One of the reasons I get burned out when I talk to climate activists these days is lack of comprehension on their part. I was disparaged by the adult leader of a group of young people marching for Sunrise Rebellion a couple years ago because I was trying to explain the Aerosol Masking effect. If you’ve followed this blog you know that there’s this thing called the McPherson paradox, named after a certain scientist I know. It is based on the premise that we can’t stop using fossil fuels because doing so would cause particulate from said use to drop out of the atmosphere. And once that happens, solar energy would not be reflected back into space by said particulate. It would hit earth and slowly cook us. I’ve seen estimates that global average temperature would have moved up by 2 C or more in a matter of days after losing the particulate.
Anyway, this is the damage we’ve already done. And I just upset a bunch of people on a discussion group for responding to a message about ‘things people don’t understand about climate change‘ with this post:
“The one thing people (especially many climate activists) don’t seem to understand about climate change is THE DAMAGE IS ALREADY DONE. We’ve been pouring tens of billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere starting with the Industrial Revolution, and the CO2 will be sitting in the atmosphere and driving greenhouse effect for another THOUSAND YEARS. All those great schemes to run on biofuel or switch to non-polluting cars or roll out net-zero schemes for carbon are useless. The best plan would’ve been to talk Grandpa out of buying his first Model T. And we knew that burning coal wasn’t helping, either.
“You can’t fix global warming if you don’t know what the problem is. Driving a Tesla and sorting your recycle cans won’t pull old carbon out of the atmosphere.”
So that’s what I wrote that got banished from Quora. I don’t see the problem, but what do I know? honesty is not a popular subject these days.
And if you’re in disagreement on the subject, there’s a comment box at the bottom of the page.
Peace.
The Brooklyn Culture Jam 
Hi Dan
In just about every field of human endeavour, we appear to face mounting constraints. Some random examples –
We are running out of sand for making concrete.
Increasing levels of ubiquitous bioactive wastes are severely messing with biota of all kinds, including H. sap.
Some people project extinction of all wild mammals, and all life in the seas by 2026.
AI is growing in power and (who knows) may already be completely in charge.
Paul’s Perils raised to the power of Pauline’s got nuffin on us.
We don’t know what we don’t know. I feel confounded by the recent awareness, that there are things that I don’t want to know that I don’t know.
On the other hand, from the big bang to twerking, wherever we look, there has been just an unending cascade of astonishing fortuitous emergent properties.
I remain firmly confident that the Three Wise Aliens are watching and waiting for the Emergent Saviour, through whom we will spread benevolent Earthocracy throughout the universe, to infinity and beyond.
Sunny daze.