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I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

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Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#361

Post by pk-protect-ai »

flir wrote: post #333
pk-protect-ai wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've thought about this as well. It's feasible to move soil only to certain regions. Greenland and Antarctica aren't among them (remember the ice shields; they will continue to scrape all the soil as they melt). Some islands in Antarctic Ocean could potentially sustain a population of 20-40k. However, you need to start moving the soil now, but you will also need to develop methods of preserving this soil until it is…

Aren't we hypothesizing a situation where there is no (or a much reduced) Greenland ice sheet? I'm imagining "hey, look at all this bare rock that's suddenly available, and it's gonna take a couple of thousand years for erosion and lichen to develop soil here, so lets take a short cut". I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm saying it's a theoretically possible idea in the face of an extinction-level event.

Here is where you are incorrect in your anticipation. The amount of land usable for agriculture will be decreasing faster than the ice shields melt. The territory where the fertile soil is available will not be human-friendly for the entire season, if at all. You can't make people work at 50°C or even 45°C with 90° humidity. You can't breathe water...

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#362

Post by getlawgdon »

jhoechtl wrote: post #249
pk-protect-ai wrote: post #145

I no longer worry. I'm extremely pessimistic about the impending climate change. I believe Sabine isn't pessimistic enough about what to anticipate. Consider the tundra methane emissions and the explosive release of methane-hydrates from the oceans, along with water vapor, a potent greenhouse gas. The disaster looming over all ecosystems (a mass extinction event) that will happen in decades and the doom-phase could l…

I am glad that I survived oil outage, sour rain, the Ozone hole, mass famine because of overpopulation. All in a lifetime. I must have had sheer luck.

Your list is a 1.75. What's occurring and coming fast is a 9.9. Thanks for sharing the kind of naivete that helped get us here.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#363

Post by PeterisP »

oezi wrote: post #315
PeterisP wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we magically went netzero tomorrow, the greenhouse effect from the already accumulated emissions would still cause a significant climate change in the upcoming decades. And, of course, we won't go netzero tomorrow, there's no "just" in it due to the time and effort it would take to scale up the solutions even if the money was there, but of course the money isn't there; while technically the world could afford it i…

You are making it out to be an insurmountable challenge and reject what we are have already achieved. Cost-parity renewables being the most impressive feat. Global treaties such as Paris are a second.

I'm saying that if you look at, for example, the IPCC reports, then out of the various scenarios considered, the very most optimistic ones, the most ambitious goal they consider worth discussing, amounts to stabilizing global warming at 1.5 degrees and that requires achieving net zero by 2050.

I'm not rejecting what we have achieved, I'm just discouraging wishful thinking that we can somehow avoid having to adapt to the effects of the climate change - our actions can change whether we'll have a small global warming or a large global warming, but there is no scenario where we will have zero global warming, as it's already happening. And it's not just my opinion, this is a high-confidence consensus of IPCC.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#364

Post by goatlover »

yungporko wrote: post #168
okr wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea, yea, people making their life better is now the reason. We must all live in poverty, because that is the natural state, where we obey the needs of nature. Nature is healing!! And for that we need to abandon demoncracy. And the leader should be who? Of course you, because only you know the solution! Cheeky ;)

you can put your fingers in your ears and say "la la la" all you want, it doesn't change the undeniable and objective truth. everybody knows the solution, *you* know the solution, it's just a hard pill to swallow so mental gymnastics are preferable. as a species we know that the overconsumption of resources is the problem. there are exactly zero valid arguments against that. anybody who claims that consuming less res…

It's not overconsumption, it's waste and pollution that are the problems. Cleaner technologies and policies are the solution. We could have decarbonized part of the economy already with nuclear power.

Degrowth is not a viable alternative on a world that's still has a large number of people that need better standards of living, and will still be adding a couple billion to the population. There's no viable economic or political model that would make degrowth work.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#365

Post by refurb »

adrianN wrote: post #316
jhoechtl wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad that I survived oil outage, sour rain, the Ozone hole, mass famine because of overpopulation. All in a lifetime. I must have had sheer luck.

There was massive concerted effort to stop acid rain and ozone depletion. Maybe we should try that for the climate crisis if we want similar success at preventing catastrophe.

Amazing how the ozone hole repaired itself despite China releasing thousands of tons of CFCs.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/23/china-factorie...

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#366

Post by badpun »

Joeri wrote: post #148
johnea wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Weird. I used to worry about climate change and now I don’t. That's funny! I was going to start my post with the exact same sentence! But for a totally different reason: I'm now convinced that there is no stopping the massive destruction of the natural environemnt. A much MUCH bigger problem than that of the climate alone. I'm not a "doomer", I'm a "realist". It's clear at this point that the world's ownership clas…

It's clear at this point that the world's ownership class is NOT going to allow any significant mitigation of petroleum use. The problem is not use, the problem is extraction. If it comes out of the ground, it gets used, and mostly ends up in the atmosphere. The volume of extracted fossil fuels is carefully managed so that prices remain low enough to prevent green alternatives from winning in the market, and high eno…

There's a theory that our economies are so fundamentally dependant on fossil fuels that, if you limit their extraction, you don't get fossil fuels price increases, but rather proportional GDP contraction (as less f.f. means less economic activity overall), and f.f. prices stay roughly the same. The evidence to back this up is the fact that, historically, the correlation between global f.f. extraction and global GDP is pretty much perfect. In other words, economic activity is pretty much about energy expenditure, and energy means pretty much fossil fuels.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#367

Post by donum »

badpun wrote: post #197
alexvoda wrote: post #140

@dang Is it just my impression that HN is drifting rigtwards on this topic? I remember HN being more in favour of proactive action against anthropic climate change. This thread feels dominated by attitudes reflecting inaction.

Is that wrong? Is only one narrative allowed in a discussion (it's not a discussion then is it?).

Left wing politics wants freedom and equality for all while right wing only want it for some. Makes no sense to discuss, lefties are correct and right wing people are either benefiting directly from the abuse ($$$) or are just stupid and believe all bullshit without using their brain.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#368

Post by timschmidt »

lozenge wrote: post #246
guyomes wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I believe that overpopulation is the root of the sustainability crisis This has been studied long time ago by scientists such as Alfred Sauvy [1], who concluded that overpopulation is not the cause of sustainability crisis, and that greenhouse gas is the major cause. In particular, limiting the growth of population has few impact on the production of greenhouse gas, whereas changing the means of energy production a…

Sustainable means different things to different people. In a simulator, could you have 12 billion people with their needs met, living fulfilled lives and continuing into the far future? Yes. Is there a political and practical way to reach that state? No. "One study estimates it would take just over 5 Earths to support the human population if everyone’s consumption patterns were similar to the average American." Any U…

Earth receives more solar energy in an hour than human civilization uses in a year. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy

We're not even vertically farming at scale yet.

There's a lot of room left for densifying human civilization. Seems like 10x should be achievable.

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#369

Post by jdthedisciple »

layer8 wrote: post #346
jdthedisciple wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Standards of living" are not some kind of homogeneous global state. The true hard pill to swallow is that YOUR (and a few others') standard of living is unsustainable.

The majority of Earth's population would like to have that standard of living and strives for it.

There is a difference between striving for basic amenities like clean water, healthy food etc, and the luxury of ordering vanities off Amazon every other day..

Not everyone desires the latter, yet it appears to be the much more environmentally impactful one at least at scale..

Re: I used to not worry about climate change. Now I do [video]

#370

Post by green7ea »

coryrc wrote: post #158
green7ea wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most essential resources aren't consumed but part of cycles — food, water, shelter. These cycles are sustained by energy and, if we were to use it well, the sun alone provides more than enough. A simple example of this is that water isn't used up, it gets dirty. It can be made clean again but that requires energy. This can be done by humans (water filtration) or by nature (evaporation and rain). We don't manage these…

The amount of vitamins in food is trending down. We say we're farming, but the plants are living on materials delivered from petroleum or natural gas in a media where we attempt to kill all life. There's not a cycle. We shouldn't complete that cycle because our waste streams are doomed with toxic chemicals (f.ex. PFAS). In the US we build shelters either out of carbon-intensive materials or use significant carbon fue…

There are great opportunities here — improving farming being a great one as you mention.

Changing our farming methods to increase humus and topsoil quality should bring back vitamins to our food. Not only this but it should also capture a great amount of CO₂. I'm not sure how reliable my memory or the original calculation are but I remember reading in "The Scientist as Rebel" that if we increase our topsoil by 2 inches on currently farmed land, that should capture most of the carbon we've emitted during industrialisation.

Of course, as you mention, if we keep mindlessly following the status quo, we'll keep getting what we deserve.

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