Here is how the cost of insurance has changed in recent years:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/05/climate-...

And remember, climate change is not something that happens and then it is done. What we are seeing now is just a start of much worse to come.

I would be in the second to last group if we actually did something when there still was time, and more was done to actually do something now. Yes, there's a lot of energy efficiency measures that could be done, and much more clean energy could be build, and we will be forced to adopt whether we want to or not. (Carbon capture from the atmosphere is a fucking joke though, which should be to everyone when you know that CO2 in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million!)

But we didn't start when we had to, and we are still doing only a fraction of what must be done. So, we are screwing ourselves over majorly. And this is not some fringe hysteria, this is the scientific consensus and has been for a long time. You can almost hear screams of frustration and desperation through the lines if you pick ut the latest IPCC report.

> can we actually do anything about it that is not just letting go of a comfortable life

Yes, no doubt! And actually doing something about it will impact our lives much less than trying to continue as usual. If we would have started 30 years ago, the transitions would have been smooth, but now it is going to be harsher. The problem is that doing something about it will affect the profits of some very big and influential corporations, and they are doing everything they can to sow FUD.

Which of course is obviously false. There’s no center right in the Republican Party, only extreme right. The Democrats try to preserve democracy, the Republicans are working very hard to dismantle it.

The POTUS is well known for screwing over contractors and lenders. It clearly didn't damage his reputation enough.

The most insane part of that is all the generally "normal" businesses who signed contracts with him despite this well publicized history. People like law firms with long histories.

Trump has always preferred dragging out a court battle to actually signing a small check for services rendered, and outright brags about it. He explicitly believes stiffing your contractors is what "Good business" means. Because he is a selfish child and getting stuff for free is his worldview.

But utter morons still line up to get shafted. I just don't understand.

I couldn't get a car loan because I have no credit history even though I had enough cash in the bank to buy the car yet people will still line up to suck the toe of someone with a known history of successfully screwing all their business partners.

Same with how his administration is full of people who don't recognize he will happily throw them under the bus for any reason even though that's all he has done for the past decade.

There is just a shocking inability for the common person to connect people to their history in the USA. The guy who started a trade war and caused prices to increase was voted in because prices were too high.

The math don't math.

I think it must be some form of "I'm special/better/smarter than that other person who got ripped off, I won't get taken advantage of!"

arguably is the reason why his business kept failing. you can only screw over suppliers a couple of times before the word gets out and no one wants to do business with you.

now they want the cash up front, and with sizable markups to CYA.

a reasonable person would try to unfuck that perception; instead Trump double-down on the grift

They are also building more solar panels and wind turbines than the rest of the world combined, and are the biggest investor in renewables. Their emission of CO2 just recently peaked. But they need a lot of power, and most of the new coal plants are there for days when there’s neither sun or wind.

> They are also building more solar panels and wind turbines than the rest of the world combined

All the more reason they have no excuse for building coal. Yet they're also burning more coal than the rest of the world combined.

> most of the new coal plants are there for days when there’s neither sun or wind.

If that was actually the case they wouldn't need to build new coal plants because renewable generation at 40% of normal plus the existing traditional power plants that used to be enough to supply 100% of power by themselves would be more than sufficient. More to the point, if that was actually the case then their emissions would be way down because they'd only be burning coal for something like one week every two years.

Are you still glad when AWS starts selling you software as a service and make hundreds of millions and you get nothing?

Of course, because I get the software as a service that I paid for. If I wasn't glad, I wouldn't buy it.,

My meaning clearly got lost when I droppen an r. Will you still be happy when they sell youR software, that is, the software you wrote, and make a lot of money while you get nothing.

Almost all science was done by "a few privleged white men" because Europe and the Americas were the only places that had modernized with large central states, university systems, and educational systems. Even in that scenario before the "objective metrics" of the post-war system came about, we still had people like Madam Curie and Ramanujan being able to work with stellar results. The idea that somehow academia would stonewall all of the non-whites is absurd.

It’s really hard to come up with better examples of the exceptions that prove the rule than Marie Curie and Ramanujan. How many more names can you come up with?

I’d even argue that still today women and minorities are strongly disadvantaged at many institutions. I’d say that as a white male that recently left academia myself. I have seen how some of my colleagues have been treated.

What do you mean? If it is the research required, it is such a tiny fraction of the cost of the cost of possible damage to society and the environment that it is completely insignificant.

I think that certainly can provide a valid point in a discussion, without being any attempt to shut it down.

And for some of us, with some specific personality traits, using it as a mantra is how we get anything at all done some days.