Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to New Yorker Magazine we need to stop denying the inevitable imminent end of the world.
What If We Stopped Pretending?
The climate apocalypse is coming. To prepare for it, we need to admit that we can’t prevent it.
By Jonathan Franzen
September 8, 2019“There is infinite hope,” Kafka tells us, “only not for us.” This is a fittingly mystical epigram from a writer whose characters strive for ostensibly reachable goals and, tragically or amusingly, never manage to get any closer to them. But it seems to me, in our rapidly darkening world, that the converse of Kafka’s quip is equally true: There is no hope, except for us.
I’m talking, of course, about climate change. The struggle to rein in global carbon emissions and keep the planet from melting down has the feel of Kafka’s fiction. The goal has been clear for thirty years, and despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.
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Even at this late date, expressions of unrealistic hope continue to abound. Hardly a day seems to pass without my reading that it’s time to “roll up our sleeves” and “save the planet”; that the problem of climate change can be “solved” if we summon the collective will. Although this message was probably still true in 1988, when the science became fully clear, we’ve emitted as much atmospheric carbon in the past thirty years as we did in the previous two centuries of industrialization. The facts have changed, but somehow the message stays the same.
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All-out war on climate change made sense only as long as it was winnable. Once you accept that we’ve lost it, other kinds of action take on greater meaning. Preparing for fires and floods and refugees is a directly pertinent example. But the impending catastrophe heightens the urgency of almost any world-improving action. In times of increasing chaos, people seek protection in tribalism and armed force, rather than in the rule of law, and our best defense against this kind of dystopia is to maintain functioning democracies, functioning legal systems, functioning communities. In this respect, any movement toward a more just and civil society can now be considered a meaningful climate action. Securing fair elections is a climate action. Combatting extreme wealth inequality is a climate action. Shutting down the hate machines on social media is a climate action. Instituting humane immigration policy, advocating for racial and gender equality, promoting respect for laws and their enforcement, supporting a free and independent press, ridding the country of assault weapons—these are all meaningful climate actions. To survive rising temperatures, every system, whether of the natural world or of the human world, will need to be as strong and healthy as we can make it.
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Read more: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/what-if-we-stopped-pretending
If believers are ready to retire to the climate apocalypse bunker and close the lid, I’m happy to support their freedom to live out their end of world fantasies, but I wish they would stop trying to impose their life choices on others.
This is good.
I thought this is the start of the Left awaking.
The New Yorker published the article. The New Yorker and the Atlantic are the standard reading for thinking Left.
This appears to be a Left guy that is thinking and criticizing the green scams. A scam is a scam regardless of which party you vote for.
For example:
“Vast sums of government money must be spent without wasting it and without lining the wrong pockets. Here it’s useful to recall the Kafkaesque joke of the European Union’s biofuel mandate, which served to accelerate the deforestation of Indonesia for palm-oil plantations, and the American subsidy of ethanol fuel, which turned out to benefit no one but corn farmers.”
This is the first Left guy that notes there is limited money to spend.
Bernie’s plan to spend $16 trillion on green stuff would in reality mean there will be $16 trillion less to spend on stuff the Left want such as Medicare, student debt relief, social programs, and so on.
There is a fix amount of GDP to spend. The politicians have already spent all we got and more. If it was possible to spend an additional $16 trillion it would have been spent.
“Our resources aren’t infinite. Even if we invest much of them in a longest-shot gamble, reducing carbon emissions in the hope that it will save us, it’s unwise to invest all of them. Every billion dollars spent on high-speed trains, which may or may not be suitable for North America, is a billion not ….”
Quote.. Today, the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. If you’re younger than sixty, you have a good chance of witnessing the radical destabilization of life on earth—massive crop failures, apocalyptic fires, imploding economies, epic flooding, hundreds of millions of refugees fleeing regions made uninhabitable by extreme heat or permanent drought. If you’re under thirty, you’re all but guaranteed to witness it.
I’m below 60 and I haven’t seen any of the things he mentions, can someone point me to the evidence? I want data not anecdotes.. and alternate realities don’t count..
..yeah that’s what I thought..
He doesn’t say you’ve seen them, but that you have a good chance at some unspecified date in the future. Of course, these are the things they’ve been saying for 40+ years, so far, nada.
The Climate Jonestown IS coming. The Faithful are starting to realize that renewables and carbon taxes were never going to significantly slow down fossil fuel use, and too many Greens are still more afraid of Nuclear power then of the Climate Crises.
But they still can’t accept that they have been scammed, or that their ‘belief in science’ is nothing scientific.
So now they are absolutely convinced that doomsday is upon us, and nothing can be done to stop it. Unfortunately there are many examples in history of where such beliefs lead.
And just as a reminder, the Jonestown Massacre started with the Faithful killing a US Congressman and his people they thought was going to reveal how bad things were there, and involved killing anyone they could reach that they blamed for their problems.
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This is even funnier !
Alien civilizations may have explored the Milky Way and visited Earth already, new study claims
https://www.foxnews.com/science/alien-civilizations-explored-milky-way-earth-already
“Stars, along with the planets around them, orbit the center of the Milky Way on unique paths at varying speeds, and they sometimes zip past one another as they do, Business Insider reports.
Carroll-Nellenback’s study points out that the aliens could simply be waiting for their next destination to come closer to them.”
How many millions of years would they be waiting ?
Heard it all before. Even people 30 years old should be figuring it out by now.
Plagues of raining frogs?
Death of the first born?
Dogs and cats living together?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmzuRXLzqKk
Well, I am still younger than 60. Currently, nothing makes me want to live to 100 more than the prospect of telling today’s 20 year old’s that they were really sold a lemon with that global warming thing and don’t you feel stoopid now?
Perhaps I should make a few Youtube videos, posthumously telling them “I told you so”.
Fortunately, most of the crop of actual science deniers (today’s pseudoscience climatologists) will be all dead in 40 years. So maybe cli science then can actually move forward without tenure and ego mucking things up and learn something valuable and enduring about climate change.
Amen, Brother Michael…
Oh goody. Someone else I can send Dr Frank’s “peer reviewed and published” link to ..
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.00223/full
Here ya go Mr Franzen. Happy reading.
Pat Frank’s landmark post at WUWT is now up to 550 comments.
Pat’s is the kind of article that almost requires comment software that can differentiate old posts in the thread from new posts. Otherwise, one has to read, or at the least scan, 400 or 500 comments to find the new ones. I bet if the somments were easier to read, there would be a lot more additional comments.
This feature used to be available at WUWT, where the new posts in a thread would be highlighted in a different background color with each new visit. Very convenient. This feature went away with the WUWT/WordPress system crash.
The most accurate, truly global data for average lower atmospheric temperature change over the last 40 years comes from the UAH satellite-measurement database (Version 6.0) See https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/09/04/uah-global-temperature-update-for-august-2019-0-38-deg-c/
The best fit through this “noisy” data (largely—but not consistently—reflecting ENSO variations of about +/- 0.4 C about the trend line) is a linear fit at a warming rate of +0.13 C/decade.
In the 20-year interval from Jan 1979 to Jan 1999, humans released 25% of the total cumulative amount of CO2 calculated to have been released anthropogenically from 1750 to end-2018, but in the 20-year interval from Jan 1999 to Jan 2019 humanity released a much larger percentage of the same cumulative amount: 37%, or almost 50% more.
(Data source: http://www.globalcarbonatlas.org/en/CO2-emissions via https://ourworldindata.org/co2-and-other-greenhouse-gas-emissions )
Does the trending of UAH satellite-based global lower atmospheric temperature show an atmospheric response to this large change in the release rate of anthropogenic CO2? Or even response to the Keeling curve exponentially-increasing growth of atmospheric CO2 concentration, however originated? In both cases, no, it does not . . . the overall temperature trend is linear at a constant slope over 40 years.
So, does anthropogenic CO2 affect global lower atmospheric temperature? No, it does not . . . we have actually performed the necessary experimental test with the required measurement accuracy and spatial resolution in the actual dynamic system (with all associated feedback mechanisms and complexities) over 40 years and have seen a null result.
CO2 at present or higher atmospheric concentration levels does not and will not affect global warming, which is obviously being driven by other natural factors: the three leading candidates are long term changes in (a) percent global cloud cover, (b) atmospheric absolute humidity, and (c) global ocean circulation patterns.
To the extent that basics physics says that CO2 should act as a “greenhouse gas,” which is credible due to its absorption and re-radiation spectral bands, it likely became saturated in ability to cause such an effect at much lower concentration levels (likely in the range of 200-300 ppm, see https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/05/08/the-effectiveness-of-co2-as-a-greenhouse-gas-becomes-ever-more-marginal-with-greater-concentration/ ), now leaving only water vapor and methane as the current non-saturated GHGs.
Took the dog out for a walk earlier. Beautiful night, great weather. Try as I might I couldn’t find the climate crisis anywhere during our walk.
I know only one person who subscribes to the New Yorker Magazine.
She is a Jew who hates Israel and loves Obama.
Just a factual observation, no more.
Truly delusional, then?
My God! This person obviously needs some immediate psychiatric intervention. He’s seriously delusional. I hope he doesn’t cause injury to himself or others.
What we are seeing is the ravings and prophecies of a millennarian religious cult.
It can happen to anyone. Even the educated upper-middle class.
Perhaps this is a new angle for the Planetary Saviors. Auntie Beeb is offering something similar, and such a deal at just $1.8 trillion: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49635546.
Who knows, maybe Auntie also has Windsor Castle for sale.
That place is a bit of “Fixer-Upper” (in real estate-ese parlance) I suspect.
Is this author, Jonathan Franzen, going to be held accountable for this apocalyptic drivel ten years from now, or has he already stashed it in his file, ready to compose his next clever piece?
He has freedom of speech to write whatever insane nonsense he likes.
Fortunately, he and his fellow band of Full Retards do not have the “freedom” to use the police powers of the government to impose them under the US Constitution.
Which is why they hate the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It tells them where they cannot go. They cannot seize guns in the US like happened in Australia and NZ did. They cannot impose a Federal “wealth tax.” They cannot restrict groups of people incorporating and speaking with one voice in political speech. And they cannot bypass the Electoral College for selecting the President/Vice-President.
And Barack Obama can never again be President.
And they cannot change a Life-time Appointment to the Supreme Court (or any federal court).
The writer is totally correct. We can’t stop the coming human-made climate apocalypse. How could we possibly stop something that doesn’t exist?
Seems to me that the alarmists realize that the gig is up and they’d like everyone to forget what they’ve been saying for decades. If it’s too late and we’re all gonna die, we may as well just sit back and enjoy what time we have left, amiright? It’s a short hop from “It’s all over” to “What? Me worry?” And if there’s nothing we can do about it, absolutely nothing, then we don’t need to listen to any more climate preaching, right? So I can drive my beloved Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sahara around town without guilt (not that I ever drove it with guilt). I can indulge my preference for plastic straws. And if all the chaos and destruction is going to happen anyway, I’d better run down to my local gun store. I’ll need to stop at the Lowe’s on the way back and order a load of bricks for the 15′ wall I’ll be building around my property.
Thank God these green ecofreaks have stopped reproducing !
In short, “Every key plank of the Democratic party is a climate action.” What complete and utter trash.
Well, we’ve been warned for many years about the coming space alien attack, which will wipe humanity off the planet. But did we do anything about it? Noooooooo! We did nothing! No space shield, build-up of high-powered lasers, etc. Nope. Nada. If anything, we’re even less prepared. But since space alien armageddon is coming no matter what we do, we may as well face the buggers with full, vibrant economies powered by inexpensive, abundant, and reliable fossil fuels supplemented by nuclear. We may as well help folks in poorer countries also enjoy the benefits of fossil fuels and nuclear power, raising standards of living, and helping them have clean air and water, along with abundant food. We may as well have governments run under the concept that ‘less government is more, allowing free markets to flourish along with the democratic principles so cherished by our country’s founders. We can do this!
Come to think of it, even if the space demons decided to bypass us, and go elsewhere, which is extremely unlikely which 98% of the experts say, we should do all of this anyway. Win-win!
I have it on good authority that that alien race you refer to is named the Vogons. And, yes, we were warned about them as far back as 1978 . . . and we have done NOTHING to prepare for them.
They will NOT bypass us, for they need to destroy Earth for a bypass.
Liberals have been lighting him up, but without actually disagreeing with him. He’s saying that society is not going to take the drastic actions that some say are needed. They’re not saying he’s wrong. They just don’t like hearing it.
Call it an aversion to reality.
Bunker mentality would be good for these jetsetters and carbon emitters.
Futility is a blessing. If the whole world could recognise that any attempts to save the world will fail and that the best option is to do nothing and preserve as much financial capital as possible so that this final generation of people can truly enjoy the rest of their lives ( even if only another 12 years)
Perhaps then the world will actually be saved from this climate madness that is destroying it.
“…despite earnest efforts we’ve made essentially no progress toward reaching it.”
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LOL, earnest efforts???
Like climate accords that require successful capitalist countries to cut emissions, but the rest of the world is free to ramp them up?
More truthful would be to say “lots of virtue signalling but no real efforts.”
No stopping apocalypse? Good. We can all stop worrying and go on with our lives.
Oop, there it is! Ever’body cabbage patch. Break it on down.
“the scientific evidence verges on irrefutable. ” Easy to say those words while ignoring lots of evidence that does refute it. These journalist are hacks for the climate change industry.
The New Yorker was once a decent literary magazine, arguably the best in the English language. They even had good non-fiction articles that covered topics in depth. Somewhere between the 1970s and 1990s they lost it, became politically correct, published fiction only because it was by minorities or third world writers, or by Joyce Carol Oates, and their non-fiction became fiction by ax-grinders. I wonder which corporation bought them out. The article, which I read in full, is an abomination of twisted facts, distorted lies, absurd generalities, and doomsday fear-mongering. Jonathan Franzen, if you ever read this, get out of the twisted cage you call your mind and go walk in the woods. You’ll feel much better.