5 ms·

14,000 scientists warn of “untold suffering” if we fail to act on climate change

59 points by AnonC 5y ago

ddingus 5y ago
I doubt they are wrong. Patterns that have held true during my life continue to unravel into something new, less familiar, desirable. The word will be a different kind of harmonious. May leave us in a very different place. I consider that outcome likely. All that said, warnings for close to a decade, often same number, 12 years, give or take. Heard that 6 plus years ago. I find it worrisome. There just is not a center of gravity on this. Nothing with mass that can make people move. Think Apollo type project. We need it, yesterday and then some.
- paulddraper 5y ago
  > Heard that 6 plus years ago. Heard it for decades. Fourteen years ago during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore said the polar ice "could" be gone in 5 years. And such things have been said much longer before that.
  - ddingus 5y ago
    I have too. Seems more specific and urgent now, yet the general inaction is very similar. The people who matter are not acting. One can only conclude this does not actually bother them.
    - pbak 5y ago
      Whether it was global cooling fear in the 1960's, or the current actual climate crisis, a lot (maybe unconsciously) know they'll always somehow find ways to eat, be mobile, and find a power source for their AC.
  - lm28469 5y ago
    The trend is there though: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/11/polar-ice-caps-melting-six-times-faster-than-in-1990s https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/11/polar-ic... It'll be there soon enough don't worry, 5 years, 25 years, 50 years, we'll be fuck regardless.
paulddraper 5y ago
It of course will come true because every natural disaster is attributable to climate change.
- eyelovewe 5y ago
  Are you essentially saying that nothing could convince you of the link between extreme weather becoming common and global warming? Because you sound skeptical of the link. The urgency is real. By the time holdouts from the big oil propaganda are convinced it will be too late. It’s likely already too late, but since there is no up to give, we shall die trying to solve this shame of our ignorant selfish generation.
  - nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
    > we shall die trying to solve this shame of our ignorant selfish generation I am sure not all baby-boomers are bad.
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    > Are you essentially saying that nothing could convince you of the link between extreme weather becoming common and global warming? First of all, stop sealioning. And second of all, provide links to support your rhetoric, instead of shaming tactics. Nobody can do anything without some kind of data. (I've actually never seen a climate shill provide any proof, going back more than a decade.)
  - paulddraper 5y ago
    > nothing could convince you of the link between extreme weather becoming common and global warming? I don't doubt it. But extreme weather is hardly a new phenomenon.
stevenalowe 5y ago
Curious if anyone has made (or can make) a specific prediction (based on their climate models and assumptions) that can be verified in a timely manner and/or demonstrated in a repeatable experiment? Same question for any proposed "solution". Scientists make verifiable predictions and repeatable experiments based on causal hypotheses that are falsifiable. Politicians sell fear.
- lm28469 5y ago
  Way too many variables, we barely understand most of the mechanisms and how they're inter connected. All we know is that we had a kind of stable ecosystem that's being disrupted by massive amount of CO2 and other gases being introduced in the system in a relatively short amount of time. It's a slowish process but whatever the outcome is it doesn't look like we'll be able to reverse it
- Marcus9 5y ago
  Yes, literally thousands of times on a wide range of issues. * Predictions that increased carbon in atmosphere would lead to higher average temperatures -> has happened. * Predictions that extreme weather events like "once in a hundred years" floods would become more common -> has happened. * Predictions that wildfire season would start earlier in the spring and end later in the fall -> has happened. * Predictions that we'd see reductions in glaciers and arctic ice -> has happened. * Predictions that we'd see a collapse in biodiversity and mass extinctions -> has happened. Scientists can't tell you exactly where an electron is and how fast it's moving, but they can still predict how it interacts with things around it.
  - stevenalowe 5y ago
    Thank you. Really hard time finding specifics. :/ lots of references to predictions in articles but original sources elusive. Got links?
throwaway81523 5y ago
> 14,000 scientists warn of “untold suffering” if we fail to act on climate change May be too late even.
aaccount 5y ago
Can I just point out that the number of scientists saying something in science doesn't mean much
nyokodo 5y ago
The main problem I have with how the issue of climate change is addressed is that there’s a huge disparity between how it’s described and how most authorities and luminaries have acted. If we are really on the brink of an existential crisis then why haven’t we been panic-building nuclear plants for decades? It was at least a temporary measure that would have bought us time while renewables and batteries caught up, but, nuclear has been widely panned amongst the environmental cadres for decades. True crises call for extreme measures and nuclear is pretty tame by comparison! Also, why haven’t we been running multiple global Manhattan projects to effectively mitigate warming or adapt our lives and our ecosystems to the threat? The intrepid yet comparatively pedestrian efforts of a few billionaires and government research grants are not nearly proportional to the descriptions of what is allegedly imminently upon us. Instead we have mostly platitudes and political theater, like the Paris Climate Agreement. It should come as no surprise then that many people suspect the danger is being exaggerated for political gain.
- runawaybottle 5y ago
  The main tangible piece of evidence for climate change is to say unequivocally that the global temperature went up by 1 degree by a certain date. We can’t get beyond 2-3 degrees, 4-6 degrees will have serious consequences. This is the one benchmark that is not ambiguous, whereas talking about polar ice caps melting (at variable rates), or global emission going up/down/stay the same is sort of ‘eh, so what’s that mean? We up 1 degree or not?’. Things that fall under hysteria is the claim that wildfires are because of climate change, or that it’s hotter than it’s ever been in so and so place, or that hurricane season is particularly bad this year because … the boogey man climate change.
- Fricken 5y ago
  Political manipulators use lies that validate people's base emotions and fears. Telling people that all the indulgences they love are destroying the planet but won't affect us until generations in the future is a poor strategy that only a tactless political manipulator would employ. Nobody wants to hear about climate change, it's tone deaf.
- heurisko 5y ago
LatteLazy 5y ago
We have failed to act. It's basically too late for anything but drastic action, no one was willing to take smaller, less drastic actions. We need to abandon this fallacy that its all about to come together, and more to adaption and mitigation efforts.
Oras 5y ago
Most of these climate change warnings are blaming the general public for not acting. I haven’t heard or read a study about the impact that weapons and wars on climate change. Every now and then there is a new experiment for a new rocket or a weapon, which I believe took lots of experiments to reach the point of final release. Aren’t these doing more harm to humanity and climate change comparing to other factors?
native_samples 5y ago
Almost exactly one year on after 1200 "scientists" told us that whilst anti-lockdown marches were terrible and guaranteed to superspread disease, BLM marches were totally different and much more important than COVID. Open letters from scientists don't seem to mean much. Also, temperatures in the USA haven't gone up for 20 years now: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=climdiv&datasets%5B%5D=cmbushcn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2000&endyear=2019&month=12 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperatu...
shreyshnaccount 5y ago
1. climate change is real 2. it is really hard to do analysis on due to the large number of variables, uncertain assumptions and general complexity of the system 3. it will mess us the earth as we know it 4. humans have been making a large impact on climate change 5. it is also a natural process 6. being natural doesn't mean it won't fuck us up 7. people in power are not willing to act if the usual HN smart-ass climate change denier or whatever comes at me asking for "proof", all I can say is look around.
- yonixw 5y ago
  Regarding 7, In my understanding, It is due to a high political price that no politician is willing to bite the bullet.
  - shreyshnaccount 5y ago
    could as well be. or they could be bought off by big oil and the like. idk. but it's not ideal
- jfengel 5y ago
  Lots of people in power are willing to act. The problem is that in the US, the system is biased towards inaction. It takes an overwhelming majority to pass legislation. You have to control the House and 60% of the Senate and the Presidency, all at the same time. A minority willing to band together is nearly always able to prevent action. Even when you get all of that, actually choosing an action on climate change isn't easy. It's a thorny, difficult problem. When you add in the difficulty of requiring absolute unanimity among that supermajority, it's no surprise that you can't get anything done, even if a majority of people recognize the problem and wish to act.
jkereako 5y ago
How effective can these messages of torment and suffering be? To those who believe it, it causes anxiety. For those who don’t, it pushes them farther away. The smallest group are those who understand but are not swayed by emotion. Ideally, everyone is in this group. I now believe the division over climate change is caused by the messaging. I think a gentler approach would be more effective.
pcdoodle 5y ago
Figure 1 right away raises alarms. You are not doing anything to help the fight by mixing in bullshit. Do it right.
john579 5y ago
Everyone knows it's too late, everyone except these 14,000 scientists. The reason why no one is doing anything is because it's pointless. If we have to face untold suffering, do it with grit, not like these spineless nannies. "Give me all your money or you're going to regret it!" Sounds like 14,000 highway robbers. Get rid of them and the problem will magically go away.
curation 5y ago
Why do we do nothing about climate change? We cannot. Why this deadlock? We live by Market Logic, which has no bearing on reality but is our symbolic reality because everyone acts as tho it is true, chasing admiration while simultaneously remaining completely blind to the entire process. Market Logic interdicts all human priorities. We need to think more; do less.
teslaberry 5y ago
what if the sociological truth is that untold suffering will come naturally as a result of natural human patterns of fighting for control and resources? and what if one of the main resources is human attention and devotion. and what if the main way to capture human attention and devotion is to sell fear at large of something, ANYTHING, other than the fight at every and all levels of humanity for control and resources. fear is sold inside of society and external to it. fear is sold within the family and external to it. fear is sold within the individual mind to be afraid of itself and to be afraid of things external to the individual.

59 points by AnonC 5y ago

I doubt they are wrong. Patterns that have held true during my life continue to unravel into something new, less familiar, desirable. The word will be a different kind of harmonious. May leave us in a very different place. I consider that outcome likely. All that said, warnings for close to a decade, often same number, 12 years, give or take. Heard that 6 plus years ago. I find it worrisome. There just is not a center of gravity on this. Nothing with mass that can make people move. Think Apollo type project. We need it, yesterday and then some.

paulddraper 5y ago
> Heard that 6 plus years ago. Heard it for decades. Fourteen years ago during his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize, Al Gore said the polar ice "could" be gone in 5 years. And such things have been said much longer before that.
- ddingus 5y ago
  I have too. Seems more specific and urgent now, yet the general inaction is very similar. The people who matter are not acting. One can only conclude this does not actually bother them.
  - pbak 5y ago
    Whether it was global cooling fear in the 1960's, or the current actual climate crisis, a lot (maybe unconsciously) know they'll always somehow find ways to eat, be mobile, and find a power source for their AC.
- lm28469 5y ago
  The trend is there though: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/11/polar-ice-caps-melting-six-times-faster-than-in-1990s https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/mar/11/polar-ic... It'll be there soon enough don't worry, 5 years, 25 years, 50 years, we'll be fuck regardless.

paulddraper 5y ago

It of course will come true because every natural disaster is attributable to climate change.

eyelovewe 5y ago
Are you essentially saying that nothing could convince you of the link between extreme weather becoming common and global warming? Because you sound skeptical of the link. The urgency is real. By the time holdouts from the big oil propaganda are convinced it will be too late. It’s likely already too late, but since there is no up to give, we shall die trying to solve this shame of our ignorant selfish generation.
- nodejs_rulez_1 5y ago
  > we shall die trying to solve this shame of our ignorant selfish generation I am sure not all baby-boomers are bad.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  > Are you essentially saying that nothing could convince you of the link between extreme weather becoming common and global warming? First of all, stop sealioning. And second of all, provide links to support your rhetoric, instead of shaming tactics. Nobody can do anything without some kind of data. (I've actually never seen a climate shill provide any proof, going back more than a decade.)
- paulddraper 5y ago
  > nothing could convince you of the link between extreme weather becoming common and global warming? I don't doubt it. But extreme weather is hardly a new phenomenon.

stevenalowe 5y ago

Curious if anyone has made (or can make) a specific prediction (based on their climate models and assumptions) that can be verified in a timely manner and/or demonstrated in a repeatable experiment? Same question for any proposed "solution". Scientists make verifiable predictions and repeatable experiments based on causal hypotheses that are falsifiable. Politicians sell fear.

lm28469 5y ago
Way too many variables, we barely understand most of the mechanisms and how they're inter connected. All we know is that we had a kind of stable ecosystem that's being disrupted by massive amount of CO2 and other gases being introduced in the system in a relatively short amount of time. It's a slowish process but whatever the outcome is it doesn't look like we'll be able to reverse it
Marcus9 5y ago
Yes, literally thousands of times on a wide range of issues. * Predictions that increased carbon in atmosphere would lead to higher average temperatures -> has happened. * Predictions that extreme weather events like "once in a hundred years" floods would become more common -> has happened. * Predictions that wildfire season would start earlier in the spring and end later in the fall -> has happened. * Predictions that we'd see reductions in glaciers and arctic ice -> has happened. * Predictions that we'd see a collapse in biodiversity and mass extinctions -> has happened. Scientists can't tell you exactly where an electron is and how fast it's moving, but they can still predict how it interacts with things around it.
- stevenalowe 5y ago
  Thank you. Really hard time finding specifics. :/ lots of references to predictions in articles but original sources elusive. Got links?

throwaway81523 5y ago

> 14,000 scientists warn of “untold suffering” if we fail to act on climate change May be too late even.

aaccount 5y ago

Can I just point out that the number of scientists saying something in science doesn't mean much

nyokodo 5y ago

The main problem I have with how the issue of climate change is addressed is that there’s a huge disparity between how it’s described and how most authorities and luminaries have acted. If we are really on the brink of an existential crisis then why haven’t we been panic-building nuclear plants for decades? It was at least a temporary measure that would have bought us time while renewables and batteries caught up, but, nuclear has been widely panned amongst the environmental cadres for decades. True crises call for extreme measures and nuclear is pretty tame by comparison! Also, why haven’t we been running multiple global Manhattan projects to effectively mitigate warming or adapt our lives and our ecosystems to the threat? The intrepid yet comparatively pedestrian efforts of a few billionaires and government research grants are not nearly proportional to the descriptions of what is allegedly imminently upon us. Instead we have mostly platitudes and political theater, like the Paris Climate Agreement. It should come as no surprise then that many people suspect the danger is being exaggerated for political gain.

runawaybottle 5y ago
The main tangible piece of evidence for climate change is to say unequivocally that the global temperature went up by 1 degree by a certain date. We can’t get beyond 2-3 degrees, 4-6 degrees will have serious consequences. This is the one benchmark that is not ambiguous, whereas talking about polar ice caps melting (at variable rates), or global emission going up/down/stay the same is sort of ‘eh, so what’s that mean? We up 1 degree or not?’. Things that fall under hysteria is the claim that wildfires are because of climate change, or that it’s hotter than it’s ever been in so and so place, or that hurricane season is particularly bad this year because … the boogey man climate change.
Fricken 5y ago
Political manipulators use lies that validate people's base emotions and fears. Telling people that all the indulgences they love are destroying the planet but won't affect us until generations in the future is a poor strategy that only a tactless political manipulator would employ. Nobody wants to hear about climate change, it's tone deaf.
heurisko 5y ago

LatteLazy 5y ago

We have failed to act. It's basically too late for anything but drastic action, no one was willing to take smaller, less drastic actions. We need to abandon this fallacy that its all about to come together, and more to adaption and mitigation efforts.

Oras 5y ago

Most of these climate change warnings are blaming the general public for not acting. I haven’t heard or read a study about the impact that weapons and wars on climate change. Every now and then there is a new experiment for a new rocket or a weapon, which I believe took lots of experiments to reach the point of final release. Aren’t these doing more harm to humanity and climate change comparing to other factors?

native_samples 5y ago

Almost exactly one year on after 1200 "scientists" told us that whilst anti-lockdown marches were terrible and guaranteed to superspread disease, BLM marches were totally different and much more important than COVID. Open letters from scientists don't seem to mean much. Also, temperatures in the USA haven't gone up for 20 years now: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperature-index/time-series?datasets%5B%5D=uscrn&datasets%5B%5D=climdiv&datasets%5B%5D=cmbushcn&parameter=anom-tavg&time_scale=p12&begyear=2000&endyear=2019&month=12 https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/national-temperatu...

shreyshnaccount 5y ago

1. climate change is real 2. it is really hard to do analysis on due to the large number of variables, uncertain assumptions and general complexity of the system 3. it will mess us the earth as we know it 4. humans have been making a large impact on climate change 5. it is also a natural process 6. being natural doesn't mean it won't fuck us up 7. people in power are not willing to act if the usual HN smart-ass climate change denier or whatever comes at me asking for "proof", all I can say is look around.

yonixw 5y ago
Regarding 7, In my understanding, It is due to a high political price that no politician is willing to bite the bullet.
- shreyshnaccount 5y ago
  could as well be. or they could be bought off by big oil and the like. idk. but it's not ideal
jfengel 5y ago
Lots of people in power are willing to act. The problem is that in the US, the system is biased towards inaction. It takes an overwhelming majority to pass legislation. You have to control the House and 60% of the Senate and the Presidency, all at the same time. A minority willing to band together is nearly always able to prevent action. Even when you get all of that, actually choosing an action on climate change isn't easy. It's a thorny, difficult problem. When you add in the difficulty of requiring absolute unanimity among that supermajority, it's no surprise that you can't get anything done, even if a majority of people recognize the problem and wish to act.

jkereako 5y ago

How effective can these messages of torment and suffering be? To those who believe it, it causes anxiety. For those who don’t, it pushes them farther away. The smallest group are those who understand but are not swayed by emotion. Ideally, everyone is in this group. I now believe the division over climate change is caused by the messaging. I think a gentler approach would be more effective.

pcdoodle 5y ago

Figure 1 right away raises alarms. You are not doing anything to help the fight by mixing in bullshit. Do it right.

john579 5y ago

Everyone knows it's too late, everyone except these 14,000 scientists. The reason why no one is doing anything is because it's pointless. If we have to face untold suffering, do it with grit, not like these spineless nannies. "Give me all your money or you're going to regret it!" Sounds like 14,000 highway robbers. Get rid of them and the problem will magically go away.

curation 5y ago

Why do we do nothing about climate change? We cannot. Why this deadlock? We live by Market Logic, which has no bearing on reality but is our symbolic reality because everyone acts as tho it is true, chasing admiration while simultaneously remaining completely blind to the entire process. Market Logic interdicts all human priorities. We need to think more; do less.

teslaberry 5y ago

what if the sociological truth is that untold suffering will come naturally as a result of natural human patterns of fighting for control and resources? and what if one of the main resources is human attention and devotion. and what if the main way to capture human attention and devotion is to sell fear at large of something, ANYTHING, other than the fight at every and all levels of humanity for control and resources. fear is sold inside of society and external to it. fear is sold within the family and external to it. fear is sold within the individual mind to be afraid of itself and to be afraid of things external to the individual.