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People won't even wear masks during a pandemic caused by an airborne pathogen for political reasons. I feel pretty hopeless about any meaningful action on clima

• altcognito 5y ago
  Those forests will thin out, a new normal will be found.
  • saboot 5y ago
    A new normal will always be found. Whether it's compatible with humanity though ...
  • buu700 5y ago
    I kind of like the current normal that includes humans.
  • graeme 5y ago
    A normal requires fairly stable conditions. Constantly changing conditions means constant flux.
    • criddell 5y ago
      Instability could be the new normal.
  • barbazoo 5y ago
    A lot of wood has to burn for forests to "thin out". That's decades of unbreathable air during the summer months.
    • ByersReason 5y ago
      Not everywhere. On the western slopes of places like the santa cruz mountains, we mostly get a thermal sea breeze that keeps things cool during summer (our so called "natural air conditioner"). This also does a very good job of keeping the air clean, as we ocean air from the NW. You just have to be sufficiently hot inland to generate such a breeze, and things are generally stable. We do of course get some smokey days when the prevailing wind is offshore, and had more smoke during the CZU fires, which were right here - but otherwise pretty good.
  • throwaway894345 5y ago
    This is in contrast to the tone that I've heard from various experts. In particular, there seems to be a lot of concern about the collapse of our ability to reliably produce food and other essentials.
• modernyogihippy 5y ago
  I've come across many news articles and videos reminding viewers that unless action is taken, the whole world will be affected, however, none touch on the places that will weather the crisis best. Personally, I don't want to plant roots in a location that is at risk of becoming unhabitable within the next ~30-50 years.
  • Johnny555 5y ago
    I don't really want to relocate globally, so my criteria is: stay away from known flood zones and coastal areas (both due to sea level rise and more frequent/destructive tropical storms). Be prepared with to live off grid in weather more severe than expected in the area for a week or more when weather knocks out the power. Oh, and stay away from urban areas for the same reason - a week long power outage in a city is not going to go well no matter how prepared you are yourself.
  • radicaldreamer 5y ago
    Everyone is likely to be screwed in unpredictable ways, but New Zealand keeps coming up as a place where things won't be so bad. Siberia as well...
    • jgamman 5y ago
      ssshhhh https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/05/all-the-maps-that-are-missing-new-zealand.html https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2018/05/all-the-m...
    • nroets 5y ago
      Mass migration to New Zealand or Siberia would entail would mean more construction work causing more carbon to be released. Rather adapt existing buildings to the changing climate.
      • mikepurvis 5y ago
        Right, but that's a global cost for a localized benefit... which is kind of the whole deal here. In any case, basically every mitigation is still going to involve massive amounts of concrete- and diesel-related emissions, whether it's new housing, flood control measures, new energy sources, carbon capture, etc etc.
• rangoon626 5y ago
  RUN RUN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!
• wongarsu 5y ago
  The places that can weather climate change well will be overrun by refugees from poorer countries that can't. For most first world countries the first order effects are mostly a drag on infrastructure costs and costs of living. Even absurd things like damming in the entire North Sea to protect against sea level rise are viable with enough political will [1]. But places that can't afford that will lose population centers to sea level rise, will be unable to produce enough water for drinking and agriculture, or just become too hot in the summer months to be livable without AC everywhere. And all those people won't just keel over and die, they will have the same thought you just expressed. 1: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-dams-could-protect-millions-from-rising-north-sea https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/feb/12/giant-da...
  • PeterisP 5y ago
    What I hear in your words is essentially an argument that it would be prudent to invest in arms manufacturers, as their products are obviously going to have an increased demand in the world-after-warming.
    • skyfaller 5y ago
      Investing in arms manufacturers could also hasten the end of civilization and possibly cause human extinction. Although the climate crisis is dire, I do not think that climate change alone is likely to kill us all. Resource wars that result from the climate crisis, however, I think could finish off humanity. Arms manufacturers do what they can to increase the likelihood of war. Not to mention that militaries produce disproportionate amounts of greenhouse gases. I mean, arms manufacturing is blood money even in "ordinary" times, but it takes another level of self-destructive evil to attempt to profit off the apocalypse.
      • shrimpx 5y ago
        Profiting off the apocalypse is exactly what’s happening in the fossil fuel-based industries isn’t it? It may not look like the apocalypse until the last minute.
• misiti3780 5y ago
  The last 1.5 years has shown humans are just too tribal to come to a consensus on something as obvious as COVID. There is zero chance we are going to all agree on climate change. Most companies and politicians think in short term intervals because of the systems we have devised. It seems to be that the most obvious solutions will be make amazing technology and make it as cheap or cheaper than the dirty competitors -- eventually, even the people that dont believe in climate change will be driving EVs, have solar panels on their roofs, and eating fake meat. Also, we should all be hoping there are some breakthroughs in nuclear (cheaper + safer reactors that leads to less regulation and allow nuclear to be more ubiquitous )
  • CodeGlitch 5y ago
    This and getting people out of poverty. People out of poverty have a greater ability to deal with extreme climate events.
    • sokoloff 5y ago
      People out of poverty also consume much more energy, so getting billions out of poverty without having a clean energy answer deployed might make things worse not better. (I’m not making a claim that we should slow either branch down nor keep people poor so only the rich can keep burning fossils.)
      • yostrovs 5y ago
        You will note that people in poverty pour their used oil into the street sewer, burn wood and coal for heat and cooking, and simply don't have time for worries beyond their immediate needs. If you want people to care about the environment, they must have their basic needs met.
    • jfk13 5y ago
      Yes.... but the development that lifts people out of poverty may at the same time exacerbate the climate problems. I'm not sure we've yet reached the point of lifting people out of poverty in a climate-friendly way.
• losvedir 5y ago
  Very pessimistic, but very true... I'd love to see a detailed analysis about - given continuing climate change - where the best places to live would be. This would be both geographically, in terms of climate, but perhaps also politically, about being able to scramble and, I dunno, keep everyone after me out, heh. I'm actually sort of mildly positive about living outside Chicago right now since 1) my vague sense is that winters will get less severe (those crazy polar vortexes we've had a couple times now notwithstanding), 2) there's a fair bit of agriculture in the region that's not on the cusp of failing, 3) the elevation is high-ish and we're not on the coast, and 3) we're next to most of the world's fresh water. That said, I'm sure since this isn't a super well considered position, I'm probably missing a ton.
  • OldHand2018 5y ago
    You are kind of right and wrong at the same time. You should definitely assume that a late-winter polar vortex is an annual occurrence. Summers will get warmer, rain storms will get more intense. So you definitely are going to need to adapt. And flooding is an issue, so you better make sure to be in a FEMA X zone. On the other hand, Illinois and Chicago are really, really low on the climate migration desirability index. Yet there is excellent soil for agriculture and the state is doing a decent job of incentivizing farmers to protect it. There is a huge amount of good water. Etc. You probably don't have to worry too much about being priced out of a house.
• Veelox 5y ago
  I forget where I saw it but I remember someone on the right criticizing those on the left by saying "I will start treating climate change like an emergency when they start acting like it's and emergency". A lot of the "solutions" to climate change that are suggested align with what the left already wants. If it's really an emergency let's act like one. The navy runs A1B reactors that are somewhere in the range of 500MW the US uses somewhere around 450000MW at any given time. That's 900 A1B reactors. They cost somewhere around $200m to put on a carrier. That puts it at around $180b to take us to 0 carbon power generation. If people believed the world was going to be uninhabitable soon you think they would be willing take some kind of path like this but instead they suggest lots of things they already want.
  • stnmtn 5y ago
    Do you think that it might be more complicated than the scenario you've devised, or do you believe it is as simple and foolproof as you say?
    • shrimpx 5y ago
      As long as we’ve figured out nuclear waste management, it’s pretty straightforward. Unfortunately nuclear too is a political issue.
    • Veelox 5y ago
      Oh it's not fool proof and there are would probably be cost over runs and you would probably need to make power produces whole for their capital out lays. There might be an nuclear incident. I feel like if the world was going to end in 30 years people would be willing to discuss more direct action.
  • ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
    Devils Advocate, a lot of "what the left already wants" they only already want because they have been worried about climate change for 20 years. For example protecting national parks. But I 100% agree, that a true path forward would involve the left taking actions to fix climate change that would be more popular with the conservative crowd. If all the coal plants we were closing, were being replaced with nuclear power in the same cities and states, there would be a lot of job protection. And that might help move things forward. Or a call for Solar Panels on homes, with panels made in the U.S. might be a good compromise as well.
• alexose 5y ago
  I see your point about mask compliance, but I would argue that tackling climate change requires the opposite approach. The best solutions are top-down economic agreements, requiring little to no buy in from individuals. What's more is that it's a cumulative problem, so every little bit helps. Factoring in carbon capture, good actors can even cancel out bad ones. Very unlike the pandemic, where a few bad actors have outsized power to make things terrible for everybody.
  • blacksmith_tb 5y ago
    That seems broadly right, though presumably there's still room for a lot of grousing when, say, SUVs are fairly taxed. But in general I'd expect more carrot than stick, credits and rebates for PV and heat pumps, we'll still get a few people complaining I'm sure ("Why can't I buy a 100W incandescent bulb any more! Socialism!")
  • lljk_kennedy 5y ago
    The political will must be there, or else the population votes someone in who will overturn agreements etc.
• saeranv 5y ago
  I think it's important to avoid overly simplistic, binary interpretations about politics or action from dominating the conversation. I think it's a form of bike-shedding, it's very easy, and accessible to vaguely blame "the media" or "politicians" for the cause of problems, which is not only inaccurate in who it blames (both The Guardian and Rebel News/OAN are media, both are not equally to blame), and also doesn't engage in actually finding data and evidence to support the argument. At any rate, with regards to climate change, it's important to note that actual progress has been made in mitigating climate change, it's not enough to hit the 1.5C target, but we'd be in an even worse place without it. In 2014 the world was on track to hit 4C by 2100, now its at 3C, (primarily due to rapid growth in clean energy). More reduction is possible in the intervening years, and the reduction is important in cutting out the more catastrophic effects of climate change. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/25/climate/world-climate-pledges-cop26.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/10/25/climate/world...
• anonporridge 5y ago
  I've come to think that it might actually be best to avoid the places that will be 'nice', because those place will attract the hoards of people that will cause massive instability. It might actually be better to find place that will have plenty of local resources, especially renewable electricity and water, but will be hard to live without supporting tech like AC, heat/insulation, air filtration, etc and even more exotic tech like indoor grown food and general purpose manufacturing like 3d printing. Beyond the density problem of 'nice' places, the difficulty of living in 'hard' places will provide a forcing function to only allow a population of smart and industrious people to live there, while those who can't hack it flee to the 'nice' places that don't require as much expensive tech to survive in. In a world ravaged by climate change, you really want to be in the group that is capable of keeping advanced tech running and improving if you want to leave a lasting legacy. Not only because it's going to get harder to live here on Earth, but because we don't have much of a collective future if we never manage to get off this rock.
• sebazzz 5y ago
  I have given up on humanity to solve this problem, especially no hope in politics to solve this problem. I do my part in the way I travel and what I eat, but I can otherwise only hope me and my kids are long dead before the earth becomes uninhabitable for a large part.
• rektide 5y ago
  > People won't even wear masks during a pandemic caused by an airborne pathogen for political reasons. The pandemic is unusual in that we physically had no options but to work together. With something like climate change, yes, everyone can be a bad contributor, but honestly, the solutions if they are to be arrived at involve a lot of invention, creation, trying things. Individuals & entities & governments are free to explore their own ways of making wins, and we don't all have to work together. We can ignore naysayers, & do the good work.