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IPCC’s starkest message yet: extreme steps needed to avert climate disaster

123 points by stichers 5y ago

wdr1 5y ago
IMHO, those who spent the last several decades opposing nuclear power have as much blood on their hands as those who denied climate change was happening at all. History will not be kind to either.
rootusrootus 5y ago
It seems fairly obvious that we do not have the collective will to make the kind of changes necessary to meaningfully change the trajectory of climate change. Might as well spend our efforts planning on how we will live with it, as it happens. I doubt we will have any more success in the future finding the will to try geoengineering, either. We will just find millions of little ways to mitigate the pain.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  In Germany, one reason why there are so many delays is that the local governments allow everyone to block building renewals sources, so you have smaller European countries that already bypassed Germany in renewals adoption, while courts keep busy discussing where Windmills are allowed to be placed.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - js8 5y ago
    Reading this from Czechia had made me chuckle. Germany is so far ahead in renewables compared to us!
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    Following in the footsteps of America, I guess. We have made it extremely easy to block infrastructure improvements, even by individuals. There seems to be some idea that if we allow everyone to have a say, we can make everyone happy. Of course that doesn't work, and I'm surprised the idea gets so much traction. So we spend hundreds of millions of dollars drawing up grand plans that try to appease every possible interest group, and then give up when it is apparent that unanimous consensus will not be achieved.
- tony_cannistra 5y ago
  As with most modern societal changes, I don't think this one is going to come down to "collective will." The massive scale of the problem limits meaningful actions to those that have a similarly massive scale of response. Only those in power can enact those. Elect people who care. There are a lot of them.
  - have_faith 5y ago
    What if people choose to elect those that don't?
    - tony_cannistra 5y ago
      You're living in that world right now.
    - mistermann 5y ago
      Or if those that claim to care do not actually, or if the current design of democracy is such that it isn't up to the task of getting the right people elected, &/or passing the right legislation. Betting so many chips on this one institution seems like not a great idea, especially since it is the one that has been driving the bus that got us to this location.
      - rootusrootus 5y ago
        > if the current design of democracy is such that it isn't up to the task of getting the right people elected, &/or passing the right legislation Before we can design a better democracy, we will need a better metric on what 'right' means.
        mistermann 5y ago
        I don't see how that would necessarily be a constraint on proceeding with a design, although I would very much support that sort of functionality (and many others) being part of a sophisticated democracy platform that is more suited for the much more complex world we live in today. For example, a political candidate could have a profile, and voters would be able to get a faster and better idea for what type of a person they really are, as opposed to the meme-war-based approach we currently have. How one would go about designing a workflow for what information does and does not get included would be a complicated but fun exercise, and perhaps the public could learn a few things about abstract thinking if the followed along as the project moved forward. What domains are there other than politics where hardly anything materially important is upgraded over time as new capabilities and technology become available, and new problems arise? That hardly anyone seems to question (or is able/willing to even consider) whether the design of our democracy is remotely optimal suggests to me that the public has been subjected to some effective "marketing".
- wanda 5y ago
  I mean, I wouldn't say that we as a species lack the collective willpower to bring about broad social change. I think that it's very difficult to get that power on the ground with any traction when you have mixed messages coming from both sides of something that is always framed as a debate. For decades, climate change was studied, warned about, and yet the way it was referred to and is still referred to by some like so: "more news regarding the debate on climate change" rather than "more news regarding climate change" — as long as it's a debate, it's undecided, you don't know if you should do something or care because the scientific community has yet to reach consensus, and government inaction is seen as a reflection of this apparent lack of consensus rather than simply governments' unwillingness to go against the grain of business and the comfortable status quo. Even though the rhetoric surrounding climate change does seem to consider it a fact as of the last few years, you still have "experts" on both sides of the fence saying that it is and isn't real, which further enables people to put it out of their mind as something that's for other people to worry about because they're not in on it. And for those who do accept that climate change is a reality, I wouldn't mind betting that a non-trivial subset of those people largely think it's too late to do anything urgent or drastic and are therefore content to endure some bizarre weather while society slowly transitions to eco-friendly models in the next fifty years. It probably couldn't have gone much better, and if big bad business was truly all powerful, I doubt we would have seen any changes in society, but business has also driven the R&D of more efficient solar technology and the rapid expansion of wind power installations. I think the crowd that consider wind farms to be a blight on the landscape have mostly gone quiet after realising that J. M. W. Turner probably wouldn't have wanted to paint electricity pylons, freeways or Airbuses either, yet they're here to stay. I'm surprised geothermal didn't take off, though I probably shouldn't be surprised given that I know practically nothing about geothermal power extraction and thus have an overly simplistic model of a magma steam engine system in my head that probably isn't at all viable or efficient.
- Nagyman 5y ago
  Climate change is a scale, from bad to really really bad, and positive change is already happening. Here's some uplifting news in a well articulated video worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw Apathy is their weapon, and it's very effective.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    They = whom, and how is this weapon wielded?
    - Nagyman 5y ago
      Sorry, it's in the video, but the oil/coal producers & related polluters who use the apathy to further limit change that affects their profits.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - mistermann 5y ago
        So the apathy is pre-existent, and they leverage this weakness - yes?
  - Nav_Panel 5y ago
    > Apathy is their weapon, and it's very effective. Psychologically speaking, these tactics are approximately the same as the church's use of hell, in the sense of "fix your shit now, or else you're going to hell". This was very effective when the church held a huge amount of political sway + serious control over the media (no internet back then, people weren't even literate). It wont work nearly as well now. Don't get me wrong--I'm no Homo Economicus fan, not saying people are fundamentally selfish--I just think people are fundamentally averse to change, to breaking their habits. The climate change leadership needs a new tactic. I'm totally in support of e.g. tax cuts and incentives for renewables, reducing carbon emissions, etc. Or other ways of raising awareness and taking action that give people what they want/need, right now, rather than being entirely concerned with an image of the future (that for many people with no families, no kids, no legacy, doesn't even exist).
- trinovantes 5y ago
  See how many Canadians complained about carbon taxes on their recent fuel costs made me realize it's basically an impossible task -- especially considering we literally experienced the consequences of our actions in record breaking heatwaves, forest fires, and flood in the last 2 years
- hotpotamus 5y ago
  The thing about geoengineering (at least solar radiation management) is that it's within the budget of some of the world's richest individuals in theory at least. It definitely seems like the least worst half-assed fix from my (rather limited) knowledge of the subject.
  - native_samples 5y ago
    Before getting too keen on geo-engineering, take a few minutes to ponder the following paragraph from an article in Newsweek: "Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality." http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf If this paragraph makes no sense to you, it's because - with the exception of the proposed geo-engineering project - it sounds like something that could have been written last week. It was actually written in 1975 when climate change meant the coming ice age. Here's Spock to tell you more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M It's a good thing they didn't try to melt the arctic, right? But notice how there's absolutely no communication of any nuance, uncertainty or the possibility that the scientists were wrong. Only laments about how the "planners" were too sluggish to react to the scientist's warnings. Absolutely nothing changed except the directional temperature change of the proposed projects.
microjim 5y ago
Let's do our best :D :D
paganel 5y ago
They had the same kind of messages reguariding famines and over-population back in the 1970s, we’ve been mostly fine, with the last (non-war induced) famine happening in 1990s Ethiopia (if I’m not mistaken). But of course that these type of institutions have learned that focusing on the good things in life doesn’t attract any funds, so here we are.
- graeme 5y ago
  You can increase food productuon in a variety of ways, and food production responds to market incentives. But the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans is a math problem and doesn’t respond to market incentives: it is pure externality. You could be right but it’s worth thinking about the shape of problems. Crucially, we’re already seeing the effects of global warming, including positive feedback loops.
- an9n 5y ago
  Isn't it the case that the global temperatures are stubbornly refusing to match the (increasingly bonkers) rhetoric? Perhaps that's the reason for warmists digging their heels in even further, censoring dissent etc.
  - anonymousab 5y ago
    > Isn't it the case that the global temperatures are stubbornly refusing to match the (increasingly bonkers) rhetoric Correct, they are in fact worse than most calculations, in terms of absolute values and acceleration. It turns out that we are not being pessimistic and scared enough.
    - EricE 5y ago
      And yet the Obama's just built a mutli-million dollar mansion in Martha's Vineyard - at sea level. Obama is a climate denier?
      - namdnay 5y ago
        this one? https://vineyardgazette.com/sites/default/files/article-assets/main-photos/2019/obama-marthasvineyard-house.jpg https://vineyardgazette.com/sites/default/files/article-asse... if sea levels rise by two feet he'll lose a bit of land around the edges, but it's hardly "at sea level"
an9n 5y ago
And here it is: 'wealthy nations will need to contribute financial aid to low-income countries, to address inequities in vulnerability to climate change and to accelerate the clean-energy transition in a way that benefits all' In other words, TPTB employing as a facade the big global institutions under their control to sprinkle some fake respectability on their plan to enforce drastically reduced living standards on the middle classes, as part of their simulacrum of global communism that will enable the ultra-rich to maintain their hegemony in perpetuity, whilst reducing all others to cattle in their technocratic global slave system. Quelle suprise
- scohesc 5y ago
  It's so easy to see it when you take a few steps back and look at the constant fear the media's been pushing for almost 30-40 years now - every once in a while there's an article about how "_this_ time it's an emergency!" I swear science is turning more and more corrupted into a substitute for religion for people. We don't have religious faith anymore to guide us and give us comfort, so we're relying on the "experts" that the "higher powers" tell us to listen to. Can't believe in the man in the sky, but we'll believe what the people the media told us were experts have to say!
  - EricE 5y ago
    "Trust the men in white coats" "Which men?" "TOP men! Trust us!"
  - PoignardAzur 5y ago
    You sound like someone saying "Ever since I've jumped off that 40-stories building, so-called experts have been telling me I would die. Well I've fallen 30 stories so far and I'm perfectly fine, these experts are morons". As for the whole science-as-the-new-religion thing, well, that's just a cheap shot. You're just seeing a lot of people disagreeing with you and going "oh, these people are obviously all brainwashed by the new dominant cult and that's why they're so stupid".
    - scohesc 5y ago
exfascist 5y ago
commandlinefan 5y ago
Let me guess... all of those steps involve higher taxes.
- chaorace 5y ago
  Well... yeah! The magical word is "carbon tax" and economists have been screaming it into the skies for at least the last decade. Nobody wants to hear it, though.
  - kansface 5y ago
    Have they really? It seems so impossibly unworkable given we don’t make most things here.
    - ericd 5y ago
      Yes: https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ It’d likely cause a lot of inflation on manufactured goods, but it’d make manufacturing here a lot more competitive, and greatly increase the leverage of blue collar workers in developed countries, which should reduce income inequality within the country - it would make the rich poorer, but the poor potentially also richer in real terms. It’s the only way I see of realistically tackling climate change.
    - daveed 5y ago
      Construction, energy, food production, and citizen transportation, are huge sources of emissions that absolutely occur on local soil.
c7DJTLrn 5y ago
Moving people away from disaster zones and making infrastructure more resilient would be far more realistic, not to mention cheaper, than reducing emissions or pulling CO2 from the atmosphere. It's too late to stop using fossil fuels. It's a forbidden fruit that has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty and the third world countries want first world lifestyles. We are better off trying to mitigate.
- true_religion 5y ago
  I think we are already doing that, albeit in typical human style of waiting for a local disaster before moving people completely out of the danger zone. The danger zones are huge, and understandably people,ant to keep using them until the last possible moment. Like all projections show Manhattan may one day be under water, but we will only slowly abandon it as it floods rather than evacuating dry land in advance.
  - EricE 5y ago
    Manhattan has been under threat of flooding for centuries yet we have figured out ways to prevent it. Same for Holland, Venice, etc. Hell as I pointed out above the Obama's just built a luxury mansion right on the beach in Marthas Vineyard. I guess they are utterly ignorant of the climate change threats, eh? Much of the climate change hysteria is only viable if you assume that human ingenuity and innovation will utterly cease for some reason. Not a very smart bet. Instead it's far more likely much of the climate change hysteria is merely a way to exert control that governments wouldn't otherwise have. For example, this article didn't even mention China or India once. If you are going to screech about carbon and not even mention the two biggest producers of atmospheric carbon then it's not a serious discussion - at all.
    - redisman 5y ago
      Manhattan and Amsterdam can afford to mitigate due to being filthy rich. They’re hardly the median coastal global city
    - triceratops 5y ago
basisword 5y ago
We get at least a couple of these reports in the news every month. I can’t help but believe it’s to create fear. The general public by and large cannot solve this crisis - it’s down to politicians to regulate and innovators to create and push new solutions and alternatives.
- maxehmookau 5y ago
  > I can’t help but believe it’s to create fear. I think cause and effect is mixed up here. I think the damage humans are causing to our planet is scary. Fear is just the emotion we feel when something scary is happening.
- Steltek 5y ago
  Politicians are not going to go out of their way to hurt industry unless the public are rabidly screaming for it. These reports are for the public to generate that push.
- tony_cannistra 5y ago
  It sounds like you're saying creating fear is a bad thing. Is it? Sure, people don't need or want to live their lives in fear. But, can you think of a time you changed your behaviour on account of something you were afraid of? I bet you can. I bet politicians really can.
  - adamrezich 5y ago
    it's mind-blowing that people like you accept the idea that it's perfectly normal and fine for unelected members of international pseudo-government bodies to spread fear porn propaganda specifically in order to get citizens to enact change in their lives, And That's A Good Thing™. how the fuck did we get to the point where top-down emotional terrorism of the working class is lauded as some kind of grand achievement for furthering human civilization? insane
    - tony_cannistra 5y ago
      I hear your attempt at divisiveness here ("people like you"), but I suspect we're not so different. Nobody in this conversation is enacting "top-down emotional terrorism" –– not me, nor the IPCC –– nor is anyone claiming that's a good idea. In fact, that would be a very bad idea. (If there's one way to get folks to do literally nothing it's to paralyse them in fear.) If you read the report, you'll see concrete recommendations that are to be enacted at the governmental level, rooted in the reality of a changing environment. The consequences of failure are intentionally stark -- we made them ourselves. You're falling for the individualism trap. Climate change isn't your problem, nor is it my problem. It's everyone's problem. Everyone's problems are solved by high-functioning institutions. Motivating action to avoid consequences at society-scale is a great way to get institutional gears moving.
Isamu 5y ago
So which countries are meeting their carbon emission goals? Is there a scorecard or summary of approaches that are producing results?
- greenail 5y ago
  https://www.statista.com/chart/26102/emission-reduction-goal-and-projected-achievements-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/chart/26102/emission-reduction-goal...
maxehmookau 5y ago
It does feel, unfortunately, that in the question of "Now or never?", that as a species we've decided on "never". Or at least "Not until something acute and surprising happens to a western country."
- mistrial9 5y ago
  superstorm Sandy.. Western wildfire.. Pacific kelp forest die-off? this is a political situation, as some people are deeply affected while others see nothing important or local economic change only
- tremon 5y ago
  Luckily, Russia has been a great help accelerating the move away from fossil fuels in Europe.
monkaiju 5y ago
Cant be solved under capitalism, climate health just doesn't play a role in maximizing profits.
- changoplatanero 5y ago
  can't be solved without capitalism either, there is no other way except capitalism to generate the excess wealth required to address this major crisis
  - Mizza 5y ago
    "My God is the correct one."
    - EricE 5y ago
      lol - pot shots are easy. What are you going to replace capitalism with? Don't just snipe. Snipe and then provide a solution to that which you just sniped.
      - Mizza 5y ago
        Vulcan anarchism. My point was only that it's a form of religious faith to think that our current form of international corporatism is the only way to generate wealth in the future. I don't even think it's doing a particularly good job of that now.
        EricE 5y ago
        Who said anything about it being the only way? It is still the best demonstrated way to provide the most opportunity the most amount of people that has ever existed throughout humanity and you still don't have a viable alternative other than a sarcastic reply.
        Mizza 5y ago
        > there is no other way except capitalism >> Who said anything about it being the only way? I'm not being sarcastic, by the way, and I don't agree with your premise.
magneticnorth 5y ago
Climate disaster coverage makes me think about how, as much as I love to think that our species will be 8B+ strong for millenia and eventually make it to the stars, that would mean that I am born among the first few percent of humanity. It seems more likely that my random sample is from somewhere in the middle, and if an ~equal number of humans will be born after me as before, then at our population growth/levels, we don't have much time left until extinction or a population collapse from which we never recover. I don't know that there's anything helpful in this thought, though - can I increase my odds of being born in the earliest percentile of the species by my actions?
- Ekaros 5y ago
  Humans are extremely resilient species which has already adapted to all but one or two areas in world, namely poles. Humans won't go extinct, that is just not going to happen anymore.... Now civilizations as we see them today might, but I think they entirely deserve it.
  - DennisP 5y ago
    You're probably right but if we start with a large reduction in livable habitat and food production, mix in a few pandemics driven by poor health and overcrowding, and consider that a situation that stressed makes nuclear war not so unlikely, then I'm not completely confident. Particularly if we get to the more severe outcomes around five or six degrees C.
  - riffic 5y ago
    > Humans won't go extinct I see this statement frequently made on discussion forums like this, and I'd like to tell you this is a tremendously arrogant belief to hold.
  - time_to_smile 5y ago
    This is a laughable claim. Human's have existed only for a very short while and during one of the most stable periods of climate in this history of the planet. I understand denial is necessary to cope, but when you really understand the scale of the changes coming it's hard to image anything other than extinction happening. All of the magic humans have done is not because of our innate abilities but because or our access to abundant energy. First in the form of solar energy harvesting through agriculture, later through fossil fuels. Unfortunately we pushed the system too far.
burner0001932 5y ago
CaspianReport has a good video on why it's hard to make the transition to renewables. Renewables are already being built at an exponential rate, but we're starting from a low starting point. Since we can't get off of coal and oil and go straight to renewables, we're moving to LNG as the transition fuel. LNG, though, is very expensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUTCPYwHguA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUTCPYwHguA
- pydry 5y ago
  We're still at a stage right now though, where solar panels and wind turbines are the cheapest form of energy by a wide, wide margin and every MWh of electricity they generate is almost guaranteed to be MWh natural gas that doesn't get burned. When natural gas regularly goes below 5-8% of grid production then we should probably shift focus to intermittency and storage but for now trying to solve the intermittency problem at the expense of generating less energy overall simply means more natural gas will get burned overall.
andrewclunn 5y ago
Waiting until there are consequences (in general) instead of merely the prediction of consequences (reactive instead of proactive) has two effects: 1) Delaying costs and potentially setting off consequences that cannot be avoided. 2) Not being taken in by those who use scare tactics to control you based upon consequences that might not happen. Is this a matter of deferred gratification and societal-level self control, or of epistemology and institutional trust?
trentnix 5y ago
“Extreme steps”, whether they admit it or not, is a reduction in the standard of living of many and handicapping the efforts to improve the standard of living for most. That requires the power of the individual to be reduced to empower central authorities who will manage our new rationed, austere society. That is, certainly, a recipe for catastrophic war. If climate change is the existential crisis some insist it is, our only solution is technological. But those who wish to use climate change as a Trojan horse to enact their social whims will reject any discussion of the sort. Because solving climate change isn’t their goal, it’s the means to attain their goal.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- cr__ 5y ago
  Do you have any proof?
  - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
    Maybe this? https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  > That is, certainly, a recipe for catastrophic war. Climate change itself is probably a recipe for catastrophic war and the resurgence of fascism. There are estimates as high as 1.2 billion for people that will be displaced by climate change[1]. Even a much smaller number of refugees from the middle east and South America has helped push politics in many western countries towards isolationism and increased xenophobia. What would 1.2 billion refugees do? [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-world-s-forgotten-victims/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-...
  - throwaway599281 5y ago
    >What would 1.2 billion refugees do? Stay in their countries and improve them just like Westerners do?
baremetal 5y ago
just reduce everyone's standard of living. that is where this is heading.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  Do you think there are other options? Doing nothing in the face of a climate catastrophe will ... what, keep up or improve everyone's standard of living?
  - baremetal 5y ago
    im not even making a value judgement. just pointing out that is the trajectory we are on. me personally? i saw all of this coming, bought farmland. started a market garden and cows+chickens on rotational grazing. no oil required to produce food. a lower standard of living for everyone is fine with me.
- Ourgon 5y ago
  Everyone's standard of living? I don't think so. People like John Kerry - that so-called 'Climate Czar' [1] who keeps on dashing around the world in his private jet to tell the world they should be ashamed about their holiday travel plans - won't reduce their standard of living. People like Jeff Bezos won't, not will Gates, nor will just about anyone who wears a nice tailored suit while banging the climate drum. They won't because they need to fly to those important meetings at nice resorts where they discuss how other people need to reduce their 'climate footprint'. They are important people. This whole disaster scenario is nothing new, it is not the first nor will it be the last. Whether it is a boiled earth scare, a frozen earth scare, a nuclear winter scare, a poisoned planet scare, a dried-out planet scare, a too-many-mouths-to-feed scare, a peak-oil scare or - to go bit further back in time - a heathen scare, a Catholic/Protestant/unbeliever scare or (even further back in time) a barbarians-at-the-gate scare, imminent disasters have always been a good way to try to get the populace to bend to some rulers will. Me, I'll gladly ignore this just like I ignored all the other scares. I'll concentrate on independence just like I've been doing since more or less forever. That we happen to lower our ecological footprint doing this is just a nice side benefit but it is not driving. What is driving is that want to cut as many strings - which all too often end up acting like stings, not strings - between those rulers and our family as possible. This means energy independence (nearly there, waiting for remaining materials to be able to go off-grid when needed), food (getting there but with a whole forest full of moose, deer and boar we'll manage if needs be) and water (we have a reliable well which can give water without the need for an electric pump) independence, etc. I only use older hardware for computing which I can repair when needed - this is how I acquire it in the first place, dumpster-diving to save the planet. We have enough bicycles and spare parts to move an orphanage, a few old tractors including a two-wheel diesel-powered Irus which is older than I am, a bunch of horses plus the land and (horse-drawn) equipment to feed them and us, etc. The harder they pull those strings, the more of them I intend to cut. [1] how long will it take for some do-gooder to suggest an alternative for that Russian word, Czar?
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
I have been worried about climate change my entire life. I doom scroll news stories that show the coming disaster. Recently, I stumbled onto this video [1] and have trouble refuting the data and claims. Any experts that can explain what am I missing and why is this guy wrong? [1] https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU
- junon 5y ago
  Because it fails to look at the big picture, and in pursuit of claiming scientists blindly cherry pick data, ends up... well, cherry picking data. Being calm, deadpan, deep voiced or British seems to be equated to "smart" or "correct". Even the comments on that video are falling for it. XKCD once again has a diagram for exactly this problem. Even focusing on just the last 100 years ignores the bigger picture. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
  - TrispusAttucks 5y ago
    I guess the primary issue with the video is the focus on US data (which is less alarming) rather than global data. Also for the forest fire data, after the large burn of the early 1900s, there would be a reduction forest debris to act as fuel so you would anticipate smaller fires for at least a few hundred years. Thanks for the XKCD reminder. I have used this in the past as a nice way to illustrate the cause for alarm.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Pretty easy. A lot of the things asserted as facts in this video are actually just lies. So it doesn't add up. One of the most indefatigable climate anti-contrarians is Andrew Dessler, climate scientist of Texas A&M University. You could read his book, or just his Twitter. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Modern-Climate-Change-Dessler-dp-1108793878/dp/1108793878 https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Modern-Climate-Change-De...
  - Ourgon 5y ago
    OK, so if it is that easy, show us where Heller is wrong instead of mentioning someone else who wrote a book. Heller's videos offer many individual facts which could - or could not, depending on who is right - be refuted by pointing at the correct [1] data. One of Heller's main claims which he keeps on coming back to is that it was a lot warmer in the '30s than it is now. This seems to be corroborated by the list of temperature extremes for the USA [2]. This point alone gives credence to Heller's accusation of climate alarmists making use of tailored views on climate data by only showing historical data which shows an upwards trend, hiding the fact that those data show a local maximum. Given that Heller has been at this for a long time I would expect someone to have taken his statements to task by showing where he is wrong. I have yet to come across a refutation like that but I've seen plenty of supposed refutations in the style of the one above using vague assertions of 'lies' and 'it does not add up'. Show us, where is Heller lying and what does not add up? If you can point at someone who actually refutes Heller's claims that would suffice as well but make sure to point at the actual correct [1] data-backed refutation, don't just say someone wrote a book. Until such a time I will believe my own observations based on historical data which do not seem to indicate a climate 'emergency' but which do show climate change, no matter which part of history is studied. [1] where 'correct' stands for 'actual', not 'corrected to fit a narrative' [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_temperature_extremes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_tempe...
tra3 5y ago
I've listened to a podcast recently [0] that describes climate change as a definite problem, but not the civilization killer it is described as. Frankly, I don't know enough about this to evaluate the problem critically. Some of the points that were made, that I thought were interesting: - climate kills very few people currently. - way more people die in "cold waves" than "heat waves". - we spend way more money on heating now, rather than cooling. This will have to change obviously. - hotter climate will encourage food production. - a economic analysis (need to find the reference) was done projecting climate change impact and apparently, it's minuscule. On the order of 5% by 2100. Global wealth is projected to increase by over 300% during this time. - so called "developing nations" have no money to move to alternative energy sources. Some things that were not addressed, that I'm specifically curious about, living in a coastal area, is sea level rise. I must admit that part of the reason I found this podcast so compelling is that the interview implies that while it's a real problem that has to be addressed, it's not, like I said a civilization killer. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQSvR1jw3ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQSvR1jw3ME
- Thrymr 5y ago
  OK, we've got hundreds of scientists from 65 countries who spent years compiling a rigorous 2900 page report on one side, and on the other, a podcast. If you are genuinely seeking the data and arguments on the issues, please at least read the executive and technical summaries of the report, here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/
  - tra3 5y ago
    I don't think there's any argument about data; but certainly the interpretation. Thanks for the link, I'll try to make my way through the "policy maker" one. The reason I made the post was to get some critical feedback on the podcast. I'm curious, how much of the report have you read yourself?
    - Thrymr 5y ago
      > I'm curious, how much of the report have you read yourself? I have not read this one yet, but I make a point of trying to read the summaries of IPCC reports before getting into arguments about it. They are impressive documents, even though written by giant committee.
blenderdt 5y ago
It's all about the money. There is only one solution to speed things up: governments must raise huge taxes on energy use and pollution.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Hopefully you meant a tax on carbon emissions, not a tax on energy use. One of the few tools we have out of this mess is a tremendous expenditure of energy to remove carbon from the atmosphere and ocean.
  - blenderdt 5y ago
    I meant energy use. We are just using too much energy.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      again, energy use in of itself is not a problem. if you're running off solar or nuclear, have a blast. the problem is Co2 in the atmosphere
schrute 5y ago
Nice article and all but what are the recommended pragmatic steps for individuals, besides casting votes for political candidates who care?
mrfusion 5y ago
Did you know the UN also warned in 2005 that man-made global warming would so decimate coastal areas as well as the Caribbean and Pacific islands that there would be upwards of 50 million “climate refugees by 2010.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturaldisasters.climatechange1 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturald...
- namdnay 5y ago
  how many are there today? if you read the article you'll see that back in 2005 they were already counting around 10M climate refugees per year
- jeffbee 5y ago
  UNHCR says there were 42.4 million people displaced due to climate-linked disasters in 2010, so this prediction was not far off. What you should be asking yourself is why you had this contrarian tidbit at your fingertips, but you're not aware of the primary facts.
incomingpain 5y ago
How many GW of coal plants are being built brand new in Asia right now? It's very high. These will operate for decades. What are we to do? Tell them to stop? Tried that unsuccessfully. I would ignore us if I were them. USA and Europe still emits tons of CO2. Has been emitting worse then them for many many decades. This carbon emitting elevated much of the wealth of the country. We are basically telling them to not become wealthy like us. They wonder why we haven't done much to reduce emissions. We were too late, it's happening now. What do we need to do. Ignore carbon taxes that do nothing. Instead, build renewables, build batteries, build solar panels. The remaining amount of fossil fuels is a hard limit. Staying on them is idiotic to say the least. It's not just transportation and centralized energy production. Plastics, lubricants, wax, sulphur, ashphalt are other products of oil. What are the non-petroleum options? We also need non-carbon emitting things like concrete. Why do we just go to it? No regulations, no taxes, maybe even funding for any corporations who work on doing these things? Wait nobody is doing this? The government is restricting and slowing this effort? Actions speak louder than words, why are the world's nations saying they'll do something while their actions say they have no intention to do anything? Is there an unspoken denial of climate change by the world?
- triceratops 5y ago
  > Ignore carbon taxes that do nothing Where have carbon taxes been enacted and in those places, have they failed to reduce consumption? > What are we to do? Tell them to stop? Tried that unsuccessfully Reduce our own consumption, institute carbon taxes. Tell them if they don't do the same, their imports are embargoed. Actually follow through and accept the rise in cost of goods.
  - incomingpain 5y ago
    >Where have carbon taxes been enacted and in those places, have they failed to reduce consumption? Yes. Oil/Gas usage is inelastic to price. The only appreciable factor toward reducing oil has been the proliferation of hybrids and EVs and its nowhere near enough. Before the carbon tax we had practically a 100% combined road taxes on gasoline to begin with. Tacking on only a tad bit more isn't producing any new reduction. >Reduce our own consumption, institute carbon taxes. How? Carbon taxes didn't work. >Tell them if they don't do the same, their imports are embargoed. Actually follow through and accept the rise in cost of goods. So pay more taxes for what? We are going to pay more to punish them? That doesnt sound like punishing them at all. Sounds like punishing me.
catchclose8919 5y ago
...how about focusing instead on how to live through this climate "disaster"?! Let's be honest about it, most developed countries are making geo-strategic decisions in the context of +7 C in <= 100 years... we're just not being f honest about it! (Avoiding it is off the table, just as well as "zero covid" was off the table since month three of the f pandemic and we should've just accepted that it's gonna become endemic and most measures are waste of resources.) Let's accept that "massive" climate change will happen, and that our goal is how to slow things down and how to avoid it being an actual disaster for HUMANITY! (It will be a disaster for many other species that we'll go extinct as we'll probably massively increase use of herbicides and fertilizers and GMOs in order to satisfy humanity's material needs against a backdrop of populations displacements and fertile lands distribution shifts. But it doesn't have to be a disaster for humanity... ugly as it may be, it's a live-and-let-die universe and irreversible biodiversity loss will happen, but humans are quite capable of not only maintaining but also accelerating, as it's our duty to, technological and scientific progress, as long as we don't stupidly turn against each-other! We have and entire universe to infect and conquer ffs, let's just not kill each other in the next century!)
- time_to_smile 5y ago
  > live through this climate "disaster" Because this is not a disaster that stops at any point in the foreseeable future. There is no other side to get "through" to. This isn't like an Earth quake or even a nuclear war where a single event happens, the world is changed but then stasis begins to return. Next year the impacts of climate change will be notably worse than they were the previous year. This will be true for the rest of your life. Positive feed backs and the geological history of the planet both indicate that after a (currently unknown) limit, things will start escalating rapidly and irreversibly until the surface of the planet is no longer recognizable. The focus should be on how to psychologically begin to deal with loss at this scale. But, as anyone can see in the comments here, people are very unlikely to be ever ready to deal with the psychological stress this imposes on them. Instead we'll see subtle but steadily increasing madness consume the population. HN is a great place to observe this.
  - 5y ago
revscat 5y ago
Growth. Every government on Earth is based around growth. To question growth is taboo, in the religious sense of the word. In most modern societies, in fact, it is more acceptable to question religion than it is to question growth. Growth is the goal of every central bank, every parliament, every authoritarian, every economic or political entity with any legitimacy. And this religious belief in growth is looking like it is going to kill us.
- catchclose8919 5y ago
  > To question growth is taboo It's not taboo, it's just basic antropo-ecological mechanics: if you don't focus on growth the other who will and will do more of it will outcompete you out of every niche. So selective pressure will increase the number of growth focused civilizations comparative to others. We actually need more growth and we need to think outside of nature's and Earth's box... We have the technology to practice closed-circle-agriculture and that only needs power (more nuclear + more renewables) + raw materials (more extraction, more oil but less of it burnt as a fuel), let's just forget about maintaining the "natural balance" and put serious research work into techniques for manipulating and tweaking so called chaotic systems... There absolutely no reason why Earth can't support even a 10 trillion humans population if we just quit on "nature" (keep it just in small reservations), and go full nuclear (imagine 1+ billion reactors!) and fully embrace semi-synthetic food (sure, first iterations on sythetic proteins were carcinogenic as hell, but we know how to solve such problems now, or how to avoid them with bugs and closed-circuit-shrimps and lab-grown-meats etc.). Yeah, a couple tens of millions might die of extra cancers and other pollution induced illnesses, but we can compensate by accelerating population growth (baby factories/camps can work if campaigns to motivate people to reproduce more don't work - though I'd guess we're good enough at the technology of brainwashing and economic incentivization by now to make masses of people do anything if we put our best efforts into....). We just need a solid serious global responsibility frameworks instead of our anemic "globalism", so that if anyone just dumps X tons of eg. mercury in the ocean, they don't receive just sanctions but also swift targeted assassinations of all guilty parties +/- a sprinkle of tactical nukes for good measure and punishment against "pissing in the pool"...
  - 5y ago
myshpa 5y ago
Maybe we could finally stop subsidizing cows / dairy industry. Cows use 3/4 of our agriculture land, same amount of land as all current forests. Beef / dairy is also a leading defforestation driver. And for cheese/milk there is a lot of plant-based alternatives. If we could afforest this land again, we would not only stop Anthropocene extinction, but we would also remove a good amount of CO2 from the atmosphere (maybe several decades worth). Then, why stop there and not afforest steppe countries (Mongolia, Kazahstan, Sahel ...) and pay their indigenous populations not to devastate it with their herds of camels/horses/sheep ? We could easily cover large swaths of land with new forests. We could even reforest our deserts, it seems very easily and cheaply (few percents of world's gdp). Why look at Mars, when we could start some serious geoingeneering here at Earth, with few seeds and some inovative methods (like Miyawaki, syntropic agriculture ...). Indians in Amazon did this. They converted pretty arid land into rainforest (terra preta). Some speculate, that extinction of Indians in this region and follow-up grow of Amazonian rainforest after Spaniards came and killed them with viruses caused little ice age in 16th century. Why not repeat it (plant new rainforests and new forests) and solve few problems with in one go. You know, we don't have only CO2 problem. Our children, or children of our children, will know tigers, giraffes and rhinos only from picture books, right after dinosaurs and mammoths (which we also ate to extinction, btw). We don't need bilionaires to do this. No technological solution will appear in a reasonable timeframe. We need public to take their heads out of their a$$3$ and demand political changes. Of course, this problem is very complex and needs to be attacked from multiple dimensions. But some solutions are easier than others, and people are ignorant (this post won't even reach front page), our leaders are only interested in their pockets and status quo (and so they lie and then do nothing). I'm hopeless and depressed. (english is not my first language, sorry)
- SnowProblem 5y ago
  Yep. Eating animals, when you add up their methane + respiration, the feed for the animals, the deforestation, and transportation, is arguably our biggest cause of climate change [1], and it's avoidable. The longest living people in the world are plant-based. So agree, it would be great if we stopped the animal subsidies and simply let the market react. As a side effect, perhaps our healthcare costs would go down. Just today I read the average american spends $1200/year on medications, largely for problems like high blood pressure and cholesterol that for many people go away when they eat more plants. [1] I know that animal agriculture being 51% of greenhouse gases number has been questioned a lot, but from what I can tell it's closer to the truth than those who want to say it's 18% or less. Ether way, it's large. New stanford study agrees that "reducing or eliminating animal agriculture should be at the top of the list of potential climate solutions" https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/01/new-model-explores-link-animal-agriculture-climate-change/ https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/01/new-model-explores-link....

123 points by stichers 5y ago

wdr1 5y ago

IMHO, those who spent the last several decades opposing nuclear power have as much blood on their hands as those who denied climate change was happening at all. History will not be kind to either.

rootusrootus 5y ago

It seems fairly obvious that we do not have the collective will to make the kind of changes necessary to meaningfully change the trajectory of climate change. Might as well spend our efforts planning on how we will live with it, as it happens. I doubt we will have any more success in the future finding the will to try geoengineering, either. We will just find millions of little ways to mitigate the pain.

pjmlp 5y ago
In Germany, one reason why there are so many delays is that the local governments allow everyone to block building renewals sources, so you have smaller European countries that already bypassed Germany in renewals adoption, while courts keep busy discussing where Windmills are allowed to be placed.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- js8 5y ago
  Reading this from Czechia had made me chuckle. Germany is so far ahead in renewables compared to us!
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Following in the footsteps of America, I guess. We have made it extremely easy to block infrastructure improvements, even by individuals. There seems to be some idea that if we allow everyone to have a say, we can make everyone happy. Of course that doesn't work, and I'm surprised the idea gets so much traction. So we spend hundreds of millions of dollars drawing up grand plans that try to appease every possible interest group, and then give up when it is apparent that unanimous consensus will not be achieved.
tony_cannistra 5y ago
As with most modern societal changes, I don't think this one is going to come down to "collective will." The massive scale of the problem limits meaningful actions to those that have a similarly massive scale of response. Only those in power can enact those. Elect people who care. There are a lot of them.
- have_faith 5y ago
  What if people choose to elect those that don't?
  - tony_cannistra 5y ago
    You're living in that world right now.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    Or if those that claim to care do not actually, or if the current design of democracy is such that it isn't up to the task of getting the right people elected, &/or passing the right legislation. Betting so many chips on this one institution seems like not a great idea, especially since it is the one that has been driving the bus that got us to this location.
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      > if the current design of democracy is such that it isn't up to the task of getting the right people elected, &/or passing the right legislation Before we can design a better democracy, we will need a better metric on what 'right' means.
      - mistermann 5y ago
        I don't see how that would necessarily be a constraint on proceeding with a design, although I would very much support that sort of functionality (and many others) being part of a sophisticated democracy platform that is more suited for the much more complex world we live in today. For example, a political candidate could have a profile, and voters would be able to get a faster and better idea for what type of a person they really are, as opposed to the meme-war-based approach we currently have. How one would go about designing a workflow for what information does and does not get included would be a complicated but fun exercise, and perhaps the public could learn a few things about abstract thinking if the followed along as the project moved forward. What domains are there other than politics where hardly anything materially important is upgraded over time as new capabilities and technology become available, and new problems arise? That hardly anyone seems to question (or is able/willing to even consider) whether the design of our democracy is remotely optimal suggests to me that the public has been subjected to some effective "marketing".
wanda 5y ago
I mean, I wouldn't say that we as a species lack the collective willpower to bring about broad social change. I think that it's very difficult to get that power on the ground with any traction when you have mixed messages coming from both sides of something that is always framed as a debate. For decades, climate change was studied, warned about, and yet the way it was referred to and is still referred to by some like so: "more news regarding the debate on climate change" rather than "more news regarding climate change" — as long as it's a debate, it's undecided, you don't know if you should do something or care because the scientific community has yet to reach consensus, and government inaction is seen as a reflection of this apparent lack of consensus rather than simply governments' unwillingness to go against the grain of business and the comfortable status quo. Even though the rhetoric surrounding climate change does seem to consider it a fact as of the last few years, you still have "experts" on both sides of the fence saying that it is and isn't real, which further enables people to put it out of their mind as something that's for other people to worry about because they're not in on it. And for those who do accept that climate change is a reality, I wouldn't mind betting that a non-trivial subset of those people largely think it's too late to do anything urgent or drastic and are therefore content to endure some bizarre weather while society slowly transitions to eco-friendly models in the next fifty years. It probably couldn't have gone much better, and if big bad business was truly all powerful, I doubt we would have seen any changes in society, but business has also driven the R&D of more efficient solar technology and the rapid expansion of wind power installations. I think the crowd that consider wind farms to be a blight on the landscape have mostly gone quiet after realising that J. M. W. Turner probably wouldn't have wanted to paint electricity pylons, freeways or Airbuses either, yet they're here to stay. I'm surprised geothermal didn't take off, though I probably shouldn't be surprised given that I know practically nothing about geothermal power extraction and thus have an overly simplistic model of a magma steam engine system in my head that probably isn't at all viable or efficient.
Nagyman 5y ago
Climate change is a scale, from bad to really really bad, and positive change is already happening. Here's some uplifting news in a well articulated video worth watching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxgMdjyw8uw Apathy is their weapon, and it's very effective.
- mistermann 5y ago
  They = whom, and how is this weapon wielded?
  - Nagyman 5y ago
    Sorry, it's in the video, but the oil/coal producers & related polluters who use the apathy to further limit change that affects their profits.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - mistermann 5y ago
      So the apathy is pre-existent, and they leverage this weakness - yes?
- Nav_Panel 5y ago
  > Apathy is their weapon, and it's very effective. Psychologically speaking, these tactics are approximately the same as the church's use of hell, in the sense of "fix your shit now, or else you're going to hell". This was very effective when the church held a huge amount of political sway + serious control over the media (no internet back then, people weren't even literate). It wont work nearly as well now. Don't get me wrong--I'm no Homo Economicus fan, not saying people are fundamentally selfish--I just think people are fundamentally averse to change, to breaking their habits. The climate change leadership needs a new tactic. I'm totally in support of e.g. tax cuts and incentives for renewables, reducing carbon emissions, etc. Or other ways of raising awareness and taking action that give people what they want/need, right now, rather than being entirely concerned with an image of the future (that for many people with no families, no kids, no legacy, doesn't even exist).
trinovantes 5y ago
See how many Canadians complained about carbon taxes on their recent fuel costs made me realize it's basically an impossible task -- especially considering we literally experienced the consequences of our actions in record breaking heatwaves, forest fires, and flood in the last 2 years
hotpotamus 5y ago
The thing about geoengineering (at least solar radiation management) is that it's within the budget of some of the world's richest individuals in theory at least. It definitely seems like the least worst half-assed fix from my (rather limited) knowledge of the subject.
- native_samples 5y ago
  Before getting too keen on geo-engineering, take a few minutes to ponder the following paragraph from an article in Newsweek: "Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality." http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf http://www.denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf If this paragraph makes no sense to you, it's because - with the exception of the proposed geo-engineering project - it sounds like something that could have been written last week. It was actually written in 1975 when climate change meant the coming ice age. Here's Spock to tell you more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQSBn50o_8M It's a good thing they didn't try to melt the arctic, right? But notice how there's absolutely no communication of any nuance, uncertainty or the possibility that the scientists were wrong. Only laments about how the "planners" were too sluggish to react to the scientist's warnings. Absolutely nothing changed except the directional temperature change of the proposed projects.

microjim 5y ago

Let's do our best :D :D

paganel 5y ago

They had the same kind of messages reguariding famines and over-population back in the 1970s, we’ve been mostly fine, with the last (non-war induced) famine happening in 1990s Ethiopia (if I’m not mistaken). But of course that these type of institutions have learned that focusing on the good things in life doesn’t attract any funds, so here we are.

graeme 5y ago
You can increase food productuon in a variety of ways, and food production responds to market incentives. But the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and oceans is a math problem and doesn’t respond to market incentives: it is pure externality. You could be right but it’s worth thinking about the shape of problems. Crucially, we’re already seeing the effects of global warming, including positive feedback loops.
an9n 5y ago
Isn't it the case that the global temperatures are stubbornly refusing to match the (increasingly bonkers) rhetoric? Perhaps that's the reason for warmists digging their heels in even further, censoring dissent etc.
- anonymousab 5y ago
  > Isn't it the case that the global temperatures are stubbornly refusing to match the (increasingly bonkers) rhetoric Correct, they are in fact worse than most calculations, in terms of absolute values and acceleration. It turns out that we are not being pessimistic and scared enough.
  - EricE 5y ago
    And yet the Obama's just built a mutli-million dollar mansion in Martha's Vineyard - at sea level. Obama is a climate denier?
    - namdnay 5y ago
      this one? https://vineyardgazette.com/sites/default/files/article-assets/main-photos/2019/obama-marthasvineyard-house.jpg https://vineyardgazette.com/sites/default/files/article-asse... if sea levels rise by two feet he'll lose a bit of land around the edges, but it's hardly "at sea level"

an9n 5y ago

And here it is: 'wealthy nations will need to contribute financial aid to low-income countries, to address inequities in vulnerability to climate change and to accelerate the clean-energy transition in a way that benefits all' In other words, TPTB employing as a facade the big global institutions under their control to sprinkle some fake respectability on their plan to enforce drastically reduced living standards on the middle classes, as part of their simulacrum of global communism that will enable the ultra-rich to maintain their hegemony in perpetuity, whilst reducing all others to cattle in their technocratic global slave system. Quelle suprise

scohesc 5y ago
It's so easy to see it when you take a few steps back and look at the constant fear the media's been pushing for almost 30-40 years now - every once in a while there's an article about how "_this_ time it's an emergency!" I swear science is turning more and more corrupted into a substitute for religion for people. We don't have religious faith anymore to guide us and give us comfort, so we're relying on the "experts" that the "higher powers" tell us to listen to. Can't believe in the man in the sky, but we'll believe what the people the media told us were experts have to say!
- EricE 5y ago
  "Trust the men in white coats" "Which men?" "TOP men! Trust us!"
- PoignardAzur 5y ago
  You sound like someone saying "Ever since I've jumped off that 40-stories building, so-called experts have been telling me I would die. Well I've fallen 30 stories so far and I'm perfectly fine, these experts are morons". As for the whole science-as-the-new-religion thing, well, that's just a cheap shot. You're just seeing a lot of people disagreeing with you and going "oh, these people are obviously all brainwashed by the new dominant cult and that's why they're so stupid".
  - scohesc 5y ago

exfascist 5y ago

commandlinefan 5y ago

Let me guess... all of those steps involve higher taxes.

chaorace 5y ago
Well... yeah! The magical word is "carbon tax" and economists have been screaming it into the skies for at least the last decade. Nobody wants to hear it, though.
- kansface 5y ago
  Have they really? It seems so impossibly unworkable given we don’t make most things here.
  - ericd 5y ago
    Yes: https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/ It’d likely cause a lot of inflation on manufactured goods, but it’d make manufacturing here a lot more competitive, and greatly increase the leverage of blue collar workers in developed countries, which should reduce income inequality within the country - it would make the rich poorer, but the poor potentially also richer in real terms. It’s the only way I see of realistically tackling climate change.
  - daveed 5y ago
    Construction, energy, food production, and citizen transportation, are huge sources of emissions that absolutely occur on local soil.

c7DJTLrn 5y ago

Moving people away from disaster zones and making infrastructure more resilient would be far more realistic, not to mention cheaper, than reducing emissions or pulling CO2 from the atmosphere. It's too late to stop using fossil fuels. It's a forbidden fruit that has pulled hundreds of millions out of poverty and the third world countries want first world lifestyles. We are better off trying to mitigate.

true_religion 5y ago
I think we are already doing that, albeit in typical human style of waiting for a local disaster before moving people completely out of the danger zone. The danger zones are huge, and understandably people,ant to keep using them until the last possible moment. Like all projections show Manhattan may one day be under water, but we will only slowly abandon it as it floods rather than evacuating dry land in advance.
- EricE 5y ago
  Manhattan has been under threat of flooding for centuries yet we have figured out ways to prevent it. Same for Holland, Venice, etc. Hell as I pointed out above the Obama's just built a luxury mansion right on the beach in Marthas Vineyard. I guess they are utterly ignorant of the climate change threats, eh? Much of the climate change hysteria is only viable if you assume that human ingenuity and innovation will utterly cease for some reason. Not a very smart bet. Instead it's far more likely much of the climate change hysteria is merely a way to exert control that governments wouldn't otherwise have. For example, this article didn't even mention China or India once. If you are going to screech about carbon and not even mention the two biggest producers of atmospheric carbon then it's not a serious discussion - at all.
  - redisman 5y ago
    Manhattan and Amsterdam can afford to mitigate due to being filthy rich. They’re hardly the median coastal global city
  - triceratops 5y ago

basisword 5y ago

We get at least a couple of these reports in the news every month. I can’t help but believe it’s to create fear. The general public by and large cannot solve this crisis - it’s down to politicians to regulate and innovators to create and push new solutions and alternatives.

maxehmookau 5y ago
> I can’t help but believe it’s to create fear. I think cause and effect is mixed up here. I think the damage humans are causing to our planet is scary. Fear is just the emotion we feel when something scary is happening.
Steltek 5y ago
Politicians are not going to go out of their way to hurt industry unless the public are rabidly screaming for it. These reports are for the public to generate that push.
tony_cannistra 5y ago
It sounds like you're saying creating fear is a bad thing. Is it? Sure, people don't need or want to live their lives in fear. But, can you think of a time you changed your behaviour on account of something you were afraid of? I bet you can. I bet politicians really can.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  it's mind-blowing that people like you accept the idea that it's perfectly normal and fine for unelected members of international pseudo-government bodies to spread fear porn propaganda specifically in order to get citizens to enact change in their lives, And That's A Good Thing™. how the fuck did we get to the point where top-down emotional terrorism of the working class is lauded as some kind of grand achievement for furthering human civilization? insane
  - tony_cannistra 5y ago
    I hear your attempt at divisiveness here ("people like you"), but I suspect we're not so different. Nobody in this conversation is enacting "top-down emotional terrorism" –– not me, nor the IPCC –– nor is anyone claiming that's a good idea. In fact, that would be a very bad idea. (If there's one way to get folks to do literally nothing it's to paralyse them in fear.) If you read the report, you'll see concrete recommendations that are to be enacted at the governmental level, rooted in the reality of a changing environment. The consequences of failure are intentionally stark -- we made them ourselves. You're falling for the individualism trap. Climate change isn't your problem, nor is it my problem. It's everyone's problem. Everyone's problems are solved by high-functioning institutions. Motivating action to avoid consequences at society-scale is a great way to get institutional gears moving.

Isamu 5y ago

So which countries are meeting their carbon emission goals? Is there a scorecard or summary of approaches that are producing results?

greenail 5y ago
https://www.statista.com/chart/26102/emission-reduction-goal-and-projected-achievements-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/chart/26102/emission-reduction-goal...

maxehmookau 5y ago

It does feel, unfortunately, that in the question of "Now or never?", that as a species we've decided on "never". Or at least "Not until something acute and surprising happens to a western country."

mistrial9 5y ago
superstorm Sandy.. Western wildfire.. Pacific kelp forest die-off? this is a political situation, as some people are deeply affected while others see nothing important or local economic change only
tremon 5y ago
Luckily, Russia has been a great help accelerating the move away from fossil fuels in Europe.

monkaiju 5y ago

Cant be solved under capitalism, climate health just doesn't play a role in maximizing profits.

changoplatanero 5y ago
can't be solved without capitalism either, there is no other way except capitalism to generate the excess wealth required to address this major crisis
- Mizza 5y ago
  "My God is the correct one."
  - EricE 5y ago
    lol - pot shots are easy. What are you going to replace capitalism with? Don't just snipe. Snipe and then provide a solution to that which you just sniped.
    - Mizza 5y ago
      Vulcan anarchism. My point was only that it's a form of religious faith to think that our current form of international corporatism is the only way to generate wealth in the future. I don't even think it's doing a particularly good job of that now.
      - EricE 5y ago
        Who said anything about it being the only way? It is still the best demonstrated way to provide the most opportunity the most amount of people that has ever existed throughout humanity and you still don't have a viable alternative other than a sarcastic reply.
        Mizza 5y ago
        > there is no other way except capitalism >> Who said anything about it being the only way? I'm not being sarcastic, by the way, and I don't agree with your premise.

magneticnorth 5y ago

Climate disaster coverage makes me think about how, as much as I love to think that our species will be 8B+ strong for millenia and eventually make it to the stars, that would mean that I am born among the first few percent of humanity. It seems more likely that my random sample is from somewhere in the middle, and if an ~equal number of humans will be born after me as before, then at our population growth/levels, we don't have much time left until extinction or a population collapse from which we never recover. I don't know that there's anything helpful in this thought, though - can I increase my odds of being born in the earliest percentile of the species by my actions?

Ekaros 5y ago
Humans are extremely resilient species which has already adapted to all but one or two areas in world, namely poles. Humans won't go extinct, that is just not going to happen anymore.... Now civilizations as we see them today might, but I think they entirely deserve it.
- DennisP 5y ago
  You're probably right but if we start with a large reduction in livable habitat and food production, mix in a few pandemics driven by poor health and overcrowding, and consider that a situation that stressed makes nuclear war not so unlikely, then I'm not completely confident. Particularly if we get to the more severe outcomes around five or six degrees C.
- riffic 5y ago
  > Humans won't go extinct I see this statement frequently made on discussion forums like this, and I'd like to tell you this is a tremendously arrogant belief to hold.
- time_to_smile 5y ago
  This is a laughable claim. Human's have existed only for a very short while and during one of the most stable periods of climate in this history of the planet. I understand denial is necessary to cope, but when you really understand the scale of the changes coming it's hard to image anything other than extinction happening. All of the magic humans have done is not because of our innate abilities but because or our access to abundant energy. First in the form of solar energy harvesting through agriculture, later through fossil fuels. Unfortunately we pushed the system too far.

burner0001932 5y ago

CaspianReport has a good video on why it's hard to make the transition to renewables. Renewables are already being built at an exponential rate, but we're starting from a low starting point. Since we can't get off of coal and oil and go straight to renewables, we're moving to LNG as the transition fuel. LNG, though, is very expensive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUTCPYwHguA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUTCPYwHguA

pydry 5y ago
We're still at a stage right now though, where solar panels and wind turbines are the cheapest form of energy by a wide, wide margin and every MWh of electricity they generate is almost guaranteed to be MWh natural gas that doesn't get burned. When natural gas regularly goes below 5-8% of grid production then we should probably shift focus to intermittency and storage but for now trying to solve the intermittency problem at the expense of generating less energy overall simply means more natural gas will get burned overall.

andrewclunn 5y ago

Waiting until there are consequences (in general) instead of merely the prediction of consequences (reactive instead of proactive) has two effects: 1) Delaying costs and potentially setting off consequences that cannot be avoided. 2) Not being taken in by those who use scare tactics to control you based upon consequences that might not happen. Is this a matter of deferred gratification and societal-level self control, or of epistemology and institutional trust?

trentnix 5y ago

“Extreme steps”, whether they admit it or not, is a reduction in the standard of living of many and handicapping the efforts to improve the standard of living for most. That requires the power of the individual to be reduced to empower central authorities who will manage our new rationed, austere society. That is, certainly, a recipe for catastrophic war. If climate change is the existential crisis some insist it is, our only solution is technological. But those who wish to use climate change as a Trojan horse to enact their social whims will reject any discussion of the sort. Because solving climate change isn’t their goal, it’s the means to attain their goal.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
cr__ 5y ago
Do you have any proof?
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  Maybe this? https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU
AlexandrB 5y ago
> That is, certainly, a recipe for catastrophic war. Climate change itself is probably a recipe for catastrophic war and the resurgence of fascism. There are estimates as high as 1.2 billion for people that will be displaced by climate change[1]. Even a much smaller number of refugees from the middle east and South America has helped push politics in many western countries towards isolationism and increased xenophobia. What would 1.2 billion refugees do? [1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-world-s-forgotten-victims/ https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/06/climate-refugees-the-...
- throwaway599281 5y ago
  >What would 1.2 billion refugees do? Stay in their countries and improve them just like Westerners do?

baremetal 5y ago

just reduce everyone's standard of living. that is where this is heading.

SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
Do you think there are other options? Doing nothing in the face of a climate catastrophe will ... what, keep up or improve everyone's standard of living?
- baremetal 5y ago
  im not even making a value judgement. just pointing out that is the trajectory we are on. me personally? i saw all of this coming, bought farmland. started a market garden and cows+chickens on rotational grazing. no oil required to produce food. a lower standard of living for everyone is fine with me.
Ourgon 5y ago
Everyone's standard of living? I don't think so. People like John Kerry - that so-called 'Climate Czar' [1] who keeps on dashing around the world in his private jet to tell the world they should be ashamed about their holiday travel plans - won't reduce their standard of living. People like Jeff Bezos won't, not will Gates, nor will just about anyone who wears a nice tailored suit while banging the climate drum. They won't because they need to fly to those important meetings at nice resorts where they discuss how other people need to reduce their 'climate footprint'. They are important people. This whole disaster scenario is nothing new, it is not the first nor will it be the last. Whether it is a boiled earth scare, a frozen earth scare, a nuclear winter scare, a poisoned planet scare, a dried-out planet scare, a too-many-mouths-to-feed scare, a peak-oil scare or - to go bit further back in time - a heathen scare, a Catholic/Protestant/unbeliever scare or (even further back in time) a barbarians-at-the-gate scare, imminent disasters have always been a good way to try to get the populace to bend to some rulers will. Me, I'll gladly ignore this just like I ignored all the other scares. I'll concentrate on independence just like I've been doing since more or less forever. That we happen to lower our ecological footprint doing this is just a nice side benefit but it is not driving. What is driving is that want to cut as many strings - which all too often end up acting like stings, not strings - between those rulers and our family as possible. This means energy independence (nearly there, waiting for remaining materials to be able to go off-grid when needed), food (getting there but with a whole forest full of moose, deer and boar we'll manage if needs be) and water (we have a reliable well which can give water without the need for an electric pump) independence, etc. I only use older hardware for computing which I can repair when needed - this is how I acquire it in the first place, dumpster-diving to save the planet. We have enough bicycles and spare parts to move an orphanage, a few old tractors including a two-wheel diesel-powered Irus which is older than I am, a bunch of horses plus the land and (horse-drawn) equipment to feed them and us, etc. The harder they pull those strings, the more of them I intend to cut. [1] how long will it take for some do-gooder to suggest an alternative for that Russian word, Czar?

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

I have been worried about climate change my entire life. I doom scroll news stories that show the coming disaster. Recently, I stumbled onto this video [1] and have trouble refuting the data and claims. Any experts that can explain what am I missing and why is this guy wrong? [1] https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU https://youtu.be/8455KEDitpU

junon 5y ago
Because it fails to look at the big picture, and in pursuit of claiming scientists blindly cherry pick data, ends up... well, cherry picking data. Being calm, deadpan, deep voiced or British seems to be equated to "smart" or "correct". Even the comments on that video are falling for it. XKCD once again has a diagram for exactly this problem. Even focusing on just the last 100 years ignores the bigger picture. https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  I guess the primary issue with the video is the focus on US data (which is less alarming) rather than global data. Also for the forest fire data, after the large burn of the early 1900s, there would be a reduction forest debris to act as fuel so you would anticipate smaller fires for at least a few hundred years. Thanks for the XKCD reminder. I have used this in the past as a nice way to illustrate the cause for alarm.
jeffbee 5y ago
Pretty easy. A lot of the things asserted as facts in this video are actually just lies. So it doesn't add up. One of the most indefatigable climate anti-contrarians is Andrew Dessler, climate scientist of Texas A&M University. You could read his book, or just his Twitter. https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Modern-Climate-Change-Dessler-dp-1108793878/dp/1108793878 https://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Modern-Climate-Change-De...
- Ourgon 5y ago
  OK, so if it is that easy, show us where Heller is wrong instead of mentioning someone else who wrote a book. Heller's videos offer many individual facts which could - or could not, depending on who is right - be refuted by pointing at the correct [1] data. One of Heller's main claims which he keeps on coming back to is that it was a lot warmer in the '30s than it is now. This seems to be corroborated by the list of temperature extremes for the USA [2]. This point alone gives credence to Heller's accusation of climate alarmists making use of tailored views on climate data by only showing historical data which shows an upwards trend, hiding the fact that those data show a local maximum. Given that Heller has been at this for a long time I would expect someone to have taken his statements to task by showing where he is wrong. I have yet to come across a refutation like that but I've seen plenty of supposed refutations in the style of the one above using vague assertions of 'lies' and 'it does not add up'. Show us, where is Heller lying and what does not add up? If you can point at someone who actually refutes Heller's claims that would suffice as well but make sure to point at the actual correct [1] data-backed refutation, don't just say someone wrote a book. Until such a time I will believe my own observations based on historical data which do not seem to indicate a climate 'emergency' but which do show climate change, no matter which part of history is studied. [1] where 'correct' stands for 'actual', not 'corrected to fit a narrative' [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_temperature_extremes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_tempe...

tra3 5y ago

I've listened to a podcast recently [0] that describes climate change as a definite problem, but not the civilization killer it is described as. Frankly, I don't know enough about this to evaluate the problem critically. Some of the points that were made, that I thought were interesting: - climate kills very few people currently. - way more people die in "cold waves" than "heat waves". - we spend way more money on heating now, rather than cooling. This will have to change obviously. - hotter climate will encourage food production. - a economic analysis (need to find the reference) was done projecting climate change impact and apparently, it's minuscule. On the order of 5% by 2100. Global wealth is projected to increase by over 300% during this time. - so called "developing nations" have no money to move to alternative energy sources. Some things that were not addressed, that I'm specifically curious about, living in a coastal area, is sea level rise. I must admit that part of the reason I found this podcast so compelling is that the interview implies that while it's a real problem that has to be addressed, it's not, like I said a civilization killer. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQSvR1jw3ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQSvR1jw3ME

Thrymr 5y ago
OK, we've got hundreds of scientists from 65 countries who spent years compiling a rigorous 2900 page report on one side, and on the other, a podcast. If you are genuinely seeking the data and arguments on the issues, please at least read the executive and technical summaries of the report, here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/ https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg3/
- tra3 5y ago
  I don't think there's any argument about data; but certainly the interpretation. Thanks for the link, I'll try to make my way through the "policy maker" one. The reason I made the post was to get some critical feedback on the podcast. I'm curious, how much of the report have you read yourself?
  - Thrymr 5y ago
    > I'm curious, how much of the report have you read yourself? I have not read this one yet, but I make a point of trying to read the summaries of IPCC reports before getting into arguments about it. They are impressive documents, even though written by giant committee.

blenderdt 5y ago

It's all about the money. There is only one solution to speed things up: governments must raise huge taxes on energy use and pollution.

jeffbee 5y ago
Hopefully you meant a tax on carbon emissions, not a tax on energy use. One of the few tools we have out of this mess is a tremendous expenditure of energy to remove carbon from the atmosphere and ocean.
- blenderdt 5y ago
  I meant energy use. We are just using too much energy.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    again, energy use in of itself is not a problem. if you're running off solar or nuclear, have a blast. the problem is Co2 in the atmosphere

schrute 5y ago

Nice article and all but what are the recommended pragmatic steps for individuals, besides casting votes for political candidates who care?

mrfusion 5y ago

Did you know the UN also warned in 2005 that man-made global warming would so decimate coastal areas as well as the Caribbean and Pacific islands that there would be upwards of 50 million “climate refugees by 2010.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturaldisasters.climatechange1 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturald...

namdnay 5y ago
how many are there today? if you read the article you'll see that back in 2005 they were already counting around 10M climate refugees per year
jeffbee 5y ago
UNHCR says there were 42.4 million people displaced due to climate-linked disasters in 2010, so this prediction was not far off. What you should be asking yourself is why you had this contrarian tidbit at your fingertips, but you're not aware of the primary facts.

incomingpain 5y ago

How many GW of coal plants are being built brand new in Asia right now? It's very high. These will operate for decades. What are we to do? Tell them to stop? Tried that unsuccessfully. I would ignore us if I were them. USA and Europe still emits tons of CO2. Has been emitting worse then them for many many decades. This carbon emitting elevated much of the wealth of the country. We are basically telling them to not become wealthy like us. They wonder why we haven't done much to reduce emissions. We were too late, it's happening now. What do we need to do. Ignore carbon taxes that do nothing. Instead, build renewables, build batteries, build solar panels. The remaining amount of fossil fuels is a hard limit. Staying on them is idiotic to say the least. It's not just transportation and centralized energy production. Plastics, lubricants, wax, sulphur, ashphalt are other products of oil. What are the non-petroleum options? We also need non-carbon emitting things like concrete. Why do we just go to it? No regulations, no taxes, maybe even funding for any corporations who work on doing these things? Wait nobody is doing this? The government is restricting and slowing this effort? Actions speak louder than words, why are the world's nations saying they'll do something while their actions say they have no intention to do anything? Is there an unspoken denial of climate change by the world?

triceratops 5y ago
> Ignore carbon taxes that do nothing Where have carbon taxes been enacted and in those places, have they failed to reduce consumption? > What are we to do? Tell them to stop? Tried that unsuccessfully Reduce our own consumption, institute carbon taxes. Tell them if they don't do the same, their imports are embargoed. Actually follow through and accept the rise in cost of goods.
- incomingpain 5y ago
  >Where have carbon taxes been enacted and in those places, have they failed to reduce consumption? Yes. Oil/Gas usage is inelastic to price. The only appreciable factor toward reducing oil has been the proliferation of hybrids and EVs and its nowhere near enough. Before the carbon tax we had practically a 100% combined road taxes on gasoline to begin with. Tacking on only a tad bit more isn't producing any new reduction. >Reduce our own consumption, institute carbon taxes. How? Carbon taxes didn't work. >Tell them if they don't do the same, their imports are embargoed. Actually follow through and accept the rise in cost of goods. So pay more taxes for what? We are going to pay more to punish them? That doesnt sound like punishing them at all. Sounds like punishing me.

catchclose8919 5y ago

...how about focusing instead on how to live through this climate "disaster"?! Let's be honest about it, most developed countries are making geo-strategic decisions in the context of +7 C in <= 100 years... we're just not being f honest about it! (Avoiding it is off the table, just as well as "zero covid" was off the table since month three of the f pandemic and we should've just accepted that it's gonna become endemic and most measures are waste of resources.) Let's accept that "massive" climate change will happen, and that our goal is how to slow things down and how to avoid it being an actual disaster for HUMANITY! (It will be a disaster for many other species that we'll go extinct as we'll probably massively increase use of herbicides and fertilizers and GMOs in order to satisfy humanity's material needs against a backdrop of populations displacements and fertile lands distribution shifts. But it doesn't have to be a disaster for humanity... ugly as it may be, it's a live-and-let-die universe and irreversible biodiversity loss will happen, but humans are quite capable of not only maintaining but also accelerating, as it's our duty to, technological and scientific progress, as long as we don't stupidly turn against each-other! We have and entire universe to infect and conquer ffs, let's just not kill each other in the next century!)

time_to_smile 5y ago
> live through this climate "disaster" Because this is not a disaster that stops at any point in the foreseeable future. There is no other side to get "through" to. This isn't like an Earth quake or even a nuclear war where a single event happens, the world is changed but then stasis begins to return. Next year the impacts of climate change will be notably worse than they were the previous year. This will be true for the rest of your life. Positive feed backs and the geological history of the planet both indicate that after a (currently unknown) limit, things will start escalating rapidly and irreversibly until the surface of the planet is no longer recognizable. The focus should be on how to psychologically begin to deal with loss at this scale. But, as anyone can see in the comments here, people are very unlikely to be ever ready to deal with the psychological stress this imposes on them. Instead we'll see subtle but steadily increasing madness consume the population. HN is a great place to observe this.
- 5y ago

revscat 5y ago

Growth. Every government on Earth is based around growth. To question growth is taboo, in the religious sense of the word. In most modern societies, in fact, it is more acceptable to question religion than it is to question growth. Growth is the goal of every central bank, every parliament, every authoritarian, every economic or political entity with any legitimacy. And this religious belief in growth is looking like it is going to kill us.

catchclose8919 5y ago
> To question growth is taboo It's not taboo, it's just basic antropo-ecological mechanics: if you don't focus on growth the other who will and will do more of it will outcompete you out of every niche. So selective pressure will increase the number of growth focused civilizations comparative to others. We actually need more growth and we need to think outside of nature's and Earth's box... We have the technology to practice closed-circle-agriculture and that only needs power (more nuclear + more renewables) + raw materials (more extraction, more oil but less of it burnt as a fuel), let's just forget about maintaining the "natural balance" and put serious research work into techniques for manipulating and tweaking so called chaotic systems... There absolutely no reason why Earth can't support even a 10 trillion humans population if we just quit on "nature" (keep it just in small reservations), and go full nuclear (imagine 1+ billion reactors!) and fully embrace semi-synthetic food (sure, first iterations on sythetic proteins were carcinogenic as hell, but we know how to solve such problems now, or how to avoid them with bugs and closed-circuit-shrimps and lab-grown-meats etc.). Yeah, a couple tens of millions might die of extra cancers and other pollution induced illnesses, but we can compensate by accelerating population growth (baby factories/camps can work if campaigns to motivate people to reproduce more don't work - though I'd guess we're good enough at the technology of brainwashing and economic incentivization by now to make masses of people do anything if we put our best efforts into....). We just need a solid serious global responsibility frameworks instead of our anemic "globalism", so that if anyone just dumps X tons of eg. mercury in the ocean, they don't receive just sanctions but also swift targeted assassinations of all guilty parties +/- a sprinkle of tactical nukes for good measure and punishment against "pissing in the pool"...
- 5y ago

myshpa 5y ago

Maybe we could finally stop subsidizing cows / dairy industry. Cows use 3/4 of our agriculture land, same amount of land as all current forests. Beef / dairy is also a leading defforestation driver. And for cheese/milk there is a lot of plant-based alternatives. If we could afforest this land again, we would not only stop Anthropocene extinction, but we would also remove a good amount of CO2 from the atmosphere (maybe several decades worth). Then, why stop there and not afforest steppe countries (Mongolia, Kazahstan, Sahel ...) and pay their indigenous populations not to devastate it with their herds of camels/horses/sheep ? We could easily cover large swaths of land with new forests. We could even reforest our deserts, it seems very easily and cheaply (few percents of world's gdp). Why look at Mars, when we could start some serious geoingeneering here at Earth, with few seeds and some inovative methods (like Miyawaki, syntropic agriculture ...). Indians in Amazon did this. They converted pretty arid land into rainforest (terra preta). Some speculate, that extinction of Indians in this region and follow-up grow of Amazonian rainforest after Spaniards came and killed them with viruses caused little ice age in 16th century. Why not repeat it (plant new rainforests and new forests) and solve few problems with in one go. You know, we don't have only CO2 problem. Our children, or children of our children, will know tigers, giraffes and rhinos only from picture books, right after dinosaurs and mammoths (which we also ate to extinction, btw). We don't need bilionaires to do this. No technological solution will appear in a reasonable timeframe. We need public to take their heads out of their a$$3$ and demand political changes. Of course, this problem is very complex and needs to be attacked from multiple dimensions. But some solutions are easier than others, and people are ignorant (this post won't even reach front page), our leaders are only interested in their pockets and status quo (and so they lie and then do nothing). I'm hopeless and depressed. (english is not my first language, sorry)

SnowProblem 5y ago
Yep. Eating animals, when you add up their methane + respiration, the feed for the animals, the deforestation, and transportation, is arguably our biggest cause of climate change [1], and it's avoidable. The longest living people in the world are plant-based. So agree, it would be great if we stopped the animal subsidies and simply let the market react. As a side effect, perhaps our healthcare costs would go down. Just today I read the average american spends $1200/year on medications, largely for problems like high blood pressure and cholesterol that for many people go away when they eat more plants. [1] I know that animal agriculture being 51% of greenhouse gases number has been questioned a lot, but from what I can tell it's closer to the truth than those who want to say it's 18% or less. Ether way, it's large. New stanford study agrees that "reducing or eliminating animal agriculture should be at the top of the list of potential climate solutions" https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/01/new-model-explores-link-animal-agriculture-climate-change/ https://news.stanford.edu/2022/02/01/new-model-explores-link....