IPCC’s starkest message yet: extreme steps needed to avert climate disaster

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00951-5

by stichers • 4 years ago

123 222 4 years ago

It seems fairly obvious that we do not have the collective will to make the kind of changes necessary to meaningfully change the trajectory of climate change. Might as well spend our efforts planning on how we will live with it, as it happens. I doubt we will have any more success in the future finding the will to try geoengineering, either. We will just find millions of little ways to mitigate the pain.

pjmlp• 4 years ago

In Germany, one reason why there are so many delays is that the local governments allow everyone to block building renewals sources, so you have smaller European countries that already bypassed Germany in renewals adoption, while courts keep busy discussing where Windmills are allowed to be placed.

js8• 4 years ago

Reading this from Czechia had made me chuckle. Germany is so far ahead in renewables compared to us!

rootusrootus3• 4 years ago

Following in the footsteps of America, I guess. We have made it extremely easy to block infrastructure improvements, even by individuals. There seems to be some idea that if we allow everyone to have a say, we can make everyone happy. Of course that doesn't work, and I'm surprised the idea gets so much traction. So we spend hundreds of millions of dollars drawing up grand plans that try to appease every possible interest group, and then give up when it is apparent that unanimous consensus will not be achieved.

tony_cannistra5• 4 years ago

As with most modern societal changes, I don't think this one is going to come down to "collective will." The massive scale of the problem limits meaningful actions to those that have a similarly massive scale of response. Only those in power can enact those.

Elect people who care. There are a lot of them.

have_faith• 4 years ago

What if people choose to elect those that don't?

colinmhayes• 4 years ago

Elect people who care.

The people not doing this is what OP means by "not having the collective will."

wanda• 4 years ago

I mean, I wouldn't say that we as a species lack the collective willpower to bring about broad social change. I think that it's very difficult to get that power on the ground with any traction when you have mixed messages coming from both sides of something that is always framed as a debate.

For decades, climate change was studied, warned about, and yet the way it was referred to and is still referred to by some like so: "more news regarding the debate on climate change" rather than "more news regarding climate change" — as long as it's a debate, it's undecided, you don't know if you should do something or care because the scientific community has yet to reach consensus, and government inaction is seen as a reflection of this apparent lack of consensus rather than simply governments' unwillingness to go against the grain of business and the comfortable status quo.

Even though the rhetoric surrounding climate change does seem to consider it a fact as of the last few years, you still have "experts" on both sides of the fence saying that it is and isn't real, which further enables people to put it out of their mind as something that's for other people to worry about because they're not in on it.

And for those who do accept that climate change is a reality, I wouldn't mind betting that a non-trivial subset of those people largely think it's too late to do anything urgent or drastic and are therefore content to endure some bizarre weather while society slowly transitions to eco-friendly models in the next fifty years.

It probably couldn't have gone much better, and if big bad business was truly all powerful, I doubt we would have seen any changes in society, but business has also driven the R&D of more efficient solar technology and the rapid expansion of wind power installations. I think the crowd that consider wind farms to be a blight on the landscape have mostly gone quiet after realising that J. M. W. Turner probably wouldn't have wanted to paint electricity pylons, freeways or Airbuses either, yet they're here to stay.

I'm surprised geothermal didn't take off, though I probably shouldn't be surprised given that I know practically nothing about geothermal power extraction and thus have an overly simplistic model of a magma steam engine system in my head that probably isn't at all viable or efficient.

Nagyman2• 4 years ago

Climate change is a scale, from bad to really really bad, and positive change is already happening. Here's some uplifting news in a well articulated video worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw

Apathy is their weapon, and it's very effective.

mistermann4• 4 years ago

They = whom, and how is this weapon wielded?

Nav_Panel• 4 years ago

Apathy is their weapon, and it's very effective.

Psychologically speaking, these tactics are approximately the same as the church's use of hell, in the sense of "fix your shit now, or else you're going to hell". This was very effective when the church held a huge amount of political sway + serious control over the media (no internet back then, people weren't even literate). It wont work nearly as well now.

Don't get me wrong--I'm no Homo Economicus fan, not saying people are fundamentally selfish--I just think people are fundamentally averse to change, to breaking their habits. The climate change leadership needs a new tactic. I'm totally in support of e.g. tax cuts and incentives for renewables, reducing carbon emissions, etc. Or other ways of raising awareness and taking action that give people what they want/need, right now, rather than being entirely concerned with an image of the future (that for many people with no families, no kids, no legacy, doesn't even exist).

trinovantes• 4 years ago

See how many Canadians complained about carbon taxes on their recent fuel costs made me realize it's basically an impossible task -- especially considering we literally experienced the consequences of our actions in record breaking heatwaves, forest fires, and flood in the last 2 years

hotpotamus• 4 years ago

The thing about geoengineering (at least solar radiation management) is that it's within the budget of some of the world's richest individuals in theory at least. It definitely seems like the least worst half-assed fix from my (rather limited) knowledge of the subject.

native_samples• 4 years ago

Before getting too keen on geo-engineering, take a few minutes to ponder the following paragraph from an article in Newsweek:

"Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality."

http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf

If this paragraph makes no sense to you, it's because - with the exception of the proposed geo-engineering project - it sounds like something that could have been written last week. It was actually written in 1975 when climate change meant the coming ice age. Here's Spock to tell you more:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M

It's a good thing they didn't try to melt the arctic, right? But notice how there's absolutely no communication of any nuance, uncertainty or the possibility that the scientists were wrong. Only laments about how the "planners" were too sluggish to react to the scientist's warnings. Absolutely nothing changed except the directional temperature change of the proposed projects.

microjim• 4 years ago

Let's do our best :D :D

paganel• 4 years ago

They had the same kind of messages reguariding famines and over-population back in the 1970s, we’ve been mostly fine, with the last (non-war induced) famine happening in 1990s Ethiopia (if I’m not mistaken).

But of course that these type of institutions have learned that focusing on the good things in life doesn’t attract any funds, so here we are.

graeme• 4 years ago

You can increase food productuon in a variety of ways, and food production responds to market incentives.

But the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans is a math problem and doesn’t respond to market incentives: it is pure externality.

You could be right but it’s worth thinking about the shape of problems. Crucially, we’re already seeing the effects of global warming, including positive feedback loops.

an9n2• 4 years ago

Isn't it the case that the global temperatures are stubbornly refusing to match the (increasingly bonkers) rhetoric? Perhaps that's the reason for warmists digging their heels in even further, censoring dissent etc.

rocgf2• 4 years ago

No, it's not the case.

anonymousab2• 4 years ago

Isn't it the case that the global temperatures are stubbornly refusing to match the (increasingly bonkers) rhetoric

Correct, they are in fact worse than most calculations, in terms of absolute values and acceleration. It turns out that we are not being pessimistic and scared enough.

mrjangles• 4 years ago

That was the case 10 years ago, but since then they have discovered that all the temperature records since 1950 were wrong, and they have been correcting them. Turns out the computer simulations were correct all along and it was the data that was wrong.

This guy has been digging up old NASA publications showing what they claimed, in 2000, that the temperature was between 1950-2000 and what they claim today that the temperature was between 1950-2000.

https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/spectacularly-poor-clima...

rocgf2• 4 years ago

Quite obviously, the logical conclusion is that institutions are always wrong, no matter what.

It is obvious that digging stuff out of the ground and then burning it for 2 centuries cannot possibly have any side-effects.

It's all good, we will fallaciously reject anything inconvenient until catastrophe hits. It's worked so far, right?

glitchc• 4 years ago

We don't have credible alternatives. The energy density per unit volume of gasoline is only outmatched by nuclear. Nothing else comes close.

Edit: Check out this chart. Scrub the metals, and compare the remaining sources. We've got a long way to go before batteries achieve parity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density#/media/File:Ene...

anonymousab2• 4 years ago

That messaging was not incorrect, there were major food concerns across the globe that were mitigated thanks to the green revolution.

I don't think it's wise to assume the same situation will automatically happen with climate concerns.

Steltek2• 4 years ago

Also importantly, solutions don't magically appear. Someone needs to do the work and before even that happens, the problems need to be identified and studying.

thinkingkong• 4 years ago

Genuine curiosity. What are you concerns about “solving” climate change? Like if the IPCC reports are all wrong, and all we end up with is renewable energy where do you anticipate the cost to shift?

tony_cannistra5• 4 years ago

I get your general point about money providing perverse incentives, but I've got to say this is a strange take.

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is "is the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change." [0]

Would you prefer that this type of institution "focus on the good things?" Instead of doing their job?

Perhaps a stretch, but it sounds to me like you're saying hospitals should tell you about how good your cholesterol levels are instead of mending your broken arm.

[0] https://www.ipcc.ch/about/

newsclues3• 4 years ago

I might believe the world leaders about this if they gave up their flights on private jets to make announcements.

When the leaders start leading, instead of making life more difficult or expensive for average people, I will start listening again.

And I’m a bike riding hippie!

tokai• 4 years ago

with the last (non-war induced) famine happening in 1990s Ethiopia (if I’m not mistaken)

You are mistaken. Why write that when you are unsure, without looking it up?

tonyedgecombe2• 4 years ago

Not the OP but I’m curious what the counter example is.

an9n2• 4 years ago

And here it is: 'wealthy nations will need to contribute financial aid to low-income countries, to address inequities in vulnerability to climate change and to accelerate the clean-energy transition in a way that benefits all'

In other words, TPTB employing as a facade the big global institutions under their control to sprinkle some fake respectability on their plan to enforce drastically reduced living standards on the middle classes, as part of their simulacrum of global communism that will enable the ultra-rich to maintain their hegemony in perpetuity, whilst reducing all others to cattle in their technocratic global slave system. Quelle suprise

scohesc2• 4 years ago

It's so easy to see it when you take a few steps back and look at the constant fear the media's been pushing for almost 30-40 years now - every once in a while there's an article about how "_this_ time it's an emergency!"

I swear science is turning more and more corrupted into a substitute for religion for people. We don't have religious faith anymore to guide us and give us comfort, so we're relying on the "experts" that the "higher powers" tell us to listen to. Can't believe in the man in the sky, but we'll believe what the people the media told us were experts have to say!

EricE8• 4 years ago

"Trust the men in white coats" "Which men?" "TOP men! Trust us!"

PoignardAzur2• 4 years ago

You sound like someone saying "Ever since I've jumped off that 40-stories building, so-called experts have been telling me I would die. Well I've fallen 30 stories so far and I'm perfectly fine, these experts are morons".

As for the whole science-as-the-new-religion thing, well, that's just a cheap shot. You're just seeing a lot of people disagreeing with you and going "oh, these people are obviously all brainwashed by the new dominant cult and that's why they're so stupid".

PoignardAzur2• 4 years ago

That's... a lot of fancy words to say "These greedy rich people are trying to take the middle class's money again to make us into slaves".

And that's just inane. Like, yeah, rich people are greedy, yeah, systemic problems exist, yeah, economic inequality is bad and the influence of the super-rich is a problem.

But I don't see how you can go from any of that to "therefore, richer countries shouldn't give aid to poorer countries because that's a trick of the super-rich to make us all into slaves".

If nothing else, helping poor countries worldwide develop reduces the power of the super-rich over society, since it means they have fewer super-poor exploited populations to draw from and need to make more concessions to workers instead of just relocating to some poorer place.

commandlinefan• 4 years ago

Let me guess... all of those steps involve higher taxes.

chaorace• 4 years ago

Well... yeah! The magical word is "carbon tax" and economists have been screaming it into the skies for at least the last decade. Nobody wants to hear it, though.

kansface• 4 years ago

Have they really? It seems so impossibly unworkable given we don’t make most things here.

c7DJTLrn• 4 years ago

Moving people away from disaster zones and making infrastructure more resilient would be far more realistic, not to mention cheaper, than reducing emissions or pulling CO2 from the atmosphere.

It's too late to stop using fossil fuels. It's a forbidden fruit that has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty and the third world countries want first world lifestyles. We are better off trying to mitigate.

true_religion• 4 years ago

I think we are already doing that, albeit in typical human style of waiting for a local disaster before moving people completely out of the danger zone.

The danger zones are huge, and understandably people,ant to keep using them until the last possible moment. Like all projections show Manhattan may one day be under water, but we will only slowly abandon it as it floods rather than evacuating dry land in advance.

EricE8• 4 years ago

Manhattan has been under threat of flooding for centuries yet we have figured out ways to prevent it. Same for Holland, Venice, etc. Hell as I pointed out above the Obama's just built a luxury mansion right on the beach in Marthas Vineyard. I guess they are utterly ignorant of the climate change threats, eh?

Much of the climate change hysteria is only viable if you assume that human ingenuity and innovation will utterly cease for some reason.

Not a very smart bet. Instead it's far more likely much of the climate change hysteria is merely a way to exert control that governments wouldn't otherwise have. For example, this article didn't even mention China or India once. If you are going to screech about carbon and not even mention the two biggest producers of atmospheric carbon then it's not a serious discussion - at all.

redisman2• 4 years ago

As if moving billions of people to new countries is somehow cheap or easy?

throwaway57522• 4 years ago

What you have written is the unrealistic thing.

The fact that we have cognitive blinders that tends to try to go between two extremes in the middle, even when one of the extremes ("extreme steps needed to avert climate disaster") is correct and the other is incorrect ("we can't stop using fossil fuel and we should just move people from disaster zones") is incorrect.

You are not taking into account the scale and width of the impact of climate change, the effort to implement what you've described, and the breakdown in society that it will cause (along with second order effects).

In the early parts of covid there was almost a breakdown in civil order because of a lack of toilet paper. When that is people dying in heatwaves, mass migration, and starvation it will not be possible to handle it in a methodical fashion.

We can stop using fossil fuels. Electric and renewable can work to replace all our needs, and we can modify our lifestyles otherwise. It isn't great but it is the best alternative.

moonchrome• 4 years ago

We can stop using fossil fuels. Electric and renewable can work to replace all our needs, and we can modify our lifestyles otherwise. It isn't great but it is the best alternative.

That's such a ridiculous statement in face of recent events - Europe can't even replace fossil fuels imported from Russia in years from now with the insane political will behind such a move - and this is some of the richest countries in the world with very left leaning/pro green energy governments. This isn't replacing fossil fuels - it's replacing one source of fuels used with another.

EricE8• 4 years ago

Speaking of moving - isn't climate change supposed to dramatically increase the ocean levels thus induce flooding?

Politicians don't seem to have got that memo: https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/peek-insi...

Or maybe they know the memo's are BS? It's always fun to compare what people say/supposedly believe to what they actually do.

basisword3• 4 years ago

We get at least a couple of these reports in the news every month. I can’t help but believe it’s to create fear. The general public by and large cannot solve this crisis - it’s down to politicians to regulate and innovators to create and push new solutions and alternatives.

maxehmookau2• 4 years ago

I can’t help but believe it’s to create fear.

I think cause and effect is mixed up here. I think the damage humans are causing to our planet is scary. Fear is just the emotion we feel when something scary is happening.

Steltek2• 4 years ago

Politicians are not going to go out of their way to hurt industry unless the public are rabidly screaming for it. These reports are for the public to generate that push.

tony_cannistra5• 4 years ago

It sounds like you're saying creating fear is a bad thing. Is it?

Sure, people don't need or want to live their lives in fear. But, can you think of a time you changed your behaviour on account of something you were afraid of?

I bet you can. I bet politicians really can.

adamrezich3• 4 years ago

it's mind-blowing that people like you accept the idea that it's perfectly normal and fine for unelected members of international pseudo-government bodies to spread fear porn propaganda specifically in order to get citizens to enact change in their lives, And That's A Good Thing™. how the fuck did we get to the point where top-down emotional terrorism of the working class is lauded as some kind of grand achievement for furthering human civilization? insane

Juliate• 4 years ago

General public is where politicians and innovators are sourced from.

A4ET8a8uTh0• 4 years ago

I am oddly in agreement with you. It is not the same, but nuclear weapons suffer from the same issue. Things are way worse than only 30 years ago ( more countries have access now; there is at least one more country likely to add that capacity in a year or two ). In a very practical sense, things got much worse from doomsday clock perspective. But each time this fear is invoked and nothing happens, people get 'used' to the idea.

Ekaros2• 4 years ago

I think more countries getting nukes is a good thing. It clearly prevents aggression by the evil imperialist countries. So I really think every country should have them and capability to deliver them to anywhere on the globe. For peace and prosperity against those who want topple their governments be they autocratic or democratic...

zmgsabst• 4 years ago

Yep, as planned.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dv8Zy-JwXr4&t=7m26s

jazzyjackson• 4 years ago

Consider Ronald Raegan's 1987 speech to the UN, famous for its mention of an alien threat. I'm convinced the UN really took it to heart that they need to invent a common enemy to unite the world toward countering an existential threat rather than fighting each other.

“Cannot swords be turned to plowshares? Can we and all nations not live in peace? In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity,”
“Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond,"
“I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?”

Personally I don't think the anxiety and mental breaks I've seen in my millenial and gen-z peers from the whole "11 years left to do something" is really worth it, what good is world peace if our lives are defined by guilt and hopelessness.

basisword3• 4 years ago

> Personally I don't think the anxiety and mental breaks I've seen in my millenial and gen-z peers from the whole "11 years left to do something" is really worth it

This is what gets me. Children having “climate anxiety” is messed up. There is nothing they can do to fix it and they shouldn’t have to worry about it. The constant repeating news cycle of climate fear is clearly targeted at them.

ericd4• 4 years ago

Tackling it involves lowering our standard of living. To have any hope of pulling that off politically, we need to care more about it than we do about our massive SUVs and our car-centric suburban lifestyles.

basisword3• 4 years ago

> Tackling it involves lowering our standard of living.

Never happening. Young people are already facing a lower standard of living the previous generation. If you think they’re going to accept an even greater decline you’re not going to win. We need to get the current technological solutions (e.g. clean energy solutions) down to roughly the same cost as fossil fuels, and we need new technological solutions in areas where we can’t solve emissions without a reduction in standard of living.

Isamu• 4 years ago

So which countries are meeting their carbon emission goals? Is there a scorecard or summary of approaches that are producing results?

greenail• 4 years ago

https://www.statista.com/chart/26102/emission-reduction-goal...

maxehmookau2• 4 years ago

It does feel, unfortunately, that in the question of "Now or never?", that as a species we've decided on "never". Or at least "Not until something acute and surprising happens to a western country."

mistrial9• 4 years ago

superstorm Sandy.. Western wildfire.. Pacific kelp forest die-off? this is a political situation, as some people are deeply affected while others see nothing important or local economic change only

tremon• 4 years ago

Luckily, Russia has been a great help accelerating the move away from fossil fuels in Europe.

monkaiju• 4 years ago

Cant be solved under capitalism, climate health just doesn't play a role in maximizing profits.

changoplatanero• 4 years ago

can't be solved without capitalism either, there is no other way except capitalism to generate the excess wealth required to address this major crisis

Mizza3• 4 years ago

"My God is the correct one."

FredPret• 4 years ago

Uhhh, yes it does! What's the point of profits if your private island/beach resort is under water? Where will profits come from if civilization ends?

Any intelligent capitalist sees the climate and other systemic issues as strategic risks/opportunities. Don't look at (late coal baron) Robert Murray and think that is all capitalism is just because he is part of it.

magneticnorth4• 4 years ago

Climate disaster coverage makes me think about how, as much as I love to think that our species will be 8B+ strong for millenia and eventually make it to the stars, that would mean that I am born among the first few percent of humanity.

It seems more likely that my random sample is from somewhere in the middle, and if an ~equal number of humans will be born after me as before, then at our population growth/levels, we don't have much time left until extinction or a population collapse from which we never recover.

I don't know that there's anything helpful in this thought, though - can I increase my odds of being born in the earliest percentile of the species by my actions?

Ekaros2• 4 years ago

Humans are extremely resilient species which has already adapted to all but one or two areas in world, namely poles. Humans won't go extinct, that is just not going to happen anymore....

Now civilizations as we see them today might, but I think they entirely deserve it.

DennisP• 4 years ago

You're probably right but if we start with a large reduction in livable habitat and food production, mix in a few pandemics driven by poor health and overcrowding, and consider that a situation that stressed makes nuclear war not so unlikely, then I'm not completely confident. Particularly if we get to the more severe outcomes around five or six degrees C.

riffic• 4 years ago

Humans won't go extinct

I see this statement frequently made on discussion forums like this, and I'd like to tell you this is a tremendously arrogant belief to hold.

time_to_smile3• 4 years ago

This is a laughable claim.

Human's have existed only for a very short while and during one of the most stable periods of climate in this history of the planet.

I understand denial is necessary to cope, but when you really understand the scale of the changes coming it's hard to image anything other than extinction happening.

All of the magic humans have done is not because of our innate abilities but because or our access to abundant energy. First in the form of solar energy harvesting through agriculture, later through fossil fuels. Unfortunately we pushed the system too far.

bee_rider• 4 years ago

I guess if you believe in quantum immortality, then you would assume that you are actually likely to be toward the average observer who never dies.

Perhaps we'll achieve medical immortality some time in the next couple decades, and then decide to stop making so many humans.

gmm1990• 4 years ago

I don't see why population collapse implies the end of the human race. It seems like it would be more sustainable medium term to have less people. Endangered species come back from numbers in the thousands maybe even less. I'd imagine once population levels reached anywhere near those kinds of levels there'd be a change in poplulations willingness to have children.

magneticnorth4• 4 years ago

I'm just meaning sort of statistically - if we somehow knew only another 100B people will be born, then either we continue along our current growth and burn through 100B in a thousand years or so, or the species lasts for millenia but the total number of those people is only 100B, so the population never got huge again.

This is really just kind of an abuse of statistical thinking - you're not wrong at all that populations recover, but in our case if that happened we're back to saying that we were born in the first 5% of humanity, which I'm saying is likely not the case.

jsharf• 4 years ago

There's some misunderstanding probability going on here.

For example, if the population stays at 8B between now and infinity, and we assume a uniform distribution of % chance you're born at any time, then it's just as equally likely that you'd be born at the beginning as at the end. There's no higher chance that you'd be born in the middle, whatsoever.

Now actually the population is likely to grow, so if anything it's much more likely that you'd be born towards the end. That begins said, some people have to be born first and of course if they thought this way, they might say things like "oh what a coincidence, this is highly unlikely" or "It's far more likely due to exponential growth that any one person exist towards the end of humanity, so therefore this must be the end", but of course, this thought could have been had by cavemen 1000's of years ago and they'd be wrong.

magneticnorth4• 4 years ago

I think we agree - I wasn't meaning to imply that I'm surely in the middle, mostly trying to be more clear about how unlikely it is to be early. Another way to put it is to say that there's only 5% chance I'm in the first 5% of people, and 50% chance I'm in the last 50% (assuming uniform distribution, which, who knows). If I'm in the last 50%, then we don't have much time left.

And yes, if everyone has these thoughts, then about 5% of people will be wrong when they think that surely they aren't in the first 5%.

(And I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt that "between now and infinity" is hyperbole - percentiles of a uniform distribution like this don't make sense if there will truly be a countably infinite number of people. )

terran57• 4 years ago

I too, used to think that we'd be a species that would head to the stars, but it appears that will be just one of a long line of species that cannot get past the great filter of Fermi's Paradox.

njarboe• 4 years ago

We could have already passed the great filter. Maybe going from single celled life to multicellular life is extremely rare. It did not appear on earth for 2-3 billion years after the appearance of single celled life. The creation of single celled life could also be great filter. Good evidence of that comes about a billion years after the formation of the Earth. And then there is a species that can escape its home planet. Apart from some single celled life on rocks ejected by impacts (not going to colonize the galaxy with those rare events), that took another billion years after multicellular life evolved. But, as Elon Musk emphasizes, we should get life into the solar system now. We don't know how rare life getting to this stage is and how likely it is to regress and never recover the capability. And in any case, current theory suggests that the sun will expand in the next few hundreds of millions of years making Earth uninhabitable to current life on Earth. Not very long compared to the 4.5 billion years Earth has existed.

magneticnorth4• 4 years ago

I like to think the great filter was the evolution of mitochondria - as far as we know, this only happened once in billions of years of life on our planet, and it seems to have paved the way for the complex life we have.

But more likely there are many filters, and maybe technology destroying the ecosystem we depend on is one of them.

burner0001932• 4 years ago

CaspianReport has a good video on why it's hard to make the transition to renewables. Renewables are already being built at an exponential rate, but we're starting from a low starting point. Since we can't get off of coal and oil and go straight to renewables, we're moving to LNG as the transition fuel. LNG, though, is very expensive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUTCPYwHguA

pydry• 4 years ago

We're still at a stage right now though, where solar panels and wind turbines are the cheapest form of energy by a wide, wide margin and every MWh of electricity they generate is almost guaranteed to be MWh natural gas that doesn't get burned.

When natural gas regularly goes below 5-8% of grid production then we should probably shift focus to intermittency and storage but for now trying to solve the intermittency problem at the expense of generating less energy overall simply means more natural gas will get burned overall.

andrewclunn• 4 years ago

Waiting until there are consequences (in general) instead of merely the prediction of consequences (reactive instead of proactive) has two effects: 1) Delaying costs and potentially setting off consequences that cannot be avoided. 2) Not being taken in by those who use scare tactics to control you based upon consequences that might not happen.

Is this a matter of deferred gratification and societal-level self control, or of epistemology and institutional trust?

trentnix4• 4 years ago

“Extreme steps”, whether they admit it or not, is a reduction in the standard of living of many and handicapping the efforts to improve the standard of living for most. That requires the power of the individual to be reduced to empower central authorities who will manage our new rationed, austere society.

That is, certainly, a recipe for catastrophic war.

If climate change is the existential crisis some insist it is, our only solution is technological. But those who wish to use climate change as a Trojan horse to enact their social whims will reject any discussion of the sort. Because solving climate change isn’t their goal, it’s the means to attain their goal.

cr__• 4 years ago

Do you have any proof?

TrispusAttucks3• 4 years ago

Maybe this?

https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU

AlexandrB• 4 years ago

That is, certainly, a recipe for catastrophic war.

Climate change itself is probably a recipe for catastrophic war and the resurgence of fascism. There are estimates as high as 1.2 billion for people that will be displaced by climate change[1]. Even a much smaller number of refugees from the middle east and South America has helped push politics in many western countries towards isolationism and increased xenophobia. What would 1.2 billion refugees do?

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-...

throwaway5992812• 4 years ago

What would 1.2 billion refugees do? Stay in their countries and improve them just like Westerners do?

jokethrowaway• 4 years ago

There is no chance 1.2B people will migrate to Europe.

The problem is that, right now, EU countries are forced to accept poor immigrants and integration is not easy.

Integration is not easy for a number of economical reasons and not due to xenophobia. EU economies, especially in the south, are not doing well. There are not a lot of jobs, life got progressively worse in the last 20 years, crisis after crisis. So naturally, migrants will end up working for 2€ per hour picking up tomatoes or selling drugs and stealing bikes.

Eventually, it will become politically unsustainable and local populations will vote to quit the EU and stop the immigrants flow. The nordic countries have a rape problem linked to immigration. My grandma is afraid of walking in her own city. I'd say we're about 50% there.

We already saw it happen in the UK. The only thing keeping the other countries in is that their economy are too weak to survive on their own and they came to rely on the single market.

giardini• 4 years ago

"resurgence of fascism???!! [emphasis mine]

WTF? Please explain, esp. why not instead a resurgence of [communism, religion, authoritarianism, Buddhism, Hinduism, wizardism a la Harry Potter, Pokemon-ism, etc, etc.]

When I read a post containing such phrases, I am likely to suffer a severe attack of "give-a-sh*-ism" (as in "I don't give a sh* about this.")

oehpr• 4 years ago

A -> B, reduction of carbon is reduction in standard of living.

B -> C, reduction in standard of living requires a powerful central authority (rather than our current one being sufficient)

C -> D, a central authority will become hostile to its neighbors.

I'm not sure any of these suppositions are something I agree with. But that last one in particular... That one in particular seems a bit much.

trentnix4• 4 years ago

If a neighbor doesn’t get with the program (such as China or Russia, for instance), how would you suggest coercing them to the same end? And a central authority doesn’t have to be hostile to neighbors to provoke war. It may be viewed as hostile by its own subjects.

ClumsyPilot7• 4 years ago

The whole comment is basically 1 step away from: 'any structural change to address climate change is a communist plot!'

simion3142• 4 years ago

“Extreme steps”, whether they admit it or not, is a reduction in the standard of living of many and handicapping the efforts to improve the standard of living for most. And that requires the power of the individual to be reduced to empower the central authorities who will manage our new rationed, austere society.

Also forcing the industry not to put polutants in the water and air has it's cost, I would like to understand why the future generation needs to pay so our generation can keep spending money on shit like ctypto, apps, luxury.

I am assuming you think that if we just do nothing some billionaire would discover how to reverse this, but any facts to prove that in 50 years this will happen and the solution would be instant and cheap? And before someone would scream "think about the poor" I would say that there are solutions like fixing tax loopholes where bilionairse move to some different country or some giant company uses some shity loophole not to pay the taxes.

ClumsyPilot7• 4 years ago

"Also forcing the industry not to put polutants in the water and air has it's cost"

it's the reverse -> allowing them to pollute and cause damage has it's cost, if a child with astma dies of air pollution, they aren't paying compensation. When someone got lead poisoning or died of black lung, companies wheren't paying for that either. If that person's family now needs support and welfare, if the pollution needs cleaning up, it's always the taxpayer picking up the tab

freshpots3• 4 years ago

Technology alone can not solve it. Our excessive consumption IS the reason we have this existential problem. We would need seven Earths worth of resources if everyone lived like North Americans.

Edit for the downvoters, it is even worse:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/cms/asset/d9fdb266-1231-4...

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2007.216...

tomrod2• 4 years ago

We would need seven Earths worth of resources if everyone lived like North Americans

How so?

New_California• 4 years ago

100%.

ruddct• 4 years ago

This is a frequently-seen argument, and "extreme steps" will definitely require a change in lifestyle for many. It's worth noting though, that many of the countries doing the 'best' against climate change (e.g. the Nordics) also have famously high standards of living.

beeforpork• 4 years ago

Your post was a good, especially as a starting point of a discussion, until you started your last two sentences ('But those ...'). Those sentences are completely counter-productive, universal, generalising accusations towards people who might actually want to discuss seriously about this topic, because they honestly share the same goal of preventing a catastrophy. It is sad that discussions are often made impossible by such unnecesary prejudice about people who you may actually want to discuss with.

trentnix4• 4 years ago

If you can’t identify the interlocutors who aren’t sincere, the necessary discussion won’t go anywhere useful. And many of those discussing climate change are absolutely insincere. You see it here in these comments with “it’s the West’s fault” and “capitalism is the problem”.

fold3• 4 years ago

Well, it is true that there is an agenda, sustainable ecology cannot exist without the end of capitalism. While it is true that in it's current form, even a minimum wage worker in global north country is not sustainable, it is the rich and the super rich that have by a large margin the highest carbon footprint.

sdoering• 4 years ago

Given that the lower half of incomes (actually of the people behind those income numbers) in the US already have a lifestyle that is in line with the Paris 2 degree goal, we are talking about the question if the rich-ish are willing to go to war for their privilege or if we (I certainly count in the upper half here in Germany while still far from even seeing the top) find ways of maybe reducing our impact.

The biggest lever is governmental regulations. Especially enabling capitalism to make good decisions. If externalities were priced into (for example) air travel, shipping or meat, the market would find ways and massive innovation potential could be leveraged.

As long as we are able to (relatively) cheaply consume while the externalities are payed by us all in the end (or the next generations) there won't be a solution. Neither socially nor technologically. At least imho.

DoingIsLearning4• 4 years ago

American, Canada, Australia, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, are a short list of countries who emit a ridiculously disproportionate amount of carbon per capita. [0]

The assumption that reduction of carbon emissions is a reduction of standard of living is flawed. A long list of developed countries have a tiny footprint per capita. Standard of living and living wastefully are not the same thing.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

sascha_sl• 4 years ago

This is a false choice. Limiting limitless consumption is not automatically reduction in the standard of living for most people.

There is a huge effect when cutting emissions of the top 10%, even a tiny bit. [1] The graph is likely hiding that if the top 10% was segmented more, it would be very hop heavy - even limiting it to the median of the top 10% should do a lot.

The US is also uniquely positioned here to cut their emissions in half and still have more emissions per capacita than Europe[1]. And no, the problem is not that the US is large and cars are required; cars are fine for rural people, but they are not fine for the spawling car-dependent suburban areas US cities keep creating. [2]

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2-by-income-region

[2]: (video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o&

ClumsyPilot7• 4 years ago

That requires the power of the individual to be reduced to empower central authorities

Oh, you think the current order is the result of economic freedom? You don't realise that's it's a result of economic tyranny where polluters and pillagers of national wealth are protected and coddled.

We could employer individuals to claim compensation for 2 million deaths caused by air pollusion globally. We could enable farmer who's lifehood has been destroyed by climate change to claim compensation from Oil companeis and other emitters.

If your plot of land decreased in value because it no longer has access to clean water, if your house has been destroyed by a flood, if you had a heart attack from abnormally hot weather of if you used to be a toure guide to the barrier reef -> join a mile long queue for compensation from Exconn mobil and others. After all, that's the cost of doing business, right?

We could also disempower the central authority from using violence to protect private jets, pipelines, coal mines, and other climate destroying assets, and see how long they last.

our only solution is technological

I've been hearing this argument and waiting for 30 years. Even better if you sit around waiting around for 'free market' to provide you with a magical solution. Should we wait for another 30 and see where it leads it? I mean it's easier that actually looking at yourself critically, right?

Joeri• 4 years ago

Your comment implies somehow there are governments choosing against technological solutions. There are none. In fact, they are investing billions into climate and energy technology and they have been doing so for decades. The ones that turn their back on nuclear power are most technologically inclined of all, because they are gambling on the hydrogen economy materializing and that requires a lot of new technology. And still it is not enough, and nowhere close to enough.

We are going to have to solve this problem with the technology we have. The clock has run out.

Or. We don’t. And we let those after us live with the consequences. I just worry that everyone who says “ok, let’s live with the consequences” has not chosen to properly inform themselves of what they are.

bryanlarsen5• 4 years ago

"Reduction in the standard of living" is really oversold by critics.

One of the most obvious impacts of a fight against climate change is that plane travel must get more expensive. Both to reduce demand and to give room for clean alternatives.

So your standard of living is reduced with fewer international vacations. But the alternative isn't "no vacations", it's "more local vacations".

DoingIsLearning4• 4 years ago

One of the most obvious impacts of a fight against climate change is that plane travel must get more expensive.

I am a staunch defender of climate action and have made many lifestyle personal decisions on that topic but this whole lifestyle 'consumer effort' message is as flawed as OP's claims. We need to look at the 'bang for buck' data.

Air travel is 1.9% of global emmissions. [0]

As a comparison:

- Energy use in Offices and Shops is 6.6% percent.

- The steel industry emits 7.2% of global emissions.

- Residential energy use is 10.9%.

- Road transport is 16.2% of global emissions.

You see where I am going with this.

Before guilting people into catching a plane for Christmas why not:

- Force steel industry into carbon scrubbing + emission mitigation R&D

- Overcharge large commercial/office areas for lighting/AC energy

- Overcharge large households using energy above a given quota per square foot

- Exponentially progressive tax on personal vehicles above 2000cc.

Notice that all of this is policy driven, not 'consumer effort'.

[0] https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect...

time_to_smile3• 4 years ago

our only solution is technological.

Technological progress is just a function of energy in a civilization. I highly recommend Smil's Energy and Civilization to understand this better.

The problem we are facing is directly a consequence of unsustainable energy usage, as such technology cannot be the solution.

Our quality of life will change whether we like it or not. In theory it would be preferable to choose that path. But people's in ability to accept that reality means we are choosing the hardest possible path.

We're already seeing wars over resources this very second. We will see global starvation this year from limited fertilizer production.

It's already happening and even in the comments on HN people aren't willing to entertain the necessary steps to prevent the worse case.

yongjik• 4 years ago

is a reduction in the standard of living of many
requires the power of the individual to be reduced
empower central authorities
our new rationed, austere society
a recipe for catastrophic war
our only solution is technological

That's, like, six unfounded predictions presented as truth with zero supporting evidence.

those who wish to use climate change as a Trojan horse to enact their social whims

And, of course, one baseless accusation.

baremetal2• 4 years ago

just reduce everyone's standard of living.

that is where this is heading.

SideburnsOfDoom• 4 years ago

Do you think there are other options? Doing nothing in the face of a climate catastrophe will ... what, keep up or improve everyone's standard of living?

baremetal2• 4 years ago

im not even making a value judgement. just pointing out that is the trajectory we are on.

me personally? i saw all of this coming, bought farmland. started a market garden and cows+chickens on rotational grazing.

no oil required to produce food.

a lower standard of living for everyone is fine with me.

Ourgon3• 4 years ago

Everyone's standard of living?

I don't think so. People like John Kerry - that so-called 'Climate Czar' [1] who keeps on dashing around the world in his private jet to tell the world they should be ashamed about their holiday travel plans - won't reduce their standard of living. People like Jeff Bezos won't, not will Gates, nor will just about anyone who wears a nice tailored suit while banging the climate drum. They won't because they need to fly to those important meetings at nice resorts where they discuss how other people need to reduce their 'climate footprint'. They are important people.

This whole disaster scenario is nothing new, it is not the first nor will it be the last. Whether it is a boiled earth scare, a frozen earth scare, a nuclear winter scare, a poisoned planet scare, a dried-out planet scare, a too-many-mouths-to-feed scare, a peak-oil scare or - to go bit further back in time - a heathen scare, a Catholic/Protestant/unbeliever scare or (even further back in time) a barbarians-at-the-gate scare, imminent disasters have always been a good way to try to get the populace to bend to some rulers will.

Me, I'll gladly ignore this just like I ignored all the other scares. I'll concentrate on independence just like I've been doing since more or less forever. That we happen to lower our ecological footprint doing this is just a nice side benefit but it is not driving. What is driving is that want to cut as many strings - which all too often end up acting like stings, not strings - between those rulers and our family as possible. This means energy independence (nearly there, waiting for remaining materials to be able to go off-grid when needed), food (getting there but with a whole forest full of moose, deer and boar we'll manage if needs be) and water (we have a reliable well which can give water without the need for an electric pump) independence, etc. I only use older hardware for computing which I can repair when needed - this is how I acquire it in the first place, dumpster-diving to save the planet. We have enough bicycles and spare parts to move an orphanage, a few old tractors including a two-wheel diesel-powered Irus which is older than I am, a bunch of horses plus the land and (horse-drawn) equipment to feed them and us, etc. The harder they pull those strings, the more of them I intend to cut.

[1] how long will it take for some do-gooder to suggest an alternative for that Russian word, Czar?

TrispusAttucks3• 4 years ago

I have been worried about climate change my entire life. I doom scroll news stories that show the coming disaster.

Recently, I stumbled onto this video [1] and have trouble refuting the data and claims.

Any experts that can explain what am I missing and why is this guy wrong?

[1] https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU

junon• 4 years ago

Because it fails to look at the big picture, and in pursuit of claiming scientists blindly cherry pick data, ends up... well, cherry picking data.

Being calm, deadpan, deep voiced or British seems to be equated to "smart" or "correct". Even the comments on that video are falling for it.

XKCD once again has a diagram for exactly this problem. Even focusing on just the last 100 years ignores the bigger picture.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

TrispusAttucks3• 4 years ago

I guess the primary issue with the video is the focus on US data (which is less alarming) rather than global data. Also for the forest fire data, after the large burn of the early 1900s, there would be a reduction forest debris to act as fuel so you would anticipate smaller fires for at least a few hundred years.

Thanks for the XKCD reminder. I have used this in the past as a nice way to illustrate the cause for alarm.

jeffbee5• 4 years ago

Pretty easy. A lot of the things asserted as facts in this video are actually just lies. So it doesn't add up.

One of the most indefatigable climate anti-contrarians is Andrew Dessler, climate scientist of Texas A&M University. You could read his book, or just his Twitter.

https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Modern-Climate-Change-De...

Ourgon3• 4 years ago

OK, so if it is that easy, show us where Heller is wrong instead of mentioning someone else who wrote a book. Heller's videos offer many individual facts which could - or could not, depending on who is right - be refuted by pointing at the correct [1] data. One of Heller's main claims which he keeps on coming back to is that it was a lot warmer in the '30s than it is now. This seems to be corroborated by the list of temperature extremes for the USA [2]. This point alone gives credence to Heller's accusation of climate alarmists making use of tailored views on climate data by only showing historical data which shows an upwards trend, hiding the fact that those data show a local maximum. Given that Heller has been at this for a long time I would expect someone to have taken his statements to task by showing where he is wrong. I have yet to come across a refutation like that but I've seen plenty of supposed refutations in the style of the one above using vague assertions of 'lies' and 'it does not add up'.

Show us, where is Heller lying and what does not add up? If you can point at someone who actually refutes Heller's claims that would suffice as well but make sure to point at the actual correct [1] data-backed refutation, don't just say someone wrote a book. Until such a time I will believe my own observations based on historical data which do not seem to indicate a climate 'emergency' but which do show climate change, no matter which part of history is studied.

[1] where 'correct' stands for 'actual', not 'corrected to fit a narrative'

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_tempe...

tra33• 4 years ago

I've listened to a podcast recently [0] that describes climate change as a definite problem, but not the civilization killer it is described as.

Frankly, I don't know enough about this to evaluate the problem critically. Some of the points that were made, that I thought were interesting:

- climate kills very few people currently.

- way more people die in "cold waves" than "heat waves".

- we spend way more money on heating now, rather than cooling. This will have to change obviously.

- hotter climate will encourage food production.

- a economic analysis (need to find the reference) was done projecting climate change impact and apparently, it's minuscule. On the order of 5% by 2100. Global wealth is projected to increase by over 300% during this time.

- so called "developing nations" have no money to move to alternative energy sources.

Some things that were not addressed, that I'm specifically curious about, living in a coastal area, is sea level rise.

I must admit that part of the reason I found this podcast so compelling is that the interview implies that while it's a real problem that has to be addressed, it's not, like I said a civilization killer.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQSvR1jw3ME

Thrymr2• 4 years ago

OK, we've got hundreds of scientists from 65 countries who spent years compiling a rigorous 2900 page report on one side, and on the other, a podcast.

If you are genuinely seeking the data and arguments on the issues, please at least read the executive and technical summaries of the report, here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/

tra33• 4 years ago

I don't think there's any argument about data; but certainly the interpretation. Thanks for the link, I'll try to make my way through the "policy maker" one.

The reason I made the post was to get some critical feedback on the podcast. I'm curious, how much of the report have you read yourself?

hh3k0• 4 years ago

- climate kills very few people currently.

"Climatic changes already are estimated to cause over 150,000 deaths annually."

https://web.archive.org/web/20220302105033/https://www.who.i...

- hotter climate will encourage food production.

"By the 2040s, the probability of a 10 per cent yield loss, or greater, within the top four maize producing countries (the US, China, Brazil and Argentina) rises to between 40 and 70 per cent. These countries currently account for 87 per cent of the world’s maize exports. The probability of a synchronous, greater than 10 per cent crop failure across all four countries during the 2040s is just less than 50 per cent."

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/09/climate-change-risk-ass...

- a economic analysis (need to find the reference) was done projecting climate change impact and apparently, it's minuscule. On the order of 5% by 2100. Global wealth is projected to increase by over 300% during this time.

"By mid-century, the world stands to lose around 10% of total economic value from climate change. That is a real scenario if temperature increases stay on the current trajectory, and both the Paris Agreement and 2050 net-zero emissions targets are not met, according to new Swiss Re Institute research."

https://www.swissre.com/institute/research/topics-and-risk-d...

- so called "developing nations" have no money to move to alternative energy sources.

The so-called developed nations can help with that transition, though. Many so-called developing nations have plenty of sun available to them, for example.

tra33• 4 years ago

Thanks for the links I'll take a look.

I found the GDP impact paper referred to in the podcast:

While climate scientists warn that climate change could be catastrophic, economists such as 2018 Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus assert that it will be nowhere near as damaging. In a 2018 paper published after he was awarded the prize, Nordhaus claimed that 3°C of warming would reduce global GDP by just 2.1%, compared to what it would be in the total absence of climate change. Even a 6°C increase in global temperature, he claimed, would reduce GDP by just 8.5%.

https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2018/MurphyNordhaus...

https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-09-10/nobel-prize-wi...

blenderdt2• 4 years ago

It's all about the money.

There is only one solution to speed things up: governments must raise huge taxes on energy use and pollution.

jeffbee5• 4 years ago

Hopefully you meant a tax on carbon emissions, not a tax on energy use. One of the few tools we have out of this mess is a tremendous expenditure of energy to remove carbon from the atmosphere and ocean.

blenderdt2• 4 years ago

I meant energy use. We are just using too much energy.

schrute• 4 years ago

Nice article and all but what are the recommended pragmatic steps for individuals, besides casting votes for political candidates who care?

mrfusion• 4 years ago

Did you know the UN also warned in 2005 that man-made global warming would so decimate coastal areas as well as the Caribbean and Pacific islands that there would be upwards of 50 million “climate refugees by 2010.”

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturald...

namdnay7• 4 years ago

how many are there today? if you read the article you'll see that back in 2005 they were already counting around 10M climate refugees per year

jeffbee5• 4 years ago

UNHCR says there were 42.4 million people displaced due to climate-linked disasters in 2010, so this prediction was not far off. What you should be asking yourself is why you had this contrarian tidbit at your fingertips, but you're not aware of the primary facts.

incomingpain3• 4 years ago

How many GW of coal plants are being built brand new in Asia right now? It's very high. These will operate for decades.

What are we to do? Tell them to stop? Tried that unsuccessfully. I would ignore us if I were them. USA and Europe still emits tons of CO2. Has been emitting worse then them for many many decades. This carbon emitting elevated much of the wealth of the country. We are basically telling them to not become wealthy like us. They wonder why we haven't done much to reduce emissions.

We were too late, it's happening now. What do we need to do. Ignore carbon taxes that do nothing.

Instead, build renewables, build batteries, build solar panels. The remaining amount of fossil fuels is a hard limit. Staying on them is idiotic to say the least.

It's not just transportation and centralized energy production. Plastics, lubricants, wax, sulphur, ashphalt are other products of oil. What are the non-petroleum options?

We also need non-carbon emitting things like concrete.

Why do we just go to it? No regulations, no taxes, maybe even funding for any corporations who work on doing these things?

Wait nobody is doing this? The government is restricting and slowing this effort?

Actions speak louder than words, why are the world's nations saying they'll do something while their actions say they have no intention to do anything?

Is there an unspoken denial of climate change by the world?

triceratops7• 4 years ago

Ignore carbon taxes that do nothing

Where have carbon taxes been enacted and in those places, have they failed to reduce consumption?

What are we to do? Tell them to stop? Tried that unsuccessfully

Reduce our own consumption, institute carbon taxes. Tell them if they don't do the same, their imports are embargoed. Actually follow through and accept the rise in cost of goods.

incomingpain3• 4 years ago

Where have carbon taxes been enacted and in those places, have they failed to reduce consumption?

Yes. Oil/Gas usage is inelastic to price. The only appreciable factor toward reducing oil has been the proliferation of hybrids and EVs and its nowhere near enough.

Before the carbon tax we had practically a 100% combined road taxes on gasoline to begin with. Tacking on only a tad bit more isn't producing any new reduction.

Reduce our own consumption, institute carbon taxes.

How? Carbon taxes didn't work.

Tell them if they don't do the same, their imports are embargoed. Actually follow through and accept the rise in cost of goods.

So pay more taxes for what? We are going to pay more to punish them? That doesnt sound like punishing them at all. Sounds like punishing me.

triceratops7• 4 years ago

Plastics, lubricants, wax, sulphur, ashphalt are other products of oil

If they're produced with green energy (i.e. oil is only used as a chemical input instead of an energy input), then they aren't adding carbon to the atmosphere. Continue using them in good health.

catchclose89194• 4 years ago

...how about focusing instead on how to live through this climate "disaster"?!

Let's be honest about it, most developed countries are making geo-strategic decisions in the context of +7 C in <= 100 years... we're just not being f honest about it! (Avoiding it is off the table, just as well as "zero covid" was off the table since month three of the f pandemic and we should've just accepted that it's gonna become endemic and most measures are waste of resources.)

Let's accept that "massive" climate change will happen, and that our goal is how to slow things down and how to avoid it being an actual disaster for HUMANITY!

(It will be a disaster for many other species that we'll go extinct as we'll probably massively increase use of herbicides and fertilizers and GMOs in order to satisfy humanity's material needs against a backdrop of populations displacements and fertile lands distribution shifts. But it doesn't have to be a disaster for humanity... ugly as it may be, it's a live-and-let-die universe and irreversible biodiversity loss will happen, but humans are quite capable of not only maintaining but also accelerating, as it's our duty to, technological and scientific progress, as long as we don't stupidly turn against each-other! We have and entire universe to infect and conquer ffs, let's just not kill each other in the next century!)

time_to_smile3• 4 years ago

live through this climate "disaster"

Because this is not a disaster that stops at any point in the foreseeable future. There is no other side to get "through" to.

This isn't like an Earth quake or even a nuclear war where a single event happens, the world is changed but then stasis begins to return.

Next year the impacts of climate change will be notably worse than they were the previous year. This will be true for the rest of your life. Positive feed backs and the geological history of the planet both indicate that after a (currently unknown) limit, things will start escalating rapidly and irreversibly until the surface of the planet is no longer recognizable.

The focus should be on how to psychologically begin to deal with loss at this scale. But, as anyone can see in the comments here, people are very unlikely to be ever ready to deal with the psychological stress this imposes on them. Instead we'll see subtle but steadily increasing madness consume the population. HN is a great place to observe this.

catchclose89194• 4 years ago

All models show that arable land will decrease in some places, but also increase in others. Net land loss due to submerging coastal areas, but also arctic areas like eg. Greenland becoming suitable for some kind of agriculture after defrosting.

And the fact "the surface of the planet is no longer recognizable" doesn't mean uninhabitable.

And "to deal with the psychological stress this imposes on them" people can also simply choose to care less, focus socially on accelerating tech development and individually stay entertained while competing in the new worldwide casinos and global-events-betting-markets etc. or playing games in the metaverses whose outcomes results in real-world-money redistributions.

we'll see subtle but steadily increasing madness consume the population

Maybe your definition of "sanity" is a bit bit constrained and needs to be adjusted then :) To keep the optimism up, maybe future challenges will usher in an era where we finally evolve psychology and psychiatry beyond the pseudoscientifc nonsense they are today, and we replace the "war on drug" with "full access to BOTH drugs and safety information about using them" + a culture focused more on using them for freely managed performance enhancement instead of plain aimless entertainment and "feeling better".

I see a lot of future's problems as opportunities tbh... and challenging stress to force us evolve faster if we modulate it right. This is what I care about most now really, working of figuring out how to "modulate things right" to be able to squeeze the positive after effects even from clearly destructive events like wars and genocides.

One man's hell is another man's heaven I guess: I've always dreamed of finally seeing the opportunity to push the masses out of this mentality combo of christianity/islam/buddshism and other maladaptive crap that paradoxically combines well with eco-scientims or passive-observe-but-not-influence-science. (Real scientific progress was/is always engineering-driven and theories come after evidence they are derived from... the modern "use theoretic speculation to design experiments" is a dead end, all interesting experiments were designed by a desire to "engineer something" even particle accelerators emerged out of desires to build-devices-to-measure/separate/produce/concentrate some isotopes or particles etc. in the hopes that at least they'd be interesting for poisons or guns.)

Let's start engineering cool solutions (pushing reflective particles into the atmosphere to reduce warming, using modern biotech to completely extinct tropical disease vectors to keep the newly-becomed-tropical areas human friendly), then engineering solutions to the new cool problems that the first solutions generate and them on and on and on faster and faster and faster!

The "madness" is imo a (maybe rough) transition to a more fertile era of though, science and engineering...

revscat2• 4 years ago

Growth. Every government on Earth is based around growth. To question growth is taboo, in the religious sense of the word. In most modern societies, in fact, it is more acceptable to question religion than it is to question growth.

Growth is the goal of every central bank, every parliament, every authoritarian, every economic or political entity with any legitimacy.

And this religious belief in growth is looking like it is going to kill us.

catchclose89194• 4 years ago

To question growth is taboo

It's not taboo, it's just basic antropo-ecological mechanics: if you don't focus on growth the other who will and will do more of it will outcompete you out of every niche. So selective pressure will increase the number of growth focused civilizations comparative to others.

We actually need more growth and we need to think outside of nature's and Earth's box... We have the technology to practice closed-circle-agriculture and that only needs power (more nuclear + more renewables) + raw materials (more extraction, more oil but less of it burnt as a fuel), let's just forget about maintaining the "natural balance" and put serious research work into techniques for manipulating and tweaking so called chaotic systems... There absolutely no reason why Earth can't support even a 10 trillion humans population if we just quit on "nature" (keep it just in small reservations), and go full nuclear (imagine 1+ billion reactors!) and fully embrace semi-synthetic food (sure, first iterations on sythetic proteins were carcinogenic as hell, but we know how to solve such problems now, or how to avoid them with bugs and closed-circuit-shrimps and lab-grown-meats etc.).

Yeah, a couple tens of millions might die of extra cancers and other pollution induced illnesses, but we can compensate by accelerating population growth (baby factories/camps can work if campaigns to motivate people to reproduce more don't work - though I'd guess we're good enough at the technology of brainwashing and economic incentivization by now to make masses of people do anything if we put our best efforts into....).

We just need a solid serious global responsibility frameworks instead of our anemic "globalism", so that if anyone just dumps X tons of eg. mercury in the ocean, they don't receive just sanctions but also swift targeted assassinations of all guilty parties +/- a sprinkle of tactical nukes for good measure and punishment against "pissing in the pool"...

revscat2• 4 years ago

I agree with you, but forced degrowth is an option when other solutions become ineffective.

namdnay7• 4 years ago

I don't like this way oh phrasing it, as if growth was some external religious belief that has infected us. The reality is far more depressing.

When you get down to it, what is growth? Growth means tomorrow is more comfortable than yesterday. Try getting elected telling people tomorrow won't be as easy as yesterday... much easier for voters to stick their fingers in their ears and shout "lalala"

myshpa• 4 years ago

Maybe we could finally stop subsidizing cows / dairy industry.

Cows use 3/4 of our agriculture land, same amount of land as all current forests. Beef / dairy is also a leading defforestation driver. And for cheese/milk there is a lot of plant-based alternatives.

If we could afforest this land again, we would not only stop Anthropocene extinction, but we would also remove a good amount of CO2 from the atmosphere (maybe several decades worth).

Then, why stop there and not afforest steppe countries (Mongolia, Kazahstan, Sahel ...) and pay their indigenous populations not to devastate it with their herds of camels/horses/sheep ? We could easily cover large swaths of land with new forests. We could even reforest our deserts, it seems very easily and cheaply (few percents of world's gdp).

Why look at Mars, when we could start some serious geoingeneering here at Earth, with few seeds and some inovative methods (like Miyawaki, syntropic agriculture ...).

Indians in Amazon did this. They converted pretty arid land into rainforest (terra preta). Some speculate, that extinction of Indians in this region and follow-up grow of Amazonian rainforest after Spaniards came and killed them with viruses caused little ice age in 16th century.

Why not repeat it (plant new rainforests and new forests) and solve few problems with in one go. You know, we don't have only CO2 problem. Our children, or children of our children, will know tigers, giraffes and rhinos only from picture books, right after dinosaurs and mammoths (which we also ate to extinction, btw).

We don't need bilionaires to do this. No technological solution will appear in a reasonable timeframe. We need public to take their heads out of their a$$3$ and demand political changes.

Of course, this problem is very complex and needs to be attacked from multiple dimensions. But some solutions are easier than others, and people are ignorant (this post won't even reach front page), our leaders are only interested in their pockets and status quo (and so they lie and then do nothing). I'm hopeless and depressed.

(english is not my first language, sorry)

SnowProblem• 4 years ago

Yep. Eating animals, when you add up their methane + respiration, the feed for the animals, the deforestation, and transportation, is arguably our biggest cause of climate change [1], and it's avoidable. The longest living people in the world are plant-based. So agree, it would be great if we stopped the animal subsidies and simply let the market react. As a side effect, perhaps our healthcare costs would go down. Just today I read the average american spends $1200/year on medications, largely for problems like high blood pressure and cholesterol that for many people go away when they eat more plants.

[1] I know that animal agriculture being 51% of greenhouse gases number has been questioned a lot, but from what I can tell it's closer to the truth than those who want to say it's 18% or less. Ether way, it's large. New stanford study agrees that "reducing or eliminating animal agriculture should be at the top of the list of potential climate solutions" https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/01/new-model-explores-link....

wdr1• 4 years ago

IMHO, those who spent the last several decades opposing nuclear power have as much blood on their hands as those who denied climate change was happening at all.

History will not be kind to either.

IPCC’s starkest message yet: extreme steps needed to avert climate disaster

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