8 ms·

Human reasoning is an amazingly flexible thing. We've gone from "this problem doesn't exist" to "this is natural variance" to "even if it was real we shouldn't

by altacc 2y ago

Human reasoning is an amazingly flexible thing. We've gone from "this problem doesn't exist" to "this is natural variance" to "even if it was real we shouldn't do anything about it because it would cost us and others aren't doing the same" to "well, it's too late now and we need to keep consuming to save ourselves from the consequences of our consumption". Anything to avoid inconveniencing ourselves or force significant & meaningful action to truly reign in the industries with the biggest effects on climate.

WithinReason 2y ago
We're simply following the Four Stage Strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak
- taneq 2y ago
  Large scale multiplayer Four Stage Strategy is basically Existential Chicken. You keep doing the most profitable thing, in the hope that your competitors care more about the continued existence of the commons than you do, and so become comparatively less competitive.
  - TeMPOraL 2y ago
    There is a silver lining: the market is, in its perverse way, priority-sorting what people focus on. At some point things will get so bad that addressing them will be more profitable than any other thing companies can do...
    - hackerlight 2y ago
      The market by itself can never solve this problem because the tragedy of the commons is not addressable by market mechanisms. It is impossible due to the game theory dynamics at play. You need top down force applied to align incentives with the public commons, it's the only way.
      - TeMPOraL 2y ago
        100% agreed, of course. I didn't mean the market will solve this problem - just that if things get bad enough, the market incentives will align towards solving the problem... just a tiny bit, just until it stops being profitable enough to continue solving it.
wddkcs 2y ago
I agree with the first sentence. Alternatively, it's amazing how the environmental activists pushing these agendas are focusing on such bad faith efforts. Where has the outcry been to put sulfur back in maritime fuel, as another commenter mentioned? Where is the effort to fix America's broken recycling system? Where is the effort to eliminate the millions of pieces of daily junk mail? If environmental efforts weren't targeted at the most authoritarian and obtuse results (demands to stop all car use, mass polluters being labeled green through the use of carbon credits, etc.) it'd be a lot easier to take the threat seriously. When the solution to the problem is 'pay me more money and do the things I want you to do' it turns the 'extinction level threat' into just another sales pitch.
- eru 2y ago
  Ironically enough, burning lots of sulfur is the only thing that has ever worked against global warming. As in it's the only thing that has both been tried and that has worked. For very good reasons (eg we don't like acid rain) we stopped putting so much sulfur in the atmosphere. And if we were to do it again, we wouldn't do it by burning dirty coal near to the ground. We would probably do it via additives to jet fuel.
  - wddkcs 2y ago
    Has it really decreased the prevalence of acid rain that much, and was acid rain really that large an issue? I haven't heard anything about it since the 90s.
    - altacc 2y ago
      If you're in the West then you haven't heard about it much because it really was a big problem and reducing it was a success story: "Wet sulfate deposition – a common indicator of acid rain – dropped by more than 70% between 1989-1991 and 2020-2022." https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/acid-rain-program-results https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/acid-rain-program-results It's an increasing problem in Asia: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231016305374 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101... I think you've demonstrated how forgetful we are. A problem gets solved but because it's not a problem we question if the fuss was worth it. Same with the Y2K bug, that got loads of hype and afterwards people complained that no planes fell out of the sky, ignoring the massive amount of work that went into reducing the problem.
roenxi 2y ago
Yeah, but that strategy isn't bad in the abstract. There just needs to be one good reason to keep going as we are. I met a person from a town in Russia where the record low is a hair higher than -50 degrees Celsius and the annual mean is -1 degree Celsius. The town is habitable. The worst case for the pro-climate change in terms of getting to say "I told you so" is that the climate crowd turn out to be right about literally every prediction, and we still ignore them and continue our merry way. We know humans are remarkably adaptable, and the climate trying to kill us every so often isn't new to us as a species. War is a substantially worse threat. The chart is concerning, but it still doesn't break my top 3 worries right now (#1 being nuclear war, #2 being lack of cheap energy and #3 being a resurgence of authoritarianism from poor economic policy in places like the US [0]). The indicators are still pretty good that our ability to just barrel through climate-related problems is good enough. If there is an honest-to-goodness problem with climate change that we can't deal with people need to talk about it more. [0] 5 minutes of thought later, I'd swap in overpopulation in somewhere there and bump out authoritarianism to #4
- ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
  I think you underestimate the costs of climate change. When areas of the planet become uninhabitable for humans without air conditioning, then there's going to be a mass movement of people which will most likely lead to famine and wars. Currently we rely on stable weather patterns to produce most of our food and that's not likely to be able to continue. I fear that war is going to come about because of the changing climate.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    That scenario is so complicated and requires so many tenuous assumptions that it might just happen anyway. The demographic stats already suggest that the future is going to be very African, that there will be lots of migration and we've had a couple of migration waves triggered by stuff that isn't climate change. The problem isn't climate, it is that there are too many people and they keep having kids. Although right now the trend in global birth rates is extremely promising and if that keeps up (keeps down?) we'll be fine.
jonp888 2y ago
I don't see any point in even trying to change any more. There is too much damage already, international cooperation has always been primarily driven by national interests, and I don't see there ever being a global movement significant enough to make a difference. What I don't get is why people are still having children in societies where it is not necessary to have offspring to provide you with income and care in your later years. Anyone approaching middle age can still look forward to a relatively comfortable life, but it's the babies being born today that are truly screwed.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I think about this more than I probably should, but people have always had hope for the future in spite of certain (personal) doom. In some sense it's just the human condition. I do wonder how people will behave if/when more and more come to the same conclusion.
- hackerlight 2y ago
  Climate change isn't binary. If we limit it to 2-3C that's a lot less suffering, war and devastation than 4-5C. And I think we have a shot at achieving that thanks to the miracle of economies of scale driven cost declines we are seeing with renewables and batteries.
- gadders 2y ago
  People are a resource. You could have the next Einstein or Norman Borlaug.
  - silverquiet 2y ago
    It's entirely possible that there is an Einstein or two working in climate science and telling us to cut down on CO2 emissions.
    - gadders 2y ago
      There could be a Tesla or Edison waiting to be born that could solve the problem.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> "well, it's too late now and we need to keep consuming to save ourselves from the consequences of our consumption". To be fair, sometimes the only way out is through. What may save us is shift towards cleaner manufacturing, cleaner energy generation, better ecological policies, and (unironically) eventually expanding out into cislunar space. What definitely won't save us is cutting down on consumption and halting economical growth, because that will collapse economies, which means we'll all starve to death if we don't kill ourselves first.
- altacc 2y ago
  What we're going "through" is the planet and there's nothing on the other side. The green economy has a lot of potential (and it's fair share of grifters) but the mindset I refer to openly rejects the green economy. It seems that in the US at least the political spectrum most aligned with climate denial is intentionally pushing to increase industries with high climate emissions and suppress investment in the green economy.
- Richyrichy3234 2y ago
  Sooooo you do know that a small % of people create most co2 right? Just because some people can't afford a new car every x years or can fly around 2 3 or 5 times a year, our society will not starve to death. There are plenty of people who have holiday houses and other shit they don't need. If we make it less attractive for the rich to work, the rich will stop working and the others get a chance.
  - fileeditview 2y ago
    That's an interesting theory. Do you have some reference for this claim? If you look at this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-selected-countries/#:~:text=Global%20carbon%20dioxide%20emissions%202010%2D2022%2C%20by%20select%20country&text=China%20and%20the%20United%20States,GtCO%E2%82%82)%20in%202022%2C%20respectively https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-.... you see the emissions by country e.g. Don't get me wrong.. I don't think anybody needs a Yacht or private jet.. however I think the emissions come primarily from industry.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
This "too late" narrative is dangerous. Climate change is not a binary, we can choose what the maximum temperature will be, and the higher, the worse. It appears that each degree is increasingly bad. The change from 4 to 5 degrees of warming will cause far more damage than the rise from 3 to 4. Yes, stopping at 1.5 is now impossible. But stopping at 2 isn't impossible and stopping at 3 is realistic. Stopping at 5 will be catastrophic. Let's not do that.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  I wonder how we stop at 2 or 3? Or ever? When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly. I live a very energy-conscious life but I believe it mostly just codes to society as "loser". That I can live with; it's essentially the only way I can live with myself knowing the cost that I create to the planet. But exceedingly few will choose to live the way I do. "Too late" is also a bit of an academic question as well; there are dragons lurking in the Earth systems - tipping points where carbon sinks become carbon sources and other feedback mechanisms waiting to be tipped. It's very easy to imagine that one tipping point cascades into another to create a runaway effect, though I don't believe there is scientific consensus on exactly where these points are, so we can perhaps hope to avoid them. That the oceans are so much hotter now than models predicted is an ominous sign that our understanding of such a complex system is still quite limited.
  - Rudism 2y ago
    Individuals choosing to live an energy-conscious life is commendable, and if enough people did it it might even ripple some small effects upwards, but ultimately I don't think that would ever be enough to actually solve anything. It has to be a top-down solution where lawmakers force the big corporations to be energy/environment conscious, but of course with the politicians (in the U.S. at least) being in the pocket of those very companies that's a tall order.
  - abenga 2y ago
    > When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly. Isolating everyone to only ever see the place they were born and never travel the world seems like a big overreaction to me. Transport (and specifically aviation) is hardly the biggest offender as well. Energy, Industry, and Agriculture are 80% of emissions, we should start there.
jsbisviewtiful 2y ago
> "well, it's too late now and we need to keep consuming to save ourselves from the consequences of our consumption" As an every day person with no power outside of voting, eating mostly vegetarian, outfitting my home with climate friendly options and buying less overall... That's literally all I can do as a household. Not many seem interested in doing similar things though so I literally have nothing else to give. That's a drop in the bucket and meaningless though unless others choose to join

by altacc 2y ago

WithinReason 2y ago

We're simply following the Four Stage Strategy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak

taneq 2y ago
Large scale multiplayer Four Stage Strategy is basically Existential Chicken. You keep doing the most profitable thing, in the hope that your competitors care more about the continued existence of the commons than you do, and so become comparatively less competitive.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  There is a silver lining: the market is, in its perverse way, priority-sorting what people focus on. At some point things will get so bad that addressing them will be more profitable than any other thing companies can do...
  - hackerlight 2y ago
    The market by itself can never solve this problem because the tragedy of the commons is not addressable by market mechanisms. It is impossible due to the game theory dynamics at play. You need top down force applied to align incentives with the public commons, it's the only way.
    - TeMPOraL 2y ago
      100% agreed, of course. I didn't mean the market will solve this problem - just that if things get bad enough, the market incentives will align towards solving the problem... just a tiny bit, just until it stops being profitable enough to continue solving it.

wddkcs 2y ago

I agree with the first sentence. Alternatively, it's amazing how the environmental activists pushing these agendas are focusing on such bad faith efforts. Where has the outcry been to put sulfur back in maritime fuel, as another commenter mentioned? Where is the effort to fix America's broken recycling system? Where is the effort to eliminate the millions of pieces of daily junk mail? If environmental efforts weren't targeted at the most authoritarian and obtuse results (demands to stop all car use, mass polluters being labeled green through the use of carbon credits, etc.) it'd be a lot easier to take the threat seriously. When the solution to the problem is 'pay me more money and do the things I want you to do' it turns the 'extinction level threat' into just another sales pitch.

eru 2y ago
Ironically enough, burning lots of sulfur is the only thing that has ever worked against global warming. As in it's the only thing that has both been tried and that has worked. For very good reasons (eg we don't like acid rain) we stopped putting so much sulfur in the atmosphere. And if we were to do it again, we wouldn't do it by burning dirty coal near to the ground. We would probably do it via additives to jet fuel.
- wddkcs 2y ago
  Has it really decreased the prevalence of acid rain that much, and was acid rain really that large an issue? I haven't heard anything about it since the 90s.
  - altacc 2y ago
    If you're in the West then you haven't heard about it much because it really was a big problem and reducing it was a success story: "Wet sulfate deposition – a common indicator of acid rain – dropped by more than 70% between 1989-1991 and 2020-2022." https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/acid-rain-program-results https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/acid-rain-program-results It's an increasing problem in Asia: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231016305374 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101... I think you've demonstrated how forgetful we are. A problem gets solved but because it's not a problem we question if the fuss was worth it. Same with the Y2K bug, that got loads of hype and afterwards people complained that no planes fell out of the sky, ignoring the massive amount of work that went into reducing the problem.

roenxi 2y ago

Yeah, but that strategy isn't bad in the abstract. There just needs to be one good reason to keep going as we are. I met a person from a town in Russia where the record low is a hair higher than -50 degrees Celsius and the annual mean is -1 degree Celsius. The town is habitable. The worst case for the pro-climate change in terms of getting to say "I told you so" is that the climate crowd turn out to be right about literally every prediction, and we still ignore them and continue our merry way. We know humans are remarkably adaptable, and the climate trying to kill us every so often isn't new to us as a species. War is a substantially worse threat. The chart is concerning, but it still doesn't break my top 3 worries right now (#1 being nuclear war, #2 being lack of cheap energy and #3 being a resurgence of authoritarianism from poor economic policy in places like the US [0]). The indicators are still pretty good that our ability to just barrel through climate-related problems is good enough. If there is an honest-to-goodness problem with climate change that we can't deal with people need to talk about it more. [0] 5 minutes of thought later, I'd swap in overpopulation in somewhere there and bump out authoritarianism to #4

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
I think you underestimate the costs of climate change. When areas of the planet become uninhabitable for humans without air conditioning, then there's going to be a mass movement of people which will most likely lead to famine and wars. Currently we rely on stable weather patterns to produce most of our food and that's not likely to be able to continue. I fear that war is going to come about because of the changing climate.
- roenxi 2y ago
  That scenario is so complicated and requires so many tenuous assumptions that it might just happen anyway. The demographic stats already suggest that the future is going to be very African, that there will be lots of migration and we've had a couple of migration waves triggered by stuff that isn't climate change. The problem isn't climate, it is that there are too many people and they keep having kids. Although right now the trend in global birth rates is extremely promising and if that keeps up (keeps down?) we'll be fine.

jonp888 2y ago

I don't see any point in even trying to change any more. There is too much damage already, international cooperation has always been primarily driven by national interests, and I don't see there ever being a global movement significant enough to make a difference. What I don't get is why people are still having children in societies where it is not necessary to have offspring to provide you with income and care in your later years. Anyone approaching middle age can still look forward to a relatively comfortable life, but it's the babies being born today that are truly screwed.

silverquiet 2y ago
I think about this more than I probably should, but people have always had hope for the future in spite of certain (personal) doom. In some sense it's just the human condition. I do wonder how people will behave if/when more and more come to the same conclusion.
hackerlight 2y ago
Climate change isn't binary. If we limit it to 2-3C that's a lot less suffering, war and devastation than 4-5C. And I think we have a shot at achieving that thanks to the miracle of economies of scale driven cost declines we are seeing with renewables and batteries.
gadders 2y ago
People are a resource. You could have the next Einstein or Norman Borlaug.
- silverquiet 2y ago
  It's entirely possible that there is an Einstein or two working in climate science and telling us to cut down on CO2 emissions.
  - gadders 2y ago
    There could be a Tesla or Edison waiting to be born that could solve the problem.

TeMPOraL 2y ago

> "well, it's too late now and we need to keep consuming to save ourselves from the consequences of our consumption". To be fair, sometimes the only way out is through. What may save us is shift towards cleaner manufacturing, cleaner energy generation, better ecological policies, and (unironically) eventually expanding out into cislunar space. What definitely won't save us is cutting down on consumption and halting economical growth, because that will collapse economies, which means we'll all starve to death if we don't kill ourselves first.

altacc 2y ago
What we're going "through" is the planet and there's nothing on the other side. The green economy has a lot of potential (and it's fair share of grifters) but the mindset I refer to openly rejects the green economy. It seems that in the US at least the political spectrum most aligned with climate denial is intentionally pushing to increase industries with high climate emissions and suppress investment in the green economy.
Richyrichy3234 2y ago
Sooooo you do know that a small % of people create most co2 right? Just because some people can't afford a new car every x years or can fly around 2 3 or 5 times a year, our society will not starve to death. There are plenty of people who have holiday houses and other shit they don't need. If we make it less attractive for the rich to work, the rich will stop working and the others get a chance.
- fileeditview 2y ago
  That's an interesting theory. Do you have some reference for this claim? If you look at this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-selected-countries/#:~:text=Global%20carbon%20dioxide%20emissions%202010%2D2022%2C%20by%20select%20country&text=China%20and%20the%20United%20States,GtCO%E2%82%82)%20in%202022%2C%20respectively https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-.... you see the emissions by country e.g. Don't get me wrong.. I don't think anybody needs a Yacht or private jet.. however I think the emissions come primarily from industry.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

This "too late" narrative is dangerous. Climate change is not a binary, we can choose what the maximum temperature will be, and the higher, the worse. It appears that each degree is increasingly bad. The change from 4 to 5 degrees of warming will cause far more damage than the rise from 3 to 4. Yes, stopping at 1.5 is now impossible. But stopping at 2 isn't impossible and stopping at 3 is realistic. Stopping at 5 will be catastrophic. Let's not do that.

silverquiet 2y ago
I wonder how we stop at 2 or 3? Or ever? When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly. I live a very energy-conscious life but I believe it mostly just codes to society as "loser". That I can live with; it's essentially the only way I can live with myself knowing the cost that I create to the planet. But exceedingly few will choose to live the way I do. "Too late" is also a bit of an academic question as well; there are dragons lurking in the Earth systems - tipping points where carbon sinks become carbon sources and other feedback mechanisms waiting to be tipped. It's very easy to imagine that one tipping point cascades into another to create a runaway effect, though I don't believe there is scientific consensus on exactly where these points are, so we can perhaps hope to avoid them. That the oceans are so much hotter now than models predicted is an ominous sign that our understanding of such a complex system is still quite limited.
- Rudism 2y ago
  Individuals choosing to live an energy-conscious life is commendable, and if enough people did it it might even ripple some small effects upwards, but ultimately I don't think that would ever be enough to actually solve anything. It has to be a top-down solution where lawmakers force the big corporations to be energy/environment conscious, but of course with the politicians (in the U.S. at least) being in the pocket of those very companies that's a tall order.
- abenga 2y ago
  > When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly. Isolating everyone to only ever see the place they were born and never travel the world seems like a big overreaction to me. Transport (and specifically aviation) is hardly the biggest offender as well. Energy, Industry, and Agriculture are 80% of emissions, we should start there.

jsbisviewtiful 2y ago

> "well, it's too late now and we need to keep consuming to save ourselves from the consequences of our consumption" As an every day person with no power outside of voting, eating mostly vegetarian, outfitting my home with climate friendly options and buying less overall... That's literally all I can do as a household. Not many seem interested in doing similar things though so I literally have nothing else to give. That's a drop in the bucket and meaningless though unless others choose to join