[sunday_serif]

I try to be an optimist, but the constant stream of record breaking abnormal weather really steers me toward climate doomerism.

Do others here feel similarly? Do you think these trends are reversible? Is technology the solution? Something else?

I guess my real question is: how do you incorporate all of this change into your worldview and outlook?

[jemmyw]

I personally believe we're doomed. Even if there is a technological solution, as things get worse it gets harder to deploy it. If people are struggling with persistent climate driven change then they'll be using whatever is cheap and available.

I've accepted it though. I don't doomer at people unless they ask. I can't do anything about the situation. I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life. If I have blame it's not for denialists, it's for all those politicians who know and accept the science but did nothing, they didn't have the guts, being voted in again was more important.

It does make me sad to see so many HN comments rolling out the same stupid "I don't trust the data" arguments that were pretty thoroughly debunked within the scientific community 10 years ago, yet still feel the need to jump on every thread about it because the whole thing makes them so angry.

[roenxi]

If there is a theory for how climate change will doom us, you should spend time talking about it. The threats people usually bring up are relatively mild. Eg, wet bulb events are pretty scary but are also sound relatively straightforward to mitigate if they start happening. Human societies deal with nasty weather events already.

I've heard scenarios put as mild as a reduction in real GDP growth, which is just a non-issue compared to the risks people want to shoulder to mitigate climate change.

> I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life

These people tend to be anti-nuclear in my experience; so I'm not sure from your comment if that strategy is a good idea. Environmentalists have been some of the more effective lobby groups for locking in fossil fuel use through 1980-2020 when we really should have been transitioning to nuclear power.

[ben_w]

> wet bulb events are pretty scary but are also sound relatively straightforward to mitigate if they start happening

First time I've heard that, everyone else says "this will kill anyone experiencing it for more than a brief period, meaning hours or minutes depending on the details".

Solution is only easy on a scale of one person, "move elsewhere", or rich societies, "stop working outside and install aircon inside", which isn't so easy for anyone working in agriculture or much of Africa and India.

[roenxi]

> Solution is only easy on a scale of one person, "move elsewhere", or rich societies, "stop working outside and install aircon inside", which isn't so easy for anyone working in agriculture or much of Africa and India.

India's real growth rate is >5% p.a. They're going to be a rich society pretty soon, because they are behaving like a clever country and building lots of power plants.

And while horrific things are likely to happen in Africa, horrific things have been happening in Africa every year for my entire lifetime. So yeah, it is terrible but not going to make me depressed by the future so much as the present. They need to figure out economic growth like Asia did. It is their only hope.

> stop working outside and install aircon inside

I dunno, sounds scalable to me. Repurpose office buildings with air conditioning for crisis use sometimes. People with air conditioners help those without.

Order of magnitude it sounds pretty doable. I don't see where the scale issue comes from to the point where I'd consider anyone I know "doomed".

EDIT If you described snowstorms, earthquakes, bushfires or tropical cyclones in the abstract they sound civilisation ending too. They are bad but people cope.

[inference-lord]

If India is building more power plants, which I'm assuming are coal? Isn't that going to mess them up worse than before? I mean, having air-con is nice, it's not possible for the whole of India to be inside with air-conditioning on for 3+ months of the year.

Even in places like Tokyo, they have to limit their use of A/C because it' so energy intensive due to the crazy amount of heat from the urban heat island effect.

[logifail]

> Even in places like Tokyo, they have to limit their use of A/C because it' so energy intensive due to the crazy amount of heat from the urban heat island effect.

I was in Singapore on Friday, for one day.

There's air-conditioning in the MRT (metro) stations, but (at least from what I experienced during my brief stay) the stations are not typically closed off from the outside.

You approach a station at street level and it's perhaps 33°C (91F) w/ humidity outside. Around midday my phone reported the weather as '33°C feels like 38°C (104F)'.

You go down an open set of stairs/escalators, and it gets progressively cooler and then you're in the metro and it's pleasantly cool. I was very quickly wondering whether this wasn't a mind-blowingly wasteful use of energy.

Anyone care to comment?

[ben_w]

> I dunno, sounds scalable to me. Repurpose office buildings with air conditioning for crisis use sometimes. People with air conditioners help those without.

Your "solution" is an example of what I meant by "easy on a scale of one person […] or rich societies", and no, they won't work for India. Not yet, anyway, as their power grid can't supply enough to run AC for everyone at the same time[0] in the event of a sufficiently wide and hot heatwave — and possibly never, as even the UK has measurable excess deaths during heatwaves (although caveat the UK has approximately no AC installed). On the plus side, India has completed the electrification of all the villages.

Remember, it's not just the national average that matters, if the bottom 15% can't afford it, they can't survive those events — 15% of India is earning no more than 125k INR/year[1], which at current rates is $1,508/year[2]. A few low income people might choose to get AC and have their friends over, but I think[3] it is sadly unreasonable to suggest that even a significant fraction of low income people could find a high income person with AC who will let them stay over for a bit.

Also, 45.6% are currently working in agriculture[4], and when these events happen, approximately all of that sector (in any specific location) has to stop working even if they have access to a building with AC and aren't just killed by such an event in their area. So do all the builders, though that's a much smaller sector. And when that happens, they earn less, so they have less money to spend on AC.

[0] http://www.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/files/file/Growth%2...

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/482584/india-households-...

[2] https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=125000+INR+to+USD

[3] On the basis of western culture, which may be an incorrect framing… https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/5317-when-asked-what-he-tho...

[4] https://www.niti.gov.in/sites/default/files/2023-02/Discussi...

[roenxi]

This is kinda what I mean about the doomer cases I hear being weak. This is all bad, but bad in line with what humanity has pretty much always been dealing with. History is a really nasty place. The present too. There are risks here, but they are not significant enough to justify abandoning fossil fuels or economic growth. Or being gloomy, for that matter.

Using those figures, you seem to be making an argument that 15% of Indians are at risk. That is pretty bad. But the upside of business as usual is much bigger than the downside. At a 5% real growth rate, income doubles in about 15 years. That is a lot of wealth that they can use to solve this problem. And approximately 80-90% of living Indians seem to be due to the fossil fuel economy that people are blaming for global warming; so by raw numbers most people are still coming out ahead. The obvious path is to keep going with coal until it runs out.

And the doom case hinges on 85% of the population sitting there and doing literally nothing while 15% fall over and die on the street. You m might believe that is likely, but I think it is implausible. And if it does happen that way, that doesn't seem like it'd sit on my conscience.

> Also, 45.6% are currently working in agriculture

Now that is a horrific stat. I would encourage Indian's to do whatever is necessary to get those poor people out of farm jobs and into something more comfortable. That sort of agricultural sector is a path of poverty, the people can't be productive enough to sustain a comfortably materialist society.

The path to doing that probably involves a lot of power stations. Likely coal fired. This point dovetails nicely with:

> Not yet, anyway, as their power grid can't supply enough to run AC for everyone at the same time

They'll need to beef up their grid, or they will be poor and probably die horribly. More electricity fixes a lot of problems simultaneously.

[corney91]

> Environmentalists have been some of the more effective lobby groups for locking in fossil fuel use through 1980-2020 when we really should have been transitioning to nuclear power.

If environmentalists are so effective, climate change would have been a higher priority over those decades. It seems likelier to me that there's other, more convincing reasons we haven't rolled out nuclear at a huge scale. For example the following are typically more convincing and applicable to nuclear as well: high costs, high political risk, fossil fuel lobbying.

[jemmyw]

I've always been pro nuclear. We talk about it a lot now (on hn anyway), but when I was growing up in the UK the greens had such a minor voice I didn't even know their stance on the issue.

The hypothesis of doom that I subscribe to is that it'll cause cascading effects that destroy parts of the existing ecology (this is already happening) and then the same to our food supply faster than we can react to. I don't worry it's going to mass cause temperatures that kill me directly if that's your implication. It'll be social collapse far away from where I live that will spread.

I live in a safe country that gets about 80% of its power from renewables. But we don't build those wind turbines here and we certainly don't mine for their materials, if the supply of stuff goes awry we'll be just as buggered as everywhere else.

[zelphirkalt]

Well, if you don't see the problem, then please hand over your home to someone else, and move soon. Not a problem right, if your area becomes uninhabitable? Also change your diet, because of other plants growing in your (new) area, or the old ones no longer growing in your previous area. Also calculate in to pay way more rent, because world population will have less space to live in and more people compete for your new home. I am sure you also won't mind devastating floods and other weather evens happening, forcing you to leave your previous home. In case of part of climate researcher being right and there being a point of no return, please also calculate in the cost for building a climate bunker under ground.

[jay_kyburz]

>The threats people usually bring up are relatively mild

Failed crops on a global scale may result in widespread famine and war. Crops can fail as a result of not enough rain, too much rain, not enough insects, too many inspects, all kinds of climate related things.

I remember reading during covid that there is not some massive food cache somewhere with the government ready to bail us out if they need to. That we are basically living season to season.

[tda]

Putting the blame for the climate crisis on environmentalists for opposing nuclear is very disingenuous. Nuclear would not have saved us from SUV's, consumption society or all the other forces wrecking the earth we live on. If nuclear would have made electricity cheap and abundant without addressing other factors, we just would have wasted more of it.

[roenxi]

If we have enough cheap energy, the other stuff doesn't matter. It is like someone from 200AD being worried that we're not all working the fields and we're going to starve in winter - that isn't a constraint on modern society, we broke it with cheap energy. Fuel goes in the machine, the machine does lots of work, and then we get food.

In fact, it might literally be like someone in the UK in 17xx worrying about the early industrial revolution because of climate change. The cost benefit calculation favours the industrial revolution by a heavy margin. If energy gets cheap enough, climate change happens and nobody needs to care.

[ben_w]

> If we have enough cheap energy, the other stuff doesn't matter.

Not so — the person you're responding to was demonstrating that important things had not in fact been invented, while your example only worked out because we did actually invent stuff.

Indeed, even today electricity is only about 10% of humanity's total power usage, and that's with batteries cheap enough to make electric cars viable. (Bit of a shame that the alternative to batteries, hydrogen, still isn't cheap enough to be a great contender today, even despite the strong incentive to replace gasoline during the height of pro-nuclear attitudes and the OPEC-induced fuel crisis).

[golergka]

> I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life.

Green party in Germany forced the country to close down its nuclear reactors and use coal instead, increasing the emissions.

[fnordian_slip]

That is one of the funniest pieces historical revisionism I've encountered in a while. Merkel, the famous green party leader.

[Timon3]

How exactly does an opposition party force the country to do something like this? Why is it the fault of the Green party, and not of the parties that were in government at the time and made the decision?

[golergka]

Through political pressure that forces parties in power to adopt some of the opposition party's positions in order to stay in power.

[Timon3]

That is incredibly biased framing. The main opinion in the broad population at the time was that nuclear power was too dangerous. You're right that the governing parties followed this to stay in power, but how is that then the fault of the opposition party, not of the governing parties?

The green party wasn't able to make this happen or not happen, as they had no governing power. The governing parties were able to make this happen or not happen. They chose to adopt part of the opposition policy to gain political power, but doing this also means they have to accept the responsibility for those decisions.

[golergka]

They might not having governing power, but these opposition parties, as well as NGOs like Greenpeace had a lot of propaganda power that they used for evil.

[Gud]

To be fair, that was not just the green party, also the social democrats and christian democrats.

[thg]

Now that's simply not true.

Closing down all nuclear plants was first decided on in the year 2000, 24 years ago. It were the Liberals (FDP) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) who rescinded that decision in 2010, only to later reinstitute it in panic after the Fukushima meltdown happened.

Those reactors that got shuttered hadn't had any safety inspections in years, they had no viable fuel left and not even the owning energy companies wanted to operate them any longer than absolutely necessary, so they would have been shut down even without the Green party in the current government.

That the now missing nuclear baseload had to have been replaced with coal, well.. Thank the Christian Democrats for that. They're the ones that favoured building out coal, slowing down the build-out of renewables as much as possible, at every chance they got.

[nomonnai]

True. However, as I experienced it, there was negligence regarding a base load problem among those favoring renewable energies.

I got into emotionally charged arguments for even asking, "Will Germany produce enough electrical power after shutting down nuclear power stations?" People told me base load was an outdated way of looking at the energy market and a conservative talking point to justify cutbacks in subsidies for renewables. An often repeated argument was that Germany has been a net exporter of electrical power for many years, so reducing capacity should not be a problem.

Personally, I feel that neither side engaged in an honest public debate. I remember very well a leading Green politician, Jürgen Trittin, declaring that the transition towards renewables would cost each German citizen as much as an ice cream cone. Yes, politics must create positive momentum, but being off by orders of magnitude signals fundamental incompetence. The usual counter is, "Had everything gone according to plan, it totally would have worked out." That is childish and not a way to do serious politics.

[lucianbr]

> they didn't have the guts, being voted in again was more important

Isn't this how democracy is supposed to work? Isn't it, as a general rule, preferable that politicians fear being voted out, and so do the things that the voters want, so they get reelected? The alternative seems to me for a politician to say one thing in the campaign - what the people want to hear, and then do something else when elected - what he thinks is best. Some do that, but they're not loved for it.

I am pretty sure that even when or if politicians do not care about the voters, they still do not do the right thing, but some other wrong thing, like enriching themselves.

What you are in fact complaining about is that politicians elected by other people did what those people wanted, instead of what you wanted. While not laying the same complaint on those you voted for - greens. They obviously did right to listen to their voters - you and people you agree with.

It's not about the guts of a chosen few. It's about humanity overall. If we do not care about the environment, billions of us, a handful who care will not, can not change much.

[ako]

Problem is that democracy doesn’t seem to work in bad times, voters only want to hear that they have more, more, more. More jobs, more income, more houses and cars. No politician will win the election by stating voters will have to work longer hours, for less payment, have to pay more taxes, and send their kids to the army to protect our freedom. As soon as that is necessary, populist politicians will gain votes by stating all of that is not needed.

[lucianbr]

If you think democracy is a system for obtaining good outcomes, then yes, it doesn't work too well. Actually I think we don't have any system for obtaining good outcomes consistently.

If you think democracy is a system for getting the government to do what the people want, then it's working as designed in many places.

The problem is not politicians, the problem is not democracy. We are the problem, we the people who want more more, and do not accept the consequences of our actions. We vote for cheap gas, then shift the blame wherever we can: to politicians, to democracy, to other countries etc.

[tux3]

>We are the problem, we the people who want more more, and do not accept the consequences of our actions

Ask why. Consider why it is that people do that. Is it really human nature? Can't we imagine a world, or even a country, where the cultural zeitgeist is different?

We certainly can have smaller communities where people accept the consequences of their actions, where people will hear about what else happens besides "more" when you ask for more. It's not that the human brain floating in a vacuum is incapable of understanding that actions have consequences. We develop that skill pretty early!

I think it's interesting to look at what separates these smaller groups from the bigger groups. I don't think it's people themselves being built of a different stuff. It's the inputs and the norms that differ.

I can certainly think of norms for a group that result in worse outcomes. I also don't think we're necessarily at an optimum in epistemics, looking around me. So optimistically, candidly, there's room to do somewhat better.

[ako]

Yes, it would help if we would be more careful with our choices. But it would also be nice if politicians could be held accountable: if they say global warming is fake, and it turns out to be true, they should get some sort of penalty. Same with allowing pollution, you’re responsible for the health impact.

If a politician doesn’t think global warming is true, at least be open to the fact they might be wrong and be careful with their choices. The environment is a fragile balance, better to be careful and limit things that might impact this fragile balance.

[tux3]

>Isn't this how democracy is supposed to work?

Under the assumption of perfect information, yes. Politicians should be afraid of doing unpopular things that will not get them re-elected.

A problem that exists down there, outside the internet bubble of information overload, is that people _aren't_ reliably informed. A human in a vacuum without access to accurate information will never spontaneously guess that they should care about the environment.

A politician's decisions are informed by voter preferences. That's good.

But the voters, themselves, how should they know whether to care or not care about any particular subject they're not experts in? Who do you trust? Where does information come from?

Well, there isn't a widespread decentralized information effort. It's not billions of us independently doing investigatory work. It is a handful of us, a small relative percentage. Voters can't all be experts. They have to trust some smaller group.

[bobfromhuddle]

Billions of people do care https://www.carbonbrief.org/interview-why-global-support-for...

[vasco]

The majority of people aren't deniers, so the minority that wants super aggressive change in policies just has to realize that not everyone is a revolutionary, and people shift their voting very little so this needs to be done over generations.

[CalRobert]

The problem here is the benefits are localised but the harm is globalised. Nobody in Micronesia can vote to raise fuel taxes in the US, despite being very much affected by US energy policy.

If we all voted together it might be different. Though I doubt it, to be honest.

[doubtfuluser]

This is exactly the problem. Above assumptions about democracy simply are not true at world level. I would imagine that if every person in the world would be able to vote equally on these topics - and everyone would have the same impact, things would look different. The rich countries are a minority population wise (or better: the people benefitting from non-ecological behavior are a minority). But when climate based refugees come, people might change their mind - or when we see in the news people dying in those affected regions… (oh wait - we already don’t care about seeing people starving… :( )

[andrei_says_]

Greta Thinberg’s speech at the UN a few years ago is crystal clear. Climate is collapsing, it is an actionable situation, and we choose to do pretty much nothing about it.

https://youtu.be/KAJsdgTPJpU?si=WvYvu1eTcEqztYtq

[Gud]

Why should I care about what this person thinks? What are her credentials?

It seems to me, Greta Thunberg is(was?) in the spotlight because her mothers celebrity status in Sweden, granting her easy access to free PR.

[gnepon]

Her message and the way she conveyed it is, for the millions that it resonated with, more important than who her mother is or her credentials (what credentials are you expecting of a teenager?)

[ikari_pl]

But that's more like the problem, not an argument.

it tells me people will let you do anything to them, if only you add enough emotions, otherwise they don't care.

[dariosalvi78]

She points at the Moon and you look at the finger. My dog can do better.

[zelphirkalt]

I don't even know her mother or the status of her mother, and read that from your comment for the first time today. I tend to focus on the message, not the ancestors.

[nec4b]

And if she would say something completely different about the climate you would also listen to her? Why is her opinion so important?

[zelphirkalt]

Because of shaking some people awake. And because of the content of the message. To me personally it could have been anyone delivering the message, but I am glad, that she reached lots of people. Starting this at the age of 12 (iirc) is remarkable, even if it does not change the message. Although one could argue, that it does add a kind of meta message: "Look here, I am a child! I will have to bear the consequences of your (in)actions!"

[andrei_says_]

What is your goal with this question? What are you trying to accomplish? Are you confused about the existence or nature of climate collapse or its action-ability? Are you unhappy about Greta’s contribution to the conversation and hoping to discredit her? Could you clarify your intentions?

What I feel from your contribution is simply interference and pulling the conversation in an unproductive direction. There’s enough of that I think.

What I’m more curious about is - what are some leverage points to shift toward solutions. Denialism is not an acceptable solution from where I stand.

[greysphere]

Her credentials are her ability to rally support/interest in climate issues. What credentials would satisfy you? Folks with PhDs and political accolades have been speaking the same points for years, and clearly they haven't bread success.

Frankly a question to ask is why you feel a person like her isn't encouraged to speak out on these issues, and isn't worth listening to? Is she saying things that aren't true? If so it seems like the thing to do would be to speak to those misstatements.

Much more likely though, systemic sexism and ageism make it difficult for folks to accept young women in leadership roles, particularly when their message asks for change from the status quo.

So the reasons you should care about what this person is saying are 1) she is speaking truths about climate change 2) the truths are about existential threats to humanity and she is able to communicate the seriousness of those threats 3) she is able to rally groups of like minded people with a common vision of those threats and their seriousness 4) paying attention to her and uplifting her leadership role helps erode systemic sexism and ageism.

[Gud]

All fair points, but what actionable advice is she offering?

[acdha]

Fortunately, she’s written a lot so you can simply find out with a quick search. For example:

https://beta.ctvnews.ca/national/sci-tech/2019/9/27/1_461325...

> Fly less or not at all, Cut down on meat consumption or go vegan, Join an activist movement, Vote

Two of those are immediately actionable and have significant impact, and the latter two are really important for building political will to overcome the efforts by a rich but minority group who profit from the status quo and whose money will insulate them from many downsides.

https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/davos-2023-keep...

> The 20-year-old Swedish activist stuck to her stance against all new oil, gas and coal developments during the fringe event, that was not part of the official conference agenda.

This letter is stronger but calls for things which could be done immediately with no technological breakthroughs needed like removing subsidies for fossil fuels and not expanding usage:

https://climateemergencydeclaration.org/open-letter-from-gre...

[greysphere]

Appreciate your engagement.

I think it very much depends on your situation. I personally look to her as a role model who's demonstrated the value of strikes and collective action in influencing climate legislation.

Others might take inspiration in her criticisms of air transportation (something that seems to be growing in popularity these days) but I'm not able to give up seeing my aging parents across the country a few more times so that point hasn't reached me quite yet.

Her wikipedia page is worth 5 minutes if you can spare them and maybe go from there.

[tracker1]

Immediately stop using fossil fuels (and let most people die). That seems to be her general advice.

[paulmd]

“Listen bub, said the slaveowner - if you’ve got a better system I’d be delighted to hear it!”

idk maybe it’s not the job of literal teenagers to come up with solutioning that meets the arbitrary whims and constrains you’ll doubtlessly impose on them? They live within the system that you have built for them.

There have always been very obvious solutions: heavy taxation on carbon emissions, with economic sanctions and perhaps eventually military action for willful and deliberate violations. The problem is that you as adults don’t consider that feasible for your own arbitrary political reasons, and so you’ll push us down the path of collapsing the climate rather than rock the boat.

Just like those Chinese fishing boats cleaning out fisheries etc: really you are only a 50 pound dumb-bomb from a solution if it came down to it. China can’t project force, they certainly can’t defend every fishing boat spread across every coastline on the globe, and if they rattle back then you retaliate in some other way. They need us too, for now. They would quickly see the light on keeping their boats in check. But you can’t solve the problem within the arbitrary political constraints set up by the current regimes.

We know the status quo doesn’t work and will collapse the climate within decades, and all anyone can do is ask why solutioning can’t be oriented around maintaining and upholding that same status quo. If you don’t change the game we all lose in the long run. But muh stock market will go down if we tax carbon!!!

The laws of the sea say one thing and china obviously won’t sign a new one that removes their right to strip-mine Greenland fisheries or whatever. And no nation will sign a treaty which truly penalizes them for collapsing the climate. And so the question is what next? You assume the answer is “nothing”, but it doesn’t have to be. And it in fact climate change itself is going to have a say too - political and military instability is already identified as a prime outcome from climate change for precisely this reason. You’re whistling past the graveyard.

What happens when some smaller nation (or group) decides drones look like a pretty good way to enforce some of this? We already see them effective with small state sponsors. Can you keep shipping safe around the entire coast of Africa, and every part of the southeast Asian region? Especially when we have absolutely democratized the means of warfare and driven the cost down to zero.

That’s the world she’s growing up and reacting to. You have truly given her and her generation nothing except a world on fire and you laugh at her for even recognizing or acknowledging this let alone attempting to reverse it, and I think that’s not going to work out as “politely” as you think.

But if you’re too shortsighted and intransigent to solve your own maze that you’ve built for yourself… why would you ever expect a literal child to be able to do it? Of course there are solutions, it just can’t be solved within your self-contradictory system. And as with anything - it’s difficult to get someone to acknowledge something when their paycheck (or quality of life, retirement fund, etc) depends on them not acknowledging it.

But ultimately, I think the people who die of climate change aren't just going to go quietly into the good night like you hope. and they get a vote too - they get all of the "boxes of democracy" in fact.

[inference-lord]

She's young and will feel the full force of some peoples ignorant stupidity.

[vasco]

So is every other kid born the same year, she's famous because she's famous because she's famous. But anyway, there's worse people in the limelight, to worry about her.

[londons_explore]

> Even if there is a technological solution, as things get worse it gets harder to deploy it.

As the world gets hotter, some people will benefit. Those people will try to stop any serious attempts to reverse course, especially when the next generation comes (to them, the current climate is normal - why would we want to spend lots of money to revert it to the way it was hundreds of years ago).

A 2/3/4 C rise in global temperature is going to happen, and humans might put the brakes on, but they will never put it back the way it was.

[skissane]

> A 2/3/4 C rise in global temperature is going to happen, and humans might put the brakes on, but they will never put it back the way it was.

I think CO2 emissions are going to decline – not fast enough to prevent a 2/3/4 C rise in global temperatures – but I think that rise could well be just a temporary thing for a few centuries, after which the climate goes back to what it used to be.

People are trying to limit CO2 emissions – not hard enough, but they are trying – and renewable electricity, electric vehicles, etc, are in the long-run going to win out because even if you don't care about CO2 emissions at all, they have other advantages.

[wcoenen]

> a temporary thing for a few centuries, after which the climate goes back to what it used to be

Reduced or even zero emissions are not negative emissions. By what processes and at what time scales will 100% of the surplus accumulated CO2 go away? I am not so sure this can happen in just a few centuries.

[skissane]

This is what the IPCC predicts [0]:

"According to the IPCC's 2021 projections of global temperature under different emissions scenarios, peak temperature could be anything from 1.6 ºC in around 2050 (if the globe hits net zero emissions by then), dropping to 1.4 ºC by 2100; to, with emissions still climbing, 4.4 ºC at 2100, with the peak still to come."

The IPCC's own predictions are that temperatures will peak and thereafter fall due to reductions in anthropogenic CO2 emissions. The question is when it will peak and how big the peak will be, which all depends on how quickly emissions are cut.

[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-01702-w

[wcoenen]

> The IPCC's own predictions are that temperatures will peak and thereafter fall due to reductions in anthropogenic CO2 emissions.

Yes, but it's important to understand why. I believe it's because the oceans and atmosphere would not be in equilibrium when we reach zero emissions, and so the oceans would continue to absorb CO2 for a while. This reduces atmospheric CO2 concentration and temperature in the short term (at the cost of further ocean acidification).

But what happens after the oceans and atmosphere reach equilibrium? Where does the excess CO2 go?

I think it can only go away through the very slow process of bicarbonate formation. And I'm not convinced this can completely remove the excess CO2 in just a few centuries.

[londons_explore]

When that happens, people will set fire to a coal seam or open a gas well because it's a cheap and easy way to maintain the climate at 'current' levels.

When people grew up in a 4C warmed world, that is the way they'll want to keep it.

[polotics]

Nope! A 4 degrees average rise means massive chaos of climate ups and downs, no one is going to be happy with that. Also note that extreme North/South location do not get good sunshine for plant growth, it's too low on the horizon, even if the temperatures are balmy...

[scruple]

> a few centuries

What does society look like to you on the other end of this?

[logifail]

> What does society look like to you on the other end of this?

Q: If you look back a few centuries, what does society look like to you?

[oezi]

Counterpoint once Co2 reduction is in place and the norm (as with Wind and solar) it becomes hard to go back to other ways of doing things.

[masa331]

You can do a lot of things about it. You can talk about it, you can gather data, you can vote politically and with your wallet, you can reduce your consumption, you can set the example for others, you can research, you can help in current organizations which are doing things about it... there is actually so much you can do if you really care. But people ale don't really care bc. putting in the work is harder than blindly consume and doom

[sneak]

This is a fiction. Just like the fact that you cannot end war by voting for antiwar candidates or end mass surveillance by voting for anti-surveillance candidates (viable ones do not exist, by design), you cannot meaningfully affect this trajectory by any individual choice.

[masa331]

That is absolutely not a fiction. You can make a big impact with all the things i mentioned and many more. Now it will obviously not change the thing overnight and the result will depend on how hard you work, what area you choose and a bit of luck i guess. But if you persist there will be results.

By changing a few things in your own behaviour and taking pride in it you can improve your own life. Not consuming so much actually improves a lot of other areas in your own life like physical and mental health, finances etc.

By working on things in your local area, raising awareness, getting involved with local government(at your town) you can make a difference with a few hours per week. Or be imaginative, do some research, get interested in some specific area and then try to apply it around you.

These are the easiest things you can do. And then you can do more, if you are ambitious. What you are describing is a viewpoint of somebody either lazy, resigned, or not really interested in these things.

[nec4b]

>> I personally believe we're doomed.

Our ancestors survived ice ages.

>> I've voted for green parties and politics my whole life.

You are part of the problem why we are burning coal instead of using nuclear power.

[jantissler]

> Our ancestors survived ice ages.

I’m not sure if you are actually serious. They did not have billions of people relying on a very brittle global economy back in the day. They did not have cities with millions of people and an enormous infrastructure to keep these people alive.

[nec4b]

>> I’m not sure if you are actually serious.

I'm not the one implying impending doom if the climate is getting slowly warmer.

>> They did not have billions of people relying on a very brittle global economy back in the day.

Compared to freezing in an ice desert, not knowing when you'll eat next time.

>> They did not have cities with millions of people and an enormous infrastructure to keep these people alive.

Funny, I see our infrastructure as a strength and not a liability.

[bobfromhuddle]

The emissions trend is slowing. We have the technology we need in order to change course, we're just not deploying it fast enough.

The worst projections, at least, are off the table: we're not headed for 6 degrees of warming, we're on track for 3, and I strongly suspect we'll end up closer to 2 degrees of warming.

That is going to be terrible. People will die, wars will be fought, and we'll see the largest migrations in human history with all the attendant political upheaval and barbarity, but we'll still be here. Humans as a species are going to make it.

For me, I found it helpful to go and work in climate. So long as I wasn't actively working to solve the problem, I was driven mad by the knowledge that we were heading for disaster.

[hn_throwaway_99]

> For me, I found it helpful to go and work in climate.

Curious, can you say what you switched from and to?

[notadoomer236]

To counter, I think we’ll most likely be fine.

It might be two degrees warmer this century. Life will go on just fine. Possibly better in some ways and places. No problem, relatively speaking, compared to the hazards our ancestors face.

If it warms 5C, we might have a real problem on our hands. I don’t think we can predict that, and I don’t think it will happen over 100-200 year timescales.

Many people seem to think there will be mass die offs, the ocean will become unsurvivable acidic, and crops won’t grow. I don’t think any of that will happen anytime soon. I think there is a very strong “doom” instinct in humans to think this is the last generation, the end of times. This is just the latest manifestation.

[londons_explore]

> Many people seem to think there will be mass die offs

Humans have already caused many mass die offs. Go into a forest today and try to catch dinner with your bare hands and you'll find it is near impossible. Yet it used to be possible - that's how our ancestors lived.

Us inventing aids like the bow and arrow has depleted the wild animal population enough that we now couldn't survive without such aids.

[notadoomer236]

But survive and thrive we do. And if you go to many places in North America (or around the world) you can still see large populations of wild animals, many recovering substantially with improved protection policies.

[lenkite]

Growing up in a rural area, I used to catch dinner with a sling as a kid. Fat pigeons were my target. This is still possible today. :)

[Jensson]

Historically you could go and catch a pig or similar reliably and feed your family since they were everywhere. Today it is hard to even feed yourself, you need many pigeons to feed even one person for a day.

Did you know that just a couple of thousand of years ago there were more elephants than humans in sub Saharan Africa? Feeding yourself with hunting then is really easy, there are meat giants to eat everywhere, that is what earth was like when humans were still hunters. Then humans hunted most of the largest animals to extinction and the remaining got turned to cattle.

[TearsInTheRain]

If you want easy access to wild pigs just move to Texas lol, they have a real problem with them

[lenkite]

"Did you know that just a couple of thousand of years ago there were more elephants than humans in sub Saharan Africa? "

This does not appear surprising. Elephants were perfectly adapted to that environment and able to fend off dangerous predators. Humans - several thousand years ago - were not as dangerous. And thus used to be the prey of necessity for older, limping lions in the past. The old big cats could no longer catch a fleeting gazelle but the slow, clumsy humans made an acceptable substitute - even if the meat tasted like bad pig. Even in the last millennium, thousands of humans were devoured by man-eating cats.

[defrost]

> but the slow, clumsy humans made an acceptable substitute

The humans that made thorn bush corrals and teamed up with spears when one yelled lion?

They're not as easy for big cats as many might think, even today you can see barefoot humans with spears facing down cats and cats shying away from the sound of humans.

Only old slightly mad cats gave humans a go, and they rarely lasted long until people teamed up and took out the man eaters.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJZR68KSIgY

> Even in the last millennium, thousands of humans were devoured by man-eating cats.

That's, like, one or two a year ... comparable to drowning and other accidental fatalities.

In reality, outside the drama of Rudyard Kipling story, it's a rare bit of drama for big game hunters to have an actual man eater to go after.

[pests]

If they hunted them to extinction then how was it easy pickings?

[inference-lord]

I highly doubt bow and arrows have to do with this depletion, Australian Aboriginals were highly highly effective hunters with spears woomeras and boomerangs and there was an abundance of wild life around in their presence.

[hnfong]

But there weren't a billion of them around.

FWIW, quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_longbow : "The trade of yew wood to England for longbows was such that it depleted the stocks of yew over a huge area."

[Jensson]

Australian Aboriginals didn't have bows so not sure how that proves anything.

[inference-lord]

They could've killed a lot of shit with similarly effective weaponry, if they wanted too, their culture wasn't into that.

My proof is that they're the oldest surviving civilization on earth and lived mostly a hunter gatherer lifestyle without running out of food and requiring mass scale agriculture to survive.

[bitfilped]

And what exactly is preventing us from getting to 5C? We can squabble all we want about what temperature will be "problematic" and the timeline to get there but the trend is set and continuing.

[notadoomer236]

Why do you think it will warm 5C? Most of the models - which are not especially accurate or battle tested - don’t put us there.

If we bumped to 1000ppm carbon, would the earth warm 5C? That’s a technical question. We don’t know exactly how sensitive the climate is or what feedback mechanisms are at play. I don’t lose sleep over it. But I’m just trying to give my perspective to counter some of the doom, since the doomers are very active online.

[swader999]

Of course life on earth would be overall better if we were slightly warmer. There's far more land outside of the tropics.

[dagss]

Better for the few outside the tropics who will shut their borders to the sufferings of those in the tropics..

[BrandoElFollito]

One thing I realize is that of I have known that 20 years ago I would probably not have had children.

I am quite worried about the world we are leaving them and when they are about 80 in 2080 the world is predicted to be hell. I would not be surprised if they decided not to have children themselves.

I read that in France the number of vasectomies among 25-ish is exploding. This may not be a good indication, though, because vasectomy was not popular in France in the first place (and still requires z 4 month cool down time, by law)

[endymi0n]

I've never quite understood this worldview, my children are born _because_ the problems at hand are huge. The only chance the next generation has are educated, intelligent, hardworking people with enough grit and resources to take these matters into their own hands and continue executing on one of the most spectacular economical and technological turnarounds of all human history.

That and preparing them for it is exactly what I'm capable of. Kids from religious fundamentalists will come on their own, whether the worlds needs them or not.

[scruple]

I chose to have children despite reflecting long and hard on this question. I hope to raise children who become adults who can endure.

My ~recent ancestors endured hardship that would push me to my limits but it was their daily existence. They fought in the American Revolution, they fired the first shots at the Whiskey Rebellion, they were directly involved in the Civil War, and on it goes, up to my father and his brothers and my brother and myself. I hope that my own children can find resiliency. I'm not sure what the point is otherwise.

[markoman]

I don't think it's feasible to ask that your children find resiliency on their own in isolation. Surviving in that new reality will have to be on some national level at least. It will require resources to offset the harm done by these conditions.

Even American conservatives, for example, appear to acknowledge that climate change is occurring. Their current spin is that no major economic changes are required now (inaction is fine!) because they believe that technology will find a way to address an even warming globe. I think a lot of people choose to believe that to avoid doomerism.

[neom]

Interesting to read you say that, last time I posted on here that climate change was a major component of my wife and I deciding not to have children, a bunch of people pissed all over that, and I was surprised because It thought it was relatively pragmatic?

[abyssin]

In 2010 I met a guy who told me that for environmental reasons it's not okay to use planes. I knew about environmental issues before, but I'd say that was the point in time when I started to see climate change as a serious issue, and my view of the future became pessimistic because of it. For a few years I was certain I'd never have children. Then I thought life has been hard for most of my ancestors, way harder than it's going to be for my children. Is a hard life still worth living? I now think so, and I have two children. I respect people's choice not to have children (by the way, it's going to make the world easier for my own), but I think for some childfree people, one of the motivations is rooted in the same individualistic values as the values fueling consumerism and the contemporary Western lifestyle. I think they view their life as their own, and not something they share with the past and the future.

[BrandoElFollito]

I often think that my ancestors all the way back to amoeba were ass kill fighters and heroes. They made it through dinosaurs, tigers, viruses, wars, famines, black plague, again wars and finally the 70's - and here I am.

I would prefer, though, they my children are not forced to go through this. It is to late now, though (sorry boys)

[BrandoElFollito]

I'm disappointed nobody pointed out the dinosaurs thing.

[BrandoElFollito]

I fail to understand why this would piss off people. Everyone has their opinion and can discuss the pros or cons but making it a heated fight is beyond me. We are not taking about Go vs. Rust! (which is indeed an important topic and all these people who are wrong by being on the Rust side, I just pity them with dedain :) :) <- look, I put two smileys, do not kill me please

[abhiyerra]

Seems you are against the climate if you are with Go. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/sustainability-with-... I kid, I kid :)

[BrandoElFollito]

This is FAKE NEWS. A lot of people say that AWS is saying this because Go is from Google. It's true, it's true. It's a conspiracy and covefefe

[OccamsMirror]

The problem, as I see it, is if everyone does the same then people really won’t care about the long term survival of the planet or species because they have no skin in the game. May as well rape and pillage the planet because there’s literally no downside for you. You’ll be dead with no children to care about.

[vasco]

If only we could know how people without children behave. If only there were some around to see if in fact they just decide to eschew society and become destructive as you predict.

[BrandoElFollito]

Looking at the birth rate, we don't have shortage of children.

I do not understand your point about killing and raping in the context of not having children. You must live in the writing neighborhood of this is the correlation you see attend you.

[asadotzler]

But everyone does't do that and it's absolutely silly to suggest they will so your alarmism just that.

[richrichie]

I respect your choice. I wish more of the people who feel passionate about saving the earth led by example like this.

[BrandoElFollito]

Lead by example by having children you mean?

[richrichie]

i meant not having children.

[BrandoElFollito]

Ah ok - I got lost in the indents of the thread while on mobile.

[continuational]

So the solution to climate change is to go extinct before it gets uncomfortable?

[otherme123]

One of the causes is to be so many humans, yes. There is probably a middle point between being 20 billion and being extint.

[CalRobert]

That's answering a different question. It's about not creating people who will experience terrible suffering

[mrighele]

The solution is to open the door to immigrants because those getting vasectomy still want somebody to take care of them when they get old

[nec4b]

>>I read that in France the number of vasectomies among 25-ish is exploding. This may not be a good indication, though, because vasectomy was not popular in France in the first place (and still requires z 4 month cool down time, by law)

We will see how they'll will feel about it after they'll grow older and they will need help from other people and those people won't exist.

[juniperplant]

Reasons to have kids

[londons_explore]

Even if most people refuse to have children, there will be some who do. And the next generation will be entirely those people.

[vasco]

As with every generation! We're all the result of a long chain of people living miserable lives and believing it was still worth it to propagate life.

Imagine humans during previous ice ages, no space heaters and The North Face jackets still having babies. We're so coddled in comparison.

[M95D]

Ice ages are, like the name say, ages. No problem if the Earth heating would take ages. We would have time to evolve 60° body temperature or something...

Also, when too cold, kill a sheep, take it's coat. When too hot, what are we (and our animals, food and pets) going to do? Undress our own skin?

[refurb]

This seem like a hysterical response.

Look at the warming forecasts and how accurate they’ve been (they haven’t).

Then look at the error bars on predicting the impact to weather (they are all over the place).

A reaction like not having kids because the world will end places way to much confidence in predictions that little probability of being correct.

[BrandoElFollito]

Well, I would like my children to have it as easy as I had, ideally much easier and better. The general predictions and what the world looks like is not particularly cheerful. I think we are the first generation that has it worse, statistically, than out parents.

Everyone is free to have children (sometimes - unfortunately) so it is a personal choice, even if it seems hysterical to some.

[refurb]

Nobody has a crystal ball. Look at any of the predictions made 50 years ago - this isn’t the first time the end of the world has been predicted.

Even some of the more basic predictions about the rise and fall of countries have been comically wrong.

But to feel so confident that you know what the future holds that you make major life choices based on it is rather… odd.

[BrandoElFollito]

When you look at the predictions from 1900, 1920 and 1960 (the ones I saw), they were unanimously optimistic: no wars, cancer cured, flying cars (or similar stuff at the beginning of the XX century). They indeed failed, but either because they did not predict great things such as the Internet, or because they were overly optimistic.

[mlrtime]

I agree, when I hear people say they won't have kids [today] because of climate concerns, it reads as fake virtue signaling. Meaning, the desire to have kids was very weak or 0, so coming up with any excuse [climate change] is a self superior moral decision, aka signaling.

[silverquiet]

When I hear people say that they will have kids [today] because of [reason], it reads as fake virtue signalling. Meaning, the desire to have kids was very strong or 1, so coming up with any excuse [reason] is a self superior moral decision, aka signaling.

I'm pretty sure you can apply this logic to any human decision. Honestly, I've come around to thinking that children are mostly status symbols within some communities (religiosity correlates about as highly as anything), and most reasons are post-hoc rationalizations of that.

That said, I'm pretty scared of climate change, and I'm probably not quite halfway through my lifespan. I can't imaging being a young child and facing down decades of this stuff. No thanks.

[cesaref]

I like to think that in 50 million years when we're long gone, whatever has evolved from the burrowing mammal that survived the mess we've caused will be looking at a thin brown layer in the geological record and wondering quite what caused the mass extinction event.

One of the crackpot ideas will be that an earlier civilisation managed to mess up the entire planet, but that's so ludicrous that they will conclude it was most likely a weird asteroid impact or something like that.

[qaq]

If you look at temperature shifts at 50 million year scale whatever wea are doing is basically irrelevant https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_widt...

[mrintegrity]

Those rapid temperature swings were related to / resulted in mass extinctions and had various natural causes. The current rapid temperature swing is caused by human activity as is well accepted by any scientist who isn't a crackpot.

[asadotzler]

We are a natural cause. Any position otherwise is silly.

[tommit]

What's silly is this comment, as it has in no way furthered the discussion. It only enables one to feel smug for a hot minute. Surely you're smart enough to infer that "natural causes" are said in contrast to "human-made causes".

[ben_w]

Silly perhaps, but conventional, as humans like to think of themselves as capable of cooperation to solve challenges larger than any one person, and to think of themselves as wiser than (other) animals and thus able to see these challenges well in advance.

[lenkite]

Those natural causes will occur again - regardless of whatever we do as a species.

[ben_w]

What we do as a species can't rule out things like star lifting. The future doesn't need to be limited to what we've done so far.

[ben_w]

The mass extinction will be visible, as will the unusual chemistry found only in that narrow, but global, layer.

Also, note the last section of your linked graph is a vertical line on that scale. It still would be if you zoom in to 50 million years rather than 500 million. Anthropomorphic climate change is a vertical line even if you zoomed in to 5 thousand years.

[swader999]

I think theres a rogue star set to mess with our orbit in about a million years so talk of another fifty might be lofty.

[atoav]

My uncle bought me a book on climate change in the 90s when I was a kid. I have spent all my life knowing we are moving in the wrong direction and chose to use my voting power and my purse accordingly.

The issue we really face is that the needed change is fundamentally incompatible with the way wealth is accumulated on the top today, how growth is expected and required at every step.

That means the first change that needs to happen is purely mental: Either we march into doom to make a bit more money for the richest or we restructure our system so it doesn't need growth to provide wealth. And once we have that mental change the next harder step will be convincing the powers that be to implement it.

We are now farther in terms of the mental question than in say 2010, but things move too slow and many people have not fully realized the existential nature of the problem.

[Phenomenit]

The Change needed is refused by the people. We would rather die and kill most of the biological world than face economic austerity, so we get what we order.

[abdullahkhalids]

From a survey [1] released just this month.

> In this study, we conducted a representative survey across 125 countries, interviewing nearly 130,000 individuals. Our findings reveal widespread support for climate action. Notably, 69% of the global population expresses a willingness to contribute 1% of their personal income, 86% endorse pro-climate social norms and 89% demand intensified political action.

And an interview of the authors [2]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-024-01925-3

[2] https://www.carbonbrief.org/interview-why-global-support-for...

[caskstrength]

Yes, in surveys everyone is always generous and ready to sacrifice their own interests, then price of gas increases some 10-20% and you have protests and riots.

[abdullahkhalids]

The reason for protests is often because the sacrifices are usually placed on the general population instead of on the top X% percent whose emissions equal the rest of the population.

"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

Surely tax car prices, but also set tax for private jet fuel to a 10000%. While electricity is not far from becoming clean, it makes no sense that the rich and the poor paid the same price for it. As total consumption increases, a region has to turn on dirtier and more inefficient plants. So high consumption users should pay a lot more, instead of doing a general price increase. Etc.

[raccoonDivider]

That makes a real difference for people making the median salary in western countries. Lots of people in finance, tech, etc. can obviously afford not to care but that's a minority.

[oezi]

We need 2-6% of GDP each year spend on this. For the next 30 years.

This is an amount of money we could just create by monetary policy or Quantitative Easing as the like to say. Nobody needs to get poor when money is spend.

[tracker1]

What exactly are you going to spend it on?

[oezi]

Getting to netzero is most economically achieved using solar, wind and battery storage + gas peaker plants for intermittent capacity needs (already today and more so in the future).

[tracker1]

Why not nuclear over gas?

If you're using gas it'll never be net zero.

[asadotzler]

Too bad they're not running the US, India, and China because poll results are meaningless if people have no actual ability to effect change and they don't.

[Phenomenit]

This is definitely encouraging but I’d rather see a study about people forgoing consumption or voluntarily imposing self austerity rather than what their opinions are.

[inference-lord]

Climate change isn't primarily about consumption though, it's about burning fossil fuels, I think the consumption argument is a decoy by the fossil fuel industry.

I know a lot of people who are pretty minimal in their consumption, but just waking up in the morning and turning on their heating in their poorly insulated apartment means they're significantly contributing to climate change.

Of course manufacturing goods is part of it too, but burning coal, gas and oil is what caused climate change. Not buying clothes or eating food.

This year I plan to consume 6 solar panels and self install them on my barn roof. I'd say this is positive consumption?

[ozim]

What about most populated areas in the world cranking up air conditioning. Just not to drop everything on people living in colder climates. ;)

[henrikschroder]

> or voluntarily imposing self austerity

The problem with this line of reasoning is that the only people who care are the anxious western upper-middle classes. Anyone poorer can't afford to care.

You absolutely cannot solve the problem through voluntary change of behaviour, and thinking that you can is a sign that you need to step out of your ivory tower. Instead you have to change the economy so that the most environmentally friendly alternative is the cheapest, and so that environmentally disastrous activities are prohibitively expensive.

[jdub]

It's not a matter of the environment vs economic austerity, rejected by the people, it's the environment vs corporate abuse, rejected by those in power.

[cuu508]

It's tragedy of the commons at all levels.

[opo]

It is actually worse than that. Even the relatively small amounts of money we are willing to spend to combat this are often not spent well.

One example, is rooftop solar. Rooftop solar is very, very, expensive compared to utility grade solar. A dollar that goes to subsidize residential rooftop solar is a dollar that would go much, much further if it was used to subsidize utility grade solar or wind.

Another example of poor decision making is Germany which decided to start shutting down nuclear power plants while they were still burning coal. So last year hard coal and lignite still produced 35.3 percent in German power production (compared to 35.2% from renewables. (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany). Before the phase out of nuclear, it generated about 25% of the electricity. It is all really hard to believe...

[dagss]

I don't think rooftop solar is that simple:

1) Does the extra cost of rooftop solar go to installers doing a lot more manual work per panel?

Installers who need a source of income to live anyway?..

2) As I see it a lot of the pollution in the world is due to fear of people loosing their jobs. One could scale down many sectors, or more aggressively shift to a greener economy, if it wasn't for the fear of people/voters loosing their jobs.

-- So when considering options I think one needs to give smaller weight to salaries ("somone had to feed that person anyway") and more weight to natural resource extraction needed...which is the "real" cost. Basically count further CO2 emissions invested, not work hours.

[opo]

>I don't think rooftop solar is that simple:

Money is fungible and not unlimited - a dollar that goes to subsidize residential rooftop solar is a dollar that would go much, much further if it was used to subsidize utility grade solar or wind.

The original poster pointed out:

>...We would rather die and kill most of the biological world than face economic austerity, so we get what we order.

As I pointed out, it is worse than that - we often waste the small amounts of money we are willing to spend. If people know that rooftop solar is an inefficient use of people's money, but justify it because it can be a jobs program for roofers - that won't help convince tax payers that policy makers are committed to fighting climate change.

[_w1tm]

> Money is fungible and not unlimited

There is no limit to the numbers in central bank databases. Resources and labor are not unlimited, though.

[mahkeiro]

Yes but installing solar rooftop is simple and won't use any additional land and get opposed by environmental groups. From that point of view, your $ will be more actionable than waiting 15 years to get your utility solar deployed.

[mmarx]

> Another example of poor decision making is Germany which decided to start shutting down nuclear power plants while they were still burning coal. So last year hard coal and lignite still produced 35.3 percent in German power production (compared to 35.2% from renewables. (https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/coal-germany). Before the phase out of nuclear, it generated about 25% of the electricity. It is all really hard to believe...

That article is from January 2023, so the numbers in there are 2022, not last year, and even then it says that nuclear produced only 11.7%. In any case, comparing to the official numbers[0], those seem to be closer to the 2021 numbers than the actual 2022 numbers: 31.3% coal, 6% nuclear, and 44% renewable. For 2023, coal was down to 26.22%, nuclear (which was only phased out in April) was down to 1.5%, and renewables were at 56%. Nuclear has not contributed more than 20% to electricity generation since 2011[2].

[0] https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris... [1] https://www.smard.de/page/home/topic-article/444/211756 [2] https://ag-energiebilanzen.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/STR...

[opo]

>That article is from January 2023, so the numbers in there are 2022, not last year,

Thanks for the clarification. The numbers are a little different, but unfortunately the main point is still true. Before the phaseout started, nuclear contributed more than 20% to electricity generation. Even now with nuclear basically eliminated, coal is still being used in 2024 to provide electricity in Germany. Earth just experienced its hottest 12 months in recorded history and it was really incredibly poor decision making to start shutting down nuclear power plants while still burning coal.

[mmarx]

> Before the phaseout started, nuclear contributed more than 20% to electricity generation.

That's true, but also quite meaningless. Before the nuclear phaseout started, renewables contributed less than 7% to electricity generation, now it's over 56%, so it more than compensates for the missing nuclear generations. Furthermore, replacing coal with nuclear is not easily done, since most coal plants also generate heat, whereas none of the nuclear plants did.

> Earth just experienced its hottest 12 months in recorded history and it was really incredibly poor decision making to start shutting down nuclear power plants while still burning coal.

None of the remaining reactors had usable fuel left, even just acquiring new fuel would already take 12 or more months (besides, all of the remaining reactors were already several years overdue on safety inspections). The decision to phase out nuclear power has been made well in advance of those 12 months: originally in 2002, partially pushed back in 2010, then finalised in 2011, and again pushed back (by 3.5 months) in 2022. The poor decision making is not phasing out nuclear power, the poor decision making is not also phasing out coal and pushing renewables from at least 2011 onwards.

[opo]

>That's true, but also quite meaningless. Before the nuclear phaseout started, renewables contributed less than 7% to electricity generation, now it's over 56%, so it more than compensates for the missing nuclear generations.

You misunderstood what I was saying. Earth just experienced its hottest 12 months in recorded history and it was really incredibly poor decision making to start shutting down nuclear power plants while still burning coal. If one thinks that climate change is important, it makes zero sense to eliminate nuclear plants while you are still burning coal. Zero sense. Even if someone thinks it is better to pander to the coal industry or doesn't believe climate change is an existential threat to human civilization, burning coal by itself directly kills thousands of people each year. One recent estimate puts that at 1800–2260 deaths in Germany each year. As climate scientist James Hansen has said, “Coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet”.

[neom]

I literally dream about Sovereign Solar. If the Canadian government was like "yo, we're doing a crown corporation and we're gonna transition the country to solar wind and tidal" - that's my actual pipe dream.

[ZeroGravitas]

A democratic majority supports fixing this when polled. Concentrated special interests manage to slow that change being implemented.

[freddie_mercury]

This isn't quite true.

Polls consistently show that people think someone somewhere should do something as long as it doesn't actually cost them any money.

"IPSOS found that just 25 percent of Americans said they’d be willing to pay higher taxes to address climate change. A 2019 Reuters poll asked specifically whether respondents would pay $100 to fight climate change and only a third said yes"

[tinco]

Meanwhile, Joe Biden while claiming to believe we are steering towards climate disaster, decided to protect the economy and preserve his geriatric political career and reduce oil prices yet again by depleting strategic reserves.

[pstuart]

Let's not get too political here -- while there is pandering on oil pricing he is forced to by an electorate that's too stupid to see the big picture. His ostensible opponent states that climate change is a hoax and wants to undo anything "green".

[notadoomer236]

Many of us don’t want to uproot everything - at substantial effort and cost - for unclear or negligible upside. USA is only at 13% of global emissions. And radically overhauling everything, as opposed to incentivizing greener tech over time, is unlikely to move the temperature much if at all. China will not play ball. The developing world will not play ball.

If we were dead serious about this as a civilization threat, we would start building as much nuclear as possible

[tinco]

USA is only at 13% if you only account for emissions by the USA. If you count the CO2 emissions the USA paid for then it is more than double that of China.

The whining about "uprooting everything" is such a cheap cop out. The US doesn't suddenly grind to a halt when oil prices are higher, or when production of goods moves back from China to Detroit.

[pstuart]

Uproot everything? There's only 2 significant direct disruptions that would be felt directly by the population: getting an electric vehicle and stove/oven. They both have cost but that can be (and is) transitioned over time and the economic burden can be subsidized.

I agree that nuclear would be great but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be cost effective. Even my pet notion, SMRs, seem to be unable to cut it. NuScale has promise but even they seem to be unable to compete with solar and wind.

Geothermal is also waiting for us -- I hear there's a bit of extra heat in the Yellowstone region.

The key thing is that our political leadership is currently owned by the fossil fuel industry and they don't want to let go of their massive profits. They've also managed to politicize the issue to such a degree that a major political party (and its membership) has no interest in addressing this and has convinced the base that it's a hoax. That's as political as I'll get here -- is to note stated positions and policies.

The US has (will) spent $6T on two wars that had no reason or value. We have plenty of money to spend -- it's just a matter of spending it wisely.

[pstuart]

Another note: we can't expect China or the developing world to play ball if we don't lead by example.

[lucianbr]

On the other hand, increasing oil prices would help Russia and other petro-states which are pretty horrible.

[pstuart]

We don't need austerity, we need to steer the money in the right direction. There's plenty of money to be made going green.

[notadoomer236]

I think the return on investment on most proposed “changes” is negative. I don’t see any evidence that most of the biological world is hurdling towards destruction from climate.

If we turned off the fossil fuel tap today, I think life on earth would get markedly worse for humans, with negligible/no impact on fauna.

[oezi]

Expect for instance mass extinction and an increased natural catastrophies?

[Auracle]

Like hurricanes?

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

[jaybrendansmith]

The people always do the right thing when it is almost too late. Same thing as World War II, we Americans ignored and avoided the war as long as we possibly could. I still wonder at the miracle of Japan attacking Pearl Harbor, had they not, it is likely that we'd be in the middle of a Nazi new world order. For this climate challenge, perhaps we can hope for some disastrous flood, or horrific hurricane, to help convince your average voter that this is not something that will just go away by itself and we need to take it seriously.

[mlrtime]

>> it is likely that we'd be in the middle of a Nazi new world order.

Ask people born in a former soviet union country who they thought "won" WW2. It is not likely in any scenario that the US would be in the middle of a Nazi world order if Pearl Harbor wasn't attacked, calling it a miracle is disgusting.

Fwiw I have direct family that fought in WW2 in the Pacific.

[jaybrendansmith]

As do I. But that doesn't change the fact that had we not had Japan force the issue, we may not have been there when needed. And yes the Soviet Union made the brunt of the effort, but the German military was quite strong.

[djmips]

I feel frustrated by all the people who resisted fixing the climate and fought and didn't believe, and they will die without any of the consequences.

[faeriechangling]

That would be why they resisted.

[goodpoint]

That's why we even see increased consumerism, fast fashion, cars getting ridiculously big.

"Enjoy it while it lasts (at the expense of young people)"

[oldtownroad]

An optimistic outlook is that we have the knowledge and resources to adapt to a changing environment without loss of life. A realistic counter to that is if we were able to utilise these resources and knowledge effectively then we wouldn’t have found ourselves in this situation. An outlook that splits the difference is… we’ve made mistakes but maybe crisis is what’s required to get everyone working together using our resources and knowledge for the greater good.

A sad outlook is that we are all rich people living charmed lives that are not at risk so we can bury our heads in the sand. We aren’t the people who will die from our mistakes.

[squigz]

> A sad outlook is that we are all rich people

Well my bills will be glad to know this, although it's news to me.

[bryanrasmussen]

https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-17512040

>the world's average salary - in PPP dollars - of $1,480 a month, or almost $18,000 a year

[richrichie]

And that is in PPP terms. Puts in perspective the difficulties the average laptop class member faces in life.

[squigz]

I'm not certain the point you're trying to make

[bryanrasmussen]

that probably, that given you are on HN commenting, in comparison to most of the world you might be perceived of as "rich" - can not of course be sure you might only make 2000 dollars a month, but it seems relatively unlikely.

[DoreenMichele]

It's generally a bad idea to assume that a specific person to whom you are replying is "representative" of some average you believe is true for a particular population. Furthermore, most people seem to have ideas about HN demographics that are inaccurate.

Here is one poll, fwiw, of where HN members live:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378

[squigz]

Strange assumptions.

[YZF]

Not that I needed convincing but the Covid pandemic demonstrated how hard it is to fight nature. When nature decides to have a go at us, earthquakes, tsunamis, pandemics, technology always seems to be on the losing end. We think we're so powerful with our technology but compared to the forces of nature we are not.

EDIT: We also can't really seem to get our act together and collaborate across the planet.

The hope is that we don't get to a place where positive feedback really pummels us and find some sort of equilibrium. It's hard to say and these are the sorts of games we should not play. If the earth completely changes into a human or life unfriendly place our technology won't save us.

Another bit of hope is that the planet has been warmer in the more distant past. I think we're technically still in an ice age.

[dgellow]

I feel the opposite regarding Covid. The world reacted pretty quickly and more or less rationally, solutions have been found and implemented with minimal delays, in a more or less coordinated fashion. All of this moved incredibly fast compared to the general pace.

A huge part of the economy has been voluntarily stopped, which is insane to think about, nobody would have thought that was possible before the pandemics happened.

[hmcq6]

> The world reacted pretty quickly and more or less rationally

> A huge part of the economy has been voluntarily stopped

Huh? Covid was tearing up northern Italy before it landed in the US and we did nothing to prevent it. Our politicians were telling people not to buy masks.

Trump sent shit tons of ventilators to Florida for no reason.

We allowed people from places that had confirmed cases of Covid to come into the US, they just had to make a layover.

The WHO refused to call Covid a pandemic until it was way too late.

Nursing homes were decimated. Schools decided that stay 6-feet apart meant "do nothing, its fine".

People were eating horse deworming paste instead of getting the vaccine. People lost their fucking shit over mask mandates.

Maybe you weren't in the US?

[dgellow]

You’re correct I’m not in the US. I also didn’t say things went well. But generally speaking the global response has been relatively rational, and we (as in “us the human societies”) have implemented radical measures fairly quickly that wouldn’t be possible in normal times.

Maybe I have very low expectations for that type of things…

[hmcq6]

Yeah I disagree. I guess it kinda just depends on how you define "generally".

In my opinion, the only country that acted rationally was NZ.

China hid the outbreak until it was already endemic in many countries.

Brazil shit the bed. Every other country seems to have let the virus in and then done very little to prevent spread.

I would say individually we did pretty well generally, but as a collective pretty much every institution failed to adequately address the situation.

Masking was never mandated in public spaces. Business owners could refuse you service but there was no "radicle measure" that made that possible. The vast majority of restaurants were open for sit in dining.

The "radicle measures" that spring to mind when someone mentions Covid are the bad ones. Like the fact that restaurants were allowed to serve food on the sidewalk (good) but then a bunch of restaurants in NY built walls and put up plastic to keep the people dining outside warm, thus negating the effects of being in open air.

But yeah, I agree with OP. Watching covid nuts attack children just for existing in public with a mask on was not a shining example of our humanity.

[herbst]

I live up in the Alps in Switzerland. There is barely any snow this year. The rivers don't have as much water as usual but the real effects will only be visible later this year.

The water is missing in other places, Italy's north heavily depends on mountain water for their farming. This is going to be a very dry year. Either forcing them to lower the quality of real Italian pasta or again increasing the prices. Also wine from the whole region will not do well this year.

In french the fragil botanical environment is changing so much that their cheese doesn't reach the usual quality anymore.

This sounds like little things maybe, but those are huge traditional markets dying in front of our eyes.

Things are changing very rapidly. I don't know how or why there would be any optimism about this.

[rstuart4133]

Similar thing happened where I live in Brisbane, Australia. A couple of weeks ago the Bureau of Meteorology (our government weather service) predicted 20mm of rain the next day. Instead we got 200mm. They are normally pretty good.

They explained the moisture in the air was at record levels this year because the sea surface temperature was 1.5 C above normal. We all knew the moisture was at record levels because Brisbane (in a temperate zone) was getting sustained levels of humidity that exceeded the levels experiences in the far northern tropics, 3000 km away. Even on a relatively mild day at say 30C, you could not walk up a hill without being drenched in your own sweat. Since their weather models had never see humidity like this sustained for weeks and weeks (it was an all-time record yesterday), they were wrong. It's doubly surprising because were in a El Nino, which should bring dry spells.

The result of all that rain was continuous storms lasting for week, at the peak bring category 3 cyclone winds (exceeding 130 km/hr), concrete power pylons being blown over (never happened before), power outages for weeks in some areas, flooding and deaths in metropolitan areas. Most of came without much warning because the aforementioned models were wrong. It's been a wild ride.

What blows me away is in West Asia the sea surface temperature was 5 C above normal this year, over three times what we are experiencing. I can't imagine what that is like.

[imgabe]

Recorded history is about 150 years, which is barely a blip in human history, let alone the planet’s history.

We will find ways to adapt and survive.

[ArnoVW]

You are of course entirely right. humanity will continue to exist. That is not what the people are saying.

What will happen, and what is in fact already happening : food gets more expensive, people have to migrate because their current location is no longer viable, more disasters, and more conflict resulting all of that.

Humanity is not going extinct any time soon. But what sort of world do you want to leave to our kids? Should our objectives be not a tad higher than “oh well, life will be worse but at least as a species well still exist”?

Also note that while we have only started “writing” since a couple of thousand years, and indeed keeping track for less than that, we do have the natural record. That may not be as precise as the written record, but there is a lot of it over a very long time. That natural record puts boundaries on previous temperatures.

You’re entitled to feel that you don’t want to change your ways for the benefit for others. That is not ideal but it’s the rules. Don’t deny and invent false narratives to prevent feeling guilty though.

[imgabe]

Food is cheaper and easier to produce than at any point in human history. Most humans were subsistence farmers or hunter gatherers until relatively recently. Indeed, the main problem we have in developed countries is too much food.

People have migrated all throughout history. Humans walked across Siberia wearing animal skins to get to North America. I think they'll be fine if they have to take a bus or a plane to a new country.

There has been conflict all throughout human history. Currently it is at a historic low. Likewise, there have been disasters. Floods, volcanoes, earthquakes. This is not new.

Yes, you should strive to leave your kids in the best situation possible, but you do that by locally improving your situation to be as good as possible. You cannot control the global food production or natural disasters or the climate. Nobody can do that. Everyone will have to work on setting themselves up in the best situation possible, which, incidentally, is all we have ever been able to do.

[asadotzler]

Yep it's all going to be great, sunshine and roses. Sure, buddy. Sure.

[hmcq6]

> Recorded history is about 150 years

Where does someone get the courage to just lie like this?

[imgabe]

You can look at the graph in the article. It starts at 1850. So, 174 years if you want to be precise.

[hmcq6]

Oh I wasn't going off a margin of error thing.

"Recorded history" and "records of average temperature taken in real time" are two very different things to say only go back 150 years.

"Recorded history" only going back 150 years implies that the US was basically the start of recorded history.

"real time temperature measurements" only go back 150 years means you don't trust the science that allows us to make estimates of climate based on things like ice core samples.

[tracker1]

Don't ice core samples seem to indicate periods warmer than today?

[mbirth]

I find the fact that we find greatly preserved animal bodies and also paths from ancient civilisations below the melting ice even more convincing that Earth had much warmer periods in the past.

[asadotzler]

So, posting in error of 15% is OK with you? Would you accept that from others?

[imgabe]

No, absolutely not. I would calculate their error percentage and make combative replies, because that's how I enjoy spending my time.

[CalRobert]

There are people alive now who knew people born more than 150 years ago. Hell I'm in my forties and remember chats with my great grandmother born in the 1880's. And we've had writing for thousands of years, of course.

[rullelito]

No it is so much better to panic (and vote green, ofc)!

[Alpha3031]

DACCCS is currently insufficiently mature to estimate how "reversible" any specific level of warming is, but current policies are expected to limit warming to 2 to 3 °C by 2100, compared to over 4 °C where no policies were implemented. Net zero emissions by 2050 would even be compatible with 1.5 °C, and that is well within what is achievable with current technology. Plus, with AR6, we have the first estimate of the zero emissions commitment over 50 years, and it is centred around zero, with a 90% CI of roughly ±0.3 °C, meaning it is likely (with "low confidence", meaning this is our first time doing it as part of CMIP) that changes in 20 year average temperatures will be quite small after complete cessation of emissions. That means assuming we ended up on a trajectory like 2 °C by 2100, if we wanted to reverse GSAT at least we would have a better than 66% chance of having another 5 decades of research and development and deployment (plus the 7 decades it took to get there), so once we get to zero emissions it becomes much less urgent.

There will still be permanent changes to the biosphere, but there is no reason to feel doomed.

[trealira]

China's climate change policies are largely about adaptation to climate change, not just mitigation or prevention[0] From the article on China's adaptation policies:

> As Freymann details, these efforts include “constructing the largest water transfer system in human history; expanding and raising nearly 6,000 miles of sea walls along its coasts; building a strategic grain reserve larger than the rest of the world’s combined; carving wetland flood basins in the centers of its largest cities; restoring coastal wetlands to act as buffers against storms; and relocating hundreds of thousands of ‘ecological migrants’ in low-lying areas.”

Reading your question made me think of this article.

It seems like a lot of time was wasted decades ago in the US on not transitioning away from fossil fuels or trying to become carbon neutral, but that's crying over spilled milk. I'm not going to doom about the effects of something that mostly happened before I was born; that's almost like becoming an alternate history theorist.

> I guess my real question is: how do you incorporate all of this change into your worldview and outlook?

To answer your question directly, I just hope more of my generation (generation Z) does less climate change denial or doomerism, and does more voting and climate change activism. And not just for feel-good policy like planting trees, but climate change adaptation, like China.

[0]: https://www.brookings.edu/articles/unpacking-chinas-climate-...

[neom]

The positive feedback loop is very troubling to me. I don't know I believe humans are doomed, but I'm quite sure the earth will be a miserable place to reside in the no-so-distant future.

[ksec]

>how do you incorporate all of this change into your worldview and outlook?

This is going to be a cynical take by HN's standard. It actually reinforce some of the fundamentals of humans beings that our ancestors has somehow understood far better than we do today.

It is that "Interest" matters. Needs are driven by interest. You cant just say the world is going to end in 100 years time and we need to stop eating meat and turn off all heaters etc etc. You also cant tell company to stop earning money or lower profits margin just because of "Good". What technology do however is that we innovate so others cant say NO.

We are now at a time where non-fossil fuels, or Wind and Solar is cheaper, and will continue to get cheaper in the future. The economy of scale is there. To the point unless the Government TAX on non-fossil fuels, the pure force of this momentum meant it is only a matter of time. I use the term non-fossil fuels because renewable doesn't include nuclear, personally I am a big fan of GE BWRX-300.

All in all in am actually quite optimistic. We are slowly solving it.

[martin82]

I don't feel any abnormal weather at all. Neither in Singapore, nor in Germany (both places where I have family and regularly stay). In my 40 years on this planet, we have always had winters with meters of snow and we have always had summers so hot that they closed schools.

Both of these events were rare and they were AMAZING and everyone was either taking out their sleds or spending the day at the beach.

We have also always had floods at the Rhine river.

[nec4b]

>> but the constant stream of record breaking abnormal weather

How do you even know what is normal weather? Can you specify an exact time when you think the weather was normal?

>> Do others here feel similarly?

No.

>> Do you think these trends are reversible?

Reversible to what? Like it was 50 years ago or 5000 years ago or 50 million years ago?

>> Is technology the solution? Something else?

People have been living anywhere from freezing arctic to hot arid deserts. We seem to be good at adapting to our environment.

[rini17]

To last cca 10000 years, when there was exceptionally stable climate that allowed for reliable agriculture.

Sure, humans can survive without agriculture but not billions of them.

[nec4b]

The earth is getting greener and you think we won't have agriculture anymore. In the last 10000 years climate varied a lot, from little ice ages to warm periods. Can you be more specific about the time and also how are you going to hold climate steady, since obvious it varies a lot naturally?

[rini17]

To feed billions "more greenery" is not sufficient, you need reliable and predictable weather. Just one or two years of world-widespread crop failures can cause mass famine. Even if on average "it's getting greener". The temperature during last 10k years varied still much less than long periods before and we're now already outside that band. For example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

[nec4b]

You are probably mixing weather and climate, but none of them has ever been predictable with or without human input. I don't think your graph is saying what you want it to say. Crop failure is a fact of farming and on average is getting less and less common, otherwise the earth would not be getting greener.

[rini17]

Death Valley recently got greener thanks to occasional flash floods. So you say it will be america's breadbasket? Not with such extreme weather. And as temperature gets up, weather extremes will too.

[bigfont]

I feel convinced to participate in climate change in my work. I don't know whether we can reverse it or whether tech will solve it, but I do believe in its importance, and I want to understand it. I have incorporated all of this change into my worldview by finding ways to improve morale in the community, and recently, by switching careers from software development into sustainable innovation.

[globalnode]

I dont think we've taking into account climate change acceleration either. I believe the tipping point will come and go before people really accept its a problem and try to hit the brakes but by then it will be waaaaaaay past the reasonable time to change our ways. Within a generation whats left of us will be living underground and popping up at night to breathe some "fresh" hot air. Say sorry to your kids.

[demondemidi]

Yep. I’m old enough to know nothing will change and the shift hard right in politics all but guarantees it. Enjoy every moment you can while it lasts. Capitalism FTW BABY! There’s no going back.

[whitehexagon]

22C here last weekend in southern Europe, and all I hear are people saying nice! We are doomed, and I already feel like a climate refugee trying to relocate to somewhere cooler. But then the gulf stream will probably fail! I feel like we cant solve this when there is no political/economical motive, or willingness for people to sacrifice.

[kristof0425]

I sincerely believe it’s just a matter of question of determination whether we want to solve this problem. If we were able to send people on the Moon as fast as we did, I don’t think we can’t do something in a decade to significantly reverse this trend. We clearly aren’t determined enough…

[alcover]

I feel dread for sure.. like plagues from the past may reappear. Especially famine. When I watch documentaries about disappeared civilisations, I now get vertigo.

I think the pressure for drastic, technical solutions will mount sharply and ideas like that solar shade will be seriously considered.

[csmpltn]

Let’s say you could magically reduce the population of humans on earth by 90%, at a moment’s notice.

Two questions:

1. Is climate change averted, and a non-issue? Or has it just been pushed back for a little while?

2. What does life on earth look like, when 90% of the people you know and depend on today are just gone?

[oezi]

The only solution is money!

And it isn't so expensive to turn things around. An estimated 100-200% in global GDP is needed to reach carbon net zero by 2050. Annually we need to spend 2-6% of GDP to get there.

Remember every bit of Co2 not emitted counts

[asadotzler]

The only solution is removing those in power who are inclined to let the world burn. Money will only be useful after then.

[oezi]

"those in power" is just a strayman. We don't need a revolution but pragmatic people.

If US Congress wasn't red, we would be moving considerable faster in the right direction.

[swader999]

No, not at all. Trying to put a measurement on all of earth is nonsense and pretending that proxies allow us to extend it further back in time is even more hubris.

[jongjong]

Since I don't have the resources or power to deal with the problem, I don't worry about it. Nothing I can do. My conscience is perfectly clean.

My only advice is that we need to fix the monetary system first or else we'll never be able to escape the cycle of deception. We'll never know what is real or not real or who we can trust or not trust.

Once we have a functioning monetary system based on hard money, only then will we be able to see what problems are real and come up with innovations that solve humanity's real problems... Who knows, that might include climate change...

Our current political reality is fake and we can never get to the truth while our monetary policies distort incentives. Almost all narratives nowadays are founded on deception and they compete against each other for mindshare... Once they cross a certain threshold, it's too easy for certain narratives to use monetary incentives to reinforce their own propagation; a powerful ecosystem of government organizations develops around the narrative and then private companies follow suit to get their contracts.

There are literally no honest narratives even in the running at this point. Once honest people see how the sausage gets made in the centers of power, they lose the heart to push their honest agendas. Only deceptive agendas remain.

Today, I'm not even in a position to answer the question of whether or not climate change is real and caused by humans because I cannot trust the current system or the 'experts' in relevant fields to provide me with that information. For all I know, the promoted experts could be 'incentivized' to the eyeballs to lean in a certain direction.

I cannot trust them because I cannot trust the system which selected them. I'm an expert in my own field and I've seen how the sausage is made there. If that's how it works in my field, why wouldn't it work the same way in other fields?

If I am to go by my own experiences of modern political organizations, I should believe the opposite of what the experts say.

[fsflover]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39503654

[southerntofu]

The trends are not reversible, but they may be attenuated if we don't adopt a "dooomed" worldview. In the french speaking world, there's a wave of eco-angriness starting to replace eco-anxiety and that's a welcome change.

People are getting involved and putting their ass on the line to stop this madness. At a great cost, given that cops regularly maim and sometimes murder ecological activists trying to stop ecocidal projects (see NDDL / Sivens / Sainte Soline).

We have a choice to make: destroy capitalism and its consumption lifestyle, or let it destroy humanity and millions of other species. I strongly recommend watching END:CIV, a 20-year-old documentary that hasn't aged a bit.

[notadoomer236]

If it warms 2-3C as the IPCC predicts, humanity will still be thriving in the 2100s. Capitalism will still be kicking along just fine, and we ll probably be richer than ever.

[tpm]

We are already at 1.5C with the help of El Nino, by 2030 we'll be there even without it. 2-3C in 2100 is very optimistic now.

[southerntofu]

It's not just about the warming. Can you name one source of water in your neighborhood that's not polluted and can be drunk? Are you aware of the massive desertification due to industrialized agriculture? There's more than isolated signs of civilisational collapse. The system will change that's for sure. The question is whether we'll choose a mildly-painful transition, or endure a deadly ecocidal hard reset.

Ecological problems are not coming for us in the 2100s. They're here now and keep getting worse.

[gmuslera]

I didn't need 12 months of record breaking world abnormal weather for that.

The previous, continuous trend upwards for decades was already bad enough, with extreme events becoming increasingly common and extremer. You have a complex system, you apply a continuous big enough pressure to it, and you get global average that is slowly rising up even if some days look normal, and, somewhere, somewhat, some days, weird things are happening. And the very concept of positive feedback loops causing that this problem is not worsening in a linear way. That is a very bad trend, that it would just take time to hit around me.

But the doomerism part doesn't come from just there. It comes from the human world. Not doing anything about it, big money making big disinformation campaings to avoid normal people to take action, big capital and top industrialized countries not doing anything about that, and adding even more disruptive activity (along with some token measures that are not in the same order than the others), official global climate organizations being taken over in front of everyone, smaller countries are being sued for taking measures to minimize impact. There is no will to fix this, to stop worsening the situation.

So you have a system that is being disrupted in big scale for decades, that is taken out of its inertia and balance by that continuous and increasing push, you start to see that it is slowly getting out of control. And there is no will to take out that push, at most you get some Newspeak way of ensuring people that something is being done. And when things really becomes desperate, we won't have decades to wait for a slow, orderly unwinding to have some effect. So some desperate extra push on a system that we still don't understand will be sold as idea of geoengineering, moving the system towards a new, even more unstable situation.

There is where my doomerism lies, not in the symptom of a string of broken records.

[roughly]

Someone I knew said "I'm an optimist because it's the only thing worth being." As much as anything, optimism is an act of will, because if things can't and won't get better, what the hell's the point of anything?

More concretely, though, I do think there's some technological levers that can be applied towards CO2 reduction & capture, bioremediation, and adaptation. I don't think they're the optimal answer - the optimal answer was us recognizing we're spending on credit a hundred years ago - but I think they're the answers we're going to use, so that's where most of my effort is.

I've mentioned this elsewhere, but - I got a job a while back that I think helps move the world in the right direction, and my god has it made a difference in my ability to handle all this. It's still not easy to look at, but it's easier when you're not burning all your energy on something orthogonal to what you actually care about. If you can live with the lower pay, I promise it's worth it for the improved ability to sleep at night.

[pc_edwin]

"recorded history".. glacial maximums and minimums..

Also would be very helpful to look at the worst case predictions and what that would entail hundred years down the line.

Its not cool but it really not that bad. Definitely not apocalyptic.

Its also worth it to consider whats the alternative because every version of an alternative is exponentially worse (communism and/or luddite primitive feudalism).

[Mistletoe]

I just buy EVs and plan to move to Finland. I won’t let this generation get me down.

[DoreenMichele]

I think it's fixable but, you know, not sure I much care anymore. I think most people don't want a fix. They want to publicly wring their hands, gnash their teeth and wail and moan.

We should be doing more about wetlands restoration. I think it's a no brainer that a substantial part of the problem is the eradication of 85 percent of global wetlands since the 1700s but it largely goes unnoticed because, I don't know, not enough hopelessness and sense of personal guilt to relate to?

I don't get it. But my life sucks and refuses to stop sucking and I am unlikely to live too much longer, so whatevs. Y'all run around screaming and flailing your arms like Kermit the frog if that's what floats your boat.

[synecdoche]

> We should be doing more about wetlands restoration.

Only if mosquitoes are eradicated.

[DoreenMichele]

Ah, yes, the total global impact of climate change is so much less than the impact of mosquitoes.

[inference-lord]

I have children and I'm freaking out for their future. Really really not a good situation. I'm pissed off we have Putin being a dick face rather than all world "leaders" working together to save the planet for the sake of their offspring's futures. Billionaires building apocalypse bunkers and then, the biggest concern of all, another potential term of "why don't we just nuke the hurricanes?" I mean, not looking great.

I think the panic will come soon though then it will just be too hard to ignore. Might be too late to do much about it by then.

[asadotzler]

should not have had children. we've known shit was gonna get bad for 20+ years so it's kinda late to start the worrying now.

[epicureanideal]

I think the data has enough issues that I don't draw any conclusions from it.

[Epa095]

Yeah, denialism is definitely one way to keep one's mood up. The problem is that we, and our children, have to live in the resulting world, and that reality will be worse if we don't act today.

[palmfacehn]

Similarly, our children will be burdened by the public debt and regulatory policies enacted in the name of climate doom.

This much is guaranteed, regardless of if the oft-cited apocalypse comes to fruition.

[netsharc]

The great thing about debt is, everybody will be dead and no one will care about some number in some powered-off data center showing negative balance.

[palmfacehn]

"How often do you think about the decline of the Roman Empire?"

[refulgentis]

What?

[robertlagrant]

There's no point saying "denialism" when it comes to talking about the data. You might as well just be saying "your tribe stupid my tribe good".

[refulgentis]

Who is talking about data in this thread? Someone made a half dig at it. Haven't seen any data yet. Other than the article. The bit about the hottest 12 months. Which seems pretty uncontroversial to me.

[robertlagrant]

> Haven't seen any data yet

That's because tribalism entered the chat, instead of a question about sources for the claim

[ethanbond]

The wise man bowed his head, “no difference between true and untrue” etc

[wk_end]

The vast, vast majority of people who are better equipped than myself - and likely you - disagree.

But let's put that aside. Let's put aside the fact that the mechanisms involved are demonstrable and simple enough for children to understand.

Even as laypeople, we can observe that in the past ten years there's been year after year after year of once-in-a-century catastrophic weather events. The odds of these being unrelated anomalies decrease every time. Unprecedented heat waves and forest fires across the North America, all the way up into the arctic, with entire towns burning to the ground. Deadly ice storms in Texas. God-sized hurricanes. In isolation these could be hand-waved away - in aggregate, they clearly point towards catastrophe.

[throwaway2990]

lol. When data is not cherry picked then those better equipped people’s opinion might be worth listening to.

[oops]

Can you cite an example of such cherry picking? I’m only aware of counter examples e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_picking#:~:text=Cherr....

[throwaway2990]

Literally every study. They will remove a particular earth moment because “it’s not relevant” but adding it in makes their data look like global warming isn’t happening. Or they exclude periods claiming that the data from that period is not good when it goes against their claims.

[claytongulick]

I'm surprised and encouraged by your comment.

No one really ever wants to discuss this, the issues with the data, the missing data, the statistical techniques used to fill in that data, how the models are derived, the funding situation with climate research and the quality issues with all of it.

It seems like the only acceptable answer is the sky is falling and we're all going to die.

Maybe both things can be true: there is a man made effect on the climate and it's difficult to measure and a lot of the research quality is poor.

Perhaps humans have adapted to difficult climates throughout our entire existence.

Perhaps the models that predict the end of the world are a bit extreme, and there are conflicting interests.

Maybe, just maybe - everything will be ok.

[wk_end]

Before we discuss the funding situation with climate research, let's discuss the funding situation against climate research. If indeed climate scientists were pay-for-play, don't you think some of the richest companies in the world would be better at finding credible people to parrot talking points that serve their financial interests?

[hnfong]

What, you think (for example) Microsoft or nVidia is going to fund scientists to claim anthropogenic climate change doesn't exist?

They literally have PR teams that intentionally aligns company objectives towards the popular climate narrative.

The narrative has so much momentum that no individual financial interest could stop it. And big oil isn't half as influential as it were.

[wk_end]

You just named “for example” the first and fourth biggest companies in the world. Look up what the third is.

I don’t know how “influential” big oil is, but I know they’re collectively quite rich. Collectively substantially richer than whoever you’ve imagined stands to gain from a shift away from carbon and has been willing and able to buy out the world’s scientific community for decades now. They can’t even pay their own scientists to shill for them; they knew about climate change since the 70s [0].

Edit: lol the list of companies I was looking at was by market cap. A list by revenue [1] makes your case even worse: five of the ten richest companies in the world sell oil. Another eight are in the top 50. Somehow no obvious boogeyman bicycle manufacturers to be manipulating the scientific consensus though.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-64241994.amp

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_companies_by...

[asadotzler]

95% of scientist have disagreed with you for 20 years and violently disagreed with you for 10 years.

[claytongulick]

> violently disagreed with you for 10 years.

Yep. That's true.

Strange isn't it?

Almost like their livelihood is at risk.

[blowsand]

I’ve yet to find it again, but I read an interesting commentary recently noting that the bulk of enthusiasm in press coverage, and for spending money, is on the long term prevention side (“decarbonization” etc), while no real press or spending is directed at the survival/relocation side, and this is an interesting data point to some.

[oops]

What are some of the issues?

[rullelito]

Experiencing the hottest 12 months in the last 200 years says nothing about the longer trend.

[tpm]

It's also the hottest 10 years in the last 200 years. And so on.

[imgabe]

Regardless of what the temperatures are, one group of 10 years would have been the hottest 10 years in the last 200 years, because, you know, that's how numbers work. Some are bigger than others and it would be exceptionally unlikely for the temperature to be exactly the same every year.

I just can't be bothered with this kind of fear-mongering. Guys, you'll never guess what happened! We collected a bunch of measurements and one of them was the biggest! Oh, no!

[dagss]

Have you even had a look at the graphs?