[hliyan]

I recently finished rewatching The Three Body Problem in which (spoilers follow) the world panics and goes into overdrive because an alien invasion is due in... 400 years. If the current climate trends continue, vast areas of the Earth may not be suitable for habitation within half that time, and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real. Granted I was a climate change skeptic myself until about 10 years ago, but right now the data seems indisputable. Even if we can't find a direct causal relationship between CO2 emissions and warming, we know the following very accurately (disclaimer: not a climate scientist): (1) amount of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere per year (2) concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (3) amount of extra energy that would be theoretically retained in the atmosphere via the green house effect, due to a given increment in CO2 concentration, (4) global temperatures within the past, say 30 years. Don't we know for a fact that (1) + (2) + (3) is very well correlated with (4), and that no other potential causes correlate as well with (4), and don't current computational models demonstrate an ability to predict (4) given (3). So, exactly what is the source of skepticism?

[yoyohello13]

I’ve come to terms with the fact that there is no stopping human consumption. It is simply not possible to get enough people to reduce to make an impact. The failure of the environment movements over the last 60 years are proof. The only way is ‘up and out’ developing clean, cheap methods of energy generation and lobbying to get that infrastructure built out as quickly as possible. At this point, investing more in Fossil fuels is a joke and anyone claiming “coal” or whatever is the future is simply a conman or a clown.

[CalRobert]

The crazy thing is that we have basically everything we need right now.

You can live in a well-insulated fully electric home powered by renewable energy and have most things you need within a walk, bike, or public transport ride away, _OR_ use an electric car for the things that aren't. If you combine that with a mostly-plant based diet (or at _least_ swapping chicken for most of your beef and lamb) and have 2 kids or fewer you're... basically there.

The main reason most people can't do this is because of political choices, not technological limitations.

Granted this doesn't include luxuries like jetting halfway around the world for a 1 week holiday or living in a 4000 square foot house in the desert and driving a studio apartment an hour to work every day, but really, is that a better life?

[graeme]

>The crazy thing is that we have basically everything we need right now.

Have you travelled? This doesn't describe most of the world. Most of the world would need to increase carbon emissions to live the way you're describing.

You aren't describing a zero carbon lifestyle, you're describing a lower carbon lifestyle. And we still use carbon in building the things in your scenario: the building, the car, etc.

Lower carbon lifestyles can slow the speed of the increase in global warming, but as long as we're emitting any carbon we're increasing global energy forcing.

By all means choose lower carbon lifestyles, but fundamentally we need nuclear or renewables + battery or all of the above such that we don't face a tradeoff between energy use and getting stuff people want.

Energy is extremely useful.

[Loquebantur]

The idea of average individuals being the relevant actors in global carbon emissions is pure misdirection. They're not, it's systemic with industry being the main culprit and the rich being the ones who benefit from that socialization of pollution costs.

The AMOC shutdown isn't merely "possible" and due "this century" either. The math of the dynamics of complex systems shows the current behavior to be signs of a phase transition in the process of happening. The speed of that shutdown isn't "decades" either, it's more likely just years.

The voices of "experts" telling you it was all some incomprehensible conundrum should deeply worry you. They're either not being honest or they're no experts.

[vladms]

> They're not, it's systemic with industry being the main culprit and the rich being the ones who benefit from that socialization of pollution costs.

You two might agree if we consider that when you say "rich" you might describe the average individual on this website (if we consider all people alive).

I do believe that 90% of the people would not want to actually destroy the planet the way it seems to be happening, but I also believe that 90% of the people can't refrain themselves from bad health habits either. So, to fix the root cause I would discuss more about people's bad emotional/impulse control, otherwise we will just change one issue (climate) to any of the others (violence, unhappiness, etc.)

[Loquebantur]

No, you're entirely wrong.

The impact an individual has on carbon emissions is directly correlated with their wealth. The distribution of which is extremely uneven: as of 2024, the top 1% worldwide possessed as much as the lower 95% combined, 57 trillion US$. That has gotten only worse in the last two years.

It's not about "bad habits", impulse control or whatever, at all.

[tovej]

It's an even smaller percentage of people that are most responsible. Any multimillionaire is already someone who could have an impact, but mostly it's the 100 million club and up that are causing the most damage. And bug LLCs in general, since those are essentially optimising for profit only.

[graeme]

This isn't true at all. If all of the global rich immediately became carbonless monks....we would cut only a portion of emissions. And continuing to emit increases global warming. Even if you estimate that the top 1% use 70% of our carbon (implausible) that still just pushes threshold back a few decades.

And if industry stopped producing with carbon billions would starve. Industry makes stuff for people. Energy is useful, we aren't just taking oil, coal and gas and burning it in factories for fun.

[Loquebantur]

Them becoming carbonless would already cut 16.5% of emissions. Together with their investments they are responsible for 25% of emissions.

But more importantly, the reason nothing is happening to cut the systemic reasons for the pollution is due to them.

You present a straw man when you point at simplistic nonsense like "energy is useful". There is no dichotomy "either carbon pollution or we sit in caves". You argue from ignorance.

[triceratops]

> Even if you estimate that the top 1% use 70% of our carbon (implausible) that still just pushes threshold back a few decades.

Getting a few more decades to handle this thing would be amazing!

[CalRobert]

Indeed I have traveled, and I am in favour of nuclear and renewables and batteries for pretty much the reasons you state. There are other issues (concrete production comes to mind, and it always bugs me that houses in Europe are so dependent on concrete when its a huge emissions source) but when you're running your building equipment and factories and transit networks on zero emissions electricity (so we can include nuclear, which I suppose isn't renewable but is still very low carbon) then the building, the car, etc. have lower embodied carbon as well.

[hypfer]

> have 2 kids or fewer

This is at odds with lots of other relevant topics that go beyond just "consumption".

2 or fewer is below the replacement rate of 2.1 This _has_ already happened, but there are a lot of voices voicing a lot of reasons why they believe that that might actually be not the best situation.

[jandrese]

You see a whole lot of panic from industrialists over the birth rate drop in the industrialized world. They claim it is an extinction level event for humanity. This is not quite correct. It is an extinction level event for economic models that assume unbounded growth of the consumer base.

[gorjusborg]

This is an important distinction: what is good for ecology is not necessarily good for economy.

If we need unbounded growth to jeep our economic system to function, its the economic system that is wrong, not nature.

[kruffalon]

Capitalist economy.

Economies can exist in many different ways. At its core it is just a way to describe how we move resources between ourselves and that can be done in many, many ways.

[CuriouslyC]

Hence why the die hard capitalist shills are so set on going to space.

[TitaRusell]

They did research on how many people you need to keep the human species alive. It was not ten billion.

[archagon]

If you read other things these industrialists say, it’s clear that their actual argument is a xenophobic/white supremacist one. The panic is entirely political, not economic. We have no shortage of viable immigrants to keep the economy going.

[georgeburdell]

It’s disingenuous to imply “industrialists” are the only ones unhappy. Anyone who doesn’t want to die a stranger in their own land is also concerned.

[archagon]

Yes, Native Americans ought to get their land back. (What do you mean “no, not like that”?)

[surgical_fire]

If the concern is one that sounds horribly like eugenics, perhaps this hypothetical "people" should indeed go the way of the dodo.

[jandrese]

Here I thought I was being more diplomatic to elide the blatant racism when discussing this topic.

[sosomoxie]

What does "die a stranger in their own land" mean and how does it relate to birthrate?

[tialaramex]

Below replacement would be terrifying if there were one thousand humans, it would be worrying if there were a million, and at least worthy of consideration if there were a hundred million, but there are almost ten billion simultaneous humans, we're fine.

[hypfer]

On a humanity-level: yes.

On an individual state-level: no.

[giantg2]

"On an individual state-level: no."

This might actually be a yes if you believe in the potential impact of automation and AI.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

>Below replacement would be terrifying if there were one thousand humans,

The funny part is that it should terrify you whether there are 10 humans or 10 billion. At the current rates, it's over in about 12-13 generations regardless of the number you start with. That's how it works... no matter how big the starting number, it's how many generations you have left.

Think of it this way? You know the dumb story they taught us in school, about the guy whose payment from the king for doing something clever was to have one grain of rice on the first chess square, and 2 on the second, 4 on the third, and so on... and how it bankrupted the king long before the 64th square? That's the same math with fertility rate of 1.0! (The Chinese have a fertility rate of 1.0, famously.) Each generation will be half the size of the previous. But how long before that is effectively zero? Will it be 1 million years, 250,000 years? No, about 300ish. 300 years. But long before you reach that point, your civilization has fallen apart. Those last 4 or 5 generations live life without electricity, anything but muscle power, or metallurgy.

And China's fertility rate isn't even the lowest! South Korea's rate just dropped to around 0.5! That's where each generation is one quarter the size of the previous.

The best part of all is that these rates haven't even bottomed out. We will almost certainly see rates right around 0 long before the century ends.

>but there are almost ten billion simultaneous humans, we're fine.

At least math illiteracy ought to console you guys towards the end.

[yoyohello13]

This whole comment rests on a very big assumption that these rates will never recover. Just because you can fit a trend line doesn’t mean the projections will pan out. It could just as easily be the case that once population starts meaningfully decreasing, the opportunity cost of children will also decrease and fertility rates will recover. This happens all the time in nature.

Our population absolutely exploded over the last 100 years. This can easily just be a reversion to the mean. There really is no reason to be worrying about human extinction right now. In fact, the ‘extinction’ rhetoric is harmful and dangerous since so many ‘solutions’ to fertility rates are less education and less freedom. I have no trouble believing a handmaids tail like faction emerging because they believe they are saving the species.

[CalRobert]

The way emissions are going we* won't make it another 12-13 generations either.

* Some humans will likely survive, but modern civilisation won't.

[InsideOutSanta]

No, this should absolutely not terrify anyone, at all. The only reason it is a concern is that our economic system is built on infinite growth, which is going to fail one way or the other eventually. It's better it fail by people voluntarily having fewer kids than any of the other possible fail states.

The solution is to fix the economic system, not to worry that teenagers aren't getting accidentally pregnant so much anymore.

Productivity is increasing all the time, and we're very likely on the verge of another huge productivity increase with LLMs and robotics. The idea that we need to constantly increase the number of humans to maintain our current economic system is absolutely asinine.

[dgroshev]

You're missing the vast interconnected network of stuff that's required to sustain that home. From your home battery to cancer treatments that you might need to sewer that runs to your home, all of this needs to be made and sometimes replaced. Most of those things are still unavailable to most humans; in many places we still haven't built roads, much less sewers and water distribution systems.

Household electricity self-sufficiency obscures the vast requirements to support it and extend this self-sufficiency to billions of other people.

[yoyohello13]

You’re right about that. I do think that access to more and cheaper energy has the downstream effect of making all those other things cheaper too and more available too. Energy is the foundation of it all.

[to11mtm]

> You can live in a well-insulated fully electric home powered by renewable energy and have most things you need within a walk, bike, or public transport ride away, _OR_ use an electric car for the things that aren't. If you combine that with a mostly-plant based diet (or at _least_ swapping chicken for most of your beef and lamb) and have 2 kids or fewer you're... basically there.

'political' is true but it covers so many different problems.

For example, while there is a grocery store very accessible to me, you have to plot the route carefully due to the road design.

Then there's the problem of the condo I currently live in not having the infrastructure for charging. (My compromise in that case is a hybrid. Kinda want a plug-in hybrid for my next car, they've gotten to where it very well could handle 80% of my driving.)

> Granted this doesn't include luxuries like jetting halfway around the world for a 1 week holiday or living in a 4000 square foot house in the desert and driving a studio apartment an hour to work every day, but really, is that a better life?

I've never gotten this lifestyle either... I'm not afraid to do a long road trip once a year or so, but yes in most cases too many costs have been externalized for too long.

[CalRobert]

Yeah, it's absurd that you can be 500 feet from a grocery story and still have to drive because otherwise you're risking death to get there.

As far as charging - I favour car-share, personally (I use mywheels.nl). Usually if you don't need a car every day (so you don't commute somewhere inaccessible via transit or bike) it makes more sense economically.

Even where I live, in a place some people describe as a bicycle Eden, there's plenty of complaining about not having "enough" car parking.

[Avicebron]

> You can live in a well-insulated fully electric home powered by renewable energy and have most things you need within a walk, bike, or public transport ride away, _OR_ use an electric car for the things that aren't.

For this to be the most effective it really needs to be deployed somewhere like India. How are they coming along with that?

[coryrc]

They have tons of people using small vehicles, bicycles and public transport. Unfortunately they aren't following China in mass rollout of solar photovoltaic; 90% of their energy consumption is fossil fuels:

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/india

USA is at 80%, which isn't much better, but at least trending down:

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/united-states

China is also at 80%, but trending down far steeper:

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/energy/china

[triceratops]

> For this to be the most effective it really needs to be deployed somewhere like India

Why? Most people there already live like that, minus insulation and reliable electricity.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Because they are likely not living like that by choice. So, when they have the resources to consume more (which will certainly happen), energy-efficient choices need to be available.

[triceratops]

Energy-efficient choices will make the same impact no matter where they're deployed. Arguably they'll have more impact in Western countries since they already emit more carbon.

"India (or China) has to do <something>" is bullshit. Everyone has to do go lower carbon right now. Richer countries can afford more expensive technologies today so they should go first. By doing so they'll drive down the cost for everyone else.

[mc32]

All of the Western nations are at 2 kids or fewer but also so are China and India. Most of the 2+ children come from the ME and subsaharan Africa and areas in Oceania/SEAsia, Maybe some parts of South America. One could slow consumption by not importing people from low carbon footprint into high carbon footprint countries -though many countries, except Japan, aren't comfortable adjusting to lower populations.

[oldandboring]

Let me guess: you live in a European city.

[dmitrygr]

Western nations reducing will DO nothing - it is too small a fraction of greenhouse emissions. The large fraction is coming form india and china. And they do not have electric everything. they don't even have running water in most places.

[rwyinuse]

Your view is outdated. China is building renewable power generation at an extremely high rate, and also exporting cheap solar panels worldwide. China has a higher share of electric vehicles in cities than most of Europe and America does. It appears their emissions are now starting to go down as a result, although the economy keeps growing.

India still has a long way to go, but China is doing the right things. Same can't be said about USA under current administration.

[contingencies]

China's solar industry has some growth pangs right now but will recover: https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/chinas-solar-... (Aug 2025) + https://archive.is/6hCFU + (May) https://www.carbonbrief.org/chart-why-chinas-solar-boom-is-s... (June)

Most individual and collective consumption driving polluting production is overwhelmingly traditional western/first-world economies, though China is catching up.

[budsniffer952]

>Same can't be said about USA under current administration.

The reason half the population won't take climate alarmists seriously are statements like this.

Saying the West, generally, or the US, specifically "aren't doing anything" is ridiculous.

https://ourworldindata.org/profile/co2/united-states

[brewdad]

That chart conveniently ends at the end of the Biden Administration.

[lostlogin]

> Western nations reducing will DO nothing

That doesn’t fit my understanding at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous...

[triceratops]

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/cumulative-co2-emissions-... Western developed countries have emitted 54% of all CO2 in history.

India and China today emit more than Europe and North America combined. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions

China's solar panel and battery manufacturing industries are humanity's best chance of "electric everything". Without them we're all cooked.

[RajT88]

> anyone claiming “coal” or whatever is the future is simply a conman or a clown.

I've seen people on social media seriously claiming that coal plants are cleaner than wind energy or solar energy. It's aggravating. Never mind that it's easy to show that for the same amount of energy output, you get a similar amount of tons of coal ash yearly to the amount of materials it went into building a wind or solar plant...

I go back and forth if they are bots, or somehow people who are just really susceptible to this kind of garbage shill clickbait.

[Loquebantur]

The "shill" phenomenon goes much further than ignorant laypeople.

The AMOC shutdown isn't merely "possible" and due "this century". The math of the dynamics of complex systems shows the current behavior to be signs of a phase transition in the process of happening. The speed of that shutdown isn't "decades" either, it's more likely just years.

The voices of "experts" telling you it was all some incomprehensible conundrum should deeply worry you. They're either not being honest or they're no experts.

[sph]

People are stupid. I almost had a fight with a friend I have seen in a long time, a usually smart person, that wanted to convince me that solar power is more polluting than non-renewable alternatives. He’a not a shill, he is a farmer and like many just believes the propaganda and the skepticism. One of the biggest flaws of human rationality is wanting to believe that ‘the man’ is lying to you and the stupid conspiracy meme on Facebook has a valid point. We all have seen the American public completely implode with the COVID and mask and antivax idiocy.

[cameldrv]

The environmental movements of the past 60 years have been extremely successful, certainly in the U.S. The ozone hole problem has been essentially solved, acid rain has been essentially solved, mass scale water pollution like rivers catching on fire has been essentially solved, massive smog has been essentially solved.

[dualvariable]

And the people involved in climate policy have solutions to climate change which don't involve enormously large restrictions on consumption, but just require more energy efficiency (which is savings) and investment into carbon-neutral energy. And they've had those solutions for at least the past 20 years.

This isn't an insolvable problem, but the carbon-based energy sector will be big losers, and they're fighting tooth and nail against it.

An awful lot of our politics and geopolitics right now is symptomatic of the carbon energy sector fighting against the reality that it needs to die for the good of the human race, but it is also extraordinarily powerful.

[mastermage]

this exactly this. They are trying to keep their money sources alive even if it costs the entire world. Which is Supervillain amount of selfish.

[graemep]

> The ozone hole problem has been essentially solved, acid rain has been essentially solved, mass scale water pollution like rivers catching on fire

All far less expensive to fix. Never actually heard of rivers catching fire?

Has acid rain been solved globally?

The ozone hole problem we got lucky on. It required global action but a lot of things lined up. Things like the British prime minster at the time being a former research chemist and therefore understanding the issue, and being successful at influencing both the US President at the time and European countries.

[rsynnott]

> Never actually heard of rivers catching fire?

This is the most famous example, though there have been a few of them: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuyahoga_River

> Has acid rain been solved globally?

Not entirely, but largely.

[graemep]

On the rivers catching fire. Wow!

I think I may have heard of it as a freak event (e.g. an oil spill) but the same the same river catching fire 14 times is not something i realised happened.

[cameldrv]

The general environment in the 60s and 70s was extremely dirty. Every once in a while when I’m out with my kids, a classic car will roll by and I’ll admire it, but then my kids will hold their noses at the awful exhaust smell. That used to be every car.

It used to be that almost every river was unsafe to swim in.

It’s possible to fix environmental problems. It just requires the will.

[zerobees]

I'm not as negative about this, but with the benefit of hindsight, it's easy why the current initiatives didn't go anywhere.

It's not that people are not willing to make sacrifices. We repeatedly did this in times of famine or war. Europe during WWII is a perfect example. Another good example of a major cultural shift in response to a new threat was the AIDS epidemic. The entire sexual revolution went out the window and we're now in a world where young people have a lot less sex than ever before. We like to talk about gender and sexuality, but we do a lot less with it, so to speak.

Anti-consumption / degrowth arguments face an uphill battle because they basically say "you should live a harder life". There should be less stuff, the stuff should be more expensive, there should be less of you. So you need a good answer why this is the right choice. Doing it "for the planet" doesn't sound too convincing because we're also a part of the planet and most people feel entitled to it. It's hard to get others to make real lifestyle sacrifices because you showed them some photos of koalas or coral reefs.

Because koalas don't cut it, we started giving increasingly apocalyptic, doomsday-type answers, all the way to renaming "climate change" to "climate crisis" or "climate disaster / catastrophe". That was probably a mistake. It created a sense of inevitability (so might as well have fun while you can) and undermined the credibility of the proposed solutions. Is it really going to save us all if I'm sorting my recyclables into five different bins?

So in a sense, I think this is a PR disaster more than anything else.

[smartbit]

> The entire sexual revolution went out the window and we're now in a world where young people have a lot less sex than ever before.

Source?

Not withstanding that people are not willing to make sacrifices, my impression is that the last decades young women gained the freedom of enjoying sex as much as they like not restricted by religious or other norms. Sleeping with several different partners a week is not frowned upon but encouraged by friends & family ’Good for you, enjoy!’.

And related to the discussion: safe sex with contraception imho is among the most environmental friendly activities as long as one travels by foot or bike.

[LargoLasskhyfv]

> safe sex with contraception imho is among the most environmental friendly activities as long as one travels by foot or bike.

This is leaving no space for privacy behind "Steamy Windows" within "Nutbush City Limits".

[Saline9515]

Ressources are not infinite, and most of the consumption doesn't bring much happiness to the consumer, if not the contrary.

A good empirical example is the success of GLP-1 inhibitors, for which people are ready to pay a lot to allow them to consume less food.

Inflation is already here anyway, and 8 billion humans simply can't consume like Americans. Either you anticipate what's coming, or you will have to endure it.

[nikanj]

WWII was much easier to sell to the people, because the nazis were invading _now_. It seems impossible to sell reduced standard of living today to respond to a problem tomorrow

[graemep]

Even with the obvious danger the Nazis presented it took a long time for most countries to respond. Britain and France could have stopped them (from a much stronger position) earlier but did nothing until after they had conquered Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland) and very little until the Nazis actually invaded France. The US did not enter the war until it was attacked either. Nor did the Soviet Union.

There was reluctance to act on an obvious and imminent threat. People just hoped it would go away.

[xnyan]

Nazis were invading other places now. The US cut off Japan's oil supply, triggering an existential crisis for Japan that led to a military attack.

If United States had joined the Axis powers, leadership very plausibly could have continued the practice of isolationism (which was the popular opinion before Pearl Harbor). It might have been a shortsighted move, but Nazis invading Europe did not sell the US population on entering the war.

[nikanj]

Comment I replied to was talking about Europe during WWII

[rwyinuse]

Yep, all the talk about individual "carbon footprint" is just a distraction designed by the fossil fuel lobby. Universally in the world people who live most environmentally friendly lives are those that are too poor to consume much, not those who are the most aware, or claim to care the most about climate change.

The only way forward is developing as much solar, wind and nuclear as possible, driving down energy prices. Obviously stuff like carbon tax can help accelerate the process, but mostly it's happening because renewables have become the cheapest way of generating energy in most parts of the world.

[lumost]

I really think the environmental movements were a red herring. It was always impossible to make a meaningful dent in your personal emissions while still existing in your location. There was never any reduction proposal which could mitigate this.

Government mandates for e.g. large nuclear construction, geo-engineering, BEV adoption, or other similar proposals would have had an impact. These all exposed the real tradeoffs which would need to be accepted of cost, hardship, or whatever the opposition to nuclear was.

The environmental movements of the last 60 years focused on impossible goals which were easy to rally behind.

[JeremyNT]

> The environmental movements of the last 60 years focused on impossible goals which were easy to rally behind.

Is this true? Americans elect leaders who won't even acknowledge the issue is real. We have at times managed to gather some momentum towards using government to address the issues through incentives and regulation - even as recent as the Biden administration - then reactionaries gain power and dismantle the efforts.

The "environmental movement" was not focused on the personal responsibility angle, it's just that the American political system rejected proposals to do any meaningful government interventions because long term thinking is never rewarded.

[snovv_crash]

Agreed. You aren't going to convince people in India that their children should stay poor when there is an option to uplift them. That's an extra billion people of energy and material needs, all by itself.

[islandfox100]

''Now, the total population of well-off countries in the world is about 1 billion, while China has more than 1.3 billion people. If we are all to become modernized, the well-off population must more than double. If we are to consume as much energy in production and daily lives as the present well-off people do, all the existing resources in the world would be far from enough for us! The old path seems to be a dead end. Where is the new road? It lies in scientific and technological innovation, and in the accelerated transition from factor-driven and investment-driven growth to innovation-driven growth.'' -Xi Jinping, Governance of China

[coryrc]

The question is whether you use solar PV or build more coal plants to supply them. The latter makes people sicker, but more dependent on the government, so you can guess which one gets the tax breaks and which one gets tariffs and international politics to make it more expensive to acquire.

[budsniffer952]

Coal technology is cheap and wide spread. PV technology is not, yet.

[dalyons]

Huh? Solar is widely acknowledged to be significantly cheaper than building new coal. And it is everywhere, you can just buy containers of it and have it delivered anywhere in the world.

[budsniffer952]

Yes. You can just buy containers of PV equipment from China and have it delivered anywhere in the world. Until they decide not to sell it to you, or they decide to stop subsidizing it. Or we go to war with them. Then you're gonna wish you had built those coal plants.

Have you paid attention to anything since 2020? Are you paying attention to anything now?

Suggesting PV is "cheaper" because of the per-watt cost to install it misses so much reality it's hard to take seriously. We live in the now, not some idealized future state. We need energy NOW. Do you think solar cells are immune to supply and demand? And that the economics will not be affected by a global shift?

[FooBarWidget]

On top of that, I see more and more people actively resisting what they call "the degrowth mind virus". For example levelsio on Twitter. He regularly complains about EU environmental regulations and the lack of AC, or inability to set it to lower than 22 C. He sets it to 18 C (which is too cold for me to sleep, but his cup of tea I guess). And regularly posts about how hot temperatures make people dumber and drive down productivity.

What I don't see is these anti-degrowth people discussing substance with pro-degrowth people. No discussions about the merits of the idea that planet's carrying capacity has been reached or exceeded. Both camps seem to treat their thesis as a given, a religion even.

[graemep]

I often have discussions of substance about religion! I love them.

I think one of the problems is that,as with many political things, people assume bad faith on the other side in this argument so there is no point having a discussion about the substance.

[tootie]

We are essentially there now. We have begun the mass deployment of renewable energy and it's only accelerating. The problem is that energy consumption is also growing so it's a moving target. We are within reach of hitting peak emissions, but the fact is that most emissions will still hang in the atmo for decades. So even when we hit the point of decreasing emissions, that's still only proximate to decreasing the amount of GHG in the atmo which is proximate the heating effects on the earth. So even at our current breakneck pace of remediation, the end effects are still locked in and getting worse for at least several decades if not centuries.

[nradov]

Ironically the "environmental" movement has in some ways actually set us back by opposing clean, safe nuclear power.

[junto]

> Ironically the "environmental" movement has in some ways actually set us back by opposing clean, safe nuclear power.

Problem is it’s not exactly clean because you’ve got nuclear waste to dispose of and nobody wants it in their backyard. It’s mostly safe, but when it does go wrong it contaminates large swathes of land for thousands of years.

Its biggest problem is that it’s expensive[1].

Not only that - it’s getting more expensive.

Not only that - it will never achieve economies of scale.

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3A3-Learning-curves-...

[dnautics]

> It is simply not possible to get enough people to reduce to make an impact

What are you talking about? The united states is currently ~-30% off peak carbon emissions.

[don_esteban]

How much of that reduction has been achieved by outsourcing the production to China/other places?

Are there good links to articles/papers where proper accounting has been done?

[asveikau]

Outside the US, countries are doing a better job of electrifying. The US has deliberately retrograde policies right now.

[stinkbeetle]

> I’ve come to terms with the fact that there is no stopping human consumption.

I really felt _sure_ that billionaires and monarchs and rest of the ruling class flying their private jets to meet their private mega yachts before attending very important meetings in luxury chalets where they lecture the filthy commoners about how horrible and greedy they are for not wanting to eat cockroaches and pay them more taxes for the greater good was going to do it. Are you sure that a few more decades of that won't finally convince people how awful they are?

> It is simply not possible to get enough people to reduce to make an impact. The failure of the environment movements over the last 60 years are proof. The only way is ‘up and out’ developing clean, cheap methods of energy generation and lobbying to get that infrastructure built out as quickly as possible. At this point, investing more in Fossil fuels is a joke and anyone claiming “coal” or whatever is the future

If only the "environment" movements had failed. They were instrumental in destroying nuclear power, with support of fossil fuel interests. The coal industry has had no better friend than the anti-nuclear "green" movement in the past 50 years.

> is simply a conman or a clown.

There's lots of conmen and clowns around. The trick is not sniffing out the ones twirling their mustaches and adjusting their monocles while demolishing orphanages, it's the ones who tell you things that make you feel good that are the dangerous ones. That's where the "con" in conmen comes from.

[mistrial9]

> The failure of the environment movements over the last 60 years are proof

superficial and incorrect

[supertroop]

Explain your reasoning or stop wasting bits.

[dahinds]

For the past ~60 years... with maybe just a bit of slack on the start of that, it would include tremendously impactful things like: - the clean air act and clean water act - endangered species act and restrictions on international trade for protected animals and plants - creation of the EPA, and reductions and regulation of pesticides and herbicides - the emergence of the organic food industry - the Montreal protocol and global reduction in CFC production - contribution to the development of clean energy technology -- you could argue that now the boom in clean energy is just economics in action but that comes after decades of basic science and technical innovation motivated by environmental concerns.

[dnautics]

it's hard to argue that the environmental movement has had "no effect" considering how much carbon the US and Europe have reduced in the last 15 years. SOx and NOx, have basically gone to zero, and water is cleaner, etc.

Sure, some of that is "dollars and cents" and not the movement directly, but most of that (technological improvement) had nonzero influence on the technologists who built the impromevents.

[flyinglizard]

Environmental movements had a huge impact on public awareness and climate change mitigation. It sure didn’t come from the government themselves. We take many everyday steps to reduce our environmental impact, from energy to transportation to building to recycling. It’s all happening to one degree or another pretty much everywhere.

[calgoo]

No, you stop wasting all our time. We are all aware that the world is going to shit because of people not accepting their part in the destruction.

[MarkMarine]

The whole framing you’re using is wrong. If you can do climate modeling and math at the planet scale, you don’t need to be convinced you have read the research and you knew 30 years ago.

If you’re skeptical of scientific authority and lack those skills… as well as the critical thinking required to read the research and distill your own conclusions, there is basically no way to convince you. You can’t find objective truth yourself and you don’t trust the resources that can.

Doesn’t matter anyway, you as an ant in a large colony barely matter, no one needs to convince you. Capital needs to understand it’s in its interest to fix the problem and it will be fixed. Until that, get an A/C and contribute to the problem.

[darth_avocado]

> Capital needs to understand it’s in its interest to fix the problem and it will be fixed

You’re looking at Capital as a monolithic block. The problem is that the majority of the Capital at the moment sits with the block that can only function by burning more fossil fuels and mowing down the last of the forests to extract natural resources. The private equity firm that owns private beach resorts will never be able to convince the trillion dollar petro giants that they need to find alternatives.

[jschveibinz]

Since 1990, global deforestation has improved by 50%. It is still net negative, but the rate of net loss is way down from 100 years ago.

[don_esteban]

Because there is so much less to cut down? And what is remaining is harder to reach/extract from?

[darth_avocado]

Thats not a positive. Its like you’re falling from the sky, reach terminal velocity and celebrating that you’re not falling any faster.

[MarkMarine]

I don’t see it that way. Some see the invisible hand of the market but I just don’t, the involvement in politics… the purposeful shaping of public opinion that is against the public interest, capital has an interest and it’s making its interest felt.

I’m pretty sure the burning fossil fuel and mowing down rainforest isn’t in the long term interest, I’m also sure that if I’m dumb enough to see this the people in control are as well. So I admit I can’t see the end state, but I’m sure the machine is being fed somehow

[darth_avocado]

Often people in control of capital are in the second half of their lives. They care about their bonuses this year, not some future inconvenience when they’re already dead.

[dehugger]

Capital, as a whole, barely thinks farther forward than the next fiscal quarter. If you are lucky, the absolute farthest out is end-of-career/lifetime for the current leadership suite. Why would capitalists be the saviors from climate change?

[jackyinger]

The skepticism is from people who are making money emitting CO2 and don’t want to stop making money in the same old way. It is well documented that oil companies have been sewing skepticism for decades, go figure.

[Jeff_Brown]

The idea that a producer is at fault and not also the consumer paying them to do that is strange to me.

[tialaramex]

Blaming the consumer is a time-honoured way to ensure nothing is done. The consumer can't pick options which don't exist, so the producer says oh well, you can either burn coal or you can go without light - there's no mention that the producer doesn't have to burn coal to make electricity, just straight to blaming you for wanting light.

[yongjik]

It's a two-sided sword. When you are the consumer, blame the producer. When you are the producer, blame the consumer. In this way everybody can blame someone else and ensure that nothing is done.

For example, more people buying EVs can meaningfully reduce CO2 consumption, but you can easily find millions of people ideologically opposed to that.

Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks like a carbon tax scheme. "Fix the earth somehow, now, but I'm not paying a cent, because that wasn't my fault!" is everyone's rallying cry.

[rsynnott]

> For example, more people buying EVs can meaningfully reduce CO2 consumption, but you can easily find millions of people ideologically opposed to that.

If you're talking rich democratic countries, largely only in the US (this would generally be a _very_ fringe position in Europe, say, even on the hard right). Where the fossil fuel industry spends a lot of money convincing people to be ideologically opposed to that. That is, it's still a producer-driven problem.

[intended]

When you are informed, you hold to account the person responsible.

The entire issue of incentives to consume being a reason to blame consumers, is obviated when there are entire industries that have spent significant amounts of money and capital to ensure that voters cannot come to a consensus.

The science on global warming was clear eons ago. The true revolution has been in scientists learning how weak facts are when going up against media machines.

[yongjik]

At some point, people should agree they are responsible for the opinions they hold. Otherwise there's no point even arguing, because the only alternatives are that (1) the modern society fails, or (2) we will have an iron-fisted eco-fascist ruler who will "restore the balance" by stomping on people's will.

[to11mtm]

> Or just look at how reliably people reject any policy that vaguely looks like a carbon tax scheme. "Fix the earth somehow, now, but I'm not paying a cent, because that wasn't my fault!" is everyone's rallying cry.

I still don't get how people got to that. In my head a decent first step for a carbon tax would be producing made consumer goods; the end result would be that yes, capitalism 'should' eventually win out and the more ecologically sound solutions would prevail.

[giantg2]

They have renewable only energy plans. So the choices do exist. Not to mention that the choice to go without something is a valid choice. If one believes strongly enough about something, then they will sacrifice for it.

[no_wizard]

This ignores too much to be a good faith argument like lack of options to choose. Ability to choose in absence of regulation, the fact that industry spends millions to curb any regulation and I know ok missing other factors.

Individual choice is actually a small part of this wheel, almost negligible.

The vast majority of polluting is done by industry, and they also do the most not to make things better and actively often try to make things worse.

[giantg2]

People want the products. Industry wouldn't exist, or not at this scale, without that. The easiest way to see this is air travel. The vast majority of it is unnecessary - business trips that could be a zoom call, vacations, shipping, etc. People got to every place on earth using trains and ships before air travel. Possible exceptions are medical transport and some types of products, which are tiny by comparison. So yeah, pretty much all on the consumer choices.

[no_wizard]

It’s not that simple.

For instance, consumers want fast and high speed rail and light rail in cities, yet the federal government is still subsidizing hundreds of billions of dollars to car centric projects rather than allowing municipalities and state governments to have control over those funds they come with strings attached that force them to choose car centric options.

Affordable housing is another example. Consumers want reliable cheap homes but every single attempt to unseat obtuse regulations and policies that make home bulldog a nightmare across metropolitan areas all over the Us entrenched home owners fight in as many ways possible to keep new homes from being built. This pushes more people into farther out suburbs that makes an existing issue even worse.

So no, it’s not all consumer choices, not even “pretty much”.

The false dichotomy that it’s simply choice is not a good faith argument.

The other flip of the coin is this: people can consume in ecologically smart and sustainable ways, and often given the choice they do but lack of choice exists across most sectors that don’t allow them to or are knowingly priced higher than the alternative options due to poor regulation or lack of proper subsidy on the scale of the dirty alternative.

And we subsidize a lot when it comes to oil, natural gas and coal, let alone other industrial polluting industries.

[giantg2]

"For instance, consumers want fast and high speed rail and light rail in cities, yet the federal government is still subsidizing hundreds of billions of dollars to car centric projects rather than allowing municipalities and state governments to have control over those funds they come with strings attached that force them to choose car centric options."

Oftentimes that comes from road taxes, so it's really car use subsidizing the car-centric projects. If states and municipalities (and the voters) really want it, then why aren't they subsidizing the public transport options... choices - there arent that many who want it bad enough to pay for it.

"Affordable housing is another example. Consumers want reliable cheap homes but every single attempt to unseat obtuse regulations and policies that make home bulldog a nightmare across metropolitan areas all over the Us entrenched home owners fight in as many ways possible to keep new homes from being built. This pushes more people into farther out suburbs that makes an existing issue even worse."

Not really. Consumer polling shows people want things like bigger, fancier single family homes over basic small apartments. Of course they only want them in "good" neighborhoods too. These preferences are choices.

"The false dichotomy that it’s simply choice is not a good faith argument."

Dichotomy implies there are only two choices. I'm simply following the logic and data. As soon as you give people the resources for "better" housing/transport/etc they take it, regardless of the externalities. Check the size and quality of new homes, the requirements and accessories for new cars, etc. The standards and options for things only goes up as the affordability does. If you can show this is not true, then I'd love to see real world examples of the majority of people choosing smaller homes, simplier cars, etc when affordability is not a factor.

"And we subsidize a lot when it comes to oil, natural gas and coal,"

Do you have examples? Most of the recent subsidies in the past decade and tax credits I've seen have been around solar, more efficient appliances, etc.

[zug_zug]

No it's not on consumer choice. The US government is SUBSIDIZING gasoline when it should be taxing it at a higher rate because of the environmental side-effects. This is standard economics theory, you tax any form of an environmental damage (e.g. carbon) at the rate of what it costs to clean it up.

[giantg2]

Can you give me some examples of gas being subsidized?

"This is standard economics theory, you tax any form of an environmental damage (e.g. carbon) at the rate of what it costs to clean it up."

Again, that's a choice for which the population's opinions differ. You have some people who would tax people for existing because of their carbon dioxide output, body heat, space they take up, etc.

[derektank]

Roughly 90% of global air travel passengers are non-Americans.

[asdfasgasdgasdg]

Gasoline is heavily taxed as well, far in excess of the subsidies it receives compared to typical consumer goods. Jet fuel itself has almost no tax net of its subsidies, however passenger aviation is also heavily taxed compared to most consumer goods. It is for sure incorrect in both cases to say that these goods are “heavily subsidized” as a way to absolve consumers of any responsibility for their ecological choices.

[llukas]

Policy of subsidizing various modes of transportation modes shapes consumer choices. Best example is high speed rail vs air on shorter routes.

[giantg2]

If there was enough demand for high speed rail, couldn't a company form a profitable business model to provide that service? Many people don't take trains because the service is abysmal in the US. People who visit Europe tend to use the trains and prefer it over flying. It seems we're in a chicken and egg situation in the US. Even subsidies to Amtrak don't seem to fix the issue.

[ro_sharp]

As long as the pollution is a negative externality and the polluting option is (immediately) cheaper, people (especially poorer people) will choose the cheaper option.

[triceratops]

Consumers pay because:

1. There's no option

2. Oil companies lied to them about safety

[JumpCrisscross]

> If the current climate trends continue, vast areas of the Earth may not be suitable for habitation within half that time, and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real

The areas to be rendered “uninhabitable” in our lifetimes are all poor. Hence the disconnect.

[ACCount37]

Kind of true.

The geography isn't as constrained, but what holds is that to rich first world countries, climate change is -0.5% GDP. A meaningful impact, but non-catastrophic and diffuse. To poor countries, it might mean death and suffering at scale.

[intended]

I suspect they will always “be poor”.

The rich will move away, and the people left behind will be the ones who don’t have the capacity to make any other choice.

[SJC_Hacker]

Miami is definitely not poor

[JumpCrisscross]

> Miami is definitely not poor

Whether Miami is rendered uninhabitable is an economic choice. (And one that could realistically be made solely by Miami.)

That’s simply not true in e.g. South Asia, Eastern or sub-Saharan Africa. (It’s technically a global economic choice. We could safeguard their populations at great expense.)

[giantg2]

"and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real."

There will always be outliers who don't believe something. But even for the people who do believe climate change is real, there is a huge variance of how we should address it. Most people have more immediate problems. Many take the same type of argument as the infinite population growth is good crowd - future tech will save us.

[journal]

if people have a hard time convincing themselves to brush their teeth, what do you expect from a whole civilization of those type of people?

[netsharc]

Even with a virus that could kill within 2 weeks, people lived in denial and selfishness. "Oh it predominantly kills old people? I'm not old, who cares!".

[RickJWagner]

Something that would help a great deal would be some very public, clearly worded predictions about future events that should happen.

Climate scientists could help convince skeptics by correctly predicting future events. Skeptics could vet the predictions immediately to avoid late refutations. They’d look foolish if they tried to downplay the events if they didn’t raise concerns at the time they were predicted.

Looking fairly at things, predictions along the lines of ‘An inconvenient truth’ did not help. ( A UK high court ruling found at least 9 errors or exaggerations in the film. )

Demonstrating predictability should increase acceptance.

[lostlogin]

> clearly worded predictions about future events that should happen.

These are already out there. Extreme weather events are happening with all increasing frequency. But as with the slow boiled frog, when is it a crisis? The denier just claims we have always had extreme weather events, and they are correct (and this sidesteps the argument).

[RickJWagner]

In your opinion, which list is the most credible? ( I.e. do you have a web link that shows a list of predictions you consider highly credible ? )

[frm88]

Astrum Earth on Youtube has a couple of videos on climate change in general and the turning of the AMOC in particular with both, schientific explanations and graphs and predictions on the outcome. I found it a reliable source of information, even if they make dramatic thumbnails and music. More to the point, they list a lot of sources you can follow up on.

https://www.youtube.com/@AstrumEarth

[lostlogin]

Sea level rise is a key problem for New Zealand - we have a lot of coast.

At beaches there are poles showing predicted sea levels at various time points.

There are lots of sites that show various predictions for sea level rises for NZ, showing predictions and reality. Eg: https://www.sealevel.nz/Auckland.html

[RickJWagner]

Thanks for that— the poles sound like a great idea.

Off topic, I love a New Zealand podcast called “Backyard Bluegrass”. The host is a walking encyclopedia of roots music, and he’s got great presentation skills.

[queenkjuul]

> So, exactly what is the source of skepticism?

You were a skeptic; you tell us?

[killerstorm]

Well, EU is convinced it's a real problem, but the only solution they are considering is to reduce emissions largely via degrowth.

OTOH to actually solve the problem we'd need geoengineering and cheap energy e.g. from fission.

Just spamming more solar does not help during winter, and EU solution seems to be "maybe you should just die".

[don_esteban]

Spamming solar in Sahara + DC cables to Europe still feels more realistic than fission. Not destabilising Libya would have helped ... whole another can of worms.

Geoengineering (depending on how it is done) is prime hubris. Are we sure we won't screw things even worse?

[killerstorm]

What's unrealistic about fission? France can do it. If best minds in Europe join forces they can figure how to do it even cheaper/safer/faster.

The missing part is political will. If anybody with unreasonable objection will be labeled enemy of the people it can be solved.

[bcraven]

"The second I pull this lever, the entire world as you know it will end in 56 years!"

https://youtu.be/I9M3go2bAIE

[BobbyTables2]

If we could plan and avoid/solve clear problems that are just 5-10 years out, we’d be in a much different world.

Getting anyone to look beyond the next quarter or year is almost impossible. Decades out ?

fuhgedaboudit …

[varispeed]

Is it bad that humans will go extinct? What good did we bring to this planet? Once we are gone, the nature will rebuild.

[satvikpendem]

> the world panics and goes into overdrive because an alien invasion is due in... 400 years.

It's the difference between Chinese planning philosophy versus the West's.

[margalabargala]

Not really. There are plenty of Western entities that think in centuries (e.g. the Catholic Church) and plenty of.Chinese entities that are chasing the next moment (all the companies who cut standards on product because "to them it is the same").

This is true about the instantaneous state of the governments of the US and China rather than some intrinsic permanent cultural quality.

[satvikpendem]

Yes, I meant current governments not culture itself.

[sph]

It is sad to admit it to our Western selves, but authoritarians plan across decades, democracies across electoral terms at best.

No king wants to rule over a failed state.

[rsynnott]

> but authoritarians plan across decades, democracies across electoral terms at best.

Eh. China is really the exception there, not the norm, and it's a particularly _weird_ authoritarian state. Your average authoritarian regime is pretty short-termist, and indeed they tend to self-destruct fairly quickly.

[webnrrd2k]

History is replete with destructive, stupid and failed authoritarian rulers. King John, Ferdinand VII of Spain, etc... just basic research will uncover a lifeline of reading on the topic. Check out Mao's Great Leap Forward killed millions, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Hirohito didn't work out so well, either. The list just goes on and on.

Seriously, read about the Roman emperors, or the Crusades, or, for a more modern example, how's Putin doing on setting up his country for long-term success? How's Trump doing with America?

[sph]

True and I don’t want to defend tyrants, but if we have to be fair, we have to admit history has had thousands of kings, and not everyone was mad with power. For every Caligula, there was a Marcus Aurelius. The vast majority weren’t great, nor bad, and people kept doing their thing. We only talk about the very bad ones.

My mistake was talking about authoritarians (i.e. tyrants) rather than monarchs (i.e. dynastic rule)

[tim333]

If you do the calculation based on that stuff without feedback effects and CO2 goes from the present ~432 ppm to 600 ppm, then (disclaimer - AI used) you'd get approx 1.1 to 1.2C of warming based on basic radiative forcing alone. Which isn't really a lot to panic over in my opinion.

I mean you may get feedback making things worse or not as bad - that's a bit uncertain.

[ETH_start]

There has been almost zero loss of sea ice since 1980. What is sparking your alarm?

[anonym29]

>So, exactly what is the source of skepticism?

We should define climate skepticism, to avoid indicting a strawman. I'd start with my definition, as someone with unorthodox views on climate that often place me at odds with progressives.

It may be easier to start with the elements we agree on. Is the climate changing? Yes, obviously, visibly, measurably. Do human activities, including burning of coal and hydrocarbons, likely have a causal, contributory impact? Absolutely. Is the adoption of cleaner sources of energy: solar, hydro, geothermal, wind, nuclear, as well as investment in transmission and storage upgrades, a good thing? Unquestionably. Is climate change causing a growth in a class of threat to human life and prosperity (e.g. heat deaths, coastal flooding, extreme weather events, etc.)? Of course.

As for the areas where I diverge from progressives: Do I expect any amount of reduction in human activity, including reduction of coal and hydrocarbon combustion, reduction of overall energy usage, reduction of living standards and growth targets, to make any difference in the magnitude of the coming climate change at all in the long run? No.

The earth has both heated and cooled by orders of magnitude more than worst-case projections before humans started burning hydrocarbons.

Earth's climate is changing, yes, but historically, over the last 500 million years, the global average temperature has been as low as ~11° C at times; as high as ~34°C at others. You're reading that correctly: strictly natural processes that predate humanity itself have repeatedly changed the global averge temperature by as much as ~23°C. Ice ages occurred with zero human impact, just as the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum and global atmospheric CO2 levels exceeding 1000ppm occurred with zero human impact.

If you were to measure the full range of earth's climate variation over the history of the earth, and attempt to assign and attribute causality to all sources of that climate variation, you'd find that both the presence of all of humanity and the sum impact of all of human activity is an insignificant footnote. If this duration were a football field, humanity itself would be the last centimeter of grass in the distance of that football field; the period in which we've been measuring the climate is a thin slice of a single blade of grass.

The potential and capacity of natural processes to raise global average temperatures by 23° C has always been present, and nothing we can do will eliminate that potential and capacity.

The focus of human climate concern, accordingly, should be preservation of human life and wealth through adaptation to a changing climate, not futile efforts to prevent change itself, or an irrational alarmism that seeks to instill a widespread sense of anxiety over a process that cannot (and never could be) stopped, and for which the sum of humanity is not responsible for.

Build AC in Seattle. Set up better floodgates in New York City. Winterize the grid in Texas. Fix building codes to make houses more safe from hurricanes in Florida, and develop better solutions to stop the destruction of homes from wildfires in Colorado.

And yeah, do invest in alternative sources and production of energy. Energy is good. Energy is prosperity - it's causally linked to GDP, it's a direct requirement for quality of life / comfort / happiness. We need renewable energy. We need dispatchable energy. We need zero-emissions energy. We need energy that works at night, when it's cloudy, when we run out of oil, and when the wind's not blowing. We need better storage, better transmission. More energy, more sources, and lower costs for all of humanity.

We can't stop the world from changing, and trying to is foolish; we should accept that it is changing whether we try to prevent that or not, and focus on protecting and improving quality of life for all of humanity in the face of this always-changing environment on this little blue dot instead.

[awjlogan]

Your car can go at 0 kph and 100 kph. It’s the rate of the change that kills you, not the speed.

[anonym29]

Poor analogy. 23° C global average temperature increase, even slowly, will end a lot of life if nothing is done to address impacts. The rate of change isn't what causes those deaths; for 23° C warming, the terminal metric is indeed itself what kills, not the rate of change getting there.

That said, another section I've largely left out above is that it's effectively impossible to coordinate global action to meaningfully reduce human emissions from current levels. Europe and the US have actually already had declining emissions levels for decades now. This isn't a philosophy problem that you can talk your way to a solution on, it's a human psychology and game theory problem.

Trying to voluntarily convince global south nations to not adopt carbon-positive energy sources that solve real problems in the third world, and instead telling them to exclusively adopt your preferred alternatives (which do come with tradeoffs, be them in cost, complexity, availability/reliability) to appease what people facing food scarcity due to a lack of refrigeration due to a lack of electricity would consider "first world concerns" is an exercise in futility, and has some thematic emotional rhymes with colonial pasts where wealthy westerners demanded sacrifice from the global poor for the comfort of the wealthy westerners. It's a very tone-deaf plea.

[awjlogan]

I was addressing your statement that Earth is always changing. Yes, of course it is, obviously at +/- 20°C little that we recognise now would survive, but the transition is a lot less painful for you and yours if it happens over millions of years rather than a few centuries.

The one hope is that renewables and batteries continue to reduce in cost, and grids everywhere develop around that paradigm. Economically, it’s inevitable, but there’s a lot of (to be stranded) money, social, and political will against it.

[no_wizard]

Voluntarily convince? Yes, I agree asking other nations to afford something on top of struggling to afford things is not easy.

However, a global reparation fund would make a difference. Not entirely unheard of for richer nations to fund these things for poorer ones

[amanaplanacanal]

You seem to be completely ignoring the biggest problem. How do you propose the rich countries in the temperature zones deal with the billion climate refugees fleeing the inhospitable tropical areas of the planet?

[lostlogin]

> How do you propose the rich countries in the temperature zones deal with the billion climate refugees fleeing the inhospitable tropical areas of the planet?

We have the answer to this on the front page of our news sites.

We try to impose a population cap. We recruit gangs of unidentifiable thugs to beat, imprison and deport them and we have race riots.

[frm88]

Set up better floodgates in New York City.

This will not be enough to mitigate the ice age pattern that will occur if the AMOC collapses. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/what-would-happen-if-atlanti... You'll have to deal with massive cooling and draught, particularly on the east coast.

[pstuart]

> And yeah, do invest in alternative sources and production of energy

This right here, it should be a Manhattan Project level of urgency, but at global "Hail Mary" level of cooperation and effort.

And the best part is that it's not like that investment is wasted -- it's foundational and will allow us to do incredible things with it.

Meanwhile the President of the United States is actively cancelling such work and doubling down on coal. Wheee!

[mrguyorama]

All Trump had to do was spend the tens of billions of dollars he has wasted on horseshit instead on a bunch of grifts with his buddies for slightly overpriced solar installs and he would go down in the history books as a revolutionary and visionary leader

[convolvatron]

there was no human impact for quite a bit of that variability over 500m years because just there were no humans, including the Cretaceous.

[card_zero]

You seem to be saying the temperature change is mainly natural? But the expected natural change in the present era is slow and downward, I think.

I mean you have two separate points here, one is "adapt" and the other is "nothing can be done", which itself can be picked apart into different specific things that can't be done, such as on the one hand getting everybody to behave themselves conscientiously with one mind, and on the other hand unilateral geoengineering.

[anonym29]

I am saying that earth's average temperature has raised by 23° C before with zero human impact, and it will raise by as much as 23° C again, even if you cut all human carbon emissions to zero overnight (itself an effective impossibility for other reasons).

The average global temperature raising by even 2°C has catastrophic and devastating impacts to humanity, to say nothing of it raising by 20°.

We can't stop or prevent global average temperatures from rising, even if we do cut emissions to zero.

What we can prevent is the widespread loss of life (human, plants, and animals) and prosperity. Preventing loss of life and prosperity is good, and it's an achievable goal, so we should pursue that goal.

[w4der]

You are leaving out the rate at which the temperature has fallen and risen in the past and how that compares with the rising seen in recent decades.

[card_zero]

There's two reasons why temperature increases can't be stopped (without actually sending the heat away somewhere, such as into space): the first one is lag in the system if we cut emissions to zero, and the second is natural change in maybe 300 million years. Why bother mentioning the second of those?

[anonym29]

This is a strawman. The natural change happens orders of magnitude faster than 300 million years.

Also, is there a way to move heat into space that doesn't require adding more heat into the atmosphere than is removed from the expulsion? Or do you just mean this as a hypothetical example?

[card_zero]

Well yeah, I just took the time interlude since the carboniferous and projected it into the future. But what's the real answer to how soon it would naturally get troublesomely hot, when worked out properly, and why is it still not very soon at all?

Heat into space: I was thinking of "PDRC":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_daytime_radiative_cool...

> If only 1%–2% of the Earth’s surface were instead made to radiate at [~100 W/m2] rather than its current average value, the total heat fluxes into and away from the entire Earth would be balanced and warming would cease.

Which is, you know, a nice fantasy and theoretically works. Like a solar shield, but terrestrial.

Edit for those thinking that even 1% is an unfeasibly large area: yes. It's about 5 million km², which is about one-fifth of North America. Maybe scatter the panels around the ocean?

[Tarsul]

In most countries the public "believes" in climate change. But it don't matter: People still consume much more than the planet can bear. Because they like to consume. And because they don't want to change "if no one else does it" (tragedy of the commons). So you're asking the wrong question (maybe not for a US audience, I give you that). The real question would be: How to change the behavior of a population? My best guess would be: by reforming capitalism (and/or democracy), e.g. carbon tax (imo best way would be that there's a second currency next to money for the carbon effect of every good/service). But good luck with that.

Disclaimer: For myself, I do believe in personal changes, e.g. consuming less (red meat, flights, gas etc). Not because it makes a big impact but because that's just my personal morality and it makes me feel better to do it. On a societal level it's tougher because most/many people's brains don't work like that (I think).

[yoyohello13]

I’m not sure even the how to change behavior is the correct line either. I think the most successful path is likely to be: how do we make human behavior less destructive?

[esafak]

A carbon tax would change behavior in short order. The challenge is introducing then maintaining it; people can always vote it out. I think left-leaning jurisdictions should definitely give it a try.

[baq]

the challenge in carbon tax isn't the people who vote it out, it's the people who never vote it in in the country next door (or on the other side of the world, it hardly matters)

[esafak]

That's not a challenge; passing it in one place gives people in others an example to point to. Nobody wants to tax themselves while others don't.

[drc500free]

Carbon taxes are massively regressive. There is no political coalition that simultaneously wants to act against climate change and doesn’t mind driving further income inequality.

[amanaplanacanal]

So you balance it with tax credits or handouts to the poor. This isn't an insoluble problem.

[intended]

You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have one comment talk about consumption being the root of all ill, then another comment stating that reducing consumption is regressive.

[drc500free]

I’ve only made one comment here.

[m3kw9]

Except the threat isn’t clear to all and our tech tree in 400 year is likely to quell climate change

[iAMkenough]

If I was a foreign adversary, I would be influencing elections to sabotage that tech tree as much as I could.

Brand climate science as “woke” and get the government to slash investment in non-performative research, monitoring, and development.

Instead, manipulate/lobby representatives into doubling or tripling investment in technologies that maintain the status quo, and incentivize/subsidize subpar solutions with public dollars.

All while your allies do the opposite and jump ahead.

[AtlasBarfed]

Here are the positive points, relatively speaking:

- solar/wind/batteries have a fundamental economic advantage already, and there is further runway for gains in efficiency, yield, and cost reductions. All its competitors are, generally speaking, tapped out in terms of economic costs and efficiencies

- population declines are currently an inevitability of urbanization and techno-capitalism, less people, less pollution

- contrary to #2, it is likely that life extension will start to come into play for the billionaire class, and that will mean the rich elites DO need to think about the future

However, I agree, those are glimmers of hope in the grand scheme of the current system

[baq]

We can't slow down burning stuff for energy, this is politically untenable.

...so the answer is to accelerate the burning, but not for the sake of burning more, but to focus on getting to true clean energy sources which will allow us to economically unwind the mess before the whole house of cards collapses, i.e. fusion + global scale solar (maybe even space solar and microwave beam down) + boatloads of batteries.

[no_wizard]

Steady state nuclear power plus wind and solar would. In today’s world, make the grid more reliable and greener than ever.

Nuclear should not be off the table. It’s safe, it’s well understood, it’s reliable and is a very cheap way to create base load capacity that renewables like solos and wind can build out on top of

[Moldoteck]

France and Sweden proved Renewables+Nuclear can decarbonize your electric grid almost fully and pretty damn fast - under 20y with old tech without any automatic welding and such... With proper policies the whole planet could do something similar in much less time...

The challenge still remains decarbonizing the rest/electrification

[no_wizard]

> The challenge still remains decarbonizing the rest/electrification

A challenge that can be more easily addressed if it can scale first to handle induced demand only rather than base load. It’s a smaller problem that way.

[amanaplanacanal]

I'm not sure where nuclear is very cheap, but it sure isn't in the US.

Of course, given the seeming inability of the US to do any kind of large projects any more, small and decentralized is probably the only thing that will work.

[lostlogin]

> I'm not sure where nuclear is very cheap

It’s always cheap and easy when mentioned here.

I live in New Zealand where we have lots of wind, rain and sun and people occasionally suggest it for here too.

[mindslight]

Please explain how "accelerating the burning" is supposed to cause fusion and global scale solar to pop into existence.

[baq]

No idea, ask fusion scientists, they might have answers on what they need built a lot of and quickly and whatever it is it’ll take energy to do it.

I wouldn’t mind shortening e.g. the Iran war by a couple of days and redirecting the funding from that to fusion research and battery buildout.

[mindslight]

So you agree that fusion power generation is not at the state where it can be straightforwardly built today, and you also have no idea what it might actually take to even research it to possibly get it there, but yet you're still asserting that "accelerating the burning" will surely cause whatever needs to happen to happen? Have I got that right?

[baq]

Yes, pretty much, except getting to working fusion is not guaranteed - but the climate disaster is, so we have to make a bet. Solar and batteries are the obvious fallback plan. Nuclear should also be, but it’s a hard sell.

[mindslight]

We seem to agree that there is a major resource allocation problem here ("shortening ... the Iran war by a couple of days"), but you still haven't explained how oil becoming scarce will cause breakthroughs in nuclear fusion to occur. I might accept the argument if it were just about solar (which mostly needs straightforward deployment). But nuclear fusion research requires spending large amounts of resources without any kind of guaranteed payout, so I would think it would only be hindered by energy becoming more expensive.

[gadders]

What's that scientific saying about correlations and causations? But, yeah, let's all go back to middle ages pre-industrial economy just in case.

[amanaplanacanal]

This isn't that hard to understand. If you have ever gotten in your car after it has been parked in the sun, you know about the greenhouse effect. That CO2 does the same thing isn't some weird mystical thing. It's basic science. We know exactly how the causation works.

[TacticalCoder]

> ... we know the following very accurately

We also know very accurately that we're between two ice ages. Shall we manage to both not cook ourselves in the next few hundred years and master climate before the next ice age comes.

For only about 12 000 years ago you did not want to be anywhere in the northern hemisphere when, in a few decades, it cooled dramatically (may I add: not due to human activity):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

Shall we be able to delay the next ice age? Should we just focus on the next 200 years or should be begin to think what we'll be able to do to prevent us from freezing to death in 10 000 years?

Also... We've got those AIs now (if I read HN correctly on a daily basis): how comes climate is not all solved already due to all the perfect apps and models AI generates for us?

[blindriver]

My source of climate skepticisms is based on the following:

1) We know that the Earth was much warmer in the past, including the Medieval Warming Period. We know that the Alps were warm enough so that the Iceman could pass through them without protection from the cold, and yet he was found encased in ice.

2) We know that the Earth is cooler now than in the past. And it's also hotter than it was in the past.

3) We know that previous historical temperatures had nothing to do with human-produced CO2.

Until someone can reconcile these facts, and they can say distinctively that the rise in temperature we see right now isn't the same reason as before, I'm going to believe that temperature will moderate and cool, just like it did in the past.

I live in California, where we were experienced a ~10 year drought. These same scientists claimed this was the "new normal" and everyone was in a panic. Then we had 2 years of rain and everything was back to normal for the last 4 years. In fact, it's better than normal. We are almost in summer, and there isn't a single area of California that is in drought conditions.

More importantly, no one is mentioning the "new normal" anymore. No one declared "we were wrong, sorry!" instead everyone is acting as if it never happened or that it's going to go back to drought conditions. The reaction is not scientific. It appears that climate science is driven by science fiction and ideology rather than actual science. And I'm quite sure there will be many people who comment "Just you wait and see!" but that's driven by ideology and not science. I prefer to follow actual science, and science to me suggests that climate will always continue to oscillate, on geological timeframes.

[AshamedBadger56]

> Until someone can reconcile these facts, and they can say distinctively that the rise in temperature we see right now isn't the same reason as before, I'm going to believe that temperature will moderate and cool, just like it did in the past.

Have you considered that one of the reasons it's not the same as before is because it's rising at a faster rate than before? It's not just that the temperature is changing but how fast it changes. If it happens slowly enough everything has time to adapt. If the rate of temperature increase happens faster than everything has time to adapt, there's problems.

> 1) We know that the Earth was much warmer in the past, including the Medieval Warming Period. We know that the Alps were warm enough so that the Iceman could pass through them without protection from the cold, and yet he was found encased in ice.

While true that the Alps were much warmer during the Medieval Warming Period, that was a regional weather change, not a global event, the change we're seeing now is global, and sustained, not just in one regional area.

Also, I'd recommend doing some additional research on Ötzi, the Iceman you're likely talking about. First, he died much earlier than the Medieval Warming Period, so they aren't even related. Also, I don't think very many people would describe him as found without protection from the cold, considering he was found with many different animal skin coats to protect him from the cold. And the fact that he died, frozen and encased in ice, further shows how it was indeed actually cold enough to be very dangerous.

> I live in California, where we were experienced a ~10 year drought. These same scientists claimed this was the "new normal" and everyone was in a panic. Then we had 2 years of rain and everything was back to normal for the last 4 years. In fact, it's better than normal. We are almost in summer, and there isn't a single area of California that is in drought conditions.

It totally is annoying how the drought conditions have been communicated to the public, for sure! However, California having a drought for 10 years and then being fine for 4 years is exactly the kind of weather whiplash and volatility that is intensifying due to climate change.

[dahinds]

There's a lot to unpack here:

- the warming in the Medieval Warming Period is modest compared to projected modern warming

- The Alps are currently "warm enough" to be crossed without special gear much of the year. Otzi was found wearing multiple layers of hides and furs that would have provided good protection against the elements and is supposed to have been killed in late spring/early summer, not the depths of winter. Glaciers are active things and where he was found could be some distance from where he died.

- Yes the earth has been warmer and colder in the past, climate scientists are aware of these facts, it can also be true that climate is changing quickly in ways that may be very inconvenient for many modern humans.

- Regarding California climate, I don't know who "these same scientists" were, and popular press about climate change is often misleading and superficial. I have lived here for ~35 years and we have had a handful of very wet years but most of that period has been classified as "drought". Yes at the moment we are not but this was a very poor water year and we've benefited from carryover storage from last year. As far as I know, the scientific consensus is still that California is getting warmer and drier on average, and the large year to year fluctuations do not nullify that trend.

[blindriver]

Nothing you wrote refutes anything that I said. Comparing actual historical temperatures to speculative temperatures where no models have been accurate isn't science.

[dahinds]

Here's a comparison of the Medieval Warm Period with recent temperatures (so no model based speculation).

https://skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=31

[eckesicle]

> Until someone can reconcile these facts, and they can say distinctively that the rise in temperature we see right now isn't the same reason as before, I'm going to believe that temperature will moderate and cool, just like it did in the past.

Would you indulge me and see if this one chart might change your mind? It includes each of your data points.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

[blindriver]

A cartoon purporting to know the localized temperatures around the world going back 20,000 years is not science.

[eckesicle]

The journal articles the chart is based on are referenced in light grey on the side, if you prefer to view the same data in a peer reviewed article format with a more serious font.

[ceejayoz]

"Nuh uh, I refuse to understand!" isn't science.

[queenkjuul]

And yet, here you are

[queenkjuul]

> Until someone can reconcile these facts, and they can say distinctively that the rise in temperature we see right now isn't the same reason as before

This has literally been done, you're just ignorant