Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#81

Post by wolfgke » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:22 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #74

gdubs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States is enormously influential throughout the world. We have the highest per capita emissions. If we make changes, it has ripple effects across the globe. We define what it means to live a wealthy, “middle class” lifestyle. Also, Nigeria and just about the rest of the world is part of the Paris accord, the US is not. China is poised to enact carbon taxes on a significant chunk of global emissions... We m…

> Two decades ago we could have solved the problem at a relatively low cost compared to what we’ll pay now, or what we’ll pay if we do nothing. Every year it gets more expensive. This is utterly false. Two decades ago we could have solved the problem if economic growth in the rest of the world stopped. (And maybe not even then.) It was never a solution.

> Two decades ago we could have solved the problem if economic growth in the rest of the world stopped.

So stop the economic growth in the rest of the world to save the climate.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#82

Post by SaasDeveloper12 » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:23 PM UTC

fallingfrog wrote: post #56

bregma wrote: post #39

I was alive in the 1970s when folks like the Club of Rome declared we'll all be dead form overpopulation and Malthusian collapse by the year 2000. Those self-same folks told us this century the arctic will be completely ice free by 2013. In the 1980s, others predicted our total demise due to acid rain and ozone depletion. Mean time, people are making good progress on both feeding the masses and curbing the exponentia…

Except the people predicting climate change isn’t the club of Rome, it’s an entire scientific community, who have been double, triple, and quadruple checking every measurement and assumption for 50 years. This is not some hysterical group of panicked hippies. We’re talking about broad consensus among all the most educated and intelligent members of our civilization. Please show a little respect and listen to them.

Yes, and they are repeatedly wrong in their predictions. We can't accurately forecast the weather a few days out. All our great hurricane model forecasts are off and that's typically a day or two out in the future. There are just far too many variables at play that we don't even know about for us to accurately forecast anything climate related that far into the future.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#83

Post by wolfgke » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:24 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #66

pathseeker wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually wouldn't require a large downgrade if nuclear was used.

Switching 100% of electricity production to nuclear would be very hard (though maaaybe possible) and very expensive to do within a decade (the mean time to construct a reactor is 7.5 years, so we'd have to launch immense construction projects right now), but that's not a solution that brings you even close to zero emissions. Electricity is just a small part (roughly 25%) of them. To get close to zero emissions you'd…

> These three things won't be sufficient, but are required to even approach zero emissions. Does it seem plausible to suceed in somehow forcing everyone worldwide to implement such policies within a decade?

So governments should better finance mitigations for the consequences of climate change.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#84

Post by ridicter » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

pathseeker wrote: post #48

ridicter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It _is_ a political issue. The technology already exists--courtesy of the scientists/engineers of course. Whether that technology is deployed is a problem of politics. For example, if the price of fossil fuels reflected its true cost to society--think climate change, extreme weather, stronger storms, droughts, ocean acidification, etc--then fossil fuels would be prohibitively expensive compared to renewable or nuclea…

>This is what a carbon tax is, and it's what many scientists and economists have been pushing for decades now. But they've been fighting a losing battle against the oil and gas lobby, and one party in particular that is wholly captured by them. You missed the forest for the trees. As the OP pointed out, the US going to zero emissions overnight will not even help. US politics will not solve Nigeria's, China's, or Indi…

There's a path dependence to everything. Had we started earlier, we would have shaped the curve of possibilities: renewables would be cheaper, storage solutions would have come online earlier, etc. We would have shaped international dialogue and culture around this issue too, with other nations following the US's lead as far as policies and technologies adopted.

Real world example of path dependence: Supreme Court stops recount in FL --> GWB elected --> Pulling out of Kyoto protocols, starting wars --> [...] Trump elected, partially due to government mistrust seeded in GWB era--> even worse climate change policies

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#85

Post by xamuel » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:26 PM UTC

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #7

You know, there was this guy that made a fool of Christianity when he predicted Jesus would return in 2011. When nothing happened, he said oops and adjusted the date. (People fortunately paid much less attention to him then.) Kinda getting tired of hearing "the sky is falling" all the time from environmental folks. When you hear "the world is ending next year, it's gonna be too late" every single year, it seems like…

How does a guy making a prediction make a fool of Christianity? That's like saying if I read a science textbook and then incorrectly predict flying cars by 2020, that I have made a fool of science.

Jesus Himself said: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark. ... Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day on which your Lord will come. But understand this: If the homeowner had known in which watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into." (Matthew 24:36-43)

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#86

Post by wolfgke » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #78

WilliamEdward wrote: post #21

What are the implications of 'irreversible'? Practically irreversible? Cannot be reversed naturally? If we run out of ice, what's to say cooling down the planet by halting carbon production won't recreate the ice caps?

The implications of 'irreversible' are that it's going to become much more difficult to reverse in the "short term" (less than hundreds of years) as after the various tipping points reversing would involve not only to cancel/compensate for our emissions, but also to overcome the much larger positive feedback loops e.g. methane released by melting permafrost, increased solar absorbtion/heating after the reflective ice…

> And our capacity to do stuff is going to decrease as we suffer from the consequences - e.g. population reduction, conflicts, etc.

If the population reduces, the emission of greenhouse gases decrease which helps to reverse the effect of climate change.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#87

Post by bjt2n3904 » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

xamuel wrote: post #85

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #7

You know, there was this guy that made a fool of Christianity when he predicted Jesus would return in 2011. When nothing happened, he said oops and adjusted the date. (People fortunately paid much less attention to him then.) Kinda getting tired of hearing "the sky is falling" all the time from environmental folks. When you hear "the world is ending next year, it's gonna be too late" every single year, it seems like…

How does a guy making a prediction make a fool of Christianity? That's like saying if I read a science textbook and then incorrectly predict flying cars by 2020, that I have made a fool of science. Jesus Himself said: "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. As it was in the days of Noah, so will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days befor…

Good point. I spoke too hastily. More specifically, brought great disrepute to Christianity, and gave others cause to mock it.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#88

Post by sleepysysadmin » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:30 PM UTC

WilliamEdward wrote: post #21

What are the implications of 'irreversible'? Practically irreversible? Cannot be reversed naturally? If we run out of ice, what's to say cooling down the planet by halting carbon production won't recreate the ice caps?

You will find that predictions of climate change have been 100% false. Nobody has a crystal ball and nobody can predict what will happen in the future. So lets look into the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

About 20,000 years ago the earth was 10 celcius colder. For the last 20,000 years the earth has been warming pretty steadily.

About 100,000 years ago the world was 5celcius warmer than today.

If you look at the black/red dots from the IPCC predictions. All of those have already been disproven as false and not going to happen. Overall on the graph what's happening is that we are more or less exactly flat.

However look at those spikes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eemian#/media/File:EPICA_delta...

Temperature on earth frequently rapidly spiked up in temperature.

So what happened to life on earth when it was 5+ celcius warmer? It was fantastic for life. Frozen wastelands like Canada and Russia thawed and became extremely livable. People moved into these northern places.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene

The Eocene 50 million years ago was 14celcius warmer and life thrived better than no other time in history.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#89

Post by klemenfer » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:34 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #66

pathseeker wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It actually wouldn't require a large downgrade if nuclear was used.

Switching 100% of electricity production to nuclear would be very hard (though maaaybe possible) and very expensive to do within a decade (the mean time to construct a reactor is 7.5 years, so we'd have to launch immense construction projects right now), but that's not a solution that brings you even close to zero emissions. Electricity is just a small part (roughly 25%) of them. To get close to zero emissions you'd…

>Electricity is just a small part (roughly 25%) of them.

25% is not a small part at all and as for the 7.5 years reactor construct/expensive claim, i'm afraid you need to update you knowledge about small scale/modular nuclear reactors, this is not the 60s-70s.

Re: Did Setting a Timeline Doom the Fight Against Global Warming?

#90

Post by fallingfrog » Thu, Sep 05, 2019, 2:38 PM UTC

SaasDeveloper12 wrote: post #82

fallingfrog wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except the people predicting climate change isn’t the club of Rome, it’s an entire scientific community, who have been double, triple, and quadruple checking every measurement and assumption for 50 years. This is not some hysterical group of panicked hippies. We’re talking about broad consensus among all the most educated and intelligent members of our civilization. Please show a little respect and listen to them.

Yes, and they are repeatedly wrong in their predictions. We can't accurately forecast the weather a few days out. All our great hurricane model forecasts are off and that's typically a day or two out in the future. There are just far too many variables at play that we don't even know about for us to accurately forecast anything climate related that far into the future.

You don’t have to be able to predict weather to predict climate.

Think of it this way: it’s impossible due to quantum uncertainty to predict the path of a single particle in a gas. Yet out of the chaos, you can still draw out nice mathematical rules like the ideal gas law PV=nRT