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Comment by Retric | Hacker News Reader

The problem is human infrastructure is built around existing climates. Something small like 2% more rain seems meaningless, but add that on top of extreme events and overtopping levees instead of being a 100 year event it's a 10 year event. Tropical diseases / insects stop being so tropical etc etc. It's a death of 1000 cuts.

On top of that clean energy is cheap, the difference between coal electricity and renewable sources is vastly less than the costs from climate change. So doing nothing has significant costs from climate changes but cutting emissions 50% is fairly cheap.

PS: Electric cars might win on their own even without considering climate change. So, we can make huge difference in adoption without significant costs.

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It's just not that easy. We also have 14% more green vegetation today than 30 years ago. The climate system is one endless positive negative feedback system and we don't have enough data to say anything truly conclusive other than the climate is changing and things are getting hotter.

Anyone claiming they know how this is going to turn out on either side are simply lying or are trapped in some ideological self-delusion. We have no way of knowing.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything but just that what we should do might not be ignoring the reality of a majority of this world who are not rich enough to install solar panels on their roofs.

With regards to the Pascals wager argument again I am more worried about a meteor hitting us and that brings us back to the discussion again about how to ensure growth which pays for technological advancements and helps more people get out of poverty.

Clean energy isn't cheap, it's subsidized heavily (yes other energy forms are too) and it's just not realistic for most of the world to use solar cells or wind as they don't have the infrastructure at all to support unreliable energy sources.

My personal belief is that we should assume the climate is changing and then use that to build solutions rather than endless and meaningless debates about whether climate change is true or not which brings us nowhere and doesn't change the climate.

If you believe things are going to be bad then make a company that deals with the things you believe are most problematic. If you believe the sea levels are rising the build solutions to deal with that if you believe methane is going to suffocate us then figure out how we can encapsulate it.

You can say the same thing about dropping a ball. Philosophically I have no way of knowing what will happen.

However, science is far from useless when making predictions.

PS: All forms of energy are currently subsidized. Yet, even without subsidies renewable are currently cheaper than coal in many possibly most areas.

I agree but again then we are back to Pascals Wager. I consider meteor hit more dangerous and human flourishing more important than climate change for the reasons I oulined.

Adequating human flourishing with our current CO2 output, discounted at zero while the measurable ongoing and certain future costs mount up, is not fit for a hacker. Systems are real things, no matter what defending your entitlements demands. Good luck with the climate.

Is that what I wrote?

Close enough I think: setting up a false analogy between climates and meteors is an argument against action. Packaging this in seductive can-do arguments for the HN crowd does not change the reality of the global predicament (not problem) we are in. The maximum commitment to R&D and the belt tightening that are both not happening now would probably not be enough to avoid major global disruption.

First of all. Its not a false analogy at all. Meteors have struck before and eradicated almost all life. Climate have been hotter than it is right now and didn't have the same effect.

Second of all I didn't mention anything about not doing anything I specifically have stated the opposite. The fact that you will straight out lie about what I said shows your true colors.

Have a good day.

Risk is dependent on probability not just outcome. The odds of a major asteroid hitting in the next 50 years is under 1 in 1,000,000 so it's not worth spending much effort preventing. Climate change is close to 100% certain so it's worth spending vastly more effort preventing relative to the downsides.

Really though, I am talking about spending well under 1/1,000th US GDP. So, that's worth it even if climate change is bad, but not devastating.

The risk of a large amount of humans dying from not being prosperous enough to care for themselves every year the next 100 years is 100% if there is not enough growth.

You are welcome to isolate this discussion if thats what you need, but to convince me at least you will need show a much broader perspective here and care not just for nature and the people that might be here in the future but also those who are here right now.

I am less worried about climate change than of many other things including a major or even fairly large meteor.

Do you think Climate Change is somehow going to help these people? Because it's also going to directly kill a lot of people in absolute terms.

The technology is here, using current levels of fossil fuels is not going to aid global GDP. It's really more a question of which groups end up with the proceeds and many very wealthy people would be worse off if oil fields become worthless. That's the push-back on this issue.

PS: It's not even a jobs issue, there are only 50,000 coal mining jobs in the US. It's all about infrastructure and owning existing resources.

I think that denying them access to cheap and reliable fuel such as fossil fuels isn't going to allow them to deal with the climate change thats happening no matter what we do.

So I think you have it backward.

It's not a question of limiting coal/oil. The global poor can't afford these resources today and that's not going to change.

The third world mostly avoided using landlines because cellphones ended up cheaper. Coal and Oil are also likely to be skipped over for cheaper alternatives.

Consider, in the US people save money by installing Solar at home vs using the high quality electric grid. When the grid is on average down for several hours a week the incentives are even stronger.

The progress of technology is not the same as progress of energy infrastructure. They didn't avoid using landlines they got a better and cheaper alternative.

Poorer countries are using fossil fuels today, more so than they are driving around Teslas, let alone having solar on their roofs which is an investment mostly for those of us who can afford it (a small fraction of the western world)

Poorer countries don't have a lot of cars. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_vehicles_... which includes cars, vans, buses, freight and other trucks.

Niger/ Gambia / Niger / Myanmar all have ~7 vehicles per 1000 people, and Togo is down at 2 where the US is at 910. So sure some cars, but not a significant investment even

China which is a good model of where these countries are going manufactures both electric and IC's. So while they are at 154/1,000 it's a lower percentage of IC's than the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car_use_by_country

They have even less electrical cars and solar on their rooftops, so you are just proving my point.

You have that backwards China has 2.1% electric cars USA is 1.13% electric.

China also has vastly more Solar panel adoption than the US because they are building a lot of infrastructure and are using the cheapest options. China even uses solar hot water heaters. https://www.asiabiomass.jp/english/topics/1209_06.html

The poorest countries are a rounding error right now, but don't expect them to use more expensive fossil fuel options.

No I don't have it backward.

You need to show that electric cars are the norm. Otherwise you are proving my point.

> The climate system is one endless positive negative feedback system and we don't have enough data to say anything truly conclusive other than the climate is changing and things are getting hotter.

The no-feedback warming per doubling of CO2 is 3.7 W/m^2, which is held to be roughly equivalent to 1 degree of global temperature. There are some fairly readily ascertainable facts about climate change, sufficient to demonstrate that it is happening, and that it is caused by human CO2 emissions. The Earth is a complex system, but the critical effects are at the top of the atmosphere, which is much less complex. The lower bound for the warming effects is consequently very well known. And it's not so much the case that there are large quantities of this other well-known greenhouse gas lying around, and more like we misnamed this planet. There is uncertainty when trying to model anything, but I'm afraid at this point the "not a serious problem" warming scenarios have been ruled out.

These problems are definitely going to be serious. But how serious they will be and whether or not all the doom and gloom is justified depends on how our societies react to the challenges.

It depends on how quickly we can develop technology and make it available to everyone. It depends on how quickly people can adapt to migration situations. It depends on countless non linear interactions that are unpredictable.

I think what we can say is that the pace of change is absolutely crucial. If land is lost to deserts or to the sea at a pace noticable only by asking your great grand parents, then I think we're good.

But if a billion people have to move within 20 or 30 years because large poor cities can no longer be defended against the sea or because technology to deal with desertification is only available to rich countries then I fear the gloom and doom is more than justified.

> But if a billion people have to move within 20 or 30 years because large poor cities can no longer be defended against the sea or because technology to deal with desertification

That seems perfectly reasonable. Nowhere near doom and gloom. There's no doom there, that I can see. Moving a billion people is not that big of a deal, as long as there is incentive. The idea that "the sea" will push people around has been going on forever and doesn't cause mass migrations in terms of the earth. It's the food and distribution a population has to worry about that will cause trouble. Everything else is well within human abilities to mitigate (even when average lifespans decrease by a few decades).

It's very hard to even respond to you. Moving a billion people is not that hard? Unbelievable ignorance, hubris, and/or FUD.

If you believe climate change is going to have that effect on us what other choice do we have?

We have no other choice probably. But I have no idea what the point of saying it's going to be easy when nothing even remotely close has happened in the history of humanity, and we can't even deal with infrastructure problems for a few thousand people at a time due to the incredible greed inherent to human society. It is rather a humanity breaking event that approaches, and its weight is heartbreaking.

Moving a 1,000,000,000 people is not that difficult? Do you have any idea what you're talking about? That would be the largest migration in human history, by a wide margin.

Recently, we've had something on the order of 2,500,000 people moving to Europe and it's widely seen as somewhere between a crisis and a catastrophe.

> Do you have any idea what you're talking about?

I think I have a better conceptualization than many people "discussing" this issue.

> That would be the largest migration in human history, by a wide margin

Nope. How many people have migrated from mexico to the US over the last 50 years? Are you assuming that one day 1 million people wake up and everyone has to move because the ocean is rising? How many feet to permanently displace 1 million over what time and how far do you really think anyone will go? You get people living next to live volcanos in Hawaii where the largest island is kinda the size of Orange County, CA. smh

Calm down and rethink what we're talking about.

> Nope. How many people have migrated from mexico to the US over the last 50 years?

A hell of a lot fewer than a billion (again: 1,000,000,000) given that the entire US population is only ~400,000,000 today.

I expect the average HN user to have better numeracy than this.

Well, considering that nearly 2 billion will die in the normal course over the next 30 years, I would suspect it's not as big a deal as you make out.

None of the infrastructure in s low-lying city like Miami is designed to last more than a few decades anyway. Gradually move a bit inland, or elevate foundations, or throw up a levee. Big woop. Not that big of a deal. Pretty much every structure standing -- every road, bridge, airport -- is going to be demolished and replaced within the next century anyway.

Infrastructure is generally built to last for a very long time. The average US bridge is 42 years old with many over 100 years old. Further, the tendency is to not move when the ocean rises just look at Venice. People are going to move as otherwise useful infrastructure is destroyed at vast expense.

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