> The question is whether we're willing to pay attention and act before the changes become too large, too rapid and too interconnected for us to manage.
Stopped asking this question a long time ago.
It’s over.
A graph that should be front-page news
301–310 of 469 posts
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#302Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only, while such work is necessary it's also insufficient . You point at the actual problem yourself: political obstruction and funding going to the opposite. The relevant issues here are ironically precisely those you can solve by discussing them on the internet. They are caused by people not thinking right and having their emotions cross-wired. They can be solved by correcting those errors in reasoning and setting…
I’m going to tell you, as a person whose path went from journalism to activism to engineering in climate tech and climate justice: persuasion isn’t going to get the goods. Changing the reality on the ground through R&D and deployment moves the needle. There are a lot of very good, very smart people who have been heads down since the 70s building the infrastructure for decarbonization, and we’re winning, even as we co…
Yup. If solar panels are good enough and cheap enough, if grid storage and battery density improve fast enough, the economic costs of staying on fossil fuels will create huge pressure in the political space and economic competition. You can overwhelm the issue.
We shouldn’t HAVE to do this, our politicians should represent our desires and our long term necessities. But that’s clearly not an easy problem to solve, and it sure doesn’t seem to be going in the right direction.
So RND to push the economy makes perfect sense to me as a way to fight this from the other direction.
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#303the problem with this kind of article is half of them push a doom angle and the other half talk about carbon footprint. both of them have the same effect making people give up or do useless lifestyle changes that do nothing for the environment. we should be pushing for backend changes that are invisible but actually make things better. that means massive subsidies to build out clean power and electrify everything. po…
Or -- hear me out on this one -- we could ban wind energy, raise costs for electric vehicles, and use government resources to promote increased use of coal and oil.
That would have a bunch of advantages such as sounding familiar to leaders whose heyday was in the 1970s, of not making us feel bad about the state of the world, and occasionally giving financial kickbacks to government leaders.
Or... if you don't like this approach, maybe making changes in political leadership is the single most important thing to do.
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#304the problem with this kind of article is half of them push a doom angle and the other half talk about carbon footprint. both of them have the same effect making people give up or do useless lifestyle changes that do nothing for the environment. we should be pushing for backend changes that are invisible but actually make things better. that means massive subsidies to build out clean power and electrify everything. po…
Unpopular opinion, but we need to start using hard and soft power if we want to fix this problem. Europe cannot fix climate change on its own, and we already represent an increasingly small share of total emissions. The question now is how we get other countries onboard fast, and if they continue to build out cheap coal-fired power stations what are we going to do about it? Something or nothing? Unless we can get eve…
I've pitched this idea before. But instead of something like the Paris Climate Accords which were an agreement for people to self-regulate and reduce emissions. What is needed is an agreement that is a sort of cartel. Nations a,b,c agree on these policies (carbon per person, environmental regulations, etc), and any nation that wants to export services/goods to a,b,c they must enter the agreement or be subject to tariffs.
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#305The message of article was great, but I wish it was written by a human.
Yeah we are on track to get to a point where Earth heating up is irreversible before Artificial super intelligence can come to aid to solve it. In fact, our datacenter buildout using gas and coal as primary energy makes this worse.
I think about Fermi Paradox a lot. The tragedy of commons when it comes to capitalism may very well one of the reasons why Dinosaurs may have a longer species lifespan than Homosapiens.
The change happens too slowly, but reversal takes global coordination which humans as a species aren't great at. Especially when anyone not coordinating may be economically advantaged.
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#306the problem with this kind of article is half of them push a doom angle and the other half talk about carbon footprint. both of them have the same effect making people give up or do useless lifestyle changes that do nothing for the environment. we should be pushing for backend changes that are invisible but actually make things better. that means massive subsidies to build out clean power and electrify everything. po…
>combustion engine bans
You think that won't do anything?
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
>shame and allegedly bully average consumers into possibly meaningless lifestyle changes is maybe almost certainly some sort of global or not global conspiracy that should be investigated and depending on the result of the investigation lead to various punishments in accordance with crimes committed ranging from fines to jail time or execution of likely non-zero number of politicians and CEOs possibly across the glob…
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>right, because clearly hn comments is exactly the place where one would present in legalese their case against possibly a global cartel or at least a conspiracy between politicians and corporations to shift the blame for their externalities onto consumers, reaping the immense profits and directly and indirectly causing millions if not tens of millions of deaths.
So let me get this straight, you don't know what exact crime has been committed, nor do you have any evidence for such conspiracy existing, but you still think they should be "investigated" and "executed". How is this not crank territory? At least q-anon is cogent enough to specify they're pedophiles or whatever.
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#308The same graph also shows a corresponding -3.5 STDEV below the mean temperature as well. It actually seems rather balanced. This year is hot, but we see similar abnormal jumps in other directions.
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
What analogy might work better, i.e., be less charged but as precise?
Agent Smith: I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to s…
He is wrong, by the way. Most animals multiply until they exceed carrying capacity, then die off in massive numbers, then repeat. They may find a long-term equilibrium. The current boom in human population, and a subsequent die-off that has not yet happened, were predicted back in the 1970s.
Re: A graph that should be front-page news
#310not really understanding why the SD graph for the year drops below zero at some points.
It needs to by mathematical definition. Half of everything is below average.
(Ignoring the complaints of others that they didn't calculate the mean from the whole graph).