yes engineers, is how we deal with humanity scale problems.
Scientists and engineers put us on the moon, but it was government that directed and enabled them to do so.
In the BP World Energy statistical review for 2018, they showed that though renewable energy had fantastic falls in prices, there wasn't enough addition to meet new energy demand, especially in China and India for industry, and for the USA regarding its huge growth in natural gas. They then asked the question, how much faster would renewables need to grow to JUST meet this new energy demand (nevermind decarbonizing existing demand). They found renewables would have to grow over 2X as fast (from 800 TWh up to 1,800 TWh).
Let this sink in: We are literally adding half the renewables we need just to keep the emissions curve flat. We probably need to go 4X faster to bend the curve downwards on emissions.
Can engineers solve that? They are a piece of the puzzle, but their most fundamental innovations will take years to kick in. We need policy, we need individual behavioral changes, we need everything we can get.
You are totally right and totally wrong at the same time.
Yes - the solution must be in large parts a technological and scientific solution, there are so many things we have to change. No - only engineers and scientists will not make a difference, engineers work for the government or companies and both need policies to shape markets for their products or investments. We need the public at the same time to shape the markets and give the engineers something to work with. Addressing climate change means changing the incentives and the direction of our technological development... and in a democracy we all get to decide on that, that politics.
> The solution to climate change is not governments and politicians and lawyers. It’s engineers. It’s always been engineers.
As long as politicians continue to play their games, engineers won't be able to accomplish anything. Solving this problem requires a widespread increase in enlightenment, and as far as I can tell a vast majority of the population thinks that only applies to people of the other political/religious persuasion, but it really applies to all of us.
Basically a scientific issue wrapped in a political issue with a big huge asterisk that says even if we do all the right things we're triaging the patients, not curing them.
There was a lot of talk about how the world will be "uninhabitable by 2050" or "civilization will crumble by 2050" and anecdotally, that really backfired for all my elderly aunts and uncles. They happily admit that climate change is real but don't care because they will be dead by 2040. Hell, I'll be in my 80's.
Not doing something because "you'll be dead before it happens" is pure selfishness. My personal observations from those close to me who don't want to act on climate change seem that their reasons have changed within the last 5 years. They no longer claim that it isn't real or happening, they now dismiss it on grounds of losing the personal liberty provided to them by our over consumption lifestyle. (If you live in the West, then you are likely over consuming.)
So I actually don't think the "doom and gloom" is causing people not to act, if anything the younger generation are acting on that message. (Fridays for Future, etc.) Instead what is delaying action, in my mind, is that the West's middle class is disappearing and now with climate change demanding a further reduction of consumption it is casuing people to try to hold on tighter to their already disappearing lifestyle.
Wouldn't it be nice it it were something as simple as setting a timeline. The reality is, it's a combination of two things (mainly):
1) We can't afford to undermind the economy. That is, any plan that cuts back on consumption (even in the short term) is going to hurt an already hurting economy[1]. However, there aren't any "leader(s)" who want to be pinned with such things so the buck gets passed.
2) Along the same lines, we've convenience'd ourselves into a corner. At this point, sacrifices (in the context of status quo lifestyles / cultural expectations) need to be made; habits needed to be changed. But again, there's no leader willing to disrupt that which needs to be disrupted. We talk a good game when it comes to wanting change but then once the call comes in, we whine. "Leaders" that cause people to whine don't get elected / re-elected. It used to be, "at war" mean the POTUS (in the USA) had carte blanche to ask for help and sacrifice. Now we live in a world where "at war" means to keep the masses distracted by keeping up with the Kardashians.
[1] Not to get off topic (but to prove my point); there's a reason fracking hocket-stick'ed under the previous POTUS. That reason is, the Fed had shot it wad and keeping the cost of fuel down is a proxy for economic stimulation (without having to say so). Ultimately, we tossed Mother Nature under the bus to keep the economy from going tits-up. If that's what "green presidents" can get away with, then that doesn't exactly raise the bar for the rest.
It annoys me when people act like Y2K was apocalyptic scaremongering. No, Y2K was a real threat, which the human race spent huge resources to meet and thereby mitigated appropriately.
I remember my father, a mainframe programmer, spending years correcting code for Y2K for the bank he worked for. COBOL and assembly. At the rollover, it went without a hitch, but there was a lot of sweat to make that happen
Y2K was indeed a real threat, AND there was also a good bit of apocalyptic scaremongering. No conflict.
Those writing apocalyptic scare stories were poorly informed and deliberately trying to activate people’s base fears. AND there was a huge effort by very smart folks to avert it. No conflict.
There is huge then there is huge. Having a bunch of smart people think about something is a huge deal and a lot of attention that could probably have been better spent elsewhere. For a business. Businesses are under constant pressure to demonstrate that they are using people's time effectively. As in, more effectively than the competition that is nipping at their heels.
But as a one-off thing it isn't really a big issue to a government, civilization or even an industry. At that level what does it matter if a few weeks are spent unnecessarily, once? Governments burn more resources than that on a slow news day.
Whenever I hear whinging about Y2K, I always jump in and say that the polio and smallpox scares were also overrated. "We also spent all that money on polio and smallpox vaccines and shit and look there's no polio or smallpox anymore, what a waste of money that was."
Might not work on anti-vaxxers but it has shut down more than one stupid conversation about Y2K.
No matter how you put it, people will find tendentious excuses for ignoring the issue, and when they are no longer tenable, they will switch to another, without any concern as to whether it is consistent with their previous position.
The part about divers crying into masks hit home. It was on my bucket list to dive in the Great Barrier Reef but it’s now been declared dead. 95% of my diving has been in the last 25% of my diving career because I know I have a limited time.
Since the BBC is now officially a climate alarmist organization, I think one can be sure that this report is as alarmist as one can be without blatantly disregarding easily verifiable facts.
It's not declared dead, but some (myself included) believe it has most likely crossed a tipping point and will be dead in the lifespan of the next generation or two.
My takeaway is different: we are beyond the tipping point. Even if we technically would not, our inability to make good decisions as a group dooms us. The good strategy is to prepare to live through the extinction event, and use that as the proof of need for better group decisions (a.k.a. politics). We do have the scientific knowledge to design a much better system, but the same knowledge hints that the momentums of the system, set by the current motivational structure would not allow a change for better without a collapse.
> The only rational path is a virtuous cycle of better politicians enacting better policies and promoting better public understanding of climate change. But as of today, there is no sign the world is moving in that direction.
Suppose my politicians fight the good fight and we enact the necessary policies. What about the other countries, especially those that aren't as well off?
A well off industrialized nation making progress on energy and pollution reduction would a) demonstrate what things works, and b) provide investment dollars into those technologies, which _usually_ results in optimizations and lowering of costs ... so even if those "other countries" don't follow immediately, their adoption could be enabled by earlier adoption by us
Would sure be nice if we spent those war trillions to solve the real problem. Unfortunately most people seem to have discovered climate change in November 2016.
Good that they did. Better to see more focus on solutions. It would be great and exciting to work on mass scale solutions and government can easily create laws to incent it
What are the implications of 'irreversible'? Practically irreversible? Cannot be reversed naturally? If we run out of ice, what's to say cooling down the planet by halting carbon production won't recreate the ice caps?
You will find that predictions of climate change have been 100% false. Nobody has a crystal ball and nobody can predict what will happen in the future. So lets look into the past.
About 20,000 years ago the earth was 10 celcius colder. For the last 20,000 years the earth has been warming pretty steadily.
About 100,000 years ago the world was 5celcius warmer than today.
If you look at the black/red dots from the IPCC predictions. All of those have already been disproven as false and not going to happen. Overall on the graph what's happening is that we are more or less exactly flat.
Temperature on earth frequently rapidly spiked up in temperature.
So what happened to life on earth when it was 5+ celcius warmer? It was fantastic for life. Frozen wastelands like Canada and Russia thawed and became extremely livable. People moved into these northern places.
The implications of 'irreversible' are that it's going to become much more difficult to reverse in the "short term" (less than hundreds of years) as after the various tipping points reversing would involve not only to cancel/compensate for our emissions, but also to overcome the much larger positive feedback loops e.g. methane released by melting permafrost, increased solar absorbtion/heating after the reflective icecaps melt, etc.
It's not technically irreversible, however, the point is that however expensive and difficult prevention might seem, reversing it after the temperature increase is going to be much, much more expensive and difficult. And our capacity to do stuff is going to decrease as we suffer from the consequences - e.g. population reduction, conflicts, etc.
>Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?
No.
I also see no evidence in the article it has hurt attitudes either way. In fact, polls show general concern about climate change. Doing something is another matter[0], but people are mindful of it. Nonetheless, the article seems to be more about the author's personal feelings than whether it influenced the movement around it either way.
I was alive in the 1970s when folks like the Club of Rome declared we'll all be dead form overpopulation and Malthusian collapse by the year 2000. Those self-same folks told us this century the arctic will be completely ice free by 2013. In the 1980s, others predicted our total demise due to acid rain and ozone depletion.
Mean time, people are making good progress on both feeding the masses and curbing the exponential growth of humanity across the globe. At the same time, clear progress is happening on the reduction-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions front. Acid rain and ozone depletion have been curtailed.
We'll always have doomsayers, extremists, and prophets. They're so busy with themselves they rarely get in the way of people who actually get work done.
On the other hand, these doomsayers also caused public outcry that changed a few things.
We can never know if these changes are the reason doom didn't happen, or because the prospects were imaginary.
Anyway, I believe that it'll be very hard to annihilate humanity let alone the planet, but it'll be very easy to lower the living standards slowly enough that we won't notice the reasons for it.
If you plan to have children, I think it's something you should thinks of.
Ofcourse, I'd prefer a rational discussion regarding the issues. But the powers at be, which usually have what to lose, usually steer the debate to be anti rational. And then you find yourself in a position where you must exaggerate in order to gain attention to your cause. It's a tragedy...
> folks like the Club of Rome declared we'll all be dead from overpopulation and Malthusian collapse by the year 2000
Some of the actual predictions from the CoR's "Limits to Growth", according to the Wikipedia page about that document:
> Given business as usual, i.e., no changes to historical growth trends, the limits to growth on earth would become evident by 2072, leading to "sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity".
(2072 is quite a long time after 2000. I wonder whether it's a typo for 2027, given what follows, but that too is a long time after 2000.)
> Global Industrial output per capita reaches a peak around 2008, followed by a rapid decline ... Global Food per capita reaches a peak around 2020, followed by a rapid decline ... Global Services per capita reaches a peak around 2020, followed by a rapid decline ... Global population reaches a peak in 2030, followed by a rapid decline
Those are all well after 2020. (The first of them doesn't seem like it's correct, thankfully. I suspect the others are some way off, too. But I'm not arguing that the CoR were right, only that they didn't say what you say they said.)
Club of Rome predictions are pretty much spot on. It's been re-evaluated two or three times recently and each time has held up an amazingly accurate picture of what has happened since. See here for the graphs filled in the intervening years[1]. I don't recall any ice predictions from Club of Rome - do you have a link?
In the 1980s the world actually came together to phase out CFCs, and fit sulphur scrubbers on coal power stations. Interestingly the builders of Battersea were the first to fit these - in 1925. They took a while to catch on.
The ozone hole has finally stopped increasing only this decade. It's trending to resolve in 50 more years, if and only if, the recent discovery of CFC use in China doesn't grow. So a century to probably solve the man-made problem.
Really like that last paragraph, toally agree. I'm not sure I agree about the clear progress on reduction of greenhouse gases thou. Expanding consumerism and population in a carbon economy would seem to preclude this. Can you explain your thinking?
Except the people predicting climate change isn’t the club of Rome, it’s an entire scientific community, who have been double, triple, and quadruple checking every measurement and assumption for 50 years. This is not some hysterical group of panicked hippies. We’re talking about broad consensus among all the most educated and intelligent members of our civilization. Please show a little respect and listen to them.
I recommend the title be changed to the actual story title or something actually similar. The article is about how setting deadlines for action on climate change came from more of an advocacy perspective rather than scientific, which had an effect opposite what was intended.
You know, there was this guy that made a fool of Christianity when he predicted Jesus would return in 2011. When nothing happened, he said oops and adjusted the date. (People fortunately paid much less attention to him then.)
Kinda getting tired of hearing "the sky is falling" all the time from environmental folks. When you hear "the world is ending next year, it's gonna be too late" every single year, it seems like a thinly veiled push for suckers who want to make campaign donations and bad laws.
Ironic that the author makes this exact point, and then doubles down on it.
How does a guy making a prediction make a fool of Christianity? That's like saying if I read a science textbook and then incorrectly predict flying cars by 2020, that I have made a fool of science.
Jesus Himself said: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. ... Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come. But understand this: If the homeowner had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into." (Matthew 24:36-43)
We have pretty good evidence to suggest that "bad shit" will probably happen eventually as a result of anthropogenic climate change. How bad, and how far into the future? Depends on the model.
The problem was, as you point out, that setting arbitrary deadlines led to a "boy who cried wolf" scenario. That doesn't invalidate the science indicating that the bad shit will start to happen eventually.
Climate change doesn't work like the Second Coming. It's not a catastrophe until a cat 5++ hurricane hits your city, and then it is. It's not evenly distributed, it does not happen all at once everywhere.
[+] [-] rayiner|6 years ago|reply
People have viewed climate change as a political issue and its not. It’s a scientific issue. It’s the astroid hurtling toward earth in the movie Armageddon or the aliens in Independence Day. The solution to climate change is not governments and politicians and lawyers. It’s engineers. It’s always been engineers.
[+] [-] ridicter|6 years ago|reply
For example, if the price of fossil fuels reflected its true cost to society--think climate change, extreme weather, stronger storms, droughts, ocean acidification, etc--then fossil fuels would be prohibitively expensive compared to renewable or nuclear energy. This is what a carbon tax is, and it's what many scientists and economists have been pushing for decades now. But they've been fighting a losing battle against the oil and gas lobby, and one party in particular that is wholly captured by them.
In fact, James Hansen, NASA scientist and head of the Goddard Institute, got out of the science to focus specifically on the politics. He urges people to join the Citizens Climate Lobby, which has lobbied for carbon pricing legislation for over a decade now: the Energy Innovation Act has bipartisan support in Congress right now (https://energyinnovationact.org/). Many other scientists are involved in the politics these day as well (Katherine Hayhoe [atmospheric scientist], Michael Mann [climatologist]).
[+] [-] mrkeen|6 years ago|reply
I like the sentiment, and we're always going to need newer, better tech. Part of it will be engineering, but part of if also has to be pure science, which I suspect won't be profitable enough for the private industry to pursue. Government needs to fund such efforts. I think this applies generally (not just to climate).
Appealing to government isn't just about trying to go from no help to some help. It's also about getting them to stop doing harm. The Guardian claims that the US subsidises the fossil-fuel industry to the tune of $20B each year.
[+] [-] gdubs|6 years ago|reply
We might be left with no choice but to experiment with a technological “hail mary” — but so far, none are very attractive.
Two decades ago we could have solved the problem at a relatively low cost compared to what we’ll pay now, or what we’ll pay if we do nothing. Every year it gets more expensive.
It’s like the old adage, fitting to this discussion: the best time to plant a tree is five years ago. The next best time is today.
[+] [-] js2|6 years ago|reply
"No individual can be expected singlehandedly to solve this problem. It's going to require national action. And by the way -- this is why we invented government. It's for dealing with issues that are too big for each of us to do on our own."
This is a humanity scale problem and government, by way of politicians and lawyers, and yes engineers, is how we deal with humanity scale problems.
Scientists and engineers put us on the moon, but it was government that directed and enabled them to do so.
[+] [-] WhompingWindows|6 years ago|reply
Let this sink in: We are literally adding half the renewables we need just to keep the emissions curve flat. We probably need to go 4X faster to bend the curve downwards on emissions.
Can engineers solve that? They are a piece of the puzzle, but their most fundamental innovations will take years to kick in. We need policy, we need individual behavioral changes, we need everything we can get.
[+] [-] dependsontheq|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mistermann|6 years ago|reply
As long as politicians continue to play their games, engineers won't be able to accomplish anything. Solving this problem requires a widespread increase in enlightenment, and as far as I can tell a vast majority of the population thinks that only applies to people of the other political/religious persuasion, but it really applies to all of us.
[+] [-] the_gastropod|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4mpm3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ensorceled|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RubenSandwich|6 years ago|reply
So I actually don't think the "doom and gloom" is causing people not to act, if anything the younger generation are acting on that message. (Fridays for Future, etc.) Instead what is delaying action, in my mind, is that the West's middle class is disappearing and now with climate change demanding a further reduction of consumption it is casuing people to try to hold on tighter to their already disappearing lifestyle.
[+] [-] knd775|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bureaucrat|6 years ago|reply
How are we? We breathe cleaner air and use more petroleum than 1970.
I will be 55 in 2050, and I bet my entire fortune that the world will be better then.
[+] [-] chiefalchemist|6 years ago|reply
1) We can't afford to undermind the economy. That is, any plan that cuts back on consumption (even in the short term) is going to hurt an already hurting economy[1]. However, there aren't any "leader(s)" who want to be pinned with such things so the buck gets passed.
2) Along the same lines, we've convenience'd ourselves into a corner. At this point, sacrifices (in the context of status quo lifestyles / cultural expectations) need to be made; habits needed to be changed. But again, there's no leader willing to disrupt that which needs to be disrupted. We talk a good game when it comes to wanting change but then once the call comes in, we whine. "Leaders" that cause people to whine don't get elected / re-elected. It used to be, "at war" mean the POTUS (in the USA) had carte blanche to ask for help and sacrifice. Now we live in a world where "at war" means to keep the masses distracted by keeping up with the Kardashians.
[1] Not to get off topic (but to prove my point); there's a reason fracking hocket-stick'ed under the previous POTUS. That reason is, the Fed had shot it wad and keeping the cost of fuel down is a proxy for economic stimulation (without having to say so). Ultimately, we tossed Mother Nature under the bus to keep the economy from going tits-up. If that's what "green presidents" can get away with, then that doesn't exactly raise the bar for the rest.
[+] [-] esotericn|6 years ago|reply
Heh. This is such a brilliant phrase that perfectly encapsulates everything that is wrong.
We can't afford to not afford things. :D
[+] [-] umanwizard|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redleggedfrog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulsutter|6 years ago|reply
Those writing apocalyptic scare stories were poorly informed and deliberately trying to activate people’s base fears. AND there was a huge effort by very smart folks to avert it. No conflict.
[+] [-] roenxi|6 years ago|reply
But as a one-off thing it isn't really a big issue to a government, civilization or even an industry. At that level what does it matter if a few weeks are spent unnecessarily, once? Governments burn more resources than that on a slow news day.
[+] [-] Ensorceled|6 years ago|reply
Might not work on anti-vaxxers but it has shut down more than one stupid conversation about Y2K.
[+] [-] mannykannot|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] inlined|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] radford-neal|6 years ago|reply
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-49520949?SThisFB
Since the BBC is now officially a climate alarmist organization, I think one can be sure that this report is as alarmist as one can be without blatantly disregarding easily verifiable facts.
[+] [-] 4mpm3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] m4gw4s|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snikeris|6 years ago|reply
Suppose my politicians fight the good fight and we enact the necessary policies. What about the other countries, especially those that aren't as well off?
[+] [-] CodeCube|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobermin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulsutter|6 years ago|reply
Good that they did. Better to see more focus on solutions. It would be great and exciting to work on mass scale solutions and government can easily create laws to incent it
[+] [-] WilliamEdward|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sleepysysadmin|6 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...
About 20,000 years ago the earth was 10 celcius colder. For the last 20,000 years the earth has been warming pretty steadily.
About 100,000 years ago the world was 5celcius warmer than today.
If you look at the black/red dots from the IPCC predictions. All of those have already been disproven as false and not going to happen. Overall on the graph what's happening is that we are more or less exactly flat.
However look at those spikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian#/media/File:EPICA_delta...
Temperature on earth frequently rapidly spiked up in temperature.
So what happened to life on earth when it was 5+ celcius warmer? It was fantastic for life. Frozen wastelands like Canada and Russia thawed and became extremely livable. People moved into these northern places.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene
The Eocene 50 million years ago was 14celcius warmer and life thrived better than no other time in history.
[+] [-] PeterisP|6 years ago|reply
It's not technically irreversible, however, the point is that however expensive and difficult prevention might seem, reversing it after the temperature increase is going to be much, much more expensive and difficult. And our capacity to do stuff is going to decrease as we suffer from the consequences - e.g. population reduction, conflicts, etc.
[+] [-] noobermin|6 years ago|reply
No.
I also see no evidence in the article it has hurt attitudes either way. In fact, polls show general concern about climate change. Doing something is another matter[0], but people are mindful of it. Nonetheless, the article seems to be more about the author's personal feelings than whether it influenced the movement around it either way.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-climatechang...
[+] [-] bregma|6 years ago|reply
Mean time, people are making good progress on both feeding the masses and curbing the exponential growth of humanity across the globe. At the same time, clear progress is happening on the reduction-of-greenhouse-gas-emissions front. Acid rain and ozone depletion have been curtailed.
We'll always have doomsayers, extremists, and prophets. They're so busy with themselves they rarely get in the way of people who actually get work done.
[+] [-] mola|6 years ago|reply
Anyway, I believe that it'll be very hard to annihilate humanity let alone the planet, but it'll be very easy to lower the living standards slowly enough that we won't notice the reasons for it.
If you plan to have children, I think it's something you should thinks of.
Ofcourse, I'd prefer a rational discussion regarding the issues. But the powers at be, which usually have what to lose, usually steer the debate to be anti rational. And then you find yourself in a position where you must exaggerate in order to gain attention to your cause. It's a tragedy...
[+] [-] gjm11|6 years ago|reply
Some of the actual predictions from the CoR's "Limits to Growth", according to the Wikipedia page about that document:
> Given business as usual, i.e., no changes to historical growth trends, the limits to growth on earth would become evident by 2072, leading to "sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity".
(2072 is quite a long time after 2000. I wonder whether it's a typo for 2027, given what follows, but that too is a long time after 2000.)
> Global Industrial output per capita reaches a peak around 2008, followed by a rapid decline ... Global Food per capita reaches a peak around 2020, followed by a rapid decline ... Global Services per capita reaches a peak around 2020, followed by a rapid decline ... Global population reaches a peak in 2030, followed by a rapid decline
Those are all well after 2020. (The first of them doesn't seem like it's correct, thankfully. I suspect the others are some way off, too. But I'm not arguing that the CoR were right, only that they didn't say what you say they said.)
[+] [-] NeedMoreTea|6 years ago|reply
In the 1980s the world actually came together to phase out CFCs, and fit sulphur scrubbers on coal power stations. Interestingly the builders of Battersea were the first to fit these - in 1925. They took a while to catch on.
The ozone hole has finally stopped increasing only this decade. It's trending to resolve in 50 more years, if and only if, the recent discovery of CFC use in China doesn't grow. So a century to probably solve the man-made problem.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/02/limits...
[+] [-] jonnypotty|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fallingfrog|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 4mpm3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunkenvicar|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ubertakter|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] magwa101|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bjt2n3904|6 years ago|reply
Kinda getting tired of hearing "the sky is falling" all the time from environmental folks. When you hear "the world is ending next year, it's gonna be too late" every single year, it seems like a thinly veiled push for suckers who want to make campaign donations and bad laws.
Ironic that the author makes this exact point, and then doubles down on it.
[+] [-] xamuel|6 years ago|reply
Jesus Himself said: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. ... Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come. But understand this: If the homeowner had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into." (Matthew 24:36-43)
[+] [-] nerdponx|6 years ago|reply
We have pretty good evidence to suggest that "bad shit" will probably happen eventually as a result of anthropogenic climate change. How bad, and how far into the future? Depends on the model.
The problem was, as you point out, that setting arbitrary deadlines led to a "boy who cried wolf" scenario. That doesn't invalidate the science indicating that the bad shit will start to happen eventually.
[+] [-] roywiggins|6 years ago|reply