First off, please accept my condolences for your loss, Claire. As a fellow cat person, let me recommend the Trailer Park Boys’ “Kittyman” sea shanty on YouTube to help cheer you up a bit.
Second, I don’t want to cancel my subscription. I have found the debate enlightening, and Dr. X’s explanation of anthropogenic climate change was very persuasive and has moved me down the continuum towards greater concern. See what calm, cool, dispassionate argument can accomplish? Minds can be changed still with just a little detachment and less evangelistic fervor.
So please, continue your laissez-faire fascistic Messianic millenarian eschatological utilitarian Chicken Littling. I’m all on board.
I'm copying this comment from the forum where I posted it in case anyone missed it. (The forum was the one where we asked people to debate the proposition, "The Green worldview does more harm than good.) The debate going on there is worth your time if you haven't read it. I've corrected the typos in the original.
"Note from Claire (not a debate point at all). I woke up to see this and was as pleased to read it as I was displeased, yesterday, to wake up to yet more email demanding that I strike Ben, Owen's father, or a number of our other contributors from our ranks, delete their contributions, declare them heretics, and ostracize from civilized society as violent thought-criminals--all because they'd offered polite, well-written, thoughtful, and carefully-argued essays or thoughts about the future of energy. These emails worry me far more than the energy debate itself.
I agree that the consequences of getting our energy policy wrong could be exceptionally serious; in the very worst case, they could end life on earth; in the somewhat-worse but still exceptionally serious case, they could impoverish the free world or cripple the developing world.
But in the long run we'll all be dead. In the short term, we now have a gravely worrying problem: It has become a cultural norm in the West (I think all these letter-writers were Westerners, from the tone and style) to *demand* that no one express a view with which he or she disagrees. People do not seem to think twice about doing so. All too few instinctively think, "It is grotesque, and highly inappropriate in a free society, even to request this, no less demand it."
The problem is cross-partisan, and it afflicts far more people than I'd realized. And this is *Energy* Week, for Heaven's sake, not Transgender Week. We're a bunch of policy wonks nerding out over here; we're not deliberately wading into some culture war zone for clicks. I would never have dreamt this subject would give rise to the kind of hysteria it has. So thank you, all of you, for reminding not only me but other readers what a normal, healthy response to disagreement is supposed to look like in a liberal democracy. It put me in a good mood to begin my day."
I also realized that chastising all of our readers for letters sent to me by no more than a dozen-odd readers was unnecessary, even silly; after all, presumably those who declared they'd never read another word we published didn't see it. (Though I suspect they did: The people who send those letters have a strange, stalker's obsession with this newsletter.) But I suspect those of you who agree with me enjoyed the statement of principle. And I'm so glad we also have so many *more* people here who think that's a principle worth vigorously defending.
We will defeat the cancellers, snowflakes, hysterics, and thought police. There are more of us than there are of them, and if we push back on them, hard, we can establish the norm: Ours is an open society, and the only appropriate response to speech we don't like is more speech and better speech.
Regarding the ever-present chance of nuclear war, I certainly agree that it is curious that most people no longer pay much heed to it. That was much less the case before the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the 1970s through the early 1980s, I did worry about it, and thought about whether my long-term plan should be to immigrate to New Zealand.
The ending of the Cold War seems to have reduced the possibility of nuclear war, and I seem to recall some group setting back some clock to indicate that general perception.
What has emerged since then are true stories about how close the world came to an exchange of missiles between the United States and the USSR, on several occasions. The first was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. While the focus of the world was on the possible exchange of of land-based missiles, there was a separate conflict taking place out in the Atlantic. As the U.S. blockade started to be implemented, the USSR dispatched nuclear-armed submarines to hang out in the Sargasso Sea. Unfortunately, the captain of this group of submarines lost contact with home base. Then the U.S. Navy found the subs and started dropping depth charges to get the submarines to surface. The Soviet subs came very close to launching their weapons, but one of the three people required to agree refused.
On another occasion, years later, a glitch in a newly installed computer signaled to some missile-monitoring group in the USSR that a handful of ICBMs had been launched and were on their way to the Soviet Union. They had only minutes to decide whether to retaliate. Fortunately, the officer on duty realized something was weird: if the USA was going to mount a surprise attack, it would launch many, many missiles, not just a few. So he argued, against some resistance from others, that it was likely a computer error. He was right, he prevailed, and the world avoided disaster.
The third incident of which I am aware was in connection with the NATO nuclear command-and-control exercise, Able Archer 83. As described in this article, "all units of the Soviet 4th Air Army had been put on high alert in reaction to the NATO drill, and the heightened alert state 'included preparations for the immediate use of nuclear weapons'."
What has been scary to learn in more recent years is that the U.S. president alone has the power to launch a nuclear attack. I don't think I need to elaborate on why that is frightening.
How does all that relate to climate change? The point is, we DO live under a very real and existential threat of nuclear war and its consequences. But there is squat all that most of us as citizens can do about it, other than be responsible when we vote for our leaders and avoid handing the nuclear codes to somebody who is unstable or evil. But voters in one country have no influence on who occupies the any of the other nations with working nuclear bombs.
So, if there is next to nothing we as individuals can do to avoid nuclear war, what's our rational choice other than to just hope it won't happen and live as if it won't? For most of us it is a binary probability. Either it will happen, in which case the consequences will be worse thandire, or it won't.
I would submit that the threat of climate change, on the other hand, is different. Why? For one, because there are probabilities of degrees (literally) of change across a broad spectrum. It is also different because there are decisions we CAN make individually, as well as policies we can push for collectively, that CAN make a difference, and possibly avert the kind of change that scientists label "catastrophic".
Well said, Claire. Having bestowed that kudo, I'll add that the reaction from some readers bears out the point I have been making: that the debate over climate/energy policy is only partly grounded in science. And its political component is particularly toxic, thanks to the heartfelt efforts of dogmatic factions on both sides. When you find yourself smeared as the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier for questioning some of the assumptions of the Green New Deal, or reviled as a commie for suggesting that climate change may partly be due to human activity (I've managed to earn both designations at various times), it's obvious that you're dealing with the madness of mobs.
I subscribe to read and hear points of view different from mine. Keep on doing what you are doing as debate helps me sharpen, clarify and sometimes amend what I believe.
Humans are constantly discovering new things about the world. Reality may be constant, but our understanding of the small part of it for which we have knowledge is pretty dynamic.
Those who are certain they know everything necessary to make decisions about climate, human nature, nuclear proliferation, social policies, energy policy, immigration or many other complex issues, need this subscription.
Risk management Is a skill that, sadly, is a required part of very few curriculums.
I used to have a notepad with the phrase "Don't Let the Turkeys Get You Down". That definitely applies here.
"Perhaps we inadequately stressed, “This is a debate,” "
Well, you know. Maybe the term "debate" has lost some of its utility. After all, it was no less a light than Kamala Harris, on being asked on a late night talk show why she lied so in a then-recently concluded Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential primary debate, responded chucklingly, "It was a debate."
[/snark]
Give 'em hell, Claire. The ones who are afraid of debate are the ones with the least to contribute to one. Or ignore them altogether; they're a waste of your time.
And, again, my sympathies and condolences for Daisy and for you.
Great post Claire. J Peterson said, sometimes when you are talking about something really important, you have to risk being offensive to get to the truth. All the people I have read here are thoughtful, well intentioned and speaking in good faith. And they are all smarter than me, though that doesn't mean I accept everything they say. I am finding my way. I am probably biased, I have some preconceived notions. Don't we all? Who was it that said he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the phone book, than by the Harvard University faculty? Experts can get it wrong. So its up to laymen to weigh the evidence.
If I wasn't already a subscriber, I would subscribe.
For those of you who are having a hard time hearing Bad Think, hear me for a moment.
In 2015 I noticed something terrible happening in the country, as white supremacists put on masks to casually expose the most palatable parts of their messaging. And I was worried it wouldn't stop growing, rather it was going to surge into mainstream acceptance. I set out on to Twitter to engage these people and find out what the hell was going on, because you can get that mask to slip very easily with a few honest questions.
If I can have a conversation with some one who carries water for the Klan, you can hear some one propose different technology. If I can say, "For the sake of argument, let's imagine your math is correct and your single variable analysis of the nation is true," you shouldn't have to strawman the first different opinion you've encountered in months. If I can have a stream of people with iron crosses and frogs for avatars try and follow me because they want to "convert me," then you can probably get through an article that opinion makers wouldn't want you to read. I stomached literal fascists, crypto-fascists, and ethnonationalists (from an alarming number of backgrounds) for more than a year to try and get better at disputing them.
Propagandists are not just deceiving you, they're also poisoning your ability to hear what honest people are saying. Convincing us that we are under a terrible threat from within our country keeps eyes on televisions, money flowing in to pockets, and opens the door to authoritarian solutions. The easiest way to convince you that you need a strong arm to protect you, is to scare you into thinking the monsters are much larger than they really are. But they're not. They're smaller than you've been told and we're being disarmed with bad mental training.
First off, please accept my condolences for your loss, Claire. As a fellow cat person, let me recommend the Trailer Park Boys’ “Kittyman” sea shanty on YouTube to help cheer you up a bit.
Second, I don’t want to cancel my subscription. I have found the debate enlightening, and Dr. X’s explanation of anthropogenic climate change was very persuasive and has moved me down the continuum towards greater concern. See what calm, cool, dispassionate argument can accomplish? Minds can be changed still with just a little detachment and less evangelistic fervor.
So please, continue your laissez-faire fascistic Messianic millenarian eschatological utilitarian Chicken Littling. I’m all on board.
I'm copying this comment from the forum where I posted it in case anyone missed it. (The forum was the one where we asked people to debate the proposition, "The Green worldview does more harm than good.) The debate going on there is worth your time if you haven't read it. I've corrected the typos in the original.
"Note from Claire (not a debate point at all). I woke up to see this and was as pleased to read it as I was displeased, yesterday, to wake up to yet more email demanding that I strike Ben, Owen's father, or a number of our other contributors from our ranks, delete their contributions, declare them heretics, and ostracize from civilized society as violent thought-criminals--all because they'd offered polite, well-written, thoughtful, and carefully-argued essays or thoughts about the future of energy. These emails worry me far more than the energy debate itself.
I agree that the consequences of getting our energy policy wrong could be exceptionally serious; in the very worst case, they could end life on earth; in the somewhat-worse but still exceptionally serious case, they could impoverish the free world or cripple the developing world.
But in the long run we'll all be dead. In the short term, we now have a gravely worrying problem: It has become a cultural norm in the West (I think all these letter-writers were Westerners, from the tone and style) to *demand* that no one express a view with which he or she disagrees. People do not seem to think twice about doing so. All too few instinctively think, "It is grotesque, and highly inappropriate in a free society, even to request this, no less demand it."
The problem is cross-partisan, and it afflicts far more people than I'd realized. And this is *Energy* Week, for Heaven's sake, not Transgender Week. We're a bunch of policy wonks nerding out over here; we're not deliberately wading into some culture war zone for clicks. I would never have dreamt this subject would give rise to the kind of hysteria it has. So thank you, all of you, for reminding not only me but other readers what a normal, healthy response to disagreement is supposed to look like in a liberal democracy. It put me in a good mood to begin my day."
I also realized that chastising all of our readers for letters sent to me by no more than a dozen-odd readers was unnecessary, even silly; after all, presumably those who declared they'd never read another word we published didn't see it. (Though I suspect they did: The people who send those letters have a strange, stalker's obsession with this newsletter.) But I suspect those of you who agree with me enjoyed the statement of principle. And I'm so glad we also have so many *more* people here who think that's a principle worth vigorously defending.
We will defeat the cancellers, snowflakes, hysterics, and thought police. There are more of us than there are of them, and if we push back on them, hard, we can establish the norm: Ours is an open society, and the only appropriate response to speech we don't like is more speech and better speech.
Regarding the ever-present chance of nuclear war, I certainly agree that it is curious that most people no longer pay much heed to it. That was much less the case before the collapse of the Soviet Union. During the 1970s through the early 1980s, I did worry about it, and thought about whether my long-term plan should be to immigrate to New Zealand.
The ending of the Cold War seems to have reduced the possibility of nuclear war, and I seem to recall some group setting back some clock to indicate that general perception.
What has emerged since then are true stories about how close the world came to an exchange of missiles between the United States and the USSR, on several occasions. The first was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. While the focus of the world was on the possible exchange of of land-based missiles, there was a separate conflict taking place out in the Atlantic. As the U.S. blockade started to be implemented, the USSR dispatched nuclear-armed submarines to hang out in the Sargasso Sea. Unfortunately, the captain of this group of submarines lost contact with home base. Then the U.S. Navy found the subs and started dropping depth charges to get the submarines to surface. The Soviet subs came very close to launching their weapons, but one of the three people required to agree refused.
On another occasion, years later, a glitch in a newly installed computer signaled to some missile-monitoring group in the USSR that a handful of ICBMs had been launched and were on their way to the Soviet Union. They had only minutes to decide whether to retaliate. Fortunately, the officer on duty realized something was weird: if the USA was going to mount a surprise attack, it would launch many, many missiles, not just a few. So he argued, against some resistance from others, that it was likely a computer error. He was right, he prevailed, and the world avoided disaster.
The third incident of which I am aware was in connection with the NATO nuclear command-and-control exercise, Able Archer 83. As described in this article, "all units of the Soviet 4th Air Army had been put on high alert in reaction to the NATO drill, and the heightened alert state 'included preparations for the immediate use of nuclear weapons'."
https://www.businessinsider.com/nato-war-game-nuclear-war-cold-war-close-call-2021-2?IR=T
What has been scary to learn in more recent years is that the U.S. president alone has the power to launch a nuclear attack. I don't think I need to elaborate on why that is frightening.
How does all that relate to climate change? The point is, we DO live under a very real and existential threat of nuclear war and its consequences. But there is squat all that most of us as citizens can do about it, other than be responsible when we vote for our leaders and avoid handing the nuclear codes to somebody who is unstable or evil. But voters in one country have no influence on who occupies the any of the other nations with working nuclear bombs.
So, if there is next to nothing we as individuals can do to avoid nuclear war, what's our rational choice other than to just hope it won't happen and live as if it won't? For most of us it is a binary probability. Either it will happen, in which case the consequences will be worse thandire, or it won't.
I would submit that the threat of climate change, on the other hand, is different. Why? For one, because there are probabilities of degrees (literally) of change across a broad spectrum. It is also different because there are decisions we CAN make individually, as well as policies we can push for collectively, that CAN make a difference, and possibly avert the kind of change that scientists label "catastrophic".
Well said, Claire. Having bestowed that kudo, I'll add that the reaction from some readers bears out the point I have been making: that the debate over climate/energy policy is only partly grounded in science. And its political component is particularly toxic, thanks to the heartfelt efforts of dogmatic factions on both sides. When you find yourself smeared as the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier for questioning some of the assumptions of the Green New Deal, or reviled as a commie for suggesting that climate change may partly be due to human activity (I've managed to earn both designations at various times), it's obvious that you're dealing with the madness of mobs.
Great Post.
I subscribe to read and hear points of view different from mine. Keep on doing what you are doing as debate helps me sharpen, clarify and sometimes amend what I believe.
Humans are constantly discovering new things about the world. Reality may be constant, but our understanding of the small part of it for which we have knowledge is pretty dynamic.
Those who are certain they know everything necessary to make decisions about climate, human nature, nuclear proliferation, social policies, energy policy, immigration or many other complex issues, need this subscription.
Risk management Is a skill that, sadly, is a required part of very few curriculums.
I used to have a notepad with the phrase "Don't Let the Turkeys Get You Down". That definitely applies here.
"Perhaps we inadequately stressed, “This is a debate,” "
Well, you know. Maybe the term "debate" has lost some of its utility. After all, it was no less a light than Kamala Harris, on being asked on a late night talk show why she lied so in a then-recently concluded Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential primary debate, responded chucklingly, "It was a debate."
[/snark]
Give 'em hell, Claire. The ones who are afraid of debate are the ones with the least to contribute to one. Or ignore them altogether; they're a waste of your time.
And, again, my sympathies and condolences for Daisy and for you.
Eric Hines
Great post Claire. J Peterson said, sometimes when you are talking about something really important, you have to risk being offensive to get to the truth. All the people I have read here are thoughtful, well intentioned and speaking in good faith. And they are all smarter than me, though that doesn't mean I accept everything they say. I am finding my way. I am probably biased, I have some preconceived notions. Don't we all? Who was it that said he would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the phone book, than by the Harvard University faculty? Experts can get it wrong. So its up to laymen to weigh the evidence.
If I wasn't already a subscriber, I would subscribe.
For those of you who are having a hard time hearing Bad Think, hear me for a moment.
In 2015 I noticed something terrible happening in the country, as white supremacists put on masks to casually expose the most palatable parts of their messaging. And I was worried it wouldn't stop growing, rather it was going to surge into mainstream acceptance. I set out on to Twitter to engage these people and find out what the hell was going on, because you can get that mask to slip very easily with a few honest questions.
If I can have a conversation with some one who carries water for the Klan, you can hear some one propose different technology. If I can say, "For the sake of argument, let's imagine your math is correct and your single variable analysis of the nation is true," you shouldn't have to strawman the first different opinion you've encountered in months. If I can have a stream of people with iron crosses and frogs for avatars try and follow me because they want to "convert me," then you can probably get through an article that opinion makers wouldn't want you to read. I stomached literal fascists, crypto-fascists, and ethnonationalists (from an alarming number of backgrounds) for more than a year to try and get better at disputing them.
Propagandists are not just deceiving you, they're also poisoning your ability to hear what honest people are saying. Convincing us that we are under a terrible threat from within our country keeps eyes on televisions, money flowing in to pockets, and opens the door to authoritarian solutions. The easiest way to convince you that you need a strong arm to protect you, is to scare you into thinking the monsters are much larger than they really are. But they're not. They're smaller than you've been told and we're being disarmed with bad mental training.
Triggering isn't just for snowflakes anymore.