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Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

economist.com

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Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#201

Post by mzw_mzw »

sanderjd wrote: post #200
mzw_mzw wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think American voters are going to be happy about sacrificing their own well-being explicitly so that other people can pollute/deforest more? Do you think that's a platform that will win elections?

I think we should use our wealth and clout to both do better than the bare minimum in our own country and pressure other countries to do at least the bare minimum. I think our leaders should figure out how to do that while still winning elections. That does sound hard, but if the job description were only to pander, anybody could do it.

> I think our leaders should figure out how to do that while still winning elections.

Do you want a pony, too?

Look, we're not talking about straight up charity. You can talk people into charity; despite the standard narrative, the United States is quite generous in that regard. What you're asking for is for us to reduce our standard of living explicitly so other people can pollute. That's going to be a hard sell.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#202

Post by eli_gottlieb »

mmel wrote: post #176
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Trump is not the God-Emperor of Mankind and does not possess century-level prescience. You can totally make a decent science fiction novel out of this, though.

There is already fanfiction depicting Donald Trump as Warhammer 40,000's Emperor of The Imperium of Man. https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=donald+trump+warham...

Yes, including memes depicting him as a "Holy Duo" with Vladimir Putin. Fascist and fascist, together at last.

All of which misses the point that the Emperor is the bad guy, because it's grimdark: there are no good guys.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#203

Post by sqeaky »

mzw_mzw wrote: post #201
sanderjd wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we should use our wealth and clout to both do better than the bare minimum in our own country and pressure other countries to do at least the bare minimum. I think our leaders should figure out how to do that while still winning elections. That does sound hard, but if the job description were only to pander, anybody could do it.

> I think our leaders should figure out how to do that while still winning elections. Do you want a pony, too? Look, we're not talking about straight up charity. You can talk people into charity; despite the standard narrative, the United States is quite generous in that regard. What you're asking for is for us to reduce our standard of living explicitly so other people can pollute . That's going to be a hard sell.

I agree. No progress has ever been made by giving up something lots of people want. Look at smoking, people know it will kill them, banned in most outdoor areas and that it is expensive/super taxed. The taxes doubled the price and that didn't reduce the smoking as much ecigs, a away for people to get what they with all of the benefits and fewer downsides.

Every gain we make needs to unambiguously be a gain otherwise some will choose to ignore the self restriction for their own personal gain and with CO2 we all lose when that happens.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#204

Post by jauco »

flukus wrote: post #191
bottled_poe wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/longterm What is it going to take to convince you? Let's just wait a few more decades to be sure though. It would be a waste spending resources trying to prevent the demise of life on Earth when we didn't need to.

Is there a name for this sort of chart?: https://sites.google.com/site/pettitclimategraphs/sea-ice-vo...

Spider chart or spiderweb chart

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#205

Post by lossolo »

I've read interesting post couple of days ago about Global Warming on reddit:

"Hey guys this research isn't really finding out anything that wasn't already known. RCP 8.5 scenario, which they assumed in their modelling, has long been known to be effectively Armageddon. Any temperature rise past 5.5 degrees is probably irrelevant because there wont be any humans left to deal with that outcome.

However it's looking increasingly likely that we aren't on the RCP 8.5 pathway. RCP 8.5 calls for steady continued growth in emissions of around 3%+ per year, which is what we were on in the early part of this decade. The last three years emissions have been effectively flat in spite of ongoing economic growth, and the Paris pledges that will keep warming to about 2.8 degrees call for the emissions peak to be in 2040~ (RCP 4.5). Based on trends in renewables, the downturn in the coal industry, and emissions growth halting, it's increasingly hard to see how we could possibly get back on track to an RCP 8.5 scenario.

2.8 degrees will still be terrible for environment, the economy, and poorer nations of course, and we should really be aiming for the RCP 2.6 scenario, where emissions peak no later than 2020. It's possible emissions have peaked already, but we will need more than three years of data to determine that. Of course, than comes the hard part of taking offline the carbon intensive elements of the world economy (i.e Coal)"

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5cz4a7/new_climate...

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#206

Post by gajjanag »

jacobolus wrote: post #178
enraged_camel wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Life will flourish wether the coast is under water or not. Life may flourish, but many lives won't. >>And does it really make a difference? It does make a huge difference to the 44 percent of humanity that lives on coastal areas.

I think the point is that after the extinction of humans and a large proportion of existing species on earth, life itself will continue and the next few million years will result in speciation to adapt to new niches on a planet with radically different climate. I don’t understand how anyone finds this comforting, however.

> I don’t understand how anyone finds this comforting, however.

Why can't it be viewed as a source of comfort? At a longer time scale, even life on earth won't exist as the sun dies. At a sufficiently long time scale, none of this stuff on earth matters, the universe continues to move on. As these highlight the transitory nature of life on earth, there is no reason for why one can't "let go" after a point. I find that a tremondous source of comfort, as I often face the problem of when to "let go" in many contexts.

I won't get into a detailed discussion of the purpose of existence (a natural counter-question to the above), or why one should still strive in one's own way to tackle issues like climate change up to "one's capacity" (which depends on accepting the purpose of existence).

These fundamental questions are extremely hard to address. It took me a long time and a lot of thought to have a reasonably satisfactory answer to these questions - though of course what answer one is satisfied by will vary from person to person. For me, the bulk of the answer came from a study of the Indian Vedantic tradition (chiefly Adwaita Vedanta) through the "Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda" among other such books, and the works of Leo Tolstoy. Mileage may vary of course.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#207

Post by NumberCruncher »

jacobolus wrote: post #178
enraged_camel wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Life will flourish wether the coast is under water or not. Life may flourish, but many lives won't. >>And does it really make a difference? It does make a huge difference to the 44 percent of humanity that lives on coastal areas.

I think the point is that after the extinction of humans and a large proportion of existing species on earth, life itself will continue and the next few million years will result in speciation to adapt to new niches on a planet with radically different climate. I don’t understand how anyone finds this comforting, however.

I just realised that this is inevitable.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#208

Post by NumberCruncher »

gajjanag wrote: post #206
jacobolus wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that after the extinction of humans and a large proportion of existing species on earth, life itself will continue and the next few million years will result in speciation to adapt to new niches on a planet with radically different climate. I don’t understand how anyone finds this comforting, however.

> I don’t understand how anyone finds this comforting, however. Why can't it be viewed as a source of comfort? At a longer time scale, even life on earth won't exist as the sun dies. At a sufficiently long time scale, none of this stuff on earth matters, the universe continues to move on. As these highlight the transitory nature of life on earth, there is no reason for why one can't "let go" after a point. I find tha…

I found my way in stoicism. Stopping taking care about inevitable things gives me the power to take care about things I can change. I do not expect the HN folks to understand and accept my point of view. The resulting misunderstanding seems to be also inevitable. And I am OK with that.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#209

Post by NumberCruncher »

sqeaky wrote: post #140
NumberCruncher wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moral is a human construct and as such it is subjective. Anyhow, I said that the life on earth survived a couple of disastrous events and still flourishes. Life will flourish wether the coast is under water or not. There were times when there wasn't any coast at all, or it was somewhere else. And does it really make a difference? You won't see anything of the war of resources except you live for 200 years. You may ta…

Your statements are equivalent to you not caring about humanity because you implicitly disregard human suffering. Since the reason people care about climate change, both for and against, is human suffering then we can disregard anything you have to say about it. That you and you are clearly just choosing the most antagonistic thing to get a reaction from people. This is the last I will be responding. If I could down…

I do care about the effects of climate change on humanity as much as I do care about bad weather. When it rains I take my umbrella. Both are things I can not hinder more than as I do now.

I do not own a car, never did, do not plan to own one, I am not caught by the consume madness and I also try to avoid wasting ressources. I wonder how many of the downvoters can say the same.

Re: Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

#210

Post by NumberCruncher »

enraged_camel wrote: post #121
NumberCruncher wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moral is a human construct and as such it is subjective. Anyhow, I said that the life on earth survived a couple of disastrous events and still flourishes. Life will flourish wether the coast is under water or not. There were times when there wasn't any coast at all, or it was somewhere else. And does it really make a difference? You won't see anything of the war of resources except you live for 200 years. You may ta…

>>Life will flourish wether the coast is under water or not. Life may flourish, but many lives won't. >>And does it really make a difference? It does make a huge difference to the 44 percent of humanity that lives on coastal areas.

Funny fact: the coast are moving. Slowly, but still moving. 44 percent of humanity sooner or later will have a problem because of it. If this happens 100 or 10M years after our death does really make that much difference to us?
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