Comment by robbrown451 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robbrown451 | Hacker News Reader

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Do you want people to explain why climate change is urgent, here in a comment?

Your links don't say "climate change isn't a problem," they just have a tiny bit of data out of context, that very few people here have the ability to fully understand as to how they may or may not relate to climate change. Do you really think the fact that agricultural output has increased over time says much about climate change, vs. technology and population and such? Or that a 2 degree temperature change in England is a) not a problem, just because a 2 degree temperature change seems minor, or b) is really going to give non-scientists a good perspective on something like this? Unless you understand all the things involved, you really need to let the scientists do an analysis on the data, rather than your seat-of-the-pants approach. If you don't want to trust the scientists, great, but just showing a tiny bit of data and extrapolating a conclusion based on intuition probably doesn't cut it.

The below is just pasted from Wikipedia, but it's a great starting point. You can follow the citations if you go to the article. Sure, it's a politicized issue so you'll always find a few on the other side. But the vast majority of scientists agree with this:

Due to climate change, deserts are expanding, while heat waves and wildfires are becoming more common. Increased warming in the Arctic has contributed to melting permafrost, glacial retreat and sea ice loss. Higher temperatures are also causing more intense storms, droughts, and other weather extremes. Rapid environmental change in mountains, coral reefs, and the Arctic is forcing many species to relocate or become extinct. Climate change threatens people with food and water scarcity, increased flooding, extreme heat, more disease, and economic loss. Human migration and conflict can also be a result. The World Health Organization (WHO) calls climate change the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century. Even if efforts to minimise future warming are successful, some effects will continue for centuries. These include sea level rise, and warmer, more acidic oceans.

Not to mention the choice of England as an example, where there was literally a record-breaking heatwave this summer that killed thousands of people. Reminds me of this: https://deadline.com/2022/07/uk-tv-interview-dont-look-up-cl...

The article you linked says:

> Hammond was right, of course, on his primary counts, as well: the temperature topped 40 degrees at London’s Heathrow airport and over 1,500 people died across Europe as a result of the heat wave.

There was 'literally' one day of temperatures over 40, in a couple of places. I didn't see any data on deaths, but it wasn't 'thousands'.

Before anyone jumps, I believe in climate change :) I just think this hyperbole isn't helpful.

Depends how you count. I believe it was 1500 directly attributed, and about 3000 excess deaths. I don't think I said anything hyperbolic or inaccurate.

The article says 1500 in Europe, I read your message to mean 'in England'.

I was referring to England, and based the "thousands" comment on this report: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

> To date, 3,271 excess deaths have been recorded during heat-periods in 2022 in England and Wales. This is an average of 82 excess deaths per day, and 6.2% higher than the five-year average. The heat-period with the largest number of excess deaths was H2 (10 to 25 July) with 2,227 excess deaths (10.4% above average), an average of 139 excess deaths per day.

And my point was that it is striking to talk about how climate change is no big deal in England in this context.

A couple thousand excess deaths of people near the end of their lifespan, in a country with over 67 million people? Forgive me if I don't find this alarming.

Yes, I want people to justify their complex policy positions that have far-reaching consequences, here in a comment. Why else are we on this forum? It's not like I'm asking people to justify that two and two make four.

Heat waves, wildfires, melting permafrost and sea ice, stronger storms -- OK, that's fine, I'm not disputing that these things are happening. But what is the human toll of these things compared against the literal billions of lives uplifted from terrible poverty in the global fossil fuel-based capitalist(ish) economy? That is the question I keep asking and to which I never seem to get a clear answer.

The time, effort, and resources we spend on de-carbonizing the global economy (or whatever other mitigation efforts are being studied and suggested) are time, effort, and resources that have alternative uses that could also benefit humanity. I wish to examine those alternative uses and the marginal cost at each level of mitigation. What I keep getting instead are categorical assertions that we are all doomed (literally, as in civilizational collapse) if we don't repent our ways and not much more than vague handwaving that renewable energy will be cheaper, more abundant, and easier to use.

I want an answer to the question: how do we bring the roughly half of the world living on a few bucks a day to first-world living standards? As a commenter put it so eloquently elsewhere, how do we ensure that Bangladeshis and Pakistanis can live like Texans? Because relieving human suffering is my goal.

Why would you assume no conflict exists between the goals of all the worlds peoples "living like Texans," and preventing environmental catastrophe? The Earth is facing serious climate change just from a plurality of humans living rampantly consumerist lifestyles, I don't think more of that is in the cards unless the number of humans drastically shrinks.

Let me be clear and say that "living like Texans" is a shorthand for a first-world standard of living, with maybe a touch of extravagance thrown in. I'm not advocating that everyone do in fact live like Texans if they don't want to! People should be free to live like monks if they want.

But actual people on the ground, especially if that ground is in places that aren't as developed, do in fact want higher standards of living. I do not see myself as having the moral authority to tell them that they cannot have it because of environmental reasons. I'd rather leave it up to them to decide whether they want to "drill, baby, drill" now and live with the possibility of facing the music later, or keep living in huts.

> As a commenter put it so eloquently elsewhere, how do we ensure that Bangladeshis and Pakistanis can live like Texans? Because relieving human suffering is my goal.

Are you prepared to hear that it is simply not possible? We have finite resources. If everyone was living like in developed countries, we would consume the entirety of the resources we are currently capable of extracting from the Earth in a year, in only a few months. And even if we expanded our extraction capabilities, there is only one Earth, of which only finite amount of material will be useful and put to good use for our comfort.

Given that, there is only two possibilities: reduce resource consumption, or expand the amount of available resources.

* Reduce: you can either reduce each individual usage, or reduce the number of individuals. Now you see why everyone is advocating for reduced individual usage, because culling the population is seen as 'not relieving human suffering'.

* Increase: it requires going away from Earth and expanding into at least adjacent bodies with the capability of transforming them into useful stuff. To plan for that, you need to prove first that such solution would be possible before we are all extinct from the ecological collapse of our life support systems.

So now you are back to square one: if 'increasing' the available resources is not available right now, and might not even be available in the future, and reducing the population is frowned upon, then you are forced to find a way to reduce resource consumption.

Which might well mean that for everyone to live like Texans, that means Texans will have to change their lives and live like everyone else.

Once our ecosystem has collapsed, a possibility we see approaching close and closer, then *no one* will live, nevermind with the latest F150 or whathaveyou that Texans might enjoy. If your goal is truly to reduce human suffering, you must also entertain the possibility that we must limit ourselves. Someone living hedonistically, trying to enjoy earthly pleasures as much as possible and dying at age 35 to cardiac and respiratory failure, has not succeeded in enjoying their lives the most.

Another question might be: does everyone want to live like Texans in the first place? Are you planning to burn our Earth on faulty ideological or cultural assumptions? Because believe me, when I see how Americans live, I definitely do not wish to join them. You might be culturally conditioned to believe your way is the best, but don't take extreme opinions such as 'climate change is preferable to modifying the status quo' based on such myopic views.

> when I see how Americans live, I definitely do not wish to join them.

Everyone's entitled to their preferences, but more people migrate to the US than any other country in the world, so it's evident that a lot people do wish to join them. And 7-8 of the top 10 recipients of global cross-border migration is to first-world countries, the inhabitants of which consume orders of magnitude more energy (even if that's less than Texans do) than those of the origin countries; so clearly many people other than myself vote with their feet to and go where more energy and resources are consumed per capita than less. Will you call all of those people myopic for pursuing a richer life, as well?

> Are you prepared to hear that it is simply not possible? We have finite resources.

Absolutely! I'm not wishing for sunshine and rainbows to appear magically and raise everyone's living standards. I simply choose to step out of the way of the people who are doing so by any means, including burning fossil fuels. And though it is axiomatically true that we live in a physical universe and therefore our resources are finite, I hope you're equally prepared to hear that in terms of the primary materials that go into producing the things that people consume, we've really just only scratched the surface of the Earth. It's pretty big. We're quite a long ways from where we need to mine other planets for resources.

> Once our ecosystem has collapsed, a possibility we see approaching close and closer

Eh. This gets repeated over and over with little evidence. Flooding in flood plains? Bring in the big earthmoving equipment, run the concrete plans, all powered by fossil fuels, and build dams. Cities with temperate climates experiencing more heat waves? Insulate homes and put in air conditioning. We'll adapt, or at least I will.

> Will you call all of those people myopic for pursuing a richer life, as well?

Definitely. People living in the US are not the most happy on Earth. Life is not the easiest there. Granted, there is a very successful propaganda at work convincing people that they will have a better chance to succeed. But more and more, this ideal is being questioned.

> Bring in the big earthmoving equipment, run the concrete plans, all powered by fossil fuels, and build dams.

To continue speaking in your language, run the cost analysis. Find how much more costly it will be to entertain grandiose project just to continue living the same way as before.

Don't get me wrong, I am not a believer of an idealistic natural world where humans should not life, far from it. But as the current pinnacle of life, the greatest achievement on Earth, I consider that it is our duty to sustain ourselves for as long as possible -- and that means for now understanding as much as possible of the biological systems on Earth before changing anything. We should reduce ecological collapses as much as possible, until we have learned everything we can from the species we are disappearing every days. We must be aware of our impact, in the fullest of sense and decide with total knowledge how to proceed.

> We'll adapt, or at least I will.

You are describing the exact inverse of 'adapting'. You want to modify the environment as much as necessary, at any cost, for it to fit our current cultural zeitgeist. Our biology trumps any current cultural fact. We should not try to preserve a single society or human colony, we should try to preserve as much life and (DNA) diversity as possible, as this is our best chance to learn and understand more, and find better ways to live, to further reduce our suffering.

> Eh. This gets repeated over and over with little evidence.

This is already happening, these last years have already shown a prelude of what is to come.

Rains will be rarer and more intense, leading to periods of drought and floods, as well as reduced retention in our current biomes. I don't know what you watched these last two years but it has already been happening in several regions, I don't know what more evidence you want of what is to come.

It will only become more and more difficult to grow food and keep livestock as the water system become more violent and unstable. Trying to stabilize an increasingly unstable system will prove extremely costly, you will be battling forces that are currently outside our capabilities. You might be optimistic and consider that we will always find solutions to it, but this is unreasonable. No one has shown so far that we will be capable of containing those issues.

Water might be the most problematic issue in the medium term, but wildfires, ocean acidification, tropical storms, ecological collapses have also started to happen, more frequently and more intensely. It will lead to a harder life for everyone. We will be lucky in the US and EU and will live better life for a time, but we will also experience greatly increased migrations, that will completely destroy our current social support systems. Given the latest rise in populism (on the left and right), it is clear to me that in that situation people will vote for any tyrant that will promise to do anything to protect their way of life. That will mean building critical infrastructure to attempt to contain the effects in the best case, but more likely just more self-serving, corrupt assholes and brutal power enforcement, genocide of the millions of people moving. It's only human nature.

Frankly what you describe will only accelerate our downfall. Our best chance of surviving is through knowledge, and your way will make so much of the complexity of life around us disappear, just to fit some myopic conception of how we should live.

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