5 ms·

Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

83 points by rotw 8y ago

NegativeLatency 8y ago
It’s really disappointing that the political systems we have don’t encourage long term stewardship of our resources. I don’t see any kind of reform happening in the US until negative consequences are felt by a significant chunk of the population.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  Yup. There's just no way us humans are going to 'act now'. Any response at a global (and, in the US, national and state) level will be 100% reactive, and 0% proactive. Since there are still people arguing over the cause, I'm starting to think it might be more productive to move the conversation from trying to be proactive (which requires everyone to agree on the cause) to reactive (which does not). In other words, start preparing for the outcome of this. We, as a species, cannot seem to be able to stop what we are doing.
  - AstralStorm 8y ago
    The main outcomes would be localized famines, general food shortage, freshwater shortage, increased heat, mass migrations, some flooding. What do you think we can do about those antecedents we're not doing right now? (not argumentative, maybe I'm missing something) We will have to deal with the source of the problem sooner or later; given enough trapped heat most of the planet will turn into deserts.
- devoply 8y ago
  What to me is troubling is that we're just getting started as a species. This whole industrialization thing is maybe 400 years old, the species around 30,000 years old. Things have existed on the planet for hundreds of millions of years. The future does not look bright for our species.
- latch 8y ago
  It's disappointing that such a political system is necessary for individuals to act responsibly, ethically and morally.
  - arthurcolle 8y ago
    Welcome to [REDACTED], land of the free and home to the brave.
    - zygotic12 8y ago
      Dang (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dang https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dang) arthurcolle I too have been damned.
  - anon7429 8y ago
    Democracy, eg the populist mob, killed Socrates and will likely kill the species too.
    - dang 8y ago
      Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
- ekianjo 8y ago
  > don’t encourage long term stewardship of our resources Politicians are completely incapable to make a balanced yearly budget, so what do we expect there exactly?
  - camgunz 8y ago
    If a major economy ever balances its budget it's making a huge mistake. GDP is driven by investment, the more you can invest the better, and if you aren't you can bet your rivals are. The balanced budget trope is abused by right wing politicians who want to (literally?) starve the welfare state while subsidizing business and defense. These are the same politicians who deny climate change in order to protect business, and the same politicians whose denial of climate change will destroy poorer, browner countries, and the same politicians who will deny aid and asylum to refugees from those destroyed countries. Don't fall for any of their horseshit, they're basically just corrupt, and incidentally monstrously evil.
- malloryerik 8y ago
  You mean until it's too late? With the current wave of nationalist populism, chance of action is shrinking. One horrifying potential feedback loop: lack of serious global action allows continued climate change, creating more refugees, intensifying nationalist populism, creating illiberal democracy, allowing further climate change, and so on.
- tfehring 8y ago
  In fact, various US government programs use taxpayer money to shield parts of the population from negative consequences of climate change already. For example, FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program subsidize property owners in high-flood-risk areas and pass along the immediate economic cost of rising sea levels to everyone else. Fannie and Freddie do the same thing by maintaining lax flood insurance requirements and taking losses (at the margin) when uninsured homeowners end up underwater (figuratively and literally) and walk away. I do think a revenue-neutral carbon tax as described in [0] could be politically viable in the not-so-distant future. But maybe I'm being too optimistic on that - coal miners seem to be awfully overrepresented in the current political environment. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/28/196355493/economists-have-a-one-page-solution-to-climate-change https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/28/196355493/econ...
btrettel 8y ago
I was reading a blog post about problems in academia which said the following in the first paragraph: > There’s a narrative I find kind of troubling, but that unfortunately seems to be growing more common in science. The core idea is that the mere existence of perverse incentives is a valid and sufficient reason to knowingly behave in an antisocial way, just as long as one first acknowledges the existence of those perverse incentives. http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/ http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc... As a cyclist who's slowly switching to a mostly vegetarian diet, partly to reduce my carbon emissions, I find this quote to apply equally well to people who believe that climate change is a problem but seem to want to wait for the government to act before they do much. Yes, maybe my efforts are "wasted" in some respect, but I don't think I'm missing much anything valuable anyway by cycling for example, so that eliminates the downside in my view.
- devoply 8y ago
  I guess baby steps might justify your approach. But I think a rethink on the level of global civilization is needed before we can make any sort of realistic progress into an actually sustainable species that might live 1 million or more years. Barring that with our current societal approach and trajectory we may go extinct at any time and the system is generally set up to support such an outcome. Eating different food or bicycling does not fix how society is set up to function and behave.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    You're correct that much larger changes are needed. I don't claim my approach would solve the problem, just be one step towards a solution. I don't even know what a complete solution looks like, but I do know the changes I've made personally are likely compatible. And I'm frustrated that very few people are willing to go as far as I have. A complete solution might be impossible, and we might have to make the least bad decision out of many.
- danieltillett 8y ago
  Does anyone know how much carbon is released to grow the extra food that you use cycling verses what you would use driving? Food production is very energy intensive and the human body very inefficient. You can’t effect the amount of carbon released by adopting a low carbon lifestyle when the price of fossil fuels is above the cost of production. All reducing demand at the margin does is lower the marginal price causing an increase in consumption elsewhere in the economy.
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Britain has just approved restarting fracking. Germany wants to demolish ancient forest to mine more lignite for power stations. The US wants to save the coal mining industry. The North West passage is almost ice free in summer. Australia's coal exports are booming. IPCC thinks it will need 2.5% of global GDP for 20 years to fix. Act now? It still doesn't seem like any of the world's electable politicians even believe the problem yet. Just in greenwash and talking about GDP growth. The next generation is fucked. Edit: That's very disappointing to see. Submission goes from top 5 on front page to nowhere, yet isn't flagged.
- lachlan-sneff 8y ago
  To mars, luna, and orbital platforms we go!
  - cxseven 8y ago
    There's not going to be anything more hospitable than Earth for a long time, long enough for the warnings here to come true and then some.
    - lachlan-sneff 8y ago
      Doesn't hurt to spread out though.
- zaarn 8y ago
  >Germany wants to demolish ancient forest to mine more lignite for power stations. It isn't Germany, the RWE corporation wants this because in the near future they will loose the ability to mine coal in that area, so they'll happily pay off politicians and raze the forest to get at whatever coal is down there until the time's up. The easy and most efficient solution to all these problems it to outlaw oil and coal now. It would cause all kinds of auxiliary damage but it would likely be cheaper than continuing down the current path.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
jamesgagan 8y ago
Stop eating animals. Governments are slow to act, but switching to a plant based diet is something you can do right now.
- malloryerik 8y ago
  I don't understand why someone would downvote this, as I thought the norm was to downvote inappropriate and unjustified comments, not comments whose opinion one simply doesn't share especially when as in this case the comment recommends something that is scientific fact: one can reduce one's carbon and methane footprints by abstaining from meat. If you don't like this comment isn't it better to respond with your reasoning?
- camgunz 8y ago
  I admit to being tired of this vague moralizing. We're in this mess because of corrupt energy industries and fucked up factory farming on a global scale, not because I like chicken nuggets. There is absolutely zero chance that we avoid global warming because enough people voluntarily switched to a vegetarian diet. It's a non-solution, just like everyone biking, turning their a/c to 85 and heaters to 60, etc etc. It will never, ever happen unless government makes it happen, and I'm sure advocates know it, and I'm therefore forced to conclude it's just some weird eco-shaming.
  - malloryerik 8y ago
    Shrill messages can and do backfire, but I think there might be a point to add. If we go vegetarian, as an example, we're likely promoting new vegetarian industries which then can create real alternatives for wider and wider groups of people. For example if people start a craze for foods made from kelp and it spreads, then it can become a part of larger government-arranged action. The same is true for alternative energies. Meanwhile you'll agree that the consumer is indeed the most important part of any economic activity, and that they often have the most choice, as most corporate managers answer to shareholders who in turn answer to short-term profits.
    - 8y ago
camgunz 8y ago
It's past time to recognize that this is happening. We're going to experience the fallout of a rapidly warming planet. We need everyone to switch from prevention mode to cure mode. The political will to avoid this just isn't, and never will be there.
anon7429 8y ago
Enjoy life while you can, it won't be here for long.
kapauldo 8y ago
It's not "we" and "us", it's half of us. Half of us half this lethal combination of confidence and ignorance. In America it's the Republicans. People just have this sick notion of what is true, they ignore science and scientists and listen to talk radio hosts and fox news and then they dig in. There is not a consensus that any problem exists.
Lidador 8y ago
Al Gore said 2015.

83 points by rotw 8y ago

It’s really disappointing that the political systems we have don’t encourage long term stewardship of our resources. I don’t see any kind of reform happening in the US until negative consequences are felt by a significant chunk of the population.

craftyguy 8y ago
Yup. There's just no way us humans are going to 'act now'. Any response at a global (and, in the US, national and state) level will be 100% reactive, and 0% proactive. Since there are still people arguing over the cause, I'm starting to think it might be more productive to move the conversation from trying to be proactive (which requires everyone to agree on the cause) to reactive (which does not). In other words, start preparing for the outcome of this. We, as a species, cannot seem to be able to stop what we are doing.
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  The main outcomes would be localized famines, general food shortage, freshwater shortage, increased heat, mass migrations, some flooding. What do you think we can do about those antecedents we're not doing right now? (not argumentative, maybe I'm missing something) We will have to deal with the source of the problem sooner or later; given enough trapped heat most of the planet will turn into deserts.
devoply 8y ago
What to me is troubling is that we're just getting started as a species. This whole industrialization thing is maybe 400 years old, the species around 30,000 years old. Things have existed on the planet for hundreds of millions of years. The future does not look bright for our species.
latch 8y ago
It's disappointing that such a political system is necessary for individuals to act responsibly, ethically and morally.
- arthurcolle 8y ago
  Welcome to [REDACTED], land of the free and home to the brave.
  - zygotic12 8y ago
    Dang (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dang https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dang) arthurcolle I too have been damned.
- anon7429 8y ago
  Democracy, eg the populist mob, killed Socrates and will likely kill the species too.
  - dang 8y ago
    Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?
ekianjo 8y ago
> don’t encourage long term stewardship of our resources Politicians are completely incapable to make a balanced yearly budget, so what do we expect there exactly?
- camgunz 8y ago
  If a major economy ever balances its budget it's making a huge mistake. GDP is driven by investment, the more you can invest the better, and if you aren't you can bet your rivals are. The balanced budget trope is abused by right wing politicians who want to (literally?) starve the welfare state while subsidizing business and defense. These are the same politicians who deny climate change in order to protect business, and the same politicians whose denial of climate change will destroy poorer, browner countries, and the same politicians who will deny aid and asylum to refugees from those destroyed countries. Don't fall for any of their horseshit, they're basically just corrupt, and incidentally monstrously evil.
malloryerik 8y ago
You mean until it's too late? With the current wave of nationalist populism, chance of action is shrinking. One horrifying potential feedback loop: lack of serious global action allows continued climate change, creating more refugees, intensifying nationalist populism, creating illiberal democracy, allowing further climate change, and so on.
tfehring 8y ago
In fact, various US government programs use taxpayer money to shield parts of the population from negative consequences of climate change already. For example, FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program subsidize property owners in high-flood-risk areas and pass along the immediate economic cost of rising sea levels to everyone else. Fannie and Freddie do the same thing by maintaining lax flood insurance requirements and taking losses (at the margin) when uninsured homeowners end up underwater (figuratively and literally) and walk away. I do think a revenue-neutral carbon tax as described in [0] could be politically viable in the not-so-distant future. But maybe I'm being too optimistic on that - coal miners seem to be awfully overrepresented in the current political environment. [0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/28/196355493/economists-have-a-one-page-solution-to-climate-change https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/28/196355493/econ...

btrettel 8y ago

I was reading a blog post about problems in academia which said the following in the first paragraph: > There’s a narrative I find kind of troubling, but that unfortunately seems to be growing more common in science. The core idea is that the mere existence of perverse incentives is a valid and sufficient reason to knowingly behave in an antisocial way, just as long as one first acknowledges the existence of those perverse incentives. http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-incentives-its-you/ http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc... As a cyclist who's slowly switching to a mostly vegetarian diet, partly to reduce my carbon emissions, I find this quote to apply equally well to people who believe that climate change is a problem but seem to want to wait for the government to act before they do much. Yes, maybe my efforts are "wasted" in some respect, but I don't think I'm missing much anything valuable anyway by cycling for example, so that eliminates the downside in my view.

devoply 8y ago
I guess baby steps might justify your approach. But I think a rethink on the level of global civilization is needed before we can make any sort of realistic progress into an actually sustainable species that might live 1 million or more years. Barring that with our current societal approach and trajectory we may go extinct at any time and the system is generally set up to support such an outcome. Eating different food or bicycling does not fix how society is set up to function and behave.
- btrettel 8y ago
  You're correct that much larger changes are needed. I don't claim my approach would solve the problem, just be one step towards a solution. I don't even know what a complete solution looks like, but I do know the changes I've made personally are likely compatible. And I'm frustrated that very few people are willing to go as far as I have. A complete solution might be impossible, and we might have to make the least bad decision out of many.
danieltillett 8y ago
Does anyone know how much carbon is released to grow the extra food that you use cycling verses what you would use driving? Food production is very energy intensive and the human body very inefficient. You can’t effect the amount of carbon released by adopting a low carbon lifestyle when the price of fossil fuels is above the cost of production. All reducing demand at the margin does is lower the marginal price causing an increase in consumption elsewhere in the economy.

NeedMoreTea 8y ago

Britain has just approved restarting fracking. Germany wants to demolish ancient forest to mine more lignite for power stations. The US wants to save the coal mining industry. The North West passage is almost ice free in summer. Australia's coal exports are booming. IPCC thinks it will need 2.5% of global GDP for 20 years to fix. Act now? It still doesn't seem like any of the world's electable politicians even believe the problem yet. Just in greenwash and talking about GDP growth. The next generation is fucked. Edit: That's very disappointing to see. Submission goes from top 5 on front page to nowhere, yet isn't flagged.

lachlan-sneff 8y ago
To mars, luna, and orbital platforms we go!
- cxseven 8y ago
  There's not going to be anything more hospitable than Earth for a long time, long enough for the warnings here to come true and then some.
  - lachlan-sneff 8y ago
    Doesn't hurt to spread out though.
zaarn 8y ago
>Germany wants to demolish ancient forest to mine more lignite for power stations. It isn't Germany, the RWE corporation wants this because in the near future they will loose the ability to mine coal in that area, so they'll happily pay off politicians and raze the forest to get at whatever coal is down there until the time's up. The easy and most efficient solution to all these problems it to outlaw oil and coal now. It would cause all kinds of auxiliary damage but it would likely be cheaper than continuing down the current path.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago

jamesgagan 8y ago

Stop eating animals. Governments are slow to act, but switching to a plant based diet is something you can do right now.

malloryerik 8y ago
I don't understand why someone would downvote this, as I thought the norm was to downvote inappropriate and unjustified comments, not comments whose opinion one simply doesn't share especially when as in this case the comment recommends something that is scientific fact: one can reduce one's carbon and methane footprints by abstaining from meat. If you don't like this comment isn't it better to respond with your reasoning?
camgunz 8y ago
I admit to being tired of this vague moralizing. We're in this mess because of corrupt energy industries and fucked up factory farming on a global scale, not because I like chicken nuggets. There is absolutely zero chance that we avoid global warming because enough people voluntarily switched to a vegetarian diet. It's a non-solution, just like everyone biking, turning their a/c to 85 and heaters to 60, etc etc. It will never, ever happen unless government makes it happen, and I'm sure advocates know it, and I'm therefore forced to conclude it's just some weird eco-shaming.
- malloryerik 8y ago
  Shrill messages can and do backfire, but I think there might be a point to add. If we go vegetarian, as an example, we're likely promoting new vegetarian industries which then can create real alternatives for wider and wider groups of people. For example if people start a craze for foods made from kelp and it spreads, then it can become a part of larger government-arranged action. The same is true for alternative energies. Meanwhile you'll agree that the consumer is indeed the most important part of any economic activity, and that they often have the most choice, as most corporate managers answer to shareholders who in turn answer to short-term profits.
  - 8y ago

camgunz 8y ago

It's past time to recognize that this is happening. We're going to experience the fallout of a rapidly warming planet. We need everyone to switch from prevention mode to cure mode. The political will to avoid this just isn't, and never will be there.

anon7429 8y ago

Enjoy life while you can, it won't be here for long.

kapauldo 8y ago

It's not "we" and "us", it's half of us. Half of us half this lethal combination of confidence and ignorance. In America it's the Republicans. People just have this sick notion of what is true, they ignore science and scientists and listen to talk radio hosts and fox news and then they dig in. There is not a consensus that any problem exists.

Lidador 8y ago

Al Gore said 2015.