> I'd have been genuinely scared to death about the ozone layer being depleted or acid rain making the planet unlivable by now, yet here we are.

It's retroactively very extreme sounding, but that's because governments collectively acted to enact environmental regulations. The ozone really was on its way to just vanishing and still isn't fully recovered.

The difference is that governments are full of people who don't realize that active efforts prevented disaster scenarios, and they're paid to say the bad things that are happening aren't happening. What was a slow moving disaster is now accelerating and people are still pretending humans can magically fix everything they knowingly fucked up.

I don't use social media, HN notwithstanding, and it is plainly obvious to me from just looking out the window that climate change is substantial and accelerating. It is the most urgent and dangerous issue facing the planet.

I agree social media is awful, but it does not follow that climate change isn't cause to panic.

If anything, half of Americans are nowhere near panicked enough about climate change as the result of social media.

I think the point here is panic doesn't solve any problems and probably only makes things worse. We'd all be better off with level heads.

Just a few days ago there was a post about Gen-Z flooding climate science/environmental jobs and the response was pretty similar to here (except for some great discourse on whether these jobs actually make a difference in the first place).

Even those taking action are seen as overly concerned/panicked children who are only doing this because of TikTok. I cannot express under this site's guidelines how absolutely grating and antagonizing this kind of view is. As if media didn't exist before the Internet and this generation is somehow a uniform drone of phone-addicted feeble minds.

Perhaps it has less to do with irrational panic and more to do with the certain loss of life that will affect us all.

But who sees action takers as any of those things? More sustainable living- things like recycling, biking, better agriculture, cleaner energy, etc. etc- have been all the rage for the last 30 years. Getting funding for research even tangentially related to climate change or clean energy has been easy since the 90s. The stock market goes nuts for clean energy. The idea that people aren't taking it seriously is silly to me. The problem is there are just so many more people every year, not that people don't care.

Do you disagree that the clean energy problem has been solved by nuclear energy? I'm not panicked because I think we already have the solution.

All the climate alarmism and environmental activists has done is promote worse options like solar and wind that are more environmentally destructive and cannot sustain modern human civilization.

Germany is nearly halfway to replacing fossil fuels and nuclear power, other countries are even further along (though they are smaller). Pretty sure they qualify as a modern human civilizations.

I've heard nonsense claims against renewable energy my entire life, but it's all over except for the shouting. Nuclear is going away because wind and solar are already cheaper and easier to deploy and better for the environment. Maybe it's a good option on Mars where there isn't a biosphere.

If you were on a spaceship and every year the CO2 => oxygen recycling systems grew increasingly unpredictable as well as the average temperature of all systems onboard, would it be alarmist to figure out what was going on? The climate is changing, very slowly on our individual lifespan timescale, but very quickly on the timescale of the last twenty thousand years of weather patterns that can support our current population.

Yes, I disagree with you on many levels. First, solar and wind are not more environmentally destructive, at least in any appreciable way. Second, solar and wind can sustain modern human civilization. Third, clean energy has de facto not been solved because only a small percentage of generation is currently nuclear. Fourth, even what you describe were possible, construction lead time on known scalable reactor designs is many years. Fifth, even what you describe were possible, the fuel supply chain is underdeveloped and would take many years to develop. Sixth, all of wind, solar, and nuclear are just electric sources and we face a storage density problem not a generation problem. Seventh, the nature of the climate problem is one that has already happened and will continue for decades even if every human ceased to exist immediately. Eighth, nuclear is still not renewable. I could go on but I hope you appreciate that I disagree with you and think you are underinformed about nuclear power.

note: Uranium spot prices are increasing because the Sprott Physical Trust purchases and WSB activity. The spot market is a minor part of the overall markets. Plants purchase from producers directly under long term contracts.

> First, solar and wind are not more environmentally destructive, at least in any appreciable way.

There's many reasons that these forms of energy are arguably worse than nuclear environmentally: such as the substantial amount of prime land they must occupy to generate the same amount of electricity to the second order effects of their limited nature in necessitating batteries to store power when the sun/wind isn't working.

> Second, solar and wind can sustain modern human civilization. > Sixth, all of wind, solar, and nuclear are just electric sources and we face a storage density problem not a generation problem.

I've written about this many times, but this energy storage problem is precisely why wind and solar cannot work to drive human activity. When the sun doesn't shine or the wind doesn't blow, you just can't realistically store enough energy to drive refrigeration, industry, and all of the other features of modern life on a mass scale with our current technology level. Nuclear energy doesn't have this constraint.

> Third, clean energy has de facto not been solved because only a small percentage of generation is currently nuclear. > Fourth, even what you describe were possible, construction lead time on known scalable reactor designs is many years.

I'm not concerned. If it's a problem and necessary for humanity, it will eventually happen, and very quickly. I think economics dictates this.

> Fifth, even what you describe were possible, the fuel supply chain is underdeveloped and would take many years to develop.

Not worried. Uranium prices are currently spiking and will continue to spike. And this is a good thing as it incentivizes increased production. Experts more informed than me have said when the spot price of uranium hits around 60-65, many more mines and sources become economically viable and will start scaling up.

> Seventh, the nature of the climate problem is one that has already happened and will continue for decades even if every human ceased to exist immediately.

I have no doubt that climate change fear mongering will exist eternally. Whenever a politician messes up forest management or flood mitigation, it's easier to blame "climate change" than their own competence.

I'm less convinced that it's a real threat to life on Earth. We'll adapt to any challenges, as we always have.

> Eighth, nuclear is still not renewable.

It doesn't matter as we have enough uranium to last many, many, many lifetimes, and far more if sea-water extraction can be done safely. By that point, we'll have other options.

> I could go on but I hope you appreciate that I disagree with you and think you are underinformed about nuclear power.

I'd agree with you that despite trying to stay informed, I don't know nearly enough about nuclear energy. And for that I blame the media who is fixated on trying to clickbait fear rather than informing us about the solutions.

The difference is that people took action on the ozone layer and acid rain. Now they aren't problems.

I can't understand the viewpoint that climate change coverage is some sort of clickbait to drive ad revenue. I can't think of anything worse to read about. It's so depressing and makes me avoid the news and see less ads if anything.

> already been a solved problem for decades

How solved is it if the solutions aren't getting deployed?

Climate scientists have historically maintained a tacit agreement to not discuss other solutions publicly, because they think reducing emissions is the best way to go and they don't want to distract politicians by telling them about other options. This has changed a bit in recent years (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/solar-geoengineer...), but the change largely hasn't filtered to the public consciousness.

That article is not about saying it's a solution. It's about saying it merits research, in case it's needed as a result of all of these other efforts being insufficient or poorly managed. Because for all we know, we'll need it and it won't work.

Scott Adams is a cartoonist with a degree in economics and an MBA.

ad hominem attack. I don't like his attitude personally but thats not ultimately relevant.

I don't think it's an ad hominem attack. What I've said is true. Just because someone is passionate and interested in medicine in their free time doesn't qualify them as a physician and the same is true in this case. It is possible that Scott Adams will end up being correct, but there are other people that have devoted a lot more time and energy in their lives learning and researching this subject than him, and I would prefer to spend my limited time listening to them instead. I think they are much more likely to be correct.

I’m convinced now the reason we don’t live in a galaxy full is interstellar species is that ad-driven engagement has ended every society before it gets to that level of technology.