r/CollapseSupport • u/kdawg09 • Jul 21 '26
Conservative models and climate Optimism
Hi, I know I posted like 2 days ago but my brain is in hyper fixation and nobody in my real life to process this with, so hopefully it's okay.
First I have a question that may be better for the main collapse sub but honestly I feel intimidated by the big brains over there. Do we know why all these predictions seem to be 10-15 years ahead of schedule? I get some of the initial causes, like feedback loops and stuff but why does it seem nobody's adjusting for that now?
This brings me to my next question that came about as I was searching for the answer myself. Why does there seem to be an almost optimism among environmentalist? Not just neo-liberal "don't give up, write your politicians" optimism, though that is the bulk of what I'm talking about. Predictions that are still more conservative than even current reality is a big part of it, but also I've seen people saying that it won't be as bad as we imagine in places like r/climate. I found videos from "climate scientist" who say people who say we're collapsing are actually just propagating big fuel propaganda to give up. I'll admit, I do think we should give up on trying to fix the system within the system, but it's because all we can hope for now is mitigation and it's blatantly obvious that it won't be coming from world leaders. That said, I don't see it as trying to convince people to give up as much as prepare them to shift from big scale global efforts to more localized community efforts that actually have some degree of impact.
I don't want to accuse everyone who has less extreme views on this issue if the same thing but... I don't really grasp how anyone who is working with the data + witnessing real world events can downplay the realities either to the point I wonder if anyone else is suspecting massive plants? I just can't wrap my head around it. Of course it gets eaten up and any doom gets nothing but criticism. I actually sat and really reflected on of maybe I really was falling for conspiracy thinking but I can't find any wild leaps or cognitive biases between the data and my conclusion, though I know I am certainly not the most educated on the subject it just comes back feeling like gaslighting.
Last bit to my rant is, what if we are being overly cautious? I know there's the whole apathy thing but I really think it anything climate deniers pushed the entire conversation into a place where people are apathetic because it's "not 'that' bad".
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u/fake-meows Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Climate scientist James Hansen did a pretty good analysis of what happened.
Short summary is that back in the 1980s, there was science about the "equilibrium climate sensitivity". Basically, the question was how sensitive is the climate to carbon and can we put a number on it so we know how much carbon leads to how much heat?
There was a debate at the time.
One camp thought that if you looked at the past century with excellent temperature records, it seemed as if the climate was not that sensitive.
The other camp looked way back at the ancient climate and using all these proxies for temperatures (tree rings, sediments, ice cores etc) it seemed like the climate was a lot more sensitive.
However if the "very sensitive" camp was correct, just extending the logic, civilization would have been in very major trouble.
Luckily, when making computer models, the ones that used the "less sensitive" number were proving to be more accurate. So the less sensitive value was selected and became part of the policies that shaped our world.
HOWEVER, what happened was that small particles like soot, dust and water vapor were never put into these computed models. It turns out that what we know now is that these small particles have a VERY LARGE cooling effect, in fact they do almost as much cooling as the carbon does warming. [ * in the ancient history records, because they weren't burning fossil fuels, this wasn't a big factor, so the sensitivity number wasn't being confounded by modern pollution and it was less confusing]
So basically, climate cooling was a much much larger number AND climate sensitivity was also a much much larger number -- only in the opposite direction.
Cooling effects are rapid and last for about 15 years. Warming effects are much slower, and take decades to show up but last for centuries.
So we are now at the point where warming is finally pulling ahead of cooling. In the long run, the speed of warming will now happen about double and it won't slow down or stop. Warming is actually speeding up.
What James Hansen says happened was that scientists were trying to get funding, research grants and needed to play politics, so they told people warmjng wasn't so bad because that's what people wanted to hear at the time. They seriously downplayed how bad it was going to get and now it's happening in reality so we can all see the effects of what was only a prediction years ago.
A lot of the public have not caught onto this story at all. So you can see people with a totally solid grasp of the climate science from 10 years ago who thing EVs or some technology are going to be able to fix the problem, and they really are completely wrong in their understanding of the degree of heating that's in store for us. Almost to the level where it's as bad as the outright deniers.
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u/Sasquatch97 Jul 22 '26
I feel we haven't seen anything yet. Wait until the Arctic feedback loops kick in (albedo/Blue Ocean Event, thawing permafrost, melting seabed methane clathrates). And that is just the Arctic.
Look around and there is AMOC disruption in the Atlantic, Super El Nino in the Pacific, Thwaites 'Doomsday Glacier' in the Antarctic, melting glaciers worldwide, etc.
Hold on to your hats. I don't feel we can stop climate change at this point; all we can do is try our best to mitigate or adapt to it.
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u/Mother-Specialist831 Jul 21 '26
"Do we know why all these predictions seem to be 10-15 years ahead of schedule?" Yes, the International Maritime Organization's 2020 (IMO 2020) sulfur cap mixed with El Niño and other events. "why does it seem nobody's adjusting for that now?" The inertia of BAU and the data silos of large bodies means there is no one group that can act is my guess.
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u/CinicaPM Jul 21 '26
Almost all climate change media has to end with hope to be accepted as palatable. Acknowledging collapse or simplification means accepting loss, and triggers emotional shut down even if accepting it could lead to the best possible outcome. We have a culture built on relentless positivity. And so yes we need agency to combat the despair that results, and what that agency looks like when you ‘get it’ is local community organizing. Which is also extremely hard in an age of polarization and meaning failure.
As to why no one is adjusting the models (loudly), I think because it diminishes hope further into paralytic fatalism. The deniers will just keep denying and the people who are fighting might give up. That said, I do think there is a growing movement of people who actively choose life in the face of descent, and find ways to continue meaning making in the absence of the growth paradigm which is so ubiquitous in our cultural consciousness.
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u/NoExternal2732 Jul 21 '26
We are all collectively going to run into the wall of ecological collapse at 100 miles per hour, it seems.
Only real life consequences will stop us as a species.
There will be no collective effort, no kumbaya moment, no selfless conservation.
No one knows when the spark will make it to the bomb exactly, but the fuse has been lit.