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Comment by sgpl | Hacker News Reader

I've been cranking up my AC and adding ice to my water to combat the heat but I recently read an article about sea-life [0] boiling to death in their natural habitats (oceans, seas) which made me realize that animals in the wild increasingly don't have this option.

It made me really sad to think about the fact that we'll probably see mass-extinction events (for animals, etc.) in the near future or at least within my lifetime because while we all 'care' there's no political will or consensus to combat climate change; it's also not a one nation issue.

I've also been religiously recycling in my personal life but every now and then I read articles about even recycling from a lot of places ending up in landfills which really frustrates me as it takes away any agency I really have on this action.

[0] https://www.complex.com/life/bc-heat-wave-cooked-more-than-a...

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> It made me really sad to think about the fact that we'll probably see mass-extinction events (for animals, etc.) in the near future or at least within my lifetime

It's generally agreed that we are already living within a mass extinction event[0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#Biodiversity "Humankind has entered what is sometimes called the Earth's sixth major extinction. Most experts agree that human activities have accelerated the rate of species extinction.The exact rate remains controversial – perhaps 100 to 1000 times the normal background rate of extinction"

There is a great book on this subject called "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History".

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17910054-the-sixth-extin...

The acidification of the ware is what goes unnoticed. The heat adds to ocean volume but CO2 acidifies water more but it's not noticeable by humans.

Wouldn't heat cause CO2 to bubble out of solution (and elevate pH)?

There are two effects:

1. As the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere increases, the partial pressure of CO2 also increases. This tends to increase the concentration of CO2 dissolved in seawater.

2. As the temperature of the seawater increases, the solubility of CO2 decreases.

(1) is much stronger than (2) so far. Atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased much more than CO2 solubility has decreased due to temperature.

>I've also been religiously recycling in my personal life but every now and then I read articles about even recycling from a lot of places ending up in landfills which really frustrates me as it takes away any agency I really have on this action.

Recycle if you want, but don't stress about it (especially religiously).

One, for the landfill reason you mentioned, and two, while it does feel good to 'do something about it', the scale of individuals recycling doesn't make up for massive companies generating waste without recycling. If you want the agency back, you'll likely have to get into politics, activism, and/or join those companies and change them from the inside (note: incredibly difficult side quest)

I know. People have all kinds of silly ideas on how to slow climate change.

http://h4labs.org/ive-got-another-stupid-idea-to-deal-with-c...

I did try to convince people to use nuclear power for a couple decades. Now I’m told it’s too late.

The windmills and solar are still coming…

The UK has in the past couple of decades massively expanded its wind production, somewhat expanded its solar, and not quite completed one nuclear plant. Coal is almost entirely phased out, its use is zero most days.

(gridwatch is currently broken but you can see that we're now gas-with-some-renewables if you look back a few days: https://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ )

The key to getting this to work in other countries is to exclude the coal extractors from the political process.

https://grid.iamkate.com and https://gridwatch.co.uk/ have the same data but represented in graphs that don't require a magnifying glass to see.

One thing you can still do is plant native plants. Almost all urban areas are virtually devoid of biodiversity and are breeding grounds for many invasive species which then spread out into other areas and choke out biodiversity elsewhere. If we want to prevent extinction, that's at least one avenue (out of many, undoubtedly) that should be taken.

Yes. 100%. For us living in the suburbs, planting additional trees, native wildflowers, and other plants can have a cooling effect (trees) and hemp animals as well.

We should also seek to oppose new car-centric development that increasingly destroys what remaining natural habitats we have. Watching Canadian Geese (as mean as they are) get run over by cars in the parking lots of furniture stores selling cheap crap shipped over from other countries is so stupid and unnecessary. And we can prevent it too.

It already is a mass extinction event, globally, by any historical standards. But yes, it could get worse.

It's been happening for a very long time. Some put it back to the times when humans left Africa. It's known as the Holocene Extinction [0]. Though, it has never been as bad as these last couple of centuries.

I think the fact that people don't seem to be aware of this is a massive failure of our society and in particular the education system. I do not know, but I would like to believe that it would have made a difference if we were all aware of how huge our impact is on the biosphere is.

Refs: [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

>> But yes, it could get worse

It will. It is.

And no one could have foreseen it.

I imagine a couple of news stories like https://horizon.fandom.com/wiki/Banda_Sea_Incident in my life time:

Horizon Zero Dawn game> "Another problem to add to our big steaming pile. Apparently a fisherman in the Banda Sea captured video of a Hartz-Timor Horus unit refueling via biomatter conversion along the shoreline of Pulau Wetar. On a pod of endangered dolphins, no less, quite possibly the last of their kind. Not to get graphic, but it looks like what happens inside a blender, as if the robot was whipping up a big pink swirling milkshake of dolphin chum. Our suppression team has scrubbed it from 43 networks, but it's still propagating, so it's only a matter of time before it goes viral. A prepared statement feels grossly insufficient. Any suggestions? This one's a real stinker."

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

"The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the sixth mass extinction or Anthropocene extinction, is an ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (with the more recent time sometimes called Anthropocene) as a result of human activity."

I was on the beach just the other day and it was alarming to see a whole bed of tidal muscle shells wide open, and empty.

There were a lot of happy little crabs about.

> I've been cranking up my AC and adding ice to my water to combat the heat but I recently read an article about sea-life [0] boiling to death in their natural habitats (oceans, seas) which made me realize that animals in the wild increasingly don't have this option.

What exactly is meant by boiling here? It's not literally boiling I assume. What's the temperature threshold change at which animals start to die in the ocean? I would assume it's very small.

> I've also been religiously recycling in my personal life but every now and then I read articles about even recycling from a lot of places ending up in landfills which really frustrates me as it takes away any agency I really have on this action.

It depends on a number of factors, including the market value of natural gas at the time. You can always feel good about recycling aluminum however. This is very easy and cost effective so it pretty much always happens.

> I've been cranking up my AC

What is your power source?

I’m curious why you ask this question. Does the answer matter or in some way lead to a broader point? If so what is that point? Assume it’s the worst possible energy source as far as you are concerned. Then what is your response?

I think they are pointing at an acceleration of the situation. Last summers have been relatively hot in West Europe as well, resulting in people buying airco’s [1]. Of course, people using airco's speeds up global warming (unless the electricity used is 100% renewable).

But at the individual level, it is understandable that people do this during heatwaves. Use green energy ;).

[1] residential buildings traditionally do not have airco’s in countries such as Germany or The Netherlands.

It does seem a bit hypocritical the poster's part if we assume he used the worst possible energy source. AC is a comfort and luxury. If we assume that climate apocalypse is impending, then going without a few comforts would seem reasonable.

>there's no political will or consensus to combat climate change; it's also not a one nation issue.

Think about this in the context of the warmist's proposals for limiting energy consumption in the developing world. People who've never had access to AC at home will be priced out of the market due to rising energy costs. Those who have no electricity will have to wait longer or perhaps never enjoy electric lighting.

This is the crux of the free rider problem. Consider this: my own hypocrisy has nothing to do with whether or not my statements on a particular topic are correct.

So now there are "warmists" who obviously target the developing world with their misplaced ire? Interesting. I guess the good thing with a strawman is it burns easily, right?

Preventing the developing world from accessing cheap energy will hinder development.

The irony of as we have more hot days, more AC is used, using more kWh, generating more CO2, leading to more hot days.

There's also the OPs complaint that he has no agency in this - but he chooses to have AC. I wonder how many tons of CO2 are emitted so people in offices can wear suits and jackets and work through the day, rather than shorts and t-shirts and siesta in the cool.

> I wonder how many tons of CO2 are emitted so people in offices can wear suits and jackets and work through the day, rather than shorts and t-shirts and siesta in the cool.

A whole lot less than 1.5 years ago!

But don't forget that there's less heating in the winter.

I suspect that because humans live in all sorts of temperature zones the combination of the two basically makes it a wash energy wise.

Shaming individuals for the crimes of an entire society and corporations, is so disingenuous and lazy, but it pops up in every single discussion on this subject.

Society and corporations are comprised of, and run by, individuals.

Only if you insist on microscopically looking at every single individual action, rather than the collective actions taken by society and corporations.

And some individuals have an extremely outsized effect on climate change a pollution, namely top management of fossil fuel companies and other gross polluters, as well as the politicians who enable them. They carry by far the largest guilt out of any of us. I'll accept my <millionth of a percent of guilt, if they accept their extremely outsized and enormous portion of guilt, and actually do something about it.

As a shorthand, we refer to these corporations as the entities guilty of gross pollution, rather than name every single individual in management positions in said companies, but we all know that the individuals in top management are responsible.

Similarly, the politicians are generally responsible for decisions and actions taken on a societal level, so they bear significantly more responsibility than Average Joe down the street, who's just trying to stay cool during a massive heatwave.

It's not disingenuous or lazy. Many people of the past died during heatwaves. The reason that doesn't happen so much these days is that we have cheap, plentiful, reliable power from fossil fuels. Renewables aren't up to it, at least not reliably. Is it not a tad psycho to advocate the abolition of fossil fuels that could easily put many people back in the situation of dying due to heat or cold... while sitting in the comfort provided by fossil fuel powered AC? Please, at least write such messages in the dark, sweating.

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