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IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

bbc.com

71–80 of 80 posts

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#71

Yet I doubt even these scientists have engaged in radically rewriting their lifestyles to reduce climate impact. If they had, they would have video conferenced instead of flying to Korea. Basically no one in the West other than the very poor live a low impact life. In the US in particular, we are really only very good at telling others how they should change. Case in point was the "March For Science" that took place…

> they would have video conferenced instead of flying to Korea

that's a good point, but having found a 10 person video conference unbearable, how could they get much done as 86 people?

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#72
post #9

It always seems odd to me that people still plan their lives as though the world fifty years from now will be basically the same as now. I hope they're right, to be honest. But we're talking 3+c warming (5.4F) and that could be horrific. I guess it's nice if you want a winery in Norway but that's small comfort.

People are growing corn further and further north here in Ontario. Places where it used to be unthinkable because the season was too short. The pessimistic oportunist in me thinks it might be wise to start buying up vacation property in Newfoundland.

Newfoundland? Too coastal. Gamble on future waterfront property in SK or AB.

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#73
post #11

I guess governments will just skip the prevention step when they realize their own inaction made that impossible and just try to find ways to adapt to the inevitable changes instead. There's pretty much no way, purely for political/human reasons, that keeping the temperatures below 2 or even 3 degrees seems feasible at that point, so humanity will just have to deal with it and adapt over the next century. Shame about…

Buy an air conditioner now, before governments start to ban them.

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#74
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right of the stronger, fitter. I’m sorry if it hurts your feelings, but that‘s how nature and evolution works. Perhaps your religion preaches something else, but why should I care?

> The right of the stronger, fitter. Right, so why don't I just come along and murder you? I have the right, by your logic. Or, maybe, this Social Darwinism is fascist nonsense and you fully admit to being disgustingly amoral. > I’m sorry if it hurts your feelings, but that‘s how nature and evolution works. Human society is not "uncontrollable nature" or determined solely by biological evolution. Everything is a soci…

> Right, so why don't I just come along and murder you? I have the right, by your logic. Or, maybe, this Social Darwinism is fascist nonsense and you fully admit to being disgustingly amoral.

You are free to try if you want to bear the consequences and the risk of a different outcome. What you people tend to forget: different morals and amoral is not the same thing, don‘t force your morals on me. You have no right to.

> The only reason to care about social wellbeing and people other than yourself is religion?

I care very much about our survival as a species, but I believe that by allowing each and every one to survive at a high cost to society, we put the wellbeing of mankind at risk. I‘m all for getting dumb people to stop eating meat for perceived ecological reasons though!

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#75
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It always seems odd to me that people still plan their lives as though the world fifty years from now will be basically the same as now Even planning for anything 10 years in the future is a daunting task. For any prognosis there are a dozen more claiming different results or different trends with different outcomes. It's an information flood that does not let you make a definite judgement since it's overwhelming,…

You also have to adjust for the fact that most of what climate scientists publish is already conservative. Get them talking one-to-one and their predictions for the next decades are dire. Me, I take a pessimistic view - I don’t think you have to have a large percentage change in, say, crop production, or storm damage rebuilding costs, for economies to feel the effect - prices rise, labour is diverted from growth to m…

> What humanity and our civilisation will be in 20 or 30 years I don’t know, but I fear it’ll be unrecognisable and almost unimaginable to us, even now.

This is certainly true when looking at 2018 from the perspective of 1988 (or even 1998).

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#76
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I prefer having bearable temperatures where I live, sleep and have visitors, What gives you the right to all that at the direct expense of the people who can't afford it?

The right of the stronger, fitter. I’m sorry if it hurts your feelings, but that‘s how nature and evolution works. Perhaps your religion preaches something else, but why should I care?

I'm not sure I can convince you otherwise. If memory serves, even Socrates reached an impasse with Thrasymachus.

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#77
According to Wikipedia, Earth atmosphere weights about 5e18 kg. A m^3 of air is alightly above 1,2 kg under normal conditions.

Suppose that on average each person from the most resourceful 1 billion people on Earth installs a device for air cleaning. The machine sucks air in, removes CO2 and releases the clean air. The device works using renewable energy, so by itself it doesn't contribute additional CO2 to the atmosphere. Suppose we want to remove 10% of CO2 from air, or in other words we want to pass 10% of Earth atmosphere through such cleaning devices. The year has about 365 * 24 * 3600 seconds, so to have those 10% in 10 years each device has to process 5e18 / 1e9 / 365 / 24 / 3600 / 10 / 10 = 1.6 m^3 of air per second.

This is not a small number, yet it's not immediately obvious why this isn't possible. For example, energy requirements can be small, because the device effectively doesn't change the bulk of the air. 10 years isn't that much comparing with the speed of raising air temperature. Cost of such a device could be perhaps smaller than a modest car. We still have option to deploy more devices, to separately clean ocean water etc. This is largely technical and not political solution.

What's wrong with this approach?

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#78
post #77

According to Wikipedia, Earth atmosphere weights about 5e18 kg. A m^3 of air is alightly above 1,2 kg under normal conditions. Suppose that on average each person from the most resourceful 1 billion people on Earth installs a device for air cleaning. The machine sucks air in, removes CO2 and releases the clean air. The device works using renewable energy, so by itself it doesn't contribute additional CO2 to the atmos…

1. Cost to produce devices 2. Assumes perfect processing rate 3. That seems like quite a lot of air. For reference, a 52 in ceiling fan does 2.8 , and you're talking about pushing air through some type of filter probably

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#79
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don‘t like alarmism. Most of it is simply proven wrong in the long term. People are good at adapting most of the time. For example, I got myself air conditioning in a country famous for skiing. People in poor countries will probably suffer much more, but they need to tackle their population growth issues anyway. In essence, there are life-changing problems affecting us every day (who would have thought 50 years ago…

> For example, I got myself air conditioning in a country famous for skiing. AC units are massive drivers of climate change. Honestly, this is a vile and selfish attitude.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this again, regardless of how bad someone else's environmental practices are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

#80
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I prefer having bearable temperatures where I live, sleep and have visitors, What gives you the right to all that at the direct expense of the people who can't afford it?

The right of the stronger, fitter. I’m sorry if it hurts your feelings, but that‘s how nature and evolution works. Perhaps your religion preaches something else, but why should I care?

Please keep generic ideological tangents off HN, especially when the thread topic is already divisive. They just lead to predictable flamewars, equal parts destructive and tedious.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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