Quote:
Originally Posted by jawagord
I think believing in flat earth has more going for it than believing humans can control climate change. The former at least has practical benefits, the latter is hubris!
Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long.
https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScie...ityofWrong.htm
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Very interesting essay.
Unfortunately the absolutist position most closely matches your own affirmation that humans cannot control the climate.
In reality, it is absolutely proven that we can, from deforestation & heat island effects to the known and measured changes in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. The only thing rational people are left to argue is magnitude.
Obviously those claiming that we have 10 years left to cut X% or disaster will come are equally absolutists and I believe that the alarmist messages aren't necessarily helping, but claims that we can go on emitting without limits is wronger.
CO2 has been understood as a greenhouse gas for over 100 years, long before there could be any reason to point to a ridiculous conspiracy to impoverish the middle class. Feedback effects are still not well understood, but some feedbacks like tundra methane release are known to be positive. We are heating the planet, the only question is how much. Maybe it won't be enough to hit a "tipping point", and maybe it will be small enough that it will result in the loss of only a few habitats and species, but... we don't know that, and to imagine that we do is also blind hubris.
The humble & conservative response is to recognize that we don't know, and to stop messing around with shit we don't fully understand - by drastically reducing CO2 emissions.