cafeamericainmag.com
There has been a lot of CW discussion on climate change. This is an article written by someone that used to strongly believe in anthropogenic global warming and then looked at all the evidence before arriving at a different conclusion. The articles goes through what they did.
I thought a top-level submission would be more interesting as climate change is such a hot button topic and it would be good to have a top-level spot to discuss it for now. I have informed the author of this submission; they said they will drop by and engage with the comments here!
Jump in the discussion.
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Notes -
Or perhaps more generally, what makes you think they're even capable of rationally evaluating fears in the first place
Exactly. People aren't generally rational, especially about their fears. And especially not people who have been shown not to be rational about their fears. So condeming them for not rationally comparing fears and thus saying they are operating in bad faith is just double dipping.
Fighting climate change and nuclear catastrophe are not about improving lives. They are about stopping them getting worse (or ending entirely!). Teslas are nice..but they are still (in my view) inferior to a similary luxurious petrol car. If climate change is a real problem, then the deal may be tackling it at a cost. Lives may not get better. It entirely depends on how bad it will be and what the cost would be. Maybe we would have to spend 10% of world GDP on some huge geo-engineering project INSTEAD of making peoples lives better in the short term.
Now, are people hypocrites? Do they struggle to make the sacrifices their principles tell them they should? Do they fail to rationally compare their dislike of Musk to whether his cars help their ideals? Yes to all of those. So it goes.
Hence "just build nuclear plants; if you thought it was such a problem you would already have accepted the added risk".
So either climate change isn't actually the existential risk they claim because they're willing to let other hysteria take precedence, or they are correct about it being the most important existential risk... which means the environment is precious enough that we're willing to let a reactor mess up a city or two. Drop in the bucket compared to "the world will be destroyed".
I wholeheartedly agree, but the reason given for not buying one is not "Electric car inherently inferior", it's "Elon man bad". People who take steps in solving the problem should be honored among those with the grievance; that is historically how the people with the grievance pay for the solutions. That they refuse to pay now, and will do whatever they can not to pay (the person who has done more for Blue environmental goals in decades than anyone else... is also their biggest political target), is notable.
Hence "just build nuclear plants; if you thought it was such a problem you would already have accepted the added risk".
Unless you also feel nuclear catastophe has a similar cost. Remember we've already established the risks are not being evaluated rationally. So you can't then use the fact they are not evaluating the comparative nuclear risk rationally as evidence of anything other than irrationality, thats what I mean by double dipping.
Remember these are not utilitarians. Just like the answer as to why groups who feel like abortion is a Holocaust happening every year aren't concentrating solely on that. That is just how people are. Virtually nobody who claims to believe that X is the worst thing in the world are willing to trade off other bad things against it in a rational manner. It is just not how we operate by and large. We are not rational. They are not rational. Rationalists are not actually rational (although they try).
So people who try to use that against a group (whether that is claiming Christians don't really believe abortion is murder or that climate worriers don't really believe in climate change), are just missing the point. They do believe it. And yet they will not act as if they do. Because they also believe in many other things and are not evaluating the trade offs in a utilitarian way. So that isn't evidence of anything except that they are humanly flawed (or gifted, if you think utilitarianism is evil).
Maybe it is true that every anti-abortion advocate should quit their job and advocate full time for a federal ban given as they believe that hundreds of thousands of innocent children are being murdered annually. Maybe everyone who believes climate change is an existential threat should be crowd funding atomic reactors. But that just is not how most people work.
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