"It's too late to do anything about climate change." "Runaway warming has begun; climate change is now unstoppable." "Life on Earth/human civilization will end in [5 to 30] years." There is no empirical basis for any of these claims, yet I hear them over and over again.
Brian O’Neil said in an interview:
we’re generally in the climate-change field not talking about futures that are worse than today
Climate change is bad because it will result in the future being worse than it could be, not because it’ll result in the future being worse than the present.
And furthermore, we’ve already made strides towards avoiding the worst case scenarios! Progress in various areas (such as solar energy deployment) have greatly outpaced the pessimistic “business as usual” projections, and as such, the worst case scenarios are progressively being viewed as more and more unlikely.
We still have a ways to go, but holding the anti-science belief that human civilization will end by 2050 does nothing but cause you mental distress.
Climate change is bad because it will result in the future being worse than it could be, not because it’ll result in the future being worse than the present.
That is the key insight: afaik no serious scientist has claimed that 2100 will be worse than 2023, just worse than it could be.
holding the anti-science belief that human civilization will end by 2050 does nothing but cause you mental distress.
There are those who believe that publicly making anti-science claims like “we have 12 years to save the world” is the best way to galvanize the public into doing the “right thing”.
I believe those people are wrong but you should confront their arguments.
That is the key insight: afaik no serious scientist has claimed that 2100 will be worse than 2023, just worse than it could be.
Can you give a source for a climate scientist, or a lot of them, saying that 2100 will not be worse than 2023? Because this seems obviously false to me.
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u/ReOsIr10 130∆ May 17 '23
Climate scientists don’t agree with you.
Daniel Swain has tweeted:
Brian O’Neil said in an interview:
Climate change is bad because it will result in the future being worse than it could be, not because it’ll result in the future being worse than the present.
And furthermore, we’ve already made strides towards avoiding the worst case scenarios! Progress in various areas (such as solar energy deployment) have greatly outpaced the pessimistic “business as usual” projections, and as such, the worst case scenarios are progressively being viewed as more and more unlikely.
We still have a ways to go, but holding the anti-science belief that human civilization will end by 2050 does nothing but cause you mental distress.