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> price CO2 emissions at the actual cost of sucking the thing back out if the atmosphere This is the only relevant bit actually. The rest will follow from ther

• 59percentmore 3mo ago
  *raise the prices
• simianwords 3mo ago
  [flagged]
  • DangitBobby 3mo ago
    If enough climate systems collapse, lots of existing farms will no longer be viable. That means famine and migration, which means war, which means lots of death. I don't know anyone who thinks we'll see extinction (outside of possible "hothouse earth" scenarios, where we become a second Venus) but societal collapse is definitely on the table. Saying this is "not scientific" would just be you not understanding the science.
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      > Saying this is "not scientific" would just be you not understanding the science. Please show me sources that the current emissions would lead to "lots of death"? Show me any decent modelling of emissions vs annual death? This one shows a million more deaths annually if we have even more emissions in 100 years than now. Million more deaths is around 2% increase in death rate compared to the hypothetical without emissions. This means even in the worst case of higher emissions in the future than now, also no technological progress, we would still be in better living conditions in the future than now. What is your answer to this? https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59bf26af29f187c6f3a9fbbf/t/678f111666f6b97afdd39e9c/1737429272631/JMP.pdf https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59bf26af29f187c6f3a9f...
      • DangitBobby 3mo ago
        ... Do you understand feedback loops? Yes? Interconnected climate systems where one system hits a threshold and accelerates change in one direction which causes another system to hit a threshold faster causing a cascade of systems to fall over until all the thresholds have been reached? Why are you showing me a document about the economic impact of "current" carbon levels applied linearly as if this system grows predicably and linearly and the economy and future technology grow as some linear function of those inputs? Do you not even understand the basic premise that the people you're criticizing operate from? If not, why are you talking about this like you know anything about it? https://iiasa.ac.at/news/feb-2026/course-correction-needed-quickly-to-avoid-pathway-to-hothouse-earth-scenario https://iiasa.ac.at/news/feb-2026/course-correction-needed-q...
        • simianwords 3mo ago
          Thanks for showing me about tipping points. Tipping points exist at every level, you could have shown this mechanism in 1800's and asked people to stop/slow development. In fact I can justify not just net zero, but net negative emissions and stalling of all progress of humanity itself by using your article. It would have been another story if there were some graph between emissions vs probability of hitting an irreversible tipping point. At least this gives us a prescriptive analysis on how to deal with the tradeoffs. Your article contains NONE of that. And I posit that it doesn't contain it because the real probabilities are much lower. You can't make serious policies by handwaving tipping points. No country should immediately go net zero because of your article or even the studies your article cites. I get that it feels good to be in a position to scold people into stopping progress. I'm willing to learn new perspectives - at least come up with a emissions vs probability quantified. Till then its just scolding and handwaving.
  • throw-the-towel 3mo ago
    End humanity, maybe not. Causing very painful social changes, however, is absolutely on the cards.
    • kergonath 3mo ago
      More than on the cards, it is already happening.
      • throw-the-towel 3mo ago
        Fair point! I meant "vastly more painful change than already is happening".
    • xienze 3mo ago
      > Causing very painful social changes, however, is absolutely on the cards. Worse than voluntarily inviting masses of incompatible cultures into western countries like we're already doing?
      • hdgvhicv 3mo ago
        Yes. And while the populist right love importing incompatible cultures en mass, that will have to stop.
      • Muromec 3mo ago
        I think I'm much more compatible with my colleagues from the said countries, who are actually nice people, than I am with the rabid fascists having this kind of a take.
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      Again just vague babble like "painful social changes". Even in the worst case modelling of emissions, we are still better off in the future than now. Show me clear sources quantifying the pain vs the emissions.
  • kergonath 3mo ago
    > The left wing version of climate conspiracy is that climate change will end humanity itself. That is unrealistic, but also not what a conspiracy is. It’s also a red herring, as nobody serious is claiming that. They are talking about civilisation changes, which we are already seeing. At some point you have to engage with the arguments besides shouting "no, it’s you".
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      > They are talking about civilisation changes, which we are already seeing. What changes? How has civilisation meaningfully changed in a way and scale it didn't before? Can you come up with examples of those changes that don't have an equivalent in form and scale 200 years back?
      • Symbiote 3mo ago
        Air conditioning is increasingly necessary in Europe.
        • Muromec 3mo ago
          Western Europe mostly, for 6 days a year and that's the part of the world that most certainly has the means to install it whenever it decides so. It's hardly an existential threat to civilization or locally to societies it affects. It's a symptom of things going sough, sure.
      • kergonath 3mo ago
        > What changes? How has civilisation meaningfully changed in a way and scale it didn't before? It’s not that it did not happen before, civilisations rose up and disappeared several times in the past. It’s just that it is happening now, largely driven by climate issues. What we are seeing now is regions becoming uninhabitable, crises sending waves of refugees, a dramatic shift towards nationalism in the West, which is terribly ill-equipped to solve global problem and is leading to a progressive crumbling of the international rules-based order. The US gave up on any pretense of sanity and went on a shooting match with Iran, throwing a wrench in the economies of a whole bunch of countries in Asia. Iran itself is in a terrible situation, with a lot of the country running dry. Trump of course is not a direct consequence of global warming, but it helps with the civilisation altering bits and adds to instability. Europe is under its third heat wave of the year, all of them having been comparable to the historic ones from 1976 and 2003. This is also having a destabilising effect on several governments that are completely feckless, having spent 20 years trying to convince themselves that it was not happening, and was no big deal anyway. These weather phenomena, along things like tropical storms in the Atlantic, are of course not new, but their frequency and magnitude is increased by global warming. They are currently costing billions and dealing with their consequences is not going to get cheaper. > Can you come up with examples of those changes that don't have an equivalent in form and scale 200 years back? I can. For example, the French Revolution was fueled by crop failures in the couple of years before due to particularly bad weather, related to a volcanic eruption in Iceland. The revolutions of 1848 came after about 4 years of crop failures due to bad weather again. The point is not that it never happened before. The Earth used to be much hotter (and also much colder). The environment used to not have humans around and it was fine. Revolutions and wars, and societal collapse are not new. Look at the late Bronze Age collapse if you want to have an idea of how bad it can realistically get. It’s not the end of the world, not even of humanity, but still a thoroughly unpleasant period to live in. The point is that this is going to happen not because we rolled a bad dice, but because we’re bloody idiots and are doing it to ourselves.
  • stalfie 3mo ago
    "Climate conspiracy"? Like you, mean, the conspiracy of climate scientists to publish facts to the best of their understanding? I don't know what exact strawman you're arguing against, although I'm sure you can always find some idiots saying something like what you say. But scientific consensus has long been that it will lead to increasingly extreme weather and mass extinction, which we seem to be on track for. Of course, we can't know for sure what the consequences are untill we do the experiment, which in this case means potentially destroying large sections of the biosphere and living with increasingly destructive weather patterns. Surely that risk is worth at least legislating that hyperscalers need to spend some of their billions on solar panels?
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      > But scientific consensus has long been that it will lead to increasingly extreme weather and mass extinction, which we seem to be on track for Show me academic consensus showing that more than 1% of our species will go extinct within 100 years if we continue the emissions as now? I assume that's a reasonable characterisation of "mass extinction" and "on track for".
      • stalfie 3mo ago
        Oh I wasn't talking about humans. I should probably have pointed that out. There's some scenarios like catastrophic crop failure and so on that might lead to that, but frankly I doubt it. I was referring more to everything else. Corals, certain insects, polar bears, salamanders and so on. With some quick googling it appears that the "Bramble Cay Melomys" is the first species so far to be declared extinct because of climate change, but the number that seems to be thrown around is that an average of 18% of terrestrial life will be critically endangered by 2100 in a scenario with 2 degrees warming. I can't be bothered with figuring out what degree of academic consensus there is around that number, but I think it's reasonable to assume that there's at least some kind of consensus about "more than 1%".
  • silver_silver 3mo ago
    It’s anxiety about tipping points more than conspiracy theories. If you look at the figures in the various scenarios without even factoring them in: hundreds of millions to billions face food and water insecurity. You may be insulated enough from the direct effects but what about what they trigger? Already even our wealthy societies are being strained by rising food prices, extreme weather, and dysfunctional migration. We don’t know exactly what the tipping points would lead to but we do know it would be some degree of a more severe and abrupt decline across the board.
    • hdgvhicv 3mo ago
      Most conspiracy theories think food grows in supermarkets and because they have a job which pays them a good global income they can just pay a bit more.
    • simianwords 3mo ago
      > If you look at the figures in the various scenarios without even factoring them in: hundreds of millions to billions face food and water insecurity Its exactly the people in the third world that don't need climate change lecture because it is absolutely needed to increase their energy and emissions output to reduce deaths. Lots of people in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Africa, India _already die_ not due to climate change but lack of productivity. They definitely don't want holier than though westerners to tell them to reduce their emissions as if it doesn't come at any tradeoff whatsoever. > Already even our wealthy societies are being strained by rising food prices False. There's no sustained rising of food prices. > We don’t know exactly what the tipping points would lead to but we do know it would be some degree of a more severe and abrupt decline across the board. Its convenient to be vague about consequences. Then you can use the vagueness to oppose whatever you want. Don't like something someone's making? You can just say "but we don't know exactly what the tipping point is so you are not allowed to do that thing".
      • silver_silver 3mo ago
        Unfortunately the third world will suffer the most from climate change. They do indeed already suffer (I’m from Africa originally myself) but emissions have to be reversed, not simply cut to zero, globally to avoid that getting even worse. There would likely be a midpoint where unchecked industrialisation would increase their quality of life but it would be short-lived. Farms aren’t factories and ultimately even the most developed nations will have to reckon with their dependence on nature. > False. There's no sustained rising of food prices. The inflation-adjusted FAO food price index has risen by 64% since 2000. The global average temperature anomaly has risen ~50% in the same period. > but we don't know exactly what the tipping point is We do know almost exactly what the tipping points are and that they will make the already dire trajectory worse. The uncertainty is simply how much worse. For example, AMOC collapse would prevent much of Europe from growing enough food to sustain its population. Not an impossible problem but certainly not an easy one, especially in the context of a world already having to deal with moving fertile regions and mass migrations from North Africa and the Middle East due to drought and extreme heat.
  • Muromec 3mo ago
    It doesn't have to end the humanity itself. My favorite city being underwater because it's too expensive too pump the water out is already bad enough.
• Aerroon 3mo ago
  We've been paying hefty excise taxes on gasoline in Europe for decades. Yet nothing has changed. Environmentalists still have the exact same demands and supposedly nothing positive has come from this. It has just made everything more expensive. So what's the point?
  • Muromec 3mo ago
    >Yet nothing has changed. Actually a lot has changed -- the world passed peak oil and the benzine cars are practically done, while a lot of generation is now "green". It isn't enough to get it to C02 negative territory so far, but saying it's nothing is a bit counterfactual. If you want to burn shit, you need to either not release CO2 somehow while doing it or suck it back from the the air somewhere and that second part isn't happening, because the emissions are mispriced.
    • Aerroon 3mo ago
      That's true, but it didn't really happen because of these excise taxes though. Tesla didn't come from Europe as a response to high gasoline prices.