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The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

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Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#81

Post by ifwinterco »

glitchc wrote: post #55
Ekaros wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is fundamentally the problem with whole thing. Vast majority of population on Earth is not ready for personal sacrifices needed. And if some government will get to around it, I am pretty sure they will be replaced and most things are rolled back. My guess is that we somehow end up geoengineering it with even more debt...

Why would they be when they see the hypocrisy of the chattering classes? How many celebrities or billionaires have curtailed their own lifestyles while pitching for climate change? Has the number of luxury jets and superyatches gone up or down over time? The average person may seem stupid but they are paying attention to the actions, and it all sounds like "I got mine, screw yours" to them.

[dead]

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#82

Post by yorwba »

I wondered where this article got the idea that "half the planet" would die "in 26 years or less" with 3°C of warming. It appears to be a misreading of the table in https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p... "Figure 12: Planetary solvency risk impact and likelihood definitions (illustrative)" qualified by "A risk impact matrix is a methodology for ranking potential impacts, not a prediction or central scenario."

In particular, they rate ≥50% mortality as Extreme and also rate warming by 3°C or more by 2050 as Extreme (this is relevant for the colorful severity/likelihood grids that are the focus of the paper) and somebody appears to have made the incorrect connection that an Extreme climate would cause Extreme mortality, and also by the time the Extreme climate is reached and not afterwards. Elsewhere, the paper mentions that "We have not shown an assessment for mortality in this illustration, as very limited research has been carried out on the potential for large-scale loss of life in relation to these interconnected risks on which to base an assessment."

Unfortunately, that makes the article title highly ironic.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#83

Post by netsharc »

glitchc wrote: post #55
Ekaros wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is fundamentally the problem with whole thing. Vast majority of population on Earth is not ready for personal sacrifices needed. And if some government will get to around it, I am pretty sure they will be replaced and most things are rolled back. My guess is that we somehow end up geoengineering it with even more debt...

Why would they be when they see the hypocrisy of the chattering classes? How many celebrities or billionaires have curtailed their own lifestyles while pitching for climate change? Has the number of luxury jets and superyatches gone up or down over time? The average person may seem stupid but they are paying attention to the actions, and it all sounds like "I got mine, screw yours" to them.

Standard tragedy of the commons behavior...

And people in developing countries complain that "why should beef or jet vacations be taxed more, those Westerners got to enjoy it, and now when we want to enjoy it, it's suddenly bad?".

And we rich Westerners think it's sacrifice to have to drive an EV or pay more for beef...

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#84

Post by nradov »

Ekaros wrote: post #24
ericmay wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And let’s also not forget, we all want the climate crises fixed, but nobody is willing to personally make any changes to their lifestyle! All parties are incentivized against fixing this problem.

That is fundamentally the problem with whole thing. Vast majority of population on Earth is not ready for personal sacrifices needed. And if some government will get to around it, I am pretty sure they will be replaced and most things are rolled back. My guess is that we somehow end up geoengineering it with even more debt...

The solution will have to come from growth and technical innovations, not personal sacrifice.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#85

Post by Alwayshasbeeb »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #2

It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu. What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.

While it's great that green energy is now economically feasible, the idea that there will quickly (say, in the next 50 years) be a "green transition" that eliminates the usage of carbon fuels is still highly dubious.

What we've seen is new renewable capacity carving out a tiny sliver in the energy mix, sometimes even being able to meet all new demand in the installation period, but we still have all the existing demand running on the old stack.

https://ourworldindata.org/energy-mix

This book talks about this: https://www.amazon.com/More-All-Consuming-History-Energy/dp/...

There's also the fact that global society is not a real time strategy game being managed by a well intentioned min-maxing actor driving compounding efficiency gains in resource usage. It's a free for all where everyone is paranoid that they'll be destroyed if they don't use every dirty trick they can (on a global geopolitical level), entrenched oligarchies permanently lobbying for their inefficient, destructive structures to continue (on a domestic economy level) and so on.

It's not looking good overall.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#86

Post by dreamcompiler »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #2

It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu. What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.

Until this administration which is actively canceling wind projects with taxpayer money.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49208314

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#87

Post by losvedir »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #2

It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu. What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.

Well "climate change" as understood today wasn't really talked about much in the 90s, as I remember it. Some broad, apocalyptic concern about creeping temperatures and knock on effects over many decades.

But I do remember quite a bit about "pollution" and like general acute environmental issues. Smog in LA, the hole in the ozone, etc. Those were both more understandable and visible to your average person and more tractable. And there was the obvious hook about energy independence after the fairly recent (at that time) oil embargo and such.

The Green party (are they still around?) talked about more vague issues like ocean plastic and six pack wrappers on birds, but I don't think we made a ton of progress there, but then that was less consequential anyway.

I feel like we went down the worst timeline since then when it became very political and people burn gas for the hell of it, and others hate people who do so. Solar and nuclear (or hell even just solar) could give us clean, cheap energy abundance, but the people championing solar tend not to do it from the abundance perspective, but in tandem with cutting energy use which is a hard sell and not necessary anyway, in my opinion.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#88

Post by halgir »

whatifitoldyou wrote: post #50

I think us people do not have the capacity as societies to effectively anticipate and solve problems that we can see approaching but have not become catastrophic yet. We always act shortsightedly and ..hope for the best. Most of the people will just not vote/support anything that might bring them some minuscule pain. Even if we know by logic that the problem is coming, we tend to follow whomever will tell us that it'…

> Think of a problem that we saw coming in the future and we collectively solved. I can think of none.

My favorite counterexample is the ozone layer. When I was a kid, that was the Big Bad environmental concern. But we actually worked together on a global scale to fix it.

Broader climate change is a much bigger problem with stronger financial and political incentives, but in principle we've done it before.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#89

Post by qsera »

inigyou wrote: post #3
Synaesthesia wrote: post #2

It's quite striking to note how media coverage of climate change and pollution have gone down so much. I remember in the 90's it was very much in the popular mileu. What's more we are living through an actual green revolution. Solar power and batteries have never been so cheap - and still promising to get cheaper and better with sodium ion batteries.

In the 90s it was something to deal with later. Now that it's something to deal with right now, of course they won't cover it. In a few decades they'll cover it again, but only to say how it's too late now. Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media.

>Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media.

Yea, they figured it just now, in the 2010s and 20s. During the 90's the thought just didn't occur to them...Makes complete sense.

Nothing discredits an idea so much like the proponents of it being total idiots.

Re: The Gargantuan Lie That Is Collapsing the Climate

#90

Post by sdellis »

pingou wrote: post #62
tim-star wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

at the end of the day 'personal changes' as a fix for climate change are just another lie big corporations fed us to make it feel like the onus was on a personal level. the amount of co2 that industries pollute and that various regulation would be able to change is multiple orders of magnitude compared to regular personal responsibility.

Who do these corporations pollute for? Isn't it for individuals?

For the accumulation of wealth and power. This is the natural consequence of unregulated capitalist incentives. Do you think the corporations care about the individuals?
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