The oil and gas we have already tapped will take us past 1.5°C | Hacker News Reader

The oil and gas we have already tapped will take us past 1.5°C

newscientist.com

Probably going to get slammed for saying this, especially in a time where downvoters decide for the most part what is allowed and what isn't, but here goes anyway: even though it affects many things, I simply do not care one iota when people talk about rising temperatures and melting ice caps. Why? Because to me it feels like "just stuff that can happen". And I'm insignificant too, unlike these big corporations and factories that cause most of these problems without caring about anything but how to avoid paying taxes and so on.

I'm not a guy who throws random stuff out on the street. I do use my car sparingly because of emissions and I do donate a lot to animal and environmental protection funds. So like every other healthy person I do care about nature, and it breaks my heart to hear about rain forests being cut or burned down, whales and dolphins being killed, and seals being clubbed to death. I eat to live, not live to eat, and I am protective of my environment.

But whenever I read stories about stuff like rising temperatures, I just could not care less. They're just stories in my mind, with a lot of political, societal and economic interests, that make sure you will never really know the truth at all, and they play on guilt and blame. So I became totally uncaring about rising temperatures and all that stuff as a result.

That sounds a really long way of saying "I am apathetic to the problem" (or blunter still, "I don't care"), which while being a perfectly valid position, doesn't really add anything to the discussion.

On the flip side, I agree with you, but that doesn't really help anything or anyone either, except to provide some comfort that you're not alone?

I consider myself one who does care, but environment doesn't make the top 10 of important issues for the masses. In truth, I can fully understand the apathy.

It's especially hard to care when the masses are taxed, compelled to recycle and told that high wattage appliances will be banned for environmental reasons (the stupidest bit of legislation to come out the EU for years). Then inconvenienced with other regulations and trivia. The big things are ignored. Insulation, combined heat and power schemes, transport, carbon and full lifecycle taxes on everyone even the large users, their premises and packaging, ending the hidden subsidies of roads.

The kids "care", but they care as well-programmed 21st C consumers. Emphasis on consume, despite our efforts.

Commerce is going the wrong way at ever increasing rate. Shortening the buying cycles for everything possible, ideally disposable everything. Packaging is increasing exponentially - for little gain, except for the manufacturer. The environmental credentials of nearly every business are an exercise in tokenism.

We get half a dozen bins and containers to pre-sort waste, a lot of which was exported as "recycling", a regulation to reduce wattage of appliances, giving us kettles that uses the exact same electric to make coffee, it just takes longer. Tesco and Amazon ensure those bins are always full.

The tory majority ensured the death of alternative energy subsidies and wrecked a nicely growing sector, and immediately increased fossil fuel subsidies months before the Paris summit.

So I fully understand why most individuals, including me, might look and think "what's the bloody point? You just OK'd fracking and more oil subsidies".

On a slightly different tangent, I think people commenting something along the lines of "I don't care", a neutral position, to most things on the internet is something we need more of.

The internet is such a polarized place, I think because a lot of people don't post if they do not care, which filters out any neutral opinions, which makes the internet a very distorting enviroment

It's also hard to not get a little cynical when some of the people who pontificate on the subject don't look like they are making many sacrifices.

Why? Individual action is utterly irrelevant for any global problem, and the pontificators know it. What can help is changing the incentive structure for the consumption of millions or billions people; i.e. carbon taxes, power plant tax incentives, new solar/wind tech that makes it cheaper than oil.

Given 95 million barrels of oil being burned every day, it matters not an iota if a rich guy sets fire to an entire barrel of oil - but it matters massively whether he lobbies for a carbon tax or whether he uses his influence to spread lies to prevent one.

As an aside, the same applies for taxes - I am not a hypocrite if I make use of a mortgage tax deduction while at the same time arguing that it is a nonsensical and highly destructive tax.

I have celebrity environment activists in mind who regularly fly in private jets to faraway resorts and live the high life while being ambassadors for climate change action on the other. The context is different but Paul Theroux's quote on Bono sums it up:

"THERE are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment"

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/the-rock-stars-bur...

Fortunately the message can be true regardless of who says it?

They choose a celebrity because they think that the little people are more likely to listen to them.

But when the messenger has the whiff of hyprocisy about them, it's natural to be cynical. No one likes being patronised.

I've been desensitized to a large extent as well. I was scared shitless as a 7 year old - thirty years ago - of disappearing rain forests and global warming.

As a 36 old software engineer with a MSc in physics I don't have any better tools at my disposal to do anything to the matter as I had as a 7 year old.

I just can't care anymore after seeing so much world energy spent on pointless bickering and national pomp. Banal political agendas drive discussions that should be cool and rational. Green movement - the spearhead of positive change in it's time - has degenerated into treehugging lunatics and irrational policies that are actively harmful to the environment (I'm speaking of nuclear energy of course).

I'm pretty sure fossil fuel industry and their owners have actively blocked research into alternative forms of energy economy - my personal tinfoil belief. Suddenly when green energy has huge political backing we are starting to see immense leaps forward.

I'm optimistic we can do something as a species. Look what we did with CFC compounds. Ozone layer was rescued with international cooperation. But I don't think trillions of dollars were held in capital in unused CFC resources.

I still believe humanity has a bright future ahead of itself. But I have no financial assets nor do I have any political power - both of which would be required to do something actively to help the human race.

The famed Douglas Adams NMP field in direct observation. "It won't affect me, doing something is harder than doing nothing, so I'll ignore it."

It's hard to not think in those terms, I agree. However, I believe that by being mindful and educating, I can do at least a little good, help avoid the exponential curve we're currently on. Personally, I do it for my nieces and nephews, and their children.

I do my best to offset the down voters by deliberately upvoting any down-voted posts. I really hate the thoughtless and humorless political correctness that's frequently evident here.

Also, I agree with your observations about how the media portrays this issue. There is always an underlying agenda - mostly to condition you to new forms of theft based on what someone believes is "good for the planet".

Please read up on Arctic methane release and the Clathrate gun hypothesis. I wonder whether a doubling of the current greenhouse effect within only tens of years would still not bother you.

replying to myself because I can't react to the dead poster anymore:

I don't have high hopes that data will reverse any of your prejudices, but here you go:

Most recent study of methane flux/storage in the ESAS:

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/373/2052/2014...

Arctic temperatures are estimated to rise 1.9x compared to global average:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2005GL025244/full

During HCO the arctic is estimated to have been 4-6C warmer than baseline (yearly average):

https://epic.awi.de/38441/1/Beierlein_2015_Holocene_page1.pd...

That's not all that much. We're now already at 400ppm CO2, and recent unmitigated projections to 2100 (538ppm) simulate an arctic yearly average of ~ plus 8C:

http://climatenewsnetwork.net/arctic-is-set-to-reach-13c-by-...

And that most probably doesn't take a positive methane feedback loop into account.

So, are you willing to play the russian roulette game with the arctic methane? The PETM boundary showed a global average warming of 5C, mostly from arctic methane at a time where there wasn't even a large ice shelf, so with significantly lower capacity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maxim...

That would be in addition to the CO2 induced warming, mind you.

Yeah because bothering will help... I for one am going to do things differently: Where me and my friends grew up sometimes crying over acidic rain, holes in the ozone layer and a generally inhabitable earth, I will not do that to my kids. I will raise them with a respect for Nature but that's it. I bet solar will soon be the most sensible solution for most power needs market-wise as well as environment-wise. Feeling shitty about yourself and your future does not change a thing, if anything it make your feel hopeless instead of empowered (like "original sin" from the bible does).

I'm not saying feel shitty, all I want is for people to care as much that they at least try to elect representatives who aren't blind to this.

All science is just stories. How do you decide what to believe?

I believe the stories about kinematics, I believe the stories about astronomy, and I believe the stories about climatology.

I didn't expect to see so many anti-science folks in this forum. Ah well, I guess I'll move away from the coast.

Denial, depression are the likely causes?

So much of this is the fault of oft-ignored local zoning boards. Everyone complains that Americans don't want to give up their cars. Well, of course they don't. In 99.9% of the US, it's illegal to live within reasonable walking distance of your job or your grocery store, and it's illegal to build densely enough to make public transportation practical. So of course everyone drives everywhere, they have no other choice.

I'm not sure zoning is the issue when you take a look at Houston, a sprawling car-centric city with very lax zoning rules.

Ah, but Houston has rules designed to force urban sprawl in myriad different ways. They just refuse to call it zoning.

Case in point - my old apartment was 2 bedrooms and had no offstreet parking. It was near a number of excellent bars with no parking. Fortunately it was easy to walk between them! Houston has rules forcing people to live far from said bars, and forcing both their home and the bar to have parking (which spreads things out even without density maximums), and makes it harder to patronize those bars without driving intoxicated.

https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2016/04/14/sprawl-beyond-zo...

Yes, while the masses are starting to come around to the idea that climate change is real, people still seem to think we can stop it. Even if we stopped all CO2 production immediately, temperatures would still be expected to warm for several decades. We are already in a situation where we have to choose between "bad" and "worse."

I just hope there's enough ressources spent into figuring out atmospheric engineering - we may only have one shot at this.

I worry this will cause public opinion to go "see, regardless what we do, it doesn't help, so it's not us and it's going to shit anyway so let's just keep doing as usual" and then things go super wrong. I mean, when people are presidential candidates and climate change skeptics...?

Not only that the major carbon growth is going to come from large parts of Asia and Africa where people are still without power. They are 3-4 times the population of the western or developed world if they they reach even half the quality of life western world enjoys. They will be producing a few times more carbon than what ever the developed world cuts back

I can't fathom how to actually keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees C in a political climate where people profess concern about the environment but wail and gnash their teeth if gas goes up by a nickel. At least, not in a world where the people with means to purchase large amounts of fossil fuels primarily live in democracies.

I wish the oil/coal/gas price would go up... That would make solar so much more competitive and discourage people from buying combustion engines.

I wish we would elect leaders that introduce a carbon tax.

Thus the democracy problem. So long as people feel they benefit more than they suffer from over-exploitation of the common resource (in this case, the atmosphere, which we use as a dump for our emissions), they will vote against any such tax. Of course, it's kind of a prisoners' dilemma problem, since country A passing a carbon tax (and reducing consumption accordingly) makes fossil fuels cheaper for country B.

There are ways to address this, like adding import duties on products from countries who dump their garbage in the atmosphere, but those are fairly unpopular too since people like being able to buy cheap stuff from China.

> Thus the democracy problem. So long as people feel they benefit more than they suffer from over-exploitation of the common resource (in this case, the atmosphere, which we use as a dump for our emissions), they will vote against any such tax.

We don't actually get to vote for individual taxes. The world would be an interesting, and quite different, place if you provided the voter with an accounting summary and asked them to choose line items, etc. etc. People currently have little idea how their money is spent and little say in how to change it.

But people do vote on particular pet issues like a carbon tax. Grey Davis was crucified politically by Schwarzenegger for a supposed increase in the "car tax" when in fact he was letting a previous discount on the vehicle registration fee lapse due to the state's serious budgetary issues.

The candidate who says "we need to increase the cost of fossil fuels so you use less of them.." won't even have an audience listening for the second part - "...to save the planet from pretty much boiling to death and ending civilization as we know it". Though, cynic that I am, I worry that most drivers would prefer billions dying to paying more for fuel. Maybe that's just because I spent too much of my life in southern California, though.

Gas prices are one of those issues people vote on emotionally rather than logically. While I'm not crazy about his approach to personal finance, I'm always reminded of something Dave Ramsey said (I had a coworker years ago who listened to him on the radio). "You guys complained about gas to no end when it was expensive, but now that we're at a buck a gallon do you feel rich?" The point being that the importance of fuel prices are overestimated in the average person's budget.

Good points about gas prices. It's also silly the way people assume oil prices are all a matter of government policy, as opposed to the business cycle. So much about being perceived as a successful politician at the national level is about entering at the right moment, when the economy is on the upswing, or about to be.

> But people do vote on particular pet issues like a carbon tax.

California's rather unusual. At the national level, which is what matters most, we don't do taxation by referendum. I'm not advocating that, either. The current system would work fine if people put a little more effort into understanding the budget and pressing their candidates to form positions.

> The candidate who says "we need to increase the cost of fossil fuels so you use less of them.." won't even have an audience listening for the second part - "...to save the planet from pretty much boiling to death and ending civilization as we know it".

Well, they do have something of an audience, but that audience is somewhat diminished by the brain-damaged nature of the American public when it comes to understanding science. But it's not as if messages of self-sacrifice for the common good always go unheard.

It's definitely the largest tragedy of the commons in our species' history thus far.

Perhaps it will be the last.

I tend to lean on the "Do people feel that way? Or are we told to feel that way?"

Let's not pretend we're making our decisions on these things in some kind of vacuum.

We're battered with "buy this, support the economy, drive your car" propaganda. How much of the 24/7 news cycle is dedicated to intelligently discussing the environment? Not much.

How much is spent detailing what companies are up, which ones are down, and oh shit did you hear about BrAngelina getting divorced? We're told that is the important stuff and let others worry about this other stuff.

It's too hard for me to accept that we have a democracy that actually cares about the concerns of the people. It all just feels like a ballot stuffed online poll.

Whole thing would have been a bit easier if Leman hadn't gone belly up. Climate Change costs would have been more visible then the have been.

One major perspective this and similar articles do not consider is all the non energy uses of coal and petroleum. Burning petroleum for ebergy is hardly it's only use. Look around you at all the plastics. Even coal has great promise as a building material. Think carbon fiber and, well all the different permutations of materials that carbon rich ore can be made into.

A Diamond Age does seem like a hopeful solution to the problem, if we could rationally harvest the and convert it to carbon fibers and diamonds rather than fill our air and oceans with so much excess CO2. I wonder if we are that rational, though.

Pretty sure just burning it is an order of magnitude more than other uses. Coal for building sounds exciting though?

No doubt it is now. I was speaking as to future uses.

And here we are poised on the threshold of a whole new fossil fuel technology: Methane Hydrate. Centuries of reserves, simpler to harvest, and here's the kicker: more dangerous if it escapes unburned than if its burned! So spills will be directly catastrophic to the atmosphere.

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