discussion from Nevin's blog -- re: hope
Aug. 27th, 2012 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ljgeoffI'm posting this here for myself, for easy access.
"That knowledge has made me physically ill. I can't eat, sleep. Everything seems surreal around me. I have great difficultly focusing and completing tasks. And I know I have to back off."
Superman:
(...) There is another class of 'cherry-picking' that I see in the climate change literature. Assumptions are made that will 'keep hope alive'. Even the most prominent chroniclers of climate change always offer a sliver of hope based on 'optimistic' assumptions. I understand this; it parallels the reluctance of an oncologist to tell an adolescent he has Stage 4 cancer. But, my intuition tells me the downstream implications of what we are seeing in the Arctic are far harsher than most are willing to admit.
Joe Smith:
I would like to comment on this. I feel it is a true enough statement. But it has to be that way. I've been getting deeper and deeper into climate change for a long time. And I have reached some horrifying conclusions of my own. OK, I say it. I think we, the whole earth is headed towards a planet wide reboot or restart. Something the planet has done before, and will probably do again at some point in the future. Its just that this time there is the slight problem of we are living here while the planet goes down for a reboot.
I work with computers, when we want to keep a system up all the time we add redundancy. There are 2, 3, 4, or more computers working together. That increases the odds that at least one will be up at any given time. So I intuitively understand this from my career.
As I learned more about Climate Change, I realized that there were multiple systems that seemed to point to the same end point or similar enough end point. I suddenly had an 'OMG' moment. There is redundancy built into this planet reset process. In my mind that increased the odds from 'well it could happen like that, but it probably will not' to 'OMG someday one of these systems would find a way to finish the job.'
That knowledge has made me physically ill. I can't eat, sleep. Everything seems surreal around me. I have great difficultly focusing and completing tasks. And I know I have to back off.
I have asked to teach a class in church on global warming. Its a UU church so they are open to such things. And I am working and re-working what I want to present. I find myself watering it down. I have to. I have to keep it at the more popular, "Oh we will do something to keep it under 2 degrees and we will figure something out". I just have to. I can't go in there and convince a whole cluster of church members that humanity or civilization, at least as we know it, is going to end.
I can't carry or hold that information myself. I find myself needing to undo my OMG moment. And if it is too big for me, it is too big for others to. And it is wrong to spread a disease that makes others sick too. I'm saying I think this 'final outcome' knowledge/opinion/conviction is a disease. One can catch it. One suffer from it, one wants to find a cure for it, and one can pass the disease on to others.
So there is a build in, biological need. We have to hold that Glimmer of Hope position. Or at least somehow we have to trick our emotional/biological side into believing its not that bad; It may not happen that way; or what ever. So we can retain our full compliment of facilities.
While some compartmentalized, isolated portion of our intellect knows the real score and occasionally nudges our behavior based on that info.
"That knowledge has made me physically ill. I can't eat, sleep. Everything seems surreal around me. I have great difficultly focusing and completing tasks. And I know I have to back off."
Superman:
(...) There is another class of 'cherry-picking' that I see in the climate change literature. Assumptions are made that will 'keep hope alive'. Even the most prominent chroniclers of climate change always offer a sliver of hope based on 'optimistic' assumptions. I understand this; it parallels the reluctance of an oncologist to tell an adolescent he has Stage 4 cancer. But, my intuition tells me the downstream implications of what we are seeing in the Arctic are far harsher than most are willing to admit.
Joe Smith:
I would like to comment on this. I feel it is a true enough statement. But it has to be that way. I've been getting deeper and deeper into climate change for a long time. And I have reached some horrifying conclusions of my own. OK, I say it. I think we, the whole earth is headed towards a planet wide reboot or restart. Something the planet has done before, and will probably do again at some point in the future. Its just that this time there is the slight problem of we are living here while the planet goes down for a reboot.
I work with computers, when we want to keep a system up all the time we add redundancy. There are 2, 3, 4, or more computers working together. That increases the odds that at least one will be up at any given time. So I intuitively understand this from my career.
As I learned more about Climate Change, I realized that there were multiple systems that seemed to point to the same end point or similar enough end point. I suddenly had an 'OMG' moment. There is redundancy built into this planet reset process. In my mind that increased the odds from 'well it could happen like that, but it probably will not' to 'OMG someday one of these systems would find a way to finish the job.'
That knowledge has made me physically ill. I can't eat, sleep. Everything seems surreal around me. I have great difficultly focusing and completing tasks. And I know I have to back off.
I have asked to teach a class in church on global warming. Its a UU church so they are open to such things. And I am working and re-working what I want to present. I find myself watering it down. I have to. I have to keep it at the more popular, "Oh we will do something to keep it under 2 degrees and we will figure something out". I just have to. I can't go in there and convince a whole cluster of church members that humanity or civilization, at least as we know it, is going to end.
I can't carry or hold that information myself. I find myself needing to undo my OMG moment. And if it is too big for me, it is too big for others to. And it is wrong to spread a disease that makes others sick too. I'm saying I think this 'final outcome' knowledge/opinion/conviction is a disease. One can catch it. One suffer from it, one wants to find a cure for it, and one can pass the disease on to others.
So there is a build in, biological need. We have to hold that Glimmer of Hope position. Or at least somehow we have to trick our emotional/biological side into believing its not that bad; It may not happen that way; or what ever. So we can retain our full compliment of facilities.
While some compartmentalized, isolated portion of our intellect knows the real score and occasionally nudges our behavior based on that info.
Sorry if that is off topic and To-Much-Information.
Bob Wallace:
""Oh we will do something to keep it under 2 degrees and we will figure something out". I just have to. I can't go in there and convince a whole cluster of church members that humanity or civilization, at least as we know it, is going to end."
There are points in between the two end points you set. Both of those points, I'm afraid, are suicidal.
There's the "If we get very serious and work hard to largely eliminate fossil fuels from our lives we might be able to avoid the worst case scenario".
And there's the "If we get very serious and work hard to largely eliminate fossil fuels from our lives we might buy enough time for someone to discover a way to pull the extra carbon out of the system".
Told short - "Get busy and bail like fools on fire. We might keep it afloat long enough for help to arrive".
Sufferance=nil
The problem with a disaster groupie society is that they cannot and do not recognize a slow moving disaster. They are conditioned to the quick disaster, some casualties and then move on to the next one. Any action taken is immediate and at the time.
In the case of Climate change this is a slow moving disaster of global proportions. Our go go go society of bite sized disasters cannot cope with this and does not have the focus to keep it in mind month on month, let alone year by year or decade by decade.
The required action is so large and the timeline is so long that humanity, as it has conditioned itself, is incapable of responding to the challenge.
It's not that we are unable to resolve this issue. More that we don't want to as it will force us to think far into the future and carry out climate activities through multiple governments, consistently with no changes.
People are going to be asked to change the way they live and make sacrifices. Not for a few days or even a few months, but possibly for half their life.
Nothing in modern society has prepared people for the challenge ahead. Those most capable of putting in the effort and the changes (agrarian societies which work on a different social pulse), are the lowest emitters and incapable of forcing the change back to stability.
It is a sad analysis, but the society we have today is going to be destroyed. All we can hope is that enough people make preparations to survive the outcome.
Fortunately our civilization has reached the stage where it can survive, for the long term, off our home planet.
It's a sad reflection of where we are today, but true all the same. My personal view is that the more people I can make aware, the more chance those people have of preparing themselves and their families for the coming challenge.
For instance it takes time to locate yourself somewhere which is remote enough from cities, self-sustaining enough to give food and situated such that even the worst storms and weather can be survived.
To my mind sites like this give those who are interested the chance to understand and plan. The rest? They'll just have one more beer or one more vodka or one more WKD and party on to the end. Then they will scream about why their Governments didn't "fix it" for them, whilst forgetting that any government which tried to restrict their lives to "fix it" would have been removed shortly after....
Sorry if this clutters the thread with OT!ljgeoff:
@Joe Smith -- I hope that your heart-felt post does not get deleted, because it really spoke to me and how I've been feeling for several years, now. It calms me to know that other people are feeling this, that I'm not completely bonkers.
As far as a sliver of hope goes, my family is saving to build a small farm near the southern shore of Lake Superior -- looks like we'll be able to buy the property next year. We are putting all of our family resources toward it, all of our disposable income. My friends and my children's friends mostly think we're nuts.
It's like there are two realities, Alternative Universes, and I'm walking from one to the other. It is very disconcerting. So it is helpful to read that there are other people who are walking back and forth with me.