More on climate change denial

"Those who deny abrupt climate change are worse than those who deny anthropogenic climate change. The latter can be dismissed easily. The former are more difficult to understand, and their denial is equally dangerous."

Viewing climate change as a long-term issue is exactly how it became a short-term issue. For 40 years, I've heard how the grandchildren will suffer. Time's up!

---Guy McPherson

The ongoing Nicole Foss saga

Seemorerocks

Nicole Foss

Call me obsessive, but I am incensed at the intellectual dishonesty of a person who is a self-proclaimed "scientist" and yet refuses to discuss science; and accuses people of being on a "personal vendetta" against her when she is clearly consumed by ill-will for Guy and keeps coming back, and back, for more attacks; and claims to be objective when she shows clear signs of being emotional and unwilling to back up her claims with a single reference to support any of her claims.

This comes at the very time when Guy McPherson is on a plane to New Zealand for his tour and she is trying to muddy the waters.

Personal?

I don't think so.  

I am obsessed by deep denial and incensed by intellectual dishonesty. 

But it could be anyone - it just happens to be Nicole Foss because she came into my space to badmouth someone that I hold in high esteem.

I don't think that makes me part of a 'death cult' or a toadie.  

The minute I disagree with Guy McPherson I will tell him so.

Central to her claim is that climate change (in her opinion) is of less importance than financial collapse because the timescale (in her view) is different and people are already feeling the pinch but not feeling climate change.

She seemed to be deaf to the idea that millions of people are already affected by catastrophic climate change - by floods, drought and the consequent inability to feed themselves.

In the words of Guy:

"Still sticking with finance being more important than people who are suffering and dying is ludicrous"

My response was that if she couldn't care about the people of the Pacific or Africa,and Asia perhaps she could give a thought to the farmers of California as they go thirsty.

Here are some quotes from Foss, which I have provided in their entirety: 

"More simplistic distortions of course, based, as usual, on a complete misunderstanding of the argument. Money is not more important than life. Crashing the operating system has consequences, however, and like it or not, finance is the human operating system. It is not an argument about money, but about systemic impacts due to very abrupt change amounting to pulling the rug from underneath people's feet on a more or less global level. The economy will self-destruct more rapidly than the climate. This is not at all to say that there are no impacts due to both systems already. Clearly there are, but the time constant for change in finance is shorter. It's as simple as that. The impacts will be large, and will be felt sooner for most than the major impacts of climate change. Observing this is no insult to anyone. Please stop casting this as some kind of personal vendetta Robin, or as evidence of some gargantuan moral failing, it is ridiculous to do so. You are simply making yourself look silly".

My response: "The tragedy is that Nicole's argument is very beguiling because it gives the false impression that there is time to adapt. And who would not like to hold on to that hope?! If it were real."

"Perhaps a lack of imagination is the problem. The point, as I keep trying to communicate, is the timeframe, which will be shorter for a virtual system than for a physical one. When large impacts happen in a very short time there is little time to adapt. I am clearly not comparing ultimate impacts, but short term impacts, particular those which affect ability to adapt to, or mitigate, the effects of longer term threats. I am not conducting a vendetta here. I have not distorted or twisted one single word said by anyone else here, but that is exactly what you and McPherson and other are consistently doing with everything single thing I say."

So without so much as diddlysquat to back up her claims she keeps repeating her mantra that climate change is a long-term problem.

She also says it is not worth discussing because there is nothing that can be done about it (differing here with her liberal cousins from GWFOTD)

Then we are back to the "fear-backed response" - essentially telling the truth about climate change would "undermine everything positive we are trying to do across the board".

It is by no means true only in relation to the economy. A fear response will shape our actions in every way, and always for the worse. It will undermine everything positive we are trying to do across the board. It will drive division, xenophobia, counter-productive crisis management, spiking discount rates (??) (ie the loss of the longer term perspective), loss of cooperative responses etc etc.

So let's all ignore it!

"Climate is clearly a long term issue. It has existed for billions of years and will continue to do so for billions more. Human operating systems the like of which we see today are an ephemeral phenomenal, an artifact of fossil fuels. They will be gone with the energy inheritance that built them, but the impact of their demise will be one for the record books. Climate will continue. Humans will continue, probably in far smaller numbers due to the condition of huge overshoot we currently find ourselves in. Climate will impose physical limits, so will other physical factors. All are linked of course, with synergistic effects. All will be affected by the economic crash around the corner, as that will drive many profound changes in the way the vast majority of us interact with our environment. I am not looking at climate in economic terms. Please read more carefully."

If you can interpret that you're a better person than me - but I guess that, apart from saying we'll always had a climate (until the day we're not) she's reiterating that the economy is more important than the climate.

I should repeat Guy's admonition to count money while holding the breath.

At this point I reminded her of her failure to provide any evidence for her statements and repeated my invitation to watch the Natalia Shakhova interview.

However, that wasn't for her. No science for the scientist!

I am not here to debate the science. I have spelled out exactly why I don't regard that as a good use of my time. It is a distraction from the issue at hand, which is systemic dynamics in a broader sense. I am not going to delve into an endless rabbit hole when doing so can have no useful outcome. I am going to concentrate on the areas where far more might be achieved. An understanding of systemic dynamics is critical to seeing the big picture. This is not a one-dimensional issue

So science is a "distraction" and an "endless rabbit-hole" which "can have no useful outcome".

No mention of the truth. Presumably to be true it has to be useful.

Well, that, my friends, is the scientist and "Big Picture thinker", intellectual from the Automatic Earth, Nicole Foss.


The entire thread can be read HERE