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Climate change as a tool of tyranny
- Thread starter Shaul
- Start date
I think climate cannot be improved by man. It can only be worsened.
I do believe in climate change.
I mean, when I was little, I used to pass my summers at my uncle's and my aunt's. In a cottage on a hill.
All Augusts, there was a hailstorm and/or two or three thunderstorms.
As far as I know, Augusts are dry in that countryside spot. Since a decade, or more.
In Rome it used to snow at least once or twice a year.
Now...where is the snow? On vacation?
I do believe in climate change.
I mean, when I was little, I used to pass my summers at my uncle's and my aunt's. In a cottage on a hill.
All Augusts, there was a hailstorm and/or two or three thunderstorms.
As far as I know, Augusts are dry in that countryside spot. Since a decade, or more.
In Rome it used to snow at least once or twice a year.
Now...where is the snow? On vacation?
Daemon Sophic
Avatar in flux
That actually is in harmony with the premise. A nefarious government could purposefully and secretively worsen the climate in order to control a population.
I think you are assuming that a government necessarily wants to improve the climate. I am suggesting that some governments would purposefully worsen the climate to subjugate and control people through fear.
Neither are wars. Yet governments have used wars for the purposes of controlling populations. A wrecked climate can serve the purpose of such governments by engendering fear among the people. Frightened people are easier to control.
Sorry, but that just does not make any sense.
exchemist
Veteran Member
This is a very odd post, at a number of levels. First, individual governments can’t change the climate. Secondly, there aren’t different ways to change the climate, that they can choose between. Thirdly, the climate can’t tyrannise or control the population.
Climate change is the net result of human activity all over the world, as a result of emission of various greenhouse gases that absorb radiation in the infra red and thereby delay the escape into space of heat from the ground, when it is warmed by the sun. Climate change is thus a result of how we all live, principally the traditional sources of energy used in a lot of our technology.
The effects are various: heatwaves and droughts, wildfires, fiercer hurricanes, changes in rainfall pattern that damage harvests, and sea level rise that threatens to inundate low-lying areas (Bangladesh, Netherlands, even New Orleans.) Such changes are already costing trillions in insurance payouts in rich countries, and can be expected to lead to large scale population migrations from poor ones, due to famine and flooding.
It strains credulity to imagine such effects would be deliberately exacerbated by any government, or what could possibly be gained.
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It's beyond the pale to think that individual governments have that power. It's so far beyond the pale that I would have to dig into my psych background because that ascribes to individual governments power they just don't have. Among other things, that betrays abysmal ignorance of the science involved.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
There is no need to assume. And it is rather difficult for one nation to change the climate How would they do that?
exchemist
Veteran Member
The psych angle is interesting. A lot of people seem to need to blame some external entity for climate change, presumably to avoid having to recognise the need for changes to their personal lifestyles. We see this for instance in attempts to blame energy producers, or the motor industry. But the truth is that it is we as individuals that run energy-hungry appliances, drive cars, run air conditioners etc. Changing that requires government action, both to incentivise the move to different energy sources in our technology and to incentivise changes in the technology choices made by consumers.
Any suggestion of government action triggers paranoia in those of a certain political persuasion. It seems to me this results from a self-serving culture that glorifies individualism to the point that any kind of social interdependence is denied.
Such people search for a myth that allows them to think: "It’s someone else’s fault, I don’t need to take any responsibility or change my way of life.”
But in a way, even this is progress. A decade ago such people were trying to pooh-pooh the idea that climate change was even real. They pretended to themselves the science was all a leftist conspiracy. We seem to have moved on from that, at least.
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Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I have a question. How bad is AGW denial in Britain? I would think that it might not be as bad as here since the first world leader to bring up AGW as a serious threat was Margaret Thatcher. Not exactly a liberal. Or have those on the right called her the equivalent of our Republicans that call any sane conservative a RINO.
exchemist
Veteran Member
You can find pockets of denial in the pages of the Daily Brexograph and the Spectator, but it’s fading. Until a few weeks ago there was a high level of cross-party support for climate policy, politically. Sadly that may be now changing, due to the desperate attempts of the Conservative party to avoid defeat at the next election. Sunak is starting to play with climate policy as potential wedge issue. But socially, most people now get it, I think. We had a record heatwave last year and this year S. Europe has suffered, so that British people have been forced home from holiday in Greece by wild fires.
But Europe has always had more expensive energy than the US and we are less dependent on our cars, as the distances are smaller. So the psychological barrier may not be as high.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I am shocked! Shocked that the US has so many deniers. One would never know it
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
We had huge oil reserves for a while and we seemed to think that cheap gas was our right. Some people never have understood that in a free market that the price of oil will always be an international price. Not having control over the price of oil has made a lot of people feel like victims.
exchemist
Veteran Member
It amazed me, when I lived in Houston, to find that the price of motor fuel was a top-of-mind political issue. In Europe, where fuel costs 3 times as much, it only rarely surfaces as an issue. But then the motor car is a core element in the myth of the post-war American dream.
There is a villain who does this in the film Our Man Flint.
I think it is possible, yes, for someone to seriously harm the ocean cycles and ruin the weather for the foreseeable future. Some madly placed bombs might accomplish it.
Now...conceivably we could through massive effort and at great sacrifice all spend our lives building machines to fix such damage. It would require a reordering of society, and we'd all be forced to become part of an organization focused around building machines that manipulated heat or pumped water or that moved material. It wouldn't be something we could just have the army do or something that could be done by Red Cross. It would take massive human involvement to support the people making the weather change back to normal. We're talking about shifting the ocean's currents manually.
