9 ms·

How Accurate Were EPAs Predictions of climate change from 40 years ago?

68 points by Anon84 3y ago

codingbot3000 3y ago
Impressive how actionable that report back in 1983 was. But unfortunately the political climate is probably harder to change than the real climate, otherwise there would have been more progress in the past 40 years.
- lazide 3y ago
  The political climate is mostly about what people want. Dealing with this issue will require major changes in the economy (even now fossil fuel based), and national security/foreign policy (fossil fuel based now and for the foreseeable future). Both of these no one has any plans yet which wouldn’t require major changes in the way people live and the way the US interacts with the world which would put them at a major disadvantage with everyone else, and take a hit in creature comforts, prestige, and power. At least based on the options currently available to us. And this isn’t a problem caused just by the US. So even if the US did this, the rest of the world would keep on trucking and making the issue worse. Unless the US went to war or something? Which would definitely cause massive burning of fossil fuels (and nukes) which would definitely make everything worse, and kill a whole lot of people rather directly. And seems rather evil too. Until the problem is causing real, unavoidable, unambiguous issues for everyone, of course it’s going to be denied. And even then…. If you’re ever tried to take the booze from an alcoholic, it’s obvious what’s going to happen. And we’re all drunk on cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels, and have been for a very, very long time. Don’t look up!
  - mustafa_pasi 3y ago
    We posted almost the same comment. I do disagree with one point. The US is the country with the most global power and is instrumental in driving global change so I really disagree that they do not hold a huge responsibility. I mean, Germany is trying to lead by example, but their attempt is pathetic. Nobody is going to care what Germany does and they do not have the economic and political power to enforce global change. But the US does. I am not saying the US can do it alone, but it has to show both initiative and willingness.
    - Robotbeat 3y ago
      Not only that, but people see Germany as being fundamentally unserious about climate change when they retire nuclear and keep burning insane amounts of destructive brown coal. I don’t think the electricity mix is even significantly cleaner than the US’s EDIT: confirmed, the US had 365grams of CO2 per kWh (805lbs per MWh) but Germany had 385g per kWh in 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity-power-sector-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity... https://www.statista.com/statistics/1247991/annual-power-sector-carbon-intensity-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1247991/annual-power-sec...
      - mustafa_pasi 3y ago
        People see Germany as a foolish naive nation which is currently hurting itself economically and making a clown of itself. It is having the opposite of the desired effect. Other countries will be more hesitant to transition to green technologies when they see Germany suffering.
        olddustytrail 3y ago
        Really? Which countries would those be? All the European countries that have far higher renewable use than Germany? No one considers Germany a leader in renewables. It's just a straw man for the nuclear fanboys.
        mustafa_pasi 3y ago
        Germany sees itself as a leader in the green transition even if this is not factually correct.
        olddustytrail 3y ago
        Oh, well you don't have to worry about other countries being put off by Germany's decisions, because no one else does. Good news, eh!
        3y ago
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    > Both of these no one has any plans yet which wouldn’t require major changes in the way people live Eh... I mean, nearly every country in the EU has seen reducing greenhouse gas emissions for years (even _with_ replacement of some gas generation with higher-intensity coal generation due to the invasion of Ukraine), on the foot of building retrofitting, increased renewable generation, etc. The US and China have also been investing significantly in renewable generation (though, I believe, at least in the US's case, building retrofitting has yet to start on a large scale). US emissions are broadly declining and have been for a while, Chinese emissions have almost flatlined, though are still inching up. People are doing stuff. > the way the US interacts with the world which would put them at a major disadvantage with everyone else Huh? I would think that the US is actually in a rather good position here, certainly relative to Europe and probably to China. The US is very physically big, so lots of space for renewables, and is more self-sufficient on lower-carbon-intensity fossil fuel (ie gas, likely realistically essential as a transition fuel) than the others. It would also likely find lower-intensity agriculture easier to cope with, if it comes to that. > And this isn’t a problem caused just by the US. So even if the US did this, the rest of the world would keep on trucking and making the issue worse. China is if anything currently outpacing the US on renewable and other low-intensity (nuclear) generation capacity. This feels like a comment written 30 years ago, back when no-one was doing anything much. Today, the big three are doing some stuff, with plans for more. > Until the problem is causing real, unavoidable, unambiguous issues for everyone, of course it’s going to be denied. The denial is interesting. In the developed world, it's only a significant factor in the US, Canada, and Australia, all of which have large fossil fuel industries, and in all of which it has been highly politicised. (Similar pattern in the developing world; the big denial cheerleader there being Indonesia). In most countries, it is fairly broadly accepted to be happening, and to be at least largely humanity's fault. Even in countries where denial is a significant political issue, it is generally on the decline (as you'd expect; the percentage of the electorate who'll die off anyway before we see really major impact is declining).
    - lazide 3y ago
      Ho man. To stop major, major climate impacts we long ago passed the point where reductions or caps would even make a dent. To even have a hope of not seeing major disruptive climate change we would have had to be at the point of net-negative fossil carbon releases years ago. And we’re nowhere near that. Those changes are something of course. and we’d be in a (marginally) worse situation without them. But they’re overall just minor impacts. The changes required to actually address the issue have barely been contemplated, and will be massively disruptive.
  - drewcoo 3y ago
    > . . . mostly about what people want. Which is all marketing. Marketing is designed to influence and to make us want. We can't blame people because marketing to them works. > If you’re ever tried to take the booze from an alcoholic, it’s obvious what’s going to happen I don't think it is obvious what happens when you take booze away from an alcoholic. Are you aware that the absence of alcohol can kill them? Were you trying to kill them?
    - lazide 3y ago
      Often they’ll attack you while denying there is a problem. Occasionally they’ll be okay with it. At least until the DT’s. It’s usually not pretty either way. And doing it too fast can kill them, yes.
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    > The political climate is mostly about what people want. Man someone should tell all the oil companies that are actively running campaigns to push propaganda on folks to change political opinions. Yes, it is "what people want". You're missing the line of "How did we get to the point of people wanting this". But instead of asking that question, you're jumping to blaming the victims and not the system that allowed a few people with money to completely change the thoughts and behaviors of millions of people. Now you're cooking with gas!
    - lazide 3y ago
      I’m pretty sure the people voting think it’s what they want - I’ve seen some get angry if you question it too.
- mustafa_pasi 3y ago
  The political climate is just an obfuscation. The electorate perceives the change to be too costly* and the climate risks to be too remote to justify this cost. The problem with reports such as these is that they always give you the big picture but do not directly relate it back to the individual. If people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000% due to recalculated natural disaster risks, that would suddenly make people rethink their positions. * I am actually not convinced either way. Some people believe it is so expensive it will necessitate degrowth, while others think that so much economic change will almost certainly spur economic growth. Either way I think that people who push the degrowth narrative are further reinforcing the view that climate action is too costly. Nonetheless it could be that they are right.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    > I am actually not convinced either way. Some people believe it is so expensive it will necessitate degrowth, while others think that so much economic change will almost certainly spur economic growth. Either way I think that people who push the degrowth narrative are further reinforcing the view that climate action is too costly. Nonetheless it could be that they are right. Whatever your view on that is, it doesn't really matter because the costs if climate change goes unchecked are going to be catastrophically high - direct in terms of e.g. having to rebuild burned down/flooded/etc. areas, more electricity for AC, etc. or indirect such as having to accommodate mass migration from climate refugees.
    - Filligree 3y ago
      The price of unchecked climate change is the destruction of civilisation. It might as well be infinity.
      - hotpotamus 3y ago
        Or zero - it's sort of a weird thing to think about, but I think at this point it is the likely outcome.
        3y ago
- BlandDuck 3y ago
  To be fair, there were other things on the agenda as well. The time was the height of the cold war, and 1983 was the year of the Stanislav Petrov incident that could potentially have started nuclear war. (Not to mention dealing with the Iran-Iraq war and working to reduce emissions CFC gasses to protect the Ozone layer). It is great that the world is now in a position to make serious progress on the green energy transition.
esarbe 3y ago
So, despite all the FUD by Big Oil, scientists were pretty much spot on, even back then. Such a shame we wasted 40 years because the profiteers didn't want us to know the true extent of their crimes.
- varelse 3y ago
  [dead]
- willis936 3y ago
  Oh, we've known for much longer than 40 years. https://youtu.be/MondapIjAAM?si=6_471s4ENLPar9G7 https://youtu.be/MondapIjAAM?si=6_471s4ENLPar9G7
king_magic 3y ago
Yep. Humanity is collectively so, so astonishingly stupid.
- switch007 3y ago
  Stupid, or greedy?
  - RHSman2 3y ago
    Greed = stupid when it comes to removing all resources and destroying the habitat that sustains you.
    - barelyauser 3y ago
      But they are not doing that. They are destroying the habitat YOU depend on. They have the resources to build another one. Elysium.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  There are thousands of people who's job is to actively research and find ways to create effective propaganda. It doesn't matter how smart or stupid humanity is. There will always be flaws to abuse to create propaganda. So, if we agree with "Propaganda generation is a given" - what should we do with the people who are creating it and what should we do to protect people as much as we can from corporate backed propaganda?
lsmeducation 3y ago
So what’s everyone thinking? Move to Vermont to close out our dying years in 70 degree weather?
- jfengel 3y ago
  If you live anywhere in the US you're probably ok. The southwest droughts are bad but the rivers were overused even before climate change. We'll build more air conditioners and more levees. Those rich enough to move to Vermont will be fine anywhere. The billions living in already marginal places near the equator will die or leave. That's where the real humanitarian disaster will be, and it will be far beyond precedent.
  - drewcon 3y ago
    As human being have been doing since the dawn of history.
    - acdha 3y ago
      If you learn more about history, note how much suffering was caused by famine, disease, and the ensuing warfare, too. One of the hallmarks of modern civilization is that we were less callous about shrugging off deaths & lowered quality of life. Thanks to those advances we have a much larger population than in the past which means each failure will impact numbers of people which would have been hard to reach in most of human history.
    - cjalmeida 3y ago
      Back then we could not prevent or ameliorate such disasters. This is equivalent to arguing we should not invest in sanitation because humans have been dying of cholera since ever.
      - drewcon 3y ago
        This is the equivalent of arguing that we instead invented sanitation to adapt to reality instead of sitting in our own shit and dying of cholera and opining about sanitation refugees.
alvah 3y ago
How accurate were the predictions from 50 years ago though?
- flir 3y ago
  Climate models get better over time. Comparing the output of models with subsequent real-world data proves this. Chances of a sudden about-face in the models at this point is... remote.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- slackfan 3y ago
  Shhh, don't bring up global cooling.
  - esarbe 3y ago
    I wish people would educate themselves about this myth. Global cooling was never a concern for climate scientists. It was the press that promoted it. https://gizmodo.com/reality-check-most-scientists-never-believed-in-globa-1617925806 https://gizmodo.com/reality-check-most-scientists-never-beli...
  - olddustytrail 3y ago
    Is that the global cooling that all the denier sites were predicting for 2016? You know, because the global warming was all caused by the sun and the sunspot cycle was going to enter a new Maunder Minimum leading to a new Little Ice Age. How did that work out?
  - tzs 3y ago
    There were a small number of scientists who in the '70s were predicting cooling. Those scientists agreed that greenhouse gases cause warming, but they thought that the cooling effect from particulate pollution would be more significant. The thing about particulates is that they and some of theor bad effects are very clearly directly noticeable to the average person. You could see them in the air, and feel and taste and smell then when you would breath that air. That makes it much more feasible politically to deal with them, and Congress and the states enacted many laws and programs to do so. And so particulate levels dropped dramatically over the next several years, invalidating the assumption of the models that predicted cooling.
whatever1 3y ago
It’s a simple mass balance of course we were right.
Devasta 3y ago
Yesterday I saw my nephew, just four years old, talk with such excitement at a train he saw last week. In eras gone by I'm sure this would have people wondering if he'll be a train driver when he grows up, but I'm under no illusions that "climate refugee" is the only possible future he is hurtling towards. I don't know how his parents handle it, if they have accepted it at all.
- drewcon 3y ago
  I don’t know where you (or your nephew are) but you’re tremendously underplaying the human races ability to simply adapt.
  - sofixa 3y ago
    How do you simply adapt to temperatures which are literally unlivable such as wet bulb temperatures hitting 33C+ in areas such as the Middle East and South Asia? Humans literally cannot survive at such temperatures. Mass migration or mass investment in redoing the building stock and electrical grid to make indoors habitable are the only options, and neither are really viable (tens of millions migrating will cause severe issues up to and including wars, meanwhile most of the countries likely to be impacted simply do not have the money nor governance needed to rebuild everything with AC).
    - Roark66 3y ago
      At the (usual) risk of being down voted to oblivion. There is plenty of space in more northern areas. Most European countries are approaching negative population growth. Huge swaths of Siberia and Canada are underpopulated. Still there are people that choose to live in places where one can barely survive with no AC (Dubai in summer, certain hot parts of the US, and many others). How are people "simply adapting" to these temperatures now?
      - carapace 3y ago
        That's the "mass migration" OP mentioned, eh? Do you imagine a billion people moving from India to Siberia? (Edit to add: that would be so epic that the entire Mahābhārata could be seen as it's prelude.)
slackfan 3y ago
Counter to the old Slashdot adage, let's actually read the fucking article. Remember, the headline trumpets: How Accurate Were Their Predictions? 1. Estimate seems to be alright. 2. "On target if a little high"? or you could read it as off by about 50 years. 3. Glad that this has been pointed out. 4. Whatever my opinion is on geoengineering, this is not a prediction, this is a statement of theory, there is no prediction or verdict to be had here. 5. This is also not a prediction. 6. I agree with the author re the link being proven out, but I disagree with their attribution of lack of action to climate changer denialism. Or is this the standard "Let's not call out India and China" dancing around the issue? Poor form, either way. 7. Is not a prediction. Verdict, saner than most articles regarding this, but still extremely poor. Out of seven points, three are not predictions, one has numbers that are so twisted that it can be spun any which way, two are valid points and one seems to be written specifically to deflect blame from the majority polluting nations. Not really quality journalism here, which is kinda sad. For an article that sets out to measure the accuracy of certain predictions it's sorely lacking in both predictions, as well as accuracy. Bring on the downvotes!
- myrmidon 3y ago
  I think you're being unfairly harsh calling the article "extremely poor" just because it goes off on a few tangents-- it's an article after all, not a homework assignment. > "Let's not call out India and China" You do realize that the US is doing way worse in Co2/capita/year right now than both of those (~15tons compared to ~9 and ~2, respectively)? And thats not even talking cumulative emissions. > Bring on the downvotes! "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. " -- guidelines
  - xscott 3y ago
    >> "Let's not call out India and China" > You do realize that the US is doing way worse in Co2/capita/year > right now than both of those (~15tons compared to ~9 and ~2, respectively)? If you call out "per country", China is double the US. If you call out "per capita per country", there are 14 countries worse than the US, including Canada and Australia. Not saying the US is blameless, but you're playing games with the stats. Why aren't you criticizing individuals in Qatar? They're emitting more than double the CO2 per person than the US. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...
shrubble 3y ago
Are there places where the global sea level mentioned, has risen? Not addressed in the article despite them quoting that from the original report.
- conception 3y ago
  The global sea is higher, yes, if that was your question. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-years-of-sea-level-rise https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-... https://theconversation.com/sea-level-rise-has-claimed-five-whole-islands-in-the-pacific-first-scientific-evidence-58511 https://theconversation.com/sea-level-rise-has-claimed-five-... https://abcnews.go.com/International/facing-dire-sea-level-rise-threat-maldives-turns/story?id=80929487 https://abcnews.go.com/International/facing-dire-sea-level-r... Etc etc
rich_sasha 3y ago
I think the original sin of climate change communication was fixating on average temperature rise. Even 5°C doesn't sound terrible when you think all you'll get is current climate plus a flat 5°C offset. 1.5 sounds barely noticeable. I think a lot of people heard, meh it's gonna be imperceptibly warmer, I don't care about some polar bears.
ocschwar 3y ago
Since this is Hacker News I think I should point out Moore's Law. All the computer modeling done by Hansen and others in the early 80's could be done today on a gamer desktop. The code itself is a mix of Fortran and (bleach) IDL (Interactive Data Language a product that today exists only to extract money from tiny niches of science). But rewriting it in Numpy/Julia/C++/Rust would be a month's exercise to most of us. Which means if there was some way to model the climate while discounting the greenhouse effect, thereby providing evidence against manmade global warming, someone would have done it by now, with a Jupyter notebook.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  Since this is Hacker News, I think I should point out that the claim "if there was some way to foo someone would have done it" is not evidence of absence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence
  - ocschwar 3y ago
    It's certainly not proof of absence. But when the need for climate models that discount AGW pertains to a trillion dollar industry with a large staff of computer modeling specialists, using the same hardware and often the same software as climate scientists, and they can't come up with something, it's evidence, and it's strong evidence.
meristohm 3y ago
Climate-change conversations feel like the most important topic on Hacker News. After reading all the comments I'm tempted to go back to the main page and look for something distracting, about emacs or Rust or some other vanishingly minor technology to divert my attention. The biggest hacking challenge is shifting our collective behavior. How do we (let's just say we in the USA, because that's the culture(s) I know best, and we continue to do significant environmental harm) make changes so that we use far fewer resources per capita? I call my political representatives now and then, and I do my small part (keeping the house temperature close to the outside temperature, as low as 59F or as high as 85F or so, anyway; I'm not the only occupant. Minimizing driving trips by maximizing appointments and errands, and living close to work. Minimizing travel- grudgingly flew to the Midwest from the PNW once for Christmas in the last three years, plus one family road trip in the same span, plus several shorter car trips- I consider these luxuries. Eating meat a few times a month. Not buying stuff for "retail therapy"- making do with what I have, and actively de-acquiring stuff & letting go of diverting hobbies so I can think more clearly and focus on what matters: the health of myself and my family, the growth and education of my child, and environmental health for all living beings. Volunteering with the local food shelf.), but I still feel like I could be doing more and I'm not sure how. So I look for answers, here on hn, in books, in the news, and in conversations. I haven't slipped into doomerism or other denial; life is interesting, there is much out of my control, and to stay sane I try to operate within my control and not stress about the rest. I'm trying to expand my control to support the narrative I like: strong local communities thriving on the resources available to them, with some trade with cities but not dependency on trade, and plenty of land and sea that we're part of rather than in dominion over. Romantic? Sure, and I accept that life isn't easy and that I and every bleeding-edge-of-life thing will die. Why not go out with all my available senses full of a minimally-polluted world? I grew up in a logged-off area in the Midwest. I live in a heavily logged area of the Pacific Northwest. In the forests nearby, forests only as old as me, there are massive stumps, reminders of what the forest use to be. Can we 8+ billion people have hundreds-year-old forests again? If we are too numerous, how do we scale back our numbers without dystopia? If some of us just use too much resources, how do we scale that back with just enough conflict, ideally without war? How do we change our culture?
- ocschwar 3y ago

68 points by Anon84 3y ago

Impressive how actionable that report back in 1983 was. But unfortunately the political climate is probably harder to change than the real climate, otherwise there would have been more progress in the past 40 years.

lazide 3y ago
The political climate is mostly about what people want. Dealing with this issue will require major changes in the economy (even now fossil fuel based), and national security/foreign policy (fossil fuel based now and for the foreseeable future). Both of these no one has any plans yet which wouldn’t require major changes in the way people live and the way the US interacts with the world which would put them at a major disadvantage with everyone else, and take a hit in creature comforts, prestige, and power. At least based on the options currently available to us. And this isn’t a problem caused just by the US. So even if the US did this, the rest of the world would keep on trucking and making the issue worse. Unless the US went to war or something? Which would definitely cause massive burning of fossil fuels (and nukes) which would definitely make everything worse, and kill a whole lot of people rather directly. And seems rather evil too. Until the problem is causing real, unavoidable, unambiguous issues for everyone, of course it’s going to be denied. And even then…. If you’re ever tried to take the booze from an alcoholic, it’s obvious what’s going to happen. And we’re all drunk on cheap energy in the form of fossil fuels, and have been for a very, very long time. Don’t look up!
- mustafa_pasi 3y ago
  We posted almost the same comment. I do disagree with one point. The US is the country with the most global power and is instrumental in driving global change so I really disagree that they do not hold a huge responsibility. I mean, Germany is trying to lead by example, but their attempt is pathetic. Nobody is going to care what Germany does and they do not have the economic and political power to enforce global change. But the US does. I am not saying the US can do it alone, but it has to show both initiative and willingness.
  - Robotbeat 3y ago
    Not only that, but people see Germany as being fundamentally unserious about climate change when they retire nuclear and keep burning insane amounts of destructive brown coal. I don’t think the electricity mix is even significantly cleaner than the US’s EDIT: confirmed, the US had 365grams of CO2 per kWh (805lbs per MWh) but Germany had 385g per kWh in 2022. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity-power-sector-germany/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1290224/carbon-intensity... https://www.statista.com/statistics/1247991/annual-power-sector-carbon-intensity-united-states/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1247991/annual-power-sec...
    - mustafa_pasi 3y ago
      People see Germany as a foolish naive nation which is currently hurting itself economically and making a clown of itself. It is having the opposite of the desired effect. Other countries will be more hesitant to transition to green technologies when they see Germany suffering.
      - olddustytrail 3y ago
        Really? Which countries would those be? All the European countries that have far higher renewable use than Germany? No one considers Germany a leader in renewables. It's just a straw man for the nuclear fanboys.
        mustafa_pasi 3y ago
        Germany sees itself as a leader in the green transition even if this is not factually correct.
        olddustytrail 3y ago
        Oh, well you don't have to worry about other countries being put off by Germany's decisions, because no one else does. Good news, eh!
      - 3y ago
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > Both of these no one has any plans yet which wouldn’t require major changes in the way people live Eh... I mean, nearly every country in the EU has seen reducing greenhouse gas emissions for years (even _with_ replacement of some gas generation with higher-intensity coal generation due to the invasion of Ukraine), on the foot of building retrofitting, increased renewable generation, etc. The US and China have also been investing significantly in renewable generation (though, I believe, at least in the US's case, building retrofitting has yet to start on a large scale). US emissions are broadly declining and have been for a while, Chinese emissions have almost flatlined, though are still inching up. People are doing stuff. > the way the US interacts with the world which would put them at a major disadvantage with everyone else Huh? I would think that the US is actually in a rather good position here, certainly relative to Europe and probably to China. The US is very physically big, so lots of space for renewables, and is more self-sufficient on lower-carbon-intensity fossil fuel (ie gas, likely realistically essential as a transition fuel) than the others. It would also likely find lower-intensity agriculture easier to cope with, if it comes to that. > And this isn’t a problem caused just by the US. So even if the US did this, the rest of the world would keep on trucking and making the issue worse. China is if anything currently outpacing the US on renewable and other low-intensity (nuclear) generation capacity. This feels like a comment written 30 years ago, back when no-one was doing anything much. Today, the big three are doing some stuff, with plans for more. > Until the problem is causing real, unavoidable, unambiguous issues for everyone, of course it’s going to be denied. The denial is interesting. In the developed world, it's only a significant factor in the US, Canada, and Australia, all of which have large fossil fuel industries, and in all of which it has been highly politicised. (Similar pattern in the developing world; the big denial cheerleader there being Indonesia). In most countries, it is fairly broadly accepted to be happening, and to be at least largely humanity's fault. Even in countries where denial is a significant political issue, it is generally on the decline (as you'd expect; the percentage of the electorate who'll die off anyway before we see really major impact is declining).
  - lazide 3y ago
    Ho man. To stop major, major climate impacts we long ago passed the point where reductions or caps would even make a dent. To even have a hope of not seeing major disruptive climate change we would have had to be at the point of net-negative fossil carbon releases years ago. And we’re nowhere near that. Those changes are something of course. and we’d be in a (marginally) worse situation without them. But they’re overall just minor impacts. The changes required to actually address the issue have barely been contemplated, and will be massively disruptive.
- drewcoo 3y ago
  > . . . mostly about what people want. Which is all marketing. Marketing is designed to influence and to make us want. We can't blame people because marketing to them works. > If you’re ever tried to take the booze from an alcoholic, it’s obvious what’s going to happen I don't think it is obvious what happens when you take booze away from an alcoholic. Are you aware that the absence of alcohol can kill them? Were you trying to kill them?
  - lazide 3y ago
    Often they’ll attack you while denying there is a problem. Occasionally they’ll be okay with it. At least until the DT’s. It’s usually not pretty either way. And doing it too fast can kill them, yes.
- aaomidi 3y ago
  > The political climate is mostly about what people want. Man someone should tell all the oil companies that are actively running campaigns to push propaganda on folks to change political opinions. Yes, it is "what people want". You're missing the line of "How did we get to the point of people wanting this". But instead of asking that question, you're jumping to blaming the victims and not the system that allowed a few people with money to completely change the thoughts and behaviors of millions of people. Now you're cooking with gas!
  - lazide 3y ago
    I’m pretty sure the people voting think it’s what they want - I’ve seen some get angry if you question it too.
mustafa_pasi 3y ago
The political climate is just an obfuscation. The electorate perceives the change to be too costly* and the climate risks to be too remote to justify this cost. The problem with reports such as these is that they always give you the big picture but do not directly relate it back to the individual. If people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000% due to recalculated natural disaster risks, that would suddenly make people rethink their positions. * I am actually not convinced either way. Some people believe it is so expensive it will necessitate degrowth, while others think that so much economic change will almost certainly spur economic growth. Either way I think that people who push the degrowth narrative are further reinforcing the view that climate action is too costly. Nonetheless it could be that they are right.
- sofixa 3y ago
  > I am actually not convinced either way. Some people believe it is so expensive it will necessitate degrowth, while others think that so much economic change will almost certainly spur economic growth. Either way I think that people who push the degrowth narrative are further reinforcing the view that climate action is too costly. Nonetheless it could be that they are right. Whatever your view on that is, it doesn't really matter because the costs if climate change goes unchecked are going to be catastrophically high - direct in terms of e.g. having to rebuild burned down/flooded/etc. areas, more electricity for AC, etc. or indirect such as having to accommodate mass migration from climate refugees.
  - Filligree 3y ago
    The price of unchecked climate change is the destruction of civilisation. It might as well be infinity.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      Or zero - it's sort of a weird thing to think about, but I think at this point it is the likely outcome.
      - 3y ago
BlandDuck 3y ago
To be fair, there were other things on the agenda as well. The time was the height of the cold war, and 1983 was the year of the Stanislav Petrov incident that could potentially have started nuclear war. (Not to mention dealing with the Iran-Iraq war and working to reduce emissions CFC gasses to protect the Ozone layer). It is great that the world is now in a position to make serious progress on the green energy transition.

esarbe 3y ago

So, despite all the FUD by Big Oil, scientists were pretty much spot on, even back then. Such a shame we wasted 40 years because the profiteers didn't want us to know the true extent of their crimes.

varelse 3y ago
[dead]
willis936 3y ago
Oh, we've known for much longer than 40 years. https://youtu.be/MondapIjAAM?si=6_471s4ENLPar9G7 https://youtu.be/MondapIjAAM?si=6_471s4ENLPar9G7

king_magic 3y ago

Yep. Humanity is collectively so, so astonishingly stupid.

switch007 3y ago
Stupid, or greedy?
- RHSman2 3y ago
  Greed = stupid when it comes to removing all resources and destroying the habitat that sustains you.
  - barelyauser 3y ago
    But they are not doing that. They are destroying the habitat YOU depend on. They have the resources to build another one. Elysium.
aaomidi 3y ago
There are thousands of people who's job is to actively research and find ways to create effective propaganda. It doesn't matter how smart or stupid humanity is. There will always be flaws to abuse to create propaganda. So, if we agree with "Propaganda generation is a given" - what should we do with the people who are creating it and what should we do to protect people as much as we can from corporate backed propaganda?

lsmeducation 3y ago

So what’s everyone thinking? Move to Vermont to close out our dying years in 70 degree weather?

jfengel 3y ago
If you live anywhere in the US you're probably ok. The southwest droughts are bad but the rivers were overused even before climate change. We'll build more air conditioners and more levees. Those rich enough to move to Vermont will be fine anywhere. The billions living in already marginal places near the equator will die or leave. That's where the real humanitarian disaster will be, and it will be far beyond precedent.
- drewcon 3y ago
  As human being have been doing since the dawn of history.
  - acdha 3y ago
    If you learn more about history, note how much suffering was caused by famine, disease, and the ensuing warfare, too. One of the hallmarks of modern civilization is that we were less callous about shrugging off deaths & lowered quality of life. Thanks to those advances we have a much larger population than in the past which means each failure will impact numbers of people which would have been hard to reach in most of human history.
  - cjalmeida 3y ago
    Back then we could not prevent or ameliorate such disasters. This is equivalent to arguing we should not invest in sanitation because humans have been dying of cholera since ever.
    - drewcon 3y ago
      This is the equivalent of arguing that we instead invented sanitation to adapt to reality instead of sitting in our own shit and dying of cholera and opining about sanitation refugees.

alvah 3y ago

How accurate were the predictions from 50 years ago though?

flir 3y ago
Climate models get better over time. Comparing the output of models with subsequent real-world data proves this. Chances of a sudden about-face in the models at this point is... remote.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
slackfan 3y ago
Shhh, don't bring up global cooling.
- esarbe 3y ago
  I wish people would educate themselves about this myth. Global cooling was never a concern for climate scientists. It was the press that promoted it. https://gizmodo.com/reality-check-most-scientists-never-believed-in-globa-1617925806 https://gizmodo.com/reality-check-most-scientists-never-beli...
- olddustytrail 3y ago
  Is that the global cooling that all the denier sites were predicting for 2016? You know, because the global warming was all caused by the sun and the sunspot cycle was going to enter a new Maunder Minimum leading to a new Little Ice Age. How did that work out?
- tzs 3y ago
  There were a small number of scientists who in the '70s were predicting cooling. Those scientists agreed that greenhouse gases cause warming, but they thought that the cooling effect from particulate pollution would be more significant. The thing about particulates is that they and some of theor bad effects are very clearly directly noticeable to the average person. You could see them in the air, and feel and taste and smell then when you would breath that air. That makes it much more feasible politically to deal with them, and Congress and the states enacted many laws and programs to do so. And so particulate levels dropped dramatically over the next several years, invalidating the assumption of the models that predicted cooling.

whatever1 3y ago

It’s a simple mass balance of course we were right.

Devasta 3y ago

Yesterday I saw my nephew, just four years old, talk with such excitement at a train he saw last week. In eras gone by I'm sure this would have people wondering if he'll be a train driver when he grows up, but I'm under no illusions that "climate refugee" is the only possible future he is hurtling towards. I don't know how his parents handle it, if they have accepted it at all.

drewcon 3y ago
I don’t know where you (or your nephew are) but you’re tremendously underplaying the human races ability to simply adapt.
- sofixa 3y ago
  How do you simply adapt to temperatures which are literally unlivable such as wet bulb temperatures hitting 33C+ in areas such as the Middle East and South Asia? Humans literally cannot survive at such temperatures. Mass migration or mass investment in redoing the building stock and electrical grid to make indoors habitable are the only options, and neither are really viable (tens of millions migrating will cause severe issues up to and including wars, meanwhile most of the countries likely to be impacted simply do not have the money nor governance needed to rebuild everything with AC).
  - Roark66 3y ago
    At the (usual) risk of being down voted to oblivion. There is plenty of space in more northern areas. Most European countries are approaching negative population growth. Huge swaths of Siberia and Canada are underpopulated. Still there are people that choose to live in places where one can barely survive with no AC (Dubai in summer, certain hot parts of the US, and many others). How are people "simply adapting" to these temperatures now?
    - carapace 3y ago
      That's the "mass migration" OP mentioned, eh? Do you imagine a billion people moving from India to Siberia? (Edit to add: that would be so epic that the entire Mahābhārata could be seen as it's prelude.)

slackfan 3y ago

Counter to the old Slashdot adage, let's actually read the fucking article. Remember, the headline trumpets: How Accurate Were Their Predictions? 1. Estimate seems to be alright. 2. "On target if a little high"? or you could read it as off by about 50 years. 3. Glad that this has been pointed out. 4. Whatever my opinion is on geoengineering, this is not a prediction, this is a statement of theory, there is no prediction or verdict to be had here. 5. This is also not a prediction. 6. I agree with the author re the link being proven out, but I disagree with their attribution of lack of action to climate changer denialism. Or is this the standard "Let's not call out India and China" dancing around the issue? Poor form, either way. 7. Is not a prediction. Verdict, saner than most articles regarding this, but still extremely poor. Out of seven points, three are not predictions, one has numbers that are so twisted that it can be spun any which way, two are valid points and one seems to be written specifically to deflect blame from the majority polluting nations. Not really quality journalism here, which is kinda sad. For an article that sets out to measure the accuracy of certain predictions it's sorely lacking in both predictions, as well as accuracy. Bring on the downvotes!

myrmidon 3y ago
I think you're being unfairly harsh calling the article "extremely poor" just because it goes off on a few tangents-- it's an article after all, not a homework assignment. > "Let's not call out India and China" You do realize that the US is doing way worse in Co2/capita/year right now than both of those (~15tons compared to ~9 and ~2, respectively)? And thats not even talking cumulative emissions. > Bring on the downvotes! "Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. " -- guidelines
- xscott 3y ago
  >> "Let's not call out India and China" > You do realize that the US is doing way worse in Co2/capita/year > right now than both of those (~15tons compared to ~9 and ~2, respectively)? If you call out "per country", China is double the US. If you call out "per capita per country", there are 14 countries worse than the US, including Canada and Australia. Not saying the US is blameless, but you're playing games with the stats. Why aren't you criticizing individuals in Qatar? They're emitting more than double the CO2 per person than the US. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...

shrubble 3y ago

Are there places where the global sea level mentioned, has risen? Not addressed in the article despite them quoting that from the original report.

conception 3y ago
The global sea is higher, yes, if that was your question. https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-years-of-sea-level-rise https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/150192/tracking-30-... https://theconversation.com/sea-level-rise-has-claimed-five-whole-islands-in-the-pacific-first-scientific-evidence-58511 https://theconversation.com/sea-level-rise-has-claimed-five-... https://abcnews.go.com/International/facing-dire-sea-level-rise-threat-maldives-turns/story?id=80929487 https://abcnews.go.com/International/facing-dire-sea-level-r... Etc etc

rich_sasha 3y ago

I think the original sin of climate change communication was fixating on average temperature rise. Even 5°C doesn't sound terrible when you think all you'll get is current climate plus a flat 5°C offset. 1.5 sounds barely noticeable. I think a lot of people heard, meh it's gonna be imperceptibly warmer, I don't care about some polar bears.

ocschwar 3y ago

Since this is Hacker News I think I should point out Moore's Law. All the computer modeling done by Hansen and others in the early 80's could be done today on a gamer desktop. The code itself is a mix of Fortran and (bleach) IDL (Interactive Data Language a product that today exists only to extract money from tiny niches of science). But rewriting it in Numpy/Julia/C++/Rust would be a month's exercise to most of us. Which means if there was some way to model the climate while discounting the greenhouse effect, thereby providing evidence against manmade global warming, someone would have done it by now, with a Jupyter notebook.

drewcoo 3y ago
Since this is Hacker News, I think I should point out that the claim "if there was some way to foo someone would have done it" is not evidence of absence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_absence
- ocschwar 3y ago
  It's certainly not proof of absence. But when the need for climate models that discount AGW pertains to a trillion dollar industry with a large staff of computer modeling specialists, using the same hardware and often the same software as climate scientists, and they can't come up with something, it's evidence, and it's strong evidence.

meristohm 3y ago

Climate-change conversations feel like the most important topic on Hacker News. After reading all the comments I'm tempted to go back to the main page and look for something distracting, about emacs or Rust or some other vanishingly minor technology to divert my attention. The biggest hacking challenge is shifting our collective behavior. How do we (let's just say we in the USA, because that's the culture(s) I know best, and we continue to do significant environmental harm) make changes so that we use far fewer resources per capita? I call my political representatives now and then, and I do my small part (keeping the house temperature close to the outside temperature, as low as 59F or as high as 85F or so, anyway; I'm not the only occupant. Minimizing driving trips by maximizing appointments and errands, and living close to work. Minimizing travel- grudgingly flew to the Midwest from the PNW once for Christmas in the last three years, plus one family road trip in the same span, plus several shorter car trips- I consider these luxuries. Eating meat a few times a month. Not buying stuff for "retail therapy"- making do with what I have, and actively de-acquiring stuff & letting go of diverting hobbies so I can think more clearly and focus on what matters: the health of myself and my family, the growth and education of my child, and environmental health for all living beings. Volunteering with the local food shelf.), but I still feel like I could be doing more and I'm not sure how. So I look for answers, here on hn, in books, in the news, and in conversations. I haven't slipped into doomerism or other denial; life is interesting, there is much out of my control, and to stay sane I try to operate within my control and not stress about the rest. I'm trying to expand my control to support the narrative I like: strong local communities thriving on the resources available to them, with some trade with cities but not dependency on trade, and plenty of land and sea that we're part of rather than in dominion over. Romantic? Sure, and I accept that life isn't easy and that I and every bleeding-edge-of-life thing will die. Why not go out with all my available senses full of a minimally-polluted world? I grew up in a logged-off area in the Midwest. I live in a heavily logged area of the Pacific Northwest. In the forests nearby, forests only as old as me, there are massive stumps, reminders of what the forest use to be. Can we 8+ billion people have hundreds-year-old forests again? If we are too numerous, how do we scale back our numbers without dystopia? If some of us just use too much resources, how do we scale that back with just enough conflict, ideally without war? How do we change our culture?

ocschwar 3y ago