4 ms·

UN Says Climate Genocide Is Coming. It’s Actually Worse Than That

46 points by chuckdries 8y ago

ForHackernews 8y ago
TL;DR: We're all f*cked. I did enjoy the paragraph focusing on the true victims of climate change -- non-Manhattanite New Yorkers.
na92 8y ago
Clean energy is coming, but slowly. People are not going to get off their cars and hop on a bike. There is something you can do, today, to mitigate one of the biggest causes of climate change. Give up meat and dairy. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-red... Ironically the thing that is easiest to do is also the last one people want to do. I always thought that the fight against meat and dairy was a moral one. I didn't know the toll it takes on the environment, until I specifically went looking for it. It is one of the best kept capitalist secrets.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Why not just have people switch to poultry? White meat is healthier, anyway. People aren’t going to go vegetarian directly but surely there are half-measures that are a good first step.
  - sys_64738 8y ago
    Or we could switch directly to Soylent Green.
- sys_64738 8y ago
  Your Guardian article sounds like it's saying that population expansion is the real problem. Me not eating a hamburger isn't going to solve the population issue.
curiousity 8y ago
Defeatism is endemic to comment threads like this. I'm not sure what the purpose of these comments is, to be honest. If anything, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me offer an alternative point of view. Yes, the climate will be irreparably damaged. Yes, lots of humnas will suffer. These things seem to be unavoidable. The harm to both our planet and its citizens is happening as we speak. However, the scale to which this occurs is in our control. This is an all-hands-on-deck sort of scenario. Everyone will need to pitch in, whatever they can, however they can. Travel less internationally. Reduce (or eliminate if possible) your meat and animal product consumption. Buy less. Vote for candidates that support renewable energy and environmentally friendly initiatives. There's a thousand ways an individual can help by voting with their wallet, their time, and their participation in their political system. Everything you do, every choice you make today and for the rest of your life, potentially affects the lives of future generations. In my opinion, the most harmful thing you can do, is choosing to do nothing. Edit: Seeing this is Hacker News, I know a lot of people are going to be commenting with technical suggestions - lab grown meats, renewable energy sources, carbon capture, geoengineering etc. I am very much in favour of these solutions. However, (as far as I know) none of these currently exist at such a scale or level of sophistication so as to make my initial point irrelevant.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  > In my opinion, the most harmful thing you can do, is choosing to do nothing. I disagree. Millions of Americans and one of two major political parties are actively obstructing action to mitigate the impact of climate change. Doing nothing is better than doing things to actively hamper positive efforts.
  - curiousity 8y ago
    I was orienting my post more towards the commenters who would rather comment "we are doomed" and "nothing will change", but you are absolutely right to point out obstructionism. That said, I think my initial point still stands: Everyone needs to do what they can to both reduce their own impact, and to pressure governments and corporations to reduce theirs.
  - 8y ago
chriskanan 8y ago
While things look gloomy, that pretty much ignores geoengineering as a possibility. Chapter Four of the IPCC report [0] discusses things that could be done to offset or slow down this process. Besides renewable/nuclear energy and getting rid of cattle (methane emissions), it discusses geoengineering methods to actively compensate for what we have done to the environment. One of the more interesting and cost effective ideas is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI): "There is high agreement that cost of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) (not taking into account indirect and social costs, research and development costs and monitoring expenses) may be in the range of 1–10 billion USD yr–1 for injection of 1–5 MtS to achieve cooling of 1–2 W m–2 (Robock et al., 2009; McClellan et al., 2012; Ryaboshapko and Revokatova, 2015; Moriyama et al., 2016), suggesting that cost-effectiveness may be high if side-effects are low or neglected (McClellan et al., 2012)." [0] Some of the other options are outlined in Table 4.7 of the report. Given that these are not that expensive and could radically reduce temperature, I think we should be doing a lot more to research both the intended and unintended consequences. I strongly think some entity is going to try some of them, and some have already been done by folks: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/science/earth/iron-dumping-experiment-in-pacific-alarms-marine-experts.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/science/earth/iron-dumpin... If you are interested in mitigating climate change, I encourage you to read through chapter 4 of the IPCC report which covers many of the possible methods. [0] Chapter 4 of the IPCC report; http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter4.pdf http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter4.pdf
sys_64738 8y ago
When the ice shelves in Greenland (40 foot sea level rise) and Antarctica (200 foot seas level rise) occur then I reckon it'll not be gradual but will be a sudden collapse. All within a very short space of months. The real issue is that nobody has proven this wasn't going to occur anyway. This is always the downfall with climate science in that there is no explicit proof that anything man does to the planet would alter what was going to occur anyway. Climate scientists also have an agenda to keep their funding so will never say "there is no issue" but will always point to the inevitable as it matches what they want for a conclusion. Follow the money, as they say.
- nine_k 8y ago
  The important part to me: e.g. "the Greenland ice sheet will end up in the ocean in 50 years, with p < 1e-5". The less important part for me: "...this will happen because of the human activity that they cannot stop anyway". So my idea is to prepare for this scenario, because we cannot realistically prevent it. E.g. build dams where it makes sense, evacuate the dangerous areas where protection cannot work, predict in detail what the coastal map is going to look like, try to predict how ocean currents and winds will change, and prepare to that, etc.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > The real issue is that nobody has proven this wasn't going to occur anyway. Are you saying that the contribution of CO₂ levels to warming isn't established, or that the human role in increasing CO₂ levels isn't established? Because both of those are very well established. > This is always the downfall with climate science in that there is no explicit proof that anything man does to the planet would alter what was going to occur anyway. This is only true in the sense where “explicit proof” is restricted to pure abstract domains like math and not applicable to any domain of material fact; to the extent that it is possible to “prove” anything about what would happen in counterfactual alternative conditions in the material universe, though, this has been proven.
  - sys_64738 8y ago
    > Are you saying that the contribution of CO₂ levels to warming isn't established, or that the human role in increasing CO₂ levels isn't established? Because both of those are very well established Established by who and where is their funding coming from? Would you trust a survey that says "Windows is better than Linux" if it was funded by Microsoft? That's why where the funding comes from is key. > is only true in the sense where “explicit proof” is restricted to pure abstract domains like math and not applicable to any domain of material fact; to the extent that it is possible to “prove” anything about what would happen in counterfactual alternative conditions in the material universe, though, this has been proven. If you want hundreds of billions of dollars to be invested in something which hasn't got clear proof of value then that's simply not enough. You need to prove the Return On Investment, regardless of field. It all comes down to money.
nine_k 8y ago
The more interesting part to me: at the +4 C warming, a lot of currently most productive and populous areas in subtropics will become too hot for humans to live. This will lead to deaths, migrations, and, of course, food insecurity. Also, melting of enough of Antarctic ice may raise the level of oceans so much that protecting coastal cities with dams will become impractical. That is, whole countries, like the Netherlands, currently have a lot of their territory below sea level, and had for centuries. But this only works for a difference of several meters, but is unlikely to work for e.g. 50m.
sosense 8y ago
"Climate change" hysteria is being pushed hard now, with articles every day here on HN.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Lidador 8y ago
Gore said 2015.

46 points by chuckdries 8y ago

TL;DR: We're all f*cked. I did enjoy the paragraph focusing on the true victims of climate change -- non-Manhattanite New Yorkers.

na92 8y ago

Clean energy is coming, but slowly. People are not going to get off their cars and hop on a bike. There is something you can do, today, to mitigate one of the biggest causes of climate change. Give up meat and dairy. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-reduction-in-meat-eating-essential-to-avoid-climate-breakdown https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/10/huge-red... Ironically the thing that is easiest to do is also the last one people want to do. I always thought that the fight against meat and dairy was a moral one. I didn't know the toll it takes on the environment, until I specifically went looking for it. It is one of the best kept capitalist secrets.

Apocryphon 8y ago
Why not just have people switch to poultry? White meat is healthier, anyway. People aren’t going to go vegetarian directly but surely there are half-measures that are a good first step.
- sys_64738 8y ago
  Or we could switch directly to Soylent Green.
sys_64738 8y ago
Your Guardian article sounds like it's saying that population expansion is the real problem. Me not eating a hamburger isn't going to solve the population issue.

curiousity 8y ago

Defeatism is endemic to comment threads like this. I'm not sure what the purpose of these comments is, to be honest. If anything, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Let me offer an alternative point of view. Yes, the climate will be irreparably damaged. Yes, lots of humnas will suffer. These things seem to be unavoidable. The harm to both our planet and its citizens is happening as we speak. However, the scale to which this occurs is in our control. This is an all-hands-on-deck sort of scenario. Everyone will need to pitch in, whatever they can, however they can. Travel less internationally. Reduce (or eliminate if possible) your meat and animal product consumption. Buy less. Vote for candidates that support renewable energy and environmentally friendly initiatives. There's a thousand ways an individual can help by voting with their wallet, their time, and their participation in their political system. Everything you do, every choice you make today and for the rest of your life, potentially affects the lives of future generations. In my opinion, the most harmful thing you can do, is choosing to do nothing. Edit: Seeing this is Hacker News, I know a lot of people are going to be commenting with technical suggestions - lab grown meats, renewable energy sources, carbon capture, geoengineering etc. I am very much in favour of these solutions. However, (as far as I know) none of these currently exist at such a scale or level of sophistication so as to make my initial point irrelevant.

ForHackernews 8y ago
> In my opinion, the most harmful thing you can do, is choosing to do nothing. I disagree. Millions of Americans and one of two major political parties are actively obstructing action to mitigate the impact of climate change. Doing nothing is better than doing things to actively hamper positive efforts.
- curiousity 8y ago
  I was orienting my post more towards the commenters who would rather comment "we are doomed" and "nothing will change", but you are absolutely right to point out obstructionism. That said, I think my initial point still stands: Everyone needs to do what they can to both reduce their own impact, and to pressure governments and corporations to reduce theirs.
- 8y ago

chriskanan 8y ago

While things look gloomy, that pretty much ignores geoengineering as a possibility. Chapter Four of the IPCC report [0] discusses things that could be done to offset or slow down this process. Besides renewable/nuclear energy and getting rid of cattle (methane emissions), it discusses geoengineering methods to actively compensate for what we have done to the environment. One of the more interesting and cost effective ideas is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI): "There is high agreement that cost of stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) (not taking into account indirect and social costs, research and development costs and monitoring expenses) may be in the range of 1–10 billion USD yr–1 for injection of 1–5 MtS to achieve cooling of 1–2 W m–2 (Robock et al., 2009; McClellan et al., 2012; Ryaboshapko and Revokatova, 2015; Moriyama et al., 2016), suggesting that cost-effectiveness may be high if side-effects are low or neglected (McClellan et al., 2012)." [0] Some of the other options are outlined in Table 4.7 of the report. Given that these are not that expensive and could radically reduce temperature, I think we should be doing a lot more to research both the intended and unintended consequences. I strongly think some entity is going to try some of them, and some have already been done by folks: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/science/earth/iron-dumping-experiment-in-pacific-alarms-marine-experts.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/science/earth/iron-dumpin... If you are interested in mitigating climate change, I encourage you to read through chapter 4 of the IPCC report which covers many of the possible methods. [0] Chapter 4 of the IPCC report; http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter4.pdf http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_chapter4.pdf

sys_64738 8y ago

When the ice shelves in Greenland (40 foot sea level rise) and Antarctica (200 foot seas level rise) occur then I reckon it'll not be gradual but will be a sudden collapse. All within a very short space of months. The real issue is that nobody has proven this wasn't going to occur anyway. This is always the downfall with climate science in that there is no explicit proof that anything man does to the planet would alter what was going to occur anyway. Climate scientists also have an agenda to keep their funding so will never say "there is no issue" but will always point to the inevitable as it matches what they want for a conclusion. Follow the money, as they say.

nine_k 8y ago
The important part to me: e.g. "the Greenland ice sheet will end up in the ocean in 50 years, with p < 1e-5". The less important part for me: "...this will happen because of the human activity that they cannot stop anyway". So my idea is to prepare for this scenario, because we cannot realistically prevent it. E.g. build dams where it makes sense, evacuate the dangerous areas where protection cannot work, predict in detail what the coastal map is going to look like, try to predict how ocean currents and winds will change, and prepare to that, etc.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> The real issue is that nobody has proven this wasn't going to occur anyway. Are you saying that the contribution of CO₂ levels to warming isn't established, or that the human role in increasing CO₂ levels isn't established? Because both of those are very well established. > This is always the downfall with climate science in that there is no explicit proof that anything man does to the planet would alter what was going to occur anyway. This is only true in the sense where “explicit proof” is restricted to pure abstract domains like math and not applicable to any domain of material fact; to the extent that it is possible to “prove” anything about what would happen in counterfactual alternative conditions in the material universe, though, this has been proven.
- sys_64738 8y ago
  > Are you saying that the contribution of CO₂ levels to warming isn't established, or that the human role in increasing CO₂ levels isn't established? Because both of those are very well established Established by who and where is their funding coming from? Would you trust a survey that says "Windows is better than Linux" if it was funded by Microsoft? That's why where the funding comes from is key. > is only true in the sense where “explicit proof” is restricted to pure abstract domains like math and not applicable to any domain of material fact; to the extent that it is possible to “prove” anything about what would happen in counterfactual alternative conditions in the material universe, though, this has been proven. If you want hundreds of billions of dollars to be invested in something which hasn't got clear proof of value then that's simply not enough. You need to prove the Return On Investment, regardless of field. It all comes down to money.

nine_k 8y ago

The more interesting part to me: at the +4 C warming, a lot of currently most productive and populous areas in subtropics will become too hot for humans to live. This will lead to deaths, migrations, and, of course, food insecurity. Also, melting of enough of Antarctic ice may raise the level of oceans so much that protecting coastal cities with dams will become impractical. That is, whole countries, like the Netherlands, currently have a lot of their territory below sea level, and had for centuries. But this only works for a difference of several meters, but is unlikely to work for e.g. 50m.

sosense 8y ago

"Climate change" hysteria is being pushed hard now, with articles every day here on HN.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Lidador 8y ago

Gore said 2015.