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Comment by ThomPete | Hacker News Reader

Luckily we are much better equipped to deal with any effect of change in climate today than we used to be when we also had even warmer climate.

In fact that's one of the things we've been really good at learning to deal with. Natures tendency to throw us all sorts of unexpected events.

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If we're so good at dealing with things -- which I think it's fairly obvious we aren't -- why don't we just "deal with" carbon emissions and our effects on the environment? Why opt for the more difficult to deal with scenario?

Thats like saying. If we are fairly good at dealing with a broken leg why don't we just deal with cancer.

I don't even know where to start.

That's YOUR argument.

Climate Change is cancer, and localised weather-based or natural disasters are broken legs.

In fact that's one of the things we've been really good at learning to deal with. Natures tendency to throw us all sorts of unexpected events.

Unexpected events within a relatively stable norm that humans have been living within for thousands of years. Climate change has the distinct potential to break out of those norms.

No that's actually your argument.

My argument is that we have become better and better at dealing with the potential consequences of climate change.

That’s definitely not wrong. But at what cost?

Can you provide some examples where you believe we have become better at dealing with the potential consequences of climate change.

Flooding, storms, drought, infertile land and so on. Death have gone way down not up

Yeah, fair enough, those things are certainly true.

I guess what some (most?) people mean when they say "the potential consequences of climate change" are those large scale, high impact, changes that we haven't yet seen.

Which I guess could be considered a bit of moving the goal posts insofar as we've dealt with everything thrown at us thus far, as we'd otherwise not be here having this conversation.

And I do, at times, find myself thinking things like "they've been saying [whatever] is on the brink of collapse for 40 years, and it hasn't happened yet".

Yeah, tricky hey.

No. That's like saying "Why go to the trouble of putting seat belts in cars, since so many people survive car crashes?"

Hopefully you'll see where to start.

Not really. How does that seatbelt work? This is the problem, you dont know.

So let me rephrase: you're saying that increasing carbon tax (for example) is a very dangerous policy because we don't exactly know how it would work out, but at the same time you are confident that our civilization will figure out solution to widespread crop failure, raising sea level, ocean acidification, (possibly) increased amount of superstorms, and a hundred million refugees spread across the world?

Of course all mega-large-scale problems look like achievable goals, as long as you don't pay too much attention on who's gonna pay for all that ...

With what?

Where have I said anything about carbon tax or that it's dangerous? That's not what I am saying at all.

That's the implication inherent in your commentary. To me (and possibly most people downvoting your comments), it sounds as if you're saying that we should deal with the symptoms and not the cause because we've seen symptoms like this before so I assume we can deal with it.

To reduce my position to a couple of cliches:

A stitch in time saves nine

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure

I am saying that neither you nor anyone else has given a single example of something we know will happen and can't deal with today. Not a single example.

What we see on the other hand is plenty of political attempts to try and force specific technologies in which aren't even close to being able to provide enough energy Solar and Wind being the most famous here.

They are going to be great as extensions but we are not going to live in a world where they provide the majority of the energy and thus they aren't fundamental solutions to the problem they are distractions and they aren't even that green.

Thats a good example of what happens when we try and solve a problem which we don't even know will show up and if it does in a 100 years form now.

The difference in cost between solving a problem with technology and methods 100 years from now should be pretty obviously huge and thus it make no sense when we can't even point to a specific problem but just speculate about it.

That's what absurd here.

Scientific modelling has given plenty of examples, many of which have been mentioned here and you've dismissed them out of hand because, in your opinion, 'modelling' is apparently unscientific.

What other method does humanity have of estimating future effects?

If you don't accept the modelling scenarios then you won't accept anything. Continually asking for something that is impossible to provide is what's absurd.

Computer models have been giving plenty of examples of all sorts of outcomes. It sounds like you don't know how computer modeling or science works.

It's not what I think it's a reality.

I think various qualified folks might have something to say about that.

Yes, modelling gives plenty of varying outcomes, that's what it's meant to do. Conclusions aren't drawn on single instances. They're drawn from running many models with varying input assumptions and conditions, and then seeing what the most likely outcomes are.

There will be some outcomes that fall within the "nothing to worry about" range, but they seem to be very low percentage likelihood. Not zero, but highly unlikely.

Isn't that how computer modelling and the scientific method work?

I am qualified enough for that but if you don't believe me then you are more than welcome to educate yourself on the subject[1].

Climate computer models create a spread of outcomes each of them based on various parameters. None of them are conclusions they are all potential outcomes. The IPCC doesn't not just conclude one outcome they provide the spectrum of potential outcomes some of these outcomes have us come out just fine, others are catastrophic but none of them are conclusions.

The outcomes that are "nothing to worry about" are not more unlikely than the "the world is falling apart" outcomes and that's the point I am trying to make.

It's not rational nor sensible to prematurely solve problems that you don't know are actually going to be problems by introducing inferior and unrealiable solutions like wind and solar "just in case" especially not when those "solutions" are creating all sorts of other problems such as burning of coal when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing.

The irony of all this is exactly that by focusing on wind and solar i.e. inferior energy sources that will never be able to provide enough energy for the worlds growing demands we are basically ending up burning more coal and fossil fuels at the same time as the wind and solar not being clean energy sources at all. Not as bad as burning coal but still not really that environmentally friendly and hard to maintain.

But the world want's to be fooled.

[1] I took the most pro climate models article I know of. Now add to this that these models are trying to look 50 to 100 years into the future and you realize just how shaky ground we are one with these models.

Again what we can say scientifically and demonstrate is a fraction of what we speculate.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-do-climate-models-work

You posted 60 comments in this thread, including all kinds of low-quality flamewar perpetuation. That's beyond egregious, and effectively trolling. Please don't do that on HN. And please review the site guidelines and follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I know what it's like when one feels like the lone voice of sanity taking on all comers, but past a certain point discretion and self-restraint are the only ways not to further damage the container here.

It is so annoying when the admin takes one side in a debate and warns the people on the other side, not to mention doing underhanded things like flagging comments without the possibility of vouching for them.

Quite despicable.

Not taking a side; I chided someone else just before posting this one. It's an irresistible perception, though, because seeing us moderate a comment one agrees with makes a stronger, more annoying impression than anything else we do.

We're quite literally already seeing the problem start to occur. Island nations are already starting to sink underneath rising oceans. Miami is constantly having to pump its sewers. Seasonal storms (hurricanes, for instance) are already becoming worse, and the temperature's effects are noticeable if you look long term. It won't take 100 years for the problem to show up -- it's already starting.

That's true, 125,000 years ago we weren't good at this. But then again, there weren't so many of us either.

Climate change has affected society for as long as we have records, and even before that. Drought overthrew pharaos [1], the Romans experienced a little ice age that contributed to their fall [2] in the 500s, Mayans form drought in the 1100s [3], and climate affected Chinese dynasties [5]. Even some of the expansions and contractions of viking migratory behavior was climate related.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...

[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...

[3] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121109-maya...

[4] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2017/09/26/climate-change-some...

[5] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/monsoon-climate-c...

In none of those cases were the effects global and permanent.

I get the "global" part, but what makes you think the current climate change will be permanent?

Permanent in terms of all the people who otherwise would remain alive, who instead will be dead.

Climate change doesn't affect the world the same way globally and never have.

[citation needed, because fossil records seriously conflict with your statement]

So, the evidence suggests climate change causes societal collapse?

The evidence suggests that the parent commenter was wrong when indicating that the last significant climate change happened 125000 years ago.

No, the last time this earth was this hot was that long ago.

And yet life managed to persist despite being much more primitive.

yes "life" did. Lots didn't. If climate change ends up being the worst end of that reported of what "might" happen. Life would still survive. Millions / billions of humans will not.

Primitive life. We are much better equipped to deal with it, that's the point.

Again what are you basing the claims of millions/billions on cause it's certainly not science?

Precisely. I couldn't agree with your point more wholeheartedly. Why, only last winter I solved my own personal encounter with climate change by playing the travel-insurance card when nature couldn't be counted on to guarantee my ski vacation. We as a society should buck up and similarly snap our fingers at this little bump in our existence. Show some fortitude, humans! Less hand wringing and more hand waving!

And there are all small things. We have never had this much heat in the neolithic era.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/last-time-eart... https://www.inquisitr.com/5111067/what-the-earth-was-like-th... https://mashable.com/article/earth-warmest-temperatures-clim...

In much more primitive societies. Again what scientifically demonstrated (not speculated) consequences of climate change are you worried we can't deal with when it happens?

I think that millions of people running out of water due to glaciers disappearing could be a bit of an issue that will, at the very least cause massive social problems. How much of North America is reliant on glacier waters?

And this has been scientifically demonstrated or are you speculating? When will this happen?

Yes, the glaciers are disappearing.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-rocky-mountai... https://abcnews.go.com/International/canadas-glaciers-shrink... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warmin... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/11/us-glaci... https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-ice-melting-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

Yes, they are and they have been doing that before. But that was not the claim you made. You said it affect our ability to get water.

Millions of people around the world use glaciers to get their drinking water. It's pretty easy to see that those disappearing would affect their ability to get water.

We can deal with that so while it might effect it that doesn't mean they won't be able to get access to water. That's one thing we've become better and better at making drinkable.

Making it harder to get water that we previously got for free is not a great solution. Making drinkable water or moving it fundamentally requires time, energy, and money.

We've never gotten water for free. All resources come at a cost.

The water in your tap is not free. Again. Please try and stop just for a minute and rethink your position.

> The water in your tap is not free.

But it sure is a lot cheaper than trying to desalinate the ocean water next to me.

> Please try and stop just for a minute and rethink your position.

On what? I am struggling to see your argument here. We have an issue that you are claiming doesn't need to be solved, and are trying to convince people to ignore, and I am repeatedly providing you with evidence that there is this is a real issue that at the very least would have some impact on us. Trying to "fix" the issues we cause 50 years in the future is going to be much, much more difficult than trying to improve today.

My point is that you arent actually making an argument here, just saying things that doesent support your claim.

https://www.21stcentech.com/climate-change-impact-worlds-maj...

The North Saskatchewan has lost 40% of its volume and continues to decrease.

And it started in the 50'es long before humans had any impact.

The 50's are not when anthropogenic warming began. It's just accelerated since the 50's.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-clarify-starting-poin... https://climateatlas.ca/climate-change-basics

Again yes and so what? What are the scientifically demonstrated consequences of that acceleration that we can't deal with? Why is it so hard for you or any other to answer that simply question? I of course know the answer but it's quite astounding that you don't stop just for a second to reflect on whether you position is as grounded in science and how much of it is based on speculating on top of that science.

I of course know the answer

You will then, of course, share that answer with us, in detail, with the same kind of scientific proof that you are asking for.

> What are the scientifically demonstrated consequences of that acceleration that we can't deal with? Why is it so hard for you or any other to answer that simply question?

If it's happening in the future and a novel event it's going to be speculation.

> I of course know the answer but it's quite astounding that you don't stop just for a second to reflect on whether you position is as grounded in science and how much of it is based on speculating on top of that science.

Please explain then, with links to all the relevant scientific information required to demonstrate that your understanding of the issue is the correct one.

How can I prove a negative?

My point is that there ISN"T a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change that we can't deal with.

So far neither you nor anyone else have provided something which is scientifically demonstrated to be happening and which we can't deal with.

I am not the one claiming. You and others are.

Mass starvation, mass dehydration, yes those are big concerns. But they can be overcome. For water, for instance, desalination exists, as do pipes, as do pumps. It would be expensive, someone's gotta pay for it -- what are millions of lives worth? But it's a reasonably well-defined engineering solution that doesn't require new technology or better understanding of the sciences to create e.g. atmosphere scrubbers or whatever. I'm biased as an engineer, big engineering projects seem a lot more feasible than international political ones. If those political ones are backed by threat of war, that's also a lot more worrying to me on the prospect of ways the planet can be rendered uninhabitable.

Have you looked into the environmental effects of desalination?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/desal...

"here’s why that’s a potential problem."

The important word there is potential.

There's a potential chance of you dying if you play Russian roulette. Does that mean you'd like to ignore the concerns because of them not being certainties?

Not really. I don't see why it'd be any harder to overcome them though, especially for known classes of effects like "what about waste?" I'll defer to the engineer quoted at the end of that article that at least for the issue of brine it's probably not a problem.

I don't eat seafood, but a lot of people around the world rely on it as a primary food source. Warm water cannot hold as much oxygen as cold water. We can already see that seafood populations are plummeting dramatically.

There are many other reasons that affect that not the least fishing.

Pointing to one problem doesn't mean the other problems don't exist. Multiple problems will have a multiplier effect on each other.

If there are five different reasons for fish population decline, and one of them gets worse, then the others may become magnified.

If commercial fishing is governed by quotas then if there are fewer fish in the sea due to population decline reason 1, then "overfishing" will become a worse problem without re-adjustment of fishing quotas. Re-adjustment of fishing quotas won't happen if there's a prevailing attitude of "we can deal with dwindling fish populations".

No one said that. I was responding to claim that made it about that when it's clearly about a lot of other things and thus the argument isn't as clear cut as it was attempted.

Not sure where the other guy said it was clear cut. He merely stated some facts about what happens to water when it gets warmer - scientific facts, like what you've been asking for.

The backhanded good news is that with fish populations declining, there doesn't need to be as much oxygen in the water...

Some places, like the US, can afford to pay substantial amounts for mitigation. It can build a lot of seawalls and desalination plants and probably even relocate Miami (or at least some of it).

Other places like Bangladesh, cannot. Its per capita GDP is 2.5% of the US's, is incredibly low lying and incredibly densely populated. A 3 foot rise in sea level would displace 30 million people [0]. That would make Syria's refugee crisis look like peanuts, its hard to imagine it occurring without millions dying and a regional war. Would this be considered something we can deal with?

[0] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-unfoldin...

Yes, of course, we can deal with it. Just like we have done in the developed countries.

Because look how well the Syria thing has worked out?

I think you have a problem seeing the scale of humanity that could be affected, and the scale of engineering and infrastructure effort would be required to support relocating 30 million people. Bangladesh doesn't have the money to do it, and the US will be too busy working on the Mexico wall.

Unless of course you're only concerned about the species surviving, rather than a large percentage of the population surviving.

Even if we know what a solution is, there's an ocean separating knowing a solution from implementing a solution.

Is the world ending because of Syria?

No, but it's bad enough that the US wants to extricate itself from the situation.

The tip of the spear only causes a small wound.

You are mixing your political opinion into this which makes it impossible to debate this rationally.

It's inescapably a political issue, but my point wasn't based on politics, it was based on the complexity and duration of the situation. Highlighting that the time scales involved to solve these issues are longer than it appears you are giving credence to.

You could point to Germany as an example of a country that's dealt fairly well with an influx of refugees from 2015, at 890,000 refugee applications, but it takes time to process them all, it's far from a smooth transition[0], plus there's a human toll associated with mass migration that falls along a purely subjective 'scale of acceptability':

More than 5,000 asylum seekers died in sea crossings, either by drowning, fuel inhalation or suffocation in overcrowded and unseaworthy boats.[1]

The issues of integration into the community, work, language barriers, and other cultural differences will mean there will be a limit at which a population will tolerate an influx of refugees.

There will also be a limit to what governments can afford to provide to refugees finding their feet. Elections are already won or lost on refugee and immigration policy, with the 'more restrictive' policies generally being more popular amongst voters.

These things aren't new, but the scale has the strong potential to be much greater.

[0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-03/germanys-open-door-re...

[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-cris...

None of those things are even close to being unsolvable though and that's really the point here.

I am being downvoted for not panicking which is fine and just shows how religious people are treating this topic.

With regards to limits, the cost of that is absolutely nothing compared to the cost of using inferior technologies to solve a problem we don't even know will be a problem in a 100 years from now.

Your arguments are very absolute.

None of those things are even close to being unsolvable

nothing compared to the cost of using inferior technologies

solve a problem we don't even know will be a problem in a 100 years from now

None of those comments ring true with me.

The migration of a few thousand people from Central America to the U.S. border was treated like a national crisis last year.

Imagine what the social and political reaction is going to be when millions flee the equatorial regions due to heat and sea level rise.

last year?

To be fair, the migration of a few thousand people was treated like a national crisis because it behooves both the people in power and the news media for the world to perpetually be in a state of crisis.

Seemingly with the exception of if it's a position supported by science.

Can you provide evidence to this claim? How exactly are we equipped to deal with what in particular, to what extent and for how long?

Such dismissive optimism needs to be either justified or smothered, unless you forgot a /s of course

Can you give me an example of a scientifically demonstrated (not just speculated) consequence that we don't know how to deal with?

Mass migration and civil war.

We have that throughout history and even today and yet we are still around. So again if that is what we are talking about I really don't see what exactly I should be so worried about.

You don't think we should try to avoid situations that will cause mass displacement and war, potentially on an unprecedented scale?

Yes and the best way to do that is to make poor nations richer which requires growth which will require more energy and thus more emission of CO2.

Yeah, we've only been dealing with those for 10,000 years. /s

The planet is much more crowded now and every piece of land is claimed by someone as owner. A mass migration won't be pretty. Just look at the Syria refugees and scale that up by lot.

Not very well we haven't.

And it causes misery and costs lives. Personally, I don't find "it won't be a mass extinction event" to be a convincing argument to ignore climate change.

Who is talking about ignoring it?

You seem to think the solution is to make things worse:

> Yes and the best way to do that is to make poor nations richer which requires growth which will require more energy and thus more emission of CO2 (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18926331)

That's even worse than ignoring it.

No my solution is to look at both the positives and the negatives and since you or anyone else haven't been able to show a single piece of scientifically demonstrated evidence that the consequences are going to be impossible for us to deal with then I choose to prioritize poor nations chance to grow more wealth over unproven, unscientific and hysterical speculation.

Alright, I'll probably get warned or downvoted for this, but here it goes...

Stop sea-lioning.

What about you start actually commenting on things I have said rather than just making things up?

Humanity has always been well equipped to hide from difficult questions.

Are we?

First, weren't those past changes much slower, thus giving much more time to adapt?

Second, wasn't the world much more sparsely populated, meaning that if your area's ecosystem changed it was often feasible to migrate to a most hospitable currently unoccupied area?

Third, if they did migrate to someplace that was already occupied and those already there objected, nobody had weapons of mass destruction. At worst, one group would genocide the other, but it wouldn't spread beyond the disputants.

If a climate change induced resource problem leads to war in our times there are weapons of mass destruction, and those wars could be very devastating and draw in others.

The climate change that contributed to the fall of the Roman empire was relatively quick [1].

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...

I will also ask you to provide an example of a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change we don't know how to deal with.

Climate change is a fact of life and we have always had to deal with it. Nature doesn't give us an environment we make dangerous, nature gives us a dangerous environment we then make safe.

I am personally more concerned about a lot of other things before climate change even enters my list.

> I will also ask you to provide an example of a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change we don't know how to deal with.

You'll have to define "deal with". How many billions dead is a success?

It's gonna be a bitch not getting anything to eat because Earth won't grow our crops anymore because we done fucked up all of its life support systems and it's just too damn hot outside.

More CO2 = higher crop yields.

Higher temperature = more arable land.

Your beliefs are not scientifically valid.

I would suggest you consider that issue may be more complicated than a single variable. While it make for great back and forth on an HN thread and wonderful, cathartic gotcha moments, (perhaps I also feel this urge), it really is a complicated issue, and pretty much all signs point to climate change as being a very disruptive, likely cataclysmic change to the entire planet. Ecosystems don't respond to rapid, catastrophic changes well. Loss of biodiversity--losing a link in the food chain--tends produce shockwaves through the entire system, which can lead to collapse.

E.g. https://phys.org/news/2015-06-tide-pools-rapid-die-off-sea.h...

Yes it's more complicated than a single variable something you too should keep in mind.

So many adjectives, so few facts.

Higher temperatures also lead to desertification, smaller land area through sea level rise, and more extreme weather events. It's a complicated situation to predict, and it would be wrong to say it comes with no opportunities, but it looks like averting the situation, even partially, is going to be far less painful than dealing with the effects.

That certainly depends on what you are going to do to prevent it.

You actually think you are contributing to the demise of the entire human race. You are so lost in apocalyptic despair that you are not thinking rationally.

So much technology, the pace of development accelerating exponentially, so much having happened in just the last 100 years compared to the past thousands of human history, and all you can see is death and destruction looming.

The real problems facing humanity are the ones that have always been, and always will be, with us.

Get a grip. Go outside, take a deep breath of some fresh air, and try to enjoy the few years you have on this beautiful planet. Try to make a difference where you are, when you are. The rest isn't up to you or anyone else.

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