51–60 of 147 posts
Flagging climate stories? WTF?
Perhaps a vested interest controls lots of accounts on here and wants to bury stories of this nature (pun not intended)? The comments don't appear to have descended into a flame war so I suspect a bot net has manually flagged it to death. I've seen it a lot on here and it makes me think it's not worth engaging with HN any more.
I've thought a lot about climate change and it's consequences. If we trigger runaway warming through feedback loops involved permafrost and ocean (hydrates) methane - things are going to get really, really bad. This happened when ~5C degree warming from millions of years of the Siberian traps eruptions caused methane hydrates to be released into the atmosphere, triggering another ~5C warming and the greatest mass ext…
This is part of the reason so little is being done to combat climate change now. If we don't act now though, the future generations will definitely drown. It will be too late for them to do anything.
> That's one of the few countries likely to benefit from climate change.
This is one of the most dangerous delusions. In our globalised interconnected world nobody will benefit. Just think about the last financial crisis. Mortgage crisis in the US caused chaos in the whole world.
> A set of troubling charts shows how little progress nations have made toward limiting greenhouse-gas emissions. When countries have made real progress "toward limiting greenhouse-gas emission" one would not need charts to see it: it would be immediately evident in everyday lifestyles, consumer habits, and energy use...
Not necessarily. For example just switching over coal-fired plants to gas-fired plants reduces carbon emissions by 50%. (This is a big reason why the US's emissions have decelerated since 2000.) Yet that would be almost entirely invisible at the consumer level.
In order of what will probably work best:
* Something barely noticeable (eg: any improvement in electricity production that does not make the customer's price skyrocket.)
* Something noticeable but not fundamentally annoying (Pay people to get electric vehicles, Norway-style. Make a large part of your transportation public and electric.)
* Something noticeable, but fun . I don't have a big idea on this one, and it kinda sucks.
* Something noticeable, and that "gets you laid" (tm). Something along the lines of "I have a Tesla. You should have sex with me.", but scalable. If someone finds this, we're saved.
The last one would be even more powerful as it could reshape at least some people's identity into "I'm the kind of person who care about climate change", so all the other changes that actually require discomfort could get rationalized away (apparently, we're pretty good at this as a species.)
So maybe someone needs to organize Vegan Supermodel Orgies as well as marching in NY. Just saying.
Is so obvious where this is all going: The wealthy -the factories owners and their close allies- the very same ones ignoring the pledges to stop contributing to climate change will be the only ones protected enough from most damages of climate change, only the wealthy will afford to live in the cities with livable temperature, to buy potable water, only the most resilient of the poor and middle-class will survive, an…
Frankly this kind of doomsaying view has no basis in reality. While it's true that unmitigated global warming will impose a very large economic cost, it's simply not the case that it's going to turn the world into some unlivable hell-scape. There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence. The best estimates say that global warming will lower per capita GDP by somewhere between 5-20% by 2100. That's a tra…
I mean, when you see how easily we set the world on fire because of some oil or water today, it is not unreasonable to assume that this is going to become even more violent when resources becomes more scarce.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly this kind of doomsaying view has no basis in reality. While it's true that unmitigated global warming will impose a very large economic cost, it's simply not the case that it's going to turn the world into some unlivable hell-scape. There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence. The best estimates say that global warming will lower per capita GDP by somewhere between 5-20% by 2100. That's a tra…
What a clueless comment. It's a tragedy for reasons MUCH beyond 'unnecessarily lost wealth'. I know you are trying to argue in good faith, but you're flat out wrong in the sense that doomsday despair is EXACTLY what we should all be feeling. A world depleted of its glaciers, lacking in drinkable water, lacking in animal diversity, lacking in arable land, lacking in coral reefs, coastal cities with all their rich hist…
None of these will be true though?
I've thought a lot about climate change and it's consequences. If we trigger runaway warming through feedback loops involved permafrost and ocean (hydrates) methane - things are going to get really, really bad. This happened when ~5C degree warming from millions of years of the Siberian traps eruptions caused methane hydrates to be released into the atmosphere, triggering another ~5C warming and the greatest mass ext…
> relax, you'll be dead by then This is part of the reason so little is being done to combat climate change now. If we don't act now though, the future generations will definitely drown. It will be too late for them to do anything. > That's one of the few countries likely to benefit from climate change. This is one of the most dangerous delusions. In our globalised interconnected world nobody will benefit. Just think…
I still think the comparative lack of low-lying coastal land, plus ample freshwater, increased growing season, and increased arable land will be net benefit for Canada and Russia. Plus if things are as bad as you say, they'll benefit from increased demand for immigration as well (even if you don't take on more people, you can select more desirable immigrants.)
This is not a crash situation like 2008, this is more like a glacier that's flowing towards you. You have plenty of time to plan your response, like moving out of the way, but you can't stop it. Trouble in other countries will have unpredictable, but not necessarily all bad effects.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Frankly this kind of doomsaying view has no basis in reality. While it's true that unmitigated global warming will impose a very large economic cost, it's simply not the case that it's going to turn the world into some unlivable hell-scape. There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence. The best estimates say that global warming will lower per capita GDP by somewhere between 5-20% by 2100. That's a tra…
Someone at Reason actually read the UN/IPCC report. There is no doomsday in it. From https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a... > So how much economic damage will pursuing the IPCC's fast transition to a no-carbon energy system spare us? The report asserts that if no policies aimed specifically at reducing carbon dioxide emissions are adopted, then average global temperature is projected to rise…
https://skepticalscience.com/ipcc-scientific-consensus.htm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/30/clima...
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43e8yp/the-uns-devastatin...
I've thought a lot about climate change and it's consequences. If we trigger runaway warming through feedback loops involved permafrost and ocean (hydrates) methane - things are going to get really, really bad. This happened when ~5C degree warming from millions of years of the Siberian traps eruptions caused methane hydrates to be released into the atmosphere, triggering another ~5C warming and the greatest mass ext…
This is just based on my casual reading of events and history. If anyone knows of any good articles talking about this sort of thing, link me.
Is so obvious where this is all going: The wealthy -the factories owners and their close allies- the very same ones ignoring the pledges to stop contributing to climate change will be the only ones protected enough from most damages of climate change, only the wealthy will afford to live in the cities with livable temperature, to buy potable water, only the most resilient of the poor and middle-class will survive, an…
Frankly this kind of doomsaying view has no basis in reality. While it's true that unmitigated global warming will impose a very large economic cost, it's simply not the case that it's going to turn the world into some unlivable hell-scape. There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence. The best estimates say that global warming will lower per capita GDP by somewhere between 5-20% by 2100. That's a tra…
What kind of dangerous demagoguery will people turn to if the world economy gets sucker punched? Sure, people will lose, but what happens if a class of people lose far more than everyone else, and refuse to take it passively?
We don't even know what a world without constant growth looks like.
The biggest thing to fear in such a scenario is other people and their weapons.