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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#331

Post by scoofy »

GMoromisato wrote: post #329

This 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,…

> but allowing climate action to become a political issue

What the hell are you talking about? What?!? This entire issue was a solved problem with a simple carbon tax (which is a conservative leaning policy) and then one party decided their strategy was going to be deny, then delay, then pose it as a fait accompli.

I was pretty damn conservative on a lot of issues when I started college... as it became more and more clear to me -- from taking earth science classes -- that climate change was very obviously happening and that we've known about it since the 1960s and that no serious person trying to suggest that it's not being made worse by human activity, that's when I started to thing that the Republicans were not going to take this issue seriously, ever.

Any centrist or conservative person who takes the issues seriously has no idea what to do because on party just decided to just say "lol, who cares." How in the hell is that environmental movement's fault!?! You look at the UK and environmentalism is not a partisan issue. Here, we have idiots holding snowballs in congress trying to score cheap political points.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#332

Post by phkahler »

I dont understand this line of reasoning at all. The holocene looks like the most recent in a cycle of short warming periods that has been going on for over 1M years. There is little reason to think its stable. One could argue that we should push warming to prevent the coming glaciation. I rather suspect that would hasten it instead, but the runaway hot house thing is not supported by the historic record. Perhaps the collapse of the AMOC is what tips it. Either way, saying its the most whatever in 125K years is irrelevant since we should be aiming for conditions from before the ice age. If you frame it in the longer history briefly mentioned in the article it looks quite different.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#333

Post by cassepipe »

GMoromisato wrote: post #329

This 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,…

No what's crazy is that something as apolitical as "many scientists specialized in climate have come to the conclusion" was successfully turned into something political thanks to a now well proven denialist playbook. We really need to stop both-siding that kind of thing. One side just said "We should do something about it to save us all" and the other side tried to come up with anything that could make them look evil but in the end what worked was bypassing reason entirely with this new thing called identity politics.

Elon Musk is a half-closeted white supremacist, he was always going to side with Trump. I don't mean that as an insult, this is just what I could gather from his tweets, preoccupations and "roman" salutes.

> 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.

Or those conservatives could have come up with their own version of tackling the issue: nuclear and gas displacing coal. Some of them did I believe, it's just not the version who won in the end. It seems strange to blame the other side for their own "aesthetic" preferences (i.e renewables)

I really don't mean to start a flamewar but your comment gives me the vibe of "I became a nazi because my daughter wanted me to sort my trash" meme or something of the genre where there is no accountability and you are always just reacting to the wrongs of the other side.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#334

Post by leptons »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It 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 gave up driving in the 1990s because I knew back then the situation was untenable for the climate. I chose to try to live a life that contributes less to the destruction of life as we know it. Life without a car has brought sacrifice, but I'm glad I did it. No, my single sacrifice won't save the planet, because far too many people are addicted to cheap energy, and free movement. Blaming the oil industry is like blaming the cows because you ate too much cheese. Now there are electric cars, but unless you are charging it up every day from solar/battery (along with your house), then you're still only helping a little.

Suppose the fossil fuel lobby disappeared tomorrow, along with government subsidies and any hegemony you think exists - people are still going to be addicted to cheap energy. Only when the forms of energy they currently rely on really starts costing what it would cost to save the planet from climate change will you and others realize that every decision has a consequence. You want to drive 2+ hours in traffic every day? That has a real cost for the environment to do it with fossil fuel.

Maybe try changing your life so that you don't spend 2+ hours every day driving around in traffic. That's what I did, I got a job locally, got rid of my car, and started riding my bike everywhere. If it was far, I planned ahead take the bus/train. I do this in Los Angeles, since the 1990s - not exactly a bike-centric place to live, but it is entirely possible to do. Of course it's more difficult to do this in rural areas, but maybe that should be the exception.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#335

Post by cassepipe »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It 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…

Most people would agree that drug dealers hold more moral responsibility for delivering a product that they know is highly addictive but on the other hand no one would absolve an addict of any responsibility. Even you think addiction is a illness, we still expect people to help themselves by deciding to get help/seek treatment to fight the addiction.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#336

Post by dangus »

cassepipe wrote: post #335
mullingitover wrote: post #92

Earlier 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…

Most people would agree that drug dealers hold more moral responsibility for delivering a product that they know is highly addictive but on the other hand no one would absolve an addict of any responsibility. Even you think addiction is a illness, we still expect people to help themselves by deciding to get help/seek treatment to fight the addiction.

This sounds sensible in isolation, but the real analogy is that the drug dealers have spent billions of dollars convincing the general public that drugs are healthy and better than the alternative of sobriety.

And also, when I go to the store to buy my daily needs like food and soap, they’re all packaged in the drugs.

Oh and I have to consume the drugs to get to the store because there’s no safe way to get there on foot or on a bike, and there’s no bus or train service because someone at GM/Ford paid my representatives to not fund that.

Then when I take my used drugs to the drug recycling center, they don’t actually get recycled because it isn’t profitable. But my recycling agency tells me that all my drugs get reused.

Seriously, just watch a paper towel ad or something. They act like it’s impossible to clean up a spill with something reusable.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#337

Post by red75prime »

logicprog wrote: post #239
baq wrote: post #25

Nothing new under the sun. We can't cut emissions fast enough politically, but we can race towards economically viable fusion power which would solve the problem from the supply side and would make industrial scale carbon sequestration not insane, for a century or so, until waste heat itself can't be radiated fast enough even in 250 ppm CO2 atmosphere - but that's a problem for the XXII century.

Economically viable fusion power uses the fusion reactor in the sky beaming energy to us for free that we can collect with relatively cheap, simple, decentralized, solid state, and extremely long lasting (decades) power transmission recievers.

Why solar aficionados consistently forget about the night and intermittency in general? It's not like diurnal and seasonal storage will pop up for free and the energy grid will reorganize itself.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#338

Post by conductr »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It 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…

It’s government’s fault for not regulating it properly. You can’t give individuals choice and then blame them. Just like you can’t give industry the ability to mass produce these things that are so inherently bad for current but especially future humans. Only governments are responsible for playing that kind of long game.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#339

Post by Zambyte »

CobrastanJorji wrote: post #324
vaylian wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Doing a little better than nothing becomes a big deal when everyone is doing it.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#340

Post by ikrenji »

GMoromisato wrote: post #329

This 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,…

what labor issues and regulatory roadblocks? the man is halfway to becoming a trillionaire. if anything there wasn't enough labor legislation and more regulation to spread the wealth a bit
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