@stevenroose

Thats not the impression I get. Aside from Greta herself needing to be put in a special needs school I live in europe (the netherlands) and used to live in the USA. If there is one thing that is evident to me it is that the school in neither country "works well" We have kids coming out of school dumb as bricks and its a HUGE epidemic that needs addressing. When schools are so woefully inadequate the last thing we need are people proposing leaving it or agendas that dismiss its importance.

I dont think i exagerate the importance of those fridays at all, if anything i understate them. Not just the fridays but the need for MORE school, and BETTER school, not less. Society is so uneducated these days and so easily swayed by nonsense facts society is barely holding together right now.

@FreePietje

@freemo

Whether schools are good or not good enough is an entirely different discussion. I was born and raised (and still live) in The Netherlands and I have no problem with our school system.

(I disagree with the constant changing of the system and with their structural underfunding, but that is also besides the point)

The education system is not the reason for the climate crises. Nor do we need more study into it (although I would be fine with that).
What we need is action.

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

It isnt an entierly different discussion. When part of your tactic is to protest schools it is no longer a seperate discussion but rather vital to the current one.

Yes we need action, it isnt the study, from the perspective of scientists, that is lacking. What is lacking is the understanding int he general population which allows for climate change deniers to exist. This is the direct result of lack of good education and critical thinking skills.

All I know is most people around the world, including the dutch and americans, are dumb as bricks and are more than capable of being quite bright if they were educated. People just stop learning how to learn, and actually doing it, a long time ago.

The climate crisis is a direct result of this, it is why climate change deniers can thrive when its so easy to debunk.

@stevenroose

@freemo
I'm glad to read that even though for a large part I disagree with your analyses.
I do wonder how it is possible that too many people don't see the problem. If the general population was more intelligent, things may be better.
I don't think lack of intelligence is (very) relevant though as people who should be smart, still don't want to do anything about it.

As is often the case, money/financial interests is the cause.
DemocracyNow! had a relevant segment on David Koch

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

Im not sure intelligence is the right word. Intelligence speaks of potential not application. It seems to be a lack of critical thinking skills and a lack of understanding logical fallacies and objective scientific methods for arriving at truth.

Schools, if done right, teach rigerous science and how to distinguish between truth and fact. They teach formal logic, logical fallacies, and Data analysis, all of which give you the tools needed to reach more objective truths.

Sadly with education seen as such a low priority and with kids not even going to school (and not being taught well even if they did go to school) I feel that leads far more to climate change deniers than just "intelligence" would.

@stevenroose

@freemo
Oil companies have know for *decades* what the problem was, but the solution ends their money machine. So they fight it.
Just like tobacco cos claimed for years/decades there is no correlation with tobacco and (lung) cancer.

I also wonder why f.e. the Dutch gov raised taxes 'for the climate', but the greatest polluters were exempted from it.
Thus: people see nothing change, except that their taxes are being raised. Few better ways to destroy willingness to combat CC

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

Those are valid concerns for sure. My point is if we had a society filled with critical thinkers then Oil companies wouldnt have gotten away with the lie in the first place.

Even now the people who oppose the oil companies are so uneducated they make emotional pleas and protests that seem like a positive act ont he surface but tend to be self destructive of their own causes. This in turn fuels the climate change deniers because when those whoa re pro-climate make absurd claims and are easily debunked it causes them to use this as a way of discrediting the whole moment, sadly.

A few examples. The amazon fires. All the scientists on the issue are well aware that the trend in forest fires are generally on the decline inteh amazon. This year the total number of fires is not unusual for the dry season in anyway compared to previous decades and rolling averages. Yet the left makes it sound like 80% of the forest is on fire (the actual number is 0.0054% as of last week). So while deforestation is a very real and critical problem by being too uneducated and focusing on the forest fires instead ultimately hurt their cause.

Another example are the trend of protests on oil pipelines, when people should be protesting gasoline consumption (which would require them to look at themselves as well). Pipelines themselves reduce oil consumption since they replace transportation along boat and trust with pipes. Pipelines consume far far less fossil fuels in transport and do far less harm to the environment than an equivalent number of trucks transporting the same fuel. As such it is self-destructive to protest the pipelines when they should be protesting the consumers.

These patterns of uneducated group-think result in the whole climate change movement to be discredited, which is unfair because the core scientists are still right even if the people are uneducated and absurd.

If we had a more educated public then those who are pro-eco would behave in ways that would be more respectable and thus would like drive fewer people to oppose the movement and discount it. Never mind the fact that there are plenty of uneducated right wingers too who deny it just due to their own lack of education as well, rather than as an effect of a discredited left.

@stevenroose

@freemo
It's an 80% increase vs last year, but that is a bit more nuanced iirc (again, recently DN! was more specific about it)

What you say wrt pipelines is somewhat true. Pipelines also decrease the cost of production of oil, thereby making exploitation of oil fields economical viable, whereas otherwise they shouldn't. Stop oil consumption and we wouldn't need them in the first place. Those pipelines cause enormous environmental damage themselves + threaten water supplies

@stevenroose

@freemo
I also blame social media and tech cos. People are easily indoctrinated with lies through them. Google/FB/etc thrive on 'engagement' and spreading conspiracy theories is the best way to 'enhance' engagement.

The low/short attention span of people also doesn't help. The real/actual news/facts are often nuanced, so the 'news' often gets dumbed down to the point they (almost) become false themselves, giving fuel to people who want to deny the basic premise.

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

The only reason social media and news is to blame, as you yourself said, is because people arent educated enough to understand the nuance. If they were then the news would not be particularly effective at lying.

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

I am a Data scientist, thats NOT how we measure if something is statistically unusual. I mean just think about it, how do you know if the 80% increase from last year is due to last year being unusually low in fires rather than this year being unusually high?

Obviously if people were more educatede they would know the second they hear something like "80% increase from last year" that such claims are BS and every red flag should go off, thats not how scienstists measure things.

What we would do is use a distribution, compare the last few DECADES, and try to see what distribution describes the event we are describing. At that point we see where this year falls compared to the previous years.

What you find is that this year is in no way special. It is statistically insignificant. You just so happen to have a year with an unusually low number of fires preceding a year with a more normal number of fires. In fact with forrest forest that is exactly how it works. The more years you go without a fire the bigger the fire is once you have one. So in fact with any rigorous analysis we quickly see that the trend is fewer fires, not more, despite the twisting of data in the way you just suggested.

@stevenroose

@FreePietje If they arent selling oil then they dont need pipelines. The fact that they want to sell oil in a way that costs them less money by not wasting more oil than they need to in the act of transporting oil is hardly something we should be mad at them for. They only sell the oil we buy. So the only people to blame is us for buying it. But no one ever wants to blame the people for their collective bad moves.

With that said lets take what you said at face value and ignore my objection. The response should be to push for a pipeline tax that ensures the cost of building a pipeline is high enough that it offsets any damage it does as best we can. This negates the argument of a financial advantage that can be used to harvest more oil.

@FreePietje

Also check out this post were i go a bit deeper into the data. You can see the 80% increase over last year int eh data but it is also evident that we had an unusual low number of fires the last year and a few years before. As can be seen this years number of fires is still below the average for last decade.

https://qoto.org/@freemo/102678852721648878

@stevenroose

@freemo
Will do.

I think the main reasons the wild fires became such a hot issue is two-fold:
1) The smoke made the sky in Sao Paulo 'black', making it highly visible for lots of people. I'm absolutely convinced de-forestation is a big problem, (only) not just in the Amazon.
2) Politicians use things like that because it's now popular. I want them to do the right thing at the right time (i.e. decades ago), not when it becomes political advantages. If only everyone agreed with me

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

I see a very different sequence of things that mde it a big deal. #1 happens every year, last year canada was covered in smoke fromt he siberian fires as well. Even philly smelled the smoke.

#2 is closer to true but its not just the politicians.

Here is how it really went down..

1) notre dame burned and news media made a fortune off the coverage. Then everyone complained that everyone was watching Notre Dame burn and no one cared about the forests that were burning (partly because burning forests arent really a big eco issue right now)

2) for some months memes circulated reiterating the idea of notre dame and the forests burning.

3) media, ever looking to make money and draw attention to nonsense saw this trend. So now that its dry season again they focused their coverage ont he forest fires just as everyone cried over, even though it was a non issue they did what they did best and made it sound like the world was ending all to get people hyped and watching more news.. it worked.

Meanwhile the REAL global climate issues continue to be ignored...

@stevenroose

@freemo
This is the first time that I've heard about someone making a connection between the Notre Dame and wild fires.

Most media companies aren't interested in facts, let alone nuances, but only about 'entertainment' and that surely is big problem :-/

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

Thats really surpising it was a huge trend on facebook for months, flooded my whole stream before the amazon fires. Attached are some examples.

@stevenroose

@freemo
Tbh also only saw it perhaps once. I'm not on Fb though.
@FreePietje

@stevenroose

Fair, it seemed rare enough here on mastodon. Mostly a facebook thing for a while there.

@FreePietje

@freemo @stevenroose
I'm also not on FB.
Funnily enough, today on DN! it was mentioned 😂
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/27/headlines/brazil_rejects_g7_amazon_aid_amid_mounting_environmental_disaster

@FreePietje

Basically was going on during the siberian fires last year. So everyone demanded forest fire coverage in outrage. This year they got it.

@stevenroose

@freemo
Your argument about pipelines is only partly valid, though. Pipelines make oil prices go down on the receivers end and markups higher on the senders end. So it incentivices the receiver to build more gas plants and to use more oil generally and in the meantime also incentivices the sender side to produce more gas.
@FreePietje

@stevenroose

Well yea pipelines make prices go down because it means you dont need to waste half a barrel of oil in order to ship the other half. So you get more oil when you buy it since less of the oil was wasted.. sure. That isnt a bad thing. To take the stance of raising oil prices through a tactic that that wastes oil to do it is ultimately lunacy.

By that logic we should pass a law where everyone needs to buy a hummer or other fuel **inefficient** car. This ensures gas prices stay high so people wont buy it... Even if people buy less oil as a result it, as a policy, is lunacy.

@FreePietje

@freemo
Sigh. I'm done with this 'discussion'.

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

Well seems we mostly left off in agreement anyway. If we disagreed on anything it seems to be more the nuance than the overarching points.

So yea, not really sure there was much left to discuss anyway.

But if you feel you have anything more to add feel free later.

Thanks for all your input.

@stevenroose

@freemo
I find it highly annoying that you belittle and/or ridicule what I consider a completely valid argument by @stevenroose
Your 'argument' of throwing toxic waste in the river to get attention, I found similarly annoying.

I now know that you're not a climate change denier, quite the opposite, but I wasn't sure for a while because of those 'arguments'.
I now also know that you can bring useful things to the discussion. Thanks for that.

But those other things really ruin it for me.

@FreePietje

I'm very sorry. I didnt mean to make it sound like i was belittling you. I did belittle the argument as absurd, but that was before i knew that you yourself believe int he argument.

I try very hard to attack ideas, not people, so if you felt attacked I'm sorry that wasnt the intention.

For the record I think you handled yourself maturely, intelligently, and did your best to review the facts as they were presented. I would have no valid reason to belittle you.

@stevenroose

@freemo
Apology accepted.

I made essentially the same argument. Even if I wasn't, I find it disrespectful and it doesn't matter if it was directed to me or not.

Besides that we shouldn't facilitate the fossil fuel industry, but rigorously move away from it, f.e. the Dakota Access pipeline not only steals, again, land of indigenous people it *will* also spoil their source of water, thus life. And for 10s of million of other people. An oil spill will happen. Guaranteed.

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

As a Native american myself I followed that iinstance rather closely including the court battles. It seemed clear to me it was not land owned by the native americans and the claim to it being sacred land was also reviewed and discredited. But with that said, any arguments of it being their land, if that case could be made with some evidence, would be a valid one to me in isolation. That would be true though regardless of if it were a pipeline or not.

But from an eco standpoint the fact is that millions of trucks mving every day to transport oil, will do FAR more damage to polluting their river (and source of life than the pipeline. So even if the purpose is to preserve the health of the rivers then they fail at that purpose by blocking the pipeline, which would be a positive improvement in terms of. eco impact on that and all other rivers.

But i agree with the idea that oil spills happen, and they may pollute that or other rivers. totally legit. My point is the solution to that is not requiring oil companies to transport oil via means that pollute more than pipelines, that doesnt solve your concern of oil spills (in fact it makes them worse). The only way you stop it is to reduce the consumption of the oil. That means you have to point the finger at the people not the companies, something the left seems incapable of doing (meanwhile the right refuse to acknowledge a problem exists at all).

@stevenroose

@FreePietje
What a mature way of ending a discussion guys! 🤝
👀
@freemo

@stevenroose

I found everyone in this conversation behaved maturely. I have a great deal of respect for both of you for doing so, thank you.

@FreePietje

@freemo @stevenroose Well, that didn't take long :-(
"Keystone Pipeline Spill in North Dakota Leaked 383,000 Gallons of Oil"
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/1/headlines/keystone_pipeline_spill_in_north_dakota_leaked_383_000_gallons_of_oil

@FreePietje

What percentage do piplines leak and how would it compare to the huge number of tons of fossil fuels that would need to be burned to transport it by other means (train or truck)..

We shouldnt be focused on individual incidents if we care about if we support pipelines or done, because that is misleading. Pipes have spills, rarely, trucks and train "spill" that same oil into the atmosphere constantly. The latter tends to be far worse though.

@stevenroose

@freemo @FreePietje @stevenroose

Good point.

The Chicago Tribune article about the spill says that the Keystone Pipeline can handle 23 million gallons per day. So that spill accounts for 1/60 of a day, less than 2%, or 0.005% of its yearly capacity.

https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-nw-keystone-pipeline-leak-20191101-uwijgloc3rgnvihcelynbc4vlm-story.html

@billstclair

Then what percentage would a truck need to hail oil, without that said its not a real comparison. That is also the hard part.

But reason tells us it takes a LOT less energy to push oil through a pipe then it does to operate an endless cariban of trucks (to get the same capacity)

@FreePietje @stevenroose

@freemo @stevenroose We had this discussion before and I have no desire to redo that. Looks like we still disagree (and that's fine).

I posted it to show/document that a spill wasn't just a theoretical possibility, but just a matter of time before it would happen. In this case just 2 months.

@FreePietje

Thanks for sharing. I knew that, they happen all the time. We should absolutely strive to reduce them. Not building them simply doesnt do that, it makes it worst. What would is abstaining from consumption.

So when I see leaks like that my response is basically "Oh crap if even the most efficient way of transport is polluting, then we really have to cut back our oil addiction **now**!. But my response is not "Lets move to less efficient ways of transporting oil in response to the most efficient way not being perfect"

So hope that explains my side.

It was nice chatting.

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

By the way the dumping of toxic waste into the river, the visceral reaction it gave you is exactly the reaction i had when i first heard about Greta.

You have to keep in mind a HUGE part of my life was fighting for advocacy to better education and access to education. I have felt for decades now it would lead to a reality that looks a hell of a lot like the one we are now in.

So to me it isnt an exaggeration or meant to be an offensive analogy. It is simply exactly what it sounds like when I hear Greta talk and it is an offensive stance to me.

Regardless i do appreciate you sharing the fact that those points were offensive to you. Again im sorry, I was trying to attack the ideas, not the people. If i didnt succeed at that I will try harder next time.

@stevenroose

@freemo
I had a feeling that something like that was behind it and for a large part the reason I continued the conversation.
I find some reason in it, but I don't think giving everyone an IQ of 120+ is ever going to happen, nor do I think even that will have the result you're expecting.

OTOH, discussions with people I 100% agree with are boring ;-)

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

My argument has nothing to do with IQ or even intelligence in the technical sense of the word. I dont think nor want, everyone to have an IQ of 120+ either. What i do want is people to be educated and have critical thinking skills. something ive seen plenty of people with low IQ learn if they bothered to formally study logic.

@stevenroose

@freemo
DN! Koch segment: https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/26/headlines/billionaire_conservative_donor_david_koch_who_funded_climate_change_denial_and_anti_labor_efforts_dies

@stevenroose

@FreePietje

I will check this out. But please be aware I am not and have never been a koch fan. So any article about ock to discredit him will mostly be lost on me since i largely just dont care about kock or his opinions much.

@stevenroose

@freemo
It's a short article, but my point was the (insane imo) influence of money (on politics) and the Koch brothers put a lot of money into discrediting climate change. And it looks like they succeeded far better then I could've imagined and surely more then I wanted.
@stevenroose

@FreePietje

Yea he did. But thats not money's problem. Only reason money works to convince people of climate change denial is because people arent educated enough to do the research themselves so they rely on media to convince them what to think int he first place.

In a well educated society Koch's money would be a vain attempt lost into the ether and the only result would be him having less money with no effect on climate activism.

So while koch was an asshole I wouldnt say he is the root of the problem, only the symptom.

@stevenroose

@freemo @stevenroose
Today was a FAR larger (2 part) segment on the Koch brothers/empire and it's influence on politics including wrt climate change:
https://www.democracynow.org/2019/8/27/christopher_leonard_kochland_koch_brothers

It's ~50 minutes in total, so don't feel an obligation to watch it.
I found it *very* interesting.

The author of “Kochland” attributed much of their success to their long-term and strategic visions in which NOT going public was considered critical because you don't have to report every 3 months and CAN execute a LT vision

@FreePietje

I'm very much convinced that lacking education isn't the (at least not the biggest) problem.

As far as my perception of the people whose behavior I can watch in my everyday life goes, well educated people who even remotely behave according to their knowledge of what kind of behaviour is damaging/less damaging to the environment .. these people are really hard to find.

... continued ...

My theory is, that the fundamental problem/cause is the contemporary construction of #socialstatus.

As long as social status and perception of achievement is strongly tied to travelling, big houses, excessive consumption, big cars, new electronics gadgets, higher resolution/power/throughput/definition everything .. people will be more or less indifferent about the negative impact of their pursuit of higher status ..

... continued ...

The most effective contribution to protecting the environment would be to actively associate less harmful ways of living with very high social status.

@FreePietje

Fair i had a similar feeling, the jeaousy remark wasnt the best of wording and drifted into personal. But it wasnt the worst of insults so i let it slide.

While i disagree with his main point and feel it is much more serious than he does I do respect his opinion all the same.

My problem with greta is simple. In an age where lack of education is causes climate change denial and for society itself to break down the most important thing we need right now is an environment that encourages people to be educated and well informed. Greta's movement is contrary to that and damaging more so than it is helpful.

Yes greta as Aspergers. Generally people with aspergers can perform very well in school, some dont. It may be this aspergers that is holding her back i dont know. But the fact is the factthat she is struggling to keep up with others her age is an indication she should be investing MORE time in school not less. If you are behind, whatever the reason, you are probably the last person who should be skipping school let alone encouraging others to do so.

@stevenroose