13 ms·

In the U.S. (don’t know about other countries) the issue got tied to politics and religion. Some peoples’ identities and beliefs are zealously tied to denialism

• abirch 4y ago
  One absurdity of this is that Fox News is carbon neutral. https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-parent-company-of-fox-news-cares-a-lot-about-global-warming/ https://digital.hbs.edu/platform-rctom/submission/the-parent...
  • platz 4y ago
    Is it true that in 40 years at the current rate, we'll be at 600 PPM? What happens to humans at that level?
    • LBJsPNS 4y ago
      We're fucked.
      • jacquesm 4y ago
        Crudely put but no less true for that.
    • ben_w 4y ago
      600PPM outdoors implies mild cognitive impairment. I’m not expecting 40 years at the current rate. Given the way PV deployments have been growing and how long they last, I expect electricity to be mostly green in the first few years of the 2030s, and most other sectors soon after.
      • jacquesm 4y ago
        It's not the direct effect on us that causes problems, it is the runaway greenhouse effect that would wreck high efficiency agriculture. Think mid double digits drops in yield. If you are focusing on the direct effect on humans you are looking at the wrong thing, that is manageable, the other one probably is not.
        • swader999 4y ago
          Doesn't yield increase with more CO2? It certainly did in my greenhouse when I put my large rabbit inside.
          • zaarn 4y ago
            Yield yes, but not nutritional contents. Most vital nutrients require more than just CO2 to have more production in a plant (notably, Nitrogen is needed).
            • ben_w 4y ago
              Nitrogen is 70% of the atmosphere, I don’t see any way for it to run short until the death of the sun (or the use of von Neumann probes) boils off Earth’s atmosphere. If you’re going to worry about fertilisers, worry about phosphate and potassium… but even then, the problem and solution is unrelated to greenhouse gases.
              • zaarn 4y ago
                Nitrogen is 70% of the atmosphere but unlike CO2 it's concentration isn't going up in an appreciable way. So if a plant is constraint in nutrients by Nitrogen, it can't make more of those if CO2 goes up. If CO2 goes up it can only make things that require more Carbon and Oxygen, both of which only form very basic structures the plants can use to build. Not nutrients.
                • ben_w 4y ago
    • jacquesm 4y ago
      Massive wars, displacement on a scale never seen before, famine. In short: go watch some movie about the apocalypse, then multiply by 10 or so unless they include the earth becoming entire uninhabitable because that likely will not happen. But for the vast majority of our species, and many others besides it will be permanent curtains. And I'm not sure if you could call the survivors lucky. It's not that the CO2 level itself would be fatal to humans, it is the cascade from large scale agricultural collapse that would do us in.
      • arethuza 4y ago
        Also sustained wet bulb temperatures > 35C rendering some areas pretty much uninhabitable for anyone not in an AC building or vehicle. Would anyone want to live somewhere where if your AC or power dies then you die when you can try and migrate somewhere more hospitable? Edit: And I am acutely aware that I live somewhere that is likely to suffer the least directly consequences from climate change.
        • jacquesm 4y ago
          I was in Portugal a while ago in summer and it was hitting 45 Celsius, absolutely unbearable. We sprinted from the car to the nearest AC'd building. No way you can deal with that kind of temperature unassisted for any length of time.
    • thecatwentup 4y ago
      There are a lot of alarmist comments here - but the direct effect on humans is minimal up to 10,000ppm[1]. The effect on the environment on the otherhand isn't easy to predict. [1] https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/2020-08/Carbon-Dioxide.pdf https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/202...
      • shawabawa3 4y ago
        Those statistics are for acute exposure. There are noticeable effects to cognition even under 1000ppm
• baisq 4y ago
  It's not extremism not to want to change your habits. You could argue that it's wrong, etc. But trying to defend for example your right to have a car and move freely is not "extremism". And it's normal to feel personally attacked when they tell you to give up your car. It's literally a personal attack on your freedom.
  • suture 4y ago
    I suggest that your feeling of being attacked is more imagined than real. The questions are: 1. Is the climate being changed by human activity and rapidly so? 2. What should one do with this knowledge if the answer to 1 is yes? Perhaps you don’t want to do anything about it. That is fine for you to decide this. But one should not answer ‘no’ to question 1 because doing something about it feels personal to you. The answer to 1 should have nothing to do with 2.
    • jtdev 4y ago
  • nonrandomstring 4y ago
    > And it's normal to feel personally attacked when they tell you to give up your car. It's literally a personal attack on your freedom. It's a really interesting comment which I wish we could explore deeper. I get the same feelings but about different things. So I know you are sincere. But also, it's cultural and quite superficial. In psychology it's called "identification". An attack on a thing you identify with feels like an attack on you personally. So for example, for me, attacks on free software, or my "right" to program in a language I choose, or to run a server, feel like actual attacks on my fundamental "freedom" as you say. In reality though, if the world took those things away, within a couple of months or years I'd have forgotten and moved along with the flow. I know this from the experience of being half a century old :) Now, if I took away your car, I can promise you'd feel the same in no time at all. Why? I don't own a car, and haven't for about 30 years. I git rid of my car when I moved to London, because private cars are a liability there. One or twice it's been a minor inconvenience. But apart from that I feel as free as ever - I go where I like, when I like, with who I like.... just rarely by car. Even though I'm a fairly conservative person in some ways, I think we must recognise that many things we cling to as "essential freedoms" are actually just in our minds.
• voisin 4y ago
  A recent HN comment that I think applies: > This sounds like a typical US thing. Suffering from a solvable problem, while creating the maximum public drama and having the society incapable of reform
  • giantg2 4y ago
    If you read their comment, you'll see this doesn't apply for two reasons: 1) This is a global problem that is not specific to the US (even if the US is a huge contributor). No other country has solved the issue. 2) The comment is implying that this isn't a solvable problem (or at least a solution has never been proposed) since all the green tech/policy isn't having an impact.
    • xorcist 4y ago
      The reason China, Australia and India gets away with what they are doing without sanctions is because they are pointing at the US and saying "they get away without doing anything so why shouldn't we?". That creates a form of international stalemate because no one can form the necessary coalition required for the agreements to have any sort of economical and political teeth.
      • 411111111111111 4y ago
        I think that's just wishful thinking, honestly. There wouldn't be a significant change even if the US got it's act together. They'd just use different excuses
        • xorcist 4y ago
          Obviously, but having US onboard opens up possibilities to create incentives that credible international accords are built on. Or the other way around, without the US, China and Australia, even if the rest of the world does everything right, global carbon dioxide levels will not only keep increasing, but do so in an accelerating manner. And before you ask why not China could create credible incentives for the US, the answer is that they do not have the institutions for it, which the US has. At least in theory.
• jtdev 4y ago
• myshpa 4y ago
  > Some peoples’ identities and beliefs are zealously tied to denialism I think you're talking about cognitive dissonance [0]. Btw, biggest contributor to climate change is meat & dairy eating [1][2]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Reduction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Reduction [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10464793/Total-elimination-meat-production-save-planet-study-says.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-10464793/Tot... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Meat-eating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance#Meat-eati...
  • pc86 4y ago
    Your sources on meat & dairy being the largest contributors to climate change are a Daily Mail article quoting the CEO of a vegan food company, and a paragraph in wikipedia that doesn't mention climate change?
    • sieabahlpark 4y ago
    • myshpa 4y ago
      The CEO is one of the authors of the study, a professor emeritus in the department of biochemistry at Stanford University. Additional sources here: 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... https://climatehealers.org/the-science/animal-agriculture-position-paper/ https://climatehealers.org/the-science/animal-agriculture-po... https://www.hsi.org/issues/climate-change/ https://www.hsi.org/issues/climate-change/
  • ackfoobar 4y ago
    It seems disingenuous to compare carbon emission that comes from a carbon cycle, to that of fossil fuels.
• giantg2 4y ago
  That addresses one side of the comment. The other side of the comment is that the green tech/policies on the other side aren't making an impact. So what do we do when neither side wants to tank the economy by implementing strict, lifestyle-altering controls?
  • Server6 4y ago
    We do nothing and wait for the disaster that will force a tanked economy and life altering changes?
    • guerrilla 4y ago
      ... and presumably the collapse of this civilization?
      • FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
        I for one look forward to the brave spirit of adventure.
        • guerrilla 4y ago
          As a gravedigger?
          • FooBarBizBazz 4y ago
            I was a little more interested in composting.
            • guerrilla 4y ago
              That does make a lot of sense.
• anonymouse008 4y ago
  The identity goes even deeper than this. You're talking to a country of people that had it so bad wherever they were originally, that they decided to uproot everything they could carry and start a completely new life. Some are first generations of this today, while many are only two to three generations away from that source. Our indigenous people also carry this identity because the ones remaining know the ultimate face of evil and carry on under that load. These are very, very different psyches of people. The subtleties show up in all elements of the current prevailing culture, and what is truly happening right now is the war between those that remember how bad it was and can be, and those who experienced life with a completely new set of pains outside the horrors of the bottom of hierarchy of needs. To tie this back to the climate and culture of the US, having gone through two major hurricanes in the gulf region, I can tell you the mindset of everyone is 'so what.' You lose your house, all possessions, and have $500 in your bank account with 4 kids -- but you are not alone, every single person around you, rich or poor is going through some chaos. Every single person is reaching out to help you clear your road, cook food for you, keep the kids together -- (first hand account). So in these communities, a big scary 'climate change' event is already happening, and they are pulling through just fine. They live in unconscious safety because they have direct evidence that their community has their back - and life continues on happily until someone comes with a shaking finger to say, 'you really need to stop everything you're doing and fight climate change.'
  • arethuza 4y ago
    Who pays for the reconstruction costs after these events - isn't there a frequency of events when things simply becomes unsustainable and people migrate (like the Okies and the Dust Bowl)?
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • anonymouse008 4y ago
      Many insurance companies have gone under, and those left, have left the region. Natural consequences are taking their toll. So you will see many migrations from this region - but I don't believe any of it will make these people say, "I must stop what I am doing and fight climate change." They will just adapt and endure.
• refurb 4y ago
  As a non-American who lived in the US, I've noticed that Americans tend to do a lot of navel gazing about the state of America - without knowing much about how other countries deal with it. A lot of blame is on the media which tend to exaggerate and sensationalize news and the US outlets are experts at it. If you spend time outside the US, you'd realize the problems the US deal with are pretty similar to the problems other countries deal with. But Americans with little knowledge of the world outside the US catastrophize what's going on the in the US - "the Republic is falling!", "it's never been this bad!", "Americans are so ignorant!" and "nobody has ever had this problem, ever!".
  • suture 4y ago
    I’ve lived in Germany for a while and grew up in Central America (though in an American colony). From my perspective the U.S is in a state of imperial decline. The republic is indeed failing. In fact, I think it’s dead but most people just don’t realize this. I can list a number of reasons for this belief and I could be completely wrong. However, reasons for my beliefs are not due to a lack of knowledge of the world outside the U.S. Empires die eventually and change happens. The major power and structural problems in the U.S. are not sustainable and will eventually have to change. Whether that change comes peacefully or violently I can’t say.
    • refurb 4y ago
      I assume you get most of your news from mass media and their "BREAKING" headlines? If so, I'm not surprised you hold that view. Accusations of the US "in decline" were happening back in the 60's and 70's when things were much worse than they are now, like order of magnitude worse. As I said, navel gazing and lack of perspective tend to dominate news in coverage of the US.
      • suture 4y ago
        I don’t watch television news or any television news program or talk show. I don’t listen to radio news or radio talk shows either. I don’t read the news as such. I will read comments that people write on this site and some others but I am not a consumer of news as such. As I said, I can give reasons for my beliefs and those reasons are not due to ignorance.
• Aerroon 4y ago
  Climate policy is going to be a sledgehammer. If you let your opposition wield it, they will destroy your way of life, because the opposition won't care (or won't realize) about the adverse effects it will cause on you. A vegan making climate policy could pretty easily make eating meat illegal, then respond to any counterarguments with "Do you not care about the climate?!" It's a fight over the sledgehammer. They fight dirty because a lot is at stake. The above assumes that the proposed policy would actually work too. Some climate policies are clearly not going to have a significant positive effect, but we're doing them anyway (eg banning plastic bags in favor of paper bags@). Other policies could be designed just to keep yourself in power (deny the opposition power). @ this does have a different reason too - to fight plastic pollution, but climate change is also cited as a reason. Paper bags are heavier and require more resources though, which makes it difficult for them to end up as better than plastic bags when it comes to climate change.
  • suture 4y ago
    I wasn’t talking about policy. I was referring to the phenomenon of people denying what is obvious and beyond scientific dispute. You are referring to a different group of extremists. And by extremist I mean a person for whom the cause (dogma) is more important than the truth. Believing nothing should be done about climate change does not make one an extremist. Believing animals should not be eaten does not make one an extremist. Adhering to those beliefs by automatically discounting contravening evidence makes one an extremist.
    • native_samples 4y ago
      "I was referring to the phenomenon of people denying what is obvious and beyond scientific dispute." The problem is that this is the religious position, not the other one. If you go investigate this properly you'll find there's tons of scientific dispute about even very basic things like what the temperature actually was 5 years ago in specific places, let alone more complex topics like what the climate would do in response to an immediate doubling of CO2 levels (so called ECS). And the impact of global warming itself isn't at all obvious. All the effects so far are so small you can't directly detect them with your own senses, you have to use sensitive monitoring equipment and/or accept a lot of conjecture about chance and probability. In turn that requires you to have absolute confidence in the people doing the measurements and processing the data, but plenty of people don't have that confidence for various legitimate reasons (e.g. the Climategate emails). So it's pretty much by definition not obvious. "Believing nothing should be done about climate change does not make one an extremist" Doing nothing is the default position in any debate so arguing for it by definition makes one not an extremist. You can't be a "nothing extremist", that's a contradiction. Extremism takes the form of positing extreme scenarios like the end of the world, and demanding extreme solutions like massive changes to everyone's ways of life. The people who say "let's not do that" are the ones pushing back on extremism. This is at the root of a lot of the fighting over climate change: it creates enormous cognitive dissonance in people. Those who decide they want to fight it want to see themselves as rational devotees of science, but find themselves being the guy in the sandwich board yelling "The End Is Nigh" and demanding extreme policies. And just like sandwich board guy they struggle to explain the details of how the world is meant to end. Very few people who have tied their identity to climate extremism can actually handle a debate about the details which is why they instantly retreat into screaming that it's all "settled science" (which is a lie).
• dundarious 4y ago
  I’m assuming “politics” here is being used in its modern sense, as a synonym for senseless/childish rivalry, instead of “collective and competitive decision-making”. And the type of religious belief you’re discussing is centered around zealotry, presumably deriving from a priori beliefs. I think these are derivative factors. The primary factor is material, as it almost invariably is. There are massive organizations and affiliated organizations with a material stake in having things be this way, and they have almost zero interest in “societal net benefit” action, or concern for “societal net deficit” harm, so long as “private net benefit” is maintained. There is no shadowy cabal, but as with other aspects of the system, lack of explicit coordination is why it works so well (think of it as a perverse version of Milton Friedman’s “pencil”).