I am not a climate change denier. Been seeing various effects of it throughout my life time. Flood intensity, fire intensity, steady loss of glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro, bleaching of the barrier reef etc. Its plainly obvious there is global change afoot.
I came across a meme today that listed out all our failed cataclysmic climate predictions over the last 50 or so years. All alarmist. Went back and found quite a few stories on these claims and found many backed by science of the day. Some of them not so old either. Basically denier propaganda. I took it with a grain of salt, as these things deserve.
Then I had an interesting interaction with a mate today around the topic of climate change, and he was pretty devo about it all. Obviously lots in the media and socials at the moment given COP26 and the flow on stories/reporting.
He's pretty gloomy on this stuff. And I found I'm pretty un-phased and overly positive that at some point we will turn this around. These days I'm not shaken by the doom and gloom reporting, but still cognisant that extreme weather were seeing the world over is caused by us and is arguably more frequent.
One Major key differences between our situations are he's bringing a child in to this world in January and he has worries for the future of his kid. I'm not. No intention. Had the snip. No kids, zero interest. Wife is on the same page. While our reasons are purely selfish and not based on not adding to this world's catastrophe, it did get me thinking about why I'm not particularly phased about all of this these days.
I distinctly remember how concerned i felt in 2006 after seeing "an inconvenient truth". Coupled with it being one of the hottest summers on record for us when it released, back then it hit like a tonne of bricks. But as time has rolled by, many of the predictions that film made have failed to materialise. As have other various doom and gloom scenarios reported, docos made about etc.
If youve made it this far, I must reiterate I believe in man made climate change. I think the data supports it and I trust in the scientific community that can reach a consensus on stuff globally.
Though the though occurred to me, after seeing the 50 years of failed predictions by scientists and other professionals in their field, has a lot of this despondency or general handwavy disinterest we see from leaders been rooted in the perception of these failed predictions over the lifetimes of our world's leaders?
If our scientific community is collectively certain about the science every time a claim is made, why are these predictions consistently failing? Are our scientists and various experts unnecessarily alarmist? Has historical alarmism hurt our trust in these future predictions? Is this the reason we don't move quickly? Will 2050 roll around and we'll have just adapted to the situation or will we start to see slow reversals of the damage done as we make inroads to renewables and various other efforts?
Thinking back to how i felt in 2006 and comparing to how i feel now, I certainly think the alarmism and failed predictions has shaped my feelings on the subject. Scotty's comments about reliance on future technologies (some of which simply don't exist yet, and we have no idea what they are or when they will exist) mirrors some of the underlying sentiment I hold over the whole scenario today. If as a 38 year old, I can have my thinking on this subject influenced like this over the period of 15, do we have any real hope that the next generations are going to have any different view or approach than the slow paced change we are promised today? I hear the kids screaming, the Grettas blah blah blahing etc. BUt if future predictions about what will happen at 2 degrees warming fail to materialise, are we just doomed to much of the same? I mean take a look at Dubai - It is possible to live in an inhospitable place comfortably (at a further cost to the environment), is that the more likely reality for our future?
My fingers are crossed for alien contact though so they can give us some of that sweet sweet technology that scotty is talking about.
www.drive.com.au
www.theguardian.com
www.carbonbrief.org
