Comment by sd8f9iu | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sd8f9iu | Hacker News Reader

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1. The big fear with climate change is that it's irreversible. That is not the case with the other problems you mention.

2. Climate change is predicted to cause food supply problems for hundreds of millions of people, trillions of dollars of economic damage, and rising sea levels that flood coastal cities. I don't see how the other problems you mention are more dire.

3. The problems you mention – homelessness, drug abuse, crime, healthcare – are problems that affect us on a domestic level. Climate change disproportionately affects poor people in other countries, yet the CO2 in our atmosphere has been disproportionately created by wealthy countries. How is addressing this snobby?

4. True climate change action would require upending the entire energy sector of the economy. How would this be not taking any action? Just because the action hasn't taken place yet doesn't mean the preaching should stop.

I find climate change opposition adopts the following trajectory: 1. It's not real. 2. Ok, but humans aren't causing it. 3. Ok, but it's not worth solving.

Your response is currently on step 3, and I don't see the logic behind it.

Seriously? I am opposed to climate change? Did you read my post? I never said I am opposed to progress on climate change or that it's not worth solving.

This is exactly the type of politics I dislike when it comes to climate change: I called into question some of the political aspects of climate change, and now I'm being cast out of as an infidel, non-believer, someone opposed to climate change progress, and being given a bunch of straw man arguments.

2. OK, but what are you really contributing here? I didn't specifically mention any other problems when I said other problems have more immediate or greater consequences, so when you say "that's not the case with other problems you mention." Well, nevermind. I assume you latched onto problems I later mentioned that are easier to make changes with in your community, like crime, homelessness, etc., and conflated that with the earlier argument I made.

Also, to address this idea about climate change being irreversible. That's a problem, because it may likely be very likely to be very difficult, but keep in mind: climate change has been happening for billions of years and carbon sequestration technology already exists. Atmospheric CO2 and temperatures already have been higher than they are now... The idea that it is irreversible is not scientific fact. Anyways, that discussion can easily serve as a straw man debate than really getting distracts from the message of what I was saying: It IS a worthy cause to fight against, I said that.

If you're not saying, "it's not worth solving," then what exactly are you saying? What other problems pose "similar if not more immediate, or greater risks to humanity" than climate change? It'd be nice if you could name a few. It seems like your post boils down to, "we have other problems to solve too, besides climate change." Ok. Great.

You do 2 things in your post: you prioritize climate change below other problems (apparently without naming them, which I mistook), and you criticize the behaviors of climate change activists. Please correct me if I'm wrong in understanding your assertions.

I replied with 1 and 2 to show how climate change is the most dire and threatening problem we face. And I replied with 3 and 4 to address your criticisms of climate change activism.

I view climate change as by far the biggest problem humanity has on its plate. I think the alarmism is plainly justified.

He's expressing his concern for the politicalization of the climate issue. It's the same concern that one might have had for the "war on poverty" in which the clout & organizations surrounding the issue become more important than the issue itself.

He's also expressing concern for wealthy individuals concerning themselves with "climate change", but don't have the capability to make a direct, observable impact. He thus raises the question: "If we can save 10 humans now, is it worth worrying about saving 100 later?"

This is a deeply philosophical issue that deserves thoughtful discourse, but it seems you've devolved it into a battle and put intent behind his words such as "you criticize the behaviors of climate change activists" that probably don't fairly represent his.

He made some assertions. I argued against them. He accused me of misunderstanding him. I defended myself and asked him to clarify. I think I'm entitled to argue and defend my claims. Nothing about that is turning this into a battle.

> He thus raises the question: "If we can save 10 humans now, is it worth worrying about saving 100 later?"

No, he said "I can think of a number of other issues that pose similar if not more immediate, or greater risks to humanity that have lower economic costs to solve." That is a much broader statement than saying, "I can think of problems with lesser risks, but that are more immediate." I don't see how my points 1 and 2 don't address his claim. I am challenging him by pointing out the nuances (irreversibility) and seriousness of climate change.

> you've devolved it into a battle and put intent behind his words such as "you criticize the behaviors of climate change activists" that probably don't fairly represent his.

He says, "Global warming activism also bothers me in some ways. Snobs have an absolute affinity for it..." That is criticizing the behaviors of climate change activists.

The 'death' of antibiotics? Soil depletion? Hopefully mankind can scrape together the energy & resources to tackle a few existential risks concurrently

Lose the high-school dramatics. I put you in camp #3 as well.

1. It is reversible over time if people concentrated on removing CO2 from the air.

2. This is not yet known. What if Russia opens borders and lets people in as long as they stay in Siberia?

What if food supply shortage helps innovate instead or changes priorities?

3. Snobby in a way for criticizing countries that are going through their versions of industrial revolution when the West went through it already.

4. Not much action from that person. People are really bad at counting calories. I bet everyone is way off when counting their carbon footprint and they would get outraged by others when they themselves could be outputting way more.

Best thing to do in terms of carbon footprint unless you are directly working on solutions is to not have children and start working on solutions. Finger pointing and preaching doesn't help.

1. Is there a viable technology to do this right now? Is there bound to be one within a decade?

2. That's why I said "predicted." Relocating hundreds of millions of poor people to Russia is not a solution to climate change. Look at the problems we are having now with accepting a couple million refugees from Syria. Plus, this doesn't address the flooding and economic cost. The long-term effects of climate change on humanity are overwhelmingly negative.

3. Virtually all climate change activists I know of primarily advocate reducing emissions at home (in the US for me). The goal is not to prevent other countries from industrializing, it's to prevent them from emitting CO2. This may be possible with green energy. Ultimately, the atmosphere doesn't care where the emissions come from.

4. I don't really care what supporting climate change action says about an individual person, I care about results.

> Best thing to do in terms of carbon footprint unless you are directly working on solutions is to not have children and start working on solutions. Finger pointing and preaching doesn't help.

Yes, finger pointing doesn't help. But at least in the US, we already have the technological and economic means to drastically reduce our carbon footprint. The problem is political will. We need top-down political action to force green energy – as you hint at, individuals trying to reduce their carbon footprint will never be enough. There is unfortunately no other way.

re (1.) It might not be that easy. Sure, the planet would cool down again, but

- the 1000 year ocean cycle takes time, (which is now transporting heat and carbon into the lower ocean layers)

- building up the ice sheets again takes way longer, and ice sheets are important to the albedo, thus also have an influence on climate,

- there are some points where something big might change, such as ocean current patterns changing permanently(due to changes in heat and salinity distribution), permafrost thawing and releasing huge volumes of methane, ..

It's a massive problem to undo. Right now it'd be still relatively easy, but it might not stay that way.

(We'll have to learn how to control the climate longterm anyway since another ice age would be desastrous, but it's too soon. We're still to unknowledgerable and weak.)

re: #2, see the huge instability of the permafrost in areas that are currently warming. It's not a good place to settle humans. http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/siberia-crater...

I've been hearing about the sky falling because of climate change most of my life. Yet in the 1970s it was global cooling. The easiest way to convince someone of a particular 'danger' is to promise world-ending catastrophe.

The science was 'settled' on Eugenics during the early 20th century as well and we saw how that turned out.

There's no mention of any positive effects of global warming. The climate is certainly changing.. But then again it has always changed and the world will adapt and evolve as it always has. When Leonardo DiCaprio gives up a private jet for a city bus, then maybe I'll start to worry. The science has been misappropriated by anti-capitalist activists.

Forgive me for not trusting the anti-capitalist cabal that share more values with Lenin than with Milton Friedman.

> Yet in the 1970s it was global cooling.

Nope: http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/that-70s-myth-did-cli...

> Forgive me for not trusting the anti-capitalist cabal that share more values with Lenin than with Milton Friedman.

Stop reading crappy news sources. Have you read the IPCC 5th AR? The synthesis report summary for policymakers is an excellent overview and really easy to read: http://ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_S...

It discusses evidence, projections for the future, practical effects for people and for economies, and potential mitigation techniques, all in common language. The IPCC reports are a combination of inputs from all the world's climate scientists. These aren't communists and Lenin fanatics (what the heck are you reading??), these are real scientists doing peer-reviewed work with real data. More about the IPCC 5th report: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fifth_Assessment_Report

This is a very serious issue and I'm really disappointed that the issue has been framed in such a way as to give you the impression that ignoring long-standing scientific principles that we use in every other area of our lives is the best way for you to act.

> Yet in the 1970s it was global cooling.

Myth. In the 1970s no one was quite sure what was coming, a few people raised the possibility of "global cooling" and one or two journalists hyped it up as journalists are wont to do, but in so far as there was a consensus it was that warming was much more likely to be a problem.

> eugenics

Not, so far as I can tell, a case of the science turning out to be wrong. What happened was that the Nazis were keen on eugenics and most of the world decided that that wasn't the company they wanted to be keeping. It's a change of values, not of scientific understanding.

> positive effects of global warming

The IPCC impact report, for instance, does talk about positive effects. It talks more about negative effects because most of the projected effects are negative.

One of the big problems I see with this issue is that the loudest people speaking up about it sometimes do it in almost absurdly apocalyptic terms, and do have more of an anti-capitalists and hardcore environmentalist vibe instead of a more science based one. This turns it into yet another politically polarized issue. But I think one should ignore the politics as much as possible and stick with the science.

Remember DDT? On one side you had Silent Spring, and on the other side you have people claiming bollocks and conspiracy and the like. I think the science is pretty settled on this one, really has been since the 1970s (eg, a metabolite of DDT, DDE, really is nasty for raptor egg shells, and wanton over-application of pesticide is an extremely poor way to control mosquitoes) but I still see things about the "DDT conspiracy" today.

Likewise, with climate change, I think the science is fairly settled to some degree. The issue here is that it's a very slow moving problem, with some degree of uncertainty. A lot of humans aren't terribly good at thinking very long term. Plus, the "easy" solution involves "giving up" our creature comforts, which contrary to the anti-capitalists opinion I don't anyone is going to want to do.

While you're right that most likely much of the world will adapt, there may be some pain points. We have so much infrastructure built along the coasts right now that could be affected by sea rise increases, for instance. Same with different weather patterns -- for instance, what's San Francisco going to do if climate change starts slowly, over time, affecting the Sierra Nevada snowpack they depend on for water?

The developed world, of course, probably can come up with some solutions for this; honestly I don't think the changes will be a complete disaster there. Poorer nations, might be another story. I'm not sure they are as able to cope.

"The science has been misappropriated by anti-capitalist activists." That is an undeniable fact - last time I entered the local university I needed to fist-bump a guy like Che, chant a few slogans, spit on a Friedman picture and show latest Naomi Klein book at the fraternity doormen. Oh god it was awful.

> Yet in the 1970s it was global cooling

No, scientists never predicted global cooling

> There's no mention of any positive effects of global warming

Perhaps because there is none that outweighs the negative effects?

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