Maybe putting sociopaths in charge of the government and the world economy was a bad idea.
The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
321–330 of 422 posts
Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
#322Playing devil's advocate, if you look at the temperature graphs up to now, ignoring the future projections, the temperature has regularly fluctuated to hotter than we have it now (~2C more) and then fallen back (6 less). There must be some stabilizing factors that cause it to do that. Maybe that'll kick in again?
Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
#323Playing devil's advocate, if you look at the temperature graphs up to now, ignoring the future projections, the temperature has regularly fluctuated to hotter than we have it now (~2C more) and then fallen back (6 less). There must be some stabilizing factors that cause it to do that. Maybe that'll kick in again?
Sometimes this process involves killing off a good portion of the multicellular life on Earth, but sure, maybe that'll kick in again.
Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…
Hank Green did a good short video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvAznN_MPWQ TL;DW: It is important that individuals show that there is a real problem and that they perform actions that address the problem. This demonstrative behaviour leads to social dynamics where more people feel encouraged to perform actions and to drive larger change. You need to start somewhere.
That puts recycling on the "I'm helping to spread awareness by temporarily adding a note to my Twitter bio" tier of action. It's better than nothing, but it's only a little better.
Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
It makes perfect sense to look at energy + container subsystems.
Why? In the context of the electrical grid, has the amount of storage you can have in the backburner ever been a choke point? If anything, fossil fuel power plants have the very same batteries to buffer some energy. But for the vast majority of power consumers that can just exist on the grid, power storage is nearly irrelevant because it can go directly from producer to consumer. Even in places where storage is relev…
The only context in which comparing power densities makes any sense is the vehicular one.
Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
#326It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…
> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…
I have to disagree here.
Companies would stop doing anything in the face of a unified boycott.
We love to blame companies, private equity, capitalism, government, anyone really. It's us. They lie to us because we want to be lied to.
Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prisoner's dilemma is a bad reference here. Prisoner's dilemma is about situation when optimal outcome requires cooperation from all participants. In the situation with climate change, personal decisions of 99% of Earth population do not really matter.
WDYM personal decisions don't matter? Industrial and agricultural sectors, which both in sum contribute 50% of total greenhouse gas emissions, produce what is in demand from consumers. Another 15% of emissions is from personal vehicles. Changing personal habits is the only way we can ever reach some utopian climate targets. Utopian because old habits die hard.
Once again, personal decisions on the consumer side doesn't matter here. Unless all consumers cooperate to force a ban on practices that are bad for environment. However that basically means forcing specific decisions on the 1% that control laws and business.
Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
#328Earlier quoted context omitted.
> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…
Hank Green did a good short video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvAznN_MPWQ TL;DW: It is important that individuals show that there is a real problem and that they perform actions that address the problem. This demonstrative behaviour leads to social dynamics where more people feel encouraged to perform actions and to drive larger change. You need to start somewhere.
We know there is a real problem, awareness is not the issue. (I've been aware of it since the mid 90's) It is ignored by large industries and governments. The incessant pounding of the useless drum of individual action continues to go absolutely nowhere. We need government and industry to take action not individuals. I will no longer placate this idea that individual action is at all useful.
Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory
#329This is 100% uninformed opinion (sorry, HN) but allowing climate action to become a political issue (and a losing political issue at that) was the core mistake the environmental movement made in the 90s and beyond.
If we had created a broad-based constituency for climate action, say, working with industry to build nuclear power or supporting natural gas to displace coal or even funding more conservative think tanks, then we'd be in better shape.
A microcosm of this was local and federal politicians driving Elon Musk to the Republicans. Labor issues and regulatory roadblocks took precedence over supporting Tesla, forcing Musk to seek Trump as an ally. This immediately poisoned Tesla's reputation with liberals and probably set back adoption of EVs in the West.
If climate change is really an existential issue, then we should be willing to compromise on non-existential issues to build a broader coalition. But no one is in the mood for that.