Personally, I think changes are irreversible, mostly because it has happened in the past (Ice Ages etc) without any of the modern day causes.
However, I like to push for minor improvements, because they have measurable impact in day-to-day life: less yellowgray days in the city, less paper trash in the street, less bottles on the beach, less heavy metals in our housing materials, more cool gadgets and DIY fun.
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I think Kurzgesagt addressed this, and they are quite realistic and bitter in some of their videos. But the danger of being too pessimistic about climate change, is that people will become complacent and just give up. Cynicism isnât going to change the world, but giving people the idea that thereâs still a bit of hope, but that action needs to come now and that we should try our best; that just might help enough to actually get stuff moving.
Itâs too late to prevent serious problems caused by climate change completely, but it is without a doubt not to late to change our course to go from the current worst case scenario to the current best case scenario. If you have the choice between losing a finger or losing a hand, youâd surely choose the finger, right?
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I didnât, from the parts I watched. I will watch all of it, but there is a lot of bad faith/practice here and as a person that loves nitpicking and arguing, I can tell easily when someone crosses the dishonesty line while pretending to be in the clear.
First, and most important of all, BadEmpanada does a great disservice to science by quoting EACH research as an indisputable and unavoidable FACT, which is most definitely NOT the case and that is unacceptable to be done with a straight face.
On finer details (timestamps):
2:21 - He declares that the sentence âwe are not doomedâ is a strawman. He does not explain why, but âstrawmanâ is a magic word now in the internet that really means âI DO NOT LIKE IT, OK???â
2:58 - He declared that not outright declaring impending doom is âtoxic positivityâ, just on his say so and leaving no room for argument that this is now FACT, even though it is his PERSONAL interpretation
3:48 - He claims that âthroughout the video they do make some token acknowledgements that climate change is bad and yes, we arenât doing enough to stop it, BUT âŠâ but he thinks that is not enough. HE THINKS. Again though he presents this as a done deal.
5:11 - He goes on a spiel how he THINKS that the use of the word âambitiousâ is actually gaslighting the viewers to thinking that 1.5 degrees âwere too much to expect and a great goalâ were in fact it means that âit was too ambitious to expect that weâd do anything about itâ. He condemns the usage of the word, even though the video explains very soon after that it is in fact the people that have money and power that seem to not do much about it. But BadEmpanada does not stand for such lukewarm statements and wanted scathing political damnation manifestos from a channel with cutesy graphics. 
6:50 - he doesnât like the phrasing âthe extremes will become more extreme and ecosystems will become under pressureâ ⊠well, too bad for him, but that is not false. Maybe he wanted details on the âextremesâ, but that doesnât make the statement wrong.
7:08 - oh now he is nagging about âwhy only a dead elephantâ ⊠no numbers he said, nothing more specific he exclaims while he forgets that the channel he is talking about has the âin a nutshellâ it is title and it is a channel about making science issues available and palatable for people that normally would NOT watch a science video, ergo they obviously cannot get in a lot of detail. Thatâs the reason Kurzgesagt has 18.5 million subs and PBS spacetime 2.5 million. Not that even PBS SpaceTime goes into the kind of details this person expects, but hey.
8:20 - The original video, after talking about the trillions in damage (which is OBVIOUSLY BAD, unless you are a child and do not have a concept of money yet, but BadEmpanada probably considers everyone a total moron that cannot infer or extrapolate anything from what they hear) mentions that âhundreds of millions of people will need to leave their homesâ
8:26 - The original video says âTHE APOCALYPSE BEGINSâ ⊠not even THAT is strong enough for BadEmpanada as we will see.
8:35 - The original video says âBillions may perish, leaving the rest on a hostile alien planetâ
8:41 - BadEmpanada calls all that âvague and wishy washy referencesâ with little reference of what that actually means for human beings ⊠âbillions may perishâ wasnât enough apparently?
8:50 - BadEmpanada goes on a small rant on why the original video mentioned the trillions of money first ⊠well, they started on the LIGHT consequences FIRST, since âbillions may perishâ comes afterwards. NOT for our BadEmpanada. He claims that âapparently the monetary cost is more relevant than the effect on human livesâ ⊠again this is just what he personally chooses to interpret from the content, but he attributes HIS thought to the content of OTHERS, as if he could read their minds.
9:11 - Here he clearly shows how much in bad faith all this video is being made with. His caption mocks the original content, even though the original content clearly said that âBILLIONS may perishâ ⊠maybe BadEmpanada forgot about it? Maybe 
9:54 - And now BadEmpanada starts the show, where he is reading articles and cherry-picked passages from research - which we do not know if they are peer reviewed (he at least provides titles and links for us to do so) and we all know that plain articles on science are always tuned towards click-bait sensationalism, but he presents all of that as FACTS ⊠not as predictions, models or probablity, but FACTS âŠ
BUT HERE IS WHERE IT GETS FUNNY:
At 9:57 he has a snippet from an article up. at 9:59 he takes the snippet down and says that âcomplete and utter disaster is going to unfold in many regions of the world that billions of people call homeâ but WHO says so? Not the article If you click on it and search for that phrase, it is not there and if you read the article is also says that âThe researchers say that going over 1.5C for one year isnât the same as a sustained rise where temperatures donât fall below this figure. The likelihood is that if it is exceeded in the next five years, it will fall below 1.5C again.â but he IGNORED THAT 
So, not only he cherry picked the article, but he also baited and switched his audience making it seem like the BBC article was making that claim about âcomplete and utter disasterâ where, in fact, that is HIS ALLEGATION
If that is what he does to 1-page articles, I wonder what he does to multi-page research. Well, we do not have to wait for long:
10:31 he produces various snippets from a research: âExtreme heat waves under 1.5 °C and 2 °C global warming, Alessandro Dossio, et al.â ⊠that is all he has in the description, without a link, so I went and found it. Here is the research in pdf:
As always in order to read a paper you need to check the methodology. Things mentioned in it that need to be considered, but our friend BadEmpanada IGNORES (not merely glosses over, as he accuses Kurzgesagt):
- " An univocal and optimal deïŹnition of heat wave is still under debate" (but it is a scary word so BadEmpanada uses it freely )
- " In this study, we use the results of a high-resolution global atmosphere model to investigate the change in magnitude, frequency, and extension of heat waves at 1.5 âŠC and 2âŠC warming levels" ( so it is just a model, a prediction, but BadEmpanada presents it as FACT - never does he say âPROBABLYâ while reading this. ) The scientists go on to explain how they TUNED their model and it is obvious from their explanation that there is an amazing array of different tunings and data and extra material and methodologies that could be included or altered. Yet, our friend conflates a predictive model for unavoidable reality. At 11:10 he even says âTens of millions will DOUBTLESSLY DIEâ while reading another research.
But if you want a very obvious point that this person is misrepresenting whatever does not fit his talking points, 11:36 he claims, and I quote, âagricultural exports being disrupted by one single relative small countryâ ⊠which he âforgetsâ that is in the top five in the world in wheat exports, while Russia is number one.
But BadEmpanada pretends that war and trade sanctions amidst a global recession and inflation crisis are not very important.
And around here Iâve had enough with him and I think Iâve demonstrated that if I were to give his video the same critical treatment he tried to give the original, weâd need 3-4 hours with me analysing his overzealotry. 
Now:
After all that I can safely say that at least for the minutes I watched he tried HARD to sell his own kind of sweet candy.
And when you go 10 out of 10 minutes selling candy, I find it highly unlikely that his tune and quality got any better later.
No, but he had a video with some actual research provided in a much more scientific way that depicts what the majority of the models project and he clearly explains that they are models, not nostradamic texts âŠ
Quite so 
Or they will just forget or disbelieve about it ⊠like they did with the nuclear warfare/winter issue. That is a far more likely outcome 
I see, maybe itâs not that great of a video then.
But thatâs not the result of being too pessimistic, is it. Itâs more like getting used to it, and thinking itâs gonna be fine. Accepting it as external parameter. And maybe being born into the world where itâs already a fact.
And with climate change it seems a lot of people arenât really pessimistic. You know, making kids, building their own future, bombing other people. Iâm sure thereâre people whom it really brings down but I donât think itâs that many.
How many people would answer âyesâ to the following questions?
- Does global warming exist?
- If the answer is âyesâ, is it caused by human activity?
- If the answer is âyesâ, would you accept 20 years of economic crisis now to make necessary transformations? Would you accept an important price rise of food, energy and manufactured products right now?
- If the answer is âyesâ, would you accept to make that effort even if some other large countries donât ?
My bet is: much less than 50%. Thatâs why governments arenât doing much and passing the problem to the next generation.
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Maybe our social skills have evolved to be useful in groups of 30 people or so. Totally inadequate for a globalised world in which problems can only be solved by cooperation of billions. That may be an abstract reason for being on the path towards extinction or at least collapse of civilisation.
During most of human evolution, our life expectancy was about 30 years. We are not adapted to dealing with problems that will arise more than 30 years in the future.
I think the sad part of these two points is that the poorest of people have to feel this effect more than anybody in charge of the massive companies responsible for the largest fraction of the pollution for the last century. The people that have polluted and made large profits might have to change their business model, but it wonât impact them at all, theyâll be at no rush to change things unless theyâre forced to.
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Complaining while telling other people to pay is easy, but it wonât work. Large companies are not abstract entities, they pollute because they use fossil fuels to produce goods that average consumers buy. If they stop using fossil fuels, then costs will rise, and manufactured products will be more expensive. In short: (relatively) poor people in rich countries (also) have to make an effort now. If they donât,
- their children will be even poorer
- Billions of people in poor tropical countries, who are not born yet, will suffer/die/become refugees.
Probably most of the population in rich countries doesnât want to be impoverished now in order to avoid point 2.
You can dismiss what Iâm saying as complaining if you wish, and that me complaining wonât effect any change by itself, sure. Literally what I write is as âeasyâ to write as what youâre writing lets be honest.
Theyâre not abstract entities is correct, they are a reasonable number of super wealthy people behind fossil fuels that have spent a century profiting off of it.
Itâs pretty funny really that when large amounts of irreprable damage have been done to the climate before you were born youâre expecting that people should have to
while large fossil fuel companies (the people that have profited behind it), and companies (people are behind that too) that would have very high pollution in their production process will basically get off scott-free.
So while
I donât think itâs unjust (if laughable at its unrealisticness) to think that some kind of heavy pollutions tax, applied retroactively, and some sort of wealth readjustment in the world wouldnât go a much longer way than solely impoverishing people at the lower end of the scale.
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Just to make things clear, I didnât aim at anyone in particular when I said that âcomplaining is easyâ. I just said that most people who complain donât wanât to pay. And I didnât say I wanted to âsolely impoverish people at the lower end of the scaleâ, but that everybody has to make an effort (rich and relatively poor people).
And also remember that most people who are considered as poor in Western Europe are richer than average Africans.
I feel like thereâre some things that could be done, that wouldnât hurt regular people. But they arenât being done anyway because someone somewhere is getting rich. So I feel like itâs not really the question of people not willing at this point. Thus saying âoh, we couldâve done something but these people, they just arenât willingâ is off.
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#eattherich
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Here is a Dutch poll about climate change from 2021 (auto translated to English): Ipsos NOS Klimaat.nl.en.pdf | DocDroid
Some excerpts:
In essence, there are not many who deny climate change exists or deny that human activity causes it. Also there seems to be strong support to combat climate change.
People are prepared to take personal measures, but they also worry if they can afford it. And many feel that companies and governments arenât doing enough and that the burden is not distributed evenly and fairly.
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âSome thingsâ, certainly, but if we really want to reduce global warming to +2°, then âsome thingsâ wonât be enough, and we need to do âeverything we canâ. And this includes hurting regular people now, for instance
- carbon tax (and thus higher energy prices)
- developing local production (so fewer cheap imported products)
- developing organic agriculture (hence higher food prices)
etc.
Yeah, but my point is that even these things arenât done. Which indicates itâs not really about regular people not willing.
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I know what you mean, but lets be clear, if someone is just about making rent has to pay 10%-15% more on
it will hurt much more than the same increase to someone middle or upper class in terms of wealth. I imagine both a flat increase will be likely to happen and will be the most unfair.
Really you canât charge people differently on things like food and energy, but you could make really unrealistic commodities more expensive or taxed. You could also change how income tax bands work to alleviate some stress on people on the low end.
^^ - this
and while that could well be true it doesnât really help the people in western Europe to feel better and accept that they might have to sleep on the street does it?
âHey, youâre sleeping on the streets of Berlin now, but youâre probably wealthier than some people in africa. Have a good night!â
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Iâm not talking about making the life of homeless people more difficult⊠I think that necessary measures would increase prices of food and energy, but I also believe that we should have a welfare system so that everyoneâs basic needs (housing, food and health) are fulfilled. So probably the income of the middle class will decrease the most.
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The most popular personal measures here are the ones that could actually save you money by wasting less:
(from the poll I shared above)
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Interesting. I wonder what would be the result of a similar poll in the US.
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