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I really don't get what is supposed to happen. The folks that can do something about this have no incentive to do so - instead, they're often incentivized to do

• bee_rider 4y ago
  Maybe the Great Filter was inside us the whole time!
  • Teknoman117 4y ago
    That is one of the Great Filter thought examples already, right? A civilization whose technology advances faster than its understanding of the impacts of said technology may blot themselves out early on.
• gmuslera 4y ago
  Sometimes substractive approaches work better than additive ones. It may not be about what else you can do, but what things that you are doing you may stop to do so to push a change. Less consumption, travel, driving and so on, done on scale, may eventually hit the ones that do the biggest damages. 2020 was the biggest setback to some of the most nasty trends in recent years because we collectively did a lot less on those and other categories.
  • llsf 4y ago
    2020 was a setback. 2020 was forced on us, and there is no way that any country would willing decide to apply such a setback on itself, voluntarily for the sake of saving the planet. The tricky part is to find a path that does not impede the economy and yet reduces the CO2 (to zero or even start capturing it). Most of the CO2 emissions are linked to fossil fuel, and so the economy in general. We are addict to fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is the life blood of all the economies. There is a say that there are 2 ways to limit your consumption: 1. You are willing to reduce your consumption => Sobriety 2. The consumption reduction because you cannot afford => Poverty Sobriety is hard, but as time passes, the climate consequences are getting more expensive. If we ignore sobriety, we will eventually fell in poverty as fossil fuel is a limited resource and we will not be able to afford it for ever. The sooner we get rid of it, the better. To govern is to foresee. Our government should plan accordingly.
• staunton 4y ago
  It looks very simple. Public awareness and pressure will gradually change those incentives and emissions will be reduced significantly. At the same time people are going to adapt to the new environment as best they can and live on. If everything goes well, living standards around the world in a hundred years will be a lot higher than now. Of course, this is not a given. A lot of people have to work very hard to get there. A lot of people have to change their minds or die, their opinions losing relevance. Alot of people will get unlucky or won't have the means to adapt to the new conditions, resulting in some of the worst humanitarian crises the world has ever seen. Conflict and war is a possibility that might work against this solution. There might be some big issues noone can think of now. However unsexy this might sound, this is the solution and it will happen. The question is when and how much suffering it will take to get there.
• Robotbeat 4y ago
  “Not as per musk” I mean, when you get rid of techno-fixes, you’re left with 100% unrealistic political solutions (Degrowth) and, like, maybe mass genocide? Why are people so conditioned nowadays to be anti-technology in fixing this? There are no solutions that are neither technological nor terrible. Decarbonization via electrification while simultaneously transitioning all electricity to renewables (& maybe some nuclear) is the most straightforward method. Besides solar radiation management, like sulfur aerosols in the stratosphere, which is scary-cheap. Or accelerated weathering.
  • halfjoking 4y ago
    Most straightforward carbon removal is accelerated rock weathering IMO https://www.projectvesta.org/ https://www.projectvesta.org/ The ocean is the carbon sink that’s reaching a tipping point. If it keeps becoming more acidic and heating up, the plankton will die, oxygen levels drop and we all die. Limestone rock weathering is how carbon is lowered naturally - usually it happens from an earthquake that exposes these types of rocks. Then over millions of years they suck carbon out of ocean as they weather. Accelerating that process by transporting the rocks to coastal areas with a lot of waves will dramatically reduce carbon. We’re talking carbon removal at less than $20/ton. Nothing else comes close, is as natural, or attacks the problem at the source by going after ocean carbon and acidification. We need $1 trillion spent yearly on rock weathering and we could avert mass death this decade. We got about 3 years to do it. 2026 is the last chance since El Niño and the sun cycle is at peak that year, after that human civilization is done for.
    • koalala 4y ago
      sorry, I'm aware that climate change is a serious problem requiring decisive action, but could you explain exactly your claim that 'humanity is done for' by 2026? this sounds somewhat exaggerated and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
      • halfjoking 4y ago
        Yeah it's alarmist, but I believe exponential growth in climate change could occur very soon due to feedbacks. Here's the reasoning: https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2023/02/dire-situation-gets-even-more-dire.html https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2023/02/dire-situation-gets... Only thing I disagree with on that blog is that the feedbacks will happen over a longer timeline. But 2026 is the tipping point year where climate change starts accelerating so fast it won't be able to be stopped. Then over the next 5-10 years things like "Clouds Tipping Point" (https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/clouds-feedback.html https://arctic-news.blogspot.com/p/clouds-feedback.html) will be reached. So 2026 is the beginning of the end of human civilization IMO. Of course some people may live underground, in the ocean or other places, but billions of people will die within 10 years following the 2026 tipping point. Billions is the low estimate, more like 99.999999% of humans.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• 2102922286 4y ago
  Here's a video made 53 years ago about how we need to tackle pollution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA45iKHjoGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MA45iKHjoGg A lot of it still rings true today. The sad thing is that we _knew_ that _something_ had to be done, but our political and economic structures provide no incentive for long-term thinking, and so we didn't change anything.
• vbxi 4y ago
  > Pardon my french, but are we just completely and collectively fucked? What does a solution, long or short term, look like - realistically, not as per Musk et al? We are, but not in our lifetimes. Our children's children's children are going to start getting the worst of it, and there's very little we can do about it now. The scales have already been tipped towards destruction, and we're just awaiting the inevitable.
  • deanCommie 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • vbxi 4y ago
      How so?
      • deanCommie 4y ago
        While some of the most visible effects of climate change are likely irreversible, and multiple animal species will be extinct, and hundreds of millions of people are going to be displaced and killed, statements like yours make people think that we should just stop and do nothing. Which would make the problem even WORSE. We still must act to make sure that ONLY some ocean species are extinct, not an entire collapse of oceanic ecosystems, and that ONLY hundreds of millions in some parts of the world are affected, not the entire human race. Defeatism only guarantees defeat.
• Rury 4y ago
  Well, given enough time, our current understanding of physics implies that we are screwed no matter what we do (and there is no possible solution). As for more relevant practical matters, no not necessarily. Mostly a matter of carbon going into the atmosphere must be < carbon leaving the atmosphere. Many solutions that can help with that, but fossil fuels are by far the biggest culprit and the root of the current problem. Cutting out their use completely would be more than half the battle, but it would obviously come at a huge cost. It's politics, that's the real problem.
  • junon 4y ago
    I'm not talking about heat death or the sun exploding. I'm talking about within the next century.
• motohagiography 4y ago
  I could go on at length and quite reasonably, but how do you reconcile with people who don't recognize your apprehension of "the planet," and "us."
• bryanlarsen 4y ago
  If we would have done nothing, we'd have ended up with something like 6 degrees of warming. Instead we have a good hope of limiting it to 3 degrees. Still way too much, but way better than i expected 20 years ago. At this point 1.5 is hopeless, but 2 isn't, so let's make it our goal.
  • revelio 4y ago
    CO2 levels have continued on their long term trend since it started to be measured so no, there's really nothing that's been done and actual warming since the mid 70s is way way less than 6 degrees. All projections of such levels of warning were way off base.
    • ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
      what makes you think they were way off base, keeping in mind that the relationship between the two isn't necessarily linear or perfect?
      • revelio 4y ago
        Isn't that a repetition? Predictions based on assuming a perfectly understood relationship that led to 6 degree predictions, combined with no reduction in CO2 growth and yet a much less than 6 degree rise = way off base. What else would you call such a prediction? BTW I don't think many people were actually predicting 6 degrees so this is a bit academic. 6 degree rise sounds more like the IPCC's discredit "business as usual" RCP8.5 scenario. Most models predict a linear-ish trend of about 0.25C per decade, as you'd expect given their underlying premise that warming is all driven by CO2 and CO2 increases more or less linearly: https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-models-global-Tsfc-vs-obs-thru-2013.jpg https://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-mod... https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/ Edit: actually Hansen was predicting in 1988 a 6-7 degree rise by 2050 "if we do nothing", that's clearly not going to happen given that since then it's been about 0.5 degrees and CO2 levels have continued to climb inexorably.
• HyperSane 4y ago
  What is really frustrating is that the people most likely to believe climate change is real are also the people most opposed to nuclear power, the only real option to mitigate it long term.
• ChatGTP 4y ago
  Apparently we should light up as many GPUs as possible and LLMs what to do. People are actually counting on this.
• Gigachad 4y ago
  People will start to get more radical if things don’t change. They are starting now to deflate the tires of oversized SUVs. Later I can imagine the destruction of property which is damaging the environment and the disruption of industries like coal power plants.
  • Our_Benefactors 4y ago
    Environmental terrorism won’t catch on since it is after all, you know, terrorism. A crunchy granola crackpot letting air out of a few car tires won’t become a trend, it’s a clickbait for ecofacists.
    • pornel 4y ago
      When whole countries start experiencing deadly heatwaves and crop failures making them uninhabitable, we will have real terrorism and wars over this.
    • Gigachad 4y ago
      It won’t have to catch on because the change is already happening. Negative sentiment around oversized cars, fossil fuel companies, and single use plastics is already widespread. Throwing paint on fur coats didn’t unite buyers in buying more fur coats, it just highlighted how unethical they were to a population that mostly already agreed.
      • pharmakom 4y ago
        Agree. It’s all about moving the Overton window to determine what gets mass adoption.
      • Our_Benefactors 4y ago
        You can feel negatively against those things without supporting ecoterrorism like degassing tires, blocking freeway traffic, and vandalizing property.
        • 4y ago
• hothead334 4y ago
  The Hacker News consensus is that no one is doing anything. I used to believe this and despair. But that is _just not true_. I've subscribed to the Harvard C Change newsletter and it's really changed my perspective - past issues here: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/climateoptimist/ https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/climateoptimist/ Just one highlight: the current has administration canceled three fossil fuel lease sales in 2022 due to a lack of industry interest In contrast, there are currently 18 active offshore wind leases with 14 new site assessment plans approved, including the scoping of the first wind energy areas in the Gulf of Mexico and Gulf of Maine.[0] I also look at this daily, although it's more focussed on Europe: https://www.positive.news/ https://www.positive.news/ It's not all sunshine and roses. But the narrative should be: 'some humans, albeit perhaps the minority, are fighting save this planet, and are winning at least of their battles'. Maybe it will be too little too late. But the narrative is decidedly not 'existential threat to our species and others, and no one gives a shit'. [0]https://www.americanprogress.org/article/offshore-wind-can-lower-energy-prices-and-beat-out-oil-and-gas/ https://www.americanprogress.org/article/offshore-wind-can-l...
• luckydata 4y ago
  It's very much an Horizon Zero Dawn kind of situation. We are collectively fucked and there's nothing realistic that can be done.