It was easier to ebike in the city, for sure. But a GMC Sierra makes the hills all right too. And it’s much better here for the environment because I’m not endorsing the capitalist view that everything should be grey concrete.
Because billions of people can’t just live in the hills.
I do however worry about the accidental introduction of invasive species and diseases, which seems to be accelerating (see: citrus greening disease).
In the rural area, you maybe travel once a week to stock up but otherwise don’t need transportation at all.
As opposed to individually moving to a rural area "since it’s better for the environment?"
To be fair, for Zaphod Beeblebrox "per capita" doesn't mean "individually," but . . .
The fossil fuel industry is still heavily invested in preventing real climate action. It is a very hard opponent to overcome.
And that taboo is probably rooted in evolutionary psychology, people have a genetically driven tendency to criticize those who advocate having less children? So could there be an instinctual drive behind it?
https://www.flashpack.com/solo/relationships/dont-want-kids-...
Climate models are showing that a parameter (ECS aka “climate sensitivity”) has been increasing since 2019. This parameter determines how much temperature increase can be expected if atmospheric CO2 doubles.
My parents live in a neighborhood with waterfront properties. Almost everybody except my parents have water standing in their crawl space. One house has a flooded cellar.
The number of people in India is not why companies like Vedanta Limited, an alumnium, iron, and gold ore mining company pollute so much.
The tires and some types of brakes still emit micro plastics.
Not only that the overcrowding and fighting over limited resources causes psychosocial stress, which might explain the mental illness epidemic nowadays?
The GHG emissions associated with food intake required to fuel a kilometre of walking range between 0.05 kgCO2e/km in the least economically developed countries to 0.26 kgCO2e/km in the most economically developed countries.
A Tesla model 3 according to WLTP test cycle uses
0.191 kWh / km * 0.434 kgCO2e/kWh = 0.083 kgCO2e / km
Sources
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-66170-y https://www.tesla.com/de_DE/support/european-union-energy-la... https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/themen/co2-emissionen-pro-kil...
That’s my bullshit detector. All of the friends heavily engaged in global fight, to the point of leading a 500-people EU startup on ecology… have finally changed their minds and have children.
My bullshit detector is, so is ecology more important for you than immigration? Because for me, if you use immigration in parallel to ecology, then you’re just nullifying the results, while asking me to take less space, which is just the usual leftist ideology.
Turns out, after interviewing dozens, that none of the ecologists, really care about ecology. None of them are sincere. None of them are honest when presented figures. None of them are upfront about their desires and projects.
It’s just that they want less of people like me. Has always been.
None of the scientific evidence I have studied has withheld the “what if we didn’t do it the leftist way” test.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/dec/04/more-tha...
Hi, CO2 and work-out Captain here. I don't know how much CO2 you typically exhale when you do push ups but it is nothing near the exhaust fumes by your 5lt gasoline SUV built in 1990.
(sshhhh... don't mention the ride back home)
It’s especially funny as you would think the whole reason people want to live so close to other people is because they don’t want to travel far to engage with other people… Yet it is always about how to get as far away from them as possible, whether by bike or train or whatever it takes.
You're welcome.
That said, I've tried to open my eyes to greenwashing. For example, most plastic recycling is a lie sold by oil companies (#1 and #2 are really the only ones that have a hope of being recycled), so I've worked hard to avoid plastic packaging.
Treat it as a software optimisation problem - should you go after a large number of very minro problems, or take an axe to the single large problem that dominates your metrics?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/nov/20/richest-...
I feel that natural learning is so much superior, if you can encourage and cultivate it. Coercion destroys the fun in learning and it teaches us how to procrastinate very well indeed. Treat people like slaves, and what do you expect? You get poor productivity as a result, too.
Overall I think the treatment of children and young people in society is terrible and unjustified. It is inhumane.
I think they are being (sort of) micromanaged and exhibit the same behaviors as adults do when micromanaged, this is especially applicable for older teens.
- I choose for MANY reasons, climate is one of them, not the topmost but still one of them, to leave a big city toward the mountains, choosing a place locally hydrogeologically stable (meaning no landslide can reach my home, no flood as well, nothing tall enough to fall onto it and so on);
- I still IGNORE both the climate change and the climate "deniers" narrative because I consider both PROPAGANDA. I mean I do not care if actual climate change, I see well (meaning it exists no extra proof needed for me), is due to anthropic activities or natural cycles or both in various percentage simply because even if the cause is 100% anthropic and we can cease now all relevant activities this would not produce significant results in less than SOME centuries, simply no matter the causes we need to ADAPT;
Now the biggest issue: both parties the "climate scared" and the "climate deniers" spit emotions but reject rationality. Most climate scared gossip about adding rooftop solar (typically while they live, in apartments), need to ditch cars for walking or cycling nearby in 15' cities (typically refusing the argument that anyone eat, in cities and in countryside, but in cities live many so there is a big need of food and no production, meaning that for allowing people to live in 15' cities a big and typically not green logistic much bigger than the countryside is needed) while most climate deniers state we can go on classic diesel for 500+ years rejecting tha claim that banally we experience raw materials issues since some years with less and less new big discovery an year after another an even if we have still much oil changing away from it take decades.
Long story short people do not want any real change, so one act as classic reactionaries, other as classic futurists who dream a future, but refuse to really think and design it to make it real.
My take is simple: we need to relocate an enormous mass of humans from some now inhabited areas to some others, not tomorrow morning but also not for the next century, and such big change means typically wars, disasters, famine and so on, planning and moving calmly a cohort at a time means SOME chances to get it done without enormous amount of spilled blood. Very little is done in that sense. The probable result is that nothing change until the immediate emergency level where things get done in a rush, some profit very much, many starve and die. The best I can is try to be as much as I can aside. I do not have a personal space station, fully autonomous and capable of rebuild itself when needed to watch from the orbit so...
There is no point wasting nerve energy for a fact I can't deal with more than that. There is no point in trying convincing a mass of Lebonian crowd (cfr. Gustave Le Bon writing on the crowds) who is actually already polarized in two opposite groups, already fighting each others.
Many NGOs are actively trying to increase the availability of birth control in such regions, they are aware of the problem with unplanned pregnancy in those parts of the world. I strongly doubt there's any racism behind it.
https://www.cgdev.org/blog/access-contraception-global-devel...
While in the west population growth is relatively slow and we still have a high per-capita CO2 footprint.
I guess I unintentionally touched a taboo subject (racism) that's not permitted by the current moral orthodoxy, which is no different to religion in the end? I hope I'm correct about this.
I don't really care if my posts are flagged or even if I get banned from this site completely, I am exercising my 1st Amendment protected freedom of speech rights. It's just that on the Internet every forum is privately owned, there is no "public square" here, and thus all are subject to moderation and censorship.
I choose to ignore the majority of experts in the field as well as the people on facebook equally! I'm so enlightened!
That's funny! I was going to start my post with the exact same sentence!
But for a totally different reason: I'm now convinced that there is no stopping the massive destruction of the natural environemnt. A much MUCH bigger problem than that of the climate alone.
I'm not a "doomer", I'm a "realist". It's clear at this point that the world's ownership class is NOT going to allow any significant mitigation of petroleum use.
The situation will continue unabated until all of the worst predictions, and many more not foreseen, come to bear.
So, I've learned to take this in stride, like with gun ownership: most gun deaths in the US are suicide. As more and more gun owners shoot themselves, this is the only mitigation to this crisis.
This will be the same for industrial distruction of our environment, including the climate. The only way it's going to mitigate is when the natural consequences come to bear and destroy a good part of the world population.
Of course, there's always "citrus greening disease" to worry about 8-)
The excuses people are willing to tell themselves will prevent any meaningful responce to the crisis... Thus, the natural consequences will occur...
Beside that, beside the classic Francis Galton experiment, beside Gustave Le Bon observation about the crowds, also the experts crowds, beside the history of Eduard Bernays campaigns, like those for the tobacco industry who makes many doctors believe smoking is good for health, try to LOGICALLY reason with your own knowledge. When the "modern climate change" start to happen for you? Perhaps DECADES ago? That how much "anthropic emissions" was made since them? How much can they change in the near future? Beside that ALL TIMES you here "we need to be quick" what does it means in practice? Maybe doing something before having the time to reason about up front?
If for you the "climate believers" narrative is The Truth and that they are "all the experts" while the others are just foolish unacculturated people from some social network well, you are a believer of some kind of religion, not differently than the believers of the flat earth.
Not counting that, your recipe than is what? Remain sit watching the TV about how important is switching to a heat pump, perhaps without doing it in person, just hearing and reverberating to others? For me there is no enlightenment of wokeism but mere logic: I choose to move from a big city to a mountain area, I built a new home so with the current design and tech, not because "it's my contribution to a cause" but because summing MANY aspects I've decide that's the most opportune/wise choice I have. Meanwhile I've also put a modern wood stove (meaning airtight, sucking air from the outside to ventilate the flame chamber) in the new home, because while I have p.v. and a small LFP storage I prefer having a more reliable backup WHEN, not if, I'll need it. I'm an engineer and I call it logic. Nothing more, nothing less while observing in modern gear how much "not at all experts" are those who have designed most of such gears simply because they do not have them in person at home, so they ignore countless real world cases not easy evidently to grasp at a project level. They dumb thing like a p.v. "integrated" EV charger that actually hyper-flawed because those who have designed it have never try to use it to actually really trying charging from p.v.
I like when HN has varying points of view with supporting links/data.
I’m with you on the population and per capita resource use.
Fact is that India is also slowly leveling out. Africa has a bunch of countries with high growth and that’s where the most humans are being added.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_populat...
Push for right to repair. We've strip mined the resources for your phone and computers, appliances, etc. from the planet, they should be able to stay in service for at least a decade, if not more. Designed obsolescence needs to go.
Sea level went up 200 feet before, there's 100 feet to go. Hopefully it won't happen in the space of a few years, like last time. (The source of the flood myths in every culture)
Reduce, reuse, recycle.
The number of people being born in very poor countries is essentially irrelevant compared to the consumption choices of people in rich countries. Based on current trends, the global population is expected to peak at around 10 billion, but the planet is comfortably capable of sustaining billions more if we can find a middle ground in resource use between the dire poverty of DR Congo and the wanton profligacy of the US. Talking about birth rates in relation to climate change is at best a misguided distraction and at worst wilful misdirection.
https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an...
: The oldest continuous ice core records to date extend 123,000 years in Greenland and 800,000 years in Antarctica. Ice cores contain information about past temperature, and about many other aspects of the environment. Crucially, the ice encloses small bubbles of air that contain a sample of the atmosphere – from these it is possible to measure directly the past concentration of atmospheric gases, including the major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide.
And fossil records go back further with respect to more general climate conditions capable of sustaining various species.
But regardless, changing the climate status quo in a short time will have various impacts, only some of which we can accurately predict and model.
I've found there's a whole philosophy that seems to line up with my (and maybe your) perspective: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_ecology
edit: its funny to see the only people making sense getting downvoted because reasons.
This is an unfortunate delusion that is widespread, and exploited by governments and industries that seek to ravage what is left of our environment for profit.
If you believe and understand that the earth is a finite place, with finite resources (as all intelligent, rational people do), then you believe and understand that this finite place, with finite resources, can only support a finite population. Of course we can debate about what exactly the "sustainable" population is and we can agree that the "sustainable" population depends on how resources are managed, used and maintained, but there can be no disagreement that this number exists, and that if there are too many people our finite resources cannot sustainably support them no manner how efficiently they are distributed.
Unfortunately far too many people don't believe this, and don't understand that the earth is a finite place with finite resources. They insist that the earth can support an infinite number of people if only we manage our finite resources properly and impose a strict enough dietary and behavioral regiment on the teeming billions stuffed onto the planet.
1) Limiting number of children in rich countries. This is what your links talk about I think. Yes, perhaps there is a taboo in place here.
Is that relevant to sustainability crisis though? Population is already declining in rich countries, quite naturally.
2) Limiting number of children in poorer countries. Well, as in the article pointed to in a sibling comment, "Richest 1% account for more carbon emissions than poorest 66%"...
So by saying that overpopulation is the root of the crisis -- are you not saying that it may be better that 10 poor people are not born, than for rich people to do minor changes to their lifestyle?
Each American or European, whose food is grown thousands of km away, is plenty more only to make their salad. Can they be blamed for their Carbon Footprint^TM? I think we should blame the fossil fuel corporations which have turned us into fuel junkies
The people in the high population growth rate regions aren't going to stay there, and their emissions will look similar to the nations they move to.
Overpopulation will solve itself as countries develop. We’ve seen that over and over.
This is congruent with removing women's bodily autonomy, banning abortion and banning or restricting birth control of all types.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263979/global-cattle-pop...
It has a track record of getting things right that dates back to Aristophanes.
Sadly their publications are frowned upon in academic circles because they use less charts than farts.
Ideally we'd all be living even more decadently than the best US lifestyle. If that means nobody feels like having kids - great.
Taboo? It's stupid. But it's not taboo, it's an incredibly conventional thing to say, and has been for many, many decades.
It's less true that a valid comparison should be "if not modern 21st Century life then hunter gather".
There's a middle ground more agrarian, less hunter, lifestyle that supported a large population in the past and can likely support a larger population than Victorian times if farming | mining switched across to renewables (electric | hydrogen) instead of fossil fuels - we've learnt a lot about efficiencies in the past century, it's a matter of application and less consumption now, certainly time for less greenhouse gas being released.
The problem is not use, the problem is extraction. If it comes out of the ground, it gets used, and mostly ends up in the atmosphere. The volume of extracted fossil fuels is carefully managed so that prices remain low enough to prevent green alternatives from winning in the market, and high enough to maximize long term revenue. If extraction would decline, fossil fuel prices would rise, and the market would automatically rebalance into a green transition.
Really the only thing politicians need to do is put in place a global and declining cap on fossil fuel extraction. Wells need to be capped even when they’re not empty. There should be zero new drilling. You can tell the honest intentions of a politician on climate change by their policies on fossil fuel extraction.
And this means ultimately it is a political problem, not an individual problem, and can be fixed through the voting booth. But that requires people to consider this the most important problem, and they don’t. So ultimately, the reason things don’t change is not some cabal, but just plain people not prioritizing it in the voting booth.
people aren't willing to stop paying for conveniences because they're cheaply available, corporations aren't willing to stop selling them because there's a demand for it and money to be made, and governments aren't willing to force anybody's hand because the people and corporations will both force them out of power if they try.
there is absolutely no chance of breaking out of it other than giving up on democracy, but that will only happen when modern society collapses entirely, which will be far too late to prevent unimaginable suffering on a massive scale.
A simple example of this is that water isn't used up, it gets dirty. It can be made clean again but that requires energy. This can be done by humans (water filtration) or by nature (evaporation and rain). We don't manage these cycles very well and they sometimes stretch out over too many of our lifetimes to manage (plastics, some nuclear waste) so it becomes easier to talk about resource 'use'.
The equation is pretty simple `humans × resources/human`. We can talk about reducing number of humans or reducing the resources needed per human. If we manage the cycles well, humans could inject more resources into the system instead of taking away from it. Of course this would still be limited by available energy. In that case, increasing the number of humans within energy capacity could benefit ecosystems.
We already have a lot of available energy but there is orders of magnitude more available as our technology improves — fusion, thorium fission, solar, wind, tides.
The problem with this line of thinking (and similar ones like „what about China?“) is that it basically absolves you from any responsibility in the matter. After all, there are simply too many people on the planet, what could you possibly do about it?
As other commenters pointed out - the west uses way too many resources compared to their population, and that is a problem.
And it is absolutely possible to have a society that doesn’t drain the planet dry, but not with capitalism :-)
And the leader should be who? Of course you, because only you know the solution! Cheeky ;)
A footpirnt so high that it more than counterbalances population growth in the developing world.
The global population is still increasing. Furthermore, as poor countries develop this is compounded by increased consumption (both resources and energy) per capita. In that respect, "richest 1% account for more emissions than poorest 66%" should be interpreted as very worrying when the poorest are getting richer.
Ultimately we don't anyone to be poor. At current population levels this would probably mean a total collapse of the environment.
Overall, the global population is indeed the root cause of our problems.
In the US we build shelters either out of carbon-intensive materials or use significant carbon fuels for upkeep... or both, usually.
It's not that the technology isn't there, we just choose not to. Hell, some 30% of people love that reality star turned president. Sadly we're getting what we deserve.
The models could be incomplete, or obsolete
Obviously they are not unsustainable in absolute terms but only when too many people live that way compared to the planetary capacity.
So population is inescapably key because we want everyone to have high standards of living.
The thing that always stood between the world and climate action was the fact that fossil fuels were the best energy source.
Since a few years, the tables have turned and solar seems to be marching towards absolute dominance.
So there isn’t much to do in terms of political climate action, since the incentives are now mostly economical.
I agree though, the extend to how people are happy to just roll over and accept that the world will go down with them is surprising.
But yes they want a better life for themselves.
everybody knows the solution, *you* know the solution, it's just a hard pill to swallow so mental gymnastics are preferable.
as a species we know that the overconsumption of resources is the problem. there are exactly zero valid arguments against that. anybody who claims that consuming less resources *isn't* the solution is either ignorant or lying.
this has not been true since 1951
I think though that is getting harder and harder to ignore actual climate issues (storms, floods, heat), wonder what will be these parties next claim to convince voters "is the left wing/immigrants that generated the floods?"...
Leaning towards left (aka progressive) is good, but if you're not paying a cost for it, someobody else is - and it's likely someone leaning right that's being forced to do so. They're not gonna like it regardless if whether it's generally a good thing.
I guess people even have their pension funds tied up into the system, so nearly everyone is forced to participate in it, against their wishes even.
Update: Something to back that up: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2019/04/05/the-worl...
I’m sure you’re being facetious, but don’t the suicidal people buy guns? It’s not that gun owners are suicidal
To have that position you basically need to reconcile two positions that to me aren't really compatible, unless someone explains it to me.
Either it's fine for Earth to not have humans and just exist peacefully with the rest of the ecosystem until another lifeform takes over.
Or it's not fine for the Earth to have no more humans and so we need to stop climate change from making the Earth uninhabitable for us, but if to do that we want to reduce the humans, I don't get it.
To "kill" humans to save humans seems weird. I guess you can slide on the scale of "more people living worse", or "less people living better", but to choose who is not possible in my opinion, so this is not implementable.
Because if you care about the Earth primarily, then warming or not doesn't really matter, it's just a geological event like many more gnarly ones over the history of meteorite impacts and so on.
But if you care primarily about the humans, then how can the answer be to have less of them? And pick and choose who gets to reproduce?
it isn't, because no solution that require any form of altruism is an actual solution.
The Haber-Bosch process is the primary method in producing ammonia from nitrogen and hydrogen. Ammonia produced, utilized mainly as fertilizers, currently responsible for approximately 1.8% of carbon dioxide global emissions
Yes, green ammonia is a thing - not yet at scale but there are plans afoot, funded by resource billionaires, to make industrial ammonia w/out the greenhouse gas ommissions.
https://fortescue.com/what-we-do/green-energy-research/green...
Population is already naturally decreasing in a fair number of countries. Let's embrace this instead of panicking and trying to reverse the trend.
It's just that it wouldn't work because any group defecting and having more children would inherit the earth and you'd be back to square one, only now not even in control.
It's the same mistake as every other decel "solution".
It's so obvious, and so unbelievable that proponents don't think of it that one has to wonder, who pushes this? Qui bono?
Like, the intensity of current wars isn't even comparable to that of WW1 or WW2 battles.
By the way this argumentation is great to sabotage any argument to keep the statusquo. When someone argues for a way better solution, tell why it's still not 100% perfect to make people to believe it has the same flaws than the previous state. Repeat until someone finds a 100% perfect solution (hint: there is never such a thing).
We had past long time ago the question if is happening or not. What I'm discussing is the "how fast" part.
The sub-question is if the war or wars if you prefer (You all know what I'm talking about) are causing the current wave of claims "I'm worried now but I was not worried yesterday"
I assume that the war is making it faster, but the effect of this particular factor could be temporal. Artifacts happen in science all the time. We don't know if war is a modifier (and in that case if would be a temporary or permanent modifier). I personally suspect that it has an impact. I could be wrong.
2) Agents in the current system have incentives to prioritize short term benefits over longer term benefits. And a lot of climate related things are short term cost/investment for "profitable" long term benefits ; the current system sucks big time in this configuration.
3) The people having the least negative impact from climate change are the countries emitting the most greenhouse gas. The countries the more negatively impacted by climate change are countries contributing the least to climate change. There is a big misalignment of interest there making a purely "free market" "economical" solution difficult.
4) There are a lot of case in the real world were there is a strong economical incentive to switch to something different and were the different agents just don't... Because people don't want to change, because there can be some particular interest in the system, because of political motive... Human is not a rational animal, and his rationality is not only dictated by money
5) We need to do more than just switching from fossil to "green electricity"
I definitely would say that and would argue it needs to be way more than 10.
If you want to solve manmade climate change you need to solve the demand for goods that cause it. You lower demand by increasing the the supply (can't do that because that increases the emissions you try bringing down) or you increase its price making only the very rich able to afford it and delaying the problem for a decade till population catches up. We already see it with migrant crisis all over the west - both Europe and US.
You do this decade after decade, again and again each time creating more and more privileged cast that can afford it (current policy) and in essence pushing the rest of the civilisation further and further into poverty as they will never catch up and if they do - new legislation will bring them down again to mask the issue once more.
An example of that would be farmers in Europe protesting removal of diesel subsidies or just in general people being able to afford smaller and smaller cars due to taxation in Europe every year.
The problem with these "minor changes to their lifestyle" is that they need to accommodate exponentially growing population that already is a magnitude or more higher than persons who need to adjust.
We are talking about 90%+ reduction in what you call "minor changes" to achieve emission equilibrium to begin with and add that with exponentially growing population and its simply not feasible not due to lack of compassion from top percentile but because changes like these would completely anihilate the modern human civilisation and bringing it back hundreds of years.
As an example theres a very informative video on what happens to country and infrastructure when 4 million people join the power grid in a decade [1] Imagine that scaled to 4 billion and the extreme worldwide devastation.
Population control is the only way to solve climate change and it needs to be reduced everywhere but especially in the undeveloped nations as they have the most potential of bringing everything down.
^ clearly never visited Asia. LOL
You support immigration if you have a stable job and own a house but you don’t if you are getting laid off and aren’t sure what you next job will be.
And it seems most of Earth has lately been in a rougher place.
This has been studied long time ago by scientists such as Alfred Sauvy [1], who concluded that overpopulation is not the cause of sustainability crisis, and that greenhouse gas is the major cause. In particular, limiting the growth of population has few impact on the production of greenhouse gas, whereas changing the means of energy production and consumption is much more impactful.
Moreover the world population is expected to be less than 12 billions in 2100 [2], which is plainly sustainable. This is mostly due to the demographic transition, a pattern observed in most countries, where the fertility rates decrease over time. More specifically I recommend the excellent book of Emmanuel Todd and Youssef Courbage on this subject [3]. The authors argue that in most countries throughout history, when both the majority of men and the majority of women know how to read and write, then the fertility rate decreases, and a revolution becomes imminent.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Sauvy
[2]: https://www.un.org/en/desa/world-population-projected-reach-...
[3]: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/a-convergence-of-civilizations...
- emotional appeal
- us/them
- simplifications of complex issues
- repetition and consistency
- perceived threads
The main increase of energy usage has been due to this, not people in urban areas eskewing apartments and public transport to drive cars and live in suburban houses.
https://youtu.be/6sqnptxlCcw?si=FfqAqooG9qg4kejC
Another fun fact: 80% of the world's population has never flown, and only 2-4% fly abroad in a year.
The climate change can be expressed a the result of A+(B+C+D...) factors
Lets assume that A is some allegedly --hypothetical-- effect of the wars exploding bombs and releasing heat in the low atmosphere. If we claim that in World War II the value A was higher and nothing happened (So nothing will happen now), we are forgetting that the "everything else" part was much lower in WWII. Just the number of vehicles circulating was abysmally lower. This invalidates our guarantee, because all in ecology is relative to the current updated situation.
Ecosystems create buffers, the expect results are: not changes/very minor changes seen (buffer worked) or catastrophic change happens (buffer fell). Small amounts of energy released in one ecosystem could trigger noticeable effects in how the energy moves around the planet. As "how the energy moves around the planet" is too long, we created a shorter name for this: "Weather"
You'll worry about something else, then you'll stop worrying about that too.
Daily Sea Surface Temperature (notice the new paradigm started in 2023 and extending into 2024):
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
Daily Surface Air Temperature:
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/?dm_id=world
Daily Sea Ice Extent (click on "Show Southern Hemisphere", also showing concerns of being low in 2023):
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice/
The most shocking is the sea surface temperature, but we see rising temperature in all layers of the troposphere. A factor that has dampened global warming for very long, since the last ice age, is the ocean's capacity for absorbing heat. If this gets saturated, and since surface waters don't mix much with deep waters.. If the same surplus heat equivalent to 15 hiroshima bombs per second today hits the surface, and rising. All that goes into heating air and surface, it's going to accellerate warming going forward. Early projections are in fact showing accelleration already.
That most people are incapable of emotionally processing this, is part of the problem.
When you get to the far right wing, it's not just about "are there sufficient numbers of children?" but "Is my favoured population subgroup having sufficient numbers of children?"
i.e. racism
Think of it like this, death is unpreventable and we still live our lives. So even if the world collapse was totally unpreventable (I think we can still turn it around), it's still better to go down fighting and living life.
Jevon's Paradox[1] states that as efficiency increases (which itself is a form of supply increase), demand increases.
My own view is that the paradox makes the idea of population reduction moot, those remaining humans would simply use more energy because supply has gone up and demand (through lack of competition) going down to levels below supply would, again, drive prices down.
But that said, religious apocalypse scenarios usually aren't quite as specific as "methane hydrate runaway feedbacks".
No. It's because it inevitably puts you in the position of deciding who gets to have children while the rest are denied such privileges for the good of the species.
In other words, eugenics.
Do your part of avoiding disaster.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
>Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
>Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
In a simulator, could you have 12 billion people with their needs met, living fulfilled lives and continuing into the far future? Yes.
Is there a political and practical way to reach that state? No. "One study estimates it would take just over 5 Earths to support the human population if everyone’s consumption patterns were similar to the average American." Any US government that tried to bring America's environmental footprint down to a sustainable or fair level would be voted out. It doesn't matter whether it would be gas taxes, meat taxes, per mile taxes, flight taxes, carbon tax and dividend, building renewable energy in less developed countries, or any other scheme. It doesn't matter if it was targeted at the ultra rich or the middle class. The sheer scale of it would cause Americans to vote out the government. And the same is true for any democracy and plenty of the non-democracies too.
Why?
1. Too many lies. In the 80s the water level was rising, but it didn't. Then acid rains would kill all, but did not. Then ...
2. I cannot change it. Using fossils (or other tech with big "environmental" impact) is a great way to scale business. The "economy God" is to important to actually go an fix the problem. That why we see no real solutions being implemented and climate agreements being ignored/ not signed.
3. The focus on CO2 is stupid. There are worse problems: fine dust, pollution, disruption of ecosystems. But we now totally focus on CO2 (or CO2-equevalents).
I do have a solution. Remove (gradually) all taxation, in favor tax on pollution and usage of particular scarce resources (e.g. land, water, fossils, radio frequencies, etc.) This way the market will solve the problem. Housing and labour (two examples of wholesome things that are currently heavily taxed) will become a lot cheaper, and polluting will become expensive.
What would that do to acidic rain, global dimming, ecology and agriculture.
Masking the problem will only make it come back harder when measures don't scale up anymore. Then there'll be no time to do much more.
Of course it does, telling people that they have to reduce fossil fuel use directly means that they are part of the problem, people really don't like that.
and it turns out that by building in a strong preference towards the null hypothesis, science has tended to dramatically understate both the amount of emission, the amount they matter, and the feedback loops that can amplify this further.
like yea it has been simulated to death but everyone wanted to whistle past the graveyard and so those simulations had drastically optimistic assumptions built into them such that we are likely to crash through what was only a decade or two ago considered the “worst case scenario” by a decent sized multiple.
And frankly the root cause is really the people who go “I find this very confusing, don’t you have this all figured out by now? wasn’t it supposed to be global cooling in the 70s???”, the process was built around appeasing you so you didn’t dismiss the whole thing as alarmist and it turns out the process was built in a way that produced (unsurprisingly) over-optimistic results. The models missed low largely because royal-you wanted to play skeptic 30 years ago.
(And no, “global cooling” was never a thing and the idea that it was is more fossil-fuel propaganda and marketing. Even noaa is uncharacteristically blunt about this.) https://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/131047.pdf
https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archiv...
Just on this example, you can physically pick soil up and move it. Enough for 9bn people? No. Enough for 100k? Yes.
The bulk of what I value about the future of humanity is our continued existence and collective ability to do beautiful and impressive things together, not the individual existence of some as-yet-unborn hypothetical humans in that future. I don't think humanity's output scales linearly with population and I don't think there's much moral worth to future individuals outside their general contribution to wider human civilisation.
There is absolutely no need to do any of that. Just tax them. Tax the childless and unmarried more. Tax the married couples with children less. Make not having children a form of wealth and tax it accordingly. The results will be achieved without a single sacrifice in personal autonomy.
(Random thought: what's the sulphur content of automotive diesel? I know it's cleaner, but there are so many more cars than boats. Could we see another sea surface temperature bump as we phase out diesel cars?)
I don't have enough money to install AC. Mobile AC is too noisy.
I have been postponing for 4 years now.
I am reading The Ministry Of The Future, it's a great book. India will be the first to suffer from this.
Important things you can influence for a low carbon footprint are:
- How do you heat and how much? Gas heating is surprisingly bad in the US due to the high amount of methane leakage
- Do you drive a lot in a combustion car, or even worse, fly?
- What kind of food do you eat? As a rough guideline, dairy and meat is pretty bad and beef much worse. Also the stuff that has to be brought in by plane.
Living in nature often makes it harder to have a low carbon lifestyle and the things often associated with "good for nature" like reducing plastic waste and organic products are often worse carbon wise.
Simplified example: pay 6% of the population to plant trees.
> and the 1% simply never will because they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.
That's a lot closer to why we won't do it. Because as a species we can't act for the long term.
Now that we are seeing a reversal to the status quo, you see the move to more efficient systems moving into full swing. The uptake of renewables is exponential now.
I just renovated and fully insulated my house with cellulose fiber that was actually really cheap, double glazed inner windows and installed floor heating with a hydraulic heat pump. My energy bill is almost nothing of what it used to be and I’ve not installed my solar yet, but I’ll be starting in March.
I did this because the price of gas, kerosene (water boiler) and oil have increased dramatically and the technology to do so exists and is cheap enough to make this investment a no brainer from an economic standpoint. It’s hard to imagine how cheap solar panels are now.
I’m not the only person doing this.
The USA and all other developing countries will adopt all these efficient gains at the same rate. No one is going to pay more for less.
Not sure why you'd call this "fantastic" other than it's a feel-good book without any evidence to support it.
>Carbon emissions per capita are actually down [1]
It takes maybe 2 minutes, maybe upwards of 10, to realize why this is completely silly. I would expect most highschoolers in stats to rip this apart. Does anyone need to devote time to debunk this? Why? You can ask ChatGPT.
>Average figures can mask significant inequalities within countries. In many countries, a small percentage of the population may be responsible for a large portion of emissions, while the majority have very low carbon footprints.
If you don't understand why this negates your comment out right should I start quoting 2Pac?
And, of course, we won't go netzero tomorrow, there's no "just" in it due to the time and effort it would take to scale up the solutions even if the money was there, but of course the money isn't there; while technically the world could afford it if it wanted, there are absolutely no indications that those who can afford it would be willing to do fund the bill, quite the opposite.
I was developed an aversion for the climate apocalypse movement since. I wonder, if they managed to alienate people without a car and very low CO2 footprint, what demographic is actually left to cater to?
BTW, this phenomenon is very old. Thausands of years ago, religious nuts already announced the end of the world. Soem religious movements like the 7th day adventists even were born out of a failed waiting for the end. That was, IIRC, in the 19th century, at a time when people didn't even know what polution will be.
We have a built-in tendency to predict our own downfall. A sort of built-in mental illness that needs to be worked against.
Going zero emission today would mean most people would starve and not have proper transportation. But without a job, they maybe wouldn't have need for that..
* eating less beef
* not flying
* using a bicycle/train. not possible everywhere for americans, anyway, but possible for most europeans. minimum is car sharing and using a light car.
* less house heating, more insulation
If they disagree, don't worry, but make sure they know. It's expected some people are going to use violence to reduce CO2 emissions, especially for the ones that can be avoided easily.
Anyways, western rich countries will not be the ones who are hit the hardest.
We are rapidly going back to the stone age...
In fact religious belief in apocalypse might contribute to the apathy about climate policy from the voters, people can either conflate the two or think the religious apocalypse is nearer so no need to address the climate catastrophe: https://www.newsweek.com/shocking-number-americans-believe-l...
The people I know on the right have nothing against birth control. They are just against abortion exept for exceptional circuimstances, because by that point the relevant parties had their chance with birth control. To them, abortion shouldn't be an escape hatch from bad life choices.
In fact, nowadays I'm beginning to hear the opposite: "please have more kids". I'm in Europe atm (I'm south-american) and I'm shocked to see that natives, by and large, just do NOT have kids, or at most 1. All cultural incentives that promoted having kids seem to have been vilified. I find it kind of sad honestly...
There is no consistent way environmentalists can argue their way out of this particular point you made:
> But if you care primarily about the humans, then how can the answer be to have less of them? And pick and choose who gets to reproduce?
Same has also happened with this hackernews post: >>39162856 (I didn't visit the link shared in this post either) and looks like this post didn't get 'as much' traction on HN as compared to the above one. However, the video shared in this post also came up on top on youtube.
Looks like HN is a good place to boost your content on YT, if it gets pushed to the top!
To somebody else it means just living life.
There is no way to objectively argue superiority of one over the other except from a religious worldview.
This looks to support my argument as its indeed what is happening and what is causing emissions to go up (less developed nations industrialising) due to technology trickling down. Please correct me if i'm wrong.
> My own view is that the paradox makes the idea of population reduction moot
Lets use math and assume all pollution comes from end users who can afford/drive cars (~20%) and ignore the rest of modern civilisation and set current efficiency of 1x.
8 000 000 000 * 0.2 * 1 = 1 600 000 000
Lets call the 1.6Bil a hard line that we want to sustain aka the perpetual enviormental doomsday in the current year+x.
Over the next 80 years with strict population control and current technology we can make that:
4 000 000 000 * 0.4 * 1 = 1 600 000 000 and bring 20% more people into the top percentile bringing the misery, disease, war and resource shortage down or keep it to its current form.
Or if we wanted to bring same 20% of population to the same mark with efficiency (11.2 bil is expected population by 2100) we would need to achieve efficiency of:
11 200 000 000 * 0.4 * x = 1 600 000 000
x = 1600000000/(11200000000*0.4) = 0.357
Thats an efficiency increase of ~2.8x
So it boils down to you claiming that in the next 80 years we can increase efficiency 2.8 times across the board. This does not only include energy but materials too 2.8x less materials used to build cars, houses, roads etc. And on top of that we will do it with a completely new source of energy since fossil fuels are going dry in the coming decades.
Furthermore you calling population growth moot suggest thinking that this can be repeated again ad infinitum in 2180 and 2260 and so on.
I'll put it mildly - don't think its feasible.
Edit: fixed the last calculation for clarity/typos
If the sea is fertile the soil can be hacked to be fertile. Any seabird could tell us how
But this is not the problem. The sea level will raise
The true hard pill to swallow is that YOUR (and a few others') standard of living is unsustainable.
> The issue is the global population. Obviously, that's the metric that matters for global issues like the climate and environment.
Look, what if you could choose between:
Option A: The 50% lowest polluting part of the world's population never existed. Would this make a dent towards global warming? No. Perhaps slow the onset by a few years. The overall magnitude of the problem would be the same.
Option B: Through reduced consumption and technology, reduce emissions of the 50% highest polluters by 80%. This would have a quite massive impact towards global warming AND also help when the 50% poorest increase their living standards.
Given these -- how can you say that "population" overall, without further qualification, is the problem?
Another factor here is that population growth isn't something that will continue as/if people are lifted out of poverty -- when people become richer and more educated, the birth rates invariably drops.
There are many other good comments on this page now about why you are wrong citing statistics and research reports, I encourage you to read them.
Which might mean the end of complex life forms like humans.
The world does not equal civilisation.
Looking at it now, I think doomerism, preppers, apocalyptic religions and the guy that stands on the street shouting "it's the end of the world" are all a basic part of the human experience. It's not a coincidence every cult eventually reaches the narrative of the impending end of the world.
Death is suppressed and finds other avenues to pop out in
Why are you @-ing dang as if his job is to maintain some kind of particular consensus in order to ... idk, support some kind of political narrative? Hah!
Edit: good point in the next comment, expect sea levels rising for at least 10m.
And both are a function of the population and are people get out of poverty use of energy and resources per capita only increases, compounding the overall impact, as already said.
If we were 500 million globally, for instance, we would not be having this discussion because there would be no problems.
I am not wrong, this is just a statement of fact. I am always surprised by this ostrich syndrome many have in absolutely refusing to consider that population is an issue, the key issue, even.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/01/shipping...
It could be the underwater Tonga volcano erruption, which put alot of water into the atmosphere. Water is also a GHG.
https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/tonga-er...
It could be El Nino part of the ENSO-cycle in addition.
https://www.npr.org/2023/06/08/1181086972/el-nino-has-offici...
All these are temporary masking conditions. They also add to feedback effects, for increased warming. So could be partly accellerating heating as well.
I think some researchers are seeing accelleration in the overall trend. You can eyeball this with a ruler as well. Even though it might be too early to tell, it's hard to find any negative feedback loops to counter all these positive ones.
For cars, I think we'd probably see increase in surface temperature on land. People might care a bit more then. It could be removed from both gas and diesel. That would bring pollution down, but also remove aerosols currently masking effects from GHG.
https://www.futurity.org/potassium-fuel-sulfur-1369772-2/
UPDATE: As noted in another comment here. Car fuel is quite a bit different category than bunker fuel (heavy fuel oil). We might still observe "unmasking"-impacts if implemented generally though. We'd notice it more too, as the impact would be right where we use our cars.
If you care about the well being of dogs, how can the answer be to have less of them crammed in your tiny apartment?
It’s about balance. It is not true that more of something is unambiguously good, for itself or the system as a whole.
You should read about how reintroducing wolves, a carnivore that kills other animals, made the Yellowstone ecosystem flourish.
https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...
Or the case of Macquarie Island.
https://archive.is/2020.10.21-044800/https://www.nytimes.com...
Or the deer of Manitou Island.
https://www.interlochenpublicradio.org/2022-03-04/unnatural-...
Or, or, or. We have tons of examples.
I can't find the comment in question, but if the person above is right when they said it was about India then you are wrong that they have a high per-capita CO2 footprint.
They are under 2 tons CO2 per person per year.
That's about 40% of the world average, 25% of the EU, 22% of China, and 13% of the US.
Climate change people seem like a doomsday cult anyways, but if what if they're right?
> If we were 500 million globally, for instance, we would not be having this discussion because there would be no problems.
But this aside, let's assume you are right.
Which 500 million would you preserve? How would you get there before climate change is irreversible anyway due to melting tundra etc?
Especially given that a lot of human history can be summed up as "wars to determine WHICH one will be the surviving set of humans to survive on limited resources". So which billions do you think will go willingly?
-- Yes, of course, assuming that this magically just happened it would solve the problem. So would a number of other unrealistic solutions that has nothing to do with population control. Are we going to discuss which one out of a number of completely unrealistic uptopias are best?
I see your 500 million inhabitant world, and raise with imagining a world with a population of 20 billion, with a million nuclear plants, no use of fossil fuels, LED-powered vertical farming, centralization of populations in big cities to let wildlife grow back and focus all efforts in responsible, non-disruptive mining of the resources needed.
Which one of those is more or less preferable or realistic is pointless, and distracting from possibilities that may be within reach.
Somehow OP must've linked to the RDCWorld video by mistake and somehow this still got to the top of HN?
I guess HN just upvotes without clicking the link?
Did you try sleeping in hammocks already? It's a solution that works reasonably well for me.
"We" - the Western voting public broadly, but also much of East Asia too - are the owning class. If you actually removed everything in our lives that depend on petroleum products, it would be a riot before the end of the month. I don't think people quite realize how much of our lives are propped up by the downstream products of oil. It's not just moving people in cars and most of electricity generation and wrapping our food in plastics; it's most of our food production (from fertilizer to mechanization), most of our biochem stuff (so much starts as natural gas), most of our infrastructure.
Without oil, the West is shivering in the cold, the shelves are empty, there's nothing to do, nowhere to go (or really, way to get there anyway) and practically no healthcare.
You square that circle, you let the rest of us know. But we won't (and should not) accept any future like that.
I think social progress is linked to technological progress (increased communication, education, etc.) and it is absolutely true that technological progress is on a rocket headed to the moon.
For example - it's possible that tundra methane emissions in many areas could be mitigated relatively quickly by the regrowth of birch and pine scrubland whose increased evapotranspiration will reduce water tables and eliminate methane emissions. And aboveground carbon sequestration in woody tree mass could outweigh losses from belowground oxidation. This already occurs in fenlands in Southern Finland (paper I read)
We don't know enough about methane hydrates to assess their stability.
Many ecosystems will be reasonably resilient to climate change - maybe up to 2/3 of them, although some specific species groups like tropical amphibians are going to have a really bad time.
I guess we also spend a fair bit on moving to renewables up here - Finland achieved energy self sufficiency last year thanks to a good combination of nuclear + solar + hydro. If I were an ideologue in either direction I'd probably say "that's the real reason I moved" or "can't believe they're waiting my tax money on this", but I'm not, I'm just a guy who likes hedging his bets. The nuclear is especially nice because cheap electricity is the true backbone of society, and we've seen the market prices go straight up _negative_ a few times due to overproduction.
Self recommending! Come to Finland and help us build a stronger democracy, whatever that means to you.
There's programs to give efficient LEDs from comed to people for changing it slowly.
I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm saying it's a theoretically possible idea in the face of an extinction-level event.
Capitalism has shown itself to have a complete inability to correctly price in the value of ecosystem services and the costs of environmental externalities. The profit cycle also operates on too small a timeframe for these climate issues.
Thinking the market will save us is just a convienient pipe dream.
I wonder if it would be possible to rip soil off places that are no longer habitable and transport it to Antarctica.
But we can dig it up fast enough ro build all those batteries we need.
The increasing sea surface temperature is concerning because it directly is starting to harm millions of sea creatures that cannot adapt fast enough. There are multiple die-offs happening already that might be due to this.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/ocean...
What's concerning is that all the arrows are pointing just one way. The discussion is now wether it's accellerating or not..
Uhh isn't that a big flaw with HN if you can?
(for example, link to a blog post that would be popular with the community to get upvotes, then switch it up for your own company blog or something to get the traffic)
I'm not rejecting what we have achieved, I'm just discouraging wishful thinking that we can somehow avoid having to adapt to the effects of the climate change - our actions can change whether we'll have a small global warming or a large global warming, but there is no scenario where we will have zero global warming, as it's already happening. And it's not just my opinion, this is a high-confidence consensus of IPCC.
Degrowth is not a viable alternative on a world that's still has a large number of people that need better standards of living, and will still be adding a couple billion to the population. There's no viable economic or political model that would make degrowth work.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/23/china-factorie...
We're not even vertically farming at scale yet.
There's a lot of room left for densifying human civilization. Seems like 10x should be achievable.
Not everyone desires the latter, yet it appears to be the much more environmentally impactful one at least at scale..
Changing our farming methods to increase humus and topsoil quality should bring back vitamins to our food. Not only this but it should also capture a great amount of CO₂. I'm not sure how reliable my memory or the original calculation are but I remember reading in "The Scientist as Rebel" that if we increase our topsoil by 2 inches on currently farmed land, that should capture most of the carbon we've emitted during industrialisation.
Of course, as you mention, if we keep mindlessly following the status quo, we'll keep getting what we deserve.
Why?
Why isn't 8 billion enough? Is there a plastic ring prize if we hit 80 billion?
Or are you talking about squeezing the 8 billion we have now closer together?
Perhaps consider that those 80 billion souls will contain Einsteins and Mozarts.
https://www.minorcompositions.info/wp-content/uploads/2011/1...
good book on the topic ^^^
> Thinking the market will save us is just a convienient pipe dream.
I think you should dig a little deeper into my comment before calling me out on my supposed pipe dreams.
I say taxation (which is NOT a market force, but a govt intervention in a market) can be used to then let the market fix the problem. Especially given that I also say that tax on "wholesome" things such as labour and housing should be abolished. To break it down for you: a massage these days costs, say, 50 USD for 30mins, because labour and the parlours location are expensive. For 50 USD I can order bin bags full of plastic rubbish (toys) from China (plastic, transport, im/ex, are all suuuuuuper cheap). I suggest to use taxation to the other way: make labour/housing cheap and transport/plastic expensive.
How are you finding life as an enviromental migrant?
People are having fewer children, as living conditions, education, and acces to TV increases the reproduction rate falls.
Ideally we'll level out at 6 billion or so.
You haven't given any good reason why the earth should squeeze as many upright aquatic apes on it as possible yet.
Those are emotional definitions having absolutely nothing in common with the situation
The ONLY question to most people is: what will happen to me from it, if it will, why me changing anything will help?
“Times are not good” not because of some unknown force but because of policies/actions creating those “not good times”
Oh good, we don't ever need any more then. /s
> Ideally we'll level out at 6 billion or so.
I doubt there's any single ideal population size, because the impact of each individual varies so widely. In the future, when we're all living 100% solar powered regenerative net-carbon-negative lives, the problem will be that there aren't enough people to offset warming caused by volcanic eruptions, meteor impacts, and overpopulated wildlife.
Your pessimism may be trendy but it isn't supported by the bear available evidence.
It was approximately exponential up until around 200ish AD, fell below exponential for a few hundred years, then was above exponential for around 600 years (the growth rate was going up approximately linearly), had a period where it varied and even was slightly negative, and then around 1500ish entered a period where the growth rate was increasing almost exponentially. That lasted to around 1960, and since then the growth rate rapidly.
Here's a graph of the growth rate from 4000 BC to 2023 [1] from the data here [2].
I was curious what it is called when the growth rate itself is going up exponentially, but utterly failed to craft a search in Google that worked for me. I then tried ChatGPT (the free version) and at first it was just wrong. I reiterated that I want to know what it is called when the growth rate is going up exponentially, not when the growth is exponential. It apologized and told me it is called "exponential growth of the growth rate" or "exponential acceleration".
I tried to verify that it is called "exponential acceleration" with Google, but failed.
Always handy, the point (lean back, look up) is we don't need 80 billion as a prerequisite to have more - that's a weak (to be generous) argument.
> I doubt there's any single ideal population size, ..
It's bounded by an upper limit of humans living like turkeys in a turkey farm and tossing the weak in the chipper to blend back in with the feed . . . is that your ideal mode of life?
The Earth is nice example of a complex system with many interconnect parts maintaining a relatively stable for millenia feedback regulated environment.
What is the argument for pushing human population to 80 billion, and at what cost does that come in terms of human living standards and the other non human life we share the planet with?
It was advocated by the Nazi's in the 1930's for a start.
But you can for sure mitigate most of the climate change risks by moving to anothe place.
“After the ban came into force, global concentrations of CFC-11 declined steadily until about 2012. However, last year scientists discovered the pace of that slowdown slowed by half between 2013 and 2017. Because the chemical is not naturally occurring, the change could only have been produced by new emissions.”
“If emissions do not decline, it will delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, possibly for decades”
Your claim, unproven. My point is that 80 billions souls will produce 80 billions souls worth of art, science, literature, and culture. Which sounds divine. Why would you be opposed to such a thing if it can be accomplished sustainably?
> It's bounded by an upper limit of humans living like turkeys in a turkey farm and tossing the weak in the chipper to blend back in with the feed
Seems that you have a dark turn of mind, which explains the pessimism.
> What is the argument for pushing human population to 80 billion, and at what cost does that come in terms of human living standards and the other non human life we share the planet with?
Humans have lived regeneratively and sustainably in the past. We seem to be in the process of figuring out how to do it in a less labor intensive manner presently. I do my part to live sustainably, and I believe in humanity's ability to innovate and adapt and to address complex problems. Seems like you feel differently.
1. Climate change as a biological and human ecosystem catastrophe.
2. A potential ecosystem threat to humans from GAI. We might anticipate AI (and initially its wealthiest owners) would be less biosystem dependent, and more of a "Let's extract ALL the rare elements from the bottom of the ocean and not clean up the mess later", "Non-degradable plastic? Its still the future!", and "Fossil fuel reserves are a horrible thing to waste" kind of constituency.
It might be prudent to think about how different impending risks might have unfortunate "alignment".
- There's no climate change
- Climate change is okay and has no impact
- Climate change exists but it's due to natural causes
- Climate change exists but it's due to natural causes and its impacts are small
- Climate change exists but its impacts are good for us
- Climate change exists but we will adapt
- Climate change exists and its the activists' fault we didn't act because they scared us with their doomsday predictions <- you are here
- Climate change exists and we shouldn't talk about it because it's scary and scared people are not productive members of society
I similarly am quite surprised to scroll past ten top voted comments all just saying slight variations of "I used to care, but now I don't" followed by some "whataboutism".
Almost like this whole post has been astroturfed. I'm not even sure though it is.
I think the US in particular is experiencing mental whiplash to how bad it really is and how much comfort the whole planet has to give up to prevent it.
Can we bring the planet back into equilibrium, absolutely. But I think many people over 20 have absolutely no interest in it. They want a solution that won't change their standard of living, which won't happen.
I expect the governments of the world to be toppled or redirected by the next two generations as they can clearly see how drastically everything is changing.
How is Finland? It was on our list but we wanted to have good train connections to the continent so ended up in the Netherlands (but above sea level). Oulu has impressive winter cycling though.
I gave up any hope of having meaningful relationships with other people in the name of building a good career in my life because that's what my parents wanted from me. I got into pistol shooting because it was primarily a solo activity.
Then the government passed laws decreeing that handguns have no place in civilized society. So I wanted to get into motorcycles. But that's just wrong because CO2 emissions. Now I'm being told that having space for myself, for a work from home office is wrong too because we need to increase density for the sake of efficiency.
Meanwhile price my groceries has went from $60 what I paid for in 2019 to $110 for that same bag of food. A small bag of flour went from $2.50 to $5 this year. Rice has gone from $14 to $22 for a large bag. And rent has became mad in many ways; last year average rent in this city was $1450 a month. This year, it's $1700 a month.
Then you've got one side that's yelling that we need to transition cars to electric but the nearest one to what you have is $20,000 more. And you're being told that we need to be looking at a way to get rid of the terrible CO2 emitting gas furnace for something more efficient like a heat pump. But the heat pump that can handle our climate is $15,000 to install.
Then they ban single use plastics like bags because of the issue of microplastics. And it annoys you but at this point it doesn't overly matter because you can't afford to eat out as much anymore anyways. But you're lucky enough to be able to afford rent and food, because you know people that are asking food banks for anything and being told the wait times are now at least 1 to 2 weeks because of the number of people in front of them waiting for food too.
All that verbal diarrhea to say... I'm tired. I'm tired of being told that it's my fault the world is screwed up. I'm tired of seeing seeing the roads I took to whatever little stability I have now being closed behind me. Tired of it seeming like that at some point in my future, the only thing I'll have left to enjoy will be the jab of a syringe full of heroin.
Overly dramatic yeah. It doesn't make any sense but it's how I feel. Dunno if it's anyone else that feels like this way, be a little surprised if it's really just me.
As for the reasons why I have (like anyone else) two or three ideas.
And whatever it is, it ain't making me feel optimist about what's to come.
Imagine fighting a war. If you and your fellow troops believe you will definitely lose, what happens to morale and the outcome? Morale collapses and you create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The situation is serious but extreme doom predictions are the outlier in all credible models.
If your energy infrastructure has a significant amount of nuclear, and your solar power is over-producing during the day, it is cheaper to have negative energy prices than to shut down the nuclear plant.
'On the subject of birth control, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states that “legitimate intentions on the part of the spouses do not justify recourse to morally unacceptable means (for example, direct sterilization or contraception).”
St. Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, the landmark encyclical reaffirming Church teaching against contraception, on July 25, 1968.
In the encyclical, Paul VI warned of serious social consequences if the widespread use of contraceptives became accepted. He predicted that it would lead to infidelity, the lowering of morality, a loss of respect for women, and the belief that humans have “unlimited dominion” over the body.'
Now, mainstream Catholics are relatively moderate in terms of many modern political positions, but I hope that the fact of approximately 1bn people adopting and affirming this position establishes that my assertion isn't bullshit. Beyond Catholics I think that the "true right" (someone help me please) have many folks (often with undercuts, wild eyes and tattoo's that they regret only because if they are discovered they will disqualify them from public life) who have far stronger views. To find out about these people (I will restrain myself from more powerful descriptions of them) please investigate the "tradwife" [3] and "incel" [2] movements.
[1]https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251920/pope-francis-...
[2] https://theconversation.com/incel-violence-is-a-form-of-extr...
[3] https://jezebel.com/trad-wife-wellness-influencers-are-tryin...
No, it will still suck, but it'll be the kind of suck you can survive without fleeing.
Unless the thermohaline circulation changes significantly, in which case the northern Mediterranean coast starts to look like Toronto, Paris starts to look like Vancouver, and Scandinavia starts to look like Anchorage.
> Won't hundreds of millions of people (or more) from India, China and Africa flee to to wherever is safe?
Yes, although in the case of China they'll probably flee to elsewhere in China, because it's huge.
degrowth is the only thing that could work at all, the lack of compatible economic and political models that would be compatible with is exactly my point, which is why we will ultimately not solve the problem.
(I'm trying to find a sea rise map that looks right by eye and not having much luck. Here's the North Atlantic at 10m[1]. Surely that's not enough flooding?)
[1] https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/4/-10.3532/51.4503/?t...
For sure for a lot of reasons like having space for a garden etc. but also i think its a lot more easier to survive there longer.
Alone the space in my flat limits me of having provisions etc.
People that overestimate the value of their opinions, maybe.
Is this a fission plant that uses fuel mined in Canada, Kazakhstan, and Australia?
I see no predictions by him.
What I do see are examples of him selectively quoting other people and that he was in turn selectively quoted himself.
This is also why you shouldn't rely on politicians for anything.
Finland is terrific! Learning the language is tough, and recommended, but ultimately optional for white collar migrants. The lower salaries here are unfortunate - I make a third of what I could make as a software lead in the US (~50k vs ~150k). Doubly so as there really is a lot of top notch engineering talent here, probably because it's so hard to hire people that FTEs end up having to learn a lot about everything lol. I haven't yet carved a path to make US level money while living in Finland - but you'd better believe it's on my list of things to beeline towards once I hit my thirties.
Takes surprisingly little to collapse a civilisation when you kick its knees out from under it.
My comment was mean to point out that the scale of warming is far more intense than two conflicts would produce.
I really hope the recent acceleration in warming can be traced to industrial methane emissions that could be stopped.
some of the "innocent poor countries" you're talking about are the worst offenders for deforestation, pollution, and other habitat destruction. get off of your high horse, we are all responsible for the state of the planet we live on.
This is just a tribute to the stoic philosophy. I recommend reading the classics. You can start with this article.
[0] >>39156692
Still. Moving now to North Europe because maybe 30 years from now you'll have to move? Why not wait it out and see if you have to move? The whole thing is one huge speculation. There's no telling if Finland will be secure since its quite weak militarily. And we we don't really know what's gonna happen - we have models with very differing scenarios.
I'd love to see a much colder Finland, personally, since I want to know what a developed country that has 6 months of winter feels and looks like from the inside. But I do agree that for most people here it would be unfortunate.
Also - I can't imagine North Europe will remain prosperous if America somehow fails, the West is very much dependent on the U.S (now also for energy). But I do hope you enjoy your time, I lived in Leiden for almost 4 years and it was like living in a postcard. Shit weather though.
Now it links to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCo3XwTRg9o
And I heard the reason why teens act out so much can be due to the incredibly stifling environment they are in for their age. I think the rise of over-controlling helicopter parenting is making that even worse?
Throughout history the treatment of children in society has been absolutely appalling. And even in today's times emotional abuse of children is very common. During the COVID lockdown nearly half of children were victims of it.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/not-surprising-see-sad-...
but living through 30 years of catastrophic predictions not happening has made me question the messenger instead.
Some examples(1):
1989: Rising seas to ‘obliterate’ nations by 2000
2008: Al Gore warns of ice-free Arctic by 2013
(1) https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca...
Don’t get me wrong. I still think it’s an area of concern. I’m actually a raging environmentalist but I just think we should spend our limited political capital on air pollution, heavy metals, microplastics, and expanding national park access.
As long as you do it.
> What would that do to acidic rain, global dimming, ecology and agriculture.
Well, it's a trade-off. Is sulfur worse than global warming?
> Masking the problem will only make it come back harder
Geo-engineering is not an opportunity to stop phasing out fossils, but a way to get more time for better technology to spread.
If personal resilience is your goal, then you must look into permaculture, no-till and agroforestry.
Mostly I moved because it amused me. I have a long history of going to places I can't actually locate on a map, eg I thought Northwestern University would be in Portland, not Chicago - imagine my shock when I stepped off the plane. Similarly with Finland. I knew so little about the place that when the opportunity to move arose I couldn't not take it, it would be like turning down getting teleported into the inside of a black hole.
Have you seen what's been happening the last couple of years? There are catastrophic predictions actually happening, sure some of them were wrong but the planet is in a pretty fucked up state right now.
In the US, which takes in far more refugees and asylum seekers, it’s around half a percentage point of all legal immigration attempts succeed.
https://www.cato.org/blog/why-legal-immigration-nearly-impos...
but this time we must defend better not to have another "dark age"
sure sad for the millions of displaced people, but for civilisation to prevail there is no way to save them, quite a no-brainer
I’ve seen a lot of things blamed on climate that are debatable. Wild fires, hurricanes, freak high tides, etc.
If it’s a true crisis we shouldn’t be grasping at normal climate events and trying to argue they’re slightly worse.
Regarding the superiority of worldviews, sure, subjectivity applies and we could go down the rabbit hole of discussing that - but the comment I was replying to was not about which worldview was better! Vasco said that "Either it's fine for Earth to not have humans ... Or it's not fine ... but if to do that we want to reduce the humans, I don't get it." I'm not going to argue that my values are the best because it's already self-evident to me and I doubt I can improve on the existing work[0], but I am very willing to explain how they're logically consistent.
[0] Via utilitarianism and the repugnant conclusion and onward. I don't think I can do any better than all the philosophers who've debated this.
The health of democracy is way better than the US at least.
Because I see that we have a lot of people coming in from Mexico claiming asylum for uh, whatever war is going on there, getting released into the country, and just never showing up for their court hearings: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/nearly-600000-m...
Energy means, well, energy. Finland still drives combustion vehicles (a lot of them, last I was there they drove some of the oldest cars in the EU on average due to high taxes for buying new ones) and probably mostly heat with energy not originating from the trio you mentioned.
I think you meant electricity, which is a great milestone on the way but not yet the destination.
Electricity used to be about 10% of a rich country's energy consumption, of late I think it's closer to 20% as some early adopters and new buildings have made the switch, but that still leaves 80% of your energy generated from oil and natural gas
The new one the admin switched to is some people yelling. A "comedy" sketch.
> The thing that always stood between the world and climate action was the fact that fossil fuels were the best energy source.
> Since a few years, the tables have turned and solar seems to be marching towards absolute dominance.
> So there isn’t much to do in terms of political climate action, since the incentives are now mostly economical.
If we could put climate change on hold for 50 years we would probably be in pretty good shape, because in 50 years we will probably have enough renewable energy that we can just decide to stop burning (most) oil.
But in the real world, in 2024 we haven't actually reduced emissions at all yet, and the possibility of cutting down emissions in 50 years isn't enough.
It's true that in that sense we aren't that far from a scenario that "isn't so terrible" but that seems more like an ironic fact than something that should be comforting.
Because of the way climate change works, the future possibility of reducing emissions simply isn't enough if we aren't actually currently reducing emissions when we would really need to be at approximately zero right now to fix the problem.
If there's a point they're making, I wasn't able to hear it unfortunately :/ Can't imagine what a hard-of-hearing or deaf person would have to make of the auto subtitles...
- banning plastic bags and straws - buying expensive electrical vehicles - ignoring other risks in our circle of influence - listening to public figures and scientists who gave us “point of no return” dates several times in the last 30 years
> There won't be an extinction event.
This also ignores the fact that we are currently in the 6th largest extinction event in the history of life on this planet [1]. Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction is a great book on this (and the history of our understanding of species extinction as well).
So aside for being naive about the science, your comment reads a bit like claiming you don't think it will rain today while in the midst of being soaked in a massive rain storm.
You don’t worry because it’s inevitable. You perceive them not worrying, but they aren’t scared enough?
What if they also have the (intuitive, but not necessarily correct) sense that it’s inevitable?
The older you are when you move, the harder it is. New language, new culture, new laws, disconnection from your old friends who took a different path. And less time to contribute to a state pension — a skilled 30-year-old can be a welcome addition to a workforce, a 60-year-old might get their state pension before citizenship — which may make them less inclined to accept you. Especially if you're moving because there's a huge global disaster and they need more workers rather than pensioners.
That said, the economics may radically change over the next 30 years; while I think the current humanoid robot workers are a bit gimmicky at best, and that they'll only be ready for autonomous use about 5-10 years after no-steering-wheel-included self-driving cars[0], the general trend of automation they represent is significant and began long before they were able to walk on legs.
> The whole thing is one huge speculation. There's no telling if Finland will be secure since its quite weak militarily. And we we don't really know what's gonna happen - we have models with very differing scenarios.
Indeed; very little is predictable even 10 years out in geopolitics. The UK was never going to leave the EU in 2012, but gone it was a decade later. The USSR was indomitable in 1984 and gone in 1994. 30 years? That's the gap between the height of the British Empire and the WW2 home guard starting with arm bands instead of uniforms, and being armed with a mix of privately owned guns and various improvised weapons.
For the environment, what happens depends on how people react to the models that exist. We may well completely eliminate CO2 emissions on that time scale — the technology is already known and in deployment for how to do this for electricity and land transport, it's being demonstrated for iron and other metal oxide refinement, but there are plenty of things to work on before we say we can manage this without also removing CO2 from the air.
But on the other hand, we may squander the remaining time, just like we squandered the last 30 years.
[0] More specifically, when the energy cost of the computing power needed for sufficient quality real-time vision reduces to ~10W; the computers Tesla currently use are supposedly 100W, but as Tesla's autopilot is not yet rated as a full-replacement for human drivers I must assume that a sufficient AI would also be more power-hungry. As 100W is very little power, Tesla (and others) might brute force this problem by having a bigger computer that uses e.g. 1kW rather than keeping the power use to 100W and waiting for a better computer. 1kW is my guess for the maximum that anyone would be willing to use in a car-based AI.
How dead Moore's Law is or isn't depends on what you're asking, I think it's still working for Joules-per-operation which is what matters here, and every factor of 10 improvement needed is about 5 years at Moore's Law rates.
> some of the "innocent poor countries" you're talking about are the worst offenders for deforestation, pollution, and other habitat destruction. get off of your high horse, we are all responsible for the state of the planet we live on.
For their own sake? Or is it, among others, Western offshore companies who partake in what you blame those darn third worlders for? It's a global economy.
Think of coffee for example. Pretty sure we consume orders of magnitude more of it in the West than the rest of the World. Yet, the coffee bean plantations aren't exactly at our doors- Instead they replace forests in Guatemala, Columbia, Indonesia, etc.
I'm not sure, HN has always been welcoming to contrarian views unless it is something particularly nasty like racism.
If I could point to anything it would be the fact that we are getting close to an election in the US.
Hot Weather.—Many a man has mopped his brow during the summer months of 1884, declaring it was the hottest weather the world ever knew, which, of course, would not be true, for the extreme heat in the record of the past has not been approached during the late summer.
In 627, the heat was so great in France and Germany, says the London Standard, that all springs dried up; water became so scarce that many people died of thirst.
In 879, work in the field had to be given up; agricultural laborers persisting in their work were struck down in a few minutes, so powerful was the sun. In 993, the sun’s rays were so fierce that vegetation burned up as under the action of fire. In 1000, rivers ran dry under the protracted heat, the fish were left dry in heaps and putrefied in a few hours. Men and animals venturing in the sun in the summer of 1022 fell down dying.
In 1132, not only did the rivers dry up, but the ground cracked and became baked to the hardness of stone. The Rhine in Alsace nearly dried up. Italy was visited with terrific heat in 1189; vegetation and plants were burned up. During the battle of Bela, in 1200, there were more victims made by the sun than by weapons; men fell down sunstruck in regular rows. The sun of 1277 was also severe; there was an absolute dearth of forage.
In 1303 and 1304, the Rhine, Loire, and Seine ran dry. In 1615, the heat throughout Europe became excessive. Scotland suffered particularly in 1625; men and beasts died in scores. Meat could be cooked by merely exposing it to the sun. Not a soul dared to venture out between noon and 4 p.m. In 1718, many shops had to be closed; the theatres were never opened for several months. Not a drop of water fell during six months.
In 1753 the thermometer rose to one hundred and eighteen degrees. In 1779, the heat at Bologna was so great that a large number of people died. In July 1793, the heat became intolerable. Vegetables were burned up and fruit dried upon the trees. The furniture and woodwork in dwelling-houses cracked and split up; meat became bad in an hour.
In Paris in 1846, the thermometer marked one hundred and twenty-five degrees in the sun. The summers of 1859, 1860, 1869, 1870, 1874, etc., although excessively hot, were not attended by any disaster.”
- source: https://books.google.com/books/about/Gaillard_s_Medical_Jour... - page 473.
I mean, you might as well quote me a list of your very personal niche hobbies and the importance of keeping them up as some kind of tradition humanity needs to uphold.
I don't think such a line of argument holds very tight in the grand scheme of things.
To others, enjoying the company of their own children and grandchildren (some of the most commonly shared joys across people, in contrast to niche interests) are far higher up there on their list of priorities of things that make our existence worthwile.
Likewise, utilitarianism won't get you far since the other person must first subscribe to it as a good idea. I don't care about "the greatest good for the majority" in some kind of vague sense whatever it means, if subjectively it means no good to me.
Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.
Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.
Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.
Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity.
Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.
Do you include everyone who owns a car in this "ownership class"? I guess I share your disposition to some degree, resignation mixed with a feeling that things are going to be bad but not as bad as some have claimed, and that eventually the situation will improve, but this practice of blanket blaming "the rich" for the problem is a/the major reason we got here in the first place.
I worked in the energy sector for over a decade. It was a very conservative industry, yet everyone who worked there had their home insulation well above code and installed the most efficient appliances they could find, many had solar panels on their roofs (long before these were as available as they are today) and were first in line for plug-in electric hybrids when they first became available. Our parking lot was kind of a dangerous place to walk because there were so many electric cars you couldn't hear them coming, our director had a hydrogen powered car.
We'd get protestors all the time showing up in front of our building. Looking down from the office windows I could see them arrive and depart. They always drove there in ICE vehicles. We sold fossil fuel, but kept our operations as efficient as possible, going to great lengths to squeeze out every joule of energy we could manage and were constantly re-evaluating our processes looking for improvements, meeting with vendors to find new technology, and spent probably more time and money than was prudent experimenting with low-carbon alternatives to majors components of the company's infrastructure.
The average person in the US who is "concerned about climate change" does none of these things, is doing absolutely nothing to change the situation, but sits on their phone complaining on Reddit while consuming as much energy as is convenient for them. The amount of energy Americans use for trivial everyday tasks is staggering. The standard suburban model of living that makes up 99% of US cities and towns is a climate disaster. Although all these things are provided by large companies, this is not the result of a conspiracy, this is what people want, what people demand. When energy prices go up a few precent, people scream bloody murder and call their elected officials demanding something be done about it. When fuel efficiency standards are proposed people complain. Given a choice between a larger home and a smaller but more efficient one, people consistently choose large houses with insulation that meets only the minimum standards. At most any choice towards efficiency is motivated entirely by either financial considerations or social signaling. (note the enormous popularity of the Toyota Prius, which is distinctly a hybrid, over better cars which looked nearly identical to their ICE counterparts)
Voters and consumers over and over again have decided to keep the system they have in place decade after decade, while blaming the people who supply them what they demand for the situation.
Which was extra ironic, given Kissinger reportedly said to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin "I figure it like Groucho Marx said 'any club that took him in he would not want to join'. I would say that anything Lê Đức Thọ is eligible for, there must be something wrong with it." while Lê Đức Thọ declined the prize, on grounds that such "bourgeois sentimentalities" were not for him and that the Paris Peace Accords (for which he and Kissinger had been awarded the prize) were not being adhered to in full.
What? You recommended it. What does it mean to you? What are you recommending?
I think that being responsibles for it is even more of a tragedy.
Plainly sustainable without fossil fuels? From what I can gather, the majority of farming, construction and transportation (including of farmed goods) relies heavily on fossil fuels.
1. How does this perspective affect you today? Is it debilitating? Depressing? Affect your wellbeing and productivity?
2. What do you believe is the probability of what you say here? Estimate with a percentage.
Does the unknown associated to the percentage in #2 make the perspective rational and helpful?
I got involved in climate advocacy in 2021. Since then I’ve successfully lobbied my local government to start an energy resources study, which will look at ways for my community to quickly transition to renewables. A small thing. But if we all do small things, it will add up!
Still though. My state, Arizona has really terrible people writing awful laws. This legislative session they’re proposing a 12.5% tax on purchasing solar if you’re not a utility, and a bunch of other regressive, anti-free market, pro-fossil fuel legislation [1]. We’re going to vote these people out of office this November and remove barriers to using our states abundant solar resources.
And since HN is a startup and technology forum, we need cheap utility scale energy storage as soon as we can get it. It exists, but solar+storage is just a bit too expensive for most regions of the country. If it does become cheaper than methane, that makes the move away from fossil fuels much easier. If you want to work on this, do it.
But also, citizens engagement is crucial. If you live in a regressive state like mine. It’s super important to get involved. If you live in a place that is going in the right direction, engage on the implementation details, there are so many ways good climate policy can get derailed in bureaucracies. There are a ton of groups that you can work with on this [2] [3] [4].
[1] https://legiscan.com/AZ/bill/HB2281/2024
[2] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/
Countries such as Pakistan and Pacific island countries that have contributed the least to climate change are among the most impacted, which is why two questions (among many others) have loomed climate politics over the past 30 years: "Where does the liability fall?" (Ex: loss and damage fund) and "How can I, as a country, be in a better position within a global crisis?" (Ex: disagreement over the global warming potential of non-CO2 emissions due to different chosen time horizons between countries; GWP100 vs. GWP*; this greatly affects carbon accounting in agricultural countries that rely on cattle for instance)
Can you be more specific?
1. significantly increased amount of 'life' on earth (as in: total kg of biomass, number of living specimens, total area with some amount of green stuff on it) due to warmer climate.
2. significantly reduced number of extant species on earth due to (geologically) fast changes in climate.
Edit: formating.
Nothing out of the ordinary here in Norrbotten, Sweden. Seems like things stop working properly under -35 degrees or so (trains, heat pumps), so some adjustments would be needed if such temperatures became more frequent.
It's not your fault specifically though, it's our fault.
I'm fortunate that I'm in Australia, so my parents now have a hybrid car, a heat pump hot water and solar panels.
I have an EV, electric hot water, solar and home battery but... it was only 2 years ago I was renting, I had no solar panels, gas hot water, petrol car, and no home battery.
I did my best to reduce my electricity usage + paying extra to use the 'green power' option, my car was the smallest/most efficient I could get, I got a motorcycle to reduce the amount of oil use for daily trips to work.
My point of view is that you can only do what is in your capacity to do, and so long as you can say that to yourself you're good, we need more people like you.
You can vote for candidates that take climate change seriously.
You can decide to buy or lease an EV instead of an ICE one.
You can raise the bar for when you book a flight.
And so on...
This appears to be less true for something like emissions, where the overall total is most relevant -- unless you're arguing that it's masking an "unfair" situation where improvements are coming from one group and should be coming from the other?
I said it's a hedge, not a sure thing!
Reducing biodiversity doesn't equate to an extension-level event though. It also doesn't mean all species who didn't thrive would be lost - many would be affected but not existentially so.
I'm reminded of George Carlin's joke about the planet being fine long-term, we're the ones who will be screwed.
Livestock make up 62% of the world’s mammal biomass; humans account for 34%; and wild mammals are just 4%.
https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass
And add to that the fact that cow flatulence is very rich in methane (much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2) because of poor diet in industrial agriculture.
The derivative of the exponential function is the exponential function.
d/dx eˣ = eˣ
So if it’s growing exponentially the rate of growth is exponential and the rate of that acceleration is also exponential.
When comparing to SF, 90% of the planet is that much more affordable. Sheesh there’s more to the world than the plight of San Francisco.
I quote "equilibrium" because social structures never stop changing. What I mean is a relatively stable situation where most of the world is not invading the rest of the world. Our present situation is that the larger portion of the population is not invading the rest, though the present trend seems to be in the wrong direction.
These are all reasonable observations, but they don't remotely substantiate "The chances of humanity surviving are incredibly slim, IMO."
Just tone down the hyperbole. No serious informed science exists to predict human extinction, though lots of ecosystems and most large wild animals are at high risk.
Less charitably, this is the kind of advice that mostly seems like an excuse to preach at people.
I’ll stick with the economic system that has reduced global poverty by 80% in the last century, and brought us everything from clean water to smartphones. Not the economic system that resulted in the genocide of millions, the systematic theft from the working class and which continues to oppress people under crushing dictatorships in places like Cuba and Venezuela.
From the Encyclopaedia Britannica [0]: __These conspicuous declines in diversity are referred to as mass extinctions__
> It also doesn't mean all species who didn't thrive would be lost - many would be affected but not existentially so.
But this is not a fact, it is a conjecture. On the other hand, we do have declining numbers of a big number of species. Unless the tendency reverts, constant long-term declining numbers will be an existential threat.
> I'm reminded of George Carlin's joke about the planet being fine long-term, we're the ones who will be screwed.
That's true, for sure. But asides from "the planet" and "we", there are also all the others.
If climate change isn't extremely bad, then maybe it's not worth it. But at some point, if it becomes existential, then all options are on the table.
The belief that rich people will be able to ride this one out is a huge part of the problem. No matter how deep your bunker, no matter how many acres of land you own, extreme weather will make all of it worthless.
1. Vote for the party that protects the environment 2. Work on smt that has positive climate impact
No, I just picked it as a random example of something that you can do to reduce population growth. Widespread access to birth control in developing countries would be a better solution. Supposedly educating girls in developing countries also helps reduce population growth as well. And there are probably countless other things you can do.
They also have traditions in many developing countries to have very large families.
- All human activities, in different degrees, contribute to climate change. Don't believe me? Say that you bike to the office everyday. You enjoy your commute, you never develop a heart condition, and in the course of your long prosperous life you have three kids and nine grandchildren, own several dogs and get a bigger house. In other words, your climate footprint all of the sudden is greater than if you had used a polluting car and died of a heart attack when you turned forty.
By definition, humanity thriving means humanity growing, and with that its footprint on the entire planet.
- But in the aggregate, humanity is what we are. There is a price to pay for climbing that hill, but there is an even greater price for not climbing it. Critters in the Serengeti don't compose poetry, nor make Youtube videos; they are too busy surviving. So are people in places where material scarcity reigns supreme. My father, who never wanted to leave his homeland, is dying at home, and my mother won't hire a nurse not for lack of money, but because she doesn't trust that young people will work for just the money and won't rob them blind.
We have the knowledge, the technology and the means to live in domes in the vast deserts of this planet, to go to the moon or to live in space habitats anywhere in the solar system.
Now you might argue that the data either doesn't support the claims made, or you might doubt its legitimacy, but instead of providing a reason you just told me that it should be obvious why the book is nonsense. That doesn't really give me a lot to engage with and I'm not going to try to make your arguments for you.
For me the Book had its intended effect. It argues that the climate movement, as it gained mainstream popularity, also lost its ability to convey nuance in favor of projecting a strong "we are heading towards certain doom" message. This helped grow the movement, but is also responsible for a lot of young people feeling completely hopeless. That's certainly something I could heavily relate with before reading the book. The book then goes on to highlight areas where the world has made much bigger progress than I would have thought. For me this turned a feeling of intense hopelessness into one of motivation.
So was the Book meant to make me feel good? Sure. In that sense I guess you can call it a feel-good book. Were the claims unsubstantiated and "without any evidence to support" them? Certainly not.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03062...
AC won't scale
Presumably she's referring to her first proposal -- a carbon tax. It's my understanding that there's nearly consensus among economists that a carbon tax is the most efficient solution to global warming, but political consensus that it would never happen when framed as a tax.
If you don't know what a carbon tax is, or why it's orders of magnitude more efficient a solution than "eat less meat" I'd encourage you to look into it a bit. Essentially if you create a system where what is best for the planet is also the cheapest course of action (for individuals and businesses), you no longer have to rely on convincing every single individual to change their morality/beliefs.
The nasty neighbour is obviously Russia and the comment below pretended that Sweden was meant instead
It couldn't be an attempt to make white people accept poverty by the big corps who sponsor politicians and control research grant monies ?
Which world do you live in? It can’t be Earth. Go outside and talk to people and please realize spending all your time online is bad for your health. What you’ve described here doesn’t exist.
No sovereign is going to agree to subordinate itself without all others doing the same
Classic prisoners dilemma
What you're describing is people experiencing grief. I'm what you would call an "extreme doomer", and did feel this way about a decade ago when I first realized the dire situation we are in.
But your first reaction is not the end. Waking up and accepting our state, and the despair that came with it, was the first stage in a long process of learning to live, and be comfortable in the world the way it is.
What you are suggesting is that we just ignore grief and pretend nothing is happening. I suppose this is just the denial stage of grieving, but it's worth recognizing that the people you know feeling this way are working through a process.
Pretending that someone isn't dead isn't a long term solution to accepting loss, even if it means in the short term you are in a dark place emotionally. It's unfortunately it upsets you to see people experiencing this, but those people, given enough time, might be in a better place to help you when you finally have to let go of denial.
I think the next phase will be people like me, not climate change deniers but climate change doomers.
The US could go carbon neutral tomorrow and it wouldnt make a dent because of China, India and Russia. 3 Billion people pumping pollution into the the air like their is no tomorrow vs. a couple hundred million reducing their footprint isn't going to make a lick of difference. I think people have always had a hard time understanding things at scale, especially a global scale.
The ONLY answer, live your life like there's no tomorrow because chances are is there isn't going to be.
The people that believe in climate change don’t understand how to solve the problem. And the people that know how to solve the problem don’t really consider it a problem worth solving at this point.
Want to have your discussion regarding "What to do?" regarding climate change? You need to stop treating people who want to know your arguments and see your data with respect first. Sabine is a great ACTUAL science educator and not merely a grifter, and (I suspect) just a modest honest person. She legit deserves clicking that subscribe button.
More co2 means corn and soy will be growing better and better, warming temps increase our growing season. We have more than enough water. What am I missing?
To which I would respond that France could hold two years with its uranium reserves if the world stopped selling it Uranium.
Gasoline reserves in comparison would last three months.
I guess an army of thousands could take it over but my hope is that me and my gun toting farming community won't put up with invaders and invaders won't want to take their chances
In reality, an economy transitioned to tech beyond fossil fuels probably enjoys much greater production dynamics. For instance, the US could build out nuclear power to satisfy base board power and then grow that base by which ever rate it decided per year. At some point, mass desalination of sea water becomes affordable because electricity drives down the price. There, too, sea water is a huge resource for literally every mineral we could need (lithium, gold, uranium, you name it). Further, any co2 removed from the ocean will then be scrubbed from the atmosphere-provided the removed water eventually finds its way back, and it would. With more water and more electricity, more of the land is usable for things like habitation, commercial/industrial, and agriculture purposes. (The US and globe has a ton of unproductive land which can be productive with some combination of water+fertilizer.) There's a relationship between the growth of power produced by an economy and its yearly growth of gdp.
The above will also take place with solar. Eventually we will have the tech to power things off whatever sun they get through the paint/coating on their surface.
At some point, the other national players will see those benefits going to other nations and change accordingly. Or they will be left in the past.
I'd go even stronger and, for the US, pass regulations that all emissions of all kinds must be captured or the company will be fined double the cost of environmental remediation as executed by contractors employed by the government (scaling from 1% of the fine to 100% of the fine over X years).
I think you're optimistic, I think we'll see mass layoffs 5-10 years from now for white collar work, and 5-10 years after that for expensive manual labor (like doctors etc). I think the gap between "solving" white collar work (e.g something similar to AGI) and solving humanoid autonomous work will be narrow, but that's just my hunch.
Instead, it should be paired with a dividend which makes it revenue neutral for the median household. Lower income families, who are more impacted by but less responsible for climate change, would be paid a benefit.
I actually maintain several online Finnish learning resources now, including a flashcard deck of the most common 10,000 words from the YLE study way back [1], a command line lemmatizer [2], and a website whose permissions I need to refresh ASAP which archives Selkouutiset with YYYY/MM/DD URLs [3].
Indeed building these tools were what got me back into software development as a profession, after a long absence.
[1]: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1149950470
For example, I'm anti-car. In principle I'm pro-EV, but I also see EVs making things even worse with respect to all the other damage cars do besides exhaust emissions. They are heavier, more powerful and at best neutral with respect to safety and social issues.
But if you look through the one dimensional lens I'm just "anti-EV" because I don't want them.
Eocenic period had high CO2 levels, but it didn't lead to ocean anoxidation. In fact, at the end of the period, the eocene-oligocene exctinction event happened in connection with reduced CO2 and global cooling of the climate. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene–Oligocene_extinction_ev...
In your version of the future, we’re all dead. In mine, the future might include a better life for all.
They are universally rather timid in their scope, and politically fragile. So maybe they aren’t going to get us there, at least not in their current form.
But it’s going too far to say they just don’t exist or can’t exist.
We have plenty of treaties that inhibit states. Nuclear weapons, slavery, pollutants. Enlightentment and enlightened self-interest isn’t out of the question.
That and misinformation isn't helping.
You. Literally YOU. Can trivially measure the impact of different gases on temperature.
Telling the difference between natural and human produced is probably not doable by you personally, however, human burned pollution tends to have different atomic markers from naturally occurring. We have mandatory pollution reporting. We can do basic maths to find reasonably close numbers to how much of the pollution is natural and how much is from us.
With regard to “the prediction models are always wrong” fake news propaganda bullshit:
They are always wrong in a way that’s worse for us by underestimating the bad impacts. Every time we improve the models, the outcomes are worse even faster than the models predict, and we have to find why.
Ask Lybia how nuclear disarmament went
Go count all the slaves supplying the global market for chocolate, cobalt, mica, vanilla etc...
How about prisoners in the US making .20-.50c/hr making license plates or literally picking cotton on a former slave plantation in alabama.
Or how about slave labor in the form of migrant children working in factories for Hyundai in the US south
The concept of self-interested Neoliberalism has utterly failed and it is turning into a global catastrophe
The earth cannot sustain 8 Billion people each living at millionaire consumption standards
The climate change may easily cause large scale international conflict or fights over resources at national level, but the distance between places without capacity to handle the weather and the better-off areas generally are thousands of miles and an ocean, and the parties to any conflict would be neighboring communities of many millions of people each - I mean, this discussion is about "what will happen to the population of current Bangladesh, and what effect that will have on neighboring countries" not about what will happen for few rich people in USA against their literal neighbors from the same state and county.
I fully expect that the wealthy countries can handle some internal displacement due to e.g. sea level rise without mass violence and a general breakdown of internal order - people having to abandon coastal properties in Florida would cause economic woes and internal political pressure to Do Something (not necessarily constructive), not cause the displaced Florida men to form large uncontested gangs roaming the Midwest looking for bunkers to loot.
In germany we can't agree on building new north-south power lines to transport the energy we generate through wind power.
..and in the USA (and many other 1st world countries) you still have one of the two political parties who doesn't even agree that climate change is either real or poses a serious problem.
This is incorrect. Please stop saying we have the technology to live anywhere else other than on Earth, it's false: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9YdnzOf4NQ
Historically, the whole reason for a city's existence was so that everything was right there. But cities, especially North American cities, for someone reason have to decided to become rural areas for people too poor be able to afford to live in actual rural areas.
It's bizarre.
There are many natural ecosystems which could and would be severely disrupted as the food chains there break up.
However, the food chain for homo sapiens largely relies on artificial monocultures that can be moved around and replaced on a large scale if the local conditions change. Natural environment can't switch to a "warmer climate biome" overnight, but a farmer can and will plant an entirely different crop in the next season if that suits the place better now, with only some expenses in retooling tractor attachments. And while there are many food industries which are relatively brittle, these are relatively niche 'luxury' foods which often are economically very valuable, but not the staple foods which actually feed the population. Like, if California had to abandon growing almonds due to water issues and instead grow something less demanding (and less profitable), that would destroy a huge industry but wouldn't cause food insecurity.
The problem with this attitude is that it prevents you from solving problems that might actually affect the odds of humans making it to tomorrow or any other near-term date. Right now it looks as if we're in the run-up to World War III. [0] Perhaps we should spend a little energy preventing that. Or perhaps aquifer exhaustion, a long-standing issue exacerbated by climate change. [1] Or solving the political polarization that prevents us from addressing other problems. [2] Humans have faced all of these problems in the past and generally solved them.
Climate change is obviously a serious and challenging problem. But it seems doubtful civilization will be directly overturned any time soon by climate change alone. Europeans and others made it through crises like the Black Plague, which killed a third or more of the population without extinguishing the arc of civilization. [3] It's the knock-on effects we need to worry about, as well as the things that prevent us from fixing them.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/27/opinion/china-taiwan-war....
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/climate/global-groundwate...
[2] https://www.politico.com/interactives/2019/how-to-fix-politi...
One thing I can't work out is if something like that - a heat/cool aircon unit counts as a heat pump from the point of view of getting a government grant?
The tasks: scrape all the selko articles and then generate fi-> en translation tasks in the form of phrases (using an LLM). Same thing except en->fi. Free form task generation where I tend to use HS for articles (so like, adult Finnish). And then one I'm working on now, Finnish transcription from auto-generated speech, from selko again.
A lot of my evaluation is based on embedding + cosine distance. LLM's are truly bringing a golden age for language learning.
I was planning on doing a similar thing but my wife didn't seem terribly enthused by the current SOTA with Finnish text generation. Sometimes I do ask GPT-4 to "kerro minulle jotain kiinostavaa [aiheesta]" and throw the generated longform text into a single Anki card to read later on. The style definitely feels different, and it hallucinates a lot, but hey, it's still net beneficial on the margin.
Let's keep in touch, it's always good to meet fellow Finnward folk. My email is in my bio if you ever need anything.
https://preprints.apsanet.org/engage/api-gateway/apsa/assets...
The rise of asylum seekers is due to this cult which believes in many of these sins. I am just as alarmed that it exists. They are the same political activists who failed to stop the pipeline have put their efforts here. Those caravans are NOT organic.
Cars matter very little in the big picture as well -- it's a distraction to blame the little people.
The vast majority of pollution is caused by industrial processes. The fix here is simple: regulate and enforce the regulation.
The main polluting countries are:
the USA: too afraid to do anything in case it affects their economy, political caste too corrupt to do what's needed.
Russia: doesn't give a shit, mostly see global warming as a way to get more influence, more usable land, and have such a little population density anyway they can afford to fuck some of it.
India: polluting as a result of too many people and trying to catch up economically, but might get their shit together like China did.
Saudi Arabia: has built their whole state on an unsustainable dependency on burning more than half of the oil they extract just for AC and water, and is completely fucked regardless.
In my country people aren't stupid and do embrace reasonable and managed use of natural resources, regardless of party.
We can measure anecdotaly that temperature is slightly rising. The reason why is it happening and happend in history multiple times is topic for debate that we can explore.
However your tone is not open for debate and use exactly same words as those you fight against.
Re global regulation you need to get the main players like the US, China and Russia to agree some sort of policy which is tricky but might be possible if people lobby their politicians.
Also, even without AI, sufficiently cheap telepresence robots can do to for manual labour what Mechanical Turk and remote work (and possibly GenAI) is doing for desk jobs — "good enough" can be surprisingly poor quality if it comes with a small enough invoice.
However, my main point is that things are hard to predict.
Exactly. The direction we need to head is obvious: Stop treating cities like wanna rural areas for poor people and turn them into actual cities, where everything is right there and travel isn't necessary – not by car, not by train, not by bike, not by anything.
But, indeed, a move from the status quo is uncomfortable, so we get silly things like "But, but, my bike is better than a car!", completely missing the forest for the trees.
> I wonder, if they managed to alienate people without a car and very low CO2 footprint, what demographic is actually left to cater to?
With climate deniers and conspiracists I always suppose they hide their real stance and it is revealed through small hints they let out. I strongly believe these small hints are baits to see if the other party has the same beliefs. They will be lying until they think there are in like-minded company (or are too drunk and let it out).
Yeah, I have been burned hard before by climate and covid deniers who lied right out to my face. They are dishonest and advance in disguise (with loaded questions and fake scepticism and the whole arsenal of arguments coming from fabricated doubt factories).
China has already solved their problem and significantly improved air quality in its cities, and is the world biggest builder of nuclear power plants. They ceased being a problem already.
Mining lithium doesn't require gasoline. Mining can be electrified like many other things. Probably easier to electrify than long distance transport since it is short distances.
Nuclear waste is not a danger in the far future. The radioactive products decay on short time scale. Most of them are gone in century, but they want to store them for.
Lithium batteries aren't a problem if they did decay. Lithium is a common, non-toxic metal. Some batteries, like lead acid in every car, have toxic metals but is small scale overall and not that dangerous.
Shoes have the same problem, except for some very expensive artisan brands. They may actually be worse per mile than biking.
Paper reference:
If any major economy achieved zero emissions for productions of electricity, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was either China using Solar and Nuclear, or France betting on Nuclear.
We call China our enemy, but the biggest enemy of US is US. We can either adapt or live in the past.
Electricity prices haven’t changed much in last 50 years in real currency.
Economies that heavily invest in cheap energy, and high autonomy will win out.
There are a lot of people that want to deflect from action on climate change by focusing on the oil refinery and not the tailpipe.
Your list is suspiciously missing China, the biggest producer of CO2. Saudi Arabia is down the list, after South Korea and Germany; their CO2 per capita is but not abormally. It is the per capita emissions and population that matter. Then USA (300 million), Russia (147 million), Saudi Arabia (40 million), India (1.4 billion). The first three have large per capita emissions, double the others. The list of CO2 producers are basically a list of large and/or rich countries.
Northern Europe should worry about the Gulf Stream or Atlantic Conveyor currents failing and changing the climate.
Another big one is melting permafrost. Warmer temps cause permafrost to melt and release CO2, which leads to more warming, and repeat.
Finally, there is danger of ice sheets melting which could rise sea levels by hundreds of feet.
Be as good as you can, regardless of others, so that they will have no whataboutism to hide behind.
Don't underestimate the power of peer pressure, even at the nation-level.
We should not be making energy expensive for the lay person.
Provide subsidies to build new solar, wind and nuclear farms - sure.
The world will quickly adapt renewable energy if it is much cheaper and convenient to use it.
In similar vein, for god sake don’t tax solar panels above usual tax rate. I’m looking at Arizona.
The biggest mistake any democratic government can make is life more expensive and miserable for their population.
That seldom goes well.
2) Another big chunk of the working population would lose their jobs because their industry gets shaken up: Those working in polluting industries (coal and gas) or the huge part of the economy that's surrounding petro-chemicals (gas stations clerks, heating engineers, fuel truck drivers), etc.
You would need to redistribute the CO2 tax income as welfare checks but again: That's not a politically viable solution because the fear of job losses pretty much outweighs anything else.
Also see above where I said to build out nuclear asap and at economically significant rates.
But this site is a good filter to get good, long articles and videos and in-depth discussion in the comments.
Short meme comedy skits can be left to plenty of sites like 9gag/some subreddits etc. There is a time and a place for that too. But in my opinion, not on HN.
https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/ny-eso-rapport-flyktingin...
It's indistinguishable from propaganda.
Good. Now read what I wrote again.
Side note on tone: The posturing ("delusion", "intelligent", "rational") makes you look bad. And it's like a thousand times worse when you're trying to pick a fight with someone by argumentatively agreeing with what they said to attack a straw man. If nobody ever told you that before, I'm sorry that you never got the benefit of that advice, and I hope it helps now that you know.
We reduced famines for a few centuries or less while the population in the most polluting countries exploded. Now, we risk famines and a possible slow death due to extreme drought due to the climate change created by the fossil Fuel Industry, in the billions
The implementation of the H&BP was irresponsible and reckless.
Even in this video, I couldn't find any quantified predictions of actual effects on people, so it just continues to support everyone's own fantasy, whichever way that goes.
Wild humans would pollute less exactly because they are limited by their environment instead of torturing from cradle to the shop billions of chicks and piglets every year
There are billions of shades of grey, like, for example, living like before the 2000’s, when the massive production of plastic crap in China produced pollution levels to skyrocket.
The alternative meant paying wages in the west
It would be standard mod practice to replace https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2024/01/i-used-to-not-worr... with a link to the video, since the blog post is just a thin wrapper around it. As the HN guidelines say, "If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
Why the wrong video made it in, I don't know, but most likely it was a simple copy-paste error. Sorry, all!
Edit: oh it might have been that one of us saw >>39157418 and mistook that for a comment of this sort: >>39163616 .
If (e.g.) China stops the US can start, or if a small country can't scale up enough more countries can join in. The whole "termination shock" thing is highly overrated, it's solvable with next to no communication at all. Decision rule: if not enough is being sprayed according to your models, make up the difference yourself.
It combats the notion that we aren't achieving anything regarding long term sustainability because we're unable to coordinate on a global scale, by showcasing that we are not only moving in the right direction in many areas, we're also accelerating.
If Hansen is right and we live in a world with very high climate sensitivity then it's not looking good, but I'd still prefer to live in a world were we make noticeable progress and fall short, than in one were we watch the world turn into an uninhabitable ball of death while doing nothing.
I don't think it's "funny" that they waste time, energy, and resources on building bigger machines to make them more money and shit out hopium when it won't mean anything on a planet unfit for human habitation come century's end. I think it's a crime against humanity that deserves to be treated as such.
Pretty much everything in that link is just random headlines, with zero connection to what the scientific consensus was in the listed years.
As just one example, ocean acidification could kill a lot of the algae. Pretty much everything is upstream of algae. It would be catastrophic, even for us.
This sounds like magical thinking. Even making the huge leap to say that cultural output would somehow scale commensurate with population infinitely, what does that actually look like in a reality with finite time and attention? I think we've already passed the point where anyone can keep up with all the cultural output (music, literature, graphical media) that is released each day. This idea of a cultural smorgasbord where we all get to sit back and enjoy a buffet of art is a dream that can only exist in the most idealistic of vaccuums.
You are pretending that our scientific knowledge is at 1600 levels to come to your insane conclusions.
You claim that I’m not open for debate, but it’s actually just that there is no debate here. You’re a just printing demonstrable lies on to the internet, for what?
> How do you know?
posed in ignorance (perhaps genuine ignorance, perhaps feigned) above, we (humans) have been measuring gas properties in isolation for 200 years (and more) and have been specifically measuring (and storing as bottled samples) atmospheric gas composition since the start of the Cold War.. seventy odd years or so now.
Much of our high quality environmental data comes from cold war research - ocean tempretures were first mapped at large scale by Scripps in order to use thermoclines to pinpoint submarines and other sounds in water.
In the civilian arena, Cape Grim is of interest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Grim_Air_Archive
https://researchdata.edu.au/cape-grim-air-archive/678420
This and other global references informs us about the changing atmospheric makeup and other experiments inform us about the increase in trapped heat from incoming solar radiation.
That's one problem. But I'm aware that CO2 is not the ONLY danger to the environment. Hopefully you are also aware of that and can discuss the topic beyond only CO2. We obviously wouldn't replace CO2 with methane, right? So let's talk about the environment, not just CO2.
>Mining lithium doesn't require gasoline.
Name one mine that doesn't use gasoline to mine, haul, store, or transport. Good luck.
>The radioactive products decay on short time scale.
At least 3% of the waste from any reactor is extremely harmful for many thousands of years. The other 97% is irrelevant. Why did you bring it up? Seems dishonest.
Citation: https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu...
>Lithium batteries aren't a problem if they did decay.
Sure if you manage to keep them all really far away from each other. High concentrations of anything is a problem. Even a basic Wikipedia search can help you here. Leaked evaporation pools, water contamination, huge amounts of water usage in production, etc.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impacts_of_lit...
Go ahead and keep downvoting. Each downvote proves exactly what I'm saying; it's unacceptable to even discuss better solutions.
In fact, you live better - far better - than anyone in history. It's not even close. It was built by the post-war 'neoliberal' order, on a foundation of human rights and free markets.
For us to quit and complain after all the work our predecessors did, remaining optimistic and working in a much starker situation - after depressions and world wars - would be pathetic abdication of our duties.
What some people are doing is obstructing us from going anywhere. We need to stop acting helpless, stand up for what we believe, fight (peacefully), stop the post-truth nonsense that supports these people, and vote them out of office.
> All human activities, in different degrees, contribute to climate change.
It's kinda true, because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (and ignoring activities that actively reduce climate change, like installing insulation or voting certain people out of office), but meaningless. Riding a bike and riding a private jet both contribute to climate change, but that's a pointless statement.
> Say that you bike to the office everyday. You enjoy your commute, you never develop a heart condition, and in the course of your long prosperous life you have three kids and nine grandchildren, own several dogs and get a bigger house. In other words, your climate footprint all of the sudden is greater than if you had used a polluting car and died of a heart attack when you turned forty.
That's restating the Second Law, in a sense. But we can do all those things, and still prevent climate change by using different technologies.
> We have the knowledge, the technology and the means to live in domes in the vast deserts of this planet, to go to the moon or to live in space habitats anywhere in the solar system.
What do you conclude from that?
I suggest you read this:
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2022.026...
> I think we've already passed the point where anyone can keep up with all the cultural output (music, literature, graphical media) that is released each day.
Good thing that's not necessary for one to benefit from it. I, for one, am happy to benefit from all the medical innovation I can't keep up with.
One is to look at host much its value changes as x goes to x+d, and divide that to d to get an average rate of change from x to x+d. Take the limit as d -> 0 to get the instantaneous rate of change at x.
That gives a rate of change of Limit as d->0 of (F(x+d) - F(x)) / d, which is pretty much the textbook definition of d/dx F(x).
The other way is to look not at the actual value of the change but rather how much of a fraction of F(x) it was. That gives this measure: ((F(x+d)/F(x) - 1) / d. The instantaneous value would be the limit as d -> 0. That limit is of the form 0/0, but using L'Hôpital's rule we can turn it into (using the notation F'(...) for d/dx (F...)) the limit as d -> 0 of F'(x+d) / F(x) which is F'(x) / F(x).
When people talk of growth rate they usually mean this second measure. The first is usually called the rate of change. BTW, note that rate of change and growth rate are related. The growth rate is the rate of change of log(F(x)).
Exponential functions have an exponential rate of change but a constant growth rate. It is that constant growth that makes the concept of a half-life work for things that exponentially decay.
All I can tell you for sure is that perceptions of trends on HN are usually unreliable. You definitely can't judge it by one thread. The Launch HN posts of startups working in climate tech generally get favorable receptions, for example.
The international political system has a long track record of cajoling nations into joining treaties that theoretically are like this.
It's not prisoner's dilemma, because the main property of the PD problem is that parties are prevented from communicating and cooperating with each other. When there's negotiations, transparencency/monitoring, etc, parties can cooperate. If you think international treaty development is like PD, you are due for a for a big optimism update!
Life is hard and always has been, but it's far easier than the lives of our ancestors (on average, of course).
Just look at the people who lived through - or the (200?) million who died in and more who lost everything in - WWII, less than 100 years ago, right after the Great Depression, right after WWI. And they were optimistic and energetic enough to build historically free, peaceful, and prosperous postwar order.
There is far more to do, absolutely. Let's get to work.
How much do you think it’s going to warm?
Finnish has 15 noun cases, but it's probably better thought of as 4+6+5 cases. The first 4 are pretty straightforward, except for the partitive, which is kind of a catch-all case. The middle 6 correspond to certain spatial relationships. Very roughly you can imagine these as {inside, outside} × {unmoving, moving closer, moving further}. Huone = room, huoneessa = in room, huoneen = into (=moving closer to the inside of) room. That kind of stuff. The last 5 have niche, special uses. That's how I mentally imagine them at least, there are a lot of details you only pick up by reading a lot.
The trade-off is that Finnish has virtually no prepositions, which English has a lot of, and which are similarly very confusing for beginners and even intermediate English speakers. There are a few post-positions, but even these are mostly things you can pick up by ear.
Verbs have a similar story. If you've ever learned Latin, Russian or Spanish you'll feel right at home with Finnish verbs, which pack a lot of info into the conjugation, but with the benefit of requiring fewer actual words per sentence.
This might be true, but what exactly are you suggesting?
I do realize HN trends are unreliable. As a few others who replied, it felt peculiarly acute in this thread, but my impression was not based merely on this thread, but on several such 'huh' moments in the past two years. While HN always felt somewhat heterogeneous and still does, compared to 7-10 years ago, to me it feels that there is relatively more science contrarianism or even denialism with regards to climate, vaccination, etc., more subthreads derailing into religion because someone justified some strongly held position upthread using religion and more socially/culturally conservative attitudes. These are things which for lack of a better term I labeled a rightward trend in the USA sense of the word. In my unreliable memory, I remember HN being mainly economically right leaning and culturally left leaning which mirrors the corporate environment which found it much easier and cheaper to gain good will points that way. In retrospect, the pandemic feels kinda like an inflexion point (both HN wide and society wide).
I also have a limited POV into HN, for example I never really looked at the Launch HN threads (for the simple reason that most focus on the USA, at least in early stages, while I am in eastern EU) so I never really got those data points. With no real data and just remembered personal anecdotes is is hard for me to tell if this was merely an illusion or things haven't changed but I have become more aware of these aspects or whether the trend is real. Others in this subthread have proposed explanations for the trend and I think several theories can be found both society wide and HN wide. But while we do have some evidence the trend is real society wide, I thought it worth checking if the it is true HN wide before hypothesising explanations. Also, (compared to FB for example which we know captured a certain cohort and is aging along with it) with HN allowing easy account creation and throwaway accounts I think it is hard to accurately measure how well the HN sample reflects the population of society at large (we do at least know there is a heavy US-centric bias for obvious reasons).
I wish there was a reliable political alignment text classifier I could use to science this.
I am disappointed to see some have interpreted this inquiry on my part as me trying to police the thread.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
Citation: The associated period of massive carbon release into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted from 20,000 to 50,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C.[21]
The hot-models Sabine referred to are in range of 4.8 - 5.6 if I'm not mistaken...
When the price of something increases, energy included, alternatives become more attractive. Oil enjoyed strong price insensitivities for a long time, but those days are sunsetting.
Even China is seeing this with their “lying flat” movement. Dowries for a marriage are averaging USD 60,000(per The Economist). So instead men aren’t dating and aren’t doing the 996.
Russia is seeing it in European nations building LNG infrastructure at their major ports and taking deliveries from overseas. That’s a long term loss of business. And those same European nations are incentivizing their citizens to replace heaters with heatpumps and other means of reducing fossil fuel use.
When prices and costs increase people are incentivized to decide to go with alternatives.
I have not thought or planed t have a lot of machines running.
Before about 1940, the most common method for measuring sea surface temperature was to throw a bucket attached to a rope overboard from a ship, haul it back up, and read the water temperature. The method was far from perfect. Depending on the air temperature, the water temperature could change as the bucket was pulled from the water. (1)
In the late 1970s ... tracking what was happening to Earth temperatures was at a relatively primitive state. Much of the relevant weather station data had not been digitized and what had been, was not widely available. Previous estimates of temperature changes ... had focused on the northern hemisphere, but that obviously missed half the planet. (2) interactive map: (3)
There is analysis showing differences in model temperature variation models and actual data from balloons and satellites since 1979. (4)
Those are few examples how our ability to measure things changes with our developing knowledge.
Rising temperatures is not new phenomena. Greenland ice core project (5) showing that there was about 25 dramatic climate changes in history. Its called Dansgaard–Oeschger event. (6), (7) and shows that for example during Younger Dryas (8) there was dramatic temperature decline and increase in few decades.
Making predictions on data since 70's are fragile and should be constantly reanalyzed.
(1) https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3071/the-r...
(2) https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/history/
(3) https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/station_data_v4_globe/
(4) https://naturalresources.house.gov/uploadedfiles/christytest...
(5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_core_project
(6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard%E2%80%93Oeschger_eve...
(7) https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/2021-11/2%20He...
Is it something like a downvoted comment? I fail to see a downvote button (which I am happy about).
I'm not sure how these two ideas make sense in your head. If you implement a carbon tax and the rich are the greatest contributors as you stated, one would expect them to be hit by the carbon tax as well.
In any case, I personally see an income tax as a strange thing to have in the context of a discussion wherein taxing undesirable behavior is seen as a way of disincentivizing it.
At the very minimum free the working class and lower-middle class from income tax.
I've found HN pretty divided when it comes topics like energy/climate/electric vehicles, immigration and foreign policy.
Before I used to feel bad, now I somewhat expect to be downvoted bringing up anything that doesn't fit someone's worldview.
I lived a decade in Seattle, WA which is a strong blue/liberal state as it goes. Sometimes pretty extreme. Now I am in Florida which is now a solid red state since Trump. It's interesting to see how the thought bubbles and world views have formed.
Yes, the US Constitution gives regulation of interstate commerce to the federal government, but this has been worked around. Lots of states have "use tax" which is an obvious[1] tax on interstate commerce, but they skirt the Constitution by saying they're taxing "use" of the goods purchased within their own state, not the interstate commerce involved. It's possible the AZ law could be written in a way that claims to tax something that happens within the state, while still being for all intents and purposes a tax on interstate commerce. And probably nobody would do anything about it.
[1] The tax is computed 100% based on the money exchanged in interstate commerce, and 0% based on usage.
>That seldom goes well.
We are the richest nation in the world, so calling life "miserable" is hyperbole beyond belief. You talk about this like it's a new problem.
We have been trying to get a carbon tax since literally 1992, but the response is always the type of nonsense your suggesting, which is designed to be feel-good bs.
If we want to stop climate change, we have to change our behavior, period. We could have done that slowly, but we chose to not do it at all.
If you're worried about life being miserable... buckle up.
I'm pretty happy with translation, even with GPT-3.5. I haven't used it for native text generation. Happy to keep in touch :D.
It would be fine if it didn't prevent me from replying. But since it does, it feels exactly like you covering my mouth while you yell in my face.
It surely doesn't make me think that I should vote for solar. If anything it makes me sure that people aren't doing any critical thinking. Aren't interested in scientific debate. And are simply pushing a marketing agenda without discussion. The Nazis did the same thing. I'll take CO2 over a world where we can't speak any day. It inspires me to rally against solar. Surely if it was scientifically sound it would be easy to defend without covering my mouth?
Go ahead and downvote again. It says everything I need to know about YC and HN and the kind of regard that you people have for human life, which is apparently none.
An echo chamber of lies and self serving agenda. Certainly not a place for science. And definitely not for the betterment of the environment. It's disgusting in short.
What I've never heard is an explanation of why some sensible, well-run scandinavian country hasn't already implemented this and brought their emissions down to zero.
If there are simple solutions to this problem then why hasn't some country already implemented them?
But let's take it. So the assumption is that there is an alternative that is better than gasoline. Nuclear is largely dominant on the coasts and gasoline usage is roughly half for goods delivery across the middle of the country where everything is coal powered. So at least for the moment, do you prefer reliance on gasoline or coal for goods delivery?
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/transporta...
Submitters can't change URLs once they've submitted.
It is reasonable to be concerned. But deploying easily-refuted hyperbole makes your (our!) cause MORE likely to be ignored as crackpot nonsense, not less.
Sources:
https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/sweden
https://government.se/government-policy/swedens-carbon-tax/s...
Yet they, in near majority, still stand behind the broad predictions of future climate change - even being aware of the work of Smale and Lorenz .. perhaps it's that 40+ year old understanding of stability, robustness, and the Dzhanibekov effect in which the broad arc of motion is entirely predictable despite wobbles on a minor axis or two.
Normalisation and may other adjustments to data sets are stock in trade operations across all the observational sciences- geophysical mineral exploration, radiometric surveying, radio astronomy, distributed signal aquisition, etc. etc. etc. You'll note for example that NASA et al are out in front about doing such things.
Predictions of trains headed for derailment based on speed, mass, and topography are not refuted by an inability to predict where the centrepiece vase in the dining car comes to rest.
Being pragmatic is not hopelessness. You have to admit what the problems are, and the book does not do that.
On the one hand, that sounds true.
On the other hand, everybody who acts is an individual. States and countries don't act on their own, they are driven by acts of individuals.
So, what's the right framing? Maybe that we need society-level changes, driven by individuals.
From history we know, how terrified population is easier to manipulate by those who offer easy solutions.
The physics is sound. The grasp of physics many dissenters have is not.
And yes, imagine what this would look like at $20 a gallon :/
Certainly 'self-sufficient' is inaccurate, given the reliance on external inputs.
If other nation states are also not self-sufficient for fissionable materials, and/or other fuel types, then I would also not call them self-sufficient on power generation.
Sure, there are degrees of reliance on providers of fuel types, but no need to muddy the waters about self-sufficiency. (f.e. Australia could be self-sufficient on solar, wind, coal, fission, I suspect - at least in terms of raw materials.)
Also the water comes out of the tap at like 35-38°, unheated. I've had plants die when watering them with this. At this rate I'm going to have to install some sort of water cooler too.
Never would I take a stance at such a low percentage - it isn't representative.
Even after millions of years, it isn't a significant portion of what climate is and was.
We're informed by past conditions and responses - but the most recent conditions (climatic parameters steady state wrt decadal means for past several thousand years + most recent hundred years of atmospheric change) are what matters now wrt AGW.
So everyone is just pushing half solutions and talking a lot. Politicians will never go for hard solutions, especially when everyone is satisfied by talking about magic pills like "green deal", "more renewables" or (from current top comment) "climate advocacy" and "citizen engagement".
People just love talking. And feeling good about it.
Redo those calculations as if the paradox has weight and see where you end up.