You've likely been affected by climate change. Your finances might be too
text.npr.org
text.npr.org
Of course. But if you have the crowd who fly around on private jets to environmental conferences telling the proles that they need to quit eating meat, eat the bugs, live in the pod, and sacrifice more to solve a problem, I think it's fair to ask that the case be very strongly made without appealing to Science (TM) and trying to browbeat people into submission.
And I'm not seeing it. I've lived long enough to see past climate predictions being total bunk: a new ice age was one worry, global warming, acid rain devastating cities, etc. Now we're just hammered with "climate change" and many real and far more provable environmental problems like the health of the oceans are comparatively ignored.
As far as likelihood goes, I don't think I have all of the answers, but the number of ifs involved in the entire chain of climate change dogma makes the worst case scenario seem very unlikely to me.
If the climate is changing, is it caused by man? There are some who point out things like natural sun changes might be the bigger issue involved with changing climate and that the world has constantly gone through hot/cold cycles.
If it's caused by man, is it actually inevitably going to cause overall harm? A changing climate might be a bad thing in certain areas, but large areas of the world could also become more livable and lead to more vegetation and farming elsewhere, and a net plant increase on the planet.
If it's causing harm, can we resolve it? Assuming that the climate is changing and it's caused by man, and it causes harm, can we do anything to solve it? I'm not sure. There are some activists who suggest that even if we quit all CO2 emissions today, the planet is already inevitably beyond doomed.
If we can resolve it, is the benefit greater than the cost? Most of us alive have had the pleasure of living in relatively stable and prosperous situations compared to all of human history. Doing what some climate activists want to do like eliminate certain kinds of energy usage very quickly may dramatically harm the lives of many more people than might be saved from the natural disasters/weather. The amount of human misery that can be caused by bad economic policies might far outweigh any problems caused by climate change.
The only thing I'd say in conclusion is whether or not climate change is real, nuclear energy is the only workable answer that all sides should be able to agree on. Regardless of your stance on the climate, everybody recognizes that cheap energy that doesn't pollute and that can power industry is a big win. Until battery technology makes several quantum leaps in efficiency, nuclear energy is the only possible answer to climate change as well the needs of humanity.
I don't understand your problem with using scientific arguments. I think that you reject evidence conceptually and are "not seeing" any climate change is a self-refuting argument if you're willing to think about it. Especially since anyone who is vocal about this crisis will say it's systemic and there are maybe less than 100 people who could, if they wanted to, dedicate their resources and solve this in our lifetime. The reason climate change is seemingly eternal and difficult to solve is because the biggest polluters aren't going to stop and we can't make them.
Here's more info on the systemic issues if you're open to any data or new ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice
The Scientific Method is unambiguously great. The modern Science (TM) is a political tool used to browbeat people into submission for money and power. I'm not trying to be insulting in any way, but my opinion is that people with your general worldview cannot see how there's a difference between those 2 things because Science (TM) strongly aligns with your worldview.
> I think that you reject evidence conceptually and are "not seeing" any climate change is a self-refuting argument if you're willing to think about it.
In the post you're responding to, I listed a set of conditions that all have to be true in order to make "climate change" an actual problem, caused by man, that can be fixed by human action, and whose solution is a win from a cost-benefit standpoint. There's not just 1 variable here that has to be weighed. Science qua science cannot advocate any action. Science is just a tool for understanding the natural world. Once you use science to understand the world as best as possible, it's human risk-management that actually allows people to decide on a course of action. Science does not and cannot make decisions for anybody or advocate any specific action.
> The reason climate change is seemingly eternal and difficult to solve is because the biggest polluters aren't going to stop and we can't make them.
Actually, you can probably make anybody do anything with enough force, but is it worth the cost? And by cost, I don't just mean money, I mean the second order effects in terms of human lives and misery. That's another one of my big questions. The economic calamity that might ensue by giving climate warriors carte blanche to do whatever they want to do might harm billions more lives than the worst possible outcome from climate change.
We're starting to see what a relatively small increase in gas prices is doing to families on the bubble. If prices end up going higher, food will literally begin to be impossible to grow, process, and transport and it will not be feasible for many people to work. How many might starve? And that's just with a relatively small gas price increase without the real climate change crowd running the show.
> Here's more info on the systemic issues if you're open to any data or new ideas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_justice
Framing anything in terms of "climate justice" is horrifyingly bad from a persuasion standpoint. This kind of framing is preaching to your own choir here and is not persuasive at all.
PS: I'd like to reiterate my following general statement that I think everybody can agree with. If you believe that climate change is a problem, nuclear is the only answer that solves it. If you don't believe that climate change is a problem, you should still want nuclear because it's clean and cheap energy that is capable of powering all human activity and industry. This is a win-win that anybody, regardless of worldview, should be able to get behind.
If you have unlimited electricity, why bother reinventing all the infrastructure for battery powered vehicles? You can just make liquid fuel out of air and water.
I believe the US Navy has been testing this sort of thing so that carriers can be self-sufficient at sea.
To be honest, I don't understand the push for electric vehicles either. Sure, the engines are very powerful and cool. As a toy for the well-off, I get the appeal. But the possible risks and downsides from a societal perspective seem massive to me and outweigh the advantages.
> As far as I understand it, the electrical grid is not setup to handle most of society using EVs.
> Charging EVs takes too long for reliable long-distance travel. I can fill a gas tank in a couple of minutes in an emergency and keep on driving. But there's a real problem if everybody needs hours to charge when there's a finite number of chargers.
> Dense cities are not setup to handle EVs. If you live in a city apartment and park on the street, figuring out some arrangement to charge an EV in a convenient fashion is very difficult.
> When you take into account the rare earth elements that need to be mined to make EVs, I'm not sure if there's any environmental win from them even if the electricity used to power them always comes from green sources.
> I think there's a real long-term problem brewing when it comes to EV battery disposal and longevity. These batteries deteriorate over time. A 10-15 year old ICE vehicle is still very usable. But it's unknown what happens when you have millions of 10-15 year old EVs that have dying batteries. Will they be safely disposed? Are people ready to pay $10K+ to replace the batteries on an older EV?
> All modern cars have lots of software, but the amount of extra software that controls EVs due to their nature is concerning to me. It feels a lot easier for a bad software update to brick an EV, or something to go drastically wrong and make your car useless, particularly in an emergency. An ICE feels a lot more resistant to hacking and other problems that I think might become more commonplace.
Maybe some of these points have great answers, but I'm overall very skeptical of the whole movement here.
Basically, they've become economically viable due to gas prices going up. Gas prices are up due to Peak Oil. Peak Oil does not mean we are running out of oil yet. It means we are running out of cheap oil.
2) I don't believe that gas prices are suddenly going up because peak oil theory is being vindicated. There's inflation, supply issues caused by dumb human "environmentalist" policies, as well as tensions due to Russia and other world events.
I got a hybrid, which were discounted when nobody wanted them when gas prices were in the toilet in late 2020.
A non-plug-in hybrid that gets 40-50 mpg is (or was just before the current car shortage) the most economic option according to my best calculations. Once I tried to estimate the fossil fuels that go into food and stuff and found riding a bicycle is not a lot better or worse than a 50 mpg car with one person in it.
Everybody seems to have an excuse for doing something else though. I have to admit that it took me years before I followed my own logic, but I finally did (because I found something I liked better than a Prius with similar mpg).
A non-plugin hybrid has 1% of the electric range, so I don't think the difference in battery size vs. a full electric is unimportant. Batteries get better, but the ratio, not so much.
It's why gas prices went crazy in the 1970s, but then we discovered the Alaska oil fields and built a pipeline. Geologists are pretty confident there are no more surprise oil fields that can save us a second time. Even if we discovered crazy amounts of oil in the Antarctic or on the moon, extraction costs would be stupidly high, so it still would not bring back cheap oil.
My main question to you is this. Is the sudden spike in the recent time period just because of Peak Oil, or is it because of other factors I've mentioned? In an era of high inflation, war fears, and environmentalist policies being pushed, I think the explanation for the current gas price increase is much easier to see.
> Eh, I've had two college classes that covered Peak Oil.
Well, I've studied some economics.
Eh, maybe I'm suffering from Dunning-Kruger effect. Maybe you are. Who can tell?
You take care.