Dictator? I simply said the market/and economists can't price in damage to our environment and won't. If you feel any regulation on a corporation is being a dictator than maybe the answer is yes in your context. We've had to dictate the direction many times in the past when industry has become to exploitative of either labor or resources.
The latest major scale dictation was Chinas 1 child policy and that lead to a bunch of different problems.
And what businesses are being exploitative?
95% of what you take for granted is made by using fossil fuels whether, tires, medicine, food, concrete, cement, steel manufactoring, computers, machines, contact lenses, textiles, pesticides, plumbing, housing, damns, solar cells, windmills, the internet and I could go on.
What are you suggesting we dictate and what price are you ready to pay for this? Are you also going to go to war with china when they won't stop pulling their population out of poverty.
You speak as if the environment was this perfect non-hostile place before we came along, but reality is it's the other way around.
Nature is hostile and dangerous and we've used fossil fuels to make it less dangerous. The positive externalities if fossil fuels far outweigh the negative.
That doesn't mean we should continue using fossil fuels but we better have a realistic alterantive IMO.
The market certainly can be regulated in such a way as to effectively price in the costs.
If we can have companies following constructs such as Sarbanes-Oxley then they can most certainly follow the constraints of environmental constructs.
Unless you mean that certain vested interests will bankroll politicians to cut regulation? Then yes, that is a very big problems (see: Koch industries buying their way out of environmental legislation) but not insurmountable.
So I don’t have the answer here. I do like Jay Inslee’s argument for simply making mandates to cut emissions and carbon usage. Ie mandating ever increasingly efficient fuel ratings on vehicles. He says that’s an easier policy change than forcing costs on people through laws or created markets that can be undone in a following cycle.
It’s all got to be on the table and considered though. The entire energy footprint of almost all of the industrial revolution through to current needs to be undone in some way. There’s an inherent requirement on the energy that must be expended in order to do that, by the laws of thermodynamics/physics.
Maybe? You’re still seem to be thinking about this in anachronistic terms. Every political and economic philosophy is based upon the unspoken assumption that there will always be a climate hospitable to human life. This means that neoliberalism is flawed at its core. Every economic and social theory that does not start with addressing the external costs of carbon dioxide is incorrect at its foundation.
Without some form of government or entity to dictate and enforce the laws the free market wouldn't stay free for long, country would turn into Somalia quickly. Why is this different?
Oceans have no owner and most pollution comes from free riders. There's no owner, no exchange takes place and there is no capitalism involved.
I would also bet that most pollution comes from undeveloped countries. I don't want to pay for anyone's free-riding. Let me know how much for 100sq miles of sea and we'll talk. I can afford to pay someone to find and sue nearby polluters.
Boy are characterizations like this getting tired. An actually accurate title would read something like: Farm and industry run-off in certain areas of the world is depleting oxygen in certain parts of the ocean.
The vast majority of the issue isn't related to rising temps, it would still be there if there were no rising temps. It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific parts of the ocean. The title "as temperatures rise" is totally dishonest. It's probably closer to something like "as demand for palm oil increases" (not trying to finger that one crop, but its more accurate than "as temperatures rise").
> "To stop the worrying expansion of oxygen-poor areas, we need to decisively curb greenhouse gas emissions as well as nutrient pollution from agriculture and other sources."
If you want to do something decisive, point out where these oxygen depleted areas are, and do something to stop the runoff. That's the main problem. Tying it in to the much more nebulous "carbon emissions" hurts more than it helps but its like climate writers cannot help themselves.
Imagine if everyone trying to stop the ozone-depletion problem did this. Nothing would have gotten done to this day. Find the smallest unit of actionable, measurable change and try to change that first.
EDIT hokay lets read the study:
BBC: "Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s."
Section 2.5 summary on page 109 (PDF) or page 85 of the report, two bullets:
• Over 900 areas around the world have been identified as experiencing the effects of eutrophication. Of these, over 700 have problems with hypoxia, but through nutrient and organic loading management about 70 (10%) of them can now be classified as recovering.
• There is no other environmental variable of such ecological importance to coastal ecosystems that has changed
so drastically in such a short period of time as a result of human activities as dissolved oxygen.
Look, the part BBC wants to spook you with? It's eutrophication! It is independent of warming and can be fixed independent of warming. This is a good thing! It is already being fixed in some areas, which is even nicer. All I ask is that we actually decouple these from "warming" so we can do something about them faster.
If you read an article citing the conclusions of an international group with 15,000+ experts in their respective field, many member nations and their scientific establishment, etc, and you believe some random comment by some random guy on the internet adds "clarity", you need to really reconsider how you evaluate information.
This is how we ended up in the situations of enormous ignorance in the climate change and immunization realms, as if scientific rigour, consensus, statistical and foundational fact, etc, are all contentious the moment some random blowhard gives their opinion.
Sure, if the root post analyzed the study, or even did the most cursory skim of it, and pointed out how the article differed from its conclusions, that would be valuable.
They didn't. They blanket dismissed it, gave their own theory, and expressed how tired they are from this cross they must bear.
The article is written by a single journalist, and clearly sensationalist. What does it matter he quotes 15000 experts if he intentionally distorts what they say?
That random comment by a random guy on the internet is adding clarity.
This claim has been made multiple times, and the single example has been a misunderstanding of the English language (e.g. "running out").
"That random comment by a random guy on the internet is adding clarity."
That random comment that inserted non-fact, dismissed essentially the entire report...yeah, no, it added just noise. Oh look now the root comment instead of just blanket dismissing global warming entirely has now listed a small sub-summary dealing just with run-off. This is a classic denialist tactic, just moving the fence posts enough, pretending to actually be considering the science.
The expect he quoted on Global Warming reducing the oxygen on the water found it all causes a 2% change. How's 98% for running out? All the of problem discussed on the article comes from the widespread dispersion of local pollution.
The journalist is at the same time lying about a problem where there isn't any and hiding a huge problem that can be solved if people focus on it.
Maybe the reason you are getting pushback is your tactic of insults. Blowhard, HN crank squad and anti-science nuts... The best way to represent a position here is through dialog, not name calling. Emotional jabs tend to undermine your argument.
Snark is going to be the end of us. It simultaneously provides a dopamine rush to the snarker, a flash of anger in the snarkee, completely destroys any context of understanding or potential for vulnerability and change. Everyone just goes shield up and battles.
We have the greatest interpersonal communication capability the world has ever seen and we piss it away on insults.
Anti-science denialists use pearl-clutching to slow down truth while their lies zip around the world.
It’s gotten to the point on HN where the “highbrow lowbrow” is dominating all discussion, because you can’t outright call a lie a lie here. It wouldn’t be “polite”. But it’s pretty easy to toss off a quick, thoughtless dismissal of any particular subject that sounds smart and polite.
He “added” a big pile of misinformation[1]. If I add three paragraphs of speculation about how deoxygenation is actually caused by vaccines am I also “adding to this discussion”?
Warmer waters hold less oxygen. This is fundamental, scientific fact..
The article specifically mentions the relatively small problem of run-off, and then the broader problem of, you know, entire oceans. A relatively constant, albeit still problematic, issue with runoff is pretty mild compared to the potentially for extremely wide-scale change from climate, hence the alarmism.
To snidely quote from the beginning of your reply-
"Boy are characterizations like this getting tired."
I'm sorry you had to go through these trials. How very heroic of you to set the record straight for all these dummies. You surely must have some relevant education and peer group, right?
>I'm sorry you had to go through these trials. How very heroic of you to set the record straight for all these dummies. You surely must have some relevant education and peer group, right?
I think you're completely missing the point.
The bombast ("the oceans are running out of oxygen","we only have 12 years left") is counter productive. We need to identify actionable problems and address them now. Alarming everyone through apocalyptic headlines will only fatigue and confuse.
Science isn't there to make you feel good, motiviated, etc. They're just pointing out what's happening to the best of their abilities to measure and analyze. Demanding a feel-good or less dire reporting on it isn't a solution.
>Demanding a feel-good or less dire reporting on it isn't a solution.
It's not about feeling good, it's about accuracy. If accuracy is something you see as an optional component of reporting, then I'm not going to be able to get on your wavelength.
"It's not about feeling good, it's about accuracy"
So....what's inaccurate about the reporting? You've strangely yet to mention any, though you did add your own invented "we only have 12 years left" bit for whatever reason (neither the article or report say anything of the sort).
But yes, we aren't going to get on the same wavelength, clearly. Your original post claimed that I "missed the point", when I clearly replied to someone's specific points, then you injected yet another narrative. This is a tactic as old as time for baseless rhetoric -- just constantly spin around the topic, adding just enough noise that you hope it disrupts the conversation.
They are almost always wrong with science when it comes to policies that aren't backed by a falsifiable hypothesis. It turns out animal fats are the safest fats and vegetable oils are poison. It turns out you don't have to worry about eating cholesterol. The same for salt. The climate hoax is about to be called out for what it is due to the models exponentially diverging from reality. They claim the ozone hole is shrinking due to CFC bans even though CFCs have only risen since they discovered the natural hole. None of this stuff had any falsifiable hypothesis behind it. The creators of UN agenda 21 were open that they would push control even if the science was fake.
And yet, here we are, 30 years later, still increasing emissions, still using fossil fuels, still having a weak global coordination. How long do you expect this 'climate hoax plan' to take? Another 10 years? When will the 'globalists' finally take over with their climate hoax plan?
They already took over and are now trying to avoid a credibility crisis. We've been living the 1984 socialist dystopia for decades, but it is really starting to show lately.
We've banned this account for breaking the site guidelines. Could you please not create accounts to do that with? Eventually it gets your main account banned as well.
Orwell wrote about communism not socialism in Animal Farm and 1984. Courtesy of his experiences, mainly in the Spanish Civil War, he became a left-leaning anti-communist democratic socialist, and supporter of UK Labour party until his death.
Orwell himself said it was his imagining of communist totalitarianism as it might manifest in Britain. So don't get too hung up on IngSoc (The German Democratic Republic wasn't especially democratic - it was a (newspeak) theme) ;p
Let me see if I can find the actual quote...
[Edit:] There we go: "[Nineteen Eighty-Four] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office."
With lots of other references to communism, Stalinism and Stalin in the Wikipedia section. One more quote worth relaying:
In his 1946 essay "Why I Write", Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism". Nineteen Eighty-Four is a cautionary tale about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in Homage to Catalonia
Hence calling him an anti-communist democratic socialist. :)
> Warmer waters hold less oxygen. This is fundamental, scientific fact..
Their own characterization is more nuanced than that. The study says that solubility changes account for about 15% (10-30%) [their % and range] of the oxygen change measured. They mention that most of the oxygen loss is at deep levels which are not affected by solubility, though there may be other second order effects from warming. In the section 3.1 conclusion they also mention the big gaps in models vs observed data, and wonder what they're missing.
The study is fine and full of expected caveats. The reporting is lame.
"Their own characterization is more nuanced than that."
Of course it's more nuanced. I'm speaking directly to their conclusions relative to global warming, clearly, and your very firm put-down of it, though you seem to be backtracking now.
"The study is fine and full of expected caveats. The reporting is bad."
How is the reporting bad? Why? Because it doesn't take a contrarian approach because the science of a massive, very complex system can't be 100%? This is exactly the nonsense every global warming denialist has plied for year ("They're only 99.99% sure, so you should believe my pet theory about like sun spots or something"). It deserves to be stomped out on sight and not tolerated as if it's on some equal footing.
Your post that I replied to has you firmly and with complete conviction wiping away all of it but industrial and farm run off, implying that they just don't know how to measure, etc. It's pretty hard to try to position yourself in the middle ground after that.
1. Oceans are not running out of oxygen, as the title suggests
2. The article leads with 700 ocean sites suffering from low oxygen, up from 45 in 1960, which is not because of oxygen solubility but because of eutrophication. The paper specificually discusses eutrophication here, and goes on to mention "but through nutrient and organic loading management about 70 (10%) of them can now be classified as recovering." (see section 2.5 intro) But that's not shitty doom-saying so it goes unsaid that it's eutrophication and that it's getting better and can be made better independent of warming.
"1. Oceans are not running out of oxygen, as the title suggests"
Does "running out" to you mean hitting 0%? In real-world use it means reduces to the point where it has a negative effect on the system, which is reportedly happening. You and a few others have taken this tact that you just disagree with the claimed alarmism of the article (and its completely accurate title) -- read the executive summary. It's pretty "alarmist" too.
Again you're back to run-off, which is weird -- the science has long targeted it, and regulations and behaviors have changed dramatically to ease it, to good effect. Things as little as most laundry detergent not having phosphor anymore. Yeah, they were "alarmist" about that, solutions were found, and the problem has improved in a lot of the world. But now global warming is coming and it is a massive external force that you can't simply change a laundry detergent around. The report isn't even saying "oh no, get rid of your pick-up", it's simply saying "this is happening". Understanding and planning, if that's the best we can do, is pretty valuable.
Of course they're more nuanced than your blanket dismissal too. For example
"As the ocean warms from the surface, stratification is expected to increase, with a tendency for a slowing down of the ocean circulation. A slowed down circulation is expected to account for up to 50% of observed deoxygenation in the upper 1000m, and for up to 98% in the deep ocean (>1000m)."
Hardly all farming runoff then. In fact that looks like the vast majority is heating related as the article notes. Yet of course we need to mitigate runoff too, given the enormous dead patch in the Gulf of Mexico.
The study states that 10-30% of the oxygen loss between 1960 and 2010 is attributed to warming-induced decline in solubility, and that globally "the majority of oxygen loss has been caused by changes in ocean circulation and associated ventilation with oxygen from the ocean surface" (i.e. probably also climate change).
Further, from the study it's clear that "deoxygenation recorded in tropical regions often reflects mostly untreated sewage inputs and agricultural runoff (areas identified in Diaz & Rosenberg, 2008)," with many other citations provided as well.
Yes, because it’s a political topic that's, pragmatically speaking, only science adjacent. To be clear I'm talking about discussions on the topic, not the merits of the work posted.
If I say “general relativity is likely wrong, but we should use the verifiable predictions it makes” no one will care. If I say “climate models are likely wrong, but we should use the verifiable predictions they make” the hackles will rise despite there being no known climate model with predictive power anywhere close to GR.
Obviously this makes the discussions far less rewarding to one’s intellectual curiosity. Like a fool I still check occasionally on the off chance that there is something interesting to be learned.
> Taking HN threads further into flamewar is also not ok.
I mean, where's the warning for insubstantial, ideological flamebait in the first place for the top post, dang? And the climate change post before that, and the one before that...
They post these things based on their gut reaction to the headline, and now the discussion in here is about the OP and not the subject at hand.
Devolving to personal attack is worse. Someone else posting misinformation is no excuse. If you have better information, you are responsible for presenting it in a way that doesn't take the discussion deeper into hell. Failing that responsibility discredits the truth, which makes things worse all around.
If you see a comment that you think we should have moderated but we didn't, the likeliest explanation is that we just didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.
This discussion somehow became brigaded by AGW deniers and you could see a stark turn in moderation, where an absolutely ignorant (not an attack, an observation) root post sits shining high on the mount despite being just embarrassing.
It is incredible and sad that HN is yet another tool for deniers and anti-science charlatans. And if dang thinks that's a personal attack, feel free to delete my attack friend -- the value of this site when it hosts such a cancerous collection of knuckledraggers approaches zero.
The top post to a scientific report is an ignorant screed [not a personal attack -- literal, actual truth] lamenting how wrong everything is, attacking a journalist who did a completely fine job (classic denier playbook), how it has nothing to do with warming. When called upon it began grossly misrepresenting the study, etc.
This is the classic denier play book. Denier 101.
It sits high and mighty. It must be correct, right?
Congratulations, dang, you've moderated yourself a wonderful little AGW denier niche. All while we pretend that scientific reports are "political" lest we ruffle the feathers of idiots who want to imagine how things should be based upon their opinions.
You broke the site guidelines. Someone else breaking them, or posting a bad comment, doesn't make it ok for you to break them too.
If you know more and have better information than someone else, you actually have a greater responsibility; breaking the rules by ranting, doing flamewar, calling names and so on, discredits the greater truth you're in possession of. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I realize that's far from easy when you're surrounded by lies and distortions, but it's work we're all asked to do here.
Honestly, sensational headlines like this are why so many people have a difficult time buying into climate change. If the media would present it as it actually is then I think more people would get on board.
No, it’s because those people have a deep mistrust of science and expertise, and using as much oil as possible is tied into some weird, macho, and at times oddly Christian identity, and suggesting that that’s harmful is threatening to them.
Anti-scientific thinking transcends political and gender identities in the USA. It can be traced at least as far back as Esalen institute stuff, and likely much farther.
It's partially our governments fault for doing things like when the Atomic Energy Commission got caught being fraudulent about what killed 5000 sheep after the 1953 Upshot-Knothole nuclear weapons test series. When the top scientific institutions lose credibility, where we are today seems at least a little inevitable.
I agree, this is true. In this particular case though, there has been sensationalism for decades now - it tends to have the opposite of the intended effect.
CO2 solubility in H2O is inversely proportional to temperature but proportional to pressure. Even at 500 atmospheres (~5 km / ~15,000 ft depth), it's still not proportional to temperature. Whether a high-pressure environment precipitates out supercritical CO2 as a "solidish" hydrate or affects solubility is beyond my current laziness to look for. I would guess supercritical CO2 has a density higher than the densest water, but that's only a guess. (Paging Thunderf00t, CodysLab or NileRed to make a video.)
EDIT: I didn't see any replies before commenting, so "eventual consistency" of independent commenters likely led to what looks like piling-on. Sorry, that's not the intention.
> It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific parts of the ocean.
I'm not sure why you think we should take your non-expert, evidenceless hot take on a BBC article more seriously than an actual study, but if you'd like to dig in more, here it is: https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/48892
Incrementalism and delay won't solve the climate change emergency fast enough, which means we and the planet die. Is that what you want? We have the money and the ability (Bio CCS) to solve CO2 levels back to 280-300 ppm for about the total cost of the US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Page 109 is a summary specifically relating to estuaries and semi-enclosed seas. There are multiple other summaries relating to other ocean types preceding it.
From the executive summary at the beginning:
The loss of oxygen in the ocean can broadly be put
down to two overlying causes – eutrophication as a
result of nutrient run-off from land and deposition of
nitrogen from the burning of fossil fuels, and the heating
of ocean waters as a result of climate change, primarily
causing a change in ventilation with the overlying
atmosphere so that they hold less soluble oxygen, and
compounded by reduced ocean mixing and changes in
currents and wind patterns. Ocean deoxygenation is but
the latest consequence of our activities on the ocean to
be recognized. Ocean warming, ocean deoxygenation,
and ocean acidification are major ‘stressors’ on marine
systems and typically co-occur because they share a
common cause.
Then from Section 2.1, Global Evidence of ocean deoxygenation:
+ Open-ocean deoxygenation is resulting mainly from a warming ocean, increased stratification and changing
circulation which interact with eutrophication-induced hypoxia (oxygen concentration below ~60 to 120 µmol
O2 kg-1) and biological activity in shelf regions.
+ Oxygen loss is closely related to ocean warming and acidification caused by CO2 increase driven by CO2
emissions as well as biogeochemical consequences related to anthropogenic fertilization of the ocean; hence a
combined effort investigating the different stressors will be most beneficial to understand future ocean changes.
Yes! That's the problem! Read the BBC article again: Do they mention that the 700 ocean sites are specifically related to estuaries and semi-enclosed seas? They don't? Hm.
I'm responding to something presented in the BBC article, something they mention context-free, because they want to(?) imply that the problem is related to open ocean temp changes, when... it's not. It's a problem of eutrophication.
It's still a man-made problem, maybe its exacerbated by additional forces, but its dishonest to paint it as if warming has caused these 700 dead zones. Warming did not. Eutrophication did. Most people who read this:
> While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate change is making the lack of oxygen worse.
> Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s.
Will think that climate change caused the 700 ocean sites, up from 45, and not run-off. It's how they are couching it. It is bad and we should scrutinize that.
But the whole report, and the whole article mentions both eutrophication and climate heating as joint contributors.
To take the part you criticise, the preceding sentence is "While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate crisis is making the lack of oxygen worse.", and the following sentence "The threat to oceans from nutrient run-off of chemicals such as nitrogen and phosphorus from farms and industry has long been known to impact the levels of oxygen in the sea waters and still remains the primary factor, especially closer to coasts."
Are they painting that as warming? Not by my reading. Does every single sentence have to correlate to the title when most do? Hm. No.
Then the article goes out into the wider oceans and talks of deoxygenation there, and the lack of mixing. Suitably dumbed down for their target audience. Could they have spelt it out better whilst meeting the needs of their non-scientific audience? Probably - it's sloppily worded, which can be said about just about every science article in every mainstream publication.
But the core point remains - the report, and the article point to a joint cause, and from my fast skim of summary sections of a 500+ page PDF a majority of the problem stems from heating.
Well if you read it in isolation, perhaps so. in context, the three sentences taken together, the last closing with "and still remains the primary factor, especially closer to coasts." seems to point to the correct main cause.
Sure it's sloppily written, but so is nearly every article on astronomy or medicine etc. But I'd generally like more science in my science reporting than I'm ever going to get.
And as it's a longer one, I wonder how much time they get to boil down a 500 page report to 1 page pop-science piece.
I'm getting tired of comments like these. Every single article about climate change or issues with the environment on HN always has someone swooping in to complain about sensationalism or something-or-other rather than talking about the actual article or the actions that can be taken. Then the rest of the HN post devolves into further nonsense because then the discussion becomes more about nitpicking rather than the actual content of the post at hand.
Instead of complaining about sensationalism or nonsense, why don't you skip instead to discussing the actual study at hand and suggest some actual actions we could do to solve the problem? Since you're apparently more of an expert than the journalist here.
This discussion was long excised from the front page yet my comments were multiply flagged (despite being absolutely benign given the scale of it), I got a warning from dang, etc. Somehow it was yielding significant traffic when it should have been seeing none.
I don't know where the brigade was drawn from, but this is simply incredible anti-intellectualism writ large. Seeing the pandering of this sort of behavior on HN is deeply disturbing. Seeing this guy's classic denialist post literally as the top moderated post on HN -- wow, I wouldn't trust this aggregate crowd on any topic.
It is one of those eye-opening moments that makes me seriously ask what I'm doing here. When we have to treat all "opinions" as if they carry weight, we are doomed.
You're mistaking anti-religious-authority behavior for "anti-intellectualism".
Climate change is a long-term issue we absolutely should deal with, but the consequences of not doing as much as ideal are, while large, still normalish-distribution-bad, not apocalypse-bad. Too much of the messaging around climate change to date has been apocalyptic. Realistically, anyone who wants to create a bubble of actually constructive discussion and action in this area in a public forum in 2019 should ban all apocalyptic terms/discussion on sight, to avoid triggering a huge number of people who are offended by bogus apocalyptic claims.
Climate change absolutely is apocalyptic-levels of bad, just not for the nations contributing the most to climate change yet. It seems to me that the people 'triggered' by 'bogus apocalyptic claims' are those that honestly, in my opinion, don't want to face the stark reality that many people are facing right now due to the way we treat our environment and would prefer to cover their ears and hope it goes away.
Banning that sort of discussion just means nations like Vanuatu get to continually be silenced.
Hint: Most of Singapore is at an elevation of <15m; they’re roughly as exposed as Vanuatu. They also have a government with one of the best technocratic track records in the world. And they’re keeping an eye on climate change, but they aren’t panicking.
Point is dang, his boss, most of the people here viscerally hate the idea of collective action. Yet climate change is something that can only be tackled by good faith collective action.
One of the best ideas I've run across to fight this (aside from stopping the sources of the problem) is vertical ocean farming. You grow kelp on cables hanging vertically in the water column, interspersed with mussels, oysters and scallops. The kelp feeds on the nitrogen and phosphorus runoff and release oxygen and the bivalves filter the water.
The small scale work done so far shows the water gets cleaner and local fish population increases. Kelp grows incredibly quickly and it can be eaten by humans and animals or used as fertilizer. The farming can be done by experienced watermen who probably have suitable boats but are underemployed due to fishing restrictions.
In particular, I wanted to see what new contributions this report was making in measurement of ocean oxygen concentrations. Section 2.1 appears to be the place this is covered, but all I see is a review of previous work by others.
The report is extraordinarily vague about what exactly were the experiments the authors did (if any). It's not structured like a research paper and reads instead like a very long executive summary. I expected to find a detailed analysis of how O2 measurements were conducted, and the possible limitations of the techniques, but there was none.
Articles about scientific papers should be required to link right at the top. Oftentimes all the hyperlinks are to other articles by the same journalist or publisher. It's insanity. A firefox plugin that somehow finds the original source and pops it up would be incredible.
I’d almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change so we can stop talking about it.
Not only are we facing the end of civilisation as we know it, it’s going to be a long ass grind to the end constantly discussing the climate crises in between dodging one catastrophe after the next and obsessing over it all.
I hardly remember life without talking about it, but I do remember it was nicer and more simple.
Will deniers get sick of denying soon so we can move on ?
> I’d almost wish Governments would do more to fight climate change so we can stop talking about it.
But what is "more" and how much is enough so the complainers stop complaining?
No rational being is denying climate change -- governments are not promoting pollution or whatever. We can face the end of civilization in more ways than just climate change. There are many other issues that are currently equally, if not more, important than climate change.
The perpetual complainers should get sick of complaining so we can move on.
The worry now is that we’re moving from climate denial to climate fascism (climate change is happening so we need to concentrate the suffering on the undesirables).
What do you actually think I can do? I feel pretty helpless and confused right now about how much an individual can actually do and why so little is being done globally.
Current things I do / have done are:
- Attend rallies occasionally.
- Divested most of my money where applicable.
- Invest in energy companies and tech.
- I went vegetarian for 2 years. I do eat meat again now,
but not a great deal and mostly fish and chicken when I do.
- Have not owned a car for about 2 years, I cycle and use public transport.
- Fly less than once a year currently. I live abroad so
sometimes I do need to go home to visit family.
- Buy essential things like clothes from companies who do things sustainably such as Patagonia. Don't really buy junk.
- Buy a monthly subscription to Climeworks.
As an individual I can do my bit; But clearly there is a limited amount of things I can do. I can't force countries to stop burning coal for power generation for example, which let's be honest, is the real crux of the issue. When I catch public transport, it's usually backed by coal or diesel right now.
What I don't get is this coal love affair that politicians can't seem to get over. We have so much to lose from climate change, including economically, so why do people love it so? It seems to be somewhat of an addiction. There seems to be a kind of "strength in denying" that older people enjoy to see in politicians. I don't really understand it but if this attitude changes, can be changed we'd instantly start on the correct path.
I also don't understand why simple and more cheap counter measures aren't being implemented rapidly.For example, afforestation. Is this because it's an admission something is wrong so most Governments won't do that so there is no commitment in it?
What is the actual the blocker here really? Corruption? Ignorance? Lobbying? We need to identify it and address it very quickly if we all want to survive and have a decent quality of life. This is why I have compassion for deniers, they don't really understand or want to admit how bad their lives will be.
On a personal level, I'm between jobs now looking for new things. I'm optimistic about the transition to renewables happening. The renewable tech is moving so fast and becoming so cheap I can see more and more of the grid changing quickly, at least in the developed world (which isn't enough on it's own); However I'm a little surprised at how little is being done to remove existing Co2. This also needs to happen.
I'm really considering how I can change my career to work on direct air capture tech or renewables even though this is far from my where my expertise lie as I'm in software.
If it helps, you are not alone. I felt helpless and frustrated for a long time myself. One thing that gives me hope at the moment is Extinction Rebellion. I realise it's not for everyone but I believe they are the best chance we have right now.
I begin to think that mass civil resistance movement is the only way to achieve deep structural social change. And deep structural changes is what we need to avert climate change. Think about historical precedents. Women suffrage, civil rights, anti-war movement, gay rights. None of these changes were initiated by the government. I also think XR is correct in saying that traditional methods of campaigning of the last 30 years have failed. It's time to try something new. Civil disobedience. A nice feature of these tactics is that you don't need the majority. Apparently it takes 3.5% of the population to take part in sustained active resistance to bring about radical change [0].
If this were a simple result of rising ocean temperatures on a global scale, wouldn't we expect oxygen levels in the atmosphere to increase? That doesn't seem to be happening (quite the opposite.) So, where is the oxygen?
There isn't a lot of oxygen in water to start with, as solubility is low. If we somehow made the Earth's oceans completely oxygen-free, it wouldn't add noticeably to the amount of oxygen in the air.
We don't have to be surprised about some of these events, since they have been predicted in the scriptures, for now, for a long time (ice melting, storms, quakes, waves of the sea heaving themselves beyond their bounds, fires/smoke, all things in commotion, and other significant catastrophic events--not just the usual levels of them).
I greatly appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. But I think we are not competent to solve planet-wide issues when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's Creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 177 ms ] threadAnd what businesses are being exploitative?
95% of what you take for granted is made by using fossil fuels whether, tires, medicine, food, concrete, cement, steel manufactoring, computers, machines, contact lenses, textiles, pesticides, plumbing, housing, damns, solar cells, windmills, the internet and I could go on.
What are you suggesting we dictate and what price are you ready to pay for this? Are you also going to go to war with china when they won't stop pulling their population out of poverty.
You speak as if the environment was this perfect non-hostile place before we came along, but reality is it's the other way around.
Nature is hostile and dangerous and we've used fossil fuels to make it less dangerous. The positive externalities if fossil fuels far outweigh the negative.
That doesn't mean we should continue using fossil fuels but we better have a realistic alterantive IMO.
If we can have companies following constructs such as Sarbanes-Oxley then they can most certainly follow the constraints of environmental constructs.
Unless you mean that certain vested interests will bankroll politicians to cut regulation? Then yes, that is a very big problems (see: Koch industries buying their way out of environmental legislation) but not insurmountable.
It’s all got to be on the table and considered though. The entire energy footprint of almost all of the industrial revolution through to current needs to be undone in some way. There’s an inherent requirement on the energy that must be expended in order to do that, by the laws of thermodynamics/physics.
I would also bet that most pollution comes from undeveloped countries. I don't want to pay for anyone's free-riding. Let me know how much for 100sq miles of sea and we'll talk. I can afford to pay someone to find and sue nearby polluters.
"If countries continue with a business-as-usual approach to emissions, the world's oceans are expected to lose 3-4% of their oxygen by the year 2100."
That's not running out of oxygen.
This is newsmaking, not news reporting and BBC should know better.
Do you?
The title is misleading whether you want it or not.
There is a reason they didn't write a precise title.
The vast majority of the issue isn't related to rising temps, it would still be there if there were no rising temps. It is the agricultural and industrial runoff in what I suspect are very, very specific parts of the ocean. The title "as temperatures rise" is totally dishonest. It's probably closer to something like "as demand for palm oil increases" (not trying to finger that one crop, but its more accurate than "as temperatures rise").
> "To stop the worrying expansion of oxygen-poor areas, we need to decisively curb greenhouse gas emissions as well as nutrient pollution from agriculture and other sources."
If you want to do something decisive, point out where these oxygen depleted areas are, and do something to stop the runoff. That's the main problem. Tying it in to the much more nebulous "carbon emissions" hurts more than it helps but its like climate writers cannot help themselves.
Imagine if everyone trying to stop the ozone-depletion problem did this. Nothing would have gotten done to this day. Find the smallest unit of actionable, measurable change and try to change that first.
EDIT hokay lets read the study:
BBC: "Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s."
Section 2.5 summary on page 109 (PDF) or page 85 of the report, two bullets:
• Over 900 areas around the world have been identified as experiencing the effects of eutrophication. Of these, over 700 have problems with hypoxia, but through nutrient and organic loading management about 70 (10%) of them can now be classified as recovering.
• There is no other environmental variable of such ecological importance to coastal ecosystems that has changed so drastically in such a short period of time as a result of human activities as dissolved oxygen.
Look, the part BBC wants to spook you with? It's eutrophication! It is independent of warming and can be fixed independent of warming. This is a good thing! It is already being fixed in some areas, which is even nicer. All I ask is that we actually decouple these from "warming" so we can do something about them faster.
This is how we ended up in the situations of enormous ignorance in the climate change and immunization realms, as if scientific rigour, consensus, statistical and foundational fact, etc, are all contentious the moment some random blowhard gives their opinion.
I don't see why a random internet commentator's pet theory (with nothing in the article to support it) should be treated as necessarily better.
They didn't. They blanket dismissed it, gave their own theory, and expressed how tired they are from this cross they must bear.
https://www.unitgraphics.com/deox/IUCNDeoxreportBOOK15-11-20... (77MB)
There's the actual study. The BBC article is pretty accurate in its summary.
That random comment by a random guy on the internet is adding clarity.
This claim has been made multiple times, and the single example has been a misunderstanding of the English language (e.g. "running out").
"That random comment by a random guy on the internet is adding clarity."
That random comment that inserted non-fact, dismissed essentially the entire report...yeah, no, it added just noise. Oh look now the root comment instead of just blanket dismissing global warming entirely has now listed a small sub-summary dealing just with run-off. This is a classic denialist tactic, just moving the fence posts enough, pretending to actually be considering the science.
The journalist is at the same time lying about a problem where there isn't any and hiding a huge problem that can be solved if people focus on it.
We have the greatest interpersonal communication capability the world has ever seen and we piss it away on insults.
It’s gotten to the point on HN where the “highbrow lowbrow” is dominating all discussion, because you can’t outright call a lie a lie here. It wouldn’t be “polite”. But it’s pretty easy to toss off a quick, thoughtless dismissal of any particular subject that sounds smart and polite.
[1] as documented by NeedBigTea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21736510
The article specifically mentions the relatively small problem of run-off, and then the broader problem of, you know, entire oceans. A relatively constant, albeit still problematic, issue with runoff is pretty mild compared to the potentially for extremely wide-scale change from climate, hence the alarmism.
To snidely quote from the beginning of your reply-
"Boy are characterizations like this getting tired."
I'm sorry you had to go through these trials. How very heroic of you to set the record straight for all these dummies. You surely must have some relevant education and peer group, right?
I think you're completely missing the point.
The bombast ("the oceans are running out of oxygen","we only have 12 years left") is counter productive. We need to identify actionable problems and address them now. Alarming everyone through apocalyptic headlines will only fatigue and confuse.
It's not about feeling good, it's about accuracy. If accuracy is something you see as an optional component of reporting, then I'm not going to be able to get on your wavelength.
So....what's inaccurate about the reporting? You've strangely yet to mention any, though you did add your own invented "we only have 12 years left" bit for whatever reason (neither the article or report say anything of the sort).
But yes, we aren't going to get on the same wavelength, clearly. Your original post claimed that I "missed the point", when I clearly replied to someone's specific points, then you injected yet another narrative. This is a tactic as old as time for baseless rhetoric -- just constantly spin around the topic, adding just enough noise that you hope it disrupts the conversation.
Warmer temperatures can be survived. It's the rate of change that's going to be the killer. Living things can adapt to change but not suddenly.
EDIT: Source for the downvoters: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png
And discussion from a world-class geologist: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2013/07/28/who-cares...
Also, Orwell was a democratic socialist and 1984 wasn’t about socialism..
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Cholesterol: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/10/feds-...
Salt: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/aug/09/salt-not-as-...
Ozone: https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/hats/about/cfc.html
IPCC: gotta research that yourself they keep rewriting history to match the models just like 1984
Un agenda 21: https://americanpolicy.org/2019/02/25/green-new-deal-reveals... "Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.”
RE post below: Orwell was a disenchanted socialist and all his books are about the evil of socialism.
Let me see if I can find the actual quote...
[Edit:] There we go: "[Nineteen Eighty-Four] was based chiefly on communism, because that is the dominant form of totalitarianism, but I was trying chiefly to imagine what communism would be like if it were firmly rooted in the English speaking countries, and was no longer a mere extension of the Russian Foreign Office."
With lots of other references to communism, Stalinism and Stalin in the Wikipedia section. One more quote worth relaying:
In his 1946 essay "Why I Write", Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism". Nineteen Eighty-Four is a cautionary tale about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in Homage to Catalonia
Hence calling him an anti-communist democratic socialist. :)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four#Sources_f...
Their own characterization is more nuanced than that. The study says that solubility changes account for about 15% (10-30%) [their % and range] of the oxygen change measured. They mention that most of the oxygen loss is at deep levels which are not affected by solubility, though there may be other second order effects from warming. In the section 3.1 conclusion they also mention the big gaps in models vs observed data, and wonder what they're missing.
The study is fine and full of expected caveats. The reporting is lame.
Of course it's more nuanced. I'm speaking directly to their conclusions relative to global warming, clearly, and your very firm put-down of it, though you seem to be backtracking now.
"The study is fine and full of expected caveats. The reporting is bad."
How is the reporting bad? Why? Because it doesn't take a contrarian approach because the science of a massive, very complex system can't be 100%? This is exactly the nonsense every global warming denialist has plied for year ("They're only 99.99% sure, so you should believe my pet theory about like sun spots or something"). It deserves to be stomped out on sight and not tolerated as if it's on some equal footing.
Your post that I replied to has you firmly and with complete conviction wiping away all of it but industrial and farm run off, implying that they just don't know how to measure, etc. It's pretty hard to try to position yourself in the middle ground after that.
1. Oceans are not running out of oxygen, as the title suggests
2. The article leads with 700 ocean sites suffering from low oxygen, up from 45 in 1960, which is not because of oxygen solubility but because of eutrophication. The paper specificually discusses eutrophication here, and goes on to mention "but through nutrient and organic loading management about 70 (10%) of them can now be classified as recovering." (see section 2.5 intro) But that's not shitty doom-saying so it goes unsaid that it's eutrophication and that it's getting better and can be made better independent of warming.
Does "running out" to you mean hitting 0%? In real-world use it means reduces to the point where it has a negative effect on the system, which is reportedly happening. You and a few others have taken this tact that you just disagree with the claimed alarmism of the article (and its completely accurate title) -- read the executive summary. It's pretty "alarmist" too.
Again you're back to run-off, which is weird -- the science has long targeted it, and regulations and behaviors have changed dramatically to ease it, to good effect. Things as little as most laundry detergent not having phosphor anymore. Yeah, they were "alarmist" about that, solutions were found, and the problem has improved in a lot of the world. But now global warming is coming and it is a massive external force that you can't simply change a laundry detergent around. The report isn't even saying "oh no, get rid of your pick-up", it's simply saying "this is happening". Understanding and planning, if that's the best we can do, is pretty valuable.
"As the ocean warms from the surface, stratification is expected to increase, with a tendency for a slowing down of the ocean circulation. A slowed down circulation is expected to account for up to 50% of observed deoxygenation in the upper 1000m, and for up to 98% in the deep ocean (>1000m)."
Hardly all farming runoff then. In fact that looks like the vast majority is heating related as the article notes. Yet of course we need to mitigate runoff too, given the enormous dead patch in the Gulf of Mexico.
Further, from the study it's clear that "deoxygenation recorded in tropical regions often reflects mostly untreated sewage inputs and agricultural runoff (areas identified in Diaz & Rosenberg, 2008)," with many other citations provided as well.
Is there any particular reason that people on Hacker News become so snarky, rude, and dismissive whenever the topic of climate change comes up?
It's not even a conversation when people are just talking past each other.
If I say “general relativity is likely wrong, but we should use the verifiable predictions it makes” no one will care. If I say “climate models are likely wrong, but we should use the verifiable predictions they make” the hackles will rise despite there being no known climate model with predictive power anywhere close to GR.
Obviously this makes the discussions far less rewarding to one’s intellectual curiosity. Like a fool I still check occasionally on the off chance that there is something interesting to be learned.
Taking HN threads further into flamewar is also not ok. Would you please review the site guidelines and stick to the rules when posting here?
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I mean, where's the warning for insubstantial, ideological flamebait in the first place for the top post, dang? And the climate change post before that, and the one before that...
They post these things based on their gut reaction to the headline, and now the discussion in here is about the OP and not the subject at hand.
If you see a comment that you think we should have moderated but we didn't, the likeliest explanation is that we just didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here.
It is incredible and sad that HN is yet another tool for deniers and anti-science charlatans. And if dang thinks that's a personal attack, feel free to delete my attack friend -- the value of this site when it hosts such a cancerous collection of knuckledraggers approaches zero.
This is the classic denier play book. Denier 101.
It sits high and mighty. It must be correct, right?
Congratulations, dang, you've moderated yourself a wonderful little AGW denier niche. All while we pretend that scientific reports are "political" lest we ruffle the feathers of idiots who want to imagine how things should be based upon their opinions.
If you know more and have better information than someone else, you actually have a greater responsibility; breaking the rules by ranting, doing flamewar, calling names and so on, discredits the greater truth you're in possession of. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I realize that's far from easy when you're surrounded by lies and distortions, but it's work we're all asked to do here.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/how-ame...
It's partially our governments fault for doing things like when the Atomic Energy Commission got caught being fraudulent about what killed 5000 sheep after the 1953 Upshot-Knothole nuclear weapons test series. When the top scientific institutions lose credibility, where we are today seems at least a little inevitable.
https://www.nytimes.com/1986/02/09/magazine/downwind-from-th...
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
Baseless, uninformed skepticism is bad.
[0] https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/gases-solubility-water-d_...
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/ja01861a033
EDIT: I didn't see any replies before commenting, so "eventual consistency" of independent commenters likely led to what looks like piling-on. Sorry, that's not the intention.
I'm not sure why you think we should take your non-expert, evidenceless hot take on a BBC article more seriously than an actual study, but if you'd like to dig in more, here it is: https://portals.iucn.org/library/node/48892
From the executive summary at the beginning:
The loss of oxygen in the ocean can broadly be put down to two overlying causes – eutrophication as a result of nutrient run-off from land and deposition of nitrogen from the burning of fossil fuels, and the heating of ocean waters as a result of climate change, primarily causing a change in ventilation with the overlying atmosphere so that they hold less soluble oxygen, and compounded by reduced ocean mixing and changes in currents and wind patterns. Ocean deoxygenation is but the latest consequence of our activities on the ocean to be recognized. Ocean warming, ocean deoxygenation, and ocean acidification are major ‘stressors’ on marine systems and typically co-occur because they share a common cause.
Then from Section 2.1, Global Evidence of ocean deoxygenation:
+ Open-ocean deoxygenation is resulting mainly from a warming ocean, increased stratification and changing circulation which interact with eutrophication-induced hypoxia (oxygen concentration below ~60 to 120 µmol O2 kg-1) and biological activity in shelf regions.
+ Oxygen loss is closely related to ocean warming and acidification caused by CO2 increase driven by CO2 emissions as well as biogeochemical consequences related to anthropogenic fertilization of the ocean; hence a combined effort investigating the different stressors will be most beneficial to understand future ocean changes.
I'm responding to something presented in the BBC article, something they mention context-free, because they want to(?) imply that the problem is related to open ocean temp changes, when... it's not. It's a problem of eutrophication.
It's still a man-made problem, maybe its exacerbated by additional forces, but its dishonest to paint it as if warming has caused these 700 dead zones. Warming did not. Eutrophication did. Most people who read this:
> While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate change is making the lack of oxygen worse.
> Around 700 ocean sites are now suffering from low oxygen, compared with 45 in the 1960s.
Will think that climate change caused the 700 ocean sites, up from 45, and not run-off. It's how they are couching it. It is bad and we should scrutinize that.
To take the part you criticise, the preceding sentence is "While nutrient run-off has been known for decades, researchers say that climate crisis is making the lack of oxygen worse.", and the following sentence "The threat to oceans from nutrient run-off of chemicals such as nitrogen and phosphorus from farms and industry has long been known to impact the levels of oxygen in the sea waters and still remains the primary factor, especially closer to coasts."
Are they painting that as warming? Not by my reading. Does every single sentence have to correlate to the title when most do? Hm. No.
Then the article goes out into the wider oceans and talks of deoxygenation there, and the lack of mixing. Suitably dumbed down for their target audience. Could they have spelt it out better whilst meeting the needs of their non-scientific audience? Probably - it's sloppily worded, which can be said about just about every science article in every mainstream publication.
But the core point remains - the report, and the article point to a joint cause, and from my fast skim of summary sections of a 500+ page PDF a majority of the problem stems from heating.
"While X has been a known issue, we now know about Y making things worse"
"What was [a little bad] in the 1960's is now [really super bad]"
The implicit finger is pointed at Y, I think. I sincerely think that's the takeaway most audiences would get from a setup like this.
Maybe I'm being too hard on the article. But the really damning thing (700 dead zones) seems way too context-free for me.
Sure it's sloppily written, but so is nearly every article on astronomy or medicine etc. But I'd generally like more science in my science reporting than I'm ever going to get.
And as it's a longer one, I wonder how much time they get to boil down a 500 page report to 1 page pop-science piece.
Much of the [oxygen] loss is expected in the top 1,000m of the water column, which is richest in biodiversity.
You are focusing on eutrophication of shallow waters near land, but that isn’t the problem.
Instead of complaining about sensationalism or nonsense, why don't you skip instead to discussing the actual study at hand and suggest some actual actions we could do to solve the problem? Since you're apparently more of an expert than the journalist here.
I don't know where the brigade was drawn from, but this is simply incredible anti-intellectualism writ large. Seeing the pandering of this sort of behavior on HN is deeply disturbing. Seeing this guy's classic denialist post literally as the top moderated post on HN -- wow, I wouldn't trust this aggregate crowd on any topic.
It is one of those eye-opening moments that makes me seriously ask what I'm doing here. When we have to treat all "opinions" as if they carry weight, we are doomed.
Climate change is a long-term issue we absolutely should deal with, but the consequences of not doing as much as ideal are, while large, still normalish-distribution-bad, not apocalypse-bad. Too much of the messaging around climate change to date has been apocalyptic. Realistically, anyone who wants to create a bubble of actually constructive discussion and action in this area in a public forum in 2019 should ban all apocalyptic terms/discussion on sight, to avoid triggering a huge number of people who are offended by bogus apocalyptic claims.
Banning that sort of discussion just means nations like Vanuatu get to continually be silenced.
Hint: Most of Singapore is at an elevation of <15m; they’re roughly as exposed as Vanuatu. They also have a government with one of the best technocratic track records in the world. And they’re keeping an eye on climate change, but they aren’t panicking.
So here we are.
The small scale work done so far shows the water gets cleaner and local fish population increases. Kelp grows incredibly quickly and it can be eaten by humans and animals or used as fertilizer. The farming can be done by experienced watermen who probably have suitable boats but are underemployed due to fishing restrictions.
https://www.greenwave.org/
https://ideas.ted.com/vertical-ocean-farms-that-can-feed-us-...
https://portals.iucn.org/library/sites/library/files/documen...
In particular, I wanted to see what new contributions this report was making in measurement of ocean oxygen concentrations. Section 2.1 appears to be the place this is covered, but all I see is a review of previous work by others.
The report is extraordinarily vague about what exactly were the experiments the authors did (if any). It's not structured like a research paper and reads instead like a very long executive summary. I expected to find a detailed analysis of how O2 measurements were conducted, and the possible limitations of the techniques, but there was none.
Not only are we facing the end of civilisation as we know it, it’s going to be a long ass grind to the end constantly discussing the climate crises in between dodging one catastrophe after the next and obsessing over it all.
I hardly remember life without talking about it, but I do remember it was nicer and more simple.
Will deniers get sick of denying soon so we can move on ?
But what is "more" and how much is enough so the complainers stop complaining?
No rational being is denying climate change -- governments are not promoting pollution or whatever. We can face the end of civilization in more ways than just climate change. There are many other issues that are currently equally, if not more, important than climate change.
The perpetual complainers should get sick of complaining so we can move on.
I would agree, yet we have many of those people in our government. The US president and vice president are both climate change deniers.
> governments are not promoting pollution or whatever
The current US administration has rolled back many clean water acts and signed away protected land to mine for resources.
> There are many other issues that are currently equally, if not more, important than climate change.
Please, do tell, because I don't see it.
Stop wishing. Go do something about it.
Current things I do / have done are:
- Attend rallies occasionally.
- Divested most of my money where applicable.
- Invest in energy companies and tech.
- I went vegetarian for 2 years. I do eat meat again now, but not a great deal and mostly fish and chicken when I do.
- Have not owned a car for about 2 years, I cycle and use public transport.
- Fly less than once a year currently. I live abroad so sometimes I do need to go home to visit family.
- Buy essential things like clothes from companies who do things sustainably such as Patagonia. Don't really buy junk.
- Buy a monthly subscription to Climeworks.
As an individual I can do my bit; But clearly there is a limited amount of things I can do. I can't force countries to stop burning coal for power generation for example, which let's be honest, is the real crux of the issue. When I catch public transport, it's usually backed by coal or diesel right now.
What I don't get is this coal love affair that politicians can't seem to get over. We have so much to lose from climate change, including economically, so why do people love it so? It seems to be somewhat of an addiction. There seems to be a kind of "strength in denying" that older people enjoy to see in politicians. I don't really understand it but if this attitude changes, can be changed we'd instantly start on the correct path.
I also don't understand why simple and more cheap counter measures aren't being implemented rapidly.For example, afforestation. Is this because it's an admission something is wrong so most Governments won't do that so there is no commitment in it?
What is the actual the blocker here really? Corruption? Ignorance? Lobbying? We need to identify it and address it very quickly if we all want to survive and have a decent quality of life. This is why I have compassion for deniers, they don't really understand or want to admit how bad their lives will be.
On a personal level, I'm between jobs now looking for new things. I'm optimistic about the transition to renewables happening. The renewable tech is moving so fast and becoming so cheap I can see more and more of the grid changing quickly, at least in the developed world (which isn't enough on it's own); However I'm a little surprised at how little is being done to remove existing Co2. This also needs to happen.
I'm really considering how I can change my career to work on direct air capture tech or renewables even though this is far from my where my expertise lie as I'm in software.
If it helps, you are not alone. I felt helpless and frustrated for a long time myself. One thing that gives me hope at the moment is Extinction Rebellion. I realise it's not for everyone but I believe they are the best chance we have right now.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w
I greatly appreciate the science and am glad for progress in our efforts. But I think we are not competent to solve planet-wide issues when we have largely rejected the instructions given by the earth's Creator (like, honesty, the Golden Rule, etc, etc): we have a hard time trusting each other even when we say we agree. I'm glad we can share our own thoughts. We need His help both to address important issues globally, and in our personal lives.
And importantly, we can be OK. Related, more detailed thoughts at http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html , a simple site w/ no javascript or sales).