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Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

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Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#161

Post by onyeka »

doon123 wrote: post #127
raquo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on. Governments and countries are not very stable under these conditions. Probably shouldn't expect your wealth to crisis proof your life in this scenario. Won't hurt but we'll all be much better off organizing to avoid this future.

>> Well, as comfortable as you will be able get with global wars, refugees, food shortages, etc. going on. I think the crisis will be contained to the poorest parts of the world. Especially the tropics. This area is going to be the first to bear the brunt of climate change related problems. I dont foresee Global wars happening. The politicians are too smart for that. They will try to contain the damage to the extant…

> Because as far as they are concerned mass deaths in poorer nations is only going to reduce the carbon emission load on our planet.

But the wealthier nations are the ones producing majority of the carbon emissions.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r...

Seems like you're counting on poorer countries to die off so you in the the richer nations can survive when it's the richer folks causing the problem. Like the resource loss from these continents wasting away won't affect them.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#162

Post by kebman »

trymas wrote: post #27

EDIT: downvoters, feel free to add your opinion, what seps we can take in 12 years to prevent climate change. I will gladly hear any opinion, especially if it is not as drastic as mine. 1. Drop coal and gas as energy sources immediately. Use renewable and nuclear energy as main power sources. Phase out nuclear after couple decades, when we hopefully can get all our energy needs from renewables. EDIT: forgot to add in…

Haha, good luck! :)

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#163

Post by CalRobert »

Well, we _could_ build a world where the majority of people:

* Live in a very well insulated flat in the city that isn't made of concrete

* Have meat and dairy only as a luxury item

* Use solar and wind power for your heat pump and AC

* Ride a bike or walk to work, or take electrically-powered public transport

* Use non-luxurious sea transport to go on foreign holidays

we'd be about there. But boiling today's young people for the sake of cheap gas has proven more politically feasible.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#164

Post by plopilop »

kharak wrote: post #152
plopilop wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think we're dumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere? We no doubt are but that problem basically goes away immediately if we ever get economic fusion power. That's an enormous "if". Fusion research has been underfunded for decades, we don't even know if we can sustain it, and for a reason I don't get, many ecologists are anti-nuclear. Plus fusion won't solve everything. You won't put a sun core into your car nor yo…

> And anyway recent studies show that the human body is unlikely to bear a trip to Mars, let alone the health issues caused by weightless environment. Could you link to an article or study about this? I don't believe that humans will ever reach other stars, but if even Mars is too much, oh well.

Sorry, I edited. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/26/1807522115

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#165

Post by plopilop »

doon123 wrote: post #140
plopilop wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Think we're dumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere? We no doubt are but that problem basically goes away immediately if we ever get economic fusion power. That's an enormous "if". Fusion research has been underfunded for decades, we don't even know if we can sustain it, and for a reason I don't get, many ecologists are anti-nuclear. Plus fusion won't solve everything. You won't put a sun core into your car nor yo…

>> And anyway recent studies show that the human body is unlikely to bear a trip to Mars, let alone the health issues caused by weightless environment. citations please..

My bad, here it is. http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/26/1807522115

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#166

Post by DanielBMarkham »

The definition of terms becomes critical here. "Catastrophe" is an alarming word. If 25% of the human population died, it would certainly be a catastrophe. But the planet would still be around. Humans would still be around. A thousand years from now, it might be remembered as "that really bad time"

Planet-scale change is truly Brobdingnagian. Anything in your life is insignificant compared to that. You have to frame this discussion before you even begin. Are you talking about stuff you can do that you can see the result of? Or are you talking about stuff you can do that will make things look different a thousand years from now? The first one is doable. The second one? We've had tens of billions of people live on this planet. I don't know of any that managed that. Maybe a dozen or so?

If I wanted to enact change, I would create acceptance criteria before I started. Am I in this to feel good? To change my local government to do X? And so forth. If your goal is something like "I want the world to be a better place!" then that's a great goal, but it's a feeling, not a goal. Goals you can measure. Goals have numbers and measurement criteria.

If you just want to be upset and vent, fine. That's a perfectly fine thing to do. After all, things suck. A lot of things suck. It's actually a more honest and healthy goal than any of the others I've discussed. We are a social species. We adapt through conversation and persuasion.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#167

Post by perfunctory »

cletus wrote: post #11

So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of thi…

> When getting stuff into orbit is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit and beam energy back to Earth.

Can we have that before 2040 please

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-repo...

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#168

Post by jjeaff »

buro9 wrote: post #45
netjiro wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now Key here is rate of change, and what humans can survive. We are changing the climate many many times faster than ever before. Nature does not have the time to adapt. And the wars, famines and mass displacements coming from ecosystem collapse is like nothing we've seen in human history. Think we have a problem with a few million migrants? Try a billion or two! P-T…

Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you. If we care about the…

Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space, the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands.

Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long time.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#169

Post by DoreenMichele »

chienandalou wrote: post #158
DoreenMichele wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never finished my degree, but I'm an environmental studies major. A cartoon in one of my books showed oxygen producing microbes that created earth's oxygen atmosphere organizing to stop the creation of this poisonous oxygen atmosphere as it was killing them. I was watching a TV show that said "If this spider were alive today, it would be hunting animals the size of house cats." and I blurted "No, it wouldn't. It wo…

> But we keep making these dire predictions I think it's absolutely not reasonable to put climate scientists and their predictions into the same line as the mayans or nostradamus. > Could we see a dramatic population crash? Absolutely. Population crashes of various species in various places are a known phenomenon. That could happen. So, a population crash could happen. A lot of the comments here sound as if the peopl…

I've lived without a car for more than a decade. I have a medical condition that is supposed to require at least $100k in medical care annually just to die slower with no hope of getting well. I have gotten off all drugs and I manage it with diet and lifestyle. I got healthier while homeless, sleeping in a tent for 5.7 years and being treated abusively by an awful lot of people who don't find my story credible.

My oldest son has the same condition. I have been supporting myself and my 2 special needs sons on under $20k annually while all of us get healthier.

I also appear to be the only woman to have ever spent time on the leaderboard of Hacker News. I hit it a month and 2 days after I got myself and my kids off the street. I then changed handles cuz reasons.

I'm quite confident I really get it. I'm quite confident I actually know useful information that could make a real difference if people would actually listen to me instead of screeching at me about what a nutter I am.

But it is generally pointless to assert that. It just causes people to more vehemently ramp up the dismissive personal attacks and assertions that I'm an idiot whose point is invalid while they run screaming across the stage flailing their arms like Kermit the frog.

Re: Ask HN: What can be done to prevent a climate catastrophe?

#170

Post by ben_w »

akvadrako wrote: post #159
ben_w wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“””The Younger Dryas … was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum started receding””” Closest I can get to supporting your client is that the local temperature of Greenland went up a lot at the end of that period. Not global. And given the article talks a lot about global thermohaline circulation, extreme local variation is not surprising.

It is a bit of an educated guess because we can’t know the global average, but most of the local temps that are estimated moved in the same direction. The ones in Greenland were larger than most though.

Wikipedia — which you chose to suggest as a source — Does not at first glance provide citations for other locations. Can you please do so?
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