Here's what I've learned about climate change and it's terrifying | Hacker News Reader

Here's what I've learned about climate change and it's terrifying

penzke.github.io

41 pointspenzke35 comments

"Doomed" is not a scientific term. It's my understanding less than 1% of scientists think it's likely mankind will go extinct from global warming.

It's a very real problem, but hysterics doesn't help, stick to the science.

The press has done a good job of scaring the shit out of people:

> 54 percent of adults agreed that climate-change threatens our extinction as a species, a poll by Comres found, compared to just a quarter who disagreed.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-protests-climate-c...

> Following the protests, 54 percent of adults agreed that climate-change threatens our extinction as a species, a poll by Comres found, compared to just a quarter who disagreed.

Key phrase: Following the protests.

The follow up question I wish these surveys would ask is: Have you changed your behavior and/or habits in order to minimize your personal impact?

My point is, many people give the answer they believe they should give, but their actual action are disconnected from that answer. As they say: Actions speak louder than words.

People really lack imagination, to comprehend how poor life can become without going anywhere near a threat of extinction.

It might be that they are given pause for thought by the comment of the Secretary-General of the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) who has said that the alarmist narrative on climate change has gone off the rails and has criticised the news media for provoking unjustified anxiety.

They might even read this and start asking some questions:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feart.2019.0022...

4-6 degrees of warming to be expected over the next century. At 4 degrees they estimate the planet will be able to support 1 billion people. It isn't the press making these claims up out of thin air.

Nothing says the warming will stop there. It's a pretty rational thing to be afraid of, I mean, if the future of humanity means anything to you at all.

Well if the population drops by 85% in short order humans will almost certainly be emitting a lot less carbon.

Complete extinction is probably off the table. However, deaths of billions and wars over the remaining resources is quite likely if we hit the 4 degrees point.

I think “doomed” is appropriate in that context.

I agree, also it's like claiming "people who wear seatbelts incorrectly believe their car ride is doomed" or even worse like a driver feeling offended because a passenger puts on his seat belt.

I'd urge you to check out the "Deep Adaptation" paper by Jem Bendell. It provides some interesting insights about the function of tone in scientific literature on the subject.

I tend to agree. Better precision is nice, but the linked piece states explicitly that they don't expect extinction, but a decrease in viable population from 8+ billion to near 1 billion.

I haven't heard numbers that precise before. It's unclear what society looks like with that level of food insecurity. From what I've read, much smaller reductions in food security are correlated with large political upheaval throughout history.

Malthusian predictions have a long and storied history of reliably underestimating human adaptation to a staggering degree, even when coming from otherwise reputable sources, and I see the claims in the piece in much the same light.

That said, I agree with you that food insecurity and upheaval will become issues, big ones -- but only because they'll become big issues long before 7 billion people starve.

Very true on historical predictive accuracy. I can not back the claim that the carrying capacity of the earth will substantially decrease in a warmer climate. From what I have read, changes in local weather patterns have caused reductions in local food security in recent and ancient history and these triggered significant upheaval (even without the presence of mass starvation).

Based on recent research, a warming climate has the potential to reshape the availability of arable land.

My concerns are primarily around upheaval (seems likely in most scenarios), potentially needing to divert more resources to food acquisition (seems unlikely in the long term as you note), and a coincident reduction in perceived value of nature preserves (a selfish concern from my love of wildlife).

>That said, I agree with you that food insecurity and upheaval will become issues, big ones -- but only because they'll become big issues long before 7 billion people starve.

and they can only become big issues long before 7 billion people starve by accepting the worldview of looming distant doom

How many have to die before we’re doomed? Is being “doomed” reserved for human extinction, or is a few billion deaths enough? A few million? Look, the situation is bad. Really bad. This whole conversation is a distraction from the main point. We’re screwed/doomed/whatever you like, if we don’t act now.

You’re way off track if you think that human extinction is the measure of how concerned we should be.

Exactly! We're not "doomed": https://www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/c5rjs2/its_that_eas...

Well extinction is an extreme. Uncomfortable living condition are not much better.

> Uncomfortable living condition are not much better

You think uncomfortable living conditions is only marginally better than complete extrnction? You’re proving the OP’s point about hysterics

What's your point? Humankind can be doomed without the species going extinct because we are far more than just a few bodies walking around. Collapse of civilization is as bad as extinction from my point of view.

Why has this article been flagged? I can't see any arguments that indicate that it's inaccurate. Most anti-climate change comments have been down voted too.

Is there some kind of brigading happening, or is climate change denialism and/or apathy now a majority position on Hacker News?

Too many downvotes on certain comments lead to it being auto flagged. Flame war detection. Also users can manually flag a submission.

But a conspiracy sounds juicer

That makes sense. Shame that a few people can kill a story like that.

Agreed, in a sense of a site agenda, if one of the moderators see it happening and think it's worth protecting from the auto/manual flagging they can do so. In practice this is mainly really important news rather than a (albeit important) discussion.

Thank you for this

There are plenty of actions that can be taken to shape our climate and the politics around it. The need is for people to take action that multiplies each action taken. Enable others to drive economic incentives.

1) Build, identify and share websites and apps that identify companies and products to use / avoid based on the climate change background of the company. These apps / sites need to be data driven and transparent with the data sources linked and accessible. Make these as easy as possible to use (ie. an AR app for phones to use in physical stores, browser plugins to use with online shopping, etc). Someone here on HN can probably crank these out in a few days to weeks (Make sure there are api's so different apps and sites can work together).

2) Using the above, focus on buying products from companies that work to improve the environment and encourage your family and friends to do the same. Everything from food to cloths to transportation, etc. Make it undesirable to BE a company that is not working to help the planet. Make it undesirable to WORK for a company that is not working to help the planet.

- ex. Brazil is letting the rainforest get cut down / burn down for corporate greed? Tag products and companies from Brazil that are part of the problem, and that are not fighting the problem.

- ex. Ethiopia plants 350 million trees in a day, invest in the companies and charities that are supporting that effort.

3) Centralize information about environmental efforts into a visually easy to navigate thing (again, app or site) so that people around the world can figure out how to invest and help. Leverage data analytics against corporate ownership and activities to score companies, countries, counties, charities and politicians on how they are helping to save the planet.

4) Call out the biggest things that drive climate change and help find solutions to change and replace them (XPRIZE anyone?). Everyone loves to talk about car pollution, no one talks about container ship and cruise ship pollution. (https://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-the-15-biggest-ships-i...). If containerships really are the worst polluters, perhaps there can be an XPrize to figure out how to replace them with something less polluting (clearly asking shoppers to stop buying and shipping things isn't working). Electric/Solar/Wind/Nuclear/Hydrogen powered boats? Electric or clean hybrid trains? It's the R&D cost to make these competitive options that prevent or reduce these from happening.

5) Are there other industrial solutions? Carbon capture and conversion to fuel? Atmospheric reflection? Maybe these are crazy science fiction, maybe not. The iPad was a prop on StarTrek The Next Generation in the 90s, now it's real and relatively cheap. Not everything will work, if we look for solutions, something will work, we can refine it and make it better. - https://www.google.com/search?q=reflect+atmostpheric+heat+in... - https://www.google.com/search?q=co2+to+fuel

Ultimately many people want to help, but don't know where to start or how they can help. The big place is not individual change... its corporate change. Saving the earth must be the economically best choice for companies and others.

It's way too little. Even if you removed consumption and personal transport completely were looking at maximum of 30% reduction.

We'd have to reengineer manufacturing goods and food distribution massively to cut it deeper, replace more transport with renewable or nuclear fueled electric. Local is best most of the time, so buy local food and locally made things. Skip unnecessary gadgets.

And the most problematic part is reducing airplane miles and agricultural emissions.

Nuclear tankers have already been shown, but I don't remember a link.

Let us take your opening statement as valid. The complexity of the problem requires solutions that allow non experts to make an impact. If manufactured goods need to be engineered, the needed investment requires group interest, a market and research and development. Reducing investment costs could accelerate this through an avenue similar to open source software. There are probably other avenues.

Re-engineer manufactured goods, make transport more renewable, reduce food miles and agriculture emissions, most consumers are supportive and simply need a simple way that they can help drive and make the change.

Regulators actively resist efforts to improve transparency and labelling when it comes to consumer goods, particularly food. How can we overcome obstacles such as barcodes not encoding critical information.

Working from your statement as completely valid, Augmented Reality has the potential to really change this. Food Barcodes and the simple visual recognition of products have the ability to link information that previously was hard to research and make available. For me, I don't know where to find the background information on the relative "goodness" or "badness" of companies or products. I expect it is out there, I just don't personally know where. (anyone want to throw it in the comments?)

https://www.seafoodwatch.org/

20 September global climate strikes are expected to be huge. In my city they are expecting a doubling from 4,000 to 8,000 people. Facebook event responses to the global strike are going through the roof.

It's really bad, and getting worse. Worse than mainstream sources have the guts to report: https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=8433

Honestly, I don't have much hope, but we have to at least try. Future generations will curse us for our indolence.

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