24 ms·

I think the unfortunate reality is that we're going to have to go through a major, catastrophic climate change event before the narrative of the American right

I think the unfortunate reality is that we're going to have to go through a major, catastrophic climate change event before the narrative of the American right (which is by far the most vocal denier of climate change) changes and we can start making some progress in reversing it. I only hope that whatever event(s) trigger this policy change are somewhat reversible. Earth is, ironically, going to be the first testbed for terraforming technology.

emodendroket 11y ago
I mean, climate change deniers don't help. But people accepting, at least notionally, that it exists are not, as a rule, doing enough either.
joeld42 11y ago
Like Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy? Or the streets of Miami flooding? I don't think anything is going to change a denier's minds if they don't want to. We just have to try and fix it without them.
- pklausler 11y ago
  s/without/despite/
- wainstead 11y ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair
  - jballanc 11y ago
    The problem, of course, is that the salaries of most supporters of the Republican party would not be impacted at all by most measures that would be taken to curtail emissions. The salaries of the leaders (and, more importantly, their backers) on the other hand...
  - refurb 11y ago
    You realize that cuts both ways, right?
- mason240 11y ago
  This is an unintentionally great comment. When people claim that every weather event is caused by global warming, it's hard to take it those claims seriously.
  - joeld42 11y ago
    You're saying that those hurricanes would not have been any less severe without the impact of humans messing with the atmosphere for the last century? I'm not saying "global warming causes all the hurricanes", I'm saying "humans messing with the atmosphere has increased the variance and severity of our weather". If you don't agree with that, you're in willful denial. Anyways, thanks for recognizing that my comment was great. I'll take what I can get.
    - tsax 11y ago
      Just one question, have you looked at the frequency of extreme weather events over the last century? http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg
      - exclusiv 11y ago
        Do we really think a century of data is a lot? Especially when you are talking about ~20 events per year? Can you explain why 1850 looks comparable or worse than the 1990s and worse than 2010s so far? I don't see what this proves. The inputs for "man's impact" in the 1850s would not come close to modern day. If we took that into account, by your logic, the bar charts should explode out the top! But it doesn't. Not even close. 1850 - 1.2B people 2010s - ~7B people and a lot more pollution From your linked data, the impact of AGW on hurricanes over the last year = 0 Edit: I think you may agree with me that it doesn't point to more extreme weather events. If so - my comment is directed at the parent.
        tsax 11y ago
gedy 11y ago
Honestly - the American right are not what concerns me - it's China, etc which seems to be gladly pumping out more and more CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... We can hide behind per-capita stats but the global CO2 level and climate does not care about per capita.
- epistasis 11y ago
  I'm not worried about China at all, their leadership has a far better chance of listening to science and acting appropriately. As they grow their standard of living it will be using less carbon intensive methods. Meanwhile, the US is far too entrenched with ideology and vested interests that have captured the political machinery. Kind of sad that we're in this state, but people keep voting Republican...
  - hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
    What solutions are you proposing exactly to reverse climate change? The trillions in investment so far in clean energy have yielded minimal results. What specifically are you recommending?
    - epistasis 11y ago
      As I mentioned in my other reply to you (which happened at the same time) revenue neutral carbon tax, or the equivalent righty version which is cap and trade. But really technology is going to drive this change, as long as the entrenched interests don't prevent the use of renewables that are cheaper than fossil fuels. Already ideally sited solar and wind are cheaper than coal, and learning curves are pushing that down all the time. Storage is also getting incredibly cheap, with lithium ion batteries it's around $0.08/kWh right now at the wholesale level. What we're really going to need is efficient carbon capture schemes though, because the feet-draggers have cost us an extremely valuable 15 years. If we can do capture at something less than $500/ton then I'm starting to feel a bit optimistic that we can head off the worst of it. But every. Single. Ton. That we emit right now is going to cost out children several times that amount. Improving efficiency of use and increasing the scale and efficiency of the renewable energy manufacturing is a massively important economic development for the US and the world.
darpa_escapee 11y ago
It will be handwaved away until the people with money and power are affected by it. The irony being that people with money and power are the least likely to ever be affected by it.
- larrik 11y ago
  They're the ones with all the beachfront homes, though...
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    Yes with insurance subsidised by the state.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  As long as people are flying private jets to climate conferences I cry foul. If they want anyone to act they would do as the king of Nineveh:Jona 3:6 "For word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes." The moment I see climate scientists starts to switch to teleconferences I think I will give it a second thought. (Yeah. I know many, possibly most of you don't believe a thing of that but it is still a good example.) (FWIW: I make a living making solar cell technology, I previously programmed recycling machines. I just happen to be tired of hypocrisy.)
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Alas, I'm afraid accusations of hypocrisy don't make good flotation devices.
    - reitanqild 11y ago
      Nah, but it helps against getting fooled while we wait for them to either stop trying to fool me (not sure about this) or put their money where their mouth is.
wavefunction 11y ago
I kind of don't care about their opinion on a scientific matter. The real issue is building political coalitions to force their compliance through democratic legislation.
hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
What specific solutions are you recommending to reverse climate change? Ban fossil fuels? Force everyone to buy Teslas (which ironically depend on fossil fuels)?
- epistasis 11y ago
  There are sooooo many that have been proposed. A revenue neutral carbon tax at about $80/ton is popular enough that oil companies use it in their planning for the future. The "right" has favored cap and trade schemes in the past (specifically Reagan), but suddenly became allergic to the idea. Your "solutions" are ridiculous anti-market solutions, presumably exaggerations that you would use to describe the solutions that have actually been proposed? Also, Teslas and other electric vehicles do not depend on fossil fuels, even if they can potentially be powered by fossil fuels (at much higher efficiencies than fossil fuel vehicles)
  - hueving 11y ago
    >Also, Teslas and other electric vehicles do not depend on fossil fuels, even if they can potentially be powered by fossil fuels (at much higher efficiencies than fossil fuel vehicles) Of course they do. They are made of materials that depend on fossil fuels for extraction. To pretend otherwise is completely idiotic. Everything that doesn't come from plants has to be mined and mining is energy intensive.
    - epistasis 11y ago
      It's "completely idiotic" to think that mining can only be done with fossil fuels. Energy is fungible. It doesn't matter if it's energy intensive, industry and mining can succeed without fossil fuels just fine.
      - makomk 11y ago
        Technically speaking all the plastic used is made from fossil fuels, but taking fossil fuels and turning them into something that we'll bury in holes in the ground instead of burning them probably isn't a bad thing when talking about global warming.
snowwrestler 11y ago
The American right is really a coalition of several different factions, and it can be chipped apart on certain issues. We see that today, with religious conservatives proposing state laws to discriminate against gay and transgender people, but many big businesses opposing those laws. Maybe we could make progress more quickly on fighting climate change if we simply bought off businesses. Implement a carbon tax that replaces business income tax and results in a net lower tax burden on businesses (from day one), and I bet a lot of opposition funding would dry up. It would be very expensive... but compare to the cost of protecting or moving all our coastal cities and communities. Maybe one reason climate change has become a cultural/political issue is that the people who understand the issue best and have worked on it the hardest, tend to also be people who are suspicious of businesses in general. They resist anything that looks like a corporate giveaway, and prefer a regulatory, government-led approach. As a result, "freedom first" libertarian types have lined up with big businesses in opposition. I won't pretend that I've thought through the details deeply--take this as a musing more than an actual proposal.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
codecamper 11y ago
What if the left just figure out how many people to move into right leaning states to make a sweep? The left has been the majority for a while, but not in charge because 1 person != 1 vote (2 senators / state regardless of population, no D.C. senator, electoral college system.. any more?)
- mikeash 11y ago
  It would be even easier if the left would just get off its collective butts and go vote. Disproportionate representation is a problem, for sure, but the American left would have far more success despite that problem if only they would go vote in off-year elections. Either way, I don't think it would help the fundamental problem, which is that roughly half of the voters in this country don't accept climate science, and their party and associated media have set up a huge feedback loop to keep it that way. Helping the Democrats isn't really a solution, because we need two healthy parties.
  - codecamper 11y ago
    Well said Mike. I agree with you completely. People just don't get that this could be a serious problem & that once you notice you have a problem, you've got 250 years of locked in effects. Here's hoping that SolarCity, Tesla, and others can make a technological difference.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Another problem is you cannot vote Sanders without voting to keep the current abortion laws. Many totally different questio ns meaning different things to different people. To many people I guess voting is choosing the lesser evil.
  - pklausler 11y ago
    So long as a dangerously insane candidate is in danger of winning an election, the only ethical choice is to vote for the sane candidate most likely to win in any race. Agree that we need multiple functional sane parties, but we haven't had that happy situation in the US for forty years.
clarkmoody 11y ago
No climate change solution is complete without a serious discussion about nuclear power, which has been opposed by the American left historically.
- tremon 11y ago
  the discussion has been opposed?
codecamper 11y ago
Maybe when food crops fail consistently and farmers figure out that it wasn't God's wrath or the communists' or the terrorists' fault.
sidechannel 11y ago
Policy is not going to fix this. Neither are politicians. We're trapped in an economic model which demands infinite growth. A system built principally on hydrocarbon energy. Modest improvements can be made to improve efficiencies (see Jevon's paradox), but we're in a treadmill to hell. You can't grow GDP without consuming more energy. We stop growing, the system will collapse. And you're never going to have a politician get elected on a platform of conservation. "You know all that wasteful consumption we've enjoyed since winning the second world war, you're going to have to do with less" Like mold in a petri dish, the human population will collapse ultimately into decentralized anarchist societies who trade among one another. Assuming we stop the 400+ reactors from going into meltdown, the majority of the population will return to farming. We're not going to Mars anytime soon. You people can't live without AC or even know how to grow a fucking tomato plant. Sadly, most of this community will die.
exclusiv 11y ago
I'm not sold on the AGW stuff the environmentalists put out, but their problem is positioning and they haven't grasped that in their battle. Nobody is arguing climate change can have big impact. We're discussing AGW. Obviously deforestation and air pollution is a Bad Thing. The environmentalists would be better off telling that story which is quite simple and easy to understand. I'm a buyer of that as both logic and an investment but not the Chicken-Little AGW story. Positioning is very important when you are selling something. ~7 million die from air pollution related deaths per year Total number of people that die of starvation per year: ~8 million. ~900 million malnourished. ~800 million don't have access to clean water. Several millions die each year from diseases related to unsanitary water. I don't understand why we can't unite and tackle those 3 instead of making it a battle between politics, environmentalism and self-righteousness (both sides). If you believe or don't believe in AGW - tackling air pollution, food supply and the water crisis should be of utmost importance.

emodendroket 11y ago

I mean, climate change deniers don't help. But people accepting, at least notionally, that it exists are not, as a rule, doing enough either.

joeld42 11y ago

Like Hurricane Katrina or Hurricane Sandy? Or the streets of Miami flooding? I don't think anything is going to change a denier's minds if they don't want to. We just have to try and fix it without them.

pklausler 11y ago
s/without/despite/
wainstead 11y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" -- Upton Sinclair
- jballanc 11y ago
  The problem, of course, is that the salaries of most supporters of the Republican party would not be impacted at all by most measures that would be taken to curtail emissions. The salaries of the leaders (and, more importantly, their backers) on the other hand...
- refurb 11y ago
  You realize that cuts both ways, right?
mason240 11y ago
This is an unintentionally great comment. When people claim that every weather event is caused by global warming, it's hard to take it those claims seriously.
- joeld42 11y ago
  You're saying that those hurricanes would not have been any less severe without the impact of humans messing with the atmosphere for the last century? I'm not saying "global warming causes all the hurricanes", I'm saying "humans messing with the atmosphere has increased the variance and severity of our weather". If you don't agree with that, you're in willful denial. Anyways, thanks for recognizing that my comment was great. I'll take what I can get.
  - tsax 11y ago
    Just one question, have you looked at the frequency of extreme weather events over the last century? http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/fig33.jpg
    - exclusiv 11y ago
      Do we really think a century of data is a lot? Especially when you are talking about ~20 events per year? Can you explain why 1850 looks comparable or worse than the 1990s and worse than 2010s so far? I don't see what this proves. The inputs for "man's impact" in the 1850s would not come close to modern day. If we took that into account, by your logic, the bar charts should explode out the top! But it doesn't. Not even close. 1850 - 1.2B people 2010s - ~7B people and a lot more pollution From your linked data, the impact of AGW on hurricanes over the last year = 0 Edit: I think you may agree with me that it doesn't point to more extreme weather events. If so - my comment is directed at the parent.
      - tsax 11y ago

gedy 11y ago

Honestly - the American right are not what concerns me - it's China, etc which seems to be gladly pumping out more and more CO2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... We can hide behind per-capita stats but the global CO2 level and climate does not care about per capita.

epistasis 11y ago
I'm not worried about China at all, their leadership has a far better chance of listening to science and acting appropriately. As they grow their standard of living it will be using less carbon intensive methods. Meanwhile, the US is far too entrenched with ideology and vested interests that have captured the political machinery. Kind of sad that we're in this state, but people keep voting Republican...
- hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago
  What solutions are you proposing exactly to reverse climate change? The trillions in investment so far in clean energy have yielded minimal results. What specifically are you recommending?
  - epistasis 11y ago
    As I mentioned in my other reply to you (which happened at the same time) revenue neutral carbon tax, or the equivalent righty version which is cap and trade. But really technology is going to drive this change, as long as the entrenched interests don't prevent the use of renewables that are cheaper than fossil fuels. Already ideally sited solar and wind are cheaper than coal, and learning curves are pushing that down all the time. Storage is also getting incredibly cheap, with lithium ion batteries it's around $0.08/kWh right now at the wholesale level. What we're really going to need is efficient carbon capture schemes though, because the feet-draggers have cost us an extremely valuable 15 years. If we can do capture at something less than $500/ton then I'm starting to feel a bit optimistic that we can head off the worst of it. But every. Single. Ton. That we emit right now is going to cost out children several times that amount. Improving efficiency of use and increasing the scale and efficiency of the renewable energy manufacturing is a massively important economic development for the US and the world.

darpa_escapee 11y ago

It will be handwaved away until the people with money and power are affected by it. The irony being that people with money and power are the least likely to ever be affected by it.

larrik 11y ago
They're the ones with all the beachfront homes, though...
- danieltillett 11y ago
  Yes with insurance subsidised by the state.
reitanqild 11y ago
As long as people are flying private jets to climate conferences I cry foul. If they want anyone to act they would do as the king of Nineveh:Jona 3:6 "For word came to the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, and he laid his robe from him, and covered him with sackcloth, and sat in ashes." The moment I see climate scientists starts to switch to teleconferences I think I will give it a second thought. (Yeah. I know many, possibly most of you don't believe a thing of that but it is still a good example.) (FWIW: I make a living making solar cell technology, I previously programmed recycling machines. I just happen to be tired of hypocrisy.)
- icebraining 11y ago
  Alas, I'm afraid accusations of hypocrisy don't make good flotation devices.
  - reitanqild 11y ago
    Nah, but it helps against getting fooled while we wait for them to either stop trying to fool me (not sure about this) or put their money where their mouth is.

wavefunction 11y ago

I kind of don't care about their opinion on a scientific matter. The real issue is building political coalitions to force their compliance through democratic legislation.

hjhgjtyhgdfi8 11y ago

What specific solutions are you recommending to reverse climate change? Ban fossil fuels? Force everyone to buy Teslas (which ironically depend on fossil fuels)?

epistasis 11y ago
There are sooooo many that have been proposed. A revenue neutral carbon tax at about $80/ton is popular enough that oil companies use it in their planning for the future. The "right" has favored cap and trade schemes in the past (specifically Reagan), but suddenly became allergic to the idea. Your "solutions" are ridiculous anti-market solutions, presumably exaggerations that you would use to describe the solutions that have actually been proposed? Also, Teslas and other electric vehicles do not depend on fossil fuels, even if they can potentially be powered by fossil fuels (at much higher efficiencies than fossil fuel vehicles)
- hueving 11y ago
  >Also, Teslas and other electric vehicles do not depend on fossil fuels, even if they can potentially be powered by fossil fuels (at much higher efficiencies than fossil fuel vehicles) Of course they do. They are made of materials that depend on fossil fuels for extraction. To pretend otherwise is completely idiotic. Everything that doesn't come from plants has to be mined and mining is energy intensive.
  - epistasis 11y ago
    It's "completely idiotic" to think that mining can only be done with fossil fuels. Energy is fungible. It doesn't matter if it's energy intensive, industry and mining can succeed without fossil fuels just fine.
    - makomk 11y ago
      Technically speaking all the plastic used is made from fossil fuels, but taking fossil fuels and turning them into something that we'll bury in holes in the ground instead of burning them probably isn't a bad thing when talking about global warming.

snowwrestler 11y ago

The American right is really a coalition of several different factions, and it can be chipped apart on certain issues. We see that today, with religious conservatives proposing state laws to discriminate against gay and transgender people, but many big businesses opposing those laws. Maybe we could make progress more quickly on fighting climate change if we simply bought off businesses. Implement a carbon tax that replaces business income tax and results in a net lower tax burden on businesses (from day one), and I bet a lot of opposition funding would dry up. It would be very expensive... but compare to the cost of protecting or moving all our coastal cities and communities. Maybe one reason climate change has become a cultural/political issue is that the people who understand the issue best and have worked on it the hardest, tend to also be people who are suspicious of businesses in general. They resist anything that looks like a corporate giveaway, and prefer a regulatory, government-led approach. As a result, "freedom first" libertarian types have lined up with big businesses in opposition. I won't pretend that I've thought through the details deeply--take this as a musing more than an actual proposal.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

codecamper 11y ago

What if the left just figure out how many people to move into right leaning states to make a sweep? The left has been the majority for a while, but not in charge because 1 person != 1 vote (2 senators / state regardless of population, no D.C. senator, electoral college system.. any more?)

mikeash 11y ago
It would be even easier if the left would just get off its collective butts and go vote. Disproportionate representation is a problem, for sure, but the American left would have far more success despite that problem if only they would go vote in off-year elections. Either way, I don't think it would help the fundamental problem, which is that roughly half of the voters in this country don't accept climate science, and their party and associated media have set up a huge feedback loop to keep it that way. Helping the Democrats isn't really a solution, because we need two healthy parties.
- codecamper 11y ago
  Well said Mike. I agree with you completely. People just don't get that this could be a serious problem & that once you notice you have a problem, you've got 250 years of locked in effects. Here's hoping that SolarCity, Tesla, and others can make a technological difference.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  Another problem is you cannot vote Sanders without voting to keep the current abortion laws. Many totally different questio ns meaning different things to different people. To many people I guess voting is choosing the lesser evil.
- pklausler 11y ago
  So long as a dangerously insane candidate is in danger of winning an election, the only ethical choice is to vote for the sane candidate most likely to win in any race. Agree that we need multiple functional sane parties, but we haven't had that happy situation in the US for forty years.

clarkmoody 11y ago

No climate change solution is complete without a serious discussion about nuclear power, which has been opposed by the American left historically.

tremon 11y ago
the discussion has been opposed?

codecamper 11y ago

Maybe when food crops fail consistently and farmers figure out that it wasn't God's wrath or the communists' or the terrorists' fault.

sidechannel 11y ago

Policy is not going to fix this. Neither are politicians. We're trapped in an economic model which demands infinite growth. A system built principally on hydrocarbon energy. Modest improvements can be made to improve efficiencies (see Jevon's paradox), but we're in a treadmill to hell. You can't grow GDP without consuming more energy. We stop growing, the system will collapse. And you're never going to have a politician get elected on a platform of conservation. "You know all that wasteful consumption we've enjoyed since winning the second world war, you're going to have to do with less" Like mold in a petri dish, the human population will collapse ultimately into decentralized anarchist societies who trade among one another. Assuming we stop the 400+ reactors from going into meltdown, the majority of the population will return to farming. We're not going to Mars anytime soon. You people can't live without AC or even know how to grow a fucking tomato plant. Sadly, most of this community will die.

exclusiv 11y ago

I'm not sold on the AGW stuff the environmentalists put out, but their problem is positioning and they haven't grasped that in their battle. Nobody is arguing climate change can have big impact. We're discussing AGW. Obviously deforestation and air pollution is a Bad Thing. The environmentalists would be better off telling that story which is quite simple and easy to understand. I'm a buyer of that as both logic and an investment but not the Chicken-Little AGW story. Positioning is very important when you are selling something. ~7 million die from air pollution related deaths per year Total number of people that die of starvation per year: ~8 million. ~900 million malnourished. ~800 million don't have access to clean water. Several millions die each year from diseases related to unsanitary water. I don't understand why we can't unite and tackle those 3 instead of making it a battle between politics, environmentalism and self-righteousness (both sides). If you believe or don't believe in AGW - tackling air pollution, food supply and the water crisis should be of utmost importance.