9 ms·

It amazes me that we humans were able to trust science, pass a law, and fix this problem. The Ozone Layer was a huge thing during my childhood in the late 80s a

It amazes me that we humans were able to trust science, pass a law, and fix this problem. The Ozone Layer was a huge thing during my childhood in the late 80s and early 90s. Now faced with a similar threat, in the words of the great Jim Mora, we can't do "diddly". Even the Paris treaty doesn't go far enough or include the United States.

ars 9y ago
> were able to trust science That's not it. There are no good alternatives to CO2 emitting fuels. So it became a whole anti-human thing where people are told "you are horrible, stop consuming, look at Africa they use less energy than you", etc, etc, etc. All in order to make people feel guilty and thereby get people to reduce their usage. Once that happened there was a backlash, that backlash needed a target and the science was chosen. But it did not start by distrusting science. You see people saying "why don't you trust science, it's the same science that gives you computers", and wondering why that doesn't convince anyone. The reason it doesn't is because it has nothing to do with science, it has to do with making people feel guilty, about existing, about using things, about traveling, or having an A/C. If I could give once piece of advice re CO2: Stop making people feel guilty about using energy. Just focus on finding alternatives, and playing up how awesome plentiful cheap, clean energy will be. But completely stop the other side of things, it's not helping.
- empath75 9y ago
  > Stop making people feel guilty about using energy. But you should feel guilty about using energy.
  - ars 9y ago
    > But you should feel guilty about using energy. No, I absolutely refuse. I refuse to such a degree I'm not even going to ask you why I should feel guilty. I have zero desire to live in that kind of world. The more energy we use the better the world becomes. We should spend our effort on finding good sources of energy (i.e. cheap, and clean). Not on using less energy. I don't mind spending some effort on efficiency, if it doesn't impact me (for example more insulation, but zero desire to drive less).
- mrkurt 9y ago
  Good gracious there are a lot of precious snowflakes who can't manage their own emotions. "Stop making people feel guilty"? Like, how? I'm as anti-judgy and anti-bad argument as anyone but this seems a bit silly. Yes people are awful at convincing other people of things, but it's entirely unreasonable to expect anyone to package up knowledge in a way that soothes peoples' feelings.
  - nsxwolf 9y ago
    I agree with the post except for the feelings part. I don't feel guilty. People try to make me feel guilty, but it doesn't work. That's the problem - nobody is feeling guilty. They look at what they have, they like it, the alternatives sound terrible, so they don't go for the alternatives. Most of us just aren't buying what you're selling, that's all. From an energy standpoint, we want a certain amount of work done. We don't care if the energy generation is CO2 producing or not. Make it cheaper and more plentiful. We want to live in the future, not the stone age.
    - mrkurt 9y ago
      Then you don't really agree with the post. It literally said "people aren't changing behavior because you're making them feel guilty". Which is really an impossible-to-address pretend argument. Cheaper and more plentiful? Sure, those are helpful to talk about. Whether the government should be subsidizing particular things? Also useful. "Making me feel guilty" or the science? Probably not productive.
      - ars 9y ago
        > It literally said "people aren't changing behavior because you're making them feel guilty". No it did not. It said "stop using guilt to try to change behavior". People hate that, and it turned this subject in a political issue (which it should never have become) instead of the engineering issue it should have been.
        mrkurt 9y ago
- perfect_kiss 9y ago
  Actually, there is a viable alternative to CO2 emitting fuels: just use nuclear energy. Unfortunately, communism-induced disaster in 1986 and then more recent Fukushima failure have had created an opinion split in our society on the use of nuclear energy; there are countries like Germany which banned building of new nuclear plants because of that. But sure, it is not hard to not to be communists and not to build nuclear plants in the zone of continious seismic activity.
  - pstuart 9y ago
    I'm hoping LFTR reactors can make it to production.
    - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
      > "I'm hoping LFTR reactors can make it to production." Have you heard of Flibe Energy [1]? They are working on LFTR technologies. The founder (Kirk Sorensen) is an outspoken nuclear energy advocate, I'd definitely recommend checking out his work/lectures [2]. [1] http://flibe-energy.com/ http://flibe-energy.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVSmf_qmkbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVSmf_qmkbg
      - pstuart 9y ago
        Nope. My understanding is India and China are pursuing this. I think it's political poison in the US.
  - dekhn 9y ago
    You're ignoring the fact that spent nuclear fuel storage is still a long-term problem.
    - Aloha 9y ago
      It is - but anyone who thinks that it can be solved right now for all eternity is a fool - all we can do it keep it stable for 500 years (which is doable) and then let our descendants figure it out from there.
- boomlinde 9y ago
  In many cases, not using fuels is a very viable alternative to using fossil fuels. There are compelling arguments for that alternative that don't amount to "you're horrible" or "this is what brought us computers". A study found that for a third of car commuters in Stockholm, their commute would be a <30 minute bike ride. That's a viable alternative for most of those people.
  - CalRobert 9y ago
    Honestly, just by • living in an apartment in a city • eating less meat • getting to work via bike, walking, public transport, or telecommuting • using renewably-sourced energy for heating and cooling a lot of people could cut out the vast majority of their personal emissions and live very comfortably. The above changes also mean far, far less land dedicated to asphalt, which means we can leave more land in its natural state (or rewild it if need be). It's sad to kill Earth no matter what, but it's especially sad that we're destroying the world not to keep 7 billion people alive, but to keep one or two billion in profound decadence.
    - cm2012 9y ago
      For most hacker news types, I would bet air travel was the vast majority of their emissions - probably putting them well over the average, even if they bike to the city daily. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/every-time-you-fly-you-trash-the-planet-and-theres-no-easy-fix/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/every-time-you-fly-you-...
      - CalRobert 9y ago
        That's true of myself. It's around 80% of our carbon footprint, depending on the year. We live on an island, which doesn't help. If there were a decent internet connection and I could work remotely I wouldn't mind a slow container ship for international travel.
- pjc50 9y ago
  So how would you have proposed changing behaviour on a massive scale?
  - mseebach 9y ago
    Not the OP, but: don't. You can't. Never mind that it's not practical, it's also simply not moral. Rich people in the west probably could and should use less energy, but something like 3/5ths of the world are entering the global middle class, and it's just wrong that we sit in out Teslas and tell them to forego the comfortable high-energy lifestyles that we've benefitted from.
    - pjc50 9y ago
      You're kind of assuming there's no moral weight on the other side of the scale. Statistical morality is not something that humans or even moral philosophers are very good at, but that doesn't mean it can be ignored. Statements like "the probability of a flood exacerbated by sea level rise causing X million people to die in Bangladesh goes up by Y for every liter of gasoline you use". Y is very small but it's not zero. Does that mean that if some disaster happens everyone who uses gasoline is very slightly culpable? It's difficult to talk about. > forego the comfortable high-energy lifestyles One interpretation of the IPCC reports might be that "if all 7bn+ people on earth use American levels of energy from fossil fuels then the average temperature will rise by an amount which will cause massive crop failures". That is, it might be impossible as a matter of physics for everyone to have comfortable, cheap high-fossil-energy lifestyles while still growing enough to eat.
  - systematical 9y ago
    I'd throw the issue over to DARPA and see if a more advanced solution is possible. Maybe we have giant solar powered aircraft combing the skies collecting CO2 and breaking it down to carbon. Or build a laser that zaps the stuff, lasers are cool, everyone loves lasers whether your gay, straight, right, left, or just don't give AF - you still love lasers. I don't know if the science behind any of that is feasible, but we have done a lot of stuff as humans that wasn't viewed as feasible at some point. And, it gets rid of Republicans main complaint of impacting the economy. Of course this would require funding, but it could be packaged into a nice shiny defense bill. It's better than our "solution" of not good enough incremental progress on reduction and not good enough incremental increases in renewable energy. Neither of those baby steps deal with the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere.
- guelo 9y ago
  Bullshit. It's the divisive politics. Anything your political opponent says sounds wrong or whiny. Tone policing, which is what you're doing here, is just another excuse to blame your opponent instead of looking into the issues on your side.
  - ars 9y ago
    You missed my point completely. WHY is it political? It's because instead of dealing with this as an engineering problem we turned it into a human behavior issue. It's not about the tone of the message - there should be no anti-human message at all. The tone is irrelevant, just stop telling people to use less energy. Instead meet their need with better energy.
    - pera 9y ago
      You could see it the other way around too. Everything can be turned into an engineering problem, but sometimes that's very inefficient: for instance, instead of using trash cans for garbage disposal we could all just litter the streets (and why not, any other environment) and have robots cleaning everything everywhere 24/7...
    - guelo 9y ago
      I'm sorry but that's kind of ridiculous. You're saying that society should not decide that any human behavior is wrong, it should just figure out how to accommodate everything.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- okreallywtf 9y ago
  But those are not the arguments that are being made by those in a position make decisions related to energy and climate. The US president denies climate change, along with much of his cabinet and his EPA head, and most republicans in congress do not trust the science and in fact spread misinformation and confusion among their constituents. I was at a town hall a few weeks ago for a republican representative who listed the names of a few prominent climate deniers who made a good case to him against anthropogenic climate change 10 years ago (at the time I think claiming it wasn't happening at all, this has since changed to its happening but is natural). Denial of the science is a huge part of why we've not made more progress. I don't even know who you are talking about that is placing the blame for all of this on the consumers, if you have some specifics I would like to know because I would like to chastise them too. Being energy conscious and trying to increase efficiency where possible at the consumer level is part of the solution but most people have no choice at all in where they get their energy (my state doesn't even have the option of purchasing renewables, I have to use renewable energy certificates if I want to do anything with my actual power bill to help). In fact, my power company has a stranglehold over much of the Southeast and many of the state governments that allows them to continually increase their rates while also not offering many renewable energy alternatives.

ars 9y ago

> were able to trust science That's not it. There are no good alternatives to CO2 emitting fuels. So it became a whole anti-human thing where people are told "you are horrible, stop consuming, look at Africa they use less energy than you", etc, etc, etc. All in order to make people feel guilty and thereby get people to reduce their usage. Once that happened there was a backlash, that backlash needed a target and the science was chosen. But it did not start by distrusting science. You see people saying "why don't you trust science, it's the same science that gives you computers", and wondering why that doesn't convince anyone. The reason it doesn't is because it has nothing to do with science, it has to do with making people feel guilty, about existing, about using things, about traveling, or having an A/C. If I could give once piece of advice re CO2: Stop making people feel guilty about using energy. Just focus on finding alternatives, and playing up how awesome plentiful cheap, clean energy will be. But completely stop the other side of things, it's not helping.

empath75 9y ago
> Stop making people feel guilty about using energy. But you should feel guilty about using energy.
- ars 9y ago
  > But you should feel guilty about using energy. No, I absolutely refuse. I refuse to such a degree I'm not even going to ask you why I should feel guilty. I have zero desire to live in that kind of world. The more energy we use the better the world becomes. We should spend our effort on finding good sources of energy (i.e. cheap, and clean). Not on using less energy. I don't mind spending some effort on efficiency, if it doesn't impact me (for example more insulation, but zero desire to drive less).
mrkurt 9y ago
Good gracious there are a lot of precious snowflakes who can't manage their own emotions. "Stop making people feel guilty"? Like, how? I'm as anti-judgy and anti-bad argument as anyone but this seems a bit silly. Yes people are awful at convincing other people of things, but it's entirely unreasonable to expect anyone to package up knowledge in a way that soothes peoples' feelings.
- nsxwolf 9y ago
  I agree with the post except for the feelings part. I don't feel guilty. People try to make me feel guilty, but it doesn't work. That's the problem - nobody is feeling guilty. They look at what they have, they like it, the alternatives sound terrible, so they don't go for the alternatives. Most of us just aren't buying what you're selling, that's all. From an energy standpoint, we want a certain amount of work done. We don't care if the energy generation is CO2 producing or not. Make it cheaper and more plentiful. We want to live in the future, not the stone age.
  - mrkurt 9y ago
    Then you don't really agree with the post. It literally said "people aren't changing behavior because you're making them feel guilty". Which is really an impossible-to-address pretend argument. Cheaper and more plentiful? Sure, those are helpful to talk about. Whether the government should be subsidizing particular things? Also useful. "Making me feel guilty" or the science? Probably not productive.
    - ars 9y ago
      > It literally said "people aren't changing behavior because you're making them feel guilty". No it did not. It said "stop using guilt to try to change behavior". People hate that, and it turned this subject in a political issue (which it should never have become) instead of the engineering issue it should have been.
      - mrkurt 9y ago
perfect_kiss 9y ago
Actually, there is a viable alternative to CO2 emitting fuels: just use nuclear energy. Unfortunately, communism-induced disaster in 1986 and then more recent Fukushima failure have had created an opinion split in our society on the use of nuclear energy; there are countries like Germany which banned building of new nuclear plants because of that. But sure, it is not hard to not to be communists and not to build nuclear plants in the zone of continious seismic activity.
- pstuart 9y ago
  I'm hoping LFTR reactors can make it to production.
  - Caveman_Coder 9y ago
    > "I'm hoping LFTR reactors can make it to production." Have you heard of Flibe Energy [1]? They are working on LFTR technologies. The founder (Kirk Sorensen) is an outspoken nuclear energy advocate, I'd definitely recommend checking out his work/lectures [2]. [1] http://flibe-energy.com/ http://flibe-energy.com/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVSmf_qmkbg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVSmf_qmkbg
    - pstuart 9y ago
      Nope. My understanding is India and China are pursuing this. I think it's political poison in the US.
- dekhn 9y ago
  You're ignoring the fact that spent nuclear fuel storage is still a long-term problem.
  - Aloha 9y ago
    It is - but anyone who thinks that it can be solved right now for all eternity is a fool - all we can do it keep it stable for 500 years (which is doable) and then let our descendants figure it out from there.
boomlinde 9y ago
In many cases, not using fuels is a very viable alternative to using fossil fuels. There are compelling arguments for that alternative that don't amount to "you're horrible" or "this is what brought us computers". A study found that for a third of car commuters in Stockholm, their commute would be a <30 minute bike ride. That's a viable alternative for most of those people.
- CalRobert 9y ago
  Honestly, just by • living in an apartment in a city • eating less meat • getting to work via bike, walking, public transport, or telecommuting • using renewably-sourced energy for heating and cooling a lot of people could cut out the vast majority of their personal emissions and live very comfortably. The above changes also mean far, far less land dedicated to asphalt, which means we can leave more land in its natural state (or rewild it if need be). It's sad to kill Earth no matter what, but it's especially sad that we're destroying the world not to keep 7 billion people alive, but to keep one or two billion in profound decadence.
  - cm2012 9y ago
    For most hacker news types, I would bet air travel was the vast majority of their emissions - probably putting them well over the average, even if they bike to the city daily. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/every-time-you-fly-you-trash-the-planet-and-theres-no-easy-fix/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/every-time-you-fly-you-...
    - CalRobert 9y ago
      That's true of myself. It's around 80% of our carbon footprint, depending on the year. We live on an island, which doesn't help. If there were a decent internet connection and I could work remotely I wouldn't mind a slow container ship for international travel.
pjc50 9y ago
So how would you have proposed changing behaviour on a massive scale?
- mseebach 9y ago
  Not the OP, but: don't. You can't. Never mind that it's not practical, it's also simply not moral. Rich people in the west probably could and should use less energy, but something like 3/5ths of the world are entering the global middle class, and it's just wrong that we sit in out Teslas and tell them to forego the comfortable high-energy lifestyles that we've benefitted from.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    You're kind of assuming there's no moral weight on the other side of the scale. Statistical morality is not something that humans or even moral philosophers are very good at, but that doesn't mean it can be ignored. Statements like "the probability of a flood exacerbated by sea level rise causing X million people to die in Bangladesh goes up by Y for every liter of gasoline you use". Y is very small but it's not zero. Does that mean that if some disaster happens everyone who uses gasoline is very slightly culpable? It's difficult to talk about. > forego the comfortable high-energy lifestyles One interpretation of the IPCC reports might be that "if all 7bn+ people on earth use American levels of energy from fossil fuels then the average temperature will rise by an amount which will cause massive crop failures". That is, it might be impossible as a matter of physics for everyone to have comfortable, cheap high-fossil-energy lifestyles while still growing enough to eat.
- systematical 9y ago
  I'd throw the issue over to DARPA and see if a more advanced solution is possible. Maybe we have giant solar powered aircraft combing the skies collecting CO2 and breaking it down to carbon. Or build a laser that zaps the stuff, lasers are cool, everyone loves lasers whether your gay, straight, right, left, or just don't give AF - you still love lasers. I don't know if the science behind any of that is feasible, but we have done a lot of stuff as humans that wasn't viewed as feasible at some point. And, it gets rid of Republicans main complaint of impacting the economy. Of course this would require funding, but it could be packaged into a nice shiny defense bill. It's better than our "solution" of not good enough incremental progress on reduction and not good enough incremental increases in renewable energy. Neither of those baby steps deal with the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere.
guelo 9y ago
Bullshit. It's the divisive politics. Anything your political opponent says sounds wrong or whiny. Tone policing, which is what you're doing here, is just another excuse to blame your opponent instead of looking into the issues on your side.
- ars 9y ago
  You missed my point completely. WHY is it political? It's because instead of dealing with this as an engineering problem we turned it into a human behavior issue. It's not about the tone of the message - there should be no anti-human message at all. The tone is irrelevant, just stop telling people to use less energy. Instead meet their need with better energy.
  - pera 9y ago
    You could see it the other way around too. Everything can be turned into an engineering problem, but sometimes that's very inefficient: for instance, instead of using trash cans for garbage disposal we could all just litter the streets (and why not, any other environment) and have robots cleaning everything everywhere 24/7...
  - guelo 9y ago
    I'm sorry but that's kind of ridiculous. You're saying that society should not decide that any human behavior is wrong, it should just figure out how to accommodate everything.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
okreallywtf 9y ago
But those are not the arguments that are being made by those in a position make decisions related to energy and climate. The US president denies climate change, along with much of his cabinet and his EPA head, and most republicans in congress do not trust the science and in fact spread misinformation and confusion among their constituents. I was at a town hall a few weeks ago for a republican representative who listed the names of a few prominent climate deniers who made a good case to him against anthropogenic climate change 10 years ago (at the time I think claiming it wasn't happening at all, this has since changed to its happening but is natural). Denial of the science is a huge part of why we've not made more progress. I don't even know who you are talking about that is placing the blame for all of this on the consumers, if you have some specifics I would like to know because I would like to chastise them too. Being energy conscious and trying to increase efficiency where possible at the consumer level is part of the solution but most people have no choice at all in where they get their energy (my state doesn't even have the option of purchasing renewables, I have to use renewable energy certificates if I want to do anything with my actual power bill to help). In fact, my power company has a stranglehold over much of the Southeast and many of the state governments that allows them to continually increase their rates while also not offering many renewable energy alternatives.