Live data from Hacker News

The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

propublica.org

71–80 of 84 posts

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#71

And yet he had children. Having just one child increases your climate footprint beyond your control -even if it's zero otherwise. Besides that, beyond his (outdoor toilet & food) masochism he is a massive hypocrite like EVERY SINGLE person that publicly whines about climate change: Unibody macbook, car, christmas lights, another macbook, iPhone, wait a second... is this a god damn amazon box in the background? Yes it…

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/black-or-white

I feel we are all hypocrites when it comes to values. I don't think slave labor is a good thing but I am sure that I, living in the West, have benefitted from historical slavery and continue to benefit from thinly-disguised slavery in sweatshops/factories far away from me. Should we just bring back slavery everywhere?

The options are not "become a monk" or "give up and take everything you can". We can all do something to help and/or (probably more effective) lobby/vote for systemic change but none of us will ever be perfect.

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#72
post #21

I keep reading of a "climate crisis", and yet cannot see first hand any actual manifestation of it outside of the newspaper headlines. There is a covid crisis going on, and I can see that well, affects me personally, affects the economy, affects the country. A climate crisis? Absolutely not. There are climate-connected adverse events here and there in the world, some with higher frequency than in the past, but do the…

The climate is changing, and it seems to be primarily caused by human activity. With change comes unpredictability and unpredictability results in perceived (and potentially actual ) instability of systems that have been in place for millennia. If you're lucky you won't experience any crisis first-hand but for the ones experiencing things like random famines, water-shortages, poverty and conflict, all due to "climate…

> perceived (and potentially actual )

>If you're lucky you won't experience any crisis first-hand

Ok, so is it here or not?

> for the ones experiencing things like random famines, water-shortages, poverty and conflict

All of which existed before climate change (since ever, actually), and are due to a multiplicity of factors of which climate is just one, and probably one of the least relevant.

>going to be >may be >going forward

So is there a crisis right now or not?

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#73
Looking at how you will feel with the tenths of degree of temperature rise each year/decade is the wrong mindset. Because what goes up "slow" and steady is what we add of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.

We don't feel temperature as global averages over a year, we feel heatwaves of maybe days over 45ºC, hailstorms, hurricanes, droughts and massive loss of crops. Our cities won't go because a slow and steady, centimeter by centimeter rise of the sea level, will get ocassionally flooded by each time more frequent storms, till we decide that we should abandon them. An that won't happen evenly on all the world.

Regarding the "slow" rise of greenhouse gases, it happens orders above of what a person, or an organized and large enough group of persons can revert, the industries add really big amount of CO2 and methane to the atmosphere each year. But that slow rise gets jumps, not because what we do, but because triggering possitive feedback loop processes, like each time more frequent forest fires, loss of ice reflecting sunlight, and warming polar regions (that have a lot of frozen greenhouse gases, that are getting released in massive scale by now). And some of those positive feedback mechanisms will work by us, when most of us must take measures against the effects of extreme weather, like everyone having air conditioners and turned on most of the time.

Personal action won't make a difference, at least directly on global climate, the only thing at a large enough scale that could do something to slow down the trend are the big industries, and they won't do anything to affect their profits till is too late already. And regarding governments, the last 5 years already showed us that matter for most of them are profits and short term results too.

Maybe the Great Filter is already with us since we invented money, all that came after till this point just took the path of least resistance.

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#74
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The climate is changing, and it seems to be primarily caused by human activity. With change comes unpredictability and unpredictability results in perceived (and potentially actual ) instability of systems that have been in place for millennia. If you're lucky you won't experience any crisis first-hand but for the ones experiencing things like random famines, water-shortages, poverty and conflict, all due to "climate…

> perceived (and potentially actual ) >If you're lucky you won't experience any crisis first-hand Ok, so is it here or not? > for the ones experiencing things like random famines, water-shortages, poverty and conflict All of which existed before climate change (since ever, actually), and are due to a multiplicity of factors of which climate is just one, and probably one of the least relevant. >going to be >may be >go…

> So is there a crisis right now or not?

That is the beauty of it all; even if climate change only works as a nudge that causes a series of events to escalate, there will still be other factors to take into account. Solving climate change won't change that.

Is the house on fire? Or is there just a large number of small fires in the basement, on the roof, in the outer walls and some of the curtains?

The consequences, so far, are manageable in most cases. Whether we're in a crisis already, or just having a few problems that we know will escalate into a crisis at some point, is rather irrelevant when it comes to preventing further damage from being done.

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#75

This guy remembers me about the golden rule in product management: If a lot of customers complain about something, they are almost always right. If they tell you how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. Outdoor toilet? OMG, please! It annoys me to no end that with the current environmental catastrophes, almost nobody approaches this with a quantitative engineering mindset, especially the ones who care most: Progr…

Look at CFCs and the hole in the ozone. We came together as a world to ban them, and the hole in the ozone is largely healing. It's a great story.

But with one wrinkle: We had a good alternative to CFCs that cost about the same.

With oil and gas, we kinda don't have a good alternative yet. Sure, sure, solar is very cheap nowadays. But from a carbon footprint viewpoint? Solar is still pretty high when you remember you have to melt down all that silicon before you go soak up the sun.

Nuclear? Pebble Bed? Thorium? Public's got a very bad smell about that stuff. Besides, you just can't let all the autocrats out there get their hands on it otherwise they start making up things about having a-bombs and then things get invasion-y. Not cheap, those invasions.

Hydro? Wind? Great if you live in Vancouver or Nepal, but in Arkansas or Uttar Pradesh?

Unlike with CFCs, we just don't have a single power source that meet the requirements wherever you go. It's got to be a mosaic of power, and that's hard (read expensive) to manage and make.

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#76
post #40

Every month I go into The Who Is Hiring thread and Ctrl-F for “climate,” “energy,” and “carbon” and almost never turn anything up. I’ve been part of this community for something like ten years and I know many people on here to be extremely shrewd and intelligent, and yet, over and over again, I see people who don’t understand the scale of climate change at all, nor the scale of the opportunity involved in transitioni…

As for your search: there's climate.careers - a site with jobs based around climate change.

I know HN skews mostly from the USA, but after being subscribed to that site for a while I found very few remote jobs (and usually requiring the ability to work in the US).

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#77
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely you mean "guessing"? What are you basing your estimate on? An estimate is based on metrics. You can't use that word "estimate" without at least citing what you base it on. If you were to reach 2030 and things are alright climate wise, would you decide you are wrong, or pick another deadline? What is your criteria for deciding whether or not you should change your mind?

Those are entirely the wrong questions to be asking.

If so, it implies your original statement was entirely the wrong statement to be making.

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#78
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your expectation for the response to 100M refugees pouring across the border?

Show me where that's happening because of climate change. Oh, I know, its gonna happen soon™. You can sell me doom by showing me. Again I ask, risking asking the wrong question, where's your support for your "estimate" that society will collapse globally by 2030 due to climate change?

The car is speeding toward a cliff edge. "Maybe the cliff edge is 200 feet away, not 100. Maybe the cliff is only 100 feet high, not 200. Could there be some gravel at the bottom, and not just boulders? Maybe it's not a cliff at all! Let's just think about this more. It would be terrible to act and then discover we didn't need to, just yet!"

What facts are you in doubt about? Do you have doubts that, as already-hot places become uninhabitable, people will flee toward places that are not, instead of staying put and, you know, dying? Europe is failing to absorb the refugee influx it already sees. In the US, 70M+ people voted for fascism in 2016 and in 2020, and a BorderWall™.

Do you doubt that as coral reefs bleach and oceans acidify, fisheries will collapse? They are already collapsing. Do you believe that as people fail to get enough protein, they will not respond with desperation?

Or are you one who insists that we don't have proof sufficiently iron-clad that record-high temperatures and record-low ocean pH will continue responding, as predicted and as observed for decades, to rising CO2 levels, and that we must act as if nothing is happening?

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#79

This guy remembers me about the golden rule in product management: If a lot of customers complain about something, they are almost always right. If they tell you how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. Outdoor toilet? OMG, please! It annoys me to no end that with the current environmental catastrophes, almost nobody approaches this with a quantitative engineering mindset, especially the ones who care most: Progr…

You’re confusing a few things though. A plastic ban has nothing to do with climate change. The drivers for a plastic ban lie elsewhere. And the fact that Europe’s rivers aren’t among the top 4 likely has everything to do with that plastic ban and the fact that Europe isn’t as populous as the places whose rivers do contribute the most plastic to the ocean. Also, the fact that until recently much of Europe almost certa…

I would say plastic bans only reduces ocean plastics on the tiny margin if the country has a well developed waste management system, which most European countries has.

Coming from a country importing garbage to use as fuel in combined power and heating plants I see no major problem with some countries exporting garbage.

China imported plastics to recycle, not throw into their rivers. They stopped because the learned that the health cost exceeded the tiny profits that industry made.

With that said, banning some kinds of plastic use under certain circumstances is a good thing. For a sustainable solution we still need to figure out recycling, correctly used, plastic is an awesome material.

Re: The Climate Crisis Is Worse Than You Can Imagine. Here’s What Happens If You Try

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to a TED talk at UNGA week a few years ago, and the presenter talked about various things that can be done to limit climate change. At the top of the list was women's education/empowerment. This got a lot of applause from the audience, who were excited to clap for preventing climate change and empowering women at the same time. The presenter did briefly mention the reason that these two laudable goals coincide…

Your presenter is obviously wrong. The US ans Europe with far smaller populations have significantly greater climate footprints than China and India, for example. And that’s before we adjust for the fact that a lot of China’s footprint is US/European footprint outsourced to China. Indians having fewer kids will do nothing to reduce the already too large impact of the existing US/European populations. Also the idea th…

What was the presenter wrong about?

And can't both be true? Developed countries need to reduce per capita emissions and developing countries need to reduce capita increase. 1000 * 1 = 100 * 10 and 2000 * 1 > 100 * 10.

Also on the plus side, reducing excessive population growth will reduce local resource need and thus local resource wars.

Post reply on HN