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Comment by ictebres | Hacker News Reader

It is beyond me how this snail pace of changing the economy to be more sustainable can be interpreted as break neck speed. What was break neck speed was maybe the corona response, which was a good thing and could be happening on climate front more…

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To be fair, there's limited shipbuilding capacity in the world, with a few dozen very large shipyards capable of producing a few dozens ships a year. And they're busy as is. Also given the shear scale of those yards, it's not like you can just build new ones on demand. Those things are huge, they span the size of a medium city, and require an entire economy of skilled people around them.

So even if we were to replace all of the world's fleet to be more energy efficient (which would almost by definition mean larger/longer ships, since they benefit from hydrodynamic efficiencies), it would take a lonnng time to replace the world's cargo fleet.

> if we were to replace all of the world's fleet to be more energy efficient (which would almost by definition mean larger/longer ships, since they benefit from hydrodynamic efficiencies)

The hydrodynamic efficiencies are a small part of the problem, there are many other things that can be done. You don't need to scrap a perfectly good hull, you can simply choose to run slower, burn higher-quality fuels, or strap on an oxidation catalyst (DOC) to cut CO, particulate filter (DPF) to reduce particulate emissions, or add selective catalytic reduction (SCR) to reduce NOx emissions.

But until regulation and the market catch up, old ships will choose to run too fast, to burn whatever's cheapest, and to vent their exhaust directly into the atmosphere.

Hrrm. Do you know why I am aware of

https://www.cma-cgm.com/news/2749/world-premiere-launching-o... and

https://www.cma-cgm.com/news/3379/world-premiere-bunkering-o... and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CMA_CGM_Jacques_Saad%C3%A9 and

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Saad%C3%A9-class_conta... ?

Because I've been curious after I've seen them coming into or leaving port while walking along the river.

Like: "Huh? LNG Powered? What does that even mean? Where would they store it?"

Several times. Business as usual now, it seems.

As is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_steaming

You're entirely right, I just wanted to provide rough perspective on the complexity of actually overhauling the world's fleet.

The german covid response was fast for an inert and badly prepared government apparatus. I was still impressed and they were just about in time, but what had to happen was still known well in advance. Everything that had to happen was known way before the virus was a thing, the button just had to be pressed.

Not sure the governments’ response to Covid should be an example for “this is how things should be done”. After all there are so many bank accounts that a liberal premier can block.

I couldn't disagree more. The response to corona decimated the economy and many businesses. The first priority for life on this planet is to have a decent quality of life. Not being able to afford food or other essentials is hardly a noble objective.

> The first priority for life on this planet is to have a decent quality of life.

Yes. Unfortunately, you can't have a decent quality of life without a quality environment to live in.

What if the downsides of decarbonisation outweigh the supposed benefits? Is this even possible in your list of possible outcomes? We have some experience of central state power steering large parts of the economy for The Greater Good.

There’s also a lot of proof of the downsides of not controlling companies: pollution, greed, child labor, unsustainable low wages, etc. Companies don’t care about the population, they’re just there to make money. If we don’t set boundaries the world will be a very ugly place.

I'm 14 and this is profound.

Impressed that you signed up for hn at 3 years old.

Very true! The New Deal eased the tensions and permitted a pretty fast recovery, while building most infrastructure modern US depends on, hopefully it will have the same effect.

Look at any recent studies about the projected cost of climate change in the decades to come or read a bit about the geopolitical consequences of what 2 degrees means.

The consequences of the response to Corona will seem like a nice a problem to have in comparison.

And contrary to a bad economic cycle, once the CO2 is in the atmosphere, there is no fixing it at a meaningful scale.

The future costs seem pretty small and based on useless models.

The costs of curtailing natural gas right now will be evident in real death toll this winter though.

The future costs start with roughly 1 billion refugees from regions that become either underwater, too hot to live, or too little water to live.

Underwater when sea level rises less than a foot a century? Get serious. Cold kills way more than heat. Death from extreme weather has been largely mitigated by industrialization and modern technology. Increased food production from more CO2 has helped reduce starvation.

Please, show me one genuine climate refugee right now.

Here is a nice visualization from the UN from 2021

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/065d18218b654c798ae9f36...

> Over the past decade, weather-related events triggered an average of 21.5 million new displacements each year

That's a function of growing population in poor areas to live (flood plains, dessert). Changing CO2 concentration to deal with this is about the least effective way I can imagine to help these areas.

There are a number of pacific islands such as the Marshall islands, Kiribati and a number of others. Majuro (the main island of the Marshall islands had a population of 20 thousand in 2012, but is currently only 6' above sea level. 1' of sea level rise removes the majority of the land, and already significant number of climate refugees from these islands who have resettled to other areas.

Why does the economy take precedent over life itself?

Because the gigawealthy have captured politics more completely than probably any other time witnessed by those of us currently alive.

How is that a reason? I think you're using some form of the argument

"Why should I recycle this can if X person has a private jet"

The answer is because they are both wrong but you only have control over one.

Because to survive in life you have to contribute to the survival of others. Anything else is selfish.

Well we are all going to die from climate change anyways. Some extra corona deaths and working economy seem like a win/win If you are a climate doomer.

You can’t have quality of life if you have no life at all.

Are you saying that helping the environment will cause harsh suffering to you and others? How do you know this?

This thread:

* “What was break neck speed was maybe the corona response, which was a good thing”

* “I couldn't disagree more. … The first priority for life on this planet is to have a decent quality of life.“

* “You can’t have quality of life if you have no life at all.”

I wasn't clear. I was questioning the overly simplistic "no life at all" as if some environmental changes are made the reduction in quality of life will be significant

Because of corona many people now have no life at all (i.e., they’re dead), and many more would have died if not for all the measures, so not sure how the statement was overly simplistic.

Same goes for the environment, if we don’t act, the environmental changes will have life ending impact for a significant number of people. Maybe not directly, but there will be food shortage, and wars. It is in the interest of everyone that we try to limit the impact of global warming as much as possible.

Honest question: Where does this apocalyptic attitude come from? Do people believe that they’re going to actually die because of global warming?

> Do people believe that they’re going to actually die because of global warming?

Climate change can be obdserved and measured. (Nitpick, but the 80's term "global warming" is used less often these days since it's confusing for some people, because climate change can have vastly different effects in different areas, not just simply "warming")

We already know that heatwaves are killing people and droughts are affecting the entire food chain, again, killing people for years already. [1]

You might take the position that these very real deaths are not caused by climate change (disagreeing with scientific consensus), that they are merely a fluke in the climate history of our planet, but then you'd have to, at least for yourself, define an "evidence threshold" which, when presented, would make you go "ok, now it's undeniably man-made climate change that is killing these people", because the slow graduality of the process makes it hard to intuitively see cause and effect.

[1] https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/07-11-2022-statement---...

I had a good life. I am worried about my children and also trying to think about the billions of people that will see their quality of life significantly degraded.

Geopolitical instability due to scarcer resources is certainly going to have a massive negative impact on everyone's life.

Just look at how a "small war" in Ukraine is already having real life consequences all around the world.

Now, imagine the effects of food and water insecurity across the world. Even Russia was not stupid enough to fully block supplies of wheat leaving Ukraine.

And this is only one aspect of how climate change might impact you.

People already have died because of global warming. Do you truly believe no additional marginal people have died due to intensified wildfire or hurricanes in recent decades?

15 years ago the show The Newsroom (another aaron sorkin flick) made the Toby Ruins Everything joke about how "the first person to die due to catastrophic failure of the planet has already been born", you know, supposed to be a bit hyperbolic and funny but yeah, dead on, the only part of that that hasn't come to pass since then is the "storms that blot out the sun and create permanent darkness" bit/joke. Massive wildfires in numbers and scale far too big to keep under control? Intense hurricanes and 100 year floods at yearly intervals? Tropical diseases that start to break loose and spread out of control? Anybody hear any of those lately?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc1vrO6iL0U

Honestly that was a bit of a mis-statement even then. The first person to die due to catastrophic failure of the climate was actually probably born in the 70s or 80s most likely.

And the party is really just getting started, this is nothing, there is around a 10-year latency so we are just seeing the impact of 2012-era carbon levels right now. It'll be another 10 years before we see the impact of the current decade of continued emissions growth. Things are going to continue to get a lot worse and fires/hurricanes/etc are only going to intensify.

Which is of course why it's important to actually get things fixed, because, as bad as things are, they will get worse unless the necessary system upgrades and repair work is performed... everyone has had that talk with management before. Some companies choose to change, some don't. Unfortunately there's nobody hiring on Mars or Europa at present...

2 degrees c average change in the next 28 years will cause people to die.

Looking at the droughts, floods, heat waves, polar vortexes, hurricane occurrences, fires (California and Siberia) - people have died over the last years in events occurring more often than they should.

Harvests and famine have some correlation to Syria and Ukraine wars and proxy wars over the last decade.

That was in response to the impact of corona approach on the economy, where millions died and still people think economy is more important.

But yes, in my opinion global warming is going to cause a lot of hurt. Countries will become unlivable (some islands will be gone in a few decades, the Netherlands will be mostly under water, dikes can not be heightened limitless, certain areas of India will soon be too hot for normal live), food production will be uncertain due to changing weather and drought, mass migration of people to more livable areas will follow, causing wars.

We’re already complaining about the amount of asylum seekers, the country is too small for all these people, how do you think it’s going to be with many more people on the move?

People are already dying because of climate change, what are you talking about?

Yes, people are dying because of lots of causes, that's the unfortunate truth, but it seems to me that some people do believe that a large part of us will die because of climate change. Hence my question.

I believe that to be false, a large part of us (as a species) will not die because of climate change (as past climate change events can attest to).

Maybe not a large part of the humans living now, but the next generation won't have it easy. I don't think that it's prudent to look at past events for two reasons: Population size and in-/dependence. There are a lot more humans now, than in the past. The year 0 is estimated to have had a population of about 170 to 400 million and about half for every 1000 years before that. It is a lot easier for smaller independent populations to move to a new place and start over, especially when most of them are hunter-gatherers or simple farmers. Their lives didn't change that much.

What will a population of 8 billion interconnected and dependent people do? They can't all move to a new place, they can't all farm for themselves. Just the war in Ukraine caused significant food insecurity due to higher grain prices and lower export numbers in some poorer countries. Now imagine such problems on a global scale.

Many of the current conflicts going on in the world already are water wars in disguise, or are about dealing with degrading environments, like in the Sahel zone. Also large-scale refugee movements are about people trying to escape from places where supply for land suitable for agriculture is not increasing. This is on top of ecosystems actively degrading because of multiple other reasons as well. There are always going to be populations somewhere that manage to insulate themselves from these problems, but things will become rougher for many of us.

At my age? Probably not. My kids? Probably.

The people that come after us. Where does this new "openly selfish and proud of it" attitude come from?

Honest question: do you not?

No, not really.

>The first priority for life on this planet is to have life

Fixed that for you.

Climate doomerism rots the brain.

I mean, if we wanted to decarbonize at break neck speeds - nuclear power and geoengineering are right there. Instead we are working with a very narrow band of acceptable solutions.

Gen III+ or earlier nuclear is a way of slowly solving 10% of the problem. It's not fast and it's limited by an irreplaceable critical mineral the overuse of which would delay full deployment of Gen IV in many scenarios.

It's not yet clear that Gen IV is faster or less limited by other critical minerals.

Dedicating your shipyards to building offshore wind cranes gets more carbon off the plate sooner than adapting it to build reactor vessels even if you only use the crane for a few years. Building more heavy casting is slow.

Every other step of the supply chain is even slower and more prone to overruns than the glacial pace of reactor construction.

Geoengineering is the last ditch emergency button. Once we hit it we can't unhit it and it might break other things.

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