16 ms·

In the end, climate change is the only story that matters

127 points by _Microft 4y ago

melonrusk 4y ago
> In the End, Climate Change Is the Only Story That Matters Hang on, just let me check the goalset.... Nope, nothing in there about what temperature the paperclips should be.
xnx 4y ago
Until climate change starts affecting our base hierarchy of needs, it's doomed to get more lip service than action. Outside of war efforts, have societies ever made sacrifices for the greater good?
- zeckalpha 4y ago
  The housing crisis in California is a regular topic here on HN. It is already affecting the base levels of needs.
- pgrote 4y ago
  >Outside of war efforts, have societies ever made sacrifices for the greater good? Ozone depletion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Was that a sacrifice? Only person I've heard complaining about it was telling some coal miners that his hairspray wasn't as good as it used to be. Here's a Fox News link on it: https://youtu.be/MYat87dsXZI https://youtu.be/MYat87dsXZI
    - beej71 4y ago
      At the same time, it's interesting to consider whether the CFC ban would have been politically possible today. I honestly don't know, but it seems likely it would have been turned into a bludgeon.
    - sokoloff 4y ago
      R12 and R22 phaseouts cost money, required some equipment changes, stocking of multiple refrigerants, all of which represent varying levels of sacrifice to solve the problem.
- exq 4y ago
  Banning CFCs to fix the ozone hole over Oceania/Antarctica. Scientific consensus was CFCs were directly responsible for the problem, countries around the globe got together and mandated the use of different refrigerants with the Montreal Protocol in 1987. Every single member of the UN ratified the agreement. It's regarded as one of if not the most effective international environmental agreement ever. Potentially saved millions of lives with reduced skin cancer cases.
  - jopnv 4y ago
  - gruez 4y ago
    Banning CFCs were a win/win for industry/environment because industry had alternatives for CFCs that they could charge a premium for. No such option exists for fossil fuels.
    - pas 4y ago
      that's absolutely not true though. there are countless alternatives from DAC/CCS coupled with anything, endless variations of nuclear (even fusion too), T shaped dams in the sea, wind, solar. the problem is about collective action, and justice/fairness/negotiation/geopolitics. like the iterated prisoner's dilemma. defectors get cheap energy, but then the next round your exports get a big tariff added, but then defectors of that get cheap shit, the next round they might get tariffs too, but then you hit a ceiling on this.
- api 4y ago
  Sacrifice for the greater good is the wrong way of framing it. It’s not a sacrifice at all. It’s a prudent investment. If a huge tree next to your house is starting to lean and is in danger of falling and causing tens of thousands worth of damage to your roof and exterior, is paying a few thousand to remove the tree a sacrifice? Yes we could adapt to climate change but investing now in non-carbon-based technologies would be far cheaper and safer. This wrong framing is actually the fault of the environmental movement which from the start has framed this like a moral panic and reform crusade. I credit that to the movement emerging from a culture with protestant puritan DNA. We got “forgive me nature for I have sinned” which is bullshit. George Carlin gave a good retort. “Stop saying save the Earth! The Earth will be fine. We are fucked.” We are what we are trying to save. “Nature” will be fine.
  - germandiago 4y ago
    On who we put the cost of the prudent investment about things we do not have certainty about? I have been hearing bad news about climate change since the 90s and none of those happened. I think this has a lot more than simple science into it. I am willing to pay the cost of transition as long as they give me dates and signa a contract saying they will give me my money back if things do not happen as in their calendar with a reasonable amoubt of flexibility.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  We're not going to see major sacrifices, much to the chagrin of activists that conflate sacrifice with effectiveness, but we are seeing significant improvements from existing climate action already. Most of it doesn't make as much noise as highly visible yet ineffective actions like bans etc. which activists prefer.
melling 4y ago
The lithium story on HN made it sound like our “plans” aren’t really working, at least in our needed time frame. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32945508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32945508 We need to buy ourselves another couple decades. We need another 50 years rather than 30 for technology to improve.
- ForHackernews 4y ago
  Nobody is even pretending to take the kind of actions needed: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/ https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/ All of the 1.5C projections rely on scifi direct-air carbon capture technology that doesn't exist and may never exist. In brief, https://arewestillfucked.com/ https://arewestillfucked.com/
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
    I find it impressive that people use CAT to justify a fatalistic attitude. You can compare the predictions year by year and see the "current policies" values drop every year, from "3.1-3.7" in 2017 to "2.5-2.9" in 2021. Do those also depend on DAC? Also, as far as I understand, the technology exists (in the sense of "there are plants already running") and scales horizontally, it's just currently too expensive by a factor of around 10 compared to current carbon pricing. Expecting general industrial progress, economies of scale, and an increase in carbon pricing to bring this into alignment doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
    - ForHackernews 4y ago
      > I find it impressive that people use CAT to justify a fatalistic attitude. I guess looking at that map of the world showing responses ranging from "Insufficient" to "Critically Insufficient" fills you with a warm fuzzy sense of optimism for the future. When you say "there are plants already running" - you must mean the demonstration projects that produce CO2 for soft drinks (that will go back into the atmosphere)[0] > There are currently 18 direct air capture plants operating worldwide, capturing almost 0.01 Mt CO2/year...In the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, direct air capture is scaled up to capture almost 60 Mt CO2/year by 2030. So great, we only need to increase by a factor of 6000 in 7 years. > Plans for a total of eleven DAC facilities are now in advanced development. If all of these planned projects were to go ahead, DAC deployment would reach around 5.5 Mt CO2 by 2030; this is more than 700 times today’s capture rate, but less than 10% of the level of deployment needed to get on track with the Net Zero Scenario. ^This is your optimistic scenario: IFF every single one of these planned facilities are actually built, we'll have 10% of requirements. [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/direct-air-capture https://www.iea.org/reports/direct-air-capture
roenxi 4y ago
Until a new energy technology gains mass adoption (maybe the lawyers will finally let nuclear get away with merely being an order of magnitude safer than coal?) the only story that matters is energy security. There is currently a war in Europe that is threatening to go the wrong sort of nuclear, and it is at best only tangentially related to climate issues even with motivated reasoning. Add in some economic pressure for the energy crisis and roll the dice a few more times and someone is going to press a button that we all regret the pressing of. There is no climate issue that can't be barrelled through with cheap energy. Even climate stasis cannot be overcome without cheap energy. The only story here is energy until energy is secure. We've already established that countries with large amounts of cheap energy are going to be fine with climate change. The top issues: 1) We've got weapons that are far too powerful. 2) Overpopulation. 3) Energy security. If we could torch the environment and solve those 3 then the sane thing to do is torch the environment. It isn't a top 3 priority.
- viraptor 4y ago
  > If we could torch the environment and solve those 3 then the sane thing to do is torch the environment. You do say "if" though. We can't do it that way. The climate crisis will cause forced migration of many people once they can't be fed. That will stimulate both armed conflicts and issues related to overpopulation. It's not helping with energy security either if we need more development or living spaces than we planned for. It's all connected.
  - roenxi 4y ago
    The people who approach this from a perspective of "there is a climate crisis" tend to be centralisers at heart though. I think most people agree that to make a market preserve the environment there needs to be a strong central body that forces them to consider it. This is exactly the strategy that promotes energy shortages, because strong central bodies promote wild over- or under-supply. The right solution is to push for cheap power. The people trying to solve 'the climate crisis' have been fighting against the political lobbies in favour of cheap energy basically forever. That is the entire fight. People who want cheap power vs. people who want to achieve alternative, less useful, objectives.
tluyben2 4y ago
It is, but no one cares, especially if it costs money or comfort. Disclaimer; didn’t RTFA.
hunglee2 4y ago
in the end, failure to mitigate climate change may be the primary factor behind the 'Great Filter' explanation for Fermi's Paradox - sentient species unable to overcome evolved competitive behaviour, and see the big picture in time to cooperate. I hope we can beat the odds
rayiner 4y ago
If the people who advocate addressing climate change actually believed this, they wouldn’t constantly be trying to tie it to other unpopular issues. They’d be willing to compromise on everything else to gather the broadest possible support base for solutions. I personally think climate change is a lot more important than it’s advocates treat it as, though it’s a stretch to say it’s “the most important” issue. Based on my understanding of “the science” economic development in the third world will still leave those people better off even accounting for climate change impacts.
- eganist 4y ago
  > If the people who advocate addressing climate change actually believed this, they wouldn’t constantly be trying to tie it to other unpopular issues. They’d be willing to compromise on everything else to gather the broadest possible support base for solutions. Question of the strawman variety: if a bill comes about that passes meaningful climate change reform but bans abortion (in the united states) altogether, is your position that such a bill should be accepted by the climate change advocacy groups?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    Arguably if they are single issue advocacy groups they shouldn’t care about the associated riders (and this would go for the anti abortion side too). But all too often you find that they are NOT actually single issue groups and instead just basically a portion of a political side.
    - pas 4y ago
      "obviously" no one is really a walking talking voting caricature. yet still there are big groups that care only about a handful issues meaningfully. eg. they usually don't vote, and very few thinfs might move them to do so. but those who vote usually are already well motivated to care for things the parties carry.
  - NhanH 4y ago
    You need to ask that question to the climate activists. GP didn't mention himself being one, it might not be applicable to him.
redeeman 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
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bilsbie 4y ago
New rule: we have to ban private airplanes before we ask common people to make any sacrifices.
- RobertoG 4y ago
  If not private planes, at least private jets.
- gmuslera 4y ago
  When people were not travelling because COVID, airlines were still doing regular empty plane trips to keep the routes. And it was one of the main industries bailed out in the pandemic. Leisure travel does far more damage than private travel, the institutions around it will keep them running till the end of the world.
- germandiago 4y ago
  only the ones of those who advocate for climate change. The rest I am ok with them.
- gruez 4y ago
  That sounds like a great way to get tons of opposition from well resourced individuals, which will ultimately sink the policy proposal. A far more prudent proposal would be to let them fly private jets, but tax their carbon emissions accordingly. If you were previously flying private and the government introduces a carbon tax that makes flying 10% more expensive, you'll likely cough up the money. If they want to ban private flying entirely you'll go on a crusade to prevent that bill from getting passed.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - type-r 4y ago
    you'll probably go a crusade either way. what a weird focus anyway, feels very "eat the rich" style when the earth doesn't care where the carbon comes from.
- 4y ago
Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
Regular people are fed up. If you try and limit their quality of life there will be an escalation of violence. We are already seeing the byproducts of lockdowns. As a regular citizen seeing people like Bloomberg, Di Caprio and Musk talk and tweet about climate change from their G650ER only makes me want to pollute more just to go against them, because what they preach can't possibly be good for me or society. Their history of sociopathic behavior speaks for itself. They want to prevent any form of wealth redistribution, so they hope to move the issue from wealth inequality (which would see them as a target) towards something like climate change which is essentially a false flag on a planetary scale to prop up the confidence in our political and business leaders (and thus prevent redistribution of wealth and power). Somethin akin to an alien invasion which would rally people together. I am not having it, every billionaire is a policy failure. If we cannot even address such policy failures which are relatively easy to solve, then thinking about mitigating , adapting and ultimately solving climate change is pure utopia. Hence it doesn't warrant our attention.
- rc_mob 4y ago
  Laws are the only way to fix this. Leonardo Dicaprio riding a bike to his next vacation does not fix global warming.
  - Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
    Extreme wealth inequality is much easier to solve than Global Warming. It's a political problem , global warming requires politics + policing + enforcement + technical inventions + technical application. I'll worry about climate change once extreme wealth inequality has been solved. It's pointless to worry about it beforehand given how they are on a completely different scale of complexity. You gotta crawl before you can walk. If you can't even crawl then there is no point worrying about your gait looks like.
    - germandiago 4y ago
      Wealth inequality is very difficult to fix based on historic data: when you bury the productive on taxes they will just stop working or run away. I must say I care about ppl being very poor but not about that obsession about being equal. We cannot pretend we are all symmetric. We are not. Only under the law. People must hace chances, not inifinite unconditional support because yes.
exabrial 4y ago
Then let the science speak for itself. What annoys me most is the integration of greenwashing into advertising, and people _eat this up up like hotcakes_. For example, Apple is not a green company by any objective measure. Their manufacturing process is absurdly water and energy intensive, and is based in countries that have some of the highest co2 emissions. They intentionally slow down and disable perfectly fine devices that have a lot of life left in them, encouraging rampart consumerism and ‘electronics as fashion wear’. They intentionally prevent people from repairing perfectly fine devices. Yet in their advertising and corporate culture, they plaster how ‘green’ they are but it reality one of the worst companies for the planet.
- cagenut 4y ago
  The "science" says being fixated on ad-campaigns is inane and a poor exercise in prioritization/judgement. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect... The anti-pattern here is making this about your personal relationship to media and brands instead of being about the physics of fossil fuels.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Pretty difficult to draw that conclusion from your source. It only tells us the consumption, not the ease of reducing it or subsequent effects.
- quonn 4y ago
  My iPhone is almost five years old and my mom uses my previous one. It‘s still going fast. Certainly the support is far longer than for Android devices.
  - fsflover 4y ago
    It's easy to compare with crappy Androids. Try to compare with my 12+-year-old laptop running latest Debian and not showing any sign of stopped updates. Same I expect from GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and Pinephone).
deleted 4y ago
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jmyeet 4y ago
Disclaimer: I believe in climate change but I honestly don't think there'll be any meaningful changes until it's economic to do so. Put another way: things like coal power will be replaced with renewables when it's cheaper. This is one reason why plummetting solar prices are so important and impactful. But there are two things I hate: 1. Citing any kind of single events (eg Hurricane Fiona in this article) as evidence of anything. They're all anecdotes. You could just as easily point to the low activity of the Atlantic hurricane season in the southern states as a positive for climate change. The whole anecdata thing is silly. Please just stop. I realize part of this is journalists trying to make something personal by focusing on a single event but it honestly doesn't help; and 2. People hijacking climate change to push a particular preconceived agenda. Nuclear power is the obvious example. It's a fine discussion point on its own but the ability people have to ignore negatives when pushing their particular agenda never ceases to amaze and is ultimately unhelpful. This isn't all doom and gloom either. US emissions depending on which you look at actually peaked decades ago (eg [1][2]). Is it enough? Probably not. Pretty much all problems that exist in the world can be reduced to being energy problems. Food production now is driven by dumping petroleum products on crops (ie fertilizers). Energy costs are a direct input to food costs. Fossil fuel emissions would go away overnight if something renewable was cheaper than fossil fuels. This may seem trite but what I mean is you could sequester CO2 into hydrocarbons and make those things at worst carbon neutral without, say, having to build out a massive grid for EVs (as one example). Climate change here isn't really a political fight. It's a fight against capitalism. Capitalism knows no political bounds. It seems unlikely capitalism is going away anytime soon so your next best option is make emissions a byproduct of a capitalist endeavour such as cheaper energy. [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states [2]: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  I don’t understand framing the evils of the modern world as “capitalism” when every other economic system exhibits the same evils. Like what’s the proposed alternative? Communism? A fascist command economy? Every alternative is measurably worse on even this metric.
Kfkfmfmf 4y ago
This is rich coming from a magazine that promotes fast fashion. The front page has this story- "The Best Jeans Under $100 to Snatch Up Immediately"
- s-lambert 4y ago
  Jeans last for years and aren't a recent trend, unless the article is about a specific style of jeans then I don't think it falls under fast fashion.
canadiantim 4y ago
This is such an asinine point of view. It’s like with Covid, how we forgot literally every other risk factor and instead opted to put blinders on and only focus on one thing. This leads to ridiculous outcomes like the BC government officially recommending the use of gloryholes to prevent the spread of Covid (while of course ignoring the risk of stds and everything else).
- rc_mob 4y ago
  What are you talking about? The earth is on track to become uninhabitable by humans. Zero humans left alive is a likely future.
  - canadiantim 4y ago
    Saying “zero humans left alive is a likely future” suggests you are basing your perspective based on fear and ideology and not science. Science of course tells us that climate change will risk higher sea levels, increased erratic weather, etc. but this is so far away from your preposterous notion of zero humans left alive. This is the danger of politicizing science.
    - melonrusk 4y ago
      Maybe they're referring to increased migration from the Global South ?
    - danhor 4y ago
      There are unfortunately few people studying worst case scenarios, but it's not like "science" doesn't consider it possible (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119). This is not likely, but it's hard to quantify how unlikely it is. Suggesting otherwise is not accurate and downplays the possible tail risks.
      - benmmurphy 4y ago
        the problem with this low probability events far out into the future is if you reduce the chance of one low probability event then you might increase the chance of another low probability event. you may decrease the chance of catastrophic climate change due to global warming but increase the chance of global cooling such that there is no actual change in risk. or you may increase the chance that a large part of humanity is wiped out by an asteroid because you have slowed down industrial progress. or any other weird butterfly effect because you are looking at inherently low probability events and trying to build policy around costing them. how these low probability events end up being handled is just whoever has the most convincing narrative which is not a good way of running policy.
Proven 4y ago
tasuki 4y ago
With such a title, I don't even want to read the article. What about other kinds of existential risk? What about human rights abuses? Do none of those stories matter? This solidifies the position of climate change as a religion. Which is a pity, because climate change is actually a pressing issue.
- tsol 4y ago
  You can't do anything about human rights abuses if you can't grow food to eat. Ultimately climate change has the potential to break down modern human society, at least to an extent. It's also a bit of an exaggeration, the point of the article isn't that we literally should not care about any other issue at all.
  - tasuki 4y ago
    > You can't do anything about human rights abuses if you can't grow food to eat. As a society, we (still) can grow food to eat. You aren't saying we should disregard human rights abuses right now just because we might not be able to grow enough food some time in the future? Again, I'm not saying to disregard climate change, I just find it very disingenious to say it's the only story that matters: it's not.
- Bakary 4y ago
  For other types of existential risks we are either in just in along for the ride (wide availability of nuclear weapons) lack data or concrete means of tackling the problem (AI, solar flares and whatnot) or it's something already linked to climate change problem management (decreased resources, overpopulation). The greying of the population is probably the second biggest story other than the climate. For human rights, as tragic as they are the scale is just tiny in comparison. And the biggest boon for those rights is a functioning and wealthy society. Remove that with climate change and demographic troubles and they will be gone in a puff of smoke.
  - tasuki 4y ago
    > For other types of existential risks we are either in just in along for the ride [...] Isn't this kind of the case for climate change too? I certainly don't feel like I can personally affect it in any way. As a society, we can affect climate change, but so can we affect nuclear weapons etc.
8jef 4y ago
Let's look at it from a different angle: climate change situation creates lots of massive business opportunities that are very appealing and actively being taken avantage of, as we speak. While we argue, oil and plastics people get richer and politic is flooded with oil money (our money, from filling our own tanks). Economic AND climate migrants (causes for migration are often intertwined and should be seen as single) are being taken advantage of instead of receiving help where they are, and lots of people are getting rich from that. Then, when sea level rising gets critical, 90% of Earth coastal population will need relocation, and that service will make others rich. These (and others) creates formidable opposing forces to any organized and collective up to bottom type adaptation, which can never be without general consent. Pandemic made sure of that by eroding most trust that remained toward the ruling class worldwide. We actually live in a world monopolized by the _us against them_ mantra that has for the most part deliberately chosen free market individual solutions to widespread dangers that concern everyone. Because climate change vilain is the guy looking in the mirror and not recognizing himself, while blaming the wallpaper. Commonly political solutions failed in commies countries, and we have not figured out yet how to organized ourselves as a planet since then, other than through free money flow that ruins everything. While the prevailing ideological landscape leaves us no hope, other than to organize ourselves and end up living in some Mad Max dystopian tyranny, we have to trust and hope for the better. Who knows, maybe we'll grab the olive branch before falling into the abyss.
- kubanczyk 4y ago
  Highlighting this, it doesn't get nearly enough attention: > how to organize ourselves as a planet
nathanaldensr 4y ago
No, it's not--unless you are an adherent to the religion. Titles like this one only reinforce the belief in many people that these beliefs have become religious. Don't be surprised when people react negatively to them as they might to any other religion.
lcall 4y ago
I don't think we are competent to solve climate change, when we have largely rejected the advice of the Creator. I appreciate those who try to control and reduce pollution, and the scientists who are doing their best. At the same time, we can have peace and be OK, and try to practice honesty and the Golden Rule, and seek a good direction in life. More at my web site (in profile), if one clicks on "Things I want to say...", "On peace amid commotion...", then "About the world in commotion generally".
- lcall 4y ago
  Thoughtful comments appreciated with any downvotes. I wonder what voluntary Sabbath observance (avoiding work & commerce & recreation; putting God first; seeking Him) would do for pollution levels.
purplerabbit 4y ago
In the end, the heat death of the universe is the only story that matters
- 1970-01-01 4y ago
  We need to figure out dark energy and dark matter before making that conclusion.
jaqalopes 4y ago
This is definitely the standard view among a lot of people, though I personally fear we’ll instead be saying “AI is the only story that matters” in 5-10 years if not sooner.
lytefm 4y ago
From the point of view of someone living in central Europe, I disagree. The only story that matters right now is Russia waging a war against the Ukraine and preparing to attack Europe once they get a realistic chance. If the US weakens the NATO after the next election, we're f*cked. Also, I don't buy the "let poor people suffer now to reduce suffering later" narrative. Restricting the access to fossil fuels increases the prices for pretty much everything that's relevant to cover basic needs, especially in less developed countries. But I'd be very fine with putting a hefty carbon emission based price tag on anything that exceeds covering basic needs - e.g. flying, cruise ships, driving big cars, using more energy to heat a pool than other families need for their whole household,...
- cableshaft 4y ago
  I would agree that there are two stories that matter, the invasion by Russia being the other, in part because we won't have to worry about extinction by climate change if nuclear winter happens before that. Also unfortunately, as the world becomes more and more scarce with its resources (seafood, freshwater, topsoil, fertilizer, usable sand, etc) we're probably only going to see more of these wars in the next couple of decades, even if this one is resolved without nukes or a World War. I don't agree with you about not wanting people to suffer now bit, though. Allowing relentless and cheap consumption of resources got us to this place in the first place. There needs to be drastic reduction in consumption of resources happening, and it should have started at least fifty years ago. It's like asking someone who's had a heart attack to not start getting a handle on their health because you don't want them to suffer any hardships right now. I'm saying this as someone who is struggling to get my own health back on track myself and had heart attack scares a few times (thankfully not an actual heart attack yet, just very convincing heartburn)...it's definitely difficult, but I can and should be doing more. Like I should be doing more to reduce my consumption of resources as well. I've done some for both, but nowhere near enough or fast enough. That being said, I don't want people to die from lack of heat or anything either. I also think the governments of the world should be doing a lot to ease the burden without just making fossil fuels cheap again, restructuring our society so we will naturally need to consume less resources (more communal places to stay for the days when it's extremely cold with no stigma attached to it, massive funding projects to convert homes away from natural gas heating, etc).
AnnoyedComment 4y ago
agentultra 4y ago
I agree. If we have another drought next year across the Western US, China, and Europe I bet the price shocks will hit rich and poor alike as food will become quite scarce. Coupled with trying to manage surviving the yearly 100 year storms and sea level rise… we’re in for quite a challenge managing to mitigate the climate crisis with feeding ourselves and protecting people from the increase in devastating disasters. If the way we responded socially and politically to the pandemic is any indication of how we’ll manage this looming monster I suspect it’s going to get really bad. It doesn’t matter how rich you are. If disaster after disaster year after year wipes out the food production you can’t eat money.
powera 4y ago
I stopped reading before I got done with the "the existence of a hurricane proves that climate change is making the weather worse". We are past the point where zealots and "persuaders" telling bald-faced lies to try to increase hysteria is in any way helpful.
hn2017 4y ago
[flagged]
SpacePortKnight 4y ago
Since the human society is better at disaster management than prevention, I would like to read at least one article which provides a solution instead of screaming end of the world. Given that world temperature would rise by 2C or even 4C by end of the century, I would say more resources should be put towards climate prediction and building infrastructure. But again, I can't make an informed opinion, since all my searches lead me to climate change prevention articles instead of management. For example, Pakistan might need to build better infrastructure and may also need to switch crops depending on how the rains would be in the future. I would like to see a well researched year by year ( and by region ) prediction if humanity decides not to take any action to prevent climate change.
openfuture 4y ago
Bah come solve it then, datalisp.is.
t0bia_s 4y ago
A story? Whats the point of this story?
seanp2k2 4y ago
>””” To stand on the bluffs above the Chukchi Sea, looking down at a series of broken and ruined seawalls that have already failed to hold back the power of the ocean, and to consider that there are politicians in this country who are unwilling to do anything about the climate crisis, or who even deny it exists, is to wish they all could come and stand on these bluffs and look out at the relentless, devouring sea.””” The politicians know that climate change is real, but many act like they don’t or downplay the severity to get votes. Even many voters recognize that it’s real, but figure that “it won’t affect me in this lifetime” and being extremely selfish, don’t care.
ttflee 4y ago
If Mother Nature changes, do not fight. Adapt to it.
sazz 4y ago
The only constant in nature is change. The climate has always changed. And that humans have an influence on it should not really surprise anyone - after all, humans are an integral part of the ecosystem and the dominant form of life. I do not see this as a valuation, but as a simple fact. I just don't understand that many people follow this fallacy that humans are responsible for the climate. To me, this is actually colonialist thinking, where Homo Superior takes responsibility for the supposedly "underdeveloped". The climate does not need protection. From the point of view of the climate, everything is fine. Only we as humans have a problem: that we do not want to subordinate ourselves and adapt accordingly. But that we think to be able to determine everything.

127 points by _Microft 4y ago

> In the End, Climate Change Is the Only Story That Matters Hang on, just let me check the goalset.... Nope, nothing in there about what temperature the paperclips should be.

xnx 4y ago

Until climate change starts affecting our base hierarchy of needs, it's doomed to get more lip service than action. Outside of war efforts, have societies ever made sacrifices for the greater good?

zeckalpha 4y ago
The housing crisis in California is a regular topic here on HN. It is already affecting the base levels of needs.
pgrote 4y ago
>Outside of war efforts, have societies ever made sacrifices for the greater good? Ozone depletion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Was that a sacrifice? Only person I've heard complaining about it was telling some coal miners that his hairspray wasn't as good as it used to be. Here's a Fox News link on it: https://youtu.be/MYat87dsXZI https://youtu.be/MYat87dsXZI
  - beej71 4y ago
    At the same time, it's interesting to consider whether the CFC ban would have been politically possible today. I honestly don't know, but it seems likely it would have been turned into a bludgeon.
  - sokoloff 4y ago
    R12 and R22 phaseouts cost money, required some equipment changes, stocking of multiple refrigerants, all of which represent varying levels of sacrifice to solve the problem.
exq 4y ago
Banning CFCs to fix the ozone hole over Oceania/Antarctica. Scientific consensus was CFCs were directly responsible for the problem, countries around the globe got together and mandated the use of different refrigerants with the Montreal Protocol in 1987. Every single member of the UN ratified the agreement. It's regarded as one of if not the most effective international environmental agreement ever. Potentially saved millions of lives with reduced skin cancer cases.
- jopnv 4y ago
- gruez 4y ago
  Banning CFCs were a win/win for industry/environment because industry had alternatives for CFCs that they could charge a premium for. No such option exists for fossil fuels.
  - pas 4y ago
    that's absolutely not true though. there are countless alternatives from DAC/CCS coupled with anything, endless variations of nuclear (even fusion too), T shaped dams in the sea, wind, solar. the problem is about collective action, and justice/fairness/negotiation/geopolitics. like the iterated prisoner's dilemma. defectors get cheap energy, but then the next round your exports get a big tariff added, but then defectors of that get cheap shit, the next round they might get tariffs too, but then you hit a ceiling on this.
api 4y ago
Sacrifice for the greater good is the wrong way of framing it. It’s not a sacrifice at all. It’s a prudent investment. If a huge tree next to your house is starting to lean and is in danger of falling and causing tens of thousands worth of damage to your roof and exterior, is paying a few thousand to remove the tree a sacrifice? Yes we could adapt to climate change but investing now in non-carbon-based technologies would be far cheaper and safer. This wrong framing is actually the fault of the environmental movement which from the start has framed this like a moral panic and reform crusade. I credit that to the movement emerging from a culture with protestant puritan DNA. We got “forgive me nature for I have sinned” which is bullshit. George Carlin gave a good retort. “Stop saying save the Earth! The Earth will be fine. We are fucked.” We are what we are trying to save. “Nature” will be fine.
- germandiago 4y ago
  On who we put the cost of the prudent investment about things we do not have certainty about? I have been hearing bad news about climate change since the 90s and none of those happened. I think this has a lot more than simple science into it. I am willing to pay the cost of transition as long as they give me dates and signa a contract saying they will give me my money back if things do not happen as in their calendar with a reasonable amoubt of flexibility.
tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
We're not going to see major sacrifices, much to the chagrin of activists that conflate sacrifice with effectiveness, but we are seeing significant improvements from existing climate action already. Most of it doesn't make as much noise as highly visible yet ineffective actions like bans etc. which activists prefer.

melling 4y ago

The lithium story on HN made it sound like our “plans” aren’t really working, at least in our needed time frame. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32945508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32945508 We need to buy ourselves another couple decades. We need another 50 years rather than 30 for technology to improve.

ForHackernews 4y ago
Nobody is even pretending to take the kind of actions needed: https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/ https://climateactiontracker.org/countries/ All of the 1.5C projections rely on scifi direct-air carbon capture technology that doesn't exist and may never exist. In brief, https://arewestillfucked.com/ https://arewestillfucked.com/
- tgsovlerkhgsel 4y ago
  I find it impressive that people use CAT to justify a fatalistic attitude. You can compare the predictions year by year and see the "current policies" values drop every year, from "3.1-3.7" in 2017 to "2.5-2.9" in 2021. Do those also depend on DAC? Also, as far as I understand, the technology exists (in the sense of "there are plants already running") and scales horizontally, it's just currently too expensive by a factor of around 10 compared to current carbon pricing. Expecting general industrial progress, economies of scale, and an increase in carbon pricing to bring this into alignment doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
  - ForHackernews 4y ago
    > I find it impressive that people use CAT to justify a fatalistic attitude. I guess looking at that map of the world showing responses ranging from "Insufficient" to "Critically Insufficient" fills you with a warm fuzzy sense of optimism for the future. When you say "there are plants already running" - you must mean the demonstration projects that produce CO2 for soft drinks (that will go back into the atmosphere)[0] > There are currently 18 direct air capture plants operating worldwide, capturing almost 0.01 Mt CO2/year...In the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, direct air capture is scaled up to capture almost 60 Mt CO2/year by 2030. So great, we only need to increase by a factor of 6000 in 7 years. > Plans for a total of eleven DAC facilities are now in advanced development. If all of these planned projects were to go ahead, DAC deployment would reach around 5.5 Mt CO2 by 2030; this is more than 700 times today’s capture rate, but less than 10% of the level of deployment needed to get on track with the Net Zero Scenario. ^This is your optimistic scenario: IFF every single one of these planned facilities are actually built, we'll have 10% of requirements. [0] https://www.iea.org/reports/direct-air-capture https://www.iea.org/reports/direct-air-capture

roenxi 4y ago

Until a new energy technology gains mass adoption (maybe the lawyers will finally let nuclear get away with merely being an order of magnitude safer than coal?) the only story that matters is energy security. There is currently a war in Europe that is threatening to go the wrong sort of nuclear, and it is at best only tangentially related to climate issues even with motivated reasoning. Add in some economic pressure for the energy crisis and roll the dice a few more times and someone is going to press a button that we all regret the pressing of. There is no climate issue that can't be barrelled through with cheap energy. Even climate stasis cannot be overcome without cheap energy. The only story here is energy until energy is secure. We've already established that countries with large amounts of cheap energy are going to be fine with climate change. The top issues: 1) We've got weapons that are far too powerful. 2) Overpopulation. 3) Energy security. If we could torch the environment and solve those 3 then the sane thing to do is torch the environment. It isn't a top 3 priority.

viraptor 4y ago
> If we could torch the environment and solve those 3 then the sane thing to do is torch the environment. You do say "if" though. We can't do it that way. The climate crisis will cause forced migration of many people once they can't be fed. That will stimulate both armed conflicts and issues related to overpopulation. It's not helping with energy security either if we need more development or living spaces than we planned for. It's all connected.
- roenxi 4y ago
  The people who approach this from a perspective of "there is a climate crisis" tend to be centralisers at heart though. I think most people agree that to make a market preserve the environment there needs to be a strong central body that forces them to consider it. This is exactly the strategy that promotes energy shortages, because strong central bodies promote wild over- or under-supply. The right solution is to push for cheap power. The people trying to solve 'the climate crisis' have been fighting against the political lobbies in favour of cheap energy basically forever. That is the entire fight. People who want cheap power vs. people who want to achieve alternative, less useful, objectives.

tluyben2 4y ago

It is, but no one cares, especially if it costs money or comfort. Disclaimer; didn’t RTFA.

hunglee2 4y ago

in the end, failure to mitigate climate change may be the primary factor behind the 'Great Filter' explanation for Fermi's Paradox - sentient species unable to overcome evolved competitive behaviour, and see the big picture in time to cooperate. I hope we can beat the odds

rayiner 4y ago

If the people who advocate addressing climate change actually believed this, they wouldn’t constantly be trying to tie it to other unpopular issues. They’d be willing to compromise on everything else to gather the broadest possible support base for solutions. I personally think climate change is a lot more important than it’s advocates treat it as, though it’s a stretch to say it’s “the most important” issue. Based on my understanding of “the science” economic development in the third world will still leave those people better off even accounting for climate change impacts.

eganist 4y ago
> If the people who advocate addressing climate change actually believed this, they wouldn’t constantly be trying to tie it to other unpopular issues. They’d be willing to compromise on everything else to gather the broadest possible support base for solutions. Question of the strawman variety: if a bill comes about that passes meaningful climate change reform but bans abortion (in the united states) altogether, is your position that such a bill should be accepted by the climate change advocacy groups?
- bombcar 4y ago
  Arguably if they are single issue advocacy groups they shouldn’t care about the associated riders (and this would go for the anti abortion side too). But all too often you find that they are NOT actually single issue groups and instead just basically a portion of a political side.
  - pas 4y ago
    "obviously" no one is really a walking talking voting caricature. yet still there are big groups that care only about a handful issues meaningfully. eg. they usually don't vote, and very few thinfs might move them to do so. but those who vote usually are already well motivated to care for things the parties carry.
- NhanH 4y ago
  You need to ask that question to the climate activists. GP didn't mention himself being one, it might not be applicable to him.

redeeman 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

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bilsbie 4y ago

New rule: we have to ban private airplanes before we ask common people to make any sacrifices.

RobertoG 4y ago
If not private planes, at least private jets.
gmuslera 4y ago
When people were not travelling because COVID, airlines were still doing regular empty plane trips to keep the routes. And it was one of the main industries bailed out in the pandemic. Leisure travel does far more damage than private travel, the institutions around it will keep them running till the end of the world.
germandiago 4y ago
only the ones of those who advocate for climate change. The rest I am ok with them.
gruez 4y ago
That sounds like a great way to get tons of opposition from well resourced individuals, which will ultimately sink the policy proposal. A far more prudent proposal would be to let them fly private jets, but tax their carbon emissions accordingly. If you were previously flying private and the government introduces a carbon tax that makes flying 10% more expensive, you'll likely cough up the money. If they want to ban private flying entirely you'll go on a crusade to prevent that bill from getting passed.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- type-r 4y ago
  you'll probably go a crusade either way. what a weird focus anyway, feels very "eat the rich" style when the earth doesn't care where the carbon comes from.
4y ago

Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago

Regular people are fed up. If you try and limit their quality of life there will be an escalation of violence. We are already seeing the byproducts of lockdowns. As a regular citizen seeing people like Bloomberg, Di Caprio and Musk talk and tweet about climate change from their G650ER only makes me want to pollute more just to go against them, because what they preach can't possibly be good for me or society. Their history of sociopathic behavior speaks for itself. They want to prevent any form of wealth redistribution, so they hope to move the issue from wealth inequality (which would see them as a target) towards something like climate change which is essentially a false flag on a planetary scale to prop up the confidence in our political and business leaders (and thus prevent redistribution of wealth and power). Somethin akin to an alien invasion which would rally people together. I am not having it, every billionaire is a policy failure. If we cannot even address such policy failures which are relatively easy to solve, then thinking about mitigating , adapting and ultimately solving climate change is pure utopia. Hence it doesn't warrant our attention.

rc_mob 4y ago
Laws are the only way to fix this. Leonardo Dicaprio riding a bike to his next vacation does not fix global warming.
- Bubble_Pop_22 4y ago
  Extreme wealth inequality is much easier to solve than Global Warming. It's a political problem , global warming requires politics + policing + enforcement + technical inventions + technical application. I'll worry about climate change once extreme wealth inequality has been solved. It's pointless to worry about it beforehand given how they are on a completely different scale of complexity. You gotta crawl before you can walk. If you can't even crawl then there is no point worrying about your gait looks like.
  - germandiago 4y ago
    Wealth inequality is very difficult to fix based on historic data: when you bury the productive on taxes they will just stop working or run away. I must say I care about ppl being very poor but not about that obsession about being equal. We cannot pretend we are all symmetric. We are not. Only under the law. People must hace chances, not inifinite unconditional support because yes.

exabrial 4y ago

Then let the science speak for itself. What annoys me most is the integration of greenwashing into advertising, and people _eat this up up like hotcakes_. For example, Apple is not a green company by any objective measure. Their manufacturing process is absurdly water and energy intensive, and is based in countries that have some of the highest co2 emissions. They intentionally slow down and disable perfectly fine devices that have a lot of life left in them, encouraging rampart consumerism and ‘electronics as fashion wear’. They intentionally prevent people from repairing perfectly fine devices. Yet in their advertising and corporate culture, they plaster how ‘green’ they are but it reality one of the worst companies for the planet.

cagenut 4y ago
The "science" says being fixated on ad-campaigns is inane and a poor exercise in prioritization/judgement. https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sector-%E2%80%93-pie-charts.png https://ourworldindata.org/uploads/2020/09/Emissions-by-sect... The anti-pattern here is making this about your personal relationship to media and brands instead of being about the physics of fossil fuels.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Pretty difficult to draw that conclusion from your source. It only tells us the consumption, not the ease of reducing it or subsequent effects.
quonn 4y ago
My iPhone is almost five years old and my mom uses my previous one. It‘s still going fast. Certainly the support is far longer than for Android devices.
- fsflover 4y ago
  It's easy to compare with crappy Androids. Try to compare with my 12+-year-old laptop running latest Debian and not showing any sign of stopped updates. Same I expect from GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and Pinephone).

deleted 4y ago

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jmyeet 4y ago

Disclaimer: I believe in climate change but I honestly don't think there'll be any meaningful changes until it's economic to do so. Put another way: things like coal power will be replaced with renewables when it's cheaper. This is one reason why plummetting solar prices are so important and impactful. But there are two things I hate: 1. Citing any kind of single events (eg Hurricane Fiona in this article) as evidence of anything. They're all anecdotes. You could just as easily point to the low activity of the Atlantic hurricane season in the southern states as a positive for climate change. The whole anecdata thing is silly. Please just stop. I realize part of this is journalists trying to make something personal by focusing on a single event but it honestly doesn't help; and 2. People hijacking climate change to push a particular preconceived agenda. Nuclear power is the obvious example. It's a fine discussion point on its own but the ability people have to ignore negatives when pushing their particular agenda never ceases to amaze and is ultimately unhelpful. This isn't all doom and gloom either. US emissions depending on which you look at actually peaked decades ago (eg [1][2]). Is it enough? Probably not. Pretty much all problems that exist in the world can be reduced to being energy problems. Food production now is driven by dumping petroleum products on crops (ie fertilizers). Energy costs are a direct input to food costs. Fossil fuel emissions would go away overnight if something renewable was cheaper than fossil fuels. This may seem trite but what I mean is you could sequester CO2 into hydrocarbons and make those things at worst carbon neutral without, say, having to build out a massive grid for EVs (as one example). Climate change here isn't really a political fight. It's a fight against capitalism. Capitalism knows no political bounds. It seems unlikely capitalism is going away anytime soon so your next best option is make emissions a byproduct of a capitalist endeavour such as cheaper energy. [1]: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states [2]: https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

AbrahamParangi 4y ago
I don’t understand framing the evils of the modern world as “capitalism” when every other economic system exhibits the same evils. Like what’s the proposed alternative? Communism? A fascist command economy? Every alternative is measurably worse on even this metric.

Kfkfmfmf 4y ago

This is rich coming from a magazine that promotes fast fashion. The front page has this story- "The Best Jeans Under $100 to Snatch Up Immediately"

s-lambert 4y ago
Jeans last for years and aren't a recent trend, unless the article is about a specific style of jeans then I don't think it falls under fast fashion.

canadiantim 4y ago

This is such an asinine point of view. It’s like with Covid, how we forgot literally every other risk factor and instead opted to put blinders on and only focus on one thing. This leads to ridiculous outcomes like the BC government officially recommending the use of gloryholes to prevent the spread of Covid (while of course ignoring the risk of stds and everything else).

rc_mob 4y ago
What are you talking about? The earth is on track to become uninhabitable by humans. Zero humans left alive is a likely future.
- canadiantim 4y ago
  Saying “zero humans left alive is a likely future” suggests you are basing your perspective based on fear and ideology and not science. Science of course tells us that climate change will risk higher sea levels, increased erratic weather, etc. but this is so far away from your preposterous notion of zero humans left alive. This is the danger of politicizing science.
  - melonrusk 4y ago
    Maybe they're referring to increased migration from the Global South ?
  - danhor 4y ago
    There are unfortunately few people studying worst case scenarios, but it's not like "science" doesn't consider it possible (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2108146119). This is not likely, but it's hard to quantify how unlikely it is. Suggesting otherwise is not accurate and downplays the possible tail risks.
    - benmmurphy 4y ago
      the problem with this low probability events far out into the future is if you reduce the chance of one low probability event then you might increase the chance of another low probability event. you may decrease the chance of catastrophic climate change due to global warming but increase the chance of global cooling such that there is no actual change in risk. or you may increase the chance that a large part of humanity is wiped out by an asteroid because you have slowed down industrial progress. or any other weird butterfly effect because you are looking at inherently low probability events and trying to build policy around costing them. how these low probability events end up being handled is just whoever has the most convincing narrative which is not a good way of running policy.

Proven 4y ago

tasuki 4y ago

With such a title, I don't even want to read the article. What about other kinds of existential risk? What about human rights abuses? Do none of those stories matter? This solidifies the position of climate change as a religion. Which is a pity, because climate change is actually a pressing issue.

tsol 4y ago
You can't do anything about human rights abuses if you can't grow food to eat. Ultimately climate change has the potential to break down modern human society, at least to an extent. It's also a bit of an exaggeration, the point of the article isn't that we literally should not care about any other issue at all.
- tasuki 4y ago
  > You can't do anything about human rights abuses if you can't grow food to eat. As a society, we (still) can grow food to eat. You aren't saying we should disregard human rights abuses right now just because we might not be able to grow enough food some time in the future? Again, I'm not saying to disregard climate change, I just find it very disingenious to say it's the only story that matters: it's not.
Bakary 4y ago
For other types of existential risks we are either in just in along for the ride (wide availability of nuclear weapons) lack data or concrete means of tackling the problem (AI, solar flares and whatnot) or it's something already linked to climate change problem management (decreased resources, overpopulation). The greying of the population is probably the second biggest story other than the climate. For human rights, as tragic as they are the scale is just tiny in comparison. And the biggest boon for those rights is a functioning and wealthy society. Remove that with climate change and demographic troubles and they will be gone in a puff of smoke.
- tasuki 4y ago
  > For other types of existential risks we are either in just in along for the ride [...] Isn't this kind of the case for climate change too? I certainly don't feel like I can personally affect it in any way. As a society, we can affect climate change, but so can we affect nuclear weapons etc.

8jef 4y ago

Let's look at it from a different angle: climate change situation creates lots of massive business opportunities that are very appealing and actively being taken avantage of, as we speak. While we argue, oil and plastics people get richer and politic is flooded with oil money (our money, from filling our own tanks). Economic AND climate migrants (causes for migration are often intertwined and should be seen as single) are being taken advantage of instead of receiving help where they are, and lots of people are getting rich from that. Then, when sea level rising gets critical, 90% of Earth coastal population will need relocation, and that service will make others rich. These (and others) creates formidable opposing forces to any organized and collective up to bottom type adaptation, which can never be without general consent. Pandemic made sure of that by eroding most trust that remained toward the ruling class worldwide. We actually live in a world monopolized by the _us against them_ mantra that has for the most part deliberately chosen free market individual solutions to widespread dangers that concern everyone. Because climate change vilain is the guy looking in the mirror and not recognizing himself, while blaming the wallpaper. Commonly political solutions failed in commies countries, and we have not figured out yet how to organized ourselves as a planet since then, other than through free money flow that ruins everything. While the prevailing ideological landscape leaves us no hope, other than to organize ourselves and end up living in some Mad Max dystopian tyranny, we have to trust and hope for the better. Who knows, maybe we'll grab the olive branch before falling into the abyss.

kubanczyk 4y ago
Highlighting this, it doesn't get nearly enough attention: > how to organize ourselves as a planet

nathanaldensr 4y ago

No, it's not--unless you are an adherent to the religion. Titles like this one only reinforce the belief in many people that these beliefs have become religious. Don't be surprised when people react negatively to them as they might to any other religion.

lcall 4y ago

I don't think we are competent to solve climate change, when we have largely rejected the advice of the Creator. I appreciate those who try to control and reduce pollution, and the scientists who are doing their best. At the same time, we can have peace and be OK, and try to practice honesty and the Golden Rule, and seek a good direction in life. More at my web site (in profile), if one clicks on "Things I want to say...", "On peace amid commotion...", then "About the world in commotion generally".

lcall 4y ago
Thoughtful comments appreciated with any downvotes. I wonder what voluntary Sabbath observance (avoiding work & commerce & recreation; putting God first; seeking Him) would do for pollution levels.

purplerabbit 4y ago

In the end, the heat death of the universe is the only story that matters

1970-01-01 4y ago
We need to figure out dark energy and dark matter before making that conclusion.

jaqalopes 4y ago

This is definitely the standard view among a lot of people, though I personally fear we’ll instead be saying “AI is the only story that matters” in 5-10 years if not sooner.

lytefm 4y ago

From the point of view of someone living in central Europe, I disagree. The only story that matters right now is Russia waging a war against the Ukraine and preparing to attack Europe once they get a realistic chance. If the US weakens the NATO after the next election, we're f*cked. Also, I don't buy the "let poor people suffer now to reduce suffering later" narrative. Restricting the access to fossil fuels increases the prices for pretty much everything that's relevant to cover basic needs, especially in less developed countries. But I'd be very fine with putting a hefty carbon emission based price tag on anything that exceeds covering basic needs - e.g. flying, cruise ships, driving big cars, using more energy to heat a pool than other families need for their whole household,...

cableshaft 4y ago
I would agree that there are two stories that matter, the invasion by Russia being the other, in part because we won't have to worry about extinction by climate change if nuclear winter happens before that. Also unfortunately, as the world becomes more and more scarce with its resources (seafood, freshwater, topsoil, fertilizer, usable sand, etc) we're probably only going to see more of these wars in the next couple of decades, even if this one is resolved without nukes or a World War. I don't agree with you about not wanting people to suffer now bit, though. Allowing relentless and cheap consumption of resources got us to this place in the first place. There needs to be drastic reduction in consumption of resources happening, and it should have started at least fifty years ago. It's like asking someone who's had a heart attack to not start getting a handle on their health because you don't want them to suffer any hardships right now. I'm saying this as someone who is struggling to get my own health back on track myself and had heart attack scares a few times (thankfully not an actual heart attack yet, just very convincing heartburn)...it's definitely difficult, but I can and should be doing more. Like I should be doing more to reduce my consumption of resources as well. I've done some for both, but nowhere near enough or fast enough. That being said, I don't want people to die from lack of heat or anything either. I also think the governments of the world should be doing a lot to ease the burden without just making fossil fuels cheap again, restructuring our society so we will naturally need to consume less resources (more communal places to stay for the days when it's extremely cold with no stigma attached to it, massive funding projects to convert homes away from natural gas heating, etc).

AnnoyedComment 4y ago

agentultra 4y ago

I agree. If we have another drought next year across the Western US, China, and Europe I bet the price shocks will hit rich and poor alike as food will become quite scarce. Coupled with trying to manage surviving the yearly 100 year storms and sea level rise… we’re in for quite a challenge managing to mitigate the climate crisis with feeding ourselves and protecting people from the increase in devastating disasters. If the way we responded socially and politically to the pandemic is any indication of how we’ll manage this looming monster I suspect it’s going to get really bad. It doesn’t matter how rich you are. If disaster after disaster year after year wipes out the food production you can’t eat money.

powera 4y ago

I stopped reading before I got done with the "the existence of a hurricane proves that climate change is making the weather worse". We are past the point where zealots and "persuaders" telling bald-faced lies to try to increase hysteria is in any way helpful.

hn2017 4y ago

[flagged]

SpacePortKnight 4y ago

Since the human society is better at disaster management than prevention, I would like to read at least one article which provides a solution instead of screaming end of the world. Given that world temperature would rise by 2C or even 4C by end of the century, I would say more resources should be put towards climate prediction and building infrastructure. But again, I can't make an informed opinion, since all my searches lead me to climate change prevention articles instead of management. For example, Pakistan might need to build better infrastructure and may also need to switch crops depending on how the rains would be in the future. I would like to see a well researched year by year ( and by region ) prediction if humanity decides not to take any action to prevent climate change.

openfuture 4y ago

Bah come solve it then, datalisp.is.

t0bia_s 4y ago

A story? Whats the point of this story?

seanp2k2 4y ago

>””” To stand on the bluffs above the Chukchi Sea, looking down at a series of broken and ruined seawalls that have already failed to hold back the power of the ocean, and to consider that there are politicians in this country who are unwilling to do anything about the climate crisis, or who even deny it exists, is to wish they all could come and stand on these bluffs and look out at the relentless, devouring sea.””” The politicians know that climate change is real, but many act like they don’t or downplay the severity to get votes. Even many voters recognize that it’s real, but figure that “it won’t affect me in this lifetime” and being extremely selfish, don’t care.

ttflee 4y ago

If Mother Nature changes, do not fight. Adapt to it.

sazz 4y ago

The only constant in nature is change. The climate has always changed. And that humans have an influence on it should not really surprise anyone - after all, humans are an integral part of the ecosystem and the dominant form of life. I do not see this as a valuation, but as a simple fact. I just don't understand that many people follow this fallacy that humans are responsible for the climate. To me, this is actually colonialist thinking, where Homo Superior takes responsibility for the supposedly "underdeveloped". The climate does not need protection. From the point of view of the climate, everything is fine. Only we as humans have a problem: that we do not want to subordinate ourselves and adapt accordingly. But that we think to be able to determine everything.