Is the Human Race on a Suicide Mission?

I think it's easy to get that impression. But humans caused the problem. Humans are the problem. It's not that people in the environmental NGOs care more about ecosystems than they do about humans, it's more that functioning ecosystems (exemplified by healthy populations of flora and fauna) are the very foundation of a well-functioning living planet, one which includes humans.

Sure, I wish the human population was about a third of the size it is now — many people recognize that the sheer success of our species has outstripped the ability of previously effective natural systems to absorb the destructive effects of irresponsible, unchecked growth. But I've never heard anyone seriously proposing that starving people be allowed to perish or that efforts to control war and pestilence be abandoned. We just have to live knowing that we're a big part of the problem. Our primitive brains are still following the early "be fruitful and multiply" model and it's hard for people to overcome the momentum of the thousands of fecund generations which preceded us.

No, I don't have a neat solution for averting emerging environmental catastrophes. I'm not sure there even is one.

People could wear t-shirts saying "DON'T F WITH ME".

Barring a major incident it may come down to a policy decision.

I don't deny the problem and flatly reject the 'minimization next to denial' suggestion of farmerman. That is merely a reflection of the intolerant and often mindless intensity that too often affects advocates in the AGW debate, one that seriously stands in the way of any solution.

AGW issues are real and verifiable. However we should stick to the observed facts and focus on the truly difficult political economic and scientific issues associated with them. Merely insisting that others accept your sometimes hyperbole-laden arguments ; signing a treaty that most signatories ignore ; imposing a new tax on "bad" behavior (as President Macron found); demanding that people give up their economic welfare; or subsidizing inefficient technologies incapable of meeting - don't .constitute meaningful steps towards a solution - as we have already found.

We do need to begin, take meaningful steps to reduce our emissions, including things like fracking for natural gas and the expanded use of nuclear power, as well as the current emphasis on wind and solar alternatives. These steps buy us more time, and done correctly, can also encourage public awareness of the problem and thereby lead indirectly to other gains.

However we also need to recognize that, just as we don't seriously attempt to restrain the fast growing new sources in India and China now Africa, we can't "require" that others lead the "green lives" that we imagine are needed. There's no effective political solution to that one either. An unrestrained Tyranny with greater power over the lives of it's people than has ever been achieved will be required to impose the popular prescriptions of AGW zealots, and that usually leads only to revolution and conflict - neither a very happy or green prospect (As President Macron has learned) .

We need instead to harness human science and technology development to find the new needed technologies ( one is the production of free hydrogen through a solar powered form of photosynthesis - this solves the energy storage problem, while providing an emissions free fuel that can be used in any extant form of engine or power cell. Ongoing research looks promising.) I'm not at all confident about containable nuclear fusion, but, believe that increased use of fission-based nuclear power will be an indispensable element to any solution. As I've suggested earlier, I believe the nuclear safety and waste disposal problems have been badly exaggerated, and that rational, effective solutions to both exist. Nuclear fuel is in fact abundant in the world, and with fuel recycling and thorium based reactors, nearly unlimited.

Current programs are based on insufficiently effective technologies. The actions rather vaguely proposed by many AGW advocates to reduce emissions are well beyond the capabilities of any political system we know of (or are willing to tolerate). These elitist prescriptions and the accompanying elitist attitude that "if you disagree with any of my prescriptions you are a hateful AGW denier" are themselves the chief obstacles to a solution to this serious problem. President Macron of France recently got an important lesson in this area and we should learn from it.

Summary: Change is too hard, let's quit.

Evidently you don't read very well.

One could, following your method, assert that the essence of AGW zealots' arguments is that " this problem is so important and difficult that we have to restrict the domain of solutions to those that cannot possibly work".

I think it's the other way around. The governments that support ostensible climate action pacts like the Paris agreement are just pacifying activists while protecting the status quo of the industrialist business-consumerism culture.

By showcasing government support for industry, the US does the opposite, i.e. evokes activism and the will of the people to take action for the greater good, which is ultimately the only way anything positive will really happen.

You mean, like Attila was the Scourge of God or Hitler was on a heaven-sent mission to birth the State of Israel?

I know you convinced yourself that this was about a small clique of 'AGW zealots' but in actual fact, it's not about them. It's not about you either, nor about me. It's about future generations. Our kids and grand kids.

You can keep charging windmills, keep blaming it all on them zealots, or you can take responsibility.

Why are you avoiding what I'm saying:

The Paris climate accord is only working to pacify climate activitists by convincing them that the government is taking action to correct climate change. Industry and others who are change-resistant will just say that they'll reform their activities when it's feasible for them to do so; and as a result everyone will just keep kicking the can further down the road instead of picking it up.

In the US and around the world, people should be looking at the news of how government supports industry and the public shirking responsibility to change and realize that it is up to individuals and businesses to actively work toward sustainability in the way we live and work and what we buy/produce.

You can tax carbon/fuel all you want and it will only intensify class conflict. That is evident in the Paris demostrations. Those yellow vested protesters represent people who drive for money. The way they are able to make money from others is by burning fuel. If their costs go up due to higher taxes, they will still have to compete to serve their paying clients, who will still patronize their driving services. If you want to make change, you can't allow people to pay to pollute. If you're going to govern carbon/fuel, you should ration it, not tax it; but if you ration it, those who want more than their ration will find a way to get it, through black markets or whatever.

What is really needed is for the public to embrace climate/industry reform in their daily choices, e.g. choosing alternative transportation and reducing their heating/cooling by insulating certain rooms and wearing warmer clothes in winter, using fans and shade for cooling instead of air-conditioning when it's hot, etc.

How would you go about proving that?

All or any of these options are either non-existent and unavailable to many people or are too onerous and impractical for others. How do you expect people to change ingrained patterns of behavior and accept a perceived reduction of living standards?

It was proven by eight years of the Obama administration ostensibly pursuing sustainability reforms, but at the end of the day the public just ate up all the stimulus money and saw new energy developments as a means of pursuing an 'all-of-the-above' approach that would further lower the price of energy.

If you watch TV, you will notice adds that promote energy use by reference to new greener technologies. They show middle-class people consuming energy robustly with things like hair-dryers, etc. The last thing they want to see the public do is embrace an activist ethic of reducing their energy use and resource footprint, because that translates into less sales of everything from energy to goods.

So the governments of the world support the consumerism/business models that fund their tax revenues. The moment they seriously challenge the people who just want more money to afford whatever they want to buy, they get resistance and attack. That is how socialism maintains its grip on the world economy, i.e. by throwing various kinds of temper tantrums instead of putting energy into reforming behavior.

At the individual level, it looks like this: Person A drives to a job and makes money to pay the bills. She or he buys what they want based on what they can afford and the credit they are allowed to spend. They have to keep making money to pay their bills or they start getting into trouble with their creditors. If they try to cut their expenses by cutting expenditures like driving or household heating/cooling, they get complaints from their family members and guests who don't pay the bill. The same happens if they cut heating/cooling in their offices and retail outlets and other indoor workplaces.

So these people ultimately care more about sustaining their economic status quo than they do about sustaining the planet. So when the government talks about reforms, they just want the reforms to create more jobs so they can go on living the same way and affording their bills. Meanwhile, the companies making money from them are lobbying government and otherwise manipulating government to keep doing what they're doing, plus they are putting out propaganda through the media that normalizes indifference toward sustainability and anything else that isn't immediately fun and otherwise ego-satiating.

So when you hear about the Paris accord and all these governments that support it, that is just the government and the same governments are under pressure from their citizens to maintain high standards of living, so the moment they put restrictions on fossil fuel or anything else that is tangible to the people, the people complain and seek to oust and replace them. As long as they don't bother people to change anything they don't really want to, the people don't care what they say or sign in terms of climate pacts, etc.

So the climate pact just pacifies the activists at one end, so the business people and others who favor the economic status quo can tell the activists to just chill out because the government is working on the problem. How many people then actually question whether the government is truly working on the problem or whether they are just providing a false sense of hope to pacify those concerned?

The activists are not pacified, from what I can tell nor were they under Obama, so your theory doesn't work.

If you truly believe that then you should be concerned about the rather mindless and ineffective policies your political leaders are taking.

Well, the point of the remark was that people in those NGOs do care more about the forests and the wildlife than they do about the people. It refers to the "elite" who make up the corporate boards of such NGOs. I'm not sure that I disagree. As an example, several such NGOs opposed a hydroelectric project for Bangladesh in the 1980s because it would cause extensive flooding upstream, in areas which were forested and the home of most of the wildlife in that impoverished nation. In terms of climate change, it was a disastrous position for them to take--but no one thought much about that 30 yeras ago. But it was a stupid move because people in Bangladesh continue to carve into the forests, cutting down saplings as well as gathering deadfall for cooking fires, and at higher altitudes, to heat their homes.

While the rank and file, and the bulk of the contributors may have the attitudes you describe, I'm not certain it applies to the corporate officers of those NGOs, or at least did not in that era, and I am frankly cynical about those corporate boards today.

I don't know that climate change is anthropogenic, but weather or not it is, it simply makes good sense that we don't dump more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Despite what the alleged Frenchman claims, the United States is not the villain in this piece--that honor goes to China and India. It certainly does not help, though, that the fat boy in the White House sends one of his lickspittles to Poland to extol the virtues of burning coal. Of course, it is probably just coincidence that the Senate majority leader comes from a coal producing state.

Both archaeologists and historians have identified several cooling events, known now as the 8.2 kiloyear event, the 5.9 kiloyear event and the 4.2 kiloyear event. These correspond to the evidence for events 8200 years before the present, 5900 years before the present and 4200 years before the present. There were major historical consequences to each of these event. These events show a cycle of from 1700 to 2300 years between each event. On the crowded historical stage, these events do not appear after the 4.2 kiloyear event, but the pattern can still be discerned. The last low point was in the early 18th century. In Europe, the War of the Spanish Succession raged in the west and the Great Northern War in the east. The winters of 1708-09 and 1709-10 were particularly severe.

In all of those events, the effects lasted about 300 years. That means that we are well past the effects of the last cooling cycle. In 1700, the population of the planet was roughly 650 million. It is now more than ten times that. In the past, wildlife and humans suffered alike, and humans were obliged to solve their problems. Today, we can look forward to five hundred years of the climate warming, at least. I don't claim to have a solution--but George's attitude is certainly not helpful. We are destroying our only home, and largely to gratify the petty and puerile greed of a tiny fraction of the human race. You know them, the ones who live in walled and gated communities patrolled by private, armed security officers. I guarantee you they don't give a rat's ass about what happens to you or to me.

Rest assure that I am most concerned about that, when it occurs. But it's a minor issue as compared to them American liars.

The Indians now? Why, you left out the Zimbabweans and the Marsians...

None of these moves can be made in isolation. Conservation without population control is almost pointless. Unfortunately no one's figured out how to employ and maintain an effective national policy to check reproduction and it's almost impossible to imagine policies to accomplish this which wouldn't be seen as a violation of basic human rights. In other words, we're cooked.

Once again, the demographics of Africa or Bangladesh have very little to do with Global Warming. Massive consumption of fossil fuels by the 'first world' is what cooked us.