I agree with Bill Nye:
I’ve got an experiment for you. Safety glasses on.By the end of this century, if emissions keep rising the average temperature on Earth could go up another 4 to 8 degrees. What I’m saying is, the planet’s on fucking fire.
There are a lot of things we could do to put it out. Are any of them free?
No, of course not, nothing’s free you idiots! Grow the fuck up. You’re not children any more. I didn’t mind explaining photosynthesis to you when you were 12. But you’re adults now, and this is an actual crisis, got it?
Safety glasses off, motherfuckers.
You can hear Bill say it if you start the video at time index 27:44. John Oliver’s brilliant commentary on the Green New Deal starts at time index 9:15.
Just the Bill Nye part:
Open Mind 
Perfect. Simply f****ing perfect.
Had to hunt for a site where I could watch it in Canada, but Newsweek as the clip here:
https://www.newsweek.com/bill-nye-global-warming-adults-planet-fire-1423540
Bill is getting all wound up and he’s not as polite about it as McPherson when he talks about our situation.
So, how are we really doing?
April 2019 ended with a monthly CO2 number of 413.52 Could be worse.
So far, so good. The sky has not fallen yet. Everybody take heart, be brave, be kind.
Warm regards
Mike
“April 2019 ended with a monthly CO2 number of 413.52 Could be worse.
So far, so good. The sky has not fallen yet.”
Sure reminds me of the old joke about the guy who falls of the roof and says “Well, so far, so good!” as he passes the second floor.
Difference is, this time it’s not funny.
FWIW, the quip goes at least back to Voltaire, who used it to describe his feelings during his time in exile at the court of Frederick the Great–and he wasn’t really kidding, either.
The final climate sequelæ for even 414 ppm CO₂ will not be realised for decades in terms of tangible climatology, and for centuries in terms of committed exinction debts that result. For every decade that we continue with business-as-usual, it probably adds extra decades (plural) to the climatological impacts and extra centuries to the ecologycal/exinction impacts.
And then there are the millenia that it will take to realise the melting of the cryosphere, and the attendant ecological impacts of that, and the rising saea levels…
I think you are right to be alarmed and feel like we should be acting as if the situation is urgent. I get accused of embracing the gloom and doom, aka “the sky is falling” so I like to lighten it up a bit. People really don’t like bad news and messengers are rhetorically shot down frequently. I also agree with you on Hayhoe. Even though I am drawn to spiritual and mystical stuff (like the miracle that we are alive and somewhat conscious), I am also very, very tired of organized religions. You want to be in awe of creation and the universe? Go ahead, that makes sense to me. You want to know what it all means? Buy a oiuja board or magical 8 ball and start asking your questions. You think you already know what it all means? Please, keep that to yourself.
“Are any [climate solutions] for fee?”
No, they are not for free, they are an investment that promotes long-term growth.
I agree with the investment part – but not with the long-term growth: there ist no way we can keep an economy growing on a single, limited planet. No matter how hard we try to make everything recycable and sustainable.
The economic system itself has to be changed in a fundamental way.
Mr Feltons,
I agree that the economic system itself has to be changed in a fundamental way. What are your thoughts about which ways?
The notion of perpetual economic growth has, to my frustration and chagrin, been infecting the political discussions in the lobbying preceding the Australian federal election on Saturday. Even the policies of the two major parties on climate change itself are inadequate, although one party is better than the other.
In the US though, there is a presidential candidate who is looking better and better on the climate action front, and he has one eye on jobs at the same time:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/16/2020-jay-inslee-climate-change-plan
Economic growth is measured in dollars per year. Dollars are immaterial and can theoretically keep on growing.
I would suggest to set limits on things we value, like pollution, and then we will see if human ingenuity is big enough to be able to create wealth or not.
Nye’s spectacular little bit actually starts at about 18:30 in the embedded clip.
The 1 minute Nye part is viewable in Canada here:
https://etcanada.com/news/451899/john-oliver-brings-bill-nye-out-to-explain-the-dangers-of-climate-change/
“I, for one, am absolutely on board for his gritty new reboot.”
Oh, yeah.
Saying “why should we have to pay to do something about climate change?” is equivalent to saying “why should we have to pay to have clean water?”
And the short answer is, “The Commodification of Everything.”
What is a Mentos?
Mentos are a brand of candy mint. Possibly one piece could be called ‘a Mento’ or ‘a Mentos’–I’m not sure the usage mavens have ruled on this. It’s probably largely a theoretical question anyway–cf., “Betcha can’t eat just one.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diet_Coke_and_Mentos_eruption
Mentos is a candy that has the property of causing soda pop to out gas rapidly. If you add a package of mentos to diet Pepsi it erupts. For some reason Diet Pepsi erupts with the highest spray but other sodas also erupt. Bill Nye performs the demonstration in the clip.
This demonstration is often done in schools or as a science project since all the materials are safe and cheap. Lots of youtube clips show ways to make the spray higher. Myth busters did a segment to determine why it works.
I suppose that calling people motherf***** might change some hearts and minds, but personally I think that Katharine Hayhoe’s approach is more effective.
Phil, I don’t think too many John Oliver viewers are climate deniers. Plus, it’s a comedy show, and in this case the joke was Nye playing against his normal family-friendly schtick.
Doc, sure re Oliver’s audience. However it’s news that’s been picked up by other sources, including the denialist National Post. I browsed through some of the comments on their Facebook post, and I remain convinced that Nye’s new approach didn’t change many minds or hearts.
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/you-idiots-the-planets-on-f-ing-fire-bill-nyes-message-to-leaders-stalling-on-climate-change
I wasn’t trying to convince you it did, merely pointing out that it wasn’t meant to. Bill Nye has usually taken a much more Hayhoeian tone, and I expect he’ll do so again.
Many years (decades…) ago, when I was still encased in my innate naïveté and introvertion, I tried the postive, gentle, and engaging method of interlocution. I have many friends and extended family who are died-in-the-wool conservatives and science deniers (not just of climate change…) and never, ever, not once did I see even a single person change their minds from the sort of approach advocated by Hayhoe. That’s not to say that it can’t happen, but that it’s not sufficiently significant to make a difference.
What I did witness though was a very strong indication that the resisters took confidence from the lack of confrontation and that their lizard brains appear to interpret the absence of overt dispute as validation of their own arguments. They very carefully craft an endless litany of logical fallacy to refute in their minds every piece of evidence with which they’re confronted, and the more agreeable the discussion the more they seem to be encouraged to imagine new and more preposterous counters to the science.
Another thing that I have\ witnessed over the years is that conservative minds are profoundly influenced by the leaders in their culture, whether it be the domanant person in a social group, the local fulminating minister, their favourite ranting politicians or their go-to media talking heads. That’s the influence that truth has to fight. When I have seen the denialist mind waiver it’s when they’ve finally been confronted with not just the empirical evidence of accumulating data but with the burning down of their houses, or the failure of their crops, or the flooding of their suburbs. Then they listen.
And in my own circle at least, when they come to that accpetance it’s been the fault of scientists that they didn’t believe the science earlier, because the scientists must have somehow not told them properly what’s happening. In other cases they just pretend that they never disputed the science, even though they did… And the answer in their eyes is still some magical confection of carbon capture and storage, or planting a few trees, but never ever the cessation of fossil carbon combustion and the adoption of renewable energy.
As a broader extrapolation of my personal experience I offer the fact that no one in the world has yet become the scientific-consensus darling of the conservative denying mindset, that the Keeling curve continues to grow ever more steep, and that there is nothing in place in any major emitting country that will see them follow from today a steep decreasing trajectory of emissions.
I am now convinced that Hayhoe-style kumbaya circles of amicable engagement will take decades too long to manifest any serious society-wide action – if it ever does. We need strong national and international leadership at the top, and inexorable and unavoidable flourishing of the appropriate technologies at the bottom. The road-block that is conservative inertia cannot be shattered in time; it must be skirted and left in the dust of positive action by strong government and industry and progressive grassroots if we’re to have any hope of salvaging something for the future.
Conservativism and denialism simply have to be made irrelevant to the progress of solutions, because one cannot change the nature of the beast.
OFF TOPIC because I cannot find any other way to get this message to you: Link to BBC Youtube link (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLdxWjEWCrk) at your April 19 post (https://tamino.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/climate-change-david-attenborough-on-the-bbc/) now returns:
“Video unavailable
“This video contains content from BBC Studios, who has blocked it on “copyright grounds.”
I looked for it with basic search and found that (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnfvuHaPWms) and (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqjoLAxauhc) give the same result.
Every link to “new” (April 2019) film now appears to be unavailable.
Very disappointing.
This?:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m00049b1/climate-change-the-facts
But it says “Available for 1 month” and only in UK.