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Comment by std_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

I don't like sensationalism as it clouds the mind with short-lived buzzes. Instead of always trying to alarm people of the big invisible terror lurking in the dark, we should educate people on how to handle the situation. What are the scenarios? What can we do ourselves for those scenarios (not to prevent, but to prepare)? Which cities and countries will be lost at what point in time? How do we protect ourselves?

Be constructive, be creative.

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I agree with you, but I don't think it's wrong that there's a general feeling that we're working on this problem, and we're getting better. Look at all these solar panels and electric vehicles we're reading about. We know there's still C02 being pumped out, but at least we're starting to get a handle on it. This shows that actually we're not. We've got a positive second derivative here. The current path leads pretty quickly to likely disaster. If you really believe that, maybe you're willing to accept more pain (economic, etc.) to make a significant difference than you otherwise would.

Personally, I live in BC, which is about to have a provincial election. I've been struggling with my choice, because while I generally align more with the NDP (left-wing party) on ideals, a number of their platform pieces seem misguided or vote-buying at best. The Liberal party (which is really a conservative party in all but name) doesn't really align with my values, but they do seem more competent, and less likely to make poor fiscal policy.

However, one key difference between their platforms is on expansion of natural gas extraction, and environmental issues in general. Reading this article got me thinking that climate change is a big enough issue that it should probably trump other concerns.

Please, please write to your local party reps in all those parties explaining your dilemma! This will probably have as much or more value in terms of policy change as a vote. Parties lump so many disparate issues together, they need to hear what individual issues are actually important to the rest of us.

Are you referring to the "competent" housing policies of the Libs that have made BC into the biggest housing bubble in the entire world? I'm not sure the conservatives (ultra-right) or NDP could have done this simply because their bases would not let them (for different reasons).

So because of this competence we're in a sitch such that we can't stop the housing boom for fear of an entire collapse of the BC economy? Please explain how either other party would have done a worse job.

No, I'm not referring specifically to Liberal housing policies. I'm not aware of any aspects of the NDP platform that would improve the housing affordability problem in BC, but I'd be interested to know about them if they exist. Might make my choice even easier. Their website just calls for "strong action", but doesn't specify what it should be: https://www.bcndp.ca/housing-speculation

As far as NDP policies I find questionable, a few are

-Remove tolls on lower mainland bridges. - this just seems like blatant vote-buying. It will worsen congestion and pollution, and reduce provincial revenue, while benefiting a small segment of the provincial population.

-(Further) delay acceptance of ride-sharing companies (Uber, etc.) - The NDP has always been the "workers' party," so I assume their interests align with the taxi drivers' union here. The policy seems poor though, from both environmental and fiscal perspectives (again). Also seems unwise politically, and I get nervous about a party when they do something that's both unwise and unpopular.

-Significantly increase minimum wage. - I support initiatives to reduce inequality. However, I don't agree that increasing minimum wage from $10.85 to $15 is the best approach. I expect it will have a significant impact on both businesses and minimum-wage employees. (Positive for some; negative for those who can no longer find work.) I believe there are better ways to help people, and that minimum wage tends to be chosen because it doesn't have a direct impact on the provincial deficit, so it's a 'free' promise. Increasing minimum wage with inflation is one thing, but a ~40% jump is another.

Those are a few things. Many of their other positions I agree with in theory, but there are few details presented so far. (Full platform is yet to be released.) Unfortunately the details that they have put forward, like those above, I find worrisome. That said, I will still likely vote NDP (or possibly Green if my riding doesn't look competitive) since I do expect they will be better for the environment (removal of tolls and blocking of ride-share notwithstanding), and I support most of their goals, even if I don't expect they'll be entirely competent in achieving them.

The housing policies are the only things that matter from an economic perspective and money is the only thing that matters. Just look at any BC economic statistics - I'm guessing ~80% of the economy at this point is tied directly or indirectly to real estate.

This situation mirrors the global warming debate: we are in a sitch such that if we fix things now it will be very painful and if not it will an an existential issue down the road. If human nature has taught me anything it's going to be the latter.

In regards to your hyphenated points:

- Haven't been following that. For public property it seems like the money always ends up going to some big donor's pocket. Have a look at the 403 or many of the other public-private partnership projects. It's almost always a terrible deal for taxpayers. It's funny - many complain about government being ineffective but not when those signing monopoly-supporting contracts.

- Have a look at some analysis online of the actual wages ride-sharing drivers make after they pay for capital costs associated with the cars, etc. I believe one generous article calculated about 2$/h for uber.

- Unless your day job is to analyze the effects of such changes you're not qualified to make that claim. Maybe the number is 16 maybe it's 2.05. Even with the most sophisticated models this would be very hard to estimate. I think we should tie MP salaries to mean wages. You'd see a nice bump to min wage every year!

You're getting too caught up in what they say. These are politicians... look at what they have done (eg the bubble).

Is it sensationalism when it's accurately describing something truly sensational?

If both temperature and CO2 levels set new records every single year, then it's stoping sensational - it becomes expected. I'm still hoping to hear solid solutions that will work on a global level, and so far, there aren't any.

As a matter of fact, with the global rise of populism it looks like in some areas, the world is going backwards. Leaked UK government memo says the environmental protections and pollution limits will have to be scaled back for UK to remain competitive after brexit. Trump is actively fighting environment protection. Cutting down of the amazon forest has slowed down in the last 20 years due to huge amount of international pressure, only to accelerate to unprecedented levels now that most of this pressure is gone.

I mean sure, Americans and other wealthy nations buying millions of electric cars is going to help somewhat, but I almost think that the world truly needs to get fucked over this, so that people on every level feel the effects or they won't care. Countries will start caring once they start losing coastal cities, corporations will start caring once global warming destroys their profits. I'm almost certain there is no other way.

> If both temperature and CO2 levels set new records every single year, then it's stoping sensational - it becomes expected.

The increase isn't the sensational part, the acceleration is. That the acceleration is happening despite emissions plateauing is even more sensational, it may be the first indication that we've hit a limit in the earths ability to absorb excess CO2.

It's really is depressing seeing the stuff about the great barrier reef etc. Hard to hopeful that we can change course when every indication is that we as a species are not capable of cooperating on such a level.

And even if everyone on earth agreed, who's going to enforce such policies? Would probably require a literal New World Order. Have fun getting the conspiritards (who would have been proven right) to go along with that one.

Hence, my "duck and cover" post elsewhere in this thread, that I sincerely hope was more joke than not.

What's more sad is that even if the nations of the world agreed to do something, with the rise of nationalism globally we would see push against "other countries telling us what to do!" like we saw in the UK. It doesn't matter that EU fishing quotas were introduced to save valuable fishing grounds - no, it's presented here as "big bad EU wanting to take jobs from poor British fishermen".

We had that moment in the 90s, then came Bush and the world's done jack all since.

>Be constructive, be creative.

Ok, solution time. Let's immediately ban everyone who denies that climate change is human made from all positions of power. That implies stripping them of both titles and wealth.

Doing this within democratic structures may be a hard problem, but that doesn't make it unsolvable.

(I'm not sure where you get the authority to ban people from authority from. That was a fun sentence!)

Why bother?

The IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change, says that over the next 200 years sea levels will rise by a meter or 2.

Damaging, for sure. Trillions of dollars in costs. But not exactly world ending.

Thats the scientific consensus. I look at the official statistics that the scientists provide, and I go "meh".

If I had the choice between magically stopping climate change forever, and stopping, I don't know, a single Iraq War (trillions in damages!), I'd have an awful hard time choosing between the 2.

Luckily, those aren't mutually exclusive choices. And climate change potentially causes wars as countries are strapped for resources, so acting to fix climate change is a twofer.

Also: you are understating the cost of climate change. These estimates are tricky to get right, but the IPCC estimates a ballpark figure of 1-4% of GDP for a 4 degrees C increase in global mean temperature. That puts the cost on the order of trillions per year, not in total.

4 degrees C is an absolute upper bound in the temperature predictions. The kind of thing you'd get if the world attempted to explicitly maximize CO2 output, instead of only pretending to minimize.

And then imagine if they did that for the next 80 years.

We are not going to climate change tomorrow, but I'd be awfully surprised if we haven't made some very good progress in the next 2 decades.

Solar prices have something like 10 to 100X decreased over the last 20 years, and there really isn't that much further (comparatively!) to go before they reach grid parity.

What I am saying is, that there are a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic about the future, and that panic seems a litter premature. We are currently easily on track to solving it, solely through normal capitalistic efforts that have created the amazing technology breakthroughs that we've seen over the last 2 decades.

Why wait for the free market fairies to magically fix climate change decades from now, when we can tax and mitigate the pollution that's destroying other people's lives and property right now? That's a well understood solution within the scope of already known science, and economics can easily predict what happens when you tax something: use of it goes down.

The free market fairies can, and already ARE fixing the problem.

It is thanks to them that we got our 30X decrease in solar prices, and made it even plausible to run the world on renewables.

But sure, do a carbon tax and externalize the externalities. I am all in favor of making people pay for the damage that they cause, directly proportional to the cost of the damage.

That is the most free market solution there is.

But my original comment was not responding to someone who made a reasonable proposal for 50$ a ton tax on carbon or something.

I was responding to someone making an outlandishly, crazy proposal.

Climate change is a problem. But it is not a world ending problem. It is a reasonably sized problem that can be solved with reasonable solutions and we do not need to kill of half of the surplus population or ban all cars or go back to living on the land or anything.

All we got to do is maybe make owning a car 20% more expensive, and then the market will figure it out, as it has been figuring it out and making a whole lot of progress for the last 20 years

I don't think you deserve the downvotes, and I agree with you that using taxes to price in the externalities of releasing carbon will help contribute to a solution. That said, I think you might be underestimating the problem. We've been trying for decades to get it under control, and as the article shows, the problem is rapidly accelerating, not improving, or even worsening at a steady rate.

We also don't know what the effect of a rapid multi-degree temperature increase will be. It's possible that it could set off positive feedback loops that will make the problem much worse. Maybe it won't, but it would be nice not to take the risk.

I agree that CO2 is very unlikely to end human civilization. But it could certainly make things much less pleasant than they need to be for a long time. In my opinion it's worth a significant amount of short-term pain to rein it in as much as possible.

Capitalistic efforts fueled and steered by taxes and subsidies. Do you really think there would have been anywhere near this progress if market forces would have left on their own?

Just for the sake of the argument: GW could be an financial and economic opportunity as well: The planet is inundated by liquidities since the 90' (30 years ago!) as states are in a never ending money war. This have been dramatically furthered with quantitative easing and negative interests. As inflation is something seen as dispectable as it lowers the values of shares, here is an opportunity to have money used for something useful, instead of being wasted. Indeed I would prefer a new spatial program, but war for renewables will do the business.

> The IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change, says that over the next 200 years sea levels will rise by a meter or 2. Damaging, for sure. Trillions of dollars in costs. But not exactly world ending.

Sea rise is only one of the expected consequences.

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

You should probably go look up the Anthropocene Mass Extinction and the concept of a food web. We're actually looking at the end of the world as we know it here.

You either do this via dictatorship, which is problematic (highly unlikely to remain committed to environmental agenda in long run), or via democracy, but if via democracy, then it's pointless. If people are willing to do this, they're willing to cut carbon. The problem with those denialists is that we keep electing them!

We already do this. Go read up on how towns in Florida regularly get flooded by seawater and development continues apace.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/01032016/ft-lauderdale-cl...

Miami Beach has already spent about $400 million to keep the ocean at bay. At some point, it becomes unsustainable.

They seem to be trying to prevent the inevitable. I wonder how much it would cost to raise the city by a floor or two and embrace their future island?

Well, in order to prepare for something, people first need to understand what they are preparing for and why.

TFA has the why..

The gap between sensationalism and pragmatism is measurement. The graph shows an accelerated growth of CO2 emission, but lacks exact profiling data to deduce reasonable actions.

duck and cover.

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