Video of the day -- global warming
As usual, the moan-groan-doom-gloom crowd is wrong, wrong, wrong. Yes, global warming is a serious danger, but it simply isn't true that nothing substantial is being done about it. Immense progress has been made over the last decade despite the obstructionism of politicians and fossil-fuel lobbyists. Civilization is not going to collapse and the world is not going to be transformed into an alien hellscape. And the credit belongs to the scientists and engineers doing the hard practical work and solving the problems, not to the whiners and scolds sitting on the sidelines spreading despair and paralysis.
posted by Infidel753 at 1:19 AM
6 Comments:
I think the video is right. We are in phase four and we do need to bring it if we want the planet to be ok. Not perfect, but ok.
Fossil fuels ARE a finite resource after all, and they will make people rich for a limited time. Come on, science!
XOXO
How some people think that the landscape is going to change overnight...in either direction is beyond me.
Fingers crossed. Though I'm not so sure about the assertion that "we" are in the video's phase four. In the US there are whole swaths of the corporate world, the public, and the politicians they support that remain solidly in phase 1. I know too many people like this - there simply is nothing that will convince them climate change is real, much less caused by humans. Too many of us are so thoroughly insulated from reality (literally and figuratively) that we still have the luxury of ignoring reality.
I have hope they are right.
Thank you for this cute, feel-good, and informative video. Unfortunately, I spend an awful lot of time in the "hopeless" category, not just about climate change, but also the sliding of this country into authoritarianism and, of course, the war in Ukaine. I'm a joy to be around.
Sixpence: Fortunately, the development and adoption of the relevant technology is not much determined by popular attitudes. I think the problem of denialism about global warming was mostly limited to the US all along, and maybe other countries of the Anglosphere.
Mary K: If global warming had been allowed to go on without serious countermeasures, it would have changed the world pretty dramatically, though not quickly. As it is, we seem headed to avoiding the worst.
Kwark: Some people are still in denial that global warming is happening at all, but their numbers have decreased a lot in the last decade or two, even in the US. It will never get all the way to zero (hell, the number of people who believe the Earth is flat hasn't gotten all the way to zero), but again, this problem is mostly confined to just a few countries, and mainly the US.
Mike: I think they are. Time will tell. There's a type of person that loves to wallow in fantasies of impending doom, from Malthus to Ehrlich to people half a century ago who thought nuclear war was inevitable, and now this. They've never been right yet.
Ricko: It's easy to fall into that frame of mind. Pessimism, cynicism, and despair are very fashionable -- on a lot of issues. The best antidote is to look at the hard evidence of what's actually going on in the real world.
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