5 ms·

Climate change: Boiling frog or tipping point panic?

14 points by smacktoward 7y ago

hacker_9 7y ago
Climate change happens over such a large scale space (the earth!) and such a large amount of time (decades!) that makes it very difficult to really comprehend. How do you tie a heatwave to CO2 emissions from cars? All that can be given are handwavey probabilities, even the weatherman gets it wrong and he's only predicting a week into the future! I suspect as we move to more energy efficient tech this problem will eventually solve itself, but I can't see it being hurried up by climate change itself.
- f_allwein 7y ago
  No, there is broad scientific consensus that the climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, and that human CO2 emissions are a key cause. See e.g. https://www.ipcc.ch/ https://www.ipcc.ch/ Unfortunately, your optimism regarding energy efficient tech does not seem warranted either. Look up Climate Lag - apparently, if we stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, it would still take decades for the effects to show.
abledon 7y ago
I was thinking yesterday how different it would be if we hadn’t invented the Internet 40 something years ago and had to tackle climate change with the preexisting forms of communication.... i think it would be much harder to rally people behind the issue
- r00fus 7y ago
  I'm not so sure. The establishment was slow to grasp the true power the Internet provides them, but it's quite sure that the Internet is a tool and it's just as useful to the authoritarians and establishment as it is to grass roots organizations. Point in fact: troll farms, fake news (both fake articles as well as the proclamation by politicians that anything against them is "fake news"), Facebook/Cambridge Analytica leak by design. Especially without any way to validate trustworthiness of actors, the Internet is simply another medium that is polluted by monied interests.
- nosianu 7y ago
  Or it might be easier because the opposition - which is quite strong if you look at places all over the world (e.g. who won elections in Brasil or the US, and in my native Germany the new right-wing is far stronger than ever and not exactly a fan of climate change action - would have it harder to organize too. In the past the leaders could get things done more easily - possibly, not quite sure. Of course that's a two-edged sword. I do believe that if we get through getting used to the new communication methods we will come out much better on the other side, but occasionally not having to listen to the crowd can be advantageous.
- yyyk 7y ago
  Historically, there was some effective climate action in the pre-internet era which led to the Montreal Protocol[0], a climate achievement which the post-internet era has yet not matched. [0] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/montreal-protocol-ozone-treaty-30-climate-change-hcfs-hfcs/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/montreal-protoco...
moksly 7y ago
I think a lot of people under 20 view climate change as an immediate and existential threat. Students have been skipping education to protest this for most of 2019 all over Europe. I don’t think we’ve seen a movement like this since the hippies in the 60iea, and it’s only just picking up. I also think our political climate will react way too late to this because the majority of voters are older than 40.
- f_allwein 7y ago
  Kudos to the school strikers! Check out Greta Thunberg's book for some clear and concise summaries of the crisis: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45450258-no-one-is-too-small-to-make-a-difference https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45450258-no-one-is-too-s...
  - southern_cross 7y ago
    Is it still being claimed that young Greta can "see" CO2 with her naked eyes?
- on_and_off 7y ago
  This reminds me of brexit : if the brexit vote had only been open to younger voters, "stay" would have won by a landslide. Which makes me very uneasy, the people that won't have to feel the negative consequences of Brexit are the ones that voted for it. Same for climate change. I guess my reflexion will just end up in "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" since I don't see a solution to this.
  - yyyk 7y ago
    In the 2017 French elections, younger voters' top two candidates were Mélenchon and Le Pen: https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/856228943464210433/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/856228943464210433/p... I wonder if the appreciation for younger voters extends there too.
southern_cross 7y ago
A couple of questions which need to be asked and answered: When Anchorage hit its previous record of 85F back in 1969, was that a "tipping point" and a sign of impending climate doom? Better yet, when Fort Yukon (which is almost 400 miles NNE of Anchorage, and just a mile from the Arctic Circle) hit its record (and all-time state high) temperature of 100F (!) way back in 1915 (!!), what that a "tipping point" and a sign of impending climate doom? Enquiring minds want to know.
- Oletros 7y ago
  Really? Are you really using some random data points to discredit an scientific consensus?
  - southern_cross 7y ago
    No, I'm using them to discredit some of the thinking in the article. You did read the article, didn't you? It's pretty simple-minded stuff. But I do have to ask: If that 100F temperature had occurred recently instead of over 100 years ago, how many people would be absolutely freaking out about it? And it would be all over the news, wouldn't it, complete with satellite interviews and talking heads and repeated insistence that "We must do something about climate change right now!" As it is, though, it's just a historical footnote isn't it? And it seems that some folks are now trying to claim that it never really happened. (It appears to have been truncated out of the HadCRUT temperature data set, for example.) How inconvenient for them, then, there are other folks out there who have gone so far as to dig up the actual handwritten log for the weather station involved, which appears to be in good order. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-E1nQ_W4AEpC7D.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-E1nQ_W4AEpC7D.jpg Still other folks have noted that there are other logs out there for other stations which show equal if not higher temperatures, but Fort Yukon is called out as the official record high temperature for the state. I can only assume that investigation showed that those other stations weren't as reliable as Fort Yukon, but the possibility exists that they did in fact experience equally high or even higher temperatures.

14 points by smacktoward 7y ago

Climate change happens over such a large scale space (the earth!) and such a large amount of time (decades!) that makes it very difficult to really comprehend. How do you tie a heatwave to CO2 emissions from cars? All that can be given are handwavey probabilities, even the weatherman gets it wrong and he's only predicting a week into the future! I suspect as we move to more energy efficient tech this problem will eventually solve itself, but I can't see it being hurried up by climate change itself.

f_allwein 7y ago
No, there is broad scientific consensus that the climate is changing at an unprecedented rate, and that human CO2 emissions are a key cause. See e.g. https://www.ipcc.ch/ https://www.ipcc.ch/ Unfortunately, your optimism regarding energy efficient tech does not seem warranted either. Look up Climate Lag - apparently, if we stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow, it would still take decades for the effects to show.

abledon 7y ago

I was thinking yesterday how different it would be if we hadn’t invented the Internet 40 something years ago and had to tackle climate change with the preexisting forms of communication.... i think it would be much harder to rally people behind the issue

r00fus 7y ago
I'm not so sure. The establishment was slow to grasp the true power the Internet provides them, but it's quite sure that the Internet is a tool and it's just as useful to the authoritarians and establishment as it is to grass roots organizations. Point in fact: troll farms, fake news (both fake articles as well as the proclamation by politicians that anything against them is "fake news"), Facebook/Cambridge Analytica leak by design. Especially without any way to validate trustworthiness of actors, the Internet is simply another medium that is polluted by monied interests.
nosianu 7y ago
Or it might be easier because the opposition - which is quite strong if you look at places all over the world (e.g. who won elections in Brasil or the US, and in my native Germany the new right-wing is far stronger than ever and not exactly a fan of climate change action - would have it harder to organize too. In the past the leaders could get things done more easily - possibly, not quite sure. Of course that's a two-edged sword. I do believe that if we get through getting used to the new communication methods we will come out much better on the other side, but occasionally not having to listen to the crowd can be advantageous.
yyyk 7y ago
Historically, there was some effective climate action in the pre-internet era which led to the Montreal Protocol[0], a climate achievement which the post-internet era has yet not matched. [0] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/montreal-protocol-ozone-treaty-30-climate-change-hcfs-hfcs/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/09/montreal-protoco...

moksly 7y ago

I think a lot of people under 20 view climate change as an immediate and existential threat. Students have been skipping education to protest this for most of 2019 all over Europe. I don’t think we’ve seen a movement like this since the hippies in the 60iea, and it’s only just picking up. I also think our political climate will react way too late to this because the majority of voters are older than 40.

f_allwein 7y ago
Kudos to the school strikers! Check out Greta Thunberg's book for some clear and concise summaries of the crisis: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45450258-no-one-is-too-small-to-make-a-difference https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45450258-no-one-is-too-s...
- southern_cross 7y ago
  Is it still being claimed that young Greta can "see" CO2 with her naked eyes?
on_and_off 7y ago
This reminds me of brexit : if the brexit vote had only been open to younger voters, "stay" would have won by a landslide. Which makes me very uneasy, the people that won't have to feel the negative consequences of Brexit are the ones that voted for it. Same for climate change. I guess my reflexion will just end up in "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time" since I don't see a solution to this.
- yyyk 7y ago
  In the 2017 French elections, younger voters' top two candidates were Mélenchon and Le Pen: https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/856228943464210433/photo/1 https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/856228943464210433/p... I wonder if the appreciation for younger voters extends there too.

southern_cross 7y ago

A couple of questions which need to be asked and answered: When Anchorage hit its previous record of 85F back in 1969, was that a "tipping point" and a sign of impending climate doom? Better yet, when Fort Yukon (which is almost 400 miles NNE of Anchorage, and just a mile from the Arctic Circle) hit its record (and all-time state high) temperature of 100F (!) way back in 1915 (!!), what that a "tipping point" and a sign of impending climate doom? Enquiring minds want to know.

Oletros 7y ago
Really? Are you really using some random data points to discredit an scientific consensus?
- southern_cross 7y ago
  No, I'm using them to discredit some of the thinking in the article. You did read the article, didn't you? It's pretty simple-minded stuff. But I do have to ask: If that 100F temperature had occurred recently instead of over 100 years ago, how many people would be absolutely freaking out about it? And it would be all over the news, wouldn't it, complete with satellite interviews and talking heads and repeated insistence that "We must do something about climate change right now!" As it is, though, it's just a historical footnote isn't it? And it seems that some folks are now trying to claim that it never really happened. (It appears to have been truncated out of the HadCRUT temperature data set, for example.) How inconvenient for them, then, there are other folks out there who have gone so far as to dig up the actual handwritten log for the weather station involved, which appears to be in good order. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-E1nQ_W4AEpC7D.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D-E1nQ_W4AEpC7D.jpg Still other folks have noted that there are other logs out there for other stations which show equal if not higher temperatures, but Fort Yukon is called out as the official record high temperature for the state. I can only assume that investigation showed that those other stations weren't as reliable as Fort Yukon, but the possibility exists that they did in fact experience equally high or even higher temperatures.