WaPo: A kind of dark realism: Why the climate change problem is starting to look too big to solve

[femmedem]

"In the daunting math of climate action, individual choices and governmental policies aren't adding up.

Solar panels are being nailed to rooftops, colossal wind turbines bestride the plains and oceans, and a million electric vehicles are on U.S. roads--and it isn't enough. Even if the world did an unlikely series of about-faces--halting deforestation, going vegetarian, paying $50 a ton carbon taxes, boosting energy efficiency, doubling car mileage, and more--it would not be enough...


[snip]


"Climate scientiests and policy experts realize they walk a fine line between jolting consumers and policymakers into action and immobilizing them with paralyzing pessimism about the world's ability to hit climate targets.


"If you're driving on a highway and the car in front of you stops short, and you slam on brakes and realize you're going to hit the guy no matter what, that's not the time to take your foot off the brake," said John Sterman, a professor of management at Massachussetts Institute of Technology's business school. "And you certainly don't step on the gas."


Much more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/a-kind-of-dark-realism-why-the-climate-change-problem-is-starting-to-look-too-big-to-solve/2018/12/03/378e49e4-e75d-11e8-a939-9469f1166f9d_story.html?utm_term=.6afc74dd7990&wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1

[LongtimeAZDem]

1. I was studying Physical Geography in college almost 30 years ago, when the consensus that

climate change was human caused was being advanced by the scientific community.

My professors all said the same thing: "We sincerely hope that somehow we're wrong, because if we're right, we'll never convince people to do something about it in time."

[femmedem]

2. Prescient.

I was studying painting closer to 40 years ago, and I knew climate change was a big, scary deal.

[femmedem]

3. Giving this a kick for the evening folks. n/t

[The_jackalope]

4. From a comment:

"The people who needed to act were your grandparents. It's too late now."

I agree, completely and utterly. It is too late to avoid major damage to human civilization, and has been too late for 50 years or more.

I have no qualms about identifying myself as a pessimist and a fatalist. Enjoy being alive. Don't have children, it wouldn't be fair to them. Make peace with others. Laugh a lot. Do whatever you think is right under the circumstances.

[defacto7]

6. this

[NNadir]

5. A part of the problem which few people anywhere will admit is that solar panels and wind turbines...

...are fingers in the dike, and the dike is collapsing on the kid whose finger is the plug.

I never see a popular discussion that doesn't reference these two types of devices, solar panels and wind turbines, on which two trillion dollars were spent in the last ten years alone.

Frankfurt School/UNEP Global Renewable Energy Investment, 2018, Figure 3, page 14

No one ever stops to consider the consequences of the fact that they haven't worked, aren't working, and won't work to address climate change.

They're like talismans, and people who evoke them in the face of their obvious failure while carrying on about how they "believe in climate change" - as if a scientific fact was subject to "belief" - and then announce that we need wind and solar power to address it are - I use this analogy a lot - like physicians who correctly diagnose a cancer and then announce that the cure is to go to a shaman in Peru.