Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Swerve

locusmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 207 posts

Re: The Swerve

#171

Post by gandalfgeek »

cosmic_shame wrote: post #167
dash2 wrote: post #57

Respectfully suggest this is nonsense. No serious climate scientist thinks we are going to fall off a cliff. There will be huge costs, yes. Civilization won't end, no. What people fail to grasp is that costs can be absolutely enormous but look like a blip compared to the effect of GDP growth in the long run. World War II is an example. The millions of deaths barely show up on a graph of world population. The huge los…

Nature did a poll of IPCC authors ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02990-w ) and 60% of them expect the world to warm >= 3°C.

Science does not work by popular vote.

Re: The Swerve

#172

Post by cosmic_shame »

gandalfgeek wrote: post #171
cosmic_shame wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nature did a poll of IPCC authors ( https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02990-w ) and 60% of them expect the world to warm >= 3°C.

Science does not work by popular vote.

I was adding context to OP's statement that "No serious climate scientist thinks we are going to fall off a cliff". If 60% of the most influential climate scientists expect the world to warm >= 3°C, and one believes (like I do) that >=3°C of warming constitutes a "cliff", then OP's statement is incorrect.

Re: The Swerve

#173

Post by BLKNSLVR »

jamiek88 wrote: post #139
swayvil wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preaching to the choir pays his rent. The other options are sucking oligarchs, amusing children, selling off your body parts, living in a cardboard box and the vast frontier of crime.

The only thing stopping me being a very successful criminal since the world went to shit and leaders started getting away with heinous obvious shit is the thought that my parents would be very disappointed. if we are doomed anyway I might as well have my time on a yacht too.

Same here except the reason is "vengeance may be visited upon my children". I also think my subconscious moral compass would declare war upon my conscious self.

Re: The Swerve

#174

Post by [deleted] »

Infernal wrote: post #155
mulmen wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's more like we are stuck in a confined space and slowly gassing ourselves with CO2 and we are arguing over turning the engine off. Oh, wait, no, it is literally that.

I feel like the analogy has to be fleshed out with the caveat that "turning the engine off" kills some > 50% of the people in the confined space right away.

[deleted]

Re: The Swerve

#175

Post by dredmorbius »

mistermann wrote: post #102
hgomersall wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know what to do about climate change - stop emitting greenhouse gases, most notably carbon dioxide and methane. Any strategy that doesn't address that on the scale that is required can be immediately dismissed as noise. That leaves relatively few options, and those are well enumerated. Probably we need to do all of them.

> Any strategy that doesn't address that on the scale that is required can be immediately dismissed as noise. What about strategies designed to set the stage for that, but do not define it as a direct goal?

As Doctorow spent a substantial part of his essay saying: time.

We had decades to act decades ago.

The stage has been set. It's not set very advantageously.

We need to act. With significant effect. Now.

Re: The Swerve

#176

Post by jrmg »

LarryDarrell wrote: post #3

It's not a bus, it's a train. Best case you can slow it down for a few people to jump off. Carter told people to wear a sweater and the American people flipped out and elected a ghoulish union-busting zombie. Twice. There will be no change until it is forced upon us when the treats stop flowing. And even then you just have to hope that the populace has an accurate story in their heads as to why.

> Carter told people to wear a sweater and the American people flipped out and elected a ghoulish union-busting zombie.

I think you’re underestimating how much of Reagan’s appeal was _optimism_.

Re: The Swerve

#177

Post by Fricken »

yongjik wrote: post #64

> Incredibly, climate denial still festers. “There’s no cliff,” they insist. “This bus is on a smooth road that goes all the way to the promised land. Only a fool would swerve now.” I think I get the main theme, but I don't think "climate cliff" is a useful analogy. It makes one picture a scene of relative calm until suddenly (and abruptly) the shit hits the fan, when the reality is going to be far more messy. (Just…

We could also say the analogy is bad because not all of humanity can fit on a bus, but that would be a misunderstanding of what an analogy is for.

If Doctorow wanted a perfect analogy for our attitudes towards climate change, then he wouldn't use any analogy at all, he would talk directly about our attitudes to climate change.

The point of an analogy is to highlight a particular dynamic that both the analogy and the thing being analogised have in common.

Re: The Swerve

#178

Post by jfjrkkskdik »

yongjik wrote: post #64

> Incredibly, climate denial still festers. “There’s no cliff,” they insist. “This bus is on a smooth road that goes all the way to the promised land. Only a fool would swerve now.” I think I get the main theme, but I don't think "climate cliff" is a useful analogy. It makes one picture a scene of relative calm until suddenly (and abruptly) the shit hits the fan, when the reality is going to be far more messy. (Just…

> while we’re slowly dying.

Contracting anyway. The collapse of industrial activity due to covid cooled things off. Enough humans die off, humanity could ultimately survive in a more bucolic but tech stabilized system to help manage logistics, intentionally leave out all the military industrial complex and disposable crap production.

Religion wanted cheap manual labor; breed, breed, breed! We still rely on memes like Protestant work ethic despite the awareness there’s probably no “higher power” in the traditional sense. Less militant political leadership not grown of WWs but of managing a global ecological problem would wisely find value in the idea “doing less is more”.

Re: The Swerve

#179

Post by morelisp »

jrmg wrote: post #176
LarryDarrell wrote: post #3

It's not a bus, it's a train. Best case you can slow it down for a few people to jump off. Carter told people to wear a sweater and the American people flipped out and elected a ghoulish union-busting zombie. Twice. There will be no change until it is forced upon us when the treats stop flowing. And even then you just have to hope that the populace has an accurate story in their heads as to why.

> Carter told people to wear a sweater and the American people flipped out and elected a ghoulish union-busting zombie. I think you’re underestimating how much of Reagan’s appeal was _optimism_.

Optimism is “things can/will be better.” When things are bad, “things are better” is fraud and jingoism.

I agree much of Reagan’s popularity was due to his willingness to lie and flatter.

Re: The Swerve

#180

Post by ncmncm »

presentation wrote: post #145
ncmncm wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You imagine poor people in position to make choices that affect their future. But it is the billionaires who make those choices and impose them.

Developing countries that want to become wealthy don't want to handicap themselves because of the problems that rich countries created.

Developing countries can start out with cheap renewables instead of buying expensive old stuff that also costs more to operate.
Post reply on HN