New report paints dire picture of America's future as climate crisis accelerates | Hacker News Reader

New report paints dire picture of America's future as climate crisis accelerates

cnn.com

12 pointsmakerofspoons14 comments

When you look at co2 per capita, I'm sad to say it's a bit fair.

Even china doesn't emit that much per capita.

Reducing emissions will be immensely difficult for the US. It cannot be done without big consequences for the US economy.

Yes, there would be big consequences. Reducing emissions would mean a huge number of blue-collar jobs and development of technology.

The only reason we don't do this is because one of the two political parties has been fully captured by the fossil fuel industry.

The only reason? Really?

Is Biden putting forth climate proposals that would actually change things? No, he isn't. Is OAC? No. Is anybody? No.

Why not? Because they all know that nobody will put up with the pain it would cause - not even the blue states.

It's time to enlist Oprah.

"You get a heat pump! And YOU get a heat pump! EVERYBODY gets a heat pump!"

Biden advocated for a huge climate and economic stimulis bill and couldn't get a single Republican to support it.

CBO itself regularly says that climate bills are ways to save money, not spend it.

https://www.citizen.org/news/cbo-says-climate-bill-would-cut...

OK, that was a climate bill. Back to my question. Would that actually change things? Change them enough to matter? Change them enough to, say, cut in half the per-person emissions of CO2? Change them enough to make the US fall in line with the Paris agreement? Change them enough that, if every nation did them, we would not exceed 1.5 C?

I'm pretty sure the answer is "no" to all of those.

Yes, but also because it would be such a big economic recession, it would cause so many riots and civil unrest.

It's not only politics, it's also because there are too many americans who think they are entitled to a car, a house and hamburgers.

It wouldn't be a problem if citizens could accept change, but it's not just a political problem, it goes much much deeper than that.

Vaclav Smil (among others) has pointed out that this really just means going back to a 1960's level of energy use for the USA, and that's really not much of a hardship or downgrading of quality of life.

Václav Smil at Driva Climate Investment Meeting 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gkj_91IJVBk

We have the technology to keep up or improve QoL while we reduce emissions. Just curbing our waste energy would get us halfway there, something like that. (E.g. insulating houses, plugging drafts, better grid management, etc.)

My understanding is that there has been little or no statistically significant change in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events [1].

[1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjp/s13360-021-02...

Note the large box at the top of your linked article warning readers:

> Editor's Note: Readers are alerted that the conclusions reported in this manuscript are currently under dispute. The journal is investigating the issue.

You basically found the one publication saying "Vaccines cause autism" while 1,000,000 different independent ones say "No they don't".

This is just willful ignorance. We're having "Once-in-a-hundred-year" floods, fires, droughts and hurricanes every few years now. The Mississippi is at historic lows. Temperatures everywhere are at historic highs. Basically every measure of temperature, weather and rainfall everywhere is something like "7 of the top 10 extremes in recorded history have been in the last decade".

Not really. That's just an easy one to Google, there are tons of other examples that are easy to find if you look.

Any time I've looked past the news articles and looked at actual extreme weather frequency going back the past 100-200 years, the results have all pretty much been consistent. There's great science out there for reconstructing stream flows (drought indicator) based on tree rings, for example, that can take you back to the 1600s.

The early 1900s, for example, were a nightmare climate-wise, and the 30s killed a crazy number of people.

"Willful ignorance"? Care to rephrase?

> This is just willful ignorance.

If it's just a matter of calling your opponent names, you're being hysterical.

What he said isn't willful ignorance. Humanity has never been safer from extreme weather and has never been more able to adapt to changes. You'll see this reflected in the number of people dying in countries with access to reliable energy over a century or so.

> “In the 1980s, the country experienced on average one (inflation-adjusted) billion-dollar [extreme weather] event every four months,” the draft report states. “Now, there is one every three weeks, on average.”

That is pretty frustrating to read. To what degree do people pining for the '80s not realize they want the '80s climate back :-/

but we've never been safer against extreme weather, reflected in deaths

Reply on news.ycombinator.com