Apple CEO Tim Cook talks climate change, fake news, and more during speech to students in Italy

20 Comments

Chance Miller for 9to5Mac:

Tim Cook has been busy traveling Europe over the last week, and his latest stop is in Italy. The Apple CEO today made an appearance at Osservatorio Permanente, an organization focused on “training young people to be active members of their community through citizenship education.”

During his speech and a subsequent question and answer session with students, Cook said that while the internet has brought many positive developments, (translated) “fake news is one of the negatives.”

“The Internet has brought so many positive things, but the fake news is one of the negatives. All of us lovers of democracy and freedom must think that separating the false from the true is the basis of freedom. Quality journalism is the foundation of every democracy and an open and free press is essential.”

Apple has made several climate change-related announcements recently, and Cook said during the event today that Apple makes renewable energy a priority not because of regulations, but because it is a “moral imperative.”

MacDailyNews Take: Here are some of Cook’s tweets from his tour:

20 Comments

  1. Yes, Tim, the climate changes. It has been doing do since long before humans arose:

    The current “climate change” hysteria is nothing more than a scheme to take from rich countries and give to poor countries in the hope of everyone being poor, so that rich Liberals like Tim Cook can remain in control, virtue-signaling every five minutes to assuage his Baptist guild over being gay.

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    1. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2016/01/25/four-graphics-and-a-book-that-help-explain-climate-change/

      See how much CO2 the dinosaurs exhaled? What was the magnitude of change when humans discovered hydrocarbons?

      Climate change deniers say, who cares about 2 degrees average temp rise when daily local weather swings more? They are misled. If the earth’s atmosphere traps heat, the unequal heating of the planet will keep driving weather systems. The difference is that oceans and atmosphere will have the equivalent of thousands of nuclear warheads of energy that was not present centuries ago. In your lifetime, the frequency and intensity of storms releasing that energy will increase. As climate changes, formerly prosperous farms will see floods and desertification in unpredictable amounts. Coastal communities will be begging for FEMA bailouts. Plants and animals on which humans rely will be stressed to near extinction. Human migration pressures especially on subsistence farmers near the equator will increase. It’s already happening. These are not isolated phenomena.

      Objectively connect the dots, as any scientist should. Then think about how to affect positive outcomes. Deniers never do that, they are the ones demanding that their lifestyles are sacred and any change in reaction to new knowledge is unthinkable. Even profitable change is rejected. No, they ignore what Tesla has accomplished and claim coal workers should receive subsidies for “clean coal” research when clean natural gas is already cheaper. All we need are better charging stations hooked up to the new cleaner electricity powerplants.

      Big oil has put so much whataboutism out there, I can see how lazy people could be confused. But this isn’t normal change. It is obvious that oil profiteers and wasteful industries are trying as hard as possible to resist letting their profitable consumer dependents from seeing the reality that human population and actions have grown significant, and change is necessary to avoid foreseeable costs to humanity.

      Another question: for those who think that energy source diversification is inconvenient, did you live through the OPEC oil embargo? What makes you think the USA is greater by kowtowing to Saudi Arabia? Energy independence is freedom. You will never be free if you’re spending billions in defense spending on awkward alliances with mid east dictators every year to keep the fuel for your pickup cheap. That is socialism, by the way. American taxpayers and blood keeping the oil flowing in the mideast for the benefit of the least efficient industries in the USA.

      We can do better and employ more people with newer tech.

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        1. That graph of CO2 is from ice core data. What a lot of people don’t know is that the ice core data where that came from shows temperature changes many years before the CO2 changes, not the other way around.

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    2. Yes, it changed and every time lots of species went extinct. The planet and Mother Nature don’t care if this or that or most or even all species go extinct. Cyanobacteria caused the very first climate change in producing so much toxic oxygen that they almost extinct themselves. All living creatures had to cope with a oxygen-rich atmosphere ever since. Billions of years later ordinary algae seem to have caused the entire Earth to freeze into a snowball. And now we seem to cause or at least accelerate the next climate change. No one will care if we chose to do so – but us! Do we really want to risk an unpleasant future for our children just because we are too lazy and to stupid to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels? Nothing is easier, we have all the means at hand: renewables, electric vehicles and a strong will to stop a self-made disaster. The whole mankind (minus Donald Trump and a few moronic hillbillies who voted for him) is united to challenge our fate. We don’t need you for this task. Go with us or go out of our way.

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    3. Gee, Ph.D, is your doctorate in anything related to climate science or just in gay bashing? Yes, there have been warmer periods in geologic time, but there are obvious mechanisms to explain them (e.g. continental drift and the Deccan and Siberian Traps). There are no comparable mechanisms, other than human activity, that can explain the speed or scale of the unprecedented pace of warming within our lifetimes.

      I would rather that Tim Cook signal virtue rather than vice. If you think that being a warrior for injustice is preferable, you are welcome to your opinion.

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    4. Way to zoom in the chart. Way to ignore the massive dieoffs that happened with these relatively slow prehistoric temperature swings. Way to forget to cite your source and the context of this data. Is it local measures or modeled extrapolation? Anyone can post a chart. Back it up like an actual pHd, if you can.

      Humans may be very adaptable but burning fuel at unchecked rates is accelerating global average temperatures faster than ever recorded. That is undeniable fact. Just because your neighborhood might get off lighter than most other global regions doesn’t give you the moral authority to turn your back. If your touchpoint fir morality is the Bible, you should be sensitive to refugees and act as the good Samaritan. Nowhere does any recognized religion praise bad stewardship of the planet or the poor on it.

      But here we go, a rich man claiming immunity for ecological destruction on his watch. Cherry picking data is a key tool of any denier. FUD. Discredit. WhatAbout? Delegitimize. Can’t change, my tribe is perfect. If i costs a dime of investment, its socialist or communist or something bad. If it wasn’t written in one of the verses i canonized, then it is a lie. Only I know truth, and no new data can ever change that. Maximizing personal profits in my lifetime is all that matters. New data can never change my selfish greedy worldview. We hear it everyday. These are the ramblings of psychotics and/or the greed-motivated organizations they control.

      Ironic that the self proclaimed party of law & order thinks stealing health and wealth from future generations is defensible. As if every dustbowl farmer thanked the prior generation for the destroyed fields they inherit, right? Those Kansas farmers who moved to California 2 generations ago were ecological refugees, something the USA will see more of in the future. Good luck bankrupting yourself militarizing the Great Wall. Such short term thinking served China, Hadrian, East Berlin, and so forth sooooo well.

      The same idiots who think that humans don’t have measurable impacts to global conditions must not be paying attention. You can pretend your life is not affected, but we are witnessing a massive species die off before your eyes. Your kids will be harmed if the current generation is as blind and inactive as many before.

      Can’t see what is in front of you? Most deniers are part of the alt right ship of fools. They will claim to the end that The Donald is trying to “drain the swamp” of corruption while he actually slashed the budget for internal fraud investigation 40% in the last year and used a personal attorney instead of what was a competent professional staff of federal experts to “find some dirt”. 3rd Choice Barr acts like he isn’t involved. When asked point blank what areas of corruption his administration was investigating besides his presumed Democrat rival, The Donald had no answer. He literally could not name anyone but Biden that he was attempting to bring charges (and he has nothing but twitter accusations against the Bidens). Trump actually thinks he’s a prince, not a public servant. He brags about being above the law. So it goes: if the Trump cult refuses to look at obvious Constitutional law violations when it doesn’t support their partisan bias, how could massive ecological destruction all around them be any more compelling?

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    5. Nice chart covering over 500 million years. Way to mask the recent climate changes over the scale of a couple of hundred years, which amount to 4/10000000 of that chart timeline.

      By the way, did you ever stop to consider that Homo sapiens evolved over the past couple of million years? We evolved to thrive under the climate conditions at the very end of your plot, and it appears that we are doing everything possible to try to rapidly get back to Cretaceous conditions. Not a great idea unless you happen to be a dinosaur.

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    1. Let ole Donnie curate your news and you will soon believe that lies are facts, egomaniacal idiots are very stable geniuses, and draining the swamp involves massive injections of corruption.

      Worst POTUS than I ever imagined possible, and I imagined that he would be absolutely horrible.

      Reply

      1. You mental midgets can’t stand the fact that President Donald J. Trump is, and will be the most successful President in U.S. history.
        Donald J. Trump, A TrueAmerican Hero! 🇺🇸
        TRUMP/2020 🇺🇸

        Reply

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