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I think given the current political climate (sic), scientists tends to be overly cautious on these subjects. They know they can be berated for any not fully pro

• s9w 7y ago
  It's curious how the situation can be viewed like this. In my experience it's the exact opposite. Headlines in my country (Germany) are absolutely dominated by the climate doomsday scenarios. Taxpayers spent hundets of millions of euros for "greener" energy, entire industries are ruined. We even killed nuclear because it's somehow not green enough. Heck even fusion energy is too evil. Fridays for future and the green party are dictating what is allowed to be said. Dozens of German cities are literally in a climate state of emergency (no joke). The sky is falling according to everyone.
  • std_throwaway 7y ago
    Well, the sky is very likely falling but it is falling so slowly that the older generation won't see any severe effects. In the great scheme it won't matter so much what Germany does if the rest of the world continues to burn the coal. The only direct effect that deindustrializing Germany has is it will kill the German economy today.
    • Dumblydorr 7y ago
      Germany is continuing to burn coal, that is why axing their nuclear was such an unforced error.
      • mgoetzke 7y ago
        The unforced error was/is not building out solar/wind/battery storage etc. Instead they just added a tax for every citizen to pay on electricity and KEEP promoting coal. Also WHY don't counties/cities own any solar/wind power stations to increase independence and lower long-term cost ? Instead they sell out to companies or rich investors instead and those get subsidized.
        • sitkack 7y ago
          Having a powerwall that can feed your local core infrastructure (hospital, water treatment, schools, etc) and then solar to charge the powerwall would mean you could isolate yourself from high spots prices for electricity. With your own local powerwall, local grid tie will charge local capacity and be ransomed by the utility.
    • SimbaOnSteroids 7y ago
      Its tragic and beyond infuriating that the demographics least likely to recognize the threat of climate change are also the least likely to ever personally feel its effects.
    • imtringued 7y ago
      Countries can act as role models. If it is possible for one country to achieve a goal then all others can try to replicate the success.
  • doe88 7y ago
    I'm no expert but seems to me your country (Germany) has long been in front on these issues, you have a strong green party and activists since the 70'. But hidden forces were and are nevertheless still looming, see the automobile industry and the scandal with diesel emissions, I'm sure there are scrambling to transition toward EV but in the meantime I would not be surprised if they battled behind closed doors to slow the adoption or proposal of measures that could hurt their business and in the end German economy.
    • s9w 7y ago
      If anyone would be serious about co2 emissions then we would go nuclear. The green party is not pro-nature.
      • CalRobert 7y ago
        The greens have a terrible split between "environmentalists who want a drum circle" and "environmentalists who can add". The former think nukes are an unspeakable horror. TBF, if you can add, you also realize that nukes are a mediocre fix at best, given that wind/solar/better efficiency get you where you want to be generally much cheaper. But if you're looking at "nukes or coal" it should be a no brainer.
      • doe88 7y ago
        Ok, I see your point, problem is nuclear is clean (wastes excluded) as long as everything is going just fine, but as soon there is an issue it can have a massive impact on the environment. I'm myself in favor of nuclear energy but I also can see its danger and understand why some peoples are against.
  • p0nce 7y ago
    I wish we were all as concerned as germans.
  • mgoetzke 7y ago
    But in Germany it is mostly us (i.e. the citizens) having to pay directly via taxes on electricity or fuel etc and arcane ways to get any subsidies. Where big corporations are doing squat it seems.
  • adrianN 7y ago
    And yet Germany has missed their climate goals for 2020 (which were already incompatible with the Paris agreement), and has dramatically slashed wind turbine construction (after dramatically slashing solar construction a few years earlier).
    • s9w 7y ago
      Yes we've spent a shitton of money, our power is ridiculously expensive, and we still have way worse co2 emission than France. But hey we're saving the world I hear!
      • adrianN 7y ago
        I pay about as much for electricity as I pay for Internet. I wouldn't call that "ridiculously" expensive.
        • s9w 7y ago
          It's about twice as expensive as France I think
          • adrianN 7y ago
            It's true that it's expensive compared to other countries, but the absolute amount of money that the average German pays is quite manageable.
  • makomk 7y ago
    I'd tend to agree - we're not even remotely cautious about claims about the pace of climate change. For example, a few months ago there was a (now largely retracted) scientific paper claiming the oceans had been soaking up much more heat than previously thought due to global warming, something like 60% more: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18352506 This was clearly suspect. The paper used a weird, indirect method to measure something that we could measure pretty much directly and got results that contradicted the direct measurements. The obvious conclusion was that their measurement method didn't work and it should've required some really strong evidence to overcome that presumption. Yet the entire press ran terrifying headlines and stories treating its conclusions as indisputable facts showing our world was even more doomed than previously though and the HN discussion was dominated by prophecies of doom. It fell to a climate change skeptic to figure out that they'd substantially underestimated the margin of error in their calculations and that their complicated indirect measurement method simply wasn't accurate enough to conclude that the oceans had absorbed more heat than the previous measurements said. Which is why it's been corrected and the better news outlets have published corrections abandoning the original claims of doom which, naturally, most of the people who saw the original terrifying stories would never see.
  • ryanmercer 7y ago
    >We even killed nuclear because it's somehow not green enough. Unfortunately for some areas, that might be a necessity going forward. Just last month France had to scale back their nuclear power when they couldn't sufficiently cool the reactors due to a combination of the heatwave and less rain than normal, Germany was also affected by that. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwave/hot-weather-cuts-french-german-nuclear-power-output-idUSKCN1UK0HR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-heatwa...