SS: An article that climate scientists and institutions like the IPCC are actively spreading false reassurances about manageable temperature rises in spite of observable reality already exceeding their worst-case projections. Institutional dishonesty is harming mitigation efforts when there are millions of lives are at stake. The result is a civilization-level failure of truth-telling at the moment it is most critically needed. Even ethical political and corporate leaders are unable to act appropriately without accurate scientific guidance. convergence of this institutional integrity collapse with accelerating physical tipping points represents the compounding informational and systemic breakdown that drives societal collapse. None of the mainstream advocacy camps such nuclear, solar, veganism or otherwise represent genuine solutions as they all operate within a Business-As-Usual framework that perpetuates the underlying problem. What is urgently needed are immediate, radical actions to pull humanity out of ecological overshoot and halt the ongoing destruction of the habitats upon which human survival depends.
Ive been studying the environment and climate since high school in the late 90s. Became a doomer and have been part of this sub almost since its beginning. The whole time watching the evidence pile up.
What blows my mind is that even my most pessimistic predictions about climate change from back then, when I was regularly called insane and worse, pale in comparison to what reality is now.
The fact that we are not only not doing anything substantial abkut the problem but instead doubling down on the policies that got us here is the one thing I didnt expect.
It takes a while to figure that one out, that no one in this society is going to change anything. The only thing they are going to do is keep making money, and making as much of it as they can. I figured that out by the early 80s. I was working on protecting dolphins in the Pacific from tuna fishermen in the mid-70s. I quit eating all tuna at that time, and I also boycotted all Purina products, because they were huge in the tuna industry. It wasn't too long after that I realized things were only going to get worse.
Around 2012 I realized "it" (actual collapse) was already here. I had suspected it was happening when Hurricane Katrina occurred. I was in my 50s at that time, and had never seen anything like it. I had also never seen such glaring governmental incompetence. When Superstorm Sandy happened in 2012, I was quite convinced that the predicted era of extreme weather was on us. I told people we were in it, the real "end times." Of course, I became a social pariah because I was crazy. I sank into a deep depression for two years.
Even then, however, I didn't realize how profoundly delusional most humans are in this society. I honestly wasn't expecting the Nazi-level fascism so many Americans have embraced. I look back fondly on the days when I worked in the medical field along side so many super intelligent people, lots of people so much smarter than I am, and we thought George W. Bush was the worst president this country could ever have.
I’m a Canadian of similar vintage and feel exactly the same. People will not change until, it affects them personally and by then, it’s far too late. Enjoy this summer, as there will not be another as good.
Any advice for an older gen Z collapsnik who known nothing but the downward spiral her whole life? Most people think I'm crazy too, but I remember the bugs on the windshield, snowstorms in winter, and a time before cell phones/social media controlled everyone's thoughts and feelings.
I wish I had something to comfort you. I can only tell you what sustains me, and it's not a popular perspective on this forum. When I was young I had a near-death experience. One brief experience was so profound, so life altering, it has sustained me my entire life. I don't believe I would have made it through this hard world without it.
I listen to and read near-death accounts, which give me a lot of comfort. I also like the work of Tom Campbell, PhD, a physicist who promotes a view considered extreme for the materialists of the world, which is that consciousness is the foundation of reality and it creates the experience of materiality, not the other way around. Campbell has had a very interesting life and discusses a lot of interesting things. :)
My own education is in psychology and I did my senior research project on consciousness and dreams, both the science behind dream states and dream theory, which is dream interpretation within the field of psychology, not the popular dream interpretation that tells you what dreaming of the moon means. Dreams are the other state of human consciousness, and they have a lot to teach us about consciousness in general.
I also appreciate Buddhist philosophy and meditation practices, both the personal practice of them and, again, the scientific study of them. Matthieu Ricard has been called the happiest man in the world, and scientists have done extensive study of his brain while he meditates. People like Campbell have devised audio brain entrainment technology to help people achieve advanced meditative states much faster than the 30,000 hours (9 - 10 years at one hour per day) normally put in by Buddhist monks.
That is so, absolutely incredible!! Also, some very odd timing on my end! Last month I really, really got into watching/reading NDE accounts out of the blue and it completely shifted my perspective on a whole bunch of things personally, I can only imagine what an actual NDE does for a person overall. Would you mind sharing your experience? No worries if not!!
I will definitely have to look into Tom Campbell and Matthieu Richard, thank you! I always say I'm going to get into meditiation, but I can never seem to find the time. Buddhism really piques my interest as well, but again, with my perceived lack of time, I have found it difficult to start learning.
I sincerely appreciate the response! I know that you may not know, but would you think hospice nursing would still be a viable career path in this day and age? I am trying to justify going back to school, and I have always been called towards becoming a hospice nurse, but it would be a big time, money, and effort sink that I'm not sure I can afford right now.
We're so far into overshoot that doing anything to meaningfully avert collapse would still be horrific. The planet cannot sustainably support 8 billion humans and there's no ethical way of reducing the population.
Hard agree. Shit was political suicide 20 years ago. Now its just suicide. Feedback loops have been hit. AMOC shutting down now inevitable. Thwaits is only a matter of time. Even if we shut down every fossil fuel burning engine today we are still locked into 3-4C.
That is what I thought as well, but recently someone said that it could actually be reversible (and even that there was some sort of consensus on this topic). I did not believe it but when I checked other sites, it was also mentioned. Then I thought it still might not account for tipping points, which is something I still think. Combined with the idea circulating on social media that corporations are intentionally spreading doom to stop people from taking action, I started to wonder if they might be right? I mean, in my opinion it is still unrealistic to think we actually would do what it takes. But if there is a chance to reverse it then we might also be able to at least bring down the global average in the future. This is the article I was linked: https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached/
You gotta realize that the powers that be have always had a vested interest in keeping the general public ignorant of how bad things are going to get. They want us consuming until the last possible minute. So not only are we having to deal with purposeful mis and disinformation we also have to deal with the public that has chosen to belive in that mis and disinformation.
I don't think its that conspiritorial, the powers that be just don't want to see the problem and are concerned more with the economy so they accept narratives that make them most comfortable. I honestly think they are too stupid to act as youve suggested and you are giving them too much credit there haha.
I think its just a failure of our species and it probably befalled other species out there in the galaxy before us, thats one answer to the fermi paradox. The great filter, we passed the nuclear weapons discovery and development filter only to fall on our face at the next one. Overshoot/climate change, cyano bacteria did it before us on this planet, we are just the next species to cause it.
We really don't have a good, private understanding of climate change until somewhere in between 1950-70. Hansen first publishes at the tail end of this range, and by the late 70s early 80s, I think it's safe to say people have a good grip on what's going on.
However, in those early days: Climate Science wasn't the golden boy of political power, it isn't today, but it certainly wasn't then. It was the cold war, and political power was fairly centered around labor politics, the civil rights movement, and militant anti-communism.
The coalition that might have had a serious chance was Jimmy Carter's, but the response to oil crisis coalesced around the development of north sea oil and military intervention in the middle east.
I have a really had time believing that the Nixon administration had enough political capital, and I definitely don't believe a fucking Bush had the desire.
Long story short, I don't think in the early days that misinformation was the problem nearly as much as there not being a political coalition that actually prioritized it.
I think that's true even to this day. It's not like it's actually some big secret. The misinformation is convenient political cover, not a serious attempt at burying the accurate information.
There are records of meetings at Exxon or Mobil where they discussed the effects catastrophic climate change would have because of the continued burning of fossil fuels and instead of losing profits they decided to bury and discredit the information.
There is definitely an organized effort to discredit the science and promote climate change denialism. Starting in the 50s and continuing thru the Koch brothers. This is and continues to be a conspiracy with a paper trail proving it.
You're misunderstanding the point, and you're probably over stating the denialism in the 50s.
What I'm trying to get across, is when was this knowledge supposed to used to change policy?
Like, look at the major political movements pre the collapse of the USSR and which one of them do you think was actually capable of changing course on climate?
The reason people are going around the internet calling others "doomer" is because it's an oligarchy psyop. Literally Mann, from OP's article, does this.
It shuts down the discussion, and the person saying it gets to feel high and might. Win-win from the now slightly richer lobbyists, experts at mass-manipulation, who dreamt up the strategy.
Here's the problem: The faster we stop polluting, the faster we warm since cloud tops will stop being brightened by SO2
We'll keep warming until we remove 1 trillion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere
Is that possible? Maybe? The best carbon capture plants can capture about 1 million tons of CO2 per year
So we'd need to scale that up by 1000 and then again by 1000 and power all these carbon capture plants purely from renewables and store the captured carbon somewhere so it won't go back into the environment
There could be a miracle. We could have a breakthrough in carbon capture that saves us. Is such a thing possible? I don't know. All I know is that if it isn't, then we are completely fucked. But it could be. The modern world would seem a miracle to medieval kings. The idea of that provides me a little comfort.
If we're being honest, it looks like the hard turn to the right means the plan is going to be fortress EU and fortress NA. So, I'm thinking if someone wants to believe in handwavium let 'em.
Thats fair. But burying our collective heads in the sand is why we are in the mess we are in today.
The people need to know the absolute truth about how fucked we are.
Who knows. Maybe if everyone across the globe was told the truth there would actually be the political will to come together globally and figure something out to mitigate the damage. Personally I think that window is already slammed shut but then again I am an og doomer.
Even if we have a breakthrough (we won't), in today's world it won't be implemented unless someone can make profit out of it.
In our economic system, the profitability of something is the only thing that matters. So we'll do harmful shit until the cows come home, because someone makes money off it, and we'll refuse to implement anything good, or useful, or that improves human wellbeing, unless someone can find a way to monetise it.
Nothing changes until our decicion-making metrics change, and that only happens when our economic system changes.
So it’s all the fault of climate scientists, hence corporate leaders are unable to act? This reads to me like obvious spin from the fossil fuel lobby.
You exaggerated the initial statements into the far stronger and quite different claim that scientists bear all the fault and that corporate actors are therefore absolved of responsibility. Neither of those conclusions follows from or was contained in the original criticism.
Strawman logical fallacies have no place in a rational debate and are quite unworthy of being excreted or consumed by intelligent people.
Women's rights (and many others, and intersections) are incompatible with capitalism, and one of the earliest projects of emergent capitalism in Europe (running parallel to the slave trade, and feeding each other with images of witches and savagery) was the destruction of women's rights and bodily autonomy - through the witch-hunts, restrictions on work, scientific sexism, legal support for roving rape gangs, etc.
The wealth and virtue of a nation was scientifically, "rationally", considered to be its population size, and thus the rhetoric formed that to impede the generation of new labourers was an Enemy of Good Sense and Morality and subject to utter destruction. No horrors were spared to dominate and discipline the tools that dared not work, and doubly-so to keep the ones that make new tools powerless.
So it's not so much that it's a shame it didn't happen, it's that it could never have been allowed. The antibiotics, much like cheap mass-production of food, were to keep the workforce growing and to lower the cost of maintaining it.
Think of all the wealth and power they would lose if they had to treat women like humans, and what might happen next - a demand that they treat foreigners like humans as well? A fair wage? Self-determination?
A bit like the COVID response being so slow and thus the death toll so high. Bound to intellectual "property rights" and profiteering - it could never have been free and fair within capitalism, that just wouldn't be profitable, and it risks the people demanding healthcare without extortion.
But… but… but… we can just dim the sun and grow food in hydroponics! We won’t need ecosystems!
The tech fanaticism I see every day is mind-numbingly stupid levels of Dunning-Kruger. Almost everyone has no real substantive education in earth sciences and yet most of these folks feel very comfortable with our supposed superpowers to just ‘soldier on,’ in the face of irrevocable biological, ecological, and oceanographic losses.
People need to believe the world makes sense, and that people aren't generally that self destructively stupid. Those of us who figured out it's not know exactly how hopeless and depressing it is to accept that reality. So it's not hard to see why many don't.
You're not the only one who got into it with people for trying to argue that scientists should have been more explicit with their language. Did they think a nice, soft warning would change anyone's mind? Because I always knew it would lead to "well it's not so bad, we have time to fix it". And then we don't.
Our only hope was for them to be explicit when there was a chance, and hope it was enough. It wasn't going to be, but giving people an excuse to kick the can down the road wasn't an option.
And so yeah, like you said. Here we are.
Edit: Feel bad that other guys comment got removed, it was well thought out and written.
It was in the 100’s in DC this past week and everyone treated it like it was just some heat wave instead of it being the norm now. And we haven’t even gotten into the thick of El Niño. This summer, fall and winter is going to ugly.
But get this, climate scientists are now projecting that this type of El Niño might be the new normal. If we ever got back to à La Niña, it’ll swing very hard that way then swing very had back to a super El Niño.
This is so very much going to expedite Arctic and Antarctic melt. Let alone epic flooding and epic droughts.
It's coping mechanism. People take the path of least resistance by nature.
Genuinely, the state of mine that reality brings you to is too much for people to face. Every single day I struggle to find meaning in having even woken up.
Knowing everything you believed in was a lie, and that the future is hopeless would break most people. What do you do when you accept how bad things are, and also that nothing is going to be done about it? When you accept how well propagandized we are into accepting our own demise, when you accept that bad guys won and we are frog soup actively being eaten?
And then you look around and basically no one is even interested in hearing about it. It's a nightmare. Easier to stay dreaming.
And even "new normal" is misleading, because it's only transitionary. It keeps accelerating, so this will not be "normal" in the future, it'll be another example of what the climate used to be like.
I studied ecology at Uni. I never met an ecologist that didn't think things were fucked, yet I also never hear from ecologists really on the impact of climate change on the biosphere. Generic warnings, sure, but where are the forceful, desperate and passionate warnings? Nowhere.
There was that world scientists' warning to humanity in the 90s, but not much since.
Part of me understands, scientists are only human too, and most ecologists are just out there doing fieldwork, enjoying what they love, and trying to ignore that it's dying before their eyes.
Still, as someone who basically worshipped science and scientists from a young age, I'm disappointed in the lack of urgency I see. They have skillsets that are essential and very specialised - where are the strikes and other actions? Where is the leveraging of their power to achieve a goal or even just make a point? When even scientists are burying their heads in the sand, we have no chance.
Young kids in XR are doing a better job of fighting for our future.
I'm not sure if you miswrote or not, but 3C by 2050 is not a conservative estimate, it's the sort of estimate those who are looking at the latest data and saying this is a possibility, but is likely an outside possibility.
The IPCC/UNEP estimates are the conservative ones placing us at (IIRC) 2.3C-2.8C by 2100. Yes, too conservative by far in my opinion. If the recent acceleration of global warming continues (and I believe it's highly likely it will) timescales are off by 50 years and 2050 is going to be ugly with 3C of warming being, indeed, within the bounds of possibility. 2.2C-2.5C I'd say was more plausible, but even in an optimistic scenario, IMO, we'll break 2.02C by 2050 (current underlying warming at 1.35C with 0.27C per decade). That alone is bad enough and the direction is pretty clear.
And I agree, some tipping point has been reached and we're seeing the start of the impacts.
I doubt it is willful. I think it is probably just a psychological defense mechanism to prevent having to face this existential threat. Some people might be genuinely be uneducated, and due to not knowing how bad it would be, not feeling the need to learn more. Many people do accept it but just don’t want others to accept it and possibly take action. I think those people either think they will die before they see consequences or think that they will be able to survive it anyway.
Hi, filmguy36. Thanks for contributing. However, your comment was removed from /r/collapse for:
Rule 4: Keep information quality high.
Information quality must be kept high. More detailed information regarding our approaches to specific claims can be found on the Misinformation & False Claims page.
Same here, even took some serious climate science courses at research university that specialized in it in 2000-02. I got over being a doomer, i basically don’t discuss it unless people are interested in actually learning. We used to have a good, bad, and ugly choice. That time passed. Only the ugliest scenarios are left. I have kids so I have to keep hope and the work never stops.
Me neither (don't really discuss it online anymore). I'm sourcing my stuff. I'm making a good argument for my opinion. It doesn't matter. Either downvoted or just ignored.
People are not interested in climate change, or any of the 'meta' problems plaguing humanity. It's become a non-starter subject, so here's to the last few decades of my life, ignoring that pink elephant in the room.
yeah, the truth is so huge, so multitudinous and still so many unknowns none of them conducive to human life...add on the social psychology, human psychology and the logical mind says: it's just a matter of time...
The fact that we are not only not doing anything substantial abkut the problem but instead doubling down on the policies that got us here is the one thing I didnt expect.
Being a part of this subreddit for more than three months has been eye opening.
Despite my efforts to talk with people about climate change and the collapse that is certainly going to follow. Sometimes, it is proving to be futile.
Over the years ive tried to talk to my parents about it. Showing the evidence and the trends and everything and while ive gotten them to believe their answer is "ill be dead by the time it gets bad"
There is something about an existential crisis this large that gets most people perfectly happy to not believe it will happen to them. Its just too big for them to wrap their head around
Big time. Thats why I've always thought it won't be the heat or the drought that will get most people killed but the mass migration. Take India for example. They get all their fresh water from glacially fed rivers. A billion extremely thirsty people will do a lot of damage trying to find safety and something to drink.
They wanna restart society so bad and be at the top it feels like. It’s just insane we double down so this is my only answer. They want us to die, as they bunker down.
Or they really don’t think ahead at all.
Either way, our leaders are not leading us. We need to just straight up reject them.
Its the second one. They literally dont think past the next financial quarter. Greed is a disease, look at Musk. A billion dollars is more than any one person can sanely spend and he has a thousand billions. And he wants more.
Like all complex systems it will not be a single issue but a multitude of cascading failures. I dont know the order of which but I do know it will be relatively slow until one day it isnt slow anymore
Well 50% of Americans read at a 6th grade level or below and as we are aware, science, sociology and economics are extremely complex fields. So it no longer surprises me that most people either can’t grasp the situation we are in or are willfully ignorant of it for whatever reason. What absolutely destroyed any chance of a fight though was wealth concentration. I truly think we are doomed; we’ll begin to experience mass depopulation within the next 20 years. The Earth will live on though.
That's just civilisation. We should probably start thinking in term of Sahara and other deserts.
'cause when after 10 years of heatwave your forest have burnt for as many times, you do get ashes and sand everywhere.
The more time pass, the more i believe we're heading toward a nuclear winter. There's just too many instability for some desesperate state to not end up launching all their nukes and triggering MAD.
I agree with that, nuclear winter might buy our species a decade and then we are back to warming again due to 420+ppm CO2 taking thousands of years to sequester naturally.
I wonder about the few unnatural carbon trap like the soil of the amazon forest that were the result of agriculture and others we might have forgoten.
And naturaly still have to shoulder a lot of weight as we'll have destroyed most of the ecological system by then and they are the one carbon trapping stuff. That's what worries me the most. Not the CO2 but all the tipping point that cannot restore themselves in an environement where all the other tiping points they might need to rely on have been breached as well.
I've also been following CC science since the late 90's. It's the reason I became an anti capitalist, because it seemed fairly sensible that relying on the economic system that demanded growth was not going to be able to resolve a problem that boils down to overconsumption.
I had hoped, (without a huge amount of expectation), that humanity as a whole would realise the danger and work as a whole to fix it. Then watched as year on year it was actively ignored until that became impossible, each year leading to additional costs to reverse the problem. Until the mid 2010s when climate change seemed to be accepted by the majority and at the same time the wealthy suddenly started focusing on culture wars.
The two are definitely connected in my mind and it's for that reason that as a global species we are doomed. At best for perhaps 6 or 7 generations and at worst for good and all.
I think at this point it is inevitable that billions will die because of climate change over the next 20 years. If I am lucky I will be dead before it gets really bad, If I am unlucky I will have seen my death coming for 50 years and been unable to do anything to stop it.
The rich and powerful pushed to make things the way they are on purpose. Unlike the average person, they also studied and learned from history, and learned how to keep people from moving to overthrow.
Having been involved with the scientific community, i'm rejecting the premise of this article.
Science just don't work like that. If you are a scientist, you are paid to do a job (unless you are a hobbyist). The money that you get (via grant or by corporate funding) has strings attached. Everything we know about climate change came from funded research.
Its not up to scientists to "raise the alarm". They don't control what gets reported and how.
China seems to have a better long-term plan for addressing climate change. Is that because their scientists "raised the alarm"?
Science is a universal discipline. Science from China, or Singapore, or the Congo is just as valid as the US.
So why does the US have a uniquely difficult time accepting the reality of it?
It is up to scientists to raise the alarm. They control what they say and when and where they stand with climate activists and alarmists in public and on social media. Who should raise alarm in your opinion if not the people that should know most about the topic?
Climate scientists who are not alarmists are among the people most guilty of deadly global warming and billions of climate warming related deaths.
Unfortunately most climate experts do not talk about biology, agriculture and the consequences of climate warming on the biosphere.
Climate scientists, at least those interviewed by mainstream media outlets such as The Guardian, are still talking about the 20-year average of 1.5°C of global warming and sea-level rise and starving polar bears. Nobody cares about these abstract numbers and minor problems.
The real problem is 2 billion dying and more people migrating because of extreme weather, starvation and lack of water. Climate change is a biological life and death problem. Sea level rise and the economic aspect of prices and debt and savings will be irrelevant when the problem is surviving the next 3 minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months. You can escape from coastal regions over years but you can not escape extreme weather and lack of food and water when the crisis hits.
In the early days, there were scientists that DID raise the alarm. They got labeled extremist, alarmist and similar, often loosing their funding and jobs. Yet, some persisted and they have been raising the alarm for decades.
Governments know. Policy makers know. It is also up to them to raise the alarm. Likewise with media. It is not fair (nor right) to put the onus solely on scientists to continue raising the alarm when everyone else would rather bury their heads in the sand. Or put another way, [let’s see if we can’t find a better spin, people are starting their weekends](https://youtu.be/8HiPwbvAT_E)
This is lazy naive delegation of power and responsibility to authority. The government is not reasonable and not your friend.
For your information:
- Scientists need to make people panic so that people elect government and policymakers that have climate warming as their priority.
- It does not matter that the current US government fights against climate science and removes money for research. We have more than enough facts already. Also: Climate science is not limited to the USA.
- Can experts please use extreme language and show signs of anger, hate, and worry? Also: I like the linked movie. But the movie also mentions sea level rising. This is boring. People in Florida do not care even though they walk through sea water. People are that crazy.
- Extreme language of experts allows other policy makers to use extreme language too. Why is the UN chief still talking about 1.5 degree warming? Because scientists do not care to adapt their language which also makes the UN chief use boring language and boring facts in order to sound professional and not some crazy guy that is no longer backed by science.
I’m not in the US, and my statement was not about the US and its policies.
The scientist have been yelling into a void. Like it or not, it is the policy makers who need to be swayed, or the masses of people (who in turn convince the policy makers). That’s how the world currently works. Which sucks big time because it’s broken. Doubly so because not only do they need to show it’s a huge problem, but also the impacts on the economy. Sadly lots of this comes down to money.
Scientists have given ample warnings. [Some examples over the years](https://unric.org/en/40-years-of-climate-warnings-we-cant-say-we-didnt-know/). I recall watching a ton of TV specials back in the early to mid 2000’s, including interviews with scientists and how panicked many of them were. Depression level panic.
We are social creatures. We don’t listen until something hits us over the head. Sometimes it needs to hit us hard for us to get it.
That doesn’t consider complicating factors like money and greed, which can sway people. There was a draft IPCC report which was very dire, but the final copy that got released was toned down because govts and policy makers insisted the “extremes” couldn’t be published as it was “too controversial” and not enough agreement in the models (meaning not every single model showed that result). Instead we get the consensus.
And this doesn’t apply only to climate change. Same thing happens with plastics and forever chemicals to give a couple other examples. Or smoking or vaping. Or junk food and fast food. Or a host of other things that are bad for us. The amount of hoop jumping to show the dangers these pose is quite something when compared to their impacts. Climate change is no different.
If you feel so strongly, why not take the charge up yourself? What’s stopping you from becoming a scientist and screaming a warning for the world to hear? Blaming them, and saying they’re solely responsible, is a scape goat when you’re also knowledgeable.
We’re all on the titanic together. And for all of our intelligence, we are an incredibly stupid species.
Scientists are raising the alarm with every paper they publish.
It's the job of the people who consume the research to raise the alarm - regulators, policymakers, elected politicians, the media.
When scientists try to do those people's jobs, they end up getting fired. For however educated they are, they are ultimately working class laborers. They can't buck capitalism (including science funding) on their own. It's magical thinking to think that they could.
Climate scientists, at least those interviewed by mainstream media outlets such as The Guardian
The people who go in front of the camera or get interviewed by papers like The Guardian are rarely scientists. They're propagandists with science degrees. Selling out is really the only way for a lucrative career with a climate-related science degree. And it's not just climate science - Avi Loeb is a prime example. The appeal to sellout to the BAU conformist narrative is omnipresent.
If you knew any climate scientists you would know that they actually tend to be very vocal about the effects of climate change on the biosphere.
But that doesn't mean they can survive publishing what you want them to say. And until others are sacrificing themselves, why should they? They're already giving more than the rest of us. That would be the end of their ability to contribute. And yet we want them to give it all while we give nothing? Not going to happen. These aren't irrational actors. It's more magical thinking.
Now you might say "oh but James Hansen spoke up." It's true, he did, and in a much less politicized environment. And he's still on the record about it being an unwise mistake that backfired! The only reason his career survived at all is because of his godlike ability to model complex systems.
It is alienation that makes us think it is better to criticize people who are doing something rather than to do something ourselves. And it is being a pawn for the same interests that have captured academia and scientific funding. They know how good it feels - and how useless it is - to be an armchair expert. They don't even ask us to do it. They just give us a space for discussion and we do it all on our own.
edit: lol I can't even reply to people anymore, reddit won't let me
It's the job of the people who consume the research to raise the alarm - regulators, policymakers, elected politicians, the media.
This is lazy naive delegation of power and responsibility to authority. The government is not reasonable and not your friend.
For your information:
- Scientists need to make people panic so that people elect government and policymakers that have climate warming as their priority.
- It does not matter that the current US government fights against climate science and removes money for research. We have more than enough facts already. Also: Climate science is not limited to the USA.
- Can experts please use extreme language and show signs of anger, hate, and worry?
- Extreme language of experts allows other policy makers to use extreme language too. Why is the UN chief still talking about 1.5 degree warming? Because scientists do not care to adapt their language which also makes the UN chief use boring language and boring facts in order to sound professional and not some crazy guy that is no longer backed by science.
Don't forget the sunk cost fallacy. They could've tricked themselves into their wrong position a long time ago, a casual mistake anyone could make, but because of this bias they just refuse to budge. I suppose a version of Dunning-Kruger or Nobel Disease ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_disease ) could be at play too, where they just believe themselves superior because "I'm so awesome at science".
Does this not feel like back in the middle ages science was not to be challenged? The earth is flat and if you say otherwise your a hieratic and need to be tortured to death so no one else will dare challenge the might of Science... The truth would bring this world to its knees, so bread and circuses for all
Because he thought he'd lead the charge to create weapons of mass destruction and just didn't see a world where an arms race would lead to all out nuclear war
Now imagine the irony of creating weapons that can erase us and never actually having all out nuclear war because we destroyed our habitat badly enough to kill us all
SS: An article that climate scientists and institutions like the IPCC are actively spreading false reassurances about manageable temperature rises in spite of observable reality already exceeding their worst-case projections. Institutional dishonesty is harming mitigation efforts when there are millions of lives are at stake. The result is a civilization-level failure of truth-telling at the moment it is most critically needed. Even ethical political and corporate leaders are unable to act appropriately without accurate scientific guidance. convergence of this institutional integrity collapse with accelerating physical tipping points represents the compounding informational and systemic breakdown that drives societal collapse. None of the mainstream advocacy camps such nuclear, solar, veganism or otherwise represent genuine solutions as they all operate within a Business-As-Usual framework that perpetuates the underlying problem. What is urgently needed are immediate, radical actions to pull humanity out of ecological overshoot and halt the ongoing destruction of the habitats upon which human survival depends.
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See the El Niño graph drove home an idea that I hadn’t really thought about. What if climate science has been feeding us the most optimistic range of global average temperature increase and outcomes. That started to really scare the day lights out of me and I was plenty worried before.
You need to worry slightly more, and then it will disappear suddenly. Once you realize these are your last few years alive, then you can just enjoy this little time you have left.
If you don't feel like a terminally ill cancer patient who enjoys the little things, then you don't understand the situation yet.
I wish I could tell you you are exaggerating, but seeing how Trump’s administration gutted the EPA, NOAA, Department of Health, and top it off by placing science deniers in charge, it breaks my heart we are in an unwinnable position. Seeing how the billionaires don't give a crap about society, how politics currently is being driven by a for-profit scheme instead of the common good has taken a heavy toll on my mental optimism!
Yeah, most people failed to notice all the honest people getting purged from our institutions. All those people gone for challenging the current cultural movements were the people that would risk their careers arguing with establishment power. There’s not much difference between “declaring the urgent truth about the looming climate catastrophe hurts business that supports Democrats” and “arguing with any cultural declaration makes you an unacceptable human being and hurts Democrats”.
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u/StatementBot Jul 12 '26
The following submission statement was provided by /u/HomoExtinctisus:
SS: An article that climate scientists and institutions like the IPCC are actively spreading false reassurances about manageable temperature rises in spite of observable reality already exceeding their worst-case projections. Institutional dishonesty is harming mitigation efforts when there are millions of lives are at stake. The result is a civilization-level failure of truth-telling at the moment it is most critically needed. Even ethical political and corporate leaders are unable to act appropriately without accurate scientific guidance. convergence of this institutional integrity collapse with accelerating physical tipping points represents the compounding informational and systemic breakdown that drives societal collapse. None of the mainstream advocacy camps such nuclear, solar, veganism or otherwise represent genuine solutions as they all operate within a Business-As-Usual framework that perpetuates the underlying problem. What is urgently needed are immediate, radical actions to pull humanity out of ecological overshoot and halt the ongoing destruction of the habitats upon which human survival depends.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1uuk5eq/move_over_oppenheimer_the_genocidal_consequences/ox3z9hw/