Fourth National Climate Assessment, Volume II
nca2018.globalchange.gov
nca2018.globalchange.gov
Climate change is a collective action problem. It can't be solved by voluntary sacrifice or any other kind of uncoordinated action. Suggesting that it can is harmful in two ways:
1. It puts the focus on solutions that don't work and won't even help.
2. Framing it in terms of sacrifice—which, again, won't even work—makes people less inclined to help in ways that might work, like lobbying for more effective policy.
"Eat your vegetables" is not the answer. People won't—no matter what. You might, your friends might, but people won't, and that's what matters.
Deny this fact at everyone's peril.
Sure, it's obviously better if people choose the hybrid over the guzzler, but if you're trying to do something to avoid catastrophic climate change, I think spending time persuading people not to buy the guzzler is not worth the opportunity cost. (By which I mean, at the margin, any time spent persuading people not to buy a gas guzzler would be better spent persuading people to support a carbon tax of some sort).
https://www.theguardian.com/weather/ng-interactive/2018/sep/...
If you have better answers for skeptics, which is your responsibility
No it isn't. Climate change 'skeptics' have such a long record of bad-faith participation that I no longer consider them worthy of response.
Switching from an omnivorous to vegetarian diet could reduce a person's carbon footprint by about 30 percent, says Martin Heller, an engineer at the Center for Sustainable Systems at the University of Michigan.
https://www.popsci.com/vegetarian-environment-health (I've picked this as the first hit on google, but if you want to find other sources go for it).
The point about vegetarianism is that eating meat is SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO inefficient that climate change won't be solved until we ALL stop eating meat (or at least the majority of the planet).
Yes, there are corporate plutocrats that are destroying the planet. No, that does not let you off the hook. If you see a collective action problem and decide that, since it's hard, and other people suck, you don't have to participate, then you're just as much a part of the problem as the sucky people.
Meat is already expensive, indicating people would eat more of it if they could afford it. If conscientious people reduce meat consumption, that supply will mostly just be consumed (at a lower price) by people that don't care.
The goal here should be to make things like meat, car fuel, etc. more expensive (via taxes, or otherwise properly pricing in the costs). It might very well be the case that some people that can afford these increased prices continue to consume exactly as much meat and fuel as they do now. So fucking what? The overall consumption will go down, which is what we need. Overall consumption will not go down significantly if you just convince some fraction of people to voluntarily reduce their consumption.
When you come back out and shout the fire truck is coming, he yells at you for wasting time inside instead of picking up his other tiny shovel and throwing some dirt.
Except... the problem clearly won't be solved with twice the tiny-shovelfuls of dirt. It needs a qualitatively different type of action.
On climate change, you have two choices:
1. You can moralize about the sucky people who won't grab a shovel, essentially complaining that the problem isn't of the form you'd like; or
2. You can do the thing that's most effective.
You can also help your neighbor shovel dirt until the fire truck arrives. That's fine, it doesn't hurt. Just understand it doesn't make a difference.
Any source to back the claim that climate change cannot be stopped unless we convert to vegetarianism?
The effect of uncoordinated action on the problem may be fine, but treating it as part of the solution space on par with actual solutions is not.
e.g.:
Alice and Bob are on a team of 10 developers. Code quality is terrible. It's obvious to Meg, the manager, that something must be done before the product totally collapses.
The other 8 developers don't care. Not only that: they actively refuse to even contemplate why quality might matter, and also each of them has different, mutually exclusive, horrifyingly destructive preferences.
Carol only uses `switch`, not `if`. Dave removes "unnecessary" object allocations (all of them) because GC pressure. Eve's editor replaces every single space with tab on save.
So Bob takes Meg aside and says the team needs training. If everyone who militantly does not care and actively refuses to cooperate could just be shown the error of their ways, he says, we surely could accept a style guide everyone would follow. Training will cure obstinance and apathy with minimal investment.
Later, Alice goes to Meg and says we need a git hook that enforces linting and, actually, a CI pipeline wouldn't hurt.
I don't know, says Meg. That sounds like it would slow us down. And setting all that up could be a lot of work. Bob says we can solve it with a couple trainings and a lot less effort.
So they go with Bob's solution, with predictable results, because Meg likes it better. If everyone who cannot possibly agree would just agree, she reasons, there would be no need for major changes.
Why can't they just agree?
You get nowhere when you let people push blame from their own actions to the actions of others (or conglomerates). The people who feel most responsible for the future of the Earth are those most likely to take action: both individual action and political action.
Eating your vegetables is the answer. (Well, part of it.) It simply isn't possible for us to fix the climate unless people start eating a whole lot more vegetables, fruit, nuts, and legumes. If we were in a society with a benevolent dictator, maybe we could force people to eat more vegetables. But how, in our democracy, are you going to get our corporate-owned politicians to pass very heavy taxes on meat? It's simply not going to happen until you have a massive number of people pushing for change. Imagine trying to legalize gay marriage in a country where 95% of people oppose it. It's a nearly hopeless endeavor.
If you are one of the people who eats steak and drives SUVs because you don't feel personally responsible for your contribution to climate change, then you're the problem. Personal responsibility is not opposed to political change, it's a prerequisite for it. The people who get the government to pass meat taxes will almost certainly be people who don't eat a lot of meat.
It's a bit like how supermarkets will put the veggies at the entrance, so people will buy more unhealthy food (as a reward for buying those vegetables!).
I'm inclined to agree with you mostly because I think the situation is so dire that those who do their part will not just leave it at that, but the above mentioned does concern me a bit.
To really address the issue requires disempowering and disenfranchising average people, denying us our customary and preferred lifestyles. This is a monumentally difficult thing to do in a system that requires the consent of the governed. Giving up your lifestyle vs. voting to give up your lifestyle (even if indirectly, by crippling the companies that provide its constituent parts) are not too different.
At least I'm fucking trying, What the Hell have you done?
1. There is a policy that is simple to explain and has some bipartisan appeal: Fee and Dividend (also known as the Clean Energy Dividend). It puts an increasing price on carbon per ton at the source (e.g., oil well, port of entry, etc.) and distributes 100% of the proceeds to the people. That's it. No tricks, no back-door subsidies. And because it is redistributed it's also not a tax in the usual sense, which helps win over those who are open to climate policy but anti-tax.
2. Things are indeed more dire than even most climate aware folks realize. Watch climate scientist Kevin Anderson break down the numbers -- it's sobering how disconnected our climate discourse is from reality:
> Considering both historical and projected non-CO2 effects reduces the estimated cumulative CO2 budget compatible with any future warming goal, and in the case of 3.6°F (2°C) it reduces the aforementioned estimate to 790 GtC. Given this more comprehensive estimate, limiting the global average temperature increase to below 3.6°F (2°C) means approximately 230 GtC more CO2 could be emitted globally. To illustrate, if one assumes future global emissions follow a pathway consistent with the lower scenario (RCP4.5), this cumulative carbon threshold is exceeded by around 2037, while under the higher scenario (RCP8.5) this occurs by around 2033. To limit the global average temperature increase to 2.7°F (1.5°C), the estimated cumulative CO2 budget is about 590 GtC (assuming linear scaling with the compatible 3.6°F (2°C) budget that also considers non-CO2 effects), meaning only about 30 GtC more of CO2 could be emitted. Further emissions of 30 GtC (in the form of CO2) are projected to occur in the next few years (Table 14.1).
Dates by when cumulative carbon emissions (GtC) since 1870 reach amount commensurate with 2.7°F (1.5°C), when accounting for non-CO2 forcings:
66% = 593 GtC 50% = 615 GtC 33% = 675 GtC
--------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------
RCP4.5 2019 2021 2027
RCP8.5 2019 2021 2025
Think "all of the direct economic benefit of fossil fuels from all of human history but in reverse, plus inefficiency losses, in 1/4 the timespan"
I've been thinking of writing an essay along the lines of the world being "default dead". Basically, unless we come up with something to suck carbon from the air and replace our energy use, I believe we're sunk.
A lot of people seem to believe that if we just stopped or "reduced" we'd solve the problem. But if we continue for just a few years as normal, then even a total cessation of emissions wouldn't solve our predicament.
Reducing, eliminating: these are important things. But, we're basically dead by default, and need to do something more to actually reverse what we emitted.
But hey, you know, reusable grocery bags and telecommuting 1 day a week should do it. I guess.
It's like we found the asteroid headed for Earth and decided to pretend it doesn't exist.
If your political beliefs tell you to not save for your retirement because the apocalypse is coming, that should be a serious red flag.
It's also fairly straightforward to find people who don't exactly hold scientists in high regard.
The jet travel may be justified, but if he believes what he is saying he should be flying commercial and the extravagance in the rest of his lifestyle looks really hypocritical.
>climate change is real
>climate change is man made
>climate hazards will impact people all over the world
>climate change quickly creates additional hazards which need to be dealt with on top of whatever problems already affect us (erosion of infrastructure, salination of farmlands/aquifers due to flooding, traffic trapping people during a forest fire)
Perhaps Al Gore believes that individual actions are completely insignificant compared to the acts of corporations and governments. Maybe he is a closet climate-denier. If either of those things are true, it is inconvenient that many see him as the face of climate activism. I think the case for climate mitigation should hinge upon scientific evidence, rather than the lifestyle and personal opinions of a single man.
If you're running around 2018 saying "global warming is not a fact" I would urge some light reading on your part, it's really quite good writing in its own right:
Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...
I'm a bit puzzled as to why you bring up Solyndra, seeing as they never claimed to be an authority on climate science, just producing PV cells. Are you arguing that climate change was invented in order to motivate grants to research, and ventures like Solyndra, which otherwise may not have received them? If this is the case, then yes, I would say that your skepticism is indeed a political belief.
Unfortunately for humans, all the evidence seems to indicate strongly that climate change is more than a conspiracy to get a few people marginal relative wealth increases. Especially since it seems the ones trying to convince the world to change haven't been very successful.
Also, I'm pretty sure the GP wasn't saying "I shouldn't save because politics," but rather, "A 401k sounds great, but if everyone's starving and the world is in chaos, what's the point?"
There have been times in history where focusing on your retirement has been a stupid idea (fall of Rome, WWII, areas devastated by plague or flood, etc, etc). However, there have also been times where catastrophe has stubbornly refused to occur.
It is actually pretty easy to describe a horrific future that can't be quickly or reasonably debunked - but anyone with sense should also be prepared for the outside scenario that everything carries on as planned. Doomsayers always face the risk that the problem turns out to be solvable or minor, and should be prepared for that.
Thats missing the point. The fact that these people arent willing to sacrifice the slightest convenience for the planet strongly suggests they dont actually believe what they are saying. Obviously no one person can ruin the planet.
And: >"A 401k sounds great, but if everyone's starving and the world is in chaos, what's the point?" Is just a nicer way to say: >"I shouldn't save because the apocalypse is coming"
>marginal relative wealth increases
Understatement of the century. >Former vice president Al Gore had a net worth of about $1.7 million at the turn of the century and 13 years later, his wealth has grown to more than $200 million. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2320452/Al-Gore-Rom...
You implied Gore made his money from climate activism, but your own source contradicts you. The options are:
1. You have such confirmation bias that you don't even read articles you post as evidence, or 2. You know you're arguing in bad faith, but you hope to persuade people who don't read the link
I'm sure Al Gore has made some money from climate activism, but the vast bulk of his fortune came from elsewhere. So the comment you were replying to was accurate in describing it as a marginal increase due to activism.
https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_1961299
Tldr; The Washington Post attributes most of Al Gore's net worth to investments in taxpayer subsidized climate startups.
There certainly are bad faith people on hackernews, i just hope you yourself arent one of them lol.
If the best counterargument you can come up with is proudly ad hominem, that should be a serious red flag.
http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genoc...
+ The 20 warmest years on record have been since 1995
We're already experiencing it.
A small increase in temperature results in a significant increase in lightening which is the big worry.
1) You have to be ready for terrible fires even if the future climate prognosis is great.
2) The residents of Paradise, California with substantial savings are going to be much better off than those without.
If anything, Paradise validates the idea that you should save and invest more in preparation for a hostile future rather than less. They aren't going it alone, they are still part of a large and functioning America.
I was responding to someone who said we would not see a Mad-Max-like world in our lifetimes; my point was merely that some people already are seeing such a thing. (Though I admit I never saw the Mad Max movie, so I may have missed the mark.)
The nytimes summary (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report...) claims the report talks about a 10% hit to US GDP in 2100 (note: I can't actually find such language in the report).
If you are in America, that type of hit is hardly on the level of life destroying, though I'll admit a) there's tail-probabilities of much worse happening, b) people in developing countries will be hurt far more, c) if you care about the outdoors, you'll be a lot less happy.
With rising temperatures, there will be natural selection pressure on all organisms, many on which the economy relies (say plants).
Organisms that repeat their lifecycle faster will have advantage over organisms with longer lifecycles (the shorter-lived adversarial species among 2 adversarial species can iterate variations faster sequentially, regardless if the 2 adversarial species are competing or predator-prey, ...).
Organisms that have higher population counts will have advantage over organisms with lower population counts (since the species with higher population counts is trying out more variations in parallel)
Hence smaller, simpler organisms will cause lots of diseases and afflictions in say agriculture, which probably will adversely affect our economies...
A 10% hit on GDP sounds like a ridiculous underestimate
Also, having hundreds of millions of starving people fleeing central and south america may affect stability. In addition to being a profound and completely catastrophe.
> We have twelve years to show results.
a) cut back on carbon emissions personally, and climate change will be undone
b) do nothing and let climate change take its course
but the reality is the option for your average consumer is
a) cut back on carbon emissions personally, and whatever happens to the world will happen regardless because you're only a microscopic contribution to the problem/solution
b) do nothing, and whatever happens to the world will happen regardless because you're only a microscopic contribution to the problem/solution
All major world governments needed to nationalize or brutally regulate polluting industries decades ago. They didn't, and it's tough to see a path forward now even assuming the political will to do so somehow appeared out of the ether.
The trouble, as I see it, is we're all being encouraged to shuffle around some trivia whilst avoiding the real issues, with only a very few truly reflecting the scale of the problem. Instead of making a concerted attempt to get households to reduce energy by insulating, changing fuels, changing tax incentives and subsidies we're given LED light bulbs and faffing around with drinking straws etc. We still often heat by gas, or bring home tonnes of plastic in the weekly shop. We need policy to achieve enough.
I think the only other route to change is via groups like Extinction Rebellion (Who are trying to get "enough" people imprisoned to get public opinion and policy change. Peaceful marches, after all, achieve nothing. Civil disobedience has been the route to the significant changes through history).
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doo...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2002/nov/02/weekend7... (Long)
Well, fwiw if we're going to heat with fossil fuels, it is best to "burn on-site". You don't get 98% efficiency in a natural gas power plant.
Until renewables take over the grid, natural gas space heating is probably as good a fuel choice as we've got.
I guess it'll depend on the climate, the COP of even the best heat pumps drops to 2 or worse in colder weather. I think I can agree that if it's a very mild climate and you frequently get a COP of 4 or better, then that could already beat a furnace in per-BTU gas consumption.
Thank you!
Table 1 has estimates of how many years of remaining global emissions we have before we exceed the cumulative emission budgets for various goals of limiting warming to at most +2, +3 or +4 degrees, and different probabilities of success. Note that the Friedlingstein et al paper from 2014 didn't even bother to talk about the possibility of limiting warming to +1.5 degrees C.
These estimates of emissions rates for remaining years before our cumulative emissions budget is exceeded are highly optimistic in the sense that they assume annual CO_2-equivalent emissions stop growing, i.e. the rate we are emitting greenhouse gas is held constant to whatever they were in 2014. In comparison, annual greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow: http://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/17/infograph...
My understanding is that coastal areas (where most people currently live) are generally fucked, but I don't really have a good understanding of what the difference is between 2C diff and, say, 3C diff. Anyone have links to some good, non-sensational estimates?
That would then probably lead to continued emissions, as any international effort to reduce them would break down, and people would take what advantage they could in a more tooth and nail world.
Meanwhile, arctic sea ice is disappearing [2] and I didn't see any mention of latent heat or phase change energy of the arctic waters. Once the ice is gone, we're done.
[1] https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/10654002541519544...
Edit: this seems to be a controversial comment. It is getting a lot of down votes and a lot of up votes. I'm a bit confused by this. The report is a US government report, largely prepared by agencies that are under the Executive branch, and says that climate change is a big and growing problem.
It is the Executive branch that will handle any Federal action in response to this. The President is the head of the Executive, and will largely determine how the Federal government responds, either directly by executive orders and by setting White House policy, or indirectly through the President's choices of heads of the agencies.
That the President a mere two days before the report was released (and almost certainly having been told well in advance what was going to be in report) is implying that climate change is not happening is on-topic and relevant.
I don't know why you're being downvoted, but I think it's important to say this clearly: anyone who believes that global warming is real, that science is a rational basis for knowledge, and wants humanity to address warming as soon as possible, is in profound, fundamental conflict with the Republican Party about the most important crisis of our time.
The significance of this report is to convey the gravity of the crisis and to raise a sense of emergency among the public. If the report succeeds, it will be generating the political will necessary to strip Republicans of power and force through a science-based policy.
"Wow, that really seems to be a problem. Wait, that's me they're mad at? And all my enemies are the ones baying for blood? They're probably lying, they are the other team after all. Nevermind."
I didn't downvote, but unless you have a plan for wiping out half the electorate you'll have to work with the other party. Activating everyone's mental immune systems with a nice pathogen-like protien coat of enemy rhetoric is not a good way to do it. It's like stirring peanut butter into the vat at an antihistamine factory.
2) The Republican Party doesn't represent the will of half the electorate at a national level—they received a minority share of the vote in the last presidential, house and senate elections, and only by virtue of the antiquated, undemocratic, and intentionally manipulated system we use do Republicans hang on to power. In a modern democracy with the electorate we have, we wouldn't be in this situation. No plan for "wiping out" millions of people needed.
3) I see the challenge facing us differently. We have to galvanize and activate the political energy and force of people who want the world to be safe and healthy as much as possible in order to forcibly extract concessions on the part of the ruling minority and set the stage for the reclamation of the government. If the large majority that support solving this crisis were mobilized, this would create enormous pressure for things to change.
To put it your way, unless you have a plan for changing the minds of millions of Republicans in the face of decades of increased polarization, a multi-billion-dollar propaganda apparatus working in concert with the president, and a near-endless supply of money from very rich corporations who benefit from our current paralysis, you'll have to settle for applying as much pressure on Republicans as we can.
The Trump Administration is in the process of dismantling all of that work as fast as possible. Here's an article from early 2017, which expresses the contrast between the two quite well:
"The order sends an unmistakable signal that just as President Barack Obama sought to weave climate considerations into every aspect of the federal government, Trump is hoping to rip that approach out by its roots." [1]
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump...
Look up the National Popular Vote Compact. Some of these solutions are not as difficult as you'd imagine.
Suppose (a wild assumption) that the Republican (or any climate change sceptic) electorate would vote for unimpeded climate protection on the condition climate change sceptics get a 50% tax cut compared to non-sceptics, would you (or should those concerned with climate change) seize that opportunity, in order to save the climate unimpeded by the sceptics? i.e. full frontal bribing part of the electorate to get out of the way?
That sound you just heard was two million years of combined social instincts crushing any attempt at reconsideration like a grape in a trash compactor. I'm sure the Republicans on HN are glad to know that climate isn't about the good of humanity, but is actually about treating then badly...
It's not just us vs them. There's at least a third group: future generations. In a realpolitic sense, should we allow "them" to screw over the future generations because of "our" blame attribution (correct or not)?
Reconsider the percentage of 50%: at what percentage do you change your stance? 40%? 30%? 20%? 10%? 5%? 2%? 1%? or absolutely strictly 0%?
Suppose this passes at some non-zero percentage, you are of course free to buy into Republican membership (or perhaps Democrat or other climate sceptic membershipif say a Green party or other succeeds in passing this) and reveal your true colors if you refuse to pay the larger tax...
A systemic problem needs a systemic solution, up till now it has been mostly the system moralizing the individual (who realises all too well we need a systemic solution)
The future generations would look back and see who can't prove they were in the added ecotax paying bracket..., of course they would see it is totally unfair, but as the problem becomes ever more urgent, the question becomes less and less about what is fair, but more and more about how the f!ck we are going to implement a timely and systemic solution, regardless of fairness...
It seems like this puzzle forces one to rediscover the true meaning of humanism, patriotism and sacrifice.
Chomsky refers to it as the most dangerous organization on earth. However, as popular as it is in the US to blame a political party, I don't think it's helpful in most cases, and this problem is no exception.
The other party is not going to stand up to corporate control of government any better than the republican party. We need a fundamental shift in culture and economic incentive to overcome this problem. Real solutions aren't event being discussed.
Alternatively, it could be through generating the political will amongst Republicans to shift their position. I make no particular claim as to likelihood.
It's pretty clear (according to the models) that the human created aerosols combat a fair chunk of the increase caused by carbon emissions (around 0.7 deg C at the moment, which is substantial; we'd have already been around 2 deg C without it). Is deliberately increasing the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere a viable path forward? Is this economically feasible and safe? Can this be used to bring us back to the pre-industrial temperature levels?
My own thoughts are that we should be exploring doing this as a secondary backstop (it has pretty high ROI), while aggressively cutting emissions as well.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-geoengineering-may-not-coo...
The current climate change problem has been caused by unintentional geoengineering with an undesirable outcome. It's reasonable to assume that different methods of geoengineering can have different effects, and might be capable of helping solve the problem.
We might have to do it anyway, but I'm hoping we can hold off till we have a replacement, so as to avoid compounding things even worse than they are. Human psychology being what it is, we'll use aerosols to push off solving things.
Anyone know the expected outcome of a seriously acid ocean? My assumption is it would be civilization ending in some way, but maybe that's wrong.
This is a simple, backyard technology that can be adopted incrementally. The fuel is carbon-neutral. If you don't have land, you can join or start a Community-Supported Agriculture co-op, for produce and fuel.
https://climitigation.org/olivine-can-reverse-climate-change...
> In this case, we are looking specifically at the rock olivine when it comes in contact with ocean water and the CO2 dissolved in it. What results is a chemical reaction that pulls carbon from the CO2 in the ocean and binds it in a solution that eventually settles into rock on the sea floor. Not only does the olivine remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but the resulting solution is alkaline and has a deacidifying effect on the ocean.
Check out the AirMiners index of 83+ startups at http://airminers.org
Please add new companies you find, too!
Let's face it: The science behind climate change is likely sound, climate change is real, and we should probably do things to address it.
What is not science is accurately predicting the future. That cannot be done. Relying on computer models that can't possibly take into consideration every variable that can affect the climate, to me, is a waste of time, resources, and human lives. It is definitely not something we should base our governmental and societal decisions on.
His use of "globalists" says all