[HN Gopher] Humans have caused 1.5 degC of long-term global warm...
___________________________________________________________________
Humans have caused 1.5 degC of long-term global warming according
to new estimates
Author : gmays
Score : 352 points
Date : 2024-11-17 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lancaster.ac.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lancaster.ac.uk)
| HWR_14 wrote:
| This article spends a lot of time worrying about which baseline
| to use as that determines how much global warming has occurred.
| Which is important because the 1.5 C limit was raised in the
| Paris accords. But wouldn't the measurement be absolute. The 1.5
| increase is just because that was the baseline they used then.
| oezi wrote:
| Looking into the numbers a couple if months ago I was surprised
| how little it costs to stop climate change.
|
| On the order of 100-200 trillion USD. Which is roughly 100-200%
| of global yearly GDP. Or 2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050. This
| could well be provided by printing money at all the federal
| reserve banks.
|
| This investment will likely bring in a positive return on
| investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts.
|
| Without such investments the downstream costs in climate change
| adaptation will be very expensive
| richardwhiuk wrote:
| Printing money wouldn't work - you just make all of the
| existing money less valuable.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| That doesn't mean the new money doesn't have value, just has
| a small percentage less value. It's a wealth transfer from
| people who currently have money to the new money. It works
| out well for people who have a negative net worth, as well!
| kreetx wrote:
| Yeah, the salaried folk who find out in hindsight will be
| really happy as well. /s
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| It is a wealth transfer from people who currently have cash
| and earn cash (workers, since increases in pay lag the rate
| at which currency loses purchasing power) to people who
| have assets and COLA adjusted annuities (wealthy people and
| old people).
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It actually would even if it made existing money less
| valuable. Econ 101
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Ever heard of quantitative easing?
| baq wrote:
| Look at Covid fiscal response causing permanent 30%
| inflation in the last 4 years. The climate+demographic
| response money printing operation will be way bigger than
| that.
| czinck wrote:
| Most of the inflation from the last 4 years is
| attributable to Russia invading Ukraine. You can't have
| the largest natural gas exporter and second largest oil
| exporter invade one of the largest grain exporters
| without causing basically everything in a supermarket or
| restaurant to be more expensive.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Also shipping interruptions and lockdowns. Giving people
| money to not work is goin to have a much larger
| inflationary effect than giving people money to build
| things we want.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Source? America is a natural gas exporter.
| switch007 wrote:
| > Most of the inflation from the last 4 years is
| attributable to Russia invading Ukraine
|
| Source? Other than media articles repeating "due to the
| war in Ukraine"
|
| Assuming you are talking about the USA, supposedly the
| USA is a net /exporter/ of grains [0]
|
| [0] Not loading for me but https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-
| products/ag-and-food-statistic... . Copilot said "The
| United States is a net grain exporter. According to the
| USDA Economic Research Service (ERS), the U.S. typically
| exports more agricultural goods, including grains, than
| it imports1. In fiscal year 2023, the value of U.S.
| agricultural exports was $178.7 billion, despite a
| decline from the previous year. Grains and feeds are
| among the leading U.S. agricultural exports"
| ajross wrote:
| It wouldn't work linearly, but it still works. If you print
| 10% of your GDP in a year, you'll be sitting on only 1/11th
| of the GDP in cash at the end of the process.
| jjallen wrote:
| You are essentially forced borrowing from the cash holders of
| the printed currency. So yeah it would work. Wouldn't
| necessarily be fair or popular; but it would work. Just have
| to account for the new money also being worth less because of
| the increase in the denominator of this equation.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _investment will likely bring in a positive return on
| investment because it reduces the negative climate impacts_
|
| There is a demographic conflict of interest between those who
| will be alive in 2050 and those who will not. The long-term
| gains are difficult to deny. The short-term costs, however,
| will be massive.
| pydry wrote:
| There's a plutocratic incentive to blame plutocratic problems
| on demographics. It fits neatly into their divide and conquer
| strategy.
|
| That's why mass media is so keen to blame everything on your
| mom ("boomers"), along with immigrants, robots, woke mind
| viruses, etc.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Most of those not alive in 2050 will have children and
| grandchildren whom they expect to be alive by then.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 2% of the GDP is technically massive, but really, fuck
| anybody that wants to throw the future generations under the
| bus to save that.
|
| And no, I won't be around by 2050.
| pstuart wrote:
| The price of renewables has plunged to be cheaper than fossil
| fuels, battery tech is improving while prices are dropping,
| new jobs are created, etc, etc.
|
| Making these changes are investments with real payoff in the
| near term.
|
| The real impediment is that fossil fuels have made some
| people incredibly rich, and they are actively fighting these
| changes to protect their income.
| speakfreely wrote:
| > The price of renewables has plunged to be cheaper than
| fossil fuels
|
| Is there a source for this? If you're referencing LCOE,
| remember that does not account for storage costs for
| intermittent power sources (wind, solar) so it's an
| incredibly misleading number.
| ein0p wrote:
| And the question is, then, what if you spend all those
| trillions (which we don't have, BTW), and it doesn't "stop".
| Who's going to be responsible, and in what way?
| not_kurt_godel wrote:
| Then we'll only have just eliminated air pollution that kills
| millions of people per year and established independent
| energy security
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Air pollution and CO2 emissions are different things. One
| causes cancer and heart issues, the other causes global
| warming.
|
| Large amounts of particulate in the air (for example from a
| volcano) would probably cause global cooling since it
| blocks out the sun.
| johnfernow wrote:
| What you're saying is correct, but I can't think of many
| scenarios where it's relevant to human actions in the
| present, with the exception of freight ships' sulfur
| emissions. [1]
|
| For the most part, burning fossil fuels is leading to
| both air pollution and GHG emissions. Sometimes you can
| in theory choose an option that leads to less global
| warming than the status quo but is worse for human health
| (e.g. burning biomass for energy instead of natural gas,
| or using diesel instead of gasoline engines), but usually
| there's an another option where you can reduce both
| undesirable outcomes (wind, solar, hydro or nuclear
| energy, electric vehicles, etc.)
|
| Even from an economic standpoint I can't think of too
| many scenarios where clean energy isn't the better option
| long-term. An EV will have a higher up-front cost but
| definitely will be cheaper than a diesel vehicle across
| it's lifetime, and most areas I imagine solar or wind
| would be cheaper than biomass. Freight ships are the only
| thing in 2024 where I think we don't have an option
| that's better in both regards and cheaper -- there we do
| have to choose between more global warming or more
| particulate matter harmful for human health. But I think
| that's the exception more than the rule for human
| activities.
|
| 1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cleaned-up-
| shippi...
| johnfernow wrote:
| Right, fossil fuels cause around 8 million deaths a year
| from air pollution [1], so regardless of climate change
| it'd be worth making a dent in those numbers.
|
| And no, air pollution isn't just a problem in places like
| India and China, it kills over 100,000 Americans a year and
| costs society $886 billion. [2]
|
| The evidence of anthropogenic global warming existing is
| extraordinarily strong [3] [4], but you're right, even if
| somehow 97% of climate scientists with studies published on
| the matter from 1991 to 2011 and 99% of them from 2012 to
| 2020 were wrong (in addition to NASA, The European Space
| Agency, NOAA, the World Meteorological Organization, and
| the national academy of science (or equivalent
| organization) of basically every country that has one),
| it'd still be worth avoiding millions of deaths a year and
| having established independent energy security.
|
| 1. https://www.bmj.com/content/383/bmj-2023-077784
|
| 2. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1816102116
|
| 3. https://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024
|
| 4. https://doi.org/10.1088%2F1748-9326%2Fac2966
| ein0p wrote:
| Would spending 100 trillion dollars that we don't have
| cause more deaths than it prevents, due to increased
| poverty and rising cost of living? That's all I'm really
| asking here. Has anyone bothered to run the numbers?
| johnfernow wrote:
| Subsidies for oil, coal and natural gas currently cost us
| about 7.1% of global GDP. [1]
|
| I imagine if we were willing to spend 2 to 5% of global
| GDP on fighting climate change, we'd also be cutting
| those subsidies. So in that scenario we'd be reducing
| government deficits and reducing the rate at which we
| print money, not increasing it.
|
| 1.
| https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-
| fuel...
| ein0p wrote:
| I agree on ending the subsidies, that's fine. But the US
| alone spends over $2T more each year than it earns.
| Oil/gas subsidies in the US are a tiny fraction of that
| sum.
| tehjoker wrote:
| ah the ever popular call to inaction as though inaction isn't
| a very dangerous course of action
|
| what is this reasoning? an invading army is coming, i won't
| try to stop it, let's just lie down and die. this focus on
| personal convenience combined with a lack of a will to live
| isn't just deadly, it's pathetic.
|
| even if you fail, resisting against the darkness is one big
| part of what dignifies humanity.
| ein0p wrote:
| Did you miss the part where the OP was proposing to
| basically rob the poor by inflating the currency? The poor
| and lower middle class already barely make ends meet even
| in the US, let alone the rest of the world. Plus, nobody
| can guarantee that the warming will stop. There have been
| periods in Earth's past when it was almost twice as hot as
| it is today. There have been periods when greenhouse gases
| (CO2 specifically, Ordovician period, 500M years ago) were
| _six times_ what they are today. Earth is still not Venus-
| like. Explain that one to me. Perhaps there are parts to
| this that we do not understand, and it might be premature
| to sacrifice the world economy and the livelihoods of the
| bottom 90% by income on this altar?
|
| Note that I'm not saying that we shouldn't reduce polution,
| or build more green energy. Nuclear, solar, wind - all of
| the above, please. Let's just not turn this into a religion
| about which you can't ask any questions for fear of being
| burned at the stake, and to which any sacrifice is
| worthwhile and you're a heretic if you suggest otherwise.
| Science must be questioned, otherwise it's not science.
| silver_silver wrote:
| The CO2 concentrations we're approaching also cause cognitive
| impairment
| gruez wrote:
| Those studies are... questionable, considering that US
| submarines have an order of magnitude higher concentration
| and the sailors on board don't turn into drooling idiots.
|
| https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/11170/chapter/5
| colincooke wrote:
| There is also a good case to be made that the prices being
| bandied around are actually much too high [1]
|
| TL;DR is three major factors:
|
| 1. The agencies that are doing the estimates are _very_ bad at
| exponential development curves (cough cough IEA estimating
| solar [2])
|
| 2. Unfortunately much of the developing world's economy is not
| growing as fast as we previously thought it would (similar
| thing happening with birthrates)
|
| 3. Many costs are absolute and _not_ marginal, which is just
| wrong IMO. We are going to need the energy either way, we
| should be talking about the "green premium" (as far as it
| exists), not how much it'll cost to generate XX TWH of energy
|
| [1]:
| https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2024/11/14/th...
|
| [2]:
| https://www.economist.com/interactive/briefing/2024/11/14/th...
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Many costs are absolute and _not_ marginal
|
| If you turn off your gas generator and replace it with solar
| + batteries, you will spend the entire cost of solar +
| batteries plus the decommissioning cost of gas (that may be
| negative if you can sell some parts) to go back to exactly
| the same point you were before.
|
| So, no the cost is only marginal if you accept you will
| follow the depreciation curve of you infrastructure. And
| that's way too slow to reach the goal.
| sokoloff wrote:
| We have some crazy incentives to install new gas boilers in
| MA. I very specifically wanted to switch from gas to an air
| source heat pump and found there was only one company in
| the area who was willing to quote it (alongside their own,
| much cheaper, quote for a gas combi boiler) and their quote
| was outrageously non-competitive with local fossil fuel
| burning (in large part because our electricity is around
| $0.30/kWh, but also because they were the only supplier and
| even they didn't really want to do the work).
|
| Even if the ASHP lasted forever, required no maintenance
| ever, and you had to buy a new gas boiler every 10 years,
| it would literally never make economic sense even if there
| weren't $2500 incentives on the gas boiler, but the
| movement on electric rates is definitely in the wrong
| direction if one wishes to displace natural gas with
| electricity (even at 400% efficiency).
|
| Every year that things stay like this is pushing back the
| likely time to next re-evaluation for that property by
| another 20 years.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The price of home solar and batteries is dropping to the
| point that $0.30/kWh is becoming untenable in any home
| that has a decent amount of roof space. You're better off
| financing a rooftop solar plant and buying 3-4 days of
| storage, even if you remain tied to the grid. Insofar as
| those costs are being driven by generation, the declining
| price of solar should eventually place an upper bound on
| what people will pay for electricity. Even if you don't
| live in a sunny place and even if net metering pays $0,
| with a few days of storage you can reduce your grid
| consumption to the point where your actual need to
| consume expensive electricity becomes a tiny fraction of
| your overall usage. I think this will tend to push costs
| downwards.
|
| Even for people who don't have the space or capital to
| install their own solar, this will happen writ large as
| the US builds out utility scale solar, wind and storage.
| gruez wrote:
| >So, no the cost is only marginal if you accept you will
| follow the depreciation curve of you infrastructure. And
| that's way too slow to reach the goal.
|
| The linked article also mentions a way less aggressive
| timeline, which means there's less of "tear out existing
| equipment and replace with renewable" going on, which
| raises costs. Moreover, the argument isn't that there's no
| such costs, only that they're being overestimated.
| Panino wrote:
| > I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.
|
| If you read Drawdown, you'll see that it doesn't _cost_ money
| to stop climate change, it _saves_ money.
|
| https://drawdown.org/the-book
| baq wrote:
| I don't like that we're even talking about money in this
| context. Money is almost fake, it's right there in the 'fiat'
| name, yet that's all most people care about.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| It's a strawman to say that money is fake because no
| serious economist argues that money is "real". Of course it
| is fake. We use money because it's a useful way to organize
| society
| baq wrote:
| My point is you need a society to use it and climate
| change will cause events which will make people question
| whether we still have one - which is enough for money to
| stop being useful. People in the west take a lot for
| granted.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Even in disaster scenarios like hurricanes, where
| everyone is going to do nearly everything they can
| regardless of cost to survive, money is still used in
| practice and in discussions, evaluations, planning. In a
| practical sense money is real not fake, because what
| money is used for, limited resources, is real not fake.
| derektank wrote:
| Money isn't fake, it's a useful abstraction for describing
| the allocation of goods and services. We could describe the
| cost of transitioning from fossil fuels in terms of labor
| hours spent, miles not traveled in an ICE vehicle, tons of
| lithium mined, etc. But money lets us collapse all of that
| down into one number that we can get our heads around and
| which is useful for figuring out things like how much we
| need to raise taxes
| lukan wrote:
| Just because it is not solid, does not mean it is not real.
|
| As long as it has value to people - it is real.
|
| Meaning, as long as you can use it to buy things. And that
| is what people care about.
|
| That stops the moment, people don't believe in the currency
| anymore. Then they will either use a different currency
| they do trust - or go back to trade little pieces of gold.
| PeterisP wrote:
| In this context money is just a unit of measurement. If we
| say that we need more of a particular kind of
| infrastructure and reduce a particular kind of activity,
| etc, then the discussion requires being able to say _how
| much_ of those (many!) things and we can quantify all of
| those in terms of dollars.
| xyzzy4747 wrote:
| Standard of living and human development index is a better
| metric to measure how well a society is doing than money.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Of course stopping climate change will save in the long run.
| The critical question is _who_ should spend the money now to
| save money later. That is the crux of the free rider problem.
| epolanski wrote:
| If you're referring to he economist one, I've read it too, and
| I think it would be much cheaper.
|
| But anyway, I don't believe half the numbers out there.
|
| To cut emissions, we need to kill materialism, consumption
| economy and most importantly tell people that they should
| choose between what's good for them (eating a burger to make
| them happy) or the planet (not bringing the equivalent
| pollution of driving an SUV 50 miles+ by eating something much
| less polluting than beef).
|
| Governments will keep chasing the kind of changes that can only
| make more money, not less.
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| > To cut emissions, we need to kill materialism, consumption
| economy
|
| That's a moral statement not a factual one. To cut emissions,
| we need to do exactly that. Pricing in externalities (yes it
| means less beef but that's not the same thing as an end to
| the world as we know it) and investing in cleaner means of
| production is enough. Most of the people pushing for large
| societal changes are doing it because it was their goal from
| the start and they are using climate change as a mean to an
| end.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| Pricing in externalities is probably the only way we can
| solve carbon emissions, and would still be very difficult.
| We would need global participation, otherwise carbon
| emissions can just be outsourced to other countries. Also,
| we need to decide the price of emitting carbon. Perhaps
| survey economists from every country and aggregate the
| answers somehow.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Lucky the Earth is infinite and so perpetual growth will
| work. /s
| RandomThoughts3 wrote:
| Growth doesn't have to depend on finite resources. Growth
| is simply more value being exchanged. You can have
| sustainable growth.
|
| Plus the human population will soon be drastically
| contracting anyway.
|
| Abandoning the only system since the birth of humanity to
| bring prosperity to billions in favour of one which has
| repeatedly be an utter failure, systematically lead to
| totalitarianism and is responsible for millions of death
| might not be the wisest choice especially when it's
| pushed by people who think they should be amongst the
| rulers due to their moral superiority.
| quonn wrote:
| About half of CO2 emissions are electricity, heating and
| transport. Not beef.
|
| And for those we have viable solutions that either do not
| lower subjective quality of living or even improve it, but
| they are not sufficiently implemented by enough people.
|
| Telling folks to stop eating beef now is compounding the
| problem by making people just give up.
|
| We should first address the things that we have viable
| solutions for instead of loosing public support by insisting
| on reducing emissions in areas where there are no good
| solutions yet and some sort of asceticism seems to be in
| order.
| epolanski wrote:
| > About half of CO2 emissions are electricity, heating and
| transport. Not beef.
|
| Methane is between 30 and 200 times more dangerous than CO2
| and a single cow produces 200 pounds of it per year.
|
| Another fun fact: the mass of all cattle on the planet is
| higher than all other animals combined. All of them from
| cats to rhinos and wild horses.
|
| > Telling folks to stop eating beef now is compounding the
| problem by making people just give up.
|
| That's exactly my point: the real issues aren't related to
| government policies related to just focusing on CO2
| emissions from energy but how much and what we consume.
|
| What we eat, by far, is the element that most impacts the
| planet. By far. The others, besides using more public
| transport are very small.
|
| But nobody wants to hear or face it because it implies how
| we live and eat.
|
| Hell a single cotton shirt requires 2000 liters of fresh
| water, a scarce resource, I don't see as much arguments
| about how we consume but plenty of neverending EV and
| electricity gaslighting.
|
| It's much simpler to point at vague problems
| quonn wrote:
| > What we eat, by far, is the element that most impacts
| the planet. By far.
|
| No it isn't.
| quonn wrote:
| > Hell a single cotton shirt requires 2000 liters of
| fresh water
|
| That's a surprisingly small amount of water. Just a
| typical shower uses 150 liters and all it does is keeping
| you clean for a day. On the other hand a cotton shirt can
| last many years.
|
| Are you saying the water is lost or destroyed or
| permanently polluted? This is, of course, not the case
| either.
| oezi wrote:
| I understand your point and I have also long held the point
| of view, but have recently learned that this isn't the right
| framing. You - as a citizen - don't need to reduce your
| consumption, but we as a society must manage that all
| activities are priced properly.
|
| One example is air traffic. If you don't consume an available
| flight, then you don't actually help the climate, because
| somebody else will buy the seat at a lower price. This is
| just market economics. To reduce flying the society already
| has put Carbon credits out there for airlines to buy if they
| want to fly from A to B. These credits reflect the cost which
| society puts on flying currently.
| epolanski wrote:
| > You - as a citizen - don't need to reduce your
| consumption, but we as a society must manage that all
| activities are priced properly.
|
| Oh, I agree, I'm not against eliminating anything, but a
| pollution sort of tax I would be perfectly fine with.
|
| Like eggs taxed more than tomatoes, poultry more than eggs,
| pig more than poultry, etc, etc.
|
| But it has to be taxed enough to make some dent in it.
| timeon wrote:
| Most people in the world do not eat that much beef. Some
| countries are outliers.
| baq wrote:
| Worst part is 10x this money in real terms will be printed
| anyway and spent for exactly this purpose in the future, just
| way too late.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I fear you're an optimist.
| baq wrote:
| I would be if I said it'll work... at that point there
| won't be anything to lose so might as well print.
| tinco wrote:
| Only 1% of GDP is agriculture, yet 100% of society relies on
| agriculture for survival. Because we don't have food shortages
| right now, GDP is heavily slanted towards things that don't
| really matter. You can't take that sort of monopoly money and
| try to influence the real world, if it were that easy then
| governments would be changing gas prices to win elections a lot
| more effectively.
|
| Not disagreeing that there should be a lot more funding of
| climate change reducing endeavors, I just don't think that GDP
| should/could be an anchor to base that on.
| 2-3-7-43-1807 wrote:
| "Let them eat Credit Default Swaps."
| marcosdumay wrote:
| There's no immediate bottleneck for reducing fossil fuel
| consumption. More money will translate into more effect, at
| most delayed by some half of a decade for any foreseeable
| effort.
|
| At some point we will find a series of bottlenecks. But up to
| a 30% reduction (with ~100% clean electricity) it's obviously
| clear, and it looks doable up to ~90% (electricity,
| transportation, heating, and some industry converted).
| tinco wrote:
| Yeah that sounds right, I'm just wondering where the
| materials and the labor come from. We don't just have 5% of
| GDP worth of those laying around, they're currently
| allocated to other things. Not saying it's impossible, but
| it's hard to estimate the repercussions.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > materials and the labor come from. We don't just have
| 5% of GDP worth of those laying around
|
| You have to make up your mind, if you are concerned about
| real resources or fictional ones.
|
| If we want to optimise for real resources we would round
| up all the people who's job is to destroy real resources,
| like casino pit bosses and the managers of Prada and fast
| fashion that destroy clothing to create artificial
| scarcity.
|
| And we would kick them out in the rain to do tree
| planting.
|
| Climate change threatens a lot more than 5% of real
| reseouces - in fact what happens when the Middle East and
| American Midwest runs out of underground water reserves?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Oh, certainly, if we are to make a serious effort, it
| requires dealocating a bit of resources from other areas.
|
| Energy investments are some 3% of the GDP, diverting
| those is an almost complete non-brainier. But we'd need
| to get about as much from other places.
| yobbo wrote:
| That is not how money and "work" functions. There is no way to
| "spend money" without spending energy and emitting CO2.
|
| Assuming there is validity to the numbers (and no new source of
| energy), it means you need to reduce GDP by 2-5% yearly until
| 2050. But GDP and money is a "sliding" scale so it might mean
| something different by next year.
| AlphaEsponjosus wrote:
| What are you talking about? If you take 2.5% to spend it on
| better infrastructure and existing technologies (that are
| more environmentally friendly) and develop new technologies,
| you are not reducing GDP. GDP just measures the ammount of
| money a country spends.
|
| Of course you need to spend money and energy (specially
| energy, everything in the universe is energy), but the
| solution is not to stop moving. We need to use energy and
| resources in order to switch to better technologies.
| yobbo wrote:
| A new energy source is not like a new technology that can
| be developed. It needs to be discovered - as in a
| scientific break-through. A plan can not assume that break-
| throughs occur.
|
| GDP measures the total production of an economy. That is
| mostly equivalent to energy_consumption * p_efficiency.
|
| Investing in new technologies that increase efficiency has
| always been a good decision. Maybe you can improve solar
| panels by a further 5% and batteries by 10%?
|
| Realistically, energy_consumption will need to decrease,
| but that isn't actually that terrible.
| oezi wrote:
| The CO2 intensity of any activity can be vastly different.
| Net-Zero goals require that you transition to activities
| which produce less CO2. This can be negative CO2 emmissions
| (e.g. planting trees/felling them/storing the wood).
|
| Replacing high CO2 intensity activities (burning coal) with
| lesser intensive tasks (e.g. burning gas or renewables) is
| the key.
|
| Solar and other renewables counteract their Co2 expenditure
| after 1-2 years.
| yobbo wrote:
| The amount of CO2 yet to be released depends on the amount
| of fossil fuel yet to be extracted. Current oil
| discoveries, wells, and coal mines will all be exploited as
| long as they are profitable.
|
| It will be necessary to lower demand for fossil fuel enough
| that new prospecting becomes unprofitable. This will happen
| eventually due to the physics of oil drilling.
|
| If you consider the amount of energy contributed to the
| world economy from fossil fuels, there is no clear path how
| to market alternatives in quantities that can make fossil
| fuels obsolete.
|
| A more realistic scenario for around 2050 is that coal-
| power increases while oil for personal transportation is
| replaced by batteries due to high oil price.
| josefx wrote:
| > I was surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.
|
| Is that the cost for the duct tape needed to plug the airvents
| of data centers all over the world? The whole AI hype is
| driving energy consumption through the roof and when you see
| the companies behind the hype eye having their own nuclear
| power plants you know they are going to outscale cities housing
| millions in waste heat production.
| boulos wrote:
| While people are excited about AI and datacenter use, it's
| still tiny in comparison to global energy consumption (1-2%)
| though that excludes all the crypto folks who are another 100
| TWh per year or so:
|
| > Estimated global data centre electricity consumption in
| 2022 was 240-340 TWh1, or around 1-1.3% of global final
| electricity demand. This excludes energy used for
| cryptocurrency mining, which was estimated to be around 110
| TWh in 2022, accounting for 0.4% of annual global electricity
| demand.
|
| You're hearing about the potential for a Gigwatt site, but a
| Gigwatt full out is less than 10 TWh per year (8960
| hours/year). These things make the news, but they're pretty
| efficient _electrically_. The question is whether they have
| utility.
|
| https://www.iea.org/energy-system/buildings/data-centres-
| and...
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| > Looking into the numbers a couple if months ago I was
| surprised how little it costs to stop climate change.
|
| Do you account for unpredictable, but climate changing, events
| like solar flare activity and volcanic activity, which also can
| contribute?
| oezi wrote:
| I recall the numbers are about reducing the man-made
| emissions to net-zero by 2050. I believe this must include
| some measures which counteract emissions which can't be
| reduced.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| how do you spend it?
| oezi wrote:
| This is about spending to replace CO2 emitting technologies
| in electricity production, transport and housing to net-zero
| sources.
|
| I recall the report mentioned that societies already spend
| more in GDP per year to adapt to climate change (e.g.
| building more AC units) than it would cost to mitigate
| climate change.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| Replacing CO2-emitting technologies is already happening.
| To argue for this plan would require proving at least the
| following:
|
| 1. Spending Wisely: Invest in technologies that work and
| also do not introduce more problems.
|
| 2. Trusting Who Spends: Governments or others must use
| funds on solving the issue (not just giving money to
| cronies).
|
| 3. Global Cooperation: Countries working together (does
| Russia who sees warming as helpful comply).
|
| 4. Dealing With Inflation: The plan should address the
| inflation it causes, as it will raise living costs for
| people already struggling.
|
| 5. Better Use of Funds: Proving this use of funds is better
| than spending on other global issues.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Although a useful metric about the size of economy, I dont
| think this gives any metric of the level of liquidity, or size
| of investment, or austerity measure necessary to change it
|
| It doesnt give any indication about the level of debasement of
| currency to accomplish it to that scale, to pay for what? to
| whom?
|
| and even if you identified some answers to those questions,
| this is where the disagreements are, ranging from cordial
| disagreement to outright denial of a problem
|
| but most of it comes down to who is paying, for what, why are
| we paying, will it change anything, and how do we make a return
| on it
| jiggawatts wrote:
| This is a fantasy.
|
| Trump _just won an election_ in a very large part because --
| and I quote -- "Prices are high!"
|
| People were talking about gas prices, food prices, etc...
|
| Any politician that would raise prices _deliberately_ for any
| reason will be immediately voted out and replaced by _literally
| anybody_ that doesn 't do so, even someone like Trump.
|
| The evidence for this should be fresh in your collective minds
| right now.
| deprecative wrote:
| "Prices are high!" came with both a lack of counter narrative
| from the Democratic candidate AND a scapegoated narrative
| that blames the government and migrants for the prices. If
| you give the masses a narrative they'll buy in. All you need
| to do is provide a meaningful narrative that accurately
| describes the situation and builds solidarity/class
| consciousness.
| gruez wrote:
| >and builds solidarity/class consciousness.
|
| Likely Trump voters are about the least likely to be
| receptive to terms like "solidarity/class consciousness",
| and implying that they're rubes that can't think for
| themselves is the exact sort of rhetoric that caused the
| Democrats to lose the election.
| llsf wrote:
| "...2-5% of yearly GDP until 2050"
|
| Estimate is COVID in 2020 cost 3.4% of GDP (source:
| https://www.statista.com/topics/6139/covid-19-impact-on-
| the-...)
|
| We are talking about one new COVID (2020 style), every single
| year for 25 years. That is significant enough to not
| spontaneously do it.
| Mizza wrote:
| There's a big difference between printing money to trick
| people into continuing to buy stuff while production is
| halted during a pandemic and massive investments in new
| energy sources and technology development and deployment.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Any large expenditure is going to cause inflation since it
| competes with the rest of market for materials, labor, or
| any other limited resource. It doesn't mean we shouldn't do
| it but we can't just ignore the consequences.
| xyst wrote:
| With USA going full climate denial in next 4 yrs and SCOTUS
| packed with O&G friendly judges. It's going to get worsw
| nojvek wrote:
| Yep, our grandchildren will have to pay a very dear price to
| clean up our mess of Glory days.
| fldskfjdslkfj wrote:
| On the bright side for a brief moment in time we created lots
| of shareholder value.
| xyst wrote:
| Aka the big grift
| twothreeone wrote:
| I don't think cleaning up is an option once you get a runaway
| atmospheric hot-house. Human population will fall due to
| global disasters and food-chain collapse, then wars, then the
| party is pretty much over.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| Although the dear price is away off, The bill is starting
| come due today; see news stories about fires and hurricanes.
| diath wrote:
| What has the US administration done in the past 4 years to make
| a significant impact on the global warming issue?
| 0xdde wrote:
| I know you can't be serious, but are you also trying to imply
| that the incoming administration, staffed from top to bottom
| with oil industry insiders, won't affect our trajectory?
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| I think it was a serious question that was relevant to the
| conversation.
| shdh wrote:
| Even if USA reversed 180 degrees, the rest of the world is
| going to continue fossil fuel usage.
|
| Developing nations will continue to increase individual CO2
| usage as their economies improve.
|
| People want to live a modern western lifestyle, and that
| requires more energy.
|
| Realistically the world is going to generate far more energy,
| not reduce energy usage/production.
|
| Moving to solar and nuclear is the only likely solution that
| will result in reduced CO2 volume.
| moffkalast wrote:
| It's funny seeing people groan and moan about climate change on
| HN when the average neolib here most likely voted Trump lmao,
| especially based on the comments in the winner announcement
| thread. You are preaching to people who wouldn't blink twice to
| burn an actual mountain of coal if it got them YC funding or a
| 1% reduction on their tax bill.
| brap wrote:
| That seems... very low?
| donohoe wrote:
| Yes, seems that way, but the impact will be huge.
|
| https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-o...
|
| See also:
|
| https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/climate-issues/d...
| klysm wrote:
| It might sound low, but consider that this number is a
| distillation of many changes into one proxy which roughly
| covers a variety of different effects that aren't strictly
| related to just temperature.
|
| For example, consider ocean acidification.
|
| Also consider the number of tipping points and positive
| feedback loops that exist. How close are we to those?
| vincnetas wrote:
| Depends on context. for example 1C for all water on earth is
| still on 1C+ but one would need a lot of energy for that.
|
| from open ai: The power required to raise the temperature of
| all the Earth's water by 1degC in one second would be 5.57 x
| 1018 megawatts.
| atoav wrote:
| - 70 to 90% of coral reefs dying, devastation of maritime
| ecosystems
|
| - potential collapse of maritime currents that lead to
| relatively mild climates in Britain
|
| - triggering of multiple irreversible climate tipping points
| (arctic ice sheet)
|
| - more common and much more devastating extreme weather events
| (warmer air can carry more water)
|
| - the aforementioned weather results in infrastructure damage
| and lack of food within big parts of the world. Waves of
| migration
|
| - _median_ sea level rise of more than a meter means extremes
| will be much higher, a big part of the human population lives
| next to the sea
|
| And much more -- this was the absolute minimum and we surpassed
| it faster than expected.
| spencerchubb wrote:
| 1.5 degrees celsius is 10% of the global average temperature.
| That is, to put it mildly, a shit ton of a difference
| mr_mitm wrote:
| If doesn't make sense to take the percentage of a quantity in
| units with an arbitrary reference point. In Kelvin it would
| be about 0.5%.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Celsius is not an absolute scale. You need to use Kelvin for
| that meaning that a 1.5C increase is close to a 0.5% increase
| in global average temperature.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Call me pessimistic but I don't think anything is going to change
| and a lot of people are going to die due to climate-forced
| migration.
|
| That being said, it's a difficult topic to discuss rationally.
| Part of the issue is deciding on what your baseline is. Looking
| at the last 200 years tells a pretty limited view. Consider
| around 100,000 years ago when global temperatures were similar
| [1].
|
| That raises some questions about what caused that spike but, more
| importantly, what caused it to lower. You can say "an ice age"
| but what really triggers an ice age?
|
| My point here is that doomsday predictions of Venus-like runaway
| inflation I think are both unrealistic and unhelpful in actually
| motivating people about an otherwise very real problem. We really
| have no idea of the mechanics in place.
|
| But like I say, we're going to do absolutely nothing about it
| anyway.
|
| [1]: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/analysis-is-it-
| actually...
| baq wrote:
| It'll take a couple of mass casualty wet bulb events to shift
| the discourse from 'it's too expensive, just drill more' to 'oh
| shit whatever it takes'
| yongjik wrote:
| Sadly, I'm skeptical about that. Covid killed a million
| Americans and half of America thinks the real enemy was the
| government telling people to stay home and wear masks. Drive
| down I-5 of CA's central valley, and you'll see signs saying
| "Congress created dust bowl."
|
| In coming decades, I fully expect to see people blaming
| renewable energy and carbon tax for whatever new climate
| disaster we end up with. Hopefully we could ignore them, in
| the same way adults stop entertaining toddlers when shit
| happens.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| We'll be lucky if people blame technology, instead of other
| groups of people that they are then motivated to take
| vengeance on. That is what I fear.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Nah the oil and gas companies will just say these web bulb
| events are acts of God and there's nothing we can do about
| them. And plenty of people would believe them.
| morkalork wrote:
| The first few are probably going to occur in south Asia and
| the most you'll see from Americans is some casual victim
| blaming. It's their poor infrastructure. It's their
| overpopulation. etc.
| piyushpr134 wrote:
| It would happen in poor countries and won't result into much
| "discourse". It has already happened actually. Moreover, even
| if it happens in the rich countries, are companies &
| countries ready to ban crypto or AI training of LLMs ? Would
| we be okay to increase airline prices (by putting a tax) so
| that people fly less ? Will countries be willing to reduce
| thermal energy by prioritising solar, wind and nuclear energy
| ? Can all countries decide to reduce petroleum usage by
| putting a 100% tax on gas ? Or will be ready to go vegetarian
| and vegan for reducing cattle farming ? Will be okay to put
| fines on food wastage ? If not, then there won't be any
| "whatever it takes"
| BobbyTables2 wrote:
| Economically taxation would be the solution.
|
| But the Carbon Tax credits/handling shows that we aren't
| grown up enough to handle taxes properly.
| morkalork wrote:
| Indeed, any and all rebuttals seem to reduce to:
|
| >Nice argument. Unfortunately I have coined the phrase
| "Axe the tax" and shall depict you as the soy wojak.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I envy your optimism but I see no evidence that this will be
| the case. People want to believe all sorts of things and
| they'll reject all evidence that contradicts their world
| view. Just look at:
|
| - Millions who died in Covid
|
| - Vaccines in general
|
| - "The election was stolen"
|
| - Wind turbines are killing the whales [1];
|
| - "There's a migrant crime wave"
|
| And so on.
|
| As long as the cost of climate change can be shifted to the
| Global South, by force when necessary, it will continue. It's
| sobering how cruel people can be, particularly in groups, if
| they feel like their way of life is threatened, or even when
| they might theoretically be slightly inconvenienced, as
| demonstrated by the recent protests in Kayesville, UT over
| providing warming centers for people in need when the weather
| gets too cold [2].
|
| [1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-66928305
|
| [2]: https://ksltv.com/705578/kaysville-homeowners-show-up-
| in-lar...
| pavlov wrote:
| The rate of temperature change happening currently is much
| greater than anything in the geologic record.
|
| What use it is to ponder about what has triggered an ice age in
| the past, when that mechanism can't possibly counteract what's
| happening now?
|
| It's like thinking about starting blood pressure medication
| when you're having a heart attack right now.
| yobbo wrote:
| I don't think ice-core measurements give year-by-year
| resolution good enough to determine this, but it would be
| interesting to know if someone proved it.
| jmyeet wrote:
| That's not true [1]:
|
| > There are twenty-five of these distinct warming-cooling
| oscillations (Dansgaard 1984) which are now commonly referred
| to as Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, or D-O cycles. One of the
| most surprising findings was that the shifts from cold
| stadials to the warm interstadial intervals occurred in a
| matter of decades, with air temperatures over Greenland
| rapidly warming 8 to 15degC (Huber et al. 2006). Furthermore,
| the cooling occurred much more gradually, giving these events
| a saw-tooth shape in climate records from most of the
| Northern Hemisphere (Figure 1).
|
| The last time I brought this up, someone said (paraphrased)
| "that's only over Greenland". Yeah, the place they did
| measurements. Do you really think a change in air temperature
| of 8-15C over decades is _repeatedly_ localized in just one
| place?
|
| [1]:
| https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-
| cli...
| fwip wrote:
| Well, the link you cite puts forward 2 hypotheses that
| could explain localized temperature change in Greenland,
| and does not mention "maybe this was global temperature
| change."
| Timon3 wrote:
| > Do you really think a change in air temperature of 8-15C
| over decades is _repeatedly_ localized in just one place?
|
| I don't understand your point. This isn't a question where
| we have to extrapolate from this one study - you can look
| at similar measurements done in other places and answer
| this question once and for all.
|
| Instead, you simply declare the hypothesis wrong,
| because...? You don't bring up an argument, you just ask
| whether others _really_ think that.
| defrost wrote:
| > Do you really think a change in air temperature of 8-15C
| over decades is repeatedly localized in just one place?
|
| Sure .. we can see this kind of "stutter" in dynamic
| environments all the time, vortexes "pulsing" in stream
| water for example.
|
| The "rapid warming" followed by "slow cooling" pattern
| speaks to a lower tempreture being the long term natural
| stable temp. for the local region duringthat much longer
| period .. but interrupted by a pulsing in the climatic cell
| stability that routinely brings warmth in from the
| equatorial zone - likely via water currents, possibly via
| air currents.
|
| Such things can happen during stable _global_ mean land|sea
| energy levels as that 's literally just an average of the
| activity of all the cells across the planet.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The last IPCC report estimates that to limit warming to 2C,
| humans can only emit at most 1150 GtCO2 (at 67% likelihood) [1].
|
| There are 8.2 billion humans, so about 140tCO2/person left on
| average. If we assume that we get to net zero by 2050, that means
| the average person can emit about 5.4tCO2/person/year from today
| to 2050 (hitting 0tCO2/person/year in 2050). This is what
| emissions look like currently [2] Top 5
| countries > 10m population Saudi Arabia 22.1t
| United Arab Emirates 21.6t Australia 14.5t
| United States 14.3t Canada 14.0t Some
| others China 8.4t Europe 6.7t
| World average 4.7t Lower-middle-income countries of 1.6t
| Low-income countries 0.3t
|
| Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer, despite
| not doing anything.
|
| [1] Page 82
| https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...
|
| [2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| > United Arab Emirates 25.8 t
|
| > Saudi Arabia 18.2 t
|
| > Australia 15.0 t
|
| These are all pretty low population though so net CO2 from
| these countries is not the largest.
|
| In terms of per capita, what drives this? These places are hot,
| is it the 24/7 Air conditioning running?
| quonn wrote:
| That is balanced by not having to heat.
|
| The more likely explanation for the first two is that plenty
| of fossil fuels are available so they are used inefficiently.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I generated this list a few months ago. I picked a threshold
| population (I think 10 million) and listed the top 5 and then
| some other groups. I think I would also guess that resource
| rich countries spend a lot on cars and AC.
|
| FYI, I edited list with latest numbers after your comment.
| mrkeen wrote:
| It could make more sense to bucket these three together if
| you're looking for what they have in common.
| Australia 14.5t United States 14.3t Canada
| 14.0t
|
| My guesses are: houses rather than apartments, driving
| everywhere, percentage of SUVS compared to sedans, meat
| consumption, general consumerism?
| vivekd wrote:
| I'm Canadian most of our emissions this past year was
| because of forrest fires.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| In the US, we also have large numbers of homes that have
| not been brought up to modern efficiency standards and
| cheap/outdated, grossly inefficient heating/cooling
| contributing. That number could probably be brought down
| quite significantly without negatively impacting quality of
| life by "simply" (I'm aware it's a huge undertaking)
| properly insulating homes and in urban/suburban areas
| banning heating/cooling solutions below a certain
| efficiency threshold.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| Probably mining and refining natural gas and oil?
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| AC is pretty efficient and the temperature differential it
| needs to overcome is smaller than winter heating in most
| places. For these places specifically it seems to obviously
| be the production of oil for the first two and coal for the
| third. The availability of fossil fuels tends to make them
| cheaper and consequently a lot more is used.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > that means the average person can emit about
| 5.4tCO2/person/year from here on out. This is what emissions
| look like currently
|
| Using a world average target number and then presenting a list
| that leads with world outliers is misleading. This is the kind
| of statistical sleight of hand that climate skeptics seize upon
| to dismiss arguments.
|
| The world average is currently under the target number:
|
| > World average 4.7t
|
| I think you meant to imply that the CO2 emissions of poor
| countries were going to catch up to other countries, but I
| don't think it's that simple. The global rollout of solar
| power, battery storage, and cheap EVs is exceeding
| expectations, for example.
|
| I don't want to downplay the severity of the situation, but I
| don't think this type of fatalistic doomerism is helping. In my
| experience with people from different walks of life, it's this
| type of doomerism that turns them off of the topic entirely.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >it's this type of doomerism that turns them off of the topic
| entirely.
|
| In my experience, it's the prospect of having to give up
| expected or dreamed about large homes, large vehicles, non
| seasonal/local fruits and vegetables, cheap electronics, and
| vacations involving flights.
| exe34 wrote:
| try suggesting that people should eat more vegetables and
| less meat - they see red and shout down any chance of
| reasoning.
| iechoz6H wrote:
| Unless they're a vegetarian presumably? I guess 'people'
| here means North Americans?
| exe34 wrote:
| well quite. I'm in the UK myself.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| One person's individual change is a drop of water in the
| ocean when compared to the vast amount of emissions and
| pollution and waste produced at scale by corporations.
|
| Arguing to your neighbor why they should recycle their
| plastic water bottle can at most make an infinitesimal
| difference.
|
| Creating a legal responsibility for Coca Cola to clean up
| the billions of plastic bottles it produces annually, on
| the other hand, could change the world.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > Creating a legal responsibility for Coca Cola to clean
| up the billions of plastic bottles it produces annually,
| on the other hand, could change the world.
|
| It would change the world in a sense of Coca Cola either
| going bankrupt, or shrinking to the point of irrelevance,
| succumbing to competitive pressure of corporations that
| aren't forced to do such cleanups.
|
| Edit: Do better, HN. Explain why you disagree. This
| argument is a delusional meme, as if people were not the
| primary consumers of corporations' products. Corporations
| are reactionary at best and believing there's 0%
| responsibility on the consumer is a 5 year old child
| mentality.
| davidcbc wrote:
| If they aren't profitable when taking into account their
| negative externalities than the owners are stealing from
| the rest of the world and they _should_ go bankrupt. They
| 'd probably figure out a better way to do business
| instead though
| tsunagatta wrote:
| The incoming government in America loves the idea of
| tariffs; why not frame it as part of a trade war in a
| theoretical government set on ending climate change?
| Place heavy tariffs on any goods that do not have the
| same cleanup obligations.
| ben_w wrote:
| > One person's individual change is a drop of water in
| the ocean when compared to the vast amount of emissions
| and pollution and waste produced at scale by
| corporations.
|
| With emphasis on "One".
|
| There's 8 billion of us; our diets have varied
| environmental impacts; and collectively agriculture is,
| though not the biggest problem, a big enough problem that
| we can't solve climate change without also fixing it.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/emissions-by-sector
|
| Also, the problem with framing it as the fault of
| corporations, is that the corporations do what they do in
| response to demand.
|
| And the laws come with costs: this is a perennial issue
| during elections and "over-regulation" has been the
| battle cry of UK and US conservatives for as long as I've
| been paying attention to politics -- so sure, if I was
| world dictator I could make it happen (and build a global
| power grid for green energy, we don't even need
| superconductors for that), but that's not the world we
| live in.
|
| Making a convincing reason for consumers to demand
| different things, or for business to choose
| sustainability just because it's cheaper, or shifting the
| Overton Window so the relevant laws aren't just a
| political football, that's hard.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| I don't understand these attempts to wave away personal
| responsibility, and pin the whole thing on corporations.
|
| It's both. We need corporations to emit less, and they
| are the biggest emitters, and they do what they do for
| two reasons:
|
| 1. They are permitted to. Yes, government needs to
| intervene and prevent some of the things they do.
|
| 2. People keep giving them money, rewarding their bad
| behavior and providing them the means and motive to keep
| doing it.
|
| We need the populace to _want_ to make change, by voting
| for legislators that pass laws limiting corporations
| _and_ by voting with their wallets. These usually go hand
| in hand.
|
| I know there are people who vote for legislators/laws
| that limit consumption, who don't make any effort to
| limit consumption themselves, but I don't think there's
| that many. People generally don't want laws that change
| the way they are living, they want laws that make other
| people live the way they are living.
|
| We don't need to shame people for consumption, that isn't
| helpful, but writing off personal responsibility is also
| unhelpful.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > I know there are people who vote for legislators/laws
| that limit consumption, who don't make any effort to
| limit consumption themselves, but I don't think there's
| that many. People generally don't want laws that change
| the way they are living, they want laws that make other
| people live the way they are living.
|
| There is nothing wrong with this behavior. I will vote
| today for everyone to curb consumption, but I see no
| reason to make the sacrifice alone.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| I am not coming at it from a moral view, simply a
| practical one: I don't think many people can sustain this
| dissonance. I don't think people are very motivated to
| vote for things that would make them change their daily
| life.
|
| There are examples that would show me wrong, like plastic
| grocery bag bans. But on the other hand, there haven't
| been very many such bans, and banning plastic bags is a
| relatively minor inconvenience, and does very little to
| slow climate change.
| layer8 wrote:
| > I am not coming at it from a moral view, simply a
| practical one: I don't think many people can sustain this
| dissonance.
|
| This is assuming that the dissonance is hurting more than
| the renunciation. People are already quite good at
| ignoring dissonances. And the causal effects are so
| removed from daily experience that often there isn't that
| great of a dissonance in the first place.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| > This is assuming that the dissonance is hurting more
| than the renunciation.
|
| It's not about "the dissonance is painful, so they seek
| to correct it by not voting for reduced consumption".
|
| It's "voting to reduce consumption takes effort, in
| knowing what to vote for and in actually casting a vote,
| and people are unlikely to put in that effort if they are
| not putting in any effort elsewhere".
|
| "Dissonance" was a poor choice of words for what I was
| trying to communicate.
| layer8 wrote:
| I thought you were talking about the dissonance of voting
| for renunciation while not voluntarily renouncing until
| forced by the system. I don't think it's uncommon.
| layer8 wrote:
| This is basically Downs' paradox. Only systemic change
| can turn things around, but any given individual's
| responsibility for systemic change is generally
| negligible.
| trealira wrote:
| That seems like a convenient way to not change anything.
| I guarantee most people would still complain heavily if
| the price of meat went up because something like a carbon
| tax were applied to it, even though the effect would be
| to reduce the meat consumption of the entire population.
| The politicians who implemented that would be voted out
| instantly.
| dgfitz wrote:
| 75% of the US is overweight or obese. You're trying to
| make a partisan issue out of a not-partisan issue. Please
| stop.
| exe34 wrote:
| I would suggest that you are the one who just made it
| partisan. I'm in the UK personally, but I can immediately
| tell which side of the political spectrum you are, given
| the reflexive defence.
| dgfitz wrote:
| I voted for Harris. I don't like trump.
| roamerz wrote:
| After reading this comment I wonder how much making
| Ozempic free for all would affect global CO2 emissions.
| ben_w wrote:
| My guess would be 3%:
|
| 1) I have no reason to think the carbon intensity per
| calorie would change
|
| 2) it doesn't take much overeating per day to build up,
| so I'd assume semaglutide based weight reduction reduces
| calorie intake by about 25% per day unless someone gives
| me a study (can't find myself as search results biased to
| news not science)
|
| and 3) all agriculture combined is about 12% of emissions
|
| multiply together and that would be about 3% of global
| emissions, which is a start, but not sufficient -- we
| need to target 99.9% for long term sustainability
| Ekaros wrote:
| Similar thing happens when you suggest about living in
| cages and not single family houses... Or banning cars
| altogether...
| ben_w wrote:
| > Similar thing happens when you suggest about living in
| cages
|
| Cages?
|
| Who is even suggesting that?
| jfengel wrote:
| I believe the causation runs the other way. The IPCC was
| founded in 1988, when CO2 emissions were 22 gigatons per
| year. Nearly four decades later it's 40 gt/y, and continuing
| to rise.
|
| Doomerism is the reaction to our utter failure to even
| pretend to try. It did not cause that failure. Nor are people
| looking at the data and going, "yeah, I ought to do
| something, but people on Hacker News were gloomy so I'm going
| to buy a bigger SUV instead." EVs and solar and suchlike are
| much, much, much too little and much, much, much too late.
|
| Doomerism doesn't help, except in the extremely limited sense
| of helping someone express their frustration. But it also
| isn't hurting because we'd be doing exactly the same nothing
| if they were cheerful.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| We were asleep at the wheel for maybe 20 years too long on
| renewables, but the pace over the last 10+ years has been
| mind-boggling, and especially the pace the last 4 years.
|
| Nothing is going to turn that tide meaningfully.
|
| I'd like to know how anyone with an ounce of reality thinks
| we're going to reduce emissions substantially faster than
| we already are.
|
| Rome wasn't built in a day.
| silver_silver wrote:
| In my mind the only realistic solution left is to make up
| the difference with solar radiation management, and I
| would bet it's what will end up happening
| idunnoman1222 wrote:
| You won't be able to stop poor countries from spraying
| aerosol into the stratosphere if it gets too hot on the
| ground
| rwyinuse wrote:
| Yes, global geoengineering will be probably deployed to
| buy us some time to get off fossil fuels.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > I'd like to know how anyone with an ounce of reality
| thinks we're going to reduce emissions substantially
| faster than we already are.
|
| Depends on what you mean by "ounce of reality".
|
| In reality, there's little that can be currently done
| mainly because of political policy. That's unlikely to
| change.
|
| But, assuming policy could be changed, then there is
| actually quite a bit that could reduce emissions
| substantially much faster. Carbon taxes, better policies
| around railways (perhaps nationalizing and expanding ala
| india), more subsidies for renewable generation and
| battery production (perhaps funded by carbon taxes?).
| Stronger regulations on private vehicles (perhaps ban
| personal private ownership of large trucks and suvs?).
| But also trade deals and modernization
| efforts/investments with lagging countries to help them
| develop carbon free economies.
|
| Now, I don't think policy change is likely. I do however
| think there are quiet a few policies that could
| significantly drive change faster than it is already
| going.
| rob74 wrote:
| Well, when even moderate gas price increases lead to
| either mass protests (e.g.
| https://apnews.com/article/colombia-protests-fuel-price-
| hike...) or the election of climate deniers (such as in
| the US), policy is (unfortunately for the climate) not
| going to change fast enough.
| cogman10 wrote:
| A 50% gas hike isn't moderate.
|
| But I agree, it's something that'd have to be delicately
| done. Ideally phased in over time.
|
| I also agree, probably wouldn't be fast enough, just
| faster to significantly faster than what we are currently
| doing.
| leptons wrote:
| Emissions will reduce substantially when the average
| temperature is 60C/140F across the globe. Life will be
| very different then.
| mmooss wrote:
| > Rome wasn't built in a day.
|
| We only have a day.
|
| > I'd like to know how anyone with an ounce of reality
| thinks we're going to reduce emissions substantially
| faster than we already are.
|
| The problem is political. The idea that politics is
| fixed, unchangeable, is obviously false. For example,
| look at the radical changes since 2015.
| nojvek wrote:
| China is currently at the forefront of deploying renewable
| energy. They install more Solar than rest of the world
| combined. They are investing 100s of Billions in
| manufacturing cheaper solar panels and batteries. China now
| has >50% new cars sold as EVs.
|
| China sees this as an opportunity and delivering on it.
| Meanwhile majority of Americans voted for Trump, the
| sentiment is anti climate change and 'drill baby drill!'.
|
| The cheaper Solar and batteries become, the more they get
| deployed. Like we solved hole in the Ozone, I'm optimistic
| we'll transition to a net zero energy future but
| pessimistic that US may get left behind and it'll be too
| late for many of the industries to compete with China. We
| are too short term focused.
| rwyinuse wrote:
| With upcoming US government it's starting to feel like
| the Chinese Communist party isn't all that bad in
| comparison. At least they aren't actively trying to kill
| future generations simply to protect big oil profits and
| to oppose democrats.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if China overtakes the US
| completely in science and technology with the way things
| are going.
| tap-snap-or-nap wrote:
| People believed the same about Germany about a century
| ago, we know the path ahead did not end so well for
| anybody. This time around though, many nations possess
| nuclear weapons.
| lovecg wrote:
| Give it time. Centrally commanded dictatorships always
| seem to hum along right to the point of sudden collapse.
| ericd wrote:
| The comically named Inflation Reduction Act included a
| _tremendous_ amount of money for scaling up clean tech
| manufacturing in the US, and it's been getting deployed
| quickly. The DOE Loan Programs Office got something like
| $400B in loan authority. Overall, the IRA was probably the
| largest single bit of climate action the US govt has ever
| taken. Unfortunately, people mostly hear about that work
| when it becomes part of political football (Solyndra and
| Tesla both got money from the DOE LPO to help them scale
| up, and the political fallout from Solyndra was the first
| time most people had heard of it). But it's happening.
| einpoklum wrote:
| > included a tremendous amount of money for scaling up
| clean tech manufacturing
|
| It included a moderate amount of money as stimulus to
| commercial companies which manufacture clean(? clean-er?)
| tech.
|
| The Biden administration has also "balanced" this by
| allowing for massive amounts of further drilling for
| fossil fuels.
|
| And even without the "balancing" - this is not remotely
| like an actual plan to convert the US to near-zero-
| emission energy production, in the immediate future,
| which is what's actually necessary.
| ericd wrote:
| $400B is moderate? Have there been other bills that have
| come anywhere close?
| einpoklum wrote:
| Did I say moderate? I should have said small. Remember
| this is $400B over a 10-year period, i.e. $40B per year.
| The US federal budget is $6.1T per year, so not even 1%
| of the annual budget.
|
| It is also small in terms of the extent of expenditure
| needed for such a conversion of the US energy production
| system. A cost estimate from 2019 suggested somewhere
| between $4.5T - $5.7T over the whole period:
|
| * https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/renewable/co
| st-of...
|
| * https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/renewable-
| us-gr...
|
| so $400B - even if we could assume that all goes directly
| to achieving the goal, which it does not - is under 10%:
| ericd wrote:
| Where'd you get 10 years? I'm seeing "through September
| 2026" for the deployment of those funds. Also, it's taken
| them a bit to get back up to speed, since the political
| fallout around Solyndra basically caused them to go
| defunct for a decade, they've had to hire a lot of people
| to get back up to speed to be able to process loans.
|
| Also, you can't look at the entire budget, entitlements
| like Medicare and Social Security dwarf everything else,
| you need to look at the discretionary part.
| kortilla wrote:
| Funny how easy it is to trivialize spending other
| people's money
| ako wrote:
| It's only 20% of what Musk thinks he can cut from the
| government expenses.
| DFHippie wrote:
| This doesn't seem like a terribly relevant metric. See
| for example this critique:
|
| https://jabberwocking.com/elon-musk-knows-nothing-about-
| gove...
|
| It is impossible to cut government expenses as much as
| Musk claims. It was akin to Trump claiming he would
| replace the ACA with something better or that Mexico
| would pay for the wall.
|
| "The secret plan I'm hiding behind my back" is not a plan
| at all.
| api wrote:
| No, doomerism discourages people from trying. It also comes
| from the same place intellectually as the luddite wing of
| the green movement, which is one major reason we didn't
| replace coal with nuclear energy decades ago. (The others
| being that coal is cheap and fossil fuel lobbyists are
| powerful. But without the luddite greens opposing it we
| might have gotten somewhere.)
|
| Doomerism leads people to go ahead and buy a ridiculous gas
| hog SUV they don't need because why not, we're all gonna
| die. Doomerism means we should cancel all our green and
| next-generation nuclear development because it doesn't
| matter. We're all gonna die.
|
| Look up the Moore's law like progress of solar, wind, and
| batteries. Look up how much renewable energy we're adding,
| the uptake rate for EVs, etc. We are not doing enough but
| we are not doing nothing.
|
| The previous poster is right. The global average is below
| the threshold and the global average is the only number
| that matters re: physics. Physics doesn't care about
| politics. The goal now must be to keep chipping away at
| those higher numbers in developed economies and to make
| sure the developing world gets renewable and nuclear energy
| before they decide to industrialize with coal like China
| did.
|
| Either that or at least make sure we're cutting emissions
| in mature economies as fast or faster than developing
| economy emissions are increasing so the average does not
| exceed the limit.
| Retric wrote:
| Global warming will cause suffering, but extreme poverty
| was worse for billions than any projections from 2.0C above
| baseline. The global population grow by 3 billion people
| since 1988 yet extreme poverty is way down.
|
| What nobody talks about is there's not enough oil and
| natural gas left to miss 2C by much. At current consumption
| rates we run out of both in ~50-60 years. Coal isn't
| competitive with renewables and as soon as we stop pumping
| hydrocarbons the associated influx of Methane also stops.
| So we're almost guaranteed to miss 2.5C of global warming,
| and stopping at 2C is likely.
|
| So congratulations humanity, all that money spent on R&D
| instead of directly cutting emissions without any solid
| alternatives actually worked!
| jordanthoms wrote:
| Humans can be trusted to do the right thing, once all
| other possibilities have been exhausted.
| Retric wrote:
| Except we actually did do the right thing.
|
| US CO2 emissions in 2007 peaked at 6,016 million metric
| tons before consistently falling since down to 4,807 in
| 2023.
|
| Per capita numbers are even better, but everyone assumes
| its from imports seemingly ignoring the massive reduction
| in coal use and vastly improved efficiency of just about
| everything.
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1049662/fossil-us-
| carbon...
| jordanthoms wrote:
| Oh, I agree on this. People were never going to accept,
| nor IMO should they have, a massive reduction in their
| living standards. New technology is the way to make
| people's lives better while also reducing global warming.
|
| I just got back from a off-grid island here in New
| Zealand - 20 years ago, generators were everywhere and as
| soon as it got dark you'd hear nothing but the buzzing of
| running them all around you. Now there is solar
| everywhere and it's completely silent.
| kortilla wrote:
| You mean batteries, right? Because Hawaii is off grid and
| has a ton of solar but at night has to switch to fossil
| generators.
| mmooss wrote:
| > New technology is the way to make people's lives better
| while also reducing global warming.
|
| It's not working, so it's fairy tale. Is there evidence
| that it's really an effective plan to save lives and
| money caused by climate change?
|
| > People were never going to accept, nor IMO should they
| have, a massive reduction in their living standards.
|
| The first is just a claim - people accept hardship all
| the time for one purpose or another (such as wars). Also,
| what is so sacrosanct about their living standards?
|
| Also, the liability of climate change is already on the
| balance sheet - and the massive reduction is coming, due
| to climate change. Just think of all the dead people, all
| the people who lose their property, all the poverty.
|
| It's like saying, 'I won't suffer a massive reduction in
| my spending in order to pay my mortgage.' You already
| have the liability; that sentence doesn't mean anything.
|
| The question is, given that reality, what will you do?
| Make up fairy tales about fairy godparents giving you
| magic wands to solve you problem?
| matteoraso wrote:
| >Oh, I agree on this. People were never going to accept,
| nor IMO should they have, a massive reduction in their
| living standards.
|
| I don't even think a massive reduction is necessary,
| though. Just stop driving, and your carbon footprint
| shrinks massively. I bike everywhere, and I don't
| consider it a sacrifice at all. Obviously, there still
| needs to be commensurate increases in funding for public
| transit to match the decrease in driving, but most people
| would still save money by not having to buy gas anymore.
| Really, I think that living an eco-friendly life would
| mean improving life, not worsening it.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Did we or did we shift manufacturing abroad and that made
| our numbers better?
| Retric wrote:
| Imports as a share of US GDP is basically identical
| between 2007 and 2023 at ~16%, it's really not foreign
| manufacturing that's relevant.
| https://www.macrotrends.net/global-
| metrics/countries/USA/uni...
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > At current consumption rates we run out of both in
| ~50-60 years
|
| At current prices. As prices go up new sources of fuel
| become economical and the cycle continues. Not to mention
| that methane emissions from agriculture are a significant
| contributor as well (30% from cows) so just removing
| hydrocarbons doesn't solve that problem.
|
| It seems like an unrealistic bet that hydrocarbon-based
| emissions drop to 0 just because you think we'll run out
| of fuel in 50 years. Does that mean airplanes stop flying
| in 50 years? No one is making these bets in the
| marketplace alongside you for good reason. And remember,
| consumption grows quite a bit year over year so you're
| looking at a much shorter time frame if your prediction
| were to be true.
| osigurdson wrote:
| Isn't there a reasonable chance aircraft will be electric
| in 50 years?
| dalyons wrote:
| Or running on synthetic fuel made with renewable energy
| worik wrote:
| ...or flying with fairy wings
|
| We can make anything up. Why not stick to the facts, as
| we know them, and reasonable projections?
|
| There is no reasonable projection for any fuel other than
| fossil fuel to maintain the sort of flying we do now.
| osigurdson wrote:
| We weren't talking about warp drives here. Certain types
| of aircraft are seem to be not that far off. 50 years is
| a ling time.
|
| Unless you are deeply involved in battery technology,
| your prediction seems overly pessimistic.
|
| Not suggesting the article below is in any way conclusive
| but just one of many that turn up on a basic google
| search.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Business/passenger-electric-
| planes-be...
| Retric wrote:
| Consumption is also heavily tied to prices. Who is going
| to pay the equivalent of 50$/gallon when they can use an
| EV?
|
| We use oil _because_ it's cheap not because it's the only
| possible solution. It's not that we're going to run out
| 100% year X, it's that as economies of scale end priced
| inherently spike. Gas stations can scale down to 1940's
| levels by having most of them close, but giant fuel
| refineries, pipelines, etc need scale to be worth the
| maintenance.
| geysersam wrote:
| For some things fossil fuels is still the only feasible
| (meaning, remotely close in cost) solution. Air fuel and
| fertilizer comes to mind.
| pyrale wrote:
| > At current consumption rates we run out of both in
| ~50-60 years.
|
| 2050 is only 26 years away, though.
| jdietrich wrote:
| _> What nobody talks about is there's not enough oil and
| natural gas left to miss 2C by much._
|
| That was true before recent developments in exploitation
| and conversion. Canada had proven oil reserves of 5
| billion barrels in 2002, but by 2005 it had proven
| reserves of 180 billion barrels because the Alberta oil
| sands became viable. South America now has far more oil
| than the Middle East - it's oil that wasn't considered
| economically recoverable until about a decade ago. Over
| recent years, we have discovered far more oil and gas
| than we've burned. Coal doesn't have much of a future as
| an energy source for electricity generation, but it might
| have a future as a feedstock for synthetic liquid fuels.
|
| We're probably going to leave most of those hydrocarbons
| in the ground, but only because of the huge progress that
| has been made in renewable energy technologies. If that
| progress stalls or there are big breakthroughs in
| hydrocarbon technology, then there's still a real risk of
| substantially exceeding 2C. We have reason to be
| optimistic, but not complacent.
| philipov wrote:
| Global warming will do more than cause suffering - it
| will cause resource starvation, especially water - and
| that will cause war and mass migration, which will
| destabilize the world on a scale much greater than
| poverty has.
| Prbeek wrote:
| It will make much of Siberia habitable and the northern
| sea route viable. Russia is probably the only country
| that will benefit from global warming
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no civilization existing today will "benefit" ..
| permafrost melt is a fuse to a bomb, among many too
| numerous to mention.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| How do you know?
| radicalbyte wrote:
| We've cut our emissions down massively, our electricity is
| pure solar, our meat consumption is 30% of what it was and
| we've flown once in 5 years (and then a fairly short
| flight). Home heating is still gas but we've halved usage
| by dropping the temp to 18c (from 21c) and better
| insulation.
|
| Cars are still petrol but we've gone from 50k km / year to
| 10k km / year most made in a tiny 1 litre car (the other is
| a Prius). We don't have enough solar to cover that and the
| electric mix here is carbon intensive enough that we're
| better off using the petrol car until it needs replacing
| before switching to electric.
|
| Hopefully at some point America will start taking their
| emissions seriously; it's crazy that you guys are so
| inefficient.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Eh it's not actually you that needs to change all that
| much but more industrial processes need to be change.
| E.g. I worked on a exploration drill rig that hunted gold
| core. We burnt well over 400,000 litres of diesel a year
| keeping that thing running. Closer to 500,000 after you
| count all the fuel burnt to keep the operator alive, fed
| and transported. 1 rig. It looked for gold that mostly
| didn't end up in electronics.
|
| Arguably it provided bugger all actual physical good for
| society in return for its consumption. It got some fat
| cats rich and employed a half dozen humans. It consumed
| insane amounts of resources.
|
| Your consumption is nothing compared to these ends of
| industry, they just try and make you think it does.
| Industrial industries worldwide need drastic changes.
| baxtr wrote:
| _> But it also isn 't hurting because we'd be doing exactly
| the same nothing if they were cheerful._
|
| Of course it is hurting. If we really want people to change
| then we need to understand human psychology.
|
| We need to create hope and not fear. Ask Kamala how
| fearmongering worked for her.
| Tade0 wrote:
| Considering that since 1988 world population went from a
| little over 5bln to 8bln, our output per capita rose by
| around 10%, which is not great, but also not terrible.
|
| Meanwhile the number of infants globally peaked around
| 2013-2017 and according to revised estimates overall
| population will peak late this century reaching 10.4bln -
| largely in countries with a small carbon footprint anyway.
|
| We're going to blow past that 2degC target and millions
| will die due to extreme weather, but I firmly believe life
| on Earth and our species will survive, especially now that
| the "business as usual" scenario is considered highly
| unlikely due to how differently e.g. China's coal usage
| changed compared to projections.
| layer8 wrote:
| > I firmly believe life on Earth and our species will
| survive
|
| Few people are doubting that. The issue is that
|
| > millions will die due to extreme weather
|
| and due to climate-related wars, and life in general will
| become less pleasant. Just breathing air with higher CO2
| concentration already isn't that great.
| hartator wrote:
| > Just breathing air with higher CO2 concentration
| already isn't that great.
|
| Or less O2. I wonder if there any study that does show
| any impact already or these are still speculations?
| Filligree wrote:
| There isn't less O2. Even if all plants on earth
| disappeared (and animals somehow survived that), it would
| take millions of years before there's any measurable
| impact on O2 concentrations.
|
| Moreover, there's no _physiological_ impact whatsoever
| until you drop several percent.
| hartator wrote:
| O2 does decrease and is measurable:
| https://www.oxygenlevels.org/
|
| I think this is a more marketable concern than CO2 as
| without O2 most know that you can't live.
| kortilla wrote:
| Nope, being a doomer makes you look dumb and people dismiss
| your whole message when your overblown predictions don't
| come true.
|
| Think about the illegal immigration hawks talking about how
| people will cross the borders and start raping and
| pillaging everything in their path. When that of course
| turns out to be false, people dismiss their position
| entirely rather than look at actual issues.
| rrix2 wrote:
| > When that of course turns out to be false, people
| dismiss their position entirely rather than look at
| actual issues.
|
| this flies in the face of a lifetime of experience
| talking about immigration with family who lives in a
| southern border state...
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| I don't think I am presenting outliers (though I have edited
| the list to add some context).
|
| US+China+Europe+Australia have cumulatively emitted 70% of
| all historical emissions. They are still 3x the world average
| and the estimated target. That's why they are on the list.
|
| China is there because it is a common villain in these
| discussion. The low-(middle)-income countries are, in my
| opinion, never going to emit much more than they do now. They
| will never contribute to the problem but will feel all the
| effects.
| returningfory2 wrote:
| If you follow your argument logically, it says there's
| nothing to do and we're in a good place.
|
| You said we need to have 5.4tCO2/person/year on average
| across the world. You then presented a table that shows
| that we are in fact _under_ this target (4.7t). In your
| follow-up comment you claim that the lower-income countries
| are "never going to emit much more than they do now". So by
| your argument the world average will probably stay below
| the 5.4t goal and we're on target.
| willsmith72 wrote:
| You're missing the core of the argument:
|
| "If we assume that we get to net zero by 2050,"...
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| The target of 5.4tCO2/person/year is assuming we take a
| linear path down from 2023 emissions to zero emissions in
| 2050. It is the halfway point on that line.
|
| Real world reductions (or increases) won't follow a
| linear path. Global population is also increasing. The
| number is just a rough estimate to show which countries
| are dropping the ball.
| tzs wrote:
| I think the point is that unless we can make a good case that
| some people have some sort of natural or divine right to a
| bigger share of the world's total CO2 emissions budget then
| other do, we have a lot of countries that are over budget.
|
| It's hard to tell the poorer countries that they should stay
| poor so as to keep the world under budget, but using fossil
| fuels for many of them is the only to become not poor in a
| reasonable timeframe with their existing resources.
|
| Just considering the welfare of their own citizens and their
| own resources their best path will often be a rapid increase
| in fossil fuels to get to a reasonable level of wealth and
| then start emphasizing renewables.
|
| Since it is unlikely that the existing wealthy countries can
| reduce emissions enough to keep the world under budget as the
| developing countries follow the aforementioned path, we
| probably need the wealthy countries to help out the poorer
| countries to try to speed things up so they go through the
| fossil fuel phase faster.
| nradov wrote:
| Sounds good, but who counts as poor? If you mean countries
| like Honduras then sure, let's help them out as long as
| they have effective financial controls to prevent
| corruption. But China is the largest emitter, and while
| they still have a huge number of poor people they also have
| nuclear weapons aimed at us. There's no possible political
| scenario where US taxpayers agree to subsidize China.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| Do you think there's ever a point where we say "guys, if we
| don't do something now, we're all Dead"?
| code_runner wrote:
| Exactly. "It's bad and you should feel bad and it can't be
| fixed"
|
| Well... ok I guess I won't stress about it too much since I
| can't change it? I was already powerless but now effort is
| futile.
|
| I'd like a real straw I guess
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Are those figures per capita for consumers or producers? Is
| Saudi Arabia scoring high because of the oil industry?
|
| > Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer,
| despite not doing anything.
|
| Low income countries also don't have good tracking or data.
| I've seen lots of practices in developing countries that are
| really damaging environmentally (GHGs and other things) that
| probably don't get reported or tracked anywhere, because
| they're so local (things like illegal refineries, manufacturing
| operations with no waste disposal, stubble burning, etc). But
| they exist. In part those damaging practices are here because
| of globalism (economic pressure) and changing lifestyles, so
| it's not their fault. But my point is we probably just need a
| global reduction in luxury and quality of life ultimately.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| These are consumption based numbers. So any oil that Saudi
| Arabia exports that is then burned elsewhere is counted in
| the other country's number.
|
| Yes, there are uncertainties in these numbers, and it is
| quite unfortunate that OWID does not state them. However, I
| don't think the uncertainties are that high. Emissions from
| fossil fuel burning or agriculture are most of global
| emissions (>90%) and are quite easy to track in bulk.
| speakfreely wrote:
| > But my point is we probably just need a global reduction in
| luxury and quality of life ultimately.
|
| Of all proposed political policies, "degrowth" is the
| standout for being the most ludicrous ask of developing
| countries. A lot of people don't like hearing it, but human
| quality of life on a global scale is measured in energy
| consumption. Trying to convince anyone to accept a lower
| quality of life, especially people who were subsistence
| farmers a generation ago, is a losing proposition.
| animex wrote:
| I wonder if there should be some scaling for extreme hot/cold
| countries. Most of our output here in Canada must be related to
| heating during our 6 months of cold climate.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Electricity and heat is indeed the largest sector by
| emissions in Canada (about a quarter) [1]. Though depends on
| where you are. In BC all electricity is hydropower, and if
| you have electric heating, your emissions are close to zero.
|
| Transport is also about a quarter. So Canada can indeed cut
| emissions in half with present day tech by fixing these two
| sectors. Still a long way to go.
|
| Also note that Estonia is at 7.3t, Finland 5.6t, Sweden 3.5t
| (Sweden was 8.6t in 1980). So climate is not really an
| excuse. It is just politics.
|
| [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-emissions-by-
| sector?t...
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer
|
| Well according to your own data which shows the average
| comfortably below the target number, nothing will happen and
| nobody will suffer?
| zahlman wrote:
| >This is what emissions look like currently [2]
|
| So, the world average is currently below the ration, and thus
| as long as we're actually headed for that net zero we're going
| to be in reasonably good shape?
|
| >Guess what's going to happen and who is going to suffer,
| despite not doing anything.
|
| Oh, this is actually about calling people bad because of what
| country they live in, never mind where the innovation is going
| to come from that would actually make net zero possible
| (assuming it actually is).
|
| Carry on, then, I guess.
|
| Russia is not far behind that top 5 list, at 12.5t/person/year,
| by the way.
| ithkuil wrote:
| This. Also because it's not like low income countries are
| going to stay low emission forever.
|
| If you think about it, that's disrespectful towards people
| living there; they are not noble savages.
|
| They are people just like you and me who are just a little
| bit behind in the development curve and they will surely want
| to have all the goodies that we have and emit all the
| greenhouse gasses associated with that lifestyle.
|
| Countries who are currently high emitters but also applying
| active measures to curb it must be praised instead of
| pointing fingers. The political will to improve things is
| fragile and people can easily vote for populists that will
| easily exploit resistance towards guilt shaming.
| zahlman wrote:
| >If you think about it, that's disrespectful towards people
| living there; they are not noble savages.... they will
| surely want to have all the goodies that we have and emit
| all the greenhouse gasses associated with that lifestyle.
|
| The hope is that whatever the developed world has settled
| on by 2050 to achieve net zero, lower-income countries will
| be able to switch to _directly_ instead of going through a
| phase of fossil fuel consumption. China was too early;
| India for example might see a much healthier trajectory.
| The association of greenhouse gasses with the lifestyle of
| the richest countries is hoped to be only incidental.
| layer8 wrote:
| > as long as we're actually headed for that net zero we're
| going to be in reasonably good shape?
|
| Only as long as we actually reach net zero by 2050, is my
| understanding.
| teamonkey wrote:
| 2 degrees C is not a _good_ outcome for the world, it's just
| a moderately aggressive target that we might be able to hit.
| The world will still be changed significantly if we do manage
| to hit the 2C target (which isn't a given). Working to reduce
| our output more before then would certainly be better.
| zahlman wrote:
| I mean "good" in the sense of long-term achievement of
| reasonably high quality of life for humanity, without a
| collapse in human population. (My understanding is that if
| there are no catastrophes, the current trajectory is
| expected to level out somewhere around 11 billion. Of
| course, if we also happen as a species to make radical
| progress on life extension, that will also have to weigh in
| to long-term changes in reproductive behaviour, etc.)
|
| Of course we should all do what we can. (I eat less meat
| than I used to, and don't drive.)
| isodev wrote:
| The next target should not be 2.0C but rather 1.6. Understand
| that everything we're adding is going to cost us going forward.
| 2.0 is when the cost become inconceivably high.
| OtomotO wrote:
| No, we have caused AT LEAST 1.5degC long-term global warming.
| root_axis wrote:
| Doesn't seem like there is any foreseeable future where climate
| change can be addressed. It's not just the leadership of the u.s,
| but the citizens themselves reject climate change as a real
| issue. Hopefully I'm just being pessemsitic.
| baq wrote:
| Oh a lot of those citizens care - it's that they travel to
| Japan for vacation anyway.
| lukan wrote:
| There was a famous case of german climate activists, those
| who glue themself on the road to block the cars to make a
| statement - they did not showed up to ther appointment in
| court, because they were enjoying their activism vacation in
| Bali.
| Aachen wrote:
| Fun anecdote but I don't see how a handful of individuals
| being alleged hypocrites is relevant
| autoexec wrote:
| Let's not pretend that the family vacation is the real driver
| to climate change. Most Americans aren't jet-setting on a
| regular basis.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Air travel is only 11% of all transport emissions, so it's
| not all that significant, especially given that it's often
| the only real option for covering vast distances.
|
| But Americans do drive everywhere, and that's 48% of all
| transport emissions (just cars, not even counting trucks,
| with that it's more like 73% for all road transport). So
| yeah. Nobody gives a fuck.
| spike021 wrote:
| Bizarre choice of example
| zo1 wrote:
| No, I 100% blame politicians and the media. If this climate
| thing is such an issue as the "doomsayers" say it is, then we
| should be outright and immediately banning/dismantling and
| destroying infrastructure that causes it. But instead, we faff
| about with "carbon credits" and "media campaigns", and cause
| all sorts of divisive misinformation and "cover" for the worst
| offenders.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Annual_C...
|
| https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c8/Annual_C...
| tuna74 wrote:
| In democratic societies we get the politicians we vote for.
| sethammons wrote:
| Four wolves and a sheep voting on what is for dinner
| kibwen wrote:
| Are you presuming the existence of some hypothetical
| political system that would prevent the wolves from
| eating the sheep?
| timeon wrote:
| Can you be more specific?
| Aachen wrote:
| By people that aren't aware of the problem or their ability
| to collectively change it, sadly. Everyone I know wants to
| do right by them and theirs; climate change having a
| meaningful impact on those doesn't seem to be on most
| voter's radar somehow
|
| I do kinda feel like a responsible leader, that should be
| elected anyway for reasons other than intended climate
| policy, should also have the guts to put a topic on the
| table that means scary change for a massive decrease in
| worldsuck on a timescale we're comfortable estimating the
| broad effects for
| croes wrote:
| Try that a look who people vote.
|
| People prefer the doctor who says smoking, drinking and no
| sports is ok over the ones who say you should stop smoldering
| and drinking and do more exercise.
| thrance wrote:
| Climate change denialism is not a natural state of mind, it was
| deliberately manufactured by people who stand to keep the
| status quo[1].
|
| [1]https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus?ind=E01
| lukan wrote:
| I think just blaming the oil corporations is too easy. I mean
| they do deserve their blame and they do deserve to pay up,
| but I allmost would say
|
| "Climate change denialism _is_ a natural state of mind "
|
| We as apelike animals just did not optimize for thinking
| globally. We optimized for the local here and now and the
| immediate future.
|
| "Fire burns, fire warm, fire good. More firewood we need!".
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't agree with this take but I don't think the quiet
| part, that we should strive for the highest quality life
| right now and let nature sort out the consequences (if any)
| later, is necessarily invalid.
|
| And I think why we're having such a hard time with "climate
| denialism" is because we're not really presenting arguments
| against the underlying argument.
| deprecative wrote:
| We've known human caused climate change has been a thing
| for over a hundred years. You can disagree with a take but
| it's a fact that this has happened.
| Spivak wrote:
| Oh I know, but let's say you didn't want to do anything
| about climate change and you knew that the kind of people
| who do:
|
| * Value moral superiority and "being right" over results.
|
| * Broadly think that people who categorically disagree
| with them are stupid and just need to be educated about
| the truth.
|
| * Believe that the mere existence of climate change
| implies that we have to do everything they say to combat
| it.
|
| * As a group are largely incapable of knowing when
| they're being put on and baited.
|
| So say hypothetically you "deny climate change." But of
| course you don't outright deny it, you say that there's
| no evidence. The discussion shifts away from what the
| proper response to climate change is to whether it even
| exists. In public discussions you can dismiss any
| argument with "well it doesn't even exist." They will
| then proceed to spinlock boiling the oceans with the
| energy expenditure trying to prove it exists-- "surely
| this next piece of evidence will be undeniable and I'll
| have them cornered!"
|
| But that couldn't possibly work, right?
| zahlman wrote:
| On the contrary, climate change denialism is completely
| intuitive, _regardless of the reality_. The problem could be
| much worse than it actually is and it would still make
| perfect sense to expect many people not to agree that there
| is a problem. This is a natural consequence of the human
| condition.
|
| First, we're talking about trend lines on the order of less
| than +1C per human lifetime. Recently, there was some buzz
| here in Toronto about some day or other having been the
| hottest that-calendar-day in a very long time, and near the
| record since measurements started 200 years ago. But if you
| look at that scatter plot, what you see is that yes, the
| trend line goes up by perhaps 2C over that period, but the
| year-to-year variation is on the order of 20C. And the
| difference between the average daily highs in the hottest and
| coldest months here is about 27C, to which you can add about
| another 8C for intra-day variation from high to low. Month by
| month, the recorded extremes of heat range 12-20C above the
| averages, and record lows plunge 13-27C below averages for
| daily minimums. All in all, a temperature range of over 73C
| has been observed here.
|
| Regardless of the consequences scientists expect as a result,
| a couple of degrees of warming since the Industrial
| Revolution (with some more effectively priced in for the
| future) is mere noise against that backdrop. Humans are
| simply not sensitive to that rate of change; nor can they be
| expected to realize the effects intuitively given that
| they're adapted to dealing with such great natural variation
| in temperature. So they have to know the science to get
| there. The result is not intuitive. If it were, there would
| have been no need to do the science in the first place.
|
| Almost no humans are equipped to replicate the science
| themselves - there are huge barriers in every category:
| awareness, willingness, time, resources and knowledge (of
| scientific methods, of research methods, perhaps even of how
| to use more sophisticated equipment than just thermometers).
| So they have to _trust the authorities_ that present the
| science to them.
|
| Trust in authority is not natural for humans - it has to be
| socialized into them. This is especially the case for humans
| born and raised in a democracy, and especially when the
| authority in question is implying a need for lifestyle
| changes that seem like they would cause lower overall quality
| of life. If that trust were natural, North American schools
| could actually focus on education.
|
| Climate change is a coordination problem. In a coordination
| problem, treating non-cooperators as opponents - especially
| by implying that they've been brainwashed by some other
| party, thus denying them agency - is an incredibly
| shortsighted and counterproductive move. Especially when it
| comes with such openly tribalistic framing (i.e. citing as
| evidence some partisan bias in lobbying by specific
| businesses).
|
| In short: people don't believe you because you don't show
| them things they can see for themselves, and you frame
| yourself as someone who wants them to sacrifice themselves
| for a greater good that you don't make legible to them.
| Warning about the threat of impending doom is not presenting
| a legible "greater good". If that worked, everyone who lives
| in Christian-majority countries would be an evangelical.
| chriscappuccio wrote:
| Wasn't it just a week ago we discovered that widely used models
| were significantly underestimating CO2 absorption by plants?
| badgersnake wrote:
| The models may be perfect or imperfect, either way the
| temperature is still going up.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| Long-term should be defined. We can cool the planet the same
| amount long-term. Why is it taken as a given that any warming is
| irreversible when we have historical natural patterns showing
| global cooling (ice age)?
| chrishare wrote:
| The damage to ecosystems, flora and fauna populations, etc etc,
| isn't reversible like that. Extinct species don't just bounce
| back, sadly.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Of course it can be reversed, it's just vastly more expensive
| to do so. If your house is on fire and you don't have insurance
| you don't say "eh I can just build a new one", you put the fire
| out.
| patrickhogan1 wrote:
| I agree that warming is an important issue to address. I
| don't agree that we know that it will be more expensive to
| cool. Space is cold and technology allowing heat to vent into
| space may be less expensive than we think.
| icetank wrote:
| Previous warming periods moved much slower. We are currently
| seeing the fastest rise in temperatur ever observed. We are
| already in a new extinction era as most species can not adapt
| fast enough to the changing climate.
| pstrateman wrote:
| The simple reality is that humanity is unable to reduce
| greenhouse gas emissions without an alternative that is superior.
|
| For every ton of CO2 that the west has reduced in the past decade
| China has produced three tons of CO2.[1]
|
| We need another breakthrough on the scale of the Haber process.
|
| [1]
| https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/co2?country=OWID_WRL~Hi...
| croes wrote:
| Because we shifted our production to other countries.
|
| Lots of their CO2 is because of us.
| chanakya wrote:
| The effect of the shifting is minor. China's exports (to all
| countries, not just the US) make only a small difference to
| their emissions growth.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-
| consumption...
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Technology is not going to get us out of this mess.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| In time
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Is there enough left?
| Freedom2 wrote:
| I disagree. If anything, a YC-funded company will get us out
| of this mess.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Step 1: Figure out how to monetize reversing climate
| change.
| antisthenes wrote:
| Make it a SAAS and put it in the Cloud.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Turn the carbon into diamond.
|
| Not jewels - let's make some diamond houses. That'd be
| neat.
| timeon wrote:
| Just write react app and scale it to as many servers as
| possible. After seeds funding ofc.
| pstrateman wrote:
| If you truly believe that then the options for what happens
| are universally bad.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| The history of life is a history of extinctions and I don't
| think humanity is an exception to that rule.
| Ekaros wrote:
| I honestly think that we are. The reduction might be
| extreme say 90 to 99%. But that still leaves 80 to 800
| million humans living some sort of existence. Might not
| be same as now, but I am almost certain humans won't go
| extinct.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| I guess that's why everyone is in a rush to develop AI,
| artificial wombs, genetic engineering, and robots but
| given the scale of the ecological damage I'm not sure
| what exactly the survivors are going to do with the
| entire mess.
| newsclues wrote:
| What is? Depopulation?
| IshKebab wrote:
| Probably nothing will get us out of this mess, but technology
| is really the only thing that can help. Solar power, wind
| power, electric cars, heat pumps. All technology. All
| helping.
| pfisch wrote:
| Seems like we could deflect 1% of sunlight with existing
| technology. I don't get why we aren't doing this.
|
| We are already terraforming the globe, so we might as well do
| it intentionally.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| The perceived risk of dramatic unexpected effects is too
| great for people to consider this before things start
| getting really bad.
|
| We'll see how people feel in 50 years.
| xbmcuser wrote:
| I was of the same opinion till last year actually still am as
| I think the world has passed the point of no return when it
| comes to global warming.
|
| But the tech is there just not the political will or finances
| as it hurts economies and people's chances of winning
| elections.
|
| China is likely to hit it's peak oil because of ev's and peak
| coal in the next 2-3 years because of renewables and
| batteries. Although China is mostly going electric for
| economic and energy security reasons it will be interesting
| to see what happens when it is no longer using carbon based
| energy for it's growth.
| benchmarkist wrote:
| Money is fake so we can print as much of it as we want. The
| problem is that innovation can't be bought with money.
| Newton did not invent calculus because he wanted to get
| rich, he invented calculus to understand the universe.
| Money is not the issue.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > every ton of CO2 that the west has reduced in the past decade
| China has produced three tons of CO2.
|
| This is a really bad statement.
|
| Reason 3:
|
| This year China installed more renewables than the rest of the
| world combined [1]. In China, 50% of new cars are electric.
| Their per/person emissions is much less than USA. Meanwhile, we
| are putting up tariffs on Chinese EVs, etc.
|
| Instead of blaming them, realise that they are taking climate
| change seriously and we are not.
|
| Reason 2:
|
| Look at your graph, 'we' have like 15% reduction in CO2. You
| could divide by any growing economy and the result is the same,
| because we suck at 'our job'.
|
| Reason 1;
|
| Lastly, we outsourced our emissions by moving production to
| China and then importing the products. That's not much of
| achievement.
|
| [1] https://globalenergymonitor.org/report/china-continues-to-
| le...
| thegrim33 wrote:
| >> Instead of blaming them, realise that they are taking
| climate change seriously and we are not.
|
| China's annual CO2 emmissions have been exponentially
| increasing for the last 50 years and are currently nearly
| three times as high as the US's and continuing to
| exponentially increase. There has been zero decrease in
| emissions over the last 50 years, only increase.
|
| The US's annual CO2 emissions have been linearly decreasing
| every year for the last 20 years and is now a third of
| China's.
|
| How is your conclusion to this that China is taking it
| seriously and the US isn't?
| https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions-metrics
| locallost wrote:
| The data you linked to shows per capita emissions in the US
| are 70% higher than in China.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| An average American produces 14 tons of CO2 and an average
| Chinese person produces 9. Of those 9, he produces 3 at
| work, building TVs that are then bought by US consumers.
|
| US/Canada/Australia have the worlds highest emissions per
| capita, except oil states like Kuwait. They have no moral
| high ground to lecture anyone about climate change.
|
| If you disagree that we should consider population size
| when we compare emissions, I am open to that idea.
|
| In that case we can make similarly absurd comparisons,
| between USA and Slovakia.
|
| It is only thanks to China that we have affordable
| batteries and solar panels at all. And without China there
| would be no hope of green energy transition whatsoever
| Aachen wrote:
| Why present an opinion as a fact ("simple reality that we're
| _unable_ ")?
|
| I agree if you opine that the high income countries won't
| adequately do it, and the low/middle income countries have
| bigger problems, but it _is_ a choice (and mainly _our_ choice,
| if I 'm not mistaken about HN's predominant NA+EU demographic)
|
| I'm not sure most high-income people (globally speaking, so
| like the richest ~billion) are consciously making that choice,
| or at minimum aren't aware of the cost-benefit situation.
| Pretending there is no choice doesn't seem like the right way
| to go about this, considering that every euro spent on
| prevention significantly outweighs adaptation options
| pstrateman wrote:
| It's not the high income countries choice.
|
| If you reduce your consumption the cost of oil will fall
| towards the cost of production and middle/low income
| countries would consume it.
|
| The only way someone in a high income country can prevent
| this is to buy oil and permanently bury it.
| Aachen wrote:
| Cost of fuel is not the whole picture if they don't have
| the infrastructure to consume it
|
| Maybe they'll do decades-long investments to set up new oil
| infrastructure after we've moved away from it, but even
| then: it isn't a 1:1 exchange. What we reduce doesn't
| simply pop back up elsewhere because, evidenced by our
| moving away in this scenario, there's economical
| alternatives. Even if it came back 100% in another country
| a few decades later, buying time really does help us here
| because we can take more and more preventative and
| adaptative measures. It won't prevent any and all issues,
| but a +3degC world in 2200 is still vastly better (and more
| predictable) than a +5degC world from accelerated oil use
|
| Rather than buying and re-burying oil, you're probably
| getting a higher ROI (lower climate change adaptation
| costs) by spending those euros (that you'd otherwise spend
| on burying oil) on helping everyone (including oneself) not
| produce greenhouse gasses
| zahlman wrote:
| >The only way someone in a high income country can prevent
| this is to buy oil and permanently bury it.
|
| This is needlessly roundabout (especially considering that
| the oil _starts_ buried). One could simply scale down
| production (by regulation).
| vivekd wrote:
| I think that's the sane opinion, we haven't reduced emissions,
| we don't have the ability to reasonably reduce emissions at
| this time. But we can look at available solutions and make what
| incremental progress we can and cheer on and celebrate the
| progress that has been made while encouraging more.
|
| But I don't think societies elites (the highest educated
| portion of the population) has taken the same perspective. I
| think they've instead chosen to approach humanity (themselves
| excepted of course) as evil, greedy stupid and belligerent and
| have taken a hostile attitude to most human and human
| endeavours (especially commercial ones)
|
| Wanting to do something about climate change is great.
| Salivating over human suffering or insulting or looking down on
| people outside of your elite circle for not doing or caring
| more...
|
| Whatever it is I think it's an even bigger problem than climate
| change. The rhetoric of the climate movement is disturbing. We
| can't progress as a species when a large portion of a our
| species hates us, looks down on us, and wants thd worst for us
|
| When did the climate change movement become the anti human
| movement? is this just a politically correct way of attacking
| poor and less educated people
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Two words -- nuclear energy.
| dvfjsdhgfv wrote:
| Title:
|
| > Humans have caused 1.5 degC of long-term global warming
| according to new estimates
|
| First sentence of the article:
|
| > humans _may_ have already caused 1.5 degC of global warming
| griffzhowl wrote:
| I guess that can be consistent actually, since the title says
| "according to new estimates". So the new estimates say humans
| have caused the warming, and the new estimates may be true
| urduntupu wrote:
| We are on the natural rise after a natural ice period. Just check
| long term temperature curves and stop looking short term, making
| it look like there has ever been the same average temperature on
| earth.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1732/
| blumomo wrote:
| https://scitechdaily.com/66-million-years-of-earths-
| climate-...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| I'm not sure if this link is intended to contradict or
| reinforce the image from the previous link. The text of
| that link indicates that the research concluded that the
| Earth is currently much warmer than it ought to be given
| known natural processes.
| blumomo wrote:
| The research concluded in a hypothesis, not a factual
| proof.
| thrance wrote:
| Simply wrong. Intuitive visualization: https://xkcd.com/1732/.
| blumomo wrote:
| It's you who's simply wrong.
|
| You have to look before the ice period, that's what OP refers
| to as long term.
|
| https://scitechdaily.com/66-million-years-of-earths-
| climate-...
| mariusor wrote:
| And we all know how well adapted humans were for that
| period, right.
| blumomo wrote:
| That is to say what?
| uhtred wrote:
| The temperature increase rate since the industrial revolution
| doesn't look very natural and doesn't seem like a coincidence.
| blumomo wrote:
| Natural rise
|
| https://scitechdaily.com/66-million-years-of-earths-
| climate-...
| cromulent wrote:
| The article you posted says:
|
| "Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural
| climate variability, we can see that the projected
| anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that."
|
| That does not seem to support your claim of "natural rise".
| blumomo wrote:
| Read: "projected" not "actual" future (!) warming.
|
| It wouldn't be the first time these climate "scientists"
| were wrong.
| euvin wrote:
| "A continuous record of the past 66 million years shows
| natural climate variability due to changes in Earth's orbit
| around the sun is much smaller than projected future
| warming due to greenhouse gas emissions."
|
| "Now that we have succeeded in capturing the natural
| climate variability, we can see that the projected
| anthropogenic warming will be much greater than that."
|
| "For the past 3 million years, Earth's climate has been in
| an Icehouse state characterized by alternating glacial and
| interglacial periods. Modern humans evolved during this
| time, but greenhouse gas emissions and other human
| activities are now driving the planet toward the Warmhouse
| and Hothouse climate states not seen since the Eocene
| epoch, which ended about 34 million years ago."
|
| Please read the article you're linking. Unless this is an
| awkwardly executed joke that I'm missing?
| blumomo wrote:
| Read: "projected" not "actual" future (!) warming.
|
| It wouldn't be the first time these climate "scientists"
| were wrong.
| tzs wrote:
| We've got satellites that can measure the inflow and
| outflow of radiation and see an imbalance.
|
| We've got spectrographs that can look at that radiation to
| see which radiation is not balanced. We can see that what
| is happening is radiation coming in at wavelengths that the
| atmosphere doesn't block heat things which reradiate much
| of that energy as infrared which the atmosphere blocks.
|
| Thanks to spectroscopy we know that it is CO2 in the
| atmosphere that is largely responsible for this blocking.
|
| We know that the increase in CO2 levels over the last
| couple of hundred years is largely from fossil fuels rather
| than things like decaying vegetation, forest fires, animal
| respiration and flatulence, or volcanic gases because of
| isotope ratios because of isotope ratios in atmospheric
| CO2.
|
| CO2 from living things or recently living things contains
| 14C. CO2 from fossil fuels and volcanoes does not contain
| 14C. CO2 from volcanoes contains a higher ratio of 13C to
| 12C than the ratio in atmospheric CO2. CO2 from fossil
| fuels contains a lower ratio of 13C to 12C than the ratio
| in atmospheric CO2.
|
| That allows scientists to look at the isotope ratios in the
| atmosphere and figure out how much of the CO2 there came
| from fossil fuels and how much came from volcanoes. The
| result is that most of the increase is from fossil fuels.
|
| As a sanity check that result also matches well with the
| amount of CO2 that we'd expect to have been released based
| on the amount of known fossil fuel use.
|
| So no, it is not a natural rise.
| gcheong wrote:
| Our response to a global pandemic was a disaster other than
| getting the vaccines made. The most recent large scale collective
| effort to defeat an existential threat prior to that was probably
| WWII. We've gotten pretty good at waging war but I fear that's
| probably where our evolution in the matter of dealing with
| existential threats will probably remain.
| Tknl wrote:
| I would argue that numerous initiative to ban highly dangerous
| substances such as the Montreal Protocol banning ozone layer
| damaging refrigerant gasses have been successful in this
| period. Instead it appears to me that global collaboration
| actually stalled after the fall the Soviet Union and the end of
| great power competition.
| switch007 wrote:
| > Our response to a global pandemic was a disaster other than
| getting the vaccines made
|
| What would you have liked to have seen?
|
| And out of curiosity, what should be the response to the 700k
| heart disease, 600k cancer, 227k accidental, 165k stroke, 147k
| respiratory and 101k diabetes deaths each year in the USA?
| (N.B. COVID sits at 186k in 2023)
| zahlman wrote:
| Remember "acid rain"? Remember "the ozone hole"? We have
| solved, or greatly mitigated, environmental problems before.
| darksaints wrote:
| I remember about 20 years ago I was pretty entrenched in circles
| of thought that were not quite "denialist" so much as they were
| "it's not gonna be as bad as they say it is-ist". I remember a
| prevailing line of thought was that climate "alarmists" only
| chose the most extreme predictions of the various models in order
| to sell the urgency of acting quickly to stop it. There were
| those that said that the most extreme predictions came from
| models that emphasized positive feedback loops (like arctic
| permafrost thawing), and ignored or de-emphasized negative
| feedback loops (like increasing vegetation growth rates). And
| above all, I remember one particular number standing out as where
| they thought we would plateau. It was at 1C of warming arriving
| around 2030.
|
| Whoops. Maybe the scientific consensus should be listened to more
| often, and the fringe less often.
| renewiltord wrote:
| All the people who usually make a big deal out of this usually
| oppose density and reducing car dependence. Degrowthers always
| seem to assume that the only job worthwhile is "guy writing meta-
| analysis paper" and "coffee shop". They ally with groups that
| protect golf courses and oppose geothermal energy and nuclear
| energy.
|
| So it's fine. We'll tech our way out of this without them. If we
| don't, we die. So be it.
| silver_silver wrote:
| Europe and China are currently leading the transition to
| renewables so that is an American problem
| renewiltord wrote:
| Yeah I have hope for the guys who can build. While America is
| complaining about Chinese energy sources, China will add
| sufficient nuclear and renewable to outpace us in decades.
| People never really look at the delta. They always look at
| the y.
| rr808 wrote:
| It feels like we're getting much more than 1.5 degrees. Here in
| NYC it used to snow several times a month, we've had one tiny
| storm the last two years. Just 20 years ago I rarely used AC in
| the summer, now its on nearly every day from May to September.
| Its not just that the temperatures are more variable, and the
| rainfall patterns are much more random it really feels like we're
| at +4 degrees already.
| kbutler wrote:
| You're probably feeling the urban heat island effect.
| treyd wrote:
| How does that explain the _change_ in long term weather when
| the city is already heavily developed.
| NewJazz wrote:
| 1.5 C is a global average. Feels like is anecdotal.
|
| Some areas will see higher averages than 1.5 C. Some areas,
| even if only seeing an average increase of 1.5 C or
| thereabouts, will see more extreme temperatures exceeding past
| record highs and lows by several degrees Celsius.
| tomnicholas1 wrote:
| That's partly because the warming experienced over land can be
| ~50-100% larger than the globally-averaged warming, with the
| temperatures over the oceans increasing more slowly to make up
| the difference.
|
| https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-does-land-warm-up...
| astahlx wrote:
| Since this is the most important and urgent topic humanity should
| be working on: why isn't this the case? Idiocracy is here. Don't
| look up.
|
| We have to throw everything into the race. But how to do this
| with the current inner workings of our societies? How to overcome
| greed? What about the power of (social) media? Why do we have
| Netflix and so on? How can we make people spend their time
| solving climate crisis, saving our planet earth?
| oldstrangers wrote:
| Saving the planet doesn't make the stock prices go up, so no
| one will care.
|
| Private companies are now getting their own nuclear power
| stations to power AI. We can't get new nuclear power for public
| use, but private for profit initiatives? Absolutely.
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| > Saving the planet doesn't make the stock prices go up, so
| no one will care.
|
| I mean, it _could_, if you set up a market structure to
| incentivize it. CAISO (California) has done this, and now
| solar and storage costs are plummeting and associated
| industries are booming as the solar+storage solution starts
| outcompeting other forms of energy production.
|
| Heck, solar+storage is even booming in ERCOT (Texas), which
| has no specific market incentives for it. Their spot market
| swings so wildly that storage makes money on power arbitrage
| and transmission easing.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| Any nuclear power plants being built decreases the marginal
| cost of building another. If private companies are willing to
| front the cost of building the first one in recent times, it
| may help.
| jumpCastle wrote:
| Stock prices cannot go up without if the planet is destroyed
| oldstrangers wrote:
| They don't seem to care about that part.
| zb3 wrote:
| No, humanity doesn't need to work on it at all, instead,
| humanity should be working on a peaceful painless extinction,
| because that will happen anyway, but not necessarily in a
| painless way.
| speakfreely wrote:
| > humanity should be working on a peaceful painless
| extinction
|
| We're already way ahead of you. Check out developed country
| birth rates.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Wealthly west is dying, fertility rate per woman is way below
| 2.1.
|
| United States: 1.67 live births per woman (2022)
|
| European Union: 1.46 live births per woman (2022)
|
| It's even worse after covid.
|
| However, Niger has 6.4 per woman.
| scoofy wrote:
| It's classic game theory. The benefits are public and delayed,
| and the losses are private and immediate. This dramatically
| incentivizes defection.
|
| Few people are going to give up their modern convinces so their
| great grandchildren will have better lives. This behavior is
| everywhere. Few people give up, say, their excess capital to
| reduce suffering in developing countries, or eating meat for
| the benefits of the animals that suffer to produce it.
|
| I've gone to enough city council meetings in the last two
| decades advocating for exactly the things that would
| incentivize GHG reductions while increasing some quality of
| life (everything from urbanism, to walkability, to dutch-style
| cycle infrastructure, to expanded train systems, to general
| electrification). The number of people who _won 't even try an
| induction range_ because they view a gas range as important to
| their identity is astounding. Most people are against
| repurposing _any_ public streets for transportation
| alternatives, even in the most left-wing cities, much less the
| absurdity of actually proposing anyone should actually give up
| _their_ car.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| It's also a coordination problem. You won't help your
| children (the timeline is not that long) by personally giving
| up your "modern [conveniences]". You need a substantial
| portion of the population to do that to have any hope of
| moving the needle. So the choice is between getting the
| benefits or not, your children will suffer anyway.
| jaybrendansmith wrote:
| Since certain political parties seem to feel it justified to
| throw their antediluvian morals about life in my face, I am
| responding in kind. I believe global warming is the central
| moral issue of our time. I hold each person who has voted for a
| political party that supports the continued carbon pollution
| personally responsible for the lives and welfare of my children
| and my childen's children. They are morally bankrupt and care
| nothing for the Earth and Humanity at large. As a technically-
| minded person, I believe we can definitely science our way out
| of this. But hope is not a plan. Most of these deluded voters
| have no clue how to solve this, they are hoping that we
| technophiles will pull a rabbit our of our collective hats and
| save them. But clearly there are no simple answers here, no
| miracle feats of engineering or unobtanium that will save us,
| just legal and regulatory changes necessary to hold capitalism
| and greed accountable for the changes it has wrought on the
| pale blue dot we all depend upon. We have done little to none
| of the tasks necessary to stop this train. I am angry and
| filled with sadness for my children, as the greedy few and
| ignorant many are destroying the little hope we have left.
| ddgflorida wrote:
| Enjoy the warmer weather.
| switch007 wrote:
| *Enjoy the windier, wetter, stormier, warmer weather
|
| The Spanish are just /loving/ the wetter weather right now. And
| so did the Bangladeshis in August.
|
| /s
| tzs wrote:
| Unfortunately it is not that simple. The _average_ goes up, but
| in many places it does so by having both more hot days and more
| cold days, with the increase in the number of intensity of hot
| days being a little more than the increase in the number and
| intensity of cold days.
| henry2023 wrote:
| Governments won't act. The best you can do to help with the
| climate crisis is to have one less kid than what you wanted to
| have.
| shdh wrote:
| That's likely not a real solution either.
|
| Encouraging a small minority of HN users to not have an
| additional child won't move the needle.
|
| It'll likely just remove a person capable of some level of
| critical thinking from the population pool.
| hollerith wrote:
| I agree, but at least we can discourage people from saying
| things like, "Russia is doomed because of demographic
| collapse," when we are just guessing about the effects of a
| slow down of the birth rate on the economy of a country long
| term.
| shdh wrote:
| Korean and Japanese birth rates are very low.
|
| The West is following suit.
|
| We'll likely see a global population decline.
| henry2023 wrote:
| Critical thinking capable people are more likely to work for
| an ad-corporation whose only side effect is to increase
| consumption and therefore increase emissions.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Okay, but having 255 kids sounds like a problem?
| anothername12 wrote:
| I think we'll blow through these limits. Humanity has never
| ceased to disappoint me.
| whiplash451 wrote:
| Genuine question to experts: what could be the positive
| contribution of agriculture on this and exactly how?
| belfalas wrote:
| Asking sincerely because I'm not well-versed on this topic - do
| we have actual proof that humans are _causing_ global warming?
|
| My understanding is that the climate will change independently of
| human activity. For example, we know that there was an Ice Age
| and it was not ended by human activity but rather natural
| processes. So the climate has been known to change historically
| without human involvement.
|
| So here is where I'm looking for clarification: I thought the
| "controversy" over climate change was the _degree_ to which human
| activity is accelerating a natural process of warming?
|
| Said differently, the planet is warming by itself, but humans
| pumping hydrocarbons and other things into the atmosphere is
| speeding up that process. But the cause is not solely because of
| human activity.
|
| Thanks in advance for thoughtful responses, I'm really just
| trying to learn here.
| srid wrote:
| Before your comment (and mine) gets flagged to death, I wish to
| provide this information that might be of interest:
|
| https://actualfreedom.com.au/sundry/factsandgroupthink/globa...
|
| Yea, the climate change narrative is highly overblown, but it
| will take a few more years before the overtone window shifts
| for larger swaths of people in power to accept it.
| torlok wrote:
| How hard are you really trying if you're asking early 2000s
| climate change questions on a VC forum.
| jib96 wrote:
| The rate of change in climate (due greenhouse gas inputs from
| human activity) is much faster than it has occurred naturally
| in the past. If you are genuinely curious, the US EPA's climate
| change indicators report would be a good place to start.
| https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
| tzs wrote:
| > do we have actual proof that humans are _causing_ global
| warming?
|
| Yes. See this comment [1] for an explanation of how we know
| that humans are largely responsible.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42167797
| shdh wrote:
| The Earth is a complex system.
|
| Warming is one aspect of climate change, but we'll likely see
| cascading effects in the system.
|
| ---
|
| For example, as global temperatures rise we are seeing that AMOC
| (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation), and as a result
| the Gulf Stream, are "slowing down". [1]
|
| This could result in EU cooling down.
|
| The clathrate gun hypothesis suggests that large releases of
| methane could cause abrupt climate shifts due to methane's strong
| greenhouse effect. [2]
|
| ---
|
| Its likely developing nations and their citizens will increase
| CO2 usage as they move towards a more western lifestyle.
|
| That means there will be an increasing amount of energy
| production and usage.
|
| Ideally we generate more with solar and nuclear.
|
| Decreasing energy production and consumption is not a real
| solution.
|
| ---
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
| CalRobert wrote:
| "Decreasing energy production and consumption is not a real
| solution."
|
| Why not?
|
| A 5 passenger vehicle can be 1200kg or 3000kg but both offer
| almost the same utility. A diet of mostly-plants can be just as
| delicious as one with a lot of beef. Building a house closer to
| work can be just as useful as building one a long ways away
| (more, actually).
| mirekrusin wrote:
| Remote working is the best green thing you can do :)
| Ekaros wrote:
| Probably not working is even better...
| shdh wrote:
| You're asking for global human behavior changes. Does that
| seem realistic?
| PradeetPatel wrote:
| With sufficient education, awareness, and incentives. I
| don't see why not.
|
| There's already a massive shift in the hospitality industry
| with paper straws and bio-decompositable cutlery, saving
| the world from a tremendous amount of plastic.
| hawski wrote:
| I would think that education and awareness could work for
| another generation, though them being bombarded with a
| popular social media image of life it may be hard.
| Incentives work to some extent (the biggest being a cost
| of doing the good thing being lower enough than doing the
| bad thing), but if you will make costs of doing bad
| things artificially bigger (I know, it is about things
| the society currently thinks as free) you risk populists
| getting to power.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| > You're asking for global human behavior changes. Does
| that seem realistic?
|
| https://www.lung.org/research/trends-in-lung-
| disease/tobacco.... Long term, smoking
| rates have fallen 73% among adults, from 42.6% in 1965 to
| 11.6% in 2022. Over the last five years, smoking
| rates have fallen 17% among adults, from 14.0% in 2017.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| You forget that doctors recommend smoking as safe in
| tabacco advertising back in 40's.
|
| https://tobacco.stanford.edu/cigarettes/doctors-
| smoking/more...
| CalRobert wrote:
| Sure, we effected major changes by making it illegal to
| build homes next to jobs so re-legalising that should make
| a big difference.
| wojcikstefan wrote:
| > A diet of mostly-plants can be just as delicious as one
| with a lot of beef.
|
| I strongly disagree - as a person who's eaten vegan for over
| a year, tried all the fancy meat alternatives, and has gone
| back because a good grass-fed steak is just 10x more
| delicious.
| jajko wrote:
| ... and if you would compare it with those meat
| alternatives most probably healthier too.
|
| If folks go vegan, go full vegan and accept permanent
| change in your life, not some desperate half-assed attempts
| to change as little as possible, which don't seem to work.
| That's valid for any diet, or any other change in life.
|
| Ie I eat beef steaks maybe once a year. I can really
| appreciate them, but its just not something that I feel
| should be part of my frequent diet, can prepare tons of
| other tasty stuff that are lighter on meat. Control a bit
| your emotions and understand where they come from, and you
| can be happy as a clam with any diet.
| CalRobert wrote:
| Sure, but I said mostly plants, not all plants. I'm not
| trying to take away Thanksgiving turkey. But most of the
| meat we eat we do thoughtlessly and it's not especially
| good anyway.
| graeme wrote:
| >Decreasing energy production and consumption is not a real
| solution.
|
| To actually solve the problem we need to:
|
| * Decrease carbon emissions to zero
|
| * Get the excess carbon out of the atmosphere
|
| * Do so while maintaining people alive and not in a state of
| revolt or starvation
|
| With no energy we collapse. Merely decreasing carbon use by
| diminishing energy doesn't solve the problem. It just makes
| it get worse less quickly. It's like not having a job and
| budgeting more carefully while drawing down your savings.
| Sensible to be sure but the real solution is enabling us to
| have abundant energy from non carbon sources and putting
| atmospheric carbon back into the ground.
| julianeon wrote:
| He probably means politically, as in "politically it won't be
| possible to bring this down much." The people don't want the
| economic inconvenience and politicians are even more
| unwilling.
| alwayslikethis wrote:
| > A 5 passenger vehicle can be 1200kg or 3000kg but both
| offer almost the same utility.
|
| Let's be honest here, a lot of these 5 passenger vehicles
| carry only the driver 90% of the times. For that use
| specifically it can be replaced with a 30 kg e-bike or
| scooter.
| CalRobert wrote:
| I can technically carry five small people on my cargo bike
| (urban arrow with extra front bench and rear mounted child
| seat) but people already think I'm extreme for some reason.
|
| I use much less energy here in the Netherlands than I did
| in California and my quality of life is much higher.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Does the IPCC account for asphalt expansion (added heat) around
| all the airport sensors as cities expand? What data source do
| they use to track and compensate for this growth?
| zahlman wrote:
| >asphalt expansion (added heat) around all the airport sensors
| as cities expand
|
| Why would this be relevant? The airport itself represents quite
| a bit of land area (thus, a significant distance to any heat
| sources that could be considered "the rest of the city"), and
| much of that was already paved the entire time.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Asphalt holds heat from the sun. Cities produce heat plumes
| that grow as the area of asphalt grows. Even without wind the
| plumes will expand to the airport and the temperature will
| increase. Cities grow in circumference expanding the overall
| area and temperature of the heat. This also increases the
| heat at night as the asphalt slowly releases the heat after
| dusk.
| zahlman wrote:
| What I'm asking is, what mechanisms allow such expansion to
| occur over distances that would be relevant to the
| measurement? The expanding edge of an urbanized area might
| be many kilometres away.
| torlok wrote:
| Sure, but let's keep voting based on culture wars and the new
| satanic panic.
| DavidPiper wrote:
| At the scale we've hit, I fail to see how anyone except
| billionaires, mega corps and investment funds can solve this
| problem. The economic incentives aren't there yet without pumping
| billions of dollars into the problem without a financial return.
|
| Governments have clearly failed, and several corporations have
| won their plays to become more rich and influential anyway in
| many countries.
|
| I don't doubt that humans will continue to survive on this planet
| if all the worst predictions come true. Many other species won't
| be so lucky, which is a shame. We have all the technology and
| power to be caretakers for our home but we just trash it anyway.
| teo_zero wrote:
| Don't take me wrong, I'm not in the denial camp, quite the
| opposite in fact. But I cringe when I read a non sequitur like
| this:
|
| > "If you plot global temperatures against the concentration of
| CO2 in the atmosphere, they both fall on a remarkably straight
| line, much straighter than current theory would predict," said Dr
| Jarvis. "That line tells you not only how much the Earth has
| warmed since pre-industrial times, but also how much of that
| warming can be blamed on human activity."
|
| How can a straight line tell us anything more than a mere
| correlation between the two measures, without any hint about
| which is the cause and which is the effect?
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