Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years • Hacker News Board

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#311

Post by ArkyBeagle » Sun, Jun 19, 2016, 12:06 PM UTC

losteric wrote: post #307

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we do not rally against it, our ability to live on this planet is at stake. I think you're speculating here, we don't actually know this. I believe the primary reason we haven't done anything yet is because the effects of increased CO2 levels haven't yet reached the scale of mass food production shortages, or a sudden increase the price of basic food stuffs. And since we can't know whether that will ever happen,…

Civilization's biggest challenge is addressing multi-generational problems. Modern America is one of the most depressing and backwards nations in that regard... we struggle with small engineering projects that simply span a couple decades, to say nothing of investing in and protecting future generations.

"Civilization" has pretty much always failed at addressing big inter-generational problems.

That was my takeaway from visiting Mesa Verde in 1972 and I haven't seen an example to contradict it yet.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#312

Post by amagumori » Mon, Jun 20, 2016, 8:13 PM UTC

blondie9x wrote: post #241

We all know by now CO2 and CH4 leads to a warmer planet. We also know what's driving greenhouse gas levels to rise across Earth. Contributors are deforestation, intensive animal farming, and primarily the combustion of carbon fossil fuels like coal, tar sands, oil, natural gas etc. But here is the underlying problem, despite us knowing how bad things are, (97+% of scientists who study this field agree we are causing…

I'm going to make an argument that will probably be very unpopular, but here we go.

The global economic system is the primary incentive system for human behavior. Under global free-market capitalism, firms are incentivized to increase profits. Unless a superior profit incentive exists for reducing environmentally hostile practices, energy and manufacturing firms will continue to make profit-optimizing choices at the expense of the environment. With our current predominant global economic system, laissez-faire capitalism, there is no way to make firms act in an eco friendly way if it's less than optimal from a profit perspective.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#313

Post by LELISOSKA » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 1:13 AM UTC

Joof wrote: post #205

LELISOSKA wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yea but not everybody has a triple digit iq and is a self sustainable engineer and doctor. consumption economy works bc it makes people buy stuff constantly and replenish all the time which in turn makes them work all day therefore driving innovation (as a whole) forward.

Out of curiosity, how does them working all day and buying things drive meaningful innovation? Less resource usage per person might instead free up people to do innovative work because fewer people need to do the other work. Bored, educated people with some free time seem to innovate the most; as opposed to who is paid to do it. It might change the direction of innovation, but I'm not certain if that is good or bad.…

well could argue that the work of others may give some with certain talents more time to create meaningful innovation e.g. funding research, but i guess its true that many things lack any large purpose. if people were more productive as individuals maybe that would be different, i dont know.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#314

Post by Recurecur » Wed, Jun 22, 2016, 3:14 PM UTC

amagumori wrote: post #312

blondie9x wrote: post #241

We all know by now CO2 and CH4 leads to a warmer planet. We also know what's driving greenhouse gas levels to rise across Earth. Contributors are deforestation, intensive animal farming, and primarily the combustion of carbon fossil fuels like coal, tar sands, oil, natural gas etc. But here is the underlying problem, despite us knowing how bad things are, (97+% of scientists who study this field agree we are causing…

I'm going to make an argument that will probably be very unpopular, but here we go. The global economic system is the primary incentive system for human behavior. Under global free-market capitalism, firms are incentivized to increase profits. Unless a superior profit incentive exists for reducing environmentally hostile practices, energy and manufacturing firms will continue to make profit-optimizing choices at the…

The problem is not capitalism, it's lack of ethics.

Since our educational process (which used to include religious teachings promoting ethics for most people) no longer instills an ethical framework, anything goes.

Transition from capitalism to some other economic system will do nothing to help, since unethical people will still maximize their experience at the expense of everything else.

Witness the communist USSR - it was the worst offender in history as far as the environment goes. China, while arguably more capitalistic in recent years, is also a huge environmental offender.

Until humanity in general, and the US in particular, returns to a concerted effort to improve ethically, we remain in deep trouble. That process of ethical improvement had gone on for hundreds of years, but seems to have regressed since around 1950.

Re: Antarctic CO2 Hit 400 PPM for First Time in 4M Years

#315

Post by mikekchar » Thu, Jun 23, 2016, 5:52 AM UTC

49para wrote: post #280

mikekchar wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to suggest 2 things which have historically been unpopular in my postings :-) 1. We don't need to sustain this many people 2. We don't need to sustain this standard of living The first one is pretty straight forward, although it's going to take another 100 years to sort out (barring a major disaster). Shifting child bearing years from the early 20's to the early 30's and changing cultural habits so that eac…

First off - I agree with you. Second - how do you propose this without being "King of the world" ? Africa has a population growth rate of 2.53%, they will double from 1.2B to 2.4B in Just the fact that the world's economies are based on debt requires that there is an exponential increase in growth to support the interest. I've thought about this issue a lot and without some kind of dramatic (i.e. catastrophic) change…

Just a quick reply since it is impossible to solve all the world's problems in an HN comment ;-)

1) You need to invest in poorer countries and lobby their governments to improve the condition women (possibly doing both at the same time by essentially bribing governments). This should naturally reduce population. You simply need to push the natural child bearing age out to 30. If you allow women the economic ability to resist getting married until they are in their late 20's this will solve the problem. Like I said, it can't be done quickly. It might take 100 years, so let's make the next doubling of population the last.

2) There is some misinformation about economics out there (from personal experience of being misinformed). I recommend reading some text books on the subject. The main thing to keep in mind is that interest paid is entered into the money supply. Interest is necessary to maintain inflation. Debt as money creation removes barriers to growth. I seriously have no room to explain further than that.

I'll leave you with one more thing. From about 1600 (slightly after I think, but I can't recall when) until the mid 1800's it was illegal for most people to cut down trees in Japan (because by the year 1600 almost the entire country was in danger of deforestation). No wood, no coal, no oil, no electricity, and virtually no animal fats (legally "vegetarian"/pescatarian society) for 250 years. The next 100 years will be dramatically easier than that was and Japanese people still praise Edo society as being one of the most cultured in history.

My point is not that our current rate of consumption is sustainable (it's obviously not). My point is that the alternatives are not necessarily worse.