zlacker

There’s a new book from Hannah Ritchie called „Not the end of the world“, that argues for optimism, without denying the reality of the situation. It’s a fantastic book and I highly recommend it.

>>Versio+(OP)
The whole premise of the book is a multi-layered hail mary, or a hail mary that continually plays out like a jackpot based on vibes and misconstruing the forces that are causing climate change.

Not sure why you'd call this "fantastic" other than it's a feel-good book without any evidence to support it.

>Carbon emissions per capita are actually down [1]

It takes maybe 2 minutes, maybe upwards of 10, to realize why this is completely silly. I would expect most highschoolers in stats to rip this apart. Does anyone need to devote time to debunk this? Why? You can ask ChatGPT.

>Average figures can mask significant inequalities within countries. In many countries, a small percentage of the population may be responsible for a large portion of emissions, while the majority have very low carbon footprints.

If you don't understand why this negates your comment out right should I start quoting 2Pac?

>>whokno+da
Unfortunately you’ve done very little to refute the claims yourself.

>>whokno+da
As you've observed, averages can be misleading because they're not robust to outliers. However, this seems most relevant to something like income, where we're interested in "most people" and don't care so much about the one ultra-rich person in the sample.

This appears to be less true for something like emissions, where the overall total is most relevant -- unless you're arguing that it's masking an "unfair" situation where improvements are coming from one group and should be coming from the other?

>>whokno+da
You're free to dislike the book, but I can't really follow your criticism. The book is clearly not "based on vibes". It's chock full of data to support the authors claims.

Now you might argue that the data either doesn't support the claims made, or you might doubt its legitimacy, but instead of providing a reason you just told me that it should be obvious why the book is nonsense. That doesn't really give me a lot to engage with and I'm not going to try to make your arguments for you.

For me the Book had its intended effect. It argues that the climate movement, as it gained mainstream popularity, also lost its ability to convey nuance in favor of projecting a strong "we are heading towards certain doom" message. This helped grow the movement, but is also responsible for a lot of young people feeling completely hopeless. That's certainly something I could heavily relate with before reading the book. The book then goes on to highlight areas where the world has made much bigger progress than I would have thought. For me this turned a feeling of intense hopelessness into one of motivation.

So was the Book meant to make me feel good? Sure. In that sense I guess you can call it a feel-good book. Were the claims unsubstantiated and "without any evidence to support" them? Certainly not.

>>whokno+da
ChatGPT burns quite a lot of energy. We need less of LLMs, not more

>>Versio+(OP)
It almost certainly doesn't take the new evidence into account Hossenfelder is talking about.

>>cubefo+Ew1
You're right, it doesn't. But most of the books claims don't depend on a specific climate sensitivity. Climate Change is just one of the chapters. It also covers air pollution, deforestation, agriculture, biodiversity loss, ocean plastics and overfishing.

It combats the notion that we aren't achieving anything regarding long term sustainability because we're unable to coordinate on a global scale, by showcasing that we are not only moving in the right direction in many areas, we're also accelerating.

If Hansen is right and we live in a world with very high climate sensitivity then it's not looking good, but I'd still prefer to live in a world were we make noticeable progress and fall short, than in one were we watch the world turn into an uninhabitable ball of death while doing nothing.

>>Versio+zH1
"Doing nothing" sounds like a straw man position. The question is rather whether optimism is warranted. I think there are some very worrying trends where we are not moving in the right direction at all, where it is even taboo to address the problem. I doubt she mentions those.

>>Versio+rM
Indeed, hopefulness is much better and productive than hopelessness. As long as it's done in a realistic way, not denying the facts, not cherry picking data, etc. Hopeful people can accomplish a lot more than hopeless people.

>>gitaar+7r2
>hopefulness is much better and productive than hopelessness.

Being pragmatic is not hopelessness. You have to admit what the problems are, and the book does not do that.

>>whokno+JW5
In what way is the book not admit the problems? Like the previous commenter said, it's full of data supporting it's claims. I'm truly interested in your arguments, because I just got this book.