David Attenborough Addresses Climate Change in Most Eloquent Way Possible (cnet.com) 192
Natural historian, English broadcaster and 93-year-old national treasure David Attenborough has spoken. Whether you like his chosen topic of climate change or not, the naturalist has an effortless and coercive way with words. From a report: Speaking to a Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee meeting in London on Tuesday morning, local time, Attenborough gave evidence on the radical action required to tackle the climate crisis. "We cannot be radical enough in dealing with the issues that face us at the moment," he said, the full talk detailed by The Guardian. "The question is: what is practically possible? How can we take the electorate with us in dealing with these things?" The UK has committed to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. But that target, according to Attenborough, "is not the way of focusing on the problem." Attenborough did acknowledge the lively efforts young people had put in to "recognising that their world is the future."
"The most encouraging thing that I see, of course, is that the electors of tomorrow are already making themselves and their voices very, very clear," he said. "And that is a source of great comfort in a way, but also the justification, the reality, that these young people are recognising that their world is the future." Attenborough compared our attitudes toward climate change with the transformation of slavery. "There was a time in the 19th century when it was perfectly acceptable for civilised human beings to think that it was morally acceptable to actually own another human being for a slave. And somehow or other, in the space of 20 or 30 years, the public perception of that totally transformed."
"The most encouraging thing that I see, of course, is that the electors of tomorrow are already making themselves and their voices very, very clear," he said. "And that is a source of great comfort in a way, but also the justification, the reality, that these young people are recognising that their world is the future." Attenborough compared our attitudes toward climate change with the transformation of slavery. "There was a time in the 19th century when it was perfectly acceptable for civilised human beings to think that it was morally acceptable to actually own another human being for a slave. And somehow or other, in the space of 20 or 30 years, the public perception of that totally transformed."
Coercive (Score:1)
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how can you "delete" AC replies?
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how can you "delete" AC replies?
I delete the web notifications of the replies. Though, I think maybe slashdot has deleted the web notification feature, so my sig isn't very accurate any more.
Please Continue (Score:3, Insightful)
Warmist regards,
ExxonMobil
Social justice is part of it (Score:5, Insightful)
I guarantee that attitudes about widespread pollution would change much quicker if, say, we dumped all of our plastic and other toxic wastes in areas where wealthy and powerful people lived.
They are dumping on us (Score:2, Informative)
We dump all of our toxic waste and our worst pollution on the poor and powerless all over the world.
The fact is most of the plastic polluting the ocean is from the third world, not from first world nations.
They are the ones dumping toxic waste on pollution on us that know better.
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Where do you think that demand for plastic comes from? Where do you think the plastic waste comes from? Where do you think the technology to make all of these plastics come from?
Hint: It's not the third world.
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Where do you think that demand for plastic comes from?
Everywhere in the world. Do you think the developing nations are so poor that they don't use plastic?
(Also, your ignorance of the rest of the world is made obvious by your use of the term 'third world,' a term which has been obsolete for almost three decades now. Learn something outside your bubble)
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First world nations generate much much more plastic waste than do third world nations: https://www.plasticsinsight.co... [plasticsinsight.com]
Feel free to substitute whatever word or phase you'd like for "third world". My point stands, though.
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Some of it's just culture, people in countries who don't realize it's a bad idea to throw trash on the ground. Scenes like this can be common [wp.com]. So it's partly an education campaign.
We used to have the same problem in America, too. If you watch "Breakfast at Tiffany's," the main character throws a wrapper on the ground after opening it. Then we had anti-litter campaigns to help clean things up.
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You're missing the point. We generate it and then dump it off on the poor people.
You're missing the point. The poor people are dumping it on themselves. Do you think we ship trash to El Salvador and dump it in their rivers? No, most of the plastic they put in the rivers comes from themselves.
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What's funny is they'll say - YOU have to stop using it.
I make fun of people still using bottled water. So should everyone. It's stupid.
We should make fun of those licking blue bell ice cream. The solution to that nonsense is to put yet another plastic band around the top to stop this nonsense. Just what we need - more plastic.
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You seem to understand that one side or the other must give, so this comes off as a rather coy way of showing which side you're on without saying it explicitly.
Recession (Score:4, Insightful)
My impression is that people that don't believe climate change is a big deal (not talking about climate change deniers here), these people probably believe nothing needs to be done.
The probably believe that, when the problem is big enough, we will be slowly be compelled to use greener alternatives and that is that. Maybe the heat will suck and some bad things will happen to the environment (some extinctions of species we do not care about much) and this is all there is to it.
But mostly they are also thinking - and I am probably not going to be around to see it anyway.
They also think (and I think everyone is on par in this one) that curbing climate change aggressively will negatively affect major industries and cause recession. Climate skeptics don't want recession. Not now anyway, in the future, if it comes because it has to, then, so be it.
Now, this is short-sighted and kind of a d*ck move.
The problem is that a lot of people speaking "eloquently" of climate change do not discuss important issues openly. I am yet to hear they say: "Oh yeah, btw, adoption of these measures will negatively impact almost ALL industry and society as a whole, because everything will be more expensive and we probably won't be producing a lot of stuff anyway (that's what's causing global warming anyway, isn't it?). In short you will get poorer and your quality of life will decrease"
There a huge lack of understanding that probably a global enforced recession (no more oil, no gas, no coal, no cows, no more plastics, reduce production of stupid stuff we don't need, etc) is the only way to prevent us from cooking to death.
I guess when people start speaking more openly about that, maybe everyone will start talking. The more delay now, the shittier it will get in the future when we actually are forced to do something. Forget the BS guys. Future is looking grim
Re:Recession (Score:5, Insightful)
Your argument could be shorted and made more blunt:
Climate change deniers don't want to be inconvenienced. More importantly, they don't want to have to face the idea that they are, no matter how minutely, tangentially responsible for the situation we're in. They not only insist, but demand, that *everyone* stick their heads in the sand just long enough for them to continue enjoying their current indulgent lifestyles, at least until they die and it's someone else's problem.
Meanwhile we're already seeing the effects. Just the record-breaking year on year on year temperature swings alone are already causing major problems with basic infrastructure like roads, which need to be repaired more often. And that's just one example among many.
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Climate change deniers don't want to be inconvenienced.
Does addressing the problem of global warming require that people be inconvenienced?
I have people tell me how electric cars are safer, higher performing, more convenient, and just generally better than an equivalent gasoline burning alternative. If this is true then people should be buying electric cars without any mention of how they diminish the threat of global warming.
Maybe people don't have to do without the convenience, or perceived convenience, of being able to fill up a gasoline burner at a filling
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these people probably believe nothing needs to be done.
is the only way to prevent us from cooking to death.
The IPCC talks about an average increase of 4 degrees, less than the daily temperature swings. You talk about us getting cooked to death. And, then you wonder what the skeptics are thinking.
I suggest you work on your self-awareness.
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People like you are part of the problem. You just make up things like that we 'will cook to death', which is easily disproven by looking at any research. It just makes people looking to improve things look like nutjobs to have people like you screaming insane falsehoods.
Also you effectively call normal people 'd*cks' which will not help in gaining any sympathy from the people you are trying to convince to spend tens of thousands of dollars and stop eating beef over the coming decades in improving their CO2
He's right... is it enough? (Score:1)
He's right, but I don't know if it's enough. Attitudes *can* change. The attitude shift we've seen with younger people and sexuality & gender, at least, has been relatively sudden.
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From what I've read from the IPCC, if we stopped burning all fossil fuels all over the planet in the next few decades, we've still got a long time to look forward to some pretty severe disruptions based on the climate change that's happening right now.
Which is why, in my opinion, we need to start putting serious R&D efforts into things like efficient CO2 capture. The atmosphere is already overloaded, and there is so much inertia with fossil fuels that it is going to be a long time before we are able to move everything off of them. In the meantime, we better start figuring out how to suck the CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, in a related R&D topic, let's continue to figure out ways to take this captured CO2 and covert it directly to eith
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There's existing work in these fields, and if we could put together some kind of X-prize like incentive for this kind of tech, that might be just the ticket.
The people doing research on nuclear power are not asking for money, they are asking for permission. I've seen multiple talks from people in the nuclear power industry on YouTube and what they will say repeatedly is that they can find private investors but what they need is permission from the government and, perhaps more importantly, they need an assurance that permission will not be revoked just because someone wrote one piece of hate mail to some senator.
The nuclear power industry has not stopped doing
I propose we use David's wealth to purchase solar (Score:1)
Yet another uber rich person preaching on how the rest of us should live.
> "We cannot be radical enough in dealing with the issues that face us at the moment,"
OK. We'll pass a law to take all $35 million you have and buy solar panels to save the planet.
He's been there, he's seen it. (Score:5, Insightful)
Many times ive had climate denialists attempt to discredit my arguments by pointing out that i havent actually been to these places, i havent actually observed these changes.
Well he HAS been to these places, and he's been back to them several times over the course of DECADES. He has observed these changes. This is a man who has devoted his life to studying the environment, and its been a very long life, he's devoted a LOT of time to it.
He is totally convinced that climate change is a problem, and he's very much in a position to know about these things.
But thats ok.. keep rolling coal because "stigginit"
you fucking morons.
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So let me get this straight:
- Old white conservatives are to be ignored and discounted because their ideas are old and racist.
- Old white progressives are to be listened to, and their words taken as gospel, because they have lots of life experience.
Ok...I get it.
Re:He's been there, he's seen it. (Score:5, Insightful)
And he never, at any point, mentioned old white conservatives. You did.
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What the hell, man? This is completely not what he is saying - he literally says that he has studied/worked in this this domain all his life, and that is why he should be listened to. Not because he is old, but because of what he did his entire very long life.
There are plenty of old people who say climate change is overblown hype, but they're usually discounted and ignored, because they're "old, out of touch white people." I've heard those exact words from people attempting to convince me that millenials and the younger crowd should be listened to, and the viewpoints of older people are invalid, because they're behind the times.
And he never, at any point, mentioned old white conservatives. You did.
Life isn't an isolated incident. Sometimes, things happen that you can connect to a previous experience in the past. Funny, that....
Morals haven't changed that much (unfortunately) (Score:3)
There was a time in the 19th century when it was perfectly acceptable for civilised human beings to think that it was morally acceptable to actually own another human being for a slave. And somehow or other, in the space of 20 or 30 years, the public perception of that totally transformed.
There are an alarming number of people who clearly still think it should be allowed to own slaves and who think of themselves (wrongly) as civilized. A lot of them live in the southern US if you need an obvious example. Human trafficking is still a shockingly widespread thing regardless of its legality and there obviously is a market for it. Racism is still a thing and groups like the KKK and Nazis still loudly proclaim they think they are or should be superior to others. Women in many places are effectively or actually slaves.
I like the optimism of the statement but the simple fact is that we haven't really progressed as much as we need to. Not even close.
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Institutionalized slavery has been eliminated in the USA and Europe. That's because right wing conservative Christians helped escaped slaves and fought the slavery status quo, and were successful in changing the views of society. In both Britain/Europe, and the USA, the conservative right was instrumental in the elimination of slavery.
I'm guessing the Democrats still haven't forgiven the Republicans for taking their slaves away. :)
But, you're right. Human morals haven't changed, and won't. We're all flawe
Is nuclear power too radical? (Score:1, Insightful)
We must do everything to avert global climate disaster... except apparently nuclear power. Why? Why is nuclear power a step too far?
I'll hear people say, "what about the waste?" What about it? We had a plan to deal with it in the USA 40 years ago with waste processing and a geological disposal site until the Democrats held it up.
But forget that for the moment because I keep hearing about how we can simply get all the energy we need from wind, water, and sun. Well, how much concrete, steel, aluminum, co
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We must do everything to avert global climate disaster... except apparently nuclear power. Why? Why is nuclear power a step too far?
Because reasons. Reasons that lack reason.
We cannot have nuclear power because people like those in Greenpeace have equated nuclear power to nuclear weapons when equating it to nuclear medicine is more logical. Our CO2 output will continue to increase until there are enough people comfortable with the idea that nuclear power is preferable to global warming. Continuing to deny nuclear power to reduce global warming is saying that we need to fear nuclear power more than global warming, which is simply an u
Wasted breath (Score:5, Insightful)
I personally think Sir David Atttenborough is fantastic. Can't really think of anyone who would be more knowledgeable about nature and the changes that have occurred in his lifetime. A lifetime dedicated to observing nature. I mean, if anyone has seen what's changed, and not for the better, this guy is our guy. He's been there. Over decades of observation.
But, deniers will deny. We already knew this, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, they will shakes their heads. Even the most renowned naturalist on the planet telling us "We need to do something about this." isn't going to convince this segment of the population.
There is no talking to these people. They don't want to talk about it. Got some new evidence that just might convince some of them? Forget it, they're not listening. Wasted breath on a wasteful generation that lusts for days long gone. Just gunna have to wait for these people to start dying off, so their collective idiotic voices diminish from the public sphere. Hopefully the climate damage occurring during that period of waiting will be deal-with-able.
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But, deniers will deny. We already knew this, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, they will shakes their heads. Even the most renowned naturalist on the planet telling us "We need to do something about this." isn't going to convince this segment of the population.
Then propose solutions that make the denial of global warming irrelevant. By that I mean offer zero carbon vehicles that are as cheap, useful, convenient, and comfortable as the carbon dioxide producing vehicles they use now, as one example. As it is now people must choose between lowering CO2 output and lowering their standard of living, or keeping their standard of living and keeping their CO2 output as it is. Give them something that lowers their CO2 while raising their standard of living. Make them
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That's not realistic. The number of people living on this planet cannot all live like Americans. The laws
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Right now it's easy to deny the effects of global warming because what comes with accepting the threat of global warming seems to always come with reducing their freedoms, their standard of living, their income, their costs, all while reducing their choices. Stop doing that. People don't like being told what to do. Give them a choice and make that choice so attractive that they choose it willingly.
If I go to my doctor, and get tests and he tells me I have cancer. I really only have two choices: Get treatment, or do nothing and die sooner.
I'm sorry that dealing with climate change is going to be painful, but trying to sugar coat it to not be painful is another form of denial. It's going to be painful. Just like cancer treatments are unpleasant to endure. But if you wanna live longer, you endure it, you don't deny it, you don't tell your doctor he's wrong and a bad doctor for diagnosing you and co
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Here's something that should be an easy sell, natural gas vehicles. Not an ideal solution but people get a 20% to 30% reduction in CO2, as well as reductions in other tailpipe emissions.
Did we take half-measures in polluting the environment to this point? Nope. Full steam ahead.
Half-measures to address what we've done will be too little, too late. We need to act 10 years ago. Hell realistically, we should have acted upon this back in the 1970''s. But we can't go back in time. And every year that passes with us doing basically nothing but flapping our lips at each other (or wagging our fingers), the problem gets worse.
A partial solution is not a solution. We've been dancing around pa
Re:Wasted breath (Score:5, Insightful)
Coal is more expensive to harvest and use than numerous alternatives and yet there's a small segment fighting for it.
Citation needed. Both on coal being more expensive than the alternatives and on people fighting for it being a "small segment".
Electrical utilities aren't in the business of making electricity, they are in the business of making money. If coal costs more than something else then they will drop coal in no time and pick up on whatever is cheaper. There's many many people fighting for coal power because it is cheap and plentiful. If you want to see people stop burning coal then give them a choice that doesn't increase their costs.
I say we give nuclear power another try. We learned a lot in the last 30 or 40 years since we stopped building nuclear power plants. We also forgot a lot. I believe we can make nuclear power cheaper than coal but only if we are allowed economy of scale. That means not making a plan to build one or two nuclear power plants, it means making a plan to build dozens of nuclear power plants. Let the designers know that they can spread development costs over a dozen nuclear power plants and these non-recurring costs start to look real small.
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Electrical utilities aren't in the business of making electricity, they are in the business of making money. If coal costs more than something else then they will drop coal in no time and pick up on whatever is cheaper.
That's precisely why coal usage has been dropping precipitously for the last decade, why coal companies that didn't diversify in time have been bankrupting everywhere recently - because it is now more expensive than the alternatives. Gas-fired power is simply cheaper.
And that's also precisely why nuclear power has languished. It's not cheap enough. Perhaps it could be with scale, as you say, but the capital investment would be enormous and not without risk. So long as most of the alternatives are cheaper -
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We are in fact seeing power companies drop coal - didn't you catch the news last week about the mines clos
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I say we give nuclear power another try.
You can thank HBO for reinvigorating the fear of nuclear power.
I'm with you. We should be building nuclear power plants. Lots of them. But I dunno what the public fears more: Nuclear power, or dealing with climate change.
They want no part of either, for the most part.
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As with most things, there are some extreme loudmouths on one side, some extreme loudmouths on the other side, and 99% of people sitting in the middle watching them yell at each other.
Yeah, the extremes are zealots. The people in the middle do shift their opinion.
We've been waiting too long .... (Score:2, Interesting)
We've been waiting too long for the nuclear deniers to die off. Instead they seem to have grown in power and influence.
Do we have to start steamrolling the nuclear deniers in order to create sustainable carbon neutral power generation? Something we would have had forty years ago if not for the nuclear deniers?
The worst of course are the (apparently) pro global warming nuclear deniers. The ones that project their denial mindset onto others.
Don't tell me AGW is a catastrophic emergency if you deny the soluti
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I personally think Sir David Atttenborough is fantastic. Can't really think of anyone who would be more knowledgeable about nature and the changes that have occurred in his lifetime. A lifetime dedicated to observing nature. I mean, if anyone has seen what's changed, and not for the better, this guy is our guy. He's been there. Over decades of observation.
So what you're saying is that he has circumstantial evidence and is not a scientist.
But, deniers will deny. We already knew this, even in the face of overwhelming evidence, they will shakes their heads. Even the most renowned naturalist on the planet telling us "We need to do something about this." isn't going to convince this segment of the population.
I take your one TV personality and raise you 36 Nobel Prize-winning real scientists (physics etc.) that say the opposite:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20... [wattsupwiththat.com]
There is no talking to these people. They don't want to talk about it. Got some new evidence that just might convince some of them? Forget it, they're not listening. Wasted breath on a wasteful generation that lusts for days long gone. Just gunna have to wait for these people to start dying off, so their collective idiotic voices diminish from the public sphere. Hopefully the climate damage occurring during that period of waiting will be deal-with-able.
Science is based on dialogue and testing theories. There is no room for dogma or for labelling people as deniers. You are the one that doesn't want to talk about it.
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Also, have you read how he chooses to argue? "CO2 is plant food
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It's not one TV personality and you know it - climate scientists agree on this issue in overwhelming majority.
First: Agreement of some kind of anointed majority is absolutely irrelevant to science. If you knew how science works then you would know that.
Second, let me fix your statement to make it more correct:
The majority of climate scientists who receive funding via government grants overwhelmingly agree...
You bring up a Nobel prized scientist who does not agree who is, unsurprisingly, not a climate scientist - his Nobel prize work is in quantum tunneling, and unless you can show me proof that he is an accomplished climatologist as well I will feel free to ignore his opinion on climate when almost all the climatologists disagree with him.
You are saying that someone with a Nobel prize in Quantum Physics cannot understand climate "science"? Quantum Tunnelling is much, much, much, much more difficult than running a linear regression on a doctored s
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This guy is the very definition of a denier.
Blame everyone else. The facts are wrong. The scientists are biased.
Deny deny deny. This is what denial looks like folks.
Thanks for stopping by to show us what I'm talking about.
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This guy is the very definition of a denier.
Blame everyone else. The facts are wrong. The scientists are biased.
Deny deny deny. This is what denial looks like folks.
Thanks for stopping by to show us what I'm talking about.
Labelling someone as a denier because you don't agree with their conclusions, how enlightened of you.
I'm comfortable to be in the company of many accomplished scientists and people of integrity that disagree with the current dogma.
D. Attenborough has a number of titles and awards (Score:1)
but does he have a Ph.D. and conducted active research in this field? Can he judge the peer review articles, the climate models, the quality of the data? If not, isn't he just repeating someone else's claims and if so, how much value is there in that?
Sure he's been studying nature for decades and has what may seem like a decline (or warming if you will) but 50 years is a mere blip when compared to natural climate oscillations.
plant a tree (Score:2)
Climate change can be mitigated and reversed by planting trillions of trees.
Re:"coercive way with words" (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, like the House Fire Alarmists. I hate how they scream about their house being on fire and the fire department needs to come before it burns down but what we really need to do is talk because the fire science isn't settled. The house may put out its own fire. The house might want to burn down. We need to talk now, take action later. Fuckin' House Fire Alarmists are almost as bad as the Stop Stabbing Me Alarmists. Fuckin' snow flakes the lot of them.
Re:"coercive way with words" (Score:5, Funny)
Most importantly, when the Earth was still a ball of molten rock, your house was hotter than it is now.
Re:"coercive way with words" (Score:4, Informative)
Climate changes. It always has. Before man was an itch in evolution's eye, the climate has changed, often radically by external, internal and natural courses. Before the use of fossil fuels, climate changed... a LOT.
It sure has. From a ball of molten rock, through ice ages and continental drift that consolidated and split everything back up again, masses of volcanic activity, climate has always changed.
We are not affecting climate change. We are swept along with it.
This is where you're wrong. The change in atmospheric composition is significant at local time scales, more akin to a global disaster event than normal climate changes. W.R.T normal climate changes, I'm with you there.
The fucking key is NOT "let's go back to medieval hovel-dwelling" to "slow" inevitable change. It's to MANAGE OUR ABILITY TO WEATHER (no pun intended) THE CHANGE THAT WE CANNOT STOP.
As you say, we need to adapt and change. Humans are good at this, other species...not so much. I think we'll see mass extinction events as flora and fauna do not have the time to adapt. They also no longer have open habitat to evolve into,as humans have been modifying vast swathes of the countryside for their own use. I don't know where you got 'medieval hovel-dwelling' from, there's nil reason for that to occur.
People like YOU are the reason we can't do that, because YOU think if we magically stopped using coal and switched to solar power the world would align, give you a wet kiss and "stabilize". That's not how it works. That's not how climate works. That's now how to survive on earth. ADAPTING TO THE EVER-CHANGING EARTH IS.
Stopping it may not be possible. The vast majority of humanity may adapt easily. Some countries may be inundated at cease to exist. There may be wars over fresh water. Billions may die.
What we do know however is that our actions are having a reaction that will cost a lot of money to either adapt or reverse.
Until you get that through your thick, fucking skulls, the better off we'll be. I am not a "climate denier" I am a realist. THERE IS NO WAY TO HALT WHAT HAPPENS NATURALLY.
What is happening is caused by us, all in just the last 1 -2 hundred years. We can stop doing what we're doing, and reverse some of that damage. Stabilising the planet, I doubt that could happen. Spreading climate change back out to it's normal timeframes? Much better result.
End of story. Don't believe me? Then why did the climate change BEFORE MANKIND APPEARED? Why did the climate change BEFORE fossil fuel use? Why did climate events WIPE OUT ENTIRE SPECIES before we even were wriggling out of the goddamned ocean?
These were catastrophic events with associated mass extinctions. Are you saying you wouldn't want to reduce these if it were possible?
Don't be an idiot. We've got enough of those here on Slashdot and on planet earth making decisions that will ruin humanity for a brass ring we can never get. THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLIMATE EQUILIBRIUM. Let me repeat that for the cheap seats:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLIMATE EQUILIBRIUM
Consider yourself schooled.
A good school will teach the scientific method, which you seem to be lacking knowledge of. Climate equilibrium is not the goal, moving back to an adaptable climate change pattern is.
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Does this mean we can start building new nuclear power plants again?
I've seen the science and nuclear power needs to be part of our energy supply or we face a far greater environmental disaster than just getting a degree or two warmer on this planet.
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All of you assholes are just standing on your desks screaming at any and everyone that will listen or dare look your way.
Oh, I'm sorry....I thought you were talking about the Climate Change Catastrophists, there.....
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The only coercion is from deniers like yourself. Everyone else is just stating facts backed up by real, verifiable evidence
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"Think like I do, or be labelled and ostracized."
That's an implied threat, that quite neatly falls into "you do this or else." Coercion doesn't have to involve putting a gun to someone's head. It can be much more subtle than that.
Re: "coercive way with words" (Score:2)
Rationally?
How do you expect to deal with people who are adamantly against climate change despite the evidence?
A good half of the US doesn't believe there's a problem and actively resist any suggestion or law for change, even if they're dying of smog or garbage in their ecosystem
Re: "coercive way with words" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's only ones confusing carbon tax with wealth redistribution are people who are intentionally trying to confuse the issue, for a variety of selfish/willfully ignorant reasons. It's like saying that giving a ticket to someone for speeding, or charging bail on a criminal, is wealth redistribution.
The point of Carbon Tax is to be a punitive measure on companies that pump out CO2. CO2 is an externalized expense that companies ignore for the simple reason being that they can. Carbon Tax is intended to re-internalize that expense and put said companies back into the equation of responsibility instead of leaving tax payers on the hook for a company's laziness.
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Don't further the confusion. It is not a punishment at all. It's purpose is simply to internalize a significant externality in hopes that simple market forces will then do what they do best and reward the people who find ways to emit less carbon.
Re: "coercive way with words" (Score:1)
The tax is self-eliminating. It goes away when the goal is achieved. When you output zero carbon you have zero tax.
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Have you ever seen a tax go away? More likely they'll just start entaxing solar panels, and ergy usage in general to make up for the "lost revenue".
Lots of places are already adding special taxes onto EV's to replace gas taxes.
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Replacing this tax for EVs is another thing that makes sense, since EVs still use roads and everything else.
Now, the fact that those taxes might not, in reality, go entirely to expenses directly linked to driving can be argued, but that is just bad administration which needs to b
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That is not the carbon tax itself, it's a policy built on top of it, mostly to keep people who can barely keep their heads above water from going under. I'm guessing you wouldn't trade places with any person who qualifies for the break.
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if it's actually anything like equal, why aren't any of the current wealthy clamoring for easy minimum wage jobs?
OTOH, plenty of middle class people would rather pay the tax rate for capital gains.
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My issue with carbon taxes is now that it is being interleaved with socialism.
Here's my issue with a carbon tax, if any CO2 release from a fossil fuel is undesirable then why not simply ban it? Don't tax it, that's complex. Make it simple, have a complete ban.
Carbon taxes are not popular, which is why I expect any such tax to fail. Even less popular would be a ban. People didn't stop burning whale oil because people realized the damage they were doing to the environment. People stopped hunting whales for their lighting oil when kerosene lanterns became cheaper. People stopped u
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Science, by definition, is never settled, psychopath.
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Science, by definition, is never settled, psychopath
So you're saying it could be worse ?
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True. But we don't know all about gravity. There's plenty of refinement to do. New discoveries are coming out all the time regarding how gravity works.
There's a distinct possibility that one of those discoveries will turn all our current theories on their head, because we've got something fundamentally wrong at the moment.
Science is never settled. Anybody who says it is has an agenda.
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We started with rationally TALKing to you in the 60s, through the 90s. Now your camp needs it explained like children, so then you can sit back and say stuff like "I never saw it that way; if only you had started this conversation by treating me like an adult, maybe we wouldn't have wasted 40 years."
I'm kidding, you would never admit your short comings.
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We started with rationally TALKing to you in the 60s, through the 90s.
Don't give us that crap. In the 60s and 70s, you were talking about global cooling, and the coming ice age. And it was alarmist screaming then, too, although not as shrill and insulting as it is today, I'll give you.
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Don't give us that crap. In the 60s and 70s, you were talking about global cooling, and the coming ice age
Go ahead, post a few links to scientific papers claiming that there would be an ice age.
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https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/... [nasa.gov]
I'm sure a report on NASA's site would be considered authoritative and valid, since any time NASA points out rising temperatures, they're considered gospel.
There are plenty more, but I'm not going to do your homework for you, because I'm busy with more important things
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Did you actually read the paper? This is a Master's thesis studying the effects of particulate pollution and its potential to change the climate (i.e., by cooling). It makes no claim that this was actively happening at the time... Might want to try again.
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OTOH, there was a LOT less evidence for it upon examination.
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Attenborough has a good backing of science, and sense. He also said that the core problem facing humanity is overpopulation.
But suddenly, when he started saying countries with way too many people in them were bad for the planet, the eco loons decided he wasn't quite the good guy after all. I mean how would we have loads of mass migratrion if all those countries started reducing their population growth to negative levels and wanting their migrants back?! Not to mention the far more important economic issues
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The real problem is that some people think it is appropriate to labels other people they do not agree with as "eco loons".
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Mod parent up. The logical conclusion of Attenborough's passion is full scale war against India and China.
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We cull herds of animals that are wrecking the environment maybe it is time to start a human cull for the same reason.
Before all the rage posting starts I am being facetious.
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We'll pass a law to take all $35 million you have and buy solar panels to save the planet.
He's 93. So most of his fortune was made *despite* the UK's punishing tax levels. When the Beatles sang "one for me, nineteen for you" it was because the top income tax bracket really was 95%.
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Dude! Where would I get my lemur porn then?