1y ago

Forget ‘doomers:’ Warming can be stopped, top climate scientist says

news.harvard.edu

Warming can be stopped, top climate scientist says — Harvard Gazette

Cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/12956314

"I push back on doomism because I don’t think it’s justified by the science, and I think it potentially leads us down a path of inaction,” said Mann during a talk last Thursday at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

“And there are bad actors today who are fanning the flames of climate doomism because they understand that it takes those who are most likely to be on the front lines, advocating for change, and pushes them to the sidelines, which is where polluters and petrostates want them.”

52 comments

it's not that doomers are denying that it can be stopped. it's just that, given the data an behaviour of people&politics, they don't really see that it will be stopped
- Yeah that's my thing too - I have no doubt that scientifically it can be stopped - there's even a real example with how crazy quickly nature started to recover during the COVID lockdowns - but it would require people to not be selfish, stupid assholes so it's never gonna happen.
  
  Well tbf, it will happen as the selfish stupid assholes die from climate change with everyone else
- Doomers are nihilistic assholes. If you dont think the politics will do it, then fill your hands and do direct action to force them.
  
  “Doomers” don’t think there is literally no way to stop it. They generally think that the people who can pull the lever will continue not to do so because they’ve resisted it for decades. It’s lack of faith in our collective will and dedication to action, not that there is no course of action that can stop it.
  I can’t blame them. I still advocate for change and work towards it, but they’re not the problem. It’s climate change deniers and politicians who refuse to do anything about it.
  Blame is being misdirected here as usual. Which contributes to why people are “doomers.”
  
  Agreed! Giving up is giving in to oligarchs who have profited relentlessly off of our suffering and the defiling of our home. Stand up! It’s better to die on your feet fighting than on your knees, groveling to the rich while they pickpocket your dying corpse.
  Climate apocalypse is here for us all. Wanton apathy and inaction leads only to guaranteed failure!
  
  But politics is us. This is what democracy is all about.
  The problem is the population at large still doesn't understand the gravity of the situation.
- Yeah, we stopped for a few days for covid and mother earth immediately started to make a comeback while we all collectively decided to develop brain conditions rather than make slight adjustments to our lifestyles.
  
  it's not nice to cast 'brain conditions' in a negative light nor to accuse people who are acting in self interest of having any conditions other than not caring about their fellow human!
- That's the same thing.
  
  Those are different things.
- Of course, that's a political problem not a scientific one.
  
  Yes but the outcome is just as bad.
- Which I think bolsters the argument for anti-doomerism (yes, I'm making that a word now).
We're all on this bus that's going 150mph towards the edge of a cliff. I know it can be stopped, but the people driving are talking about 'slowing to 120mph by 2050' (but breaking at this pace we will be like 135mph by then) and these armed thugs are protecting them so no other can get up and take the wheel. Call me a doomer all you want but we're fucked.
- Accepting this notion I feel like the best thing to do is to harden and make more resilient our ability to survive the extreme weather and tenperatures coming. If we can survive on Mars or whatever we can survive on a warmer Earth.
  
  We as a species will survive global warming, assuming the societal collapse doesn't lead to nuclear armageddon.
  We as average people typically will not.
The greatest barrier to reducing climate change is the ultra wealth financing denialism of climate change and the tight grip they have on what the average person thinks is real through immense lobbying, owning media outlets and controlling what they publish, and unlimited disinformation campaigns. Maybe it's frowned upon to talk about those things at such a rich university, but if you're not talking about those things are you really helping the situation or are you maintaining the delusional status quo of "we can get to it when we get to it"
- The average person isn't so gullible. We know its an issue, and we know the causes But most od these big polluting countries are not democracies. That's clear because the parties in power are not doing what the people want them to do.
  
  We do live in plutocracies - I agree with you there.
  I don't think the problem with the average person is gullibility per se, I think it's 1) how much strain/overhwhelm they face make a nice life for themselves (with the accelerated cost of living, lack of safety nets, impending climate change) and how marginalized rational concern about the climate change and growing wealth inequality is compared to how loudly trumpeted the lies used to maintain the status quo are that serve the billionaires.
  For many, (and this example is a big issue in my country of Canada at the moment) it's easier to direct anger towards a tax meant to curb climate change than it is to face reality and anger at larger and more influential factors like neoliberalism.
  Anger lends itself to simplified reasoning. Billionaires and conservatives know this very well. If we want to open the average person's eyes we need to be very strategic in our messaging, otherwise it won't stick as well as the earworm crap the right uses.
  As soon as wildfires start up in Canada again this season, the rise of 'clean fossil fuel' ads (i.e, propaganda saying "nothing to be concerned about, keep consuming") will happen again. It is still possible to hear about Greta Thurnberg on the news or online - to use an example. That type of content might only be available on the dark web in a couple decades
  
  Hot take to call the US and Europe autocracies. I don’t exactly disagree, but still a hot take.
Doomerism is the result of fossil fuel propaganda. The open strategy of O&G right now is to convince the public that no progress has been made, the world is already over and it's not worth trying to fix.
I think the real problem is not understanding that it's not a binary bad or good (not understanding might be understating motivations... it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it and all that).
Yes, realistically we are already well committed to a path that is going to cause great hardship for future generations. But it isn't going to be an extinction level event by itself. We most definitely can still make things worse, even if we've already messed up rather badly.
- Hell, even nuclear war wouldn't necessarily be an extinction level event- like something like 97% of people would die, but for that remaining 3% of people, life will suck while they restart the 1000 year process of bringing humanity back out of dark ages II.
The problem about doomism is that it promotes inaction in the less educated "because things are fucked anyway".
To be honest I think the doomers are right, not because there isn't still time to fix most of it (there probably is) but because the political will to actually do it isn't there. Which is an uphill battle because the more we delay the more drastic measures are needed which require even more political will to actually do. Those two things are getting ever more out of sync. The political will has been slowly increasing but not as fast as as the urgency and need for measures.
But the sentiment that results from doomism makes this political will even worse.
If only this were what people/govts disagreed on regarding climate change.

52 comments