Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots' | Hacker News Reader

Climate report: Scientists politely urge 'act now, idiots'

bbc.com

83 pointsrotw48 comments

Britain has just approved restarting fracking. Germany wants to demolish ancient forest to mine more lignite for power stations. The US wants to save the coal mining industry. The North West passage is almost ice free in summer. Australia's coal exports are booming.

IPCC thinks it will need 2.5% of global GDP for 20 years to fix.

Act now? It still doesn't seem like any of the world's electable politicians even believe the problem yet. Just in greenwash and talking about GDP growth.

The next generation is fucked.

Edit: That's very disappointing to see. Submission goes from top 5 on front page to nowhere, yet isn't flagged.

To mars, luna, and orbital platforms we go!

There's not going to be anything more hospitable than Earth for a long time, long enough for the warnings here to come true and then some.

Doesn't hurt to spread out though.

>Germany wants to demolish ancient forest to mine more lignite for power stations.

It isn't Germany, the RWE corporation wants this because in the near future they will loose the ability to mine coal in that area, so they'll happily pay off politicians and raze the forest to get at whatever coal is down there until the time's up.

The easy and most efficient solution to all these problems it to outlaw oil and coal now. It would cause all kinds of auxiliary damage but it would likely be cheaper than continuing down the current path.

Good point, though from memory of news reports the energy minister is in favour. I imagine it's far less popular with the public.

In light of this morning's IPCC report I think you are right with the second point. An outright ban may soon cause less auxiliary damage than trying to encourage economies (i.e. ignoring the issue)

I was reading a blog post about problems in academia which said the following in the first paragraph:

> There’s a narrative I find kind of troubling, but that unfortunately seems to be growing more common in science. The core idea is that the mere existence of perverse incentives is a valid and sufficient reason to knowingly behave in an antisocial way, just as long as one first acknowledges the existence of those perverse incentives.

http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2018/10/02/no-its-not-the-inc...

As a cyclist who's slowly switching to a mostly vegetarian diet, partly to reduce my carbon emissions, I find this quote to apply equally well to people who believe that climate change is a problem but seem to want to wait for the government to act before they do much.

Yes, maybe my efforts are "wasted" in some respect, but I don't think I'm missing much anything valuable anyway by cycling for example, so that eliminates the downside in my view.

I guess baby steps might justify your approach. But I think a rethink on the level of global civilization is needed before we can make any sort of realistic progress into an actually sustainable species that might live 1 million or more years. Barring that with our current societal approach and trajectory we may go extinct at any time and the system is generally set up to support such an outcome. Eating different food or bicycling does not fix how society is set up to function and behave.

You're correct that much larger changes are needed. I don't claim my approach would solve the problem, just be one step towards a solution. I don't even know what a complete solution looks like, but I do know the changes I've made personally are likely compatible. And I'm frustrated that very few people are willing to go as far as I have.

A complete solution might be impossible, and we might have to make the least bad decision out of many.

Does anyone know how much carbon is released to grow the extra food that you use cycling verses what you would use driving? Food production is very energy intensive and the human body very inefficient.

You can’t effect the amount of carbon released by adopting a low carbon lifestyle when the price of fossil fuels is above the cost of production. All reducing demand at the margin does is lower the marginal price causing an increase in consumption elsewhere in the economy.

https://bicycleuniverse.info/bicycling-wastes-gas/

According to this a "typical" omnivore cyclist produces about 3 times less carbon than a "typical" driver. Vegan and vegetarian are about 4 times less. You can play around with the numbers in the calculator. I think this guy's probably biased towards veganism, but this is what I've seen.

I haven't seen a comparison with motorcycles or electric vehicles, or a comparison that took into account the embodied energy of the vehicles.

Edit: This calculator also assumes equal trip distances between modes of transportation, which is not realistic in my experience. Cyclists tend to have shorter trips. So that's another factor to consider.

> You can’t effect the amount of carbon released by adopting a low carbon lifestyle when the price of fossil fuels is above the cost of production. All reducing demand at the margin does is lower the marginal price causing an increase in consumption elsewhere in the economy.

If that's true, then I guess the goal is to slowly reduce the price. Perhaps cycling is ineffective in terms of carbon emissions. This is okay for me as I find either the cost or physical fitness benefits convincing in isolation.

Thanks - as I suspected it is really complex and very dependent on the assumptions.

I would love to cycle more, but I fear for my life riding on roads with traffic. I have seen far too many killed cyclist with my own eyes - in fact when I think about the only dead people I have seen are cyclists and motorcyclists.

The obvious difference is that a human on a bicycle is moving on the order of 10 times less mass than a human in a car. Like my sibling post notes, it could be different for, e.g, a motorcycle, but a cyclist also produces about 0% of the SOx, NOx, or particulate emmissions of those vehicles, whichever is a somewhat different conversation.

Well those particulates and gases are still produced in the production and transport of food. If you eat more food then more will have to be grown and transported.

Some of that food could be a carbon sink, depending on how it's grown, how it's transported and where it ends up. With the later it might even get a second life generating electricity.

Yes this is all true, but it makes it really hard to know what the carbon footprint actually is.

How many calories do you think two hours of cycling uses?

It's not much, and it's comfortably within what most people are eating already.

Maybe, but without some good data it is hard to say. I do know that us sloth-like generation eat far less than our ancestors.

The extra movement that increases the resting metabolic rate would cost about 500 kcal combined with the load. Estimating for an hour of cycling daily.

This means about one extra meal to match which would actually cut into waste if it is done smart. Or perhaps you do not even have to adjust anything. (obesity is a thing)

> the human body very inefficient

the human brain uses 20 watts and has more computational power than the best supercomputer, so you should be careful.

how far does a car go with 1 yogurt?

Suppose it is a sweet yogurt and has 300 kcal in a package (1 kcal/ml) and we use bioethanol in a car, it is a match 1:1. Ignoring conversion losses and metabolism, a car taking 6l/100km and a trained human on foot would go some 12 km on this. (human on a bicycle is comparable to a specially designed ecocar)

A fully manned car (5 persons) or a loaded truck wins by a good margin even over a tandem or cargo bike. A bus or truck even more so.

The main difference is in initial material costs, refining metals is expensive. The problem remains how to cleanly burn and source bioethanol.

> how far does a car go with 1 yogurt?

wow, didn't expect actual coaster approximation

Stop eating animals. Governments are slow to act, but switching to a plant based diet is something you can do right now.

I don't understand why someone would downvote this, as I thought the norm was to downvote inappropriate and unjustified comments, not comments whose opinion one simply doesn't share especially when as in this case the comment recommends something that is scientific fact: one can reduce one's carbon and methane footprints by abstaining from meat.

If you don't like this comment isn't it better to respond with your reasoning?

I admit to being tired of this vague moralizing. We're in this mess because of corrupt energy industries and fucked up factory farming on a global scale, not because I like chicken nuggets. There is absolutely zero chance that we avoid global warming because enough people voluntarily switched to a vegetarian diet. It's a non-solution, just like everyone biking, turning their a/c to 85 and heaters to 60, etc etc. It will never, ever happen unless government makes it happen, and I'm sure advocates know it, and I'm therefore forced to conclude it's just some weird eco-shaming.

Shrill messages can and do backfire, but I think there might be a point to add. If we go vegetarian, as an example, we're likely promoting new vegetarian industries which then can create real alternatives for wider and wider groups of people. For example if people start a craze for foods made from kelp and it spreads, then it can become a part of larger government-arranged action.

The same is true for alternative energies.

Meanwhile you'll agree that the consumer is indeed the most important part of any economic activity, and that they often have the most choice, as most corporate managers answer to shareholders who in turn answer to short-term profits.

These industries would come in at a cost to existing ones, essentially zero sum on jobs.

Consumers do not have enough pressure and tend to go for cheaper option rather than cleaner. And for avoiding imagined concentrated fears rather than diffuse long term loss. Which is why we're in the current predicament.

> Meanwhile you'll agree that the consumer is indeed the most important part of any economic activity, and that they often have the most choice

I actually disagree. I think it's difficult to be a healthy vegetarian (let alone a vegan) if you're in rural or poorer areas, as the majority of the US and indeed the world are. Most people aren't choosing their diets, they're eating what they can, or succumbing to billions of dollars of advertising carefully crafted to hypnotize them into brand loyalty to corporations dependent on factory farming. It's a fundamental flaw in market-based thinking: consumers often don't have serious choices or the information or resources to make good ones.

It's also a convenient escape hatch for irresponsible corporations and corrupt governments. "Well we agree there's a problem, but we can't fix it without unethical market regulations".

My biggest issue with living in the South and (slowly) shifting vegetarian is restaurants. I want to go out and eat with my friends, but most of them just don't have good vegetarian options, and it's really annoying. It's part of the reason why I haven't completely gone vegetarian yet.

I was vegetarian for years and basically lived on fries and bad salads. I feel your pain haha.

The easiest thing we could do immediately is to produce fermented 100% bioethanol (petrol), retune cars, trucks and ships to burn it clean. (aircraft need more caloric fuel) This only solves emissions and not completely.

Electric powered by uranium and renewables solves more and is also immediately feasible though expensive to build infrastructure for battery handling.

Second thing would be to disperse industry and farming more evenly so that we do not have to transport food long distances. Remove energy intensive packaging (cans and bottles - use dispensers or foil), replace lighting with most efficient available. Switch manufacturing to as much on demand as possible.

Most of the startups we've seen grow massively in the last decade through word of mouth have been because people make a change and then tell others about it, i.e. viral growth.

If you switch to become veggie and start biking, and persuade >1 others to do the same, we should see exponential growth and you will have played your part in a substantial change for society.

I don't think it needs government intervention. The reasons to do it are compelling enough on their own with a little research. Look into it and consider making the change.

This is generally because either it makes sense economically (YouTube dropped video distribution costs to zero), you avoid some unpleasantness (grubhub), or you're psychologically manipulated to more or less be addicted to a service (Facebook) -- in many cases all of the above. Network effects of going vegetarian are minimal, and have been since there's been meat.

It absolutely needs government intervention. For decades scientists have been warning about climate change and diets have not changed. If you look at any region with meaningful impact you'll see it's 100% due to regulation, whether that's penalties for bad garbage practices, penalties for water or electricity waste, etc. There is simply no way we crowdsource this, and my evidence is that we've had almost 40 years to do it and haven't even come close.

It's past time to recognize that this is happening. We're going to experience the fallout of a rapidly warming planet. We need everyone to switch from prevention mode to cure mode. The political will to avoid this just isn't, and never will be there.

It’s really disappointing that the political systems we have don’t encourage long term stewardship of our resources.

I don’t see any kind of reform happening in the US until negative consequences are felt by a significant chunk of the population.

Yup. There's just no way us humans are going to 'act now'. Any response at a global (and, in the US, national and state) level will be 100% reactive, and 0% proactive. Since there are still people arguing over the cause, I'm starting to think it might be more productive to move the conversation from trying to be proactive (which requires everyone to agree on the cause) to reactive (which does not).

In other words, start preparing for the outcome of this. We, as a species, cannot seem to be able to stop what we are doing.

The main outcomes would be localized famines, general food shortage, freshwater shortage, increased heat, mass migrations, some flooding.

What do you think we can do about those antecedents we're not doing right now? (not argumentative, maybe I'm missing something)

We will have to deal with the source of the problem sooner or later; given enough trapped heat most of the planet will turn into deserts.

What to me is troubling is that we're just getting started as a species. This whole industrialization thing is maybe 400 years old, the species around 30,000 years old. Things have existed on the planet for hundreds of millions of years. The future does not look bright for our species.

It's disappointing that such a political system is necessary for individuals to act responsibly, ethically and morally.

Welcome to [REDACTED], land of the free and home to the brave.

Dang (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/dang) arthurcolle I too have been damned.

> don’t encourage long term stewardship of our resources

Politicians are completely incapable to make a balanced yearly budget, so what do we expect there exactly?

If a major economy ever balances its budget it's making a huge mistake. GDP is driven by investment, the more you can invest the better, and if you aren't you can bet your rivals are.

The balanced budget trope is abused by right wing politicians who want to (literally?) starve the welfare state while subsidizing business and defense. These are the same politicians who deny climate change in order to protect business, and the same politicians whose denial of climate change will destroy poorer, browner countries, and the same politicians who will deny aid and asylum to refugees from those destroyed countries. Don't fall for any of their horseshit, they're basically just corrupt, and incidentally monstrously evil.

You mean until it's too late? With the current wave of nationalist populism, chance of action is shrinking. One horrifying potential feedback loop: lack of serious global action allows continued climate change, creating more refugees, intensifying nationalist populism, creating illiberal democracy, allowing further climate change, and so on.

In fact, various US government programs use taxpayer money to shield parts of the population from negative consequences of climate change already. For example, FEMA and the National Flood Insurance Program subsidize property owners in high-flood-risk areas and pass along the immediate economic cost of rising sea levels to everyone else. Fannie and Freddie do the same thing by maintaining lax flood insurance requirements and taking losses (at the margin) when uninsured homeowners end up underwater (figuratively and literally) and walk away.

I do think a revenue-neutral carbon tax as described in [0] could be politically viable in the not-so-distant future. But maybe I'm being too optimistic on that - coal miners seem to be awfully overrepresented in the current political environment.

[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/06/28/196355493/econ...

Al Gore said 2015.

Enjoy life while you can, it won't be here for long.

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