Unpopular Opinion
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
6. Defend your opinion
This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
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Spot on. Polls across the globe show that a majority of humanity is concerned about climate change. The end result, which may well be the death of our species, is hardly spoken about, but is becoming more and more a realistic outcome. In that light, one would expect people to make a positive contribution, either by helping to slow down global warming or through showing compassion towards other people. The opposite is happening (and not just on Lemmy): e.g. borders are closed to keep (climate) migrants out, people insist on protecting their own wealth… and at the same time many seem to wish for an apocalyptic scenario. Hey folks, if the going gets tough, the tough get going! Make a positive change. Gloom and doom never did any good.
There's a good reason for that: no legitimate climate model predicts that outcome. I don't understand where that existential angst is coming from when no credible climate scientist is claiming it'll lead to human extinction. The threat is millions of excess deaths - not the end of the human race. The IPCC reports don't even mention human extinction as a plausible outcome. That terminology is almost entirely absent from actual scientific assessment.
The worst-case scenario is already really bad. Why do we need to pretend it's even worse?
Your article contradicts itself: “If I had to rank climate change as an existential risk to humanity, it would be below a lot of the other threats that are heavy on people's minds,” says Schlosser. “Nuclear war, global pandemics: as an existential risk these are far greater than climate change.” Ah, but alas, the likelihood of nuclear war, global pandemics increases tremendously because of climate collapse. We’re on track for +2.5°C to +2.9°C by 2100 under current policies; this is a tremendous temperature increase in record time, very similar to the ones that lead to mass extinctions in the past. There is a distinct risk that humanity will kill itself (there are sufficient scientific publications that highlight this). I’m not particularly bothered by it, as I will be dead by then, and life on Earth will continue as always, but I do see it as a positive motivation to limit human suffering as much as possible.