Holy shit dude I knew it was bad, but not this bad. That's over 50% of elected representatives.

I really dislike people who don't understand/abuse the concept of uncertainty in scientific discoveries. When a scientist says that there's a "high degree of certainty" about something, they don't mean 60% or 80% sure, they mean 99.9999% sure that their findings are fact. The leftover 0.0001% is left over to ensure that other scientists are heard in the extreme case that they make a discovery that changes literally our entire understanding of how the world works.

It's apologists like you that devalue the extremity of the situation. Do you know how serious the pollution and CO2 emissions done by industries are? Private citizen pollution is extremely dwarfed by the aviation, train, ship and fracking industry. But you're satisfied with banning tiny little fucking nothings that are easily offset again by a 0.001% production increase of a single industry.

No, this is not progress and you are wrong for thinking it.

This is what you see:

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2E0E2Mb84wk/WzoYu5Hna2I/AAAAAAAAAGM/Q5h5Lv4lrz8cDb43EodyKuk9tmBLN8CCgCLcBGAs/s640/Global%2Bfossil%2Bfuel%2Bconsumption%2Bpercentage.png

And you call that progress. This is what I see:

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-bRBI3rRIke0/WzoYu-dwozI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/nm4FLgM0n1I-p8mzZvpao_Joo2cjx6caACLcBGAs/s640/Global%2Bfossil%2Bfuel%2Bconsumption.png

As you can see, regulations and new legislation to promote more environmentally friendly practices are not synonymous to a reduction of the problem. New regulations, new legislation, but the industry continues growing. I don't call that progress. Restricting private citizen consumption like banning straws is extremely fucking insulting and by justifying it you are letting yourself become part of the gullible masses who think that something is being done. It isn't.

Here's what a fracking plant looks like. Look at the trucks and houses for size reference:

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/N1_1xOgh83Y/maxresdefault.jpg

"But banning straws is progress lol"

https://theecologist.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline_l/public/NG_media/367848.png?itok=WMPmcI0n

"dude just buy less plastic bags lmao"

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7281/9431314171_82b2433f12_c.jpg

Get angry or get out.

i dont give a frack

You are a fool if you think there is any chance to work out the kinks. Besides my comment is the opening line of the infamous Unabomber's manifesto.
http://editions-hache.com/essais/pdf/kaczynski2.pdf
Very hard to argue with the points he makes.

As opposed to the amazing stability of knowing for sure that more than half of your children will die within the first ten years of their lives, and that all your distant descendants will face the exact same predicament

pure opinion

Because surely indignities didn't occur before

Being more aware of the prevalence of psychological suffering is not the same as it increasing

Surely manual sustenance farming and malnutrition were (and are) at least equally as physically painful as manual labor is now?

Can we please just bury the capitalist class before they bury us? That would be nice.

Straws account for 0.01% of plastic pollution, the United States, as a whole accounts for less then 10 percent of all the world's pollution. The United States and its citizens are not at fault for "global warming" or "climate change". Countries like China and India are so filthy that nearly 90% of their water supply is tainted, the problem, if any, are other countries, not the US. Unfortunately alot of the countries that account for pollution are not apart of NATO or any other global system. China, at this point, cares more about turning a profit then the well being if its citizens.

eat the rich

You are quoting from the opening summary of a 35000 word essay and expecting to be able refute his statements without even reaching his justifications.

This is the most bizarre logic. "Oh it's only a bit of trash, so it shouldn't matter what I as a private citizen do." This is the same logic that leads to low voter turnout (eh, a single vote doesn't matter) that in turn leads to clueless old guys who don't know what they're talking about being elected year after year. If you as a citizen don't take care of the environment, why should an official that is supposed to be a representative of you as a citizen care? Why should these elected officials place political pressure on countries that produce the most pollution if they're elected by an uncaring citizenry? Why should they work to raise awareness of such issues if you, the citizens they represent, shift the blame to "oh it's India and China and I can't do anything about that." If you aren't doing anything, then why should the government who represents you? Also, just because China is at the top doesn't mean the United States magically produces zero pollution. China may be 2x as much, but the US is ranked second on the top sources of pollution by country, followed by the EU, then India.

>Attributing culpability to the negligible damage done by private citizens
>Overlooking, if not downright ignoring the real widescale damage done by unseen titans
>Arguing about fucking straws

Fuck you and your "just be a better human bean :-)" philosophy.

Show the jury which one of these is made by the individualistic actions of the standard private citizen.

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wKoEzFp9UFk/WzoQ3aKF1bI/AAAAAAAAAGA/HZOfVBcQ-zcH2Mm245q42mIEHH0hF8fkACLcBGAs/s1600/Climate%2Bchange%2BNASA.gif

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rem1aBV8_8E/Wzoun-ys-3I/AAAAAAAAAG8/XsApTq5DD_Ql-ni1Ke3RwrokM4nvMcYfQCLcBGAs/s1600/Global%2Bfishing%2Bwatch.gif

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b_IXx6HIH7Y/WzowuRKWgoI/AAAAAAAAAHY/ehCn5yCx0acMyROSbZEp4NXxia-WQoinwCLcBGAs/s1600/Oil%2BField%2Bin%2BNigeria.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23EmJYSjW-g

But somehow the average person is expected to hold power over this. Grow up.

How the fuck do you expect anyone to be held accountable and for actual change to occur if you actively don't do anything about it?

You are scientifically illiterate, a Reaganite who believes that anything and everything can be accomplished by your own individualistic self-determination, as though you or the millions of other nobodies like yourself control the multi-trillion dollar industries that regiment the globe. All of humanity could return to anarcho-primitive societies and you'd still have to deal with the disastrous effects of global warming, effects which were brought on by gargantuan titans the scale of which you have no means to even process. Society is now forced to depend and suckle on the black oil tit of petrol, with the alternative being the literal collapse of civilization. This is not a decision I or my ancestors made, but was imposed upon all of us by the folly of corporate titans and accelerationist governments.

We are already living in a scarcity scenario. We are consuming 70% more of what the Earth can yearly produce. We are literally living in debt. The collapse is not an event that will happen overnight, but a process of which we already find ourselves in. Giant atmospheric rivers from the Amazon rainforest responsible for the Monsoon seasons in the tropics, of which billions of people depend on for their agricultural harvest (AKA: literally not starve to death) are now being diminished by illegal and unregulated exploration and also being diverted from their usual paths through the secondary effects of Man's tampering with the atmosphere.

And here you are, a self-righteous and ignorant "American Dream" preaching tit, trying to tell me that me buying a straw is somehow a factor in this. Educate yourself and look at the vast scale at which these things operate. All the automobiles in the world still provide only a negligible percentage of the total vehicular pollution (the greatest of which are airplanes and cargo ships), but please, do go on to talk about how it's my fault that we live in such a potently pollutant era that Geologists literally had to invent a new name - Anthropocene - to describe it.

It's pretty easy when they all hinge on the idea that "living in modern times is worse than living in primitive societies, and it will only get worse." It just shows an incredible lack of perspective

Pictured: giant corporations bribing poor nations like Bangladesh to accept their trashed ships because it's cheaper than to proceed with all the legal requirements of ship disposal. The people then have to deal with it, but it's their fault, right?

http://mfame.guru/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/bangladesh.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eegHk_zgBZc/Tu4QGq6AeLI/AAAAAAAAZZo/xIP68TJ_u3Y/s1600/DSC_6292b.jpg

https://d30fl32nd2baj9.cloudfront.net/media/2017/02/02/shipbreaking.jpg/ALTERNATES/w640/Shipbreaking.jpg

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2014/04/22/article-2610478-1D4445E300000578-339_964x515.jpg

"Just don't use plastic bags lmao"

I'd like to chime in on a few things:

It's a buzzword I haven't really seen used before, but it's just another name for an already heavily considered possibility. The problem (in regards to world heating) is not so much pollution like plastic in the oceans, but rather, the release of greenhouse gases into the air. Earth used to be a "hothouse" as described. There was far more carbon dioxide in the air, and as a result, earth's atmosphere trapped more heat. As plants perform photosynthesis, they take carbon dioxide from the air and trap carbon, releasing oxygen. Then they die, and that carbon is trapped underground. After hundreds of millions of years, some is trapped in the form of coal and oil... Which happens to make great fuel. Burning fossil fuels is essentially undoing hundreds of millions of years worth of natural carbon sequestering. Other effects, like polar ice caps melting, reinforce the trend- blue ocean absorbs more light than white ice, thus heating the earth more. Processes like these are what could in theory make the warming irreversible (at least within a fathomable time frame). Without a good solution, the planet can go back to the old "hothouse" it used to be. This process would be (and already has been) harmful to civilization, as well as harmful to existing species of plants and animals.

Climate change won't directly end civilization, but if it continues in its current trend it will cause untold harm, and future generations may look back and wonder why we were so selfish and irresponsible.

The big picture is that humans like material things, comfort, and ease of life. This is all well and good, but currently the way we as a society provide that isn't sustainable in the long term. We can through widespread and painful regulation force changes in how we produce those things (ie more renewable energy, less wasteful packaging, etc etc) and we can make sacrifices in our lives (use public transportation more rather than driving, etc etc) to reduce what we use. The current reality isn't conducive to either of those types of change happening enough, especially as more of the world advances and consumes more. We'll probably continue down this path until the whole world really starts "feeling the heat", pun intended. If we're determined, and lucky, enough policy change and lifestyle changes will be made to change this trend- but it doesn't seem likely right now.

Its weird how i'm scared that I wont be able to make it to 45 or 50 years old without living in some fucked up world. Everything is changing so fast for the worst. I do the most I can with what I have even if i'm just a drop in the ocean. This sucks and is something I worry about a lot.

The greed and laziness is killing us. We are paying and will have to pay more in the future for all the things we did to our home.

But the alternative is actually worse. Starbucks decided to start selling paper straws... in a one time use plastic bag, the "strawless lids" they invented actually use more plastic then the old straw/lid combo. I live in an area of California where you not only have to buy a paper straw but you are forced to pay even more for plastic products. Compared to other countries, the US is actually one of the cleanest countries, if you look at the actual numbers. If you removed LA, NY, Chicago, SF, and Cleveland, the Unites States would be much cleaner.

The city of LA started painting the streets white in March in order to combat "global warming", it will cost over 40,000 dollars per mile. Don't you think that that money could have been spent better? LA county is plagued with poverty and crime, don't you think that the billions of dollars they spent on white paint could have been sent to anything better? Not only that but the paint will actually make things hotter! The white paint will reflect the heat off the road make the road cooler, yes, but where will that excess heat go? That heat will not just dissipate because of the white paint, it will most likely be reflected into the glass buildings creating even more of a greenhouse affect. So this "project" to save the earth, will actually make LA about 20 degrees hotter.

I agree that there is a good deal of evidence in favor of global warming, but lets ask the question: If the world is warming up? Then why was last winter a record cold winter?

skimming through the opening paragraph, and dismissing the rest of the 35k word essay based on your EXTREMELY simplified idea of his main point is incredibly intellectually lazy

Telling people to "educate themselves, they will surely agree with me after that" and read a 35k word essay and leaving it at that is also intellectually lazy. Length does not automatically make a point more valid

obviosuly not, yet while they're pushing an agenda that the thing does not exist they are making a pretty big effect.

The same way the gov't in Israel spends money on lack-of-water awareness advertisements, because they know it's important to save water, gov'ts should spend money raising awareness about this problem.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/265895292191248385?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E265895292191248385&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.snopes.com%2Ffact-check%2Ftrump-deletes-global-warning-claim%2F

like... dude

https://gyazo.com/7bb8ee90d8aa5b7c0ce7b07f0b28aeb0
https://gyazo.com/7299aa17b6df73657f6840cf1c89a2c2

???
You guys don't care what the post is about but who made it

You talk about a lack of perspective when once again you boil a 34 page essay into one sentence and expect anyone to take you seriously.

I don't boil the essay down to one sentence because I feel like it, I do it because that is the only claim that needs to be disproved to make the entire essay fall flat on its face

I'm not saying you have to agree, or that reading it and being able to comprehend it will lead you to agree. I'm only pointing out how little of an effort you made to even try to understand something that is admittedly not as black-and-white as you would obviously like to believe

i make a thread about global warming and someone quotes the fucking unabomber, great.

Sure it's not black and white, but the original comment I went against was saying that

That's a very clear case of "educate yourself." It literally doesn't justify anything by itself, but apparently the only way to go against the claim that "you're a fool if you think there is any chance to reform society" is to read the entire essay and deconstruct it point by point

The manifesto ends with a vague plan to destroy the "technological society". A revolution not to remake society, but to destroy all traces of technology and society in the entire world so that it will never be remade, while somehow keeping nature and the human species intact. It's written by a terrorist that had previously been an unwilling subject to CIA's mind control project MKULTRA.

I've read the first 190 paragraphs (about 70%?) now and it really hasn't progressed on the key point imo. There's good critique on the problems of society and the lack of freedom it "inevitably" causes, the motives of scientists part, etc. but there's so many assumptions like "mental illness has increased dramatically", as if the cause couldn't be that pre-industrial revolution people just didn't have as much time to document their mental problems. (And that was one of my original points, before I read any of it except for the opening paragraph.)

billions of people are going to die

no major action is going to be taken till the planet is semi destroyed so no point in talking about it guys

why don't we just make like trees and leaf