By co-incidence I was reading about Mann vs doomers today. This came about because I was searching for practical information about climate crisis prepping, which is broadly what I've been focused on for the past few years. There is very little info out there, you end up with endless debates like this one.
I agree that his claim that doomerism is a fossil fuel information war strategy lacks evidence. My own summary is that the doomer stance is the fossil fuel
industry's worst nightmare. An example is my little slogan that "the transition to electric cars will make climate change worse, it will just do it slightly slower than fossil fuel cars. We actually need to transition to NO cars."
"No cars" is an example of the intersection between adaptation and mitigation. You can go car-free because you want to reduce your emissions and prevent disaster; or if you think disaster is inevitable you can go car free because pretty soon you'll have no choice and you'd better get ready.
I also wonder when the likes of Mann have to make the switch and stop saying "the good news is it's not too late but we're running out of time." When does he say "Well, that's it, we've run out of time." He and his admirable cohort have been saying "we are running out of time" for decades, and emissions keep on rising. China, the US, Australia, the UK - just about everywhere - it's more fracking, more coal approvals, more coal-fired power stations (in China anyway).
10, 15, 20 years ago, we heard the "good new clause": if we act NOW it will be OK. What I see is that we didn't act then, we're not acting now, we won't act in the future. This is a political judgement, it's my assessment of human behaviour and self-deception. It's not a scientific judgement about parts per million or whatever. The fossil fuel advocates are winning. China has promised to INCREASE carbon emissions until 2030 and then scale them back, becoming carbon neutral by 2060. 2060! Act now? No, let's do it in 37 years. These targets are usually missed so maybe it will be 50 years or more.
The article where I read Mann's anti-doomer rhetoric was from 2020. It sounds like that was when he had the idea for his book. The climate nightmares of 2023 (Canada, Hawaii, Antarctic sea ice, etc.) hadn't happened then.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-51857722
