Climate change: IPCC scientists say it's 'now or never' to limit warming | Hacker News Reader

Climate change: IPCC scientists say it's 'now or never' to limit warming

bbc.co.uk

44 pointsLinuxBender31 comments

It's now or never, as it has been for decades apparently.

A lot of the negative effects of climate change are baked into the cake already, and society has repeatedly made the decision to accept them, despite my wishing it would have chosen otherwise. At this point I think it'd be more effective just to list the cost of deferring any action for a year. I.e. "if we don't do anything for another year, that will destroy an additional trillion dollars of value and cost 50,000 additional lives compared to doing something today."

>It's now or never, as it has been for decades apparently.

Yes and that is why temperature targets keep increasing. A few decades ago +1.5°C was "trivial" to achieve with mitigations. Now +2.5°C is "trivial". How long until +3.2°C is considered the target? How long until we are stupid enough to keep playing the game all the way to +9°C?

Considering all the people that believe every gram of coal on the planet should be burned, even if that is completely unnecessary and serves no purpose, I personally think we will instead turn this into a game where the goal is to score higher and outdo the previous generation.

I'm afraid the consumerist (and dominating) part of society is more interested in how many years of exploitation we can still squeeze outta this baby, so this whole charade doesn't need to end.

Yeah well the ice caps really are melting, at a quite prodigous rate, soooo "now or never" feels kind of accurate.

It's more yesterday or never. Of course, scientists pointed it out then, with the same exact phrasing, to no public effect.

They also say that the technology is here right now to decrease co2 emissions significantly.

Here in Italy ENEL (the major electricity provider) proposed a huge investment in renewables that could decrease the cost of electricity by 40%, create 80.000 jobs, just by authorising renewable projects which are already proposed and waiting authorization. This would increase the percentage of renewable energy to 70%.

This is not impossible at all.

It’s time for massive public works projects once again. If we can spend trillions on military and billions bailing out “too big to fail” failures, we can spend significantly on re-developing our nations for the new reality of our climate and environmental limitations. We need to fund all facets of new approaches to energy and waste.

This is a weird response to the parent post. They say all we have to do is approve permits, and you reply that a massive public works project is required. Do you fundamentally disagree with them?

I read it as "we should definitely do more of these"

All you have to do is look at the impacts of predominantly renewable generation on the west coast to see that just building renewables is insufficient. CA is massively renewable but storage starved and as a result heavily leans on neighboring states dirty generation to balance the grid. We need storage projects and transmission upgrades, the generation itself is the cheap and easy part.

I see headlines like this and I realize that a significant portion of the public would read it and immediately say "OK, 'never'."

>I see headlines like this and I realize that a significant portion of the public would read it and immediately say "OK, 'never'."

Right but it's not that they are 'science deniers' or whatever name you have for them.

The reality is that the worst polluters like China, India, and USA are simply not going to stop. I don't see this ever changing. It is never. What are we going to do more than we already have?

Flipside, what's even the fix here? Planting trees? Canada has 10,000 trees per person. They are considered are worst emitting source. Trees are used against us. Should mismanaged forests going through forest fires be used against us? I dont think so.

What does that seem to recommend? Clear cutting all our trees seems to be the correct move for climate change?

How about we keep our trees and just go with never.

you admit the forests are mismanaged.. can you not just like, manage the forests better? or clear cut fire breaks? or spend more on fire control?

>you admit the forests are mismanaged.. can you not just like, manage the forests better? or clear cut fire breaks? or spend more on fire control?

I don't know much about the forests but Climate Change folks sure don't like how we are managing them. I'll agree they were mismanaged.

Worse yet, Canadian taxpayers pay a ton of money to manage all these forests. What are we getting for it? You leave the damned forests alone and they self-manage. How the hell did we get a worse result?

Canadian government is run by Liberal and NDP coalition, who has been in power for multiple governments now. They are the ones who brought in a carbon tax and have even raised it just recently again. What did this tax revenue get us? Nothing. Less than nothing, they just created more debt for government than all previous governments combined.

I think to myself, what if I were absolute monarch? What do I do? Where's the billions from this carbon tax?

Solar panels paid for by carbon tax. Every house is to get an array of solar panels? Nope, nobody seems to be planning that.

How about electric cars? Well ya, Canada/Ontario or really the doug ford government is the one who got us setup to build batteries and evs. The guy who opposes the carbon tax and tried to get it killed...

We can’t even manage water and that’s theoretically easier

I immediately responded with "never". It's always been "never". Honestly, I don't know how the climate scientists keep publishing their reports year after year with full knowledge that it won't be acted on.

It's a bit depressing that it hasn't even made the front page of HN yet.

Some people would rather watch the whole world burn than cede one iota of power.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand." -- Frederick Douglas

We live in a vetocracy. We protangonists do not have enough juice to override vetoes. Yet? Ever? I don't know and can't even guess.

In my despair, I've settled on adaptation and survival, hoping some fraction of society mamages to muddle thru the next century (and beyond).

In my hope, I've settled on hoping for the worst for a beautiful "told you so" moment.

If the worst happens, we deserve it. So why despair?

> But keeping temperatures down will require massive changes to energy production, industry, transport, our consumption patterns and the way we treat nature.

The hyperobject (per Timothy Morton) nature of this problem feels insurmountable, and tackling it is one of the purposes of central government if it cares about the well-being of the people it serves--so, not insurmountable if governments are acting in line with my values (and there's a lot I don't know, here in this cave looking at shadows). I accept it as a big problem, and I make efforts at the level I can control, and I hope that together we can agree to limit our resource-churn equitably. Looking for technological solutions is a fun diversion, but effective change is at the culture-level. Decreasing demand on this finite world will help life on Earth weave its story a bit longer.

It's going to require major cities to flood, burn, or otherwise become permanently unlivable before you can expect any game changing actions. Until then, governments will continue to ignore our problem.

All religions are full of radical climate change hysteria, because climate has always been unpredictable... and always a good way to scare and control people. Relating random climate events to human "sins" is the oldest and longest lived scam. All you have to do is convince the people that you talk to the "gods" (or equivalent... "science"?, "computer models"?) and can save people from the climate... and you can scam them. It seems to never get old, so absolutely no reason to stop using it.

I would bet that in 2032, IPCC scientists will still be saying it’s ‘now or never’ to limit warming.

Of course. It will still be true in 2032; it will just be a much higher threshold of warming, with much more severe consequences, that we'll be about to cross. We can always wait longer and make things worse, right up until the whole global economy collapses and most of us die.

Yeah they should drop the now. Everyone knows we picked never.

Good call, since they’ve been saying ‘now or never’ for at least the past decade.

It's been 'now or never' for 50+ years. Who believes this crap anymore?

50 years ago it was "now or never" to prevent any major effects from climate change. then it was "now or never" to keep warming under 1C, then to prevent ocean acidification, then to keep warming under 2C, then to keep the ice caps from melting, then to prevent a runaway effect.

it's like a fire alarm going off. if you act early, you can smother it. otherwise you need an extinguisher, then to call the fire department, then at least to get you and your kids to safety. it's always now or never to save what you can, it's just that what you can save diminishes.

Every one passingly familiar with the science.

If this "now or never" was true, the WH wouldn't have released the strategic oil reserves to lower the gas prices.

unless they were just primarily worried about political expediency?

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