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As an aside, it’s striking to me that Hacker News has a significant audience of flat earthers. Don’t look up, right? Let’s be clear, human caused climate change
by edgefield 4y ago
As an aside, it’s striking to me that Hacker News has a significant audience of flat earthers. Don’t look up, right? Let’s be clear, human caused climate change is very real. Rigorous science confirms this and CO2 + methane levels are now driving very visible and catastrophic weather all over the world. The only thing left to debate is how quickly the planet will become hostile to human life and whether some scientific discovery (magic at the moment) can head off the worst outcomes.
Edit: The responses and downvoting in this thread just prove my point. Debating human caused climate change is no different than debating that the earth is round or that Trump won in 2020. Incredible.
- momento 4y agoWhat leads you to believe there is a “significant” number of people who view the earth as flat on HN?
- akomtu 4y agoIt's flat if you consider the hypothesis of extra small dimensions.
- goatlover 4y agoIt won't become hostile to human life, it will become more challenging for human civilization to deal with the warming. And we don't need magic, we can decarbonize and pursue several strategies for mitigation.
- Arainach 4y agoIt will absolutely become hostile to human life. https://theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-need-to-worry-about-the-wet-bulb-temperature https://theguardian.com/science/2022/jul/31/why-you-need-to-...
- edgyquant 4y agoPlease post peer reviewed papers and not sensationalist articles. You’ll quickly see how wrong you are
- uncle_ted_ 4y ago
- random314 4y agoThe crop failures and flooding will create famine, refugee crisis and wars that will kill more people than WW2, covid19 etc. But unlike the previous crises, it will mostly affect "other" people. But we will have several strategies for mitigation on paper.
- yongjik 4y agoGiven how many people reject any decarbonizing plan as political ploy, we might as well need magic to make it work. :/
- enchiridion 4y ago“Magic at the moment”, that’s a new one to me. What a way to box the entirety of human ingenuity into a pithy phrase. Such a fiendish application of the dialectic knife.
- rowanG077 4y agoI don't think it was meant as you interpret it. Rather a callback to the famous quote "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic".
- enchiridion 4y agoThat might be right. I took it in the spirit of climate change advocates who tend to argue for immediate radical change. Underlying those arguments is a belief that we will not be able to address problems as they arise in the future. I think we will. I believe in the power of human ingenuity to respond to constraints of the environment. That’s what I took it to mean; the ability to solve unsolved problems when the need arises.
- mek6800d2 4y agoKind of like stopping a volcano or an earthquake. What happens when the problem gets too far gone and the vaunted human ingenuity is utterly impotent in solving the problem? (I mean the point after which there is literally nothing humans could do to react to the problem.) To get an idea of the monumental complexities of global warming, I recommend reading The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History by David Beerling. He describes a multi-discipline investigation of global warming involving paleobotanists to atmospheric scientists, climate scientists, oceanographers, chemists, physicists, and the list goes on. I also recommend googling "planetary boundaries" and "tipping points". Climate change is only one of the boundaries whose transgression threatens us. And the boundaries interact with each other and we don't really know how these interactions might affect rates of change. So, radical changes now -- bad. Human ingenuity and radical changes in the future on the threshold of global catastrophe -- good.
- daliusd 4y agoDrawdown https://drawdown.org/ https://drawdown.org/ lists number of strategies what is and can be done to mitigate results of global warming. So it is not all white or black, but yes it is still quite serious .
- galangalalgol 4y agoHostile to human life seems a bit hyperbolic. Our technology and society will collapse and stop the co2 addition well before then. Its possible we will have hit run-away by then, but I don't think that is currently predicted? A malthusian collapse followed by a second shot with sustainable tech built on the back of unsustainable ones might well have a chance.
- RosanaAnaDana 4y agoDo large scale catastrophic floods, heat waves, snow storms, hurricanes, and wild fires not qualify as hostile to human life? What is the true scotsman weather and climate that is hostile to human life?
- edgyquant 4y agoIf they do then the Earth already qualifies as hostile to human life
- klyrs 4y agoThe problem is that the level of hostility is increasing. A caged tiger is hostile but with some sensible precautions, one can avoid harm. If the cage is opened, that hostility is an immediate concern.
- jpollock 4y agoHostile to human life means "humans cannot exist without technological assistance". It doesn't mean mass death, that's a measure of the Carrying Capacity. Hostility means carrying capacity is zero, or close to it.
- pvaldes 4y agoWho will maintain the nuclear plants so they don't go out of control if the society collapse?
- galangalalgol 4y ago
- random314 4y agoI noticed an influx of Republicans into HN about 2 years ago. Since then there have been a lot of emphasis on Republican talking points, including vaccine phobia, mask phobia, climate science denial and other anti science stances. The change felt quite sudden.
- datalopers 4y ago> The change felt quite sudden They've always been here but vocal and unashamed airing of those views is what rapidly changed across culture (not limited to HN) as a whole. Ignorance and conspiracy is now a badge of honor.
- vkou 4y agoIf they are at all representative of the party itself, their views were also different in the past. The views of an average republican from 2006, on many, many subjects don't look much like those of an average republican from 2020. It's the consequence of a big tentpole party embracing it's loony fringe. Many party members will change their views to whatever the party tells them, even if it tells them that black is white and down is up.
- random314 4y agoThe message is - don't look up
- seibelj 4y agoYou don’t have to be a republican (as if that’s a slur?) to disagree with the “science” of masking considering government officials said not to use masks, then to use masks, then we were all going to die if we didn’t wear masks, now no one is wearing masks… What is and is not “settled science” is up to extreme interpretation
- ocbyc 4y agoNot only that. But broadening the scope just a bit. These polypropylene masks might have a marginal benefit (the famous Guardian yt video shows its a small one) for small virus sized particles of breath. Yet are a big issue for plastics in our food supply and over all trash in the oceans. Marginal affect for thousands of years of microplastics. Can someone be concerned about the actual pollution (benzene, pthalates, and heavy metals) While also realizing that we share an atomosphere with China and India. (Game theory abounds) CO2 bad... buy electric car good- Is all people seem to want to think. Nuclear is a clear option for limiting CO2, but that's unspeakable. Now climate activists are on the same side as big oil. Neither of you want us to look at modern nuclear technology.
- shakezula 4y agoI’m consistently surprised by how effective the “scientism” push has been at muddying the waters, and places like HN show it most readily. I have more than several friends who are smart, highly educated individuals, working in tech or tech adjacent jobs, who are absolutely convinced that the scientific community is all blowing this “climate change” out of control and that it’s really a symptom of some deeper problem with academia. It’s incredibly effective too, because academia is certainly not perfect.
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- blueflow 4y ago> the planet will become hostile to human life Example of someone blowing it out of proportion, right in your parent post. The trust issues don't come from nowhere.
- edgefield 4y agoHave you seen the news about Pakistan? A third of the country has turned into an ocean. 1,000+ have died. Millions have lost their homes. This sounds pretty hostile to human life. Don’t you think?
- blueflow 4y agoWhat do you expect? That earth is some garden of Eden where nothing bad ever happens? Climate Change is going to make things worse, but it always has been a struggle, and always will be. Remember 2004, when a Earthquake and Tsunami killed a quarter of a million people? Spanish Flu? The Plague? I don't consider that hostile. Mars is hostile. Or Venus.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y agoSo is everything fine until Earth becomes Venus? A decent chunk of the Earth's landmass (where a TON of people currently live) is going to get pretty bad if temperatures rise 3C. At 35C in India - it's believed even healthy young people can die in just 6 hours of exposure. This will happen regularly if temperatures rise 3C. India will be home to maybe 2B in 2050 - when many climate projections say this will happen. I'm optimistic we won't reach 3C of warming by 2050. But it seems within reason that it could happen.
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- scifibestfi 4y agoSaying "human caused climate change" with that level of certainty, catastrophizing, and distain for questioning is as anti-science as believing in flat earth.
- edgefield 4y ago