You miss that many, perhaps most so-called doomers can accept that it is highly likely that humanity will face near term dystopia and still act to reduce harm, bring joy and even work on mitigation.
People are complex and go through cycles as I have experienced and witnessed. One could be a doomer for one day or one year, and then be hopeful, optimistic, in different despairing and most every other emotion over time.
I strongly disagree with your superficial analogy between doomers and deniers. As others have pointed out where is the data to support your simplistic conclusion?
To be truly informed about the climate and ecological crisis, without having feelings of despair and hopelessness, is a willful and perhaps unhealthy denial of reality.
There is a slight chance of avoiding a dystopian future. And that is through the emergency scale and speed deployment of the Climate Triad - direct cooling of the climate through modifying albedo, large scale CDR and Accelerated emission reductions.
Along with smart growth and transformative adaptation a dystopian future may still be avoidable. Yet ironically it is often the same climate scientists who condemn doomers who also strongly oppose direct cooling of the climate thus also ensuring a dystopian unimaginable future.
When you say "truly informed" what precisely do you mean by that? In my experience, the lack of information on the environment was the thing that sent me down the climate doom spiral, nearly causing me to end my life. My nightmares were filled with biblical end times imagery with constant fires, hundreds of feet of sea level rise, hurricanes stretching as far inland as Kansas, billions dying from famine over the course of a few years. It wasn't until I actually looked at the science and what was plausibly going to occur in the future, I was much less hopeless. Not saying that climate change isn't going to do bad things, but I know for certain many of my worries of near term doom were wishful thinking at best. In fact, research seems to back me on this.
When you step away from the online slacktivist space and step into a college lecture, its far drier and nuanced than "we're all doomed if we don't halve our emissions in 2 minutes!!1!1!". So education, if anything, is what liberates people from despair
I expect there is a difference: doomers will be hard at work preparing for the end of the world; while deniers would continue their other projects without a care. There might be social and environmental consequences to prioritizing the end of the world, especially if the doomer does not expect consequences to matter at all.
It's funny you mention social and environmental consequences to prioritizing the end of the world. The groups we should all be afraid of are the Evangelical Christians. A lot of them believe that we are literally in the "End Times". It influences them, a lot.
Half of evangelicals support Israel because they believe it is important for fulfilling end-times prophecy
I would classify myself as a lukewarmer. Yes, the climate is warming, yes anthropogenic CO2 has something to do with it, but I don't think a degree or so of warming per CO2 doubling is a particularly big problem. There are far bigger problems in the world. However, I don't like pollution which is why I am not a fan of coal as a fuel: too many particulates and too much SOx and NOx emissions.
I have two big problems with the alleged solutions to the problem.
The first is strategic. What if warming is caused by factors other than CO2? Things like solar and ocean cycles, the things that caused the Medieval Warm Period and the LIA? Yet, we are spending most of our efforts on mitigation and virtually nothing on adaptation. Adaptation has the advantage of protecting us, regardless of cause.
The second problem is that the solutions we are working on like wind, solar and biomass cause bigger problems than those they are supposed to solve. Biomass involves clearing rain forest to make way for palm oil plantations and burning trees at Drax produces more CO2 and particulates than burning coal.
Then we go on to the land and mineral requirements for grid scale wind, solar and battery storage. Not much in the way of CO2 emissions, but still a massive environmental footprint and still intermittent energy.
If we must decarbonise, the only high density, high EROEI, reliable solution is nuclear power. It has the problem of not yet being very flexible to cope with peaks in demand. But wind and solar can't be relied upon for that either. So David Mackay had it right years ago when he proposed nuclear plus gas. Low, but not zero, CO2 emissions, but relatively cheap, reliable energy with a small environmental footprint. We need to get better at building nuclear plants faster, which will bring down the LCOE.
‘What if warming is caused by factors other than CO2? ‘ Your argument rests on this weakly evidenced and low probability proposition, rather than the strong evidence for the far higher probability proposition that it is caused by CO2. IPCC, IEA and UK CCC all lay it out. Wind and solar, and storage in concentrated solar power/molten salts, hydrogen and pumped hydro as well as some batteries are all compatible with nuclear and gas during the transition. If Drax burning new growth trees on a 30 year cycle, say 1/30 of a UK plantation each year, it would be CO2 neutral - something never possible for a coal or gas fired station, even if it isn’t fuelled from such UK plantations at present. All of these energy sources have problematic environmental impacts, but warming poses the biggest imminent threat and nuclear, solar and wind have the lowest CO2/KwH, way less than coal and gas, and wind and solar are cheaper per megawatt and quicker to build.
'Probability' has no part in science and should not form the basis of evidence-based policy making. Pierre Darriulat on the IPCC attribution statement:
"It is sensible to ask for a scientific summary of the IPCC work, not addressing policy
makers but as objective as possible a summary of the present status of our knowledge and
ignorance about climate science. Such a report must refrain from ignoring basic scientific practices, as the SPM authors blatantly do when claiming to be able to quantify with high precision their confidence in the impact of anthropogenic C02 emissions onglobal warming. Statistical uncertainties, inasmuch as they are normally distributed, can be quantified with precision and it can make sense to distinguish between a 90% and a 95% probability, for example in calculating the probability of getting more than ten aces when throwing a die more than 10 times. In most physical problems, however, and particularly in climate science, statistical uncertainties are largely irrelevant. What matters are systematic uncertainties that result in a large part from our lack of understanding of the mechanisms at play, and also in part from the lack of relevant data. In quantifying such ignorance the way they have done it, the SPM authors have lost credibility with many scientists. Such behaviour is unacceptable. A proper scientific summary must rephrase the main SPM conclusions in a way that describes properly the factors that contribute to the uncertainties attached to such conclusions."
‘Confidence interval’ is an alternative. What word we choose to describe the level of confidence in the greenhouse effect and CO2 and methane acting as greenhouse gases, is not that important. Evidence is the key term I guess, for the effect of C02 levels on global temperature in the past and present. For that we have, for instance, evidence from the historic record of C02 levels and temperatures and then we have the functioning of the greenhouse effect as the mechanism, far simpler than the complex weather systems. We know for instance that the C02 ppm are now higher than any time, since 1880 and the average temperature increase since then. daily #CO2 Record High of 424.83 ppm at Mauna Loa Apr 17 2023 and March global temp average +1.48 C relative to average 1880-1920. If you have stronger evidence of C02 not acting as a greenhouse gas than that it does that would be news to climate scientists.
As they say, correlation is not causation. The paleo evidence suggests strongly that CO2 increases lag increases in temperature. That CO2 is a 'greenhouse gas', i.e. it absorbs and re-emits infrared radiation, is not in dispute. Its effectiveness as a driver of global mean temperature is, as well as the magnitude of the vital water vapour feedback needed for the 'enhanced greenhouse effect' (which is hypothesised to be the main cause of the post industrial increase in global mean temperature), not to mention the confounding effect of natural internal variability and the role of clouds. These systemic uncertainties cannot be quantified or dismissed in the way that the IPCC attempts to do when deriving its probability based attribution statement.
Thanks. Indeed correlation is not causation, hence the need to specify the causal mechanism- I.e the greenhouse effect over which it appears we can agree along with the data on temp increases and ppm. The difficulty as you say is attribution, ‘how much’ temp increases can be attributed to emissions and how much to natural variability. That said the correlation with C02 is strong and the mechanism clear and correlation is a good indicator of causation, as its absence is of an absence of causation. I don’t think there’s a any comparable period in the past when ppm levels have risen so much globally over such a short time frame to check if the correlation is consistent and therefor even more unlikely to be coincidentally caused by natural variation I.e now and in the past, but there maybe. The lag you speak of was I think over far longer periods of gradual increases in C02 levels. Given the strong evidence for the causal mechanism and despite the difficulty in establishing robust and precise numbers for the exact level of probability in attribution for emissions as the principle cause of temperature increases (rather than natural variability), it appears odd to be drawn to the explanation (natural variability) that just happens to coincide with big increases in emissions, rather thinking the explanation for which there is a clear mechanism and a strong correlation (GGE) is the more likely cause.
This website has a discussion going back to 2008 in the comments that provides a good collection of research and debate. You may know the site. The comments section is quite a read. I’ve copied and pasted the start but there’s 100s of pages on this subject. ‘ What does past climate change tell us about global warming?
What the science says..
Previous climates can be explained by natural causes, while current climate change can only be explained by an excess of CO2 released by human fossil fuel burning. Records of past climates indicate that change happened on time scales of thousands to millions of years. The global rise in temperature that has occurred over the past 150 years is unprecedented and has our fingerprints all over it.
Climate Myth...
Climate's changed before
Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. (Richard Lindzen)
The total rate of global warming observed since the industrial revolution can only be explained by the observed excess of CO2 in the atmosphere. The excess of CO2 can only be explained via human sources. Let us first examine the post-industrial revolution warming and some of the telltale signs that humans are responsible.
The human fingerprint
How can we be sure that humanity’s release of greenhouse gases are to blame for the observed rise in global temperature? First, let’s look at evidence showing that greenhouse gases are causing the current warming. Then we will explore how we know that the recent increase in greenhouse gases is due to human activity.
Greenhouse gases like CO2 are understood quite well, so we can make predictions about what we should observe. When CO2 is added to the atmosphere, it causes the lower atmosphere (aka the troposphere where we live and experience its weather) to warm. This warming occurs because the added CO2 traps infrared heat emitted from the Earth's warm surface - heat that would otherwise escape to space. However, in the stratosphere, above the troposphere, adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes it to cool. This is because the extra CO2 in the stratosphere radiates more heat to space. The stratosphere has been cooling in recent decades, as atmospheric CO2 increases. This also rules out the sun, as an increase in solar energy would heat the whole atmosphere.
Another example, predicted by Arrhenius in 1896, states that winters should warm more than summers. Hemispheres receive less sunlight in winter and cool down by radiating energy away into space. If greenhouse gases were increased, they would act to prevent some of that energy from radiating away, thus warming the winter hemisphere. The warming effect on winter was predicted to be greater than that of summer. Again, this is observed.
It is also possible to use statistical techniques, like detection and attribution studies, to compare the relative contributions of various factors (such as greenhouse gases, aerosols, etc.) towards the recent global warming trend. These too show that the recent global warming trend cannot be explained without the additional greenhouse gases humans have released into the atmosphere.
Given that the warming is caused by greenhouse gases, how do we know that human CO2 emissions are specifically to blame for their sudden increase? This too can be quantified.
Figure 1. Examples of human fingerprints on global warming. Source
We have accurate estimates of how much CO2 we release each year, and we also have a good understanding of the natural annual variability of CO2. Although the land and ocean are absorbing CO2 all the time, it is not enough to prevent the increase of atmospheric CO2. There is currently more CO2 being put into the atmosphere annually than natural processes can remove. One way to observe the ocean absorption of CO2 is by the increasing acidification of ocean water.
Additionally, the average atomic weight of atmospheric CO2 is observed to be decreasing. The carbon atom in CO2 can have different amounts of neutrons in its nucleus, a difference we can measure. Of the three main reservoirs of CO2—plants, water, and air—plants have a detectably lighter average weight of CO2. This indicates that much of the atmospheric CO2 is coming from a plant based source. Fossil fuels, the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions, are made of fossil plants, and therefore contain the lighter average atomic weight of CO2.
There are other examples of human fingerprints, like the depletion of atmospheric oxygen due to combustion or nights warming faster than days, which confirm our scientific understanding. The planet is warming unnaturally fast, and the only explanation is the excess release of greenhouse gases like CO2 by humans.
The myth commits the single cause fallacy
Now let’s take a closer look at the myth. The myth that current climate change is natural because past climate changed naturally makes an implicit, and incorrect, assumption. It assumes that because the climate has changed from natural causes before, it can only be changing from natural causes now. This is committing what is known as the single cause fallacy. As the name suggests, this is when a phenomenon is falsely attributed to a single cause, even though other causes are possible. It would be similar to saying that smoking cannot cause cancer because people were getting cancer before cigarettes were invented. In the following sections we will look at different examples of past climates commonly used in the myth.
Previous warm climates and energy balance
One version of this myth compares current climate to past periods where CO2 levels were comparable but temperatures were different - this is meant to sow doubt about the legitimacy of CO2 as a driver of climate change. However, this discrepancy can be explained by the process of energy balance.’
The vital question here is 'how much' of recent warming is due to CO2? Because if the answer is 'just a small fraction' (which might well be the case looking at current evidence and ongoing research into natural climate variability), then the 'problem' of man-made climate change disappears and the 'problem' then becomes one of adaptation to predominantly natural climate fluctuations.
Yes, it's too expensive at the moment. I am working on a piece looking at how we can bring down the cost of nuclear. I think the two main drivers are cost of capital and build time. SMR's should also help, with smaller plants pre-fabricated in factories.
However, we should also not overlook the value of the power provided. Well maintained nuclear plants operate at 90% load factor, and work 24 x 7. The value of that energy is far greater than wind or solar, which only produce when the weather is favourable. We can't run a modern economy on intermittent energy.
One of the main reasons they are expensive is the regulations requiring radiation to be As Low As Reasonably Achievable which increases costs significantly for minimal reductions in radiation which in many places is lower than natural background radiation.
I am not sure that this is true for reactors recently built by the Russians, Chinese and South Koreans (see Barakah nuclear power plant). In any case, comparing the cost of nonstop power generation with intermittent power generation is absurd. Lazard's consultants are well aware of this and that's why they now include solar and wind with some storage.
One paper found that the cost of building containment vessels for US nuclear reactors was a key factor in their increasing cost and long build times, at least in large part due to "declining on-site labor productivity":
"We find that nth-of-a-kind plants in the US have been more expensive than first-of-a-kind plants, with “soft” factors external to reactor hardware contributing over half of the cost increase between 1976 and 1987. Costs of the reactor containment building more than doubled, primarily due to declining on-site labor productivity. Productivity in recent US plants is up to 13 times lower than industry expectations."
Anything that might mitigate that would clearly have a big impact.
From a re-read of that GE page, it looks like grid "firming" may involve a combination of baseload power sources, "peaking" units which kick in when customer demand is expected to be highest, storage (to which both baseload and intermittent sources can contribute, at times when generation exceeds demand), and perhaps also some additional grid management tactics?
Just noting there's (at least) a fifth candidate for providing such power (noting this list is irrespective of costs or environmental impacts), alongside coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission: geothermal.
There's a good introduction to next gen geothermal (analogous to next gen nuclear) here:
Lazard is not a neutral player on the issue of energy costs. Like other financial entities, it has a vested interest in the continued public investment in intermittent energy.
I am neither a Denier nor a Doomer, and I am happy to see the chart which shows both are marginal outliers on the circular spectrum.
But there is also another group that deserves recognition—Decarbonizers—for their blind dedication to delusion and dogma, driven by the belief that simply reducing fossil fuel emissions by absolute decarbonization or its faux twin Net Zero will suffice.
For those of us dedicated to restoring a Holocene (or a close approximation) for future generations’ flourishing survival, there is another “D”—I’d call us Disciplined Doers, deliberating and deploying demonstration test outside-the-box innovative projects based on unbiased and unconstrained scientific understanding complex Earth Systems.
To make a complex long story short, yesterday, I discovered (thanks to a friend) PBS's movie "Beneath the Polar Sun" (pbs.org/show/beneath-polar-sun) which illustrates my point: There is no way to mitigate what the movie graphically shows but to #CoolTheArctic. Thirty years is all it took to get the Arctic ice cap to this point, and it will take another 30 years to decarbonize (or reach delusional Net Zero) and by that time the dreaded tipping points will have come and gone, irreversibly. If we just wait for CO2 and CH4 emissions to cease, it will be way past TOO LATE.
EMERGENCY TRIAGE INTERVENTION (think CPR and tourniquet) is required to directly cool the Arctic to restore the sea ice albedo. All while we #RemoveCO2 and #RemoveCH4 to get atmospheric concentration back to pre-industrial concentrations and survivable sustainable 300ppm (Dr. James E. Hansen et al. suggested 300ppm but at least no greater than 350ppm), which is less than 0.5°C, far away from 1.5° or 2°C, levels that are a death sentence to humanity). That was the basis for the group named 350.org.
Imagine that tomorrow, we discovered a world orbiting the Sun directly opposite of the Earth. It has the same inclination and the same size moon. It has an average temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit, with oceans covering 73% of the world, and ice covering 7% of the world. It is teaming with life, although there are no humans or similar species.
It would be a miracle, no? We would definitely stop planning to go to Mars, with its average temperature of -81 degrees Fahrenheit.
The mirror Earth described above is what our world will be under climate change (except for the no-humans part - there will be lots of humans still). ...
I think it can be safely stated there are different kinds of 'doomers'. One kind, not me, see a collapse of society as the planet becomes unsuitable for human life. Another kind, more like me, see a changing planet where a moment is coming. This moment as I see it will be a future global catastrophe where going forward life on this planet will be different for everyone. Then and unfortunately only then will decisions necessary for survival on a now permanently changed planet. I think governments will be forced to give up some of their soverign powers to global supranational environmental management.
Amen Brother! Another "Realist" is always a good thing to come across.
You should read my latest piece. The "moment" you speak of is now. The CRISIS is starting today.
There is a MASSIVE EL NINO starting. The IPCC prediction is that we will get 0.4C of warming. Hansen indicates 0.6C. I think it's going to be closer to 0.8C.
How long Richard will it take to reach global consensus after this 'moment' you write about? Thank you for your essay. This is what worries me. There are so many carried interests.
It's going to be messy and bloody now. We waited too long and the Chinese lost faith in us as partners. They have decided that they want to be in control of the geoengineering project that's coming.
The Pax Americana is dying right now, although few see it yet. You have to be watching the diplomacy to see it, but we are in trouble. After decades of "real politic" we have few friends and the "interests" of the rest of the world are increasingly not aligned with us.
This isn't going to go well for anyone. In the short term this massive heat wave is going to be a catalyst of change and a major stressor for the existing order. The fact that China made the effort to build up their grain reserves and now have 50% of the total global reserves is not encouraging. Both Russia and China are acting as if they expect catastrophic famines to happen in the near future.
There is supporting evidence for this. The fossil fuel interests have been grooming their audience for several years now that "impending famines" will be due to "natural variation".
I kid you not. About 2 years ago I started seeing articles by "deniers" talking about how the famines in the 19th century were the result of heat waves that occurred before CO2 emissions affected the Climate System. They cited this as an example of how famines like this were caused by "natural variation" in the Climate System in the past.
Then used the necessity to protect against disasters like that as justification of further fossil fuel use. It's a very insidious and clever bit of psych-ops. I found it disturbing because their Climate Models tend to give them a 3-5 year lead on what's about to happen with Climate.
The alignment between the signal from the fossil fuel interests and the Russia/China actions strongly suggests that catastrophic famines are about to happen in the near term. The signal from the Climate System is developing along lines that are confirming that analysis.
I would say that this is our Alas Babylon moment. Use it well.
Excellent post. The tendency to exaggerate a problem is universal and almost always destructive.
There is something appealing in the simplicity of exaggeration that inspires an almost religious fanaticism. It is partly a consequence of the effectiveness of virtue signalling to achieve social status in some circles.
I think your discussion might have been helped if you'd done more to describe what you mean by a 'doomer'. I've been something of a radical environmentalist for most of my life, but I'd never seen the damage done by real doomerism until I saw my fiancee--now wife---fall for Guy MacPherson's crackpot ideas about "near term human extinction" (all people on the earth dead by 2026) and the descent of earth into becoming something like Venus within 30 years after that. (Yup, that's right---no multi-cellular life left on the earth within what used to be considered one generation.)
I had to go through a labour of Heracles to convince my significant other that this was nonsense of the first order. And it says something about her love for me that she was willing to stick with me and finally see how crazy his ideas really are. These ideas are tremendously damaging to people with frail psyches.
I wonder if you think that there might be another category beyond the Guy MacPherson cesspool. Call it 'doomer light'. That would be people who say that our present style of civilization is doomed, or, if we pursue the path we are on right now, it will lead to our doom. Perhaps not as a species, but as a civilization.
I don't believe in the personal automobile---I want good public transit. I think far, far too many people are flying around the world---I see tourism as a blight on the environment. I think that economics needs to envision an end to economic growth and embrace some of the ideas of misfits like Herman Daly.
Do these ideas of mine make me a 'doomer light'? I've certainly been involved in a great many projects to make the world a better place (as I see it), but I've always worked outside of the political, economic mainstream instead of as a paid employee of an environmental organization. This was something of a conscious choice, because I've always felt that the pursuit of funding and that paycheque always involves a serious watering-down of the message.
Is being too pure to bend your ideas to the point where you are always an 'outsider' mean that you aren't actually doing anything except futile, empty gestures? I've done many things in my life (successfully sued Walmart, organized bio-regional Congresses, built a strong local Green Party, and, much more), but all the time supported myself with blue collar work. But is that sort of activism just 'empty nonsense' compared to someone who's really a part of society---flogging electric cars, jetting around to international conferences, meeting with government ministers, etc?
There are a lot of nuances, and I'm aiming this comment at your readers as much as you. Consider it something to think about.
Love your Substack. I find lots of useful, thought-provoking stuff on it.
And I'm very glad that you were able to persuade your fiancee, now wife, thanks in part for her love for you, that those "all people extinct by 2026 and a Venus-like Earth within 30 years after that" predictions were false.
There are no end to wild claims stemming from apocalyptic beliefs, whether religiously, politically, or (as here) environmentally motivated. And they can be, as you noted, extremely damaging to the lives of those who are caught up in them – and others who care about them.
As usual, a "Techno-Optimist" gets it completely wrong and craps on people who could be allies. Hannah, do you actually know any "doomers" or are you just blindly repeating the "Techno-Optimist" talking points?
I am a Doomer. Hell, I'm a "Doomer" from the freaking 80's. I have been a "Global Warming Evangelist" most of my adult life trying to rouse people to action. But, I guess I am part of the "problem" now because I don't buy into the "solutions" the Optimists are pushing these days.
I see you and the other "Optimists" as cowards and fools. You don't want any real change to the way the world works. You just want to electrify it.
You want personal cars.
You want travel on demand.
You want cheap consumer goods.
You want everyone to be "vegan".
You don't want to give up anything.
You want a "high energy" lifestyle without guilt and you are pushing the FALSE narrative that this is possible in an attempt to get people to "buy in" to this wonderful FUTURE and start voting Green. Optimists are willing to "lie" to people if that's what it takes.
"Because, “Telling everyone the world as they know it is over and that they’re going to die isn’t an effective communications strategy, even if it’s true.” - David Finocchio
Moving Beyond Doomism: Data-Driven Strategies for Effective Climate Content
Or maybe you BELIEVE that the FUTURE you want is possible and you have convinced yourself of it. As someone who has studied the issue and watched it unfold my entire life, I think you are wrong. I think that the Optimists are the problem now because you are in denial about what the newest Climate Science findings are indicating.
Doomers, real doomers, want ACTION.
We want Air Travel shut down. We want CH4 (methane) shut down. We want ALL the remaining Oil and Coal to stay in the ground. We want a Global Emergency declared and a new Global Treaty that will punish any nation that engages in "ecocide". We want all of the worlds 18-24 year Olds drafted into a Planetary Conservation Corps "right now" so that they can be put to work on the massive infrastructure projects that will be necessary to keep our civilization going.
I think most people can't resist focusing their energy on making fun of those who take a collective problem so seriously, rather than helping them. Who has the most fun in a sinking ship: the poor soul who keeps desperately trying to plug the holes in the hull, or the joker who taunts them by making more and more holes?
It's always easier to mock the socially inept but earnest "nerd" than it is to listen to them. I honestly don't know why I bother commenting.
The argument is about to be over.
In about 8 months we will know how bad the MONSTER EL NINO, that kicks the Climate Crisis into gear, will be. I understand the Climate System and predicted last year that it's going to be VERY BAD.
Eight more months is about how long we have before our Bella Epocha ends.
The issue is complicated. It takes a serious effort to dig down into all the propaganda to find the basic issues. After reading 20 books on the subject and brushing aside the fantasies, I have come to the conclusion that (a) 8 mm of sea level rise per year cannot be stopped (b) Most warming will happen in the North, opening the Arctic Ocean to shipping.
I have finally pulled together my thoughts on all this in a new substack published today. What should our energy policy be in the face of geological, geopolitical and physical reality? The short answer is Nuclear Power Everywhere All at Once. More detail here:
My sense is whether climate denier or doomer, in both cases the realm is uncertainty. Even the deniers (unless they believe in the 6000 yo earth) seem to accept that the climate has pivoted radically at least five times we can pinpoint (from fossil records) and cascaded into a mass extinction. There is likely not enough accuracy/certainty to know when/if current trends might tip the planet in unforseen ways. The change in albedo over a 30 year period is readily observable and hence for the zealots (both sides) fuel for conjecture. It seems to me the "big signals" of concern seem to be polar ice melts (and their predictable rates), subsequent albedo changes, sea level rise. The outsized risk in these cases is inadequacy of modeling to foresee a more rapid tipping point. Articles that report (1) last 20 years as outlier hot (2) melt at the polls wildly unpredictable for myriad reasons (3) mixing beneath the ice in places like Greenland changing the gradient and predictability of currents are all in the infancy of predictability. Donald Rumsfeld might have called these unknown unknowns. It seems likely if you introduce an energy gradient into a VERY COMPLEX system, it is likely to have lots of unanticipated consequences. It is not irresponsible, as a result, to at least buckle up.
Since around 2000, starting with BP's carbon footprint calculator, industry has been shifting tactics away from outright denial towards delay. My making us feel that it's all our fault, but that there's nothing we can do about it, they are feeding the doomers while greenwashing themselves. The marketing campaign is working as intended. It's a feature, not a bug.
Some doomers I know have tried to get goverments and companies to act for 30 years... and are now giving up. I would say the biggest problem in society is people that recognize the problem but think that somebody else will solve this for them. Especially if these are people with a lot of resources and power.
You miss that many, perhaps most so-called doomers can accept that it is highly likely that humanity will face near term dystopia and still act to reduce harm, bring joy and even work on mitigation.
People are complex and go through cycles as I have experienced and witnessed. One could be a doomer for one day or one year, and then be hopeful, optimistic, in different despairing and most every other emotion over time.
I strongly disagree with your superficial analogy between doomers and deniers. As others have pointed out where is the data to support your simplistic conclusion?
To be truly informed about the climate and ecological crisis, without having feelings of despair and hopelessness, is a willful and perhaps unhealthy denial of reality.
There is a slight chance of avoiding a dystopian future. And that is through the emergency scale and speed deployment of the Climate Triad - direct cooling of the climate through modifying albedo, large scale CDR and Accelerated emission reductions.
Along with smart growth and transformative adaptation a dystopian future may still be avoidable. Yet ironically it is often the same climate scientists who condemn doomers who also strongly oppose direct cooling of the climate thus also ensuring a dystopian unimaginable future.
When you say "truly informed" what precisely do you mean by that? In my experience, the lack of information on the environment was the thing that sent me down the climate doom spiral, nearly causing me to end my life. My nightmares were filled with biblical end times imagery with constant fires, hundreds of feet of sea level rise, hurricanes stretching as far inland as Kansas, billions dying from famine over the course of a few years. It wasn't until I actually looked at the science and what was plausibly going to occur in the future, I was much less hopeless. Not saying that climate change isn't going to do bad things, but I know for certain many of my worries of near term doom were wishful thinking at best. In fact, research seems to back me on this.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-023-03518-z
When you step away from the online slacktivist space and step into a college lecture, its far drier and nuanced than "we're all doomed if we don't halve our emissions in 2 minutes!!1!1!". So education, if anything, is what liberates people from despair
I expect there is a difference: doomers will be hard at work preparing for the end of the world; while deniers would continue their other projects without a care. There might be social and environmental consequences to prioritizing the end of the world, especially if the doomer does not expect consequences to matter at all.
It's funny you mention social and environmental consequences to prioritizing the end of the world. The groups we should all be afraid of are the Evangelical Christians. A lot of them believe that we are literally in the "End Times". It influences them, a lot.
Half of evangelicals support Israel because they believe it is important for fulfilling end-times prophecy
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/14/half-of-evangelicals-support-israel-because-they-believe-it-is-important-for-fulfilling-end-times-prophecy/
About four-in-ten U.S. adults believe humanity is ‘living in the end times’
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/12/08/about-four-in-ten-u-s-adults-believe-humanity-is-living-in-the-end-times/
The Far-Right Christian Quest for Power: ‘We Are Seeing Them Emboldened’
Political candidates on the fringe mix religious fervor with conspiracy theories, even calling for the end of the separation of church and state.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/us/christian-nationalism-politicians.html
I agree.
I would classify myself as a lukewarmer. Yes, the climate is warming, yes anthropogenic CO2 has something to do with it, but I don't think a degree or so of warming per CO2 doubling is a particularly big problem. There are far bigger problems in the world. However, I don't like pollution which is why I am not a fan of coal as a fuel: too many particulates and too much SOx and NOx emissions.
I have two big problems with the alleged solutions to the problem.
The first is strategic. What if warming is caused by factors other than CO2? Things like solar and ocean cycles, the things that caused the Medieval Warm Period and the LIA? Yet, we are spending most of our efforts on mitigation and virtually nothing on adaptation. Adaptation has the advantage of protecting us, regardless of cause.
The second problem is that the solutions we are working on like wind, solar and biomass cause bigger problems than those they are supposed to solve. Biomass involves clearing rain forest to make way for palm oil plantations and burning trees at Drax produces more CO2 and particulates than burning coal.
Then we go on to the land and mineral requirements for grid scale wind, solar and battery storage. Not much in the way of CO2 emissions, but still a massive environmental footprint and still intermittent energy.
If we must decarbonise, the only high density, high EROEI, reliable solution is nuclear power. It has the problem of not yet being very flexible to cope with peaks in demand. But wind and solar can't be relied upon for that either. So David Mackay had it right years ago when he proposed nuclear plus gas. Low, but not zero, CO2 emissions, but relatively cheap, reliable energy with a small environmental footprint. We need to get better at building nuclear plants faster, which will bring down the LCOE.
‘What if warming is caused by factors other than CO2? ‘ Your argument rests on this weakly evidenced and low probability proposition, rather than the strong evidence for the far higher probability proposition that it is caused by CO2. IPCC, IEA and UK CCC all lay it out. Wind and solar, and storage in concentrated solar power/molten salts, hydrogen and pumped hydro as well as some batteries are all compatible with nuclear and gas during the transition. If Drax burning new growth trees on a 30 year cycle, say 1/30 of a UK plantation each year, it would be CO2 neutral - something never possible for a coal or gas fired station, even if it isn’t fuelled from such UK plantations at present. All of these energy sources have problematic environmental impacts, but warming poses the biggest imminent threat and nuclear, solar and wind have the lowest CO2/KwH, way less than coal and gas, and wind and solar are cheaper per megawatt and quicker to build.
'Probability' has no part in science and should not form the basis of evidence-based policy making. Pierre Darriulat on the IPCC attribution statement:
"It is sensible to ask for a scientific summary of the IPCC work, not addressing policy
makers but as objective as possible a summary of the present status of our knowledge and
ignorance about climate science. Such a report must refrain from ignoring basic scientific practices, as the SPM authors blatantly do when claiming to be able to quantify with high precision their confidence in the impact of anthropogenic C02 emissions onglobal warming. Statistical uncertainties, inasmuch as they are normally distributed, can be quantified with precision and it can make sense to distinguish between a 90% and a 95% probability, for example in calculating the probability of getting more than ten aces when throwing a die more than 10 times. In most physical problems, however, and particularly in climate science, statistical uncertainties are largely irrelevant. What matters are systematic uncertainties that result in a large part from our lack of understanding of the mechanisms at play, and also in part from the lack of relevant data. In quantifying such ignorance the way they have done it, the SPM authors have lost credibility with many scientists. Such behaviour is unacceptable. A proper scientific summary must rephrase the main SPM conclusions in a way that describes properly the factors that contribute to the uncertainties attached to such conclusions."
https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/47304/pdf/
‘Confidence interval’ is an alternative. What word we choose to describe the level of confidence in the greenhouse effect and CO2 and methane acting as greenhouse gases, is not that important. Evidence is the key term I guess, for the effect of C02 levels on global temperature in the past and present. For that we have, for instance, evidence from the historic record of C02 levels and temperatures and then we have the functioning of the greenhouse effect as the mechanism, far simpler than the complex weather systems. We know for instance that the C02 ppm are now higher than any time, since 1880 and the average temperature increase since then. daily #CO2 Record High of 424.83 ppm at Mauna Loa Apr 17 2023 and March global temp average +1.48 C relative to average 1880-1920. If you have stronger evidence of C02 not acting as a greenhouse gas than that it does that would be news to climate scientists.
As they say, correlation is not causation. The paleo evidence suggests strongly that CO2 increases lag increases in temperature. That CO2 is a 'greenhouse gas', i.e. it absorbs and re-emits infrared radiation, is not in dispute. Its effectiveness as a driver of global mean temperature is, as well as the magnitude of the vital water vapour feedback needed for the 'enhanced greenhouse effect' (which is hypothesised to be the main cause of the post industrial increase in global mean temperature), not to mention the confounding effect of natural internal variability and the role of clouds. These systemic uncertainties cannot be quantified or dismissed in the way that the IPCC attempts to do when deriving its probability based attribution statement.
Thanks. Indeed correlation is not causation, hence the need to specify the causal mechanism- I.e the greenhouse effect over which it appears we can agree along with the data on temp increases and ppm. The difficulty as you say is attribution, ‘how much’ temp increases can be attributed to emissions and how much to natural variability. That said the correlation with C02 is strong and the mechanism clear and correlation is a good indicator of causation, as its absence is of an absence of causation. I don’t think there’s a any comparable period in the past when ppm levels have risen so much globally over such a short time frame to check if the correlation is consistent and therefor even more unlikely to be coincidentally caused by natural variation I.e now and in the past, but there maybe. The lag you speak of was I think over far longer periods of gradual increases in C02 levels. Given the strong evidence for the causal mechanism and despite the difficulty in establishing robust and precise numbers for the exact level of probability in attribution for emissions as the principle cause of temperature increases (rather than natural variability), it appears odd to be drawn to the explanation (natural variability) that just happens to coincide with big increases in emissions, rather thinking the explanation for which there is a clear mechanism and a strong correlation (GGE) is the more likely cause.
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?p=36&t=893&&a=22
This website has a discussion going back to 2008 in the comments that provides a good collection of research and debate. You may know the site. The comments section is quite a read. I’ve copied and pasted the start but there’s 100s of pages on this subject. ‘ What does past climate change tell us about global warming?
What the science says..
Previous climates can be explained by natural causes, while current climate change can only be explained by an excess of CO2 released by human fossil fuel burning. Records of past climates indicate that change happened on time scales of thousands to millions of years. The global rise in temperature that has occurred over the past 150 years is unprecedented and has our fingerprints all over it.
Climate Myth...
Climate's changed before
Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2 levels being lower than they are now. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. (Richard Lindzen)
The total rate of global warming observed since the industrial revolution can only be explained by the observed excess of CO2 in the atmosphere. The excess of CO2 can only be explained via human sources. Let us first examine the post-industrial revolution warming and some of the telltale signs that humans are responsible.
The human fingerprint
How can we be sure that humanity’s release of greenhouse gases are to blame for the observed rise in global temperature? First, let’s look at evidence showing that greenhouse gases are causing the current warming. Then we will explore how we know that the recent increase in greenhouse gases is due to human activity.
Greenhouse gases like CO2 are understood quite well, so we can make predictions about what we should observe. When CO2 is added to the atmosphere, it causes the lower atmosphere (aka the troposphere where we live and experience its weather) to warm. This warming occurs because the added CO2 traps infrared heat emitted from the Earth's warm surface - heat that would otherwise escape to space. However, in the stratosphere, above the troposphere, adding CO2 to the atmosphere causes it to cool. This is because the extra CO2 in the stratosphere radiates more heat to space. The stratosphere has been cooling in recent decades, as atmospheric CO2 increases. This also rules out the sun, as an increase in solar energy would heat the whole atmosphere.
Another example, predicted by Arrhenius in 1896, states that winters should warm more than summers. Hemispheres receive less sunlight in winter and cool down by radiating energy away into space. If greenhouse gases were increased, they would act to prevent some of that energy from radiating away, thus warming the winter hemisphere. The warming effect on winter was predicted to be greater than that of summer. Again, this is observed.
It is also possible to use statistical techniques, like detection and attribution studies, to compare the relative contributions of various factors (such as greenhouse gases, aerosols, etc.) towards the recent global warming trend. These too show that the recent global warming trend cannot be explained without the additional greenhouse gases humans have released into the atmosphere.
Given that the warming is caused by greenhouse gases, how do we know that human CO2 emissions are specifically to blame for their sudden increase? This too can be quantified.
Figure 1. Examples of human fingerprints on global warming. Source
We have accurate estimates of how much CO2 we release each year, and we also have a good understanding of the natural annual variability of CO2. Although the land and ocean are absorbing CO2 all the time, it is not enough to prevent the increase of atmospheric CO2. There is currently more CO2 being put into the atmosphere annually than natural processes can remove. One way to observe the ocean absorption of CO2 is by the increasing acidification of ocean water.
Additionally, the average atomic weight of atmospheric CO2 is observed to be decreasing. The carbon atom in CO2 can have different amounts of neutrons in its nucleus, a difference we can measure. Of the three main reservoirs of CO2—plants, water, and air—plants have a detectably lighter average weight of CO2. This indicates that much of the atmospheric CO2 is coming from a plant based source. Fossil fuels, the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions, are made of fossil plants, and therefore contain the lighter average atomic weight of CO2.
There are other examples of human fingerprints, like the depletion of atmospheric oxygen due to combustion or nights warming faster than days, which confirm our scientific understanding. The planet is warming unnaturally fast, and the only explanation is the excess release of greenhouse gases like CO2 by humans.
The myth commits the single cause fallacy
Now let’s take a closer look at the myth. The myth that current climate change is natural because past climate changed naturally makes an implicit, and incorrect, assumption. It assumes that because the climate has changed from natural causes before, it can only be changing from natural causes now. This is committing what is known as the single cause fallacy. As the name suggests, this is when a phenomenon is falsely attributed to a single cause, even though other causes are possible. It would be similar to saying that smoking cannot cause cancer because people were getting cancer before cigarettes were invented. In the following sections we will look at different examples of past climates commonly used in the myth.
Previous warm climates and energy balance
One version of this myth compares current climate to past periods where CO2 levels were comparable but temperatures were different - this is meant to sow doubt about the legitimacy of CO2 as a driver of climate change. However, this discrepancy can be explained by the process of energy balance.’
The vital question here is 'how much' of recent warming is due to CO2? Because if the answer is 'just a small fraction' (which might well be the case looking at current evidence and ongoing research into natural climate variability), then the 'problem' of man-made climate change disappears and the 'problem' then becomes one of adaptation to predominantly natural climate fluctuations.
The answer to nuclear power is that while it is a technically good solution, it's too costly. The data is here : https://www.lazard.com/research-insights/2023-levelized-cost-of-energyplus
Two large nuclear stations are available for free in Germany, since they were running fine when the crazy government there just shut them down.
Shutting down existing nuclear in favour of coal seems crazy, yes.
Yes, it's too expensive at the moment. I am working on a piece looking at how we can bring down the cost of nuclear. I think the two main drivers are cost of capital and build time. SMR's should also help, with smaller plants pre-fabricated in factories.
However, we should also not overlook the value of the power provided. Well maintained nuclear plants operate at 90% load factor, and work 24 x 7. The value of that energy is far greater than wind or solar, which only produce when the weather is favourable. We can't run a modern economy on intermittent energy.
One of the main reasons they are expensive is the regulations requiring radiation to be As Low As Reasonably Achievable which increases costs significantly for minimal reductions in radiation which in many places is lower than natural background radiation.
I am not sure that this is true for reactors recently built by the Russians, Chinese and South Koreans (see Barakah nuclear power plant). In any case, comparing the cost of nonstop power generation with intermittent power generation is absurd. Lazard's consultants are well aware of this and that's why they now include solar and wind with some storage.
One paper found that the cost of building containment vessels for US nuclear reactors was a key factor in their increasing cost and long build times, at least in large part due to "declining on-site labor productivity":
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254243512030458X
"We find that nth-of-a-kind plants in the US have been more expensive than first-of-a-kind plants, with “soft” factors external to reactor hardware contributing over half of the cost increase between 1976 and 1987. Costs of the reactor containment building more than doubled, primarily due to declining on-site labor productivity. Productivity in recent US plants is up to 13 times lower than industry expectations."
Anything that might mitigate that would clearly have a big impact.
Also noting that there's an industry term for non-intermittent power generation that feeds into an electrical grid: "firming" power.
Here's a GE page describing that, and mentioning some additional terms which qualify "firming":
https://www.ge.com/gas-power/applications/grid-firming
"Baseload" is another term which may have quite similar meaning. (There may be subtle differences between that and "firming"? I'm not sure ...)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_load
From a re-read of that GE page, it looks like grid "firming" may involve a combination of baseload power sources, "peaking" units which kick in when customer demand is expected to be highest, storage (to which both baseload and intermittent sources can contribute, at times when generation exceeds demand), and perhaps also some additional grid management tactics?
Just noting there's (at least) a fifth candidate for providing such power (noting this list is irrespective of costs or environmental impacts), alongside coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear fission: geothermal.
There's a good introduction to next gen geothermal (analogous to next gen nuclear) here:
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/10/21/21515461/renewable-energy-geothermal-egs-ags-supercritical
Lazard is not a neutral player on the issue of energy costs. Like other financial entities, it has a vested interest in the continued public investment in intermittent energy.
I am neither a Denier nor a Doomer, and I am happy to see the chart which shows both are marginal outliers on the circular spectrum.
But there is also another group that deserves recognition—Decarbonizers—for their blind dedication to delusion and dogma, driven by the belief that simply reducing fossil fuel emissions by absolute decarbonization or its faux twin Net Zero will suffice.
For those of us dedicated to restoring a Holocene (or a close approximation) for future generations’ flourishing survival, there is another “D”—I’d call us Disciplined Doers, deliberating and deploying demonstration test outside-the-box innovative projects based on unbiased and unconstrained scientific understanding complex Earth Systems.
To make a complex long story short, yesterday, I discovered (thanks to a friend) PBS's movie "Beneath the Polar Sun" (pbs.org/show/beneath-polar-sun) which illustrates my point: There is no way to mitigate what the movie graphically shows but to #CoolTheArctic. Thirty years is all it took to get the Arctic ice cap to this point, and it will take another 30 years to decarbonize (or reach delusional Net Zero) and by that time the dreaded tipping points will have come and gone, irreversibly. If we just wait for CO2 and CH4 emissions to cease, it will be way past TOO LATE.
EMERGENCY TRIAGE INTERVENTION (think CPR and tourniquet) is required to directly cool the Arctic to restore the sea ice albedo. All while we #RemoveCO2 and #RemoveCH4 to get atmospheric concentration back to pre-industrial concentrations and survivable sustainable 300ppm (Dr. James E. Hansen et al. suggested 300ppm but at least no greater than 350ppm), which is less than 0.5°C, far away from 1.5° or 2°C, levels that are a death sentence to humanity). That was the basis for the group named 350.org.
As always, Hannah, thanks for such clear thinking.
I had assumed that the anti-vegan sections of my latest book (https://www.amazon.com/Losing-Religions-half-failed-airplanes-basketball-ebook/dp/B0BGJGC5D3/ ) would get the most pushback, but it has been my chapters about environmentalists that have caused the most anger. (That and my pro-AI chapter.)
But still, no one has answered me on points like this: https://www.mattball.org/2021/11/the-world-of-tomorrow.html
Imagine that tomorrow, we discovered a world orbiting the Sun directly opposite of the Earth. It has the same inclination and the same size moon. It has an average temperature of 65 degrees Fahrenheit, with oceans covering 73% of the world, and ice covering 7% of the world. It is teaming with life, although there are no humans or similar species.
It would be a miracle, no? We would definitely stop planning to go to Mars, with its average temperature of -81 degrees Fahrenheit.
The mirror Earth described above is what our world will be under climate change (except for the no-humans part - there will be lots of humans still). ...
I think it can be safely stated there are different kinds of 'doomers'. One kind, not me, see a collapse of society as the planet becomes unsuitable for human life. Another kind, more like me, see a changing planet where a moment is coming. This moment as I see it will be a future global catastrophe where going forward life on this planet will be different for everyone. Then and unfortunately only then will decisions necessary for survival on a now permanently changed planet. I think governments will be forced to give up some of their soverign powers to global supranational environmental management.
Amen Brother! Another "Realist" is always a good thing to come across.
You should read my latest piece. The "moment" you speak of is now. The CRISIS is starting today.
There is a MASSIVE EL NINO starting. The IPCC prediction is that we will get 0.4C of warming. Hansen indicates 0.6C. I think it's going to be closer to 0.8C.
How long Richard will it take to reach global consensus after this 'moment' you write about? Thank you for your essay. This is what worries me. There are so many carried interests.
It's going to be messy and bloody now. We waited too long and the Chinese lost faith in us as partners. They have decided that they want to be in control of the geoengineering project that's coming.
The Pax Americana is dying right now, although few see it yet. You have to be watching the diplomacy to see it, but we are in trouble. After decades of "real politic" we have few friends and the "interests" of the rest of the world are increasingly not aligned with us.
This isn't going to go well for anyone. In the short term this massive heat wave is going to be a catalyst of change and a major stressor for the existing order. The fact that China made the effort to build up their grain reserves and now have 50% of the total global reserves is not encouraging. Both Russia and China are acting as if they expect catastrophic famines to happen in the near future.
There is supporting evidence for this. The fossil fuel interests have been grooming their audience for several years now that "impending famines" will be due to "natural variation".
I kid you not. About 2 years ago I started seeing articles by "deniers" talking about how the famines in the 19th century were the result of heat waves that occurred before CO2 emissions affected the Climate System. They cited this as an example of how famines like this were caused by "natural variation" in the Climate System in the past.
Then used the necessity to protect against disasters like that as justification of further fossil fuel use. It's a very insidious and clever bit of psych-ops. I found it disturbing because their Climate Models tend to give them a 3-5 year lead on what's about to happen with Climate.
The alignment between the signal from the fossil fuel interests and the Russia/China actions strongly suggests that catastrophic famines are about to happen in the near term. The signal from the Climate System is developing along lines that are confirming that analysis.
I would say that this is our Alas Babylon moment. Use it well.
Excellent post. The tendency to exaggerate a problem is universal and almost always destructive.
There is something appealing in the simplicity of exaggeration that inspires an almost religious fanaticism. It is partly a consequence of the effectiveness of virtue signalling to achieve social status in some circles.
I think your discussion might have been helped if you'd done more to describe what you mean by a 'doomer'. I've been something of a radical environmentalist for most of my life, but I'd never seen the damage done by real doomerism until I saw my fiancee--now wife---fall for Guy MacPherson's crackpot ideas about "near term human extinction" (all people on the earth dead by 2026) and the descent of earth into becoming something like Venus within 30 years after that. (Yup, that's right---no multi-cellular life left on the earth within what used to be considered one generation.)
I had to go through a labour of Heracles to convince my significant other that this was nonsense of the first order. And it says something about her love for me that she was willing to stick with me and finally see how crazy his ideas really are. These ideas are tremendously damaging to people with frail psyches.
I wonder if you think that there might be another category beyond the Guy MacPherson cesspool. Call it 'doomer light'. That would be people who say that our present style of civilization is doomed, or, if we pursue the path we are on right now, it will lead to our doom. Perhaps not as a species, but as a civilization.
I don't believe in the personal automobile---I want good public transit. I think far, far too many people are flying around the world---I see tourism as a blight on the environment. I think that economics needs to envision an end to economic growth and embrace some of the ideas of misfits like Herman Daly.
Do these ideas of mine make me a 'doomer light'? I've certainly been involved in a great many projects to make the world a better place (as I see it), but I've always worked outside of the political, economic mainstream instead of as a paid employee of an environmental organization. This was something of a conscious choice, because I've always felt that the pursuit of funding and that paycheque always involves a serious watering-down of the message.
Is being too pure to bend your ideas to the point where you are always an 'outsider' mean that you aren't actually doing anything except futile, empty gestures? I've done many things in my life (successfully sued Walmart, organized bio-regional Congresses, built a strong local Green Party, and, much more), but all the time supported myself with blue collar work. But is that sort of activism just 'empty nonsense' compared to someone who's really a part of society---flogging electric cars, jetting around to international conferences, meeting with government ministers, etc?
There are a lot of nuances, and I'm aiming this comment at your readers as much as you. Consider it something to think about.
Love your Substack. I find lots of useful, thought-provoking stuff on it.
Thanks for your thoughtful remarks here, William.
And I'm very glad that you were able to persuade your fiancee, now wife, thanks in part for her love for you, that those "all people extinct by 2026 and a Venus-like Earth within 30 years after that" predictions were false.
There are no end to wild claims stemming from apocalyptic beliefs, whether religiously, politically, or (as here) environmentally motivated. And they can be, as you noted, extremely damaging to the lives of those who are caught up in them – and others who care about them.
Wow, insult the Doomers much?
As usual, a "Techno-Optimist" gets it completely wrong and craps on people who could be allies. Hannah, do you actually know any "doomers" or are you just blindly repeating the "Techno-Optimist" talking points?
I am a Doomer. Hell, I'm a "Doomer" from the freaking 80's. I have been a "Global Warming Evangelist" most of my adult life trying to rouse people to action. But, I guess I am part of the "problem" now because I don't buy into the "solutions" the Optimists are pushing these days.
I see you and the other "Optimists" as cowards and fools. You don't want any real change to the way the world works. You just want to electrify it.
You want personal cars.
You want travel on demand.
You want cheap consumer goods.
You want everyone to be "vegan".
You don't want to give up anything.
You want a "high energy" lifestyle without guilt and you are pushing the FALSE narrative that this is possible in an attempt to get people to "buy in" to this wonderful FUTURE and start voting Green. Optimists are willing to "lie" to people if that's what it takes.
"Because, “Telling everyone the world as they know it is over and that they’re going to die isn’t an effective communications strategy, even if it’s true.” - David Finocchio
Moving Beyond Doomism: Data-Driven Strategies for Effective Climate Content
https://myclimatejourney.substack.com/p/beyond-doomism-data-driven-climate-content/comments
Or maybe you BELIEVE that the FUTURE you want is possible and you have convinced yourself of it. As someone who has studied the issue and watched it unfold my entire life, I think you are wrong. I think that the Optimists are the problem now because you are in denial about what the newest Climate Science findings are indicating.
Doomers, real doomers, want ACTION.
We want Air Travel shut down. We want CH4 (methane) shut down. We want ALL the remaining Oil and Coal to stay in the ground. We want a Global Emergency declared and a new Global Treaty that will punish any nation that engages in "ecocide". We want all of the worlds 18-24 year Olds drafted into a Planetary Conservation Corps "right now" so that they can be put to work on the massive infrastructure projects that will be necessary to keep our civilization going.
Does that sound like "do nothing" to you?
I think most people can't resist focusing their energy on making fun of those who take a collective problem so seriously, rather than helping them. Who has the most fun in a sinking ship: the poor soul who keeps desperately trying to plug the holes in the hull, or the joker who taunts them by making more and more holes?
It's always easier to mock the socially inept but earnest "nerd" than it is to listen to them. I honestly don't know why I bother commenting.
The argument is about to be over.
In about 8 months we will know how bad the MONSTER EL NINO, that kicks the Climate Crisis into gear, will be. I understand the Climate System and predicted last year that it's going to be VERY BAD.
Eight more months is about how long we have before our Bella Epocha ends.
The "newest climate science findings"
Do you mean the ones that show we're going to get very close to our 2C target?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01661-0
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac4ebf
The issue is complicated. It takes a serious effort to dig down into all the propaganda to find the basic issues. After reading 20 books on the subject and brushing aside the fantasies, I have come to the conclusion that (a) 8 mm of sea level rise per year cannot be stopped (b) Most warming will happen in the North, opening the Arctic Ocean to shipping.
It will be a new planet but a habitable one.
At least you are informed. You and I are on the same page.
Do you have a good (or, as the case may be, bad) example of doomerism of this kind?
There might not be a world to live in when she grows up. What use is school without a future?
–Our House Is on Fire: Greta Thunberg’s Call to Save the Planet
a dishonest picture book aimed at traumatizing kids ages 3-8
I don't think this is a good example. "Might not" is surely not a call not to do anything - quite the opposite.
I have finally pulled together my thoughts on all this in a new substack published today. What should our energy policy be in the face of geological, geopolitical and physical reality? The short answer is Nuclear Power Everywhere All at Once. More detail here:
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/nuclear-power-everywhere-all-at-once
My sense is whether climate denier or doomer, in both cases the realm is uncertainty. Even the deniers (unless they believe in the 6000 yo earth) seem to accept that the climate has pivoted radically at least five times we can pinpoint (from fossil records) and cascaded into a mass extinction. There is likely not enough accuracy/certainty to know when/if current trends might tip the planet in unforseen ways. The change in albedo over a 30 year period is readily observable and hence for the zealots (both sides) fuel for conjecture. It seems to me the "big signals" of concern seem to be polar ice melts (and their predictable rates), subsequent albedo changes, sea level rise. The outsized risk in these cases is inadequacy of modeling to foresee a more rapid tipping point. Articles that report (1) last 20 years as outlier hot (2) melt at the polls wildly unpredictable for myriad reasons (3) mixing beneath the ice in places like Greenland changing the gradient and predictability of currents are all in the infancy of predictability. Donald Rumsfeld might have called these unknown unknowns. It seems likely if you introduce an energy gradient into a VERY COMPLEX system, it is likely to have lots of unanticipated consequences. It is not irresponsible, as a result, to at least buckle up.
This great series in Orion Magazine digs deeper: https://orionmagazine.org/?s=Deny%20and%20delay
I just put up a post that touches on this.
https://johnlovie.substack.com/p/disinformation
Since around 2000, starting with BP's carbon footprint calculator, industry has been shifting tactics away from outright denial towards delay. My making us feel that it's all our fault, but that there's nothing we can do about it, they are feeding the doomers while greenwashing themselves. The marketing campaign is working as intended. It's a feature, not a bug.
Some doomers I know have tried to get goverments and companies to act for 30 years... and are now giving up. I would say the biggest problem in society is people that recognize the problem but think that somebody else will solve this for them. Especially if these are people with a lot of resources and power.