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There is a chance we are already doomed. We may have already hit a tipping point that'll trip other tipping points and things will get bad faster than the human

There is a chance we are already doomed. We may have already hit a tipping point that'll trip other tipping points and things will get bad faster than the human race is capable, even on a good day, of overcoming. But even still, it doesn't really change what the best course of action is. We should electrify everything, deploy renewables, EVs and heat pumps widely, tax carbon etc. We'll live happier, richer, healthier lives right up until when (if?) doom overtakes us. Feel free to be a doomer, but don't be a sucker and let yourself be manipulated by obvious lies.

_hypx 4y ago
Doomerism is catching on because nearly none of those ideas are worth a damn. It's something of an subconscious realization that most environmentalists are not serious people, and most policies are intended to placate the electorate rather than solve anything. When we see a large scale push for more nuclear power, mass transit, opposition to car-centric neighborhoods, shifting of focus to stopping industrial emissions, acceptance of ideas like geoengineering, as well as various other "unacceptable" ideas, then we will have become serious about climate change. If we want to stop doomerism, we'll have to make a massive shift on how we view the problem. Until then, doomerism is a logical conclusion of how we're actually attempting to solve the problem.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- htss2013 4y ago
  You're right that it's a logical conclusion given what's actually happening, but your examples aren't the reasons why people are starting to realize this. Eg, a mystery entity blew up the nord stream 2 pipeline and caused so much methane to be released, that years worth of past and future carbon progress have been erased. When people see that no one important cares about that because Russia is naughty, and people are still going on about your neighborhood design, what else is there to conclude?
  - _hypx 4y ago
    Why do you think Europe is importing so much natural gas in the first place? What Russia is doing is a symptom of the problem. It is not the problem.
    - htss2013 4y ago
      What is the root problem that you think motivates Russia?
      - _hypx 4y ago
        Europe is buying Russia's natural gas. That is the root problem. In fact, with the shut downs of nuclear power, Europe is more dependent on natural gas and coal than it had been for decades.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  I think it's catching on because it's easier than feeling like you're complicit in not doing anything (providing you an out) and it's something for people to project their other ennui onto.
- NumberWangMan 4y ago
  Most of the environmentalists I hang out with are on board with most of those ideas, myself included. (And also carbon taxation, which incentivizes a bunch of them) Geo-engineering is a tough one, and I think should be viewed as a last resort, once we're already well on our way to decarbonizing, because otherwise it's the equivalent of trying to stop a speeding car by pressing the brakes without taking your foot off the gas. Something like releasing particulates may cool the earth, but is really hard to do reliably and accurately, and if you ever stop, you're in for a large amount of very sudden warming. There's also a moral hazard effect. It's not fixing the problems, it's trying to treat the symptoms. That said, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it, I just want to make sure we're at least also attacking the root causes as hard as we can as well.
  - _hypx 4y ago
    If you're referring to nuclear, that only happened recently. Before, environmentalists had done more to stop zero emissions energy than to promote it. Geoengineering is likely to be the same type of fight. We pretty much have to do it. There's no way around it at this point. It's biggest enemy are environmentalists who demand ideological purity. It's heading towards the same story as anti-nuclearism. It should also be noted that people who are pro-nuclear or pro-geoengineering are not fanatics and are not obsessed with their ideas in the way radical environmentalists are. No one is suggesting that they replace all other ideas. Radical environmentalists who suggest that is the case are basically projecting. As if their opponents are as crazy as they are with their ideas.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  That's just a slightly different (though overlapping) list of things you think we should do. Things that apparently you think could a) save us from doom, and b) be good ideas anyway, so my basic point stands: doomerism doesn't change our options.
hn_version_0023 4y ago
Here's a thing I've wondered, and it's a genuine question. I'm not terribly well educated so please bear with me if every bit of this is wrong... and correct my understanding! If electricity produces heat through resistance and the earth loses heat to space, if the rate of heat produced by electricity is more than the rate we lose heat to space, won't that warm the earth over time? If that's the case, wouldn't it then be wise to shut down all electricity production, world-wide? Please note I'm not advocating this as a "solution" because obviously there are a huge number of problems with throwing humanity back into the stone age.
- shrimp_emoji 4y ago
  Every type of energy/work generates heat. That's entropy. What you're describing is a runaway greenhouse effect, which depends on the composition of the atmosphere. Venus hit one without electric cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Venu... > A runaway greenhouse effect involving carbon dioxide and water vapor likely occurred on Venus. Carbon dioxide is also responsible for global warming on Earth, so putting more of it into the atmosphere with fossil fuels would be the thing to stop/mitigate.
- undersuit 4y ago
  Yes, which is why burning fossil fuels is bad, we're releasing energy that didn't radiate into space during a time where the environment was already much hotter... and even at an extreme point coating the earth in solar panels would affect our albedo enough to increase the temperature, regardless if we use the energy they create. Heat is actually the limiting factor for our growth on this planet. We can grow food off planet, we can't really increase our heat radiation rate.
- NumberWangMan 4y ago
  If you get electricity from the sun (or the wind, which is essentially sun power), then you are heating the earth no more than it would be heated by the sunlight anyway. You're just intercepting the sunlight power and using it to do something useful, instead of letting it heat up the ground, or letting the wind heat up the air through friction. Similarly with hydroelectric power. That doesn't apply to fossil fuels or nuclear power, though. But really, the biggest factor by far is how easy it is for long-wave radiation to escape the earth. One thing that isn't intuitive is that every particle of heat radiation that escapes the earth is likely to have "tried" lots of times before, but been reflected back by greenhouse gases (or has bounced around in the atmosphere a lot, being absorbed and re-emitted by CO2 or methane or H20). Basically, only a tiny fraction of the heat radiated from earth actually makes it to space instead of being reflected back. So changing that balance is really what causes the climate to warm, not generating more heat on earth.
upsidesinclude 4y ago
Not to be a doomer here, but have you considered what it will take in mining to achieve your goal? Not the least of which is the energy required to accomplish the task. It is worth a moment of your time to understand. At 82kgs of copper per vehicle 1.5 billion vehicles, doubling every 20 years 80 million cars produced annually. Even if we only made EVs starting today. It would take almost 20 years to replace the cars on the road, by which point, the number of cars being utilized would have doubled. With all the copper produced on earth. So that doesnt take into account large trucks or the windings for the transformers to charge the vehicles, nor does it take into account increases in output. Nevertheless, it is no small feat. Our lives will not be happier, richer or healthier as a result any time soon.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  > but have you considered what it will take in mining to achieve your goal? Yes: > fossil fuels require much more mining and drilling than clean energy technologies. Today the world mines 8 billion tons of coal every year, whereas the clean energy transition is estimated to require around 3.5 billion tons of minerals in total over the next three decades. https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/blog/are-clean-technologies-and-renewable-energies-better-for-the-environment-than-fossil-fuels/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/blog/are-clean-technol...
  - upsidesinclude 4y ago
    Yeah, i dont have to read that link to know it's garbage. Guess what the concentration of coal is when mined. Clue: 100. Guess the concentration of metal in ores when mined.... Please don't be misled by these types of fallacious arguments.

_hypx 4y ago

Doomerism is catching on because nearly none of those ideas are worth a damn. It's something of an subconscious realization that most environmentalists are not serious people, and most policies are intended to placate the electorate rather than solve anything. When we see a large scale push for more nuclear power, mass transit, opposition to car-centric neighborhoods, shifting of focus to stopping industrial emissions, acceptance of ideas like geoengineering, as well as various other "unacceptable" ideas, then we will have become serious about climate change. If we want to stop doomerism, we'll have to make a massive shift on how we view the problem. Until then, doomerism is a logical conclusion of how we're actually attempting to solve the problem.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
htss2013 4y ago
You're right that it's a logical conclusion given what's actually happening, but your examples aren't the reasons why people are starting to realize this. Eg, a mystery entity blew up the nord stream 2 pipeline and caused so much methane to be released, that years worth of past and future carbon progress have been erased. When people see that no one important cares about that because Russia is naughty, and people are still going on about your neighborhood design, what else is there to conclude?
- _hypx 4y ago
  Why do you think Europe is importing so much natural gas in the first place? What Russia is doing is a symptom of the problem. It is not the problem.
  - htss2013 4y ago
    What is the root problem that you think motivates Russia?
    - _hypx 4y ago
      Europe is buying Russia's natural gas. That is the root problem. In fact, with the shut downs of nuclear power, Europe is more dependent on natural gas and coal than it had been for decades.
shrimp_emoji 4y ago
I think it's catching on because it's easier than feeling like you're complicit in not doing anything (providing you an out) and it's something for people to project their other ennui onto.
NumberWangMan 4y ago
Most of the environmentalists I hang out with are on board with most of those ideas, myself included. (And also carbon taxation, which incentivizes a bunch of them) Geo-engineering is a tough one, and I think should be viewed as a last resort, once we're already well on our way to decarbonizing, because otherwise it's the equivalent of trying to stop a speeding car by pressing the brakes without taking your foot off the gas. Something like releasing particulates may cool the earth, but is really hard to do reliably and accurately, and if you ever stop, you're in for a large amount of very sudden warming. There's also a moral hazard effect. It's not fixing the problems, it's trying to treat the symptoms. That said, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it, I just want to make sure we're at least also attacking the root causes as hard as we can as well.
- _hypx 4y ago
  If you're referring to nuclear, that only happened recently. Before, environmentalists had done more to stop zero emissions energy than to promote it. Geoengineering is likely to be the same type of fight. We pretty much have to do it. There's no way around it at this point. It's biggest enemy are environmentalists who demand ideological purity. It's heading towards the same story as anti-nuclearism. It should also be noted that people who are pro-nuclear or pro-geoengineering are not fanatics and are not obsessed with their ideas in the way radical environmentalists are. No one is suggesting that they replace all other ideas. Radical environmentalists who suggest that is the case are basically projecting. As if their opponents are as crazy as they are with their ideas.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
That's just a slightly different (though overlapping) list of things you think we should do. Things that apparently you think could a) save us from doom, and b) be good ideas anyway, so my basic point stands: doomerism doesn't change our options.

hn_version_0023 4y ago

Here's a thing I've wondered, and it's a genuine question. I'm not terribly well educated so please bear with me if every bit of this is wrong... and correct my understanding! If electricity produces heat through resistance and the earth loses heat to space, if the rate of heat produced by electricity is more than the rate we lose heat to space, won't that warm the earth over time? If that's the case, wouldn't it then be wise to shut down all electricity production, world-wide? Please note I'm not advocating this as a "solution" because obviously there are a huge number of problems with throwing humanity back into the stone age.

shrimp_emoji 4y ago
Every type of energy/work generates heat. That's entropy. What you're describing is a runaway greenhouse effect, which depends on the composition of the atmosphere. Venus hit one without electric cars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Venus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_greenhouse_effect#Venu... > A runaway greenhouse effect involving carbon dioxide and water vapor likely occurred on Venus. Carbon dioxide is also responsible for global warming on Earth, so putting more of it into the atmosphere with fossil fuels would be the thing to stop/mitigate.
undersuit 4y ago
Yes, which is why burning fossil fuels is bad, we're releasing energy that didn't radiate into space during a time where the environment was already much hotter... and even at an extreme point coating the earth in solar panels would affect our albedo enough to increase the temperature, regardless if we use the energy they create. Heat is actually the limiting factor for our growth on this planet. We can grow food off planet, we can't really increase our heat radiation rate.
NumberWangMan 4y ago
If you get electricity from the sun (or the wind, which is essentially sun power), then you are heating the earth no more than it would be heated by the sunlight anyway. You're just intercepting the sunlight power and using it to do something useful, instead of letting it heat up the ground, or letting the wind heat up the air through friction. Similarly with hydroelectric power. That doesn't apply to fossil fuels or nuclear power, though. But really, the biggest factor by far is how easy it is for long-wave radiation to escape the earth. One thing that isn't intuitive is that every particle of heat radiation that escapes the earth is likely to have "tried" lots of times before, but been reflected back by greenhouse gases (or has bounced around in the atmosphere a lot, being absorbed and re-emitted by CO2 or methane or H20). Basically, only a tiny fraction of the heat radiated from earth actually makes it to space instead of being reflected back. So changing that balance is really what causes the climate to warm, not generating more heat on earth.

upsidesinclude 4y ago

Not to be a doomer here, but have you considered what it will take in mining to achieve your goal? Not the least of which is the energy required to accomplish the task. It is worth a moment of your time to understand. At 82kgs of copper per vehicle 1.5 billion vehicles, doubling every 20 years 80 million cars produced annually. Even if we only made EVs starting today. It would take almost 20 years to replace the cars on the road, by which point, the number of cars being utilized would have doubled. With all the copper produced on earth. So that doesnt take into account large trucks or the windings for the transformers to charge the vehicles, nor does it take into account increases in output. Nevertheless, it is no small feat. Our lives will not be happier, richer or healthier as a result any time soon.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
> but have you considered what it will take in mining to achieve your goal? Yes: > fossil fuels require much more mining and drilling than clean energy technologies. Today the world mines 8 billion tons of coal every year, whereas the clean energy transition is estimated to require around 3.5 billion tons of minerals in total over the next three decades. https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/blog/are-clean-technologies-and-renewable-energies-better-for-the-environment-than-fossil-fuels/ https://citizensclimatelobby.org/blog/blog/are-clean-technol...
- upsidesinclude 4y ago
  Yeah, i dont have to read that link to know it's garbage. Guess what the concentration of coal is when mined. Clue: 100. Guess the concentration of metal in ores when mined.... Please don't be misled by these types of fallacious arguments.