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Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

nytimes.com

171–180 of 210 posts

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#171

Ouch. I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left. Should I even bother with my current career in tech, or would it be better to quit it and do something that could have even a slight impact now? These articles are great, but preaching to the choir. What should any of us do? I'm seriously and sincerely asking. Are there any suggestions, from a personal stand point i…

As far as I can tell, we are reasonably certain that the effects of climate change will be very bad. It’s hard to say exactly what will happen, though.

The truly apocalyptic predictions are just not very likely. We are not going to be boiled alive or turn into Venus or whatever. It’s not going to get so hot that all plant matter catches on fire.

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#172
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Did it occur to you that they never amounted to anything because people did shit about them?" Then you've admitted the only point I care about here, which is that getting personally panicky about those things would have been a waste of time. Doom is not certain. People do in fact do things in reaction to problems. "Did it occur to you that just because you live an insulated life, that these disasters are actually ha…

There is an inevitable (if nothing is done), slowly unfolding tragedy in motion right now. You are the one that is reacting irrationally, in spite of the number of words you've thrown at the problem. Your sentiment really embodies the worst kind of free-rider: "you shouldn't worry, because other people have solved problems for me in the past".

This is a terribly uncharitable (downright hostile) interpretation of jerfs’ actually thoughtful response.

It’s not about free-riding. The grandparent posted, “I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left. Should I even bother with...” and there’s a lot in jerfs’ response which I hope GP reads and reflects on.

The world is saturated with imminent disaster. Perhaps the entire universe hangs on a thread.

The way we (humans) get out of it, and they way we always have, is not nihilistic defeatism. In the face of continuous doomsday prophecy, the optimal individual response is absolutely to tune it completely out and focus on becoming the best you can be at that thing that you do.

And throwaway5752 you trying to moralize that jerfs is “the worst kind of free-rider” is an asinine ad hominem attack that I’d say only amplifies the underlying truth of how important it is to tune out voices like yours.

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#173
post #145

I feel like this article underestimates the difficulty of stopping climate change. Would China have remained poor, if in the 1980's a better anti-climate-change treaty had been signed? Would the world have discovered better clean technology? There is a tendency to assume that treaties just solve the problem. I suspect that a different treaty would have failed, just like current negotiations are failing, because of th…

I do agree - climate change is a massive problem with thousands of facets, trillions of dollars at stake, and stakeholders including everyone from all global citizens, all global creatures/environments, and all businesses/governments. It's truly the biggest crisis we've ever faced as a species.

In my view, on rich vs poor nations, if China handled its emissions much earlier and more aggressively, we'd still have massive historical emissions and massive per capita emissions in North America and Europe. Rich people tend to decry those not using renewables and not transitioning quickly, however it's easier to transition/decarbonize with EVs and solar PV and energy efficiency when your economy is already developed. Long commutes, western diets, leisure travel, copious heating and air conditioning, and many other factors are not present in other countries which still have "dirty" economies with longer ways to go to both energize their entire populace AND to clean up said energy sources. So, westerners should look in the mirror before they criticize those people just getting electricity or their first car in the last decade.

The rays of hope I see for climate change come from the potential for energizing nations to skip over total fossil fuel dependence in their industrialization and modernization schemes. Furthermore, there are bright spots in electric buses (huge wave of these will come in next decade), in renewable deployments (~2/3 of capacity additions in recent years in USA), and in overall business movement towards low carbon solutions. While national and state policy-makers could move more quickly, surely, there is a lot of innovation occurring in the private and local levels.

Long term, even if we decarbonize very quickly due to technological innovations and S-curves, I foresee needing to use environmental engineering techniques to cool the planet. While risky, I think the level of economic and societal harm from the heating/expansions of the oceans and further ice melt will necessitate some sort of artificial cooling of the planet.

While some may deem this as unethical or playing God with our planet, IMO we've already irrevocably changed our planet's heat content. We need to not only pull our foots of the accelerator, reducing emissions of GH gases, but we also need to put our foots on the brake, somehow cooling the planet and/or sequestering previous emissions. If we don't take these latter steps, no amount of decarbonization will prevent catastrophes of hurricanes, fires, flooding, desertification, and sea-level-rise in the next countless generations.

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#174
post #161
post #145

I feel like this article underestimates the difficulty of stopping climate change. Would China have remained poor, if in the 1980's a better anti-climate-change treaty had been signed? Would the world have discovered better clean technology? There is a tendency to assume that treaties just solve the problem. I suspect that a different treaty would have failed, just like current negotiations are failing, because of th…

I feel much the same. I think the concerns about climate change are wildly overstated for the developed world. There are some more concerns when subsistence farming is the primary way of living, but humans (and humanity) adapt, and we adapt with great alacrity.

Well, AC does help. But fast forward 100, 200, 500 years. After the food riots, the protests, political meltdown, the scarcity of clean water, the wars, the starvation and pandemics, the loss of coastal cities, the collapse of ocean ecosystems, loss of the ice caps, forests, deserts spreading, we'll be lucky if 10 million people survive living...underground.

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#175

Why isn't there a billion dollar reward to any person or company that comes up with a cost-effective way to capture carbon from the air and convert back to solid carbon? I'd love to understand the physics (or chemistry? maybe economy?) that prevents this from materialising.

I did a back of the envelope calculation or maybe better a guesstimate on this awhile back. At perfect conversion efficiency you could turn emitted CO2 back to carbon using 15-20 average sized nuclear power plants. If you realistically get 10% overall efficiency then maybe you need 200 of them. All that assumes you can actually build chemical cells that don't need continuous replacement. It also just compensates for…

The problem here is that uranium extraction and other elements of nuclear power production (e.g. concrete manufacturing) is itself carbon intensive process and takes a while to pay off.

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#176
post #60

Ouch. I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left. Should I even bother with my current career in tech, or would it be better to quit it and do something that could have even a slight impact now? These articles are great, but preaching to the choir. What should any of us do? I'm seriously and sincerely asking. Are there any suggestions, from a personal stand point i…

"I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of the time I have left." It is a grave life error to assign excessive likelihood to the doomsayers. I've been reading about inevitable doom for 25 years now. Some of what I read as a kid dated to the 60s and the guaranteed dates of inevitable doom had already passed by the time I read them in the early 90s. Even assuming they are completely 100…

> I do not anywhere near fully believe in inevitable doom.

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”

Unfortunately every single aspect of modern life is based on the assumption of exponential growth. This just isn't gonna work.

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#177
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is correct no country in the world has reduced CO2 emissions like the US did in the past decade, thanks to Shale revolution. Pennsylvania is the world's #3 producer of NG. I mean one state in US. Even if some people grudge this fact, the Grid is not ready for variable generation that Wind and Solar does, they do buy some time for Grid to become smarter (Grid of MicroGrids) where it can digest Solar and Wind, esp…

It may be true that the USA has achieved the largest reduction in CO2 emissions in absolute terms. But they’re coming off a very large base. In percentage terms, there are several countries that have done significantly better, including the UK who’s CO2 emissions are now 38% below 1990 levels (and 25% below 2012 levels!) despite significant population growth. While US emissions have, by some measurements, dropped in…

The lack of sense of proportion that pervades HN when comparing US with other countries .. US is 7x bigger economy and 4x more population. Wyoming is larger than UK in area.

Some of the optimistic models do say US is at 1985 levels.

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#178
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's tricky when a preponderance of evidence and theory tells us that the lag time on the signal is several decades but human generations are also measured in decades. It doesn't matter how strong your negative feedback is if the system it's controlling is in thermal runaway by the time you apply a corrective signal. Maybe we can bandaid or mitigate the worst effects for some people. Probably richer people. But just…

Harvey? The hurricane that was the first to make landfall after 12 years of no hurricanes? After we were repeatedly explicitly promised increased hurricanes because of global warming? The one that Wikipedia lists as merely a category 4 and looms large in your mind simply because of where it happened to hit? Did anyone ever admit their predictions about increased hurricanes during those 12 years were wrong? I never sa…

And I remember wildfires in California when I was a kid, too. Except now probably about 10 million people live closer to them and like to build houses in the way of them. (Oh, and let's not forget how many of those fires turn out to be less about "global warming" and more about arson. After a certain point, dry is just dry.)

The problem isn't what sets the fire. It's that the heat dries out the forests, making any fires larger and more devastating. For example: you can light a fire pretty much anywhere in an Eastern forest, because they're sufficiently wet that a fire won't grow very large. You could even do that a few decades ago in the West. But try that now in California, you and could start a thousands-acre conflagration so hot it kills the soil and doesn't burn out until literally all available fuel has been used up.

Did anyone ever admit their predictions about increased hurricanes during those 12 years were wrong? I never saw it. You just remember the images, not the 12 years of no images.

There have been way more hurricanes. Luckily for us, the oceans are very large, and most of those hurricanes did not make landfall.

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#179
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your original post you listed out a bunch of issues that never amounted to anything. Did it occur to you that they never amounted to anything because people did shit about them? It wasn't the economy that stopped the Ozone hole from expanding. It wasn't technological innovation that brought down the Soviet Union and ended Red Scare. Did it occur to you that just because you live an insulated life, that these disas…

"Did it occur to you that they never amounted to anything because people did shit about them?" Then you've admitted the only point I care about here, which is that getting personally panicky about those things would have been a waste of time. Doom is not certain. People do in fact do things in reaction to problems. "Did it occur to you that just because you live an insulated life, that these disasters are actually ha…

I guess we need to define what you mean by "personally panicky". I read you saying that a person shouldn't be personally panicky as "a person should not worry." That's where my annoyance comes from.

The grandparent comment's Fight or Flight instinct should be going off at ALL mentions of AGW. They need to be thinking about the next decades of their life with AGW in mind. If they live in Florida, they should seriously consider not living in Florida. If they have a house that's near a beach they need to leave. If they don't live in the developing world, they need to figure out how to get to the developed world ASAP.

You're right that nobody should be brought into a crippling depression because of global warming, but we're far past being optimistic about it.

Also, your "who is making money off your panic" thread is stupid and you should stop. People panic for a variety of reasons and only a small minority are "because panic was induced by a second party".

Re: Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change

#180

Can anyone supply a tldr?

A group of scientist and environmental lobbyists worked hard so that by the late 70's everyone knew about the problem of rising CO2 emissions and the impending doom of a changing global climate. The issue required action and limitations on the use and burning of natural resources. That messed with the status quo too much so the people with the power at the time said fuck it. The 'it' being young people, their kids, and their kid's kids.
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