[hn_throwaway_99]

I think it should be somewhat obvious that it will be impossible for us to avoid the absolute worst of global warming. Humans simply don't have the capability to act in the coordinated, political way that is necessary. Somehow holding out hope that we'll all come to our senses and things will change is like holding out hope that we'll never have any wars again. It is just not compatible with human nature.

I'd love it if I were wrong, or if someone can change my mind, but in a world where we have never had as much access to information, large swaths of the population don't even believe global warming is _real_, let alone something we should do something about.

We should just start planning for the worst case scenarios, because they are going to happen regardless.

[john_moscow]

I'm not sure how many people are skeptical about the global warming itself, but there are definitely good reasons for skepticism about the proposed political solutions. I have yet to see a quantifiable and accountable proposal in a format "let's allocate $X billion, implement measures A, B and C, so with the probability of Y%, the point where Earth becomes uninhabitable due to global warming will shift by N years into the future". Instead far too many people who haven't tried running even a lemonade stand, are talking about raising billions by taxing things most of us enjoy with a very hazy perspective of having some great outcome way past their own political lifespan. Given that everyone else manages to cooperate in a completely unprecedented way.

To give an example, I personally hate commuting and believe that spending hours sitting in traffic every day is a major waste of time. However, if a politician came by and promised to raise gasoline prices by 50% in order to invest $X billion into WeWork so that they could solve the commute problem once and for all, I would never have voted for them. Not because I love commuting, but because I don't believe this will solve the problem at all, given the track record of WeWork. Of course, people with a financial interest in WeWork would gladly label me a commutist and would try to make sure my arguments are not heard.

There are plenty of ways to reduce the emissions that are much easier to quantify and implement: making nuclear power safer, improving biodiesel, even a national standard for replaceable EV batteries so you could switch one out not much slower than filling in a gas tank. But instead we keep hearing the original sin [0] rhetoric on how we should eat less, not buy a big house and give up on having kids.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin

[ZeroGravitas]

> I'm not sure how many people are skeptical about the global warming itself.

Climate change denial denial. Very meta.

https://www.wired.com/story/americans-trust-scientists-until...

[kilotaras]

> However, if a politician came by and promised to raise gasoline prices by 50% in order to invest $X billion into WeWork so that they could solve the commute problem once and for all,

Than you should like carbon fee and dividend scheme[1]. Tax emissions, divide equally between all citizens. The end result is unchanged populations spending power, but redistributed towards less carbon-intensive products.

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

[john_moscow]

That would mean taxing most productive or enjoyable activity (raising kids, going to business trips, fine dining) and rewarding depressive low-carbon-footprint sitting in front of the TV and waiting for death. I would rather spend that money subsidizing greener alternatives to common CO2 sources (e.g. EV subsidies), but that's already being done.

[wavepruner]

Where would the incentive to reduce emissions come from then? If you divide your tax of increase in emissions by 300+ million people, your effective tax increase will be low compared to the money you could make by increasing emissions.

[dTal]

Carbon taxes should be uncontroversial. They're economically sound and use levers we already have and trust to control other aspects of society without much debate (sin taxes are widely used despite the odd objection). But people on the extreme eco-warrior end are suspicious because they look like paper-pushing without doing anything, and people on the extreme capitalist-growth end dislike them because they will in fact be disruptive. It takes a kind of well-intentioned pragmatism that I think is rare - one tends to get selfish pragamtism, or else well-intentioned idealism/fanaticism.

[pgsandstrom]

When I hear people say that making nuclear power safer is easier than eating less meat, it kind of feels like people are just promoting the solutions that dont involve them making any sacrifices.

[nec4b]

And why should people make sacrifices if you could solve the problem without making sacrifices? This smells of a religious dogma that people should suffer because of the original sin.

[akvadrako]

If you think CO₂ is something we should reduce, the tree planting idea that's been talked about recently looks pretty good. Even if their costs are off by a factor of 10 it's still affordable; trees are an almost ideal carbon capture tool.

[john_moscow]

Planting trees will trap some atmospheric carbon in the lumber. However, once the lifespan of the tree is over and it starts rotting away, most of the carbon will get released back into the atmosphere, as it has been happening for millions of years.

In my opinion, it's not about planting the trees, it's about finding a way to turn the carbon trapped by them into something logistically and economically comparable to fossil fuels.

[akvadrako]

That's not a problem because new trees will grow in their place. Those trees can capture all the carbon humans have put into the atmosphere so far.

[john_moscow]

But that means that planting a tree binds a finite "tree lifetime" amount of carbon. So, in order to neutralize the worldwide carbon emissions using trees, we would need to keep planting them as long as we keep releasing CO2. So we would need to consume X square miles of agriculturally suitable land per year to simply keep the net emission at zero.

Now, IIRC, the energy density of oil is much higher than the one of lumber. I haven't done the calculation, but we might simply run out of suitable area way before any reasonable effect is reached. Don't forget that the logistics of tree planting will spend some CO2 as well, and given the finite CO2-per-planted-tree amount, it could be considerable.

Also if the trees have not spread naturally in the past millions of years in the area where you would want to plant them, there might be some ecological reasons to it. Hence, they may not survive long-term, or may get wiped by forest fires, or may require irrigation, fertilizers or other support that also produces CO2.

[akvadrako]

I agree it isn’t a complete answer to the question of how to return co2 levels to some level forever, but it has a good cost benefit ratio and could buy 50 years.

The study showed that the available land at a low cost, much less than alarmist propaganda, is enough to reverse all the co2 emissions so far.

[TomMarius]

I really like and vouch for the last paragraph

[mikedilger]

I agree that this is a tragedy of the commons situation. But there is a tiny bit of hope. After all, we did fix the ozone hole, even while someone in China kept releasing massive amounts of CFCs. So at least when the problem is limited and the solution doesn't require overwhelming sacrifice we can and do sometimes work together. This problem is much less tractable though.

It's hard for people to work out what information is true, what information is denial, and what information is hyperbole. Unfortunately the warnings we are getting via the media are inconsistent, alarmist, and don't put things into useful human terms that you can use to make decisions by. There needs to be a concerted effort to do better on the messaging front. I don't have any hope that the news media will do better while Western society puts little value on honor and doing the right thing, and puts high value on making as much money as possible.

Given the inconsistent messaging, people cannot rationally work out the answer to the following question: Which is worse? Giving up meat, my SUV, and air travel... or dealing with a +1.5C temperature shift? Most people think the former is worse, and quite rationally keep living as they have been at carbon footprints well in excess of 10 mton-co2e/year. Alarmist messaging doesn't fix that situation because people aren't dumb and can tell what is alarmist and what is a statement of solid facts. In fact, I've yet to hear a statement of solid facts that lays out the case why I should give up my (meat + SUV + air travel) that isn't highly speculative. Personally I am giving up these things and planting trees, but only because I bothered to deeply research the situation. The messaging is still really bad.. especially in the US where people apparently have no will to listen to each other anymore.

[dantheman]

We can and act that way... Unfortunately, for most people on earth their CO2 consumption will have to go up significantly for them to have an improved quality of life.

The large swath of population that doesn't believe in global warming is far less important than the large swath that is anti-nuclear. China, India, etc will need substantial energy to improve their quality of life and their populations are so large relatively to that of the West that marginal improvements in the Wests consumption will have little effect.

[endymi0n]

I used to be pro-nuclear as well, but I‘m not anymore. If you look at fully externalized cost including the consequences of uranium mining and storage of isotopes, renewables plus storage are close to breaking even.

Except that even the minimum reactor size (for technical, security and proliferation reasons) mandates extremely large investment in terms of capital and space, which in turn leads to ownership by large intransparent conglomerates, bickering by NIMBYs, clearances, costly audits and years of planning and validation.

Renewables plus storage on the other hand just get cheaper by automation and are relatively affordable. Any larger company can afford cash and space for solar on the roof plus a PowerPack in the backyard.

Knowledge and learning rate for that track advances at an order of magnitude faster rate than for fission or fusion.

In terms of scaling up as quickly as needed, nuclear is dead in the water.

[tick_tock_tick]

We are closing in or have hit peak renewable in several states and countries around the world. Unless we figure out a massive improvement to battery technology renewables are not going to help us in the same way they been.

[endymi0n]

[citation needed]

Wind power is continuously upgrading due to more possibilities opening with higher turbines, as well as old sites being upgraded.

Offshore wind is just getting profitable without subsidies, it's just getting started.

Solar is fitting in anywhere and with still falling prices will get ever more cost competitive even at low insulation sites.

Storage technology is just getting started as well with many investments from the past 5-10 years now reaching maturity (low-cobalt, silicon, solid state, fuel cells...)

You're entitled to your opinion, but I'd be curious as to your sources.

[hackeraccount]

I know it sounds contradictory but poverty is worse for CO2 production then wealth is. The world is in a situation that requires us to grow away from greenhouse gas production. I firmly believe that actions that hurt growth need to be approached with carefully - if X hurts growth but cuts the rate of greenhouse gas emissions it needs to cut them by a large amount - by the same token if Y increases growth and raises greenhouse gas emissions it might make sense if it raises growth by a large amount.

[CodeSheikh]

" where we have never had as much access to information, large swaths of the population don't even believe global warming is _real_"

I completely agree. In this age of broadband internet, social media where information is at your disposal, we are not matured enough to handle this, speaking from micro-evolutionary perspective. And where we can not digest/process/retain information, we conveniently convince overselves that it might not be real. Sadly, we are doomed.

[PaulHoule]

Not true. An overwhelming majority of Americans believe climate change is real:

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/most-americans-suppo...

The actual roadblocks to action are: (1) lack of a realistic plan (not like "we're going to subsidize renewables" but "we expect to reduce solar radiation by 0.25%, reduce emissions from power productions by 25%, ..." where the numbers add up to a real change) and (2) the conspicuous inability of the government to demand sacrifices from Elites (Macron's tax cuts), and (3) ordinary people feeling overwhelmed and that any sacrifice is the "last straw" (e.g. Yellow Shirts riot when they try to raise the price of gas)

(2) and (3) are linked because the government needs legitimacy to demand sacrifices and if it can't get them from those that have, how can it get them from anybody else?

If you want something to happen start a Kickstarter to rent a plane and seed the upper atmosphere with SO2 -- that avoids the 'collective action' problem.

[perfunctory]

> We should just start planning for the worst case scenarios

Who is "we" here? If by "we" you mean those humans that are incapable of coordinated political action, then I don't see us planning for the worst at the moment. You just replaced one unattainable goal with another. If by "we" you mean everyone individually should start building bunkers for themselves, then that's a perfect recipe for extinction.

[DubiousPusher]

I have been feeling more and more this way. If the resource constriction and human displacement predicted by many analyses occurs, the state responses will likely be predictably horrifying. Given the response of the U.S. Europe and Australia to the current refugee crises it seems something terrible on a far greater scale is nearly unavoidable.

Like you, I would love to be wrong about this but I have not seen any convincing argument against it.

[imtringued]

What's there to plan? Your only options are to move and to do very risky geo engineering projects.

[elihu]

I think the awareness is there on the individual level in most countries; what's lacking is that the political process is broken in various way, so that the interests of wealthy people and shareholders overrule the will of the majority of people.

In the United States, for instance, a majority wants significant action to avert climate change. Some of the obstacles to this actually happening are the electoral college, the filibuster, gerrymandering, first-past-the-post elections, the Citizens United decision, regulatory capture, and so on. We don't need to fix all of those things in order to act decisively, but if we reformed at least some of them it would make progress much easier.

[avocado4]

So how should an investor prepare today to the inevitable consequences of climate change?

[jdkee]

Buying waterfront property in the great lakes region of the U.S. seems like a good bet.

[justin66]

Lake Erie set a record high water level this year, so timing your purchase might be a little tricky.

[larnmar]

Buy tundra. Buy up tons of land anywhere that’s currently too cold to be useful.

[Scarblac]

Spend your money on entertainment while you still have it.

[lugg]

Pull your head out your ass.

You're the one sitting here on the internet claiming defeat.

How many people have you told to cut back on consumption and fuel use this month?

Yea. That's what I thought.

Don't act like it's impossible to change behavior it's not.

Smoking, drunk driving, domestic violence, racism, homophobia, and a bunch of other social issues have all been largely tackled the last few decades.

In WW2 we repurposed car factories to make tanks in a matter of weeks.

Please, don't act like we're a bunch of invilids incapable of change.

Speak for yourself.

[dang]

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