Germany’s Failed Climate Goals a Wake-Up Call for Governments Everywhere | Hacker News Reader

Germany’s Failed Climate Goals a Wake-Up Call for Governments Everywhere

bloomberg.com

31 pointsericdanielski11 comments

Honestly, is there actually any chance of there _not_ being an environmental disaster by the end of the 21st century? I'm not saying we shouldn't keep trying, but the political willpower just doesn't exist. Significant portions of the worlds' population either:

- Depend on CO2-emitting technologies for their daily sustenance and/or existence

- Flat-out deny that humanity is exacerbating climate change

- Are completely apathetic to the issue since it doesn't affect their lives (at this time)

IMHO, there's an argument to be made that researchers are better off coming up with "band-aids" that can be applied in 50-60 years when first-world countries finally run out of ways to ignore the problem (i.e., when Wall Street floods, French vineyards stop producing, Saudi oil wells spontaneously combust, and sunbathing for more than 5 minutes, even with SPF 50 applied, results in 2nd degree burns).

Technologically, the answers are out there, waiting for someone with cajones to lay down the law. The longer it takes, the fewer the options and the more unpleasant the unavoidable responses become.

Don't depend on political willpower. If it happens it will happen because traditional carbon-intensive energy sources will become unprofitable because of renewables getting cheaper.

And when any of that nasty stuff happens, first-world countries will be a drop in the bucket in the world's energy consumption structure and whatever they do or not do, will no longer matter. Basically this is why climate change efforts don't work so much now: OK you can implement these unprofitable measures, it will only result in your industry reducing due to incompetitiveness and third world countries displacing it - using whole lot less efficient, dirty, carbon-intensive technologies - making things worse.

So, just wait for renewables to actually become cheaper with no subsidies and drive carbon-based energy out of business. Which is likely to happen, especially as the main missing link - batteries - are making huge progress in cost in the recent couple years, finally. World energy landscape will look totally different if they get 3x cheaper than now, and that is more than likely. If it doesn't ever happens there is nothing we can do and we'll just have to learn to live with the climate damaged to whatever point it happens.

Germany's shutting down all its nuclear power in favor of "sunny days when the wind is blowing" energy. And people are surprised that this doesn't work out so well?

"I am not so much pro-nuclear as I am pro-arithmetic." -- Stuart Brand.

“The human fingerprint on rising temperatures was clear in the heatwave this year,” said Michael Mann, a professor of atmospheric science at Penn State University.

the famous "hockey stick" actor was exposed using temperature adjustment code with a comment called "fudge factor" to "hide the decline" that we found out from climategate leak

In two other programs, briffa_Sep98_d.pro and briffa_Sep98_e.pro, the "correction" is bolder by far. The programmer (Keith Briffa?) entitled the "adjustment" routine “Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!” And he or she wasn't kidding. Now IDL is not a native language of mine, but its syntax is similar enough to others I'm familiar with, so please bear with me while I get a tad techie on you.

Here's the "fudge factor" (notice the brash SOB actually called it that in his REM statement): yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)5.+1904]

valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,-0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6,2.6]0.75 ; fudge factor

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/11/crus_source...

Not to be rude, but the science appears to be against you here. Wikipedia covers the "hockey stick controversy"[1] in rather meticulous detail, with the end of the introduction noting:

> More than two dozen reconstructions, using various statistical methods and combinations of proxy records, have supported the broad consensus shown in the original 1998 hockey-stick graph, with variations in how flat the pre-20th century "shaft" appears.[12][13] The 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report cited 14 reconstructions, 10 of which covered 1,000 years or longer, to support its strengthened conclusion that it was likely that Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the 20th century were the highest in at least the past 1,300 years.[14] Over a dozen subsequent reconstructions, including Mann et al. 2008 and PAGES 2k Consortium 2013, have supported these general conclusions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

Hi thank you, I don't think your comment was rude in fact it was one of the nicest interactions of my day I do, however disagree. The source you gave me, specifically ... "Over a dozen subsequent reconstructions, including Mann et al. 2008 and PAGES 2k Consortium 2013, have supported these general conclusions." subsequentally refers to the same exact persons ("Mann et all") data that I am referring to, -- so to speak, we have come full circle: my source shows a flaw, your argument refers to the flawed data, as true. Do you see this? I am pointing to data showing Manning doctored the data, and you are giving me the same doctored data as proof. I would be honored if you understand my point here. Also I encourage you to read the link [1] and find any flaws. I encourage you to engage critical thinking and play a "contrarian" view on the subject matter. You might be extremely surprised to what you find.

1. https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2009/11/crus_source...

Mann did finally admit to being wrong about the hockey stick.

>We conclude that model overestimation of tropospheric warming in the early twenty-first century is partly due to systematic deficiencies in some of the post-2000 external forcings used in the model simulations.

https://www.nature.com/articles/ngeo2973

> external forcings used in the model simulations

you can read the code that does the "external forcings" and see the comment "fudge factor". I'm just reading their source code.

That was obvious 15 years ago. It didn't matter to them then either. What mattered was the test of time. The model failed so badly, Mann himself could no longer support it. I just thought you'd like to know that Mann quietly disavowed the model, since nobody has been allowed to add that to the wikipedia page. Nuclear shills are still trying to convince everyone that CO2 is more dangerous than radioactive waste. Nothing changes with them.

You need to keep up with the denialism cutting edge, they’ve given up on attacking the incontrovertible science, and are pivoting to defeatism, “global greening” and other versions of “it’s happening, so what?” Get with the times man!... And That website is bizarre! A bit of climate denialism, a dash of pro-lifer, and just a soupson of islamophobia. Charming.

To be charitable though, I don’t necessarily blame people for looking at the magnitude of the problem and deciding to go deeply into denial. With the dearth of hope and workable solutions, pretending that there is no problem and attacking old numbers probably feels better than the alternatives. What I can’t forgive or stand though, are people who deny because the solutions are politically unpalatable to them.

A better read than “American Thinker” would be https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change (Especially the many and varied citations)

https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

https://www.csicop.org/si/show/the_consensus_on_anthropogeni...

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