Thanks for describing my fears of the future as a "death fantasy" that's definitely what they are! I know you can speak with authority about this, because you have a PhD, so even though every piece of climate science I encounter tells me we're fucked, I'm glad to know it's just me fantasizing, and not at all reacting to verifiable fact.
There is not a single climate change paper out there that says "Your great Aunt Martha is going to be stabbed by an ecofascist on August 21st 2031". That is probably not going to happen! It could happen, but there's no sense in worrying about that outcome for Ole Aunt Maratha when there are so many to choose from. You're taking real, aggregate trends and predictions and using them to construct specific worries for specific people. Are you equally concerned about Aunt Martha's diet and exercise cause if she's in the US, current science indicates it's going to be heart disease and not the Rural White Citizens Brigade that does her in.
Yup that's totally what you've been saying, which is why you've completely ignoring my closing statement,
I'm not interested in the closing statement, because it's predicated on the feelings of doom the rationality of which I am questioning. If you just posted your closing thoughts I wouldn't have anything to say, but you insist on leading into them with a catalog of climate change death scenarios.
No you're just denying every specific way in which it will take shape
No, I'm just denying that you can generalize from aggregate trends to specific predictions about specific people. I don't freak out everytime I get into a car, even though in aggregate that's one of the most dangerous things I do. I do freak out every time I get on a plane though, humorously enough, because I am an irrational sillybilly. I don't spend any time fretting that my friends and family are going to get T-boned on the highway, despite the fact that TONS of people do and will get T-Boned on the highway. There's no sense in it.
I think the many many many many many aggregate horrible things that we know for a fact will happen - things you claim you do not deny will happen
Correct, lots of bad things are going to happen.
are going to aggregately make life so miserable and unbearable and increasingly hostile to human life, that most of us are going to die some unpleasant death.
Nope, haven't seen any numbers that support this specific claim with any reasonable degree of probability. 25% of humanity dying of climate change causes would be an undeniable apocalypse, and actually not that far-fetched. But even under that scenario "most of us are going to die a climate change death" would be incorrect. Because of how numbers work.
But you are of course not invalidating climate change, even though you are now presenting it as something that can be solved with a simple diet.
No, I'm contrasting your willingness to fret over long-range, far-fetched deaths for your friends and family while not giving a whit about the current leading causes of death. Surely if you're worried about your friends and family dying you'd want to focus on the stuff that is currently killing the most people and not just the Roland Emmerich stuff.
I thought you wanted to look to what we can do, and wanted to discuss what should be done to make the world a better place? Now the discussion has once again taken a turn and we are at another subject. Fascinating how you, a selfproclaimed pedant that thinks being clear in language is very important, chooses to change subject willy-nilly.
You absolutely should focus on what you can do to make the world a better place. But we've not ever left the subject of you insisting leftists should think that each of use is doomed to a climate death.
Yet another classic of climate change deniers, but you are of course not denying anything
I'm denying that it's necessary or even reasonable to live in daily fear of cars killing everyone I know despite the fact that cars do and will continue to kill tons of people. Just like climate change, which does and will continue to kill tons of people.
For the record, I mean "climate change [attributable] death" here, using a but-for notion of causation, which would include things like the social, political, and economic developments attributable to climate change.
Why would I post about diet and excersice on a thread about climate change?
You wouldn't post about how doomerish heart disease and cancer have you feeling anywhere, which is my point.
I think leftists should be realistic about what the future entails, so as to be most effective in their organizing
I agree with this, and I think that involves a degree of humility in our ability to predict precisely what the future entails. When you start saying "I'm going to die in the next 20 years due to x, y, or z", you're bending science way past it's breaking point into flights of fantasy.
I do not live in daily fear, and I do not think people should.
Good, but you also feel
Still I feel as though I am staring down the barrel of a shotgun built out of misery and shit. No one my age wants to talk politics, climate or the future, because it looks so fucking bleak - Sure we might be able to have a good life or part of a good life, but the world that is coming looks like hell on earth. When we say "things aren't going to get better" we are talking about this sentiment. It feels as though the world is ending and there is nothing to do.
You can feel that way, but there is no need for a leftist to feel that way, and I'd argue it's largely unhelpful.
Look, I've literally moved to my current location based on climate change models and have taught myself food preservation and run a community vegetable gardening to learn agricultural skills. But I also have a retirement account. I have no idea what's going to happen in the future, and certainly don't trust in my ability to predict the future to point where I'd want to let it sap my enjoyment from the present.
I agree with all of this, with the important distinction that there seems to be a degree of evangelism to his position. It's one thing to develop your own coping mechanisms related to existential anxiety, but another thing entirely to imply that such existential anxiety is rationally motivated and should be shared, which I think is being done specifically here
They argue that realizing and admitting how completely and utterly fucked we all are is actually anti-leftist, it is defeatist. I disagree, and I think it's a poor argument, because it dismisses rightful worries held by a lot of people. It also strikes me as unscientific
The fact that they're copying and pasting these bits of a little a manifesto in multiple climate change posts doesn't do much to dispel that notion for me.
So to sum up, I'm glad that they've developed an attitude of perseverance and struggle against the forces making our wold a worst place, I don't appreciate the implication that leftists should under-go some doomerist dark enlightenment to get there, as not everyone will come out the other side.
I have to agree with him. The person you are replying to is doing the absolute most to try and control their narrative about what you (and what they) are saying instead of having any meaningful conversation with you. The best thing to do would have been to stop replying 5 posts ago, and the next best thing is just to stop doing it now.
They routinely are trying to own you about your PhD or whatever, since they are trying to frame you as talking down to them and lording over them with your degree (which I've not seen you do, you've simply used it to try and give yourself some credibility above "random schmuck posting on hexbear") and to be fair, you are attempting to educate them about it by trying to get them to see that extrapolating general trends is not a coherent way of examining these studies, but they are not receptive to the education you're trying to provide, so it's not worth the effort.
FWIW I also have an advanced education and work in a field so closely related to climate change, atmospheric dynamics, and so much of my recent funding and research is looking into climate change and working with climate scientists, that I can effectively just say that I do climate science. You are not wrong.
The reason we have close to 0 idea how its going to effect the actual material lives of people in Pittsborough, MS is because we have virtually 0 funding going to that, and virtually 0 of our collaboration is working with Sociologists or other people who are capable of examining that. ALL of our money is coming from people who want to know where they will be able to put their bunkers to be maximally safe. That's just the truth.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious to me at this point they want to have it both ways where they can engage in these sorts of lurid death fantasies but also retreat to much more defensible ground of scientific predictions when this sort of doomporn fanfic stuff gets called out as unhelpful. It sorta reminds me of this same phenomena that was noted to play out with COVID
Because I exercise regularly and it is something I can take care of myself?
You can't take care of your friends and families exercise habits yourself.
I have however posted about Long Covid and how it makes me doomerish.
See, it's the flashy stuff again. Long covid is a huge problem, but it's not worse that diabetes or heart disease from a scientific medical perspective, so I just don't understand the attention mismatch unless we're willing to just accept a baseline level of shit and misery.
I wonder why I never put a specific range of years where this would happen, it's almost as if I countless times admitted for uncertainty, it's almost as if I mentioned I might be wrong as well
I mean you admit you could be wrong, which is good. In any case, I'm not taking issue with your statements as wrong (because I don't know if they are) but as unjustified. The claim that a majority of people reading these posts will die of climate adjacent causes may or may not be true, but it is absolutely unjustified based on the current literature. That doesn't make it impossible or even implausible, it just means that the current preponderance of evidence does not point to that as being the most likely outcome, so I don't think we should fixate on it.
Where am I saying this is a constant thing?
I genuine hope it isn't. It's certainly not a rare thing given this is something like the third climate change post I've run into with you in nearly as many days. > Wow this sure would be poignant if it weren't just a regurgitation of my ending statement. Should we start a tally at how many times I've referred to it? It almost seems like you ignore it so you can continue to have a pointless discussion
Wow this sure would be poignant if it weren't just a regurgitation of my ending statement. Should we start a tally at how many times I've referred to it? It almost seems like you ignore it so you can continue to have a pointless discussion
Semantics again. It is an individual issue, they can solve themselves.
Statistically they won't though.
You are now moving the goalposts again. You were arguing I did not have this worry for other stuff, I explained why, you kept arguing, I showed I had this worry for other stuff
I argued you did not have this worry for things that were objectively killing the most people, and your response to that was to claim you did have this worry about things which was not killing the most people like long covid. I then further noted that you worries about long-covid and climate change share the commonality that they're new, and flashy modes of death, and not the meat-and-potatoes grim-reapers like heart disease that the current science indicates as being the most likely causes of deaths for the people you care about.
Sure seems like you do hope it is, since you keep insisting that is what I believe and feel.
I'm not insisting on that at all, that's just the impression I've gotten from what you said, and am more than happy to be wrong about it.
Holy fuck I love semantic pedantry
Oh come on have a bit of fun with language for a bit will ya that was a self-deprecating joke about viewing one's own statements with charity not extended to others.
There is not a single climate change paper out there that says "Your great Aunt Martha is going to be stabbed by an ecofascist on August 21st 2031". That is probably not going to happen! It could happen, but there's no sense in worrying about that outcome for Ole Aunt Maratha when there are so many to choose from. You're taking real, aggregate trends and predictions and using them to construct specific worries for specific people. Are you equally concerned about Aunt Martha's diet and exercise cause if she's in the US, current science indicates it's going to be heart disease and not the Rural White Citizens Brigade that does her in.
I'm not interested in the closing statement, because it's predicated on the feelings of doom the rationality of which I am questioning. If you just posted your closing thoughts I wouldn't have anything to say, but you insist on leading into them with a catalog of climate change death scenarios.
No, I'm just denying that you can generalize from aggregate trends to specific predictions about specific people. I don't freak out everytime I get into a car, even though in aggregate that's one of the most dangerous things I do. I do freak out every time I get on a plane though, humorously enough, because I am an irrational sillybilly. I don't spend any time fretting that my friends and family are going to get T-boned on the highway, despite the fact that TONS of people do and will get T-Boned on the highway. There's no sense in it.
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Correct, lots of bad things are going to happen.
Nope, haven't seen any numbers that support this specific claim with any reasonable degree of probability. 25% of humanity dying of climate change causes would be an undeniable apocalypse, and actually not that far-fetched. But even under that scenario "most of us are going to die a climate change death" would be incorrect. Because of how numbers work.
No, I'm contrasting your willingness to fret over long-range, far-fetched deaths for your friends and family while not giving a whit about the current leading causes of death. Surely if you're worried about your friends and family dying you'd want to focus on the stuff that is currently killing the most people and not just the Roland Emmerich stuff.
You absolutely should focus on what you can do to make the world a better place. But we've not ever left the subject of you insisting leftists should think that each of use is doomed to a climate death.
I'm denying that it's necessary or even reasonable to live in daily fear of cars killing everyone I know despite the fact that cars do and will continue to kill tons of people. Just like climate change, which does and will continue to kill tons of people.
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For the record, I mean "climate change [attributable] death" here, using a but-for notion of causation, which would include things like the social, political, and economic developments attributable to climate change.
You wouldn't post about how doomerish heart disease and cancer have you feeling anywhere, which is my point.
I agree with this, and I think that involves a degree of humility in our ability to predict precisely what the future entails. When you start saying "I'm going to die in the next 20 years due to x, y, or z", you're bending science way past it's breaking point into flights of fantasy.
Good, but you also feel
You can feel that way, but there is no need for a leftist to feel that way, and I'd argue it's largely unhelpful.
Look, I've literally moved to my current location based on climate change models and have taught myself food preservation and run a community vegetable gardening to learn agricultural skills. But I also have a retirement account. I have no idea what's going to happen in the future, and certainly don't trust in my ability to predict the future to point where I'd want to let it sap my enjoyment from the present.
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I agree with all of this, with the important distinction that there seems to be a degree of evangelism to his position. It's one thing to develop your own coping mechanisms related to existential anxiety, but another thing entirely to imply that such existential anxiety is rationally motivated and should be shared, which I think is being done specifically here
The fact that they're copying and pasting these bits of a little a manifesto in multiple climate change posts doesn't do much to dispel that notion for me.
So to sum up, I'm glad that they've developed an attitude of perseverance and struggle against the forces making our wold a worst place, I don't appreciate the implication that leftists should under-go some doomerist dark enlightenment to get there, as not everyone will come out the other side.
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I have to agree with him. The person you are replying to is doing the absolute most to try and control their narrative about what you (and what they) are saying instead of having any meaningful conversation with you. The best thing to do would have been to stop replying 5 posts ago, and the next best thing is just to stop doing it now.
They routinely are trying to own you about your PhD or whatever, since they are trying to frame you as talking down to them and lording over them with your degree (which I've not seen you do, you've simply used it to try and give yourself some credibility above "random schmuck posting on hexbear") and to be fair, you are attempting to educate them about it by trying to get them to see that extrapolating general trends is not a coherent way of examining these studies, but they are not receptive to the education you're trying to provide, so it's not worth the effort.
FWIW I also have an advanced education and work in a field so closely related to climate change, atmospheric dynamics, and so much of my recent funding and research is looking into climate change and working with climate scientists, that I can effectively just say that I do climate science. You are not wrong.
The reason we have close to 0 idea how its going to effect the actual material lives of people in Pittsborough, MS is because we have virtually 0 funding going to that, and virtually 0 of our collaboration is working with Sociologists or other people who are capable of examining that. ALL of our money is coming from people who want to know where they will be able to put their bunkers to be maximally safe. That's just the truth.
Yeah, it's pretty obvious to me at this point they want to have it both ways where they can engage in these sorts of lurid death fantasies but also retreat to much more defensible ground of scientific predictions when this sort of doomporn fanfic stuff gets called out as unhelpful. It sorta reminds me of this same phenomena that was noted to play out with COVID
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You can't take care of your friends and families exercise habits yourself.
See, it's the flashy stuff again. Long covid is a huge problem, but it's not worse that diabetes or heart disease from a scientific medical perspective, so I just don't understand the attention mismatch unless we're willing to just accept a baseline level of shit and misery.
I mean you admit you could be wrong, which is good. In any case, I'm not taking issue with your statements as wrong (because I don't know if they are) but as unjustified. The claim that a majority of people reading these posts will die of climate adjacent causes may or may not be true, but it is absolutely unjustified based on the current literature. That doesn't make it impossible or even implausible, it just means that the current preponderance of evidence does not point to that as being the most likely outcome, so I don't think we should fixate on it.
I genuine hope it isn't. It's certainly not a rare thing given this is something like the third climate change post I've run into with you in nearly as many days. > Wow this sure would be poignant if it weren't just a regurgitation of my ending statement. Should we start a tally at how many times I've referred to it? It almost seems like you ignore it so you can continue to have a pointless discussion
I mean I don't see them as being equivalent, but that may be one of those irregular verb scenarios.
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Statistically they won't though.
I argued you did not have this worry for things that were objectively killing the most people, and your response to that was to claim you did have this worry about things which was not killing the most people like long covid. I then further noted that you worries about long-covid and climate change share the commonality that they're new, and flashy modes of death, and not the meat-and-potatoes grim-reapers like heart disease that the current science indicates as being the most likely causes of deaths for the people you care about.
I'm not insisting on that at all, that's just the impression I've gotten from what you said, and am more than happy to be wrong about it.
Oh come on have a bit of fun with language for a bit will ya that was a self-deprecating joke about viewing one's own statements with charity not extended to others.