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World on 'catastrophic' path to 2.7C warming, warns UN chief

• scarmig 5y ago
  Is fatalism (in an all too unfortunately literal sense) all we have left? When an official says "unless governments credibly commit to immediate, massive decreases in emissions, we're screwed," it just amounts to "we're screwed." Encouraging and striving for some radical new technological innovation is all we can do.
  • RandomLensman 5y ago
    No. We just cannot sustain panic continuously. I am confident that eventually a mix of decarbonization, mitigation of climate change effects, and some sort of geoengineering will avoid any apocalypse.
    • scarmig 5y ago
      The point is that by all measures decarbonization isn't happening. Mitigations are a critical part of any solution, but expensive and hacky. And geoengineering is exactly the kind of radical new technology we might need, but the key point is that it doesn't exist right now and might not ever be practical.
      • RandomLensman 5y ago
        Decarbonization is happening/starting to happen - I actually see it taking off. It is an S-curve, though, so right now it looks tiny, but that will change.
        • moistly 5y ago
          Decarbonization needs to sequester it as fast—actually, much faster—than we’ve been taking it out. 75 million barrels per day. IMO that is not attainable.
      • nsxwolf 5y ago
        We need to turn the experience of daily life into something far worse than the most draconian COVID lockdowns to even put a dent in this problem. Forever.
        • junon 5y ago
          This is my viewpoint as well. People are all talk about "should be doing" but when it comes down to "alright, you're going to have to sacrifice some comfort" all action ceases.
          • tsimionescu 5y ago
            I don't think this is so much people, as corporations and the politicians they own. Even economic stagnation is seen as abhorrent, when in fact we will have to undergo economic shrinkage to even contain the problem. The entire world economy will have to start shrinking for a few decades while we replace all fossil fuels with other things, and then we can try to get back to growth. But this is absolutely not acceptable in any mainstream economic discussion, even from the left, and absolutely counter to the very definition of a for-profit corporation. Even slowing down growth is seen as 'too risky', while the world burns. Better we buy new iPhones every month to help propel the economy.
        • commandlinefan 5y ago
          Well... you and I will, anyway. It won't apply to politicians.
      • margalabargala 5y ago
        Not saying it's a good idea, but geoengineering is currently both technically and economically feasible. It would be easy for e.g. the United States to reduce the total incoming sunlight by enough to counteract global warming. The issue is that doing so will have widespread unknown issues on the planet. For example- launching enough thin, reflective mylar film to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point to reduce incoming solar radiation by ~0.1% would take about 500 Falcon Heavy launches (highest capacity rocket currently available). This would take several years and around $100 billion. Once Starship is ready and in use, this would go way down. $100 billion and several years is practically nothing for the US, China, or one of several other countries with the capability to do this. Obvious downsides include denying the use of the L1 Lagrange point to human use permanently, eventual degradation of the sun shield as solar wind pushes pieces of film out of place, and of course possible mass famine and plant die-off due to lower solar radiation.
        • dr_dshiv 5y ago
          Check it. Teller, E., Wood, L., & Hyde, R. (1996). Global warming and ice ages: I. Prospects for physics-based modulation of global change (No. UCRL-JC--128715). Lawrence Livermore National Lab..
    • silisili 5y ago
      Agreed, but I quit saying as much, as often here you are met with disdain for saying such things, and that you are creating distractions. TBF I do see both sides - by saying 'ah we'll figure it out' it makes it seem like it's not a huge issue(it is). But I do think we will figure it out, even if it means vaporizing the sky to block the sun while carbon increases.
  • RicoElectrico 5y ago
    The problem lies much more in the realm of politics, rather than technology and science. We opted to wage pointless wars instead of modernizing the energy mix. There are also instances when politicians do want to change something, but their cluelessness shows - solar freakin' roadways anyone?
    • jonny_eh 5y ago
      > We opted to wage pointless wars instead No, we opted to provide incentives to fossil fuel producers and consumers. That is how we got into this mess. Pointless wars are bad for other obvious reasons.
      • ashtonkem 5y ago
        It’s worth pointing out that the US Military is one of the most prolific polluters in the world, and while an army at peace isn’t a totally idle thing, active deployment drives up consumption massively. Our pointless wars have absolutely contributed to global warming, although I wouldn’t pin the majority of the blame on them.
        • dundarious 5y ago
          I think the military comparison is apt, because massive military spending is seen as table stakes for being a “serious” politician in the US, whereas massive GHG reduction spending is seen as an automatic disqualifier and makes you a silly believer in the “green dream or whatever”.
      • rayiner 5y ago
        We also opted to make climate change a vehicle for unrelated progressive issues: https://news.yahoo.com/aoc-chief-staff-admits-green-124408358.html https://news.yahoo.com/aoc-chief-staff-admits-green-12440835... > “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing,” he added
        • 5y ago
  • wing-_-nuts 5y ago
    >Is fatalism (in an all too unfortunately literal sense) all we have left? If you wish to keep 'the world as we know it'? Yes, that ship has sailed. What we're fighting for now is the degree to which the world we know will be destroyed.
  • AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    I think the wording gives it away. "Unless government credibly commit to..." Not "unless governments do". Just if they "credibly commit to doing". They still aren't thinking in terms of actually doing things, just in terms of committing to do them. Talk != action, not even if the talk is "credible". You think this is an existential problem? Great. Start doing something. Don't tell me what you're going to do, do it.
  • DanHulton 5y ago
    Keep in mind, it's not pass/fail. 2.7 is different from 2.8 is different from 2.9, etc. They're all bad, sure, even terrible, but limiting it _at all_ could make the difference for literal millions of people. Fatalism leads to giving up, which leads to us hitting all those higher numbers, which leads to an unnecessary amount of extra suffering.
    • mercurywells 5y ago
      Due to the feedback loops, isn't 2.9 potentially significantly worse than 2.8 versus 2.8 compared to 2.7?
      • xyzzyz 5y ago
        IPCC thinks that “tipping points” leading to positive feedback loops are highly unlikely. In general, you should rather expect negative feedback loops. For example, the warming response to increased CO2 emission is logarithmic, meaning that the more CO2 you emit, the weaker effect additional effect has, and quite significantly so. Of course, our problem is that we are emitting so much, and our emissions grow so fast, that this diminishing effect is of little consolation. The point is, negative feedback loops are much more likely than positive ones.
        • tsimionescu 5y ago
          There are some pretty clearly known positive feedback loops as well - mainly that ice has much higher albedo than water, and that ice covered areas that today are net emitters of heat will become net absorbers if they lose more ice. Specifically Greenland is known to already have become a net absorber, meaning that there is no way nkw to prevent the eventual permanent melting of all of Greenland's ice.
          • scarmig 5y ago
            Those are already accounted for in the 2.7C etc estimates, though. The CO2 forcing just accounts for 0.5C IIRC of the warming, with known positive feedbacks (most notably water vapor, but also albedo etc) driving the rest. The question becomes, are unknown feedbacks more likely to be positive or negative? I'd lean toward negative, which is what most experts think, but definitely an unknown.
  • errantspark 5y ago
    I feel like we could go a long way toward this through individual choice. You can just y'know, refuse to help ruining our planet. I bet for most people on this forum that's absolutely a practical choice but the money is too good to worry about that. I don't think that's the best solution, but at least it's one I can personally enact, and if deontologically expanded it does lead to solving the problem. Don't play negative or zero sum games and ostracize those that do.
    • luckylion 5y ago
      > You can just y'know, refuse to help ruining our planet. People don't like that. A friend of mine likes driving his car, and does so a lot to go places on the weekend and stuff. He'd like to see the government mandate reduced car usage. I've asked him: you're free not to use your car, why do you still use it if you believe it would be best if you didn't? Because he likes it and if it's not made into law, he won't do what he thinks is best. "We should outlaw personal air travel, but until that has happened, I'm going to fly around the globe" is what I see in far too many proponents of those rules. I have no idea what goes on in their head, it's completely alien to me.
      • foxfluff 5y ago
        I know exactly what goes on in their head. They could abstain from things they like and make their lives more miserable, but it has absolutely zero impact unless millions of others also do the same. And there's no way the masses are doing that voluntarily. (See also how difficult it is to get people to put masks on, distance, take vaccines, etc. with or without mandates; now try get people to voluntarily give up property and hobbies they enjoy) Individual action just isn't enough. Hell, you could wipe my entire country of about 5 million people, and the impact on global CO2 output is on par with the average annual increase in CO2 output over the past two decades. A year or two later, the world would be outputting more CO2 than it did before our genocide.
        • luckylion 5y ago
          Yeah, I just don't understand that line of thought. Of course, each individual's actions are meaningless, but they're wouldn't be the only ones who do it. If only the voters of the green party in Germany would stop/sharply reduce flying, that would be ~10% of Germans (~16% projected votes, ~70-75% citizens are voting). Since they do fly more than the average person [1][2][3], and since they are more likely to be part of the upper class which tends to contribute more per capita, the impact would be even larger. They could single handedly massive reduce the pollution from air travel just by changing their own habits. Yet they don't, keep on flying at higher levels than other groups while demanding legislation to stop them. It's like a cliche movie killer who asks to be stopped. Look at vegans who are vegan for moral reasons. They don't say "we shouldn't eat animals, and the state should outlaw it, but until no one is allowed to eat animals, I'll have a steak every day". They start by themselves and then try to convince others and (sometimes) call for legislation. "Since my influence as an individual is meaningless, I'll continue to be (an outsized) part of the problem instead of being part of the solution" is just completely alien to me, I literally don't understand the reasoning behind it. Would they own slaves if it wasn't outlawed because one slave more or less doesn't change the big picture? [1] https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/gruenen-waehler-halten-rekord-bei-flugreisen-a-1002376.html https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/gruenen-waehle..., 2014 [2] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/umfrage-zur-flugscham-gruenen-anhaenger-fliegen-am-meisten-und-haben-das-schlechteste-gewissen/24679158.html https://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/umfrage-zur-flugscham-gr..., 2019 [3] https://www.businessinsider.de/wirtschaft/klimawandel-gruene-sind-die-vielflieger-des-bundestages-2019-8/ https://www.businessinsider.de/wirtschaft/klimawandel-gruene..., 2019 for green members of parliament who fly more than any other party per person
• focusgroup0 5y ago
  Have any of these dire predictions ever come true? https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-park-2020-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-park-202...
  • kergonath 5y ago
    Predictions of specific events at a specific date are most often stupid. What we know is that the global average temperature is trending upwards, that Greenland is on the way to losing its ice sheet, and that some large ice sheets are sliding into the sea in Antarctica. It is certain at this point that Greenland will be ice free and that there won’t be any glacier left in Europe, but putting a specific date is foolish.
  • scarecrowbob 5y ago
    Is that article not saying explicitly that these "dire predictions" are being demonstrated by the loss of ice in the park? Or am I misunderstanding what you are writing?
  • Supermancho 5y ago
    To summarize, yes.
  • mikojan 5y ago
    So much this. "Science" predicts there's a 17% chance you won't survive a game of Russian roulette. It's a fun game, though.
    • jonny_eh 5y ago
      No one has ever expressed regret from playing Russian Roulette.
    • nielsbot 5y ago
      "fun"
  • marcellus23 5y ago
    Have you been to Glacier Park? I suggest you go there and take a tour. Especially look at the pictures of what the glaciers used to look like, and then look at the real glaciers now. Hard to argue against global warming then.
• kergonath 5y ago
  We tend to low-ball the predictions from the models for political reasons and not to sound too alarmist, but we get more and more data showing that the numbers we use are severely underestimated. 1.5°C was always a pipe dream, but it looks like even 2°C or 2.5°C are all but inevitable, just because of the stuff that’s already in the atmosphere. Yeah, there is little to be optimistic about.
  • TazeTSchnitzel 5y ago
    What really spooks me is: how much of the baked-in warming, and warming we are unlikely to avoid, is going to set off irreversible tipping points?
    • ljf 5y ago
      This - the tipping point where a glacier melt is sped up, and then exposes peat and releases more co2 etc etc - there are so many little tipping points that we just don't know about. Maybe easy alone would have a minor impact, but cumulatively the impacts may be huge. A lot will also depend on the state of society in general when the things get tough, will extreme heat or extreme rain come during a war, or economic downturn, or in a pandemic?
  • rayiner 5y ago
    Okay but what does 2.7C really mean in terms of aggregate effects? Quantify it relative to something concrete.
    • smaddox 5y ago
      Global average temperature was 4C lower than pre-industrial levels during the last ice age. New York was a kilometer under ice.
      • tomjen3 5y ago
        Based on that, it would be a good thing and we should work to increase global warming so that our safety margin gets bigger.
• Proven 5y ago
  Globalist garbage.
• newaccount2021 5y ago
  with more cryptocurrency mining, we can push this to 3C and therefore avoid the disaster of 2.7C
• sjatkins 5y ago
  If we generously assume the models which do not have a good record of maching actual data are correct, 2.7C is not remotely catastrophic by the IPCC's own analysis. Average temperature has been up by much more than that at times in the last few thousand years.
  • outside1234 5y ago
    Every 1C increase results in 2.5m of sea level increase. 8ft of sea level rise will be devastating for Florida for example. This prediction is for 6.75m of sea level rise or 22ft.
    • paulmd 5y ago
      It's an interesting hack for the electoral college, certainly. The state is still going to be there, build an artificial island and be the only person left on the island and you get yourself 3 electoral votes and a personal rep and two senators.
  • isoprophlex 5y ago
    Yes and society as it exists now is what, at most 200 years old? Your point is moot. This temperature rise is totally out-of-context for us, and will cause a lot of pain.
  • scarmig 5y ago
    A slow, steady increase over millennia of a couple degrees Celsius is fine and possibly even on net good (more agriculture in the northern parts of the globe, which contain a lot of land). The same increase over a century is disastrous, because infrastructure and capital doesn't change or move nearly so rapidly.
  • Mehito 5y ago
    Yes most people on hn will not experience much issues through climate change the other 100million and more will. They will loose land, health, money etc. People whoms homes will be burned etc. We will experience future animal diversity reduction. This is something very depressing but depending in the Person how much you care for such things. Also we will experience more dramatic Events as well. Like droights and lots of rain. The Impact on you might range from 'not leaving my flat today' to 'I lost everything'. Your surroundings will slowly change. Woods will start looking different. And still we are not very certain about all those things. It could get much faster much worse through tipping points. It also forces future generations to already plan their future accordingly: they will know that they will experience an increase of sealevel of 60cm and more.
• gotoeleven 5y ago
  There is a solution, it's called nuclear power. When will the perceived risk of nuclear power be overtaken by the risks of global warming? Why does it seem like we, as a society, are not capable of making grown-up assessments of this issue?
  • azinman2 5y ago
    That's A solution, but it's not like energy plants are the only source of CO2. They also take many billions to create and many many years, need rare materials that can also be turned into weapons, and need to be located near some large body of water for cooling. It's not like you can just roll that out to the entire world in time even if you started now.
    • api 5y ago
      They're by far the main source. Coal burning for electricity is the source of >60% of all fossil CO2 emissions. That's just coal power plants. No oil, no gas, no other sources.
    • kergonath 5y ago
      We also need to electrify everything that can be, and use fuel cells for what can not. The capital issue really is political, as not doing it will cost way more in the long run. Pricing adequately carbon emissions would be a first step. Nuclear plants don’t need rare materials, and the waste in current designs cannot be used in a nuclear bomb (well, they could be used in a dirty bomb, but then there are loads of cheap as chips chemicals that are much better for this use). It is true that it is too late now to rely only on that. We still need all the tools we have, and we should build as much reactors as we can, and as much wind turbines (and solar panels where it makes sense) as we can. We are not in a situation where we can prioritise one or the other, otherwise we end up with gas and coal, like in Germany.
  • breakyerself 5y ago
    We need a price on carbon emissions. Probably coupled with subsidies on a per kwh basis for carbon free energy. Different energy sources will be appropriate in different markets. Mandating specific technologies is going to end up being wasteful and inefficient.
• coryrc 5y ago
  35%+ of the US population won't even get vaccinated to save their own lives. The majority of people aren't willing to sacrifice their own standard of living at all to help. 97.8% of cars sold in the US are gasoline-powered even though people could afford to buy EVs. Nearly every house built today is not at passivhaus standard, and probably not a single apartment building. And even if the US completely changed... there's oil and coal distributed fairly evenly across the whole world. Even if the USA used all its power, it couldn't stop the rest of the world from exploiting every last drop of oil and last chunk of coal. Tell me where I'm wrong, what could any group do to stop every drop of oil in the middle east and Nigeria from being pulled out?
  • aaomidi 5y ago
    It would help to avoid thinking on the individual level and more so on the system level of what we could do to encourage certain behaviors? For example, Netherlands was able to completely revolutionize their cities and optimize them for bike travel. Now biking is the main mode of transportation. A lot of the changes we want to see individuals do, the system discourages it or makes it hard to do those changes. Electric cars have dubious benefit for the environment as well, so I don't think using that as a solution is fair.
    • coryrc 5y ago
      And yet, they're not on approach to get net-zero in time. All that change and it wasn't enough. EVs are just the tiniest inconvenience to Americans over gas and still they won't embrace it. It's much cheaper than the other things we need to do.
      • bluGill 5y ago
        EVs are just the tiniest bit better than gasoline engines for the environment, yet everyone pretends like the solve the problem because they don't want to be inconvenienced. If you want to make a dent in the problem you need useful mass transit everywhere. Useful is more important than everywhere - useful will get people out of their cars, while everywhere gets people driving by and ignoring it because when they last looked it wasn't useful. (best to assume once every 5 years unless someone else finds it useful and raves about it)
• newbamboo 5y ago
  Is this because of the submarines?
• the_third_wave 5y ago
  The lyrics of The Clash' London Calling [1] come to mind, especially the chorus and the last verse. Ton understand the chorus you need to realise they wrote this in 1979 when there was another climate-related disaster scenario. The title London Calling refers to the call sign for the BBS news broadcast, the last verse lets the listener know that some of what was said might be true. Chorus: The ice age is coming, the sun's zoomin' in Meltdown expected, the wheat is growin' thin Engines stop running, but I have no fear Cause London is drownin', I, live by the river Verse 3: (London calling), yes, I was there, too And ya' know what they said? Well, some of it was true! (London calling) at the top of the dial And after all this, won't you give me a smile? (London calling) If The Clash is not your thing, maybe R.E.M.'s It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) fits the bill. Both tracks can be seen as dealing with the same subject matter and come to the same conclusion - The Clash wants you to give them a smile, R.E.M. feels fine. In other words, stop it with the panic porn. Learn to adapt to the warmer climate as humans have done before, just like they adapted to an ice age where large parts of the continents were ice-covered. Use your head when confronted with statements of doom, check historical records and you'll quickly find there were worse droughts and more heatwaves about a century ago - which led to the Dust Bowl [3]. Take the ravages of the dust bowl as an example and imagine they had had access to the current crop of social networks and networking technology back then. There would have been similar predictions of doom - crops were failing, anf not just in the USA. Would those predictions have been justified given the development of the weather in the decades past the 40's? Clearly not. What makes the current predictions of doom different from earlier ones? Is it the climate modelling which is used as base? Feed those models with (real - not 'corrected') data from before the dust bowl and see what they make of the next century. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Calling_(song) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Calling_(song) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_End_of_the_World_as_We_Know_It_(And_I_Feel_Fine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_End_of_the_World_as... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
  • scarmig 5y ago
    It makes one despair that a few lines from a Clash song are used to discredit an entire scientific area of study.
• aboringusername 5y ago
  [deleted, sorry]
  • jonahbenton 5y ago
    Upvote. One of the many disconnects in climate is around measurable day to day impacts both individually and on aggregate. The same UN report that points to high-C temperature increases claims in economic terms only a smaller rate of GDP growth for a high-C world, compared to GDP growth for a stable world. That means we may well have both climate disaster AND flying cars and disease and aging elimination and all the benefits that "progress" makes available, now not just from traditional tech but acceleration in energy and biology development as well. If that is true, then even a dramatic rise in episodic disasters just becomes a cost of doing business. I don't think that's true, but I also don't think we are headed for population crash. And I would be very, very, very surprised to see e.g. travel rationing. Much much more work to do on localized analysis and narrative.
    • splistud 5y ago
      Let's be very clear. Every mitigation strategy discussed will have massive downward pressure on the population. You don't get to make it harder/more expensive/impossible to generate food and energy and also have the same amount of people.
      • jonahbenton 5y ago
        True but not in these timeframes. With all respect, willing to take the (way way) over in the scenario parent describes- total global population of 1-2B in 50 years. In 200 years? Yeah, dramatically reduced counts of humans is possible. But in 50 years- global population will be greater than it is now.
  • oliv__ 5y ago
    Count me out of that world, thanks
• the-dude 5y ago
  I am no alarmist, but just look at how most governments reacted to COVID.
  • sneak 5y ago
    Every major world government, even the supposedly good/professional ones, lied about various things both big and small, and engaged in different types of ass-preserving coverups.
    • the-dude 5y ago
      I was hinting about the time it took them to actually do something. Anything.
      • elevaet 5y ago
        Not just the government, but the people they govern. Look how many people have been unwilling to do even the most simple intervention - face masks. It's going to be hard to get these types of laggards to accept the changes we need to make so cut down on carbon pollution.
        • the-dude 5y ago
          In the case of NL, it has been the government who started to raise and spread doubts about masks at the very beginning. 'There is no proof' 'It could actually be harmful because false sense of security'
          • elevaet 5y ago
            That's true and a good point I kind of erased from my memory. There was a lot of pushback from the medical establishment around masks at the beginning here in Canada as well. That was extremely frustrating to witness. This problem is analogous to the conflicting messaging about climate change that's been coming from politicians, industry, media, over the last couple of decades.
• irrational 5y ago
  Recent I was having a "discussion" with an anti-vaxxer (though they don't like that term since it's not really a vaccine, according to them). They claim that "studies" prove that mRNA drugs cause cancer in almost all cases. So I responded that this was great news since it means almost everyone will die which will solve the Covid crisis, over-population, and the dumping of gases from the burning of fossil fuels into the atmosphere. Killing 3 birds with 1 stone! They were not amused.
  • Zababa 5y ago
    > (though they don't like that term since it's not really a vaccine, according to them) To be fair, compared to the other vaccines that we're used to (except for the flu shot), this vaccine appears really weak. I wonder if giving it another name (immunity booster?) would have helped.
    • freeone3000 5y ago
      It's more effective than most vaccines, but most vaccines are for relatively rare diseases (due to near-universal vaccination for decades). The pertussis vaccine is only about 80% effective against contracting pertussis, but, nearly nobody is exposed to pertussis EVER, versus nearly everyone being exposed to the flu (or to covid) -- usually several times.
      • Zababa 5y ago
        That might be me being misinformed about them, but when I think about vaccines I think about think like polio and how they almost don't exist anymore.
        • freeone3000 5y ago
          Due to universal administration over years. The polio vaccine is particularly an awful one, with only about 90% effectiveness (matching the covid vaccine) but the ability to cause polio as a side effect. Polio is nearly eradicated because so many people got the vaccine. It only works if everyone does it.
• agumonkey 5y ago
  who here is working on planning socio-economic scenarios and responses to the plausible crisis ? (migrants, anger, poverty) I'm a bit stumped to see nobody trying to model social dynamics in potentially catastrophic contexts. Sure, some people are doing the usual "It's gonna be war and crime and bla" but I'm talking about almost quantitative modeling. How to see society as chemical or proteic reaction bath and try to see how we can dope the material here and there to smoothen the future problems.
  • Zababa 5y ago
    I'm not using any scientific tools for now, but I think the changes coming are a good reason to run away from the cities. The shift to work from home have made this even easier than before. I wouldn't want to be there when the climate refugees arrive.
    • jonahbenton 5y ago
      With respect- in the US I would suggest the opposite. Cities are the only places that know how to scale, that have the capital and human infrastructure to handle influx, and that can and will command resources when there are scarcities and constraints. I would double down on cities. Everywhere else will be a crapshoot.
      • Zababa 5y ago
        I don't really agree. Refugees won't go into the countryside. A few years ago in France we had a influx of refugees, and the vast majority were around Paris or big cities in general. In the countryside no one saw anyone. Even in Lyon we didn't see many people.
  • adventured 5y ago
    There's lying, delusion, denial, opportunism occuring in vast abundance. I commonly see a large amount of living in denial, living in delusion, about it, even among people that (supposedly) fully buy in to the worst climate change scenarios. See: The Obamas buying an $11 million ocean-side property. They either don't believe any of it, or they don't care how bad that looks. Similar to rich climate change evangelicals flying around on private jets all the time. Are they rationalizing? Are they pathological liars? Are they in denial? Standard hypocrites? Or see: Chuck Schumer & Co. pushing the fraud that we have to act immediately on their proposed green agenda to save the US from climate change. It's all bunk, they're lying very belligerently. The US isn't an isolated magic realm, climate change is overwhelmingly global. There's nothing they have proposed that will matter stacked next to China's rapid emissions expansion. They conveniently ignore that of course, they go out of their way to not talk about that aspect, and then lie and claim their plans can rescue the US from global climate change. With most people you can't have a rational discussion about any of this. For the same reason you can't have rational discussions about Covid. Out of control emotion, irrationality and propaganda rule the day.
• FooBarBizBazz 5y ago
  This is tangential, but I don't like this word "heating" -- and not for the political reasons you think. I know why we use it. It sounds more severe than "warming", and more active. That's not my problem with it. My problem is that it misleads about the physical mechanism. Temperatures don't go up because of additional heat inputs to the system. They go up because of the greenhouse effect. A better description would be something that evokes, somehow, that you are wrapping something in insulating blankets until it overheats and dies. It's less "heating", more "smothering". "Heating" conjures this mental image of the Earth in a pot on the stove. That's dramatic but not how it works. It's more like the Earth is your beloved dog, who you've just locked in the car with the windows up on a hot day. Additionally, a phrase like "2.7C degrees of heating" has a little of the problem that popular science-speak often does, where it insists on saying, say, "power", where "force" would have been a more accurate word, and no less communicative to those who don't know any physics anyway. Because "heat" is measured in units of energy, while "2.7C" is in units of temperature. Granted, if you multiply this temperature delta by the thermal capacity of the Earth, you do get a change to thermal energy. But again, what's misleading is the idea that humans are directly injecting that energy. They -- we -- aren't. We're shifting an equilibrium, in an energy flow -- from the Sun to the Earth, and radiated from the Earth to space. A good thing about the focus on temperature, though, is that that's more directly relevant to the environmental issues. The thermal energy of the Earth is not really relevant. The temperature is. Anyway, I wish that our efforts at communicating urgency could also embed some communication of the underlying scientific concepts, the causal mechanisms. Maybe "smothering" does it.
  • ASalazarMX 5y ago
    I think we are beyond semantics. Calling it smothering, greenhouse, warming, climate change, etc. doesn't make a difference. The only people who still want to believe that it isn't happening won't be convinced by names. They'll be convinced only when it (drought, desertification, flooding, hunger, etc.) affects their own neighborhood.
    • pjc50 5y ago
      Not even then. The pandemic has made it very clear how good people are at ignoring a disaster happening around them. And look at the Texas response to its power crisis last winter.
• jl6 5y ago
  Don’t give up. Even if we get to catastrophic 5 or 8 or 10 degree warming, it won’t wipe us out completely and we will still have to find a way to pay back our pollution debt. Why is this supposed to be encouraging? Because every little bit of pollution avoided today is a little bit less pollution to clean up in the future. Every bit does count. Even if avoiding 2.5 degree warming seems impossible, let’s at least make it 3 instead of 5 or 8 or 10. I use “pollution” to make it clear that this is not just about CO2 but also about every other type of trash that we dump onto this planet.
  • slumpt_ 5y ago
    Mobile phone culture is really disturbing in this regard. The amount of annual-upgrade-onto-the-next shit with devices that can last years and years. It’s not the problem in itself, but it highlights an aspect of consumer psychology that really damages the planet and probably our mental health too.
    • krainboltgreene 5y ago
      The pollution from mobile phones is actually not even worth thinking about. > We have found that, if unchecked, ICT GHGE relative contribution could grow from roughly 1–1.6% in 2007 to exceed 14% of the 2016-level worldwide GHGE by 2040 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S095965261733233X?via%3Dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09596...
      • slumpt_ 5y ago
        > It’s not the problem in itself, but it highlights an aspect of consumer psychology that really damages the planet and probably our mental health too.
        • paulmd 5y ago
          the idea that consumer psychology is relevant at all is a deliberate effort by the industry to mislead. Recycling will never matter, not buying a new phone will never matter, that's why they have focused public attention onto those things. collective action, largely regulation and government intervention, is the only way anything will ever change. And yes, pricing those externalities in is certainly going to make prices increase, and if your iphone costs 50% more then you'll have your "personal incentive" to hold onto it longer as well, if that's really the hill you want to die on. phones don't matter in particular, though, and the price wouldn't go up 50%. And broadly speaking electronics are good on climate in general, climate change is largely due to energy consumption and things like not commuting are easy wins in terms of personal energy reduction. Sitting at home on your xbox tonight is way better than you driving to a concert, sitting in your home office is way better than you commuting 30 minutes each way to work twice a day. But it's something that is near and dear to people so of course that's the thing people who are opposed to climate interventions choose to focus on, because what if it meant you had to give up your phone, is THAT what you want, huh!?!?!? Nah, I want companies to be forced to make efficiency improvements and emissions capture technologies that they don't do because it's not economically viable and nobody's forcing them, I want farmers to be forced to use low-methane-emission feeds that they don't do because they aren't economically viable and nobody's forcing them, etc etc. Cumulatively that stuff won't add up to even 50% except for a handful of goods probably. It's just something industries use to drag their feet.
• ab3rC1te 5y ago
  Your a fucking idiot. Look into HARRP and weather modification.
• mrfusion 5y ago
  Here’s what they were saying in 2004: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t... I’m not ready to subscribe to the panic just yet. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still worth taking measures to limit co2 but I’m not going to panic about it.
  • ryandrake 5y ago
    News about climate change always reminds me of that "Truck almost hits a pole" meme [1]. We're always "on the catastrophic path" and "nearing irreversible damage" and "almost permanently fucked". I'm personally not a climate denier, but I can understand the skepticism. For the last 20 or so years, we've always been really really close to utter disaster. To get a little more provocative, it feels like Christians declaring Jesus will be returning Any Day Now, for the last 2000 years. 1: https://imgur.com/r/gifs/kuplW0m https://imgur.com/r/gifs/kuplW0m
    • paulmd 5y ago
      Science communicators try to avoid it because implying that things are on an irreversible course tends to cause people to shrug and say "oh well, guess that's that then". But things can actually always get worse, and they will if something isn't done. But we're already there. Things are catastrophic right now. Wildfires are intensifying, hurricanes are intensifying, we're having "hundred year" floods every 5-10 years, the coral reefs are dying from the carbon dioxide in the air. And this is just the start, things are going to be far worse in another 50 years unless we take action now.
      • mrfusion 5y ago
        This says reefs are doing well: https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2021/07/23/peter-ridd-record-coral-cover-of-great-barrier-reef-shames-climate-alarmists/ https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2021/07/23/pet...
• coolspot 5y ago
  Less people on the planet -> less CO2 emissions. I just don’t understand why no one talks about how we produce more and more people, each consuming a lot.
  • martincmartin 5y ago
    We did in the 1970s. Have you seen Soylent Green?
  • Zababa 5y ago
    Because ecologists are often left-wing people, and talking about overpopulation would shift the blame from the occident to Africa and Asia. Edit: as an example of that, look at that map of mismanaged plastic https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#share-of-global-total-mismanaged-plastic-waste https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#share-of-global.... Do you think that fighting against plastic straws and bags had any kind of meaningful impact?
    • billiam 5y ago
      What a lazy and irrelevant point. Social scientists won't shift the blame to Africa and Asia because their energy intensity is still a tiny fraction of the developed world, and unless and until we deal with energy intensity, we don't have political authority to dictate terms to the rest of the world.
      • josephcsible 5y ago
        > Social scientists won't shift the blame to Africa and Asia because their energy intensity is still a tiny fraction of the developed world China is in Asia.
      • Zababa 5y ago
        China pollutes more than the US, the EU and Canada combined https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di.... The amount of resources on Earth is limited, and doesn't increase with the population. Pollution by capita is irrelevant. I'll also let you take a look at energy intensity and see if Africa and Asia are so good at it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_intensity_by_country. China is worse than the USA, India is worse than France. What exactly do we have to deal with? And something else, Asia consumes the most energy in the world by far: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-consumption-by-region https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/primary-energy-consumptio.... At some point you have to face reality, even if you don't like it.
• dr_dshiv 5y ago
  Can we please start the geoengineering R&D work now? Let's not have those positive feedback loops start spiralling out of control.
  • tsimionescu 5y ago
    No. That is by far the most dangerous option, at least as likely to make the problems worse as it is to help at all. Geoengineering is absolutely to be discarded in these discussions. Technology will kot save us this time.
    • civilian 5y ago
      hmmm. Everything has a trade-off, including of risk. I think your blanket statement against geoengineering has got to be wrong. Geoengineering is a broad category, and it'd probably be better if we split it into specific strategies. Why are olivine beaches at least as likely to make the problem worse? Why is injecting Sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere at least as likely to make the problem worse? Why are shade satellites at least as likely to make the problem worse? Are the risks associated with these strategies really worse than 2.7+ C of global warming?
      • tsimionescu 5y ago
        Olivine beaches: unknown impact of this mineral in large quantities on local life, plankton, general ocean life. Since ocean life is a major component of climate (through the vast amount of carbon sequestered), this could have unpredictable consequences. Probably one of the less crazy options. Sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere: unknown impact on ozone layer. Unknown possible chemistry in high radiation environment. Unknown effect on weather patterns. Unknown chance to fall back down to earth. Reductions of incoming solar radiation have unknown effects on all ecosystems on the planet. Extremely dangerous to try. Shade satellites: similar concerns as above, except for ozone layer, chemical reactions, risk of raining down. Production of the huge number of satellites needed to matter has risky environmental costs. Huge number of objects in orbit will greatly accelerate orbital collisions, may destroy the constellation before it has any real effect. The risks are currently inestimable, while the risk of 2.7C is at least understood. On the other hand, reducing carbon emissions is doable, and has little risk of negatively impacting the environment. It's the right solution, and any time wasted by delaying it with promises of Geoengineering is criminal.
• egberts1 5y ago
  so we all know that some 10,000 temperature reading stations get ommited from most climate change whitepapers, leaving with with ~7,200 legacy 1973 stations in which to use for our much bias/less readings and analysis. But I’ve yet to read how today’s whitepaper sought to compensate for creeping but heat-producing urban and suburban sprawl. What I really want to see is how are the rural regions faring decade-over-decade.
• api_or_ipa 5y ago
  This line from the article really bothered me > With only 1.1C of warming so far, the world has seen a torrent of deadly weather disasters intensified by climate change in recent months, from asphalt-melting heatwaves to flash floods and untameable wildfires. I'm really bothered by the recent trend in science reporting to take a carte blanche approach to attributing every natural disaster to climate change. Yes, it's indisputable that climate change is absolutely changing our weather patterns, and it's very probably causing and/or strengthening the consequences of disasters happening now, but it's just plain bad science reporting to lump up all recent natural disasters and go "see! Climate change!". And yes, I'm aware that this might be the only way to catch people's attention to the current crisis, but that doesn't excuse the disservice to bone fide science reporting. /rant.
  • enkid 5y ago
    So, how would you report it? You can't point at two hurricanes and say "this one was caused by climate change and this one wasn't", you can only say, statistically, we should be seeing one hurricane instead of two.
    • jsudi 5y ago
      You can not say that climate change caused them in the same way we don’t say that God caused them.
      • enkid 5y ago
        Climate change is an evidence based assertion that makes verified predictions and is widely accepted by the scientific community. God meets none of these criteria.
        • jsudi 5y ago
          If you can’t even say which catastrophes are caused by climate change with certainty, then maybe it’s not as clear cut as you think it is.
• noasaservice 5y ago
  But, we plebes will still be shamed for our straws. In reality, it's the massive industry that has no reason to be clean. And it's the transportation infrastructure in the USA that favors cars over everything else. And its massive deforestation across the world. And it's massive CO2 causing evolution of H2CO3 in the ocean, systematically destroying oceanic life. In reality, it's capitalism, hockeystick required growth (as opposed to sustainability), bad/no planning at larger governance levels, and obsolete-by-design goods that used to be durable.
• hesdeadjim 5y ago
  One pet peeve of mine with climate change articles is that in the US Celsius is often used. A&W tried introducing a 1/3 lb burger, and it failed horribly because the average consumer couldn't understand that 1/3 is greater than 1/4. Now with climate change, that same person is going to shrug off 2.7C because "2.7 isn't much". Re-frame that as 5-10F, and that person is suddenly going to be much more interested, because a 5-10F increase in summer temperatures anywhere in the US is meaningful.
  • anamexis 5y ago
    I don't think the global mean temperature change is going to come off as particularly impactful either way. 5-10°F increase is notable, but doesn't sound particularly scary or urgent. It's the catastrophic consequences that are the scary part.
    • hesdeadjim 5y ago
      Yep I won't disagree that the actual consequences are far more severe than turning up the A/C and not going outside. Depending where you live though, adding 5-10°F isn't entirely ignorable. If you live in Texas, that's taking a 100°F day and making it sound even more brutal. Or as a Coloradan, it's experiencing temperatures you never thought you'd see in the mountains, and being able to intuitively associate the increase in temperatures with the increase of wildfires.
    • woodruffw 5y ago
      A 10 degree increase in the average summer temperature would probably mean tens of thousands of deaths per day in less developed countries with humid climates. The human body doesn’t tolerate wet-bulb temperatures above 95F.
      • anamexis 5y ago
        I'm not disagreeing. But just citing the global mean temperature rise does not convey those kinds of horrific consequences.
• syntaxstic 5y ago
  So we're fucked?
• gibsonf1 5y ago
  How many predictions not coming true, and there have been so many, will it take for people to become skeptical of these kinds of predictions?
  • titzer 5y ago
    You're right, the predictions that it would all be fine seem not to have come true. I mean, seriously, are skeptics even making predictions? No. They have no model, they have no calculations, they have no idea of the future except that nothing's a problem and it'll all work out. Or whatever. They put nothing on the table.
    • sylvainr65 5y ago
      > are skeptics even making predictions? I think that this is their point: predictions cannot be made with our current understanding of climate.
• lightsurfer 5y ago
  No pain no change, only highly evolve and conscious people can change out of conscience, which is not the case of people who derived their sense of identity out of profit. They wont change. Maybe that's what people like Elon Musk have figure, the will destroy the planet, I may as well start working on a plan b, Mars. Or maybe simply stop having children as we may be bringing them to this world to face a terrible calamity.
• medlazik 5y ago
  Yet another thread about climate change on HN where ctrl+f capitalis returns zero results. It's time to say the fucking word. It's time to admit you were wrong about the free market. It's time to vote for anticapitalist regulationists whenever you can. Capitalism did some great things while destroying the planet, it now needs to be radically regulated. Solution is 100% political.
  • adventured 5y ago
    > It's time to say the fucking word. It's time to admit you were wrong about the free market. It's time to vote for anticapitalist regulationists whenever you can. I'm going to remain a staunch Capitalist. I wasn't wrong about market based economics. I won't be admitting to such a thing. The greenest, cleanest, nicest nations in the world are all market based economies, and that includes the nations of Scandinavia (which are all market based economies; none are Socialist nations). There have been no actual free market economies in existence in the past century. Hong Kong perhaps came closest. The US for its part hasn't been anything close to a free market during most of the post Civil War era, however it remains a market based economy as with all of Western Europe. The US and all economies of Europe (as well as all relevant economies of Asia) are highly regulated, and nowhere near free market systems. The most polluting nation in world history, modern China, is very openly anti-Capitalist and very aggressively pro-Socialism. They have never been Capitalist, nor have they ever had a free market economy. Their system is becoming less market based by the day, and they're set to double their emissions again in the coming decades. They currently operate under a totalitarian Communist one-party dictatorship. Socialism with Chinese characteristics, as they're so fond of saying.
• atotic 5y ago
  I was helping prep my high school kid for his evolution quiz. One of the concepts was "punctured equilibrium". To get his attention, and make it relevant I used: "global warming is puncturing the equilibrium today. What do you think that looks like?"
  • titzer 5y ago
    It's "punctuated equilibrium". Meaning, there are relatively long periods of stability separated by short spells--punctuations--of upheaval.
• lacrosse_tannin 5y ago
  Read Desert
• focusgroup0 5y ago
  Disappointed with the HN crowd - of all groups of posters, we should understand the inaccuracy of mathematical models, and the unexpected emergent behavior of complex interconnected systems. How are we so arrogant to believe that we can predict the future with certainty?
• clipradiowallet 5y ago
  Devil's advocate here. The article mentions imminent "massive loss of lives and livelihoods". Wouldn't that lower emissions? ie, we aren't likely to need to keep smog factories pumping out pollution 24/7 when the population is slashed in half. I realize that's not an ideal scenario, but it's a fail-safe of sorts.
  • disambiguation 5y ago
    yes, all systems reach equilibrium eventually. IMO this is the buried lede of the whole topic, any solution we come up with is going to look like a "controlled crash" in the sense that nature will force us to crash at some point
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• effingwewt 5y ago
  To quote someone in the dolphin massacre thread- 'Fucking humans.' We are and have always been the problem. I feel like we legitimately are parasites, we even ravage/consume ourselves. Shit like this makes me hope we never get off this planet to just infect more planets and systems.
• Blackstrat 5y ago
  The lack of healthy skepticism in these comments is somewhat concerning. I guess most here haven’t lived through the last 50+ years of climate and population growth catastrophic warnings. If you are really concerned about CO2 pollution, talk to China, Brazil, and Africa. The States is a net CO2 sink. Or you could simply quit listening to politicians and bureaucrats, who at the end of the day simply want power, control, and your money.