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One person studying climate change at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories opined that the U.S. would not take climate change seriously until it loses a maj

One person studying climate change at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories opined that the U.S. would not take climate change seriously until it loses a major city. New Orleans doesn't count.

ttul 7y ago
I’m sorry to say this, but it can’t happen soon enough.
technofiend 7y ago
>New Orleans doesn't count. I'm not sure anything outside the Northeast does. There were many calls to stop funding post-hurricane reconstruction until Sandy hit. Puerto Rico is still struggling to get funding years after Irma and Maria, and Houston is debating if they really want to stop construction in the Addicks reservoir and surrounding areas.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  In NJ we got "stronger than the storm" and zero reputable talk - that I recall - about the possibility of not being so willing to rebuild. It's difficult to sway public opinion about the immediacy when so many other signals parrot tradition and the staus quo. We're not stronger than the storm, only amazingly dumber.
- addicted 7y ago
  NYC was crippled by Sandy, and that didn’t lead to any changes. Let’s be honest. The only thing that will change is if the Republican party’s power reduces.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    What would your theoretical Democrats do differently?
    - jaredklewis 7y ago
      Because the first step to doing something about climate change is believing it exists.
      - garmaine 7y ago
        You didn’t answer the question. What policy would be different?
        JoeSamoa 7y ago
        First off the EPA would get proper funding: https://www.edf.org/deep-epa-cuts-put-public-health-risk https://www.edf.org/deep-epa-cuts-put-public-health-risk And would admit clearly that it is something we can change and start promoting policies that help move society in the right direction. Instead they are censoring themselves and the organization is all but toothless. https://time.com/5075265/epa-website-climate-change-censorship/ https://time.com/5075265/epa-website-climate-change-censorsh... So yea things would be different.
        belltaco 7y ago
        The Paris agreement was a good start, which Trump pulled the US out of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement
        DuskStar 7y ago
        A lot of people (myself included) would say that the Paris Agreement gave up too much for too little. If everyone followed the limits there, the climate would still be fucked - and those limits were far more restrictive for countries like the US than the developing world. And while it might be reasonable to say that it's not fair to ask for those countries to give up their chance of getting out of poverty, it still leaves the problem. I can accept giving up things to save the climate. I, and many others, can't accept giving up things to see the world go to hell anyways.
BurningFrog 7y ago
I doubt even losing NYC and LA will make China or India change course.
- ramraj07 7y ago
  Pretty sure they'll loose cities before the US does. Most cities in India are at their wits end in water crises already
  - kortilla 7y ago
    Water crisis != pain from climate change. A massive dam is a great way to deal with a water crisis at expense of the environment.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  There's a chance it could make the US be more willing to go out of its way to help and/or push them change course...
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    Aside from threatening nuclear war, I don't see what power the US has over China or India to do major sacrifices. And that sure looks like a cure worse than the disease to me...
    - losteric 7y ago
      The US doesn't need to lift a finger. Climate change will severely disrupt China and India's populations, and likely lead to the collapse of some neighboring nations - it's an existential threat they are motivated to address.
    - scarejunba 7y ago
ars 7y ago
> the U.S. would not take Other countries have not done anything either (lip service doesn't count). This is a "lack of good alternatives" problem, not a US problem.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  What's Germany been up to?
  - ars 7y ago
    They've been shutting down nuclear power and keeping coal. Take a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Electricity_Production_in_Germany.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:... Nuclear went down, to be replaced by wind/solar. i.e. they did nothing useful. Actually it's worse than it looks - they've outsourced their CO2 emissions to China to build all those solar cells, etc. Germany is an example of a failure, not a success: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19910540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19910540
    - imtringued 7y ago
      This narrative is very funny because it plays into boomer tendency of hating renweables. Germany showed that it's possible as long as you don't give up along the way. Countries like China or the US never started doing anything in the first place so criticism coming from those countries is just plain hypocritical. "I don't want it and now I don't have to because haha look at Germany, what a loser, haha"
      - freeflight 7y ago
        Thank you for pointing this out, as a German it's kinda grating to keep on reading this kind of stuff, which also regularly frames the German nuclear exit as some kind of knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima. When in reality the exit was already decided as far back as 2000, with the Bundestag ratifying it in 2002 [0]. A decision which was backed up by the EGG [1], a regulatory framework to facilitate and subsidize the large scale expansion of renewable energy sources that has been happening in Germany for over a decade now. As such, I'd like to think we've been a bit ahead of the curve in terms of recognizing the problem and actually doing something against it. In that context, the still on-going use of coal ain't exactly great, but the reasons for that are way more political (miner jobs) than anything else. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomgesetz_(Deutschland)#Novellierung_2002 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomgesetz_(Deutschland)#Novel... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act#Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act_(2000) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...
mehrdadn 7y ago
Yeah, assuming by "lose" they mean the city gets pretty much entirely wiped out in a short timespan and never recovers. If it takes too long for the effects to fully set in or if the city recovers then I'd expect people will just carry on.
caseymarquis 7y ago
I think that's giving us too much credit: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/277058739/1-in-4-americans-think-the-sun-goes-around-the-earth-survey-says https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/277058739...
Animats 7y ago
Miami?[1] [1] https://www.miamigov.com/Government/ClimateReadyMiami/Flooding https://www.miamigov.com/Government/ClimateReadyMiami/Floodi...
agumonkey 7y ago
Don't give people ideas :)
zulgan 7y ago
"It's only on the brink of destruction that people find the will to change." -- The Day the Earth Stood Still It is the same with deep technical debt, change only comes after major outage and enormous loss.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > It is the same with deep technical debt, change only comes after major outage and enormous loss. I so wished that were true. But there are - unfortunately - plenty of examples where even that does not make any difference. Improvement starts with knowing that you can do better and how to do better, upper management can be quite clueless and usually people that have some mobility will have left the company long before such a crisis hits. The people responsible tend to want to do better but do not know how, even when given the resources. This sort of organizational dis-functionality is more common than you might think.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
egypturnash 7y ago
Sad but true. We already saw a ton of victim-blaming after Katrina. If the US falls apart before New Orleans drowns, I really hope that the Monarch of the Grand City-State of Nawlins has the sense to allocate a lot of her budget of freshly-minted Fleur-Dou-Bloons to the Krewe of Sewerage and Water, because those pumps are about the only thing keeping the city from being a lake bottom.
- gerbilly 7y ago
  I heard that people from new Orleans didn't say say "Nawlins," that it was a neologism used by people from outside the state. Is this true?
  - egypturnash 7y ago
    I grew up there and I have said it so many different ways. Mostly “Noowarlins”. I sure saw it rendered as “N’awlins” a lot in Bunny Matthews’ “Vic and Nat’ly” comic about a couple of Yats (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_English https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_English) when I was growing up. I’ve also just come back after spending half a life in the furthest corners of the US so what the hell do I know though.

One person studying climate change at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories opined that the U.S. would not take climate change seriously until it loses a major city. New Orleans doesn't count.

ttul 7y ago

I’m sorry to say this, but it can’t happen soon enough.

technofiend 7y ago

>New Orleans doesn't count. I'm not sure anything outside the Northeast does. There were many calls to stop funding post-hurricane reconstruction until Sandy hit. Puerto Rico is still struggling to get funding years after Irma and Maria, and Houston is debating if they really want to stop construction in the Addicks reservoir and surrounding areas.

chiefalchemist 7y ago
In NJ we got "stronger than the storm" and zero reputable talk - that I recall - about the possibility of not being so willing to rebuild. It's difficult to sway public opinion about the immediacy when so many other signals parrot tradition and the staus quo. We're not stronger than the storm, only amazingly dumber.
addicted 7y ago
NYC was crippled by Sandy, and that didn’t lead to any changes. Let’s be honest. The only thing that will change is if the Republican party’s power reduces.
- DuskStar 7y ago
  What would your theoretical Democrats do differently?
  - jaredklewis 7y ago
    Because the first step to doing something about climate change is believing it exists.
    - garmaine 7y ago
      You didn’t answer the question. What policy would be different?
      - JoeSamoa 7y ago
        First off the EPA would get proper funding: https://www.edf.org/deep-epa-cuts-put-public-health-risk https://www.edf.org/deep-epa-cuts-put-public-health-risk And would admit clearly that it is something we can change and start promoting policies that help move society in the right direction. Instead they are censoring themselves and the organization is all but toothless. https://time.com/5075265/epa-website-climate-change-censorship/ https://time.com/5075265/epa-website-climate-change-censorsh... So yea things would be different.
      - belltaco 7y ago
        The Paris agreement was a good start, which Trump pulled the US out of. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement
        DuskStar 7y ago
        A lot of people (myself included) would say that the Paris Agreement gave up too much for too little. If everyone followed the limits there, the climate would still be fucked - and those limits were far more restrictive for countries like the US than the developing world. And while it might be reasonable to say that it's not fair to ask for those countries to give up their chance of getting out of poverty, it still leaves the problem. I can accept giving up things to save the climate. I, and many others, can't accept giving up things to see the world go to hell anyways.

BurningFrog 7y ago

I doubt even losing NYC and LA will make China or India change course.

ramraj07 7y ago
Pretty sure they'll loose cities before the US does. Most cities in India are at their wits end in water crises already
- kortilla 7y ago
  Water crisis != pain from climate change. A massive dam is a great way to deal with a water crisis at expense of the environment.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
mehrdadn 7y ago
There's a chance it could make the US be more willing to go out of its way to help and/or push them change course...
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Aside from threatening nuclear war, I don't see what power the US has over China or India to do major sacrifices. And that sure looks like a cure worse than the disease to me...
  - losteric 7y ago
    The US doesn't need to lift a finger. Climate change will severely disrupt China and India's populations, and likely lead to the collapse of some neighboring nations - it's an existential threat they are motivated to address.
  - scarejunba 7y ago

ars 7y ago

> the U.S. would not take Other countries have not done anything either (lip service doesn't count). This is a "lack of good alternatives" problem, not a US problem.

Pfhreak 7y ago
What's Germany been up to?
- ars 7y ago
  They've been shutting down nuclear power and keeping coal. Take a look: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:Electricity_Production_in_Germany.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Germany#/media/File:... Nuclear went down, to be replaced by wind/solar. i.e. they did nothing useful. Actually it's worse than it looks - they've outsourced their CO2 emissions to China to build all those solar cells, etc. Germany is an example of a failure, not a success: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19910540 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19910540
  - imtringued 7y ago
    This narrative is very funny because it plays into boomer tendency of hating renweables. Germany showed that it's possible as long as you don't give up along the way. Countries like China or the US never started doing anything in the first place so criticism coming from those countries is just plain hypocritical. "I don't want it and now I don't have to because haha look at Germany, what a loser, haha"
    - freeflight 7y ago
      Thank you for pointing this out, as a German it's kinda grating to keep on reading this kind of stuff, which also regularly frames the German nuclear exit as some kind of knee-jerk reaction to Fukushima. When in reality the exit was already decided as far back as 2000, with the Bundestag ratifying it in 2002 [0]. A decision which was backed up by the EGG [1], a regulatory framework to facilitate and subsidize the large scale expansion of renewable energy sources that has been happening in Germany for over a decade now. As such, I'd like to think we've been a bit ahead of the curve in terms of recognizing the problem and actually doing something against it. In that context, the still on-going use of coal ain't exactly great, but the reasons for that are way more political (miner jobs) than anything else. [0] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomgesetz_(Deutschland)#Novellierung_2002 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomgesetz_(Deutschland)#Novel... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act#Renewable_Energy_Sources_Act_(2000) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Renewable_Energy_Source...

mehrdadn 7y ago

Yeah, assuming by "lose" they mean the city gets pretty much entirely wiped out in a short timespan and never recovers. If it takes too long for the effects to fully set in or if the city recovers then I'd expect people will just carry on.

caseymarquis 7y ago

I think that's giving us too much credit: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/277058739/1-in-4-americans-think-the-sun-goes-around-the-earth-survey-says https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/02/14/277058739...

Animats 7y ago

Miami?[1] [1] https://www.miamigov.com/Government/ClimateReadyMiami/Flooding https://www.miamigov.com/Government/ClimateReadyMiami/Floodi...

agumonkey 7y ago

Don't give people ideas :)

zulgan 7y ago

"It's only on the brink of destruction that people find the will to change." -- The Day the Earth Stood Still It is the same with deep technical debt, change only comes after major outage and enormous loss.

jacquesm 7y ago
> It is the same with deep technical debt, change only comes after major outage and enormous loss. I so wished that were true. But there are - unfortunately - plenty of examples where even that does not make any difference. Improvement starts with knowing that you can do better and how to do better, upper management can be quite clueless and usually people that have some mobility will have left the company long before such a crisis hits. The people responsible tend to want to do better but do not know how, even when given the resources. This sort of organizational dis-functionality is more common than you might think.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

egypturnash 7y ago

Sad but true. We already saw a ton of victim-blaming after Katrina. If the US falls apart before New Orleans drowns, I really hope that the Monarch of the Grand City-State of Nawlins has the sense to allocate a lot of her budget of freshly-minted Fleur-Dou-Bloons to the Krewe of Sewerage and Water, because those pumps are about the only thing keeping the city from being a lake bottom.

gerbilly 7y ago
I heard that people from new Orleans didn't say say "Nawlins," that it was a neologism used by people from outside the state. Is this true?
- egypturnash 7y ago
  I grew up there and I have said it so many different ways. Mostly “Noowarlins”. I sure saw it rendered as “N’awlins” a lot in Bunny Matthews’ “Vic and Nat’ly” comic about a couple of Yats (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_English https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_English) when I was growing up. I’ve also just come back after spending half a life in the furthest corners of the US so what the hell do I know though.