27 ms·
96% of climate policy since 1998 failed
- akira2501 2y ago> Yet in the vast majority of policies there was no discernible emissions reduction beyond what would be expected based on long-term economic and population dynamics. There are 2 billion more people, or 33% _more_ people, than there were in 1998. What reduction was "expected?" > In developed countries, pricing stands out, whereas in developing countries, regulation is the most powerful policy. Ah. We keep the poor destitute and we allow the rich to buy indulgences. Perhaps your "expectations" are entirely flawed?
- Kenji 2y ago[flagged]
- poincaredisk 2y agoWhat a weird statement. Ideally 0% of policies would fail, since the goal of having a policy is to succeed. If you're opposed to any climate policy, you should wish for NaN% failed policies instead (i.e. no policies at all). Aiming for 100% failed policies sound like a way to make everyone, including you, unhappy.
- ipaddr 2y agoPublic failed policies prevent or deter future failed policies. You must hope for failed policies to get to NaN% policies.
- stonethrowaway 2y agoCIA Superior: What did we learn, Palmer? CIA Officer: I don't know, sir. CIA Superior: I don't fuckin' know either. I guess we learned not to do it again. CIA Officer: Yes, sir. CIA Superior: I'm fucked if I know what we did. CIA Officer: Yes, sir, it's, uh, hard to say CIA Superior: Jesus Fucking Christ
- Arainach 2y ago(From "Burn After Reading", a wonderful movie)
- stonethrowaway 2y agoI was contemplating tossing in a “If the policies you followed have brought you to this, of what use were the policies?” but it’s more than likely that these policies were designed to fail and were a distraction. Climate change to TPTB is a situational comedy.
- paulcole 2y agoAmazed it’s that low. As a group, wealthy people (in the global sense — i.e. anyone reading this) aren’t inconvenienced enough by climate change yet. So there’s a 0% chance that they’ll supports any climate policy that negatively impacts their quality of life in any way. But they also don’t want to feel like Part of the Problem, so they’ll enthusiastically support do-nothing policy.
- roenxi 2y agoEven if we were affected we wouldn't support policy that negatively impacts our quality of life. The point of policy is to improve QoL.
- paulcole 2y agoYes, exactly. People won’t trade their QoL today for a better future for the planet. At some point that will have to be done by force rather than choice. So yes, you’d better hope the magic policy that both A) Works and B) improves QOL today is found. Although to be honest, this point won’t come until everyone alive today is probably long dead so it doesn’t matter that much.
- mistrial9 2y ago> So there’s a 0% chance that they’ll supports any climate policy /me reviews dozens of serious mass actions, hundreds of long form publications, and legislation in California and elsewhere.. wondering how this fits with "zero percent" of anything.. can we regroup and rephrase a bit here?
- paulcole 2y agoNo need to rephrase! You can simply continue moving your eyes left to right to find additional words!
- totetsu 2y agoI know someone who was a post-doc researcher in climate policy. a seeming sorely needed are of expertise. But a large enough group of the population just wanted to cry, the government is too big, and we don't want to waste money on policy analysts so there has been no opportunity to actually do anything.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y agoI guess, I want to know what the how accurate the models from 1998 on have been. Iirc, “An Inconvenient Truth” was put in 2006. I remember it winning Best Documentary.
- rhcom2 2y ago> We find that climate models published over the past five decades were generally quite accurate in predicting global warming in the years after publication, particularly when accounting for differences between modeled and actual changes in atmospheric CO 2 and other climate drivers. https://eps.harvard.edu/files/eps/files/hausfather_2020_evaluating_historical_gmst_projections.pdf https://eps.harvard.edu/files/eps/files/hausfather_2020_eval...
- userbinator 2y ago18 years later and it's still the misleading propaganda it has always been.
- magicalhippo 2y agoI can't say for 1998, but this paper[1] compares the IPCC projections made from 2000 and onwards. The earlies estimation underpredicted temperature rise while later ones did better. I also checked the IPCC predictions from 2001 myself a couple of years ago[2], and across multiple factors like sea rise, glacier loss etc observed values seemed to be within the predictions. [1]: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16264-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-16264-6 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27166369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27166369
- userbinator 2y ago[flagged]
- bamboozled 2y agoNot really surprised. Every time I open Apple Weather and look at the daily average it seems to be ~ +5c the norm, about a year ago I just put it down to "must be a warm summer" but it's been like that for almost 12 months now. It's autumn and it's crazy warm. Either Apply weather has some serious bug, or it's the climate that's ruined. Even the trees seem a bit confused. What's that data going to look like in a decade? I really hate to think.
- ipaddr 2y agoYou might live in an unusual place or Apple could be providing misleading data. The 5c above norm isn't accurate for the majority of the world.
- bamboozled 2y ago...or I might be living in a place experience an extreme heatwave induced by anthropogenic warming ? "Melting Glaciers force Switzerland and Italy to Redraw Borders" https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/29/melting-glaciers-switzerland-italy-alpine-border-matterhorn https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/sep/29/melting-...
- smolder 2y agoIt's anthropogenic (human caused) warming.
- bamboozled 2y agoThanks
- tightbookkeeper 2y agoWhen there are cold years we are told this is short term weather and not long term climate. But every warm year and storm is evidence of long term change.
- 2y ago
- rr808 2y agoI remember all the hate USA got when it didn't sign the Kyoto Protocol. Its emissions have fallen ever since then, despite population rising by a quarter.
- kaonashi 2y agoeasy to cut emissions when you deindustrialize
- rr808 2y agoYes that helps but more important was the fracking revolution that replaced a lot of coal with gas.
- jellicle 2y agoProbably the easiest way would have been to draw a line around each factory in the US, declare that those now counted as outside-US for emissions purposes, and then declare that now the US was a zero-emissions country. Done and dusted, problem solved.
- wakawaka28 2y agoTake it up with China. They are building tons of coal plants as we speak, and also eating our lunch in trade. Edit: I got a "posting too fast" nonsense message. So here is my response to "solar is cheaper than coal, they are fools": China has a TON of solar panels and batteries. They make most of them. So they apparently think coal is worth it anyway. If coal was more expensive or worse overall, theu would be absolute suckers to ship their product to us.
- landryraccoon 2y agoIf they are still building a ton of coal they’re making a colossally foolish mistake. Solar is already far cheaper than coal for new installations, and the price is still falling.
- invalidname 2y agoThe headline focuses on a difficult number but the article pointed out 63 effective policies that government can focus on. Unfortunately, these seem to be the tougher policies like carbon tax which people aren't fans of... But it makes sense, you pollute you should pay for the cleanup.
- PaulKeeble 2y agoI would really like the cost of CO2 emission to start to tend towards the true cost of capture and storage of CO2. At the moment that price is heavy and I think that should be the goal and any fines for organisations that breach emissions laws should be set on that basis. It might never come down but I hope it does but in the meantime that is the price of emissions.
- igornadj 2y agoCarbon tax has wide popular support across the globe.
- invalidname 2y agoReally? Not a huge expert but this is a huge talking point on the right. They don't like the carbon tax. E.g. second result from a simple search: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carbon-tax-political-popularity-research-1.7221908 https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carbon-tax-political-popula... Yes, Liberals (such as me) like carbon taxes. But even among liberals taxes aren't a popular subject. Especially not a potentially regressive tax like some carbon taxes.
- igornadj 2y agoJust looking at Canada, it seems their support has dropped below half, but speaking generally, it's popular. E.g. https://globescan.com/2021/11/05/new-global-poll-shows-growing-public-support-for-carbon-tax/ https://globescan.com/2021/11/05/new-global-poll-shows-growi...
- 2y ago
- ls612 2y agoClimate policy fails because the proposals are eye-wateringly expensive, amounting to trillions of dollars annually. In contrast, the CFC protocols and treaties worked splendidly because they were cheap, costing only billions of dollars to switch to chemicals which didn’t interact with ozone. Changing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is not the only way to change the climate, and is unlikely to be the cheapest way to change the climate. But acknowledging that would require having a diplomatic/societal technology to determine what the optimal climate should be.
- bamboozled 2y agoAren't we going to lose Trillions of dollars forever to climate change anyway?
- ls612 2y agoIf we sit on our thumbs and do nothing about it perhaps (the uncertainty bars around long term damage are massive though). But changing CO2 levels is not the only way to avert that damage.
- caipre 2y agoWhat are the viable alternatives that you have in mind?
- rqtwteye 2y agoWhat else is there? Geoengineering sounds interesting but nobody knows what the ultimate effects would be in a complex system like the Earth. And if geoengineering is done on a global level there will probably be winners and losers. How do you negotiate that?
- coryrc 2y agoThe strong do what they have to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.
- 2y ago
- xyst 2y agoAnd with the worsening weather events (Hurricane Helene ripped through the Florida Keys and other areas in its path), we are seeing the consequences of our collective inaction.
- tbrownaw 2y agoWhile that's predicted to happen, it doesn't appear to have happened yet. https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/ > In summary, it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human-caused increases in greenhouse gases have caused a change in past Atlantic basin hurricane activity that is outside the range of natural variability, although greenhouse gases are strongly linked to global warming.
- davidmurdoch 2y agoDon't forget about the category 4 Hurricane Helene from September of 1958. Every time there's a huge storm you shouldn't just go about yelling "climate change!", just like you can't claim we've fixed climate change just because we have a few nice calm sunny days.
- smolder 2y agoRight. It's not about 1 storm in isolation. Climate change is evident through the very clear and measurable patterns of weather over time, not to mention glacial loss, ocean acidity, etc.
- davidmurdoch 2y agoWhy is this downvoted? I dont understand what is controversial here.
- graycat 2y agoAt https://i2.wp.com/www.climate4you.com/images/GISP2%20TemperatureSince10700%20BP%20with%20CO2%20from%20EPICA%20DomeC.gif?zoom=2 are graphs of temperature and CO2 going back to the end of the last ice age. There have been many efforts to model the temperatures and make predictions. At http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg is a graph showing several predictions starting in 1975. The predictions were from small to big changes. The comparatively accurate predictions were from the comparatively small changes.