If you have an idea what to do, I am certainly all ears, the whole thing is incredibly frustrating. It turns out that as a species we’re both 1) really bad at responding to creeping threats and 2) totally susceptible to propaganda from rich, self-interested parties. Oh and of course it helps that in some countries a majority of people are scientifically illiterate, but that’s not an intrinsic psychological flaw.
I don’t know if that was intended as a slight dig against them but it’s not their job and scientists aren’t necessarily the best communicators. All they can do is do the research and then attempt to boil down and simplify the clearest science, and possibly aid in devising governmental policy…which they’ve done with the IPCC, COP/UNFCCC etc.
When we say things like this, a counterpoint is often the ozone layer. But there are critical differences there:
For 99% of us, banning CFCs made no difference to our daily lives whatsoever. You had to responsibly dispose of your old fridge but…you are supposed to do that anyway.
For big business, it was a comparatively small cost, certainly worth it to prevent any bad public perception.
In this case it’s something that threatens the bottom line of companies that make billions in a quarter. It’s big money versus the needs of ordinary citizens worldwide, and the former wins such a contest. Particularly since, as I say, people don’t understand the science and we’re in the golden age of disinformation.
most people on here (and in society) don’t want to put in the work to do that. They want to label and classify people as quickly as they can based on minimal, or even no, real evidence.
No, I don’t have any workable solutions for engaging leaders into action, either. Throwing soup at paintings, gluing themselves to the pavement, and spraying Stonehenge with colored corn starch are all kind of dumb, trolling stunts that has gotten the “Just Stop Oil” flakes attention but not moved the needle a whit toward their core objective, and publishing thousand page reports of multi-decade studies and some of the most advanced computer simulations created by humanity and backed up with a mountain of observational evidence has left climate scientists figuratively out in the cold.
Indeed, it is essentially impossible to take effective action at this point, because any mass drawdown of carbon and methane emissions is going to have an attendant reduction in energy, transportation, construction, and agricultural yields that will result in lowered standards of living (for those in developed nations), massive drop in global economic ‘productivity’, and sooner or latter mass famines, all of which are coming regardless but no democratically elected leader is going to champion such a strategy and no autocrat will risk their control by admitting that such a threat exists. The time to take effective actions such as developing and transitioning to lower emission energy and transportation technologies, implementing sustainable agricultural and construction methods, de-emphasizing globalization as an economic efficiency modality, curtailing geometric population growth, et cetera is decades past, and for all that ‘electrification’ of transportation and industrial methods and the explosive growth of solar and wind power is celebrated, it just isn’t comprehensive or robust enough to really make a dent in emissions or ameliorate increased heat retention feeding climate change mechanisms.
It’s not a dig at all; indeed, I thing the impacts of climate research and consequences of viable projections have been quite clearly communicated by some researchers who are trying desperately to warn the general public and political leaders of the dire future that is coming, and are being largely ignored even when no one is seriously contesting the technical veracity of the projections. Many of those researchers in the US are now facing being defunded and even dismissed because the incoming administration just doesn’t want any discussion on this topic or dissension with their strategy of “Drill, baby drill!”
I’ve watched the presentations at the Cryosphere Pavilion at the last few COP meetings (which are shoved off way to the side in a small ‘pavilion’ (more like a cramped niche that can barely seat forty people, and mostly attended by other researchers) as speakers have presented technical findings about the state of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, Arctic icepack, ocean circulation models, et cetera with barely restrained horror…and the conference itself has shifted into a marketplace for making oil and gas trade agreements. Nobody in power is listening, and it is clear that o effective plans or steps will be made until it is far too late to accomplish anything.
I think we have an abundance of evidence on hand. Way too much water has gone over the dam for me to be “hopeful” about our present political and environmental situation.
I agree entirely @Stranger_On_A_Train .
And I get your original point now too. It’s sad that the same cynicism is now being employed by those who accept the science and those who believe the nonsense alike. It makes no difference to the planet what our reasons are for doing nothing.
Cramped? Surely COP is a lavish affair, full of fatcat climatologists rolling up in gold-plated Hummers?