asg70 wrote:jedrider wrote:What makes you think that we haven't already crossed this threshold?
That's what I think of whenever I read MSM articles about us being close to tipping points. How long can we possibly be on the safe side of the tipping point? Remember 350.org, for instance? We blew way past 350PPM. Environmentalists keep shifting the Maginot line further and further forward in order to manufacture some sense of hope, but it seems more and more like a lot cause and we're just quibbling over
how high the Malthusian body count will be rather than whether there will be one or not.
I think the number of scientists willing to openly state that a die-off is not absolutely baked into the cake are very low, regardless of what they truly think. And this lack of willingness to be brutally honest bothers me.
We were past 350 when McKibben formed 350.org. It was a talk of his that got me to go into action and form a 350 event in Philadelphia.
Years latter I was at an event with Bill, he was the main attraction for an after event cocktail reception. I cornered him for a quick question which, to paraphrase myself was... Bill I heard you giving this timeline for change and we have blown through it. I now hear new more distant timelines for action. What gives? To which he said, “Yeah we blew through those timelines and bad things will happen. But we are trying to organize people and if we don’t give them hope they won’t help us.” He then went on to talk about how we, the old generation, should become more involved and protest, get arrested, push the issue. Because we are old we have little to loose, it’s too much to put on young folks who, who if arrested, may loose their job, their career. He personally acted on those ideas. I find him a man of integrity.
But there is your answer. There are few really big well defined tipping points, like there are no tipping points to getting totally shit faced falling down drunk. You have just one drink, no bigee. And one more is OK. And what the heck, I’m feeling good, where’s the third. And then it’s whoopee, this parties smoking, bring on the fourth, fifth, sixth drink. And then you wake up with your head in the toilet.
We are somewhere around drink four.
But I too am annoyed at the lack of candor. I heard that “hopium” BS too much. I want my facts and drinks straight up, no water.