I feel like the incentives to participate in ordered society are diminishing every year. I just don't see the benefits anymore: if one doesn't fight, then they die meaninglessly anyway.
Billions of people all over the world go about their lives just fine, worrying about mundane things and slowly improving their situation every day. Almost all objective metrics point out at the human population doing better than ever and life being as best as it ever was.
Someone somewhere said "the end is near", so let's ignore all the counter-arguments and counter-examples, human ingenuity and technological capability and weep instead.
Unsubstantiated weeping about the fate of the world is fine, self-fulfilling prophecies on how there are no incentives to participate in ordered society aren’t.
I've lived in a humid sub-tropic region (South Texas) of the US my entire life. A couple weeks ago we had an all time record-high heat index of 117. Objectively, that seems pretty high, and subjectively, it sucks huge dick. I'm really not all that interested in learning how much higher my body can withstand while being told that everything is fine, and anyway whatabout China?
How about, I'm mildly homeless (essentially I live with my parents to leverage economies of scale around energy usage; I don't air condition a dwelling that only I live in), I ride an electric bike when possible (to include to my office which is 2 miles away), and I've recently taken up beekeeping and growing a portion of my food hydroponically. I never fly in a plane. I will eat basically anything, but it leans away from beef and other problematic stuff. I doubt I'm doing enough, and I've become pretty convinced over the last seven or so years that humanity is just straight-up fucked anyway (no kids for me which I could say is a green thing, but really I can't imagine explaining the magnitude of the fuckedness they'd face (and the living with parents thing sure doesn't help either)), but anyway I'd feel even more responsible if I did that stuff. Regarding the truck thing though, the Ford Maverick looks pretty useful and I believe there is a hybrid, so maybe that would be reasonable? #notalltexans lol
We are on the verge of a massive societal if not natural shift, and academics and politicians are too busy in their ivory towers to see that the prosperity of the post-war era has been a dead man walking for two decades at least.
Just look at anyone below age 25. It is utter lunacy for them to believe in the system as a force for good, or a necessary good either. "Your vote counts," and other bullshit media keeps repeating like a broken record.
It's going to get worse, but humanity takes a step forward for the better only after massive tragedies, not when megacorp says they're going net zero, or that party promises they'll fix it for real by adding a tax on meat products.
Humanity and Earth will eventually be fine, but right now we're just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, so to speak.
The bulk of people below 25 live in the Global South. A majority of them live in countries experiencing strong economic growth, albeit from a low base. This kind of doomerism is exclusive to rich countries and is little more than whingeing.
I reckon patting ourselves in the back because we have helped the Global South out of poverty is a very privileged Western point-of-view.
The large charity foundations billionaires give the money to are doing undeniably good work, but it is a massive circlejerk for rich people to imagine that thanks to their generosity they're now all singing Kumbaya.
How's the deforestation of the Amazon going? At least now the indigenous tribes can drink Coca-Cola now instead of plain water. Isn't globalisation just great?
Western charity had fuck all to do with the countries that have successfully pulled themselves out of poverty. They built themselves up through exports and incredibly hard work until they became rich enough to start consuming themselves.
I never meant to say Western charities were the only actors in this growth. The opposite in fact.
I'm just saying it is commonplace in the Western world to pat ourselves in the back because we've donated $100 to Médecins Sans Frontières and believe we've made the world a better place. We certainly did, but it's just a drop in the ocean.
I don't understand how this is relevant. You made a broad generalisation about how people under 25 are supposedly dommed. When the flaw in your argument is pointed out, you go into a tangent about Westerners patting themselves on the back?
I live in the Global South. My perspective is from someone who has witnessed a dramatic improvement in the quality of life of my compatriots.
The economic growth that my country has experienced in past few decades is down to abandonment of retarded socialist policies and adoption of globalisation. The fact that you think Western charity has anything to with it suggests profound ignorance.
> How's the deforestation of the Amazon going?
The people of Brazil have every right to make use of the resources of their country. If they want land for their livestock or want to harvest timber, more power to them! Remind me: What happened to the forests in Europe or the bison in America?
> Isn't globalisation just great?
It absolutely is! More globalisation, more growth and less whinging from privileged Western doomers.
> The people of Brazil have every right to make use of the resources of their country.
It's not the people of Brazil that are benefiting of the resources of the Amazon rainforest. Even worse is believing that the destruction of the rainforest is the catalyst for Brazil's growth.
Also:
> This kind of doomerism is exclusive to rich countries and is little more than whingeing.
When one can finally afford bread, they still are too busy to see how fucked up our global economic divide is. Give a starving man a crumb of bread while you have stashed food for years, and they'll weep with gratitude. It's all a matter of perspective.
Sometimes you need a vantage point to notice how unfair everything is.
> It's not the people of Brazil that are benefiting of the resources of the Amazon rainforest.
Brazilian farmers would beg to disagree.
> Even worse is believing that the destruction of the rainforest is the catalyst for Brazil's growth.
You're attacking a strawman. I made no such claim. Although Brazil experienced significant growth during the China fueled commodity supercycle. That was possible thanks to... checks notes ... globalisation!
> When one can finally afford bread, they still are too busy to see how fucked up our global economic divide is.
Globalisation and free trade have lifted hundereds out of poverty and reduced economic inequality globally.
> Sometimes you need a vantage point to notice how unfair everything is.
Thankfully we have Whinging Saviors to tell us all about how everything is fucked despite things being significantly better than in the past:
What do you mean you can find a high paying job and afford to have a good standard of living? It is utter lunacy for you believe in the system! You're too poor to know!
Dude, good for you that your life in the Global South has improved, and I mean that sincerely.
But you're the one that has moved the focus to that. Would you mind if I whinge, like you keep on repeating ad nauseam, that here in our privileged world, things are not better than they were 20 years ago for most people except the ultra-rich? We do in fact have our own < 25 years old here as well, they are not only living on the equator as you seem to suggest.
So if I accept that in poorer countries things have turned for the best, as you keep droning on, please accept that I have a perspective that here in our supposed ivory towers life for many people is worse, poorer and with less social mobility. These two outcomes are not incompatible with each other.
Please whinge all you like. Just don't generalise your doomer worldview to the whole world.
> We do in fact have our own < 25 years old here as well, they are not only living on the equator as you seem to suggest.
I specifically said the majority of people under 25 live in the Global South. That's simply an objective fact down to larger population and higher fertility. And the Global South has nothing to with the Equator.
Again with your ad hominem and repeating the same two words (like an annoying kid that has just learned a fancy new word) to shut down any possibility of constructive disagreement. You're insufferable. Have a good one.
Are you upset that your parochial world view can be summarised in two just two words? And do you really want to pretend your comment chain which went into irrelevant tangents was constructive?
I really don't think what happened to the bison is something that should be idealized. It wasn't and isn't a good thing. Certainly not something I'd want repeated.
A relatively simple carbon tax could put us on the right path, but most voters aren’t pushing for it. If the voters were all pushing for it, even if it means living a lower energy lifestyle in the short run and all that that entails, you’d see change.
Write a physical paper letter to your congresspeople letting them know that you’re a single issue voter on carbon tax with carbon dividend and border adjustment. Help bring it to the top of their mind, above the huge number of competing priorities, if you want to see something done.
The biggest lie the political circus has managed to spread is that if the system is broken, it's because the voters should do more. It's never because of corruption, lobbyism, populism, billionaires funding political campaigns, corporations pushing their interests.
No, always blame the voter. But please don't complain too loudly, say the protest laws. And so we keep the farçe alive for another 4 years.
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The carbon tax would be a swell idea, but no politician will ever table it, because none of the major players that put money in their pocket want it.
Obviously everyone is pushing for their own interests, some of them more effectively than others. But I also don't see many voters ranking this as their single biggest issue, and politicians are well aware of that. Whatever forces you think are pulling the strings behind the scenes, getting to broad support seems likely to be a necessary precondition to overcoming the inertia of a system and a people that are generally comfortable with the status quo.
How did the voters react to the gas tax increases in France? Was that the result of the evil billionaires and lobbyists? Or was it regular people afraid of the potential disruption to their lives?
> the incentives to participate in ordered society are diminishing [...] I just don't see the benefits anymore
I don't know where you live, of course. But you seem to be in despair. If I may suggest that you reflect further or talk with someone, your view of society is clearly not true.
There continue to be significant benefits to participating in ordered society. And this, for the vast majority of humanity.
Human conflict is the most immediate danger from climate change, as tensions rise. We can kill ourselves a lot faster than the climate has any hope of doing it for us. So maybe don’t exacerbate that?
I imagine both actual population and population density have something to do with it as well. The difference is massive, which probably also means a lot more green areas and a lot less concrete and metal in proportion.
a. Northern Hemisphere: The half that lies north of the Equator. This hemisphere contains approximately 68% of Earth's landmass and is home to about 90% of the global population. It includes North America, Europe, Asia, and most of Africa.
b. Southern Hemisphere: The half that lies south of the Equator. It contains only 32% of Earth's landmass and is home to about 10% of the global population. It includes South America, Australia, Antarctica, and the southern parts of Africa.
If you want a more serious answer, tectonic plates are the floating cooled solidified 'slag' on a spinning spherical molten furnace (that's been cooling for 4 billion years).
Distance from spin axis (equator Vs poles) plays more of a dynamic than "South" vs "North" (air quoted as that's merely a convention as to which hemisphere is the 'top' hemisphere).
Two major points are that:
* N vs S looks a bit different on a globe or non Mercator projection (chosen by European traders to maximise the parts of the world of interest to them).
* current positions are just that - they've steadily moved since formation of the planet.
North and South should not be in air-quotes. They're correct, by definition.
"Top" and "bottom", however, can be air-quoted. There's nothing that says north equals "top"; north and south are arbitrary, and are just terms chosen to designate the two poles. The only reason people think north=top is because most maps are oriented that way.
If you flip North can change from "top" to "bottom" or from "bottom" to "top" depending on your map. But it doesn't stop being North, which is a fairly well defined concept. Hence no air quotes.
> But it doesn't stop being North, which is a fairly well defined concept.
Can you cite the definition please?
My understanding, from 40 years of geodesy and cartography, was that it was a fairly recent (post 16th Century) convention and many many significant older maps orientate in quite different ways.
Huh? This doesn't make sense. Lots of modern maps even have north pointing somewhere other than up, though they use a marker to indicate which way is north.
It doesn't matter which way you point a piece of paper: the North Pole is always going to be the North Pole, and the South Pole is always going to be in Antarctica (until the continent drifts, though the pole will still be there). The names of these poles may have been originally chosen centuries ago because popular maps pointed that way, but now those names are fixed by definition.
So you link to Wikipedia. OK. You see that it defines North pole in terms of Northern hemisphere. Now if you follow the links through you will see that Wikipedia defines North as "where the up on the map is". Qed.
If I'm standing on the Moon, looking at the Earth, I can see which side is North because of the arrangement of the continents. I don't need to have a paper map with me. The whole thing doesn't make sense.
Finally, you're just plain wrong, and you're reading Wikipedia wrongly. According to the page for "North",
>The word north is related to the Old High German nord, both descending from the Proto-Indo-European unit ner-, meaning "left; below" as north is to left when facing the rising sun. Similarly, the other cardinal directions are also related to the sun's position.
So the definition is derived from the Sun's position, not some stupid paper map.
You're probably reading this part:
>By convention, the top or upward-facing side of a map is north.
That just says that maps are normally oriented with North pointing up. It doesn't say that "north" is defined* that way.
First you define North in terms of arrangements of continents (saying north is where northern continents are, cool) and then you use English etymology as definition? Lol.
> You're probably reading this part
Probably? I literally quoted it.
You claim I misinterpreted that phrase but you don't give a better option. All definitions of north are by convention or relative to space (so if it flips then "northern arrangement" of continents you see from the moon will be southern)
"North" IS by convention. I've been saying this all along. It has nothing to do with any map. The place we call "the north pole" is north because it's been defined that way for ages. Apparently the origins of the word have to do with Sun, but the effect is the same, because it points to the same place on this spinning ball.
Ah but that's my point, turns out north is not a well-defined concept contrary to what I thought first.
That quote is ambiguous and could be interpreted as "north is where the up on the map is". And actually there seems to be no better definition (that eg. would stand the flip of axis). What are we arguing about again?
North IS a well-defined concept. From the most ancient times, people knew where north was: it's 90 degrees left of east, and east is where the Sun rises. Go back in time 5000 years and ask anyone where North is, and they'll point you to it, long before any modern maps of the world were ever made.
Wikipedia having one poorly-written line about it doesn't change tens of thousands of years of human history and knowledge about where north is. Wikipedia isn't even an authoritative reference on anything.
I think it's pretty much a myth that a projection was chosen to accentuate certain countries, the simpler and less nefarious reason is that they're easier to use for navigation.
The land masses are floating plates pushing and shoving against each other over a bubling mass of heat energy pushing up to escape outwards, there are more forces at play than simple centrifuging.
The linked animation shows a relatively short sequence of movement, over the last few million years, that is likely the most we'll be able to reconstruct thanks to the arrow of time.
BTW, looking at northern hemisphere vs southern hemisphere doesn't show just how unevenly it is distributed. To really see how unevenly land is distributed go to Google Maps (or any other online map that switches to a 3D globe view when you zoom out and search for Bora Bora in French Polynesia.
Then zoom out to the globe view. Then tweak the position to get North America to just disappear over the horizon, along with most of South America.
With sufficient tweaking you can get it down to the half of the Earth you are looking at just being ocean, Australia, Papua New Guinea, Tasmania, about 2/3 of Antartica, and parts of Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, and Philippines, plus a handful of islands.
You're looking at a snapshot of a process that goes on for billions of years... there's no particular reason why any snapshot would look like any sort of way.
We have caused the Halocene extinction. Our wasteful lifestyles are the virus of the planet. The overconsumed. The technologists who think our devices and social media and VR are a substitute to blind us from the truth. We are destroying our planet. That’s reality. Our devices and travel are our escape.
“You are not special. You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You're the same decaying organic matter as everything else. We're all part of the same compost heap. We're all singing, all dancing crap of the world.“
What if mankind just lives in peace and balance with nature? No plastic. Carbon balance. Nothing added annually that wouldn’t be taken back and fixed anew by nature. Greenhouse gases back at 350 ppm. What if?
You could see our consumption as part of the natural dynamic. We came from nature. We are no less animal than any other animal and our actions are perfectly natural. "Humanity evolved a brain that allowed them to access previously untapped energy sources leading to population growth. This eventually led to an unsustainable population growth, shortly followed by a massive disruption in the global ecosystem and climate. However, the sudden dip in diversity led to an explosion of new species over the following 1.8 million years."
It's total hubris of us to split the world into natural and artificial. The stuff in the ground that we dig up came from nature, we came from nature, so everything we produce is the result of nature. Not excusing our actions or inability to change, but also not ascribing it completely to malice or saying stuff like we should be in balance with nature which is meaningless.
If you were designing a planet atmosphere for 10 billion people, what percent co2 would you target ? Mars and Venus and prelife earth had very high levels of co2.
I wonder what percentage of the mesozoic co2 is sequestered in oil and gas and what the total quantity is based on that calculation.
When people can't distinguish truth from lies, or don't know how to conduct basic research on the truthfulness of something, it's the product of failed parenting and/or a failed education system.
> The average worldwide temperature was 17C (63F), just above the previous record of 16.9C reached in August 2016, according to data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction.
There are a lot of different factors at work. One of the most prominent is El Niño, which brings warm water up from the depths of the Pacific ocean.
The number reported here is the surface temperature, which doesn't account for the heat absorbed by the deep ocean. Some years, the additional heat of climate change is captured by the oceans and hidden from the surface temperature measurement -- those are La Niña years, and the surface is comparatively cool. This year El Niño is bringing all of that heat back up, contributing to setting records.
All of this is driven by the chaotic 3D motion of oceans, taking the temperature up and down on years-long scales. Climate change operates on decades-long scales, but goes monotonically up. This year we also have an increase in the short-term scale, leading to record temperatures.
El Niño isn't the only factor; it's just one of many. Together, it means we don't set record temperatures every single year. But it will happen more and more often because of the longer-term scale which only goes in one direction.
"The average worldwide temperature was 17C (63F), just above the previous record of 16.9C reached in August 2016, according to data from the National Centers for Environmental Prediction."
So, not just in Bloomberg's offices.
I suspect though, that your comments were not made in good faith.
I do like the idea the Bloomberg writers were stretched for ideas until Bob turned to Jim and said..well heck today's like super hot? Maybe it's the hottest ever! And Jim said. Hey you're informed me you're the source. You stay anonymous Bob I mean urrr anonymous guy and I'll run it.
Global warming is not a matter of belief, but of trust in the scientific community. What you may be criticising is how some media report on the climate catastrophe, which itself has been scientifically studied since the 1970s and has been concluded to be caused by humans as much as scientists can agree on anything. Whether people "believe" in global warming is only relevant in terms of policy, just like it took some time in the late 19th century for people to accept that some illnesses are caused by bacteria and implement policy accordingly. Understanding the mechanisms of a threat is the first of many steps, but the threat itself doesn't care about whether you believe in it.
There is a difference between accepting bacteria which is something that is happening at the present to accepting predictions about the future of the climate and the state of the world which is something that might happen in the future. Predicting the future is always harder, especially when trying to predict complicated systems like climate, so there is here an element of believing.
Bacteria cannot be seen with the naked eye so for almost anyone, and especially at the time there is a huge element of 'believing' for bacteria as well. So today we can buy our own microscopes, and maybe you have but certainly back at the time when policies on health were changed in response to science on bacteria, it wasn't because every single person who implemented them had a microscope or the appropriate training - they had to trust some other people who had done the background work - much as today. The biggest problem I see with the same trust applied to the work done on climate change is the human lifetime. Antibiotics, for example can have a positive effect in a timescale appreciated by everyone but changes to policy that can help climate change take place over many years and are much harder to visualize or associate cause and effect.
That's a good point regarding scientific claims about the future, thanks. You are right that the future of a complex system is impossible to predict precisely, and maybe that's often misleadingly communicated.
I think in terms of negative consequences, though, the effects of anthropogenic climate change are already here in the present. Although it is scientifically debated to what extent one can attribute single weather extremes to co2 emissions, it's not really disputed that today's climate, which is already severely impacting humans negatively, is due to past human emissions.
Basically: it's already happening right now, and to identify the mechanisms responsible for the present climate does not require belief that goes beyond other scientific insights that are otherwise widely accepted.
Is there a specific example that you could cite about weather extremes?
Most of these claims I've seen are either wrong or fail to take into account several obvious factors.
For instance, claims of rising property damage amounts or lives lost fail to account for the amount of property that has accumulated in these locations or the population explosions in these places.
I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand correctly. Do you mean a) examples for increasing frequency of weather extremes? Or b) present day damages attributed to climate change (which can only be attributed in probability: this heat wave is X times more likely thanks to human emissions..)
If it's a), examples are that the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the past 13 years; also increasing are the volatility of rainfall, the likelihood, duration, and intensity of heat waves, the arctic temperature, the temperature in the tundra, the acidity in the oceans, etc..
If it's b) you can look at area of bush and forest fires, duration of droughts, areas of flooding, desertification etc. which are all increasing, and which cause tangible damage.
Of course you have a good point; it's nontrivial to "distribute" the damage of, say, the flood in Pakistan last year, into: climate change, bad urban planning, high population density, bad political response etc. But the bottom line is: the climate is changing quicker than we are adapting to it. The fact that many factors come together, and that it's complicated, doesn't mean that this isn't a factor.
I think one of the main misconceptions is that the discussion is too centred on average global temperature, or average rainfall. It's the increasing frequency of wild fluctuations (droughts, floods, heat waves) that creates the challenges.
If you like I can dig out references etc., I just wasn't sure what kind of specific examples you were looking for.
How is trust in the scientific community not belief? If you aren't checking their claims directly, then it's just that you believe them and others don't.
BTW it's not really trust in the scientific community. There are lots of scientists calling foul on this kind of story. What happens is, we get told they're the wrong kind of scientists, or "fringe" or whatever. It's social signalling all the way down and the message is Follow The Science.
Note the response - yes they may be nuclear physicists or hydrologists but they can't possibly comment on climate, they're the wrong sort of scientists. Also they even say they have a good understanding of science and then define science as "what 99% of experts believe" which is just hilariously medieval.
These are just examples. I can't be bothered trying to draw up huge lists. Other people have done that, it doesn't matter, the crisis true believers just use a circular definition of expert in which if you disagree the world is doomed you can't be an expert, therefore, are not worth listening to.
It's more like how you have to be careful with psychotherapists because they may try to sell you therapy you don't really need, and maybe your mate who's a surgeon points that out to you.
But thanks for illustrating my point so perfectly. All the people who think they're most rational on this topic are actually the least rational. Relying purely on mental shortcuts and social cues works right up until someone figures out how they can game you for profit, which is what's happening here (cry crisis = funding, grants, status, fame).
Yeah, but you would probably listen to a Neurologist about your lack of a foot problem if 99 out of 100 podiatrists told you 20 years ago that your perfectly healthy foot would fall off in 10 years if you didn't stop driving your car or you didn't pay them the money every day for the rest of your life.
Extremely cold days can be part of global warming, which is why it is now called "climate change" to avoid confusion. It's not that everything gets hotter: while average temperatures rise, the system as a whole gets deregulated, leading to an increase in extreme phenomena, some of which are extremely cold days.
There are also, of course, local patterns that can cause extremely cold days. Averages and quantity also matters, of course. How many extremely cold days for each extremely hot day?
