[HN Gopher] Good News on Climate Change
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Good News on Climate Change
Author : mpweiher
Score : 44 points
Date : 2021-11-26 10:52 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (forum.effectivealtruism.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (forum.effectivealtruism.org)
| exyi wrote:
| The skeptic in my head said "you'll just see an empty page here".
| The actual page: "hold my beed" :]
|
| > Could not connect to the reCAPTCHA service. Please check your
| internet connection and reload to get a reCAPTCHA challenge.
| Rickthedick wrote:
| The fact that nuclear power exists and no politician is talking
| about it makes me question the intentions and ethics of
| government. It seems like a lot of this just has to do with
| money. Huge losses would be made if we converted everything but
| if we did all of our warming issues would be fixed. We can store
| the radioactive waste temporarily until we can easily ship it to
| the moon and bury it. We will likely have that space tech very
| soon. IDK what the hell is going on bc this plan seems SO EASY
| and fixes EVERYTHING!!
| mattlondon wrote:
| If the rocket taking the nuclear material to the moon blows up
| during take off, you've just scattered nuclear waste over huge
| areas of the world. It is basically a dirty bomb.
| stevage wrote:
| Tons of politicians talking about it. Several countries
| actively going that route.
|
| However, nuclear takes a long time to implement. Much slower
| than renewables.
| pl-94 wrote:
| That is not exactly true. You can't put electricity for all of
| the major sources of co2 consumption. For example, the
| chemistry for building cement is emitting co2. Also, steel
| requires so much heat than electricity is 10x more expensive
| than coal for this application.
| sulam wrote:
| The "good news" here is that probabilities of 6C warming are
| reduced from what they have been historically. If you're paying
| any attention you are aware that 6C warming would be beyond
| catastrophic, and that many very negative effects are likely to
| be seen at 4C or even 2C warming. Indeed we are already seeing
| strong negative effects from warming despite only 1C increase
| over the last 75 years (2C since pre-industrial times).
|
| So good news, the planet is less likely to be uninhabitable
| except in high latitudes.
| someguydave wrote:
| what effects of global warming do we see today, exactly?
| stevage wrote:
| More frequent and more damaging bushfires, hurricanes,
| droughts, heat waves, cold snaps,
| gameswithgo wrote:
| warmer temperatures, warmer oceans, more acidic oceans,
| higher oceans.
| cranekam wrote:
| Permanent loss of glaciers, vastly longer fire seasons,
| melting permafrost, coral bleaching, loss of farmland, etc.
| And anecdotally winters are just much less cold these days
| (I'm in Northern Europe).
| the-dude wrote:
| > Indeed we are already seeing strong negative effects from
| warming
|
| I keep reading this over and over, everywhere. Yet sea level
| rise at the Dutch coast has not accelerated and is at a steady
| 1.5-2mm/yr for over a century.
|
| https://www.klimaatfeiten.nl/gevolgen/zeespiegel/nederland-z...
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| << Let me cherry pick one thing that has not gone wrong yet
| so I don't have to worry about this >> is how you become RIM.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| It's a dynamic and complex system, not all metrics tracking
| the consequences of climate change will be evolving in
| perfect synchrony, and they will not change everywhere in the
| same way.
|
| Also sea level does not rise equally all around the globe:
| "Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less
| than the global average due to local factors such as land
| subsidence from natural processes and withdrawal of
| groundwater and fossil fuels, changes in regional ocean
| currents, and whether the land is still rebounding from the
| compressive weight of Ice Age glaciers." [1]
|
| Looking at a single metric from a single place is quite
| shallow reasoning. Ask a Canadian if they are already seeing
| strong negative effects from warming and you will get the
| exact opposite reaction from you after what happened there
| over the last year.
|
| [1]: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html
| the-dude wrote:
| Yet nobody seems to produce sea level graphs with an
| accelerating trend from anywhere. Yet for the The
| Netherlands we have 4 measuring stations which are
| consistent.
|
| Your link only mentions 'and the rate has increased in
| recent decades' but then only talks about sea level rise.
|
| Nobody is disputing sea level is rising : we have exited an
| ice age.
|
| And before you accuse me of shallow reasoning : why don't
| you come up with the graphs?
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > "And before you accuse me of shallow reasoning : why
| don't you come up with the graphs?"
|
| Because that's irrelevant to my point? That sea level is
| rising or not, and specifically in The Netherlands at
| that, cannot reasonably be used as a proxy to decide
| whether or not we are globally starting to feel the
| consequence of global warming.
|
| But here is a graph anyway:
| https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-
| chan...
|
| And here is another one: https://www.climate.gov/news-
| features/understanding-climate/...
|
| And here is a quote: "The rate of sea level rise has
| accelerated considerably relative to the pre-industrial
| era. Over the twentieth century, global sea level
| increased at an average rate of about 2 mm yr-1, which is
| substantially larger than the rate of the previous three
| millennia. Furthermore, evidence now exists for
| additional acceleration during the twentieth century" [2]
|
| But I see you are pulling your climate facts from a
| website that states "The warming is beneficial for people
| and nature" and "Large-scale use of 'renewable' energy is
| bad for nature and the environment", so I don't really
| know why I am bothering arguing with you.
|
| [2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49588416_Glo
| bal_Sea...
| the-dude wrote:
| I should have known everything would be used against me.
| That site was the first that popped up in zhe Google when
| I was looking for the graph.
|
| In previous comments, I linked directly to the measuring
| stations feeds ( if only I could search my HN comments ).
|
| The graph is the same, what does it matter which site it
| is hosted on?
|
| How come the rise in the late 1800's and early 1900's is
| already 'substantially larger' ( how much? ) than the
| millenia before ( if true? ). The car was hardly
| invented.
|
| And your graphs : if I squint really hard, I might see
| some acceleration in the last 10-15 years. But it could
| as well be statistical insignificant in the time frames
| we are talking about.
| Voloskaya wrote:
| > that site was the first that popped up in zhe Google
| when I was looking for the graph
|
| I apologise for my tone then. I have too much faith in
| Google, and thought that this was the kind of site you
| would have to explicitly look for.
|
| > And your graphs : if I squint really hard, I might see
| some acceleration in the last 10-15 years. But it could
| as well be statistical insignificant in the time frames
| we are talking about.
|
| I have plotted what would roughly be a constant yearly
| increase of the sea level from both graphs here so it can
| be seen more clearly: https://imgur.com/a/Lts6MEU
|
| The acceleration can very clearly be seen starting from
| around the 90s, especially in the second graph since this
| one goes to 2020s instead of 2010 in the first.
|
| I have no idea why specifically the sea level as measured
| in The Netherland would not show that acceleration, it
| might be due to one of the reason highlighted in my first
| post, but sadly it's not something that holds globally.
| pl-94 wrote:
| Your points are fair and it is always a healthy situation
| to be suspicious of ominous news. At the same time, it is
| important to keep looking for answers to our
| misunderstanding on the climate change. The good news is
| that the IPCC did a really great job for pointing all the
| resources in their executive summary. The main answer to
| your counter intuitive observation is that the internal
| variability of the climate is huge. For example, the
| European countries might know no warming during 10 years
| and then a sudden rebound in a few years. So it is
| important not looking at the small scale but only at the
| global scale. It is difficult to summarize the internal
| variabilities on a single comment, but you will easily
| find a lot of explanations about it on the iinternet .
| sulam wrote:
| Go back 20 or 30 years and the "story" with warming was sea
| level rise. However, as we learn more about how ecosystems
| respond to increased temperatures, we've learned that there's
| many more things to worry about than whether or not Miami
| Beach millionaires are going to have to add a floor to their
| garages. For instance, heat waves are hotter now than they
| used to be, leading to increased mortality rates in the very
| young and very old in areas that don't have reliable cooling
| available. Places like, oh, Paris. Entire populations are
| being displaced in mountain communities where fresh water
| came from snow/glacier melt, but now the glacier is gone and
| the snow doesn't accumulate anymore. Watch this space,
| because this could easily be a source of water problems in
| California before long, since most of Northern California's
| water supply depends on the Sierra snow pack. (Although, real
| talk: we should just stop giving almost all the water to
| farmers to grow more almonds). Sea level rise has caused
| recurrent tidal flooding across the Eastern seaboard and
| those effects are coming to the West coast and Hawaii next.
| Because of this, coastal communities are getting their flood
| plain boundaries redrawn by FEMA, leading to increased home
| insurance costs and disclosures that directly affect property
| values. Beetle populations have exploded as they can both
| overwinter more easily and, in some places, now have two
| breeding cycles a year instead of one. This in turn means
| trees are being killed by beetle infestations in NA at a rate
| that is literally higher than what is burned every year in
| wildfires.
|
| I could go on...
| bonzini wrote:
| > areas that don't have reliable cooling available. Places
| like, oh, Paris
|
| Most of Europe has extremely poor cooling of buildings even
| without AC. Stop making buildings black and add outdoor
| blinds instead of living in a greenhouse (the kind of stuff
| that is super common in Mediterranean countries), that will
| already help _a lot_. Trying to solve the problem with more
| electricity is making it worse, not better.
| coolso wrote:
| > The "good news" here is that probabilities of 6C warming are
| reduced from what they have been historically.
|
| So I guess it's a good thing we didn't listen to the old
| science and go scorched earth to prevent what they thought
| would happen.
|
| The question becomes, why should people trust or believe the
| new science any more than the old? What if that's also greatly
| exaggerated?
|
| Sometimes I wish science were treated more like the fallible
| concept it is, rather than a religion whose followers can be
| more fervent than even the most fundamentalist of [insert
| religion here]
| pl-94 wrote:
| Why do you think it is good thing we waited so long? The
| carbon budget to not go over 1.5C is now pretty much used.
| Without aerosols, it is even likely that we have already
| overshoot 1.5C. Adaption and reduction would have been so
| much easier if it were better anticipated.
| sulam wrote:
| In general, this bias towards preferring data that preserves
| the status quo vs data that tells us we need to be active in
| anticipating and mitigating future risks is 1) very human and
| 2) detrimental to long term success, regardless of the domain
| in question. I don't blame you for having doubts, and you're
| probably aware that scientists also have doubts. That doesn't
| mean they shouldn't do their work, and give us the best
| information they have with the tools at their disposal.
|
| Regarding climate change specifically, I make the point that
| we are seeing effects already because it neutralizes this
| line of reasoning entirely. This isn't about some future risk
| that we can see debated in academic journals of questionable
| provenance. This is about real effects that are happening
| today.
| [deleted]
| sleepysysadmin wrote:
| Hmm for some reason the webpage loaded as a blank page first
| time. "Guess no good news"
|
| RCP 8.5 was never expected to happen. It was a prediction based
| the entire world doing nothing at all, banning things like green
| tech, and increasing fossil fuel use AND even the introduction of
| new techs to increase the amount of available fossil fuel
| reserves. Afterall we only have ~50 years left anyway. To get to
| 8.5 we would need to expand upon this significantly.
|
| RCP 7 was kind of status quo, which isn't even possible because
| Tesla is worth a trillion $.
|
| RCP 6 is we kind of half-assed it and we never properly reduce
| anything, no new techs etc. This one is possible but given
| political climate I see this as practically impossible.
|
| RCP 4.5 is highly likely. We have until 2045 or so until we peak.
| I see this happening, China has many coal power plants in
| construction right now. They wont be reducing. Much of the world
| wont be. Though around this 2045 date is when fossil fuels start
| increasing in price quite significantly just because of
| supply/demand. The cost to go non-fossil fuel will simply make
| more sense before this. So those coal plants in construction now,
| mainly by china, will be getting shut off then. The rise in temps
| will be roughly 2 celcius and that's completely manageable by our
| society. Especially given decades to respond. There are arguments
| that features like greenification is actually a good thing and
| not a bad thing. Therefore 4.5 is actually unlikely.
|
| RCP 3.4 is where it's all at. It's literally the line we are
| tracking already with everything we have done. It's slightly less
| than 2 celcius in increase. There's no major need to declare war
| on china and blow up their fossil fuel operations.
| [deleted]
| algo_trader wrote:
| We got very, very lucky with several factors
|
| Population stabilized faster than expected. Gas as a bridge
| fuel. Marine, solar thermal, geo-thermal, new nuclear did not
| hit the exponential curve. Luckily PV, wind and Li-Ion did. The
| world is relatively sane and peaceful. A US/USSR world would
| have been more difficult. Interest rates can easily crush
| renewables even today
|
| Etc, etc
| rsync wrote:
| Forgive me ...
|
| I wonder what commenting engine this site is using ?
|
| It looks _very similar_ to the comments used on lesswrong and I
| think that perhaps effectivealtruism and lesswrong are related
| entities ?
|
| It's very well done ...
| throwaway3b03 wrote:
| The same codebase powers both lesswrong and ea forum.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| LessWrong is the big-R rationalist forum. EA has some of its
| roots in the rationalist community as well (Yudkowski, for
| example, is listed as a key figure on EA's wikipedia page).
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(page generated 2021-11-26 23:01 UTC)