Directly assaulting Guy McPherson

A direct attack (and misrepresentation) on Guy McPherson

Seemorerocks

Were this not a direct assault on Guy McPherson (Paul Beckwith-style) as well as a gross misrepresentation of what he has to say I could have listened to the following and seen it as a justified personal response.

This piece starts from the same false premise that Guy is telling people to just 'give up' and blow all your money on a world trip.

That is not al all what he is saying.

It amazes me that these people treat the whole thing as if it were just a 'matter of opinion' (and all opinions are equal).

It seems to be enough for people to think, or say that it is so, for it to be so.

None of them refer to the actual scientific evidence unlike Guy McPherson until he gave up doing updates on his giant climate change essay, mostly because most of the evidence is in.

I have been part of all this for almost 30 years and until recently could have agreed with the bulk of what is being said but for the fact that the actual evidence (as opposed to nicely-worded opinions) indicates that 70+ positive feedbacks have set in, we have 400 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere and rising - more if you include other greenhouse gasses while ostensibly emissions from madmade CO2 have flatlined.

We may be about to see the final proof of runaway global warming with the melting of most of the Arctic ice (in fact, it has already mostly gone if you take into account thickness).

I don't mind people having their own personal responses - some people may (temporarily) crawl into a ball with depression but most of us will decide to fight and to live life to the full.

But responses like the one below always go with some denial (or emission) of the scentific evidence and an inability to think systemically - an inability to join dots.

Even a good knowledge of climate science, glaciology etc. can fall short of the mark if one ignores the biology. Simply, if the weather gets too hot, or too unpredictable, we cease to be able to grow grains at scale.

It always comes with an arrogant assumption that humans are 'special' - that we do not depend on the world around us just to live, let alone keep an industrial civilisation (capitalist or non-capitalist, it doesn't matter).

We can overthrow capitalism and throw all the CEO's of oil companies into the sea and the outcome will still be the same.

The woman below said "you can live without optimism but you can't live without hope."

Even the dictionary on Google gives the following definition

hope

hōp/

noun

1. 1.

   a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen.

   "he looked through her belongings in the hope of coming across some information"

   synonyms:

   aspiration, desire, wish, expectation, ambition, aim, goal, plan, design; More
2. 2.

   archaic

   a feeling of trust.

verb

1. 1.

   want something to happen or be the case.

   "he's hoping for an offer of compensation"

   synonyms:

   expect, anticipate, look for, be hopeful of, pin one's hopes on, want;  wish for, long for,dream of "he's hoping for a medal"

 “The feeling of wanting something to happen and thinking that it could happen : a feeling that something good will happen or be true. : the chance that something good will happen. : someone or something that may be able to provide help : someone or something that gives you a reason for hoping.” (Merriam-Webster Dictionary)

I prefer the definition given by Guy - hope is holding out for an outcome over which we have no agency.

The mature response would be to look at all the evidence and then proceed from there with how we are going to respond.  As to the latter, there will be as many responses as there are humans, including in many cases lying to oneslef and putting one's head in the sand.