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It is not virtue signalling to identify the cause of a problem. If a man comes into my room and starts stabbing me, I have every right to say "this man is stabb

It is not virtue signalling to identify the cause of a problem. If a man comes into my room and starts stabbing me, I have every right to say "this man is stabbing me". Corporations, capitalist production and other institutions (e.g. global militaries) are a core factor in climate change. My evidence for this is that in the vast span of human history before these things existed, neither did climate change!

the_third_wave 4y ago
> My evidence for this is that in the vast span of human history before these things existed, neither did climate change! We are currently in the Holocene. Do you know what that means? Have a look at this temperature graph and you might get an inkling of the changing climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:Holocene_... Realise that this graph only shows the interglacial period (Holocene), not what things looked like during the Pleistocene (the last glacial period) or the Younger Dryas. For a more expansive overview have a look at this graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Evolution_of_temperature_in_the_Post-Glacial_period_according_to_Greenland_ice_cores_%28Younger_Dryas%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Evolutio...
- sigmoid10 4y ago
  Temperature variations in ancient times are very unreliable, because they can only be inferred indirectly. The big giveaway for anthropogenic climate change is co2 concentration, since we can directly measure its value hundreds of thousands of years in the past thanks to air bubbles enclosed deep in glaciers: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-re... It clearly shows that the atmosphere never looked anything like this since humans climbed down from trees. Bonus fact: All mass extinctions happened when the co2 levels rose over a certain value (we're already at 419ppm, that 393ppm value in the article is from a few years ago): https://johnenglander.net/co2-levels-and-mass-extinction-events/ https://johnenglander.net/co2-levels-and-mass-extinction-eve... If they rise over 600ppm for example, the oceans will acidify and their ecosystems will collapse. Since most of our oxygen comes from oceanic plankton, we'll literally suffocate when that happens - and at the current trend it could happen before the century is over. The largest extinction event ever, the Permian-Triassic event (where 80% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates died), is currently thought to have been caused by massive emissions of runaway greenhouse gases in the thawing Siberian tundra - similar to what we are seeing right now.
  - foverzar 4y ago
    > Temperature variations in ancient times are very unreliable, because they can only be inferred indirectly > The big giveaway for anthropogenic climate change is co2 concentration, since we can directly measure its value hundreds of thousands of years in the past thanks to air bubbles enclosed deep in glaciers I can't believe that these two are consecutive sentences. Are you manipulating the meaning of "direct measurement" on purpose? You can't really get a direct measurement of something from the past without a time machine. Glaciers are, by definition, an indirect measurement, that relies on a specific model to calculate the measurement value. There is a lot of criticism of this model from chemists, but since it is no longer a scientific discussion, but a political one, these people typically get repressed.
    - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
      Do you have links to papers on this?
- VBprogrammer 4y ago
  > We are currently in the Holocene. Do you know what that means? I don't think it means anything. It is the entire period from the last ice-age until present encompassing the entirety of recorded history? What do you think it means?
  - the_third_wave 4y ago
    Instead of explaining I'll just add a link to one of those Wikipedia pages which still seems to be free from ideological bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene The key thing to look for is this: The Holocene has been identified with the current warm period, known as MIS 1. It is considered by some to be an interglacial period within the Pleistocene Epoch, called the Flandrian interglacial. It is not 'the entire period from the last ice-age until present' because we're still in an ice age. The Holocene is the current interglacial period, before it came the Younger Dryas, what comes after it is of course as of yet unknown but given the way previous interglacials came and went it is likely to be followed by a long period of glaciation. The main takeaway is that the climate has been changing ever since the planet developed and will keep on doing so until there is no more atmosphere, i.e. when the sun blows up to encompass the orbit of Venus and strips the Earth's atmosphere off. That'll take a while so it is not necessary to start planning for this scenario. It was changing when Homo Sapiens developed some 300.000 years ago, it was changing when our species moved out of Africa - who knows, this might even have played a role in that migration. Homo Sapiens was there when a large part of the northern hemisphere was covered in land ice, 'we' were there when that ice retreated. We survived then, we will survive now.
hackerlight 4y ago
> Corporations, capitalist production and other institutions (e.g. global militaries) are a core factor in climate change. And selfish individuals that don't want to pay a carbon tax or have "unsightly" wind turbines. The core problem is selfishness manifest politically, both by corporations and individual voters, who are happy to screw everyone else over if it means their own lives are a little better in the short-term.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  > And selfish individuals that don't want to pay a carbon tax There's research on this that suggests a majority of people want a carbon tax, and the ones that don't have primarily been convinced that it wouldn't work, not that it would cost them more. And can you guess who has been telling them those lies? Similarly, democracies are full of people who want to fix the problem, but they've been bombarded with propaganda to confuse matters, but still progress has been made.
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    I believe the root of the problem lies at the level of the individual. Specifically, the misalignment of incentives between the individual and other people due to tragedy of the commons. A lot of individuals don't care about climate change only because they happen to live in a cold country, and it won't impact them much. They don't care about people living in hotter countries. I have spoken to such people on HN. A lot of individuals may say they are happy to pay a carbon tax, but I remember reading some research that when push comes to shove, in practice they don't actually want to pay it, it's only a survey phenomenon. Instead they want other taxpayers to fund the transition, whether it's people on higher incomes or corporate taxes. Again, selfishness. If I am the one causing the problem, I either don't want to solve it, or I want someone else to pay to solve it. Corporations that pollute want to continue to pollute because they are staffed with such individuals that are responding to those exact same incentives. The corporation is just a collection of selfish individuals with misaligned incentives. Propaganda and misinformation created by corporations do play a role, but they're not the whole story. The most useful level of analysis (in terms of explaining why we are where we are) is incentives operating on individuals.
foverzar 4y ago
> My evidence for this is that in the vast span of human history before these things existed, neither did climate change! Well that is just factually wrong. If you didn't notice, we are not living in the ice age right now.
- badtension 4y ago
  "Climate change" is generally understood as rapid changes, like the ones we are experiencing since 1800s (estimated average delta of at least +1.5C in 250 years). Past "climate change" of +1C in 1000 years is natural.

the_third_wave 4y ago

> My evidence for this is that in the vast span of human history before these things existed, neither did climate change! We are currently in the Holocene. Do you know what that means? Have a look at this temperature graph and you might get an inkling of the changing climate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene#/media/File:Holocene_... Realise that this graph only shows the interglacial period (Holocene), not what things looked like during the Pleistocene (the last glacial period) or the Younger Dryas. For a more expansive overview have a look at this graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Evolution_of_temperature_in_the_Post-Glacial_period_according_to_Greenland_ice_cores_%28Younger_Dryas%29.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Evolutio...

sigmoid10 4y ago
Temperature variations in ancient times are very unreliable, because they can only be inferred indirectly. The big giveaway for anthropogenic climate change is co2 concentration, since we can directly measure its value hundreds of thousands of years in the past thanks to air bubbles enclosed deep in glaciers: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-relentless-rise-of-carbon-dioxide/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/24/graphic-the-re... It clearly shows that the atmosphere never looked anything like this since humans climbed down from trees. Bonus fact: All mass extinctions happened when the co2 levels rose over a certain value (we're already at 419ppm, that 393ppm value in the article is from a few years ago): https://johnenglander.net/co2-levels-and-mass-extinction-events/ https://johnenglander.net/co2-levels-and-mass-extinction-eve... If they rise over 600ppm for example, the oceans will acidify and their ecosystems will collapse. Since most of our oxygen comes from oceanic plankton, we'll literally suffocate when that happens - and at the current trend it could happen before the century is over. The largest extinction event ever, the Permian-Triassic event (where 80% of marine life and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates died), is currently thought to have been caused by massive emissions of runaway greenhouse gases in the thawing Siberian tundra - similar to what we are seeing right now.
- foverzar 4y ago
  > Temperature variations in ancient times are very unreliable, because they can only be inferred indirectly > The big giveaway for anthropogenic climate change is co2 concentration, since we can directly measure its value hundreds of thousands of years in the past thanks to air bubbles enclosed deep in glaciers I can't believe that these two are consecutive sentences. Are you manipulating the meaning of "direct measurement" on purpose? You can't really get a direct measurement of something from the past without a time machine. Glaciers are, by definition, an indirect measurement, that relies on a specific model to calculate the measurement value. There is a lot of criticism of this model from chemists, but since it is no longer a scientific discussion, but a political one, these people typically get repressed.
  - Kim_Bruning 4y ago
    Do you have links to papers on this?
VBprogrammer 4y ago
> We are currently in the Holocene. Do you know what that means? I don't think it means anything. It is the entire period from the last ice-age until present encompassing the entirety of recorded history? What do you think it means?
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  Instead of explaining I'll just add a link to one of those Wikipedia pages which still seems to be free from ideological bias: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene The key thing to look for is this: The Holocene has been identified with the current warm period, known as MIS 1. It is considered by some to be an interglacial period within the Pleistocene Epoch, called the Flandrian interglacial. It is not 'the entire period from the last ice-age until present' because we're still in an ice age. The Holocene is the current interglacial period, before it came the Younger Dryas, what comes after it is of course as of yet unknown but given the way previous interglacials came and went it is likely to be followed by a long period of glaciation. The main takeaway is that the climate has been changing ever since the planet developed and will keep on doing so until there is no more atmosphere, i.e. when the sun blows up to encompass the orbit of Venus and strips the Earth's atmosphere off. That'll take a while so it is not necessary to start planning for this scenario. It was changing when Homo Sapiens developed some 300.000 years ago, it was changing when our species moved out of Africa - who knows, this might even have played a role in that migration. Homo Sapiens was there when a large part of the northern hemisphere was covered in land ice, 'we' were there when that ice retreated. We survived then, we will survive now.

hackerlight 4y ago

> Corporations, capitalist production and other institutions (e.g. global militaries) are a core factor in climate change. And selfish individuals that don't want to pay a carbon tax or have "unsightly" wind turbines. The core problem is selfishness manifest politically, both by corporations and individual voters, who are happy to screw everyone else over if it means their own lives are a little better in the short-term.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> And selfish individuals that don't want to pay a carbon tax There's research on this that suggests a majority of people want a carbon tax, and the ones that don't have primarily been convinced that it wouldn't work, not that it would cost them more. And can you guess who has been telling them those lies? Similarly, democracies are full of people who want to fix the problem, but they've been bombarded with propaganda to confuse matters, but still progress has been made.
- hackerlight 4y ago
  I believe the root of the problem lies at the level of the individual. Specifically, the misalignment of incentives between the individual and other people due to tragedy of the commons. A lot of individuals don't care about climate change only because they happen to live in a cold country, and it won't impact them much. They don't care about people living in hotter countries. I have spoken to such people on HN. A lot of individuals may say they are happy to pay a carbon tax, but I remember reading some research that when push comes to shove, in practice they don't actually want to pay it, it's only a survey phenomenon. Instead they want other taxpayers to fund the transition, whether it's people on higher incomes or corporate taxes. Again, selfishness. If I am the one causing the problem, I either don't want to solve it, or I want someone else to pay to solve it. Corporations that pollute want to continue to pollute because they are staffed with such individuals that are responding to those exact same incentives. The corporation is just a collection of selfish individuals with misaligned incentives. Propaganda and misinformation created by corporations do play a role, but they're not the whole story. The most useful level of analysis (in terms of explaining why we are where we are) is incentives operating on individuals.

foverzar 4y ago

> My evidence for this is that in the vast span of human history before these things existed, neither did climate change! Well that is just factually wrong. If you didn't notice, we are not living in the ice age right now.

badtension 4y ago
"Climate change" is generally understood as rapid changes, like the ones we are experiencing since 1800s (estimated average delta of at least +1.5C in 250 years). Past "climate change" of +1C in 1000 years is natural.