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On a tangentially related note, it confuses me why so many people seem to think that the only reason to do away with fossil fuels as much as possible is climate

On a tangentially related note, it confuses me why so many people seem to think that the only reason to do away with fossil fuels as much as possible is climate change. Millions die prematurely from air pollution every year. Even if climate change was fake we should still be trying to use cleaner energy.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jrussino 4y ago
"What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_and_we_create_a_better_world_for_nothing%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an...
- soperj 4y ago
  I honestly feel that people have got away with one with this type of thinking. In my province (British Columbia), there's a few major issues that have all been attributed to climate change; forest fires, flooding & decline of the salmon populations. Since there's this big boogeyman that they can't solve themselves (climate change), they don't even have to look into their forest management practices (spraying round-up to kill Aspen - a firebreak species - to plant mono-culture round-up ready pine stands - a serotineous species), or their off-shore fish farms that are located at the mouth of some of the most important rivers for salmon (spread sea lice and disease) or power generation (almost exclusively hydro dams), or that they've drained lakes for farm land and when the levees can't keep up the land floods again. Great Barrier Reef is another prime example, pollution is causing a lot of issues, but you only hear of coral bleaching because of climate change.
  - VancouverMan 4y ago
    The government-imposed greenbelts around some major Canadian cities have also backfired. The reduced supply of land drives up prices within the urban area surrounded by the greenbelt. This in turn just encourages more sprawl on the outer edges of the greenbelt, where land can be cheaper. Those living in these new developments often commute into the urban area for work or other reasons, and now have to drive much farther each day as they pass through the greenbelt two (or more) times. Infrastructure development in and through the greenbelt becomes bureaucratically challenging, preventing public transit or more efficient road infrastructure from being built. Environmental regulations can too often have unanticipated (or ignored) environmental impacts that negate many of the supposed benefits.
    - ripley12 4y ago
      Ehh. The Agricultural Land Reserve really isn't the problem in Vancouver. Cities already have a ton of land where they can+should be allowing more housing but aren't (ex: the vast majority of residential land in Vancouver bans townhouses+apartments+condos). With the exception of maybe some parts of Richmond, I don't think there's much a case that the ALR is the problem here.
      - elmalto 4y ago
        Agree. Just drive down main once and look at all the 2 story buildings… not even talking about the neighborhoods that are primarily detached. Vancouver is so expensive yet nobody is allowed to create denser housing. Nimbyism at its finest
        npc12345 4y ago
- rayiner 4y ago
  This assumes there is no cost to the change.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    The real question is if the cost to change is less than the current or future costs of inaction. I find what you said a manipulate style of argument used frequently today. "What about lithium mines" ignoring the various oil disasters and the effects of drilling "What if the vaccine had a 2% chance of killing me" ignoring the probability of dying from covid (made up numbers here) I'm not claiming which side is right but these are often framed as the choice between the cost of the change and no cost.
    - rayiner 4y ago
      But the premise of the point made by @jrussino is that the avoided costs of mitigating climate change turn out to be less than anticipated. In that case, we will have spent a lot of money for little benefit. The snarky joke doesn’t make logical sense.
      - themitigating 4y ago
        I replied to your comment of "This assumes there is no cost to the change." which is not nor is it ever the case.
        rayiner 4y ago
        Except it is the case in the joke I was replying to: > "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an... This joke asserts that climate change mitigation measures would be justified even if climate change was a hoax. And that joke only works if you assume that those measures are free, or at least very cheap.
        4y ago
- refurb 4y ago
  That's not a great argument. There are limited resources. If we spend on X, it means we don't spend on Y. If it turns out Y is the bigger problem? Well, we missed a massive opportunity to make the world even better.
- LoganDark 4y ago
  That is my new favorite quote.
borissk 4y ago
- Syonyk 4y ago
  In other words, you've not talked to many (any?) Trump supporters, and are just speculating about what evilly evil things they might evilly support for their own evil ends. Or something of the sort. The conservative end of the spectrum is generally more concerned with things like "a stable power grid with enough power at all times" than carbon emissions, though I know quite a few pretty hard conservatives with solar, hybrids, EVs, etc. And a good case can be made for all that stuff without bothering with carbon emissions at all. And then you see things like California, within a week or so, deciding to ban ICE car sales in some fairly near future, and having to send out power announcements about "Please don't charge your EV during these hours." It doesn't take a genius to do the math that, hey, more EVs charging while coal power plants are turned down, that might be a problem. I think it's a solvable one, but "shouting down anyone who points it down as a fossil fuel shill" (as happens in some circles of the internet - not here, but I've certainly been accused it for some nuanced arguments about power systems) doesn't help solve it. If coal with carbon capture has a future in the power grid... so be it.
  - jonstewart 4y ago
    > If coal with carbon capture has a future in the power grid... so be it. It doesn’t. Coal’s sinking like a lead balloon because it’s too expensive. It is far cheaper to build ridiculous overcapacity of wind and solar, with moderate storage, than to pursue other energy sources, like nuclear or coal. Live by the market, die by the market.
    - Syonyk 4y ago
      For now, certainly. We'll see what it looks like long term. Of course, we've let China dominate the production of wind and solar equipment... which won't come back to bite us as a trade war continues heating up. Of course, nobody is willing to have conversations about just using radically less energy. Can't have that...
newsclues 4y ago
As a bike riding hippie in the age of video meetings and streaming, explain to me why the world elite need to fly all over the world in private jets to discuss climate change? Can you tell me why my grocery store stopped giving out free plastic bags by charging for them, and now phasing them out for paper, but they still sell plastic garbage bags and I can't reuse the grocery store bag for my garbage bag now? Can you tell me why bunker fuel for cargo ships which is a major driver for pollution isn't being stopped? Seems like there are a limited number of large ships creating a massive amount of emissions that would be go after. Can you explain why the phrase "Climate Change" is a better mission that "reduce pollution", which seems easier to understand and get behind for everyone?
- fragmede 4y ago
  I don't know about the others, but for the last one, "reduce pollution" only works if people, who aren't bike riding hippies by a large margin, see any point in reducing pollution. Why is pollution even bad, anyway? Seriously, factories have been working for centuries and nothing has gone wrong, so why should we regulate where they can pour their waste or make them pay for environmental nonsense like carbon capture? It's just this weird hippy tax that has no point since nothing has gone wrong. Climate change (because people were too stupid to use the phrase "global warming" without making fun of the "warming" part whenever it was remotely cold) encapsulates the need for people to care about pollution with the understanding that it may be future generations will reap the benefits in a way that "reduce pollution" does not.
  - maxbond 4y ago
    (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33713513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33713513 ) > Seriously, factories have been working for centuries and nothing has gone wrong, so why should we regulate where they can pour their waste or make them pay for environmental nonsense like carbon capture? Pardon? Factories have caused all sorts of problems with discharge, intentional or unintentional. Here's some from the top of my head: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster (mismanagement at a pesticide factory causes an explosion, poisoning many people and permanently contaminating the surrounding landscape). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease (a factory discharged mercury into the sea for years, where it interacted with anaerobic bacteria in the sediment to become incredibly deadly organic mercury and poisoned an entire town) Keep in mind, these are from the top of my head and I am a nonexpert; we have environmental regulations because people have been hurt or killed by pollution numerous times. Here's a quote that I hope will emphasize just how powerful pollution can be on an industrial scale: > Pollution was so heavy at the mouth of the wastewater canal, a figure of 2 kg of mercury per ton of sediment was measured: a level that would be economically viable to mine. Indeed, Chisso did later set up a subsidiary to reclaim and sell the mercury recovered from the sludge. They literally dumped enough mercury into the river to turn it into a mercury mine. If that doesn't convince you that factories haven't simply been operating with "nothing going wrong", then I don't know what to say.
jodrellblank 4y ago
There was a reply to this comment, now deleted, which said "Should have cars add something to exhaust so humans can see/smell it--even if just for demo purposes. Might help people to understand." And I wanted to reply to that to say that we did used to be able to see exhaust fumes, and things were added so that we can't see them. I have often thought that "the school run" would be different if everyone could see the cars pumping out exhaust outside the school, but history suggests that what would be different is people wouldn't want to see it, rather than being inconvenienced by getting rid of it. And that's a pattern which comes over from elderly care problems, homelessness and mental health problems, poverty problems, where the actions taken are often closer to sweeping under the rug than trying to solve the root causes. > "Millions die prematurely from air pollution every year." Especially including the radiation in the emissions from coal burning power plants, which kills more people every year than any nuclear power plant accident.
- MorrisMinor 4y ago
  Radiation from coal is probably not a problem: "These studies concluded that the maximum radiation dose to an individual living within 1 km of a modern power plant is equivalent to a minor, perhaps 1 to 5 percent, increase above the radiation from the natural environment" https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html
- legulere 4y ago
  > Especially including the radiation in the emissions from coal burning power plants, which kills more people every year than any nuclear power plant accident. I once did the maths, Chernobyl was on the order of 100 times Chinas current yearly nuclear emissions caused by coal burning. Particulate matter and nitrogen oxides are the real issue (and sulphur dioxide where it’s not filtered out yet).
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    There's one particular mine/set of generators in china that basically just burns low-grade uranium ore (the ash is more concentrated than Namibian and Nigerian mines). If you exclude that one 100x is about right. For the rest, yeah. Also La Hague emits about 1/20th of a chernobyl per year. CO2/NOx/SOx/particulates from coal are still worse.
CrypticShift 4y ago
Because major environmental actors (big NGOs...) are mostly engaging in a PR exercise to incite fear into our collective lizard brain. As Attenborough said: "saving our planet is now a communications challenge" Linking Climate to life-threatening scenarios like Hurricanes (that hit you in-your-face) and food crisis, are more apt to rattle us into panicky action. Slow, inconspicuous, decades-in-the-making ill-health (but not sudden death) inducing chemicals in our water, air and food will never make it through our current processes of media and political decision-making.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jrussino 4y ago

"What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_and_we_create_a_better_world_for_nothing%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an...

soperj 4y ago
I honestly feel that people have got away with one with this type of thinking. In my province (British Columbia), there's a few major issues that have all been attributed to climate change; forest fires, flooding & decline of the salmon populations. Since there's this big boogeyman that they can't solve themselves (climate change), they don't even have to look into their forest management practices (spraying round-up to kill Aspen - a firebreak species - to plant mono-culture round-up ready pine stands - a serotineous species), or their off-shore fish farms that are located at the mouth of some of the most important rivers for salmon (spread sea lice and disease) or power generation (almost exclusively hydro dams), or that they've drained lakes for farm land and when the levees can't keep up the land floods again. Great Barrier Reef is another prime example, pollution is causing a lot of issues, but you only hear of coral bleaching because of climate change.
- VancouverMan 4y ago
  The government-imposed greenbelts around some major Canadian cities have also backfired. The reduced supply of land drives up prices within the urban area surrounded by the greenbelt. This in turn just encourages more sprawl on the outer edges of the greenbelt, where land can be cheaper. Those living in these new developments often commute into the urban area for work or other reasons, and now have to drive much farther each day as they pass through the greenbelt two (or more) times. Infrastructure development in and through the greenbelt becomes bureaucratically challenging, preventing public transit or more efficient road infrastructure from being built. Environmental regulations can too often have unanticipated (or ignored) environmental impacts that negate many of the supposed benefits.
  - ripley12 4y ago
    Ehh. The Agricultural Land Reserve really isn't the problem in Vancouver. Cities already have a ton of land where they can+should be allowing more housing but aren't (ex: the vast majority of residential land in Vancouver bans townhouses+apartments+condos). With the exception of maybe some parts of Richmond, I don't think there's much a case that the ALR is the problem here.
    - elmalto 4y ago
      Agree. Just drive down main once and look at all the 2 story buildings… not even talking about the neighborhoods that are primarily detached. Vancouver is so expensive yet nobody is allowed to create denser housing. Nimbyism at its finest
      - npc12345 4y ago
rayiner 4y ago
This assumes there is no cost to the change.
- themitigating 4y ago
  The real question is if the cost to change is less than the current or future costs of inaction. I find what you said a manipulate style of argument used frequently today. "What about lithium mines" ignoring the various oil disasters and the effects of drilling "What if the vaccine had a 2% chance of killing me" ignoring the probability of dying from covid (made up numbers here) I'm not claiming which side is right but these are often framed as the choice between the cost of the change and no cost.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    But the premise of the point made by @jrussino is that the avoided costs of mitigating climate change turn out to be less than anticipated. In that case, we will have spent a lot of money for little benefit. The snarky joke doesn’t make logical sense.
    - themitigating 4y ago
      I replied to your comment of "This assumes there is no cost to the change." which is not nor is it ever the case.
      - rayiner 4y ago
        Except it is the case in the joke I was replying to: > "What if it's a big hoax and we create a better world for nothing?" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_if_it%27s_a_big_hoax_an... This joke asserts that climate change mitigation measures would be justified even if climate change was a hoax. And that joke only works if you assume that those measures are free, or at least very cheap.
        4y ago
refurb 4y ago
That's not a great argument. There are limited resources. If we spend on X, it means we don't spend on Y. If it turns out Y is the bigger problem? Well, we missed a massive opportunity to make the world even better.
LoganDark 4y ago
That is my new favorite quote.

borissk 4y ago

Syonyk 4y ago
In other words, you've not talked to many (any?) Trump supporters, and are just speculating about what evilly evil things they might evilly support for their own evil ends. Or something of the sort. The conservative end of the spectrum is generally more concerned with things like "a stable power grid with enough power at all times" than carbon emissions, though I know quite a few pretty hard conservatives with solar, hybrids, EVs, etc. And a good case can be made for all that stuff without bothering with carbon emissions at all. And then you see things like California, within a week or so, deciding to ban ICE car sales in some fairly near future, and having to send out power announcements about "Please don't charge your EV during these hours." It doesn't take a genius to do the math that, hey, more EVs charging while coal power plants are turned down, that might be a problem. I think it's a solvable one, but "shouting down anyone who points it down as a fossil fuel shill" (as happens in some circles of the internet - not here, but I've certainly been accused it for some nuanced arguments about power systems) doesn't help solve it. If coal with carbon capture has a future in the power grid... so be it.
- jonstewart 4y ago
  > If coal with carbon capture has a future in the power grid... so be it. It doesn’t. Coal’s sinking like a lead balloon because it’s too expensive. It is far cheaper to build ridiculous overcapacity of wind and solar, with moderate storage, than to pursue other energy sources, like nuclear or coal. Live by the market, die by the market.
  - Syonyk 4y ago
    For now, certainly. We'll see what it looks like long term. Of course, we've let China dominate the production of wind and solar equipment... which won't come back to bite us as a trade war continues heating up. Of course, nobody is willing to have conversations about just using radically less energy. Can't have that...

newsclues 4y ago

As a bike riding hippie in the age of video meetings and streaming, explain to me why the world elite need to fly all over the world in private jets to discuss climate change? Can you tell me why my grocery store stopped giving out free plastic bags by charging for them, and now phasing them out for paper, but they still sell plastic garbage bags and I can't reuse the grocery store bag for my garbage bag now? Can you tell me why bunker fuel for cargo ships which is a major driver for pollution isn't being stopped? Seems like there are a limited number of large ships creating a massive amount of emissions that would be go after. Can you explain why the phrase "Climate Change" is a better mission that "reduce pollution", which seems easier to understand and get behind for everyone?

fragmede 4y ago
I don't know about the others, but for the last one, "reduce pollution" only works if people, who aren't bike riding hippies by a large margin, see any point in reducing pollution. Why is pollution even bad, anyway? Seriously, factories have been working for centuries and nothing has gone wrong, so why should we regulate where they can pour their waste or make them pay for environmental nonsense like carbon capture? It's just this weird hippy tax that has no point since nothing has gone wrong. Climate change (because people were too stupid to use the phrase "global warming" without making fun of the "warming" part whenever it was remotely cold) encapsulates the need for people to care about pollution with the understanding that it may be future generations will reap the benefits in a way that "reduce pollution" does not.
- maxbond 4y ago
  (See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33713513 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33713513 ) > Seriously, factories have been working for centuries and nothing has gone wrong, so why should we regulate where they can pour their waste or make them pay for environmental nonsense like carbon capture? Pardon? Factories have caused all sorts of problems with discharge, intentional or unintentional. Here's some from the top of my head: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster (mismanagement at a pesticide factory causes an explosion, poisoning many people and permanently contaminating the surrounding landscape). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease (a factory discharged mercury into the sea for years, where it interacted with anaerobic bacteria in the sediment to become incredibly deadly organic mercury and poisoned an entire town) Keep in mind, these are from the top of my head and I am a nonexpert; we have environmental regulations because people have been hurt or killed by pollution numerous times. Here's a quote that I hope will emphasize just how powerful pollution can be on an industrial scale: > Pollution was so heavy at the mouth of the wastewater canal, a figure of 2 kg of mercury per ton of sediment was measured: a level that would be economically viable to mine. Indeed, Chisso did later set up a subsidiary to reclaim and sell the mercury recovered from the sludge. They literally dumped enough mercury into the river to turn it into a mercury mine. If that doesn't convince you that factories haven't simply been operating with "nothing going wrong", then I don't know what to say.

jodrellblank 4y ago

There was a reply to this comment, now deleted, which said "Should have cars add something to exhaust so humans can see/smell it--even if just for demo purposes. Might help people to understand." And I wanted to reply to that to say that we did used to be able to see exhaust fumes, and things were added so that we can't see them. I have often thought that "the school run" would be different if everyone could see the cars pumping out exhaust outside the school, but history suggests that what would be different is people wouldn't want to see it, rather than being inconvenienced by getting rid of it. And that's a pattern which comes over from elderly care problems, homelessness and mental health problems, poverty problems, where the actions taken are often closer to sweeping under the rug than trying to solve the root causes. > "Millions die prematurely from air pollution every year." Especially including the radiation in the emissions from coal burning power plants, which kills more people every year than any nuclear power plant accident.

MorrisMinor 4y ago
Radiation from coal is probably not a problem: "These studies concluded that the maximum radiation dose to an individual living within 1 km of a modern power plant is equivalent to a minor, perhaps 1 to 5 percent, increase above the radiation from the natural environment" https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/1997/fs163-97/FS-163-97.html
legulere 4y ago
> Especially including the radiation in the emissions from coal burning power plants, which kills more people every year than any nuclear power plant accident. I once did the maths, Chernobyl was on the order of 100 times Chinas current yearly nuclear emissions caused by coal burning. Particulate matter and nitrogen oxides are the real issue (and sulphur dioxide where it’s not filtered out yet).
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  There's one particular mine/set of generators in china that basically just burns low-grade uranium ore (the ash is more concentrated than Namibian and Nigerian mines). If you exclude that one 100x is about right. For the rest, yeah. Also La Hague emits about 1/20th of a chernobyl per year. CO2/NOx/SOx/particulates from coal are still worse.

CrypticShift 4y ago

Because major environmental actors (big NGOs...) are mostly engaging in a PR exercise to incite fear into our collective lizard brain. As Attenborough said: "saving our planet is now a communications challenge" Linking Climate to life-threatening scenarios like Hurricanes (that hit you in-your-face) and food crisis, are more apt to rattle us into panicky action. Slow, inconspicuous, decades-in-the-making ill-health (but not sudden death) inducing chemicals in our water, air and food will never make it through our current processes of media and political decision-making.