Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months | Hacker News Reader

Climate change: 12 years to save the planet? Make that 18 months

bbc.com

55 pointsperfunctory19 comments

Keep in mind whenever you see these "we have X <timeframe>" quotes, they're usually an attempt to fit a complicated series of graphs into a short English sentence/headline, so they will always be wildly reductive. If your knee jerk reaction is to take the contrarian/devils-advocate counter point because you assume it can't be that reductive or simple, you are failing at media studies in the 21 century 101.

The context for the quote is, roughly speaking, the graph in the bottom left corner of this infographic put out by the IPCC in their Special Report on 1.5C:

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2018/10/SPM1...

The most important thing to understand about that chart is that it is considered a baked in assumption that we will do either the blue line if we're smart (mostly just climate refugees), and the grey line if we're dumb (loooots of climate refugees and probably a bunch of famines and wars).

Every person, every family, every town, city, village, state, and country, every company, every non-profit, every board of every thing, needs to be putting their "how we get to zero by 20X0" plan in writing NOW.

But the grey line assumes that we as a species act like responsible adults. There is something darkly comical about the IPCC emission scenarios.

I'm listening to Walter Isaacson's biography of Ben Franklin, and climate change reminds me of a more daunting version of the challenge faced by the Constitutional Convention of 1787. One Franklin quote, in particular, stands out in my mind: "Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best."

This voice of benevolent uncertainty is strangely silent in the conversation on climate change. Every talking head "knows" the answer and speaks prophetically to their followers who already agree. I believe it is this preaching to the choir (by both sides) the keeps progress on hold.

It's worth noting that Franklin was not typical among the delegates at the convention. He was a minority voice of humorous and pragmatic compromise that helped to cool tempers and foster agreement.

If we want to see action on climate change promptly, we need both sides to cede a bit of certainty and humor their opponents. A climate change skeptic can get on board with solar and EVs (see Ford prototype pulling a train). Likewise, a climate advocate can get on board with geoengineering as an essential tool that caters to who we are rather than who we should be.

Carbon awareness has backfired, becoming so widely conversational that both sides have advocates with strong opinions that don't know a thing. I'm too damn naive to figure out what the middle path is, but it's there, and I believe we'll find it. However, we may find it more suitable to kill off our ideological enemies in war, being fought openly or prosecuted through a justice system coopted by a radical majority.

Sadly, I see each side fantasizing about absolute power. Wouldn't it be great to cut down and bury the deniers in shallow graves? Wouldn't it be great to see those tree-huggers hang from their beloved trees?

I don't want this. It horrifies me.

No matter how you look at it, humanity will need to perform a daring escape. Why not solve our problems with the same ingenuity that got us here in the first place? It sure as hell won't be my ingenuity, but with the right public conversations, we may be able to cultivate it sooner than later.

In my opinion we are at the planning stage for a battle of a war we have already lost.

I feel like unless they have extremely high confidence in this number, this statement will do more harm then good. If 18 months comes and goes and it isn’t the end of the world, it will only feed climate change deniers with “see! I told you they don’t know what they are talking about.”

That’s not what the article says, if you read it you will see it’s suggesting the decisions made in the next 18 months are crucial for saving the planet.

I give you a button that forms a contract: you will die in 5 years but gain $100M today.

If you press it and nothing happens for 18 months, is it not the end of the world?

> if 18 months comes and goes and it isn’t the end of the world

No reason for concern. If failed climate prophecies had any effect, climate prophecies would be out of fashion by now. Nothing will change.

dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20519357

Anyone know why that submission was flagged to death?

It's clickbait. This is a quote from Prince Charles with a hard deadline of 18 months to save the planet.

Ah malvosenior. You were the author of the funniest comment on that thread! "This is a statement by Prince Charles of all people, might as well have Taylor Swift chime in while we're at it" but the comeback from hirundo "That's not fair. As the Prince of Whales it's his duty to protect the environment of marine mammals" was a close second.

Let's face it, we are fucked.

Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.

True or not, even if all nations of the world decided today to make honest attempts to reduce emissions, it wouldn't happen within 18 months. So if the timeline is that short, what's the point of doing anything. We're doomed. If it's not truly that short, it'll be another prediction that fails to come true and gives further ammunition to those who don't believe climate change is happening or believe the danger to be overblown. Either way, such pronouncements don't seem to be helpful in achieving the ultimate goal of stopping or controlling climate change.

Please read the article. That's not what it's saying at all.

You misunderstood the article. It is not that we have to cut emission by 50% within the next 18 months. But we have to finally start acting within this timeframes and not with promises but with clear commitments to change things significantly.

We are not doomed (yet).

We still can prevent the worst.

But we have to act NOW.

This is a problem of hundreds of gigatons of a gas affecting billions of people over the course of decades across the entire planet. When you wrap your brain around that scale and mechanism you simply cannot apply a notion of "too late" to a set of scalar function that massive. That is a false-dichotomy, or more accurately a depressive form of "splitting".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com