Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All

https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/12/04/why-climate-alarmism-hurts-us-all

by aazaa • 7 years ago

34 67 7 years ago

draklor403• 7 years ago

Hurting people is precisely the point of all of this alarmism. The goal is not to solve the "climate crisis", but to subvert the guilt of the people for self-serving needs of the few that stand to gain for society taking up measures deemed by them to "solve" the crisis.

smt884• 7 years ago

OK, I'll bite.

How do you explain the hundreds of thousands of scientists worldwide who have studied the environment professionally for, collectively, millions of person-years?

What is their self-serving motive? Surely a biologist would still have funding and things to study either way. The same is true for physicians, geologists, physicists, and many of the other specialties who have confirmed the finding that there is a climate crisis.

The same is not true of 100% of the climate-crisis denial, where you can see multi-trillion-dollar businesses actively astroturfing their side of the conversation.

draklor403• 7 years ago

There is no question that the climate is changing. But what is the crisis here ? Are the apocalyptic warnings anywhere close to reality? And lets look at the proposed solutions: - Going meatless. There is more and more evidence that the methane/CO2 emissions of meat industry is not very significant, atleast when you compare it to construction, cement and other industrial pollutants. The more important question is, what is the alternative ? Insects protein ? GMO crop fueled veganism? Jurassic park is all about how unintended consequences can arise out of stupid interventions ? Meatless burgers etc are full of junk nutrition and full of stuff like sunflower and vegetable oils, oils a century ago were considered industrial oils and used as paint thinners. - Green energy. Germany reversed their decision on Nuclear reactors to go green and the energy costs are 2x that of France. How do you expect to be competitive with other industries then ? It was the freeing up of stored chemical energy by James Watt that powered the greatest poverty lifting experiment in the history of Manking. There is no way Germany would get to 100% green energy by 2050 unless fusion, or everyone lives like they did in th 18th century or you kill off half the population. - People consume less ? Pray why is that virtue-signaling dipshits like Lenardo Di Fraudio, Attenborough fly around in private jets whereas we plebs have to give up on our tiny cars and electronics ? A single virtue signaling Hollywood nincompoop consumes 100x more than any average person would in an entire lifetime. - More taxes so people consume less ? Aren't we taxed enough ? - Tax the rich ? Gates and Bezos dont have a 100 billion sitting around in cash. Most of it is locked up as assets in Stock or another form. Besides, whatever millions they have paid so far is more than what 100,000 people would pay in a lifetime.

kalado• 7 years ago

"If you are aware of the science you're priviliged enough to survive climate change, no need to worry just because the 4 billion people in other countries are going to die"

goatlover2• 7 years ago

Or the 4 billion number is just a wild guess to emphasize climate change being a big problem. What's the science behind estimating such a number?

delecti2• 7 years ago

In my last column, I pointed out that there is no scientific basis for claims that climate change will be apocalyptic

If the author means literally everyone dead, planet gone, then obviously it won't be "apocalyptic", but the science is suggesting it's likely to be really bad. It seems pretty unreasonable to say "not apocalyptic? oh then that's not so bad, what's all the fuss about" when the situation is this dire. We could avert a lot of it if we actually did anything about it.

hjkthkrleh2• 7 years ago

What does "really bad" mean? How is the current situation "this dire"?

This kind of statements is exactly what this article is about.

gatherhunterer• 7 years ago

No, that is not what the article is about. One of the researchers he interviewed asked the Guardian to correct its quotation but stood by his prediction of four billion deaths caused by climate change. The article in no way denies that the situation is bad or dire.

tonyedgecombe• 7 years ago

I often wonder if we would be better off framing it in terms of the financial costs. How much is it going to cost to build a wall around New York, evacuate low lying areas in Florida, move agricultural production around the world, accept millions of climate refugees.

the-dude5• 7 years ago

For example, you could have read the article.

It tries to counter claims of "4 billion casualties".

AKrumbach• 7 years ago

If the author means literally everyone dead, planet gone, then obviously it won't be "apocalyptic", but the science is suggesting it's likely to be really bad.

No, the science doesn't imply that climate change is going to mean literally everyone dead, only a massive cost to maintain things as they are today. Contrawise, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said "the world will end" by 2030 if we don't stop climate change. (Source: https://thinkprogress.org/we-dont-have-12-years-to-save-the-...)

So, yes there are people being absolutely, ridiculously, unscientifically hysterical about the effects of climate change. Unscientific alarmism is just as harmful toward efforts to properly manage the global ecology as the unscientific denial of changes.

lucideer• 7 years ago

I'm not sure what the scientific definition of "apocalyptic" is, but in my mind the biggest aspect of climate change people seem to overlook in assessing the potential fallout is mass displacement of people.

We've already witnessed extreme political radicalisation within Western countries as a result of displacement of people from Syria: numbers in the order of a few million. It seems likely that displacement from climate change would be a significant percentage of world population (8+ billion soon). The reaction to that will be apocalyptic.

charliesome• 7 years ago

I highly recommend reading David Wallace-Wells' "The Uninhabitable Earth" - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41552709-the-uninhabitab...

The book is quite information dense, intellectually honest with regard to the likelihood of various outcomes, and offers the clearest and broadest assessment I've yet read of where we are and what lies for us in the future.

Describing the contemporary climate discourse as "alarmist" denies the severity and scale of the problem we face.

Miner49er• 7 years ago

The author is a paid advocate for nuclear power.

jumbopapa2• 7 years ago

Isn't that one of the cleanest options available that can actually meet our energy demands?

MisterTea• 7 years ago

He's also against renewables. This is a shill piece.

moosey2• 7 years ago

Michael Schennenberger runs the BTI, or the "Breakthrough Institute", which is against taxing carbon, against fossil fuel reduction, and pro-geoengineering. It is ultimately a think-tank, which is just another name for a professional propaganda unit, IMO.

This is an article encouraging you to calm down and sit down. It's a careful cherry-pick of data, something that the IPCC report is not, and something that is extremely common in contemporary opinion pieces.

We should not be rosy about climate change or other pollution related issues. There exists massive quantities of evidence that can be covered at hacker news, and seeing this disinformation here when we have access to actual scientific information about climate change shocks me.

NeedMoreTea6• 7 years ago

He's also a registered lobbyist, founded and runs Environmental Progress - essentially a pro nuclear lobby group, and is rabidly anti-renewables - inventing "facts" to make them look bad.

He does far more damage than good, and you basically can't trust a word he says or cites.

malvosenior2• 7 years ago

Pro nuclear is a good thing though no? It seems like the solution to climate change and energy production. I know I'm very skeptical of people who claim to be pro-environment then rally against nuclear power.

thu21113• 7 years ago

You basically can't trust a word he says or cites.

He mostly cites the IPCC and climate scientists. Or are you saying those sources aren't trustworthy?

I read the article. Every word of it is true. It can be summed up as:

Lots of people, especially teenagers, are starting to suffer mental health problems because they think the world is about to end. The world isn't about to end, this is a lie. The people claiming it is are mostly making it up, or misquoting other people, or in one case a journalist misheard "eight billion" as "a billion" and other comedies of errors. It's important that people understand what climate science really says before a teenager does something they can't come back from.

leereeves4• 7 years ago

Do you have a source for your claim that that BTI is "against fossil fuel reduction"?

And why do you include "pro-geoengineering" in that list of "bad things BTI believes"? If we aren't going to significantly reduce emissions (and after 40 years of political inaction that should be obvious to everyone), geoengineering may be our best response to climate change.

moosey2• 7 years ago

I'm not against geoengineering, and it will be part of the actions that posterity will have to do in order to deal with climate change, but why leave the major changes in lifestyle that will be required to fight it for future generations? We must accept that we need to massively increase energy efficiency, and a huge part of that is abandoning the "everyone gets a car and a McMansion".

We should not default to geoengineering. We should default to reduction of carbon pollution, obviously, then when it isn't enough, start geoengineering, which will probably also be necessary.

The start with geoengineering faction is just a few steps away from the "it isn't happening" crowd.

the-dude5• 7 years ago

He is trying to counter claims of "4 billion casualties".

leereeves4• 7 years ago

And similar claims like "the world is going to end in 12 years".

9999px• 7 years ago

So glad to see this comment here. The entire time I was reading that I kept thinking, "I need to google this guy, he's clearly got skin in the game."

malvosenior2• 7 years ago

It's interesting to compare and contrast climate change and nuclear war. When I grew up it was common knowledge that the world could end at any point in time via nuclear holocaust. It was more or less the most direct existential threat to humanity the world had ever seen. It did spawn some nihilistic artistic movements and general detachment, but I'd say that the anxiety people felt was much lower than what you hear from the younger generations re: climate change.

Even on this site, you'll see many people say that they don't want to have kids because of climate change. I don't recall people in the 80s saying they wouldn't reproduce due to the future threat of nuclear war.

I'm not sure what the exact cause is but I suspect it has something to do with the how the different generations process authority and media messaging. Earlier generations being much more skeptical of what they are told.

delecti2• 7 years ago

Having kids didn't make nuclear war more likely. Having kids does increase your effective carbon footprint.

dragonwriter• 7 years ago

Having kids does increase your effective carbon footprint.

Only for an odd definition of “your”.

hjkthkrleh2• 7 years ago

how the different generations process authority and media messaging

The big difference is that the current generation gets it's information from Instagram/..., from peers, not authority, thus at the same time they can be skeptical of authority while totally believing whatever circulates on Instagram (for example the recent fake fact how "Amazon, the lungs of the planet, are burning", the fake fact being that Amazon generates 20% of the world oxygen)

goatlover2• 7 years ago

Also the fake fact that the Amazon rain forest was being burned down instead of an increased fraction of the forest was being burned this year to clear for more farmland over decline in the percentage in recent years.

Which is an issue, because it's best if as much of the Amazon is preserved as possible, but not the apocalyptic one of the entire rainforest going up in smoke.

labster• 7 years ago

This article manages to be mostly correct while at the same time being several shades of ok boomer. Sure, we're not all going to die. But on the other hand a major source of geopolitical instability comes from crop failure, and people still seem rather alarmed about that war in Syria and all the refugees.

The fact that we're in a global mass extinction event is somewhat troubling as well, even given that not all of the extinctions are caused by climate change.

It's not the one-meter sea level rise (optimistic case). It's the one meter plus more hurricanes with more storm surge. Yes, we can managed retreat. But people really don't want to do that, and then one day you have your sewer system under water.

That could have happened with a big enough hurricane anyway, but climate change just makes a lot of problems bigger. It's almost never a prime mover, it's a statistical problem, which in the short term makes the numbers a little worse for all of us. But enough of those numbers are changing that we should be alarmed. Life expectancy decreasing a year or two, as it is in the US right now, should be alarming, even if it is statistics, and climate is not really that different.

And if you're using "15 if statements", it doesn't usually mean you're wrong, it just means you need to refactor your code.

Gravityloss• 7 years ago

I thought Greta Thunberg was pretty factual?

smt884• 7 years ago

She is aggressive, emotional, and passionate about the need for change, but she doesn't present new facts or policies herself. She leaves that up to scientists.

"I don’t want you to listen to me. I want you to listen to the scientists, and I want you to unite behind the science, and then I want you to take real action."[1]

She's even been asked to make specific recommendations, and she says to follow the science.

1. https://www.axios.com/greta-thunberg-testimony-climate-chang...

the-dude5• 7 years ago

This submission is now flagged. Please unflag it, there is nothing wrong with the article.

bryanlarsen5• 7 years ago

It's a dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21648582

baxtr• 7 years ago

I am not sure if flagging this helps. Why not discuss a controversial position?

bryanlarsen5• 7 years ago

It's a dupe.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21648582

smt884• 7 years ago

Why not discuss a controversial position?

One reason is if the argument is made in bad faith by a paid shill, as is the case here.

There are lots of discussions happening now about nuclear vs. renewables vs. fossil fuels. There's no need to waste anyone's time broadcasting a piece like this that presumed its conclusion when a check was signed.

goodmachine• 7 years ago

Flagging helps here because the author (with whom, fwiw, I basically agree - let's have more nuclear power!) cannot be trusted to supply reliable information, ie not to distort data whenever it suits him.

https://www.wiseinternational.org/nuclear-monitor/853/exposi...

https://theecologist.org/2018/sep/20/nuclear-power-lobbyist-...

https://news.mongabay.com/2019/08/michael-shellenbergers-slo...

thu21113• 7 years ago

Neither can many journalists, but we don't systematically flag stories found in the NY Times.

The article in question gives many citations, interviews with original sources and is in general an excellent piece of journalism. It's also arguing against a ridiculous, extreme position whose prime proponents have frequently admitted they're lying. Trying to suppress this article because it's written by someone in favour of nuclear power is exactly what makes people suspicious of all environmentalist narratives because how do they know they're getting the full picture?

GVIrish• 7 years ago

While I agree that alarmists who think the world is ending in 10-20 years are wildly off-base, Shellenberger is badly understating things at times.

He asked an IPCC scientist about what was unmanageable about a 3 ft+ sea level rise, and after said scientist explained the numerous serious scenarios his glib conclusion was:

"In other words, the problems from sea level rise that Oppenheimer is calling “unmanageable” are situations like the ones that already occur, such as in the days following Hurricane Katrina, where societies become temporarily difficult to manage. (Katrina killed over 1,800)."

This is a really bad hot take. Number one, Hurricane Katrina was a one-time weather event. Sea level rise means you're always going to be dealing with trying to hold back the sea. In parts of the world that are already struggling with poverty, how are they gonna come up with the billions of dollars to engineer, build, and maintain sea walls and dykes?

And that's not even getting into the fact that if you're starting out with much higher sea level, storm surge is gonna cause that much more damage. On top of that, significantly warmer seas are going to cause much stronger storms.

People displaced by said consequences of climate change are going destabilize governments and/or cause conflicts. There are many hot spots in the world where long standing tensions could burst into open conflict if a climate-related disaster or crisis hits.

lcall• 7 years ago

We don't have to be surprised about some of these events, since they have been predicted in the scriptures, for now, for a long time (ice melting, storms, quakes, waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds, fires/smoke, and other significant catastrophic events--not just the usual levels of them).

I do appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. But it seems to me we are not competent to solve such things when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's Creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.

And we can be OK. Related thoughts at http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html , a simple site w/ no javascript or sales).

Why Climate Alarmism Hurts Us All

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