Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

https://www.facebook.com/notes/arnold-schwarzenegger/i-dont-give-a-if-we-agree-about-climate-change/10153855713574658

by herbertlui • 11 years ago

367 231 11 years ago

facebook.com

buckbova• 11 years ago

If I believe your number:

First - do you believe it is acceptable that 7 million people die every year from pollution?

Answer this, how many of that 7 million year over year die from carbon dioxide?

This is the major issue with deniers. Carbon dioxide != pollution.

Edit:

I don't know anyone not in favor of clean energy. I know plenty who warn of government overreaching using climate change scare tactics.

You want to take a stance on pollution, then do that. Don't rant about climate change deniers.

Pharaoh2• 11 years ago

So you are ok with 1* million(x) CO2 pollution deaths per year and 6 million(y) other pollution death per year?

*- Move the x as you want, and set y as (7 - x) million.

Oletros• 11 years ago

You're mixing pollution with green house gases

merpnderp3• 11 years ago

I think it's a valid point since the EPA labels CO2 as pollution.

[EDIT] Since I'm getting so many down votes, thought I'd link the EPA calling CO2 pollution. http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan

antod• 11 years ago

Carbon dioxide != pollution

It's what plants crave!

tremols2• 11 years ago

You americans must go beyond the false dichotomy of republicans and democrats.. its just two different ways of getting your tax money, weapons and staged wars or bureaucracy. Neither gives a damn about an african genocide to lower the price of chocolate.

ChrisArgyle• 11 years ago

tl;dr Even climate change deniers must face that fossil fuels are polluting our air and water and are eventually going to run out. Investing in clean energy is just pragmatic and doesn't make you a tax-and-spend liberal.

tremols2• 11 years ago

the lie was not neccesary. climate change deniers are worried about the government getting its nose into everything and destroying a country to favour some bankers. if you started with the right arguments like arnold the story would be different.. and its not late.

astrodust3• 11 years ago

Come on man. Not everything is a conspiracy of bankers.

vvanders• 11 years ago

I was kinda hoping there would be a second message down the left side:

http://www.wired.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger/

thieving_magpie• 11 years ago

Regarding the third question, it's a nice analogy there but is he suggesting that electric power is predominantly clean?

Across the US, 37.4% of our electric power comes from coal. I don't want to detract from the overall message because it is clear and accurate but I think it's important to think about how electric power is currently generated.

Coal statistic pulled from: http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/...

konspence• 11 years ago

In the first and second question he addresses pollution and coal. I think it's safe to assume he means an electric car powered by renewable energy.

mmanfrin• 11 years ago

Coal as a source of our electric power has plummeted in a decade, being taken up mostly by natural gas (but also in small part by solar/wind). Additionally, there is no change needed for an end consumer if the power they use is switched to a different source, whereas to switch a fuel for cars means switching cars. The drive to get people on electric cars means that switching everything off of fossil fuels is a matter of switching the power plants (which we've seen is something that can be done quickly as with coal->natural gas).

redblacktree5• 11 years ago

I would be very interested in an all-electric minivan with enough range for my frequent 600-mile trips to my wife's home town. Sadly, this does not yet exist.

wangarific• 11 years ago

The idea is that conventional gasoline engines will pollute, electric engines won't. As for the source of electricity, it's currently not 100% clean but getting cleaner as renewable sources take over.

jtolmar• 11 years ago

With gas burning cars we have two problems - pollution from cars and pollution from electrical plants. With electric cars we only have one problem - the power plants. It increases the magnitude of that problem, but the total complexity goes down.

scott_karana• 11 years ago

Centralized coal plants are more efficient than individual internal combustion motors.

Even adding losses from transmission and the electric motors at the end, it's a net-win.

Yes, other power sources are better, but even as a stopgap coal has its use.

xlm1717• 11 years ago

Energy in general doesn't look like a good investment in the near future.

chejazi2• 11 years ago

Unrelated: Facebook notes look good. I wonder if it's a direct competitor to to Medium / Svbtle.

jsprogrammer• 11 years ago

You mean placing text in a rectangle? Looks like it.

chejazi2• 11 years ago

Reading this made me realize: it looks good read because there are no ads on the page. It's crazy how obtrusive ads are these days..

hn9780470248775• 11 years ago

Jarringly different in style than the rest of the site.

nmridul• 11 years ago

The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue.

There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided.

If pollution was the prime focus from day one, then more push would have been given to renewable.

Maybe, Arnold is able to bring more people to think in this direction.

amalag• 11 years ago

I agree with this. Amazing that we need AS to give people a dose of wisdom. I have to agree with everything he said. I am not convinced about CO2 causing global warming but I am 100% ok with our society pushing away from coal, gasoline and fracking.

rm_-rf_slash• 11 years ago

If only it were that easy. With energy use expected to rise and the Jevon's Paradox sure to annihilate any environmental benefits from increased efficiency, we will have to make some unfortunate choices about energy sources. Coal is very very dirty, beyond CO2, we're talking sulfur and mercury poisoning. Fracking is actually quite safe but notoriously under regulated. Nuclear is clean and safe but a generation raised on Homer Simpson and Chernobyl footage means they'll never accept it.

Even green tech is dirty. Refining rare earths is environmentally disasterous (gotta rip those high valence electrons somehow) and battery recycling in Nigeria has created a huge spike in lead poisoning cases and deaths.

Fighting climate change is the biggest conflict in the history in humanity. Our species is our enemy and our ally, and we are tasked between holding onto the plummeting biodiversity we have on this day, December 7, 2015, or complete and utter extinction. It won't be easy, and we will all have to make choices we don't like.

Daishiman3• 11 years ago

"I am not convinced about CO2 causing global warming"

Honestly, how convinced you are about it is only relevant because economic interests have planted a seed of doubt about it.

Your position to question the science on climate change is about as good as it is on a myriad other issues which no one seems keen on questioning. If there weren't a lobby doing it, your uncertainty would be as much as what qualified experts have.

gnaritas12• 11 years ago

If you are not convinced of something that nearly all scientists say is true, then you need to change your mind because the odds are nearly 100% that you're wrong and your belief is based on ideological footing that is blinding you.

It is really quite absurd to deny something the entire scientific community says is true.

stcredzero2• 11 years ago

There always will be a debate on global warming.

I doubt this is true without the caveat: ...so long as the energy industry keeps funding an opposition.

ArkyBeagle5• 11 years ago

I think the science will take a long time to harden beyond its present state. We can project forward estimates but this will refine over time. It's a long-term project.

adventured2• 11 years ago

Putin's Russia, and Xi's China, are extremely skeptical of global warming. Russia outright considers it a fraud and conspiracy, Putin has stated exactly that. Plenty in the developing world are on board with that skepticism.

Which is why China is going to keep their emission levels completely uncapped for the next 15 years at least, allowing for dramatic growth in said emissions. The best they've agreed to, is that maybe emissions will fall after 2030 (emphasis on the fact that it's an entirely empty pledge).

beerbajay• 11 years ago

I think you're ignoring the profit to be made in extending the time between now and when ANY kind of regulation (pollution OR climate change) kicks in. Industries have historically avoided responsibility for various kinds of pollution by using the same FUD tactics that are used in the climate change "debate".

lmm5• 11 years ago

There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided.

Bullshit. Whatever the focus was, vested interests would have funded opposition and that's what kept people divided.

rybosome3• 11 years ago

Hear, hear. The fossil-fuel industry fought long and hard to sow doubt that ambient lead levels in the atmosphere were increasing due to the burning of leaded gasoline. Losing on that point, they then attempted to prove that low levels of lead are not harmful to humans; this has since been shown to be wildly inaccurate.

It blows my fucking mind that people accuse scientists of being untrustworthy due to having a financial interest in proving global warming to be true; this is in spite of the fact that the fossil-fuel industry has already been caught putting out junk science that justified poisoning humans to protect their profit.

cat-dev-null• 11 years ago

"Merchants of Doubt"-style manufactured confusion, false-flag issue-advocacy and pseudo-contrarian FUD to smokescreen the reality of civilization-impacting health and environmental issues... from smoking to coal and more.

It's all about ease of delaying regulation to maximize profits, not conspiracy theories, just dirty tricks as means to ends.

mbreese• 11 years ago

Funny - I don't really see much of a debate...

crpatino• 11 years ago

It's called a Filibuster, i think. 99% may be in perfect consensus, but as long as the idiot (or mallevolent) 1% is allowed to keep claiming that there is insufficient information, the "debate" will keep going and going.

It is remarkably similar to a DOS attack.

gozur882• 11 years ago

That's because you're reflexively dismissing people on the other side. They're still there, though.

MrZongle22• 11 years ago

"The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue."

This is why I hate environmental discussions with a passion, because at some point if one expresses less than total agreement with the AGW crowd you apparently are in the pocket of Smokey McCoalstove and enjoy smog, dead fish, and coughing babies. Martin Luther received a warmer response from the Catholic Church than some "deniers" who dare question the established dogma.

Daishiman3• 11 years ago

Yes, because unless you have actual, critical arguments beyond the conspiranoid baseless claims that climate scientists are all in collusion, all the science points one way, and the entire civilized world with the exception of some US politicians who are suspiciously befriended with certain economic interests oppose it.

yongjik• 11 years ago

Revisionist history much?

We added lead to gasoline in the 1920s and it remained legal in most countries (including the US) until 1990s. In other words, it took us seventy years to stop actively adding toxic heavy metal to gasoline so that it spreads everywhere cars can go.

After all, we're talking about an industry that can spread FUD about a whole branch of science. I see no reason why they wouldn't do the same to other pollution problems.

ArkyBeagle5• 11 years ago

But Midgley and Kettering were from GM. And if you look at least at oil company PR these days, they're touting clean energy and taking warming quite seriously.

https://exxonmobil.com/Benelux-English/energy_climate.aspx http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/12/07/3728921/exxonmob...

hackuser• 11 years ago

There always will be a debate on global warming

As long as the denialists are well-funded:

Unearthing America's Deep Network of Climate Change Deniers

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-11-30/unearthing...

Sailfish3• 11 years ago

Oh, puhleaseeee! The Warmists are most well-funded funded there is, getting trillions of tax payer dollars for extremely lucrative jobs.

If the guide is based on "follow the money" the Warmists will lose by orders of magnitudes.

mikeash6• 11 years ago

If pollution is your focus but not global warming, then you'll focus more on scrubbing technologies and better combustion and the like. A lot of stuff can burn extremely cleanly now if you ignore CO2, and the only reading to look at CO2 is climate change. It's not important at all as a pollutant otherwise.

I also doubt that people would be unified on pollution if not for global warming. In my experience, the people who doubt climate change also downplay pollution in general. It's largely the same people saying global warming is a liberal hoax, and complaining about how the government says they can't dump used motor oil down the storm drains, can't buy freon anymore, cars have to come with catalytic converters, and such.

jinushaun3• 11 years ago

I disagree. Switching the conversation back to pollution will have the same end result as focusing solely on climate change.

Yes, a focus on pollution will result in cleaner dirty energy, but cleaner dirty energy is better than dirty dirty energy. Clean dirty energy is probably more likely to have lower CO2 emissions.

Climate change deniers may try to deny pollution, but pollution is a lot harder to explain away. Pollution happens in your face today (see China), but climate change happens 100 years away in extrapolated data models. You can explain over fishing destroying jobs instead of ecosystems. Or explain over-logging creating soil erosion that destroys homes.

People understand problems that affect people today, not ecosystems tomorrow.

EdSharkey6• 11 years ago

So is the conversation something like, "air/water/ground pollution" X "planet is becoming uninhabitable"? Where X differs depending on who is talking?

For Schwarzenegger, X seems to be "therefore". For me, X is more like, "but not". I treat the two arguments as separate.

Shocking warnings have always come with pollution. For me, those warnings have mostly born out as true. I have chronic asthma, probably from air pollution. And, I have eyes so I can observe the haze and smog over the city in the morning. I've been to China and seen and felt what happens when there are no pollution controls at all. Rivers catching fire/all the life being killed off in them by dumped waste is a real thing that happens.

Acid rain, though? That one jumped the shark for me; I think acid rain was all hype. Fantastic claims need really fantastic evidence is all I'm saying.

I do like pollution controls though and I am amazed at how improved the air quality is in the states over what it was in the 1970's. I have kids, and I want to continue our regime of pollution controls. Renewable energy sources are the way to go.

Global warming appears to me to be bad science, however. All the computer models predicted a spiraling warming effect, but instead we're cooling off, and we're potentially heading for another mini-ice age. The sun, being the primary energy input for the system, is never causally linked to warming or cooling trends on our planet. Why is that, especially when we can measure the sun's energy output is not a constant? Money and power is my guess. I don't see any proof - at our current rate of energy consumption and pollution - of how we are making a dent in this absolutely massive system. The scientific claims seem to predict destabilization, and I just don't see any proof of that happening.

Honestly, if global warming theorists want to bolster their claims, they should keep links between pollution and warming very abstract. Trying to use health effects of pollution as a proof of atmospheric destruction weakens the argument because they're two separate effects. Arnold does a disservice to his cause here.

TheOtherHobbes• 11 years ago

I have no idea where you get the idea that the planet is cooling, but you're 100% wrong about this.

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate-guide/science/temp-recor...

This is not "bad science."

And it leads to predictable effects. The North West of England is partly underwater this week because of yet another "once a century" storm - the kind that have been rolling around every few years since 2000 or so. Increased rainfall for the UK has been predicted since the late 1980s as an effect of CO2 output.

"The sun, being the primary energy input for the system, is never causally linked to warming or cooling trends on our planet."

Climate change models have allowed for solar output for decades. See e.g.

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08...

It might be an idea to educate yourself on the real science.

kgmpers• 11 years ago

Global warming appears to me to be bad science, however...

Climate scientists do and have studied the link between climate and the sun, as well as many other factors, but in the end GHG emissions from humans are contributing the most to increasing global temperatures.

http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...

Also while it's a big system, there are also 7 billion of us. In 2012 we released over 30 billion tonnes of C02 into the atmosphere.

https://www.eia.gov/cfapps/ipdbproject/IEDIndex3.cfm?tid=90&...

gutnor• 11 years ago

There always will be a debate on global warming.

That seems mostly a US problem. In the rest of the first world, even in BRIC countries, there does not seem to be any debate on Global warming but on the economic repercussions and the fairness of the measures considering First World countries polluted as much as they wanted.

Actually, considering the complete lack of controversy in the scientific community, the US position is rather strange. I guess it is just easier internally to sell wacky conspiracy theories than some hard truth like "it is not our economic interest and we are the world leader, so sorry guys".

jinushaun3• 11 years ago

I've been preaching this for years! Global warming makes as much sense as eternal damnation to non-believers. It redirects the environmental conversation away from tangible short term problems such as pollution to abstract long term problems like global warming. People can relate to problems affecting people (pollution and health, over-logging and soil erosion, over-fishing and lost jobs, oil and energy dependence, etc). Global warming is a lot harder to relate to. It's so abstract that it's easy for opponents to dismiss and spread FUD.

The shift in conversation towards Climate Change really hurt the environmental movement, IMO.

j-l-• 11 years ago

I really wonder. So much money and freedom was spent and 7 millions of people are still dying? Smart choice would be Termination, not Terminator.

saosebastiao2• 11 years ago

Door 2 is also likely fatal. Most electric motors produce ozone :)

srameshc• 11 years ago

I just found this link http://www.science20.com/news_articles/solving_ozone_problem... . I am sure this will be a problem for many years but it will be addressed. The problem on the other hand is the pollutants from automobiles. If someone is driving a car in New Delhi with windows down for few hours, can feel the grease from engine fumes on face and nostrils. Clean your nose and that is when you realize how terrible the traffic is. The problem is not with people who are driving the cars. There are pedestrians and people living off streets who breath that air all day. It scares me to see a child breath that air as I am tend to fall sick with throat ruptured even after a day on the road inside a car. That would hopefully change around the world if we have electric vehicles.

stcredzero2• 11 years ago

You are most certainly technically incorrect, which is the worst kind of incorrect. It would take very very high levels of ozone to be anywhere near as promptly fatal as carbon monoxide poisoning from running a gasoline powered car inside a closed garage. As far as I know, no one commits suicide by running an electric motor in a closed room. Ozone causes oxidative damage to tissues, including the delicate tissues of your lungs. Carbon monoxide shuts down the oxygen carrying function your hemoglobin. You can be killed by unnoticeable levels of carbon monoxide. It's highly unlikely you won't be able to sense dangerous levels of ozone. In fact, it's likely to be unpleasant enough to drive you from the room. Whereas CO makes you feel sleepy as you slip down to unconsciousness forever.

(EDIT: That said, ozone in rather small amounts can be quite damaging to long term health.)

saosebastiao2• 11 years ago

It is plainly obvious that CO and even CO2 from IC engines is drastically more fatal than anything coming out of an electric motor...I thought the trolling attempt was transparent, but apparently not. If I really wanted to provide a counter to the article, pollution from battery manufacturing is far more concerning than ozone (which has a half life measured in days) from brushed electric motors. And even that appears to be far less of a problem than the carbon economy.

That being said, ozone can be fatal over the long term, and researchers regularly segment pollution death estimates to include ozone pollution [1].

[1] http://www.iop.org/news/13/jul/page_60518.html

sebular• 11 years ago

Not true. Brushless induction motors don't produce ozone, and that's the type of motor used in the Tesla, Leaf, Volt, i3, and any other electric vehicle on the road. Schwarzenegger wouldn't be dumb enough to end this letter with a claim that wasn't fact-checked.

merpnderp3• 11 years ago

I like that he makes it more about the economics of saving lives, which should be the primary argument.

But that is a tricky problem since we have 4 million a year dying from indoor cooking smoke, and millions more from other various aspects of extreme poverty. Most of which would be a greater ameliorated by cheap coal plants. Cheap coals plants are horrible polluters, but they are cheap, aren't as bad as indoor pollution, and allow countries to pull themselves out of abject poverty, thus saving lives immediately by fertilizing crops, making cheap concrete, powering factories, all the things a richer society needs.

justicezyx• 11 years ago

Typical logical flaw of applying the argument to various other argually retard comparison.

The comparison here is between clean energy and fossil fuel. It has little to do with cooking, or extreme poverty.

pavlov3• 11 years ago

With too much reliance on cheap coal for economic growth, you end up here:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-pollution-...

China's use of coal has probably peaked. Any developing country would do well to follow China's lead and build renewables rather than coal, whatever its short-term advantages.

merpnderp3• 11 years ago

I agree, coal is bad and we need cheaper more reliable wind/solar. But people are dying today and coal is available today.

To see some of the issues involved with running and maintaining wind power on large scales, this is a great article showing China's struggles.

http://www.economist.com/news/china/21660164-though-wind-gen...

barney54• 11 years ago

Developing countries are following China's example because it works. Renewables such as solar and wind are expensive and can't keep the lights on.

People in developing countries want "real electricity, not fake electricity" as villagers in Dharnai, India told the Chief Minister of Bihar state when he came to inaugurate a solar microgrid. (subscription required) http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477

Yes, Beijing's air quality is bad, but you can put pollution control systems on power plants and China is doing exactly that. A very large problem for Beijing is uncontrolled pollution from automobiles, scooters, trucks and other small engines.

The point about coal is that it keeps the lights on and it is affordable. That matters a huge amount when you don't have electricity.

adventured2• 11 years ago

China added 39 gigawatts of new coal power capacity in 2014. They issued permits for at least 150 new coal plants in 2015. They're building a new coal power plant every week, and issuing a new permit every two days. Just the new permits issued for 2015 alone would be equal to 40%+ of all US coal power plant output. While we're at it, let's remember to throw in the recent 14% revision upward in their coal use.

Their coal use clearly hasn't even remotely peaked. All the plans on their table right now call for building a lot more coal power plants.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/world/asia/china-coal-p...

kbutler• 11 years ago

China's use of coal has probably peaked. Any developing country would do well to follow China's lead...

Hmm. I think it's more correct to say the /rate of increase/ of China's use of coal has probably peaked.

"China added 39 gigawatts of coal-fired capacity in 2014 — 3 gigawatts more than it added in 2013. That is equivalent to three 1,000 megawatt units every four weeks.[v] At the peak, from 2005 through 2011, China added about two 600-megawatt coal plants a week, for 7 straight years. And, China is expected to add the equivalent of a new 600-megawatt plant every 10 days for the next 10 years. "

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/analysis/as-u-s-shutte...

China is increasing renewable power generation, but they continue to add coal power generation as well.

AnimalMuppet2• 11 years ago

But is a cheap coal plant a worse polluter than N household cooking fires, where N is the number of households that the cheap coal plant enables to switch to electric cooking? (Don't forget that those households also probably heat the house with wood fires or something equally nasty.)

ArkyBeagle5• 11 years ago

"The economics of saving lives" are usually pretty shoddy, frankly. Factor isolation is a nightmare, and as you point out, other goods may well counterbalance "bads."

Claudus• 11 years ago

1. "WHO estimates indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million deaths in 2012 in households cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves."

If the majority of the "7 million" die from indoor cooking, It seems like it would be better to focus our resources on developing infrastructure in SE Asia so that every household has electricity and modern cooking appliances.

Tepix2• 11 years ago

It's relatively easy to fix indoor cooking, but it's hard to fix CO2 once it's out there.

steven20123• 11 years ago

I absolutely don't believe that human-created CO2 emissions cause global warming. However, I consider myself a staunch environmentalist.

I believe we should be doing whatever we can to control pollution. It sickens me that factories pump out pollution, that we can barely eat fish anymore because of all the garbage and poisons we pump into our oceans. I think we need very strict controls on every form of pollution as well as garbage and creating plastic waste (including microplastic particles in our oceans), although I do believe CO2 pollution is on the bottom of the scale in terms of importance. I believe that fines for factories that pollute the environment should be material, ie. very heavy relative to yearly revenues. Personally, I do my best to ensure that I create as little waste as possible, and that I do my part in terms of recycling, composting, etc.

So I consider myself an environmentalist, I just don't believe that global warming is caused by human activity, and CO2 pollution is the least critical of the pollutions.

kazinator• 11 years ago

All of the surrounding doublespeak is deplorable. We are expected to treat these all these terms as being synonymous: "climate change", "global warming", "human-created CO2 emissions". If you deny one of these, you deny them all.

toomuchtodo2• 11 years ago

Can you explain your lack of belief when 97% of climate scientists (there's conflicting data on this; some reports show as high as 99%) agree that human activity is causing global warming?

EDIT: That's not rhetorical. I'll entertain any logical reasoning you have as to why your reasoning is superior to those educated and practicing the subject daily.

swagv• 11 years ago

He has infinite wisdom that failed the 97% of the scientific researchers who make it their profession to review this stuff.

metamet• 11 years ago

Maybe they forgot a keyword? It certainly isn't the sole cause of global warming/climate change, but it is real.

CO2 in the atmosphere--what's historically known as the greenhouse effect--leads to earth's warming. CO2 emissions are also undeniably connected to the the greenhouse effect, which we clearly have a role to play in. That's science that no one disputes.

But somehow people come out of the woodwork as climate change denialists.

It doesn't really make sense unless seen through a political lens, since politics is antithetical to science in a lot of ways.

spydum• 11 years ago

I suspect simply because the 1-3% who are skeptical are literally excommunicated from the scientific community. The problem is that it requires a belief. While we have evidence, there is no conclusive proof, since it's it is difficult to "test" in this field of science.

mrfusion• 11 years ago

I'm sure a large majority of nutrition scientists supported a low fat diet 20 years ago. (Food for thought)

NumberCruncher• 11 years ago

Maybe he has a basic understanding of time series analysis:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

OniBait• 11 years ago

I thought the 97% of climate scientists claim (based on Cook et al) was shown to be a really flawed study. In any event, Consensus does not equal science.

I think given the broad definition of "human activity is causing global warming", you'd be hard pressed to find disagreement. If you refine it to "human activity is causing a majority of global warming and that warming is bad" there is a lot less agreement.

guscost• 11 years ago

Cook should do surveys for these questions too (and include replies from more than 100 people):

If human activity is causing global warming, is that a good or bad thing?

If that is a bad thing, does it present an existential threat to our civilization?

If it presents an existential threat, is it the most significant existential threat our civilization currently faces?

If it presents an existential threat, can our civilization do anything about it?

Where does the danger of global warming rank compared to the danger of, say, population growth? Other pollution? Terrorism stuff? Nanobot grey goo?

If our civilization can do something about an existential threat from global warming, could a cap-and-trade or some other kind of government policy be a good solution?

If etc, could the dynamics of our culture, markets, or technology be a good solution?

steven20123• 11 years ago

For decades, scientists, doctors and dietitians said that eating fat caused heart disease, and you should decrease your fat in your diet. Only in the last couple of years has this "fact" been deemed wrong.

I don't think you would have found a single scientist, doctor or dietitian since the 70s that would have disagreed with the above. It was taken as fact and anyone who thought differently would have been a laughing stock.

The same goes with global warming caused by CO2. It makes for an easily digestible theory, but it doesn't explain many known facts. Global warming caused by CO2 has never been proven, obviously, since you can't do experiments on a global scale. So there's already a lot of faith that you would need to take into consideration. There's circumstantial evidence at best. But still a lot of unknowns about climate and the vast changes that the Earth has undergone over the last 6B+ years, so to say that we know that the current warming trend is caused by CO2 to me is not science.

If you read this thread, it's humorous to read all of the people who think that there is data going back millions of years that links CO2 to climate change. It's a great example of how regular people just take whatever is spoon fed to them without thinking "really, does that make sense?"

For example, North America was covered in ice at one point, and the temperature increased dramatically over the last hundreds of thousands of years. What caused this, and could the same process be responsible for the warming we have seen in the last several decades?

The 5000 year old Iceman found in the Alps attempted to cross the Alps when there was very little snow. We know this because of the clothes that he was wearing when his body was found. So obviously the climate was much different 5000 years ago than today. What caused this change, and could the same process be responsible for the warming we see now?

We know that during the Medieval Warming Period, it was a lot warmer than it is now. What caused this change, and could the same process be responsible for the warming we see now?

I would like these questions answered before I change my opinion. As a man of science, I see too many people flocking like sheep to the answer of CO2 causing climate change. Just like the whole fat-in-the-diet belief, too many people don't really think, they assume that the scientists are right, which is not thinking, in my opinon.

rybosome3• 11 years ago

Regardless of one's stance on global warming and whether or not humans contribute to it, I would hope that we can all agree on the necessity of environmental stewardship. It's deplorable that many bodies of water cannot be swam in (let alone fished from), that breathable air which does not contribute to asthma and lung cancer is a luxury, and most of all that this happens because corporations place the cost of these externalities on society without adequately paying for it.

badsock• 11 years ago

What about ocean acidification, which is also a very-dangerous effect of increasing atmospheric CO2 levels?

Frondo• 11 years ago

Great, you don't need to believe it.

Being that it is the observed reality of the world, the causal link between human industrial activity and global warming exists no matter who or what believes it.

Since it sounds like you'd support policies that encourage pro-environmental action anyway, I'm happy for you to believe whatever you want.

Tepix2• 11 years ago

What if you're wrong? CO2 may lead to a runaway greenhouse effect, making the earth uninhabitable in the long run (turning it into a Venus look-alike).

I don't think we can risk this outcome (and the extinction of our race) just because because a couple of people think CO2 may not cause global warming.

smalldataguy4• 11 years ago

I don't think an environmental Pascal's Wager is a strong position to base actions on. Reducing emissions will have a strong effect on our societies and people's lives (and global economics), so it's important to weight things properly.

Not saying you're wrong, just that criticisms of Pascal's Wager have validity.

ArkyBeagle5• 11 years ago

But we don't know that the endgame is extinction of the race. We don't even know when various benchmarks will occur ( say, sea level at x% higher ) .

The physics of a Venus aren't on the table - SFAIK, all the carbon we're digging up and burning was once animal or vegetable matter, derived from a Carboniferous era level of atmospheric CO2.

gnaritas12• 11 years ago

It's no longer a matter of belief, the evidence is in, the overwhelmingly vast majority of climatologists say you're wrong; end of debate. Now it's time to do something about it.

refurb4• 11 years ago

I think that's a terrible idea.

For hundreds of years, people thought stress and food caused ulcers. It was scientific fact and if you doubted it, you'd likely be labelled a crackpot. Until a scientist in Australia proved ulcers were caused by bacteria.

So consensus was wrong. Very wrong.

I'd prefer it if people kept questioning everything. How else do we push forward our knowledge?

eloff• 11 years ago

I downvoted you, not because I disagree with you, but because you have your head in the sand. Not believing in human caused global warming at this point is like not believing in the germ theory of disease. The weight of evidence against that position is so insanely lopsided that the only way is possible to defend it is out of sheer ignorance. Please educate yourself on the topic so people don't laugh at you behind your back.

collyw2• 11 years ago

"I dont't belive..."

Believe, the magic word, makes it a religion basically. I'll take the sceintific consensus. They have evidence.

http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

gsibble• 11 years ago

Where does the 7 million figure come from?

woodchuck64• 11 years ago

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollut...

benten10• 11 years ago

Ohh man, does Hackernews bring out all the tinfoiled gentlemen from nuclear apocalypse bunkers once in a while !

See: comments here.

rybosome3• 11 years ago

When speaking with people who do not agree with me on the correctness or urgency of global warming, this is the argument I traditionally make: let's examine the worst-case scenarios. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the science, taking it seriously is a logical choice.

The plausible worst-case scenario of charging ahead with measures to combat climate change isn't actually that bad, not to mention the ancillary benefits outlined by Schwarzenegger. Aggressively stimulating the renewables economy would be a death knell for the fossil-fuel industry, which could harm the overall economy (though renewables would also contribute positively). It would be disruptive to sections of the country that are dependent upon the fossil-fuel industry (coal country in Kentucky, for instance), which would be very hard on the people living there. This is certainly bad and should not be done lightly, but it's hardly apocalyptic.

The plausible worst-case scenario of failing to address climate change is _really_ bad, ranging from property destruction all the way to civilizational collapse or even potentially human extinction[1]. In a world with nuclear weapons, large-scale destabilization resulting from famine, drought and loss of land to flooding is a very dangerous thing. The Earth is the only home we have, why even flirt with the possibility of disrupting our currently livable climate?

...and that argument doesn't even take the scientific consensus on the existence of human-cased global warming into account.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effec...

toomuchtodo2• 11 years ago

http://www.climateactionreserve.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/...

rudolf03• 11 years ago

Exactly. Even if anthropogenic global warming is somehow completely not real, the expected value of acting as if it were real is much much greater. It's kind of like Pascal's wager, except with different probabilities. And millions of scientists.

DougWebb6• 11 years ago

I think the drawback to your argument is that you're not considering all scenarios. One "worst-case" I can think of is that we charge ahead with measures to combat climate change, harming big parts of the economy in the process, and wind up with the famine, drought, and flooding anyway because we didn't charge ahead with the right measures.

It's extremely important to determine whether the global warming is caused by us or not, and whether or not we can alter global warming whether we caused it or not. If it's mostly natural (and we know the earth has gone through much warmer periods long before we showed up) then the measures we need to take involve protecting our coastal cities and our food and energy supplies. If it's mostly caused by us, then we need to stop doing what's causing it, and probably need to protect our coastal cities and food and energy supplies anyway.

akvadrako• 11 years ago

Why does it matter if we caused anything? If the Earth is going to get too hot or too cold for our survival, we should try to stop it. Maybe we haven't affected the climate yet, but if we try we probably can.

jpadkins2• 11 years ago

aggressively stimulating renewables is one thing, but a lot of people are calling for a world wide flat carbon tax. That is a very regressive tax that will hit the poorest the hardest. It will barely register for the average californian, but it will cause many products and services to be priced out of reach from people in developing economies.

So the worst case scenario all depends on what is being proposed.

nikdaheratik• 11 years ago

The "regressive" part of the tax can be mitigated just by rebating some (most?) of the money back to the people who would be most impacted. The rest can be used for R&D into clean energy, power grid improvements, etc.

The bigger issue is making sure the tax is applied consistently everywhere, otherwise we just move polluting industries to countries with lax enforcement and put countries that are enforcing the tax at a disadvantage.

robk• 11 years ago

Isn't this the same as Pascals Wager then? We should pray to God since the upside result is worth the downside cost.

sawwit• 11 years ago

An obvious difference is that we do have scientific models of global climate change that give us at least some evidence, but we lack any such information for the case of the existence of a god.

icanhackit2• 11 years ago

The problem with Pascal's Wager: which God and thus which set of rituals and rules do you follow? You've got quite a selection to choose from. You go from having a simple Yes/No choice to having thousands of choices.

In the case of action against climate change, the downsides of doing something are minimal compared to the downsides of inaction. It's a much more binary choice than what Pascal put forward.

taberiand• 11 years ago

Except God isn't 97% certain to exist

gnaritas12• 11 years ago

Pascals wager is a simple false dichotomy, a logical fallacy. It's not a rational argument.

Jedd• 11 years ago

So, basically, the Precautionary Principle [1]

"The precautionary principle or precautionary approach to risk management states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking an action."

Perfectly sound, perfectly logical, and the basis of (much the same as you) the argument I present when I find people who either don't understand, or disagree with (a subset of not understanding?) the science.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle

vlehto12• 11 years ago

Here is Lindybeige using that argument to justify why you should hop on one foot, and ban football.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6R999ZLlSdI

But I agree that in general it's good principle. For climate change it's not that applicable. It's easy to show that burning oil is good for the economy. It's difficult to show that it's bad for the climate. If we say that Shell needs to show some proof that burning oil is overall good two things will happen: 1. Shell forges bullshit. 2. Everybody keeps burning oil just like today until there is some kind of replacement. Just for practical reasons.

So then it goes to "why we need to invest money to the alternatives". And then that precautionary principle could be applied to that investment.

TL;DR You need to show fossil fuels are bad, for practical reasons.

kafkaesq4• 11 years ago

There are two doors. Behind Door Number One is a completely sealed room, with a regular, gasoline-fueled car. Behind Door Number Two is an identical, completely sealed room, with an electric car. Both engines are running full blast.

I want you to pick a door to open, and enter the room and shut the door behind you. You have to stay in the room you choose for one hour. You cannot turn off the engine. You do not get a gas mask.

I'm guessing you chose the Door Number Two, with the electric car, right? Door number one is a fatal choice - who would ever want to breathe those fumes?

This is the choice the world is making right now.

The choices aren't that simple, Arnold, and the analogy you're making isn't valid, either. Does he not understand that that "clean" electric car requires an energy grid to run on? And that this grid is very far from "clean", and will be for quite some time? And that the process of creating (and decomissioning) electric cars is very far from environmentally harmless, also?

I'm not saying that there's no positive trade-off in favor of electric cars; most likely there is. But fear-driven arguments (even if pointed in the "right" direction) don't help much, and have a similar effect on the brain as carbon monoxide, over time.

astrodust3• 11 years ago

The point here is it's easier to control emissions at large-scale power generation plants than it is on millions of individual vehicles. How many cars would fail an inspection if exposed to one?

The same cannot be said about power plants.

There's also the renewable angle. Surplus wind power, as experienced in Spain, would basically provide free power for recharging vehicles overnight. You cannot do this with gasoline.

The sealed room is also a way of presenting what we're doing to our climate, that the automobile emissions don't just go "into the air", but become part of the environment.

kafkaesq4• 11 years ago

I don't dispute the electric cars are, overall, clean. Just that the image that Arnold is promoting with his "Gedankenexperiment", per my quote above (that electric cars are somehow 100% clean and environmentally harmless) is simply false, anti-intellectual, and unscientific.

kafkaesq4• 11 years ago

Like I said, I understand the tradeoffs, and agree that it looks like they'll tilt favorably to electric cars, in the longer run.

My point is that the rhetoric Arnold is using is a classic form of what psychologists call "extremifying," i.e. presenting a danger or tradeoff as much more dangerous or binary than it really is -- in order to, you know, get people to "do the right thing". (Or perhaps because he can't really tell the difference).

And in a world beset with ignorance, chronic attention deficit and a lack of critical thinking skills all around, this is not a good thing.

joshuaheard• 11 years ago

"California has some of the most revolutionary environmental laws in the United States, we get 40% of our power from renewables, and we are 40% more energy efficient than the rest of the country."

California also has the second highest energy costs in the continental United States.

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...

magicalist3• 11 years ago

From that chart it appears a large reason for that is they charge Commercial customers the same rates as Residential ones, unlike most states.

Also worth considering is economic activity per unit energy, where California is placed third in efficiency, so it looks like those energy prices are doing fine.

http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/pdf/...

morsch• 11 years ago

If it takes Arnold Schwarzenegger and a frankly preposterous "sealed room" analogy in order to convince people to slow down on emissions, and recasting the emissions issue as a pollution issue -- as if there was a difference -- in order for them to safe face, so be it.

Of course those electric cars still virtually emit CO2^Wpollution when you refuel them using coal-generated power, so I guess we can go back to going back and forth about the pros and cons of nuclear energy now.

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

I believe that man-made CO2 emissions likely have a significant impact on the climate, and we should do something about it, but even so the issue is a very complex one and its politicization hasn't helped. Here's why it's not so easy:

1. The data is crap. What you need is average temperatures and other data (humidity, pressure, cloud cover, albedo, etc.) over the entire Earth down to a fairly small scale. What we have is a mismash of horribly calibrated weather station data near cities combined with limited satellite data and various proxies, all of which has to be massaged a great deal to make it usable. Sea level data has the same sort of problems, nearly impossible to properly calibrate to sufficient precision. The fact that people have poured tons of effort into collecting and attempting to calibrate data doesn't mean the data is actually very good.

2. The models are also crap. A century ago Svante Arrhenius came up with the greenhouse effect theory and did some back of the envelope calculations on its magnitude, coming up with a figure of climate sensitivity of about 2 deg. C per CO2 doubling. Today all of our vaunted climate modelling hasn't managed to come up with a more accurate figure than that. Current estimates are still "maybe 2 deg. C per doubling, with some enormous error bars". Modern models have several problems. The conceit is that climate models are de novo elaborations from first principles and are as rock solid as our understanding of the laws of physics. In practice all climate models contain multiple "empirically determined" fudge factors. They fit the data, they don't predict it. And that's assuming we even had enough good data to really run good prediction checks, which is dubious at best.

3. The climatology scientific community is very problematic. There is little indication of sufficient rigor, and criticizing results is an easy way to get effectively excommunicated from the community. Take, for example, the famed "hockey stick" paper, which has now been thoroughly discredited, but all of the discrediting happened effectively "behind the scenes" and quietly. Science works best when it's open and boisterous. It's surprising that climatology isn't in even worse state given how insular and political it is.

4. Even if we assumed that man-made carbon emissions were going to cause a huge degree of global warming there is still a huge gap between that fact and figuring out what to do about it, which many folks simply skip over. The actual damage (to the biosphere and to human activities) is just as difficult to determine as the climate is to predict. The right course of action to take depends a great deal on lots of different factors: sociological, technological, and economic. Especially since a lot of the CO2 production of the 21st century will come from economies that are climbing out of poverty and into affluence. It may well be the smartest choice to simply continue polluting until the world is richer and more technologically advanced and then consider mitigation strategies.

4a. CO2 emissions may not be, and likely is not, the most important pollution issue everywhere in the world currently. But it gets the most attention and sometimes that makes it more difficult to get traction on other issues.

Meanwhile, there really are serious "climate change denialists" and some of the folks on that side are absolutely terrible. Canadian PM Harper banned government scientists from talking to the press, for example. But the answer to science being perverted for political reasons isn't to simply pervert it in the opposite direction to compensate.

It's just a complete shit-show across the board and I'm not happy with how any of it is being handled at either the level of scientific inquiry or public policy.

vlehto12• 11 years ago

I was skeptic until I studied the history of the subject. It's a sad state. Nobody would expect to study lets say material science from historical perspective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...

There could be some major breakthroughs since 1970, but the whole shebang is so polarized, that I would not know that to believe.

From policy point of view human emotions have to be taken to account. Motivations for denialism are often either "nah, it doesn't matter" or alternatively "They say we all die! I don't want to believe that." I was in the latter camp.

Prehistoric events show us that climate change is probably not the end of humanity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...

And on the other hand ask any farmer how he feels about unpredictable weather. Agriculture is completely based on predictable seasons. It's very likely that combating climate change could save millions of lives.

pippy• 11 years ago

I really enjoy when people take a fresh perspective on things. Climate change has been cited by Pew Research Center as the top greatest threat, and putting a different spin on things will always be nice to try and convince people.

The top reason to reduce carbon emissions is not to reduce global toxicity and prevent climate change. Saving the planet is a bonus. Energy independence creates a stable geo political environment, almost all wars have a root cause of fighting over resources. There's little point in saving the planet if we're going to kill ourselves by the time comes when need to save it.

peterdelahunty• 11 years ago

http://www.cowspiracy.com/

twiceaday• 11 years ago

the film that environmental organizations don't want you to see!

I despise this type of rhetoric.

msvan• 11 years ago

I wonder why, in the debate about fossil fuels, we never bring up the point that oil has been the cause of a lot of issues in the Middle East. Many guns and bombs have gone off in order to get to the Middle Eastern oil, and much of the funding behind ISIS comes from oil money in Saudi Arabia. Oil has had a pretty steep moral price tag.

ejcx• 11 years ago

Lots of very partisan folks here. My mother is an avid believer that climate change is a hoax and we don't need to take care of the planet. She says 'Mother earth knows how to take care of herself', but she deeply respects Arnold as a businessman, politician, and self-made man.

This is the type of thing that can reach her and change people in her boat's way of thinking. Way to go Arnold.

calinet6• 11 years ago

Kind of proud that this man signed my diploma.

Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change

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