We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says • Hacker News Board

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#121

Post by Kaiyou » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 3:07 PM UTC

KirinDave wrote: post #112

charlieflowers wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not GP, but there are plenty of examples of doomsday prophets predicting the tribulation, or the rapture, or some other form of the end of the world.

Okay, but what reasonable level of evidence and plausibility hasn't been passed for global warming? At this point, what else would it take a reasonable person to see the danger of the situation we're in?

If any of the predictions in regard to global warming for the last few decades affecting my personal life would have come true, that would have been a start. In reality, nothing much changed the last past decades, so I don't expect change for the coming decades, either.

It's also a case where the disease seems easier to live with than the cure.

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#122

Post by bryanlarsen » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 3:10 PM UTC

jrochkind1 wrote: post #102

bryanlarsen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans could be fine. We've got the capability to turn energy into food in a purely artificial environment. (Google vertical farming). The price of food would go up significantly and society never does well when that happens, but our economy is big enough to feed 7-10 billion people that way if it actually had the will to do so. Rats will probably also do well; they're pretty urban adapted. Any other species? Questio…

I wouldn't place bets on how "big" our "economy" is going to be once the serious destabilization starts happening. Sadly, at the moment humans are showing themselves more interested in viciously attacking each other to protect "what's theirs", rather than banding together to save us all. The standards being set by our current US government for how to help people in trouble globally are... terrifying. I'm not optimist…

Agreed. There were lots of caveats in my statement. It seems that lots of people would rather have widespread food riots than pay 10 cents more for a gallon of gas.

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#123

Post by mcv » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 3:20 PM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #119

mcv wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is: the second one is not going to be enough. Closing a few plants won't do it. We need to dramatically change how we generate our energy. Figuring out where we might need dams may be enough for the next couple decades, but if ice caps continue to melt, dams are never going to be able to stop 60 m of sea level rise. Melting slower is not enough. And at the moment, it's only going to melt faster because we…

How do you propose to fix this problem?

Dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 we produce. That's not going to prevent all problems, but if we do enough, it will prevent the worst problems.

We really need to aim at zero CO2 production. We will fall short of that goal, but everything will help slow things down, and eventually bring temperatures back to what they were, after natural plant growth has gotten the time needed to remove CO2 from the air again. Once that happens, the melting will stop and climates will stabilize.

If we can get global temperatures back to normal in a century, that means we'll have about 1-2 meter of sea level rise to cope with. That means the end of the Maldives and serious investments in some coastal areas, but many coastal cities will survive.

If we can get temperatures back to normal earlier than that, that will mean less sea level rise, and significantly less other problems. Not all damage can be undone, but some will, and there will be a limit to it.

But the longer it takes, the worse the effects will be, and the longer it will take to recover.

Of course we can also help nature a bit and plant more trees and look for other ways to get more CO2 out of the air. It maybe be drops in a bucket, but we're going to need a lot of drops, so we better get started. At the moment, we're still barely doing anything.

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#124

Post by stareatgoats » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

mcv wrote: post #84

The title is very misleading. There is no hard deadline to save ourselves from climate change, or if there is, we already passed it. We're currently at the point were every year we continue doing nothing, means it takes multiple years (decades? centuries?) to recover from the accumulated effects. Permanent ice is already melting, climate is already changing. Even if we completely stop emitting CO2 right now (which we…

> global temperatures would slowly revert to normal

I share your concern regarding the gravity of the situation, and that a whole battery of efforts need to be made in order to mitigate the effects of current global warming. But I wish intelligent people would refrain from supporting the notion that there is any kind of "normal" regarding the climate. There is no such thing.

We have enjoyed a climate favorable to humans (in many places) in the last 8000 years or so, which has really been an anomaly in terms of the geological record. And the notion that we can manipulate the climate forever so that cities can stay put where they happened to be built at some point has to go. It is not sustainable.

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#125

Post by aaomidi » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 3:30 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #92

aaomidi wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ten years* We don't do shit until it's already fucked millions of people.

Well, if you assume the Earth is unsustainably overpopulated already, surely that should be a fundamentally inevitable development anyway...?

I don't assume this. I think the west would have to give up some stuff they see as a "need" currently and we can sustain this population.

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#126

Post by worldsayshi » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 3:47 PM UTC

stareatgoats wrote: post #124

mcv wrote: post #84

The title is very misleading. There is no hard deadline to save ourselves from climate change, or if there is, we already passed it. We're currently at the point were every year we continue doing nothing, means it takes multiple years (decades? centuries?) to recover from the accumulated effects. Permanent ice is already melting, climate is already changing. Even if we completely stop emitting CO2 right now (which we…

> global temperatures would slowly revert to normal I share your concern regarding the gravity of the situation, and that a whole battery of efforts need to be made in order to mitigate the effects of current global warming. But I wish intelligent people would refrain from supporting the notion that there is any kind of "normal" regarding the climate. There is no such thing. We have enjoyed a climate favorable to hum…

> But I wish intelligent people would refrain from supporting the notion that there is any kind of "normal" regarding the climate. There is no such thing.

While I agree that that is true for a sufficiently long timescale, the rate of change that we force on the world right now does make it look like we're changing the normal.

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#127

Post by KirinDave » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 3:51 PM UTC

Kaiyou wrote: post #121

KirinDave wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but what reasonable level of evidence and plausibility hasn't been passed for global warming? At this point, what else would it take a reasonable person to see the danger of the situation we're in?

If any of the predictions in regard to global warming for the last few decades affecting my personal life would have come true, that would have been a start. In reality, nothing much changed the last past decades, so I don't expect change for the coming decades, either. It's also a case where the disease seems easier to live with than the cure.

Several of them are in the process of coming through right now. The Arctic ice is going, and the Antarctic ice is getting smaller consistently. Sea levels are in fact rising although we're in the early phases of this.

ocean temperatures are rising and that's leading to widespread climate instability. These were predictions, and they are now coming true. They've been verified via a variety of methodologies.

You're insulated from the worst of the effects for now. That's because you are not at the very bottom of the human economic strata. but the hardships introduced by climate change will continue to climb up the chain of economic prosperity until only people who live like Pharaohs and ignore them.

Most critically, if we act now we can avoid the worst outcomes. Given that it's a rather good time to consider over turning all of our infrastructure in the developed world, Why wouldn't that be enough motivation for you?

there's so many problems that exist because we're all living collectively on infrastructure designed over the last 300 years. Legacy structural decisions have profound effects on our lives, not the least of which is a demand for centralized governance. By using climate changes an excuse to decentralize infrastructure, we can use it as an opportunity to decrease everyone's dependence on centralized control. It's rare that humanity has such a powerful motivating factor for both social and infrastructural change.

The economic knock on effects of this are not to be underestimated either. We can create environment electricity costs 100ths of what it does today. We can make things more reliable, and we can let local communities have more control over what they want to do and how they want to live.

Please think about this. It's a dangerous time, but it's also a time full of opportunity.

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#128

Post by dagss » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 3:54 PM UTC

challenger22 wrote: post #98

mcv wrote: post #84

The title is very misleading. There is no hard deadline to save ourselves from climate change, or if there is, we already passed it. We're currently at the point were every year we continue doing nothing, means it takes multiple years (decades? centuries?) to recover from the accumulated effects. Permanent ice is already melting, climate is already changing. Even if we completely stop emitting CO2 right now (which we…

>Even if we completely stop emitting CO2 right now (which we can't), there would still be too much CO2 in the atmosphere for some time, leading to further heating and longer melting Do you have any data on this? If you look at how quickly things cool off at night, Earth's biosphere reaches steady-state thermal equilibrium over the course of a few days. Your claim is essentially that we've already set off an albedo fo…

So warming is global and when there is night at one place, then that is because there is daytime somewhere else.

Yes, if you can just shut off the sun for some time, we can definitely easily overcome global warming... ...

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#129

Post by WillPostForFood » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

stubish wrote: post #82

WillPostForFood wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Al Gore has made the claim multiple times: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/ e.g. in 2007: Their latest modelling studies indicate northern polar waters could be ice-free in summers within just 5-6 years. Professor Wieslaw Maslowski told an American Geophysical Union meeting that previous projections had underestimated the processes now driving ice loss.

Could, not would. Like smoking can kill you, not smoking will kill you. It is a common and fundamental English language pattern, clearly indicating doubt and should never be misinterpreted as certainty.

Fair enough, but could is enough to play on people's fears. Immigrant X could be a terrorist. Food additive Y could cause cancer. You can't then claim you didn't say "would".

Note that things like tobacco cancer warnings use use can/could not will/would, and the intent of the message is still clear.

"SURGEON GENERAL WARNING: Cigar Smoking Can Cause Lung Cancer And Heart Disease."

"WARNING: This product can cause mouth cancer."

Re: We Have Four Years to Save Ourselves from Climate Change, Harvard Scientist Says

#130

Post by gdubs » Wed, Jun 12, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

The “we’ve been hearing scare stories for decades” argument is akin to “I’ve been driving drunk without my seatbelt for a decade and people keep saying I’ll die, but I haven’t yet.”

For many, many people, the dire warnings have come true. Entire towns were erased by fire in Northern California last year. Severe storms are racking up billions and billions of dollars in damage every year — and entire islands have been decimated. The amount of corn planted in the Midwest for the time of year is off the charts, due to freakish weather.

The world is a big place. We can’t wait until everyone all at once is feeling the types of disasters that make you sit up and take notice. But these events are happening constantly, all around the world.

Yea, it doesn’t look like “The Day After Tomorrow”, but what kind of yardstick is that, anyway?

We need to strike a balance between a healthy dose of fear, optimism for the sake of our children, and resolve.