What Kind of Problem Is Climate Change?

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/opinion/climate-change.html

by mitchbob • 7 years ago

67 165 7 years ago

nytimes.com

bristleworm• 7 years ago

text without paywall: https://web.archive.org/web/20190930123234/https://www.nytim...

british_india• 7 years ago

Thank you!

liaukovv• 7 years ago

Imagine if humanity has treated other technological problems as societal ones:

What do you mean plague vaccine? We need to stop dreaming about magic solutions and just stop living in cities
Farming? No this will never work, just stop reproducing. And collect more berries.
Fire? Why do we need fire? It's dangerous and hot food is a luxury.

hnarn2• 7 years ago

1. The plague, while probably exacerbated, was not caused by urbanization.

2. With the exception of up until modern times, farming, like many other major changes in human habitation, never threatened our existence on this planet.

3. Fire is dangerous, but the benefits vastly outweighed the dangers, and also did not permanently, in the chronological perspective of human beings, threaten our ecosystem.

ptah• 7 years ago

the second one would have actually helped us to avoid current dilemma :-P

justsubmit24• 7 years ago

In which case, you probably wouldn't exist, and neither would the medium in which we're having this conversation.

Better or worse?

noonespecial• 7 years ago

So what then? A few thousand humanoids would have picked berries for a few dozen thousand years until the next ELE wiped them out and be gone? That's better how?

We've got exactly one planet's worth of resources to consume in our reach for the stars. Doing nothing and doing it wrong gets us extinction on basically the same galactic time scale.

What a tragedy though, to have a real shot and burn it all up trying to get each other to click on ads for plastic crap no one needed.

einpoklum• 7 years ago

"Humanity" has not treated problems collectively until a few hundred years ago. Some might argue it still doesn't, really.

Also, and more importantly - it's easy to categorize problems retroactively based on how they were eventually resolved; not so easy to apply this categorization with foresight.

Finally - some problems have both societal and technological aspects, and so do their solutions.

pjc50• 7 years ago

Disease was as much a social problem requiring changes to the norms of "cleanliness" as a technological problem.

NeedMoreTea2• 7 years ago

We don't need to imagine, we know how humanity reacted to plague prior to effective treatments. Very badly. With lynch mobs and singling out certain groups for persecution. Even having acne would do it...

spodek• 7 years ago

The article's opening sentence:

If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that climate change is real, probably nothing will.

However big they seemed compared to the past, they're nothing compared to the future, though everything we do affects it. We can still avoid some of the worst.

hnarn2• 7 years ago

My biggest gripe with that type of argumentation is that it plays into the idea that weather and climate are pretty much the same thing, when they really aren't.

whatshisface7• 7 years ago

Yeah, if you get people used to that kind of argument, get ready for absolutely zero belief in global warming next time we have a cold winter preceeded by no hurricane.

goatlover• 7 years ago

Also because correlation isn't causation. An instance of a hurricane or a warmer summer by itself doesn't prove anything. That's poor science journalism. You need trends and models to demonstrate climate change, not an instance of undesirable weather. It's not like hurricanes or warm summers never happened before.

cos2pi• 7 years ago

Agreed, this has repeatedly been one of the biggest failings in communicating the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

Climate change is not a single event, nor a cluster of events, that occur(s) over a summer. Strong hurricanes have occurred well before Dorian [1]. So have heat waves [2].

Extreme weather happens. The change in the frequency of (some) extreme events can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, but a single event cannot.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave

whatshisface7• 7 years ago

That's kind of a bad way to open it, because in the absence of other information a hot summer followed by a hurricane absolutely would not convince anybody of global warming.

gameswithgo3• 7 years ago

it is a bad way to open for logical people, but given how effective industry has been at making people skeptical of climate change with exactly those bad kind of arguments, maybe appealing to the emotions is the way to actually make things happen?

I don't like it but I would roll with it if that is the pragmatic solution.

Reedx• 7 years ago

The notion that weather == climate is such a terrible argument and framing. It immediately devolves the conversation into anecdotes about the weather.

Resulting in endless gridlock, getting nothing done aside from increasing outrage and spectacle.

merpnderp• 7 years ago

I think I'd like to know more about hurricane trends and strengths. Trends in hurricane strength and frequency as the only useful metrics as damage done has more to do with where and what we build.

But I guess if I were a NYT's reader I wouldn't even think about asking these questions, I'd just yell ERMEGERD Dorian and start trash talking anyone who doesn't immediately panic.

justsubmit24• 7 years ago

However big they seemed compared to the past, they're nothing compared to the future

That is not a scientific claim.

cldellow• 7 years ago

Eh, perhaps not as phrased, but it's a scientific claim made by the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 C.

From the chapter 3.3.6:

There is thus limited evidence that the global number of tropical cyclones will be lower under 2°C compared to 1.5°C of global warming, but with an increase in the number of very intense cyclones (low confidence).

The qualifiers are important - they're not as confident about this claim as others, but feel the risk of it being true given that there is some scientific support for it, merits it being mentioned so people can make informed decisions.

bryanlarsen2• 7 years ago

Is there any way to escape the prisoner’s dilemma facing the provision of a public good?

Wrong question. We're not creating public goods, we're preventing the creation of a public bad, aka externalities. How to prevent creation of externalities is well-known: Pigouvian taxes, which are similar to but not quite the same as sin taxes.

The prisoner's dilemma also exists here, but there is a solution which also won the Nobel Memorial Prize: William Nordhaus' climate clubs.

https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/

reallydontask3• 7 years ago

Now we just need enlightened politicians to sell these taxes to the public.

xienze2• 7 years ago

Well they're certainly trying, by parading a young girl around to make emotional appeals.

enragedcacti• 7 years ago

I find it very weird that the author chose to use the prisoner's dilemma and public goods as a framing for the article when the tragedy of the commons and common goods seem to be much more apt. Every ton of CO2 a country emits is consumption of a finite resource (the amount of warming we can endure before catastrophic effect) and you can't inhibit another country from releasing it. Therefore the problem is about a non-excludable but exhaustible resource.

I'd love to hear from someone more economically minded about why I'm wrong.

tomatotomato37• 7 years ago

Using taxes to change public behavior only work for things that are completely optional, ala alcohol or cigarettes. A tax like this on essentials like fuel just leads to people wearing traffic vests burning down your capital.

bryanlarsen2• 7 years ago

Yes, if you implement it poorly. A properly set up carbon tax should end up with more money in the hands of the poor rather than less.

https://canada.citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-divid...

avar5• 7 years ago

Most OECD countries pay 60-100% of the price of the US price of a gallon of gasoline just in taxes[1]. It absolutely works as an incentive, and e.g. Berlin isn't in flames right now because gas is closing in on $6 per gallon.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_tax_in_OECD_countrie...

chooseaname2• 7 years ago

Stronger storms, heat waves, drought, floods, erratic weather. Check. Where I live, we are on track to have the driest September on record. We have also broken or tied 7 record hot days (and looks like we might go for 8 today)[0]. How much more common does this have to be before people start acting?

Edit: [0] Had someone argue with me that this just means we had record hot months before. I'm like, no, that's not how that works. Those record days were from different years. The new ones were from the same year.

whatshisface7• 7 years ago

Remember when people were saying that global warming wasn't happening because we were in the middle of a particularly cold winter? Treating this year's bad weather as proof of global warming is making the same error in the other direction. The climate can only be understood as a long-term average of the quite large annual variations in weather.

chooseaname2• 7 years ago

I get that. I do. I said:

How much more common does this have to be before people start acting?

Because it is becoming more common. Just as predicted.

justsubmit24• 7 years ago

We have also broken or tied 7 record hot days (and looks like we might go for 8 today).

On average, how many record-high days have been recorded each year, for as long as your records have been kept?

How many record-low days?

A number out of context is not useful for drawing a scientific conclusion.

corodra11• 7 years ago

I agree that global warming is real. Global warming is a problem. However...

If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that climate change is real, probably nothing will.

That's an amazingly stupid comment. This is why global warming deniers exist, because people make these types of stupid comments. A hurricane strengthening and stalling on land is not linked to global warming. It's always happened and always will. What was hurricane Andrew then in 1992? What about Katrina 2005? How about in 2004 where 4 hurricanes hit Florida in a 6 week time span? I lived through that one.

Hurricane Lorenzo, right now, is a better example due to where it's at in the Atlantic and its strength. Still not a great example, but better than Dorian. Dorian was technically a normal hurricane. Nothing that special or different. Devastating yes. But devastation is not an indicator of climate change. A higher number of hurricanes and higher than average number in Cat 4 and Cat 5. That's an indicator. And to be honest, this year has been pretty chill when it comes to hurricanes. Only one FL scare. Most years there are 3-5 scares by the end of September. We're only on L when it comes to named storms. Bad years in the past are around S by now. Hurricanes are named in order of the alphabet if you didn't know. In 2004, we went through the whole alphabet, plus some.

I agree global warming is happening. But this year's hurricane season does not show it.

tomp• 7 years ago

Funny enough, worst hurricane in recorded history (according to some metrics) happened in 1935!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane

wozniacki• 7 years ago

  If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, 
  hasn’t convinced you that climate change is real, 
  probably nothing will.

I was stunned that such a callous, dismissive & low quality statement would even pass muster at The Grey Lady.

Who's proof-reading these pieces?

Pair it with a striking statistic from a reputable source, at the very least if youre going to make such a naked statement. Who is the piece trying to convince? The already convinced and dyed-in-the-wool card carrying eco-enthusiasts or the unconvinced and the leery crowd?

justsubmit24• 7 years ago

If I may turn a phrase: If this NYT article hasn't convinced you that climate change propaganda is real, and that the NYT is not a reputable source, probably nothing will.

mfer• 7 years ago

I would suggest using something other than hurricanes (at least those in the Atlantic basin) as evidence of global warming. The existing observations aren't good for the support of global warming at this point [1].

To help aide in convincing more skeptics I would suggest observations that have held up under scrutiny.

[1] https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

corodra11• 7 years ago

Correct me if I'm wrong. What happened in Alaska, that heat wave, was BEYOND normal. Not by a little, but by a lot. They crushed a whole bunch of heat records that week, right?

Wouldn't that be the best poster child of global warming taking affect for at least 2019 (thus far)?

lowii• 7 years ago

If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that climate change is real, probably nothing will.

Saying that is as dumb as saying global warming isn't real because there's still snow in winter.

dyslexit3• 7 years ago

That's not at all why global warming deniers exist. The reason they exist is because the fossil fuel industry managed to make believing in climate change a political issue rather than a scientific one, which is why the denial is embraced by one party but not the other. The actual "arguments" don't matter, this one especially since it's impossible to tell if Dorian would've even existed or not had the climate not changed.

corodra11• 7 years ago

Okay, I do agree. But misinformation due to sloppy broad brush strokes does not help. At all. It fuels what you just said. It gives them "See, see! They're wrong about this! What do they know? They're just making stuff up for their agenda!" And to be honest, I have to agree with that statement. Because that first line of the article is simply a "the sky is falling because I say so" statement. And remember, I do agree that global warming is happening. But because I believe the science, I have to be fair on all factual statements. No matter if that fact helps or hurts me. I have to be fair.

It would have been smarter to talk about Alaska heat wave from the get-go that lasted, what was it, 7 to 9 days? I don't remember. That's WAY harder to dance around. Everyone can go "It got hot in Alaska? Weird... it got 90+ degrees hot? WTF? For how long? Holy shit!" Instead of a statement that amounted to "There was a hurricane in the Atlantic. Global warming is real."

gridlockd8• 7 years ago

Global warming is a trend that can now, with thirty years of hindsight, be clearly identified. However, many people on both sides made lots of predictions that didn't come to pass, so some amount of skepticism towards certain more alarmist claims is warranted. It's too convenient to just lump any skepticism into the "denier" and "bad person" box, and that's exactly what happens.

It's also dishonest to point out that the fossil industry has a clear interest, while ignoring that the renewables industry also has such an interest. A lot of business is being made peddling non-solutions to a problem that might actually be unsolvable.

justsubmit24• 7 years ago

Don't you recognize that your words are just as meaningful if the parties are switched? For example:

That's not at all why global warming alarmists exist. The reason they exist is because the green energy industry managed to make believing in climate change a political issue rather than a scientific one, which is why the alarmism is embraced by one party but not the other. The actual "arguments" don't matter, this one especially since it's impossible to tell if Dorian would've even existed or not had the climate not changed.

Perspective matters.

jfengel• 7 years ago

That statement seems accurate to me, but there's a lot wrapped up with it. What should have convinced people, decades ago, is the combination of well-attested theory and numerous lines of evidence. Anybody capable of being convinced -- which is to say, able to understand science and not ideologically blinded to it -- has needed no subsequent convincing.

There are a lot of people who don't fit that category, and if they are to be persuaded at all, it won't be by the means that are used to convince the scientifically literate. For the illiterate, they might well be tipped by one summer's weather or one hurricane's damage. That's bad science, but the voting booth doesn't care whether your reasons are sound or not. The New York Times is reporting on policy as well as science: what people are going to choose to do.

In that sense the statement is accurate. Those capable of being convinced by science are convinced; those who are moved by incorrect evidence have just received a big wad of it. The only ones who haven't reached the correct conclusion are driven by ideology, and won't be convinced by any evidence.

We can bemoan the fact that so much of policy is decided on bad grounds, but that seems to be a fact of life. Most people don't understand science, and manufactured doubt can be used to sway them from the conclusions reached by science. If you care about getting things done in a democracy, you have to take them into account.

That doesn't justify using the science badly, but that's not what's happening here. They're just reporting on the mechanisms by which people have reached their conclusions.

whatshisface7• 7 years ago

the combination of well-attested theory and numerous lines of evidence

One time, I saw a graph of temperature over time. That's it. Nobody has ever tried to show me any other theory or evidence. Has anyone ever tried publicizing the science? I take issue with the "science has failed so now we have to be irrational" story because I am not convinced that the science has ever been tried.

el_cujo• 7 years ago

Anybody capable of being convinced -- which is to say, able to understand science and not ideologically blinded to it -- has needed no subsequent convincing.

I don't think this is an accurate characterization of things. Most people I know believe in climate change, but very few of them could cite any facts or graphs or science that convinced them really. They believe it because people on tv who they trust told them it was true.

I'm not saying this is bad, we should trust experts on topics without expecting every single member of the population to get bogged down in the gritty details. I myself do believe in climate change and vote for democrats. That said, it annoys me when people act like everyone who believes in climate change is a genius who knows science and isn't blinded by ideology while the deniers are cavemen or religious zealots too dumb to get it. Like it or not, it has become a political issue and people on both sides are largely just following their own side, not looking deeply into the findings and methods of scientific studies to decide for themselves if they agree with the researchers.

scragg2• 7 years ago

I think the point of bringing up hurricane Dorian is the size/strength. It's not unique by itself but cat 4/5's are at an upward trend[1]. Also take a look at hurricane Barry[2] this year. It's a disturbance that came out of the continental US, became a hurricane in the gulf, and came back to strike the US.

[1] https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/wp-content/uploads/pix/user_images... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Barry_(2019)#/media/...

corodra11• 7 years ago

Big problem with that chart. Look where it ends. 2006. It looks like an upward trend. If you add the last decade it's missing, that trend won't exist. You know what, let put that together in BI really quick. I want to see if that trend holds true since it's missing the past decade of data.

rmilejczz2• 7 years ago

This natgeo article seems to disagree with you, claiming that higher upper ocean temps allowed Dorian to maintain a greater intensity than it would have otherwise while stalled over the Bahamas. Higher temps also contributed to Dorians overall strength. You make many arguments about prevalence but I’m not seeing that mentioned by others as a link to global warming, only peak intensity which absolutely is rising and absolutely contributed to Dorians overall devastation. More info here:

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/09/how-w...

rmilejczz2• 7 years ago

Why is this comment downvoted? I’ve only been on HN for a few weeks but I’m constantly get downvoted when trying to act in good faith and engage in discussions. What am I doing wrong? It’s becoming frustrating, since none of these downvoters bother to explain what led them to downvote my comment in the first place.

jmcqk62• 7 years ago

This is why global warming deniers exist, because people make these types of stupid comments.

Oh, this is why they exist? Or is this just a convenient excuse?

Either way 'some people don't make sense when describing X' is not a good reason to reject X.

corodra11• 7 years ago

To be fair to anyone that denies something, if they don't directly observe it, why should they believe it? Especially if they have to alter their day to day lives around that statement? The media makes contradictory sweeping claims time and time again over small bits of data. Why should anyone believe "the science" they pose? With the media being the leaders of dialogue, why should people believe in something that alter's their day-to-day practice? I'm not even getting into the fossil-fuel fueled propaganda. Just a human nature perspective. Not being able to observe an action/event is meant to be suspect rather than held as doctrine.

Again, I'm not saying global warming is a lie. I know it's real. Not a belief or held in faith. Just knowing. But part of the discourse as to why people don't believe it, I see from articles like the NYT article. It's just a realistic stance on the issue. Articles like these give zero benefit. Even those who believe in global warming are arguing against this article in HN. It definitely won't bring the deniers into the light.

modernista• 7 years ago

Can you please reconcile this statement:

Dorian was technically a normal hurricane.

with the following

[The Labor Day Hurricane] was tied with Hurricane Dorian for the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricane by maximum sustained winds, with winds of 185 mph (295 km/h) at landfall

Or if not, at lease please stop calling people "stupid" for bringing up Dorian as an indication that perhaps we should be concerned about increasing frequency of severe tropical storms?

garmaine10• 7 years ago

If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that climate change is real, probably nothing will.

If you think the "other side" is a climate change denier, you don't have a grasp of the issues involved and I'm really suspect that your op-ed is preaching to your crowd rather than actually trying to engage the problem.

The issue has never been denying the scientific fact that CO2 reflects infrared light, causing a greenhouse effect. It's a question over the scale of the problem, the timelines in which it plays out, and the panic and alarmism exhibited by one side of political debate.

Moving off fossil fuels is going to cost a lot of money, and it is going to be substitutive spending, not the growth-building kind. The Green New Deal, if enacted as specified, would send us into a prolonged, generation-long recession. Is is worth it? Is it necessary? That depends on how alarmist you are in your global warming predictions. And that is where we disagree. I've lived through two major economic recessions, and seen the effect that has on young people and opportunities. I wouldn't want to wish that on an entire generation. Millennials think boomers gave them a bad break, but wait until their kids see what opportunities their climate change policies leave them with...

We need to move off fossil fuels. But we can do it in a way that is gradual and growth-positive, while exploiting the warming climate in a way that boosts agricultural yields and adds living space for the growing population of the world. That requires a healthy debate about trade-offs and choices, and recognition that this is a complex, multi-faceted issue that people come to with multiple opinions and that's okay.

Miner49er2• 7 years ago

The Green New Deal, if enacted as specified, would send us into a prolonged, generation-long recession.

Source? The last New Deal helped get us out of the Great Depression. Seems crazy to suggest that a new similar one would cause one.

garmaine10• 7 years ago

First point, the last new deal didn't get us out of the great depression. You might recall that the great depression lasted throughout the 1930's. It was World War 2 and its aftermath that ended the depression.

But anyway, the only similarity is in the name. The FDR new deal built new infrastructure. The Green new deal replaces infrastructure. Adding infrastructure where there was none before increases productivity, and therefore causes economic growth. Replacing infrastructure has net-zero change and therefore while the activity adds to GDP, it has no lasting effect on the economy. And since it substitutes for things that would have led towards growth, it actually causes stagnation or decline.

In the social sciences, this is known as the "broken window fallacy." There's a lot of papers you can find with those search terms.

If you want an idea of the best-case scenario of what life would be like under the Green New Deal, look to Japan with it's 20+ years of economic stagnation. Except without nationalized pensions we'd be asking a whole generation to live through work-until-you-die conditions. I'm sorry, but I don't think I want to do that to my kids unless it is a real do-or-die scenario as the alarmists claim. But the alarmists are wrong. The world is not ending tomorrow, or even the day after. We can deal with the change at a pace that doesn't result in economic suicide.

dexterdog• 7 years ago

Saying the New Deal got us out of the Great Depression is like saying Gavrilo Princip started Word War I.

justsubmit24• 7 years ago

Are you saying, then, that any legislation entitled "Foo Bar New Deal" will therefore have a positive effect?

If so, I would like to propose a Pink New Deal. It's even better than the Green one, trust me. And it seems crazy to suggest otherwise.

avar5• 7 years ago

The per-capita CO^2 emissions of well-to-do western countries like Norway and Germany are a little over half as much as that of the US, France is around a quarter of US emissions (mainly due to Nuclear).

You're the one who's being alarmist if you're trying to argue that the US is staring down some decades-long recession to move more in that direction, which is pretty much all that's being suggested by some fringe politicians in the US.

Is German and Norwegian youth looking at having to deal with decades of recession, rising unemployment, rising income equality etc? No, they're not.

garmaine10• 7 years ago

If you're arguing that the US should invest heavily in new nuclear energy plants, you'll find no objection from me.

notfromhere3• 7 years ago

The idea that a huge infusion of Keynesian spending into the economy is going to trigger a generation-long recession has to be the least informed take.

The choice is a stark one: either invest in technologies and infrastructure to decrease CO2 production, or give future generations the gift of a dead planet.

garmaine10• 7 years ago

The choice is a stark one: either invest in technologies and infrastructure to decrease CO2 production, or give future generations the gift of a dead planet.

The science says otherwise. Did you know that for most of Earth's evolutionary history the climate was far, far warmer with higher CO2 concentrations than today? Global warming has lots of negative ramifications, but it is not going to create a "dead planet."

Spreading outright falsehoods doesn't help things.

magicalhippo• 7 years ago

exploiting the warming climate in a way that boosts agricultural yields

The world getting 1.5C hotter on average doesn't mean everywhere just gets 1.5C hotter all the time. If the increase means more droughts and more excessive rainfall, it's limited what you can do to exploit it for agricultural yields.

garmaine10• 7 years ago

I suggest you examine this chart:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.p...

Which is taken from this excellent Wikipedia article:

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

A change of 1.5C is just a nudge in the direction of historical averages.

specialist• 7 years ago

I like the game theoretic framing. Winners and losers. Currently a zero sum game. Where we non-zero sum games, filled with win-win outcomes.

Robert Wright's book Nonzero, which advocates for these kinds of reforms, deeply influenced my worldview, way back when.

https://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Destiny-Robert-Wright/d...

I'm a treehugger. During the 90s, I volunteered at Wetlands Conservation Network (WetNet), a short lived Audubon offshoot trying to save the Pacific salmon.

During my time there, I somehow got the impression that all environmental (ecological) challenges could be fixed with better accounting and fair markets.

More than just addressing externalities.

With our salmon, the (economic) winners were timber companies and developers. Who reaped outsized rewards for developing habitat. (Timber companies were turning second growth forests into urban sprawl thru their subsidiaries.)

Other beneficiaries were power (hydroelectric) and some farmers (irrigation).

The biggest losers were the commercial & tribal fishers, anglers, and the hard to quantify "culture".

But for some reason, beyond my experience and understanding, commonsense structural reforms were completely out of bounds.

For instance, (I'm told) that water rights in the West are "use it or lose it", so potato farmers in Idaho continue to grow an oversupply. Whereas if they somehow rent (or transfer) those water rights in an open marketplace, that water could be put to better uses.

Note that I've been out of the treehugger game since 2000, so I don't know what, if any progress, has been made since.

Also, I continue to be surprised that Wright's Nonzero thesis apparently hasn't gotten any traction. Neither with the libertarian Freedom Markets™ cultists. Or the weirdly regressive leftists who reject markets and incentives, and continue to conflate corporatism & cronyism with capitalism.

Oh well.

RobertRoberts• 7 years ago

When I was a child, my parents were in a dooms-day cult.

When people threaten your future with vague notions of impending, and irrevocable doom, there is only one answer:

Live for today.

Why don't climate dooms-dayers not see that their very tactics of spreading irrational fear (instead of rational solutions) is antithetical to their desired outcomes?

(there's a post about planting trees I haven't read yet, seems reasonable to do _something_ that everyone agrees with instead of trying to ram down ideas very few people agree with)

reallydontask3• 7 years ago

Do you not worry about the world you will be leaving behind for your children? or nephews/nieces? or just the rest of humanity that will come after you?

Surely, I can't be alone in this.

rcMgD2BwE72F• 7 years ago

seems reasonable to do _something_ that everyone agrees with

So people will do something that has very little effect on the problem, feel good for their contributions. Then, people will learn than this "something" had no meaningful impact, feel betrayed ("but we agreed on this"), and give up. "Oh, come on, I already did "something". They'll wait for someone else to pickup the burden.

That would be big waste of time and energy.

avar5• 7 years ago

The Paris Agreement, as part of the way as that's going to get us, is by-and-large being globally implemented. Rising awareness about climate change has contributed to pushing for all sort of policies from more fuel-efficient cars, to state subsidies in dozens of countries for things like renewable energy, electric cars etc.

If your view of people pushing for something being done about climate change is that of a dooms-day cult you're going to have to admit that it's a rather politically successful cult.

lordfoom• 7 years ago

Why don't climate dooms-dayers not see that their very tactics of spreading irrational fear (instead of rational solutions) is antithetical to their desired outcomes?

It's not irrational fear.

Why do cynical eye-rollers like you always try and crab bucket people's attempts at changing things for the better?

justsubmit24• 7 years ago

From the other perspective, it's yours that is cynical (saying that we're all going to die in a few years), and its yours that is crab-bucketing us into the past (stop eating meat, stop flying airplanes, stop driving cars, stop taking holidays, even stop watching YouTube[0]).

How far back down the technology tree are we supposed to go?

0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJn6pja_l8s "Climate crisis: the unsustainable use of online video"

all_usernames• 7 years ago

It's an interesting and valid point, I think. Fear may motivate some to start changing and looking for solutions, but it has the opposite effect on many: denial is one of the most pervasive defense mechanisms in psychology. And climate denialism has got to be the most astounding example of it.

lm284694• 7 years ago

Live for today.

Isn't that the cause of the issue though ? "Who cares about 100+ years in the future, my v8 mustang and my weekly plane trips are pretty convenient, and planting a tree won't change much anyway, and china is doing anyway, plus if I'm the only one doing it it won't help that much, and &c."

seems reasonable to do _something_ that everyone agrees with instead of trying to ram down ideas very few people agree with)

The problem is that the things most countries agreed on are not nearly enough and even if they were almost none of the goals are met.

gridlockd8• 7 years ago

Isn't that the cause of the issue though ? "Who cares about 100+ years in the future, my v8 mustang and my weekly plane trips are pretty convenient, and planting a tree won't change much anyway, and china is doing anyway, plus if I'm the only one doing it it won't help that much, and &c."

This is a caricature with little bearing on reality. Indeed, the biggest share of CO2 emissions isn't due to "rich Americans" living wasteful lifestyles, but people in emerging economies living a comparably modest lifestyle. That's what makes this problem extremely difficult. We would have to deny those people the lifestyle that we enjoyed for the past 50+ years.

We could achieve far more by, say, investing into replacing more primitive power generation in those countries than replacing inner-country air travel with more primitive transport.

The problem is that the things most countries agreed on are not nearly enough and even if they were almost none of the goals are met.

Of course, moral posturing costs nothing. When you actually try to do something as political leader, such as putting a tax on fuels as Macron did, chaos ensues.

corodra11• 7 years ago

Wouldn't you say though that "live for today" is a logical response to high amounts of insurmountable and uncertain fear? If you're an average person, what can you logically do to overcome the actions of governments and corporations with pocketbooks that make more per minute than you do per year? I'm not defending it. I'm just asking, how do you convince someone otherwise?

You can't go "Just buck up and do something!" That's something you tell someone who is depressed and that doesn't work. Plus they can point to survivorship bias to the very, very few that meaningfully accomplish anything.

emptyfile• 7 years ago

Irrational fear? Climate change is an irrational fear in America? Just drives home how late we are to do anything about it.

If Americans, the richest most polluting people on earth can't be persuaded to release less CO2, good luck convincing a citizen of India or Indonesia to do the same.

And apparently a sizeable part of the population thinks that planting trees or buying a few Teslas will solve it.

whatshisface7• 7 years ago

The fear of climate change ruining life in America is irrational, because America is the richest country in the world and will probably be able to push most of the bad effects off on other people. Even if climate change destroys trillions of dollars the US will still have trillions left. Americans should be thinking in terms of spending a few billion now to save a few trillion later, not in terms of an existential crisis for the human race.

asokoloski• 7 years ago

One tactic that seems like it will be very effective is to call or write your congressperson to let them know that you support H.R. 763. The bill has support from economists and scientists alike. It's designed not just to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but to do it in a way that minimizes impact on the economy, and also provides an incentive for other countries to pass similar legislation (by imposing tariffs on imports from countries that don't).

sauwan• 7 years ago

More info here:

https://citizensclimatelobby.org/energy-innovation-and-carbo...

jokoon• 7 years ago

The world of today is highly individualistic, and climate change is exactly how nature will punish humans for not being able to be more cooperative. It's as simple as that.

To me inequality and global warning are siblings. They are about the same thing, and share a common cause. If you cannot solve inequality you cannot solve global warming.

Unless Elon Musk or somebody else is able to finance a big breakthrough in several technologies that makes ALL greenhouse gasses machines obsolete, there is literally no way humans will avoid having their population reduced.

This article is short and it's a good summary on why individualism not only makes society unfair, but also threatens humanity.

beat5• 7 years ago

I'd say we are making big breakthroughs in technology that will make greenhouse gas machines obsolete, and that's where we'll get eventually. But getting there will take decades, because we have to obsolete out (and/or buy out) existing fossil-dependent infrastructure - heating in cold climates, and international shipping are two big ones that come to mind. But do what we can.

That said, I'm not convinced this is going to lead to a global population reduction. In modernized economies, food isn't the boundary on population growth (all modern economies are at near-zero growth or even negative growth, and developing nations are modernizing to low birth rates at an astounding pace). Barring any huge changes, we're looking at the global population growing maybe 50% over the next century, and being completely level or shrinking after that, and most of that growth happening in the next few decades.

So for the population to shrink significantly, it would require billions to die, of famine or resource wars. So what's going to shrink the food supply that much? Enough to induce famine at a global scale? Keep in mind that global warming moves more slowly than harvest cycles. Farmers and nations can make decisions on what crops to plant and adjust their farming practices based on new information and reasonable predictions. Next year's weather won't be much different than this year's was, even if it will be significantly different than the weather in 20 years.

We are also on the cusp of two massive technological changes that will impact our farming abilities - IoT, and GMO. IoT allows plant-by-plant management of crops, reducing tilling and chemical use. GMO allows adaptation of crops to growing conditions more quickly than hybridizing does.

It just seems to me that the concerns about feeding everyone, in the wake of a previous century that absorbed a quadrupling of the population while making more food than ever and a future of at least two key technological breakthroughs, is more doomsday than solid reasoning.

tgbugs• 7 years ago

One phrase that seems to be missing from the article is is larger category of problem -- a collective action problem. The public good framing has to do with a citizen/state relationship. The collective action framing reflects a state/state relationship. A number of the more technical terms throughout the article imply this, but I was surprised that the term itself was left out because including it immediately tells us that certain solution simply will not work.

Further note (edit). I think it is unlikely that a single state will ever be able to mitigate alone unless all other states stop or drastically reduce CO2 release. Maybe one state could threaten to set off a bunch of nukes in the upper atmosphere to destroy electronics and power grids around the world as a threat to encourage compliance, but that seems extremely far fetched.

gmuslera2• 7 years ago

The problem of seeing this as a cost-benefit equation is when you may risk facing infinite cost.

Climate change, as a single, isolated factor, won't cause by itself human extinction or at least the end of the human civilization in a foreseeable future, but reality is complex, current civilization and most of mankind depends on a lot of connected systems. Positive feedback loops happen, in climate, economics and in cultures, and from time to time the effects catch by surprise experts. We might be betting it all, and losing the bet, forever.

amanaplanacanal3• 7 years ago

You might be right, but you can make that same argument about any change in any complex system.

gmuslera2• 7 years ago

In this case, it is the complex system at which we all live in.

And we are not talking about the fly of a butterfly, the climate system is gaining an atomic bomb worth of energy each second https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/07/global-w...

programminggeek• 7 years ago

It's an invented problem based on a belief that we control the planet. Yet, if we DID control the planet, we could simply fix it.

What if the planet got warmer without our input? What then?

dragonwriter3• 7 years ago

It's an invented problem based on a belief that we control the planet.

Climate change is a problem whether or not it's anthropogenic (which there is massive evidence that it is).

Yet, if we DID control the planet, we could simply fix it.

Us having the capacity to initiate a warming trend doesn't imply that we could simply stop it.

What if the planet got warmer without our input? What then?

Then we'd have just as much interest in bringing it under control. The impacts don't change of the source is different.

What Kind of Problem Is Climate Change?

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