17 ms·

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

367 points by herbertlui 11y ago

buckbova 11y ago
If I believe your number: > First - do you believe it is acceptable that 7 million people die every year from pollution? Answer this, how many of that 7 million year over year die from carbon dioxide? This is the major issue with deniers. Carbon dioxide != pollution. Edit: I don't know anyone not in favor of clean energy. I know plenty who warn of government overreaching using climate change scare tactics. You want to take a stance on pollution, then do that. Don't rant about climate change deniers.
- Pharaoh2 11y ago
  So you are ok with 1* million(x) CO2 pollution deaths per year and 6 million(y) other pollution death per year? *- Move the x as you want, and set y as (7 - x) million.
- Oletros 11y ago
  You're mixing pollution with green house gases
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    I think it's a valid point since the EPA labels CO2 as pollution. [EDIT] Since I'm getting so many down votes, thought I'd link the EPA calling CO2 pollution. http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan
- antod 11y ago
  > Carbon dioxide != pollution It's what plants crave!
- tremols 11y ago
  You americans must go beyond the false dichotomy of republicans and democrats.. its just two different ways of getting your tax money, weapons and staged wars or bureaucracy. Neither gives a damn about an african genocide to lower the price of chocolate.
ChrisArgyle 11y ago
tl;dr Even climate change deniers must face that fossil fuels are polluting our air and water and are eventually going to run out. Investing in clean energy is just pragmatic and doesn't make you a tax-and-spend liberal.
- tremols 11y ago
  the lie was not neccesary. climate change deniers are worried about the government getting its nose into everything and destroying a country to favour some bankers. if you started with the right arguments like arnold the story would be different.. and its not late.
  - astrodust 11y ago
    Come on man. Not everything is a conspiracy of bankers.
vvanders 11y ago
I was kinda hoping there would be a second message down the left side: http://www.wired.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger/ http://www.wired.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger/
thieving_magpie 11y ago
Regarding the third question, it's a nice analogy there but is he suggesting that electric power is predominantly clean? Across the US, 37.4% of our electric power comes from coal. I don't want to detract from the overall message because it is clear and accurate but I think it's important to think about how electric power is currently generated. Coal statistic pulled from: http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/egrid2012_summarytables_0.pdf http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/...
- konspence 11y ago
  In the first and second question he addresses pollution and coal. I think it's safe to assume he means an electric car powered by renewable energy.
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  Coal as a source of our electric power has plummeted in a decade, being taken up mostly by natural gas (but also in small part by solar/wind). Additionally, there is no change needed for an end consumer if the power they use is switched to a different source, whereas to switch a fuel for cars means switching cars. The drive to get people on electric cars means that switching everything off of fossil fuels is a matter of switching the power plants (which we've seen is something that can be done quickly as with coal->natural gas).
  - redblacktree 11y ago
    I would be very interested in an all-electric minivan with enough range for my frequent 600-mile trips to my wife's home town. Sadly, this does not yet exist.
    - lmm 11y ago
      You make a 10-hour-each-way trip frequently? Man, stop throwing away your life like that. Downsize your house, take a pay cut, do whatever it is you have to to move somewhere closer. I struggle to even begin to imagine the misery of what you're doing.
xlm1717 11y ago
Energy in general doesn't look like a good investment in the near future.
chejazi 11y ago
Unrelated: Facebook notes look good. I wonder if it's a direct competitor to to Medium / Svbtle.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago
  You mean placing text in a rectangle? Looks like it.
  - chejazi 11y ago
    Reading this made me realize: it looks good read because there are no ads on the page. It's crazy how obtrusive ads are these days..
- hn9780470248775 11y ago
  Jarringly different in style than the rest of the site.
nmridul 11y ago
The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue. There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided. If pollution was the prime focus from day one, then more push would have been given to renewable. Maybe, Arnold is able to bring more people to think in this direction.
- amalag 11y ago
  I agree with this. Amazing that we need AS to give people a dose of wisdom. I have to agree with everything he said. I am not convinced about CO2 causing global warming but I am 100% ok with our society pushing away from coal, gasoline and fracking.
  - rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
    If only it were that easy. With energy use expected to rise and the Jevon's Paradox sure to annihilate any environmental benefits from increased efficiency, we will have to make some unfortunate choices about energy sources. Coal is very very dirty, beyond CO2, we're talking sulfur and mercury poisoning. Fracking is actually quite safe but notoriously under regulated. Nuclear is clean and safe but a generation raised on Homer Simpson and Chernobyl footage means they'll never accept it. Even green tech is dirty. Refining rare earths is environmentally disasterous (gotta rip those high valence electrons somehow) and battery recycling in Nigeria has created a huge spike in lead poisoning cases and deaths. Fighting climate change is the biggest conflict in the history in humanity. Our species is our enemy and our ally, and we are tasked between holding onto the plummeting biodiversity we have on this day, December 7, 2015, or complete and utter extinction. It won't be easy, and we will all have to make choices we don't like.
  - Daishiman 11y ago
    "I am not convinced about CO2 causing global warming" Honestly, how convinced you are about it is only relevant because economic interests have planted a seed of doubt about it. Your position to question the science on climate change is about as good as it is on a myriad other issues which no one seems keen on questioning. If there weren't a lobby doing it, your uncertainty would be as much as what qualified experts have.
j-l- 11y ago
I really wonder. So much money and freedom was spent and 7 millions of people are still dying? Smart choice would be Termination, not Terminator.
saosebastiao 11y ago
Door 2 is also likely fatal. Most electric motors produce ozone :)
- srameshc 11y ago
  I just found this link http://www.science20.com/news_articles/solving_ozone_problem_caused_electric_cars-78149 http://www.science20.com/news_articles/solving_ozone_problem... . I am sure this will be a problem for many years but it will be addressed. The problem on the other hand is the pollutants from automobiles. If someone is driving a car in New Delhi with windows down for few hours, can feel the grease from engine fumes on face and nostrils. Clean your nose and that is when you realize how terrible the traffic is. The problem is not with people who are driving the cars. There are pedestrians and people living off streets who breath that air all day. It scares me to see a child breath that air as I am tend to fall sick with throat ruptured even after a day on the road inside a car. That would hopefully change around the world if we have electric vehicles.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  You are most certainly technically incorrect, which is the worst kind of incorrect. It would take very very high levels of ozone to be anywhere near as promptly fatal as carbon monoxide poisoning from running a gasoline powered car inside a closed garage. As far as I know, no one commits suicide by running an electric motor in a closed room. Ozone causes oxidative damage to tissues, including the delicate tissues of your lungs. Carbon monoxide shuts down the oxygen carrying function your hemoglobin. You can be killed by unnoticeable levels of carbon monoxide. It's highly unlikely you won't be able to sense dangerous levels of ozone. In fact, it's likely to be unpleasant enough to drive you from the room. Whereas CO makes you feel sleepy as you slip down to unconsciousness forever. (EDIT: That said, ozone in rather small amounts can be quite damaging to long term health.)
  - saosebastiao 11y ago
    It is plainly obvious that CO and even CO2 from IC engines is drastically more fatal than anything coming out of an electric motor...I thought the trolling attempt was transparent, but apparently not. If I really wanted to provide a counter to the article, pollution from battery manufacturing is far more concerning than ozone (which has a half life measured in days) from brushed electric motors. And even that appears to be far less of a problem than the carbon economy. That being said, ozone can be fatal over the long term, and researchers regularly segment pollution death estimates to include ozone pollution [1]. [1] http://www.iop.org/news/13/jul/page_60518.html http://www.iop.org/news/13/jul/page_60518.html
merpnderp 11y ago
I like that he makes it more about the economics of saving lives, which should be the primary argument. But that is a tricky problem since we have 4 million a year dying from indoor cooking smoke, and millions more from other various aspects of extreme poverty. Most of which would be a greater ameliorated by cheap coal plants. Cheap coals plants are horrible polluters, but they are cheap, aren't as bad as indoor pollution, and allow countries to pull themselves out of abject poverty, thus saving lives immediately by fertilizing crops, making cheap concrete, powering factories, all the things a richer society needs.
- justicezyx 11y ago
  Typical logical flaw of applying the argument to various other argually retard comparison. The comparison here is between clean energy and fossil fuel. It has little to do with cooking, or extreme poverty.
- pavlov 11y ago
  With too much reliance on cheap coal for economic growth, you end up here: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-pollution-warning-severe-smog-china http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-pollution-... China's use of coal has probably peaked. Any developing country would do well to follow China's lead and build renewables rather than coal, whatever its short-term advantages.
  - merpnderp 11y ago
    I agree, coal is bad and we need cheaper more reliable wind/solar. But people are dying today and coal is available today. To see some of the issues involved with running and maintaining wind power on large scales, this is a great article showing China's struggles. http://www.economist.com/news/china/21660164-though-wind-generation-growing-fast-much-remains-wrong-industry-need-weatherman?zid=313&ah=fe2aac0b11adef572d67aed9273b6e55 http://www.economist.com/news/china/21660164-though-wind-gen...
  - barney54 11y ago
    Developing countries are following China's example because it works. Renewables such as solar and wind are expensive and can't keep the lights on. People in developing countries want "real electricity, not fake electricity" as villagers in Dharnai, India told the Chief Minister of Bihar state when he came to inaugurate a solar microgrid. (subscription required) http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477 http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477 Yes, Beijing's air quality is bad, but you can put pollution control systems on power plants and China is doing exactly that. A very large problem for Beijing is uncontrolled pollution from automobiles, scooters, trucks and other small engines. The point about coal is that it keeps the lights on and it is affordable. That matters a huge amount when you don't have electricity.
Claudus 11y ago
1. "WHO estimates indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million deaths in 2012 in households cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves." If the majority of the "7 million" die from indoor cooking, It seems like it would be better to focus our resources on developing infrastructure in SE Asia so that every household has electricity and modern cooking appliances.
- Tepix 11y ago
  It's relatively easy to fix indoor cooking, but it's hard to fix CO2 once it's out there.
steven2012 11y ago
I absolutely don't believe that human-created CO2 emissions cause global warming. However, I consider myself a staunch environmentalist. I believe we should be doing whatever we can to control pollution. It sickens me that factories pump out pollution, that we can barely eat fish anymore because of all the garbage and poisons we pump into our oceans. I think we need very strict controls on every form of pollution as well as garbage and creating plastic waste (including microplastic particles in our oceans), although I do believe CO2 pollution is on the bottom of the scale in terms of importance. I believe that fines for factories that pollute the environment should be material, ie. very heavy relative to yearly revenues. Personally, I do my best to ensure that I create as little waste as possible, and that I do my part in terms of recycling, composting, etc. So I consider myself an environmentalist, I just don't believe that global warming is caused by human activity, and CO2 pollution is the least critical of the pollutions.
- kazinator 11y ago
  All of the surrounding doublespeak is deplorable. We are expected to treat these all these terms as being synonymous: "climate change", "global warming", "human-created CO2 emissions". If you deny one of these, you deny them all.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Can you explain your lack of belief when 97% of climate scientists (there's conflicting data on this; some reports show as high as 99%) agree that human activity is causing global warming? EDIT: That's not rhetorical. I'll entertain any logical reasoning you have as to why your reasoning is superior to those educated and practicing the subject daily.
  - swagv 11y ago
    He has infinite wisdom that failed the 97% of the scientific researchers who make it their profession to review this stuff.
  - metamet 11y ago
    Maybe they forgot a keyword? It certainly isn't the sole cause of global warming/climate change, but it is real. CO2 in the atmosphere--what's historically known as the greenhouse effect--leads to earth's warming. CO2 emissions are also undeniably connected to the the greenhouse effect, which we clearly have a role to play in. That's science that no one disputes. But somehow people come out of the woodwork as climate change denialists. It doesn't really make sense unless seen through a political lens, since politics is antithetical to science in a lot of ways.
gsibble 11y ago
Where does the 7 million figure come from?
- woodchuck64 11y ago
  http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollut...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
- davidw 11y ago
  > some land Which potentially includes lots of coastal areas, like, say, New York, large portions of Bangladesh, and a few entire island nations. That's a pretty high cost. But the linked post is politics, so I'm flagging it in any case.
- tootie 11y ago
  That's not enough? Most major cities are coastal. We'd lose Hong Kong, New York, most of Holland. We'd also see more extreme weather in the form of powerful hurricanes and droughts. Water and food supplies start to disappear which will inevitably lead to conflict and war over resources. Then you've got the medium-term horizon of about 1000 years when the ocean can no longer sustain phytoplankton and oxygen levels drop to the point that most air-breathing animals will die off.
benten10 11y ago
Ohh man, does Hackernews bring out all the tinfoiled gentlemen from nuclear apocalypse bunkers once in a while ! See: comments here.
rybosome 11y ago
When speaking with people who do not agree with me on the correctness or urgency of global warming, this is the argument I traditionally make: let's examine the worst-case scenarios. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the science, taking it seriously is a logical choice. The plausible worst-case scenario of charging ahead with measures to combat climate change isn't actually that bad, not to mention the ancillary benefits outlined by Schwarzenegger. Aggressively stimulating the renewables economy would be a death knell for the fossil-fuel industry, which could harm the overall economy (though renewables would also contribute positively). It would be disruptive to sections of the country that are dependent upon the fossil-fuel industry (coal country in Kentucky, for instance), which would be very hard on the people living there. This is certainly bad and should not be done lightly, but it's hardly apocalyptic. The plausible worst-case scenario of failing to address climate change is _really_ bad, ranging from property destruction all the way to civilizational collapse or even potentially human extinction[1]. In a world with nuclear weapons, large-scale destabilization resulting from famine, drought and loss of land to flooding is a very dangerous thing. The Earth is the only home we have, why even flirt with the possibility of disrupting our currently livable climate? ...and that argument doesn't even take the scientific consensus on the existence of human-cased global warming into account. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effec...
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  http://www.climateactionreserve.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/climatesummit.jpg http://www.climateactionreserve.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/...
- rudolf0 11y ago
  Exactly. Even if anthropogenic global warming is somehow completely not real, the expected value of acting as if it were real is much much greater. It's kind of like Pascal's wager, except with different probabilities. And millions of scientists.
- DougWebb 11y ago
  I think the drawback to your argument is that you're not considering all scenarios. One "worst-case" I can think of is that we charge ahead with measures to combat climate change, harming big parts of the economy in the process, and wind up with the famine, drought, and flooding anyway because we didn't charge ahead with the right measures. It's extremely important to determine whether the global warming is caused by us or not, and whether or not we can alter global warming whether we caused it or not. If it's mostly natural (and we know the earth has gone through much warmer periods long before we showed up) then the measures we need to take involve protecting our coastal cities and our food and energy supplies. If it's mostly caused by us, then we need to stop doing what's causing it, and probably need to protect our coastal cities and food and energy supplies anyway.
kafkaesq 11y ago
There are two doors. Behind Door Number One is a completely sealed room, with a regular, gasoline-fueled car. Behind Door Number Two is an identical, completely sealed room, with an electric car. Both engines are running full blast. I want you to pick a door to open, and enter the room and shut the door behind you. You have to stay in the room you choose for one hour. You cannot turn off the engine. You do not get a gas mask. I'm guessing you chose the Door Number Two, with the electric car, right? Door number one is a fatal choice - who would ever want to breathe those fumes? This is the choice the world is making right now. The choices aren't that simple, Arnold, and the analogy you're making isn't valid, either. Does he not understand that that "clean" electric car requires an energy grid to run on? And that this grid is very far from "clean", and will be for quite some time? And that the process of creating (and decomissioning) electric cars is very far from environmentally harmless, also? I'm not saying that there's no positive trade-off in favor of electric cars; most likely there is. But fear-driven arguments (even if pointed in the "right" direction) don't help much, and have a similar effect on the brain as carbon monoxide, over time.
- astrodust 11y ago
  The point here is it's easier to control emissions at large-scale power generation plants than it is on millions of individual vehicles. How many cars would fail an inspection if exposed to one? The same cannot be said about power plants. There's also the renewable angle. Surplus wind power, as experienced in Spain, would basically provide free power for recharging vehicles overnight. You cannot do this with gasoline. The sealed room is also a way of presenting what we're doing to our climate, that the automobile emissions don't just go "into the air", but become part of the environment.
  - kafkaesq 11y ago
    I don't dispute the electric cars are, overall, clean. Just that the image that Arnold is promoting with his "Gedankenexperiment", per my quote above (that electric cars are somehow 100% clean and environmentally harmless) is simply false, anti-intellectual, and unscientific.
joshuaheard 11y ago
"California has some of the most revolutionary environmental laws in the United States, we get 40% of our power from renewables, and we are 40% more energy efficient than the rest of the country." California also has the second highest energy costs in the continental United States. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...
- magicalist 11y ago
  From that chart it appears a large reason for that is they charge Commercial customers the same rates as Residential ones, unlike most states. Also worth considering is economic activity per unit energy, where California is placed third in efficiency, so it looks like those energy prices are doing fine. http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/pdf/table6.pdf http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/pdf/...
morsch 11y ago
If it takes Arnold Schwarzenegger and a frankly preposterous "sealed room" analogy in order to convince people to slow down on emissions, and recasting the emissions issue as a pollution issue -- as if there was a difference -- in order for them to safe face, so be it. Of course those electric cars still virtually emit CO2^Wpollution when you refuel them using coal-generated power, so I guess we can go back to going back and forth about the pros and cons of nuclear energy now.
InclinedPlane 11y ago
I believe that man-made CO2 emissions likely have a significant impact on the climate, and we should do something about it, but even so the issue is a very complex one and its politicization hasn't helped. Here's why it's not so easy: 1. The data is crap. What you need is average temperatures and other data (humidity, pressure, cloud cover, albedo, etc.) over the entire Earth down to a fairly small scale. What we have is a mismash of horribly calibrated weather station data near cities combined with limited satellite data and various proxies, all of which has to be massaged a great deal to make it usable. Sea level data has the same sort of problems, nearly impossible to properly calibrate to sufficient precision. The fact that people have poured tons of effort into collecting and attempting to calibrate data doesn't mean the data is actually very good. 2. The models are also crap. A century ago Svante Arrhenius came up with the greenhouse effect theory and did some back of the envelope calculations on its magnitude, coming up with a figure of climate sensitivity of about 2 deg. C per CO2 doubling. Today all of our vaunted climate modelling hasn't managed to come up with a more accurate figure than that. Current estimates are still "maybe 2 deg. C per doubling, with some enormous error bars". Modern models have several problems. The conceit is that climate models are de novo elaborations from first principles and are as rock solid as our understanding of the laws of physics. In practice all climate models contain multiple "empirically determined" fudge factors. They fit the data, they don't predict it. And that's assuming we even had enough good data to really run good prediction checks, which is dubious at best. 3. The climatology scientific community is very problematic. There is little indication of sufficient rigor, and criticizing results is an easy way to get effectively excommunicated from the community. Take, for example, the famed "hockey stick" paper, which has now been thoroughly discredited, but all of the discrediting happened effectively "behind the scenes" and quietly. Science works best when it's open and boisterous. It's surprising that climatology isn't in even worse state given how insular and political it is. 4. Even if we assumed that man-made carbon emissions were going to cause a huge degree of global warming there is still a huge gap between that fact and figuring out what to do about it, which many folks simply skip over. The actual damage (to the biosphere and to human activities) is just as difficult to determine as the climate is to predict. The right course of action to take depends a great deal on lots of different factors: sociological, technological, and economic. Especially since a lot of the CO2 production of the 21st century will come from economies that are climbing out of poverty and into affluence. It may well be the smartest choice to simply continue polluting until the world is richer and more technologically advanced and then consider mitigation strategies. 4a. CO2 emissions may not be, and likely is not, the most important pollution issue everywhere in the world currently. But it gets the most attention and sometimes that makes it more difficult to get traction on other issues. Meanwhile, there really are serious "climate change denialists" and some of the folks on that side are absolutely terrible. Canadian PM Harper banned government scientists from talking to the press, for example. But the answer to science being perverted for political reasons isn't to simply pervert it in the opposite direction to compensate. It's just a complete shit-show across the board and I'm not happy with how any of it is being handled at either the level of scientific inquiry or public policy.
pippy 11y ago
I really enjoy when people take a fresh perspective on things. Climate change has been cited by Pew Research Center as the top greatest threat, and putting a different spin on things will always be nice to try and convince people. The top reason to reduce carbon emissions is not to reduce global toxicity and prevent climate change. Saving the planet is a bonus. Energy independence creates a stable geo political environment, almost all wars have a root cause of fighting over resources. There's little point in saving the planet if we're going to kill ourselves by the time comes when need to save it.
peterdelahunty 11y ago
http://www.cowspiracy.com/ http://www.cowspiracy.com/
- twiceaday 11y ago
  > the film that environmental organizations don't want you to see! I despise this type of rhetoric.
msvan 11y ago
I wonder why, in the debate about fossil fuels, we never bring up the point that oil has been the cause of a lot of issues in the Middle East. Many guns and bombs have gone off in order to get to the Middle Eastern oil, and much of the funding behind ISIS comes from oil money in Saudi Arabia. Oil has had a pretty steep moral price tag.
ejcx 11y ago
Lots of very partisan folks here. My mother is an avid believer that climate change is a hoax and we don't need to take care of the planet. She says 'Mother earth knows how to take care of herself', but she deeply respects Arnold as a businessman, politician, and self-made man. This is the type of thing that can reach her and change people in her boat's way of thinking. Way to go Arnold.
calinet6 11y ago
Kind of proud that this man signed my diploma.

367 points by herbertlui 11y ago

If I believe your number: > First - do you believe it is acceptable that 7 million people die every year from pollution? Answer this, how many of that 7 million year over year die from carbon dioxide? This is the major issue with deniers. Carbon dioxide != pollution. Edit: I don't know anyone not in favor of clean energy. I know plenty who warn of government overreaching using climate change scare tactics. You want to take a stance on pollution, then do that. Don't rant about climate change deniers.

Pharaoh2 11y ago
So you are ok with 1* million(x) CO2 pollution deaths per year and 6 million(y) other pollution death per year? *- Move the x as you want, and set y as (7 - x) million.
Oletros 11y ago
You're mixing pollution with green house gases
- merpnderp 11y ago
  I think it's a valid point since the EPA labels CO2 as pollution. [EDIT] Since I'm getting so many down votes, thought I'd link the EPA calling CO2 pollution. http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan
antod 11y ago
> Carbon dioxide != pollution It's what plants crave!
tremols 11y ago
You americans must go beyond the false dichotomy of republicans and democrats.. its just two different ways of getting your tax money, weapons and staged wars or bureaucracy. Neither gives a damn about an african genocide to lower the price of chocolate.

ChrisArgyle 11y ago

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

tremols 11y ago
the lie was not neccesary. climate change deniers are worried about the government getting its nose into everything and destroying a country to favour some bankers. if you started with the right arguments like arnold the story would be different.. and its not late.
- astrodust 11y ago
  Come on man. Not everything is a conspiracy of bankers.

vvanders 11y ago

I was kinda hoping there would be a second message down the left side: http://www.wired.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger/ http://www.wired.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger/

thieving_magpie 11y ago

Regarding the third question, it's a nice analogy there but is he suggesting that electric power is predominantly clean? Across the US, 37.4% of our electric power comes from coal. I don't want to detract from the overall message because it is clear and accurate but I think it's important to think about how electric power is currently generated. Coal statistic pulled from: http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/egrid2012_summarytables_0.pdf http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/...

konspence 11y ago
In the first and second question he addresses pollution and coal. I think it's safe to assume he means an electric car powered by renewable energy.
mmanfrin 11y ago
Coal as a source of our electric power has plummeted in a decade, being taken up mostly by natural gas (but also in small part by solar/wind). Additionally, there is no change needed for an end consumer if the power they use is switched to a different source, whereas to switch a fuel for cars means switching cars. The drive to get people on electric cars means that switching everything off of fossil fuels is a matter of switching the power plants (which we've seen is something that can be done quickly as with coal->natural gas).
- redblacktree 11y ago
  I would be very interested in an all-electric minivan with enough range for my frequent 600-mile trips to my wife's home town. Sadly, this does not yet exist.
  - lmm 11y ago
    You make a 10-hour-each-way trip frequently? Man, stop throwing away your life like that. Downsize your house, take a pay cut, do whatever it is you have to to move somewhere closer. I struggle to even begin to imagine the misery of what you're doing.

xlm1717 11y ago

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

chejazi 11y ago

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

jsprogrammer 11y ago
You mean placing text in a rectangle? Looks like it.
- chejazi 11y ago
  Reading this made me realize: it looks good read because there are no ads on the page. It's crazy how obtrusive ads are these days..
hn9780470248775 11y ago
Jarringly different in style than the rest of the site.

nmridul 11y ago

The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue. There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided. If pollution was the prime focus from day one, then more push would have been given to renewable. Maybe, Arnold is able to bring more people to think in this direction.

amalag 11y ago
I agree with this. Amazing that we need AS to give people a dose of wisdom. I have to agree with everything he said. I am not convinced about CO2 causing global warming but I am 100% ok with our society pushing away from coal, gasoline and fracking.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
  If only it were that easy. With energy use expected to rise and the Jevon's Paradox sure to annihilate any environmental benefits from increased efficiency, we will have to make some unfortunate choices about energy sources. Coal is very very dirty, beyond CO2, we're talking sulfur and mercury poisoning. Fracking is actually quite safe but notoriously under regulated. Nuclear is clean and safe but a generation raised on Homer Simpson and Chernobyl footage means they'll never accept it. Even green tech is dirty. Refining rare earths is environmentally disasterous (gotta rip those high valence electrons somehow) and battery recycling in Nigeria has created a huge spike in lead poisoning cases and deaths. Fighting climate change is the biggest conflict in the history in humanity. Our species is our enemy and our ally, and we are tasked between holding onto the plummeting biodiversity we have on this day, December 7, 2015, or complete and utter extinction. It won't be easy, and we will all have to make choices we don't like.
- Daishiman 11y ago
  "I am not convinced about CO2 causing global warming" Honestly, how convinced you are about it is only relevant because economic interests have planted a seed of doubt about it. Your position to question the science on climate change is about as good as it is on a myriad other issues which no one seems keen on questioning. If there weren't a lobby doing it, your uncertainty would be as much as what qualified experts have.

j-l- 11y ago

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

saosebastiao 11y ago

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

srameshc 11y ago
I just found this link http://www.science20.com/news_articles/solving_ozone_problem_caused_electric_cars-78149 http://www.science20.com/news_articles/solving_ozone_problem... . I am sure this will be a problem for many years but it will be addressed. The problem on the other hand is the pollutants from automobiles. If someone is driving a car in New Delhi with windows down for few hours, can feel the grease from engine fumes on face and nostrils. Clean your nose and that is when you realize how terrible the traffic is. The problem is not with people who are driving the cars. There are pedestrians and people living off streets who breath that air all day. It scares me to see a child breath that air as I am tend to fall sick with throat ruptured even after a day on the road inside a car. That would hopefully change around the world if we have electric vehicles.
stcredzero 11y ago
You are most certainly technically incorrect, which is the worst kind of incorrect. It would take very very high levels of ozone to be anywhere near as promptly fatal as carbon monoxide poisoning from running a gasoline powered car inside a closed garage. As far as I know, no one commits suicide by running an electric motor in a closed room. Ozone causes oxidative damage to tissues, including the delicate tissues of your lungs. Carbon monoxide shuts down the oxygen carrying function your hemoglobin. You can be killed by unnoticeable levels of carbon monoxide. It's highly unlikely you won't be able to sense dangerous levels of ozone. In fact, it's likely to be unpleasant enough to drive you from the room. Whereas CO makes you feel sleepy as you slip down to unconsciousness forever. (EDIT: That said, ozone in rather small amounts can be quite damaging to long term health.)
- saosebastiao 11y ago
  It is plainly obvious that CO and even CO2 from IC engines is drastically more fatal than anything coming out of an electric motor...I thought the trolling attempt was transparent, but apparently not. If I really wanted to provide a counter to the article, pollution from battery manufacturing is far more concerning than ozone (which has a half life measured in days) from brushed electric motors. And even that appears to be far less of a problem than the carbon economy. That being said, ozone can be fatal over the long term, and researchers regularly segment pollution death estimates to include ozone pollution [1]. [1] http://www.iop.org/news/13/jul/page_60518.html http://www.iop.org/news/13/jul/page_60518.html

merpnderp 11y ago

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

justicezyx 11y ago
Typical logical flaw of applying the argument to various other argually retard comparison. The comparison here is between clean energy and fossil fuel. It has little to do with cooking, or extreme poverty.
pavlov 11y ago
With too much reliance on cheap coal for economic growth, you end up here: http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-pollution-warning-severe-smog-china http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-pollution-... China's use of coal has probably peaked. Any developing country would do well to follow China's lead and build renewables rather than coal, whatever its short-term advantages.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  I agree, coal is bad and we need cheaper more reliable wind/solar. But people are dying today and coal is available today. To see some of the issues involved with running and maintaining wind power on large scales, this is a great article showing China's struggles. http://www.economist.com/news/china/21660164-though-wind-generation-growing-fast-much-remains-wrong-industry-need-weatherman?zid=313&ah=fe2aac0b11adef572d67aed9273b6e55 http://www.economist.com/news/china/21660164-though-wind-gen...
- barney54 11y ago
  Developing countries are following China's example because it works. Renewables such as solar and wind are expensive and can't keep the lights on. People in developing countries want "real electricity, not fake electricity" as villagers in Dharnai, India told the Chief Minister of Bihar state when he came to inaugurate a solar microgrid. (subscription required) http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477 http://www.eenews.net/climatewire/stories/1060026477 Yes, Beijing's air quality is bad, but you can put pollution control systems on power plants and China is doing exactly that. A very large problem for Beijing is uncontrolled pollution from automobiles, scooters, trucks and other small engines. The point about coal is that it keeps the lights on and it is affordable. That matters a huge amount when you don't have electricity.

Claudus 11y ago

1. "WHO estimates indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million deaths in 2012 in households cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves." If the majority of the "7 million" die from indoor cooking, It seems like it would be better to focus our resources on developing infrastructure in SE Asia so that every household has electricity and modern cooking appliances.

Tepix 11y ago
It's relatively easy to fix indoor cooking, but it's hard to fix CO2 once it's out there.

steven2012 11y ago

I absolutely don't believe that human-created CO2 emissions cause global warming. However, I consider myself a staunch environmentalist. I believe we should be doing whatever we can to control pollution. It sickens me that factories pump out pollution, that we can barely eat fish anymore because of all the garbage and poisons we pump into our oceans. I think we need very strict controls on every form of pollution as well as garbage and creating plastic waste (including microplastic particles in our oceans), although I do believe CO2 pollution is on the bottom of the scale in terms of importance. I believe that fines for factories that pollute the environment should be material, ie. very heavy relative to yearly revenues. Personally, I do my best to ensure that I create as little waste as possible, and that I do my part in terms of recycling, composting, etc. So I consider myself an environmentalist, I just don't believe that global warming is caused by human activity, and CO2 pollution is the least critical of the pollutions.

kazinator 11y ago
All of the surrounding doublespeak is deplorable. We are expected to treat these all these terms as being synonymous: "climate change", "global warming", "human-created CO2 emissions". If you deny one of these, you deny them all.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
Can you explain your lack of belief when 97% of climate scientists (there's conflicting data on this; some reports show as high as 99%) agree that human activity is causing global warming? EDIT: That's not rhetorical. I'll entertain any logical reasoning you have as to why your reasoning is superior to those educated and practicing the subject daily.
- swagv 11y ago
  He has infinite wisdom that failed the 97% of the scientific researchers who make it their profession to review this stuff.
- metamet 11y ago
  Maybe they forgot a keyword? It certainly isn't the sole cause of global warming/climate change, but it is real. CO2 in the atmosphere--what's historically known as the greenhouse effect--leads to earth's warming. CO2 emissions are also undeniably connected to the the greenhouse effect, which we clearly have a role to play in. That's science that no one disputes. But somehow people come out of the woodwork as climate change denialists. It doesn't really make sense unless seen through a political lens, since politics is antithetical to science in a lot of ways.

gsibble 11y ago

Where does the 7 million figure come from?

woodchuck64 11y ago
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollut...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

davidw 11y ago
> some land Which potentially includes lots of coastal areas, like, say, New York, large portions of Bangladesh, and a few entire island nations. That's a pretty high cost. But the linked post is politics, so I'm flagging it in any case.
tootie 11y ago
That's not enough? Most major cities are coastal. We'd lose Hong Kong, New York, most of Holland. We'd also see more extreme weather in the form of powerful hurricanes and droughts. Water and food supplies start to disappear which will inevitably lead to conflict and war over resources. Then you've got the medium-term horizon of about 1000 years when the ocean can no longer sustain phytoplankton and oxygen levels drop to the point that most air-breathing animals will die off.

benten10 11y ago

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

rybosome 11y ago

When speaking with people who do not agree with me on the correctness or urgency of global warming, this is the argument I traditionally make: let's examine the worst-case scenarios. Regardless of whether or not you agree with the science, taking it seriously is a logical choice. The plausible worst-case scenario of charging ahead with measures to combat climate change isn't actually that bad, not to mention the ancillary benefits outlined by Schwarzenegger. Aggressively stimulating the renewables economy would be a death knell for the fossil-fuel industry, which could harm the overall economy (though renewables would also contribute positively). It would be disruptive to sections of the country that are dependent upon the fossil-fuel industry (coal country in Kentucky, for instance), which would be very hard on the people living there. This is certainly bad and should not be done lightly, but it's hardly apocalyptic. The plausible worst-case scenario of failing to address climate change is _really_ bad, ranging from property destruction all the way to civilizational collapse or even potentially human extinction[1]. In a world with nuclear weapons, large-scale destabilization resulting from famine, drought and loss of land to flooding is a very dangerous thing. The Earth is the only home we have, why even flirt with the possibility of disrupting our currently livable climate? ...and that argument doesn't even take the scientific consensus on the existence of human-cased global warming into account. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effec...

toomuchtodo 11y ago
http://www.climateactionreserve.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/climatesummit.jpg http://www.climateactionreserve.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/...
rudolf0 11y ago
Exactly. Even if anthropogenic global warming is somehow completely not real, the expected value of acting as if it were real is much much greater. It's kind of like Pascal's wager, except with different probabilities. And millions of scientists.
DougWebb 11y ago
I think the drawback to your argument is that you're not considering all scenarios. One "worst-case" I can think of is that we charge ahead with measures to combat climate change, harming big parts of the economy in the process, and wind up with the famine, drought, and flooding anyway because we didn't charge ahead with the right measures. It's extremely important to determine whether the global warming is caused by us or not, and whether or not we can alter global warming whether we caused it or not. If it's mostly natural (and we know the earth has gone through much warmer periods long before we showed up) then the measures we need to take involve protecting our coastal cities and our food and energy supplies. If it's mostly caused by us, then we need to stop doing what's causing it, and probably need to protect our coastal cities and food and energy supplies anyway.

kafkaesq 11y ago

There are two doors. Behind Door Number One is a completely sealed room, with a regular, gasoline-fueled car. Behind Door Number Two is an identical, completely sealed room, with an electric car. Both engines are running full blast. I want you to pick a door to open, and enter the room and shut the door behind you. You have to stay in the room you choose for one hour. You cannot turn off the engine. You do not get a gas mask. I'm guessing you chose the Door Number Two, with the electric car, right? Door number one is a fatal choice - who would ever want to breathe those fumes? This is the choice the world is making right now. The choices aren't that simple, Arnold, and the analogy you're making isn't valid, either. Does he not understand that that "clean" electric car requires an energy grid to run on? And that this grid is very far from "clean", and will be for quite some time? And that the process of creating (and decomissioning) electric cars is very far from environmentally harmless, also? I'm not saying that there's no positive trade-off in favor of electric cars; most likely there is. But fear-driven arguments (even if pointed in the "right" direction) don't help much, and have a similar effect on the brain as carbon monoxide, over time.

astrodust 11y ago
The point here is it's easier to control emissions at large-scale power generation plants than it is on millions of individual vehicles. How many cars would fail an inspection if exposed to one? The same cannot be said about power plants. There's also the renewable angle. Surplus wind power, as experienced in Spain, would basically provide free power for recharging vehicles overnight. You cannot do this with gasoline. The sealed room is also a way of presenting what we're doing to our climate, that the automobile emissions don't just go "into the air", but become part of the environment.
- kafkaesq 11y ago
  I don't dispute the electric cars are, overall, clean. Just that the image that Arnold is promoting with his "Gedankenexperiment", per my quote above (that electric cars are somehow 100% clean and environmentally harmless) is simply false, anti-intellectual, and unscientific.

joshuaheard 11y ago

"California has some of the most revolutionary environmental laws in the United States, we get 40% of our power from renewables, and we are 40% more energy efficient than the rest of the country." California also has the second highest energy costs in the continental United States. https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...

magicalist 11y ago
From that chart it appears a large reason for that is they charge Commercial customers the same rates as Residential ones, unlike most states. Also worth considering is economic activity per unit energy, where California is placed third in efficiency, so it looks like those energy prices are doing fine. http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/pdf/table6.pdf http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/pdf/...

morsch 11y ago

If it takes Arnold Schwarzenegger and a frankly preposterous "sealed room" analogy in order to convince people to slow down on emissions, and recasting the emissions issue as a pollution issue -- as if there was a difference -- in order for them to safe face, so be it. Of course those electric cars still virtually emit CO2^Wpollution when you refuel them using coal-generated power, so I guess we can go back to going back and forth about the pros and cons of nuclear energy now.

InclinedPlane 11y ago

I believe that man-made CO2 emissions likely have a significant impact on the climate, and we should do something about it, but even so the issue is a very complex one and its politicization hasn't helped. Here's why it's not so easy: 1. The data is crap. What you need is average temperatures and other data (humidity, pressure, cloud cover, albedo, etc.) over the entire Earth down to a fairly small scale. What we have is a mismash of horribly calibrated weather station data near cities combined with limited satellite data and various proxies, all of which has to be massaged a great deal to make it usable. Sea level data has the same sort of problems, nearly impossible to properly calibrate to sufficient precision. The fact that people have poured tons of effort into collecting and attempting to calibrate data doesn't mean the data is actually very good. 2. The models are also crap. A century ago Svante Arrhenius came up with the greenhouse effect theory and did some back of the envelope calculations on its magnitude, coming up with a figure of climate sensitivity of about 2 deg. C per CO2 doubling. Today all of our vaunted climate modelling hasn't managed to come up with a more accurate figure than that. Current estimates are still "maybe 2 deg. C per doubling, with some enormous error bars". Modern models have several problems. The conceit is that climate models are de novo elaborations from first principles and are as rock solid as our understanding of the laws of physics. In practice all climate models contain multiple "empirically determined" fudge factors. They fit the data, they don't predict it. And that's assuming we even had enough good data to really run good prediction checks, which is dubious at best. 3. The climatology scientific community is very problematic. There is little indication of sufficient rigor, and criticizing results is an easy way to get effectively excommunicated from the community. Take, for example, the famed "hockey stick" paper, which has now been thoroughly discredited, but all of the discrediting happened effectively "behind the scenes" and quietly. Science works best when it's open and boisterous. It's surprising that climatology isn't in even worse state given how insular and political it is. 4. Even if we assumed that man-made carbon emissions were going to cause a huge degree of global warming there is still a huge gap between that fact and figuring out what to do about it, which many folks simply skip over. The actual damage (to the biosphere and to human activities) is just as difficult to determine as the climate is to predict. The right course of action to take depends a great deal on lots of different factors: sociological, technological, and economic. Especially since a lot of the CO2 production of the 21st century will come from economies that are climbing out of poverty and into affluence. It may well be the smartest choice to simply continue polluting until the world is richer and more technologically advanced and then consider mitigation strategies. 4a. CO2 emissions may not be, and likely is not, the most important pollution issue everywhere in the world currently. But it gets the most attention and sometimes that makes it more difficult to get traction on other issues. Meanwhile, there really are serious "climate change denialists" and some of the folks on that side are absolutely terrible. Canadian PM Harper banned government scientists from talking to the press, for example. But the answer to science being perverted for political reasons isn't to simply pervert it in the opposite direction to compensate. It's just a complete shit-show across the board and I'm not happy with how any of it is being handled at either the level of scientific inquiry or public policy.

pippy 11y ago

I really enjoy when people take a fresh perspective on things. Climate change has been cited by Pew Research Center as the top greatest threat, and putting a different spin on things will always be nice to try and convince people. The top reason to reduce carbon emissions is not to reduce global toxicity and prevent climate change. Saving the planet is a bonus. Energy independence creates a stable geo political environment, almost all wars have a root cause of fighting over resources. There's little point in saving the planet if we're going to kill ourselves by the time comes when need to save it.

peterdelahunty 11y ago

http://www.cowspiracy.com/ http://www.cowspiracy.com/

twiceaday 11y ago
> the film that environmental organizations don't want you to see! I despise this type of rhetoric.

msvan 11y ago

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

ejcx 11y ago

Lots of very partisan folks here. My mother is an avid believer that climate change is a hoax and we don't need to take care of the planet. She says 'Mother earth knows how to take care of herself', but she deeply respects Arnold as a businessman, politician, and self-made man. This is the type of thing that can reach her and change people in her boat's way of thinking. Way to go Arnold.

calinet6 11y ago

Kind of proud that this man signed my diploma.