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The problem with climate change is that it creates a reality distortion field. Anyone who would honestly try to think about it would give up on life, so instead

The problem with climate change is that it creates a reality distortion field. Anyone who would honestly try to think about it would give up on life, so instead we have this fake optimism accompanied by fake solutions, basically a fantasy not unlike Harry Potter. Those 2 billion new cars aren't going to help the environment, which is already on the fritz, but if they are electric that means we are on the right path to the unicorn to come and fix everything. Which is great because then we don't have to change our way of life. Meanwhile the world is less organized than ever.

boredemployee 4y ago
this pretty much. i think the way we're living is so broken, from education to everything else.
- XorNot 4y ago
  - boredemployee 4y ago
    Please, highlight who said we need to lower our quality of life? Maybe avoiding waste is a great place to start.
    - alar44 4y ago
      Anyone who is being realistic understands that we have to stop eat food out of season, keeping all buildings at 68 degrees during the summer, getting rid of multi hour commutes in cars, taking vacations in cruise ships, buying new phones every year, shipping everything in multiple layers of plastic over 1000s of miles etc etc. We are so fucking far past "reduce reuse recycle." No one is changing anything about their lives and that should be more than obvious to anyone paying attention.
      - RealityVoid 4y ago
        You won't get there through individual action, only through systemic change at the top levels.
        tunesmith 4y ago
        That's a binary way of thinking. Sorites paradox. Individuals taking individual action, collectively together over time, can influence systemic change at top levels, more effectively than just waiting for the top levels to change their mind on their own.
        RealityVoid 4y ago
        I agree, but then the best bang for buck is pushing to change policy, not making sure you close the light bulb when you leave the room.
        tunesmith 4y ago
        Again, why not both?
        alar44 4y ago
        And the top levels are put in place by either money or people who don't want to hear they need to change.
        maeil 4y ago
        Thousands of years of history disagrees with this kind of reductionism.
      - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
        > getting rid of multi hour commutes in cars Thats an improvement in quality if lude, held back by efficient free market
      - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
        Your comment really is important. Most of these diacussions seem to assume that as long as we transition from ICE to EVs and Coal to Solar then everything will be fine. We need to learn to cope with less. My wife and I were discussing this the other day actually. I was born in 86 so I'm not terribly old, but even I remember growing up as a kid in Idaho that one didn't just go to the grocery store to buy salmon--it wasn't really available. If you wanted salmon, you had to plan for it. Nowadays I can find salmon at every grocery store at any inpulse. Is it nice? Yes. Necessary? No.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
If we had stayed on the path we were on, it was a path to over 5 degrees of warming. If we keep our commitments, like the ones various nations have made to ban gas cars by 2035, we'll limit our warming to about 2.5 degrees. The difference between 2.5 degrees and 5 degrees is the difference between a really bad time and an apocalypse.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  But no one is going to keep those commitments, few if any countries are even close, and many are not even on any real path. Not to mention, we're taking about 2.5 degrees of warning by 2100. But the world didn't end there. If we don't go to 0 emissions (and there is currently no realistic path to that that any country even remotely accepts - massive degrowth of the economy), we will eventually reach 5 or more degrees of warming, it will just be a little later than 2100.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    These are concrete commitments, which countries do have a fairly good track record of keeping. The 2.5 does not require the nebulous "40% below 2010 emissions" type of commitments which countries have a really bad track record of keeping. A country saying "We will do X" is much more likely to do X than a country that says "We will achieve Y" will achieve Y.
  - pcthrowaway 4y ago
    > Not to mention, we're taking about 2.5 degrees of warning by 2100. But the world didn't end there To be fair, it might at the rate we're going
  - ikt 4y ago
    > But no one is going to keep those commitments, few if any countries are even close, and many are not even on any real path Where are you seeing this? In the last few years alone there has been hundreds of billions if not trillions put into renewable energy.
    - 4y ago
SubiculumCode 4y ago
To be fair, toddlers do the same with their incessant overconfidence, and yet in the end it is that overconfidence that helps them gain skills and achieve great things. Sometime blind optimism is optimal.
- nrb 4y ago
  Toddlers have parents to save them when their incessant overconfidence gets them into danger.
- Comevius 4y ago
  This is funny because blind optimism and having a fatalistic attitude are the same behavior. In essence I'm overconfident about a dismal future. You have to be generally unhappy with the way things are going to feel this way, and many people are not, because they got theirs, in their own lives, and have no reason to care. And this is the trap we find ourselves in. People have no reason to achieve great things outside of getting theirs.
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    Given the 2 options, I want the people working on the green technology to have blind optimism.
  - tunesmith 4y ago
    Between blind optimism and a fatalistic attitude, which is more biased toward action?
  - leobg 4y ago
    I’d say that’s exactly what makes Elon so unusual.
hotpotamus 4y ago
I mean, don't we already know the cheap, half-assed solution? (And therefore the one we'll take?) Eventually someone will start solar radiation management, and we'll plod along like we always do.
- lumost 4y ago
  Geo engineering solutions have been proposed for a while. They were particularly popular in the public imagination back when there was fear of a new ice age. They are less popular now given the belief that there is something we can do to change our CO2 emissions. I suspect the next major climate conference will include discussion on this topic given the present effects of global warming and our inability to control carbon emissions in any region for the last 30 years.
  - analyte123 4y ago
    The US and most of Western Europe use less energy per capita than they did 20 years ago.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Syonyk 4y ago
  > Eventually someone will start solar radiation management, and we'll plod along like we always do. I'm fairly certain that doesn't do a thing for ocean acidification...
  - hotpotamus 4y ago
    I didn't say it was a whole-assed solution.
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Not any sort of solution. CO2 polluters would just pump out enough more that they would make no difference. But stopping them after that would be disastrous.
imtringued 4y ago
Densification requires land value taxes.
matrix_overload 4y ago
If you look at human history, desperation always triggered innovation. 120+ years ago people predicted that the streets would soon drown in horse manure. It wasn't averted by introducing horse taxes and auctioning limited-issue passes to leave your estate. It was fixed by transition to cars, that quickly sparked a whole new industry, radically improving the designs one after another. Similar will happen with climate change. Once we get desperate enough (as in actual crop failures and actual fear of hunger), suddenly, figuring out mitigation and reversing techniques will become more profitable than minting shitcoins, and the humanity will very quickly figure something out. Currently, the real desperation isn't there yet. There is a lot of fearmongering driven by hunger for power (restricting what others can do is power) or corporate profits (electric cars are a huge business niche that is only competitive due to the climate angle). It is doing its part, but it's akin to driving at half the speed to conserve fuel, while simultaneously having a huge leaky hole in the gas tank. Better than nothing, but won't fully solve the problem. The best we can do currently is try to not completely forget the real scientific method (experiment -> theorize -> refine -> reproduce -> question -> improve) and the real project management (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely goals with prioritization by cost/reward/risk). We will need those thigs when the shit really hits the fan and they are currently being very rapidly eroded in favor of pledging loyalty to the unquestionable leader and throwing poop at the competing tribe.
- pas 4y ago
  innovation is not a faucet, you can't just pour a big one when you feel like it. of course you know this, but you identify "desperation" as the fuel for it. which is definitely a big part of our human struggle, but that doesn't mean we can't do better by looking at exactly those previous transformational periods. (and we can see that it did not affect everyone the same, hence waiting for crop failures in areas that emit the vast majority of CO2 means condemning tens/hundreds of millions of people to having a super doubleplus ungood time. oh and that's when wars start, when desperation makes it look like a better alternative.) it was not innovation that decreased smog and lead pollution. yet at the same time there's this paradox of history drawing straight lines on graphs: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-straight-lines-on-graphs-or-do-straight-lines-on-graphs-drive-reality/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-str... switching to cars generated a lot of economic surplus directly. just as back in the days the new railway lines. the problem with CO2 that it's an externality. exactly that horse to car switch introduced this hidden trade off, and we need to make it seen, and then markets can/will pick the innovative solutions that optimize for less CO2.
origin_path 4y ago
"The problem with climate change is that it creates a reality distortion field" Very much so! "Anyone who would honestly try to think about it would give up on life" Not at all. There are lots of people who studied this stuff carefully, thought honestly about it, and came to realize that the claims of doom and armageddon are woefully over-exaggerated. They realize that the people claiming the world is going to end because of climate change have been making those very same predictions for 70 years+ now and were always wrong, because their 'science' is flawed and agenda-driven. Of course you aren't allowed to listen to such people, let alone be one, lest the sandwich-board wearers have a meltdown about it, so the mass hysteria gets worse every year, and the predictions get ever more extreme and less connected to reality. "Meanwhile the world is less organized than ever." Excellent! That is how it should be. The sort of people who want to "organize" the world have a terrible track record of causing hundreds of millions of deaths when their organized plans go awry and they can't admit it. The world needs much less organization a.k.a. central planning, and way more people being honest about climate science.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  > There are lots of people who studied this stuff carefully, thought honestly about it, and came to realize that the claims of doom and armageddon are woefully over-exaggerated Name two (that aren't Bjorn Lomborg).
  - origin_path 4y ago
    Only two? Isn't that kind of unambitious, given that "lots of people" doesn't even restrict it to specific classes of people? Oh well, have five names and I'll restrict it for you to published scientists who specialize in climate/atmospheric science. Nic Lewis, Roy Spencer, Judith Curry, William Happer, Richard Lindzen There are many more of course. Dr Spencer's page is a good introduction to some of the issues (but by no means the only ones) that cause scientists to disclaim armageddon predictions: https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/ https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/
    - 4y ago
parkingrift 4y ago
We already have a solution for the warming and the technology to implement it. Launch sulfur into the stratosphere. Queue all the green democrats telling me all the silly reasons we can’t do it. Infinitely chasing a perfect outcome. It’s the only plausible solution to buy us the time we need to advance renewable technology and move from fossil fuels without drastically altering quality of life. And we’ll do it just as soon as green democrats give up on the absurd dream of some renewable utopia just around the corner. I predict no later than 2060.
- yonaguska 4y ago
  So you want to simulate a volcanic induced winter? How many people will that starve?
  - koheripbal 4y ago
    It will starve zero people, because it's not at all the same as volcano ash.
  - parkingrift 4y ago
    None, because it doesn’t block sunlight.
tim333 4y ago
That's a bit over downbeat for a number of reasons but here's a big one - solar has gone from about the most expensive source of electricity to the cheapest in 10 years https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/02/Price-of-electricity-new-renewables-vs-new-fossil-no-geo.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/02/Price-of-electric... and I doubt that trend will let up for a while.

boredemployee 4y ago

this pretty much. i think the way we're living is so broken, from education to everything else.

XorNot 4y ago
- boredemployee 4y ago
  Please, highlight who said we need to lower our quality of life? Maybe avoiding waste is a great place to start.
  - alar44 4y ago
    Anyone who is being realistic understands that we have to stop eat food out of season, keeping all buildings at 68 degrees during the summer, getting rid of multi hour commutes in cars, taking vacations in cruise ships, buying new phones every year, shipping everything in multiple layers of plastic over 1000s of miles etc etc. We are so fucking far past "reduce reuse recycle." No one is changing anything about their lives and that should be more than obvious to anyone paying attention.
    - RealityVoid 4y ago
      You won't get there through individual action, only through systemic change at the top levels.
      - tunesmith 4y ago
        That's a binary way of thinking. Sorites paradox. Individuals taking individual action, collectively together over time, can influence systemic change at top levels, more effectively than just waiting for the top levels to change their mind on their own.
        RealityVoid 4y ago
        I agree, but then the best bang for buck is pushing to change policy, not making sure you close the light bulb when you leave the room.
        tunesmith 4y ago
        Again, why not both?
      - alar44 4y ago
        And the top levels are put in place by either money or people who don't want to hear they need to change.
      - maeil 4y ago
        Thousands of years of history disagrees with this kind of reductionism.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      > getting rid of multi hour commutes in cars Thats an improvement in quality if lude, held back by efficient free market
    - hunter-gatherer 4y ago
      Your comment really is important. Most of these diacussions seem to assume that as long as we transition from ICE to EVs and Coal to Solar then everything will be fine. We need to learn to cope with less. My wife and I were discussing this the other day actually. I was born in 86 so I'm not terribly old, but even I remember growing up as a kid in Idaho that one didn't just go to the grocery store to buy salmon--it wasn't really available. If you wanted salmon, you had to plan for it. Nowadays I can find salmon at every grocery store at any inpulse. Is it nice? Yes. Necessary? No.

bryanlarsen 4y ago

If we had stayed on the path we were on, it was a path to over 5 degrees of warming. If we keep our commitments, like the ones various nations have made to ban gas cars by 2035, we'll limit our warming to about 2.5 degrees. The difference between 2.5 degrees and 5 degrees is the difference between a really bad time and an apocalypse.

tsimionescu 4y ago
But no one is going to keep those commitments, few if any countries are even close, and many are not even on any real path. Not to mention, we're taking about 2.5 degrees of warning by 2100. But the world didn't end there. If we don't go to 0 emissions (and there is currently no realistic path to that that any country even remotely accepts - massive degrowth of the economy), we will eventually reach 5 or more degrees of warming, it will just be a little later than 2100.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  These are concrete commitments, which countries do have a fairly good track record of keeping. The 2.5 does not require the nebulous "40% below 2010 emissions" type of commitments which countries have a really bad track record of keeping. A country saying "We will do X" is much more likely to do X than a country that says "We will achieve Y" will achieve Y.
- pcthrowaway 4y ago
  > Not to mention, we're taking about 2.5 degrees of warning by 2100. But the world didn't end there To be fair, it might at the rate we're going
- ikt 4y ago
  > But no one is going to keep those commitments, few if any countries are even close, and many are not even on any real path Where are you seeing this? In the last few years alone there has been hundreds of billions if not trillions put into renewable energy.
  - 4y ago

SubiculumCode 4y ago

To be fair, toddlers do the same with their incessant overconfidence, and yet in the end it is that overconfidence that helps them gain skills and achieve great things. Sometime blind optimism is optimal.

nrb 4y ago
Toddlers have parents to save them when their incessant overconfidence gets them into danger.
Comevius 4y ago
This is funny because blind optimism and having a fatalistic attitude are the same behavior. In essence I'm overconfident about a dismal future. You have to be generally unhappy with the way things are going to feel this way, and many people are not, because they got theirs, in their own lives, and have no reason to care. And this is the trap we find ourselves in. People have no reason to achieve great things outside of getting theirs.
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  Given the 2 options, I want the people working on the green technology to have blind optimism.
- tunesmith 4y ago
  Between blind optimism and a fatalistic attitude, which is more biased toward action?
- leobg 4y ago
  I’d say that’s exactly what makes Elon so unusual.

hotpotamus 4y ago

I mean, don't we already know the cheap, half-assed solution? (And therefore the one we'll take?) Eventually someone will start solar radiation management, and we'll plod along like we always do.

lumost 4y ago
Geo engineering solutions have been proposed for a while. They were particularly popular in the public imagination back when there was fear of a new ice age. They are less popular now given the belief that there is something we can do to change our CO2 emissions. I suspect the next major climate conference will include discussion on this topic given the present effects of global warming and our inability to control carbon emissions in any region for the last 30 years.
- analyte123 4y ago
  The US and most of Western Europe use less energy per capita than they did 20 years ago.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Syonyk 4y ago
> Eventually someone will start solar radiation management, and we'll plod along like we always do. I'm fairly certain that doesn't do a thing for ocean acidification...
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I didn't say it was a whole-assed solution.
ncmncm 4y ago
Not any sort of solution. CO2 polluters would just pump out enough more that they would make no difference. But stopping them after that would be disastrous.

imtringued 4y ago

Densification requires land value taxes.

matrix_overload 4y ago

If you look at human history, desperation always triggered innovation. 120+ years ago people predicted that the streets would soon drown in horse manure. It wasn't averted by introducing horse taxes and auctioning limited-issue passes to leave your estate. It was fixed by transition to cars, that quickly sparked a whole new industry, radically improving the designs one after another. Similar will happen with climate change. Once we get desperate enough (as in actual crop failures and actual fear of hunger), suddenly, figuring out mitigation and reversing techniques will become more profitable than minting shitcoins, and the humanity will very quickly figure something out. Currently, the real desperation isn't there yet. There is a lot of fearmongering driven by hunger for power (restricting what others can do is power) or corporate profits (electric cars are a huge business niche that is only competitive due to the climate angle). It is doing its part, but it's akin to driving at half the speed to conserve fuel, while simultaneously having a huge leaky hole in the gas tank. Better than nothing, but won't fully solve the problem. The best we can do currently is try to not completely forget the real scientific method (experiment -> theorize -> refine -> reproduce -> question -> improve) and the real project management (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, timely goals with prioritization by cost/reward/risk). We will need those thigs when the shit really hits the fan and they are currently being very rapidly eroded in favor of pledging loyalty to the unquestionable leader and throwing poop at the competing tribe.

pas 4y ago
innovation is not a faucet, you can't just pour a big one when you feel like it. of course you know this, but you identify "desperation" as the fuel for it. which is definitely a big part of our human struggle, but that doesn't mean we can't do better by looking at exactly those previous transformational periods. (and we can see that it did not affect everyone the same, hence waiting for crop failures in areas that emit the vast majority of CO2 means condemning tens/hundreds of millions of people to having a super doubleplus ungood time. oh and that's when wars start, when desperation makes it look like a better alternative.) it was not innovation that decreased smog and lead pollution. yet at the same time there's this paradox of history drawing straight lines on graphs: https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-straight-lines-on-graphs-or-do-straight-lines-on-graphs-drive-reality/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/03/13/does-reality-drive-str... switching to cars generated a lot of economic surplus directly. just as back in the days the new railway lines. the problem with CO2 that it's an externality. exactly that horse to car switch introduced this hidden trade off, and we need to make it seen, and then markets can/will pick the innovative solutions that optimize for less CO2.

origin_path 4y ago

"The problem with climate change is that it creates a reality distortion field" Very much so! "Anyone who would honestly try to think about it would give up on life" Not at all. There are lots of people who studied this stuff carefully, thought honestly about it, and came to realize that the claims of doom and armageddon are woefully over-exaggerated. They realize that the people claiming the world is going to end because of climate change have been making those very same predictions for 70 years+ now and were always wrong, because their 'science' is flawed and agenda-driven. Of course you aren't allowed to listen to such people, let alone be one, lest the sandwich-board wearers have a meltdown about it, so the mass hysteria gets worse every year, and the predictions get ever more extreme and less connected to reality. "Meanwhile the world is less organized than ever." Excellent! That is how it should be. The sort of people who want to "organize" the world have a terrible track record of causing hundreds of millions of deaths when their organized plans go awry and they can't admit it. The world needs much less organization a.k.a. central planning, and way more people being honest about climate science.

wizofaus 4y ago
> There are lots of people who studied this stuff carefully, thought honestly about it, and came to realize that the claims of doom and armageddon are woefully over-exaggerated Name two (that aren't Bjorn Lomborg).
- origin_path 4y ago
  Only two? Isn't that kind of unambitious, given that "lots of people" doesn't even restrict it to specific classes of people? Oh well, have five names and I'll restrict it for you to published scientists who specialize in climate/atmospheric science. Nic Lewis, Roy Spencer, Judith Curry, William Happer, Richard Lindzen There are many more of course. Dr Spencer's page is a good introduction to some of the issues (but by no means the only ones) that cause scientists to disclaim armageddon predictions: https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/ https://www.drroyspencer.com/global-warming-101/
  - 4y ago

parkingrift 4y ago

We already have a solution for the warming and the technology to implement it. Launch sulfur into the stratosphere. Queue all the green democrats telling me all the silly reasons we can’t do it. Infinitely chasing a perfect outcome. It’s the only plausible solution to buy us the time we need to advance renewable technology and move from fossil fuels without drastically altering quality of life. And we’ll do it just as soon as green democrats give up on the absurd dream of some renewable utopia just around the corner. I predict no later than 2060.

yonaguska 4y ago
So you want to simulate a volcanic induced winter? How many people will that starve?
- koheripbal 4y ago
  It will starve zero people, because it's not at all the same as volcano ash.
- parkingrift 4y ago
  None, because it doesn’t block sunlight.

tim333 4y ago

That's a bit over downbeat for a number of reasons but here's a big one - solar has gone from about the most expensive source of electricity to the cheapest in 10 years https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/02/Price-of-electricity-new-renewables-vs-new-fossil-no-geo.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2021/02/Price-of-electric... and I doubt that trend will let up for a while.