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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

#111

Post by wbsss4412 »

seiferteric wrote: post #108
wbsss4412 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Im going to speak to the US as I am American, but most of this could be implemented in other countries. Global action requires diplomacy and global agreements, but these policies could be replicated in other places/it’s not like there isn’t buy in around the world to varying degrees. In no particular order: institute carbon taxes, tie in climate based criteria for fha loans including weatherization, electrification a…

You just listed a bunch of wishes, not things that can actually pass today… that’s the problem I’m pointing out.

Can is a matter of a small handful of people making a decision.

Calling that wishful is abdicating responsibility.

The point is we aren’t powerless, we just love acting like we are.

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

#112

Post by philipkglass »

acdha wrote: post #93
JamesBarney wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many times in that past 1000 years have we solved large hard problems through a global agreement to make everyone worse off? We can't pass a carbon tax in the US, imagining China or India doing that with much lower standards of livings is insane. How many times in the past 1000 years have we solved large hard problems through technology? We already have the technology, we can just build a bunch of nuclear reactor…

> How many times in that past 1000 years have we solved large hard problems through a global agreement to make everyone worse off? People said the same thing: we couldn't afford clean water, emissions controls or fuel economy systems for cars, ending use of DDT (and that even years after its effectiveness had fallen off of a cliff due to selected immunity), power-efficient appliances, replacing incandescent lightbulb…

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with the point you are responding to or contesting it. These positive developments have a large technological component to them. Adopting new and improved technologies didn't make people worse off. People got the same amount of light from LED bulbs while reducing the consumption of electricity by 75%. A purely behavioral approach to the lighting problem would mean something more like "everyone still uses incandescent bulbs, but for 75% fewer hours per year." That actually makes people worse off and has much worse prospects for widespread adoption.

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

#113

Post by [deleted] »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #103
seiferteric wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the other we are taking responsibility for changing behavior which we have control over. Okay, propose concrete actions, political, legal even military if needed that you think will help accomplish this and could actually work globally?

Im going to speak to the US as I am American, but most of this could be implemented in other countries. Global action requires diplomacy and global agreements, but these policies could be replicated in other places/it’s not like there isn’t buy in around the world to varying degrees. In no particular order: institute carbon taxes, tie in climate based criteria for fha loans including weatherization, electrification a…

[deleted]

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

#114

Post by mfer »

scythe wrote: post #98
mfer wrote: post #28

This weekend I read about how our food supply chain is responsible for a lot of greenhouse gases. As much as automobiles. That changing it could have a massive impact. But, people don't like change that touches their food and leaders just won't even talk about it. How do we get people to be open to changes in stuff like this?

>But, people don't like change that touches their food and leaders just won't even talk about it. How do we get people to be open to changes in stuff like this? You don't. I don't know where you get the idea that "leaders won't even talk about it", because I've been bombarded with articles about the GHG costs of agriculture for over a decade. It's everywhere. And frankly, a lot of it is borderline deliberately mislea…

You bring up some points worth talking about. For example...

> Articles will choose to highlight the fact that about a quarter of global emissions are due to agriculture — but if you stick to developed countries, it's a tenth.

The reason this is discussed in percentages is that developed countries put out more GHG that developing countries. So, the percent from the food supply chain is a smaller percentage but still a large amount.

There are also different GHGs. Those from our food supply chain, outside of CO2, last in the atmosphere less time and have a greater impact. This means that lowering them has a shorter time to seeing the impact.

> The "plant-based" lobby is well-funded and manages to insert themselves all over the conversation while other industries like cement/steel/landfill/heating/shipping get little to no political or regulatory attention.

If you follow the money you'll find that big AG is far more well funded than "plant-based". I recently learned that 60% of cholesterol studies are funded by the egg industry alone. Big AG is massively funded.

Digging into the details rather than the surface discussions is illuminating.

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

#115

Post by wbsss4412 »

JamesBarney wrote: post #62
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…

How many times in that past 1000 years have we solved large hard problems through a global agreement to make everyone worse off? We can't pass a carbon tax in the US, imagining China or India doing that with much lower standards of livings is insane. How many times in the past 1000 years have we solved large hard problems through technology? We already have the technology, we can just build a bunch of nuclear reactor…

1000 years ago we didn’t have global communications… I don’t see how this is a reasonable timescale for comparison.

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

#116

Post by trustscientism »

It seems like there is a dogmatic, myopic focus on merely reducing emissions to "solve climate change", based on a completely hypothetical notion that we can control the weather like a thermostat.

We would do well to have a more broad conversation about sustainability, resiliency, and adaptability for the inevitable reality that the climate is going to change drastically no matter what.

The planet has been averaging "civilization ending" climatological catastrophies about once every 10,000 years for the past ~160,000 years or more from a variety of different causes; the last one being around 12,000 years ago...

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

#117

Post by munificent »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #105
munificent wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a fascinatingly weird sentence. You're using falsifiability here, I assume, to deliberately invoke the Popperian notion of what is and isn't science, but then applying it to a description of the science process itself. The short answer is that, no, no one can provide a falsifiable definition of scientific consensus any more than one could devise an experiment that uses the scientific method to validate the sc…

You cleverly avoided the topic "scientific consensus" by changing the discussion to "science" as a broader (oddly undefinable) concept. Don't you think it's a risky argument to present something as black and white as facts (science is supposed to be based on them almost exclusively in some areas) as merely a concept of group imagination? Assuming there is no psychological perspective to be argued, surely a factual, p…

> You cleverly avoided the topic "scientific consensus" by changing the discussion to "science" as a broader (oddly undefinable) concept.

I believe the two are essentially synonymous. "Scentific consensus" is what most scientists agree is true. "Science" is the process people use to define who is a scientist and what that consensus is.

> Don't you think it's a risky argument to present something as black and white as facts (science is supposed to be based on them almost exclusively in some areas) as merely a concept of group imagination?

Absolutely not. While there may be facts "out there" that are black and white, we have no metaphysical direct access to them. Consensus is as close to black and white as facts get. We're all just primate brains full neurons screeching monkey sounds at each other. We are not mathematical machines of pure reason.

> surely a factual, provable definition can be at least attempted?

"Factual" and "provable" are not concepts that apply to definitions. Can you offer a factual falsifiable proof of the definition of "squirrel"? "Green"?

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

#118

Post by criddell »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #111
seiferteric wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just listed a bunch of wishes, not things that can actually pass today… that’s the problem I’m pointing out.

Can is a matter of a small handful of people making a decision. Calling that wishful is abdicating responsibility. The point is we aren’t powerless, we just love acting like we are.

The small handful of people have to answer to their constituents and voters are hostile to anything that will raise taxes or lower their quality of life today.

That might change if things get bad enough, but by then it's probably too late for anything but a technological miracle.

Non-democratic countries (like China and Russia) have a better chance of making the changes because there it truly is the case that a small number of people can bring about change.

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

#119

Post by badRNG »

_skel wrote: post #102
badRNG wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> 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 No it doesn't. My argument is that if the scientists start bringing more politics into this, they make the political situation even worse than it is now, and they give people even more reasons to resist listening.

So where's the line? How much scientific evidence must we suppress to avoid offending reactionary sensibilities?

The fact that climate change is human caused is deeply political in the US. Should the IPCC suppress this fact too to cater to a tiny minority of science deniers?

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

#120

Post by moritzwarhier »

wbsss4412 wrote: post #111
seiferteric wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just listed a bunch of wishes, not things that can actually pass today… that’s the problem I’m pointing out.

Can is a matter of a small handful of people making a decision. Calling that wishful is abdicating responsibility. The point is we aren’t powerless, we just love acting like we are.

I love how well you made that argument, although I am as disillusioned as your other respondent.

Another problem is that countries are also in a global economic competition.

The legislative frameworks still do not keep the costs of destroying the planet from being so low that doing so is an economic imperative.

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