Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "Why We Shouldn’t Fear a Climate Apocalypse" video.
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@GeekOverdose A car moving towards a crowd of children doesn't kill anyone right up until the second it plows into them. I get irritated by alarmism, but then the exitinction of all life on this planet is something to get alarmed about. Whether it will happen in 10 years or 1000, it should be addressed with an identical sense of urgency but people, and especially corporations, are too selfish to make changes unless it directly affects them, and in many cases, not even then.
"If we can show that the climate changing has no effect on how many people die," But you can't, so... Floods, hurricanes, wildfires, ice melt, sea level rise and extreme weather events - all predicted - all happening. Climate deniers or their professional disinformers can pretend as though we are not seeing what we're seeing, but you'd need a more compelling argument than any I've seen.
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@Anti-Liberal_Humanist Human nature is to procrastinate, and corporate nature is to choose the most profitable solution, usually making environmental issues someone ELSE'S problem. If you saw that your child was munching deadly nightshade and would hit a fatal dose in one minute, you'd get up NOW and prevent them, you wouldn't wait 50 seconds because that still gave you 10 seconds before they were TOTALLY screwed. Same with the planet. Every SECOND we abuse the environment brings us closer; every gas hungry car, every farting cow, every uncapped hydrogen spurting oil well. It's ridiculous to wait until one second until midnight before deciding we should act with urgency, then hoping to roll back another 1000 years of abuse. And to be QUITE clear, the planet probably does NOT have 1000 years.
" If you had lived the last 20 years without access to the news and other publications you would not have noticed that the climate was changing." Each year for the past ten has been hotter than the one before. Extreme weather events are more common. Flooding is more severe. Hurricanes are larger. Even here in a very temperate corner of temperate Britain, the weather has been wild the past few years, with some of the hottest days in my life, and unquestionably the most extreme rainfall. Of course, that could simply be weather. One person's experience is inconsequential, but the trends across the planet are not.
"climate-related deaths have declined drastically" funnily enough, so have deaths by tuberculosis. Do you think that that might be because we've become better at predicting and managing these events?
" there is no strong positive long-term trends, attributable with high confidence to climate change" Apart from global temperature change, melting ice caps and and rising sea levels.
"If sensationalized news stories and activist rhetoric" you have NO idea where I am getting my facts from so, I suggest you don't guess.
"there is no strong positive long-term trends, attributable with high confidence to climate change, for many extreme weather/climate events including floods and hurricanes according to the IPCC."
That's incorrect and indicates that it is YOUR sources that are dubious, and YOU are the disinformer. From the IPCC report "Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)"
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"It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land. Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred."
Here's the summary so that you can be better informed next time https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Headline_Statements.pdf
You've been wrong on pretty much every statement. Assuming you are not an in industry shill, I suggest you interrogate why you feel so defensive towards action to improve the planet. Are you just childishly petulant about being told what to do, in which case, I order you NOT to step in front of a fast moving vehicle, or are you so self centred that you would destroy the planet rather than inconveniencing yourself even a little bit? I suppose the third option could be that your hatred of environmental activists is simply so great that it spurs a bad case of oppositional defiance disorder, which I suggest you overcome for everyone's good.
I'm going to leave it there. I've made an unequivocal case and disproved all of your points using the very source you cite. Further back and forth will achieve nothing. Learn or don't.
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@GeekOverdose People are dying NOW and every day due to climate change; drowning, burning, heat exhaustion, reduced water availability for drinking and crops. The fact that opponents discount or are determined not to see is their problem. The fact is, the car is ALREADY ploughing into the crowd.
Premise 2 is on shaky footing. "modern technology counteracts this increase in extreme weather events" To an extent. For a start, it matters when, and over what time-period you measure. I don't know if there is deliberate deception going on here, but we have previously seen anthropogenic climate deniers deliberately starting their measurements the decade AFTER or BEFORE extreme events that would show a far more extreme picture.
Modern technology didn't prevent the deaths in Germany or Belgium. We detected the rain sooner, but technology could not prevent it. Technology is not a panacea for all of our mistreatments of the planet. It cannot counteract mass die offs. It cannot instantly prevent hurricanes or floods or desertification or wildfires or sea level rise. If you take the lazy route of saying "technology will fix it" then you are placing unjustified faith in technology or kicking the can down the road.
You need to add a third premise.
Premise 3: Regardless of premise 2, there may be a trigger point where a CO2 feedback loop creates an unstoppable runaway greenhouse effect.
Thus, even if not a SINGLE person died en-route to that point, if that point was inevitable following the trajectory of current behaviour, the human race would want to avoid it. If we don't address the issue, it is possible that we will make Earth uninhabitable. This is not some 1 in a trillion longshot, but a very real possibility based upon known and agreed upon the majority of scientists with expertise in the field.
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