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I recently finished rewatching The Three Body Problem in which (spoilers follow) the world panics and goes into overdrive because an alien invasion is due in...

• gadders 4mo ago
  What's that scientific saying about correlations and causations? But, yeah, let's all go back to middle ages pre-industrial economy just in case.
  • amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
    This isn't that hard to understand. If you have ever gotten in your car after it has been parked in the sun, you know about the greenhouse effect. That CO2 does the same thing isn't some weird mystical thing. It's basic science. We know exactly how the causation works.
• yoyohello13 4mo ago
  I’ve come to terms with the fact that there is no stopping human consumption. It is simply not possible to get enough people to reduce to make an impact. The failure of the environment movements over the last 60 years are proof. The only way is ‘up and out’ developing clean, cheap methods of energy generation and lobbying to get that infrastructure built out as quickly as possible. At this point, investing more in Fossil fuels is a joke and anyone claiming “coal” or whatever is the future is simply a conman or a clown.
  • snovv_crash 4mo ago
    Agreed. You aren't going to convince people in India that their children should stay poor when there is an option to uplift them. That's an extra billion people of energy and material needs, all by itself.
    • islandfox100 4mo ago
      ''Now, the total population of well-off countries in the world is about 1 billion, while China has more than 1.3 billion people. If we are all to become modernized, the well-off population must more than double. If we are to consume as much energy in production and daily lives as the present well-off people do, all the existing resources in the world would be far from enough for us! The old path seems to be a dead end. Where is the new road? It lies in scientific and technological innovation, and in the accelerated transition from factor-driven and investment-driven growth to innovation-driven growth.'' -Xi Jinping, Governance of China
    • coryrc 4mo ago
      The question is whether you use solar PV or build more coal plants to supply them. The latter makes people sicker, but more dependent on the government, so you can guess which one gets the tax breaks and which one gets tariffs and international politics to make it more expensive to acquire.
      • budsniffer952 4mo ago
        Coal technology is cheap and wide spread. PV technology is not, yet.
        • dalyons 4mo ago
          Huh? Solar is widely acknowledged to be significantly cheaper than building new coal. And it is everywhere, you can just buy containers of it and have it delivered anywhere in the world.
          • 4mo ago
• Tarsul 4mo ago
  In most countries the public "believes" in climate change. But it don't matter: People still consume much more than the planet can bear. Because they like to consume. And because they don't want to change "if no one else does it" (tragedy of the commons). So you're asking the wrong question (maybe not for a US audience, I give you that). The real question would be: How to change the behavior of a population? My best guess would be: by reforming capitalism (and/or democracy), e.g. carbon tax (imo best way would be that there's a second currency next to money for the carbon effect of every good/service). But good luck with that. Disclaimer: For myself, I do believe in personal changes, e.g. consuming less (red meat, flights, gas etc). Not because it makes a big impact but because that's just my personal morality and it makes me feel better to do it. On a societal level it's tougher because most/many people's brains don't work like that (I think).
  • yoyohello13 4mo ago
    I’m not sure even the how to change behavior is the correct line either. I think the most successful path is likely to be: how do we make human behavior less destructive?
  • esafak 4mo ago
    A carbon tax would change behavior in short order. The challenge is introducing then maintaining it; people can always vote it out. I think left-leaning jurisdictions should definitely give it a try.
    • baq 4mo ago
      the challenge in carbon tax isn't the people who vote it out, it's the people who never vote it in in the country next door (or on the other side of the world, it hardly matters)
      • esafak 4mo ago
        That's not a challenge; passing it in one place gives people in others an example to point to. Nobody wants to tax themselves while others don't.
• jackyinger 4mo ago
  The skepticism is from people who are making money emitting CO2 and don’t want to stop making money in the same old way. It is well documented that oil companies have been sewing skepticism for decades, go figure.
  • Jeff_Brown 4mo ago
    The idea that a producer is at fault and not also the consumer paying them to do that is strange to me.
    • ro_sharp 4mo ago
      As long as the pollution is a negative externality and the polluting option is (immediately) cheaper, people (especially poorer people) will choose the cheaper option.
    • tialaramex 4mo ago
      Blaming the consumer is a time-honoured way to ensure nothing is done. The consumer can't pick options which don't exist, so the producer says oh well, you can either burn coal or you can go without light - there's no mention that the producer doesn't have to burn coal to make electricity, just straight to blaming you for wanting light.
      • giantg2 4mo ago
        They have renewable only energy plans. So the choices do exist. Not to mention that the choice to go without something is a valid choice. If one believes strongly enough about something, then they will sacrifice for it.
      • yongjik 4mo ago
        It's a two-sided sword. When you are the consumer, blame the producer. When you are the producer, blame the consumer. In this way everybody can blame someone else and ensure that nothing is done. For example, more people buying EVs can meaningfully reduce CO2 consumption, but you can easily find millions of people ideologically opposed to that. Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks like a carbon tax scheme. "Fix the earth somehow, now, but I'm not paying a cent, because that wasn't my fault!" is everyone's rallying cry.
• anonym29 4mo ago
  >So, exactly what is the source of skepticism? We should define climate skepticism, to avoid indicting a strawman. I'd start with my definition, as someone with unorthodox views on climate that often place me at odds with progressives. It may be easier to start with the elements we agree on. Is the climate changing? Yes, obviously, visibly, measurably. Do human activities, including burning of coal and hydrocarbons, likely have a causal, contributory impact? Absolutely. Is the adoption of cleaner sources of energy: solar, hydro, geothermal, wind, nuclear, as well as investment in transmission and storage upgrades, a good thing? Unquestionably. Is climate change causing a growth in a class of threat to human life and prosperity (e.g. heat deaths, coastal flooding, extreme weather events, etc.)? Of course. As for the areas where I diverge from progressives: Do I expect any amount of reduction in human activity, including reduction of coal and hydrocarbon combustion, reduction of overall energy usage, reduction of living standards and growth targets, to make any difference in the magnitude of the coming climate change at all in the long run? No. The earth has both heated and cooled by orders of magnitude more than worst-case projections before humans started burning hydrocarbons. Earth's climate is changing, yes, but historically, over the last 500 million years, the global average temperature has been as low as ~11° C at times; as high as ~34°C at others. You're reading that correctly: strictly natural processes that predate humanity itself have repeatedly changed the global averge temperature by as much as ~23°C. Ice ages occurred with zero human impact, just as the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum and global atmospheric CO2 levels exceeding 1000ppm occurred with zero human impact. If you were to measure the full range of earth's climate variation over the history of the earth, and attempt to assign and attribute causality to all sources of that climate variation, you'd find that both the presence of all of humanity and the sum impact of all of human activity is an insignificant footnote. If this duration were a football field, humanity itself would be the last centimeter of grass in the distance of that football field; the period in which we've been measuring the climate is a thin slice of a single blade of grass. The potential and capacity of natural processes to raise global average temperatures by 23° C has always been present, and nothing we can do will eliminate that potential and capacity. The focus of human climate concern, accordingly, should be preservation of human life and wealth through adaptation to a changing climate, not futile efforts to prevent change itself, or an irrational alarmism that seeks to instill a widespread sense of anxiety over a process that cannot (and never could be) stopped, and for which the sum of humanity is not responsible for. Build AC in Seattle. Set up better floodgates in New York City. Winterize the grid in Texas. Fix building codes to make houses more safe from hurricanes in Florida, and develop better solutions to stop the destruction of homes from wildfires in Colorado. And yeah, do invest in alternative sources and production of energy. Energy is good. Energy is prosperity - it's causally linked to GDP, it's a direct requirement for quality of life / comfort / happiness. We need renewable energy. We need dispatchable energy. We need zero-emissions energy. We need energy that works at night, when it's cloudy, when we run out of oil, and when the wind's not blowing. We need better storage, better transmission. More energy, more sources, and lower costs for all of humanity. We can't stop the world from changing, and trying to is foolish; we should accept that it is changing whether we try to prevent that or not, and focus on protecting and improving quality of life for all of humanity in the face of this always-changing environment on this little blue dot instead.
• AtlasBarfed 4mo ago
  Here are the positive points, relatively speaking: - solar/wind/batteries have a fundamental economic advantage already, and there is further runway for gains in efficiency, yield, and cost reductions. All its competitors are, generally speaking, tapped out in terms of economic costs and efficiencies - population declines are currently an inevitability of urbanization and techno-capitalism, less people, less pollution - contrary to #2, it is likely that life extension will start to come into play for the billionaire class, and that will mean the rich elites DO need to think about the future However, I agree, those are glimmers of hope in the grand scheme of the current system
• baq 4mo ago
  We can't slow down burning stuff for energy, this is politically untenable. ...so the answer is to accelerate the burning, but not for the sake of burning more, but to focus on getting to true clean energy sources which will allow us to economically unwind the mess before the whole house of cards collapses, i.e. fusion + global scale solar (maybe even space solar and microwave beam down) + boatloads of batteries.
  • no_wizard 4mo ago
    Steady state nuclear power plus wind and solar would. In today’s world, make the grid more reliable and greener than ever. Nuclear should not be off the table. It’s safe, it’s well understood, it’s reliable and is a very cheap way to create base load capacity that renewables like solos and wind can build out on top of
    • amanaplanacanal 4mo ago
      I'm not sure where nuclear is very cheap, but it sure isn't in the US. Of course, given the seeming inability of the US to do any kind of large projects any more, small and decentralized is probably the only thing that will work.
      • lostlogin 4mo ago
        > I'm not sure where nuclear is very cheap It’s always cheap and easy when mentioned here. I live in New Zealand where we have lots of wind, rain and sun and people occasionally suggest it for here too.
    • Moldoteck 4mo ago
      France and Sweden proved Renewables+Nuclear can decarbonize your electric grid almost fully and pretty damn fast - under 20y with old tech without any automatic welding and such... With proper policies the whole planet could do something similar in much less time... The challenge still remains decarbonizing the rest/electrification
• satvikpendem 4mo ago
  > the world panics and goes into overdrive because an alien invasion is due in... 400 years. It's the difference between Chinese planning philosophy versus the West's.
  • margalabargala 4mo ago
    Not really. There are plenty of Western entities that think in centuries (e.g. the Catholic Church) and plenty of.Chinese entities that are chasing the next moment (all the companies who cut standards on product because "to them it is the same"). This is true about the instantaneous state of the governments of the US and China rather than some intrinsic permanent cultural quality.
    • satvikpendem 4mo ago
      Yes, I meant current governments not culture itself.
      • sph 4mo ago
        It is sad to admit it to our Western selves, but authoritarians plan across decades, democracies across electoral terms at best. No king wants to rule over a failed state.
        • webnrrd2k 4mo ago
          History is replete with destructive, stupid and failed authoritarian rulers. King John, Ferdinand VII of Spain, etc... just basic research will uncover a lifeline of reading on the topic. Check out Mao's Great Leap Forward killed millions, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Hirohito didn't work out so well, either. The list just goes on and on. Seriously, read about the Roman emperors, or the Crusades, or, for a more modern example, how's Putin doing on setting up his country for long-term success? How's Trump doing with America?
          • sph 4mo ago
• giantg2 4mo ago
  "and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real." There will always be outliers who don't believe something. But even for the people who do believe climate change is real, there is a huge variance of how we should address it. Most people have more immediate problems. Many take the same type of argument as the infinite population growth is good crowd - future tech will save us.
• JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > If the current climate trends continue, vast areas of the Earth may not be suitable for habitation within half that time, and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real The areas to be rendered “uninhabitable” in our lifetimes are all poor. Hence the disconnect.
  • ACCount37 4mo ago
    Kind of true. The geography isn't as constrained, but what holds is that to rich first world countries, climate change is -0.5% GDP. A meaningful impact, but non-catastrophic and diffuse. To poor countries, it might mean death and suffering at scale.
  • intended 4mo ago
    I suspect they will always “be poor”. The rich will move away, and the people left behind will be the ones who don’t have the capacity to make any other choice.
  • SJC_Hacker 4mo ago
    Miami is definitely not poor
    • JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > Miami is definitely not poor Whether Miami is rendered uninhabitable is an economic choice. (And one that could realistically be made solely by Miami.) That’s simply not true in e.g. South Asia, Eastern or sub-Saharan Africa. (It’s technically a global economic choice. We could safeguard their populations at great expense.)
• journal 4mo ago
  if people have a hard time convincing themselves to brush their teeth, what do you expect from a whole civilization of those type of people?
  • netsharc 4mo ago
    Even with a virus that could kill within 2 weeks, people lived in denial and selfishness. "Oh it predominantly kills old people? I'm not old, who cares!".
• RickJWagner 4mo ago
  Something that would help a great deal would be some very public, clearly worded predictions about future events that should happen. Climate scientists could help convince skeptics by correctly predicting future events. Skeptics could vet the predictions immediately to avoid late refutations. They’d look foolish if they tried to downplay the events if they didn’t raise concerns at the time they were predicted. Looking fairly at things, predictions along the lines of ‘An inconvenient truth’ did not help. ( A UK high court ruling found at least 9 errors or exaggerations in the film. ) Demonstrating predictability should increase acceptance.
  • lostlogin 4mo ago
    > clearly worded predictions about future events that should happen. These are already out there. Extreme weather events are happening with all increasing frequency. But as with the slow boiled frog, when is it a crisis? The denier just claims we have always had extreme weather events, and they are correct (and this sidesteps the argument).
    • RickJWagner 4mo ago
      In your opinion, which list is the most credible? ( I.e. do you have a web link that shows a list of predictions you consider highly credible ? )
      • lostlogin 4mo ago
        Sea level rise is a key problem for New Zealand - we have a lot of coast. At beaches there are poles showing predicted sea levels at various time points. There are lots of sites that show various predictions for sea level rises for NZ, showing predictions and reality. Eg: https://www.sealevel.nz/Auckland.html https://www.sealevel.nz/Auckland.html
        • RickJWagner 4mo ago
          Thanks for that— the poles sound like a great idea. Off topic, I love a New Zealand podcast called “Backyard Bluegrass”. The host is a walking encyclopedia of roots music, and he’s got great presentation skills.
• varispeed 4mo ago
  Is it bad that humans will go extinct? What good did we bring to this planet? Once we are gone, the nature will rebuild.
• blindriver 4mo ago
  My source of climate skepticisms is based on the following: 1) We know that the Earth was much warmer in the past, including the Medieval Warming Period. We know that the Alps were warm enough so that the Iceman could pass through them without protection from the cold, and yet he was found encased in ice. 2) We know that the Earth is cooler now than in the past. And it's also hotter than it was in the past. 3) We know that previous historical temperatures had nothing to do with human-produced CO2. Until someone can reconcile these facts, and they can say distinctively that the rise in temperature we see right now isn't the same reason as before, I'm going to believe that temperature will moderate and cool, just like it did in the past. I live in California, where we were experienced a ~10 year drought. These same scientists claimed this was the "new normal" and everyone was in a panic. Then we had 2 years of rain and everything was back to normal for the last 4 years. In fact, it's better than normal. We are almost in summer, and there isn't a single area of California that is in drought conditions. More importantly, no one is mentioning the "new normal" anymore. No one declared "we were wrong, sorry!" instead everyone is acting as if it never happened or that it's going to go back to drought conditions. The reaction is not scientific. It appears that climate science is driven by science fiction and ideology rather than actual science. And I'm quite sure there will be many people who comment "Just you wait and see!" but that's driven by ideology and not science. I prefer to follow actual science, and science to me suggests that climate will always continue to oscillate, on geological timeframes.
  • AshamedBadger56 4mo ago
    > Until someone can reconcile these facts, and they can say distinctively that the rise in temperature we see right now isn't the same reason as before, I'm going to believe that temperature will moderate and cool, just like it did in the past. Have you considered that one of the reasons it's not the same as before is because it's rising at a faster rate than before? It's not just that the temperature is changing but how fast it changes. If it happens slowly enough everything has time to adapt. If the rate of temperature increase happens faster than everything has time to adapt, there's problems. > 1) We know that the Earth was much warmer in the past, including the Medieval Warming Period. We know that the Alps were warm enough so that the Iceman could pass through them without protection from the cold, and yet he was found encased in ice. While true that the Alps were much warmer during the Medieval Warming Period, that was a regional weather change, not a global event, the change we're seeing now is global, and sustained, not just in one regional area. Also, I'd recommend doing some additional research on Ötzi, the Iceman you're likely talking about. First, he died much earlier than the Medieval Warming Period, so they aren't even related. Also, I don't think very many people would describe him as found without protection from the cold, considering he was found with many different animal skin coats to protect him from the cold. And the fact that he died, frozen and encased in ice, further shows how it was indeed actually cold enough to be very dangerous. > I live in California, where we were experienced a ~10 year drought. These same scientists claimed this was the "new normal" and everyone was in a panic. Then we had 2 years of rain and everything was back to normal for the last 4 years. In fact, it's better than normal. We are almost in summer, and there isn't a single area of California that is in drought conditions. It totally is annoying how the drought conditions have been communicated to the public, for sure! However, California having a drought for 10 years and then being fine for 4 years is exactly the kind of weather whiplash and volatility that is intensifying due to climate change.
• TacticalCoder 4mo ago
  > ... we know the following very accurately We also know very accurately that we're between two ice ages. Shall we manage to both not cook ourselves in the next few hundred years and master climate before the next ice age comes. For only about 12 000 years ago you did not want to be anywhere in the northern hemisphere when, in a few decades, it cooled dramatically (may I add: not due to human activity): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas Shall we be able to delay the next ice age? Should we just focus on the next 200 years or should be begin to think what we'll be able to do to prevent us from freezing to death in 10 000 years? Also... We've got those AIs now (if I read HN correctly on a daily basis): how comes climate is not all solved already due to all the perfect apps and models AI generates for us?
• MarkMarine 4mo ago
  The whole framing you’re using is wrong. If you can do climate modeling and math at the planet scale, you don’t need to be convinced you have read the research and you knew 30 years ago. If you’re skeptical of scientific authority and lack those skills… as well as the critical thinking required to read the research and distill your own conclusions, there is basically no way to convince you. You can’t find objective truth yourself and you don’t trust the resources that can. Doesn’t matter anyway, you as an ant in a large colony barely matter, no one needs to convince you. Capital needs to understand it’s in its interest to fix the problem and it will be fixed. Until that, get an A/C and contribute to the problem.
  • dehugger 4mo ago
    Capital, as a whole, barely thinks farther forward than the next fiscal quarter. If you are lucky, the absolute farthest out is end-of-career/lifetime for the current leadership suite. Why would capitalists be the saviors from climate change?
  • darth_avocado 4mo ago
    > Capital needs to understand it’s in its interest to fix the problem and it will be fixed You’re looking at Capital as a monolithic block. The problem is that the majority of the Capital at the moment sits with the block that can only function by burning more fossil fuels and mowing down the last of the forests to extract natural resources. The private equity firm that owns private beach resorts will never be able to convince the trillion dollar petro giants that they need to find alternatives.
    • jschveibinz 4mo ago
      Since 1990, global deforestation has improved by 50%. It is still net negative, but the rate of net loss is way down from 100 years ago.
      • don_esteban 4mo ago
        Because there is so much less to cut down? And what is remaining is harder to reach/extract from?
• killerstorm 4mo ago
  Well, EU is convinced it's a real problem, but the only solution they are considering is to reduce emissions largely via degrowth. OTOH to actually solve the problem we'd need geoengineering and cheap energy e.g. from fission. Just spamming more solar does not help during winter, and EU solution seems to be "maybe you should just die".
  • don_esteban 4mo ago
    Spamming solar in Sahara + DC cables to Europe still feels more realistic than fission. Not destabilising Libya would have helped ... whole another can of worms. Geoengineering (depending on how it is done) is prime hubris. Are we sure we won't screw things even worse?
    • killerstorm 4mo ago
      What's unrealistic about fission? France can do it. If best minds in Europe join forces they can figure how to do it even cheaper/safer/faster. The missing part is political will. If anybody with unreasonable objection will be labeled enemy of the people it can be solved.
• BobbyTables2 4mo ago
  If we could plan and avoid/solve clear problems that are just 5-10 years out, we’d be in a much different world. Getting anyone to look beyond the next quarter or year is almost impossible. Decades out ? fuhgedaboudit …
• m3kw9 4mo ago
  Except the threat isn’t clear to all and our tech tree in 400 year is likely to quell climate change
  • iAMkenough 4mo ago
    If I was a foreign adversary, I would be influencing elections to sabotage that tech tree as much as I could. Brand climate science as “woke” and get the government to slash investment in non-performative research, monitoring, and development. Instead, manipulate/lobby representatives into doubling or tripling investment in technologies that maintain the status quo, and incentivize/subsidize subpar solutions with public dollars. All while your allies do the opposite and jump ahead.
• queenkjuul 4mo ago
  > So, exactly what is the source of skepticism? You were a skeptic; you tell us?
• bcraven 4mo ago
  "The second I pull this lever, the entire world as you know it will end in 56 years!" https://youtu.be/I9M3go2bAIE https://youtu.be/I9M3go2bAIE
• tim333 4mo ago
  If you do the calculation based on that stuff without feedback effects and CO2 goes from the present ~432 ppm to 600 ppm, then (disclaimer - AI used) you'd get approx 1.1 to 1.2C of warming based on basic radiative forcing alone. Which isn't really a lot to panic over in my opinion. I mean you may get feedback making things worse or not as bad - that's a bit uncertain.
• ETH_start 4mo ago
  There has been almost zero loss of sea ice since 1980. What is sparking your alarm?