I thought the impact of climate change on El Nino was not really settled (notably due to the erratic nature of the ENSO), do you happen to have a source on that?

Of course there is a limit. The question is how high it is. For instance, at high enough CO2 concentrations, the greenhouse effect doesn’t get much stronger anymore. Also, the more CO2, the faster it dissapears by eroding rocks. That happens on a geological timescale, though.

If we did something to lower temperature, I’d be very worried about the CO2 concentration’s other effect: feeling like suffocating all the time.

Honestly, corporate footprints is all that needs to be thought about when thinking about climate change.

The shifting of blame to the individual or even putting it on the individual to “help” is avoiding the real issue. And even if individuals are contributing, which I acknowledge they are but at a much lower rate of impact, then probably the best way to change individual consumption/waste is once again by abolishing capitalism which guides the production of the material reality utilized to create such individual waste in the first place.

I’m not going to go point by point because I think it’s not productive to act as if this kind of argument has only two sides. When we talk about subjects in a persuasive fashion, where we’re trying to win someone over to our side, it frequently has the opposite effect, entrenching is into our already polarized views.

We need to concern ourselves with moral relativism to make appropriate decisions. In an ethical sense, I believe sexual assault of a human is at least an order of magnitude worse than milking a cow. But that opinion comes largely from the fact that I’m a human and I’m not a cow.

If we want to sway someone’s opinion, I think we should focus less on absolutes and more on quantities. We should meet people where they are. Maybe instead of driving home all the disturbingly true reasons we should never milk or even breed cattle, we should use those same arguments to highlight the absurdly destructive impact of doing those things at the scale which we are.

If half of society has a burger and a milkshake once a month, there is a significant environmental impact on milking those cows and raising those cattle to be slaughtered, as well as a very real moral cost. There is also some emotional benefit to the human of consuming fats and proteins from those sources. And both positive and negative nutritional effects as well.

It’s already difficult to compare costs and benefits from such wildly different categories when it’s just one burger a month. Humans are emotional beings and even a well-reasoned argument may not trump the emotional feeling one gets from a hamburger and a shake.

But consider the changing of factors if those same people go from one beef product and one dairy product a month to one every other day. Or even more frequent. How much more land it takes, how much more suffering the livestock go through in conditions designed for maximum profit and minimum concern for moral costs. The additional methane production, the deforestation, the added risk of heart attacks. All the bad parts multiplied wholesale, while the good parts all experience diminishing returns.

If you take one of those semi-daily beef and dairy consumers, and give them a hard line, where any consumption of beef or dairy is unacceptable, is that going to generate a positive or a negative effect on the system as a whole? Some may be convinced to quit consuming, but I feel their difference will be swallowed by those who feel called out in such a way that they would rather consume even more out of principle than face the hard truth that their lifestyle is wrong. It’s easy for humans to build walls of cognitive dissonance, where we know what we’re doing is harmful, but we make excuses for ourselves to avoid facing that reality.

If you want the masses to face their collective reality, we need to meet people where they are. Maybe burgers and milkshakes will always be part of your life. But there are alternatives that can be a different part of a life rich in variety. If someone currently eats a burger every other day, maybe they can strive for once a week. And if that goes well, once a month. And then, once they have a greater familiarity with the culinary variety that’s possible, they may start to forget to eat that meal entirely.

We should remember that we’re all just people. We don’t need to be on different sides. You don’t need to be wrong and neither do I. We’re just earthly passengers connecting electronically in a wide cosmos. Our lives are all so different and yet uncannily familiar. So we’ll get more mileage out of sharing our experiences than prescribing them to others. Because if we feel we’re being talked down to, we’ll decide we’ve already picked a side. But if we’re just sharing, then we’re all on the same endless side. In that spirit, none of what I’m saying is meant to invalidate anything you’ve said. Only add to it.

And just to add, I don’t mind if there’s a bit of feces in my milk. It looks perfectly white, so I imagine it’s in low enough quantity that it’s not a health risk after pasteurization, and as far as I know, the quantity is also low enough that it doesn’t effect taste. But I think cows should have good lives even at the expense of productivity, and milking should be a voluntary behavior, perhaps in exchange for appropriate compensation, rather than something that’s forced on them. Just my two cents (plus about a buck fifty).

Cow milk has faeces in it?

If we all had this point of view, that’d be the end of us.

It’s more that climate is the long-term average, while weather is the variation around the average. So while there is an trend in the average temperature, the variation means that there will still be hotter and cooler periods.

Yes. The average temperature of the globe is higher, but global warming is not applied evenly and the chaos caused to global weather currents does actually cause some regions to get colder.

Mathematically it’s obvious and straightforward but the point is that it’s not intuitive from a typical person’s subjective perspective. It’s easy to underestimate or dismiss the rate of change until a situation becomes unmanageable.

cough Italy cough

No country bought into the fear mongering about nuclear energy after Fukushima as much as Germany did.

Germany bought the fear mongering BEFORE Chernobyl (which of course accelerated it). Also their “green” party was founded on the goal of getting rid of nuclear in the 90s. Real Engineering on Youtube has a great video on this whole thing

Looks like coal has increased from 2021 to 2022 as nuclear decreased.

Who’s engaging in whataboutism?

Unless you’re Chinese, there’s very little you can do to stop that, as opposed to encouraging your country’s politicians who have proven commitment to curb climate change.

So “China builds 5 coal plants every day before breakfast” is the whataboutism here.

The point is that this poster is a WuMao and will say anything to try and support the Chinese government. Sad that they have wormed their way in here already.

National pride ✨

Same same same. It’s all their fault for manufacturing all of our shit and still having half of the CO2 emissions per capita compared to the US.

In agreement with your broader point but a different approach: to say that we should die out as a species due to climate change is over-simplifying, imo. Yes, there are hardships ahead and we truly need to look at ourselves as a species and ask what needs to change for the sake of ethics and others. However, we have been in dire situations before, albeit with less foreknowledge. Would someone living in, say, 1840 have wished that humanity had died out in the bronze age collapse, when the near-entirety of known civilization collapsed due to climate change?

When considering the entire species we can’t take such a short term view. Yes, hard times are ahead. Yes, we will get through it. I say if one is inclined not to have kids, he should not have kids. But if one is inclined to do so, he should do so

We are not that special. And if we were, it wouldn’t matter anyway. We are just going to kill ourselves.

Oh that’s an easy one, life exists to further the entropy of the universe. That’s the only reason. Entropy cannot be reversed, and it’s extreme is inevitable.

I disagree, what’s different from previous civilizations is our usage of energy. We found fossil fuels which are basically conveniently stored sunlight and we have used this abundance to help ourself to do more while using less stored energy in our bodies.

There isn’t that much oil left which especially behaves like miraculous liquid, kind of like magic. Without it our society would collapse and majority of people would be required to go back to fields to grow food.

Any survivors wouldn’t have all the currently existing technology as most easily accessible recourses are already gathered. All while current inventions continue to decay and require replacement eventually, leaving behind only mountains of trash.

Good luck relying on the coin flip that civilisation gets to a point it can make use of those before they all oxidise, metals don’t last forever, nor do they maintain the capacity for all applications due to quality.

That “born too late to explore earth” bit hits my heart big time. I’ve always been sad that we can’t do that anymore like we used to be able to. People a thousand years ago could just leave and explore if they wanted, then pitch a tent somewhere beautiful and live there if they chose. If you wanted you could live at the top of a mountain, or inside of a cave covered by a waterfall. Such beauty and freedom. It’s sad that a thousand years later, all of our “progress” has essentially taken away nearly all of our freedom in that regard. You never had to be hungry back then, you could hunt or plant food nearly anywhere you pleased. Never had to be homeless, you could fell some trees and build a cabin somewhere beautiful. Now? Most people are fortunate if they can afford a vacation a few hours away once every year or so, if that. There’s no peace of mind, we all work work work and scramble to fulfill as many of our endless obligations as possible. Then we retire, if fortunate enough and hopefully don’t have to work as hard for a little bit and die. I’ve always had dreams of sailing the sea and exploring, almost like memories in my mind. Maybe it’s a past life, maybe it’s memory passed down through my DNA, maybe it’s fantasy. I don’t know what it is, but I know that it’s what feels right to me. Planting down and living in our homes/work almost our entire lives then dying feels so wrong. I care almost nothing about material wishes or monetary gain, but I’d like to be rich in order to travel and feel free.

I’m sorry if that sounded too harsh.

I consider finding econiche and surviving in it a win condition. When scaling it to whole universe, it would be being able to exist without consuming and decaying their environment they need for their existence.

Unfortunately, or not, I don’t think there is a single species that can live forever. I think all life is based on consumption, one eating something else and growing until it exceeds its limits in environment, after which it decays to meet its carrying capasity.

Eventually sun no longer provides sunlight and plants stop growing. Chemosynthetic bacteria and some fungi may still use some compounds as their energy source, but they have limits as well and eventually all life simply perishes.

So do I believe or think there is something to win? To me simply being alive is a win. The space seems very empty and deadly to me. It’s miraculous that we exist, although sad that we are causing extinction event.