Comment by robomartin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robomartin | Hacker News Reader

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I wish I could answer your question. I really do.

The way I would put it is this:

First we need to start by not lying. I think that almost 100% of the crap out on this subject are lies. We have religious camps that deny it all and religious camps who think we can fix it with magical pixie dust.

We need to free-up our scientists --who are genuinely scared to speak-up-- so they can start to think about reality rather than this fantasy they need to push in order to receive grants and have a job.

Next, with real conversations happening, we need to also understand that there are very compelling reasons to clean-up our act. And these reasons have nothing whatsoever to do with saving the planet, because we can't.

A simple example of this is the ridiculous fleet of container ships (some 15,000 of them on the oceans) burning the most horrific fuel available: Bunker fuel. This stuff is horrible across all axis. And nobody talks about it.

While the governor of California scores virtue-signaling points by banning IC cars by 2035 (doubt it will happen) he does and says NOTHING about bunker fuel pollution that produces, by some accounts, more contaminants in a single day than the entire transportation system of the US (cars, trucks and plans) in one year.

This is why I think the dialogue based on lies is just crazy. We are ignoring issues at scale to focus on things that are politically valuable (and likely financially too) that will deliver questionable results, if that.

So, no, I don't have an answer. I am just yelling out loud "This is wrong". Just like I was years ago about Facebook's algorithms and today there's a documentary on Netflix highlighting precisely what I predicted 8 to ten years ago. I mean, people in my own family were saying I as crazy. Now they are calling me to tell me to watch this documentary on Netflix that is saying the things I was saying years ago. Interesting how the world works.

Specifically your point about bunker fuel, this is now out of date a bit. The International Maritime Organization rules about ultra-low sulfur fuels came into effect 1/1/2020. Ironically though, this just affects sulfur, and so while a lot fewer people will die of air pollution as a result, the reduction in particulate matter (and complementary rise in greenhouse effect) is actually predicted to result in a marginal increase in global temperatures. I agree with you that much of the environmental movement in the West feels inadequate or focusing in insignificant problems (plastic straws anyone?), but from my experience in the renewable industry, people are talking about this, just too few of them.

http://www.imo.org/en/MediaCentre/HotTopics/Pages/Sulphur-20...

Thanks for the update and link. I am glad they are cleaning-up their act.

In my research I also discovered cargo ships are responsible for other forms of pollution nobody talks about. One of them is what's called "species pollution". As they fill and empty their ballast tanks they suck in, transport and expel wild life from one location to another. In this fashion invasive species damage ecosystems not prepared to receive them.

https://www.seos-project.eu/marinepollution/marinepollution-...

That said, CO2 from container ships represents somewhere in the order of 3% of total world-wide emissions. For reference, this is greater than the CO2 output of all of Germany.

As you said, too few people are having conversations about the realities of these matters. The issue has been politicized to a ridiculous level on both sides of the spectrum and we are wasting time focusing on nonsense.

Thanks for the detailed response. Proceed along with your premise as true and go further. Assume the macro-scale organizations' incentives are broken, and will/can not take material action until near-term (organizationally fatal?) effects are threatening their hold on power. Is your worst case scenario aligned with RCP 8.5 [1] or even worse?

I do not anticipate any foreseeable feasible scenario where the economic political structure will allow scientists to lay out the facts without fearing for their livelihood to meet their basic physiological and safety needs. So turning on its head the question of how to change the economic political landscape, assume their basic needs are met, what exactly do the scientists and engineers need to gather the data and analyze it, and to what end?

I'm a little confused about the thesis chain for that matter. I see at the beginning the "we cannot save the planet" thesis, but I'm not clear on what follows other than an ambiguous "clean-up our act" thesis. Clean-up what, specifically? By what metrics?

I'm okay with accepting the premise that we will experience the worst-case scenario. I've yet to be convinced we as individuals need to wait for broader and deeper consensus to study and make large-scale decisions as a civilizational whole before taking effective action ourselves, like move towards the poles away from the equator, secure essential localized supply chains, secure potable water production, identify and practice essential skills like various disciplines of tech tree repairs, etc. I can see a need for scientists like entomologists to help identify which insect populations will shift with the bands of increased temperatures, or identify more closed-cycle and efficient permaculture without external industrial-reliant inputs. But until there is perceptible change in leadership to grasp reality, I'm not clear on the benefits of advocating for top-down change, though I certainly welcome any insight on this that I'm missing.

For me personally, the thesis that follows from "we cannot save the planet" is "decentralize and decouple myself from a happy-path-bound grid", take what accidental happenstance cooperative opportunities arise, and hope for the best on the broader economic political scale.

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/the-worst-case-climat...

Regarding the first part of your comment. I can't prove what I am going to say due to reasons that will be obvious, but this is the best I can do right now.

I believe RCP 8.5 will not happen.

Why?

One more time, I go back to the 800,000 year ice core CO2 data. The earth obviously has a regulating mechanism that brought CO2 down from the 300 ppm range to 200 ppm. The way it did it is brutal and simple: Weather.

It is my hypothesis that the planet is reacting to the increase in CO2 right now by activating that mechanism. I think I can say that we are seeing more and more violent storms, hurricanes, etc. Which, in turn, precipitates more CO2 than we could ever dream of capturing through artificial means.

And so, what I am saying is that we need to start thinking about living in a world with massive powerful storms, "finger of god" class storms. The climate change problem isn't a problem for the planet, it's a problem for humanity.

> I'm a little confused about the thesis chain for that matter. I see at the beginning the "we cannot save the planet" thesis, but I'm not clear on what follows other than an ambiguous "clean-up our act" thesis. Clean-up what, specifically? By what metrics?

Me too!

Frankly, I think this is precisely the reason we need to make a push for stopping the lies and allow our brilliant scientists all over the world to focus on real solutions to real problems.

If I may offer a second hypothesis, it is that, if we stop the lies and allow them to do this work the remarkable genius of our global scientific community will reframe the problem in the proper terms and, with time, deliver relevant solutions, not to "save the planet" but rather to save humanity.

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