Extinction Rebellion Ireland

Real Jazz Book

This discussion is crazy. Whether you believe in global warming or not, the way we are currently treating the Earth is completely unsustainable. If you take Ireland as a microcosm of the world, an island which has had inhabitants for a long time – all wilderness has been destroyed, nearly all wildlife, and there are pretty much no trees on the island. We have something like 7 million cattle in Ireland now, and most of their products are exported. Is that really necessary? Why do we need to produce that much beef? We know it has a pretty bad environmental impact. Could we not use some of that land to try and plant some broad leaf trees or “rewild” some of the country?
So even if temperatures aren’t rising, we’re destroying our oceans and forests and anything we can get our hands on to make ourselves richer. The whole world needs to slow down. And yes, shock horror, maybe we need to have a lower standard of living. Do people think we can just continue as is and have more and more stuff and take more holidays and buy more things, until the end of time?
For all the talk of India and China, look at our own back yard. If the rest of the world exploit what’s left on the planet the way we’ve done with our own island, there will be nothing left at all. We need to give back to nature in Ireland.
Something needs to change. Except it wont – we’ll continue to rape the sh*t out of the planet until there isn’t much left and that will lead to war and totalitarianism. Can’t wait.

Akrasia

gozunda wrote: »

No we're not. We are talking about shrills and ideologues riding on the back of 'climate change' and that which was the topic of my post. Gerit? What is being pushed is doomsday sensationalism which has bugger all got to do with peer reviewed scientific research.




As above. Ditto.



The 'alarmists' are exactly that - alarmists. Again the story from the Express is exactly like the type of hyperbole being promoted and pushed by various vested interests.

Sometimes alarm is genuine justified. If you're just after buying a house and you discover while doing some renovations that the electrics are wired extremely badly and there's a major fire risk.

The actual risk of the house burning down could be less than .1 percent per day of occupation, but a prudent owner would still be justified in moving out of the house while the wiring is repaired at great expense. If the owner was a landlord who intended to rent out the property, then if the owner didn't resolve the wiring issue that he knew about, he would be legally responsible if there was a fire even though a fire was never guaranteed, it was only an elevated possibility due to structural defects that experts warned him were likely to cause a fire eventually

Sure, he/she could ignore the problem and hope that there isn't a fire, and most days he would be fine, but that one damp morning when there's a short circuit and his house burns down with a family in it....

When the consequences of something are catastrophic then even low probability events become alarming.

There are always going to be individuals who are misinformed on specifics or who believe things based on bad sources or who get their facts wrong on certain things but on balance, is the extinction rebellion cause grounded in the evidence, and the answer is yes.

There genuinely is a climate emergency. There genuinely are extinction level threats because of climate change. Whole swathes of the eco system are dying off. Flying insects are being annihilate, most of the coral reefs could be gone within a few decades and with them goes the majority of aquatic species in our oceans.
We are almost guaranteed to exceed the 2c of warming that already puts us at risk of crossing tipping point that could drive the climate upwards beyond even 5 to 7 celcius by the end of this century with even further increases into the future.

With climate disruption on that scale possible, it is almost impossible to actually overstate how dangerous that is to human survival as long as you include the next generation of humans into your calculations. Humans that are born today will be bearing the brunt of the impacts we are failing to prevent.

Akrasia

Jimmy Garlic wrote: »

According to Al Gore the ice caps should have melted five years ago. Still there.

According to actual scientists, we'll have an ice free summer in the Arctic by the middle of this century. Could even be sooner

That will have profound impacts on the climate in the northern hermisphere

Jimmy_oc1998

Akrasia wrote: »

According to actual scientists, we'll have an ice free summer in the Arctic by the middle of this century. Could even be sooner

That will have profound impacts on the climate in the northern hermisphere

We will have an ice free summer in the Arctic at some stage no matter if we're eating grass and ****ting into a hole in the ground.

Accept that. Might as well enjoy life while we can.

gozunda

Akrasia wrote: »

Sometimes alarm is genuine justified. If you're just after buying a house and you discover while doing some renovations that the electrics are wired extremely badly and there's a major fire risk.

The actual risk of the house burning down could be less than .1 percent per day of occupation, but a prudent owner would still be justified in moving out of the house while the wiring is repaired at great expense. If the owner was a landlord who intended to rent out the property, then if the owner didn't resolve the wiring issue that he knew about, he would be legally responsible if there was a fire even though a fire was never guaranteed, it was only an elevated possibility due to structural defects that experts warned him were likely to cause a fire eventually
Sure, he/she could ignore the problem and hope that there isn't a fire, and most days he would be fine, but that one damp morning when there's a short circuit and his house burns down with a family in it....When the consequences of something are catastrophic then even low probability events become alarming.[/]

There are always going to be individuals who are misinformed on specifics or who believe things based on bad sources or who get their facts wrong on certain things but on balance, is the extinction rebellion cause grounded in the evidence, and the answer is yes.

...

I wonder where I've heard the 'burning house ' analogy before?

One of Ms Thungbergs favourite piece of rhetoric is the phrase  "I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire.  and on occasion has been accompanied by similar scaremongering sentiments including

“I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,”

Reminds me of the parable of the biblical burning bush and just like the Bible it is potrayed as a story from which we can derive meaning and lead us to of greater understanding through fear etc because evidently many people are 'too thick' and the point must be ramed home with a colourful picture etc

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu_wX_1AoCm/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_mid=W6ykigABAAEpyIEbTNB4i8T0z3Pp

So there we have it in a nutshell - hyperbole, panic and fear that our 'house is on fire'

It's interesting that you've devoted more than a half of your comment to this language of hyperbole which is what xr is all about imo. As a movements it uses alarm and doomsday type scenarios to convince people that the world is about to end even though the scaremongering has little if anything to do with real climate research. So no extiction rebellion is not grounded in the evidence. Rather it tries to use panic and fear as a weapon to make people believe that they should be 'with them'

xckjoo

Jimmy_oc1998 wrote: »

We will have an ice free summer in the Arctic at some stage no matter if we're eating grass and ****ting into a hole in the ground.

Accept that. Might as well enjoy life while we can.

Deep....



Lucky us that you decided waffling on the internet is the best way to maximise your enjoyment of life!

Akrasia

Jimmy_oc1998 wrote: »

We will have an ice free summer in the Arctic at some stage no matter if we're eating grass and ****ting into a hole in the ground.

Accept that. Might as well enjoy life while we can.

So you accept that climate change is happening and we're responsible for it then?

We're already too late to avoid a lot of bad sh1t from happening largely because we didn't act soon enough, but we haven't crossed any of the major tipping points yet, and until we do, we have a chance of avoiding the utterly catastrophic consequences of climate change.

You might not care about the future, but I do, and I don't want to leave future generations with a planet so depleted that it can barely sustain human civilisation anymore.

Akrasia

gozunda wrote: »

I wonder where I've heard the 'burning house ' analogy before?

One of Ms Thungbergs favourite piece of rhetoric is the phrase  "I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire.  and on occasion has been accompanied by similar scaremongering sentiments including

“I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,”

Reminds me of the parable of the biblical burning bush and just like the Bible it is potrayed as a story from which we can derive meaning and lead us to of greater understanding through fear etc because evidently many people are 'too thick' and the point must be ramed home with a colourful picture etc

So there we have it in a nutshell - hyperbole, panic and fear that our 'house is on fire'

It's interesting that you've devoted more than a half of your comment to this language of hyperbole which is what xr is all about imo. As a movements it uses alarm and doomsday type scenarios to convince people that the world is about to end even though the scaremongering has little if anything to do with real climate research. So no extiction rebellion is not grounded in the evidence. Rather it tries to use panic and fear as a weapon to make people believe that they should be 'with them'

It's a very simple and apt analogy. Thungberg didn't come up with it, it's so obviously analagous to climate change that it has been used thousands of times to explain the urgency of climate change and why we need to act to prevent as much of it as possible.

One of the problems with global warming is that it is cumulative and the effects that we are locking in today won't become apparent until the future, so we have to use comparisons with other risks that people understand need to be mitigated, like the risk of your building burning down, or the risk of cancer from smoking, or the risk of getting killed or injured in a car accident...

gozunda

Daxton Scrawny Plow wrote: »

I just remember he redirected a load of water to provide rapids for him to canoe down while campaigning in 1999. It was a dry summer so it risked drought. It's beside the point anyway. The point is the point, not the person making it.

Wrong. The cult of the person is a well known phenomena in appealing to peoples beliefs

Ms Thungberg has been likened to Joan of Arc, Ghandi etc - near semi mystical figures who were set up on a pedestal by believers and adherents

We have many climate breakdown celebrities now, we have the twitterati who have huge followings, who cheer and clap and lap up every word.

Most movements have at least a nominal figurehead who cannot be criticised or questioned. This movement appears to be little different.

See the video here as an example.
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article191077953/Greta-Thunberg-Klimaschutz-Aktivistin-ueberrascht-von-ihrer-Generation.html?jwsource=cl

Real Jazz Book

gozunda wrote: »

Wrong. The cult of the person is a well known phenomena in appealing to peoples beliefs

Ms Thungberg has been likened to Joan of Arc, Ghandi etc - near semi mystical figures who were set up on a pedestal by believers and adherents

We have many climate breakdown celebrities now, we have the twitterati who have huge followings, who cheer and clap and lap up every word.

Most movements have at least a nominal figurehead who cannot be criticised or questioned. This movement appears to be little different.

See the video here as an example.

how do you suggest we keep exploiting resources in a finite world without it leading to environmental calamity? You can knock Greta as much as you like and this whole movement but we're on a one way ticket to absolute disaster and at least they're trying to highlight the issue.

Akrasia

gozunda wrote: »

Wrong. The cult of the person is a well known phenomena in appealing to peoples beliefs

Ms Thungberg has been likened to Joan of Arc, Ghandi etc - near semi mystical figures who were set up on a pedestal by believers and adherents

We have many climate breakdown celebrities now, we have the twitterati who have huge followings, who cheer and clap and lap up every word.

Most movements have at least a nominal figurehead who cannot be criticised or questioned. This movement appears to be little different.

See the video here as an example.
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/article191077953/Greta-Thunberg-Klimaschutz-Aktivistin-ueberrascht-von-ihrer-Generation.html?jwsource=cl

The only people who are turning people into personality cults are the climate change 'skeptics' who keep talking about Al Gore and Greta Thungburg.

Nobody is looking to Thungberg for any scientific evidence about climate change, she is popular because she is passionate and well spoken and it is a wake-up call to hear young people pleading with their parents generation to not destroy the planet.

Al Gore is irrelevant to the scientific debate. He made a couple of documentaries where he was mostly accurate, made a few mistakes but got the general message correct and suddenly he's being thrust forward as the climate change guy who the denial movement focus their attacks on.

It's a very obvious tactic, to set up figureheads to focus on and then tear them down. It's where the straw man fallacy comes from.

None of the climate science depends on anything that Gore or Thungberg has ever said. They are political activists who are trying to get people to change based on the warnings from the foremost experts in the relevant scientific fields.

Dakota Dan

Real Jazz Book wrote: »

how do you suggest we keep exploiting resources in a finite world without it leading to environmental calamity? You can knock Greta as much as you like and this whole movement but we're on a one way ticket to absolute disaster and at least they're trying to highlight the issue.

Jaysus, you are painting a bleaker picture than any alarmists. I suppose you have shunned fossil fuels years ago and only go walking or cycling distance from your house?

gozunda

Real Jazz Book wrote: »

how do you suggest we keep exploiting resources in a finite world without it leading to environmental calamity? You can knock Greta as much as you like and this whole movement but we're on a one way ticket to absolute disaster and at least they're trying to highlight the issue.

I believe that has already been covered in ths tread. Joining a protest movement waving a placard in the hope of being a nuisance / wanting to get arrested is not doing something no matter what way you look at it.

The problem is that anyone who has questioned this movements hyperbole or how it has evolved keeps getting hit on the head with the usual "it's better than nothing" fallacy. I would disagree tbh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivi20kEurJc

Real Jazz Book

Dakota Dan wrote: »

Jaysus, you are painting a bleaker picture than any alarmists. I suppose you have shunned fossil fuels years ago and only go walking or cycling distance from your house?

I never said that. I do cycle to work though yes and have never owned a car.
How can wanton environmental exploitation and capitalism lead to anything but disaster? I'm all ears.

Wanderer78

Dakota Dan wrote:

Jaysus, you are painting a bleaker picture than any alarmists. I suppose you have shunned fossil fuels years ago and only go walking or cycling distance from your house?

Since we re complete fossil fuel junkies, 'shunning' these fuels could in fact lead to starvation of many, very quickly, this won't be an easy fix

Wanderer78

Real Jazz Book wrote:

I never said that. I do cycle to work though yes and have never owned a car. How can wanton environmental exploitation and capitalism lead to anything but disaster? I'm all ears.

Capitalism hasn't been all bad, it may in fact be a part of the solution

Real Jazz Book

Wanderer78 wrote: »

Capitalism hasn't been all bad, it may in fact be a part of the solution

I'm not an economist but isn't it based on perpetual growth? I can't see how that can be anything but terrible for the planet.
It's like when they talk about population reduction and people say who would look after our old people and pay for their care etc?
Maybe some old people will have to suffer a little? Maybe I will when I'm old? Maybe a generation will have to go through some hardship? Maybe we'll all have to suffer a little for the greater good? When did we become such wimps?

gozunda

Akrasia wrote: »

It's a very simple and apt analogy. Thungberg didn't come up with it, it's so obviously analagous to climate change that it has been used thousands of times to explain the urgency of climate change and why we need to act to prevent as much of it as possible.One of the problems with global warming is that it is cumulative and the effects that we are locking in today won't become apparent until the future, so we have to use comparisons with other risks that people understand need to be mitigated, like the risk of your building burning down, or the risk of cancer from smoking, or the risk of getting killed or injured in a car accident...

It's simple alright. A bit too simple and is just part of the usual alarmist arsenal of fear and scare. You're right similar have been used to lead masses of people rather similarly useless pathways in the past. And all manner of disasters may potentially befall us - however that does nor excuse us having to cover ourselves in sack cloth and in ashes.

I think if you check Ms Thungberg uses that phrase repeatedly. Not only does it uses the distressing imagery of someone's house on fire - it is as she says designed to make people feel fear and panic. Well that's just lovely....

The girl has been evidently reared on a diet of doomsday scenarios, has suffered from depression brought on by these beliefs and she now wants everyone to join her in a feast of the this. Eh no thanks all the same.

I'm sorry but the whole approach is bulk**** and the little more than rabble rousing and of absolutely no use to the solution of any of the worlds problems no matter what way you look at it.

mariaalice

Real Jazz Book wrote: »

I'm not an economist but isn't it based on perpetual growth? I can't see how that can be anything but terrible for the planet.
It's like when they talk about population reduction and people say who would look after our old people and pay for their care etc?
Maybe some old people will have to suffer a little? Maybe I will when I'm old? Maybe a generation will have to go through some hardship? Maybe we'll all have to suffer a little for the greater good? When did we become such wimps?

What hardship would that be?

So will we be haveing modern cancer drugs and treatment, modern dentistry, antibiotics reading glasses to mention just a few in this new society and im curious how will the eco-tourists get here by flying?

Real Jazz Book

mariaalice wrote: »

What hardship would that be?

So will we be haveing modern cancer drugs and treatment, modern dentistry, antibiotics reading glasses to mention just a few in this new society and im curious how will the eco-tourists get here by flying?

Well I was saying that people worry about population decline because old people won't be looked after as well. The hardship may be that they won't be looked after as well!
What eco-tourists?

s7ryf3925pivug

Regulated capitalism maybe. Right now it's not regulated enough. Governments serve the market and the big players within it. Do whatever they can to facilitate corporations. No tax on pension contributions - money locked into the stock market until you retire or die.

The market system is not bad in itself, but it needs to be more regulated to be directed towards solutions and not just infinite growth. Infinite growth is unsustainable. Consumerism is a big part of it and that is something bad; attitudes need to change.

gozunda

Akrasia wrote: »

The only people who are turning people into personality cults are the climate change 'skeptics' who keep talking about Al Gore and Greta Thungburg.Nobody is looking to Thungberg for any scientific evidence about climate change, she is popular because she is passionate and well spoken and it is a wake-up call to hear young people pleading with their parents generation to not destroy the planet.Al Gore is irrelevant to the scientific debate. He made a couple of documentaries where he was mostly accurate, made a few mistakes but got the general message correct and suddenly he's being thrust forward as the climate change guy who the denial movement focus their attacks on.
It's a very obvious tactic, to set up figureheads to focus on and then tear them down. It's where the straw man fallacy comes from.
None of the climate science depends on anything that Gore or Thungberg has ever said. They are political activists who are trying to get people to change based on the warnings from the foremost experts in the relevant scientific fields.

Al Gore is relevant as he a major player in promoting in much of the hyperbole. He is also cited by Ms Thungberg a pioneer type hero. And then we have those falling on every word from these figureheads and citing them as inspiring them to join alarmist movements like extinction rebellion. It's not particularly difficult to figure out that's how it's all relevant.

I for one have not set up Ms Thungbergs as a "figurehead' - Or Al Gore etc. That has already been done. It's incredible that where criticism is directed at any of this - it is highlighted as a fallacy and not allowed - I mean wtf?

mariaalice

Real Jazz Book wrote: »

Well I was saying that people worry about population decline because old people won't be looked after as well. The hardship may be that they won't be looked after as well!
What eco-tourists?

It is in the first post as one souloiton eco-tourism which is an oxymoron its tourism and eco or not.

You haven't answered the quesiton will you and your family be availing off modern pharmaceutical treatment for cancer modern dentistry, antibiotics, reading glass? to mention a tiny amount of issues all products of the capitalism system.

Everything in life is in ying and yang, light and dark, good and bad. It is not possibel to hive off one aspect of living and igoner the other.

Real Jazz Book

mariaalice wrote: »

It in the first post as one souloiton eco-tourism which is an oxymoron its tourism and eco or not.

You haven't answered the quesiton will you and your family be availing off modern pharmaceutical treatment for cancer modern dentistry, antibiotics, reading glass? to mention a tiny amount of issues all products of the capitalism system.

Everything in life is in ying and yang, light and dark, good and bad. It is not possibel to hive off one aspect of living and igoner the other.

I think you're confusing me with someone else I never mentioned eco tourism?
I'm not sure antibiotics are products of capitalism, but anyway what are you on about? I haven't written a manifesto on how to make a new world work but the current model is not sustainable. What do you think?

mariaalice

There is no solution currently, it is not sustainable as it is, the changes would need to be massive in every society in the world not just the rich west.

I am putting my faith in technological solutions for the moment.

It certainly not about blaming the governments and expecting a top-down solution or woolly-headed thinking about using less plastic ( whick is a good thing in and off its self ) or growing your own food and the like.

Real Jazz Book

mariaalice wrote: »

There is no solution currently, it is not sustainable as it is, the changes would need to be massive in every society in the world not just the rich west.

I am putting my faith in technological solutions for the moment.

It certainly not about blaming the governments and expecting a top-down solution or woolly-headed thinking about using less plastic ( whick is a good thing in and off its self ) or growing your own food and the like.

So you're sticking your head in the sand. The Governments are doing NOTHING currently. They pander to lobbyists mostly. No one is perfect but you should try making some changes yourself. Tech isn't going to solve the growing demand for meat and fish and consumables that create all the junk poisoning our oceans any time soon.
I don't have the solutions but it's a broken system and it's killing the planet.

Jimmy Garlic

gozunda wrote: »

I wonder where I've heard the 'burning house ' analogy before?

One of Ms Thungbergs favourite piece of rhetoric is the phrase  "I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire.  and on occasion has been accompanied by similar scaremongering sentiments including.

“I don’t want you to be hopeful, I want you to panic, I want you to feel the fear I feel every day,”

Reminds me of the parable of the biblical burning bush and just like the Bible it is potrayed as a story from which we can derive meaning and lead us to of greater understanding through fear etc because evidently many people are 'too thick' and the point must be ramed home with a colourful picture etc

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bu_wX_1AoCm/?utm_source=ig_embed&ig_mid=W6ykigABAAEpyIEbTNB4i8T0z3Pp

So there we have it in a nutshell - hyperbole, panic and fear that our 'house is on fire'

It's interesting that you've devoted more than a half of your comment to this language of hyperbole which is what xr is all about imo. As a movements it uses alarm and doomsday type scenarios to convince people that the world is about to end even though the scaremongering has little if anything to do with real climate research. So no extiction rebellion is not grounded in the evidence. Rather it tries to use panic and fear as a weapon to make people believe that they should be 'with them'

Climate fear porn with religious overtones and hatred of the unbeliever heathens. All religions/cult use fear as their main lever, fear of death, sinning and sinners mainly. Extinction rebellion operates just like a religion, it even has its own prophets such as Miss Trunburg who repeat the simple slogans of the religion /cult. Most religions/cults are also are extremely patronising and dogmatic, just like extinction rebellion.

dhaughton99

whisky_galore wrote: »

Nebulous, leaderless and aimless groups like this and the Occupy Movement are destined to fade away after the initial 'shares and likes'.
I'd like if this could come to something but it'll be the usual minority professional protester class with noserings and knitted beards.

They’ll fade away once daddy gives them the money to head to Bali for the summer.

Jimmy Garlic

dhaughton99 wrote: »

They’ll fade away once daddy gives them the money to head to Bali for the summer.

Probably think it doesn't apply to them, just the little people. Numbers will shrink as the fly off to Bali, Thailand, Peru, Cambodia etc.

Grayson

Akrasia wrote: »

It's a very simple and apt analogy. Thungberg didn't come up with it, it's so obviously analagous to climate change that it has been used thousands of times to explain the urgency of climate change and why we need to act to prevent as much of it as possible.

One of the problems with global warming is that it is cumulative and the effects that we are locking in today won't become apparent until the future, so we have to use comparisons with other risks that people understand need to be mitigated, like the risk of your building burning down, or the risk of cancer from smoking, or the risk of getting killed or injured in a car accident...

The other analogy people use is the frog in the boiling water analogy. It's said that if you put a frog into hot water it will jump out. If you put it in cold water and raise the temp slowly, it won't because it doesn't realise what's happening.

The analogy is actually incorrect because frogs don't act like that. However the logic behind it is real. When it comes to risk humans are very bad at analysing risk in the future. For most people the natural reaction is to wait until something has to be done. People will go for short term gain over long term.

That's one of the reasons it's so hard to get people mobilised over climate change. The worst of it is in the future and it's years away. The problem is that we should have started acting years ago. We are already behind schedule. All we can do at this point is limit the damage and we can't do that.

So yes, we should act as if the house is on fire. The whole place isn't ablaze right now. We have time to stop it from getting worse but we have to do something right now.