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by xvxvx 23 days ago
There’s been so much climate alarmism since Al Gore decided to pivot to ‘hero of humanity’ that it barely registers for me now. I still have frozen rice and beans from covid. Hope they’re still good.
6 comments

Is it really alarmism when anyone alive for the last 30 years can clearly tell weather patterns are changing?

To me this is like claiming someone in 1901 was an alarmist for talking about how dumping chemicals into our waterways was destroying them and dumping chemicals out the back of plants was creating polluted toxic ground as they observe increasing numbers of dead fish. And they were right, there are endless numbers of extremely toxic superfund sites and even more that are poorly documented that we know are killing people.

I'm as big a doomer (realist?) as they come but I think the framing is misleading here - deaths due to natural disasters have gone down due to planning, infastructure, coordination, better warning systems, so merely stating that millions died last time feels like sensationalism
You really should revisit the absurd claims Gore was promoting that didn't age well like the north pole melting in 5 years (2014).

IMHO, the toxic chemicals comparison doesn't work.

For climate change, you have alternatives to raise people's quality of life more effectively and saying that you must prioritize fighting climate change over ... better healthcare, sanitation (avoidance of toxic chemicals!*), nutrition, workforce development, etc. is not really an easy sell because the other paths yield better ROI.

*Edit*

> You really should revisit the absurd claims Gore was promoting

Why? Absurd claims are absurd claims - I have zero doubts about the AGW outline and majority of case and data put forward in the IPCC papers despite never having seen the Gore film nor even living in the USofA.

LOL!

How do you reconcile arguing it isn't "alarmism" and acknowledging the claims are "absurd"?

You're definitely trying to have it both ways on the issue of whether people have been guilty of promoting alarmism.

> I have zero doubts

That is a red flag, regarding almost anything. It's a blind spot.

If you are a rich Westerner, you'll probably be fine. It's the poor that take the brunt when these sorts of emergencies happen.
>rich Westerner

Not quite.

These affluent countries torture themselves with terrible energy transition projects that jack up prices for everyone at the cost of more efficient alternatives.

Healthcare, nutrition, education and other programs do vastly more for quality of life improvements for the poor.

We aren't doing those either.
Yeah...I know you want to gripe, but you'll have to be more convincing.
No one is going to be fine.
Exactly
There is way too much noise, AI made what was bad worse.

Before, it was the main stream media sharing biased information.

Now we have the same biased media AND AI sharing slope left and right. The only option left is independent journalist, ignore everything else.

There were so much alarmism in 1898 against opioids in children's cough syrups, it barely registered. Then politicians decided to ban it for a few thousand dead, when alarmist doctors talked about millions.
The earth is hotter than it's been in 125,000 years. Warming at a rate dozens of times faster than the fastest periods of natural warming. The oceans are 25% more acidic. The worlds ice sheets and glaciers are losing 1 trillion tons of mass per year.

Did Al Gore make a stupid prediction about arctic sea ice loss? Yes. Do you know who criticized him at the time? Climate scientists. Did you know Al Gore isn't a fucking scientist?

I fucking hate Al Gore. You know why? Because he made himself the face of the climate crisis and now every partisan fuck on the right can't see past that. It's overwhelming their rationality.

this reaction is a big part of the problem

also has nothing to do with possible covid food shortages