Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated' | Hacker News Reader

Oceans 'soaking up more heat than estimated'

bbc.co.uk

132 pointsrjknight219 comments

Yet more bad news on the climate change front.

Based on previous discussions on HN, I'm sure there will be plenty of people proposing ambitious and creative technological solutions.

I fear that there's an anthropic bias[0] at work where humans are convinced we will solve this problem because we've always solved other problems before. But we forget that if we hadn't solved those previous issues, we wouldn't be here to talk about it (and it has been very touch-and-go[1] before). That leads us to overestimate our chances of eventually sorting this out, too.

But maybe this is start of the great filter? [2]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_bias

[1] https://io9.gizmodo.com/close-calls-three-times-when-the-hum...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

We already have solved the issue. We know how to produce massive amount of energy, all day long. We just don't want to implement it, because of local incident risk. And because of this we are in the middle of a global incident. Technology available in 5 years are already too late.

> We already have solved the issue. We know how to produce massive amount of energy, all day long. We just don't want to implement it

That means we haven't solved the issue. The solution might require as much of a change in human psychology as a change in technology.

> We know how to produce massive amount of energy, all day long.

Are you hinting at nuclear power? If so, I (somewhat) agree with you.

The environmentalists that I used to hang out with believed with a burning passion that nuclear power was an absolute evil. I understand that perspective, though I disagree with it.

If one takes the position that The Main Future Threat is related to and rooted in human released greenhouse gases, then nuclear power is right back on the table, front and center, even given its challenges, risks and long-term side effects.

About those, though: my understanding is that it has been possible, for some time now, to produce nuclear power plants that are exceptionally safe and cost effective. And with substantial research dollars, the plethora of possible 'next gen' fission reactor technologies would yield all kinds of fruit to, for example, mitigate or remove the long term side effects.

Given all of that, I think solar+battery (along with hydro, wind and their up and coming friends) is now the way to go, given how much costs have come down.

Going all into nuclear power probably made sense a couple of decades ago.

>We just don't want to implement it, because of local incident risk.

More likely due to capital. It's always capital. We're going to kill all life for capital.

The endless growth of runaway Capitalism with no plans to put a halt to is potentially our great filter.

We'll need to send another Sagan vinyl up to warn about the dangers of Capitalism among societies.

IPCC claims we need to expand beyond capitalism to solve this [1].

[1] https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/18/the-hope-at-the-heart-o...

It's not capitalism because authoritarian states aren't cutting emissions either. Capitalism gives the people with money what they want, autocracies give the people with power what they want, and so on, and not one single distribution of getting-what-they-want is going vegan and cutting emissions to zero. The only remaining conclusion is that nobody wants to go vegan and stop emissions.

If you want a government that does that, you would have to give all power to a small group of people like you. That would never happen because there are so many groups with other immense interests that if you are going to let one "win" and control everything the odds of you winning are almost nil. The only option is to somehow get more people to want to change everything.

Capitalism is fully compatible with authoritarianism and often even welcomes it. Authoritarian states are more willing to help reduce costs incurred by things like human rights and labor laws.

>It's not capitalism because authoritarian states aren't cutting emissions either.

Are they capitalistic or economies though? Right wing systems that value privitization? Countries that are cutting emissions in extremely significant manners (relative to their countries, they can't control the world), and putting out well reachable net-zero emissions goals, are the furthest left wing countries in the world at the moment that have checks on Capitalism.

You could have a right-wing communist state, just imagine what would happen if you made a commune out of poor US rural republicans. The "left-wing" countries aren't cutting emissions due to their system of government, they are cutting emissions because of the attitude of their people.

The government they have is a direct representation of the people, who collectively have put checks on capitalism to be able to favor their own lives and the lives of their fellow citizens over capital.

China produces nearly twice the carbon dioxide emissions as the second largest carbon dioxide producer, USA. China is a communist state.

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/sc...

how would that statistic look like if it attributed the carbon where the end product was consumed? At least China isn't calling global warming a hoax...

I've never thought about it like that... Your completely right, and i'm sure it would show the US is doing alot more harm than previously thought.

> China is a communist state.

Yet its market operates more like a capitalistic one.

It's also not entirely fair to point the finger wholly at China on CO2 output when Europe and the US have effectively outsourced their manufacturing and most polluting processes to companies over there.

It's really a capitalist state managed by an authoritarian government. Despite that the ruling party used "Communist" as it's name.

China is a capitalist state run by converted former Marxists using the language of Marxist-Leninism to administrate an authoritarian market economy.

They've in a sense found a way to use Marx's critique of capitalism towards its opposite intent. Marx saw the authoritarianism inherent in the market and how it was tied to wage labour exploitation? The Chinese Communist party has harnessed that authoritarianism to increase exploitation to its maximum.

The Communist Party in China are as "communist" as the later Roman emperors were "Christian."

Do the workers own the means of production?

No, therefore China is not a communist state. It is one in name only. Its economy is extremely capitalistic.

> China is a communist state.

China is, actually, the living proof capitalism works a lot better without a democracy holding it back.

For the majority, perhaps. Try telling that to the Uighurs of Xinjiang.

There is nothing in a democracy either that prevents minorities from being oppressed. Examples of democratic countries with oppressed minorities are plenty.

I agree.

I think you're misinterpreting the tone of the parent's comment as an endorsement, when it is likely in fact a critique.

Marx's commentary on so-called democratic states: "The executive of the modern state is nothing but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie" rings quite true today. In China they've perfected this by getting the pesky petty grumbles of the population out of the way.

This is also a crisis of critical thought. There's an utter lack and/or willingness to imagine any other reality than the current market economy. This goes even to the length of advocating some sort of scorched earth policies to decrease the earth's population since in their mind, the only human is the market-human and is as such inherently a terrible polluter.

This is fundamentalism.

There are plenty of attempts to think about other systems, implement them, and advocate for change. They all lack something important: success.

Also ironically it is a market of competing ideas to markets.

There's not been too many as it's remarkably difficult to implement an alternative to a market economy outside of revolution. That likely favours specific alternatives.

I've not seen attempts to implement any approach that is seeking sustainability, or constrain growth, or break out of the duopoly of centrally planned vs free market.

That leaves a lot of ideas, of varying credibility, that have never been trialled in any way, shape, or form. Off the top of my head "doughnut economics" was briefly popular in the news a few years ago. It remains a thought experiment. (I don't remember enough about it to comment on its viability).

Coops, communes, nonprofits, open source projects... lots of attempts to develop a sustainable micro economy. Build up from there.

> They all lack something important: success.

Are you sure? The increasing automation will perhaps give us a future where most people don't have to work and we'll still have plenty of food, shelter, social interaction and entertainment - the latter is almost free in this digital world.

Maybe it is just me, but it's as if one can start to see the contours of it forming, slowly, though, as many of the remaining automation tasks are really, really hard. Like building a house, or making something that can do the house chores that we don't have machines for yet.

Your counterexample is an unrealized future hypothetical utopia. I am not sure where you are going with that, but I am sure that isn’t a “success” because it doesn’t exist yet. That is just a simple question of logical validity not of empiricism.

Not the OP, but it is not 'unrealized' as you say. Read enlightenment now by steven pinkerton. He has a whole book about how we are currently 'realizing' this 'future hypothetical utopia'

When I was 18, microcomputer advocates were predicting 3-day working weeks because of all the hum-drum work computers would do for us.

I'd like to believe in your dream and I'm not saying it won't come to pass, but we'll have to redesign our culture to stop fetishising hard work first.

This will probably happen someday, but it's probably centuries away, or at least a single century away if we're being very optimistic. We have to figure out how we can deal with the problems we're facing in our lifetimes.

If success would be a prerequisite of evolution it would grind to a halt.

That may have sounded profound but it comes off poorly because it gets the theory of evolution completely wrong.

Success is the differentiator that allows for the selection part of natural selection. Also evolution cannot “grind to a halt” because it is an outcome of thermodynamics.

Evolution isn’t a metaphor. It is still the underlying physical process even in selection of political systems.

Did I though? Success is the differentiator post-mutation. If mutation itself ceases due to the prerequisite, evolution does too. But why do you feel the need to read and dissect an analogy so literally in the first place? It's not the point.

> If mutation itself ceases due to the prerequisite, evolution does too.

But then your reply doesn't make sense. Here's what parent said:

> There are plenty of attempts to think about other systems, implement them, and advocate for change. They all lack something important: success.

That part would imply that mutation is happening, just unsuccessfully. If you wanted to disagree with that, then your analogy was just confusing.

Given what I wrote in my original comment I interpret the reply as standard status quo apologetics and implying that success needs to be a prerequisite. Then the analogy seems appropriate no?

Success is the selective measure. Not the prerequisite. The prerequisite is a population that changes over time relative to the selective pressure.

I have never talked about the selective phase.

Right?

It’s not an analogy. Evolution is the actual process. No ifs ands or buts about it.

There are myriad attempts to try alternatives to some ideal “market economy”. From Venezuela to Burning Man to Wikipedia to China to Japan to Romania to the Canadian wheat board.

What succeeds, lives.

Ok, given your replies I can only conclude that I should never use an analogy in a reply to you ever again. You've read everything literally and run away with it. The only thing I was attempting to say is that the random mutation phase is a part of evolution and that can't have a success prerequisite. This was intended to say that one can't require previous success to be a prerequisite to political and economic ideas.

What I am conveying to you is that your misunderstandings of evolution are causing you to say things that are illogical pretzels.

Evolution is such a beautiful, elegant discovery. It underlies so much behaviour in the universe, from biology to politics to economics to culture.

If you insist on calling it an analogy--even though it is in fact the reality of the situation, which is just one more example of you misunderstanding it--your use of it is faulty, and so your "analogy" is failing.

And towards the overall point, there are plenty of competing ideas and executions to the market economy. While I sustain none are succeeding, many adventurers in this field would disagree.

While you just don't seem to know about them, perhaps you could take this conversation as a call to action to go search for the many groups working on testing different economical models and go join them. It could be fun!

This is your second reply to where I explain what I meant with regards to evolution without you enlightening me about what's wrong but instead go on about evolution in some sort of spiritual awe.

But you're not done there. After you've decided to overrule that the author of the analogy used it as an analogy you extrapolate that since I'm not following your evolutionary wanderings I'm clearly ignorant of politics and economics altogether. What the hell?

I find that the impending climate cataclysm is really starting to affect me and my day to day life in the form of crushing depression and anxiety. It's such a huge, nebulous, threatening issue that I can't even begin to think how we go about mitigating it (as preventing it entirely seems like a dead horse to flog at this point).

I'd be really curious to know if anyone else is feeling like this? And how you may have gone some way to alleviating it through positive means? I'm always looking for practical things I can do to contribute towards a solution, even if they're small (e.g. vegan diet, strict recycling, cycling/walking nearly everywhere and so on). But it feels like a drop in the ocean. And it's really starting to weigh heavy on me mentally, as trivial as that may seem in the grand scheme of things where the future of our species might be a stake.

I'm doing very few of those things, and while it weighs on me, I think the net effect on my happiness is a drop in the bucket compared to any efforts to affect my direct surroundings positively. Do you do volunteer work, or anything in that direction? It might feel insignificant, but it's important to remember you're human, and likely to be affected more by 'direct' things, however pointless they might seem in the grander scheme.

The way I see it, it's a bit like putting on your own oxygen mask first. I've been burned out on working on 'bigger things', and in hindsight I wish I'd made sure to have 'smaller things' alongside to provide me with positive energy.

You make a good point. I think most of the paralysis and dread I feel comes from the fact that this is such a huge issue.

I've applied to volunteer at some conservation charities (Sea Shepherd, etc.) and am waiting to hear back how I can be useful to them.

I just can't shake the dread and negativity that comes over me whenever I think about it.

I person stopped caring and I think many people are starting to feel the same. While the issues are the most important to our lives and future generations, I feel totally hopeless in humanity. We simply cannot and will not organize on a broad enough level to do anything about it. It will probably take a series of miracles to make any serious impact on improving our situation even though solutions are dead simple. One google search will turn up many viable solutions to global warming but since we are dealing with deeply flawed creatures called humans, we are screwed.

At this point, I don’t know that I care at all. I will die. My offspring will die. Perhaps human extinction is the ultimate cleansing that needs to happen. But then again, who cares if Earth remains habitable. Who cares if by some odd chance the only planet in the universe to support complex life (highly unlikely) loses that life? What are we on universal scale if NOTHING. perhaps a being that cannot stop a stoppable and foreseeable suffering should seize to exist. Isn’t this what evolution is all about? The fit survive the unfit parish.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my fellow human beings. We have overcome some amazing challenges on personal and societal scales but perhaps we have met one we are not capable of overcoming? 1 or 0, we struck out.

I'm also really starting to feel the weight of it.

I collect fossils, and it recently crossed my mind that the coral fossils in my collection may be all that's left of corals by the end of my lifespan. I've also given up on the idea of raising children, as much as I want to be a mother, because it doesn't seem right.

It's a heavy weight, what helps me avoid it is just immersing myself in work. Hardly positive.

I feel the same on the raising children point. I want to be a father, and my wife wants children too, but I feel as though it would be unfair - cruel, perhaps - to bring them into a society that could be a generation or two away from collapse. What sort of future would they have? It's a wrenching argument I have with myself that eats away at me deeply.

I totally understand your feelings. My main approach is that I try to embrace and accept doom. It's going to come anyway. I also don't believe there is any real value in a survival of the human race. The end was always going to come - and it actually will. For individuals today, for families tomorrow and for society next week.

I don't know if this way of thinking works when you have children, though. I don't have. And I assume then by principle of induction your chronological horizon of relevance is approaching infinity.

Psychologically it is soothing to live by the concept of being the change you want to see in the world.

Read Hans Rosling’s ”Factfullness.” It’s the antidote to that crushing feeling of hopelessness. Though admittedly, it feels like I need to constantly reread it to stay hopeful.

Unfortunately, Hans Rosling's research has dealt with the last few decades, which saw massive socioeconomic improvements that humanity bought on environmental credit. The next few decades are going to be about whether or not we will be able to pay back that debt.

No, I really don't have these big feels about this. I have a totally different set of big feels.

I gave up my car more than a decade ago. I eat less meat than most Americans and have for a long time. I have few possessions.

I have a serious medical condition, as does one of my sons, that is supposed to cost $100k+ annually for medical care alone (for each of us). Pursuing alternative remedies has eliminated all medical expenses and also dramatically reduced other costs, such as food expenses, because my body works better these days.

Me and my sons being healthier saves us and the world millions of dollars over our lifetimes. And if you assume the cost of that medical care in any way correlates to burden on the earth's resources, then presumably we have shrank our environmental footprint tremendously.

So I'm making as much difference as I think I can make on a personal level. I do wonder if I can make a difference more out in the world, but that seems very unlikely.

I'm an environmental studies major, though I never completed my degree. I would like to do more, career-wise, about environmental issues.

But I have a very serious credibility problem. I was a homemaker for a lot of years, so, clearly, I can't know dirt, never mind my 6 years of college and 5+ years at a corporate job. People think I'm making up the whole 'I have a dread disease and I'm getting well with diet and lifestyle' thing. Etc. ad nauseum.

I occasionally start little websites to try to put out good info that's actionable for individuals and blah blah blah. It never gets any real traction. I don't get taken seriously and can't further develop anything since I don't have engagement. I'm basically talking to myself in my little corner of the internet like a crazy person, which does not lead to anything of substance.

I made my peace a long time ago with the fact that I can only do as much as I can do. The road needs to rise up to meet me. There has to be fertile ground or it won't go anywhere, no matter how awesome the seeds of ideas are.

At this point, it's a bit hard for me to really get all upset about this in part because I was treated so horribly by so many people while I was homeless. The world didn't give a flying fuck about me and often heaped verbal abuse upon me on top of callous indifference under circumstances where that callous indifference should have helped land me in a grave.

It didn't. I'm still here.

But I kind of feel like if people really are this desperate, then they can try "the crazy thing" and maybe wonder if that woman with that incredulous story isn't just full of shit and maybe has something to contribute. And if people would rather hurtle to their doom than consider the possibility that I know something useful, whatevs.

We are all just dust in the wind anyway. And karma can be a bitch, I hear.

(shrug)

Pardon the wall of text. This ended up being longer than expected; jump to the bottom for the concrete suggestions if you want to skip the personal context that follows.

> anyone else is feeling like this

I've been closely following environmental concerns for a couple of decades now; over 15 years ago, I felt there was a non-trivial (and ever growing) chance that the climate would, in my lifetime, end the lives of at least hundreds of millions of people. I posted about it on LiveJournal early in the millennium.

> crushing depression and anxiety

Unlike most, my struggle with negative emotions around this topic started in full force at a time when the science was far less certain than it is now. That always presented me a useful mental backstop: overriding negative emotions with the understanding that my intuitions were not strongly correlated and cross verified.

So I went forward, keeping an eye on things, but assuming that my emotional conclusions were going to be proven wrong. This is, I suppose, a concrete form of manufactured hope. (A lot of the collapse obsessed crowd use the term 'hopium'. The urban dictionary definition doesn't quite convey the meaning expressed.)

When I was in my teens and twenties, I was very environmentally focused, but it was all fairly local stuff. I worked with Greenpeace and Earth First for example.

As the possibilities of a future systemic collapse increased over time, and I started a family, I released my passion for local environmental concerns, exchanging it for a passion to maximize chances for the best possible outcomes for my family, especially my son.

That remains my strategic passion. From some people's perspectives, it is selfish, and I understand that point of view.

Based on my ongoing research and readings, the probability for civilization ending climate change in the next 30 years might be passing 50%. The story we're responding to here is one of many. If you look deeper, you will find that a growing percentage of climate scientists have passed the point of 'frantic' and are now entering the realm of depression and intellectually paralyzing anxiety.

etc etc etc. TL;DR: ....how do I maintain a positive mental state? It's not easy, but I am pretty successful at it.

Many sibling replies are concrete, practical and useful, so consider those. My passion for coming up with to protect my family's future is my take on that. I'll just add a few paragraphs of perspective, which is, for me, the most potent tool.

I know nothing to very little about the people who post on Hacker News. Even given that lack of information, I'll comfortably insist that each of us here has at least a 90% chance of living better, more comfortable, more healthy, more amazing lives over the next 20 years than 99.9% of all humans who have ever lived, including those alive today.

That is my perspective: no matter what happens in the future, I have lived and will most likely continue to live (for quite a few years) a life of enormous beauty and possibilities.

Unless (though well informed!) depression and anxiety about possible futures fucks it up for me.

Also: there's still a very good chance that the terrible futures we're concerned about won't come to pass, either for heretofore unknown natural reasons, or perhaps because we talking monkeys will get our shit together and start fixing things. (For the record: I don't have any solid ideas about what those fixes might be or how they might play out, but that is a limit on my own imagination and understanding, not on possible realities.)

In short: I'm aware of no ways that crushing anxiety and depression will improve my life.

I keep asking. How to organize at the middle layer ? Not govt or nation wide, but smaller areas. I believe starting small reactions in parallel could accelerate things. Otherwise it's still talk.

State level politics might help. California is trying to be carbon-neutral by 2045: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-california-ac...

Even that is too large IMO. At least in my view of things, I'm cool with states working on this. I wanted something like communities. I'll see.

I'm curious why the small community emphasis?

half subjective reasons:

- I'm bored by the system and jobless, and this would be an interesting thing to try as an activity for me

- larger efforts are slow

- I have this vision that bootstrapping small group efforts my heat up the system to help larger efforts.

I may add that large changes are bouncing back and forth between 'people are responsible' and 'industries are responsible' without going much anywhere. And I'm fairly convinced that most of people's behavior is mostly pleasurable habits (and mostly individual at that) and that people can't really change because alone and inexperienced in a change makes anything harder; while in a group, with a few that have skills (nutrition, mechanics, etc) can turn this into a pleasant new habit.

Ah so more for personal reasons fair enough. Digital efforts could scale in a nonlocal way with teaching theoretically but people would need to take interest although it could help if they say see an easy to make hummus as a healthy and delicious dinner to get them to natrually start eating less meat not as an end goal but because of legitimate preference.

Oh the digital part is mostly a few bits of calling and logging, I don't want any sophisticated tooling, the goal is gathering and enjoying learning/doing together. I don't know what to cook off humus, but surely by having great new dinners, hobbies that are fun, eco friendly is the goal. Basically low on resources, high on pleasantness.

I'm sorry to be that guy, but I really think blockchain offers solutions to these types of coordination problems. For example, Aragon just launched their mainnet today. They made a platform that allows distributed collaboration between groups of people. I think this could potentially reduce bureaucracy and reduce the time between idea and implementation. I have zero stake in Aragon btw, I just find it fascinating and it gives me some hope that humans can come together to positively affect the world.

Crypto could also become one of the biggest contributors to climate change, since it’s literally just wasting as much energy as possible to make money.

The monetary system itself is a big contributor or climate change. Kings used to require empires in order to protect their gold stores. I think securing the longest PoW (or PoS) chain is a very good use of resources, as it's tantamount to a king protecting his gold.

yeah, I don't buy the future of crypto. Too many cons (energy and other) not enough pros.

How does Aragon's effectiveness for this compare to e.g a Google Docs spreadsheet?

It can handle economic decisions within an organization using democracy, or multi-sigs to a few trusted individuals. It's also connected to Web 3.0, so you have all of the benefits of being within the ethereum ecosystem.

So i assume we have all had homework at one point in time? Does this not just feel like homework for the planet, and we are Ll procrastinating because we think we can cram it out at the last minute? How do we shock ourselves into action? This is the question i keep asking myself.

If you consider the world a classroom and the problem homework then none of the 30 students are aware they have homework. The cockroach in the corner of the room knows but everyone else didn’t get the memo. My point being - I will argue that majority of the world is unaware of impending doom - either for reasons of lack of education and awareness or out of pure ignorance. People forget that modern life as you and I know it does not apply to a large population of this planet who are blissfully unaware or don’t have the resources and capacity to do anything about it if they were.

It certainly doesn’t help that our political and value systems have been set up to promote greed and corruption. Look at Trump, he has to be reasonably educated right? But does he give a damn? And if not, why not? The same goes for all the senators.

1) Go watch the movie cowspiracy on netflix. Go vegan.

2) Get an energy audit and see if your home needs more insulation. If a solar panel installation will pay for itself in a reasonable time where you live (rebates - SRECs - etc) consider getting one.

3) If you live in a warmer climate with safe biking paths - get an electric bike to go to work.

4) The next car you get should be electric or plugin hybrid. Even if it's a used car.

We cannot mess around anymore. Governments always lag society - they never lead. So we need to push to make these changes more common.

I do that stuff but it's not going to save the world.

To save the world we need: a substantial price on carbon, a faster path to developing advanced nuclear power (in addition to continuing renewables deployment), a major rollout of lab-grown meat as soon as it's affordable with decent quality, negative emissions methods both technological (direct air capture) and biological (kelp, reforesting), and maybe some kind of solar radiation management if things go too far.

In short we need a global WWII-level effort. Instead we're encouraging people to ride bikes and eat their veggies.

I think all of these things are set in motion by people making efforts like going vegetarian.

No, people making personal efforts like that has the opposite effect. It makes them think they are doing something that matters so they don't put any effort into pushing for the drastic changes required to fix the problem.

People making individual efforts like that is about as useful as praying when it comes to preventing tragedy of the commons scenarios.

I know that people sometimes excuse bad behaviour by their other bad behaviour; however, to stick with the vegetarian example: more and more people around me, and in my country and general, have been going vegetarian, and this process is only accelerated because it is easier than ever to become one due to supermarkets and restaurants catering to this growing group.

So sure, people are not going to be perfect immediately, but there's no doubt that even the non-vegetarians are far more aware of these issues due to the number of vegetarians around them. Meanwhile, the environmentally-friendly parties in my country and the surrounding ones have been growing in popularity.

Besides, I'm not quite sure how you think people are going to be pushing for drastic changes if every step towards that actually is a step away from it. Would actively dumping toxic waste in our rivers be better?

For change to happen, there needs to be a widespread push for it, and that widespread push isn't going to happen unless awareness spreads. Sure, it might already be too late for that push to make a difference, but about not doing anything we can at least be sure that it will not make a difference.

both are true depending on the circumstance. for example going vegetarian encourages restaurants to offer more vegetarian options making entry into a vegetarian diet easier for others. Riding a bicycle makes car drivers more aware of cyclists, more awareness means it's safer to bike, means more will be willing to do it regularly, and more people who will advocate for bicycle friendly communities.

You could say that the effort is vain, but saying that it "has the opposite effect" is quite a strong statement. I am interested to hear how individual efforts of going vegetarian/vegan are contributing to global warming. And could you expand on "putting effort into pushing for the drastic changes"?

Sometimes when people go to the gym, they give themselves a pay on the back and leave to iver eat their next meal. If, making small sacrifices encourages more extravagant indulgences, then yeah, maybe it could.

However, I think that the second order effects need to be considered. As I mentioned in another post, sometimes you doing a thing makes it easier for others to do a thing, until a critical mass brings about a major change in state. For example, buying a fuel efficient vehicle encourages manufacturers to produce them. Eating and asking for vegetarian options encourages them to be offered, making it easier to become a vegetarian without being a stick in the mud. It can also change norms. Sometimes people won't do a thing because they don't want to go against norms. Like a guy out with his buddies ordering a burger instead of the salad he actually might prefer.

There are plenty of "be the change" types who don't vote, and who have disengaged from the political process.

Like i see personal level actions as a leader to future large scale group actions. Similar to electric cars, they’re inaccessible by cost to most, but the high cost purchaser is their path to mass adoption.

Also, if a wealthy person cannot justify extra insulation to prevent energy waste, i sure don’t expect a poorer person to ever take the idea seeiously.

funny you should say that because religious institutions have, historically, had a major role in preventing tragedies of commons.

> In short we need a global WWII-level effort.

I agree.

"It’s been a couple of weeks now since the IPCC report came out. You know what it says. If the whole damn species pulls together in a concerted effort “without historical precedent”— if we start right now, and never let up on the throttle— we just might be able to swing the needle back from Catastrophe to mere Disaster. If we cut carbon emissions by half over the next decade, eliminate them entirely by 2050; if the species cuts its meat and dairy consumption by 90%; if we invent new unicorn technologies for sucking carbon back out of the atmosphere (or scale up extant prototype tech by a factor of two million in two years) — if we commit to these and other equally Herculean tasks, then we might just barely be able to keep global temperature from rising more than 1.5°C.[1] We’ll only lose 70-90% of the word’s remaining coral reefs (which are already down by about 50%, let’s not forget). Only 350 million more urban dwellers will be exposed to severe drought and “deadly heat” events. Only 130-140 million will be inundated. Global fire frequency will only increase by 38%. Fish stocks in low latitudes will be irreparably hammered, but it might be possible to save the higher-latitude populations. We’ll only lose a third of the permafrost. You get the idea.

We have twelve years to show results.

If we don’t pull all these things off— if, for example, we only succeed in meeting the flaccid 2°C aspirations of the Paris Accords— then we lose all the coral. We lose the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the Greenland Ice Shelf (not that it isn’t already circling the bowl, of course). Twice as many people suffer “aggravated water scarcity” than at 1.5°C; 170% more of the population deals with fluvial flooding. The increase in global wildfire frequency passes 60% and keeps going. Marine fisheries crash pole to pole. The number of species that loses at least half their traditional habitat is 2-3 times higher than would have been the case at 1.5°C. It goes on." [1]

(Edit) Yet in my experience nobody is talking about this. A few weeks ago the IPCC told us we have a gun to our head and a decade to solve the problem. A few days ago we learned that "population sizes of wildlife decreased by 60% globally between 1970 and 2014" [2]. And now we're on to the next thing and everyone is walking around like things are normal. People should be focussed on this and nothing else, but they're not.

And also: how exactly do I explain to my children that the world they're growing-up in is in a dire state and soon may not even be able to support anything like a normal life for them? Ideas anyone?

[1] The Adorable Optimism of the IPCC, by Peter Watts https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433

[2] https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/living-planet-report-2018

> And also: how exactly do I explain to my children that the world they're growing-up in is in a dire state and soon may not even be able to support anything like a normal life for them? Ideas anyone?

They'll think it's normal, which is the real tragedy, but that's been happening for generations already. Your idea of normal is not as rich as your ancestors'. Wasn't North America abundant with wildlife when the Europeans arrived?

Tangential xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1321/

> They'll think it's normal, which is the real tragedy, but that's been happening for generations already. Your idea of normal is not as rich as your ancestors'. Wasn't North America abundant with wildlife when the Europeans arrived?

I'm not sure what you mean. I consider my life to be substantially richer than my ancestor's lives. I live in Europe, not North Americal, but yes there was more wildlife around a couple of centuries ago. It would be nice to have that again, but i'd settle for something like the current fairly poor situation it it meant that my kids and their contemporaries don't have to risk being made into refugees by climate change, or face a future of water/food/energy shortages, failed states and frustrated potential.

Sorry I meant richness of the local ecosystem. Big mammals in particular.

> To save the world we need: a substantial price on carbon,

No we don't. Global warming is a self-reinforcing effect. So there's no point to slowing down emissions. No point at all. Even if you get it to zero, the resulting concentrations will still accelerate into the right. Even if you get it negative at the same rate we're producing it today (which would eliminate all human co2 contributions EVER in ~60 years) would do nothing but delay.

So why bother ? This avenue is closed, and useless.

We glued a grenade to our hand, and pulled the pin. Messing around trying to insert the pin back in provides nothing but comic relief. We need to adapt. To limit the damage, and fix things.

As you say, only direct geoengineering can work. On the plus side: doesn't require global cooperation. On the downside: that'll make someone clearly directly responsible for the (MUCH worse) effects global cooling will have, especially locally ... so it's extremely incompatible with how current green parties think and "influence policy".

Whereas the current "complain and do nothing but token efforts" is very good at getting constant attention, votes and money. But only if the problem keeps getting worse.

So just like everyone they accuse, green and leftist parties themselves are dependent on global warming happening and getting worse. Maybe that, too, is a reason why we have nothing but token efforts. Also, they would have to admit that "mother nature"/gaia is definitely NOT going to save our ass, even if we stop polluting.

Additionally, Gaia, so to speak, has already decided to inflict global warming on us, as a punishment or just because, take your pick, effectively for what humanity did at the end of the 19th (not 20th) century. So we need to inflict further damage on the ecosystem artificially controlling the temperature to prevent worse. But that'll futher destroy habitats, and on a much larger scale than what we've seen so far.

Not eating meat, capturing co2, lab-grown meat, even nuclear power ... just can't work. Only geoengineering can work.

If we ceased all carbon emissions today the earth would continue to warm for centuries, sure. But if we did that then it wouldn't the total temperature rise be lower, requiring less geoengineering? How is that pointless?

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There are artificial ways to stop ocean acidification as well ... but yes, we'll have to manage a lot of things.

So why bother ?

This right here sums up about 97% of the entire issue. People look at the scale of problem, figure they can't make "a real difference" and use that as justification for continuing on with business as usual. It boils down to "The pain and nuisance of me personally taking fewer airplane trips, walking more or eating less meat (or whatever) far outweighs in my mind the benefit to The World of me inconveniencing myself. So Why Bother?"

And, conveniently, it's an argument that frames itself in a way that is nigh impossible to argue with.

I love the idea of it being a self regulating cost, but frankly this whole conversation is about the fact we as humans are not reacting. So I’m all for throwing a price on it to break the cycle of procrastination!

Taxes can always be repealed, but I’d like to see us start giving a shit before we assume this won’t work, because whatever we are doing now doesn’t work!

> So there's no point to slowing down emissions.

> We need to adapt. To limit the damage, and fix things.

The first contributes to the second.

That's just it. It used to, but it doesn't. At this point global warming is self-reinforcing. So while it's correct what you say, the implied corollary is not true.

The implied corollary is of course that if we slow down emissions global warming will stop. And it won't. It will slow down, but not stop. Not even if we get net emissions to zero.

> developing advanced nuclear power

Deploying renewable energy generators is just so much fast and more flexible, and demolition (either controlled or uncontrolled) isn't such a risk as with a nuclear power plant.

Stopping our existing coal power plants while cutting down on energy consumption; Sure, it's an educational problem but during WWII people collected scrap metal for the war effort.

The problem with renewables alone is storage. The big Tesla grid battery in Australia does 100MW and stores 129MWh. Its capital cost was $90 million: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/27/south-aus...

That's great as part of a diverse grid but some areas don't have hydro/geothermal, so if those places want to go entirely carbon-free without nuclear we need to rely entirely on wind/solar/battery. That means, at a minimum, we need to get through a windless night.

So let's say about 12 hours. For 12 GWh we'd need 12,000/129=93 Tesla-scale plants, costing $8.3 billion. That's just for minimum storage, not including the wind turbines and solar panels.

We have to take the current cost of wind/solar and add another 50% or so, since we need to generate enough to fill the storage, not just meet current needs during the day. Then we need to overbuild even more, because on a cloudy day we only get about half as much energy out of our solar panels. Another issue is the sheer amount of lithium and cobalt you'd need; we're pushing the limits already, and we'll need a lot more for electric cars.

At this point you're probably thinking long-distance transmission to collect wind power from a wide area, but that's also expensive. More importantly, it's politically difficult and time-consuming to get the land rights.

By comparison, construction cost for modern conventional nuclear plants is under $8 billion/GW: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-as...

Of course, there are emerging technologies to help with all of this. Wind, solar, and batteries are all getting cheaper, and batteries using other raw materials are being developed.

But if we're going to look to future technologies, let's do that with nuclear as well. Molten salt reactors look way cheaper than conventional reactors, and fast reactors can eat nuclear waste. At least half a dozen startup companies are working on molten salt reactors, several are working on fast reactors, and Russia has two commercial fast reactors on their grid right now.

This is the most accurate comment so far.

Also note that we need all of the above in place within the next 10-15 years.

I don't understand why govt's aren't tasking their militaries with using their considerable resources to find solutions to climate change - they have, at minimun the following skills: science, tech, manpower, organisational ability.

Because there's no political will and nobody cares.

https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos...

Honestly, we're just going to keep sleepwalking into catastrophe.

What makes you think that the powers that be are sleepwalking? They know it's coming and they want to be out on top when it does.

Hence the anti-refugee, anti-immigrant talk -- might as well start early and get people in the mindset to deal harshly with mass migration caused by climate change.

Hence the continued military build-up and the consolidation of armed forces in hot-zones (multiple meanings to 'hot')

Hence the rise of protectionism (free trade won't mean much in a climate crisis world anyways)

Hence the rise of nationalism (what's "mine" is mine)

There are too many advantages to being the last to do anything, and it's too late to do anything without a major revolution or civil war. The whole world economy goes into a tailspin over a relatively minor increase in the barrel price of oil -- imagine what it will do if oil goes up by 1000%, which is what it would need to do to stop its rampant consumption...

I love my kids, but sometimes wish I hadn't had any.

Yeah, maybe. I don't buy it. As far as I can tell, there's not some big global conspiracy of "the powers that be" -- there's just a bunch of random stupid humans doing the best they can.

The problem of climate change is just too big and happening over too long a timescale for us to address. None of our personal or political systems are evolved to deal with it.

I didn't say it was a conspiracy. It's a net, systematic effect caused by individual decisions in their self-interest. The concentration of power is an aggregate effect of the method of economic production we have.

That said, don't kid yourself for a minute that the people with large amounts of capital don't meet and discuss these things amongst themselves. They have both public-facing institutions (political parties, etc.) and private ones for this purpose.

Ok, but so what?

BREAKING NEWS: Rich guys also hope their families survive the water wars.

The point is that 'rich guys' have the ability to make sure they survive 'the water wars' while you do not. And also it's in their interest to stay rich before then. And to stay rich, that means continuing to do what we're doing. Which results in the 'water wars'.

Not sure what/why we're arguing about here.

We need to start with a revenue neutral carbon tax.

Yes – probably one of the best organizations to donate your time to: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/

Carbon pricing is what really is going to set things in motion on a large scale.

If every single person on Earth did 1 - 4 it still wouldn't be enough. Change has to come from industrial polluters to have a real impact, and the only way to change industry is to stop driving growth through consumption. So...

5) Stop buying stuff.

To that end, in order to stop craving stuff, protect yourself form ads.

Most ads are designed to make you want to buy something you don't need.

They keep you in a state of permanent dissatisfaction to keep you on the consumption treadmill.

Consequently they contribute to both global unhappiness and environment destruction.

Exactly. Break the treadmill, get out, stop consuming, stop buying stuff.

I think if every single person on Earth went vegan it would have a significant impact. It would force the meat industry to change.

"I think if every single person on Earth went vegan it would have a significant impact."

It will never happen.

We need more practical solutions.

Only 10% of people in developed countries would even think of making major changes to their lifestyle for such reasons ...

And there are 5 billion people in poor countries who are rapidly becoming 'consumers' and they don't care, at all. They want cars, appliances and 'stuff' now.

There's hope but I think it'll have to be really quite pragmatic, and more focused on supply and less on demand, i.e, solar, wind, a lot more nuclear and I wish we'd invest more in Fusion research.

Going vegan is essentially "Stop buying stuff" where "stuff" is meat. You should stop buying anything that pollutes a lot and/or has low value compared to alternatives: diesel cars, disposable plastic items, useless gadgets, etc.

If you still want meat in your diet, start buying less beef and more eggs or chicken. That'll be a good start. https://timeforchange.org/eat-less-meat-co2-emission-of-food

Even if you don't want to go vegan, it's easy to eat less meat (and probably good for your health if you have a Western diet). My partner is vegetarian, I eat meat occasionally (and when I do I eat good meat, ethically and sustainably farmed).

Reducing meat consumption is by far the easiest way to reduce your carbon footprint.

I believe that the climate impact of ethically raised meat tends to be a lot higher than that of mass-produced meat. The reason being that it simply takes more resources to ethically produce meat.

Story is much more complicated than that.

It takes far more fertilizer and irrigation to produce food for mass-produced meat. Well-maintained pasture has diverse plants year round soaking up a small amount of CO2 versus land for corn that is plowed under. And land for ethical meat often has trees to shade the animals. Mass-produced meat requires highly intensive cleaning of stalls. And for things like beef, it is still unclear whether one diet or another produces more methane, which is a huge portion of the climate impact.

Then there are things like what is done with the manure. In a well-managed factory farm, it is digested. But there are tons of stories about polluted rivers near factory farms that make it clear that often isn't the case. Those polluted rivers result in algal blooms, which is a whole other matter.

Basically, a statement like "more resources to ethically produce meat" confuses the price to a farmer of producing meat with a calculation that incorporates all the externalities, which is a whole lot less clear.

All meat is a incredibly wasteful way to grow food. Plus mass produced meat usually always is harmful to the animal's wellbeing and also due to the way they live in close cramped spaces, there is lot of antibiotic put into their feed to stop diseases. Being vegan is the best but sadly we love meat too much. I am myself no better

Nonsense. Grazing animals are part of the natural cycle that has produced grasses, the topsoil, and nutrients that tie them together. Vegetarianism breaks that cycle and leads to use of chemicals for growing edible plants.

> Vegetarianism breaks that cycle and leads to use of chemicals for growing edible plants.

What? It is pretty clear cut that humans eating plants directly requires growing a lot less plants than humans eating meat, which ate those plants. Animals don't grow on sunlight, so they are basically a reactor for turning plants from one type of food into another. And the laws of thermodynamics tell us they aren't 100% efficient, so... eating meat requires more plants to be grown than eating plants themselves...

What the commenter probably refers to is the fact that grazing animals eat plants which humans can not eat while vegetarians eat those which are suitable for human consumption. The grass eaten by herbivores 'just grows' while the cabbages, lettuces, beans and sprouts (et al) eaten by vegetarians (et al) don't "just grow", they need to be grown purposefully on soil which has been fertilised, they need to be protected from insects and vermin, etcetera.

Had the herbivores been harvested from the wild this would all be true. In practice the herbivores are fed not just grass but beans, grains and other produce. Which has to be grown just like the vegetables eaten by vegetarians. Since the 'conversion factor' - the efficiency by which an animal transforms 1 kg of fodder into 1 kg of edible animal - varies from about 2 (insects) via 5-7 (chicken) via 9-11 (pig) to 14-18 (cow) it becomes clear that it takes a lot more grains, beans and such to feed a carnivore than it takes to feed a vegetarian.

That's why it must be ethical and sustainable!

This. I have seen and experienced how a radical view of vegetarianism (or veganism) deters people from doing anything about their meat consumption. Specially people who likes meat.

After meeting a couple of "relaxed vegetarians", who said something like "I'm vegetarian, but if there is no vegetarian option, I can eat meat too" my partner became pseudo vegetarian: she allows herself to eat meet one weekend per month. As myself, I became indoors vegetarian, as we do not consume meet indoors.

That's the best way to do it. Going vegan it's not easy for everyone and possibly not healthy. But eating less meat it's a no-brainer.

I make an effort to reduce energy consumption simply from a cost basis. It is better for the environment obviously, but eating less meat is simply not going to happen.

This makes no sense. Eating meat is just as expensive as energy consumption. Food can be just as delicious with 20% meat instead of 80% meat. Why would you insist on eating as much as possible?

I didn't say I was eating as much as possible. I said I am going to continue to eat it at the same rate I currently do. Personally I am not going vegetarian.

I've noticed you keep making posts that boil down to 'I do/am/believe <x>' without it offering much relevance or insight to the discussion. It seems like you're just live blogging on HN. I'm very curious what your reasons are for doing so.

EDIT: I'm honestly curious. It doesn't bother me too much, and I'm sure I've made comments that I thought were valuable but in hindsight were probably just me wanting to be present. It's mostly the consistency of such comments from you that fascinates me.

It's a discussion thread. I add my input, maybe you find it relevant, maybe you dont. Maybe I don't add enough insight. Fair enough.

But it's honestly fucking weird that you are tracking my comments.

I often click on the user's comment history if a comment stands out positively or negatively, and I realized that I'd done so more than once with yours. I don't think that counts as weird.

That said, I did write a bunch of code that actually allows me to track a user's comments. But I wrote that mostly so I can get updates if infrequent but great commenters post something. Perhaps that is a bit weird.

I found your comment by clicking on another comment of his, in another thread. He is absolutely "live blogging". He seems to have little to no actual real world experience, conflates technological notions easily, and often comments without any understanding of the underlying subject matter. Paulie, I think we would all prefer if you returned to reddit.

Thinking that subscribing to a user's new and public comments (the equivalent of adding a blog to your feed reader) is creepy and stalking would further confirm that. Nice to hear I'm not just being crazy about this though :).

That isn't a bit weird, that is outright creepy and borderline cyberstalkish. I wonder what you have done before a first date.

I think it's more weird that you that behavior weird. Many people do that. Creepy perhaps, but it's not weird.

>ethically and sustainably farmed

There is no such meat in the beef or chicken industry. There are sustainable methods to raise and provide enough meat for the demand and there are ethical methods (e.g. cage free, free range) that are absolutely not sustainable given the demand for meat. There is no overlap.

> "...for the demand"

If demand is lowered by the population at large consuming a lot less meat, then it's perfectly reasonable to produce meat ethically and sustainably.

Chickens/eggs, etc.

Lots suggest shifting to chicken is already a good step

Not for the chicken

Well that's another debate

Hate to break it to you, but there is no such thing as ethically farmed meat. If it’s killed for your plate, it’s still bad karma.

You don't acknowledge an ethical difference between a pig that has never seen the sun and lived on barely enough room to stand and a pig that has been held in a way that accommodated its natural behaviors?

There is an ethical difference yes, but it’s still a net negative. We don’t need to kill in order to eat. We just choose to.

It gets ethically weird for me when I contemplate hypothetical pigs that had happy lives but would not have existed if they were not farmed. Kinda Logan’s run? But pigs.

The utilitarian in me wants to see the existence of the pig as an ethical net positive overall.

I think the argument that eating the pig raised in dark factory is better than the pig that had a life is valid.

Sure, but that doesn't make it "ethical." It's still killed, and nothing wants to be killed.

Death isn't the problem, everything dies. The problem is needless suffering.

Eating meat can actually be a moral act. If the animal you eat lead a better life than it otherwise would have because of the care you provided in raising it, it's a net good. To put this in perspective, imagine you were impoverished and living a miserable existence and someone offered to let you live in comfort and luxury, and promised to take care of your offspring, but in exchange you had to agree to euthanasia at age 30. That might not be attractive to you from a first world perspective, but a lot of people would take that in a heartbeat.

Death !== killing, not matter how you want to justify it.

I hate to break it to you, but everything that you eat is killed for your plate.

Unless you're a freegan

This is a matter of opinion, not fact. With dairy, you might have a point.

Ive stopped eating red meat, and in a bad week 25% of my meals are vegan, in a good week 75% or more of my meals are vegan.

I’ve read that a medium sized dog has the carbon footprint of a medium sized SUV, approximately.

I have two small-medium dogs. They eat a lot of vegetables and legumes. 90% of their snacks / treats are sweet potato / carrots / apples. Their main meals consist of a mix of grated veggies, cooked brown rice, cooked and puréed split peas, and two or three tablespoons of kangaroo or chicken mince to flavour. Sometimes I leave out the mince, so their meals are vegan too. They love it! They can’t get enough of the split pea purée.

With the added benefit that their poop is well formed and easy to pass, goes really well in the compost!

You may want to look into supplementing the dogs’ diets with taurine. There is rising suspicion in the vet world that a diet high in legumes, pulses, and potatoes may suppress taurine absorption and increase the risk of developing dilated cardiomyopathy: https://www.fda.gov/animalveterinary/newsevents/cvmupdates/u...

Wow! Thanks for the heads up. I'll be sure to cycle them off the split peas. I wonder if sweet potatoes could be a problem too. Will look in to supplementing their diets.

Thanks :)

Is there any research on how doggies do on vegan or reduced-meat diets? I wonder they'd have any long term health benefits from a well-planned, balanced vegan diet?

I've read that dogs can be vegan. They're not obligate carnivores like cats. That's about all I know really.

We can do our part locally, but individuals have no control over industry. We need to force the hand of government to paint the big strokes that we can't.

I feel like social change is going to be the slowest, a government may tend to lag but they can do the most in the quickest amount of time with industry regulation.

When I got to Germany in 2004, most eggs for sale were category 3: cage-raised

Now, category 3 is illegal, and the cheap eggs are category 2: barn-raised (not way better, but at least they can walk about)

This did not happen because egg producers or the agricultural regulatory agencies felt bad about how they were keeping their chickens, but because enough of the public who cared pushed the government to make category 3 eggs illegal - and the only reason they had that whole categories thing to begin with was enough of the public who cared.

I usually buy category 1 eggs (free-range, for some minimal value of free range) from small local producers here - I don't care what the chickens ate because the chickens don't really care what they eat, but I'll buy category 0 (free-range, organic feed) if category 1 isn't available.

Exactly. We need a carbon tax, or a fee-and-dividend system. And we need it yesterday.

Doing the above can't hurt (and while you're at it you could forego long distance travel too).

But it will be much better/more-useful to be the annoying person who contacts your federal representatives every month and more importantly will not shut up about it to friends, family, and colleagues.

(I am sad to say that I have not been such a person myself, but I've resolved recently to be better about that. Let's hope I'm not too weak.)

That 'but' is an excuse. Government opinion will always lag the peoples opinion - its a reactive organisation.

Making a change yourself and normalising it is a huge signal to those you come into contact with that they should do the same.

Governments change when politicians realise they are growing out of touch with the people they are trying to coerce.

> Government opinion will always lag the peoples opinion - its a reactive organisation.

I don't think this is true. In the USA, incandescent lightbulbs were more-or-less banned in favour of energy-efficient CFLs and LEDs, and people whined and moaned like crazy. Then they very quickly got over it. If you'd waited around for everyone to convince their friends and neighbors to spend 300% more up front on light bulbs, that would never, ever have happened.

We need political leaders to show real leadership. I am not optimistic.

I've done all of the following at various points, and announced that it was for environment reasons:

- Gone vegetarian

- Bought a tiny used car instead on new one or one with more space.

- Moved to a neighborhood where I could walk to work.

- Declined for my employer to send me on an expenses paid trip to a conference 2000 miles away.

This has had ZERO effect on the behavior of any of the witnesses. And if I voice too much disapproval of people's ecologically destructive behavior, all that will happen is that I will be branded as some weirdo puritanical eco-prude, who's opinions and values are too fringe to be given any weight.

How do you know this had ZERO effect on the witnesses? I used to be a climate change denier, and I’m not anymore. This is probably due to enough people like you convincing me to get informed. But people like you who knew me 15 years ago probably despaired (incorrectly) that they didn’t impact me.

Except for the last action, though, the first three had the benefit of saving you money and thus bringing you closer to financial freedom, as well as putting you in a less painful position when we all finally have to reduce our consumption. Show how excellent your life still is at this lower consumption level - not wasting all that time commuting, for starters.

It's not the government that needs to change though, it's industry and agriculture, and government needs to act to make them change because voting with our wallets is wishful thinking and only applies to people who care. That's not enough people unfortunately. To that end, we need to force the government's to act instead.

Industry will not do what is best for you and I, let alone the planet, if it means an extra dollar. You think you can vote with your wallet but frankly, the rest of the world doesn't care like you and I do. They don't and won't change soon enough. Not only that, but marketing is really good at tricking people into thinking they are doing good. Sugar free, fat free, organic foods, marketing finds ways to pedal the same food and processes with different labels and the same negative effects. It takes regulation to change it. False advertising isn't prevelant in Australia because our government regulates the crap out of food labels for one example.

Another example is green energy. People are swapping to green energy only now rather than years ago because the government has subsidised it so hard that the dollars make sense. People didn't care until it saved them money, and electricity companies who were in the best position to make changes didn't care until they were forced to. If it were up to them they will pedal coal until we all die, and if it were up to the consumer we would just use more dirty electricity to run our aircons.

Thank you for your comment by the way, I am appreciating the discourse.

Industry mostly exists to serve each and every one of us individuals. Of course there are exceptions. I don’t personally have much use for a cruise missile or an F35, etc.

But your point is well taken: we need to address these issues at all levels.

What I am finding in my road to eating less meat is that vegetarian food seems to take a lot longer to prepare. I can knock up a steak with mushrooms and brocolli in about 10 minutes.

I am finding to create something just as satisfying that's vegetarian is some form of pie or lasagne that is delicious but takes an entire evening to cook.

What would the vegetarian equivalent to a quick steak be?

A salad with some pan-fried halloumi cheese and pine nuts is quick and satisfying, though probably too salty to eat every day. Halloumi works as a meat substitute in a lot of recipes.

Lentils and onions over rice will fill you up, but it's certainly less fun than a steak.

Stir fries are quick, fun to cook and satisfying. Slice a couple of hard-boiled eggs, add soy sauce and sesame seeds, and serve over the stir-fried veg.

Yes, halloumi is amazing!

Pressure cookers are magic, turning 1.5-2 hr cooking times into 30-40 minutes.

For red beans and rice, I soak the beans the night before, which reduces the needed cooking time.

Those are all good, but if instead of asking "how can I reduce my carbon footprint" you ask "what should my carbon footprint be", I think you'll find the answer a bit discouraging. Basically, where I live, just my share of the cost of maintaining basic infrastructure puts me above the limits implied by the Paris accord, nevermind actually moving from place to place, having heating or eating things.

Maybe that's why you don't see too much focus on telling people what their personal goals should be - the situation encourages defeatism if you actually try to find a personal solution to the problem.

What we need is a wartime economy, geared towards surviving climate change. In my view, that could actually be very good for us - western societies haven't had a concrete goal to unify their citizens for as long as I've been around, at least. And this time, the goal wouldn't revolve around killing people!

Now, how do we get started?

I don't think mass veganism is going to happen but it's clear that as climate change worsens, veganism will only continue to grow in popularity. Comments like yours are slowly convincing me that investing long-term in the vegan industry is a good idea.

What do you think you'll be investing in?

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

0) Address the fact that the vast majority of carbon, methane, and other contributors to climate change is produced by fewer than 100 international corporations. (Animal agriculture is a big part of it, as is the fossil fuel industry, but so is shipping.)

Address it how? Stop buying goods from those companies?

That doesn't seem like a realistic answer. It requires a lot more knowledge on the part of consumers than consumers have or can readily obtain, and puts the onus on those least able to affect the behavior of those companies and puts the cost of making the change on those who have little responsibility for the choices that led us here.

We have environmental regulations, they just aren't strong enough and they often have loopholes specifically for the worst offenders (e.g. animal agriculture and shipping both externalize tremendous environmental costs on everyone). There's also differences between nations that make it possible to outsource environmental impact, which needs to be balanced.

It's not realistic to tell consumers, "Don't buy products made overseas", because for most people in most parts of the world, most of the products they need are made overseas. I don't think it's a bad thing for manufacture to flow to where it is most efficient, but it is a bad thing when environmental impact explodes because of it. There needs to be pressure on the companies hauling those goods, from every nation they ship to, to reduce emissions dramatically.

And, while I've been vegetarian or vegan for 24 years, and I encourage everyone to do so, both to reduce suffering and to reduce environmental impact, it turns out asking people to become vegetarian or vegan doesn't actually work. There have been organizations encouraging plant-based diets for decades, and yet only a small percentage of people eat a plant-based diet. The industry has to be made to internalize those costs, so they change their practices. It'll also raise prices to more realistic levels, which would shift consumption to plant-based alternatives which have orders of magnitude lower environmental impact (though still high, when talking about feeding a few billion people, but certainly more sustainable than feeding a few billion people beef).

I think there's a lot to be said for going vegan, but conspiracy literally is a conspiracy, and I'm usually not inclined to take conspiracies seriously.

But yes, things need to change. And yes, that requires changes by governments and corporations, but all of that is set in motion by regular people. Change your habits, even if they don't make a difference on their own - they show others that this is important, and will influence them to make their own changes. It will spread, not just to our regular behaviour, but also to our consumption and voting decisions. People are more likely to do as you do than to do as you say.

5) Work less. 3-4 days a week is plenty, especially for the HN crowd.

>Governments always lag society - they never lead.

Eh? I have many examples that prove otherwise.

Like, government mandating solar panels on new buildings. People aren't happy with those because of how expensive they are. Or government mandating certain cars cannot go through cities certain days. People aren't happy because they'd rather use their SUVs. Or government mandating you have to pay for plastic bags and in the end they will be banned altogether. Which sucks and is inconvenient.

Yeah, we have to be careful that we aren't just promoting, "Let them eat solar panels" solutions if we want actual progress.

How should we got about people saying: "It's too late. It's now an open bar and I won't shoot myself in the foot by restricting my lifestyle or paying more than others for the same goods and services to soften the inevitable coming disaster. If this is the last ride and I have a seat I might as well enjoy it."

Eg: "Why buy a green car if it's going to cost me way more than a good old diesel and the apocalypse is coming the same anyway ?"

A used Prius isn't that expensive. Or keep the diesel and consolidate/limit trips. I would argue if we all drove less people would have a better lifestyle due to less traffic, better health, less wasted time, etc. regardless of climate change.

Are those people wrong?

It's sure looking like we might as well get our boozing in before last call.

5. Have less or no children. ~Birth rates in the India, China and, Africa are an issue.

6. Don't have pets. Your dog is far from carbon neutral.

Many people here will have a much bigger effect by considering how to tackle environmental concerns in their workplace.

Get into decision-making positions and advocate for energy saving on a corporate scale.

How about travel by plane? Are you willing to do that?

And then - how about not having children? An impact of a single child is greater than lifetime of eating meat by a single person.

I totally support the idea people who deny climate change should not reproduce. For two main reasons: first, to save the environment and, second, to improve the human gene pool.

I don't expect them to agree, however.

>second, to improve the human gene pool.

Yeah, everyone who disagrees with me is wrong and we should prevent them from reproducing. /s

I fully believe in climate change but your opinion that eugenics is part of the solution is out in left field and incompatible with the values of most people on this planet to put it charitably.

I probably should be more explicit when I joke.

...or you can raise them to have a net positive impact on the environment, like Ben Falk.

Nuclear war can reverse global warming [1]. Some argue that since nuclear weapons exist, they will likely be used sooner or later.

1. https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nucl...

The nuclear explosions would send massive clouds of dust high into the stratosphere, blocking so much sunlight that a nuclear winter would result. Global temperatures would plunge 20°C to 40°C for several months, and remain 2 - 6°C lower for 1-3 years. Up to 70% of the Earth's protective stratospheric ozone layer would be destroyed, allowing huge doses of ultraviolet light to reach the surface. This UV light would kill much of the marine life that forms the basis of the food chain, resulting in the collapse many fisheries and the starvation of the people and animals that depend it. The UV light would also blind huge numbers of animals, who would then wander sightlessly and starve. The cold and dust would create widespread crop failures and global famine, killing billions of people who did not die in the nuclear explosions. The "nuclear winter" papers were widely credited with helping lead to the nuclear arms reduction treaties of the 1990s, as it was clear that we risked catastrophic global climate change in the event of a full-scale nuclear war.

https://www.wunderground.com/resources/climate/nuke.asp

Every problem has a solution that's simple, elegant, and wrong.

Well... Reversing global warming isn't a goal in itself; it's the means to making/keeping the planet pleasantly habitable for us :P

I thought it was almost decided recently(definitely later than 2011) that actually, nuclear war wouldn't cause global cooldown, or if it did it would be extremely temporary, definitely not on the scale of decades or centuries.

Another interesting fact is that we have detonated nearly 2500 nukes since we first made them, and it had observably zero impact on climate, despite each one releasing gigantic amounts of energy into the atmosphere.

Most of the purported cooling comes from the ashes of burning cities blanketing the atmosphere; so we would not expect any effect from tests.

Still I think the methodology of the studies that produced this theory have been widely discredited.

A global nuclear war will certainly reduce the subsequent CO2 emissions, even if nuclear winter model is incorrect

The oceans have a mass 1000 times that of the atmosphere. So if they were predicting 2C increase in the heat of the atmosphere wouldn't that be .002 deg Celsius in the ocean? Can you even measure that give the vastness of the ocean?

It's more complex than that. To heat up by those 2C, water takes over 4 times as much energy as air does. On the other hand, most of the warming happens in the upper layer of the ocean, which is a big issue because it messes with the ocean's circulation.

So when I said that the ocean has 1000x the mass of the atmosphere, I did the math earlier to get the total mass of both. That is a different calculation than the below per unit of volume measurement.

Sea water has a mass of ~1000kg/m^3. Sea level air has a mass of 1.2kg/m^3. How does it only take 4 times as much energy to heat up a cubic meter of seawater than a cubic meter of air? Wouldn't it be ~820 times as much?

At what level of crisis does one country with a large enough arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles target the largest population centres of the world as the last resort to reach sustainable levels of humanity?

Is this being war-gamed at the highest level of any of the big three world powers that have this kind of arsenal?

Countries that are net exporters of primary materials and foods would be more valuable than those which are net importers.

Try to minimize effects on arable land and base ecosystems - limit the damage to the boundaries of worthless cement and asphalt.

How many times in a row with the likeliest variables does the modeling have to result in "them or potentially everyone" before the decision is made to press the big red button?

Who decides the variables? What population numbers are we talking? What about retribution?

What about more subtle alternatives? Taking out an entire country's power grid under the guise of a terrorist act, let the ensuing chaos be it's own form of population control, then comes the big bang under cover of chaos it is more difficult to attribute.

This sounds like a dystopian story which would get turned into a bad movie with a happy ending starring The Rock or Tom Cruise being reunited with their daughter who was at college in one of the targeted cities but as luck would have it was visiting less fortunate rural orphans when it all went down, and she still had her makeup clutch.

I really don't know if I should have posted this or not. I've spent the last hour reading the other comments and the overwhelming feeling i get is that there's very little hope. Someone even quoted Peter Watts, so i can't be going too far thinking that this a real future option can I? I don't even know if i think its a remotely realistic scenario, but i do know that war is humanity's most effective population control with historic precedent.

You might "enjoy" this book about conflict in the age of global warming: "Ultimatum" by Matthew Glass -- it's like "West Wing" with a little more action in it: https://www.amazon.com/Ultimatum-Matthew-Glass-ebook/dp/B002...

I vote we start with your hometown.

Maybe just me, but unless I am mistaken you mean that if you are willing to call for the mass killing of other people's friends and families (for ANY reason, but in this case for the greater good) then you should be willing to start with your own friends and family. In the end, I don't think genocide is the solution for any problem large or small, but if you are going to suggest it as a solution you had better offer your own pound of flesh in the bargain.

Did I read too much into your statement?

If everyone knew how to grow food locally there would be less transportation waste, more community, & stronger immune systems from working the dirt with hands instead of exclusively machines.

It also would make the food more expensive.

Not if you shared a plot of land with neighbors and contributed to upkeep. Essentially free. Not practical in urban setting, which is why I avoid cities.

It’s only free if your time is worth zero. It’s net more expensive if you have a job that you wouldn’t be doing.

The benefits mentioned in the parent could potentially be worth allocated time. Growing food does not require a quantity of time that would interfere with work - bulk labor is required for planting and harvesting, but monitoring growth throughout the season is a great pre/post work activity to share with others.

If they got this number wrong by 60% for all these years and just noticed, why should I trust anything else about all of their different, conflicting climate models?

They didn't get it wrong. They did the best they could with the data they had, which they knew was sparse.

"However, these estimates all use the same imperfect ocean dataset and share additional uncertainties resulting from sparse coverage, especially before 2007"

You'll note here the methodology isn't the issue, but rather the dataset. They've improved the dataset.

> why should I trust anything else

Well, technically, you shouldn't. You can look at the data and review it yourself. The problem is, you aren't probably an expert in the field. Which means at some level, you've already put your trust in the experts at some level.

Furthermore, to double down on the "they didn't get it wrong" comment:

"Our result - which relies on high-precision O2 measurements dating back to 1991 - suggests that ocean warming is at the high end of previous estimates."

You'll note here that this they concluded the actual warming was still within the previous estimates. And considering estimates are just that, this further backs up their claim.

Ok, let’s even stipulate that it’s a failure of data rather than methodology. The computerized climate models have very sensitive dependence on this kind of poorly measured data. Why should I trust them if that data is subject to wild swings as measurements get refined?

> Why should I trust them if that data is subject to wild swings as measurements get refined?

You are begging the question here.

Simply put, "that data is subject to wild swings as measurements get refined", isn't reflected in the article. It's something you are making up. Again, the data was within the estimation previously made. They've refined that data.

A wild swing would in fact go from showing one thing to showing another thing entirely. That's how a swing works. What really happened is the predication was correct. We are now getting to see more precisely how correct.

Regardless, I honestly don't believe you are being honest here, since you are asking the same question and not putting any effort into this. You are trolling. If you aren't, put forth some effort. You think you are being "smart," but the truth is, you aren't.

True, why trust anything. It is not as if there is some systematic way to over time iteratively improve a rational model that is testable and verifiable through a competitive process.

How would you propose testing or verifying a non-falsifiable model? Each sample of future data we have tends to show our models to be simply broken except in the most broad sense of a longterm gradual increase in temperatures. For instance from 2001 and 2010 the warming slowed to 0.11C per decade. [1] For the 17 years before then was 0.17C. There was not a single model that predicted this and, in spite of a number of after the fact hypotheses for that apparent decline, there is still no decisive answer. Does this not kind of bother you?

We might argue that well since they're getting the overall picture right, that they must be fundamentally correct, even if they don't perform so well on the micro scale. But I'm not sure this is a reasonable argument. In particular, the past 400k years of Earth [2] show a very regular waxing and waning of temperatures, with the scale increasing upwards of 10C from the frequently extremely rapid transition from the mins to the maxes. Not only is about now when you would expect to be entering a warming era, but we've yet to even hit the highs of temperatures the planet reached in relatively recent geologic history, though before humans even existed. This is no way suggesting that humans are not contributing to the current phase of climate change, yet at the same time is it really particularly insightful to propose that temperatures will continue to do as they've done for hundreds of thousands of years?

As usual I'm sure people will just downvote this, but I genuinely have no clue why. It's as if its taboo to ask, what I think, are completely reasonable questions. At the same time it's completely kosher to freak out and suggest climate change could imminently end the very species of humankind, which is not a remotely realistic outcome even in the most catastrophic and near 0 probability level outcomes.

[1] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/did-global-warmin...

[2] - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Ice_Age_...

Whether or not the world has been warmer in the past is entirely and completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is that we are provably massively accelerating the current warming, causing changes to weather, water and food systems we rely on for our survival. If we don't make equally massive sacrifices to fix this, we will lose our food, water, and land. This isn't the time for middlebrow devils-advocate games, it is the time for action.

Why do you think we'll lose our food, water, and land? Let's start with a couple of important maps. This [1] is a map of where US farmland is. This [2] is where US water resources are. So of course we need to consider these things in terms of climate change. I quite like the simulator the NOAA has set up here [3]. It lets you increase or decrease water levels and dynamically see the effect. Perhaps the most surprising thing though is this [4]. That's an article that illustrates what the world would look like if somehow literally all ice in the world melted, some 216 feet of sea level rise. And indeed the world would be quite reshaped, but the surprising thing is by how little. Suffice to say you wouldn't need to start building an ark. And as an relevant aside, sea levels have already risen more than 400 feet since the the most recent interglacial warming period started some ~20,000 years ago. [5] Somehow, life went on.

To be clear I 100% agree with you on changes, but not losses. And I am in no way playing devil's advocate. I think the things I've asked, and said, are reasonable. They're completely authentic in any case, and I am 100% open to changing my view. If anything I've said is inaccurate in any way, or any question technically unreasonable - please do share. Apologies on the excessive amounts of links here, but I find this is a topic where disinformation is excessive and so I think it's important to cite most facts.

---

[1] - https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_MEDIA/nrcs143_010966....

[2] - https://water.usgs.gov/ogw/gwrp/activities/images/StudyLocat...

[3] - https://coast.noaa.gov/slr/

[4] - https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2013/09/rising-s...

[5] - https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/gornitz_09/

It’s a reasonable question. The work is learning how to get a reasonable answer.

You don't have to. Scientists could be wrong, they can always be wrong.

But even if there's just a 1% chance of human existence being threatened for something, I'd err to the side of caution.

Is it 1%? Where did that figure come from?

What if it’s only 0.00000001%? Is it still worth erring on the side of caution when there are real costs to doing so?

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