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There is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying. At what point does this become so scary that something happens to increase the t

There is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying. At what point does this become so scary that something happens to increase the taxes on fossil fuels so that consumption will go down? Falling renewable prices are not enough, and use-based taxes are the single best way to let individuals make their own decisions about what/how much to use. Carbon credits are a good market-based solution too, but it seems likely that people and industries will try to game the system.

blondie9x 11y ago
So true. Washington is too tainted by vested interests that seek to procrastinate shift. Time has literally run out. From here we are already in catch up mode. It seems like a revolution is necessary to stop them from acting against humanity's long term existence for their short term financial gain.
- gedy 11y ago
  Washington could be taken over by the Green party, ban fossil fuels, etc - and we'd still be in trouble due to China, et al with their increasing CO2 output. Reminds me a bit of banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean. That's lovely, but given Asia dumps something like 150 times the amount plastics into the ocean, so is basically meaningless.
  - whyenot 11y ago
    > banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean They were banned because they don't decompose, so they end up all over the place. Not just in the ocean, but on the beach, in creeks, lakes, anywhere near a highway, etc. As an example local to Silicon Valley, Stevens Creek used to be completely clogged with plastic bags. It's gotten a lot better now.
    - anexprogrammer 11y ago
      They've banned plastic bags in the UK too. Of course any wasteland or street is still littered with fast food plastic, plastic bottles and the excessive packaging found in most supermarkets. We have slightly effective recycling schemes for a tiny proportion of what we use, and massive amounts of recycling end up shipped to the developing world to be dumped. Manufacturers of TVs, appliances, IoT toys and any thing else using plastics aren't required to own their debris at end of lifespan. So, as is typical with modern politics, we've had a token gesture that affects the public but utterly avoids the real issue. The oceans are doomed unless we grow up and own our debris as a species.
    - Evenjos 11y ago
      There's some research that the creation of paper bags, and those more permanent plastic bags, is just as harmful to the environment as plastic disposable bags. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4460 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4460
    - gerbilly 11y ago
      Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
  - ageofwant 11y ago
    Its not meaningless. Its millions of tons of plastic less, it may be the 2% margin that matters.
    - eggy 11y ago
      I read the book Guesstimation 2.0 by Lawrence Weinstein a few years ago, and it had this breakdown. This is not addressing any other fact than how much time people spend worrying about the wrong thing, thinking emotionally rather than rationally or mathematically: "Paper or Plastic? How many plastic bags does the US use in one year? 10 bags per grocery store trip x 2 trips per week x 52 weeks per year = 1000 bags per person per year. 300 x 10^6 people in the U.S. = 300 x 10^11 bags in the US per year. Is this a lot? Compared to what? A roll of bags weighs a few ounces so there are about 200 bags/lb Your 10^3 bags weigh about 5 pounds. The 500 gallons of gasoline you burned last year weighs 4000 pounds (2 tons). Your 10^3 bags are irrelevant. (Just don’t litter)." ...Or use a re-usable bag ;) I want to read "How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint Of Everything" by Mike Berners-Lee. It addresses similar disconnections on how we think about our impact on the climate, and the steps we take to try and do something. For example, people who bike everywhere, but eat foods shipped from all over the world over local produce.
      - ageofwant 11y ago
        I commented meaning to address plastic pollution and its direct affect on the biosphere. China's pollution may destroy 98% of foo species, America's plastic may push foo to extinction. I agree that focus are many times misdirected and ineffective, but that's no reason not to try.
        eggy 11y ago
        The comment was not to negate the impact of plastic bags; it was to illustrate, and I think very much in line with the evidence, of how we misappropriate our attention. The suburban family who pauses at checkout to decide plastic or paper has good intentions, but misplaced intellect. They should be looking at the gas used to and from the store, imported food purchases vs. locally grown, and their own household for energy-efficiency. Yes, plastic, and paper for that matter, are a reasonable item on the list, but the others outweigh it by magnitudes, and the common person thinks 'paper or plastic?'.
  - blondie9x 11y ago
    gedy regardless we must lead by example. We have seen that guilt and public inertia can drive others to act. Being exemplary does have an impact. China signed a climate deal with the US to limit emissions for the first time in 2014. In 2015 they and earlier this year they signed a global deal on climate also. Leading and being by example can lead to change.
    - gedy 11y ago
      In the competition of nations, leading by example is fairly useless. Nations do what they want to move forward. China dumps a lot of CO2, and it's growing. http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/sci...
  - CalRobert 11y ago
    My santa Monica alleyway went from garbagr-strewn to... Well not perfect but a lot better after SM banned them.
- downandout 11y ago
  >Washington is too tainted by vested interests One could say this about both sides of this issue. Clean tech has utilized an enormous amount of lobbying and been given substantial subsidies as a result - despite the lack of appreciable results.
  - beatpanda 11y ago
    > despite the lack of appreciable results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
    - downandout 11y ago
      Anything that is subsidized to the level that solar has been will grow until the subsidies end or are reduced. If pedal power were subsidized in this fashion, not only would the power-generating stationary bike industry explode, but American obesity rates would plummet - right up until the subsidy ended. Solar would continue to grow if it were economically viable on its own. It's getting closer and I hope it gets there. But when I said "appreciable results" I meant the introduction of economically viable alternatives, absent subsidies.
      - beatpanda 11y ago
        What would the economic viability of oil look like without the massive subsidies the industry reeceives every year, including the construction of infrastructure that favors transportation predicated on cheap oil over everything else?
codecamper 11y ago
It's very sad that reefs are dying, but it seems that their whole existence was very much tied to a very specific amount of carbon in the atmosphere. (about 265 ppm co2) The scary thing is that these reefs are so incredibly diverse & their creation took millions of years. Millions of years to create and they can be globally destroyed in just 200 or so years. It's also scary is to consider what else may be balanced just as precariously.
- darkseas 11y ago
  The Great Barrier Reef formed over the last 14,000 years since the last Ice Age rather than million years as you suggest. And while the vast colonies may die, and their calcareous skeletons may dissolve as the ocean acidifies, the polyps themselves will probably survive fine in different forms in other ecological niches. This will be no help for the diverse array of creatures that rely on the reefs, or associated fisheries and tourism industries however.
- DanBC 11y ago
  The rest of the ocean might be balanced precariously on how acid they are. Slight increases make it impossible for some creatures to create shells. Those creatures are key parts of the food chain, which means that fisheries (already under sever pressure from over-fishing) risk total collapse. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140502-ocean-snail-shell-dissolving-acidification-climate-change-science/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140502-ocean... http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidificati... But not all species are going to be vulnerable to this. Some grow thicker shells. http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification--a-risky-shell-game http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification--a-r... > Under very high experimental CO2 conditions, the shells of clams, oysters, and some snails and urchins partially dissolved. But other species seemed as if they would not be harmed, and crustaceans, such as lobsters, crabs, and prawns, appeared to increase their shell-building (see interactive).
- donatj 11y ago
  How did they survive the ice ages and previous warm ages, and what makes this different?
Taek 11y ago
I don't think we will see significant change until people are dying by the millions, in first world countries. If Japan is losing population to climate change, if the US is losing population to climate change, if the EU is losing population to climate change, THEN we will see change. Deaths in Indonesia, middle East, Africa, South + Central America won't be enough to inspire change. The people who have the power won't act until they feel directly threatened.
- czechdeveloper 11y ago
  Well, then it will be way too late to do anything.
  - eikenberry 11y ago
    Which is a good reason why we should be spending time researching what to do when that happens instead of only on prevention. The possibility of 100% prevention is _very_ small, we will need to deal with the ramifications.
fche 11y ago
"There is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying." Do you think any of that evidence is terrifying to skeptics? If not, think about why not.
- losteric 11y ago
  Simple: They ignore it. They imagine it's lies spread by corporate elite trying to profit from fear mongering and anti-american technology. Hilarious considering the truth.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
ra1n85 11y ago
>At what point does this become so scary that something happens to increase the taxes on fossil fuels so that consumption will go down? You're jumping to conclusions on the actual solution to the problem. I suggest unpacking this problem a bit more. Given the time scales, and potential delay between addition of CO2 into the atmosphere and consequence, I imagine that we should also be thinking "How do we adjust to our new climate?". "Taxes, now" is short sighted.
- whitneyrzoller 11y ago
  "Deal with it" is what you've come up with after "unpacking the problem a bit more"? As the Donald would say, "sad".
  - ra1n85 11y ago
    Entirely up to if you'd like to understand it that way. The climate is guaranteed to change, whether by man's action or not. Let's treat it less like the act of a vengeful god, and more like a fact of life.
- megalodon 11y ago
  If it's guaranteed to slow consumtion, why not? "Taxes, never" is short sighted.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
pink_dinner 11y ago
As long as you also increase taxes and have penalties in every country. Go to India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China (The list could go on). The air is polluted with the stench of car exhaust pretty much every where you go. I even went to London a few months ago and got sick because of the pollution. When I would blow my nose at the end of the day, black nasty soot would be on the kleenix. The US has done a lot to help out climate change and the environment. We have all kinds of EPA standards on our vehicles (that are actually followed), which have been in place for at least a decade or more. I can go to most major cities and not feel like I'm choking from the rancid air. These taxes only end up strangling our economy because we follow the rules and other countries go un-checked because there is virtually no penalty. "Carbon credits are a good market-based solution too, but it seems likely that people and industries will try to game the system." Carbon credits are a joke. Huge companies pay for them and then just continue polluting. I thought the goal was to fix our environment, not make carbon credit companies wealthy. Money shouldn't give you a free pass to pollute. Are we also going to tax electric vehicles because the batteries cause damage to the environment (and we don't have a good way to dispose of them yet)? How about the electricity used to charge the vehicle itself? Will that be taxed as well unless it's solar/wind/hydro?
- stcredzero 11y ago
  Are we also going to tax electric vehicles because the batteries cause damage to the environment (and we don't have a good way to dispose of them yet)? Do you have citations for this?
  - Symbiote 11y ago
    It seems the process isn't especially profitable, but it exists: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000037 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714... I don't see any reason to say the batteries damage the environment.
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      The materials used come out of mines. The damage to the environment may not be egregious, but it is clear enough that it is there.

blondie9x 11y ago

So true. Washington is too tainted by vested interests that seek to procrastinate shift. Time has literally run out. From here we are already in catch up mode. It seems like a revolution is necessary to stop them from acting against humanity's long term existence for their short term financial gain.

gedy 11y ago
Washington could be taken over by the Green party, ban fossil fuels, etc - and we'd still be in trouble due to China, et al with their increasing CO2 output. Reminds me a bit of banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean. That's lovely, but given Asia dumps something like 150 times the amount plastics into the ocean, so is basically meaningless.
- whyenot 11y ago
  > banning plastic bags in California to help the ocean They were banned because they don't decompose, so they end up all over the place. Not just in the ocean, but on the beach, in creeks, lakes, anywhere near a highway, etc. As an example local to Silicon Valley, Stevens Creek used to be completely clogged with plastic bags. It's gotten a lot better now.
  - anexprogrammer 11y ago
    They've banned plastic bags in the UK too. Of course any wasteland or street is still littered with fast food plastic, plastic bottles and the excessive packaging found in most supermarkets. We have slightly effective recycling schemes for a tiny proportion of what we use, and massive amounts of recycling end up shipped to the developing world to be dumped. Manufacturers of TVs, appliances, IoT toys and any thing else using plastics aren't required to own their debris at end of lifespan. So, as is typical with modern politics, we've had a token gesture that affects the public but utterly avoids the real issue. The oceans are doomed unless we grow up and own our debris as a species.
  - Evenjos 11y ago
    There's some research that the creation of paper bags, and those more permanent plastic bags, is just as harmful to the environment as plastic disposable bags. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4460 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4460
  - gerbilly 11y ago
    Also see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch
- ageofwant 11y ago
  Its not meaningless. Its millions of tons of plastic less, it may be the 2% margin that matters.
  - eggy 11y ago
    I read the book Guesstimation 2.0 by Lawrence Weinstein a few years ago, and it had this breakdown. This is not addressing any other fact than how much time people spend worrying about the wrong thing, thinking emotionally rather than rationally or mathematically: "Paper or Plastic? How many plastic bags does the US use in one year? 10 bags per grocery store trip x 2 trips per week x 52 weeks per year = 1000 bags per person per year. 300 x 10^6 people in the U.S. = 300 x 10^11 bags in the US per year. Is this a lot? Compared to what? A roll of bags weighs a few ounces so there are about 200 bags/lb Your 10^3 bags weigh about 5 pounds. The 500 gallons of gasoline you burned last year weighs 4000 pounds (2 tons). Your 10^3 bags are irrelevant. (Just don’t litter)." ...Or use a re-usable bag ;) I want to read "How Bad Are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint Of Everything" by Mike Berners-Lee. It addresses similar disconnections on how we think about our impact on the climate, and the steps we take to try and do something. For example, people who bike everywhere, but eat foods shipped from all over the world over local produce.
    - ageofwant 11y ago
      I commented meaning to address plastic pollution and its direct affect on the biosphere. China's pollution may destroy 98% of foo species, America's plastic may push foo to extinction. I agree that focus are many times misdirected and ineffective, but that's no reason not to try.
      - eggy 11y ago
        The comment was not to negate the impact of plastic bags; it was to illustrate, and I think very much in line with the evidence, of how we misappropriate our attention. The suburban family who pauses at checkout to decide plastic or paper has good intentions, but misplaced intellect. They should be looking at the gas used to and from the store, imported food purchases vs. locally grown, and their own household for energy-efficiency. Yes, plastic, and paper for that matter, are a reasonable item on the list, but the others outweigh it by magnitudes, and the common person thinks 'paper or plastic?'.
- blondie9x 11y ago
  gedy regardless we must lead by example. We have seen that guilt and public inertia can drive others to act. Being exemplary does have an impact. China signed a climate deal with the US to limit emissions for the first time in 2014. In 2015 they and earlier this year they signed a global deal on climate also. Leading and being by example can lead to change.
  - gedy 11y ago
    In the competition of nations, leading by example is fairly useless. Nations do what they want to move forward. China dumps a lot of CO2, and it's growing. http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/science/each-countrys-share-of-co2.html http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/sci...
- CalRobert 11y ago
  My santa Monica alleyway went from garbagr-strewn to... Well not perfect but a lot better after SM banned them.
downandout 11y ago
>Washington is too tainted by vested interests One could say this about both sides of this issue. Clean tech has utilized an enormous amount of lobbying and been given substantial subsidies as a result - despite the lack of appreciable results.
- beatpanda 11y ago
  > despite the lack of appreciable results. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_photovoltaics
  - downandout 11y ago
    Anything that is subsidized to the level that solar has been will grow until the subsidies end or are reduced. If pedal power were subsidized in this fashion, not only would the power-generating stationary bike industry explode, but American obesity rates would plummet - right up until the subsidy ended. Solar would continue to grow if it were economically viable on its own. It's getting closer and I hope it gets there. But when I said "appreciable results" I meant the introduction of economically viable alternatives, absent subsidies.
    - beatpanda 11y ago
      What would the economic viability of oil look like without the massive subsidies the industry reeceives every year, including the construction of infrastructure that favors transportation predicated on cheap oil over everything else?

codecamper 11y ago

It's very sad that reefs are dying, but it seems that their whole existence was very much tied to a very specific amount of carbon in the atmosphere. (about 265 ppm co2) The scary thing is that these reefs are so incredibly diverse & their creation took millions of years. Millions of years to create and they can be globally destroyed in just 200 or so years. It's also scary is to consider what else may be balanced just as precariously.

darkseas 11y ago
The Great Barrier Reef formed over the last 14,000 years since the last Ice Age rather than million years as you suggest. And while the vast colonies may die, and their calcareous skeletons may dissolve as the ocean acidifies, the polyps themselves will probably survive fine in different forms in other ecological niches. This will be no help for the diverse array of creatures that rely on the reefs, or associated fisheries and tourism industries however.
DanBC 11y ago
The rest of the ocean might be balanced precariously on how acid they are. Slight increases make it impossible for some creatures to create shells. Those creatures are key parts of the food chain, which means that fisheries (already under sever pressure from over-fishing) risk total collapse. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140502-ocean-snail-shell-dissolving-acidification-climate-change-science/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140502-ocean... http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidificati... But not all species are going to be vulnerable to this. Some grow thicker shells. http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification--a-risky-shell-game http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/feature/ocean-acidification--a-r... > Under very high experimental CO2 conditions, the shells of clams, oysters, and some snails and urchins partially dissolved. But other species seemed as if they would not be harmed, and crustaceans, such as lobsters, crabs, and prawns, appeared to increase their shell-building (see interactive).
donatj 11y ago
How did they survive the ice ages and previous warm ages, and what makes this different?

Taek 11y ago

I don't think we will see significant change until people are dying by the millions, in first world countries. If Japan is losing population to climate change, if the US is losing population to climate change, if the EU is losing population to climate change, THEN we will see change. Deaths in Indonesia, middle East, Africa, South + Central America won't be enough to inspire change. The people who have the power won't act until they feel directly threatened.

czechdeveloper 11y ago
Well, then it will be way too late to do anything.
- eikenberry 11y ago
  Which is a good reason why we should be spending time researching what to do when that happens instead of only on prevention. The possibility of 100% prevention is _very_ small, we will need to deal with the ramifications.

fche 11y ago

"There is a whole lot of climate change evidence coming out that is terrifying." Do you think any of that evidence is terrifying to skeptics? If not, think about why not.

losteric 11y ago
Simple: They ignore it. They imagine it's lies spread by corporate elite trying to profit from fear mongering and anti-american technology. Hilarious considering the truth.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

ra1n85 11y ago

>At what point does this become so scary that something happens to increase the taxes on fossil fuels so that consumption will go down? You're jumping to conclusions on the actual solution to the problem. I suggest unpacking this problem a bit more. Given the time scales, and potential delay between addition of CO2 into the atmosphere and consequence, I imagine that we should also be thinking "How do we adjust to our new climate?". "Taxes, now" is short sighted.

whitneyrzoller 11y ago
"Deal with it" is what you've come up with after "unpacking the problem a bit more"? As the Donald would say, "sad".
- ra1n85 11y ago
  Entirely up to if you'd like to understand it that way. The climate is guaranteed to change, whether by man's action or not. Let's treat it less like the act of a vengeful god, and more like a fact of life.
megalodon 11y ago
If it's guaranteed to slow consumtion, why not? "Taxes, never" is short sighted.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

pink_dinner 11y ago

As long as you also increase taxes and have penalties in every country. Go to India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China (The list could go on). The air is polluted with the stench of car exhaust pretty much every where you go. I even went to London a few months ago and got sick because of the pollution. When I would blow my nose at the end of the day, black nasty soot would be on the kleenix. The US has done a lot to help out climate change and the environment. We have all kinds of EPA standards on our vehicles (that are actually followed), which have been in place for at least a decade or more. I can go to most major cities and not feel like I'm choking from the rancid air. These taxes only end up strangling our economy because we follow the rules and other countries go un-checked because there is virtually no penalty. "Carbon credits are a good market-based solution too, but it seems likely that people and industries will try to game the system." Carbon credits are a joke. Huge companies pay for them and then just continue polluting. I thought the goal was to fix our environment, not make carbon credit companies wealthy. Money shouldn't give you a free pass to pollute. Are we also going to tax electric vehicles because the batteries cause damage to the environment (and we don't have a good way to dispose of them yet)? How about the electricity used to charge the vehicle itself? Will that be taxed as well unless it's solar/wind/hydro?

stcredzero 11y ago
Are we also going to tax electric vehicles because the batteries cause damage to the environment (and we don't have a good way to dispose of them yet)? Do you have citations for this?
- Symbiote 11y ago
  It seems the process isn't especially profitable, but it exists: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714000037 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214993714... I don't see any reason to say the batteries damage the environment.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    The materials used come out of mines. The damage to the environment may not be egregious, but it is clear enough that it is there.