The idea that we should eliminate fossil fuels is truly a privileged take.
Care to share which of the thousands of peer-reviewed papers on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's website, you have:
a) read
b) understood
c) found errors in
d) brought to the world's attention?
500, 10, 1, ? I thought not.
And yes, of course it sucks - no one wants this. You seem to think the unpleasantness of the diagnosis and remedy gives you and yours an out.
This is such an interesting observation. I had always thought that with a dire enough problem, humanity would band together and come up with a solution at all cost.
But after observing the worldwide response to the pandemic, I’m quite sure the world will become engulfed in wildfire and famine while a notable fraction of the population continues to insist that “this is normal and everything is fine”.
It’s an odd situation where magical thinking (“it can’t happen to me”) negates self-preservation.
Off the top of my head I know that
1. Glacier park was to vanish by 2020. Its still there, barely changed, some glaciers shrank, others grew.
2. Sea level didn't rise as expected.
3 Polar bears are strong, and are not on the endangered list.
4. Temperatures did not rise as much as expected. We are still way below the Roman and Bronze age warm periods.
5. Damage from weather has increased in America, but that is a result of a policy to rebuild, instead of abandoning areas prone to bad weather. Increasing the probability of being damaged by bad weather. Actual weather severity has not changed much.
6. In school, I was made to feel terrified of desertification. The opposite happened, the deserts retreated. The globe is greening.
As I said, that is off the top of my head, but it can all be backed up by data. Or prove me wrong. Can you show me a few ipcc predictions which actually came true? Thanks.
The predictions we’re talking about play out over decades. The sources cite other predictions. It’s a feedback loop of assumptions and peer review from people who you know already share the same assumptions.
Climate science is much more akin to sociology than a hard science.
It is, and it's our only option. It's the reason nobody is doing a lot to combat climate change: because it'll require a lot of tears, effort and money, and nobody wants or can afford to spend them.
At the end, it's always the poor that have to pay. It's always been like that. Doesn't make climate change any less real.
But the wealthy people who make this argument tend to argue for total inaction rather than a justice-focused approach where they sacrifice greatly in order to permit the global poor to have access to efficient energy for as long as possible.
Any sacrifice that is called for should start at the top.
Perhaps I've missed something. Could you cite an example of an actual (not merely theoretical) climate policy that pulls from the rich without hurting the working class?
It's even less credible when the one person is putting 10x as much carbon in the atmosphere as the average person.
And until the rich start making personal sacrifices, they lack any moral authority to demand sacrifices from others.