The world is losing the war against climate change • Hacker News Board

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#151

Post by rb808 » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:29 PM UTC

The war is unwinnable. Global warming can only be reversed if we stop all Co2 and methane emissions, and then start net carbon capture to reduce current co2 levels.

Its just not going to happen. No one ever says that out loud. There is noise about reducing carbon emissions - in reality this is a lot of argument about reducing carbon emissions in wealthy countries. We can't even do that. Meanwhile even my greeny-lefty friends enjoy their central heating, imported food, masses of electronics and vacations in foreign countries. There is little hope in getting the world's peoples to reduce their quality of life. Generally everyone is happy to just blame Americans/China/Big Business/Coal/etc and keep on living as they please.

Realistically not much is going to change. It might be possible to slow down the warming a little. But its going to get much more uncomfortable, its probably worth moving to somewhere cooler.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#152

Post by TOGoS » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

anoplus wrote: post #71

Reason077 wrote: post #29

Is there even a "war" against climate change? If there is, it's barely gotten started. For the most part, politicians are at best apathetic and at worst, actively hostile to the idea of "fighting" such a war.

From the activism I follow in my country in last decade, I learned that politicians are apathetic, and a good activism is needed to make them move. That's how lazy governments work. So I think until we fix governments performance we need to engage in efficient activism. What is efficient activism? This question interests me.

Workplace organizing. It's a lot easier to get people to fight for something when they know they'll benefit from it directly (via higher wages, better working conditions, etc). A unified working class is the most effective tool we have for fighting countering the power of bug business, who would rather let the world burn than stop building pipelines.

Most people don't like what's happening to the world -- they just feel powerless to stop it. So let's change that.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#153

Post by koube » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

sparkling wrote: post #110

Merad wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in the US. The majority of the country isn't to the point of believing that climate change poses a serious threat, and among non-Democrats attitudes towards climate change are actually regressing: https://news.gallup.com/poll/231530/global-warming-concern-s...

Weather or not the majority believes in climate change is irrelevant. The simple fact is: while the US reduced its total carbon footprint by ~0,4% in 2017, it increased in the EU and China. No reason to point fingers at the US.

The EU is reducing its carbon footprint if you zoom out from that one year[0]. China also has half of the carbon footprint per person[0]. The US appears the have the highest carbon footprint per capita of the major nations, beaten only by small countries[1].

[0]https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/06/01/climate/us-bi...

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/environment/datablog/2009/sep/02...

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#154

Post by sjwright » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:31 PM UTC

radicalbyte wrote: post #50

WhompingWindows wrote: post #12

If you look at global power sector emissions from 1998 to 2018, you'll see that while we have dramatically improved upon the energy intensity (energy/capita) and even are making improvements on carbon intensity (carbon/capita), but the sad reality is this: we are still using around 35% coal power in 2018, the same as we did in 1998. And the power sector is the easiest sector to decarbonize, by the way. If you look at…

I've been looking into carbon capture recently because it's going to be vital to slowing down the warming (and buying us another 50 years for the transition). What surprised me is that I can cover double my two-car-owning European family's carbon footprint via planting trees in the UK at an annual cost of around $400. It'll cost half that to do the same in a developing country. We need a global carbon tax and we need…

But it's not just planting the tree, right? It's taking land that currently has no tree, reserving it for the tree, and guaranteeing that the land & tree will remain intact for a nominal period of time, possibly indefinitely?

Trees are cheap. Fertile tree-growing land not currently used for trees: not so much.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#155

Post by alkonaut » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

rcMgD2BwE72F wrote: post #127

alkonaut wrote: post #67

So we need a quick plan B. The required goals from nations won’t be met and people won’t change lifestyle to do something about it. We need to also do something that ensures warming stops without any sacrifice made by people (other than taxe to fund the massive programs) Maybe we could turn things around in 10 or 30 years but the damage done may either be irreversible or runaway. So a short term solution that ensures…

We haven't done $%# to try and execute Plan A i.e. reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It's the cheapest and easiest plan by far , so why do you think we can afford to switch to some fanciful plan B? Most alternative are either distractions by/for those who can't accept the harsh reality, Get-rich-quick schemes by some industrialists or science-fiction by/for those who prefer to dream of a nice future rather than doin…

> It's the cheapest and easiest plan by far,

It’s the simplest plan, but I’ll argue we are seeing it’s pretty difficult as it requires changing the behavior of a lot of people, if even just a little abd/or changing policies of a lot of countries.

I’m not saying plan A should be somehow abandoned or slowed (so perhaps B is a bad name because it’s typically used when A is abandoned) But it should be complemented. We should also investigate the stupidly sci-fi get-rich-quick (or perhaps lose weight fast?) schemes. Technological solutions might at least buy some time for the slow change we are seeing in behavior and policy.

And yes, I realize there is a hazard that some of these schemes risk giving an impression that the problem is being solved, and plan A isn’t necessary. That can’t happen.

I also realize that anything other than simply limiting emissions is a complex and expensive plan, but even a complex and expensive plan is better than a simple and cheap plan that is politically impossible.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#156

Post by TOGoS » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

chosenbreed wrote: post #89

Reason077 wrote: post #29

Is there even a "war" against climate change? If there is, it's barely gotten started. For the most part, politicians are at best apathetic and at worst, actively hostile to the idea of "fighting" such a war.

The politicians largely reflect the people they govern. I don't think we can expect much better from them as compared to the general population...not to mention of course the vested interests and lobbying capability of corporations. And again corporations have shareholders, employees, etc...

> The politicians largely reflect the people they govern.

Someday I'd like to visit the universe you live in. It sounds nice.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#157

Post by batteryhorse » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

ryanx435 wrote: post #65

"Climate change" is the athiests' version of Armageddon.

It's true. Climate change really is modern day religion.

A volcanic eruption is more likely to cause the climate to change.

The war on climate change suggests that humans are capable of preventing a volcano from erupting.

The poles are shifting as well.

Pollution is a separate issue, of course we should keep everything clean, but when the climate stops changing, that probably means the planet is dead, like Mars (setting up a colony on Mars makes absolutely no sense either)

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#158

Post by tripplethrendo » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

steego wrote: post #103

nonbel wrote: post #33

"War against" ("War on") seems to mean it is a never-ending boondoggle that, at best, wastes a bunch of resources. Is there any example of these "wars" being a success? The three that come to mind are: War on drugs: fail War on cancer: fail War on poverty: fail Why is the economist trying to link climate change to this?

I can't help but think that picking apart a magazine's headline is a huge distraction from an important issue, but I also can't help myself in pointing out how off the mark you with such a superficial observation. As far as global poverty is concerned, between 1990-2013 more than a billion people were lifted out of poverty according to the World Bank. I'm sure you can point to local and anecdotal evidence that does n…

A billion people consuming more is surely bad for climate change though, no?

Millions of people pouring into 1st world countries and consuming more is surely bad for climate change.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#159

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:32 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #131

vowelless wrote: post #91

I am a little out of the loop and so I have a few questions: 1. At what point in time can we arrest ocean temperature rise purely by reducing emissions? 2. Even if we stopped further rise in temperature, is the current temperature (land and ocean) sustainable, or is a chain reaction already underway that will increasingly lead to more and more turbulent weather? 3. Are there viable ways to extract greenhouses gasses…

How are we going to make the ice cube? Where's all the heat from cooling the water going to go? Back in the atmosphere? Maybe we should just make a massive solar array, power a large laser with it, and shoot the beam into space.

There was actually a very clever paper on nano materials which, instead of emitting IR on the blackbody spectrum, emit it in a band the atmosphere is transparent to. Reversing the greenhouse at ground level.

Re: The world is losing the war against climate change

#160

Post by hacknat » Mon, Aug 06, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

Losing? We already lost.

It's probably too late to save modern civilization, the new war on climate change is about making sure we don't make the planet uninhabitable for almost ever land animal. But, our chances of accomplishing that are pretty good (of keeping the planet habitable, not failing to do so), especially as we lose billions of people that will die because of catastrophic climate change.