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Comment by RonaldSchleifer | Hacker News Reader

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> hold China and India responsible for their wildly outsized levels of pollution once you control for their per capita contribution to humanity

China and India contribute 4-10 times less CO2 per capita than the US.

You skipped the last part.

Personally I am not happy going down the route of weighting the value of humans, but if we don't come up a solution to global warming that is politically actionable, somebody will start arguing that the west should do something about the rise of China and India. If we can only support 4 billion people on the planet, nobody will want to be in the group that has to be killed.

The world doesn't care about per capita.

That’s an absurd statement and reeks of the most vile arrogance.

I’m so confused, do you honestly and in good faith make a statement like that? Do you not understand the disastrous social and political implications of approaching the problem like that? Do you not understand that fairness is central to this problem because a coordinated global effort is necessary and there is no fascist world police and hopefully never will be so we are dependent on convincing everyone and fairness is obviously central to this?

Humans care about per capita emissions because that’s one of the only ways to make this fair and we need to make this fair or else we will convince no one.

You are solving a social/political problem. Arrogant statements like yours won’t.

You won't make a difference until you stop the over population. The biggest contributor is simply being born.

Since the United States has one of the highest energy usage rates per capita, do you mean tackling overpopulation in the United States?

The US has 330 million people, China has nearly 1.5 billion. No I think the US is just fine.

Per capita only matters if you're okay ignoring the bulk of the problem.

The people in the world certainly care.

>China and India contribute 4-10 times less CO2 per capita than the US.

And rising, fast.

Besides that, the planet doesn't care about per capita numbers.

The planet also doesn't care about countries. Per capita seems to be the fairest comparison that one can make.

People do though. Why should we stunt the developing world's growth just because we've already fucked things up too much? Seems like colonialism all over; the West gets to keep polluting, but the developing world must stop developing?

If "stunting developing world growth" is too much of a cost to endure for your cause, then this isn't a WW2 level emergency. In WW2, the US deemed the ends to be important enough to kill innocent German/Japanese cogs and civilians by the millions.

It isn't that level of emergency. If it was, western governments would be curbing the largest producers of emissions. Not asking the populace and other nations to curb emissions while doing nothing about more egregious activities.

>Why should we stunt the developing world's growth just because we've already fucked things up too much?

If climate change is a real concern, it's going to be a requirement.

The West doesn't get to have a huge population (nor does it need or want one) why should the developing world have one?

It seems rational discussion is not what people actually want.

Hypocrisy is rampant in the discussion about climate change.

Irrationality and emotions are manipulation tactics, not solutions, therefore nothing will actually change with the climate.

The worst is when _real_ demonstrable solutions are presented and rejected because they don't "feel good" or make some kind of marketing splash.

Don't mistake a lack of empowerment with hypocrisy. When someone advocates for policy to limit the emissions of vehicles produced by the automotive industry, but happens to drive their car to work everyday, that's not hypocrisy. That's a person who is coping with the system around them, still advocating to change that system in the only way that is meaningful. Systemic changes require large actions. To pretend that individual actions alone will get us out of this death spiral is at best naive.

someone advocates for policy to limit the emissions of vehicles produced by the automotive industry, but happens to drive their car to work everyday, that's not hypocrisy

Agreed, but if a person who owns multiple homes and flies between them says it, it’s clear that they want you to believe something that they don’t believe themselves. The climate movement really needs to divest itself of celebrities because they do nothing but undermine the message.

I agree on your automotive analogy. But what about these?

1. Have fewer kids. (but only some countries)

2. Don't fly so much. (but we can fly anytime we want in our private planes)

3. Per capita pollution needs to go down. (but not for us and our private planes)

4. You need to lower carbon emissions by changing your purchasing habits. (but we can buy private yachts and multiple homes)

5. Use paper straws in plastic bags. (instead of plastic straws in paper bags)

6. Take action to prevent carbon increase (but only things we approve of (ie, no planting trees...))

etc...

It seems that the loudest and biggest hypocrites are the rich and powerful.

Good comment but prepare to be downvoted into oblivion.

If it is that much a threat, why aren't we primarily powered by nuclear? Cost can't be a factor because countries are bending over to spend hundreds of billions investing in some version of a green deal.

No compromises because it's too late for compromises they say. I wonder why

>f you want to stop climate change then, e.g., (and many of these will be uncomfortable to most here) give up your car, find jobs that are remote work or even better yet where you can walk to work, move to a temperate climate where little heat and cooling are needed, stop immigration of people from low impact regions to high impact regions

We can't all do this, unfortunately. And I don't mean "us on HackerNews", I mean "us, globally".

>dvocate for population control of African and Asian populations that are adding on the order of net 85 million additional humans to the planet every year

This is a tough one. It's widely known that simply being born or having children contributes more to climate change than almost every other single source. And yet, rapid population growth in the 2nd/3rd world is a taboo subject.

> And yet, rapid population growth in the 2nd/3rd world is a taboo subject.

Population control is a taboo subject anywhere, unfortunately.

I am in the same boat.

I don't even know why I have to be called a climate change denier or skeptic. The onus is on people who believe the climate is changing to prove it. As to say, it is not my job to disprove something that hasn't been proved.

Now obviously there is "proof" in circulation. But what is it proving? Have any prediction targets been met at all? How much will the sea tides rise and when? How much would have they risen given natural cycles? Even if man mad emissions weren't affecting the temperature would a climate scientist be able to predict the temperature 5 years from now?

Nasa has a few articles about how Earth is much greener than 40 years ago due to global warming -> https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/3/graphic-warmer-...

Are we simply waiting for this new vegetation to mature and reduce carbon emissions? Is anyone factoring in potential plant growth? Could they even measure that? Maybe the earth knows how to naturally cycle?

As I've aged, all I have seen is men make futile predictions about everything under the sun. The more and more variables and extrapolations added to a problem generally leads to an exponentially bad answer. I'm sure anyone who works in a job that does heavy spread sheet work can twist any bunch of numbers to fit a departments desired figure.

Furthermore, the mass fervour of the world for climate change should induce skepticism. Where is everyone getting their sources from?

Arguments such as:

"Think about the children" "Save the planet"

Are typically go to answers of people who can't make a real point.

Now it is not anyone's fault that they should act hysterical, the authority that is trickling down all this information should be a bit more out spoken. The media also needs to drop the term "experts" and "scientists".

I'd just like to know, in 10 years from now, if carbon emissions were at 19th century level, what would be the temperature be? and at our current rate of carbon emission what will the temperature be? With what degree of accuracy will the figure hold up to? Other then reducing man made emissions, what other planetary behaviour will also reduce carbon emissions? Can they be predicted and have you included them in the report?

Not even going to bother with the political aspect of this all, which actually may well be the majority of this movement. If I truely believed climate change were a real problem for the world, as the above posted said, I would be going after all the billion person populations first and foremost.

I'm going to assume you are posting in good faith but to give you an honest answer I have a hard time engaging with posts like this because it reads like you've done no work to inform yourself.

> I'd just like to know, in 10 years from now, if carbon emissions were at 19th century level, what would be the temperature be? and at our current rate of carbon emission what will the temperature be? With what degree of accuracy will the figure hold up to?

People have written literally thousands of pages that would answer this question. There are hundreds of pages that give a more accessible overview of the research. It would take you less than a minute to start reading some of this

Five years ago when questions like this popped up I would dutifully take the 10 minutes to pull together some links that directly addressed the question.

> The onus is on people who believe the climate is changing to prove it

I don't disagree. But once the people who believe the climate is changing have written millions of words explaining what they believe is happening, surely there is some onus on internetposterN to read some of that before dismissing the entirety of the enterprise by raising a few questions

I agree with you generally about the hubris of people, even highly educated, re: the ability to forecast the future. And even accepting the predictions of various reports, etc. it's not completely clear that the world will be as bad as most are saying. We're richer than ever, all forecasts seem to point to a better world where even under the threat of climate change we'd be better off to cope with it than in any other timeline or point in history.

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