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I try to be an optimist, but the constant stream of record breaking abnormal weather really steers me toward climate doomerism. Do others here feel similarly?

I try to be an optimist, but the constant stream of record breaking abnormal weather really steers me toward climate doomerism. Do others here feel similarly? Do you think these trends are reversible? Is technology the solution? Something else? I guess my real question is: how do you incorporate all of this change into your worldview and outlook?

epicureanideal 3y ago
I think the data has enough issues that I don't draw any conclusions from it.
- oops 3y ago
  What are some of the issues?
- Epa095 3y ago
  Yeah, denialism is definitely one way to keep one's mood up. The problem is that we, and our children, have to live in the resulting world, and that reality will be worse if we don't act today.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    There's no point saying "denialism" when it comes to talking about the data. You might as well just be saying "your tribe stupid my tribe good".
    - ethanbond 3y ago
      The wise man bowed his head, “no difference between true and untrue” etc
    - refulgentis 3y ago
      Who is talking about data in this thread? Someone made a half dig at it. Haven't seen any data yet. Other than the article. The bit about the hottest 12 months. Which seems pretty uncontroversial to me.
      - robertlagrant 3y ago
        > Haven't seen any data yet That's because tribalism entered the chat, instead of a question about sources for the claim
  - palmfacehn 3y ago
    Similarly, our children will be burdened by the public debt and regulatory policies enacted in the name of climate doom. This much is guaranteed, regardless of if the oft-cited apocalypse comes to fruition.
    - netsharc 3y ago
      The great thing about debt is, everybody will be dead and no one will care about some number in some powered-off data center showing negative balance.
      - palmfacehn 3y ago
        "How often do you think about the decline of the Roman Empire?"
        refulgentis 3y ago
        What?
- blowsand 3y ago
  I’ve yet to find it again, but I read an interesting commentary recently noting that the bulk of enthusiasm in press coverage, and for spending money, is on the long term prevention side (“decarbonization” etc), while no real press or spending is directed at the survival/relocation side, and this is an interesting data point to some.
- claytongulick 3y ago
  I'm surprised and encouraged by your comment. No one really ever wants to discuss this, the issues with the data, the missing data, the statistical techniques used to fill in that data, how the models are derived, the funding situation with climate research and the quality issues with all of it. It seems like the only acceptable answer is the sky is falling and we're all going to die. Maybe both things can be true: there is a man made effect on the climate and it's difficult to measure and a lot of the research quality is poor. Perhaps humans have adapted to difficult climates throughout our entire existence. Perhaps the models that predict the end of the world are a bit extreme, and there are conflicting interests. Maybe, just maybe - everything will be ok.
  - wk_end 3y ago
    Before we discuss the funding situation with climate research, let's discuss the funding situation against climate research. If indeed climate scientists were pay-for-play, don't you think some of the richest companies in the world would be better at finding credible people to parrot talking points that serve their financial interests?
    - hnfong 3y ago
      What, you think (for example) Microsoft or nVidia is going to fund scientists to claim anthropogenic climate change doesn't exist? They literally have PR teams that intentionally aligns company objectives towards the popular climate narrative. The narrative has so much momentum that no individual financial interest could stop it. And big oil isn't half as influential as it were.
      - wk_end 3y ago
        You just named “for example” the first and fourth biggest companies in the world. Look up what the third is. I don’t know how “influential” big oil is, but I know they’re collectively quite rich. Collectively substantially richer than whoever you’ve imagined stands to gain from a shift away from carbon and has been willing and able to buy out the world’s scientific community for decades now. They can’t even pay their own scientists to shill for them; they knew about climate change since the 70s [0]. Edit: lol the list of companies I was looking at was by market cap. A list by revenue [1] makes your case even worse: five of the ten richest companies in the world sell oil. Another eight are in the top 50. Somehow no obvious boogeyman bicycle manufacturers to be manipulating the scientific consensus though. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994.amp [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by...
- wk_end 3y ago
  The vast, vast majority of people who are better equipped than myself - and likely you - disagree. But let's put that aside. Let's put aside the fact that the mechanisms involved are demonstrable and simple enough for children to understand. Even as laypeople, we can observe that in the past ten years there's been year after year after year of once-in-a-century catastrophic weather events. The odds of these being unrelated anomalies decrease every time. Unprecedented heat waves and forest fires across the North America, all the way up into the arctic, with entire towns burning to the ground. Deadly ice storms in Texas. God-sized hurricanes. In isolation these could be hand-waved away - in aggregate, they clearly point towards catastrophe.
  - throwaway2990 3y ago
    lol. When data is not cherry picked then those better equipped people’s opinion might be worth listening to.
    - oops 3y ago
      Can you cite an example of such cherry picking? I’m only aware of counter examples e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking#:~:text=Cherry%2Dpicking%20is%20often%20used,is%20an%20ongoing%20warming%20trend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking#:~:text=Cherr....
      - throwaway2990 3y ago
        Literally every study. They will remove a particular earth moment because “it’s not relevant” but adding it in makes their data look like global warming isn’t happening. Or they exclude periods claiming that the data from that period is not good when it goes against their claims.
  - deleted 3y ago
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Phenomenit 3y ago
The Change needed is refused by the people. We would rather die and kill most of the biological world than face economic austerity, so we get what we order.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  A democratic majority supports fixing this when polled. Concentrated special interests manage to slow that change being implemented.
  - freddie_mercury 3y ago
    This isn't quite true. Polls consistently show that people think someone somewhere should do something as long as it doesn't actually cost them any money. "IPSOS found that just 25 percent of Americans said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to address climate change. A 2019 Reuters poll asked specifically whether respondents would pay $100 to fight climate change and only a third said yes"
  - tinco 3y ago
    Meanwhile, Joe Biden while claiming to believe we are steering towards climate disaster, decided to protect the economy and preserve his geriatric political career and reduce oil prices yet again by depleting strategic reserves.
    - lucianbr 3y ago
      On the other hand, increasing oil prices would help Russia and other petro-states which are pretty horrible.
    - pstuart 3y ago
      Let's not get too political here -- while there is pandering on oil pricing he is forced to by an electorate that's too stupid to see the big picture. His ostensible opponent states that climate change is a hoax and wants to undo anything "green".
Mistletoe 3y ago
I just buy EVs and plan to move to Finland. I won’t let this generation get me down.
DoreenMichele 3y ago
I think it's fixable but, you know, not sure I much care anymore. I think most people don't want a fix. They want to publicly wring their hands, gnash their teeth and wail and moan. We should be doing more about wetlands restoration. I think it's a no brainer that a substantial part of the problem is the eradication of 85 percent of global wetlands since the 1700s but it largely goes unnoticed because, I don't know, not enough hopelessness and sense of personal guilt to relate to? I don't get it. But my life sucks and refuses to stop sucking and I am unlikely to live too much longer, so whatevs. Y'all run around screaming and flailing your arms like Kermit the frog if that's what floats your boat.
- synecdoche 3y ago
  > We should be doing more about wetlands restoration. Only if mosquitoes are eradicated.
  - DoreenMichele 3y ago
    Ah, yes, the total global impact of climate change is so much less than the impact of mosquitoes.
oldtownroad 3y ago
An optimistic outlook is that we have the knowledge and resources to adapt to a changing environment without loss of life. A realistic counter to that is if we were able to utilise these resources and knowledge effectively then we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this situation. An outlook that splits the difference is… we’ve made mistakes but maybe crisis is what’s required to get everyone working together using our resources and knowledge for the greater good. A sad outlook is that we are all rich people living charmed lives that are not at risk so we can bury our heads in the sand. We aren’t the people who will die from our mistakes.
- deleted 3y ago
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- squigz 3y ago
  > A sad outlook is that we are all rich people Well my bills will be glad to know this, although it's news to me.
  - bryanrasmussen 3y ago
    https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040 >the world's average salary - in PPP dollars - of $1,480 a month, or almost $18,000 a year
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - deleted 3y ago
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    - richrichie 3y ago
      And that is in PPP terms. Puts in perspective the difficulties the average laptop class member faces in life.
    - squigz 3y ago
      I'm not certain the point you're trying to make
demondemidi 3y ago
Yep. I’m old enough to know nothing will change and the shift hard right in politics all but guarantees it. Enjoy every moment you can while it lasts. Capitalism FTW BABY! There’s no going back.
jongjong 3y ago
Since I don't have the resources or power to deal with the problem, I don't worry about it. Nothing I can do. My conscience is perfectly clean. My only advice is that we need to fix the monetary system first or else we'll never be able to escape the cycle of deception. We'll never know what is real or not real or who we can trust or not trust. Once we have a functioning monetary system based on hard money, only then will we be able to see what problems are real and come up with innovations that solve humanity's real problems... Who knows, that might include climate change... Our current political reality is fake and we can never get to the truth while our monetary policies distort incentives. Almost all narratives nowadays are founded on deception and they compete against each other for mindshare... Once they cross a certain threshold, it's too easy for certain narratives to use monetary incentives to reinforce their own propagation; a powerful ecosystem of government organizations develops around the narrative and then private companies follow suit to get their contracts. There are literally no honest narratives even in the running at this point. Once honest people see how the sausage gets made in the centers of power, they lose the heart to push their honest agendas. Only deceptive agendas remain. Today, I'm not even in a position to answer the question of whether or not climate change is real and caused by humans because I cannot trust the current system or the 'experts' in relevant fields to provide me with that information. For all I know, the promoted experts could be 'incentivized' to the eyeballs to lean in a certain direction. I cannot trust them because I cannot trust the system which selected them. I'm an expert in my own field and I've seen how the sausage is made there. If that's how it works in my field, why wouldn't it work the same way in other fields? If I am to go by my own experiences of modern political organizations, I should believe the opposite of what the experts say.
- fsflover 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39503654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39503654
alcover 3y ago
I feel dread for sure.. like plagues from the past may reappear. Especially famine. When I watch documentaries about disappeared civilisations, I now get vertigo. I think the pressure for drastic, technical solutions will mount sharply and ideas like that solar shade will be seriously considered.
cesaref 3y ago
I like to think that in 50 million years when we're long gone, whatever has evolved from the burrowing mammal that survived the mess we've caused will be looking at a thin brown layer in the geological record and wondering quite what caused the mass extinction event. One of the crackpot ideas will be that an earlier civilisation managed to mess up the entire planet, but that's so ludicrous that they will conclude it was most likely a weird asteroid impact or something like that.
- qaq 3y ago
  If you look at temperature shifts at 50 million year scale whatever wea are doing is basically irrelevant https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_620_original_image/public/graph-from-scott-wing-620px.png https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_widt...
  - mrintegrity 3y ago
    Those rapid temperature swings were related to / resulted in mass extinctions and had various natural causes. The current rapid temperature swing is caused by human activity as is well accepted by any scientist who isn't a crackpot.
    - lenkite 3y ago
      Those natural causes will occur again - regardless of whatever we do as a species.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        What we do as a species can't rule out things like star lifting. The future doesn't need to be limited to what we've done so far.
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      We are a natural cause. Any position otherwise is silly.
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
One thing I realize is that of I have known that 20 years ago I would probably not have had children. I am quite worried about the world we are leaving them and when they are about 80 in 2080 the world is predicted to be hell. I would not be surprised if they decided not to have children themselves. I read that in France the number of vasectomies among 25-ish is exploding. This may not be a good indication, though, because vasectomy was not popular in France in the first place (and still requires z 4 month cool down time, by law)
- neom 3y ago
  Interesting to read you say that, last time I posted on here that climate change was a major component of my wife and I deciding not to have children, a bunch of people pissed all over that, and I was surprised because It thought it was relatively pragmatic?
  - richrichie 3y ago
    I respect your choice. I wish more of the people who feel passionate about saving the earth led by example like this.
    - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
      Lead by example by having children you mean?
      - richrichie 3y ago
        i meant not having children.
        BrandoElFollito 3y ago
        Ah ok - I got lost in the indents of the thread while on mobile.
  - abyssin 3y ago
jemmyw 3y ago
I personally believe we're doomed. Even if there is a technological solution, as things get worse it gets harder to deploy it. If people are struggling with persistent climate driven change then they'll be using whatever is cheap and available. I've accepted it though. I don't doomer at people unless they ask. I can't do anything about the situation. I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life. If I have blame it's not for denialists, it's for all those politicians who know and accept the science but did nothing, they didn't have the guts, being voted in again was more important. It does make me sad to see so many HN comments rolling out the same stupid "I don't trust the data" arguments that were pretty thoroughly debunked within the scientific community 10 years ago, yet still feel the need to jump on every thread about it because the whole thing makes them so angry.
- lucianbr 3y ago
  > they didn't have the guts, being voted in again was more important Isn't this how democracy is supposed to work? Isn't it, as a general rule, preferable that politicians fear being voted out, and so do the things that the voters want, so they get reelected? The alternative seems to me for a politician to say one thing in the campaign - what the people want to hear, and then do something else when elected - what he thinks is best. Some do that, but they're not loved for it. I am pretty sure that even when or if politicians do not care about the voters, they still do not do the right thing, but some other wrong thing, like enriching themselves. What you are in fact complaining about is that politicians elected by other people did what those people wanted, instead of what you wanted. While not laying the same complaint on those you voted for - greens. They obviously did right to listen to their voters - you and people you agree with. It's not about the guts of a chosen few. It's about humanity overall. If we do not care about the environment, billions of us, a handful who care will not, can not change much.
  - ako 3y ago
    Problem is that democracy doesn’t seem to work in bad times, voters only want to hear that they have more, more, more. More jobs, more income, more houses and cars. No politician will win the election by stating voters will have to work longer hours, for less payment, have to pay more taxes, and send their kids to the army to protect our freedom. As soon as that is necessary, populist politicians will gain votes by stating all of that is not needed.
neom 3y ago
The positive feedback loop is very troubling to me. I don't know I believe humans are doomed, but I'm quite sure the earth will be a miserable place to reside in the no-so-distant future.
inference-lord 3y ago
I have children and I'm freaking out for their future. Really really not a good situation. I'm pissed off we have Putin being a dick face rather than all world "leaders" working together to save the planet for the sake of their offspring's futures. Billionaires building apocalypse bunkers and then, the biggest concern of all, another potential term of "why don't we just nuke the hurricanes?" I mean, not looking great. I think the panic will come soon though then it will just be too hard to ignore. Might be too late to do much about it by then.
- deleted 3y ago
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- asadotzler 3y ago
  should not have had children. we've known shit was gonna get bad for 20+ years so it's kinda late to start the worrying now.
YZF 3y ago
Not that I needed convincing but the Covid pandemic demonstrated how hard it is to fight nature. When nature decides to have a go at us, earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics, technology always seems to be on the losing end. We think we're so powerful with our technology but compared to the forces of nature we are not. EDIT: We also can't really seem to get our act together and collaborate across the planet. The hope is that we don't get to a place where positive feedback really pummels us and find some sort of equilibrium. It's hard to say and these are the sorts of games we should not play. If the earth completely changes into a human or life unfriendly place our technology won't save us. Another bit of hope is that the planet has been warmer in the more distant past. I think we're technically still in an ice age.
- dgellow 3y ago
  I feel the opposite regarding Covid. The world reacted pretty quickly and more or less rationally, solutions have been found and implemented with minimal delays, in a more or less coordinated fashion. All of this moved incredibly fast compared to the general pace. A huge part of the economy has been voluntarily stopped, which is insane to think about, nobody would have thought that was possible before the pandemics happened.
  - hmcq6 3y ago
    > The world reacted pretty quickly and more or less rationally > A huge part of the economy has been voluntarily stopped Huh? Covid was tearing up northern Italy before it landed in the US and we did nothing to prevent it. Our politicians were telling people not to buy masks. Trump sent shit tons of ventilators to Florida for no reason. We allowed people from places that had confirmed cases of Covid to come into the US, they just had to make a layover. The WHO refused to call Covid a pandemic until it was way too late. Nursing homes were decimated. Schools decided that stay 6-feet apart meant "do nothing, its fine". People were eating horse deworming paste instead of getting the vaccine. People lost their fucking shit over mask mandates. Maybe you weren't in the US?
    - dgellow 3y ago
kristof0425 3y ago
I sincerely believe it’s just a matter of question of determination whether we want to solve this problem. If we were able to send people on the Moon as fast as we did, I don’t think we can’t do something in a decade to significantly reverse this trend. We clearly aren’t determined enough…
wsc981 3y ago
[flagged]
- iamsaitam 3y ago
  Oh yes, the classic climate change denier rhetoric, penning at the end a random quote. You mention some scientists tweets and the first one is a Economics Professor.. come on man, at least put some effort in your bullshit propaganda.
- mupuff1234 3y ago
  > There’s many bad (financial) incentives to push the human induced climate change narrative What those incentives and how exactly are they stronger than the financial incentive to not do anything and continue at full steam? Sure there are some players than would benefit from the transition but that seems like the minority to me.
  - wsc981 3y ago
    It’s easy to see that the people pushing the human induced climate change narrative have been very successful, at least in my country of origin, The Netherlands. As people have been pushed to get solar panels. Buy electric vehicles (and by 2030 I believe the EU wants to ban the sale of non-electric vehicles, even banning re-selling second hand diesel and gas vehicles in EU). In The Netherlands home owners will be forced to change from gas heating to waterpumps in coming years, etcetera. And what about the massive windfarms that are being setup everywhere in The Netherlands?
    - mupuff1234 3y ago
      Sure, but you do realize that the majority of companies and economy will not benefit from the transition, quite the opposite? So seems like the bigger financial incentive is to deny the issue if anything.
      - wsc981 3y ago
        I agree it will be horrible for the economy. And for food production and the like. Germany is also feeling the pain as the high energy costs make manufacturing companies unprofitable, forcing them to cease operations or move to other countries. But the EU is determined to follow this path and The Netherlands will follow. As a result the middle class will be crushed through high costs of living and taxation. And many companies will cease to exist or move elsewhere. Of course, this will result in rising unemployment.
roughly 3y ago
Someone I knew said "I'm an optimist because it's the only thing worth being." As much as anything, optimism is an act of will, because if things can't and won't get better, what the hell's the point of anything? More concretely, though, I do think there's some technological levers that can be applied towards CO2 reduction & capture, bioremediation, and adaptation. I don't think they're the optimal answer - the optimal answer was us recognizing we're spending on credit a hundred years ago - but I think they're the answers we're going to use, so that's where most of my effort is. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but - I got a job a while back that I think helps move the world in the right direction, and my god has it made a difference in my ability to handle all this. It's still not easy to look at, but it's easier when you're not burning all your energy on something orthogonal to what you actually care about. If you can live with the lower pay, I promise it's worth it for the improved ability to sleep at night.
imgabe 3y ago
Recorded history is about 150 years, which is barely a blip in human history, let alone the planet’s history. We will find ways to adapt and survive.
- rullelito 3y ago
  No it is so much better to panic (and vote green, ofc)!
- hmcq6 3y ago
  > Recorded history is about 150 years Where does someone get the courage to just lie like this?
  - imgabe 3y ago
    You can look at the graph in the article. It starts at 1850. So, 174 years if you want to be precise.
    - asadotzler 3y ago
      So, posting in error of 15% is OK with you? Would you accept that from others?
      - imgabe 3y ago
        No, absolutely not. I would calculate their error percentage and make combative replies, because that's how I enjoy spending my time.
    - hmcq6 3y ago
      Oh I wasn't going off a margin of error thing. "Recorded history" and "records of average temperature taken in real time" are two very different things to say only go back 150 years. "Recorded history" only going back 150 years implies that the US was basically the start of recorded history. "real time temperature measurements" only go back 150 years means you don't trust the science that allows us to make estimates of climate based on things like ice core samples.
rullelito 3y ago
Experiencing the hottest 12 months in the last 200 years says nothing about the longer trend.
- tpm 3y ago
  It's also the hottest 10 years in the last 200 years. And so on.
  - imgabe 3y ago
    Regardless of what the temperatures are, one group of 10 years would have been the hottest 10 years in the last 200 years, because, you know, that's how numbers work. Some are bigger than others and it would be exceptionally unlikely for the temperature to be exactly the same every year. I just can't be bothered with this kind of fear-mongering. Guys, you'll never guess what happened! We collected a bunch of measurements and one of them was the biggest! Oh, no!
    - dagss 3y ago
      Have you even had a look at the graphs?
notadoomer236 3y ago
To counter, I think we’ll most likely be fine. It might be two degrees warmer this century. Life will go on just fine. Possibly better in some ways and places. No problem, relatively speaking, compared to the hazards our ancestors face. If it warms 5C, we might have a real problem on our hands. I don’t think we can predict that, and I don’t think it will happen over 100-200 year timescales. Many people seem to think there will be mass die offs, the ocean will become unsurvivable acidic, and crops won’t grow. I don’t think any of that will happen anytime soon. I think there is a very strong “doom” instinct in humans to think this is the last generation, the end of times. This is just the latest manifestation.
- bitfilped 3y ago
  And what exactly is preventing us from getting to 5C? We can squabble all we want about what temperature will be "problematic" and the timeline to get there but the trend is set and continuing.
  - notadoomer236 3y ago
    Why do you think it will warm 5C? Most of the models - which are not especially accurate or battle tested - don’t put us there. If we bumped to 1000ppm carbon, would the earth warm 5C? That’s a technical question. We don’t know exactly how sensitive the climate is or what feedback mechanisms are at play. I don’t lose sleep over it. But I’m just trying to give my perspective to counter some of the doom, since the doomers are very active online.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  > Many people seem to think there will be mass die offs Humans have already caused many mass die offs. Go into a forest today and try to catch dinner with your bare hands and you'll find it is near impossible. Yet it used to be possible - that's how our ancestors lived. Us inventing aids like the bow and arrow has depleted the wild animal population enough that we now couldn't survive without such aids.
  - 3y ago
southerntofu 3y ago
The trends are not reversible, but they may be attenuated if we don't adopt a "dooomed" worldview. In the french speaking world, there's a wave of eco-angriness starting to replace eco-anxiety and that's a welcome change. People are getting involved and putting their ass on the line to stop this madness. At a great cost, given that cops regularly maim and sometimes murder ecological activists trying to stop ecocidal projects (see NDDL / Sivens / Sainte Soline). We have a choice to make: destroy capitalism and its consumption lifestyle, or let it destroy humanity and millions of other species. I strongly recommend watching END:CIV, a 20-year-old documentary that hasn't aged a bit.
- notadoomer236 3y ago
  If it warms 2-3C as the IPCC predicts, humanity will still be thriving in the 2100s. Capitalism will still be kicking along just fine, and we ll probably be richer than ever.
  - tpm 3y ago
    We are already at 1.5C with the help of El Nino, by 2030 we'll be there even without it. 2-3C in 2100 is very optimistic now.
  - southerntofu 3y ago
    It's not just about the warming. Can you name one source of water in your neighborhood that's not polluted and can be drunk? Are you aware of the massive desertification due to industrialized agriculture? There's more than isolated signs of civilisational collapse. The system will change that's for sure. The question is whether we'll choose a mildly-painful transition, or endure a deadly ecocidal hard reset. Ecological problems are not coming for us in the 2100s. They're here now and keep getting worse.
oezi 3y ago
The only solution is money! And it isn't so expensive to turn things around. An estimated 100-200% in global GDP is needed to reach carbon net zero by 2050. Annually we need to spend 2-6% of GDP to get there. Remember every bit of Co2 not emitted counts
- asadotzler 3y ago
  The only solution is removing those in power who are inclined to let the world burn. Money will only be useful after then.
  - oezi 3y ago
    "those in power" is just a strayman. We don't need a revolution but pragmatic people. If US Congress wasn't red, we would be moving considerable faster in the right direction.
bobfromhuddle 3y ago
The emissions trend is slowing. We have the technology we need in order to change course, we're just not deploying it fast enough. The worst projections, at least, are off the table: we're not headed for 6 degrees of warming, we're on track for 3, and I strongly suspect we'll end up closer to 2 degrees of warming. That is going to be terrible. People will die, wars will be fought, and we'll see the largest migrations in human history with all the attendant political upheaval and barbarity, but we'll still be here. Humans as a species are going to make it. For me, I found it helpful to go and work in climate. So long as I wasn't actively working to solve the problem, I was driven mad by the knowledge that we were heading for disaster.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > For me, I found it helpful to go and work in climate. Curious, can you say what you switched from and to?
Alpha3031 3y ago
DACCCS is currently insufficiently mature to estimate how "reversible" any specific level of warming is, but current policies are expected to limit warming to 2 to 3 °C by 2100, compared to over 4 °C where no policies were implemented. Net zero emissions by 2050 would even be compatible with 1.5 °C, and that is well within what is achievable with current technology. Plus, with AR6, we have the first estimate of the zero emissions commitment over 50 years, and it is centred around zero, with a 90% CI of roughly ±0.3 °C, meaning it is likely (with "low confidence", meaning this is our first time doing it as part of CMIP) that changes in 20 year average temperatures will be quite small after complete cessation of emissions. That means assuming we ended up on a trajectory like 2 °C by 2100, if we wanted to reverse GSAT at least we would have a better than 66% chance of having another 5 decades of research and development and deployment (plus the 7 decades it took to get there), so once we get to zero emissions it becomes much less urgent. There will still be permanent changes to the biosphere, but there is no reason to feel doomed.
herbst 3y ago
I live up in the Alps in Switzerland. There is barely any snow this year. The rivers don't have as much water as usual but the real effects will only be visible later this year. The water is missing in other places, Italy's north heavily depends on mountain water for their farming. This is going to be a very dry year. Either forcing them to lower the quality of real Italian pasta or again increasing the prices. Also wine from the whole region will not do well this year. In french the fragil botanical environment is changing so much that their cheese doesn't reach the usual quality anymore. This sounds like little things maybe, but those are huge traditional markets dying in front of our eyes. Things are changing very rapidly. I don't know how or why there would be any optimism about this.
- rstuart4133 3y ago
  Similar thing happened where I live in Brisbane, Australia. A couple of weeks ago the Bureau of Meteorology (our government weather service) predicted 20mm of rain the next day. Instead we got 200mm. They are normally pretty good. They explained the moisture in the air was at record levels this year because the sea surface temperature was 1.5 C above normal. We all knew the moisture was at record levels because Brisbane (in a temperate zone) was getting sustained levels of humidity that exceeded the levels experiences in the far northern tropics, 3000 km away. Even on a relatively mild day at say 30C, you could not walk up a hill without being drenched in your own sweat. Since their weather models had never see humidity like this sustained for weeks and weeks (it was an all-time record yesterday), they were wrong. It's doubly surprising because were in a El Nino, which should bring dry spells. The result of all that rain was continuous storms lasting for week, at the peak bring category 3 cyclone winds (exceeding 130 km/hr), concrete power pylons being blown over (never happened before), power outages for weeks in some areas, flooding and deaths in metropolitan areas. Most of came without much warning because the aforementioned models were wrong. It's been a wild ride. What blows me away is in West Asia the sea surface temperature was 5 C above normal this year, over three times what we are experiencing. I can't imagine what that is like.
globalnode 3y ago
I dont think we've taking into account climate change acceleration either. I believe the tipping point will come and go before people really accept its a problem and try to hit the brakes but by then it will be waaaaaaay past the reasonable time to change our ways. Within a generation whats left of us will be living underground and popping up at night to breathe some "fresh" hot air. Say sorry to your kids.
swader999 3y ago
No, not at all. Trying to put a measurement on all of earth is nonsense and pretending that proxies allow us to extend it further back in time is even more hubris.
atoav 3y ago
My uncle bought me a book on climate change in the 90s when I was a kid. I have spent all my life knowing we are moving in the wrong direction and chose to use my voting power and my purse accordingly. The issue we really face is that the needed change is fundamentally incompatible with the way wealth is accumulated on the top today, how growth is expected and required at every step. That means the first change that needs to happen is purely mental: Either we march into doom to make a bit more money for the richest or we restructure our system so it doesn't need growth to provide wealth. And once we have that mental change the next harder step will be convincing the powers that be to implement it. We are now farther in terms of the mental question than in say 2010, but things move too slow and many people have not fully realized the existential nature of the problem.
whitehexagon 3y ago
22C here last weekend in southern Europe, and all I hear are people saying nice! We are doomed, and I already feel like a climate refugee trying to relocate to somewhere cooler. But then the gulf stream will probably fail! I feel like we cant solve this when there is no political/economical motive, or willingness for people to sacrifice.
gmuslera 3y ago
I didn't need 12 months of record breaking world abnormal weather for that. The previous, continuous trend upwards for decades was already bad enough, with extreme events becoming increasingly common and extremer. You have a complex system, you apply a continuous big enough pressure to it, and you get global average that is slowly rising up even if some days look normal, and, somewhere, somewhat, some days, weird things are happening. And the very concept of positive feedback loops causing that this problem is not worsening in a linear way. That is a very bad trend, that it would just take time to hit around me. But the doomerism part doesn't come from just there. It comes from the human world. Not doing anything about it, big money making big disinformation campaings to avoid normal people to take action, big capital and top industrialized countries not doing anything about that, and adding even more disruptive activity (along with some token measures that are not in the same order than the others), official global climate organizations being taken over in front of everyone, smaller countries are being sued for taking measures to minimize impact. There is no will to fix this, to stop worsening the situation. So you have a system that is being disrupted in big scale for decades, that is taken out of its inertia and balance by that continuous and increasing push, you start to see that it is slowly getting out of control. And there is no will to take out that push, at most you get some Newspeak way of ensuring people that something is being done. And when things really becomes desperate, we won't have decades to wait for a slow, orderly unwinding to have some effect. So some desperate extra push on a system that we still don't understand will be sold as idea of geoengineering, moving the system towards a new, even more unstable situation. There is where my doomerism lies, not in the symptom of a string of broken records.
csmpltn 3y ago
Let’s say you could magically reduce the population of humans on earth by 90%, at a moment’s notice. Two questions: 1. Is climate change averted, and a non-issue? Or has it just been pushed back for a little while? 2. What does life on earth look like, when 90% of the people you know and depend on today are just gone?
pc_edwin 3y ago
"recorded history".. glacial maximums and minimums.. Also would be very helpful to look at the worst case predictions and what that would entail hundred years down the line. Its not cool but it really not that bad. Definitely not apocalyptic. Its also worth it to consider whats the alternative because every version of an alternative is exponentially worse (communism and/or luddite primitive feudalism).
nec4b 3y ago
>> but the constant stream of record breaking abnormal weather How do you even know what is normal weather? Can you specify an exact time when you think the weather was normal? >> Do others here feel similarly? No. >> Do you think these trends are reversible? Reversible to what? Like it was 50 years ago or 5000 years ago or 50 million years ago? >> Is technology the solution? Something else? People have been living anywhere from freezing arctic to hot arid deserts. We seem to be good at adapting to our environment.
- rini17 3y ago
  To last cca 10000 years, when there was exceptionally stable climate that allowed for reliable agriculture. Sure, humans can survive without agriculture but not billions of them.
  - nec4b 3y ago
    The earth is getting greener and you think we won't have agriculture anymore. In the last 10000 years climate varied a lot, from little ice ages to warm periods. Can you be more specific about the time and also how are you going to hold climate steady, since obvious it varies a lot naturally?
    - rini17 3y ago
      To feed billions "more greenery" is not sufficient, you need reliable and predictable weather. Just one or two years of world-widespread crop failures can cause mass famine. Even if on average "it's getting greener". The temperature during last 10k years varied still much less than long periods before and we're now already outside that band. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...
      - nec4b 3y ago
        You are probably mixing weather and climate, but none of them has ever been predictable with or without human input. I don't think your graph is saying what you want it to say. Crop failure is a fact of farming and on average is getting less and less common, otherwise the earth would not be getting greener.
bigfont 3y ago
I feel convinced to participate in climate change in my work. I don't know whether we can reverse it or whether tech will solve it, but I do believe in its importance, and I want to understand it. I have incorporated all of this change into my worldview by finding ways to improve morale in the community, and recently, by switching careers from software development into sustainable innovation.
ksec 3y ago
>how do you incorporate all of this change into your worldview and outlook? This is going to be a cynical take by HN's standard. It actually reinforce some of the fundamentals of humans beings that our ancestors has somehow understood far better than we do today. It is that "Interest" matters. Needs are driven by interest. You cant just say the world is going to end in 100 years time and we need to stop eating meat and turn off all heaters etc etc. You also cant tell company to stop earning money or lower profits margin just because of "Good". What technology do however is that we innovate so others cant say NO. We are now at a time where non-fossil fuels, or Wind and Solar is cheaper, and will continue to get cheaper in the future. The economy of scale is there. To the point unless the Government TAX on non-fossil fuels, the pure force of this momentum meant it is only a matter of time. I use the term non-fossil fuels because renewable doesn't include nuclear, personally I am a big fan of GE BWRX-300. All in all in am actually quite optimistic. We are slowly solving it.
martin82 3y ago
I don't feel any abnormal weather at all. Neither in Singapore, nor in Germany (both places where I have family and regularly stay). In my 40 years on this planet, we have always had winters with meters of snow and we have always had summers so hot that they closed schools. Both of these events were rare and they were AMAZING and everyone was either taking out their sleds or spending the day at the beach. We have also always had floods at the Rhine river.
trealira 3y ago
China's climate change policies are largely about adaptation to climate change, not just mitigation or prevention[0] From the article on China's adaptation policies: > As Freymann details, these efforts include “constructing the largest water transfer system in human history; expanding and raising nearly 6,000 miles of sea walls along its coasts; building a strategic grain reserve larger than the rest of the world’s combined; carving wetland flood basins in the centers of its largest cities; restoring coastal wetlands to act as buffers against storms; and relocating hundreds of thousands of ‘ecological migrants’ in low-lying areas.” Reading your question made me think of this article. It seems like a lot of time was wasted decades ago in the US on not transitioning away from fossil fuels or trying to become carbon neutral, but that's crying over spilled milk. I'm not going to doom about the effects of something that mostly happened before I was born; that's almost like becoming an alternate history theorist. > I guess my real question is: how do you incorporate all of this change into your worldview and outlook? To answer your question directly, I just hope more of my generation (generation Z) does less climate change denial or doomerism, and does more voting and climate change activism. And not just for feel-good policy like planting trees, but climate change adaptation, like China. [0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unpacking-chinas-climate-priorities/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unpacking-chinas-climate-...

epicureanideal 3y ago

I think the data has enough issues that I don't draw any conclusions from it.

oops 3y ago
What are some of the issues?
Epa095 3y ago
Yeah, denialism is definitely one way to keep one's mood up. The problem is that we, and our children, have to live in the resulting world, and that reality will be worse if we don't act today.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  There's no point saying "denialism" when it comes to talking about the data. You might as well just be saying "your tribe stupid my tribe good".
  - ethanbond 3y ago
    The wise man bowed his head, “no difference between true and untrue” etc
  - refulgentis 3y ago
    Who is talking about data in this thread? Someone made a half dig at it. Haven't seen any data yet. Other than the article. The bit about the hottest 12 months. Which seems pretty uncontroversial to me.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      > Haven't seen any data yet That's because tribalism entered the chat, instead of a question about sources for the claim
- palmfacehn 3y ago
  Similarly, our children will be burdened by the public debt and regulatory policies enacted in the name of climate doom. This much is guaranteed, regardless of if the oft-cited apocalypse comes to fruition.
  - netsharc 3y ago
    The great thing about debt is, everybody will be dead and no one will care about some number in some powered-off data center showing negative balance.
    - palmfacehn 3y ago
      "How often do you think about the decline of the Roman Empire?"
      - refulgentis 3y ago
        What?
blowsand 3y ago
I’ve yet to find it again, but I read an interesting commentary recently noting that the bulk of enthusiasm in press coverage, and for spending money, is on the long term prevention side (“decarbonization” etc), while no real press or spending is directed at the survival/relocation side, and this is an interesting data point to some.
claytongulick 3y ago
I'm surprised and encouraged by your comment. No one really ever wants to discuss this, the issues with the data, the missing data, the statistical techniques used to fill in that data, how the models are derived, the funding situation with climate research and the quality issues with all of it. It seems like the only acceptable answer is the sky is falling and we're all going to die. Maybe both things can be true: there is a man made effect on the climate and it's difficult to measure and a lot of the research quality is poor. Perhaps humans have adapted to difficult climates throughout our entire existence. Perhaps the models that predict the end of the world are a bit extreme, and there are conflicting interests. Maybe, just maybe - everything will be ok.
- wk_end 3y ago
  Before we discuss the funding situation with climate research, let's discuss the funding situation against climate research. If indeed climate scientists were pay-for-play, don't you think some of the richest companies in the world would be better at finding credible people to parrot talking points that serve their financial interests?
  - hnfong 3y ago
    What, you think (for example) Microsoft or nVidia is going to fund scientists to claim anthropogenic climate change doesn't exist? They literally have PR teams that intentionally aligns company objectives towards the popular climate narrative. The narrative has so much momentum that no individual financial interest could stop it. And big oil isn't half as influential as it were.
    - wk_end 3y ago
      You just named “for example” the first and fourth biggest companies in the world. Look up what the third is. I don’t know how “influential” big oil is, but I know they’re collectively quite rich. Collectively substantially richer than whoever you’ve imagined stands to gain from a shift away from carbon and has been willing and able to buy out the world’s scientific community for decades now. They can’t even pay their own scientists to shill for them; they knew about climate change since the 70s [0]. Edit: lol the list of companies I was looking at was by market cap. A list by revenue [1] makes your case even worse: five of the ten richest companies in the world sell oil. Another eight are in the top 50. Somehow no obvious boogeyman bicycle manufacturers to be manipulating the scientific consensus though. [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994.amp https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994.amp [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by_revenue https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by...
wk_end 3y ago
The vast, vast majority of people who are better equipped than myself - and likely you - disagree. But let's put that aside. Let's put aside the fact that the mechanisms involved are demonstrable and simple enough for children to understand. Even as laypeople, we can observe that in the past ten years there's been year after year after year of once-in-a-century catastrophic weather events. The odds of these being unrelated anomalies decrease every time. Unprecedented heat waves and forest fires across the North America, all the way up into the arctic, with entire towns burning to the ground. Deadly ice storms in Texas. God-sized hurricanes. In isolation these could be hand-waved away - in aggregate, they clearly point towards catastrophe.
- throwaway2990 3y ago
  lol. When data is not cherry picked then those better equipped people’s opinion might be worth listening to.
  - oops 3y ago
    Can you cite an example of such cherry picking? I’m only aware of counter examples e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking#:~:text=Cherry%2Dpicking%20is%20often%20used,is%20an%20ongoing%20warming%20trend https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking#:~:text=Cherr....
    - throwaway2990 3y ago
      Literally every study. They will remove a particular earth moment because “it’s not relevant” but adding it in makes their data look like global warming isn’t happening. Or they exclude periods claiming that the data from that period is not good when it goes against their claims.
- deleted 3y ago
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Phenomenit 3y ago

The Change needed is refused by the people. We would rather die and kill most of the biological world than face economic austerity, so we get what we order.

ZeroGravitas 3y ago
A democratic majority supports fixing this when polled. Concentrated special interests manage to slow that change being implemented.
- freddie_mercury 3y ago
  This isn't quite true. Polls consistently show that people think someone somewhere should do something as long as it doesn't actually cost them any money. "IPSOS found that just 25 percent of Americans said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to address climate change. A 2019 Reuters poll asked specifically whether respondents would pay $100 to fight climate change and only a third said yes"
- tinco 3y ago
  Meanwhile, Joe Biden while claiming to believe we are steering towards climate disaster, decided to protect the economy and preserve his geriatric political career and reduce oil prices yet again by depleting strategic reserves.
  - lucianbr 3y ago
    On the other hand, increasing oil prices would help Russia and other petro-states which are pretty horrible.
  - pstuart 3y ago
    Let's not get too political here -- while there is pandering on oil pricing he is forced to by an electorate that's too stupid to see the big picture. His ostensible opponent states that climate change is a hoax and wants to undo anything "green".

Mistletoe 3y ago

I just buy EVs and plan to move to Finland. I won’t let this generation get me down.

DoreenMichele 3y ago

I think it's fixable but, you know, not sure I much care anymore. I think most people don't want a fix. They want to publicly wring their hands, gnash their teeth and wail and moan. We should be doing more about wetlands restoration. I think it's a no brainer that a substantial part of the problem is the eradication of 85 percent of global wetlands since the 1700s but it largely goes unnoticed because, I don't know, not enough hopelessness and sense of personal guilt to relate to? I don't get it. But my life sucks and refuses to stop sucking and I am unlikely to live too much longer, so whatevs. Y'all run around screaming and flailing your arms like Kermit the frog if that's what floats your boat.

synecdoche 3y ago
> We should be doing more about wetlands restoration. Only if mosquitoes are eradicated.
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  Ah, yes, the total global impact of climate change is so much less than the impact of mosquitoes.

oldtownroad 3y ago

An optimistic outlook is that we have the knowledge and resources to adapt to a changing environment without loss of life. A realistic counter to that is if we were able to utilise these resources and knowledge effectively then we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this situation. An outlook that splits the difference is… we’ve made mistakes but maybe crisis is what’s required to get everyone working together using our resources and knowledge for the greater good. A sad outlook is that we are all rich people living charmed lives that are not at risk so we can bury our heads in the sand. We aren’t the people who will die from our mistakes.

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squigz 3y ago
> A sad outlook is that we are all rich people Well my bills will be glad to know this, although it's news to me.
- bryanrasmussen 3y ago
  https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040 https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040 >the world's average salary - in PPP dollars - of $1,480 a month, or almost $18,000 a year
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - richrichie 3y ago
    And that is in PPP terms. Puts in perspective the difficulties the average laptop class member faces in life.
  - squigz 3y ago
    I'm not certain the point you're trying to make

demondemidi 3y ago

Yep. I’m old enough to know nothing will change and the shift hard right in politics all but guarantees it. Enjoy every moment you can while it lasts. Capitalism FTW BABY! There’s no going back.

jongjong 3y ago

Since I don't have the resources or power to deal with the problem, I don't worry about it. Nothing I can do. My conscience is perfectly clean. My only advice is that we need to fix the monetary system first or else we'll never be able to escape the cycle of deception. We'll never know what is real or not real or who we can trust or not trust. Once we have a functioning monetary system based on hard money, only then will we be able to see what problems are real and come up with innovations that solve humanity's real problems... Who knows, that might include climate change... Our current political reality is fake and we can never get to the truth while our monetary policies distort incentives. Almost all narratives nowadays are founded on deception and they compete against each other for mindshare... Once they cross a certain threshold, it's too easy for certain narratives to use monetary incentives to reinforce their own propagation; a powerful ecosystem of government organizations develops around the narrative and then private companies follow suit to get their contracts. There are literally no honest narratives even in the running at this point. Once honest people see how the sausage gets made in the centers of power, they lose the heart to push their honest agendas. Only deceptive agendas remain. Today, I'm not even in a position to answer the question of whether or not climate change is real and caused by humans because I cannot trust the current system or the 'experts' in relevant fields to provide me with that information. For all I know, the promoted experts could be 'incentivized' to the eyeballs to lean in a certain direction. I cannot trust them because I cannot trust the system which selected them. I'm an expert in my own field and I've seen how the sausage is made there. If that's how it works in my field, why wouldn't it work the same way in other fields? If I am to go by my own experiences of modern political organizations, I should believe the opposite of what the experts say.

fsflover 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39503654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39503654

alcover 3y ago

I feel dread for sure.. like plagues from the past may reappear. Especially famine. When I watch documentaries about disappeared civilisations, I now get vertigo. I think the pressure for drastic, technical solutions will mount sharply and ideas like that solar shade will be seriously considered.

cesaref 3y ago

I like to think that in 50 million years when we're long gone, whatever has evolved from the burrowing mammal that survived the mess we've caused will be looking at a thin brown layer in the geological record and wondering quite what caused the mass extinction event. One of the crackpot ideas will be that an earlier civilisation managed to mess up the entire planet, but that's so ludicrous that they will conclude it was most likely a weird asteroid impact or something like that.

qaq 3y ago
If you look at temperature shifts at 50 million year scale whatever wea are doing is basically irrelevant https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_width_620_original_image/public/graph-from-scott-wing-620px.png https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_widt...
- mrintegrity 3y ago
  Those rapid temperature swings were related to / resulted in mass extinctions and had various natural causes. The current rapid temperature swing is caused by human activity as is well accepted by any scientist who isn't a crackpot.
  - lenkite 3y ago
    Those natural causes will occur again - regardless of whatever we do as a species.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      What we do as a species can't rule out things like star lifting. The future doesn't need to be limited to what we've done so far.
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    We are a natural cause. Any position otherwise is silly.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago

One thing I realize is that of I have known that 20 years ago I would probably not have had children. I am quite worried about the world we are leaving them and when they are about 80 in 2080 the world is predicted to be hell. I would not be surprised if they decided not to have children themselves. I read that in France the number of vasectomies among 25-ish is exploding. This may not be a good indication, though, because vasectomy was not popular in France in the first place (and still requires z 4 month cool down time, by law)

neom 3y ago
Interesting to read you say that, last time I posted on here that climate change was a major component of my wife and I deciding not to have children, a bunch of people pissed all over that, and I was surprised because It thought it was relatively pragmatic?
- richrichie 3y ago
  I respect your choice. I wish more of the people who feel passionate about saving the earth led by example like this.
  - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
    Lead by example by having children you mean?
    - richrichie 3y ago
      i meant not having children.
      - BrandoElFollito 3y ago
        Ah ok - I got lost in the indents of the thread while on mobile.
- abyssin 3y ago

jemmyw 3y ago

I personally believe we're doomed. Even if there is a technological solution, as things get worse it gets harder to deploy it. If people are struggling with persistent climate driven change then they'll be using whatever is cheap and available. I've accepted it though. I don't doomer at people unless they ask. I can't do anything about the situation. I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life. If I have blame it's not for denialists, it's for all those politicians who know and accept the science but did nothing, they didn't have the guts, being voted in again was more important. It does make me sad to see so many HN comments rolling out the same stupid "I don't trust the data" arguments that were pretty thoroughly debunked within the scientific community 10 years ago, yet still feel the need to jump on every thread about it because the whole thing makes them so angry.

lucianbr 3y ago
> they didn't have the guts, being voted in again was more important Isn't this how democracy is supposed to work? Isn't it, as a general rule, preferable that politicians fear being voted out, and so do the things that the voters want, so they get reelected? The alternative seems to me for a politician to say one thing in the campaign - what the people want to hear, and then do something else when elected - what he thinks is best. Some do that, but they're not loved for it. I am pretty sure that even when or if politicians do not care about the voters, they still do not do the right thing, but some other wrong thing, like enriching themselves. What you are in fact complaining about is that politicians elected by other people did what those people wanted, instead of what you wanted. While not laying the same complaint on those you voted for - greens. They obviously did right to listen to their voters - you and people you agree with. It's not about the guts of a chosen few. It's about humanity overall. If we do not care about the environment, billions of us, a handful who care will not, can not change much.
- ako 3y ago
  Problem is that democracy doesn’t seem to work in bad times, voters only want to hear that they have more, more, more. More jobs, more income, more houses and cars. No politician will win the election by stating voters will have to work longer hours, for less payment, have to pay more taxes, and send their kids to the army to protect our freedom. As soon as that is necessary, populist politicians will gain votes by stating all of that is not needed.

neom 3y ago

The positive feedback loop is very troubling to me. I don't know I believe humans are doomed, but I'm quite sure the earth will be a miserable place to reside in the no-so-distant future.

inference-lord 3y ago

I have children and I'm freaking out for their future. Really really not a good situation. I'm pissed off we have Putin being a dick face rather than all world "leaders" working together to save the planet for the sake of their offspring's futures. Billionaires building apocalypse bunkers and then, the biggest concern of all, another potential term of "why don't we just nuke the hurricanes?" I mean, not looking great. I think the panic will come soon though then it will just be too hard to ignore. Might be too late to do much about it by then.

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asadotzler 3y ago
should not have had children. we've known shit was gonna get bad for 20+ years so it's kinda late to start the worrying now.

YZF 3y ago

Not that I needed convincing but the Covid pandemic demonstrated how hard it is to fight nature. When nature decides to have a go at us, earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics, technology always seems to be on the losing end. We think we're so powerful with our technology but compared to the forces of nature we are not. EDIT: We also can't really seem to get our act together and collaborate across the planet. The hope is that we don't get to a place where positive feedback really pummels us and find some sort of equilibrium. It's hard to say and these are the sorts of games we should not play. If the earth completely changes into a human or life unfriendly place our technology won't save us. Another bit of hope is that the planet has been warmer in the more distant past. I think we're technically still in an ice age.

dgellow 3y ago
I feel the opposite regarding Covid. The world reacted pretty quickly and more or less rationally, solutions have been found and implemented with minimal delays, in a more or less coordinated fashion. All of this moved incredibly fast compared to the general pace. A huge part of the economy has been voluntarily stopped, which is insane to think about, nobody would have thought that was possible before the pandemics happened.
- hmcq6 3y ago
  > The world reacted pretty quickly and more or less rationally > A huge part of the economy has been voluntarily stopped Huh? Covid was tearing up northern Italy before it landed in the US and we did nothing to prevent it. Our politicians were telling people not to buy masks. Trump sent shit tons of ventilators to Florida for no reason. We allowed people from places that had confirmed cases of Covid to come into the US, they just had to make a layover. The WHO refused to call Covid a pandemic until it was way too late. Nursing homes were decimated. Schools decided that stay 6-feet apart meant "do nothing, its fine". People were eating horse deworming paste instead of getting the vaccine. People lost their fucking shit over mask mandates. Maybe you weren't in the US?
  - dgellow 3y ago

kristof0425 3y ago

I sincerely believe it’s just a matter of question of determination whether we want to solve this problem. If we were able to send people on the Moon as fast as we did, I don’t think we can’t do something in a decade to significantly reverse this trend. We clearly aren’t determined enough…

wsc981 3y ago

[flagged]

iamsaitam 3y ago
Oh yes, the classic climate change denier rhetoric, penning at the end a random quote. You mention some scientists tweets and the first one is a Economics Professor.. come on man, at least put some effort in your bullshit propaganda.
mupuff1234 3y ago
> There’s many bad (financial) incentives to push the human induced climate change narrative What those incentives and how exactly are they stronger than the financial incentive to not do anything and continue at full steam? Sure there are some players than would benefit from the transition but that seems like the minority to me.
- wsc981 3y ago
  It’s easy to see that the people pushing the human induced climate change narrative have been very successful, at least in my country of origin, The Netherlands. As people have been pushed to get solar panels. Buy electric vehicles (and by 2030 I believe the EU wants to ban the sale of non-electric vehicles, even banning re-selling second hand diesel and gas vehicles in EU). In The Netherlands home owners will be forced to change from gas heating to waterpumps in coming years, etcetera. And what about the massive windfarms that are being setup everywhere in The Netherlands?
  - mupuff1234 3y ago
    Sure, but you do realize that the majority of companies and economy will not benefit from the transition, quite the opposite? So seems like the bigger financial incentive is to deny the issue if anything.
    - wsc981 3y ago
      I agree it will be horrible for the economy. And for food production and the like. Germany is also feeling the pain as the high energy costs make manufacturing companies unprofitable, forcing them to cease operations or move to other countries. But the EU is determined to follow this path and The Netherlands will follow. As a result the middle class will be crushed through high costs of living and taxation. And many companies will cease to exist or move elsewhere. Of course, this will result in rising unemployment.

roughly 3y ago

Someone I knew said "I'm an optimist because it's the only thing worth being." As much as anything, optimism is an act of will, because if things can't and won't get better, what the hell's the point of anything? More concretely, though, I do think there's some technological levers that can be applied towards CO2 reduction & capture, bioremediation, and adaptation. I don't think they're the optimal answer - the optimal answer was us recognizing we're spending on credit a hundred years ago - but I think they're the answers we're going to use, so that's where most of my effort is. I've mentioned this elsewhere, but - I got a job a while back that I think helps move the world in the right direction, and my god has it made a difference in my ability to handle all this. It's still not easy to look at, but it's easier when you're not burning all your energy on something orthogonal to what you actually care about. If you can live with the lower pay, I promise it's worth it for the improved ability to sleep at night.

imgabe 3y ago

Recorded history is about 150 years, which is barely a blip in human history, let alone the planet’s history. We will find ways to adapt and survive.

rullelito 3y ago
No it is so much better to panic (and vote green, ofc)!
hmcq6 3y ago
> Recorded history is about 150 years Where does someone get the courage to just lie like this?
- imgabe 3y ago
  You can look at the graph in the article. It starts at 1850. So, 174 years if you want to be precise.
  - asadotzler 3y ago
    So, posting in error of 15% is OK with you? Would you accept that from others?
    - imgabe 3y ago
      No, absolutely not. I would calculate their error percentage and make combative replies, because that's how I enjoy spending my time.
  - hmcq6 3y ago
    Oh I wasn't going off a margin of error thing. "Recorded history" and "records of average temperature taken in real time" are two very different things to say only go back 150 years. "Recorded history" only going back 150 years implies that the US was basically the start of recorded history. "real time temperature measurements" only go back 150 years means you don't trust the science that allows us to make estimates of climate based on things like ice core samples.

rullelito 3y ago

Experiencing the hottest 12 months in the last 200 years says nothing about the longer trend.

tpm 3y ago
It's also the hottest 10 years in the last 200 years. And so on.
- imgabe 3y ago
  Regardless of what the temperatures are, one group of 10 years would have been the hottest 10 years in the last 200 years, because, you know, that's how numbers work. Some are bigger than others and it would be exceptionally unlikely for the temperature to be exactly the same every year. I just can't be bothered with this kind of fear-mongering. Guys, you'll never guess what happened! We collected a bunch of measurements and one of them was the biggest! Oh, no!
  - dagss 3y ago
    Have you even had a look at the graphs?

notadoomer236 3y ago

To counter, I think we’ll most likely be fine. It might be two degrees warmer this century. Life will go on just fine. Possibly better in some ways and places. No problem, relatively speaking, compared to the hazards our ancestors face. If it warms 5C, we might have a real problem on our hands. I don’t think we can predict that, and I don’t think it will happen over 100-200 year timescales. Many people seem to think there will be mass die offs, the ocean will become unsurvivable acidic, and crops won’t grow. I don’t think any of that will happen anytime soon. I think there is a very strong “doom” instinct in humans to think this is the last generation, the end of times. This is just the latest manifestation.

bitfilped 3y ago
And what exactly is preventing us from getting to 5C? We can squabble all we want about what temperature will be "problematic" and the timeline to get there but the trend is set and continuing.
- notadoomer236 3y ago
  Why do you think it will warm 5C? Most of the models - which are not especially accurate or battle tested - don’t put us there. If we bumped to 1000ppm carbon, would the earth warm 5C? That’s a technical question. We don’t know exactly how sensitive the climate is or what feedback mechanisms are at play. I don’t lose sleep over it. But I’m just trying to give my perspective to counter some of the doom, since the doomers are very active online.
londons_explore 3y ago
> Many people seem to think there will be mass die offs Humans have already caused many mass die offs. Go into a forest today and try to catch dinner with your bare hands and you'll find it is near impossible. Yet it used to be possible - that's how our ancestors lived. Us inventing aids like the bow and arrow has depleted the wild animal population enough that we now couldn't survive without such aids.
- 3y ago

southerntofu 3y ago

The trends are not reversible, but they may be attenuated if we don't adopt a "dooomed" worldview. In the french speaking world, there's a wave of eco-angriness starting to replace eco-anxiety and that's a welcome change. People are getting involved and putting their ass on the line to stop this madness. At a great cost, given that cops regularly maim and sometimes murder ecological activists trying to stop ecocidal projects (see NDDL / Sivens / Sainte Soline). We have a choice to make: destroy capitalism and its consumption lifestyle, or let it destroy humanity and millions of other species. I strongly recommend watching END:CIV, a 20-year-old documentary that hasn't aged a bit.

notadoomer236 3y ago
If it warms 2-3C as the IPCC predicts, humanity will still be thriving in the 2100s. Capitalism will still be kicking along just fine, and we ll probably be richer than ever.
- tpm 3y ago
  We are already at 1.5C with the help of El Nino, by 2030 we'll be there even without it. 2-3C in 2100 is very optimistic now.
- southerntofu 3y ago
  It's not just about the warming. Can you name one source of water in your neighborhood that's not polluted and can be drunk? Are you aware of the massive desertification due to industrialized agriculture? There's more than isolated signs of civilisational collapse. The system will change that's for sure. The question is whether we'll choose a mildly-painful transition, or endure a deadly ecocidal hard reset. Ecological problems are not coming for us in the 2100s. They're here now and keep getting worse.

oezi 3y ago

The only solution is money! And it isn't so expensive to turn things around. An estimated 100-200% in global GDP is needed to reach carbon net zero by 2050. Annually we need to spend 2-6% of GDP to get there. Remember every bit of Co2 not emitted counts

asadotzler 3y ago
The only solution is removing those in power who are inclined to let the world burn. Money will only be useful after then.
- oezi 3y ago
  "those in power" is just a strayman. We don't need a revolution but pragmatic people. If US Congress wasn't red, we would be moving considerable faster in the right direction.

bobfromhuddle 3y ago

The emissions trend is slowing. We have the technology we need in order to change course, we're just not deploying it fast enough. The worst projections, at least, are off the table: we're not headed for 6 degrees of warming, we're on track for 3, and I strongly suspect we'll end up closer to 2 degrees of warming. That is going to be terrible. People will die, wars will be fought, and we'll see the largest migrations in human history with all the attendant political upheaval and barbarity, but we'll still be here. Humans as a species are going to make it. For me, I found it helpful to go and work in climate. So long as I wasn't actively working to solve the problem, I was driven mad by the knowledge that we were heading for disaster.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> For me, I found it helpful to go and work in climate. Curious, can you say what you switched from and to?

Alpha3031 3y ago

DACCCS is currently insufficiently mature to estimate how "reversible" any specific level of warming is, but current policies are expected to limit warming to 2 to 3 °C by 2100, compared to over 4 °C where no policies were implemented. Net zero emissions by 2050 would even be compatible with 1.5 °C, and that is well within what is achievable with current technology. Plus, with AR6, we have the first estimate of the zero emissions commitment over 50 years, and it is centred around zero, with a 90% CI of roughly ±0.3 °C, meaning it is likely (with "low confidence", meaning this is our first time doing it as part of CMIP) that changes in 20 year average temperatures will be quite small after complete cessation of emissions. That means assuming we ended up on a trajectory like 2 °C by 2100, if we wanted to reverse GSAT at least we would have a better than 66% chance of having another 5 decades of research and development and deployment (plus the 7 decades it took to get there), so once we get to zero emissions it becomes much less urgent. There will still be permanent changes to the biosphere, but there is no reason to feel doomed.

herbst 3y ago

I live up in the Alps in Switzerland. There is barely any snow this year. The rivers don't have as much water as usual but the real effects will only be visible later this year. The water is missing in other places, Italy's north heavily depends on mountain water for their farming. This is going to be a very dry year. Either forcing them to lower the quality of real Italian pasta or again increasing the prices. Also wine from the whole region will not do well this year. In french the fragil botanical environment is changing so much that their cheese doesn't reach the usual quality anymore. This sounds like little things maybe, but those are huge traditional markets dying in front of our eyes. Things are changing very rapidly. I don't know how or why there would be any optimism about this.

rstuart4133 3y ago
Similar thing happened where I live in Brisbane, Australia. A couple of weeks ago the Bureau of Meteorology (our government weather service) predicted 20mm of rain the next day. Instead we got 200mm. They are normally pretty good. They explained the moisture in the air was at record levels this year because the sea surface temperature was 1.5 C above normal. We all knew the moisture was at record levels because Brisbane (in a temperate zone) was getting sustained levels of humidity that exceeded the levels experiences in the far northern tropics, 3000 km away. Even on a relatively mild day at say 30C, you could not walk up a hill without being drenched in your own sweat. Since their weather models had never see humidity like this sustained for weeks and weeks (it was an all-time record yesterday), they were wrong. It's doubly surprising because were in a El Nino, which should bring dry spells. The result of all that rain was continuous storms lasting for week, at the peak bring category 3 cyclone winds (exceeding 130 km/hr), concrete power pylons being blown over (never happened before), power outages for weeks in some areas, flooding and deaths in metropolitan areas. Most of came without much warning because the aforementioned models were wrong. It's been a wild ride. What blows me away is in West Asia the sea surface temperature was 5 C above normal this year, over three times what we are experiencing. I can't imagine what that is like.

globalnode 3y ago

I dont think we've taking into account climate change acceleration either. I believe the tipping point will come and go before people really accept its a problem and try to hit the brakes but by then it will be waaaaaaay past the reasonable time to change our ways. Within a generation whats left of us will be living underground and popping up at night to breathe some "fresh" hot air. Say sorry to your kids.

swader999 3y ago

No, not at all. Trying to put a measurement on all of earth is nonsense and pretending that proxies allow us to extend it further back in time is even more hubris.

atoav 3y ago

My uncle bought me a book on climate change in the 90s when I was a kid. I have spent all my life knowing we are moving in the wrong direction and chose to use my voting power and my purse accordingly. The issue we really face is that the needed change is fundamentally incompatible with the way wealth is accumulated on the top today, how growth is expected and required at every step. That means the first change that needs to happen is purely mental: Either we march into doom to make a bit more money for the richest or we restructure our system so it doesn't need growth to provide wealth. And once we have that mental change the next harder step will be convincing the powers that be to implement it. We are now farther in terms of the mental question than in say 2010, but things move too slow and many people have not fully realized the existential nature of the problem.

whitehexagon 3y ago

22C here last weekend in southern Europe, and all I hear are people saying nice! We are doomed, and I already feel like a climate refugee trying to relocate to somewhere cooler. But then the gulf stream will probably fail! I feel like we cant solve this when there is no political/economical motive, or willingness for people to sacrifice.

gmuslera 3y ago

I didn't need 12 months of record breaking world abnormal weather for that. The previous, continuous trend upwards for decades was already bad enough, with extreme events becoming increasingly common and extremer. You have a complex system, you apply a continuous big enough pressure to it, and you get global average that is slowly rising up even if some days look normal, and, somewhere, somewhat, some days, weird things are happening. And the very concept of positive feedback loops causing that this problem is not worsening in a linear way. That is a very bad trend, that it would just take time to hit around me. But the doomerism part doesn't come from just there. It comes from the human world. Not doing anything about it, big money making big disinformation campaings to avoid normal people to take action, big capital and top industrialized countries not doing anything about that, and adding even more disruptive activity (along with some token measures that are not in the same order than the others), official global climate organizations being taken over in front of everyone, smaller countries are being sued for taking measures to minimize impact. There is no will to fix this, to stop worsening the situation. So you have a system that is being disrupted in big scale for decades, that is taken out of its inertia and balance by that continuous and increasing push, you start to see that it is slowly getting out of control. And there is no will to take out that push, at most you get some Newspeak way of ensuring people that something is being done. And when things really becomes desperate, we won't have decades to wait for a slow, orderly unwinding to have some effect. So some desperate extra push on a system that we still don't understand will be sold as idea of geoengineering, moving the system towards a new, even more unstable situation. There is where my doomerism lies, not in the symptom of a string of broken records.

csmpltn 3y ago

Let’s say you could magically reduce the population of humans on earth by 90%, at a moment’s notice. Two questions: 1. Is climate change averted, and a non-issue? Or has it just been pushed back for a little while? 2. What does life on earth look like, when 90% of the people you know and depend on today are just gone?

pc_edwin 3y ago

"recorded history".. glacial maximums and minimums.. Also would be very helpful to look at the worst case predictions and what that would entail hundred years down the line. Its not cool but it really not that bad. Definitely not apocalyptic. Its also worth it to consider whats the alternative because every version of an alternative is exponentially worse (communism and/or luddite primitive feudalism).

nec4b 3y ago

>> but the constant stream of record breaking abnormal weather How do you even know what is normal weather? Can you specify an exact time when you think the weather was normal? >> Do others here feel similarly? No. >> Do you think these trends are reversible? Reversible to what? Like it was 50 years ago or 5000 years ago or 50 million years ago? >> Is technology the solution? Something else? People have been living anywhere from freezing arctic to hot arid deserts. We seem to be good at adapting to our environment.

rini17 3y ago
To last cca 10000 years, when there was exceptionally stable climate that allowed for reliable agriculture. Sure, humans can survive without agriculture but not billions of them.
- nec4b 3y ago
  The earth is getting greener and you think we won't have agriculture anymore. In the last 10000 years climate varied a lot, from little ice ages to warm periods. Can you be more specific about the time and also how are you going to hold climate steady, since obvious it varies a lot naturally?
  - rini17 3y ago
    To feed billions "more greenery" is not sufficient, you need reliable and predictable weather. Just one or two years of world-widespread crop failures can cause mass famine. Even if on average "it's getting greener". The temperature during last 10k years varied still much less than long periods before and we're now already outside that band. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...
    - nec4b 3y ago
      You are probably mixing weather and climate, but none of them has ever been predictable with or without human input. I don't think your graph is saying what you want it to say. Crop failure is a fact of farming and on average is getting less and less common, otherwise the earth would not be getting greener.

bigfont 3y ago

I feel convinced to participate in climate change in my work. I don't know whether we can reverse it or whether tech will solve it, but I do believe in its importance, and I want to understand it. I have incorporated all of this change into my worldview by finding ways to improve morale in the community, and recently, by switching careers from software development into sustainable innovation.

ksec 3y ago

>how do you incorporate all of this change into your worldview and outlook? This is going to be a cynical take by HN's standard. It actually reinforce some of the fundamentals of humans beings that our ancestors has somehow understood far better than we do today. It is that "Interest" matters. Needs are driven by interest. You cant just say the world is going to end in 100 years time and we need to stop eating meat and turn off all heaters etc etc. You also cant tell company to stop earning money or lower profits margin just because of "Good". What technology do however is that we innovate so others cant say NO. We are now at a time where non-fossil fuels, or Wind and Solar is cheaper, and will continue to get cheaper in the future. The economy of scale is there. To the point unless the Government TAX on non-fossil fuels, the pure force of this momentum meant it is only a matter of time. I use the term non-fossil fuels because renewable doesn't include nuclear, personally I am a big fan of GE BWRX-300. All in all in am actually quite optimistic. We are slowly solving it.

martin82 3y ago

I don't feel any abnormal weather at all. Neither in Singapore, nor in Germany (both places where I have family and regularly stay). In my 40 years on this planet, we have always had winters with meters of snow and we have always had summers so hot that they closed schools. Both of these events were rare and they were AMAZING and everyone was either taking out their sleds or spending the day at the beach. We have also always had floods at the Rhine river.

trealira 3y ago

China's climate change policies are largely about adaptation to climate change, not just mitigation or prevention[0] From the article on China's adaptation policies: > As Freymann details, these efforts include “constructing the largest water transfer system in human history; expanding and raising nearly 6,000 miles of sea walls along its coasts; building a strategic grain reserve larger than the rest of the world’s combined; carving wetland flood basins in the centers of its largest cities; restoring coastal wetlands to act as buffers against storms; and relocating hundreds of thousands of ‘ecological migrants’ in low-lying areas.” Reading your question made me think of this article. It seems like a lot of time was wasted decades ago in the US on not transitioning away from fossil fuels or trying to become carbon neutral, but that's crying over spilled milk. I'm not going to doom about the effects of something that mostly happened before I was born; that's almost like becoming an alternate history theorist. > I guess my real question is: how do you incorporate all of this change into your worldview and outlook? To answer your question directly, I just hope more of my generation (generation Z) does less climate change denial or doomerism, and does more voting and climate change activism. And not just for feel-good policy like planting trees, but climate change adaptation, like China. [0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unpacking-chinas-climate-priorities/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unpacking-chinas-climate-...