It's unfortunate we didn't get more facts from the interviewee on how exactly it's too late. The interview felt more like a complaint about politics and less about the dire situation of humanity.
David Suzuki is even known to people in Australia, he's expressed his views on our national broadcaster the ABC's Science Show many times. I think the first time I'd heard him talk was in the 1980s.
His view are well-known to anyone who has listened to his broadcasts. He is a clear and articulate speaker.
Edit: I agree with xnx's point that "the climate change "movement" and messaging is so bad and misguided that it is counterproductive." Suzuki is one of the exceptions, his arguments are logical, straightforward and backed up by scientific fact.
Suzuki is not just a local phenomenon, nor is he a mumbling hysterical ideolog but a well-known and well-respected science writer of longstanding who bases what he says in science.
I'm not local but come from the other side of the planet and even the opposite hemisphere and I first heard Suzuki speak over 40 years ago. Neither am I an hysterical ideolog, as mentioned I agree with xnx's point that the climate change Movement's messaging is bad, misguided and counterproductive.
I'd add the reason why it's so is that for some within the Movement the environment is more than just politics, for them it's essentially morphed into a religion and it's their constant proselytizing that has annoyed the shit out of many, myself included.
Suzuki is not one of those but a science communicator who works with scientific facts.
Yes, this was about his thoughts on the matter, not a summary or analysis of the predicament we're in. It was nice to hear honest commentary on this topic from an esteemed science communicator.
For anyone who wants more specific information about the dire situation of humanity, that's very easy to find. He mentioned Johan Rockström so you can check out his work. Or Eliot Jacobson. Or James Hansen. Or the reports that the IPCC publishes. And on Substack, Richard Crim puts out The Crisis Report regularly. It's full of detailed analysis with references to published papers.
Not that that's unusual. My sense of a lot of left-wing and political/environmental folks is that they'd be fine with watching humanity exterminated by climate change - so long as they were allowed a nice, long "I was RIGHT, and you were WRONG" gloating monologue near the end.
Please don't use HN for ideological battle or post flamebait like this. We've had to ask you this before [1]. Please make an effort to observe the guidelines whenever posting on HN.
Well I am talking about all crashes, not just car-pedestrian crashes. For example Teslas crash in to other cars and then the company blames the human driver.
The reason these people are homeless a lot of the times is because they lack housing. Drug usage and crime are a side-effect of this [1].
Denser housing -> Better (frequent, reliable) public transport -> more people use it -> More people want to live in denser housing -> More denser housing is developed -> less homeless.
This is the formula for how Manhattan, brooklyn, and queens were developed by real estate companies. Builders wanted to be near public transport because they knew they could build large apartment buildings and get a bunch of money in rent because a bunch of people wanted to live near public transport so they could get places quickly and reliably.
[1]: Also if we legalized all drugs people wouldn't be forced to turn to criminal organizations. We already do this with alcohol.
People steal bud light because they can’t afford or don’t want to pay for it, not because it’s illegal to have or consume. The war on drugs had done untold damage to our society by reframing drug problems as a moral problem rather than a medical problem. Black markets pop up immediately once things are banned because, as long as there is a market for it, supply will meet demand.
It can be but you have to make your choice of housing location priority number one. Then worry about employment, raising a family, etc. Not easy at all which is why so few do it.
You also need a minimum amount of financial comfort and stability, which, in the US, is not easy for many people. Often the poorest neighborhoods are the most car-bound.
It's not the ebikes that he's saying are dangerous, it's the couriers. I got hit by a Getir rider in Brookline (probably near the parent) who zipped the wrong way out of a one-way street into the crosswalk I was using. Any vehicle driven by someone who isn't following the general rules/flow/expectations of everyone around them is dangerous.
And large vehicles are dangerous too. But that's orthogonal.
I think part of the problem is that the danger from cars kind of force the bikes onto the sidewalk. If a biker has a choice between possibly getting hit by a car or possibly hitting a pedestrian, the choice is kind of obvious.
The solution is better infrastructure for bikes. Separate bike lanes from cars and pedestrians, slow the cars down, and improve visibility at conflict points.
> If a biker has a choice between possibly getting hit by a car or possibly hitting a pedestrian, the choice is kind of obvious.
I don't think that's true, though. The alternative is not "endanger pedestrians", the alternative is "walk". A biker has a choice to not bike. And that's what I do; I walk when I'm in Boston, because I don't think urban biking is safe enough for me to make that choice.
Like, yes, better bike infrastructure is a good idea and separated bike lanes is something that I absolutely support, but biking is a choice, and right now a lot of people on e-bikes (not so much regular bikes, to be honest) make me feel unsafe to walk in places that they tend to congregate.
Cars absolutely are more dangerous when pedestrians and cars intersect. They're also not on the sidewalk, where pedestrians usually are, while bicycles (and, in my experience, especially e-bikes) tend to be. I've never gotten hit by a car. I have gotten hit by bicyclists. I'd rather not be hit by either.
If we're all on board with punishing bicyclists (and, again, especially e-bikes), who get to act like vehicles when it suits them, from being on sidewalks and potentially endangering pedestrians, I think there's a great dialogue to have about that.
Category Theory really helped me in building a framework for finding similarities in problems. Which, after all, is the basis for creativity in general. Can’t solve a problem if you don’t know what questions to ask in the first place.
No. People (extraordinarily healthy people) are suffering pulmonary embolisms (and thus hospitalized) weeks after they have been cleared from the virus. There is a very, very, very long tail to this disease outside of the initial 2 - 4 weeks of being sick.
Small percentages of people suffer complications from many different types of illnesses. At a certain point, human beings simply have to live with a small chance of a bad outcome from ailments that are normally mild.
This isn't some small percentage of people this is 3 - 8% [1] of people hospitalized! Despite not finding data for people not hospitalized many report suffering from and being hospitalized for failures of the pulmonary, endocrine, and digestive system.
Sometimes people have strokes from sneezing.
See I can make generalizing statements about bullshit too.
> This isn't some small percentage of people this is 3 - 8% [1] of people hospitalized
And what percentage of people that get covid are hospitalized? Let's estimate and say 3% of people that get covid end up hospitalized. 3-8% of 3% is, frankly, a small percentage of people.
You can make any percentage seem large and scary with the right framing (https://xkcd.com/1252/)
I was talking about the near future when most people are vaccinated, as we have ample proof that hospitalizations are extremely rare for vaccinated individuals.
> More than one in 10 Covid patients died within five months of being discharged from hospital, while almost a third of those who survived the virus had to be readmitted, new research has warned.
> Papers released by the governments Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) also revealed half of patients in hospital with the virus suffered complications, with one in four struggling when they got back home.
> Younger patients under the age of 50 were more likely to suffer complications.
I was talking about the near future when most people are vaccinated, as we have ample proof that hospitalizations are extremely rare for vaccinated individuals.
This is not a 1 in a million event. There are studies like my comment above that back this statement whole heartedly. This is a virus with proven neuroinvasive potential that affects large swaths of otherwise incredibly healthy people.
You can't compare these supposed 1 in a million events to something like doing perf testing on a 64 node raspberry pi kubernetes cluster.
