Eminent Scientist Says Climate Activists Need to Get Real | Hacker News Reader

Eminent Scientist Says Climate Activists Need to Get Real

nytimes.com

35 pointsjohnny31325 comments

I imagine that interview was like a cold shower for the interviewer. It was enjoyable to read, though.

Smil steadfastly rejected the (almost continuous!) politicizing attempts and dissed the virtue signalling. Well done.

(Reporter: "I eat less meat [...]; I'm [...] looking at solar panels and heat pumps." Smil: "There is nothing wrong with the heat pump, but proper insulation, that's much better in the long run. ... People will stop eating meat, then fly for a vacation in Toscana.")

The interview was very well done. Smil made excellent points about the fact that we need something the biggest polluters can agree on - how can China, India, the US, and Russia agree on anything in today's world?

Smil has suggested elsewhere that we will need to make climate cleanup work more economically palatable. We will need many more nuclear reactors, a much stronger energy grid, and hydro. There will be trade offs, but this is the most likely path.

Also - I recommend Bill Gates excellent and clearly written book on climate change.

The problem is that it is easier to tout slogans and simplistic solutions than it is to conduct a sober analysis.

Economics considerations are important, you can't just gloss over them. For example, just the other day, my dad was telling me of someone he knew who spent £25k on a heat pump. It makes for great feels, and you get to go to bed at night with the warm fuzzies, but there is no discussion of things like payback period. One doesn't need to be a genius to understand the concept of payback period, but even this simple analysis is overlooked. And things like payback and Return On Investment are important to determining whether something is viable. And it's by no means clear in my mind that these costly solutions and all the materials they involve are actually better environmentally than existing solutions.

It's like when people propose something like hydroelectric schemes. From what I've been given to understand, these are proven to be viable. But whenever such a scheme is proposed, groups pop up saying that it will harm some ecosystem. Will it harm an ecosystem? Probably, yes. But every time anyone takes a dump their having a deleterious effect on the environment, so I am expecting a more nuanced argument than that.

My point is not that I am advocating for against hydroelectric schemes per se. My point is that "how dare you" doesn't lead to intelligent decision-making.

“We don’t need pushing to the sides. What we need is the dull, factually correct and accurate middle. Because only from that middle will come the solutions. Solutions never come from extremes. It’s also irresponsible to state the problem in ways where, when you look closer, it’s not like that. There are these billions of people who want to burn more fossil fuel. There is very little you can do about that. They will burn it unless you give them something different. But who will give them something different? You have to recognize the realities of the world, and the realities of the world tend to be unpleasant, discouraging and depressing.”

I agree with all that except the conclusion. I don’t think we need to be so dour. The world is moving incredibly fast. China installed more wind energy last year than the entire world installed in the past 5 years. Dubai is on track to be 100% solar powered by 2050. We have solutions like stratospheric sulfur injections that we don’t want to use, but could if the permafrost starts melting. The world is not all doom. I love his anti-politics politics, though.

V. Smil is a polymath who understands the problem of climate (visa-vi energy availability, security, sustainability) in such a depth, in full historical context, and on so many levels of analysis simultaneously (geopolitics, population dynamics, immigration, etc) to the point its humbling [for those who were able to read with notes his book on energy, global-trends-catastrophes, etc]. That is meant to motivate one (especially younger generations) to get real about solving the right problem at the right scale, with the right time-energy costs, rather than politically and emotionally driven, and ultimately wasteful pseudo issues (such as banning plastic straws, one out of myriad such examples). [And CO2 concentration is just a poster child for a cluster of issues of which an understanding the water cycle and enabling natural ecosystems regulating it properly is the core of this cluster of climate change bundle).

One take away point I would highlight for myself from the interview is the reinforcement: ".... this is a totally unprecedented problem, and people don’t realize how difficult it will be to deal with. " This is (speaking from Germany's point of view) the entrapped high-school and elementary school activism equipped with political slogans are hands down the worse possible way to go about thinking/acting about the said problem. Rather create math-physics-engineering centered curricula (or its elements) where physical/natural reality of being is the central philosophy so kids are less concerned with politics and become practical, competent agents of change which ever way it will turn out to be. Why a 10 year old kids has to know G. Thu. school activism while not having the slightest idea of physical reality of modern civilization, not to speak of actual useful things like units, scales, and degrees of the problem -- adapted to their level).

> Well, we changed people’s consumption by letting them have their S.U.V.s. We can change people the other way. We could say, To save the planet people should drive smaller cars. If you drive a smaller car, you get a rebate. If you drive an S.U.V., you pay a surcharge. There are many ways to go around bringing rational goals. You don’t have to invent new things to solve these problems. This promise of inventions — 3-D printing! Houses will be printed! Cars will be printed! Have you seen any printed houses and cars? We live in this world of exaggerated promises and delusional pop science.

The solution has always been to make gas $20 per gallon or $30 per gallon or whatever it needs to be to force people to use dense housing and public transit or cycling/walking.

Problem is not all the countries are going to do it, especially the ones who have not been living the high life for the past 60 years, so it is politically dead in the water. And hence you end up with exaggerated promises and delusional pop science, stuff that is politically palatable.

Industry needs to change, the small emissions per person will barely do anything other than reduce quality of life.

Industry would change, they would also be subject to drastically higher fossil fuel prices. Not to mention people would have to consume less stuff since they have less space. Not to mention the reduced purchasing power of everyone since they would be spending more on fossil fuels.

The reduction in quality of life would be inevitable, hence the political unviability.

Both do. Individuals need to stop directly burning fossil fuels, AND we need to switch our industrial and power generation infrastructure. There’s plenty of work to go around.

Also, if not all the countries are going to do it, you'll impoverish the countries that do it and leave the ones who don't to take over economically.

>to force people to use dense housing

After seeing how pandemics work in densely populated areas, nope. Never. That has ship has sailed.

Did densely populated areas overall fair much worse when controlling for poverty? I'm not being snarky I genuinely don't know, the last time I heard about this it wasn't conclusive.

Anyway we may have left ourselves little choice. I certainly don't think we're still within the window of "this is worse for everyone but better for me" being acceptable.

Communicable diseases spread quicker in densely populated areas, this is known.

The other option is reducing number of humans. Whichever way we want to cut it, less mass needs to be moved less distance to meaningfully reduce consumption of fossil fuels, and that is proportional to number of humans and the distances between them.

Or the miraculous discovery of an energy / locomotion mechanism that does not have the negative side effects of current known sources.

Be careful with the conviction that you are right, and others are wrong, to the degree that you are willing to force people to do things. Forcing people to do things for their own good has a terrible historical track record in terms of doing damage, and people who do it, no matter how sure they are, often find out later they were wrong after all.

You may not think raising gas prices is the sort of force that might incur damage, but making life more difficult and expensive is inherently costly, and those costs are real -- settling for jobs that are poor fits, education that is missed, businesses that fail, needed care that becomes economically impractical, opportunities missed due to expenses. A sacrifice that means little to you may be tragic in someone else's life.

>You may not think raising gas prices is the sort of force that might incur damage

I do not think that at all. There will be lots of damage. That is the whole point, we cannot effectively reduce energy consumption without reducing consumption which is moving less mass less distances.

Either less humans period fly to Tahiti for honeymoons, or more humans live a much lower quality of life (what is considered quality of life today).

Hence the political intractability of the problem.

> it needs to be to force people to use dense housing and public transit or cycling/walking.

I never understood why people believe living in dense cities is good for the environment. Could you explain why you think so? I get the transit argument, but imho everything else points to the opposite. Cities are warmer than rural areas. They cannot store the water from rain, they have to transport it away. They have problems with air pollution, not only because of cars. They disconnect people with nature, because they cannot experience nature day to day. The air is much better outside of cities. You can't buy healthy food around the corner from the farmer that produced it, etc.

Dense cities consistently produces lower per-capita carbon emissions. This has to do with transit, with transportation of material, with houses (yes, townhouses too!) not having as many walls to lose heat from, etc.

We can and have designed cities that properly handle rainfall. The issue is not density, but the lack of water-permeable surfaces. Suburban parking lots and wide freeways cause the same issues and on a larger scale due to the low density.

The lack of nature is, again, solved not just once. In Amsterdam they have dense urban areas right next to actual farms with cows, free-range ones. Again, you save space for nature by going high density. Compared to sprawling out with cul-de-sacs a you have more people getting closer to nature more often. Same argument for farmers traveling to town.

(I do sense a bit of mismatch between conceptions of non-dense-city living spaces. You seem to be talking about something that combines the environment of rural areas with the convenience of suburbia, but these two seldom co-exist without wasting a lot of tax money on maintenance…)

I agree with this guy. World climate policy can't follow the desires of a teenager-turned-adult who while having conviction, does not have expressed understanding beyond high school aspirational.

People will end up in ruin if they follow their favorite celebrities to provide them compass on anything important. But this is what we have these days.

Get off your high horse; people have only ever followed the hype gripping the masses

You might try and show you’re not possessed by an entitled high schooler view of the world and avoid peddling the notion you are possessed of a special meta view

The mechanism for consensus is a gridlocked political system. Everyone seems to think grinding in their deep work thought bubble and unique mental model puts them beyond the edge of human discovery. What a joke

I like his conclusions, but also think he neglects to acknowledge that the current solutions are a result of people trying to solve the problem of climate change while balancing other problems. You can't force a solution, as another commenter points out, without some negative externalities. The sad reality is that there is a negative correlation between wealth and impact from climate change, while there is also a negative correlation between wealth and impact from forced immediate actions to curb emissions.

Would any climate activists actually disagree with him? Yes, the situation is dire. Yes, the task at hand is incomprehensibly hard. That’s the whole issue!

5 years ago Smil was badmouthing EVs and blaming it on Obama of all people.

https://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/36.EVs_.pd...

> The last thing we need is to push for the rapid introduction of a source of demand that would summon even more fossil-fuel- based electricity generation.

> And even if EVs all ran on renewable sources of electricity, greenhouse gases would still be emitted during the produc- tion of cement and steel for hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and photovoltaic panels, and of course during the manufacture of the cars themselves.

I keep hearing how he's an energy genius but it all feels like when Jordan Peterson was being hyped as an intellectual.

In this interview he can't decide if it's a big catastrophe that we can't avoid or a hoax, while also proposing simple solutions that would have worked if people did them two decades ago. Here's rhetorically all over the place.

USA brand state property objects must comply with full tax cattle regulations, including paying for the Weather Council. Anyone who questions the Weather Council must be cast into a lake of fire for the high crime of Science Denial.

He he... "Climate Activists Need to Get Real"... Also that Caps Words, comic !

Seriously ? Activists ? Like people do political/etc influence for living ? :> Man, they do whatever someone pays them to do ! Banning that "occupation" would bring something realism... Also un-dumbing academy peoples and system would help. Criminalizing intentional failing-up/into corporations by experts/gov-representatives/elected officials ?

CO^2 ? What about O^2 ? I hear many times stories about water into ankles and you could catch fishes with bare hands. Few decades ago, of course. Now lakes are empty. Just yesterday I hear that there is no oxygen in water so water is dead for living creatures. But no... Lets imagine next tax and do nothing else !

Since ancient times cities was surrounded by fields to grow food "just-on location" and now cities are mega-dead-by-hunger-traps.

You see to live you just need to eat, drink and breath. Agriculture needs to be again main occupation of planet Earth population - you need to explode into pieces that mega-agriculture and idio-subsidio-industry. Less fuel will be consumed by idividual humans working in near-house gardens :) You do not need to have oranges and bananas from other side of the equator to be cheaper then potatos and carrots grown behind everybody windows...

And instantly cut 70% of paperwork (or worse: computerized) needed for anything ! Yes, fucking ANYTHING !! Let mass fired goverment and controling agencies workers be the first wave of New Agriculture.

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