[sceew]

In my experience with some conservatives, it seems that they believe global warming is happening but they are skeptical of how effective left-leaning politicians can be in combating climate change. Therefore it is not worth conceding political turf on other issues if they will see little change in the rate of global warming.

Interesting once you start to take into account other countries contributions to global warming. The United States is relatively low among developed economies when it comes to emissions per GDP : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_ratio_of_... .

I am really not impressed by any sides efforts to combat global warming.

Of course this will be met by criticism from HN, but I would love to see more discussion beyond conservatives are anti-science radicals who want to kill the earth.

[coldpie]

The messaging coming from Republican politicians is either that climate change is not happening, or that it is a natural cycle and nothing to do with humans. Both of these hypothesis are objectively false.

Setting that aside, emissions per GDP is an interesting and useful statistic, but it doesn't paint a complete picture. If you were to entirely eliminate the top three highest emissions per GDP countries from your list, you will have done nothing to combat climate change. If you sort that list by total emissions, the US ranks #2 a short distance behind China. China is actually fifth from the very bottom of that list.

It's a complex situation and will have an impact on the global economy no matter what. We can decide to do something now and take short-term losses to prevent massive devastation in the long term from doing nothing.

> I am really not impressed by any sides efforts to combat global warming.

Hmm. What would impress you? I honestly think climate change is the most important issue in the world right now, and I would love to know what we can do to get you on our side.

[rayiner]

> The messaging coming from Republican politicians is either that climate change is not happening, or that it is a natural cycle and nothing to do with humans. Both of these hypothesis are objectively false.

Climate change is a shibboleth and people largely appear to recognize it as such. For example, in Ware County, GA (to pick somewhere at random), 70% of folks voted for Trump but 2/3 answered "yes" to "global warming is happening."

> I honestly think climate change is the most important issue in the world right now, and I would love to know what we can do to get you on our side.

Supporting diplomatic efforts to combat climate change are virtue signaling. I'm an environmentalist and I agree that climate change is probably an impending disaster. But diplomats aren't going to fix it. The Kyoto protocol, for example, accomplished almost nothing: http://www.circularecology.com/news/the-kyoto-protocol-clima.... The only thing that can save us (if we can be saved) is technological breakthrough, and the prospects of that happening won't change based on U.S. participation in international climate change protocols.

[runamok]

The phrase "virtue signaling" is so useless. As if any action that does not have clear and immediate results is just posturing and pandering.

I think change absolutely has to come from governments and thus diplomats. Are corporations going to cooperate at a global scale to fix this with no regard for short term profits? Corporations like Exxon knew about climate change 40 years ago. Personally I think we should be litigating against a corporation that would hide something of global importance like that.

Where is the money to research these technical solutions going to come from? The article you linked showed that there were improvements among the signatories even though without the fall of the USSR it would have been 2.7% vs. 4.7%. Still it was something vs. just saying "this problem is too big to solve, let's hope some smart scientist finds a fix before we all die". Had China and the US been adhering to the Kyoto protocol undoubtedly the impact would have been much greater.

[rayiner]

> The article you linked showed that there were improvements among the signatories even though without the fall of the USSR it would have been 2.7% vs. 4.7%.

That's rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. And acting as if that's an important thing to spend political capital on is precisely "posturing and pandering."

[runamok]

Still not seeing your point. The goal is x. We achieve x/2. We still achieved something. We proved we can actually make an international agreement with long term goals and short term sacrifice and make improvements. I don't really blame politicians for taking further credit and trying to spin their success as even more impressive. Do you think the Paris agreement (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement) would ever have happened if not for that initial (however small) success? Reading the aims it seems on the surface to provide reasonable goals that balance growth and fairness with trying to prevent climate change.

What should they spend political capital on? Seems like this section is also going to help develop technological solutions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement#Ensuring_finan...

[ethbro]

The problem I have with pointing to international frameworks as failures because of their less than optimal results is the alternative.

How could we fix the climate more effectively? Elect a world dictator / threaten other countries with nuclear annihilation unless they cut their emmissions.

Would we rather live in that world?

[tptacek]

I agree with you about "virtue signaling". I don't agree with Rayiner about this stuff, but in a good, sort of bracing way --- until I get to the line where he says that everyone trying to do something politically about climate change is doing so in bad faith.

[pvnick]

At some point there's a threshold beyond which alternative enegry sources become more profitable than fossil fuels, and at that point zillions of dollars will be spent on R&D. We're getting there, albeit perhaps a little more slowly than environmentalists would prefer.

One way to ensure that doesn't happen is to put a tax on carbon emissions. Governments then become dependent on fossil fuel usage for revenue and will enact policies that ensure that revenue stream never gets cut off.

[djsumdog]

I really feel that climate change is totally irrelevant. There is so much other pollution out there and it's all a symptom of massive over consumption, planned obsolescence, negligent/unplanned obsolescence and consumerism.

The quest for things, the newest things, the newest non-upgradable things, is leading us into disaster. We can't keep throwing away phones after two years or purchasing new laptops instead of fixing what we have. We don't have the raw materials to replace the millions of gas cars on the roads with electric/hybrids.

Things like rail, consuming less, paying more for longer lasting devices, smaller factories that produce fewer yet higher quality goods, etc. etc. will fix the underlying problems. Things like CO2 emissions, the massive plastic patches in the oceans, heavy metal in our water supplies, toxic waste--these are all symptoms and not the root problem itself.

It requires a massive change in thinking, advertising and economies. For example, Intel should be happy when it has a massive growth reduction because it means they created something that lasts a long time, is still valuable and is non-disposable. Companies need to be rewarded for things that simply last longer or can be upgraded, recycled or refurbished. The fundamental role of money and its representation of resources has to change. Our values about what is valuable needs to change.

Climate change is just a runny nose out there that people try to plug up with pseudoephedrine when the real problem is the virus that's killing your body.

[pvnick]

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how those issue can be solved that doesn't involve totalitarianism or in other ways infringing on people's rights. Because the problem you're trying to solve has been attempted by many murderous dictators in the past. "But this time is different," they all say, and it never is.

[ethbro]

What about taxing things on the consumer side? I know a number of municipalities that charge people per bag of garbage.

What if that were extended based on toxicity? Enough so that throwing out year old electronics started to get expensive enough that consumers started valuing longevity again?

I don't think you'll get US buy-in for any sort of manufacturer-targeted externalities tax. See carbon tax debate. But, if you tax the consumer (either on the front or back end), demonstrate that the tax revenue is 100% funding something they believe in (e.g. toxic electronic waste fee -> parks, libraries, and after-school programs) then you might have a shot.

Part of the problem is that the 60s-00s were in Moore's Law, so there was a finite performance incentive to upgrade devices frequently. I'm hopeful as that changes, build quality becomes a key distinguisher.

[harryh]

In general I agree with you that a technological breakthrough is the only thing that will really help us and that government cooperation will be hard to come by but I do think that lobbying for carbon taxes could help move the needle on how much effort is put into research.

[pvnick]

Indeed it is a complex situation. The difficulty is that, among proposed solutions, there are ideas that are being taken seriously that have the potential to drastically slow down the economy, decrease the standard of living for millions or billions of people (which could realistically involve people in developing nations starving to death), and massively increase government control over our lives.

Now I get that all of these things may be required to save the planet. But the alarmists have been warning of impending doom and destruction for decades now, and everything is still fine. So maybe let's practice some level-headedness and stop disingenuously pretending that the skeptics are just stupid extremists?

[endymi0n]

With all due respect, I don't think so. Program lifetime cost of the F-35 Lightning is projected at a whopping 1.5 trillion US$. For the same amount of money, you could bring the renewable energy level to 50% of US electricity consumption (~1 US$/W). Scale effects not even included. Nobody wouldn't even miss the fighter (well, nobody missed it for all the years it was late).

It would be a concentrated effort of just 5 years going all the way at the scale of the Manhattan or Apollo projects, just a question of somebody really wanting to do it. It's just that it's way less sexy.

[sceew]

Uh, citation needed.

Isn't the 1.5 trillion number the total cost projected out to 2070 or so? (with maintenance included)

You can't take the cost of the whole program to 2070 and then state that nobody would miss the program. Not saying that defense budgets aren't up for debate, but your line of reasoning is not convincing.

[rayiner]

Would spending $1.5 trillion from now until 2070 (the time horizon for the F-35 expenditures) avert climate change? Or will climate change happen anyway, and the only consequence will have been a reduction in our abilities to fight other countries for dwindling fresh water resources?

[stinkytaco]

Everything is not fine, however. We are currently experiencing the effects of global warming. In the first world we are largely insulated from this but we've seen more frequent severe weather (of the 15 busiest hurricane seasons on record -- with records dating back to the 19th century or so -- 10 have been since 2000). Severe drought and heat have also become more common. We've seen migration patterns of wildlife change and that has lead to impacts on communities that rely on those for their livlihood (native communities for example). We've seen the sea level rise 88mm since 1993. There have been real impacts. Just because we don't feel it in the first world, doesn't mean people haven't been impacted.

[sceew]

So what is the solution?

What do you do about the expansion of populations (http://www.nzdl.org/gsdl/collect/fnl2.2/archives/HASH8cd2.di...) in developing countries that are still waiting for rapid growth? Intuitively, as they transition to developed economies that will come with greater CO2 emissions. Do you force them to adapt less economically viable sources of energy consumption? Natural gas may be the best bet there. I am not holding my breath for solar power and wind turbines to be adopted by countries that still face widespread malnutrition.

I don't think democracy and liberal capitalism will have any consequential solution to global warming, people are too inherently motivated by short-term and local gain. Unfortunately, any massive change will probably have to be dictatorial/authoritarian/militant, what are the byproducts of that?

[yk]

The cost of solar is dropping fast, and for the time being the largest emitters per capita are developed economies. So we should start in developed economies, were we can spare the effort and then work on developing economies.

On the poorest economies, quite a few of them are close to the equator were solar looks very good, plus a rather nice thing about solar is, that it scales very well. In countries were malnutrition is still a wide spread problem, a solar powered lamp enables people to work outside of daylight hours, and a solar oven prevents them from sitting in kerosene fumes while cooking. This are small appliances with a rather minimal footprint, but improves their lives in ways it is hard to imagine for us, who are just used to always having electricity.

Plus, there is not reason to assume that they have to take the same development path as the developed economies. They have the second mover advantage, that is developing economies can avoid the problems western industrialization did create, simply because they can see these problems in the west.

[euyyn]

> Do you force them to adapt less economically viable sources of energy consumption?

How about: Voting for policies of boosting the development of renewable energies in the US, putting to work all the unemployed of the coal mines, so it's American companies (instead of, say, Chinese) that make them more economically viable than non-renewable sources. So when these countries transition to developed economies, they become consumers of American manufacturing.

[pbreit]

How about: that the contribution by humans is unclear, that we may be able to resolve issues that do arise and/or that adaptation is a viable solution?

[coldpie]

The contribution by humans is unequivocal. If you would like to understand how we know that, take a couple hours and read the IPCC report Summary for Policymakers. It is a fascinating and relatively easy read. It also includes projections based on several different models and estimates the impact on society from those projections.

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_...

[acqq]

Also note that the different curves of the projections don't mean that the most probable is in the middle. The highest and the worst one is under the assumptions "if we don't do anything about it" which is exactly what was done up to now!

The lowest one is "if we soon stop using the fossil fuels completely" which is not going to happen.

And to those who don't believe:

It is caused by humans: see the energy used in the last 200 years:

https://gailtheactuary.files.wordpress.com/2012/03/world-ene...

And see what it means that the "climate changed before":

https://xkcd.com/1732/

The principle the warming works is the same why you wear a coat in the winter: the coat keeps the surface temperature of your body warmer, even if the coat itself doesn't produce a new heat. A thick coat keeps you warmer than a thin one. More CO2 does the same to the Earth surface. Without the greenhouse gases the average Earth temperature would be 0°F (or -18°C) and it is 59°F (15°C). And "a few degrees more" is really a lot and awfully fast, see the xkcd drawing again.

[pbreit]

The xkcd thing is compelling except not sure the data source and I've seen conflicting data. Rest of post not compelling.

[acqq]

> I've seen conflicting data

That's called the "wishful thinking" fallacy, to which you cling to confirm your previous "investment." If we'd look at your sources of the apparent "conflicting" data, we'd be able to see that they are intentionally biased, fabricated, cherry picked or whatever. But I would be surprised that you accept that fact, on average it doesn't function that way psychologically. Which is how humans work, but not a scientific argument.

Anyway, the natural processes, unless cataclysmic, don't make such rapid changes that we experience now. The speed of the change is orders of magnitude faster now than the non-cataclysmic natural ones. It is really going to be worse than most can even imagine. Our children or grandchildren are going to hate us for not doing enough. The politicians and lobbyists who only see their own benefit will be dead and won't care.

To compare with the "good old times": the study of human DNA shows that 70000 years ago, only 2000 humans survived one extinction event:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2975862.stm

And then there was no civilization infrastructure to fail, just the hunter-gatherers, ready to move.

[CWuestefeld]

Whether or not it's caused by humans isn't relevant. If it's a problem, regardless of the cause, we ought to be thinking about what we can do to avoid it or to adapt.

So I don't understand why so much of the left chooses to frame the issue in such a way that makes it contingent on that cause.

[coldpie]

Understanding the cause is key to learning how to avoid it.

[berkay]

Is it really? Would it not be easier to find consensus (hence more productive) if we were to focus on whether the climate is changing (and not why)? Determine what the impact of the climate change will be and how we should address this problem?

[pbreit]

The warming part is much clearer than the anthropomorphic part.

[acqq]

Even if it's maybe not clear to you or to those you like to believe, it's still clear to the relevant scientists of the whole world.

"Total radiative forcing is positive, and has led to an uptake of energy by the climate system. The largest contribution to total radiative forcing is caused by the increase in the atmospheric concentration of CO2 since 1750 (see Figure SPM.5). {3.2, Box 3.1, 8.3, 8.5"

"Human influence on the climate system is clear. This is evident from the increasing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, positive radiative forcing, observed warming, and understanding of the climate system. {2–14}"

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_...

The politicians, lobbyists and the media aren't the same as the scientists.

[ar0]

I think you are reading this table wrong. The table does not list "emissions per GDP" but "GDP per emissions", which is actually the inverse.

So to get the "emissions per GDP", you have to read the table backwards, which means the United States is (among Australia, Israel, Canada) emitting more CO2 than most other developed countries, in particular Western European ones. For example, Germany produces roughly 60% more economic output (3,612 USD / ton of emissions) per CO2 emitted than the United States (2,291 USD / ton) and the United Kingdom (4,284 USD / ton) almost twice as much.

In any case, maybe a better figure would be "emissions per capita", which paints a similar picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

[Update: Of course, all of these figures are not that helpful because they ignore how much CO2 emissions one "outsources" by buying products manufactured elsewhere. If you are primarily a service-driven economy, you will have much lower CO2 emissions in your country, but you will most likely still buy a lot of stuff from China etc. which will produce CO2 emissions there. That's e.g. why Switzerland is not as green as it would seem from this table.]

[soVeryTired]

Emissions per GDP is a bit of a weird metric, don't you think? It disguises major variations within individual nations' economies.

It's hardly surprising that a developed-world, service economy would produce fewer emissions per GDP than a developing economy that is geared toward mining and manufacturing.

It's also worth noting that the likely benefactors of those developing-world emissions are the people in developed countries. So even regional estimates of emissions, let alone emissions per GDP, probably miss the point.

[CWuestefeld]

Emissions per GDP is a bit of a weird metric

It seems that way. But considering that so much of the emissions are produced in the course of producing goods, it makes sense to tie the emissions to the production. In the extreme case, where a single nation produces all goods consumed by the world, we'd expect the large portion of global emissions to come from that one nation, and the emissions of the rest of the world to be very significantly lower.

Obviously this isn't perfect. Other activities than production produce emissions - notably transportation. But I believe that those dollars are captured in the GDP total.

I think we then get down to "which people are profligate consumers", and I'm not sure how to factor that in.

[soVeryTired]

But GDP is not the same thing as production of goods. Here's wikipedia's breakdown of US GDP by industry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States#G...

These industries are emphatically not equal contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. So it makes little sense to aggregate them and measure the emissions to GDP ratio.

[tonyedgecombe]

Yes, I don't know but would imagine somewhere like China has huge variations between rich and poor areas.

[mrpopo]

> I am really not impressed by any sides efforts to combat global warming.

The reality today is that no efforts are made whatsoever by any political movement on the planet to combat global warming, in the entire planet (except perhaps the CPC of China, against all odds). American Republicans do not even have the hint of honesty of admitting the issue at stake. They denied it 10 years ago, now they want to turn their audience into believing that it may not be human-caused.

> I would love to see more discussion beyond conservatives are anti-science radicals who want to kill the earth.

The discussion was over dozens of years ago, there is no debate. Human activity (intensive farming, petroleum and coal burning, cement production, ...) is causing climate change, period. And the changes are already past the point of being reversible. The data is plentiful and everywhere for the world to see.

[acqq]

> there is no debate

If the media were unbiased and wanted to show the viewers the actual state, there would be always 20 scientists in the studio, 19 scientists speaking that the global warming is real and only one speaking that he believes it's not. Then every viewer would understand.

"One person per side" is the core of the problem. That's how people get the impression it's 50-50: on the question "most scientists think global warming is happening" unsurprisingly only 49% of the public answered yes. They always see on the TV, at best, one guy speaking against another guy. The impression then: 50-50. It's not.

[tonyedgecombe]

>>The reality today is that no efforts are made whatsoever by any political movement on the planet to combat global warming

I don't think that is true, in the UK there have been efforts, for instance our coal use is the lowest for 150 years[1]. It isn't anywhere near enough to solve the problem but it isn't nothing either.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/mar/31/rapid-de...

[mrpopo]

True, thanks for the correction. The point that I wanted to make was that all the efforts underway around the world at their current magnitude are not gonna make a dent in the greenhouse gases generation curve.

[mistermann]

> The discussion was over dozens of years ago, there is no debate.

You might find this attitude counter-productive in achieving your goals, especially in a democracy.

[acqq]

The "debate" means "a formal discussion on a particular matter in a public meeting or legislative assembly, in which opposing arguments are put forward and which usually ends with a vote."

If 95% of the scientists of the whole world agree the global warming exists and is human caused, that "formal discussion" is really over since 1990. Since then there was no debate if. You can read the results of that discussion in the IPCC reports, the last summary here:

http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_SPM_...

If you mean that the politicians would like to "debate" between themselves "what to do about it," they sure do. But they shouldn't be allowed to doubt all scientists of the world. It's criminally irresponsible, considering the potential dangers.

It's also extremely simple in basic principles: without naturally occurring greenhouse gases, Earth's average temperature would be near 0°F (or -18°C) instead of the much warmer 59°F (15°C). More greenhouse gases, the higher the temperature on the surface. The same way you cover yourself with the blanket, under the blanket it's warmer, not because you produce more heat but because more warmth stays under the blanket. It's that simple, as simple as wearing the coat not to freeze in the winter, and unbelievable that somebody can be manipulated to doubt it.

P.S. Surveys of scientists' views on climate change (to answer the question to this post):

https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-conse...

But they are of course less important than the IPCC which is official, worldwide and in the agreement since 1990.

[mistermann]

> If 95% of the scientists of the whole world agree the global warming exists and is human caused.

I often read this number, do you know where it came from, and what 95% of scientists agree on specifically?

[computereye]

You can check this source: https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-c...

[mistermann]

On one hand that seems fairly reasonable, on the other hand I can't escape the feeling that the author had a conclusion and was fitting results to it. It is an inherently messy and complicated field and there are many ways one could interpret this largely qualitative data, but the author seems to have not a shred of doubt or uncertainty, for my type of personality it makes my spider senses tingle.

EDIT:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-to-determine-...

One of the problems with Cook's appeal to authority is this: So far, no one has quantified the consensus among natural scientists on global warming. In fact, it cannot be done easily, said Jon Krosnick, a social psychologist at Stanford University who has been studying communication strategies for decades.

While the Cook study may quantify the views expressed in published literature, it does not establish the beliefs of any defined group of scientists, Krosnick said.

"How do you determine who qualifies to be surveyed and who doesn't qualify?" he asked. "Personally, I haven't seen anyone accomplish that yet."

EDIT2: This might be an interesting read if it wasn't behind a paywall:

https://www.iceagenow.info/97-percent-consensus-errrr-not-ex...

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9#p...

[mrpopo]

True, it's unfortunately a bug/feature of democracy to turn any and all scientific truth into a discussion.

[pbreit]

> there is no debate

Even for things that are substantially better understood no one would ever say "there is no debate".

[knowaveragejoe]

The debate is not whether it is occurring at all or contributed to by mankind, but which of our activities have what effect, and what to do about it.

When folks like the above say "there is no debate", it should be quantified with that.

[pbreit]

Should be but never is.

[wfo]

It doesn't need to be, anyone with the most basic understanding of the issues or anyone who cares enough to do the most basic cursory examination of the facts knows exactly what's being referred to.

There simply is no worthwhile discussion to have about whether or not human activity has been a cause of climate change. 'Debating' it is akin to debating the existence of gravity or a causal link between smoking and cancer or whether or not quicksort is better than bubblesort. That is, it would be similar if there were a very wealthy and powerful 'bubblesort' lobby that funds and props up any argument that favors it, no matter how ridiculous or how much bad faith is required to make it.

[pbreit]

Well, in fact researchers recently found that second-hand smoke probably isn't harmful. And that's exactly the point, things that some people think are settled are far from settled. And that kind of attitude invites suspicion. Why are you so concerned by skeptics?

[mikeash]

My experience is that "conservatives" will pick whatever argument they can get away with when it comes to climate change. Depending on the context the same person might argue:

1. Climate change is a hoax.

2. Climate change is real, but natural.

3. Climate change is real, caused by humans, but beneficial.

4. Climate change is real, caused by humans, harmful, but attempts to fight it don't help.

5. Climate change is real, caused by humans, harmful, can be fought successfully, but the cost isn't worth it.

I too would like to see more productive discussion, but it's hard when every discussion on the subject is flooded with people arguing in opposition to the facts.

[euyyn]

It boils down to not wanting to spend their money, and arguing whatever it takes for that not to happen. In Spanish you'd say "les duele el bolsillo".

[noobiemcfoob]

Replace "conservatives" with "people" and delete everything after "with"

If you're discussing a topic with someone who relies on illogical crutches and isn't interested in discussing the topic... why are you even talking?

[mikeash]

"why are you even talking?"

Some combination of: they're related to me, they vote, they barge into conversations and start arguing against the facts.

[noobiemcfoob]

But what you're complaining about isn't an issue with conservatives; it's an issue with asshats. And if your goal is to convince an asshat of something, you don't talk to the asshat. You talk to (and convince) the person the asshat respects.

If someone barges into an discussion like that and you attempt to confront them with reason and argumentation, you're gonna have a bad time only further poisoning your perspective of the "other side".

[mikeash]

It's an issue with climate change deniers specifically, which has nearly total overlap with the set of conservatives.

And sure, this sort of thing is not unique to climate change denial. What is unique is the consequences that denial is having to the planet (and therefore me), and their presence in forums that are otherwise at least vaguely aligned with facts.

[noobiemcfoob]

How is their denial affecting you? Has it led to tangible changes in your life? Maybe you'd argue that it has led to a lack of tangible changes, but I don't think you can stand on that. Environmentally conscious efforts have continued to grow year after year despite a lack of political consensus, ultimately leading to solar now being cheaper than coal. That isn't due to regulation. It's because people who care have found ways to make a living doing the thing they care about and making it more viable.

tl;dr: People may deny the problem, but when the solution isn't political in the first place, I can't see why it matters.

[ajross]

No offense, but what kind of crazy metric is that? "Wealthy people get to pollute more?" "It's OK to ignore emissions until everyone is as wealthy as we are?" I mean, I could spend hours and hours churning out moral hazards based on that analysis.

It would never fly with other subjects: "handgun injuries per taxable income" shows that only the poor get shot, so it's not really as much a problem as you think.

My vague guess is that you're trying to use "GDP" as some kind of proxy for "industrial output", and saying that while the US emits a ton of CO2, that's OK because we actually need to do that to produce all the wonderful thigns we do. Except that's not what GDP means at all, and industrial production stopped being a dominant fraction of that number like a century ago.

Having lots of web developers and Starbucks franchises in our economy doesn't give us a license to pollute.

(Edit: literally minutes after I posted this, there's a WaPo story up saying that the Trump administration is floating the possibility of a carbon tax of some sort. So maybe there's some hope for conservatives after all.)

[ocschwar]

As a conservative, I can tell you that left-leaning politicians will not be effective at combatting climate change so long as they are up against a right wing obstruction machine.

(For the record, I am stuck between supporting crooks and hacks who claim to be conservative, and supporting liberals, and so I'm backing liberals for the duration.)

[coldpie]

Thank you. I hope in the near future we have a party that can reflect your views without rejecting reality. The only way to bring Republicans back into reality is to stop rewarding them for insanity.

[euyyn]

So the choice is between politicians that will face obstruction, making them less effective, and politicians that won't even bother trying?

[ocschwar]

Politicians that will actively engage in that obstruction.

Pretty gross.

[zaphod12]

I am also very unimpressed by anyone party's effort to combat it, but as this map exemplifies, we aren't even at that stage f the conversation yet with many folks. We NEED to be talking about how to combat it, but instead we're spending all of our time arguing about whether it exists. Which is insane! We're frogs sitting in a pot of water that's about to boil and arguing about whether it's getting hotter, instead of talking about how to jump out.

I'd love to be having policy conversations about solutions instead of doing that.

[noobiemcfoob]

Most proposed "solutions" to this problem directly attack multiple people's livelihoods. They can, should and must defend against these things tooth and nail. Expecting otherwise is naive.

Real solutions look like building out a renewable infrastructure. A thing that is happening everyday already, spearheaded by humanely conscious individuals and companies (Google, Apple, etc). There is literally nothing for the government to do in this situation but get out of the way and facilitate such endeavours.

Instead, we talk about carbon taxes >.>

[euyyn]

I remember a presidential candidate proposing a solution that was boosting the building of renewable infrastructure and technology, so exactly what you propose.

I think calling that a "humanely conscious" government, as you say, would have been appropriate too.

[noobiemcfoob]

I'd rather that president lower my taxes and leave the infrastructure business to companies that actually understand how it connects to everything else.

[sdflkd]

I can't tell if this is satire?

[euyyn]

By those beliefs, you'd rather NASA not had bootstrapped the commercial space business that now has SpaceX developing reusable rockets.

[noobiemcfoob]

Yes, I would be against any program developed for military reasons. NASA has produced a ton of amazing things. But they did it so we could blow people up.

[Corristowolf]

> In my experience with some conservatives, it seems that they believe global warming is happening but they are skeptical of how effective left-leaning politicians can be in combating climate change.

This is a major point. It's not that conservatives (in general) don't think it's happening, but believe that the solutions provided won't yield results to how expensive or "sacrificing" they are. Especially when you have big lobbies involved and especially when you consider China and how they have no real plan on cutting emissions.

[mrpopo]

China is the world's biggest investor in solar technology and hopes to grow its solar power to 20GW by 2020. [1]

China forced all taxi drivers in Beijing to use electric cars, a desperate and very controversial move. [2]

China is highly subsidizing its high-speed rail companies, bleeding billions of dollars per year, to cut other transportation methods. [3]

I am not saying to follow their example (some of their actions are probably not the best investments, environmentally speaking), but saying they do not have a real plan is quite untrue.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_China

[2] http://mashable.com/2017/02/27/china-electric-taxis/#r749sZh...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_China

[noobiemcfoob]

And China's example proves nothing here. Am I supposed to be surprised that an authoritarian government somehow finagled the political capital to invest in industries guaranteed to be highly disruptive to its most major economic competitor? Cuz I'm not.

[mrpopo]

My point was to prove the fact that China does have real plans to cut on emissions. Your answer is that their policies are economically viable and future-proof. I don't understand what is your point.

[noobiemcfoob]

Economically viable only in a political climate utterly alien and therefore nontransferable to America.

[netzone]

China is a good example of when a dictatorship(ish) can do good (more than a democracy regarding the same issue) when focused on the right thing

[VLM]

Conservatives love spending huge amounts of money for a good return, that's how we've gotten cheap solar, for example. They also have excellent time preference and planning for the future, accusations of the contrary run into observed examples of who actually is wealthy for all scales of wealth.

To expand upon the conservative reasoning:

Suicide never fixed anything. Killing our own economy and literally killing our own people makes some people (suspiciously never the people doing the suffering...) feel better about themselves not being as guilty. But lets face it, unless you can get "cult leader" levels of suicidal thinking into the entire species, human #235325 sacrificing himself and his family merely means human #85735 over there is going to burn the coal and oil, perhaps a little later. All the "conservation" stuff has no impact on the earth. A history book a million years from now would read something like "all the coal got burnt; some felt holier than thou for not personally burning; but it all got burnt" For some, being anti-suicide is a religious belief. For others, its just common sense. Why should I kill my kids so they don't burn coal which supposedly makes them holy, when someone else's living kids will burn the coal anyway? Why can't those people simply accept cyanide pills for themselves and their families, why do they insist on dragging us into their death cult kicking and screaming? In the long run from the earths point of view what does it matter if its all getting burnt anyway? Will mother nature "feel better" knowing a Chinese dude burned the oil instead of a rural white guy burning the same oil?

Wisdom about time is stronger on the right than on the left, see financial investment for example. Or just simple time preference WRT criminality statistics. Lets say we have to kill a million americans by ripping away their jobs and forever dumping them into drug addicted rural poverty without medical treatment leading to young death, lets really make them suffer because thats what we need to do to lower the carbon rate by 5%. Whats the result of all that human suffering? Well, the same sea level rise will happen and same climate change will happen, just maybe a couple weeks or months later. Perhaps the next ice age will arrive a few months sooner. But the human cost, oh my God. From a moral or ethical standpoint its pure evil to torture people just to move a date on a calendar that doesn't matter anyway. Its pure evil, basically. Many things are inevitable such as death and aging. The best measure of a human being is in how you face the inevitable. Grotesque slaughter and torture says more about the people proposing that "economic fine tuning" than they want made public. I would rather bravely face a 30M sea level rise on November 23rd 2071 than shoot my neighbor's kid in the head today to face the same 30M sea level rise on November 24th 2071. Sociopaths will do anything to get ahead, but conservatives have moral and ethical standards. Conservatives frankly are just braver people. Look at military demographics for example. I could support environmental policies that will ensure my survival a little longer, but what good is mere survival if you have to become a monster to do it? You have to truly and deeply hate your fellow man to support "economic fine tuning" like is usually proposed, have a deep desire to experience other's suffering and pain, especially of the unwilling, of the lower social classes. I'm not libertarian enough to say that's an OK way to look at the world.

Some are not part of social groups where holiness signalling spirals would benefit them so they don't bother signalling. If all your academic friend retweet your guilty terror of global warming you get a big payoff. If you don't, you're not "cool". You have to do this thing. The thing don't mean anything its just what you have to do to be cool. Not everyone hangs out with degenerates, frankly. Or their personal variety of degenerate gets "twitter cred" quoting the bible or just being a normal human or whatever. Just saying a lot of noise in the system comes from metastasized social media. A cancer of social signalling that only benefits itself and its own growth rate while lowering quality of life. Some ideas are just bad in a certain moral or ethical sense to propagate. Some folks have religious prohibition of proudly publicly being "holier than thou" and frankly thats good.

[Jtsummers]

I can't tell if your post is meant to be satirical or serious.

> conservatives have moral and ethical standards.

And liberals don't?

> Conservatives frankly are just braver people.

Got it, this is satire.

[yesbabyyes]

You sound like a member of a doomsday cult. All hope is lost, we shall perish, so we might just enjoy it while it last. And if so, get yours.

I guess that's actually a pretty good summary of the right-wing leadership in the West.

[ska]

What is the collective noun for a group of straw men?

[NoGravitas]

A bonfire of straw men.

[therpe1]

This is actually a fantasy that has no basis in reality.

You claim that conservatives "(in general)" do believe in global warming but poll after poll after poll demonstrates otherwise[1]. 85% of Republicans don't think humans are to blame and (by extension) there's nothing we could possibly do about it. The Republican President claims quite emphatically that it's a "hoax." How do these observable facts jive at all with your claim that conservatives don't believe in the "solutions" when most don't even acknowledge the problem.

As for your fantastic claim that China won't cut emissions again, I suggest looking at reality. See the Climate Action Tracker for China [2]. China is on track to achieve its peak admissions by 2030 which is what they agreed to under the historic Paris Agreement.

The facts are out there. There's no need for you to make up fantastical claims you just have to have the courage to look at them.

[1] http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-climate-...

[2] http://climateactiontracker.org/countries/china.html

[ElEmEnOhP]

>The Republican President claims quite emphatically that it's a "hoax."

That was a joke made on twitter.

[tzs]

He's made that claim numerous times over a span of years. Are you claiming those were all jokes?

[mastax]

Source for it being a joke?

[yodsanklai]

> In my experience with some conservatives, it seems that they believe global warming is happening but they are skeptical of how effective left-leaning politicians can be in combating climate change.

Interesting, I was under the impression that most conservatives were climate change deniers (or at least mild deniers as in it may be real but not a big deal).

That being said, a conservative friend of mine argues that what we need to solve environmental issues (and GW in particular) is more growth, more production and consumption. In his opinion, a side effect of this will be more investment in research and eventually new solutions to the environmental problems (as it has happened many times in history, for instance, think of horses being a nuisance in NYC). I would call that a serious leap of faith, but at least there's some logic in the reasoning!!

[VLM]

A better example than horses would be the decline in solar prices over the last half century. No amount of asceticism, or holier than thou preaching, or apocalyptic ranting, or suicide, or willful destruction of the economy could produce that graph of capitalist cost decline in solar energy. Enormous effort on the brains of STEM people, sweat from the craftsmen building and staffing the factories, bean counters financing incredible expenditures... that's how that cheaper than coal solar panel got made. Doesn't matter if one or one billion flailed themselves or felt really guilty, the rise of solar energy is a triumph of the right and capitalism not the left. Thaaats how coal dies as an energy source.

We didn't leave the stone age because of social status signalling holiness spirals declaring the in-group hates stone and stone workers. Or by making everyone feel guilty about the earth only having a finite calculable amount of usable stone. Or by patting ourselves on our backs for a job well done by lowering the third derivative of stone use to a slightly lower yet still large positive number.

[vilmosi]

Isn't solar energy getting massive amounts of investments and subsidies from the government, across the world?

[wdr1]

> Of course this will be met by criticism from HN, but I would love to see more discussion beyond conservatives are anti-science radicals who want to kill the earth.

+1

I noticed that even in the Yale study, the options on solutions were limited to those with broad left of center options.

Other options, include some that have been pushed by people right of center to address climate change, were not listed. E.g., nuclear power.

[mannykannot]

> I am really not impressed by any sides efforts to combat global warming.

If you are at all interested in why things are as they are, you might start with the time-honored practice of following the money.

[TheCoelacanth]

Then start insisting that right-leaning politicians take action on climate change. Left-leaning politicians don't have a natural monopoly on combating climate.