> To stabilize climate at any particular temperature level, however, it is not enough to halt the growth in annual carbon emissions. Global net carbon emissions will eventually need to reach zero and negative emissions may be needed for a greater-than-50% chance of limiting warming below 3.6°F (2°C) (see also Ch. 14: Mitigation for a discussion of negative emissions).
> Considering both historical and projected non-CO2 effects reduces the estimated cumulative CO2 budget compatible with any future warming goal, and in the case of 3.6°F (2°C) it reduces the aforementioned estimate to 790 GtC. Given this more comprehensive estimate, limiting the global average temperature increase to below 3.6°F (2°C) means approximately 230 GtC more CO2 could be emitted globally. To illustrate, if one assumes future global emissions follow a pathway consistent with the lower scenario (RCP4.5), this cumulative carbon threshold is exceeded by around 2037, while under the higher scenario (RCP8.5) this occurs by around 2033. To limit the global average temperature increase to 2.7°F (1.5°C), the estimated cumulative CO2 budget is about 590 GtC (assuming linear scaling with the compatible 3.6°F (2°C) budget that also considers non-CO2 effects), meaning only about 30 GtC more of CO2 could be emitted. Further emissions of 30 GtC (in the form of CO2) are projected to occur in the next few years (Table 14.1).
Dates by when cumulative carbon emissions (GtC) since 1870 reach amount commensurate with 2.7°F (1.5°C), when accounting for non-CO2 forcings:
Yep. We will need significant investment in not just emissions reduction but active negative emissions, on the order of significant percentages of global GDP, for a long time.
Think "all of the direct economic benefit of fossil fuels from all of human history but in reverse, plus inefficiency losses, in 1/4 the timespan"
It's rather sobering. It's also my impression that most people who "believe" in climate change haven't near come to grips with the scale and urgency of the problem.
I've been thinking of writing an essay along the lines of the world being "default dead". Basically, unless we come up with something to suck carbon from the air and replace our energy use, I believe we're sunk.
A lot of people seem to believe that if we just stopped or "reduced" we'd solve the problem. But if we continue for just a few years as normal, then even a total cessation of emissions wouldn't solve our predicament.
Reducing, eliminating: these are important things. But, we're basically dead by default, and need to do something more to actually reverse what we emitted.
I was talking to my dad last night and he was saying how important it is to maximize your 401k, etc. and all I could think was "but even I have money it won't effing mean anything when billions of people are starving and you need to defend any means to produce food with force".
But hey, you know, reusable grocery bags and telecommuting 1 day a week should do it. I guess.
It's like we found the asteroid headed for Earth and decided to pretend it doesn't exist.
Or some rich and powerful people decided to tell you a metior was about to pummel the Earth and you better accept a reduced standard of living while they fly to and from climate conferences in their private jets.
If your political beliefs tell you to not save for your retirement because the apocalypse is coming, that should be a serious red flag.
Are you saying that Al Gore's above-average energy consumption (private jets, mansions, etc) invalidates his claims about climate change? Are we meant to infer from his behavior that nobody needs to make any significant changes to their lifestyle?
I think you should reevalute your confidence in this assessment, because in the United States alone there are demonstrably millions of people with non-negligible faith in public figures - of all kinds and political affiliation.
It's also fairly straightforward to find people who don't exactly hold scientists in high regard.
Yes. If you're unwilling to live by the charges you are demanding others make, your credibility is weakened.
The jet travel may be justified, but if he believes what he is saying he should be flying commercial and the extravagance in the rest of his lifestyle looks really hypocritical.
I would agree if Al Gore existed in a vacuum. There are other, less extravagant people who also claim that:
>climate change is real
>climate change is man made
>climate hazards will impact people all over the world
>climate change quickly creates additional hazards which need to be dealt with on top of whatever problems already affect us (erosion of infrastructure, salination of farmlands/aquifers due to flooding, traffic trapping people during a forest fire)
Perhaps Al Gore believes that individual actions are completely insignificant compared to the acts of corporations and governments. Maybe he is a closet climate-denier. If either of those things are true, it is inconvenient that many see him as the face of climate activism. I think the case for climate mitigation should hinge upon scientific evidence, rather than the lifestyle and personal opinions of a single man.
Al Gore created the climate hysteria I was responding to and profited immensely from it. I have yet to see any compelling evidence for anthropogenic warming. People (even scientists i've seen talk about it) will invariably fall back to an appeal to authority and explain how the greenhouse effect works, which is not proof the sky will start falling.
we had predictive models of CO2s greenhouse effect decades ago, the predictions are coming true before our eyes already.
If you're running around 2018 saying "global warming is not a fact" I would urge some light reading on your part, it's really quite good writing in its own right:
Losing Earth: The Decade We
Almost Stopped Climate Change
So:
Your understanding that you can't prove yourself but which you take on faith from a politicized system of academic grants and government loans to fraudulent businesses like Solyndra is "scientific fact" and my skepticism is merely a "political belief".
I'm not really taking anything on faith here. Anyone with an undergraduate-level physics education should not have a difficult time making sense of all of this. The Greenhouse Effect was first theorized by Joseph Fourier in the early 19th century, and soon thereafter became established science.
I'm a bit puzzled as to why you bring up Solyndra, seeing as they never claimed to be an authority on climate science, just producing PV cells. Are you arguing that climate change was invented in order to motivate grants to research, and ventures like Solyndra, which otherwise may not have received them? If this is the case, then yes, I would say that your skepticism is indeed a political belief.
It's quite clear that if climate change is real and a pressing concern, the people flying around the world trying to stop it would not be major drivers of the problem.
Unfortunately for humans, all the evidence seems to indicate strongly that climate change is more than a conspiracy to get a few people marginal relative wealth increases. Especially since it seems the ones trying to convince the world to change haven't been very successful.
Also, I'm pretty sure the GP wasn't saying "I shouldn't save because politics," but rather, "A 401k sounds great, but if everyone's starving and the world is in chaos, what's the point?"
The future has been, since the birth of language, terrifying and uncertain.
There have been times in history where focusing on your retirement has been a stupid idea (fall of Rome, WWII, areas devastated by plague or flood, etc, etc). However, there have also been times where catastrophe has stubbornly refused to occur.
It is actually pretty easy to describe a horrific future that can't be quickly or reasonably debunked - but anyone with sense should also be prepared for the outside scenario that everything carries on as planned. Doomsayers always face the risk that the problem turns out to be solvable or minor, and should be prepared for that.
>people flying around the world trying to stop it would not be major drivers of the problem.
Thats missing the point. The fact that these people arent willing to sacrifice the slightest convenience for the planet strongly suggests they dont actually believe what they are saying. Obviously no one person can ruin the planet.
And:
>"A 401k sounds great, but if everyone's starving and the world is in chaos, what's the point?"
Is just a nicer way to say:
>"I shouldn't save because the apocalypse is coming"
>marginal relative wealth increases
Understatement of the century.
>Former vice president Al Gore had a net worth of about $1.7 million at the turn of the century and 13 years later, his wealth has grown to more than $200 million.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2320452/Al-Gore-Rom...
The article says Gore made his money in business, by starting a TV network and from stock options earned while sitting on Apple's board. The options were from before the massive rise in Apple's stock.
You implied Gore made his money from climate activism, but your own source contradicts you. The options are:
1. You have such confirmation bias that you don't even read articles you post as evidence, or
2. You know you're arguing in bad faith, but you hope to persuade people who don't read the link
I'm sure Al Gore has made some money from climate activism, but the vast bulk of his fortune came from elsewhere. So the comment you were replying to was accurate in describing it as a marginal increase due to activism.
"These people" are. You just haven't heard of them. In particular there are quite a few low-energy, off grid, permaculture advocates living what they preach. The existence of Al Gore doesn't change the science.
No, but it does put into question the motivations of people funding the science, and academics are poorly-paid professionals constantly fighting for funding, not gods with uniformly honored moral scruples.
I could also raise my standard of living by stealing my neighbor's stuff. But that would be rude. I don't see how stealing from my neighbor's kid's future is any better.
If the best counterargument you can come up with is proudly ad hominem, that should be a serious red flag.
I live in British Columbia and for the past 3 summers have had to spend at least all of August indoors with doors and windows sealed shut due to the dangerous levels of particulates in the air. I am already experiencing it.
More or less. The fires are caused mostly by lightening and dry winds (some human caused too) by also contributed to by a lot of fuel from overly wet spring followed by dry hot summer.
A small increase in temperature results in a significant increase in lightening which is the big worry.
Have you seen the photos of Paradise, California? Of this year's hurricanes? Depending on where this person lives, they may already be experiencing very serious effects. Good-bye retirement savings if you have to rebuild or migrate to a less-vulnerable area.
You're honestly going to empty your 401k because someone else's house burned? Ok
Does everyone just want to take a breather here and ask why an upvoted subthread is claiming that it is nonsensical to save for retirement because the TV says we will all die in a fire. Seriously, this isn't even worthy of Reddit.
Come on HN, try to trend above the IQ of Huffpost, you can do it
[edit: but on second thought, maybe more of us should consider donating some portion of our retirement savings to those who have had their entire lives wiped out by disaster and are immediate distress. Thanks for the nudge.]
Oh good. Stop bad thinking. Is it your gf's fault for wearing short skirts and arousing sexual flame war in the rapists head or is it the fault of rapist?
I'm not quite sure you are making a point in line with the person you are responding to. The California fires are terrible but:
1) You have to be ready for terrible fires even if the future climate prognosis is great.
2) The residents of Paradise, California with substantial savings are going to be much better off than those without.
If anything, Paradise validates the idea that you should save and invest more in preparation for a hostile future rather than less. They aren't going it alone, they are still part of a large and functioning America.
I agree; you should save if you can. But perhaps you should not expect it to last until your retirement (or perhaps even you yourself will not last until your retirement) as climate disasters become more common and deadly.
I was responding to someone who said we would not see a Mad-Max-like world in our lifetimes; my point was merely that some people already are seeing such a thing. (Though I admit I never saw the Mad Max movie, so I may have missed the mark.)
I think the best way to prepare for the coming century would be to train hard. Study agriculture, soil science, horticulture. Regularly train to build strength and endurance. Maybe learn how to fight. Feel free to work on your 401k as well, but I think a better metric of your security is "How far can you carry 60 pounds of supplies and equipment in a day?"
> I was talking to my dad last night and he was saying how important it is to maximize your 401k, etc. and all I could think was "but even I have money it won't effing mean anything when billions of people are starving and you need to defend any means to produce food with force".
If you are in America, that type of hit is hardly on the level of life destroying, though I'll admit a) there's tail-probabilities of much worse happening, b) people in developing countries will be hurt far more, c) if you care about the outdoors, you'll be a lot less happy.
how can one calculate the 10% hit on GDP for 2100?
With rising temperatures, there will be natural selection pressure on all organisms, many on which the economy relies (say plants).
Organisms that repeat their lifecycle faster will have advantage over organisms with longer lifecycles (the shorter-lived adversarial species among 2 adversarial species can iterate variations faster sequentially, regardless if the 2 adversarial species are competing or predator-prey, ...).
Organisms that have higher population counts will have advantage over organisms with lower population counts (since the species with higher population counts is trying out more variations in parallel)
Hence smaller, simpler organisms will cause lots of diseases and afflictions in say agriculture, which probably will adversely affect our economies...
A 10% hit on GDP sounds like a ridiculous underestimate
I worry that current projections seem to disregard problems like the potential clathrate gun. So far we've been forecasting too optimistically.
Also, having hundreds of millions of starving people fleeing central and south america may affect stability. In addition to being a profound and completely catastrophe.
You could sink your investment dollars into companies with green technology bona fides. They will hopefully be the ones raking in the returns in the near future. If not, well, like you said the money won’t be worth anything anyways.
> If the whole damn species pulls together in a concerted effort “without historical precedent”— if we start right now, and never let up on the throttle— we just might be able to swing the needle back from Catastrophe to mere Disaster. If we cut carbon emissions by half over the next decade, eliminate them entirely by 2050; if the species cuts its meat and dairy consumption by 90%; if we invent new unicorn technologies for sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere (or scale up extant prototype tech by a factor of two million in two years) — if we commit to these and other equally Herculean tasks, then we might just barely be able to keep global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C.[1] We’ll only lose 70-90% of the word’s remaining coral reefs (which are already down by about 50%, let’s not forget). Only 350 million more urban dwellers will be exposed to severe drought and “deadly heat” events. Only 130-140 million will be inundated. Global fire frequency will only increase by 38%. Fish stocks in low latitudes will be irreparably hammered, but it might be possible to save the higher-latitude populations. We’ll only lose a third of the permafrost. You get the idea.
I think even most people who "believe" are only saying it for social acceptance. I see no evidence of more than a very few people making the sorts of changes in their lifestyle that would make any difference in their personal carbon emissions
Shepherds can believe the commons are being depleted without it altering the incentive to graze their own sheep there. It would be nice if the option were between
a) cut back on carbon emissions personally, and climate change will be undone
b) do nothing and let climate change take its course
but the reality is the option for your average consumer is
a) cut back on carbon emissions personally, and whatever happens to the world will happen regardless because you're only a microscopic contribution to the problem/solution
b) do nothing, and whatever happens to the world will happen regardless because you're only a microscopic contribution to the problem/solution
There's a third option, though: Do whatever, but vote for a party that wants to curb emissions. Only governments can turn this around. Listened to an interview with a climate scientist who was advocating that. He said individual action is a distraction.
The scope of the issue makes individual lifestyle changes laughably pointless.
All major world governments needed to nationalize or brutally regulate polluting industries decades ago. They didn't, and it's tough to see a path forward now even assuming the political will to do so somehow appeared out of the ether.
There's a social scientist, Mayer Hillman, who advocates this view[0], and that we must accept we're doomed to have a chance of fixing it. He has quite a remarkable track record of being right long before an idea catches on [1].
The trouble, as I see it, is we're all being encouraged to shuffle around some trivia whilst avoiding the real issues, with only a very few truly reflecting the scale of the problem. Instead of making a concerted attempt to get households to reduce energy by insulating, changing fuels, changing tax incentives and subsidies we're given LED light bulbs and faffing around with drinking straws etc. We still often heat by gas, or bring home tonnes of plastic in the weekly shop. We need policy to achieve enough.
I think the only other route to change is via groups like Extinction Rebellion (Who are trying to get "enough" people imprisoned to get public opinion and policy change. Peaceful marches, after all, achieve nothing. Civil disobedience has been the route to the significant changes through history).
I think a combined cycle gas plant producing electricity at ~55% efficiency paired with a heat pump on site with a COP above 2 is actually better. Modern heat pumps actually have a COP in the 4-6 range (at least, ductless mini splits do). It’s a little surprising but it’s also cheaper to run a heat pump with a COP greater than 3 (gas is ~1/3 the price on a kWh basis). They are definitely a bit more expensive upfront, however.
That's the sort of change I had in mind. To start a move off fossil and onto electric utilising community heat pump schemes for new estates and apartments etc. Far better as a community thing than individuals so the costs are reduced to each. That or electric for those houses with solar.
I guess it'll depend on the climate, the COP of even the best heat pumps drops to 2 or worse in colder weather. I think I can agree that if it's a very mild climate and you frequently get a COP of 4 or better, then that could already beat a furnace in per-BTU gas consumption.
Table 1 has estimates of how many years of remaining global emissions we have before we exceed the cumulative emission budgets for various goals of limiting warming to at most +2, +3 or +4 degrees, and different probabilities of success. Note that the Friedlingstein et al paper from 2014 didn't even bother to talk about the possibility of limiting warming to +1.5 degrees C.
These estimates of emissions rates for remaining years before our cumulative emissions budget is exceeded are highly optimistic in the sense that they assume annual CO_2-equivalent emissions stop growing, i.e. the rate we are emitting greenhouse gas is held constant to whatever they were in 2014. In comparison, annual greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow: http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/17/infograph...
Why is this report so low-key? Shouldn't climate scientists by now man up and just tell the public in plain English that climate catastrophe is inevitable?
They’ve been doing that the entire time, the problem is that “inevitable” has connotations that it’s too late to do anything. Whereas, yes, it’s too late to prevent entirely, but the more action we take now the worse the catastrophe will be
I think a lot of people's problem (or at least mine) is that it's not clear exactly what "catastrophe" means, despite following climate news pretty closely. I've heard some descriptions of "human species ending event", but unless we get complete runaway feedback loops that turn our planet to Venus (which, my understanding is that most scientists find this extremely unlikely), that shouldn't really happen.
My understanding is that coastal areas (where most people currently live) are generally fucked, but I don't really have a good understanding of what the difference is between 2C diff and, say, 3C diff. Anyone have links to some good, non-sensational estimates?
The real short term problem if we get to those levels is migration and war. That will compound any intrinsic environmental stresses, especially if nukes fly. There are several nuclear armed countries in drought zones.
That would then probably lead to continued emissions, as any international effort to reduce them would break down, and people would take what advantage they could in a more tooth and nail world.
Don't expect much action on this at the Federal level. Here's the President's recent climate assessment: "Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?" [1]
Edit: this seems to be a controversial comment. It is getting a lot of down votes and a lot of up votes. I'm a bit confused by this. The report is a US government report, largely prepared by agencies that are under the Executive branch, and says that climate change is a big and growing problem.
It is the Executive branch that will handle any Federal action in response to this. The President is the head of the Executive, and will largely determine how the Federal government responds, either directly by executive orders and by setting White House policy, or indirectly through the President's choices of heads of the agencies.
That the President a mere two days before the report was released (and almost certainly having been told well in advance what was going to be in report) is implying that climate change is not happening is on-topic and relevant.
I will explain my upvote: the single greatest enemy of solving Climate change, literally anywhere in the world, is the Republican Party. If you imagine a world in which the Republican Party does not have the ability to affect U.S. policy, you can imagine a world in which a) we are already deep into U.S. efforts to lead the way on preventing large rises and b) where the terms of the debate about where to go from here are very different. Right now, Republicans control the government, so you are correct that we should not expect much change at the federal level before 2020 unless something radical and highly unlikely happens.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, but I think it's important to say this clearly: anyone who believes that global warming is real, that science is a rational basis for knowledge, and wants humanity to address warming as soon as possible, is in profound, fundamental conflict with the Republican Party about the most important crisis of our time.
The significance of this report is to convey the gravity of the crisis and to raise a sense of emergency among the public. If the report succeeds, it will be generating the political will necessary to strip Republicans of power and force through a science-based policy.
"Wow, that really seems to be a problem. Wait, that's me they're mad at? And all my enemies are the ones baying for blood? They're probably lying, they are the other team after all. Nevermind."
I didn't downvote, but unless you have a plan for wiping out half the electorate you'll have to work with the other party. Activating everyone's mental immune systems with a nice pathogen-like protien coat of enemy rhetoric is not a good way to do it. It's like stirring peanut butter into the vat at an antihistamine factory.
1) I think that when one of two parties is condemning the world to grave harm on the basis of corruption, graft and ignorance, it's worth explicitly calling that out as a bad thing irrespective of how that party responds.
2) The Republican Party doesn't represent the will of half the electorate at a national level—they received a minority share of the vote in the last presidential, house and senate elections, and only by virtue of the antiquated, undemocratic, and intentionally manipulated system we use do Republicans hang on to power. In a modern democracy with the electorate we have, we wouldn't be in this situation. No plan for "wiping out" millions of people needed.
3) I see the challenge facing us differently. We have to galvanize and activate the political energy and force of people who want the world to be safe and healthy as much as possible in order to forcibly extract concessions on the part of the ruling minority and set the stage for the reclamation of the government. If the large majority that support solving this crisis were mobilized, this would create enormous pressure for things to change.
To put it your way, unless you have a plan for changing the minds of millions of Republicans in the face of decades of increased polarization, a multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus working in concert with the president, and a near-endless supply of money from very rich corporations who benefit from our current paralysis, you'll have to settle for applying as much pressure on Republicans as we can.
Despite overwhelming bad-faith manipulation of the legislative process by Republicans, Obama managed to move the climate status quo in the U.S. and the world tremendously in dozens of governmental and diplomatic spheres.
The Trump Administration is in the process of dismantling all of that work as fast as possible. Here's an article from early 2017, which expresses the contrast between the two quite well:
"The order sends an unmistakable signal that just as President Barack Obama sought to weave climate considerations into every aspect of the federal government, Trump is hoping to rip that approach out by its roots." [1]
Re 2: If you've got a way to get from this "antiquated, undemocratic" system to a "modern democracy", we'd all love to see the plan. It's going to either involve wiping out millions of voters, though, or else it's going to involve changing the constitution. Pulling that off with the electorate we have seems... improbable.
The rules for the state-by-state vote for the electoral college are not part of the constitution, for example. Nor is crooked gerrymandering. Fixing those would be a great start. Automatic voter registration, making Election Day a national holiday, and prosecuting all of the corrupt officials who have been working together to suppress non-white votes would be good too. Abolishing the senate will take longer, for sure, but in the mean time we can stop cruelly disenfranchising the residents of Washington, D. C. and Puerto Rico, which I'm sure would have a positive effect on bringing the senate closer to the national electorate.
Look up the National Popular Vote Compact. Some of these solutions are not as difficult as you'd imagine.
I believe climate change is happening and we should adress it. Here is a very weird question:
Suppose (a wild assumption) that the Republican (or any climate change sceptic) electorate would vote for unimpeded climate protection on the condition climate change sceptics get a 50% tax cut compared to non-sceptics, would you (or should those concerned with climate change) seize that opportunity, in order to save the climate unimpeded by the sceptics? i.e. full frontal bribing part of the electorate to get out of the way?
Sure. And then I would steal all the money back at the first opportunity because they are deliberately offloading their externalities onto everyone else and have been doing so since forever. They should be treated as they have historically treated others.
>They should be treated as they have historically treated others.
That sound you just heard was two million years of combined social instincts crushing any attempt at reconsideration like a grape in a trash compactor. I'm sure the Republicans on HN are glad to know that climate isn't about the good of humanity, but is actually about treating then badly...
I didn't say treating them badly, but treating them with reciprocity. At this point the GOP is actively committed to making things worse overall. There is no reason to accommodate them, because as an institution they have repeatedly acted in such bad faith that continuing to play along is to be complicit.
It's not just us vs them. There's at least a third group: future generations. In a realpolitic sense, should we allow "them" to screw over the future generations because of "our" blame attribution (correct or not)?
Reconsider the percentage of 50%: at what percentage do you change your stance? 40%? 30%? 20%? 10%? 5%? 2%? 1%? or absolutely strictly 0%?
Suppose this passes at some non-zero percentage, you are of course free to buy into Republican membership (or perhaps Democrat or other climate sceptic membershipif say a Green party or other succeeds in passing this) and reveal your true colors if you refuse to pay the larger tax...
A systemic problem needs a systemic solution, up till now it has been mostly the system moralizing the individual (who realises all too well we need a systemic solution)
The future generations would look back and see who can't prove they were in the added ecotax paying bracket..., of course they would see it is totally unfair, but as the problem becomes ever more urgent, the question becomes less and less about what is fair, but more and more about how the f!ck we are going to implement a timely and systemic solution, regardless of fairness...
It seems like this puzzle forces one to rediscover the true meaning of humanism, patriotism and sacrifice.
No. I am not going to work with people who have spent decades systematically undermining every else's existence and enthusiastically supporting genocide and ecocide, as most hard-right Republicans do (the only kind that are still allied ot the GOP). These people need to be defeated, not reasoned with.
I'd like to see the GOP go out of existence as an institution and its major power brokers neutralized. I'm not interested in what they do with their lives once their power is broken.
I'm touched by your optimistic conclusion, but the idea we'll see science-based policy does not resonate with as likely. I don't think facts or reasoning were so frowned-upon since medieval times.
> single greatest enemy of solving Climate change, literally anywhere in the world, is the Republican Party.
Chomsky refers to it as the most dangerous organization on earth. However, as popular as it is in the US to blame a political party, I don't think it's helpful in most cases, and this problem is no exception.
The other party is not going to stand up to corporate control of government any better than the republican party. We need a fundamental shift in culture and economic incentive to overcome this problem. Real solutions aren't event being discussed.
This kind of position ignores the striking differences between the last Democratic president and the current one. There are limits to what a president with an antagonistic congress can do, and within those limits I think Obama did quite a lot. Could he have done more, and done better? Absolutely. Do I think the media's disinterest in his constant speaking about the climate played some role in his lack of traction in forcing Republicans to participate? Yes. Is there a hand-wavey equivalence between Republicans and Democrats on global warming policy? No. Not even close.
Neither party has done anything significant to counter climate change in the 30 years since James Hansen's testimony before the U.S Senate. Look at the numbers. Whether this is because of limits to what can or can't be done just further proves my point. Neither party is going to do any better than the other.
> If the report succeeds, it will be generating the political will necessary to strip Republicans of power and force through a science-based policy.
Alternatively, it could be through generating the political will amongst Republicans to shift their position. I make no particular claim as to likelihood.
This is true, but you also have to look out for coopting of the Democratic party. For instance this year the Koch organization is looking a significantly shifting a lot of donations into Democratic politicians. You can blame one party, the GOP primarily, but you also need to lobby for the Democrats to come out with a strong and clear climate plan.
I don't know why this was downvoted. Along with eliminating emissions, we'll more or less have to find a way to suck out carbon it we're to return to the world we knew.
I would love for all globalist climate change doomsayers to put their money where their mouths are and stop flying across the globe in jets, driving in cars, and eating vegetables and meat from commercial agriculture, but I am not holding my breath.
Let's face it: The science behind climate change is likely sound, climate change is real, and we should probably do things to address it.
What is not science is accurately predicting the future. That cannot be done. Relying on computer models that can't possibly take into consideration every variable that can affect the climate, to me, is a waste of time, resources, and human lives. It is definitely not something we should base our governmental and societal decisions on.
We don't need to "accurately predict the future" at this point. First, climate change is the present. Second - does it matter if we're in "best-case" of only so many millions dying, or the worst-case (end of civilization)?
It's pretty clear (according to the models) that the human created aerosols combat a fair chunk of the increase caused by carbon emissions (around 0.7 deg C at the moment, which is substantial; we'd have already been around 2 deg C without it). Is deliberately increasing the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere a viable path forward? Is this economically feasible and safe? Can this be used to bring us back to the pre-industrial temperature levels?
There's lots of studies suggesting you can do this at low cost. There are issues, from not solving some problems at all (ocean acidification) to creating others (localized rainfall reduction).
My own thoughts are that we should be exploring doing this as a secondary backstop (it has pretty high ROI), while aggressively cutting emissions as well.
It seems like we have to do some geoengineering no matter what, because the emission cuts required to solve the problem are unattainable even if every government on the planet was trying to do its part.
The current climate change problem has been caused by unintentional geoengineering with an undesirable outcome. It's reasonable to assume that different methods of geoengineering can have different effects, and might be capable of helping solve the problem.
In my view, this could be dangerous if we do it before we are on the way to eliminating carbon via an alternative. If we get a symptom reduction via aerosols, we might just burn everything we can, and have some terrible effects on the oceans.
We might have to do it anyway, but I'm hoping we can hold off till we have a replacement, so as to avoid compounding things even worse than they are. Human psychology being what it is, we'll use aerosols to push off solving things.
Anyone know the expected outcome of a seriously acid ocean? My assumption is it would be civilization ending in some way, but maybe that's wrong.
Terriying for us and future generations.
Simplest actions we all can take:
1 stop eating meat (especially beef pork lamb) and dairy (especially cheese)
2 lower unecessary travel
3 get energy efficient appliances
4 buy less stuff
5 demand more action from govt and corporate world
The other elephant in the room will be the precipitous decline in fossil fuels in the coming decades , maybe sooner then we think and what this will do to our society in maintaining our present complexity and more importantly food production.
The very best thing you can do on climate change, right now, for free, is stop suggesting people "do their part" by flying less or eating less or making any other kind of individual sacrifice. Erase that proposition from your brain and never mention it again.
Climate change is a collective action problem. It can't be solved by voluntary sacrifice or any other kind of uncoordinated action. Suggesting that it can is harmful in two ways:
1. It puts the focus on solutions that don't work and won't even help.
2. Framing it in terms of sacrifice—which, again, won't even work—makes people less inclined to help in ways that might work, like lobbying for more effective policy.
"Eat your vegetables" is not the answer. People won't—no matter what. You might, your friends might, but people won't, and that's what matters.
This thought process led me to consider buying a gas guzzler in the past. The sooner it hurts enough for everyone to “get it” the better. But I didn’t buy a gas guzzler. Instead, I bought a hybrid.
I think the point that the GP is making is that while you may indeed have bought a hybrid, objectively the population at large have not made that same switch, and if only you (and people like you) make the switch it has approximately no effect on the problem.
Sure, it's obviously better if people choose the hybrid over the guzzler, but if you're trying to do something to avoid catastrophic climate change, I think spending time persuading people not to buy the guzzler is not worth the opportunity cost. (By which I mean, at the margin, any time spent persuading people not to buy a gas guzzler would be better spent persuading people to support a carbon tax of some sort).
That's why old political approaches should be abandoned in favor of more dramatic ones. I'm so done being nice to 'skeptics' and ideological moderates, their intellectually lazy accessories.
Interesting. I'm done with lazy 'intellectuals' who think they can offer questionable evidence and demand everyone accept it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What is the natural climate variability and what is the standard deviation thereof? What is the climate sensitivity and how accurately do we know this value? Why do the simulations predict warming that doesn't show up in observation? What happened to "more frequent, stronger hurricanes?" Here's an idea! If you have better answers for skeptics, which is your responsibility, maybe more people would agree with your claims.
Switching from an omnivorous to vegetarian diet could reduce a person's carbon footprint by about 30 percent, says Martin Heller, an engineer at the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan.
The point about vegetarianism is that eating meat is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO inefficient that climate change won't be solved until we ALL stop eating meat (or at least the majority of the planet).
Yes, there are corporate plutocrats that are destroying the planet. No, that does not let you off the hook. If you see a collective action problem and decide that, since it's hard, and other people suck, you don't have to participate, then you're just as much a part of the problem as the sucky people.
Meat is already expensive, indicating people would eat more of it if they could afford it. If conscientious people reduce meat consumption, that supply will mostly just be consumed (at a lower price) by people that don't care.
The goal here should be to make things like meat, car fuel, etc. more expensive (via taxes, or otherwise properly pricing in the costs). It might very well be the case that some people that can afford these increased prices continue to consume exactly as much meat and fuel as they do now. So fucking what? The overall consumption will go down, which is what we need. Overall consumption will not go down significantly if you just convince some fraction of people to voluntarily reduce their consumption.
Imagine your neighbor's house is on fire. You run outside and see him throwing dirt on his porch with his kid's plastic shovel. You gawk at this decision for a second, then run back inside and call the fire department.
When you come back out and shout the fire truck is coming, he yells at you for wasting time inside instead of picking up his other tiny shovel and throwing some dirt.
Except... the problem clearly won't be solved with twice the tiny-shovelfuls of dirt. It needs a qualitatively different type of action.
On climate change, you have two choices:
1. You can moralize about the sucky people who won't grab a shovel, essentially complaining that the problem isn't of the form you'd like; or
2. You can do the thing that's most effective.
You can also help your neighbor shovel dirt until the fire truck arrives. That's fine, it doesn't hurt. Just understand it doesn't make a difference.
Except there is no fire truck that’s coming. We still need to convince our governments to take action. And how can we do that if we individually are still throwing kindling on the flames.
> The point about vegetarianism is that eating meat is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO inefficient that climate change won't be solved until we ALL stop eating meat (or at least the majority of the planet).
Any source to back the claim that climate change cannot be stopped unless we convert to vegetarianism?
I understand your point to a degree, but how will not suggesting people do their part help? I understand why you feel this is not helpful, but the start of your comment seems to suggest you think it's counterproductive. Is this simply because it will potentially motivate people to take more productive actions?
Proposing uncoordinated action makes no sense unless you basically deny the nature of the problem, which means you can't solve it. Workable solutions will be sidelined for as long as possible in favor of appealing fantasies.
The effect of uncoordinated action on the problem may be fine, but treating it as part of the solution space on par with actual solutions is not.
e.g.:
Alice and Bob are on a team of 10 developers. Code quality is terrible. It's obvious to Meg, the manager, that something must be done before the product totally collapses.
The other 8 developers don't care. Not only that: they actively refuse to even contemplate why quality might matter, and also each of them has different, mutually exclusive, horrifyingly destructive preferences.
Carol only uses `switch`, not `if`. Dave removes "unnecessary" object allocations (all of them) because GC pressure. Eve's editor replaces every single space with tab on save.
So Bob takes Meg aside and says the team needs training. If everyone who militantly does not care and actively refuses to cooperate could just be shown the error of their ways, he says, we surely could accept a style guide everyone would follow. Training will cure obstinance and apathy with minimal investment.
Later, Alice goes to Meg and says we need a git hook that enforces linting and, actually, a CI pipeline wouldn't hurt.
I don't know, says Meg. That sounds like it would slow us down. And setting all that up could be a lot of work. Bob says we can solve it with a couple trainings and a lot less effort.
So they go with Bob's solution, with predictable results, because Meg likes it better. If everyone who cannot possibly agree would just agree, she reasons, there would be no need for major changes.
You get nowhere when you let people push blame from their own actions to the actions of others (or conglomerates). The people who feel most responsible for the future of the Earth are those most likely to take action: both individual action and political action.
Eating your vegetables is the answer. (Well, part of it.) It simply isn't possible for us to fix the climate unless people start eating a whole lot more vegetables, fruit, nuts, and legumes. If we were in a society with a benevolent dictator, maybe we could force people to eat more vegetables. But how, in our democracy, are you going to get our corporate-owned politicians to pass very heavy taxes on meat? It's simply not going to happen until you have a massive number of people pushing for change. Imagine trying to legalize gay marriage in a country where 95% of people oppose it. It's a nearly hopeless endeavor.
If you are one of the people who eats steak and drives SUVs because you don't feel personally responsible for your contribution to climate change, then you're the problem. Personal responsibility is not opposed to political change, it's a prerequisite for it. The people who get the government to pass meat taxes will almost certainly be people who don't eat a lot of meat.
I think you make a good point, but the one caveat is that 'eating your vegetables' might create a false sense of comfort that you've done your part.
It's a bit like how supermarkets will put the veggies at the entrance, so people will buy more unhealthy food (as a reward for buying those vegetables!).
I'm inclined to agree with you mostly because I think the situation is so dire that those who do their part will not just leave it at that, but the above mentioned does concern me a bit.
On the other hand, there’s a dangerous belief that emissions are something corporations do for their own greedy purposes; if they can be curtailed, ordinary people could go about their lives in peace. This is backwards. It is consumer preferences - to drive an SUV to a detached house in suburbia, to fly home for Thanksgiving, to eat meat, etc. which inherently require massive amounts of energy. Polluting corporations happen to be the mechanism for fulfilling these demands under capitalism. If we expressed our preferences by voting instead of spending, it could just as easily be the state doing the polluting.
To really address the issue requires disempowering and disenfranchising average people, denying us our customary and preferred lifestyles. This is a monumentally difficult thing to do in a system that requires the consent of the governed. Giving up your lifestyle vs. voting to give up your lifestyle (even if indirectly, by crippling the companies that provide its constituent parts) are not too different.
Keep in mind that projections are typically underestimated and don't take into account potential tipping points. I encourage everyone to read the chapter on Potential Surprises. [1]
Meanwhile, arctic sea ice is disappearing [2] and I didn't see any mention of latent heat or phase change energy of the arctic waters. Once the ice is gone, we're done.
This is a topic that has a lot of noise but there are two relatively easy to explain things to tell people (I am discounting the usual 27% of the population who will never be interested):
1. There is a policy that is simple to explain and has some bipartisan appeal: Fee and Dividend (also known as the Clean Energy Dividend). It puts an increasing price on carbon per ton at the source (e.g., oil well, port of entry, etc.) and distributes 100% of the proceeds to the people. That's it. No tricks, no back-door subsidies. And because it is redistributed it's also not a tax in the usual sense, which helps win over those who are open to climate policy but anti-tax.
2. Things are indeed more dire than even most climate aware folks realize. Watch climate scientist Kevin Anderson break down the numbers -- it's sobering how disconnected our climate discourse is from reality:
> In this case, we are looking specifically at the rock olivine when it comes in contact with ocean water and the CO2 dissolved in it. What results is a chemical reaction that pulls carbon from the CO2 in the ocean and binds it in a solution that eventually settles into rock on the sea floor. Not only does the olivine remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but the resulting solution is alkaline and has a deacidifying effect on the ocean.
This is a hopeful direction but it sounds like the jury is out of this can really scale to anywhere the amount we need. But it’s cheap and it helps with the oceans so seems like it’s part of a solution matrix. Also seems lower risk than spraying stuff into the atmosphere so I hope we can get moving on it.
David Blume [1] has been promoting for years the idea of small-scale alcohol fuel production integrated into a Permaculture farm.
This is a simple, backyard technology that can be adopted incrementally. The fuel is carbon-neutral. If you don't have land, you can join or start a Community-Supported Agriculture co-op, for produce and fuel.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] thread> Considering both historical and projected non-CO2 effects reduces the estimated cumulative CO2 budget compatible with any future warming goal, and in the case of 3.6°F (2°C) it reduces the aforementioned estimate to 790 GtC. Given this more comprehensive estimate, limiting the global average temperature increase to below 3.6°F (2°C) means approximately 230 GtC more CO2 could be emitted globally. To illustrate, if one assumes future global emissions follow a pathway consistent with the lower scenario (RCP4.5), this cumulative carbon threshold is exceeded by around 2037, while under the higher scenario (RCP8.5) this occurs by around 2033. To limit the global average temperature increase to 2.7°F (1.5°C), the estimated cumulative CO2 budget is about 590 GtC (assuming linear scaling with the compatible 3.6°F (2°C) budget that also considers non-CO2 effects), meaning only about 30 GtC more of CO2 could be emitted. Further emissions of 30 GtC (in the form of CO2) are projected to occur in the next few years (Table 14.1).
Dates by when cumulative carbon emissions (GtC) since 1870 reach amount commensurate with 2.7°F (1.5°C), when accounting for non-CO2 forcings:
By next year, we'll (most likely) have burned through our chance of holding climate change to 1.5°CThink "all of the direct economic benefit of fossil fuels from all of human history but in reverse, plus inefficiency losses, in 1/4 the timespan"
I've been thinking of writing an essay along the lines of the world being "default dead". Basically, unless we come up with something to suck carbon from the air and replace our energy use, I believe we're sunk.
A lot of people seem to believe that if we just stopped or "reduced" we'd solve the problem. But if we continue for just a few years as normal, then even a total cessation of emissions wouldn't solve our predicament.
Reducing, eliminating: these are important things. But, we're basically dead by default, and need to do something more to actually reverse what we emitted.
But hey, you know, reusable grocery bags and telecommuting 1 day a week should do it. I guess.
It's like we found the asteroid headed for Earth and decided to pretend it doesn't exist.
If your political beliefs tell you to not save for your retirement because the apocalypse is coming, that should be a serious red flag.
It's also fairly straightforward to find people who don't exactly hold scientists in high regard.
The jet travel may be justified, but if he believes what he is saying he should be flying commercial and the extravagance in the rest of his lifestyle looks really hypocritical.
>climate change is real
>climate change is man made
>climate hazards will impact people all over the world
>climate change quickly creates additional hazards which need to be dealt with on top of whatever problems already affect us (erosion of infrastructure, salination of farmlands/aquifers due to flooding, traffic trapping people during a forest fire)
Perhaps Al Gore believes that individual actions are completely insignificant compared to the acts of corporations and governments. Maybe he is a closet climate-denier. If either of those things are true, it is inconvenient that many see him as the face of climate activism. I think the case for climate mitigation should hinge upon scientific evidence, rather than the lifestyle and personal opinions of a single man.
If you're running around 2018 saying "global warming is not a fact" I would urge some light reading on your part, it's really quite good writing in its own right:
Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...
I'm a bit puzzled as to why you bring up Solyndra, seeing as they never claimed to be an authority on climate science, just producing PV cells. Are you arguing that climate change was invented in order to motivate grants to research, and ventures like Solyndra, which otherwise may not have received them? If this is the case, then yes, I would say that your skepticism is indeed a political belief.
Unfortunately for humans, all the evidence seems to indicate strongly that climate change is more than a conspiracy to get a few people marginal relative wealth increases. Especially since it seems the ones trying to convince the world to change haven't been very successful.
Also, I'm pretty sure the GP wasn't saying "I shouldn't save because politics," but rather, "A 401k sounds great, but if everyone's starving and the world is in chaos, what's the point?"
There have been times in history where focusing on your retirement has been a stupid idea (fall of Rome, WWII, areas devastated by plague or flood, etc, etc). However, there have also been times where catastrophe has stubbornly refused to occur.
It is actually pretty easy to describe a horrific future that can't be quickly or reasonably debunked - but anyone with sense should also be prepared for the outside scenario that everything carries on as planned. Doomsayers always face the risk that the problem turns out to be solvable or minor, and should be prepared for that.
Thats missing the point. The fact that these people arent willing to sacrifice the slightest convenience for the planet strongly suggests they dont actually believe what they are saying. Obviously no one person can ruin the planet.
And: >"A 401k sounds great, but if everyone's starving and the world is in chaos, what's the point?" Is just a nicer way to say: >"I shouldn't save because the apocalypse is coming"
>marginal relative wealth increases
Understatement of the century. >Former vice president Al Gore had a net worth of about $1.7 million at the turn of the century and 13 years later, his wealth has grown to more than $200 million. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2320452/Al-Gore-Rom...
You implied Gore made his money from climate activism, but your own source contradicts you. The options are:
1. You have such confirmation bias that you don't even read articles you post as evidence, or 2. You know you're arguing in bad faith, but you hope to persuade people who don't read the link
I'm sure Al Gore has made some money from climate activism, but the vast bulk of his fortune came from elsewhere. So the comment you were replying to was accurate in describing it as a marginal increase due to activism.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1961299
Tldr; The Washington Post attributes most of Al Gore's net worth to investments in taxpayer subsidized climate startups.
There certainly are bad faith people on hackernews, i just hope you yourself arent one of them lol.
If the best counterargument you can come up with is proudly ad hominem, that should be a serious red flag.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genoc...
+ The 20 warmest years on record have been since 1995
We're already experiencing it.
A small increase in temperature results in a significant increase in lightening which is the big worry.
Does everyone just want to take a breather here and ask why an upvoted subthread is claiming that it is nonsensical to save for retirement because the TV says we will all die in a fire. Seriously, this isn't even worthy of Reddit.
Come on HN, try to trend above the IQ of Huffpost, you can do it
[edit: but on second thought, maybe more of us should consider donating some portion of our retirement savings to those who have had their entire lives wiped out by disaster and are immediate distress. Thanks for the nudge.]
1) You have to be ready for terrible fires even if the future climate prognosis is great.
2) The residents of Paradise, California with substantial savings are going to be much better off than those without.
If anything, Paradise validates the idea that you should save and invest more in preparation for a hostile future rather than less. They aren't going it alone, they are still part of a large and functioning America.
I was responding to someone who said we would not see a Mad-Max-like world in our lifetimes; my point was merely that some people already are seeing such a thing. (Though I admit I never saw the Mad Max movie, so I may have missed the mark.)
The nytimes summary (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report...) claims the report talks about a 10% hit to US GDP in 2100 (note: I can't actually find such language in the report).
If you are in America, that type of hit is hardly on the level of life destroying, though I'll admit a) there's tail-probabilities of much worse happening, b) people in developing countries will be hurt far more, c) if you care about the outdoors, you'll be a lot less happy.
With rising temperatures, there will be natural selection pressure on all organisms, many on which the economy relies (say plants).
Organisms that repeat their lifecycle faster will have advantage over organisms with longer lifecycles (the shorter-lived adversarial species among 2 adversarial species can iterate variations faster sequentially, regardless if the 2 adversarial species are competing or predator-prey, ...).
Organisms that have higher population counts will have advantage over organisms with lower population counts (since the species with higher population counts is trying out more variations in parallel)
Hence smaller, simpler organisms will cause lots of diseases and afflictions in say agriculture, which probably will adversely affect our economies...
A 10% hit on GDP sounds like a ridiculous underestimate
Also, having hundreds of millions of starving people fleeing central and south america may affect stability. In addition to being a profound and completely catastrophe.
> We have twelve years to show results.
https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433
a) cut back on carbon emissions personally, and climate change will be undone
b) do nothing and let climate change take its course
but the reality is the option for your average consumer is
a) cut back on carbon emissions personally, and whatever happens to the world will happen regardless because you're only a microscopic contribution to the problem/solution
b) do nothing, and whatever happens to the world will happen regardless because you're only a microscopic contribution to the problem/solution
All major world governments needed to nationalize or brutally regulate polluting industries decades ago. They didn't, and it's tough to see a path forward now even assuming the political will to do so somehow appeared out of the ether.
The trouble, as I see it, is we're all being encouraged to shuffle around some trivia whilst avoiding the real issues, with only a very few truly reflecting the scale of the problem. Instead of making a concerted attempt to get households to reduce energy by insulating, changing fuels, changing tax incentives and subsidies we're given LED light bulbs and faffing around with drinking straws etc. We still often heat by gas, or bring home tonnes of plastic in the weekly shop. We need policy to achieve enough.
I think the only other route to change is via groups like Extinction Rebellion (Who are trying to get "enough" people imprisoned to get public opinion and policy change. Peaceful marches, after all, achieve nothing. Civil disobedience has been the route to the significant changes through history).
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doo...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2002/nov/02/weekend7... (Long)
Well, fwiw if we're going to heat with fossil fuels, it is best to "burn on-site". You don't get 98% efficiency in a natural gas power plant.
Until renewables take over the grid, natural gas space heating is probably as good a fuel choice as we've got.
I guess it'll depend on the climate, the COP of even the best heat pumps drops to 2 or worse in colder weather. I think I can agree that if it's a very mild climate and you frequently get a COP of 4 or better, then that could already beat a furnace in per-BTU gas consumption.
Thank you!
Table 1 has estimates of how many years of remaining global emissions we have before we exceed the cumulative emission budgets for various goals of limiting warming to at most +2, +3 or +4 degrees, and different probabilities of success. Note that the Friedlingstein et al paper from 2014 didn't even bother to talk about the possibility of limiting warming to +1.5 degrees C.
These estimates of emissions rates for remaining years before our cumulative emissions budget is exceeded are highly optimistic in the sense that they assume annual CO_2-equivalent emissions stop growing, i.e. the rate we are emitting greenhouse gas is held constant to whatever they were in 2014. In comparison, annual greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow: http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/17/infograph...
My understanding is that coastal areas (where most people currently live) are generally fucked, but I don't really have a good understanding of what the difference is between 2C diff and, say, 3C diff. Anyone have links to some good, non-sensational estimates?
That would then probably lead to continued emissions, as any international effort to reduce them would break down, and people would take what advantage they could in a more tooth and nail world.
[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/10654002541519544...
Edit: this seems to be a controversial comment. It is getting a lot of down votes and a lot of up votes. I'm a bit confused by this. The report is a US government report, largely prepared by agencies that are under the Executive branch, and says that climate change is a big and growing problem.
It is the Executive branch that will handle any Federal action in response to this. The President is the head of the Executive, and will largely determine how the Federal government responds, either directly by executive orders and by setting White House policy, or indirectly through the President's choices of heads of the agencies.
That the President a mere two days before the report was released (and almost certainly having been told well in advance what was going to be in report) is implying that climate change is not happening is on-topic and relevant.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, but I think it's important to say this clearly: anyone who believes that global warming is real, that science is a rational basis for knowledge, and wants humanity to address warming as soon as possible, is in profound, fundamental conflict with the Republican Party about the most important crisis of our time.
The significance of this report is to convey the gravity of the crisis and to raise a sense of emergency among the public. If the report succeeds, it will be generating the political will necessary to strip Republicans of power and force through a science-based policy.
"Wow, that really seems to be a problem. Wait, that's me they're mad at? And all my enemies are the ones baying for blood? They're probably lying, they are the other team after all. Nevermind."
I didn't downvote, but unless you have a plan for wiping out half the electorate you'll have to work with the other party. Activating everyone's mental immune systems with a nice pathogen-like protien coat of enemy rhetoric is not a good way to do it. It's like stirring peanut butter into the vat at an antihistamine factory.
2) The Republican Party doesn't represent the will of half the electorate at a national level—they received a minority share of the vote in the last presidential, house and senate elections, and only by virtue of the antiquated, undemocratic, and intentionally manipulated system we use do Republicans hang on to power. In a modern democracy with the electorate we have, we wouldn't be in this situation. No plan for "wiping out" millions of people needed.
3) I see the challenge facing us differently. We have to galvanize and activate the political energy and force of people who want the world to be safe and healthy as much as possible in order to forcibly extract concessions on the part of the ruling minority and set the stage for the reclamation of the government. If the large majority that support solving this crisis were mobilized, this would create enormous pressure for things to change.
To put it your way, unless you have a plan for changing the minds of millions of Republicans in the face of decades of increased polarization, a multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus working in concert with the president, and a near-endless supply of money from very rich corporations who benefit from our current paralysis, you'll have to settle for applying as much pressure on Republicans as we can.
The Trump Administration is in the process of dismantling all of that work as fast as possible. Here's an article from early 2017, which expresses the contrast between the two quite well:
"The order sends an unmistakable signal that just as President Barack Obama sought to weave climate considerations into every aspect of the federal government, Trump is hoping to rip that approach out by its roots." [1]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump...
Look up the National Popular Vote Compact. Some of these solutions are not as difficult as you'd imagine.
Suppose (a wild assumption) that the Republican (or any climate change sceptic) electorate would vote for unimpeded climate protection on the condition climate change sceptics get a 50% tax cut compared to non-sceptics, would you (or should those concerned with climate change) seize that opportunity, in order to save the climate unimpeded by the sceptics? i.e. full frontal bribing part of the electorate to get out of the way?
That sound you just heard was two million years of combined social instincts crushing any attempt at reconsideration like a grape in a trash compactor. I'm sure the Republicans on HN are glad to know that climate isn't about the good of humanity, but is actually about treating then badly...
It's not just us vs them. There's at least a third group: future generations. In a realpolitic sense, should we allow "them" to screw over the future generations because of "our" blame attribution (correct or not)?
Reconsider the percentage of 50%: at what percentage do you change your stance? 40%? 30%? 20%? 10%? 5%? 2%? 1%? or absolutely strictly 0%?
Suppose this passes at some non-zero percentage, you are of course free to buy into Republican membership (or perhaps Democrat or other climate sceptic membershipif say a Green party or other succeeds in passing this) and reveal your true colors if you refuse to pay the larger tax...
A systemic problem needs a systemic solution, up till now it has been mostly the system moralizing the individual (who realises all too well we need a systemic solution)
The future generations would look back and see who can't prove they were in the added ecotax paying bracket..., of course they would see it is totally unfair, but as the problem becomes ever more urgent, the question becomes less and less about what is fair, but more and more about how the f!ck we are going to implement a timely and systemic solution, regardless of fairness...
It seems like this puzzle forces one to rediscover the true meaning of humanism, patriotism and sacrifice.
Jerry Brown was asked why he continued to approve offshore drilling and his response was that he refused to put so many out of work.
Downvoters disprove me or go back to Huffpost
Newsom won't end drilling either. But sure, it's all Trump's fault
Chomsky refers to it as the most dangerous organization on earth. However, as popular as it is in the US to blame a political party, I don't think it's helpful in most cases, and this problem is no exception.
The other party is not going to stand up to corporate control of government any better than the republican party. We need a fundamental shift in culture and economic incentive to overcome this problem. Real solutions aren't event being discussed.
Alternatively, it could be through generating the political will amongst Republicans to shift their position. I make no particular claim as to likelihood.
Check out the AirMiners index of 83+ startups at http://airminers.org
Please add new companies you find, too!
Let's face it: The science behind climate change is likely sound, climate change is real, and we should probably do things to address it.
What is not science is accurately predicting the future. That cannot be done. Relying on computer models that can't possibly take into consideration every variable that can affect the climate, to me, is a waste of time, resources, and human lives. It is definitely not something we should base our governmental and societal decisions on.
His use of "globalists" says all
It's pretty clear (according to the models) that the human created aerosols combat a fair chunk of the increase caused by carbon emissions (around 0.7 deg C at the moment, which is substantial; we'd have already been around 2 deg C without it). Is deliberately increasing the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere a viable path forward? Is this economically feasible and safe? Can this be used to bring us back to the pre-industrial temperature levels?
My own thoughts are that we should be exploring doing this as a secondary backstop (it has pretty high ROI), while aggressively cutting emissions as well.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-may-not-coo...
The current climate change problem has been caused by unintentional geoengineering with an undesirable outcome. It's reasonable to assume that different methods of geoengineering can have different effects, and might be capable of helping solve the problem.
We might have to do it anyway, but I'm hoping we can hold off till we have a replacement, so as to avoid compounding things even worse than they are. Human psychology being what it is, we'll use aerosols to push off solving things.
Anyone know the expected outcome of a seriously acid ocean? My assumption is it would be civilization ending in some way, but maybe that's wrong.
Climate change is a collective action problem. It can't be solved by voluntary sacrifice or any other kind of uncoordinated action. Suggesting that it can is harmful in two ways:
1. It puts the focus on solutions that don't work and won't even help.
2. Framing it in terms of sacrifice—which, again, won't even work—makes people less inclined to help in ways that might work, like lobbying for more effective policy.
"Eat your vegetables" is not the answer. People won't—no matter what. You might, your friends might, but people won't, and that's what matters.
Deny this fact at everyone's peril.
Sure, it's obviously better if people choose the hybrid over the guzzler, but if you're trying to do something to avoid catastrophic climate change, I think spending time persuading people not to buy the guzzler is not worth the opportunity cost. (By which I mean, at the margin, any time spent persuading people not to buy a gas guzzler would be better spent persuading people to support a carbon tax of some sort).
https://www.theguardian.com/weather/ng-interactive/2018/sep/...
If you have better answers for skeptics, which is your responsibility
No it isn't. Climate change 'skeptics' have such a long record of bad-faith participation that I no longer consider them worthy of response.
Switching from an omnivorous to vegetarian diet could reduce a person's carbon footprint by about 30 percent, says Martin Heller, an engineer at the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan.
https://www.popsci.com/vegetarian-environment-health (I've picked this as the first hit on google, but if you want to find other sources go for it).
The point about vegetarianism is that eating meat is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO inefficient that climate change won't be solved until we ALL stop eating meat (or at least the majority of the planet).
Yes, there are corporate plutocrats that are destroying the planet. No, that does not let you off the hook. If you see a collective action problem and decide that, since it's hard, and other people suck, you don't have to participate, then you're just as much a part of the problem as the sucky people.
Meat is already expensive, indicating people would eat more of it if they could afford it. If conscientious people reduce meat consumption, that supply will mostly just be consumed (at a lower price) by people that don't care.
The goal here should be to make things like meat, car fuel, etc. more expensive (via taxes, or otherwise properly pricing in the costs). It might very well be the case that some people that can afford these increased prices continue to consume exactly as much meat and fuel as they do now. So fucking what? The overall consumption will go down, which is what we need. Overall consumption will not go down significantly if you just convince some fraction of people to voluntarily reduce their consumption.
When you come back out and shout the fire truck is coming, he yells at you for wasting time inside instead of picking up his other tiny shovel and throwing some dirt.
Except... the problem clearly won't be solved with twice the tiny-shovelfuls of dirt. It needs a qualitatively different type of action.
On climate change, you have two choices:
1. You can moralize about the sucky people who won't grab a shovel, essentially complaining that the problem isn't of the form you'd like; or
2. You can do the thing that's most effective.
You can also help your neighbor shovel dirt until the fire truck arrives. That's fine, it doesn't hurt. Just understand it doesn't make a difference.
Any source to back the claim that climate change cannot be stopped unless we convert to vegetarianism?
The effect of uncoordinated action on the problem may be fine, but treating it as part of the solution space on par with actual solutions is not.
e.g.:
Alice and Bob are on a team of 10 developers. Code quality is terrible. It's obvious to Meg, the manager, that something must be done before the product totally collapses.
The other 8 developers don't care. Not only that: they actively refuse to even contemplate why quality might matter, and also each of them has different, mutually exclusive, horrifyingly destructive preferences.
Carol only uses `switch`, not `if`. Dave removes "unnecessary" object allocations (all of them) because GC pressure. Eve's editor replaces every single space with tab on save.
So Bob takes Meg aside and says the team needs training. If everyone who militantly does not care and actively refuses to cooperate could just be shown the error of their ways, he says, we surely could accept a style guide everyone would follow. Training will cure obstinance and apathy with minimal investment.
Later, Alice goes to Meg and says we need a git hook that enforces linting and, actually, a CI pipeline wouldn't hurt.
I don't know, says Meg. That sounds like it would slow us down. And setting all that up could be a lot of work. Bob says we can solve it with a couple trainings and a lot less effort.
So they go with Bob's solution, with predictable results, because Meg likes it better. If everyone who cannot possibly agree would just agree, she reasons, there would be no need for major changes.
Why can't they just agree?
You get nowhere when you let people push blame from their own actions to the actions of others (or conglomerates). The people who feel most responsible for the future of the Earth are those most likely to take action: both individual action and political action.
Eating your vegetables is the answer. (Well, part of it.) It simply isn't possible for us to fix the climate unless people start eating a whole lot more vegetables, fruit, nuts, and legumes. If we were in a society with a benevolent dictator, maybe we could force people to eat more vegetables. But how, in our democracy, are you going to get our corporate-owned politicians to pass very heavy taxes on meat? It's simply not going to happen until you have a massive number of people pushing for change. Imagine trying to legalize gay marriage in a country where 95% of people oppose it. It's a nearly hopeless endeavor.
If you are one of the people who eats steak and drives SUVs because you don't feel personally responsible for your contribution to climate change, then you're the problem. Personal responsibility is not opposed to political change, it's a prerequisite for it. The people who get the government to pass meat taxes will almost certainly be people who don't eat a lot of meat.
It's a bit like how supermarkets will put the veggies at the entrance, so people will buy more unhealthy food (as a reward for buying those vegetables!).
I'm inclined to agree with you mostly because I think the situation is so dire that those who do their part will not just leave it at that, but the above mentioned does concern me a bit.
To really address the issue requires disempowering and disenfranchising average people, denying us our customary and preferred lifestyles. This is a monumentally difficult thing to do in a system that requires the consent of the governed. Giving up your lifestyle vs. voting to give up your lifestyle (even if indirectly, by crippling the companies that provide its constituent parts) are not too different.
At least I'm fucking trying, What the Hell have you done?
Meanwhile, arctic sea ice is disappearing [2] and I didn't see any mention of latent heat or phase change energy of the arctic waters. Once the ice is gone, we're done.
[1] https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/15/
[2] https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/11/
1. There is a policy that is simple to explain and has some bipartisan appeal: Fee and Dividend (also known as the Clean Energy Dividend). It puts an increasing price on carbon per ton at the source (e.g., oil well, port of entry, etc.) and distributes 100% of the proceeds to the people. That's it. No tricks, no back-door subsidies. And because it is redistributed it's also not a tax in the usual sense, which helps win over those who are open to climate policy but anti-tax.
2. Things are indeed more dire than even most climate aware folks realize. Watch climate scientist Kevin Anderson break down the numbers -- it's sobering how disconnected our climate discourse is from reality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BX1r8OAmz9I
https://climitigation.org/olivine-can-reverse-climate-change...
> In this case, we are looking specifically at the rock olivine when it comes in contact with ocean water and the CO2 dissolved in it. What results is a chemical reaction that pulls carbon from the CO2 in the ocean and binds it in a solution that eventually settles into rock on the sea floor. Not only does the olivine remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but the resulting solution is alkaline and has a deacidifying effect on the ocean.
This is a simple, backyard technology that can be adopted incrementally. The fuel is carbon-neutral. If you don't have land, you can join or start a Community-Supported Agriculture co-op, for produce and fuel.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Blume