A 3°C world has no safe place • Hacker News Board

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#101

Post by betterunix2 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #82

scoofy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American development pattern is the problem that we can actually solve. If you genuinely care, and this isn't pandering, read the book Strong Towns. Our cities are designed as inefficiently as possible, on purpose, and things like zoning and automobile infrastructure literally ban climate conscious living spaces. We should also at least have a carbon tax for things like normalizing beef as an alternative rather t…

Other than world war, what mechanisms do you propose to get China, India, and the entire 3rd world on to an effective carbon tax plan? I mean, if the answer is world war, I’ll at least give you credit for an honest answer. I just rarely see that come up. The truth is yes we can and should do better, but also realize that other nations will take any advantage they can, including ignoring climate concerns. So if it’s a…

You impose tariffs on their exported goods to compensate for their failure to impose carbon taxes, and maybe even impose an export tax on goods shipped to them. China needs trade with other countries and will get on board with a carbon tax if enough of the world is on board with such a plan, no war needed.

Of course if things are truly implemented fairly, the US will also likely be subject to such taxes due to our own apparent inability to reduce our per capita carbon emissions...

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#102

Post by lumost » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

jdavis703 wrote: post #85

abeppu wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Up until now, I think it's been too hard to direct your money away from the companies emitting loads of carbon. But I wonder, now that Europe is talking about a border tax for imported carbon, and the US has introduced legislation for a border tax, could that change, even before other places institute the same? To be eligible for import to Europe, would producers elsewhere need to tally and report the carbon associat…

Most of the companies on the various “top polluters” lists are energy companies. We can direct our money away from them by walking, biking, transiting or buying an EV.

A lot of energy goes into manufacturing products such as steel, plastic, aluminum, servers etc.

The energy sources for these items are at the discretion of the large buyers. A steel plant can absolutely make the switch from coal to solar/wind at its own discretion.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#103

Post by SV_BubbleTime » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

donatj wrote: post #28

azalemeth wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I equally wish that more Americans used SI -- Farenheit is about as familiar to me as Rankine; I have been bitten by the US use of 'mil' to mean thousandths of an inch whilst remaining how some en-gb engineers use it as inaccurate slang for mm. But this is a big distraction. Alas, I know that the whole reason we're in this pickle is that scientific literacy is low, and most people prefer short term gains over longer…

> I have been bitten by the US use of 'mil' to mean thousandths of an inch Huh, I live in the US and I've only ever heard that called a thou but wikipedia backs you up. I'd think a mil would be a millionth of an inch.

You see mil in small scale CAD all the time, circuit boards and chips and footprints are close to 50% mils vs mm in my experience if not more.

I use mm, but it’s often a pain when premade parts and libraries are in mils.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#104

Post by ip26 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #74

noasaservice wrote: post #27

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics…

> I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. > So what do I do? know what we're doing is what we can Everything you do is inconsequential in the face of living in a detached single family home on a quarter acre lot. That very simple fact has exponential knock on effects requiring so much more mass to move so much further and hence consuming so much more energy, that everythi…

If we could wave a magic wand & cut global energy consumption in half via more public transit & denser living, but still burning fossil fuels... we would have the exact same crisis, perhaps delayed a few years.

I'm naturally inclined towards austerity, but this problem cannot be fixed with cutbacks & efficiency alone.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#105

Post by simonh » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #61

noasaservice wrote: post #27

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics…

Apparently, a reasonably sustainable level of CO2 production is about 3T per person per year. The average in the US is about 17.5T pp/yr. But ... 5.3T pp/yr of that amount is caused by the existing coal fired power plants in the USA. So one thing you could do is to write to your elected representatives to specifically petition for the abandonment of this form of power generation and its replacement with renewable sys…

Even replacing coal with natural gas generation would eliminate about 2.5T PP/yr. Obviously we can do better than that, but it probably makes sense to some extent as an interim measure. What I mean is some highly beneficial changes don’t even need to be particularly drastic or costly.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#106

Post by mastax » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

dmead wrote: post #90

scoofy wrote: post #49

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished…

You're asking people to suffering annoyances and spend lots of money when the average income has been going down for 40 years. I'm surprised you're surprised.

It hasn't? https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#107

Post by AussieWog93 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #82

scoofy wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American development pattern is the problem that we can actually solve. If you genuinely care, and this isn't pandering, read the book Strong Towns. Our cities are designed as inefficiently as possible, on purpose, and things like zoning and automobile infrastructure literally ban climate conscious living spaces. We should also at least have a carbon tax for things like normalizing beef as an alternative rather t…

Other than world war, what mechanisms do you propose to get China, India, and the entire 3rd world on to an effective carbon tax plan? I mean, if the answer is world war, I’ll at least give you credit for an honest answer. I just rarely see that come up. The truth is yes we can and should do better, but also realize that other nations will take any advantage they can, including ignoring climate concerns. So if it’s a…

The EU already have a solution for this - they tax imports from nations that don't have an ETA themselves.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#108

Post by tkiolp4 » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #49

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished…

> It’s surreal.

I would say it’s human nature. We, humans, learn by making mistakes. There may be small differences among countries in the way we address, let’s say, climate change (e.g., Amsterdam is full of people riding bikes while Madrid is not), but at the end we all behave the same, whether in NY, Athens, or Santiago: we, as a world-wide society, only care about our immediate future, about our needs right now. The future? Well, let’s talk about that tomorrow. Countless of civilizations have disappeared (or transformed) due to this very short-term thinking way of doing things. We may disappear (or transform) as well.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#109

Post by miltondts » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

chana_masala wrote: post #2

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

The larger issue is that measuring the problem in degrees, doesn't convey the gravity or the urgency of the situation. Most will associate it with seasonal changes, or sea rise or extreme weather. But that is just the surface level.

What happens when millions are displaced because India, Pakistan and much of Africa can no longer support human life? What happens when food and water output is reduced? What happens when droughts stops being weather events, but become permanent? What happens if ocean accidification gets to levels where a sudden massive extinction happens? People are greatly underestimating the dangers of climate change. If what is described in the IPCC reports comes to pass and if we really are already at 2C as some reports indicate https://www.ecowatch.com/greenhouse-gases-paris-agreement-26.... Then we will see massive destabilization of global society. Most current societies are simply not equipped to deal with all the problems that will happen at the same time.

I do hope we can still do something to prevent this. But at this point we really need to go to negative emissions and fast, yet the best we can muster is 10 years of increasing emissions followed by another 20-30 of decreasing, and this is assuming the governments can stick to those targets. Assuming we are at 2C, then 4C by 2100 seems probable. Interesting times ahead.

Re: A 3°C world has no safe place

#110

Post by RedditKon » Fri, Jul 23, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

scoofy wrote: post #49

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished…

100 companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions. This isn't a right/left problem - both parties have let corporations get away with runaway pollution for entirely too long.