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Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

nature.com

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Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#81

Post by janto »

slg wrote: post #23
luxuryballs wrote: post #16

Quoted post unavailable.

The description on that episode: >Steven E. Koonin is a theoretical physicist, professor, former Chief Scientist for the BP petroleum company, and former Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy under the Obama administration. He's also the author of "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters." I'm not sure "former Chief Scientist for the BP petroleum company" i…

I don't think that's a fair implication, but a "balanced take" means nothing to me on this topic. I want all sides to argue their position as hard as they can and then let me decide for myself.

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#82

Post by wbsss4412 »

seiferteric wrote: post #56
ryeights wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand why this is downvoted. This is exactly my perception as well: techno-optimism is dangerous, and there really is no excuse for the amount of pointless conspicuous consumption that occurs in modern life.

So techno-optimism is dangerous, but social/political optimism is not? At least we somewhat know how to make technology, but I don't think anyone knows how to force this social change on the world.

It’s not optimism, it’s about where the solution lies.

In one case we are wishing for a solution to fall out of some genuis minds. In the other we are taking responsibility for changing behavior which we have control over.

That’s not optimism, it’s pragmatism.

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#83

Post by _skel »

badRNG wrote: post #67
atlantas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The report also references for the first time “historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism” Unfortunately these are not scientists. This just one example, but they are ideologues and activists first who wear science as a skin and bully scientists into submission. We saw how disastrous this was for Covid response with how science was treated as religion ("Believe Science"). The first thing we mus…

> Unfortunately these are not scientists. Are we really at the point where we are going to claim that the IPCC aren't scientists? This seems to be little more than reactionary backlash at a sound observation of the social impact of climate change on communities (and the report does a great job of elaborating which communities and what impacts.) Must we "eject" every scientist who observes a social impact that someone…

Do you want people who are not left-wing to listen to scientists?

When you are trying to convince people to believe in something they don’t want to believe in, it’s a bad move to insult them or inject inflammatory political views into the discussion.

This kind of language about colonialism, inequity, etc. is going to alienate a lot of people — just like the smug self-righteousness of “I believe in science” (which implies that anyone who disagrees with the speaker doesn’t believe in science) alienated millions of people and made the anti-vax movement stronger.

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#84

Post by harpersealtako »

slg wrote: post #23
luxuryballs wrote: post #16

Quoted post unavailable.

The description on that episode: >Steven E. Koonin is a theoretical physicist, professor, former Chief Scientist for the BP petroleum company, and former Under Secretary for Science at the U.S. Department of Energy under the Obama administration. He's also the author of "Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters." I'm not sure "former Chief Scientist for the BP petroleum company" i…

I wouldn't personally call it "balanced" either (unless "balanced" counts anything between extreme climate change alarmism and extreme climate change denial).

That said, I do think it's a valuable contrarian perspective, and if you haven't heard the steel-manned version of the climate change "skeptic" argument, it's absolutely worth listening to just to add some nuance to your existing views even if it doesn't necessarily change them. There are some really legitimate, strong criticisms that he raises in the episode that I personally plan on doing more research on.

(also: he was Chief Scientist in BP with their alternative and renewable energy strategy)

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#85

Post by acdha »

twofornone wrote: post #49

>The report also references for the first time “historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism” that contribute to many regions’ vulnerability to climate change. Because I'm sure these people would somehow be worse off without the exposure to modern technology and civilization from colonialism... This research should really stick to climate, harder to take it seriously when it comes with a side of wo…

> Because I'm sure these people would somehow be worse off without the exposure to modern technology and civilization from colonialism...

> This research should really stick to climate, harder to take it seriously when it comes with a side of woke propaganda.

This ignorance is a great example of why this is needed: many of the mitigations are unaffordable for the countries worst affected and a poorer population has less reserve capacity to make cuts — as a simple example, a great way for Americans to reduce their carbon output would be to eat half as much beef, and while there'd be some whining nobody would be going hungry because of that. That's a big contrast to a country where long periods of colonial mismanagement followed by a haphazard return to local government means that most of the population is still highly sensitive to things like droughts, changes in insect / animal population, etc. Yes, plenty of that is due to local corruption and should be recognized as such but that's far from all of it and certainly doesn't mean that we should ignore that a lot of people are going to suffer from pollution our countries emitted.

https://origin.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/co2-emissi...

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#86

Post by fullshark »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #57
fullshark wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any alternative, people will not accept lower living standards, except possibly minor inconveniences. There may not be a single magic pill but there are multiple technologies in concert that can be utilized to slow this down and possibly stablize things (e.g. there are multiple alternative energy sources)

That attitude is a self fulfilling prophecy. People have rarely been presented with any realistic trade offs between the climate and their own consumption. Typically it’s been “become and aesthetic and give up all material goods or it’s pointless”. Large portions of waste and pollution are already accounted for by the time individuals are presented with a choice.

Whats your suggestion exactly, and what's a realistic trade off that you think will have dramatic impacts? Economic nudging I think can do some things, certainly taxes and gov't investments (i.e. build a nuclear power plant, people don't care how they get power largely as long as they get power). We have people recycling a generation later even though it's annoying but now that's supposedly terrible among environmentalists anyway so you can do some things I grant.

But if your plan is decrease global consumption (not even per capita, just absolute consumption cause the environment doesn't care how many people there are) X% it doesn't even matter what that number is you will fail.

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#87

Post by throwaway5752 »

atlantas wrote: post #36
throwaway5752 wrote: post #2

Scientists have had a pretty good record on this, compared to the general public, industry, and policymakers. I am happy to not throw them under the bus.

> The report also references for the first time “historical and ongoing patterns of inequity such as colonialism” Unfortunately these are not scientists. This just one example, but they are ideologues and activists first who wear science as a skin and bully scientists into submission. We saw how disastrous this was for Covid response with how science was treated as religion ("Believe Science"). The first thing we mus…

So what about that? I ignored it. The climate is warming at a dangerous rate for human civilization and focusing non-core one liners is a distraction from the real issue.

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#88

Post by dlnovell »

blurker wrote: post #7

One of my concerns as someone who is part of the tech community is the innovation delusion. Many of us are focused on "magic pill" technology solutions to get us out of this. Things like fusion, carbon capture, electric cars, etc... As someone with an engineering background, I've been guilty of this type of thinking too. Whenever I encounter a problem I think about how I could apply technology to solve it. However, I…

We have to do everything. There's no either/or... we HAVE to reduce consumption, we HAVE to find lower-carbon alternatives for everything we continue to consume, and we HAVE to create technologies to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

It's not gambling or a delusion to say we must create new technologies to have a prayer of solving the problem. And of course there's no "magic pill" - we need to innovate in a thousand different ways, simultaneously.

The scale of the problem is hard to truly wrap ones head around, but it's crystal clear that voluntary sacrifice and curtailing consumption as the primary solution is a non-starter. That's not how humans work.

Also, what about developing countries? Are we going to tell them they have to consume less too? Seems unreasonable. So we're going to ask the developed world to consume less, and some of us might reduce a little bit... nowhere near the scale of emissions reductions that are necessary. Seems more like a rounding error than an actual impact.

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#89

Post by wbsss4412 »

qgin wrote: post #50
blurker wrote: post #7

One of my concerns as someone who is part of the tech community is the innovation delusion. Many of us are focused on "magic pill" technology solutions to get us out of this. Things like fusion, carbon capture, electric cars, etc... As someone with an engineering background, I've been guilty of this type of thinking too. Whenever I encounter a problem I think about how I could apply technology to solve it. However, I…

You’re not wrong, but hoping people will choose anything other than the default thing is going to result in failure. If you lay out cities for cars, people will use cars. If you build massive urban areas in places that stay in the 90s with high humidity, people are going to blast the AC. If disposable things are cheaper than longer lasting things because there’s no cost to throwing it away, people are going to do it.…

I think that was the point they were making.

Techno-optimism is saying “don’t worry, we don’t need to change anything, technology will save us!”

Re: Climate change is hitting the planet faster than scientists originally thought

#90

Post by badRNG »

_skel wrote: post #83
badRNG wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately these are not scientists. Are we really at the point where we are going to claim that the IPCC aren't scientists? This seems to be little more than reactionary backlash at a sound observation of the social impact of climate change on communities (and the report does a great job of elaborating which communities and what impacts.) Must we "eject" every scientist who observes a social impact that someone…

Do you want people who are not left-wing to listen to scientists? When you are trying to convince people to believe in something they don’t want to believe in, it’s a bad move to insult them or inject inflammatory political views into the discussion. This kind of language about colonialism, inequity, etc. is going to alienate a lot of people — just like the smug self-righteousness of “I believe in science” (which imp…

This presupposes that scientists are the reason that "not left-wing" people (in reality a small fraction of US conservatives) aren't listening to scientists. The fact that climate change is human caused is political in the states, should that, too, be left out of the IPCC report to make it more palatable?
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