10 ms·

Climate research moves from papers to articles to headlines like a game of telephone. I think this is a big problem because it gives your average doomscroller a

Climate research moves from papers to articles to headlines like a game of telephone. I think this is a big problem because it gives your average doomscroller a sense of impending dread and helplessness. Michael E Mann (the famous climate scientist who published the "hockey stick" emissions paper) talks about this in his new book -- "The New Climate War." Check it out. The body of this article does touch on the actual claim of the paper -- that a myriad of factors linked to climate change have stymied agricultural productivity (particularly in less-affluent countries) compared to what that productivity would have been without those factors -- even though total agricultural output has grown due to better technology and so on. However, if all you see is the headline the impression you get is: the world is getting hot and our farms aren't being productive enough. That's a different claim that inspires despair, not action. Climate change is real and very, very scary. But the progress we've made in renewables, battery tech, agricultural yields, desalinization, etc., is really remarkable. It ain't over 'til it's over.

salmonfamine 6y ago
If you're feeling compelled to act, now is a great time to look for jobs in CleanTech. https://www.angellist.com/blog/inside-the-venture-climate-tech-boom?utm_source=angellist https://www.angellist.com/blog/inside-the-venture-climate-te...
- core-questions 6y ago
  Pity that most of this is still fuelled by oil, in one way or another; shoving that oil energy through several intermediaries does not actually decrease entropy. It's like the use of oil to make fertilizer to grow corn to make ethanol to supplement gasoline; would have been better to just burn the oil to start with, economically, environmentally, and in the long term politically, too. Corn subsidies in America wrecked the Mexican corn production market, resulting in waves of illegal immigration as poor farmers who don't know how to do anything else moved north to continue to ply their trade in a place where it is still profitable. Too many cleantech projects are catabolic: consuming more energy than they produce, while spreading the blame and consumption around and giving people a way to claim carbon credits. Might as well just call them 'carbon indulgences' for all of the emissions they actually save in reality. Only an economist could pretend that someone who owns a bunch of land doing nothing has an invisible commodity of carbon the government allocated for them to emit, that can be sold to a factory somewhere else that is actually emitting carbon, and pretend that it is somehow helping the environment to shuffle those dollars around. Somehow, production processes continue; with the exception of those that shut down, only to open elsewhere in the world where there are fewer regulations on environment and labour. The result is a lose-lose, where we no longer have the ability to actually decrease emissions, no longer have any of the economic advantages of the emissions, and of course no longer have any way to ensure the people working in those facilities get a living wage or any of the other benefits of the labour laws our ancestors fought for. Go ahead and take a CleanTech job, just remember, there's a 95% chance it's a circlejerk that doesn't accomplish anything at all in the real world besides spreading the problem around and grifting off of it in the process.
mempko 6y ago
It isn't over until it's over. However, COVID and the response governments around the world made it's clear they are NOT treating climate like an emergency. The issue with climate are feedback loops which cause non-linear responses. These are dangerous because they have a tendency to sneak up on you. We are being way too conservative in our climate response and the uncertainty around the future should not make us feel better. I believe Michael Mann is wrong that scary headlines prevent action. Look at Greta and the youth climate movement and XR. It exploded BECAUSE of the dread and anxiety. Yes, it's true people on the sidelines might get scared away, but you only need a small group of REALLY committed actors to make real change. Those on the sidelines will come along after the fact.
- salmonfamine 6y ago
  > It isn't over until it's over. However, COVID and the response governments around the world made it's clear they are NOT treating climate like an emergency. How does the COVID response have anything to do with the climate response? The governments of the world have all responded differently -- some quite stringently -- and the speed with which we produced an mRNA vaccine (itself a technological marvel) is truly nuts. >The issue with climate are feedback loops which cause non-linear responses. These are dangerous because they have a tendency to sneak up on you. We are being way too conservative in our climate response and the uncertainty around the future should not make us feel better. It is true that feedback loops are dangerous, but what do you mean by "sneaking up" on us? There's always uncertainty in modeling and projections of any kind, but the most agreed-upon climate models and projected scenarios include feedback loops. > I believe Michael Mann is wrong that scary headlines prevent action. Look at Greta and the youth climate movement and XR. It exploded BECAUSE of the dread and anxiety. Yes, it's true people on the sidelines might get scared away, but you only need a small group of REALLY committed actors to make real change. Those on the sidelines will come along after the fact. Well, maybe. Everyone is different, so perhaps some people will be spurned to act by these sorts of headlines. A majority of people in the US agree that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed, so hopefully we will see more and more political pressure in the future.
  - matthewdgreen 6y ago
Diederich 6y ago
For the record, I've been what could accurately be called a climate change alarmist for over three decades now. More concretely, I've felt that there was a least a fair chance that climate change would, by the year 2070, cause enormous harm to human civilization, where 'harm' could be seen, in part, as over a billion premature deaths. Over the decades, my internal estimate of the odds has changed from "a small but statistically significant chance" to "more than 50%" today. I've also been of the mind that, most likely, there's little chance that humanity will be able to substantially change these probabilities. Yes, that's pretty doomy gloomy, on the surface at least. "But the progress ... etc., is really remarkable. It ain't over 'til it's over." This! We CAN NOT know what the future holds. A primary 'doomer movement' in the 1970s when I was growing up was population. Even among the most forward thinking, optimistic people of the time, few if any could imagine our planet being able to feed 8 billion people. None could imagine the possibility that the world population could naturally (without either huge die offs and/or draconian controls) stabilize at 10 billion people, which many solid models are now indicating. (And I get that there are valid arguments against the sustainability of our current and near future food production methods.) The point is that we can not know what miracles technology and sociological progress can bring, and we're expanding in both areas exponentially. (I'm not using that word, exponentially, lightly or incorrectly.) Is all of this 'hopium'? Perhaps. I agree with those that argue acceptance is important and healthy. Yes, accept that, from what we can see right now, things look very bad. Yes, accept that there's a strong probability that human civilization will collapse in the lifetime of Millennials. At the very minimum, all of the steps/hours/days between now and then will be interesting, and there's an unlimited amount of joy to be found and created.
- curuinor 6y ago
  there's also exponential stuff going the wrong way, too. all of cryptoland, for example. this stuff just works in logspace or logexpsum space
  - Diederich 6y ago
    > there's also exponential stuff going the wrong way, too That's quite true, and that 'bad exponential' stuff is the main source of my pessimism.
throwaway888abc 6y ago
Earth Temperature Timeline for scale https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- hammock 6y ago
  The smoothing coefficient (or data resolution, however you want to look at it) on that chart is vastly different over different periods of time, leading to a misleading hockey stick type visualization.
  - pixl97 6y ago
    So what you're saying is, even though it may have went high in the past, you believe that we have the possibility of dropping cool again in a short (decadal) period of time?
    - hammock 6y ago
      What I'm saying is, the human heartbeat looks very spiky when you sample it 250 times per second. When you collect data in minute-long periods though, it looks like a flat line. We do not have daily, yearly or even decadal temperature data for the time period 15,000 BC the way we do for the modern day. There is a lot of historical variability that is not shown on the graph. That variability could easily reach today's levels or higher, for moments.

salmonfamine 6y ago

If you're feeling compelled to act, now is a great time to look for jobs in CleanTech. https://www.angellist.com/blog/inside-the-venture-climate-tech-boom?utm_source=angellist https://www.angellist.com/blog/inside-the-venture-climate-te...

core-questions 6y ago
Pity that most of this is still fuelled by oil, in one way or another; shoving that oil energy through several intermediaries does not actually decrease entropy. It's like the use of oil to make fertilizer to grow corn to make ethanol to supplement gasoline; would have been better to just burn the oil to start with, economically, environmentally, and in the long term politically, too. Corn subsidies in America wrecked the Mexican corn production market, resulting in waves of illegal immigration as poor farmers who don't know how to do anything else moved north to continue to ply their trade in a place where it is still profitable. Too many cleantech projects are catabolic: consuming more energy than they produce, while spreading the blame and consumption around and giving people a way to claim carbon credits. Might as well just call them 'carbon indulgences' for all of the emissions they actually save in reality. Only an economist could pretend that someone who owns a bunch of land doing nothing has an invisible commodity of carbon the government allocated for them to emit, that can be sold to a factory somewhere else that is actually emitting carbon, and pretend that it is somehow helping the environment to shuffle those dollars around. Somehow, production processes continue; with the exception of those that shut down, only to open elsewhere in the world where there are fewer regulations on environment and labour. The result is a lose-lose, where we no longer have the ability to actually decrease emissions, no longer have any of the economic advantages of the emissions, and of course no longer have any way to ensure the people working in those facilities get a living wage or any of the other benefits of the labour laws our ancestors fought for. Go ahead and take a CleanTech job, just remember, there's a 95% chance it's a circlejerk that doesn't accomplish anything at all in the real world besides spreading the problem around and grifting off of it in the process.

mempko 6y ago

It isn't over until it's over. However, COVID and the response governments around the world made it's clear they are NOT treating climate like an emergency. The issue with climate are feedback loops which cause non-linear responses. These are dangerous because they have a tendency to sneak up on you. We are being way too conservative in our climate response and the uncertainty around the future should not make us feel better. I believe Michael Mann is wrong that scary headlines prevent action. Look at Greta and the youth climate movement and XR. It exploded BECAUSE of the dread and anxiety. Yes, it's true people on the sidelines might get scared away, but you only need a small group of REALLY committed actors to make real change. Those on the sidelines will come along after the fact.

salmonfamine 6y ago
> It isn't over until it's over. However, COVID and the response governments around the world made it's clear they are NOT treating climate like an emergency. How does the COVID response have anything to do with the climate response? The governments of the world have all responded differently -- some quite stringently -- and the speed with which we produced an mRNA vaccine (itself a technological marvel) is truly nuts. >The issue with climate are feedback loops which cause non-linear responses. These are dangerous because they have a tendency to sneak up on you. We are being way too conservative in our climate response and the uncertainty around the future should not make us feel better. It is true that feedback loops are dangerous, but what do you mean by "sneaking up" on us? There's always uncertainty in modeling and projections of any kind, but the most agreed-upon climate models and projected scenarios include feedback loops. > I believe Michael Mann is wrong that scary headlines prevent action. Look at Greta and the youth climate movement and XR. It exploded BECAUSE of the dread and anxiety. Yes, it's true people on the sidelines might get scared away, but you only need a small group of REALLY committed actors to make real change. Those on the sidelines will come along after the fact. Well, maybe. Everyone is different, so perhaps some people will be spurned to act by these sorts of headlines. A majority of people in the US agree that climate change is a problem that needs to be addressed, so hopefully we will see more and more political pressure in the future.
- matthewdgreen 6y ago

Diederich 6y ago

For the record, I've been what could accurately be called a climate change alarmist for over three decades now. More concretely, I've felt that there was a least a fair chance that climate change would, by the year 2070, cause enormous harm to human civilization, where 'harm' could be seen, in part, as over a billion premature deaths. Over the decades, my internal estimate of the odds has changed from "a small but statistically significant chance" to "more than 50%" today. I've also been of the mind that, most likely, there's little chance that humanity will be able to substantially change these probabilities. Yes, that's pretty doomy gloomy, on the surface at least. "But the progress ... etc., is really remarkable. It ain't over 'til it's over." This! We CAN NOT know what the future holds. A primary 'doomer movement' in the 1970s when I was growing up was population. Even among the most forward thinking, optimistic people of the time, few if any could imagine our planet being able to feed 8 billion people. None could imagine the possibility that the world population could naturally (without either huge die offs and/or draconian controls) stabilize at 10 billion people, which many solid models are now indicating. (And I get that there are valid arguments against the sustainability of our current and near future food production methods.) The point is that we can not know what miracles technology and sociological progress can bring, and we're expanding in both areas exponentially. (I'm not using that word, exponentially, lightly or incorrectly.) Is all of this 'hopium'? Perhaps. I agree with those that argue acceptance is important and healthy. Yes, accept that, from what we can see right now, things look very bad. Yes, accept that there's a strong probability that human civilization will collapse in the lifetime of Millennials. At the very minimum, all of the steps/hours/days between now and then will be interesting, and there's an unlimited amount of joy to be found and created.

curuinor 6y ago
there's also exponential stuff going the wrong way, too. all of cryptoland, for example. this stuff just works in logspace or logexpsum space
- Diederich 6y ago
  > there's also exponential stuff going the wrong way, too That's quite true, and that 'bad exponential' stuff is the main source of my pessimism.

throwaway888abc 6y ago

Earth Temperature Timeline for scale https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/

hammock 6y ago
The smoothing coefficient (or data resolution, however you want to look at it) on that chart is vastly different over different periods of time, leading to a misleading hockey stick type visualization.
- pixl97 6y ago
  So what you're saying is, even though it may have went high in the past, you believe that we have the possibility of dropping cool again in a short (decadal) period of time?
  - hammock 6y ago
    What I'm saying is, the human heartbeat looks very spiky when you sample it 250 times per second. When you collect data in minute-long periods though, it looks like a flat line. We do not have daily, yearly or even decadal temperature data for the time period 15,000 BC the way we do for the modern day. There is a lot of historical variability that is not shown on the graph. That variability could easily reach today's levels or higher, for moments.