Scientific fact isn’t working to persuade people, though. It takes a mix of approaches.
I personally find her rhetoric to be a little rigid and rote… sort of along the child-preacher vein. Her opposition to nuclear power is also objectionable to me. I’m glad Thunberg is out there getting people talking, I’m glad she’s pulling back the veil to show that we, the politically empowered adults, are for the most part waiting for a deus ex machina to put out a fire that is already started.
But there’s no perfect avatar for any cause. No matter who you put out there, it will be a problem. If it’s a rich person, “they have no worries, I don’t relate to them.” If it’s a poor person, “they don’t understand the implications of the subject matter”. If it’s a middle-class person, they are un-American communists who ought to be content with what they have.
Recognizing a shade of difference between “not survivable” and “not survivable without air conditioning”, I will accept a sliver of guilt for the omission, but no more. What kind of life is it when a person literally cannot survive outdoors for more than an hour or two? When we’re talking about poor subsistence farmers, what are they supposed to do? How do they do their jobs? Will farming even be viable under those conditions? How much more water will crops require, and is that much water even available? What about the millions of other outdoor workers?
There are lots of reasons air conditioning just isn’t good enough. Southeast Asia is crowded- if it becomes a desert, what then? If nearly every animal, bird and insect dies from the heat because they don’t have air conditioning, what kind of world is that? Sure, some animals have a rete mirabile and maybe they will manage, but a lot of animals don’t have that.
As was mentioned, a lot of these people are terribly poor. Their homes are shacks- how will they arrange air conditioning? And that article focuses on just one problem, extreme unsurvivable heat. What about a place like Bangladesh which is just barely above sea level? When literally millions of subsistence farmers are driven off their land by sea rise, are they just going to pack up and enjoy air conditioning somewhere else? I doubt it.
You’re mistaken in imagining that we agree, because the position that “some voices sometimes use some exaggeration and hyperbole” is not accurately described as “hysteria”. If you were willing to describe specific popular exaggerations of climate-change dangers in a more rational and accurate way instead of simply throwing around the “hysteria” label indiscriminately, then we’d be in agreement.
And I suspect you also don’t agree with me that “damn near everybody who fulminates about “hysteria” and “alarmism” and so forth in discussions of climate change is using exaggeration and hyperbole, when they’re not outright lying. The deniers’ pose of skeptical moderation has pretty much lost all credibility.”
Cite? I personally think the importance of dealing with climate change supersedes even rational concerns about the undeniable problems with nuclear power, but AFAICT it’s self-deluding bullshit to claim that “the single most damaging blow against the environment” has been opposition to nuclear power.
There are lots of significant reasons, not just environmentalist opposition and/or irrational fears, why nuclear power hasn’t (and isn’t likely to) solve all our complex problems with fossil-fuel dependence. Airily claiming that “we’ve had the technology to move past the use of fossil fuels” while ignoring all those other reasons is not convincing.
More and more these days, I’m seeing (both current and unacknowledged former) climate-change deniers trot out this unsupported and vague nuclear-power counterfactual as a way of deflecting blame for global-warming issues onto environmentalists and/or liberals. Just whine, without any persuasive supporting evidence, “Well we woulda got rid of all these bad emissions a long time ago if you liberals hadn’t been so stupid about your no-nukes dogma!” and hey presto, all of a sudden you can tell yourself that it’s all somebody else’s fault and has nothing to do with your stubborn refusal to recognize the problem in time.
How about NASA? They are talking about mitigating the effects, and adapting to the changes that are going to occur/have occurred. It is too late. That observation is not hysteria.
You want a cite for his opinion? :dubious: I don’t think it’s ‘self-deluding bullshit’ though I don’t know that it, alone is ‘the single most damaging blow against the environment’. I think it would be hard to put a finger on any single cause of the mess we are in. But certainly the opposition to nuclear has pushed back any sort of ability to take a major bite out of CO2 emissions and other harmful pollutants from fossil fuel power generation today, at least beyond what we’ve already done. It’s ‘self-deluding bullshit’, IMHO, to think otherwise, as we don’t HAVE any scalable solutions that could take a major bite out of it today EXCEPT nuclear. Certainly not 30 years ago, or even 10.
The other side of that is, at this point it’s moot. We didn’t do it, and we won’t now, so we are stuck and have to do what we can. Crying over what could have been is pointless now.
If only there were a country that, Je ne sais pas, had a name associated with mustard and fried potatoes who HAD been able to utilize a large percentage of their over all power production using nuclear. Man, if only there were such a country, non? Et bien…
Interesting. So, (to paraphrase you from above) you are annoyed by a group trying to deflect blame about global warming because of bad decisions they made in the past? ‘Hey, Presto!..all of a sudden you can tell yourself that it’s all somebody else’s fault and has nothing to do with your (and your groups) stubborn refusal to recognize the problem in time’ and take the steps needed to actually do something!
That’s very insightful. And I mean that. You should, perhaps, consider and reflect on your words there. I think that both sides could do with a lot more thoughtful reflection on a mirror. But, regardless of the fuckups that have happened in the past (and are clearly still happening today), or what we could have or should have done, I think we need to work with what we have. But we need to do so from a realistic and real world perspective of what CAN actually be done in our actual political systems and international structure with respect to what our citizens are going to go for…and not go for. Until and unless someone becomes god emperor of the world, able to dictate to the masses by complete fiat, ‘world leaders’ can only do so much. It takes time to shift public opinion to the point where they are willing to make the sorts of sacrifices that would be necessary at this point and with what we have today to take a serious bite out of fossil fuels. Even if you WERE such a person and were actually willing to make the call, it’s going to take a long time to actually put in place using the tech we have today.
How long to replace a percentage of ICE vehicles with AEV’s or even hybrids such that a real CO2 bite can be taken out of the system, even after accounting for all the new manufacturing? How long to develop and deploy energy storage systems for solar and wind so that we can maintain the baseload, or have peaker fossil fuel plants at near-line levels such that they can be brought up whenever needed for days or weeks if necessary? A decade? Two? Three? Whatever it is, that’s what we will have to do, and in the mean time, we will have to suck it up wrt increasing climate variation and severity. The oceans WILL rise because that’s what water does when it gets hotter. Storms will get worse, more sever and more frequent. Droughts will be worse and floods worse as well. This is all going to happen. Telling the kids today that we are all collectively doomed, that they will all die or civilization will fall (unless we do this draconian left wing stuff of course) isn’t the solution…it just ramps up the fear and anxiety. Instead, I think we need to work with what we have and find a way to do what we can.
Nobody’s denying that opposition to nuclear power has “pushed back” the ability to use nuclear power to reduce the impacts of fossil-fuel use. What’s “self-deluding bullshit”, as I said, is making unsupported claims that this reluctance to use nuclear has been “the single most damaging blow against the environment”.
It’s also not very persuasive to say that greater use of nuclear power would enable us to “take a major bite out of CO2 emissions” without examining just how “major” that “bite” would be. Take your example of France, which has always been much more active in promoting and using nuclear power and which has had substantially lower carbon impacts from energy generation as a result. Well, France is still above the global average in emissions levels, is still facing a reversal of their previous emissions-level decline, and is still producing large amounts of emissions in their non-nuclear-friendly transportation sector (which is an even bigger emissions contributor in the US than in the comparatively small and densely populated France).
Vague counterfactuals about how things would have been better now, if only one’s political opponents hadn’t been so uncooperative in the past, aren’t convincing arguments unless you can make a clear and specific case of exactly how and how much the situation would have changed as a result. (And yes, you’re right that that objection applies to counterfactuals from either side of the climate-action debate. But only one side is trying to use such counterfactuals as excuses for not taking effective action now.)
It’s pointless in terms of actually taking action, sure. It’s not at all pointless in terms of propaganda to persuade people to further delay taking action.
If you can get people to believe that there’s no real use in pursuing major emissions reductions because “we had our chance with nuclear power a few decades ago and the dumb liberals sabotaged that, so it’s all their fault we’re stuck with this”, then you can prolong the inertia.
Trying to equate acknowledgement of the fact that higher greenhouse-gas levels and consequently higher temperature rises will most likely produce worse climate impacts with extremist forebodings “that we are all collectively doomed, that they will all die or civilization will fall” is just more of the exaggerated hysteria-accusation rhetoric that I’m getting so tired of. So is trying to equate any kind of accelerated emissions-reduction approach with disparaged (but unspecified) “draconian left wing stuff”.
I haven’t watched/listened to her speech (aside from some short clips on the news) because I don’t need her to tell me things I already know, nor do I need to get my emotions heightened on this issue. As a person who is often cynical about emotional appeals but who believes in the issue very much, I tend to try and avoid diving into the morass of evaluating “how accurate was emotional appeal X”.
That said, I take issue with two of the OP’s points.
First, the argument that a person speaking from a position of privilege, or who uses their privilege to address larger issues in which they themselves might be complicit is automatically a hypocrite is a poisoning of the well and a logically broken position.
Second, the idea that the best course was/is nuclear energy shows a massive lack of imagination. I’m not going to step into the should we/shouldn’t we argument (I’m fairly inexpert and agnostic about it, frankly), but nuclear power wasn’t going to, on its own, solve climate crisis then, and it certainly isn’t now.
Which is why we aren’t going to do anything much about climate change. A Swedish teenager gives an impassioned speech about the failures of global leadership to address the issue. And the same people who claim that it is immediate and pressing and vital
[ol][li]Reject the only remotely practical solution in favor of unspecified imaginative solutions, and[/li][li]Change the subject back to bashing Trump.[/ol][/li]
Regards,
Shodan
That’s true…they are above average in emissions globally, though mainly it’s not on the production side but on the transport side as you indicated (they have over 35 million cars on their roads and their logistics transport relies heavily on fossil fuels use). But let’s put that number into some context. Here is the top 20 list of emitters of CO2. What I want to draw attention too is the difference between France and Germany, as they are pretty similar. Except one thing of course…one of them has focused on nuclear, one has gone the other way.
Now consider…if WE had that percentage of nuclear (about 70%), what that would mean with respect to our own, huge emissions. Or if Germany did. Or if we AND Germany did. Or, better yet, if we and China did. Even if we had nothing else, we are talking nearly a 50% decrease in potential emissions from that alone. Now, tell me…how would that NOT make a difference?? Couple that with the potential rise today in AEV’s that seem to be on the cusp of breaking out and you are talking about real, substantial differences. This isn’t pie in the sky.
Like I said, no use crying over spilled milk at this stage. It didn’t happen. It’s not going to happen either, not today, and not in 10 years…or 50 for that matter. We have to do what we can with what is realistic, and nuclear is a dead parrot. It’s shuffled off this mortal coil, or is in the process of shuffling off. So, we have wind and solar and the potential, in a few decades perhaps, of large scale energy storage systems, or at least of peaker fossil fuel plants that can be in standby to ramp up as needed. Maybe there is potential for a new grid. And there is the promise, down the line, of AEV’s replacing ICE fossil fuel burners. I could see a cross over of production in the next 10 or 20 years, where more AEV’s are produced than ICE cars.
All of this is, sadly, going to take time. And there isn’t much that the world leadership can do to speed that up substantially that they haven’t already done. Europe, even the US is already subsidizing solar and wind. Hell, it’s how I got my solar power system and battery for my house. It’s what kick started the electric car production that has us on the verge of major breakthroughs. I think that some countries, like the US, could do more. Use the market to disincentive coal. Yeah, going to be politically a mixed bag, but it’s something that is within the realm of do-able with the right leadership who isn’t blowing smoke and sunshine up their bases collective asses while promising new jobs and a return to the good old days of the 50’s.
Yeah, well, I’m sick and tired of folks who are doing just that, though you seem to be unaware of the fact that this is a theme we’ve been hearing for years. It IS freaking hysteria. And, sorry, if you didn’t see that all through the speech, as well as laced through nearly everything the left is saying about climate change. Good grief, we’ve had plenty of threads on this board where the posters were in full on ‘we are all doomed’ mode. It’s hard for me to credit that you aren’t aware of this, to be honest, which kind of makes me wonder at your ‘I’m getting so tired of it’ schtick.
Horseshit. Have you READ the New Green Deal? Sorry, but…horseshit. This isn’t about ‘emissions-reduction’. I have no issue with emissions-reductions or mitigation strategies, in theory, depending on the devil in the details. But stuff like the New Green Deal ISN’T ABOUT EMISSIONS REDUCTIONS…it’s about social engineering using global climate change as an excuse. And that’s the theme I seen in all of this stuff and laced throughout the speech referred to in the OP. It’s also why I call bullshit on the meme that ‘global leadership’ hasn’t done what they should or could have done. To me, the reduction of that is ‘free citizens who are really at fault for electing the wrong people don’t know what’s good for them, so we should take charge and do whatever we need to to fix this existential crisis for them by fiat’.
If it were actually about all this draconian stuff being on the table to REALLY reduce emissions then nuclear would be at the top of the list of things we could have and should have been doing. But it isn’t. Because emissions aren’t the only or even the primary objective, IMHO. When I DO see that I’ll know that at least one side is actually taking this as seriously as it really is. Just like when I see Republicans talk about banning coal and coal plants and mandating their decommissioning (oh, and seriously talk about nuclear) I’ll know they are starting to take this seriously. I’m not holding my breath for either.
Which is why I think we have to work within what’s realistic and do-able wrt lowering emissions. Solar and wind with some sort of backup, electric vehicles replacing ICE fossil fuel ones, more efficient energy grids and houses/factors/buildings, more efficient and less CO2 intensive manufacturing and agriculture. There are plenty of things we can and are already doing. And continue to look for pie in the sky solutions for removing CO2 (we need to consider the effects on ocean acidity as well), as well as stuff like fusion or other more exotic solutions, maybe planetary engineering. These aren’t going to save us from ourselves in the short or medium term, but still worth while to look at as possibilities down the road.
Sorry, but in reality you are trying to distract from the main issue: The Swedish teenager is pointing specially at Trump’s lack of leadership, and dumb dragging.
And speaking of practical solutions, Trump is all talk, he is more busy wasting money on walls when with his power he could tell the military to, lets say, make new standardized nuclear small energy plants in already in place military installations or bases, plants that can be added to the grid later when the need does arise. His deadly ignorance only tells him to not see this as an emergency and that is where we are, that other politicians claim to dislike nuclear is a problem too, but less so than being led by a ignoramus.
I’m not sure why you included me here. I have nothing to say about Trump in this thread, and I did not in any way reject nuclear power.
I just question the OP’s assertion that it’s the “only real viable option” (or, as you state, “the only remotely practical solution”) for addressing climate change.
Nuclear may (or may not) have an important role to play in future energy needs, but it’s not a magic bullet. Suggesting, as the OP did, that the only failure of leadership wrt climate change is not pushing nuclear development is myopic.
See, I don’t think her speech was aimed solely at Trump. If it was, then a couple of things. First, she shouldn’t have been talking about 30 year time frames. Secondly, I agree…he is a big part of the problem, or at least he is a big symptom of the problem, in that a large percentage of the US electorate doesn’t take this as seriously as it needs to be taken, and is in denial (about a lot of things). Like I said earlier, he’s actually not only a dinosaur wrt climate change, but he’s actually going against the market wrt coal.
And while the US is certainly important, if the rest of the world is waiting on us to fix the problem, they are going to be waiting a long time…a long time before we, as a people, get our collective shit together and agree it IS a problem, and what can, realistically, be done. So, a Swedish girl berating the US because it’s not doing what she wants is, to me, a waste. Better to push for more of what COULD be done in her own neck of the woods. You aren’t going to shift China, any more than the US. They are going to get there, eventually, but in their own time. The US is already on the path, and China…well, China is China. What they are doing are for other reasons than climate change, but if it has any sort of positive effect, well, it’s all good, right?
One thing I’ve worried about though and maybe you could answer this (it’s not part of the OP). What if China DOES seriously cut it’s pollution from coal power production? Unlikely, I know, but what if they do? I’ve read a few things that talk about the fact that, contrary to what seems logical, all of the particulate matter from coal plants, while being seriously nasty and killing a lot of folks each year actually block some of the sunlight from hitting the earth then bounding back up to be caught by GhG. Is that correct? And what would the short term effect be? Would we actually get MORE trapped energy in the short term? Not that I don’t think they should do it, but just curious if you want to take a swing at answering.
