Here's the line of the day:
As a scholar who researches the history of Western fears about human extinction....
That's quite a specialty. This essay grabbed my attention because I've lately been on an anti-doom kick, so I was intrigued by a piece recounting our long history of always thinking we live in uniquely frightening times. Check it out.
Doom / End Times gives our lives meaning
https://www.mattball.org/2023/05/doom-force-that-gives-life-meaning.html
Interesting article, and while reading it was thinking Kevin would definitely approve lol...overall though, the article confirms the prescience of historical commentators about as much as questioning them, given most of the historical commentators didn't put dates on their predictions, and we are still on a trajectory that is pretty spot on.
Also, this has nothing really to do with hundred year cycles, this kind of cynical and dread commentary has been pretty consistently communicated and re-enunciated every decade since WWI, and to a lesser extent going back another century.
I would have found it more interesting for the article to have explored the statements about humanity and the capability of humanity in more detail, since facts about capability of destruction and beliefs about human nature don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, a pending future Armageddon could have nothing to do with essential human nature and only to do with individual and/or cultural human frailties and obsessions (or even just plain individual and collective mistakes managing ever more increasing complexity).
Not to be lost is that we always tend in the present to take our time as the de facto (control), discounting that those who came before did much the same, so may see future developments up to now as confirming and trending downward (WWII, endless military conflicts, climate change, etc.), while we tend to suppose the key indicators for the worst to come (or speculated to) is always ahead of us somewhere.
In any case, continuing to semi-intentionally stumble forward into an ever more complex and powerful-technocratic managed society in the same way we are currently doing so, where the crowd (phenomenon and psychology) is still not properly understood or respected, is not the best recipe for success or future liberty/freedom/democracy, as we need more grassroots empowerment and awareness to get through what will be otherwise be inevitable elite deviance and failure, and the way to do this is constitutional amendments that political bribery is not speech, corporations not persons, for the freedom of information and privacy, in order to secure the continued blessing of liberty, along with transparency and accountability, for ourselves and future generations.
I'm a mostly conservative/ libertarian person looking to engage with liberals and progressives in good faith. This looks like a good place to try.
If you want to talk Doom and Gloom, the elephant in the room is of course climate change. Sure, there are some nutbags who will deny the basic physics and chemistry of the greenhouse gas effect. And I'm sure you can identify other big deficiencies on my side. But there are serious objections to the left narrative on climate change.
(1) Hysteria. The media and activists usually hype the outer range of estimates from the IPCC and other sources, without talking much about probabilities. It's easier for NGOs and even scientists to get funding and attention for their issues when they generate hysteria, but that's not how policy should be made.
(2) Cost and benefits. Climate change is a risk and a problem. We also have 8 billion people in the world who need to be fed (one hopes, several times a day). We are actually doing much better on this than we have ever done in human history, with vast improvements over the last 30 years, and that has been partly achieved through cheap energy from fossil fuels. We need to weigh any climate action against its potential impact on the ability of 8 billion people to get fed and cared for decently.
There is no free lunch. So we need to weigh the realistic risks of climate change against disruption of systems that are enabling the world's poorest to get fed, clothed, and housed better than ever before.
This doesn't mean we take no action, but it does suggest we be very careful. My son's teacher told him we can just switch to wind and solar and all will be good. My son's teacher is an idiot.
We could however push to have coal burning globally to be replaced with Gen IV nuclear tech. That would be, while not a free lunch, a way of making big improvements without risking mass disaster.
I'm new here, but this seems like a reality-based crowd, so I'd love to get your take.
hype the outer range of estimates from the IPCC and other sources
here's a quantum physicist that lays out the case that climate scientists have actually rejected the outer range estimates and that the outer range could actually be correct
sabine hossenfelder/I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do.
Interesting video. I like to look for points of agreement. In her "solutions" at the end, she says: "Build nuclear. Build nuclear. Build nuclear." Roger that. But I encounter way, way too many lefties (including my son's teacher) acting as if wind and solar can solve this. And those kinds or morons set policy in Germany, where they're now burning more coal in part because they shut down their last nuclear power plants.
morons?
Germany generated 47.3 percent less electricity from coal-fired power plants in the third quarter of 2023 compared to the same period last year, the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) announced. The share of electricity from coal-fired power plants was 23.9 percent, less than that of wind power.
reuters:
Somewhat offsetting the shake-ups in Germany's nuclear and gas markets has been a steady surge in renewable energy supplies from solar and wind sites, which generated nearly 40% more electricity in 2022 than nuclear and natural gas sources combined, according to data from think tank Ember.
german nukes
morons
That's awfully simplistic. Nuclear power plants are licensed for a set period, after which, they need to either shut down or get relicensed. The cost of meeting new regulations and completing repairs following inspections is often more expensive than just shutting down and shifting to other technologies. That moment where LCOE of wind and solar dropped below nuclear happened a couple of years ago.
And as lower-case notes, that shift wasn't back to coal.
Perhaps you were thinking of the temporary rise in coal use as a consequence of the transition away from Russian natural gas?
Welcome. I’m not a liberal zealot, and I agree and disagree with some of what you said. Where I disagree is that I get the feeling that much/most of the “right” including many political leaders, don’t believe the physics and chemistry of climate change. That’s a huge problem and more than offsets where I agree with you. I’d also say I think the main reason we have 8 billion people, with much lower poverty than ever is because of science, of which exploiting coal, oil, gas, etc is just part of. Antibiotics, medicine in general genetically modified crops and so many other things are why the world’s standard of living has mushroomed the last 100 years.
meanwhile, I agree that there is too much overwrought hysteria around climate change on the left. Not every storm, or extreme weather event is because of climate change (some do couch it in terms of increasing the chance of an extreme event occurring, but that gets lost in the noise). And shout constantly that we’re doomed. That doesn’t help. The fact is, in the U.S. CO2 emissions per capita are down about 30% since 2000. Do I wish it were down 50%? Yes, but it’s substantial progress and it’s going to continue. It’s natural for people to resist change, even for their own (and the world’s) own good, especially when being constantly railed at about killing the planet.
So, how do we get the masses on the right to treat climate change seriously, and how to we get the loudest voices on the left to help convince the masses that this can be solved without harming their well being and those of 8 billion others?
Thanks. Good questions. Don't know the answers, but I'll look forward to further engagement.
re Skeptical, I'm on the go so not much time, just would add that even a 1% chance of runaway climate change is unacceptable, so the precautionary principle deserves some respect here, great risk deserves more attention than lesser, and often arguments seem to defend mostly status quo when is really just shirking critical risk management.
Let's listen to the science and make coherent, strategic course changes as warranted, but elites getting richer burning up the one-time carbon inheritance which has enabled today's global situation may not end well, unless we pivot appropriately and assure the people have their hands on the reins (for better or worse).
Wait, is this Eschaton?
perhaps the worst thing about a north korean missile launch is we won't be able to tell kevin 'i told you so'
That person needs a real job.
Sounds like they found a pretty good one already.
Societal collapse isn't starting soon because it's already started. We're all the coyote chasing after the roadrunner and ran off the cliff. Most people just haven't looked down yet.
But hey, everything is just fine, climate change is either a hoax or exaggerated by libtard America-hating scientists, and the rampant and open fascism here and elsewhere is just economic anxiety! Never mind the other dozens of problems that humanity can't just "innovate" itself out of.
Just keep chasing and don't look down, everything is just fine!
C'mon, the doomers aren't the problem. It's not them that we need to worry about, it's the Deniers. Playing into the schtick that it's the Nervous Nellies that are screwing over progress and not the ones blithely ignoring that their behavior in search of Lucre are the problem IS a problem.
It used to be common knowledge that you never went where you ate. The same goes for every other aspect of our environment, it's just now there's so many of us we can't help but disturbing its balance with our behavior.
+1 Your voice of reason beats :"Skepticsl" any day.
All too often, I'm reminded of "The Sorceror's Apprentice", while needing to remind myself that it's deeper than that, since there is no sorceror (expert) who can deliver us, we must build human dignity and respect up from the grassroots, and aggressively educate folks to be aware about and of projection, "other" demonization, dehumanization, war-mongering, elite deviance, market distortion and elite capture (which can be alleviated via aggressive democracy, as evidenced by original monopoly and trust busting progressives a century ago).
Yes and no.
Some things -- like threats to democracy in America -- flare up every once in a while and it seems likely that we'll survive. But that doesn't mean the threat isn't real and serious. Downplaying the threat puts off action. That delay comes with consequences.
Other things -- like climate change -- are unavoidable. The only reason why the world managed to shut down in response to SARS-CoV-2 was because the effects (death, hospitalizations) were immediate and tangible. We won't have the resolve to scale up the reduction of GHGs until Catastrophe arrives and keeps punching the world in the face. By then, it'll be too late and things will get worse for the next century.
Yes, well we cannot all have dissertations on the history of container production via interleaving plant fibers in aqueous solutions.
basket weaving?
No, container production via interleaving plant fibers in aqueous solutions. Nothing so quotidian as “basket weaving” …