Apocalypse Never
Climate change is real but it's not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world's last unprotected redwoods. He cocreated the predecessor to today's Green New Deal. And he led a successful effort by climate scientists and activists to keep nuclear plants operating, preventing a spike of emissions. But in 2019, as some claimed "billions of people are going to die," contributing to rising anxiety, including among adolescents, Shellenberger decided that as a lifelong environmental activist, leading energy expert, and father of a teenage daughter, he needed to speak out to separate science from fiction. Despite decades of news media attention, many remain ignorant of basic facts. Carbon emissions peaked and have been declining in most developed nations for more than a decade. Deaths from extreme weather, even in poor nations, declined 80 percent over the last four decades. And the risk of the Earth warming to very high temperatures is increasingly unlikely thanks to slowing population growth and abundant natural gas. Curiously, the people who are the most alarmist about the problems also tend to oppose the obvious solutions. What's really behind the rise of apocalyptic environmentalism? There are powerful financial interests. There are desires for status and power. But most of all there is a desire among supposedly secular people for transcendence.
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What Hacker News says
- No, it is a realistic approach to a problem which has been facing many places elsewhere in the world where it has been solved using engineering. It is far more apt to call climate doom predictions statements of religious faith given the history of engineering solutions to climate-related problems and the close resemblance of climate doom preachers to those deriving their prophecies from scripture.
Here's a few books on the subject which might be of interest for those who want to widen their view on the ever-changing climate. All of them have in common that they do not deny the climate is changing nor that human activities influence how it changes. Where they differ from the doom narrative is that they approach climate change in the way humans have dealt with other environmental problems to lessen or negate their impact instead of by preaching some grand narrative on how society should be run to avoid catastrophe.
Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All by Michael Shellenberger
https://www.amazon.com/Apocalypse-Never-Environmental-Alarmi...
False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet by Bjorn Lomborg
https://www.amazon.com/False-Alarm-Climate-Change-Trillions/...
Unsettled (Updated and Expanded Edition): What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters by Steven E. Koonin
https://www.amazon.com/Unsettled-Updated-Expanded-Climate-Sc...
- Read Apocalypse Never. An awesome book.
- Just want to recommend Apocalypse Never, a book I am finishing reading. The author explains the faulty logic behind decommissioning Nuclear as a source of power very eloquently. Big mistake.
- Yes, read them. The scientific reports that is, not the condensed version presented in the media. If you read them well you'll find they do not support the climate doomsday prophecies which are being bandied around. The only way to use those reports to support those is to use the long-discredited - by the IPCC itself, mind you - worst-case scenarios yet it is those which the media and politicians use to support their doom cries.
When you're done reading at least the abstracts in the IPCC reports - but it is worth the time to read the actual reports themselves - you can also read a few other sources, e.g. Schellenberger's Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, Björn Lomborg's False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet and Steve Koonin's Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters. These give a far better view over what climate change entails and how it can be dealt with than the breathless fear-mongering as seen in the media and as spouted by politicians.
- I'm fairly sure it is not. Climate change is actually a good example, it has been blown out of all proportions by both politicians as well as media which has led a large number of children and young adults to start worrying whether they will have a future at all before they will die from starvation/drowning/heat shock/fill-in-the-blanks. Slightly older young adults state they do not want to get children "since they will not have a future on a dying planet", all being egged on by "Extinction Rebellion"-like prophets of doom in the media.
They are your children so it is your responsibility to make sure they learn to separate panic porn and propaganda from believable prognoses on things like war, natural phenomena, changing climate and its ramifications and more. Get some books on the subject - Michael Shellenberger's "Apocalypse Never", Bjørn Lomborg's "False Alarm", Steven Koonin's "Unsettled" and read up on the facts and fictional narratives around the subject of the changing climate. If you are not in panic-mode they are far less likely to be pulled into the fable of a climate-induced eschaton. Teach them critical thinking skills - that is true critical thinking, not "critical theory" thinking which is actually the opposite of what I'm getting at. Help them on their way of navigating through the rapids of their formative years and they'll be stronger and more self-reliant on the other side.
- I would recommend the book Apocalypse Never by Michael Shellenberger. It's an interesting read where the author talks about how environmental alarmism hurts us and makes us focus on the wrong things and the importance of nuclear.
