Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather • Hacker News Board

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#351

Post by amrocha » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #178

edhelas wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because eating less meat, stop taking the plane, reducing our consumption level, replacing cars with bikes and trains and other stuff like that seems radical to you ?

> replacing cars with bikes and trains 1. What if you are disabled and have no train connectivity? 2. What about workers who need to travel by car to build trains? What about support workers who help those workers? And so on? See what happens if we stop virtue signaling and think for a few more seconds? Please stop with this zero-order thinking and spend a few seconds thinking of first-order and second-order effects…

>What if you are disabled and have no train connectivity?

Ok, then you can have a car. Everyone else still can't.

>What about workers who need to travel by car to build trains? What about support workers who help those workers? And so on?

Company provided shuttle buses.

See what happens if we stop virtue signaling and think for a few more seconds?

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#352

Post by concordDance » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

21echoes wrote: post #306

pentae wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to guess you've never spent much time outside the bubble of the first world. After living extensively overseas in Latin America & South-east Asia and seeing how its part of everyday life for most people in the rest of the world to openly burn trash, plastics, car tyres.. litter everywhere, cutting the cat converters off their trucks, dumping construction waste straight into rivers.. it's been eye opening. N…

You can wax poetic all you want about anecdotal values differences between the first and third worlds, but speaking in terms of actual practical impact: what you are saying is simply not true. Greenhouse gas emissions scale super-linearly with income: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-world-s-top-1-of-emitte... There are dozens and dozens of studies all reaching this same conclusion, if the International Energy Ag…

Your link has the Chinese top decile with higher emissions than the EU top decile, so your "what you are saying is simply not true" seems incorrect, their central point of value differences and higher pollution in third world countries seems to stand up well.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#353

Post by refulgentis » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:14 PM UTC

onetimeusename wrote: post #350

21echoes wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can wax poetic all you want about anecdotal values differences between the first and third worlds, but speaking in terms of actual practical impact: what you are saying is simply not true. Greenhouse gas emissions scale super-linearly with income: https://www.iea.org/commentaries/the-world-s-top-1-of-emitte... There are dozens and dozens of studies all reaching this same conclusion, if the International Energy Ag…

This doesn't take into account that countries like the US have already cut emissions and emissions have been declining for years. Meanwhile, China has much greater total emissions than the US does and emissions in China are increasing per year continuously as they are in India. Total global emissions are what matters for the climate. Although reducing waste and being more efficient are always helpful, fixating on lif…

Source? (AFAIK it does, and it'd be very unexpected for it not to. The rest of the comment is unclear to me. I may be reading it as a strawman instead of a steelman -- would a reply like: 'just because our derivative is negative doesn't mean on a per-capita basis we're less' be accurate? I'm sure I missed something)

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#354

Post by amrocha » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #130

RandomLensman wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing of that sort will happen "tomorrow", and even if true it would not justify genocidal policies today.

The true genocidal policy is to continue dumping CO2 into the atmosphere in increasing amounts. Personally, I feel it is more honest for us to deal with the outcomes of what "we" are doing now, rather than just leaving it for our children to deal with.

Not even our children. We will deal with it in 5 years. We're past the fucking around phase, now it's time to find out in increasingly large amounts every year.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#355

Post by concordDance » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

thomasahle wrote: post #345

rayiner wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does “per capita” emissions have to do with the physics of climate change?

It's related to the comment I was replying to: > Meanwhile, educated people in western countries are incredibly eco-conscious, have excellent modern waste management, have amazing huge national parks and conservation areas, clean waterways or have nets to prevent plastics entering the oceans.. are 'banning' gasoline cars by 2030.. and the air quality! Amazing. The commenter appears to say that people in western count…

The Chinese emit more per capita than the Europeans.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#356

Post by rootusrootus » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:15 PM UTC

datameta wrote: post #152

moffkalast wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more you think about it the more it becomes plainly obvious how unfathomably screwed we genuinely are.

If policies don't drastically change. Just imagine norwegian electric car subsidies but happening everywhere decades straight - for solar, wind, tidal, battery, pumped water stations, sand batteries. Perhaps a Sahara -> Europe solar megaproject (I remember a good discussion on HN about that). Separately, I wonder if a geoengineering megaproject is more likely to be funded than small incremental changes due to politic…

> Just imagine norwegian electric car subsidies but happening everywhere

That's hard to imagine, because Norway exported a huge amount of pollution to the rest of the world in order to finance their current policy of green technology adoption. Not everyone has that nice ratio of oil and tiny population.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#357

Post by baq » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #291

thomasahle wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But it's you reduce the economy, think of what it will do to the poor!" it's incredible how ritch people will happily push the poor in front of them when it's beneficial. The fact is "emmisions per capita" is heavily correlated with "gdp per capita": https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co2-emissions-vs-gdp The "educated people in western countries [who] are incredibly eco-conscious" emit way more co2 than "85% of the…

What does “per capita” emissions have to do with the physics of climate change?

Nothing.

But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that nobody is prepared to willingly let go of their conveniences. They may say they are but they haven’t seen the real cost to their lifestyle.

The transition is politically impossible. You’ll see some kind of populist revolution happen in Germany, which on paper seems to be the leader in green policies.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#358

Post by iamegypt » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:16 PM UTC

thinkingtoilet wrote: post #326

Gareth321 wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What do you think will happen if the temperatures keep rising, the oceans keep rising, and currently livable areas of land that hold billions of people become inhabitable? It’s really not so bad. Not compared to killing millions of people today by increasing the price of energy. Estimates are of a rise of [2-4 degrees centigrade by 2100.]( https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/climatechange/science#:~:text=Glob... .) This will…

>This will likely result in an [increase]( https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/6/1/014 ....) of arable land. This is my point. We already have major immigration/refugee issues all over the world. Even if we are 100% certain climate change will result in more farm land for humanity, the issue is where are the people now and where will that farm land be then? Do you think Russia (or any other country)…

[flagged]

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#359

Post by dv_dt » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

thriftwy wrote: post #336

dv_dt wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? Europe has tons of mass transit and walkable cities.

Despite this, they also have a huge length of high speed highways with cars going back and forth. The topology is not much different than in the US. Difference is there, but it's quantitative and will not in any way prevent climate change, especially as it also relies on infrastructure that US does not have and will take a huge carbon footprint to build.

They also have huge lengths of high speed and regional rail. The difference shows up in the energy per capita numbers.

Nothing prevents climate change unless we get more intentional and scaled investments in renewable energy and circular green economies.

Re: Earth had hottest 3-months on record; unprecedented sea temps & extreme weather

#360

Post by concordDance » Sun, Sep 10, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

moritzwarhier wrote: post #214

lr4444lr wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are plenty people in other parts of the world who don't have such a high standard of living, and it's not that big of a problem. Go live like that for 6 months and get back to us: food insecurity, inadequate healthcare, and few civil services or safety net. Those other countries are not net zero pollution either. You wanna crash the economy? How then will we develop the innovations to fix this problem? Can't…

I upvoted you, but IMO: - private cars and their usage are too cheap - air travel is too cheap - producing garbage is to cheap - politics is top centered around providing infinte fuel for "growth" instead of distributing resources rationally Yes, this is a political opinion. The stunt many people do is pretending that climate denialism and politics centered on fueling growth are not a political opinion but "rational"…

If your issue is global warming you should be campaigning for electric cars rather than against private cars. But I suspect you actually dislike cars in and of themselves, even if they could be grown on trees and powered by banana skins.