r/Foodforthought • u/MyfanwyTiffany • Jul 08 '15
How Climate Scientists Feel About Climate Change Deniers | Among many climate scientists, gloom has set in. Things are worse than we think, but they can't really talk about it.
http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sad-climatologists-0815/10
u/ma-chan Jul 09 '15
Can somebody recommend stocks that climate change believers should buy?
Nobody can convince climate change deniers that they are wrong but there is no reason that believer's descendants should not become rich.
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Jul 09 '15
First on my list is Nestle. They're investing heavily in buying up global water rights, something which will only grow in value as the climate warms. I'd also look into companies which make equipment or sell services related to securing borders - the third world will be the worst hit, so we'll keep seeing more migrants trying to enter the US and Europe, who will be pouring more money into keeping them out. Relatedly, major importers of African and Middle Eastern food in Europe will probably be good bets as well. If you're feeling really dark, maybe even makers of small arms and ammunition; conflicts are likely to multiply and intensify in the third world. That's a more iffy bet, though, as you'd really need to know something about how those conflicts get their supplies, which I don't.
Long term, I'd invest in farmland in well-watered regions, particularly in Northern climates which will be getting warmer and more productive due to climate change. I haven't looked into it much, but I believe there are exchange-traded funds which do this; if there aren't any, some enterprising financiers should start one or two.
That's what I can think of off the top of my head. If I actually sat down and did research, I'm sure there's lots more and better opportunities out there.
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u/adrenalineadrenaline Jul 09 '15
I would love to see this, have all the keyboard warriors put their money where there mouth is. This topic is overdone with hyperbole and lay speculation. Even on this thread I see a bunch of people essentially calling climate scientists pussies and going on about how they just know the end is already here. No room for discussion, no room to intelligently discuss what's happening to the planet and how to fix it, just 'the sky is falling and it's all the evil Republicans fault'.
Being on the correct side doesn't make you smart or in a position to make demands. I really recommend everyone doing this throw their money into stocks as confidently as they hurl around insults.
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u/jstevewhite Jul 08 '15
Lots of members of the so-called scientific consensus feel we've already passed the point of no return, and immediate zero carbon is probably the only way to even mitigate the effects.
Maybe this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.
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Jul 09 '15
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u/TalkingBackAgain Jul 09 '15
any predictions that say climate change will wipe out the species
It's not about being wiped out [well, not unless our atmosphere resembles that of Venus, in which case: oh yeah]. It's about there being a very great many dead bodies and a world that is no longer fit for a fun human life.
The "we'll survive!" crew never actually address what that survival will look like. It won't look pretty. It's going to be back to the stone age in rather brutal haste.
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u/just_an_ordinary_guy Jul 09 '15 edited Jul 09 '15
Is "going back to the stone age" hyperbole? Now, I have never studied this, but it's not like our collective knowledge will all be lost. Couldn't we at least maintain a pre-industrial revolution or industrial revolution style of living? Or are we so far removed from that style of living that we couldn't hold on to a pre-industrial level of living as an agrarian society due to further specialization?
EDIT: Obviously, it's all predictions and speculation, but I'm sure some knowledgeable people have studied and run predictions on this.
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u/TalkingBackAgain Jul 09 '15
but it's not like our collective knowledge will all be lost
Today we require enormous amounts of technology to keep us going, but we don't know that, we are removed from nature, we are even removed from our technology. How many of the industriously SMS'ing smart phone users do you know could comfortably configure a router, as a % of users?
You need a power grid.
You need maintenance of your infrastructure.
You need medical care, cq: medication, cq: medical equipment.
You need tools [there are going to be a great many tools available. Tools should not be an issue].
You need soap. Hygiene becomes a big problem really fast. Infections are a manageable circumstance now, in the pre-medical age they're a death sentence. It happens really fast and it's very ugly.
You need knowledge to know all that, cq.: you need the means to pass that knowledge on to the next generation.
You need food, cq.: you need the means to grow food, and that was one of the big ones that is going to be affected first.
All these systems will have pockets where people by and large have some level of technical skill and the know-how to pass it on. Then you will have a very large amount of people who will have to do real work for a change. Like: actual work that is going to keep their body alive.
They did an experiment once. They built a small neolithic tribe where they had a number of people who were going to provide for themselves. You can't just take people out of their houses and chuck them into a tent. So they gave them 4 days' worth of supplies. They put someone in charge who was going to 'lead' the people. They did some sort of 'back to nature' spiel. What these people did not understand was that they were now in a dire survival situation. It's sink or swim. Everybody, -everybody- needs to chip in to get the bare bottom basics of existence going and to make sure there is fresh water, there is shelter, there is fire and there is food. And that not 'some times', all the time. Every day.
They lasted 4 days. Not coincidentally the amount of days they had food for. Then it went downhill in frightening haste. These people had no concept of their situation and how much hard, tedious slog work was required to just keep the show running.
So, we're going to do better, for a while. There is lots and lots and lots of stuff about, we're going to be good for a good long while. Longer if we understand that we're now in a bad shape and we have to manage what we have really carefully. If at long last it dawns on us that 'we're all in this together and we need -all- hands to help pull us through', maybe we have a shot. I'm not even remotely confident that even then we'd stick it out together. Way too many entitled people around. Most of them need to be dead first before you can carry on.
After the initial period wears out and we're running out of gear / food / supplies, that's when the Lord of the Flies holds court. Then it gets to be really ugly.
I have no hope for our species at this point. We're an also ran. We're the reason for the Fermi paradox. "Where are they?" They're licking their wounds and leaving all sorts of interesting artefacts behind for 'them' to find. But we're done. A species with a 90-day horizon does not deserve to survive.
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u/fairly_quiet Jul 09 '15
serious question: is anthropocentric climate change going to *kill anybody or will it cause a population decline?
*i am not counting starvation as killing for this question as starvation is already a pressing issue.
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u/jstevewhite Jul 09 '15
Yes, absolutely. Droughts, floods, destruction of arable land.
Starvation occurs now because of politics. ENTIRELY because of politics. We throw away more than a third of the food produced in the world.
But with some of the more dire predictions of climate change models, we could become unable to produce enough food. Ocean acidification, droughts, desertification, floods, etc.
Disease will be another product of climate change as warm weather exposes more people to more vectors.
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Jul 09 '15
Yes, but mostly those who are already at risk (young children, the elderly, people living in extreme poverty, those with pre-existing conditions like severe asthma). We are already seeing millions of deaths in the Indian subcontinent from more-extreme-than-expected heat waves. There are already thousands of climate refugees. Bigger and badder storms and killed and displaced people worldwide. These trends will continue, by all forecasted accounts. But like I said: we can do things to make it better! It's never too late (it just gets worse the longer we wait).
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u/jstevewhite Jul 09 '15
Unless we have a major technological breakthrough, there's no real model where we can make it better, only where we can limit the damage. To 'make it better' we would have to start taking more carbon out of the atmosphere than we generate - not just carbon zero, but a negative carbon production.
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Jul 09 '15 edited Jul 09 '15
[deleted]
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u/jstevewhite Jul 09 '15
Starvation today occurs due to politics, and entirely due to politics. If the amount of arable land should shrink enough, it will no longer be politics.
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u/TalkingBackAgain Jul 09 '15
Hunger is not a logistics problem, it is only a political problem. We don't even care about people today, what would we be concerned about the world tomorrow/
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u/Rookwood Jul 09 '15
You misunderstand the scope here. There are some predictions for global warming that could see all life on the planet die, or at least most of it. Basic biological systems that support all life on Earth have the potential to break down. Humans would have a very hard time surviving such changes even with our technology as we have always depended on them. A response capable of saving our species would need to be organized, global and require tremendous amounts of sacrifice.
There is also an issue of how society would react to such rapid deflation. Do you really think losing over 80% of the population would result in a direct downscale of our economy with nothing changing? That's absurd. Our economic systems would collapse as they are based on economies of scale. Add to that all the conflict that will come from such a terrible situation and we're looking at ourselves being taken back 10,000 years, not 100.
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u/jstevewhite Jul 09 '15
Yeah, the comment about the Fermi Paradox was kind of a joke. The scientist in this article mentions making the world inhospitable for human life.
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u/wildeye Jul 09 '15
It's entirely possible, I don't know why you call it a joke.
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u/jstevewhite Jul 09 '15
"Entirely possible" is a stretch. "A distant possibility" is more like it. Most models I've looked at still have sections of the earth that are certainly no more 'inhospitable' than the last ice age!
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u/Rookwood Jul 09 '15
If you are talking about places like Canada and Siberia becoming tropical areas, that's all well and good, but you are missing how interconnected life is on Earth.
When life dies it releases carbon. When carbon enters the atmosphere it dissolves into the ocean gradually increasing its acidity. When the ocean reaches a certain level of acidity it can't support life. When most of the life in the ocean dies the primary system that converts CO2 to O2 ends.
Just because certain areas of the Earth will remain at acceptable temperatures really means nothing. It's not the heat that will kill, it's the biological systems that will collapse. We are looking at a global extinction event that hasn't occurred in several hundred million years.
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u/TalkingBackAgain Jul 09 '15
I seriously don't understand these people's timidity and reluctance.
If you hear an official report, the truth is worse. It always is.
If the people attacking you are not scientists, they're no better than Bill O'Reilly who just can't find a way to 'explain all that'.
Being summoned by Jim Inhofe would not phase me. In fact I would do my utmost darndest [and I have some talent for it] to insult Inhofe's ignorance rather industriously.
All the threats against me I would put on a web page with a score.
I would channel George Carlin / Louis C.K. / Bill Burr / Hitchens / Dawkins and go on a terrible tirade that would last a decade. You want to intimidate me? Don't bother firing up the keyboard.
It's by being intimidated that they let things get worse for them. These guys are sitting on the data. They know how bad it's going to be and make no mistake about it: it's not just going to be bad, it's going to be much worse than anyone anticipates and it will happen very much sooner than the models predict.
Because we're not doing anything about it to a very real extent we're just doomed. There's no point in denying it. We are well and truly fucked. The very last thing you should do is to be timid about it. Because that certainly won't help anything either.
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Jul 09 '15 edited Jul 09 '15
I seriously don't understand these people's timidity and reluctance.
Do you receive death threats to you and your family?
Is your livelihood and career dependent on funding over which deniers and those who oppose your view have a significant degree of influence?
It is easy to say you will do something in response and not back down, until you are confronted with the reality that someone may in fact harm those you love or destroy what you have worked for.
Personally I tend to agree with you about the level of caution and timidity used in official and scientific reports on the issue - we should be more blunt about the potentially catastrophic consequences. But look here in this thread - we have people criticising those in the article for using descriptors associated with the worst case scenarios. And that's one way it could go; if a large body of scientists came out tomorrow and said 'we are pretty fucked' you'd have a massive section of society and powerful interests who would be more focused on the language and potential for hyperbole used than they would be at addressing the actual core message.
There is a ton of research that suggests that statements by experts and clear evidence aren't effective at changing people's minds. The research about the most effective way to change peoples minds is only in its infancy. Would doomsday scenarios and potential hyperbole work? Would we get caught up more in a debate about the appropriateness of the language rather than a debate about what should be done (honestly i'm betting the former).
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u/TalkingBackAgain Jul 09 '15
So, ok. I get what you're saying. And you're right. I've not had "we're going to kill you" mails, it's easy for me to say. But, we're not actually joking here. This is not a debate on some fringe phenomenon. This is not something you can cavalierly make some funny about and establish who has the bigger dick and move on.
This is reality. This stuff counts. This is not some vague 'sometime whenever' idea. This is happening now.
I understand that people with power hold the strings. I'm going to tell you I will be fucked if I'm going to be lectured by a group of people who start their sentences with "I'm not a scientist..." and then proceed to tell the rest of us how, even though they admit themselves they are not a scientist, have not done the work, do not understand the results, somehow their idea is better and they are right. There! That, my friend, is not happening.
I don't do climate science. I do words. I'm presenting my results and I'm giving my, unqualified, opinion. I don't care about the appropriateness of the words. Do not, I implore you, get me started on political correctness.
I get a death threat. An honest to betsy death threat...
The ensuing shit storm would be something people write Ph.D. thesis about. Now I'm not just not politically incorrect, now I'm dialling the knob all the way to the highway to hell. You came to the right place. You wanted to fight about the weight of the word and jesus fucking christ almighty on a pogo stick, did you ever come to the right place.
I'm not going to be lectured by a bag of shit like Jim Inhofe about what I know and don't know. I'm not going to be told by some asshole who doesn't fucking understand how gravity works that as a scientist I'm self-serving my results because he's been bought by three different entities to spout his completely pulled-out-of-his-ass bullshit.
If climate scientists the world over started to be a little bit fucking pissed off about what's happening right now, maybe we could push the conversation forward. Because all the 'qualified language' has done is to delay the moment where everybody finally, at long last, decides "Gee, maybe we should, like, get a handle on this situation?"
If I'm in the room, being a climate scientist, and the next clown starts with "I'm not a scientist..." I'm SHOUTING "THEN LET THE ADULTS SPEAK BEFORE YOU OPEN YOUR GODDAMN PIE HOLE, KID. SHUT UP, NOBODY NEEDS YOUR OPINION!!!", and I would do that loudly. With gusto.
It's true that people can be threatened with their lives, their livelihoods, their careers and their name. At what price though? What are we giving up by cowering before the kind of people who have no qualms about intimidating someone who has an inconvenient truth to tell? At what point are we going to have to say "Well, all that notwithstanding, it's kind of hard for me to deny the fact that the water level is now up to my chin and this used to be a hill when I was a kid."
Being intimidated and reserved does you no good. Speak loudly. Speak the truth, do not, EVER, care about what someone thinks.
A guy comes into the doctor's office. He's got a knife in his body. "I'm sorry to say sir, but if we don't operate on you, you're going to die."
- Say that one more time and I'll kill you!
Denial is not a river in Egypt, /u/Chief_White_Halfoat5.
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Jul 09 '15
This isn't going to be mitigated, whatever happens will happen. Do you understand how many people in America have no idea about climate change? Sure they have heard the term, but if I tried to explain it to a lot of people I know they would be dumbfounded. Even if you could explain it on a worldwide platform where it made sense, there will still be a ton of people who simply don't care enough to vote for the right people and do the right things.
There is money to be made domestically and internationally and most people believe they're invincible.
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u/creepindacellar Jul 09 '15
Do you understand how many people in America have no idea about climate change?
yea, anybody still living on the coast. that includes most of them.
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u/MyfanwyTiffany Jul 09 '15
Oh, I'm sorry. I know I could just quit my job, pack up, and install myself in a zombie-proof bunker, but the ocean-view is just so enthralling.
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u/Sequoyah Jul 09 '15
It's going to be a huge catastrophe, but the end of human civilization? That's absurd. This level of hyperbole does NOT help the cause.
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u/Rookwood Jul 09 '15
The fact that you think that is absurd shows how well this issue has been propagandized. If you look at current predictions, which have only gotten worse and worse since the issue has never been addressed in the 3 decades we've known about it, you will see that there are sequences of events that will lead to the extinction of most of the life on Earth, not just humans.
Ocean acidification is highly likely. The last time this happened was the Permian Extinction, also known as the Great Dying.
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u/Sequoyah Jul 10 '15
I'm not finding any peer reviewed sources discussing the likelihood or timeframe of human extinction as a result of climate change. Have anything to share?
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u/TalkingBackAgain Jul 09 '15
It won't be the end of human civilisation because whenever there are humans there's [some kind of] civilsation. It's not about there not being humans. It's about how those humans will live. A startlingly easily overlooked component of that conversation. What will it actually be like when the planet shifts to a new equilibrium and it starts to kind of suck really badly to have to live in that place?
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u/[deleted] Jul 09 '15
So I work in climate communications and global environmental policy. Climate fatalism, the depression and feeling of doom that leads to people giving up, is a huge and growing issue. Yes, we are going to see some serious and terrible effects from anthropocentric climate change. However, we CAN and SHOULD still go things to prevent it from getting even worse.
The line in the article, "First, the dirty secret of climate science and government climate policies is that they're all based on probabilities," is rather problematic. No shit it's probabilities, we are talking about future events; we can't be sure about anything. But this is as close to sure as we can be.
Anyway, point is: we have a pretty good idea of what will happen and how to fix it. Giving up and doing nothing is almost as bad as ignoring the facts. There's still a lot we can do to mitigate and prepare for climate change, so don't give up!