You know that metaphor about how a frog in a pot on the stove doesn't know it's heating up and doesn't jump out until it's too late?
The pot has started boiling.
You know that metaphor about how a frog in a pot on the stove doesn't know it's heating up and doesn't jump out until it's too late?
The pot has started boiling.
"The summer of ‘the warmest day ever'…until tomorrow."
We're not going to make it are we😕
Yes it has.
Well, civilized is debatable. But yes, all the imaginary systems will collapse because they're imaginary and entropy is a thing. Governance doesn't exist🤣 The world's governments have already thrown us all under the bus😕
@petergleick this still works as a metaphor, but in reality the frogs jump out.
So we're less adaptive to subtle environmental changes than frogs.
@avocado_toast @petergleick personally I don't engage in humanity self-hate. We also jump out of the pot of boiling water. The climate crisis is just a bit more complicated to jump out of.
Like yeah, you can moan about how humans suck and ignore the problems. But it is, objectively, a very difficult problem. I don't know if the negativity accomplishes anything.
@avocado_toast @petergleick we're not. By proportion a significant fraction of humans agree that climate change is a problem. Certainly not 2 to 1 of climate deniers.
Modify the drawing to make the edges of the pot 1 meter tall, requiring significant infrastructure work to get out of, and make the majority of frogs say "the pot is boiling but I don't know what to do about it". That'll be more accurate.
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/09/16/global-climate-change-poll
@ReneeWestberry @avocado_toast @petergleick Once again : enough with the humanity self-hate.
A bunch of billionaires selling boats that are contributing to warm the pot but making it much more tolerable in the mean time.
I'm not pretending the situation isn't bad. But y'all just love to describe it as worst than it actually is just so you can indulge in hopeless despair. It's counter-productive. The frogs who are already convinced they're gonna die aren't getting out of the pot either.
@akkavodol @ReneeWestberry @petergleick nobody's "getting out of the pot" because the pot is planet Earth.
Enough with the tone policing. I don't have to be delusional just because you want me to join you in having a bias for positive thought.
If it were possible to solve the climate crisis through manifestation it'd already be accomplished.
@avocado_toast @ReneeWestberry @petergleick this isn't tone policing, this is me telling you that your worldview is inaccurate.
There's this inherent bias in human thinking that convinces us that if a worldview is grim and depressing it has to be true. That's just not how it works. It's just as easy to be wrong because you think things are worst than they really are than the other way around.
I'm just doing my best to bring some perspective into the conversation.
@akkavodol @ReneeWestberry @petergleick where am I wrong? Are we on track to emit less carbon than we did in 2022?
Don't think so.
@ReneeWestberry @akkavodol @petergleick the boiling pot is earth itself and the only people trying to "get out of it" are pursuing planetary exit.
The solution isn't to get out of it in this case, it's to turn the gas on the stove off.
But people are adamant that we actually need to keep increasing the temperature on the cook top every year while insisting that somehow some way we won't boil to death from it.
@akkavodol @petergleick what to do about it is already known: burn less crap, consume less, travel less, etc...but it's not happening at all. Year over year we're actually doing more of all of these things.
There also may be fewer climate change deniers than people who acknowledge the science, but the reach of climate deniers and their control over governmental policy is more than enough to make up for their lack of majority support.
@avocado_toast @petergleick It's not that simple.
If today, right now, we were to turn the oil production down to *no more climate change* level, the consequences would be disastrous. Our industry would collapse. We would no longer be producing enough food, electricity, medicine... for a large fraction of humanity. There would be famines. Wars.
The question is how do we slow climate change without doing more damage than climate change. It's not at all easy.
@avocado_toast @petergleick Yes, because the population is rising and the living conditions of people in third world countries is steadily improving.
Slowing climate change by pushing one third of the world back to the level of poverty they were in 50 years ago would be fairly easy.
...this is fine.
Very much not the point, I know, but did you ever consider how that story could possibly be true?
Frogs aren't suicidally stupid and have a perfectly good nervous system after all.
While apparently not true in the scientific sense, Wikipedia says that many people consider it a valid metaphor … and that in one experiment they had removed the frog's brain first …
!ImageDescription: There are 3 green frogs sitting in a pot with boiling water, heated by flames underneath. One says: “My calculations indicate we are slowly boiling alive!” The other two reply: “I don’t feel anything!”, “Alarmist!”
@petergleick Would be great if you could add a description to the image :)