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Comment by graeme | Hacker News Reader

It's rather sobering. It's also my impression that most people who "believe" in climate change haven't near come to grips with the scale and urgency of the problem.

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.

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There's a social scientist, Mayer Hillman, who advocates this view[0], and that we must accept we're doomed to have a chance of fixing it. He has quite a remarkable track record of being right long before an idea catches on [1].

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)

We still often heat by gas

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 think a combined cycle gas plant producing electricity at ~55% efficiency paired with a heat pump on site with a COP above 2 is actually better. Modern heat pumps actually have a COP in the 4-6 range (at least, ductless mini splits do). It’s a little surprising but it’s also cheaper to run a heat pump with a COP greater than 3 (gas is ~1/3 the price on a kWh basis). They are definitely a bit more expensive upfront, however.

Don't forget about 20% transmission losses.

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.

That's the sort of change I had in mind. To start a move off fossil and onto electric utilising community heat pump schemes for new estates and apartments etc. Far better as a community thing than individuals so the costs are reduced to each. That or electric for those houses with solar.

I was talking to my dad last night and he was saying how important it is to maximize your 401k, etc. and all I could think was "but even I have money it won't effing mean anything when billions of people are starving and you need to defend any means to produce food with force".

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.

> I was talking to my dad last night and he was saying how important it is to maximize your 401k, etc. and all I could think was "but even I have money it won't effing mean anything when billions of people are starving and you need to defend any means to produce food with force".

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.

how can one calculate the 10% hit on GDP for 2100?

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

I worry that current projections seem to disregard problems like the potential clathrate gun. So far we've been forecasting too optimistically.

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.

I think the best way to prepare for the coming century would be to train hard. Study agriculture, soil science, horticulture. Regularly train to build strength and endurance. Maybe learn how to fight. Feel free to work on your 401k as well, but I think a better metric of your security is "How far can you carry 60 pounds of supplies and equipment in a day?"

Or some rich and powerful people decided to tell you a metior was about to pummel the Earth and you better accept a reduced standard of living while they fly to and from climate conferences in their private jets.

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 quite clear that if climate change is real and a pressing concern, the people flying around the world trying to stop it would not be major drivers of the problem.

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?"

>people flying around the world trying to stop it would not be major drivers of the problem.

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...

The article says Gore made his money in business, by starting a TV network and from stock options earned while sitting on Apple's board. The options were from before the massive rise in Apple's stock.

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.

Here's the first hit from a web search for "al gore solyndra"

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.

"These people" are. You just haven't heard of them. In particular there are quite a few low-energy, off grid, permaculture advocates living what they preach. The existence of Al Gore doesn't change the science.

No, but it does put into question the motivations of people funding the science, and academics are poorly-paid professionals constantly fighting for funding, not gods with uniformly honored moral scruples.

The future has been, since the birth of language, terrifying and uncertain.

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.

Are you saying that Al Gore's above-average energy consumption (private jets, mansions, etc) invalidates his claims about climate change? Are we meant to infer from his behavior that nobody needs to make any significant changes to their lifestyle?

Yes. If you're unwilling to live by the charges you are demanding others make, your credibility is weakened.

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.

I would agree if Al Gore existed in a vacuum. There are other, less extravagant people who also claim that:

>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.

Since when does the whole thing hang on the reputation of Al Gore? What a ridiculous argument, unworthy of HN.

Seriously. Are we really at the point where "I don't like Al Gore, therefore climate change is a hoax" is something we're supposed to rebut?

If something is true, it's true no matter who says it.

Most people have some faith in scientists and close to zero faith in public figures.

I think you should reevalute your confidence in this assessment, because in the United States alone there are demonstrably millions of people with non-negligible faith in public figures - of all kinds and political affiliation.

It's also fairly straightforward to find people who don't exactly hold scientists in high regard.

Does that still hold if you replace “public” with “religious?”

It makes me sad that, in 2018, acknowledgement of scientific fact is seen as a "political belief".

So: Your understanding that you can't prove yourself but which you take on faith from a politicized system of academic grants and government loans to fraudulent businesses like Solyndra is "scientific fact" and my skepticism is merely a "political belief".

I'm not really taking anything on faith here. Anyone with an undergraduate-level physics education should not have a difficult time making sense of all of this. The Greenhouse Effect was first theorized by Joseph Fourier in the early 19th century, and soon thereafter became established science.

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.

It makes me sad that, in 2018, people still think that assertions about the future climate made by predictive computer models is seen as a "fact".

we had predictive models of CO2s greenhouse effect decades ago, the predictions are coming true before our eyes already.

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 could also raise my standard of living by stealing my neighbor's stuff. But that would be rude. I don't see how stealing from my neighbor's kid's future is any better.

If the best counterargument you can come up with is proudly ad hominem, that should be a serious red flag.

Have you heard of the term Neo-Liberalism? Lowering living standards for the middle class is part of the plan. Burglary has nothing to do with it.

You could sink your investment dollars into companies with green technology bona fides. They will hopefully be the ones raking in the returns in the near future. If not, well, like you said the money won’t be worth anything anyways.

Your friend is right. Mad Max world isn't in your immediate future. Not even the most pessimistic forecast comes anywhere close

Have you seen the photos of Paradise, California? Of this year's hurricanes? Depending on where this person lives, they may already be experiencing very serious effects. Good-bye retirement savings if you have to rebuild or migrate to a less-vulnerable area.

I'm not quite sure you are making a point in line with the person you are responding to. The California fires are terrible but:

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 agree; you should save if you can. But perhaps you should not expect it to last until your retirement (or perhaps even you yourself will not last until your retirement) as climate disasters become more common and deadly.

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.)

Define "immediate"?

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genoc...

No one reading HN today will ever experience it

+ The 5 warmest years on record have been in the 2010s

+ The 20 warmest years on record have been since 1995

We're already experiencing it.

I live in British Columbia and for the past 3 summers have had to spend at least all of August indoors with doors and windows sealed shut due to the dangerous levels of particulates in the air. I am already experiencing it.

Particulates – is that smoke from forest fires caused by hot dry weather?

More or less. The fires are caused mostly by lightening and dry winds (some human caused too) by also contributed to by a lot of fuel from overly wet spring followed by dry hot summer.

A small increase in temperature results in a significant increase in lightening which is the big worry.

So you don't believe the fiery hellscape that is California in 2018 is climate related at all?

Weather is not climate. Natural disaster is not climate.

Changes in average precipitation rates is climate, and california's fire season is now year-round.

Please reread the guidelines. Intentional obtuseness is not conducive to healthy discussion.

I think even most people who "believe" are only saying it for social acceptance. I see no evidence of more than a very few people making the sorts of changes in their lifestyle that would make any difference in their personal carbon emissions

The scope of the issue makes individual lifestyle changes laughably pointless.

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.

Shepherds can believe the commons are being depleted without it altering the incentive to graze their own sheep there. It would be nice if the option were between

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

There's a third option, though: Do whatever, but vote for a party that wants to curb emissions. Only governments can turn this around. Listened to an interview with a climate scientist who was advocating that. He said individual action is a distraction.

Neither political party is taking things seriously enough. They care too much to appease their corporate overlords.

Exactly. Even worse, most people, even here, mostly just talk about what other people should do.

Okay, so what exactly does "dead" mean here?

> 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.

https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433

Start here: https://www.sunrisemovement.org/gnd

Also: https://rebellion.earth/

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