Hacker News Reader

Comment by WhompingWindows | Hacker News Reader

I worry that part of the reason some Americans don't fear climate change is: 3 degrees Fahrenheit is only 1.67 Celsius, so Americans might be practically understanding the warming as "half" of what other countries/people think.

The counter-argument: surely Americans are informed enough to understand the phrase "1.5 degrees of warming" means Celsius...I'm not confident average Americans know that. I'm not sure the science education is up to snuff in the USA.

The Americans who don't consider climate change a big deal, generally live in the interior of the country without as many severe weather events. Generally speaking, these folks are misinformed voters and it's hurting our climate policy. They think: Why should they care about "3 degrees of [Fahrenheit] warming", especially because there's no fires or storms near them?

View on HN

I feel like the numbers sound so low they probably do more harm than good regardless.Even 3°C is well within normal variation from day to day, so unless you're already concerned about the secondary effects, vicious cycles etc, the number alone is reassuring if anything.

I don't think that's an accurate interpretation of what americans think. The majority of Americans don't think the Government is doing enough.

https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-vi... "About two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) say the federal government is doing too little to reduce the effects of climate change"

https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/04/18/a-look-at-h... According to this: 59% of Americans see it as a major threat and 23% see it as a minor threat. This is close to the Australia (60% and 29%) and UK (66% and 23%) numbers.

I think the media discussion in America on many issues (policing, masks/vaccines, climate change) presents a distorted view of what the majority believes, because sensational, clashing talking heads drive more ad dollars. So why don't we see more action on climate change in America? Well, some reasons: 1) Lobbying efforts often push back or at least water down any change. 3) America's two party system plays to the extremes in both camps rather than the majority viewpoint, which gets lost. 1) most people have more pressing near term concerns that dominate their choices.

Those polls don't really tell us how their view of temperature changes are affecting their view of policy and climate. If 67% think that, that's basically covering the West and the East, which is the areas covered by storms and fires. But that last 33% of voters elects a disproportionate number of senators, places like KS or AR have the same number of Senators as California, even though the number of citizens is a mere fraction. I just worry that there's a disproportionate share of power and votes in the hands of individuals who don't think a jot about climate, and maybe the temperature numbers "feel" small to them.

Regardless of the exact numbers, my point is similar to the original article: people don't understand the ramifications here. Even if they intuitively know 3C is almost 2X as much as 3F, they still may not understand the article's points either.

> these folks are misinformed voters and it's hurting our climate policy

For the electorate it isn't really a matter of information or education. People have things they care about more or are vote based on emotion.

In a way it's like trying to use logic to convince somebody to support The Atlanta Braves rather than the Yankees. They didn't get there through a process of logic and isn't logic that's going to change them.

Doesn't it matter if they think it's 1.5 degrees or 3 degrees of warming? Doesn't that 1.67X change their perspective substantially?

What on earth are you talking about? You literally made up the 1.5 vs 3 degrees thing above, and now you're basing your argument on that being true, despite you having made it up moments ago.

Do you have a single source that says "Americans think climate change is only half as bad because of F vs C"?

Personally I doubt that a meaningful percent of Americans (or people anywhere) even know this "3" number to begin with, let alone the unit. This isn't something most people are focused on.

It changes nothing. My whole point was that people aren't deciding on who to vote for based on sound scientific principles. You aren't going to change their position with more facts or new facts.

Discerning Americans think that gulf stream environmentalists flying to conferences in private jets is hypocritical, and that if they actually cared about this issue and it was a serious threat, then they would behave like it (and quit trying to rip up the crust of the earth to mine lithium with child labor as if it was the only solution to this problem).

Instead, this is just GRIFT to pull taxes from public funds into the pockets of plutocrats (hey where is greta this whole scheme sounds like capitalism again) while telling you that YOU need to live with restrictions that the upper class won't be policed on, like the good subject you are.

Devil's Advocate, since I agree they should just meet virtually... arguably there are maybe 10,000 people globally that decide most things regarding climate change. If those 10,000 people flew to one spot and agreed to enact policies that alone did 3X more in a decade than all individual choices of citizens could ever do, wouldn't that be worth it? We know what individual citizens do regarding their lights and food and transportation habit is a small, miniscule piece of what the companies and governments actually can do, so I think it's a little pointless to tell billionaire CEOs and heads of countries with billions of people that they can't take flights to go make climate policy stronger. Those few flights would occur anyway, we can't stop them, and meanwhile they may be enacting changes that could clean up millions of future jet flights.

Sure, and they could fly first class on commercial to get to that meeting. But they have egos and don't think restrictions apply to them - but ohh this is an "emergency," isn't it?? I thought we were having all hands on deck to stop climate change, right? We're all going to starve and die.

All for one and one for - nah, never mind gas up my second leer jet, Jeeves!

> "gulf stream environmentalists flying to conferences in private jets is hypocritical"

Perhaps it is. Or perhaps it's necessary to get things done. Who knows?

It's a kind of an odd argument though. That "discerning Americans" will jump on board when they see some other people doing "some things" such that it indicates to them that it must be real.

Why work through that indirection? It's so arbitrary and can be arbitrarily moved. It's a blame shifting mechanism - I won't worry about this until "gulf stream environmentalists", "china", somewhere/someone else does something that I think is enough. I won't say what that is or what I'll actually do and by when. Or if I do and I make it to that point I can always find some other "issue".

Perhaps that's the point. I mean delay and distract was the big tobacco plan - and many of the same people apparently moved to fossil fuel companies.

A more serious and beneficial approach would be to look at what climate science predicted and what happened. Then look at what their future predictions are like.

If you take the IPCC reports they have generally underpredicted the rate of climate change.

> Or perhaps it's necessary to get things done.

Since when did commercial flight or rail stop being a way to transport people? Oh, right, it's not an option for the elite class because... reasons. They could do all of this without having several dozen private jets flying to the same places.

> It's a blame shifting mechanism

It's NOT a blame shifting mechanism, or at least that's not how I'm using it. What I'm saying is that your privileges are being revoked for transportation, theirs are not. You are being shamed for taking a commercial flight, but they are not, even when using private jets.

Finally, consider the rhetoric they are pushing. They are saying that this is an "emergency," meanwhile they are observably NOT acting like it's an emergency. This is a classic case of "they've got theirs," and it's clear that they don't plan on making any sacrifices that result in a lower standard of living for themselves.

> Since when did commercial flight or rail stop being a way to transport people?

I'm not sure why you are lumping those two modes of transport together. According to one estimate, "a passenger traveling in a private aircraft emits ... between 75 and 250 times the CO2 of a comparable high-speed rail journey."[0]

You're right, though, that private jets are an easy target for a carbon tax, and I don't know of any climate activists arguing that private jets should be exempt from one.

Perhaps the reason it is not high on people's lists of things to fix, though, is that "the aviation industry only contributes around 2% of global CO2 emissions, with private air travel representing an even smaller fraction." (according to the European Business Aviation Association).[0]

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/should-private-jets-be-banned-to-spare...

> I'm not sure why you are lumping those two modes of transport together.

I think you misunderstand - "commercial flight" is referring to flying on one of the large carriers instead of privately. Both of those modes of transportation move large groups of people, together. Many people, one trip. Rail is available in Europe, but not in the US.

> Perhaps the reason it is not high on people's lists of things to fix, though, is that "the aviation industry only contributes around 2% of global CO2 emissions, with private air travel representing an even smaller fraction."

They are saying this is an "emergency" though. Is it a good idea to fly any plane during a climate emergency that will purportedly starve all of us? Why aren't these people concerned about starving themselves? This is an emergency and they aren't taking their own precautions seriously.

> I don't know of any climate activists arguing that private jets should be exempt from one.

While not activists, the EU, for one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27775620

No amount of living parsimoniously or adopting neoprimitivism will address the pollution caused by others who are not doing the same. Individual actors do not move this dial. No amount of me eschewing jet travel will reduce carbon emissions from the Pentagon or change the supply chains incentivize coal power in developing economies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com