Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal” | Hacker News Reader

Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”

thewalrus.ca

100 pointspseudolus167 comments

While I agree with the title, I think the author misses the real reason not to refer to the "New Normal". David Wallace-Wells sums it up pretty well:

> It is tempting to look at these strings of disasters and think, Climate change is here... this is how California governor Jerry Brown first described the state of things in the midst of the state's wildfire disaster: "a new normal"

> The truth is actually much scarier. That is, the end of normal; never normal again. We have already exited the state of environmental conditions that allowed the human animal to evolve in the first place, in an unsure and unplanned bet on just what that animal can endure.

This is where climate change, from a human perspective, is so different than any other disaster we've dealt with prior. From earth quakes to even something as extreme as nuclear war, these events represent a single, high magnitude disruption of the status quo, which then leads to the return of a new stability. Once the change has occurred adaption can begin.

Climate change will continue to get worse throughout our lives, the lives of our children after us, and most certainly their children as well. We won't reach a new point of stability which we can call the "new normal" for multiple generations. You'll never get "used to it" during your life time. As soon as people get used to smoky skies, hotter summers and drier winters, the next challenges will starting to occur and they'll be more extreme.

Climate change from anthropogenic green house gas emissions is an example of "fiddling with systemic parameters" and hoping that all response is linear.

Its not just CO2 and friends. Any shifting around of systemic chemical compositions (whether in air, water or soil) has similar potential for difficult to predict (and hard to reverse) damage.

Given our role and abilities fiddling with these types of systemic abundances does not lead to immediate feedback loops. It takes generations to move the needle. But tipping points are real in any complex system. The biosphere is not a static something that can be tuned at the service of homo sapiens. It will rebalance. And the new equilibrium might not be to our liking.

Surviving this "slow cooking of the frog" phenomenon will require us to develop behaviors that we have never before contemplated. Developing a web of trust, objectivity and sense of responsibility not only among all living individuals but also all future generations.

That's an amazing perspective I had never once considered. "The new normal" isn't the current state of things, instead "the new normal" is that we're on a slope. Instead of outliers that then regressions to some mean, it will continue to get worse. We'll have the hottest summer ever multiple years in a row.

That's scary.

Edit: If anybody want's to read the entire text that OP refers to: https://www.livemint.com/news/world/climate-change-crisis-cl...

I thought it was obvious that "The New Normal" was sarcastic/ironic and the steady drumbeats of "New Normals" implied everything was getting worse via a ratchet effect.

Exactly how I've been reading it. "The New Normal" is that "normal" is no longer a thing (if "normal" ever even really existed outside of mathematics/statistics).

Too bad the author is not offering any alternative. It's not good enough to just say "stop doing X". It would be nice if it's followed by "Do Y instead".

Maybe I missed it, but the only thing I found in the whole article that resembles a counterproposal is a single sentence in the end - "... policy flows from conversation and debate instead of force."

So we are supposed to have more conversation and debate? Sounds like exactly what we've been doing for the last 30,40,50 years.

"So we are supposed to have more conversation and debate? Sounds like exactly what we've been doing for the last 30,40,50 years."

It has sounded more like competing monologues than anything else to me...

Good point....it's like, does anyone actually think something useful is going to come out of threads like this other than enjoyment?

The subtext under the headline seems direct enough:

>When it comes to the climate crisis, new normals convey a single, grim message: instead of acting, get used to it

The idea is to stop calling things "The new normal" since that implies acceptance. Fight instead. Don't go along with the idea that the world has to be like this.

Concerning climate change, the world is going to be like this.

All models are clear that global warming cannot be reversed. No "turning green" will lower average temperatures enough in our lifetime. Thus, acceptance is capital, because only acceptance of reality can lead to sensible solutions.

As a side note, screaming "It's too late: hurry up!" is really an idiot way to advocate your cause, whatever your cause may be.

> All models are clear that global warming cannot be reversed. No "turning green" will lower average temperatures enough in our lifetime.

Thats factually correct, but also kind of a strawman. The objective at this point is not to reverse climate change, but to stop it getting much, much worse.

Without the cooperation of BRICS these efforts are moot. Not to further spiral this discussion into politics, but the current administration is pushing BRICS away rather than pulling closer.

Ostensibly climate change continues to be used as a political bargaining chip on the world stage because of a fundamental refusal by Western elites to relinquish their hegemony.

That's metaphorically like stepping on the gas and the brakes at the same time.

If we really believe we need the masses to reach a level of acceptance in order to reach sensible conclusions, perhaps that whole step could be bypassed by doing away with the frequent alarmism and "i fucking love science" attitude in the first place.

> As a side note, screaming "It's too late: hurry up!" is really an idiot way to advocate your cause, whatever your cause may be.

Is it? It can simultaneously be true that we have been too slow to avoid very concerning outcomes, and also that the best course of action open to us is to act quickly and decisively

>As a side note, screaming "It's too late: hurry up!" is really an idiot way to advocate your cause, whatever your cause may be.

“It is too late to save your foot. It has been damaged beyond saving by your inaction. But with aggressive action on your part, you could save some of your legs and delay the loss of your other foot. It's too late: hurry up!”

What's done may be done, but we could perhaps keep it from being even worse.

Problem is that afaik things are not going get better; climate change is going to hit us bad. The fight is now mostly just trying to manage how bad it is going to be, especially in 2100s and further.

The way you fight is by buying a Tesla and switching your power to clean energy providers. Climate change activists never seem to talk about either of those things tho, it’s always amorphous nonsense like “dismantling capitalism”

> Climate change activists never seem to talk about either of those things tho

They don't? You're listening to a different crowd than I am.

Buying a Tesla isn't even close to enough. Climate change activists say amorphous nonsense like "dismantling capitalism" because the changes needed are much, much further reaching than simply buying a different thing.

Transportation is only about 25% of CO2, and cars are only a fraction of that. Even if there were zero CO2 produced in a Tesla's lifecycle (and it's more than that), it wouldn't be anywhere near enough.

You'd also need to turn off all the fossil fuel power plants -- which isn't going to happen without government intervention.

That's not enough, either. Food and concrete are also massive producers of CO2. Again, corporations aren't going to voluntarily stop raising cows or making concrete. Laws are required -- the kinds of laws that make people scream "socialism".

Nor can it end there. To reach net-zero, we're going to have to balance out the inevitable remaining human-produced CO2. Some of that will be carbon capture -- not something corporations do unless forced. Some will be reserving large swathes of fertile land for trees -- probably owned by the government, i.e. socialism.

That's probably still not enough. Try this on for size: we eliminate a lot of bullshit jobs that require commuting, energy, and other sources of carbon. Maybe a universal basic income that drives up the cost of workers, and a lot of workers just drop the hell out. Maybe then we reorganize the economy to stop maximizing "employment" as a fundamental goal, and we stop optimizing for total Gross Domestic Product.

That is what "dismantling capitalism" means. Maybe it's not necessary to go that far. It sure as hell would have been less likely if we'd done something about it 40 years ago. Instead, we dicked around for decades, while believing that capitalism would solve it. Capitalism mostly responded by denying that the problem existed.

The activists may not really understand what they say when they toss around the catch phrases. But I assure you that the people who coined those catch phrases do know what they mean, and you can engage with that if you don't like engaging with the rank-and-file who are rightfully enraged that nothing is being done, even if they themselves don't fully understand the magnitude or direction of what's required.

The point is that the 'new normal' is lulling people into 'doing nothing'. The 'do Y' is, simply take action to be better. Whatever it is.

Each X needs a different Y. So go do Y for that particular problem, instead of nothing.

How can this one author tell you what to do for every problem outlined. The point is to stop doing nothing.

The problem is that any good I, as an individual, can produce is far outweighed by the damage a multi-trillion dollar businesses can cause. This isn’t to say that individuals should do nothing, this is to say we need to deconstruct and limit those who actively harm the environment, starting from the largest and working down.

Vast majority of those businesses ultimately serve consumers in one way or another. Some are deeper in the supply chain networks than others, but still you shouldn't pretend that industy somehow exists as completely isolated sector.

I don’t believe that Microsoft was serving customers when they made Windows 10 or 11. I also don’t believe Apple is serving customers when it makes its devices nearly impossible to sustain. Companies are certainly not serving customers when they package products in unsustainable packaging that is meant to be discarded.

While businesses may produce products/services for individuals to buy, you shouldn’t pretend that industry doesn’t make their own decisions. It’s not my fault bottling companies moved from glass to plastic, that was decided against my will. All I can do is recycle and pray they don’t chuck that plastic in the ocean on “accident”.

As I’ve said at the start, this is not to minimize the individual’s role in this, but to highlight the fact that for every piece of plastic I recycle thousands of pounds of it are produced, and that was not my decision. That was decided by billionaires with little care for anything but optics and their bottom line.

Companies exist to make money and the money comes from consumers, either less or more directly.

> every piece of plastic I recycle thousands of pounds of it are produced, and that was not my decision.

Not your decision individually, but it the collective decision of consumers to give money to companies that produce plastics

And, individually, we can help that process by reducing or eliminating our support of those companies.

> Too bad the author is not offering any alternative. It's not good enough to just say "stop doing X". It would be nice if it's followed by "Do Y instead".

It's entirely reasonable to just say "stop doing X" when X is (a) causing significant harm and (b) helping people to deny its harmful reality. There is no requirement to come up with an alternative.

But in fact, of course, the author does suggest an alternative. As the article says "When it comes to the climate crisis, new normals convey a single, grim message: instead of acting, get used to it". So they're saying don't do that. Don't get used to it. Don't acquiesce. Face the problem, don't normalise it. Its a plea for action at a personal level, not a policy level.

Conversation and debate have served us for easily 30,000 years.

During which time civilizations have risen and fallen, often because of their own short-sightedness. It hasn't wiped out the human race, but there are outcomes far short of extinction that are nonetheless best avoided because they are extremely unpleasant.

Why must there be an alternative? There's no utility in communicating "this is the new normal" other than to persuade others in a prescriptive manner. It's completely unnecessary unless one has some ulterior motive.

It's the new normal, bro. Get with it. What are you, stuck in the past? /s

When you're criticizing something, you must present an alternative for your criticisms to hold any weight. If you're unable to say "let's build that" after shouting "let's tear this down" it tells me you don't understand the situation well enough to speak about it to others.

No, one mustn't necessarily. A thing can be criticized in isolation while an alternative is pending. Inaction is also an alternative in and of itself. In this case, alternative messaging or any persuasive messaging is not a requirement.

What happened in Alberta was just a couple weeks of warm weather after a fairly cold winter. The timing was right when new growth hadn't had a chance to take hold so all the dry grass and tinder was perfect fuel.

The rap attack helicopter crews were dismantled in both BC and Alberta to save a few millions at best. Easily doubled the size of the burn area not having this capability.

This is normal but not new. Alberta has had larger amounts burned and the trend is down. The 1920's to 1940's were the worst in recorded history. Accurate measuring of what was burned has improved each decade too. Earlier in the record much was not included.

The problem isn’t just the fire. It’s the strange weather patterns that bring smoke down to areas that have never seen conditions like that. Was the warm ocean keeping the jet stream from its typical shape?

Smoke in New York from Canadian boreal fires happened in the May 2010 fire and the May 1870 Saguenay fire. In 1870 parts of Europe were covered in smoke from the Canadian fire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saguenay_Fire

1870, 2010, 2023, ????

1870, 2010, 2023, 2146, ????

So what is you point here? That warming planet is not likely to increase the rate of New York suffering smokes? Honestly this would put New York in a pretty special place as forest fires are set to increase a lot, and smokes are expected to distribute in higher density to wider areas. This is pretty observable on the West Coast already, where we have a brand new Smoke Season in the early to late autumn in the Pacific North West.

But realistically New York will not be this lucky, and the chances of the next smokes coming as distantly apart as per-industrialization is probably close to 0. I’m not a climate scientist but I bet we will for sure see several more smokes coming to New York before the end of the century (just like we have on the West Coast in the past 5 years).

My point is that sequences like that are insufficient to draw conclusions.

Maybe so, but I don’t think your parent was drawing any conclusions, just pointing out the very likely scenario that these smokes will happen with increased frequency, or at least, that’s how I understood it.

These weather patterns aren’t new or all that strange.

This set of conditions periodically occur over time. The difference is that now people have hyper awareness of uncommon but normal weather events. Cue confirmation bias.

The Omega Block is a "strange" weather pattern compared to the usual configuration of the jet stream. It is unusual and surprising. I didn't say it was new, rare, or uprecedented.

It's possible for a weather event to be "normal" (something we see from time to time) but also triggered or more likely ehanced by anthropogenic climage change. Hurricanes aren't anything new, and devastating hurricanes earlier and later in the season aren't even "new". The fact that we've seen it before doesn't mean that humans aren't making it worse.

It doesn't need to be raining locusts for things to be really messed up.

> It doesn't need to be raining locusts for things to be really messed up.

Fair enough, but what is the metric for calling something "due to climate change"?

Because it seems to me that currently the blame for every drop of rain that falls above (or below) average is directly ascribed to the evil people in the suburbs driving their cars.

Right, well. In that case, I suppose we shouldn't do anything at all.

The issue isn't that something is "due to climate change". This is a false choice: "either it's due to climate change, or it's not". The extra energy in the atmosphere doesn't pick and choose where to apply itself. Every weather pattern is affected by climate change. Everything has its gain knob turned up a little more each year.

"Just a couple weeks of warm weather" is precisely the problem though; it's hot dry weather at a time of year when this historically does not happen. The problem is that the statistical variance of events is going crazy. It's not that there's some sudden break and the temperatures are unilaterally higher, it's that the plot drawing the standard deviation in temperatures (and precipitation) now looks much crazier than it did in the past, and this leads to this kind of unpredictable situation with severe consequences.

And so we'll continue to have "plausible deniability" among some of the corelation of any of these things to climate change, despite the statistical modeling so clearly showing that they're tied together. No sane person is saying we're only getting forest fires because of climate change. We're saying forest fires are incrementally more frequent or severe or unpredictable because of it.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s in one of the areas (Parkland County) that had severe fires this year, and this is not an area traditionally affected directly by this scale of fire.

My parents live 5 minutes from a town that was evacuated (Entwistle). Some people in their church had their whole house & barn incinerated. It's not a remote highly forested area, it's heavily settled and a mix of farmland and some wooded areas and bush.

In my childwood did we didn't have April and May temperatures like this. In fact, summer time... July, August... temperatures rarely went above 25c-28c, let alone up into near 30c with no precipitation in the end of April.

Snow was on the ground often into last week of April at least. And often still is.

Further west on HWy 16, Edson, Hinton, and down in David Thomson country, and the areas in the eastern foothills, sure, that's always had fairly high fire risk. But what is unique about this spring is the way these fires were brought much closer to settled areas, and how they occurred so early in the season.

It's hard to find decent data on Alberta but here's Canada: https://cwfis.cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/ha/nfdb

Hard to find a trend in that and if you go back eighty more years we are about two thirds less area burned than in the 20's to the 40's. Mapping of area burned has become better every decade too.

I'm not sure how meaningful stats are from the 20s to 40s given the forested vs populated area of the country was so massively different. There was simply more forest to burn.

FWIW my great-grandparents cleared their farm in Alberta (Innisfail area) from bush/forest in the 20s. Huge areas that are just wide open heavily settled farm fields now were aspen parkland and forest.

2043AD: "A nuclear bomb went off today in New York City. Welcome ladies and gentlemen, to the New Normal™. That is why we at Chemcorp have a special on Iodine tablets for only $3.99/month! So put on your radiation suit and head on down to your nearest store!"

My favourite phrase for a “new normal” moment is the borrowed Simpsons joke:

A: “This is the hottest summer ever!”

B: “This is the coldest summer of the rest of your life!”

While I support the efforts to prevent and reverse the environmental damage we're causing, personally I don't believe they'll really succeed. It seems that human society is fundamentally incapable of acting in a coordinated way against a global, long term threat. So at a certain point convincing people to take the bus instead of a car, specifically because that will save the planet, starts to seem like a lie. It's not unreasonable to start thinking in terms of preparedness, rather than just prevention.

We dealt with the ozone hole fairly well. There hasn't been total nuclear war. The Netherlands is ten feet under sea level and does fine. Polar bears and all other bears are absolutely thriving.

Neither of these things required any change from regular people. In fact, today many people say that ozone hole just disappeared, because the changes needed were so transparent, no one even noticed. Is there a way people can continue their normal lives, but still eliminate the green house gasses emissions?

We won't reduce emissions unless there's a massive reduction in population. Otherwise normal people will adapt. Less people will die if the planet warms more. Extreme cold events kill more than heat waves do and that's even without including the seasonal flu and cardiac events related to the cold.

There are hard limits on how much heat a human can take. We cannot adapt beyond, except for literally never going outside again.

Which is the norm and always has been in places like Arizona in the summer. I didn't go out for more than an hour at a time in Tucson in the summer when I lived there. Anything longer and you seriously thought about and prepared for it. This has always been the way humans lived in these areas.

Arizona is a warm, but dry place. Temperature of 38C can be both mildly inconvenient and deadly, depending on the humidity. There are densely populated areas of the world that are much more humid than Arizona and are getting warmer. Eventually people will ditch those places and start to move towards milder climates.

And what do you do if it's not just in the summer, but the whole year? What if it's parts of the earth where a lot of poor people live?

What crops do you grow in those conditions?

So we should be fine with an increasing proportion of the populated environment that never experienced these conditions beginning to?

> Is there a way people can continue their normal lives, but still eliminate the green house gasses emissions?

Yes, but real change can never happen as long as those who are in power continue to remain in power. Though green house emissions are a smokescreen used by serial climate offenders to present a “green” image while causing immense ecological damage behind the scenes. It’s important, undoubtedly, but one of many issues such as habitat destruction, chemical dumping, e-waste, etc.

When they were happening, everyone noticed the changes regarding the ozone hole. Whether they believe those changes were impactful is a different matter.

This take annoys some people but...

That's basically spot on, trying to convince people that they have to drastically lower or stagnant their standard of living is not going to be a successful strategy.

Electric cars only started to gain adoption once they are good enough. Exactly the same with solar panel prices.

We just need more technological breakthroughs it's the only realistic strategy.

>Neither of these things required any change from regular people.

Government regulation on business practices. In 1952, London had a smog event that literally killed 12,000 people. Government regulation cleaned up the air and mostly focused on businesses [1]. LA did the same thing [2]. Cap and trade restrictions on SO2 and NOx in the US and EU reduced acid rain causing emissions faster and cheaper than predicted [3]. Force businesses to reduce their CO2 output from their operations and products and they will find they most efficient and profitable way to do so.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

[2] https://www.aqmd.gov/home/research/publications/50-years-of-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

We dealt with one threat to the ozone layer, which is still recovering to its prior state and will take decades longer to do so all other things being equal. Except that all other things will not be equal due to the climate changing, and we may yet see it degraded from other processes to create a hole over the Arctic soon. A hole over the Arctic would have a much larger effect on human populations.

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

https://www.eea.europa.eu/en/topics/in-depth/climate-change-...

And a little explainer video on the complexities of differing temperatures at different layers of the atmosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y35Lzgc9iJk

Why would "convincing people to take the bus instead of a car" require coordinated action? Just stop letting them buy gas. (Where by "them" I mean individual passenger-vehicle drivers. Continue to allow commercial vehicles to buy gas, but require that they show their commercial-vehicle license at the register.)

A country could do it; or it could be done city by city with municipal bylaws to act only upon the worst polluting regions. And, since the only restriction would be on buying gasoline, people who still wanted to drive could just buy EVs.

So it's Monday morning, the UK government announces that petrol and diesel cars are no longer. They make clear that this is permanent.

A ton of people now have vehicles that are basically scrap metal, they've lost tens of thousands overnight. There are physically not enough EVs, or charging infrastructure, or maybe even the grid capacity in order for people to switch.

By 10am, immigration lawyers' phones around the world are off the hook.

If you phase it, then you're just describing what is already happening, this is what coordinated action looks like.

By 1pm current PM and MPs would meet the destiny of King Charles I. by hand of its own voters.

God Save the King.

Meanwhile China is bringing on a new coal plant every week. Actually, 2 new plants a week [1]. But you suggest we stop selling gas to people.

https://energyandcleanair.org/publication/china-permits-two-...

Just stop letting them buy gas? That would take either:

- That companies (plural) stop selling gas. That's coordinated action, because you need all the oil companies (or all the gas stations) to agree.

- That the government decides it. But in a democracy, that takes coordinated action too. The president does not have the constitutional authority to decree "no more sales of gasoline for passenger vehicles".

On the top level: OPEC (a coalition of mostly totalitarian states) can decide to restrict sale of petroleum to only be purchased by states, not private companies. Where that decision could be forced by just a few other states, at gunpoint.

Let me put it this way: why do you think there isn't an OPEC-like private marketplace for uranium? Because states don't want there to be such a thing. States make themselves an oligopsony for the purchase of uranium, and then regulate its distribution to only parties they want to have it. And people generally like it that way.

(Also, the president of the United States is a bad example of what a country's executive's powers generally are, because federalism. Most other heads of states can just make a decree like that.)

But state action is a less-likely scenario, and also not the one I was really imagining. The more likely scenario is local action — i.e. a mayor enacting a bylaw for their municipality such that gas stations that don't regulate sale of gasoline would be blocked from operating within city limits. (And sure, you could drive outside the city limits to get gas... but presuming the metropolitan area is large enough, you might burn the whole tank just getting back home after doing that.)

A mayor does have that power. They need no referendum, no legislature, to pass such a bylaw. They merely need the people to be okay-enough with the action to not impeach them in response. (In fact, technically, you don't even need the bylaw. Businesses only operate on physical commercially-zoned properties in cities at the city's sufferance; a city government is free to revoke a given business's ability to operate on such property at any time, for no reason. A city can un-make the zone a business is operating under, and replace it with a new zone that has different rules, that then exclude that business. This happens all the time!)

From there, it spreads not by coordinated action, but just by other city governments seeing the idea and copying it.

People are ok with Uranium being controlled because they know that in a concentrated form it is hazardous and they have no use for it in their daily lives. Oil and gas are the complete opposite, they're safe enough for anyone to handle and they are incredibly useful for just about everything you do in your life. If you just tear those away from people without replacing them with something better then at best those people will vote you out or just leave the area you govern for somewhere else. If you make it so they can't do either of those then congratulations you've just created a totalitarian police state with unelected leaders and guards at the borders that shoot you if you try to leave.

> That the government decides it. But in a democracy, that takes coordinated action too. The president does not have the constitutional authority to decree "no more sales of gasoline for passenger vehicles".

California, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, and Washington are going for it: https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/states-banning-new-gas-po...

No they aren't (or at least that's not what your link says). They are banning sales of new gas-powered passenger vehicles but for the foreseeable future you will still be able to buy gas for your old beater, '67 Mustang, or red Barchetta.

That's very different from "stop letting them buy gas" - It doesn't punish people for continuing their current standard of living nor forcibly reduce it and it doesn't immediately destroy the value of gasoline passenger vehicles, in fact it may increase them unless charging infrastructure catches up in those places.

Congratulations! You've just made it impossible for the people who operate every essential service on which you depend to get to work.

Slightly more plausible alternative: cessation of fossil fuel subsidies.

Stop calling it 'climate change', the correct (causative, descriptive) phrase is 'fossil-fueled global warming'. Industry PR types worked hard to relabel the phenomenon because the former is a blander term that doesn't explicitly point the finger at the root cause.

As far as normals, the warming rate is slow enough that it takes about ten years (running average) for conditions to notably change. See this 'staircase of denial' tweet.

https://twitter.com/mathiasced/status/1616348855842250754?la...

This is a hard problem for human civilization because 'taking action' today - i.e. replacing all fossil fuels with renewables on the fastest imaginable timeline (about three decades of constant heavy lifting at best) won't affect the rate of warming much for the next 100 years or so, we'll be seeing +0.1 C per decade at least for that timeframe on average (higher at the poles, lower at the equator).

I suppose 'normal' is what humans get used to, as once some phenomenon has been the same for about a decade, people start calling it normal. This is a flaw in human cognition, resulting in poor capacity for truly long-term planning.

I think all the alarmist language is doing a massive disservice to environmental concerns for the reason the author is portraying but also a much different reason where a lot of people tend to greet hysterics with absolute doubt and discern. When environmentalists decided instead of having a real public conversation and resorting to what a lot of people perceive as the people screaming on the corner about the end times - they began getting met with people who will disregard everything they say and then decided to double down by labeling people who disregarded them as heretics. If I was more cynical I'd honestly believe that the climate change activists are agit-prop by groups that would be subject to a lot of the more reasonable environmental changes by letting/getting very loud and passionate people to tell middle and lower class people they can't own cars, eat certain meats and have their right to travel impeded in order to get a portion of the population to disregard any environmental legislations.

I guess, a large portion of climate change activists give the same effect as flat-earthers do with some legitimate conspiracy theories but to the people trying to enact straight forward environmental legislations. A sort of, shitting-in-the-pool effect.

The attempts at "real public conversation" led to passive or active mockery anyway. Consider, for example, ManBearPig.

I don't think many people were under the impression Al Gore was having a real public conversation. His books and movies fall squarely into the "alarmist" category.

In what sense?

Didn't he say we would all be underwater by 2010 or something? I didn't see the movie...

If he did, would you mind sourcing it? Until then I don't see a reason to believe you, as you yourself say you didn't watch the movie.

He said sea levels could be 20 feet higher in the near future. Which could only be right if we’re talking hundreds of years…

Hundreds of years is kind of the near future with respect to the ~300,000 years we've existed (H. Sapiens, and tools) and the ~30,000 years since we started to 'civilize' (art, descriptive cave paintings) even relative to agriculture (12,000 BP)

News people don't like is often dismissed as 'hysterics', 'alarmism', etc, which is a well known cognitive bias. Nearly all people trying to improve the future do so sensibly, following established processes and norms and trying to be nice, but you haven't heard of these people because that's not how change is made in the face of established power that doesn't want the change. Most of that good work gets sunk. Change in the face of vested interests is 'noisy, hysterical, disagreeable', at least to the vested interests.

Step 1: Nobody likes hysterics or alarmism

Step 2: Hey no need to point fingers here or say "I told you so", we're all dealing with this.

> Step 2: Hey no need to point fingers here or say "I told you so", we're all dealing with this.

Are we? It looks like the vast majority of people are looking away and blaming climate change scientists and activists for not doing enough or doing it wrong or whatever else instead. Some of us are dealing with it, the rest don't realize we're all in the same sinking boat.

Step 2 is the "find out" phase, the pattern is consistent for every fuckup I've been a part of. Noone wants to hear how obvious it was.

What change are activists actually making? The only significant change I’ve seen in this field is from green tech

Activist’s goal is to change policy from government, when an activist campaign is successful, the politician takes the credit.

Here is an example of an actual climate activist reacting to an actual policy which he helped influence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qw5zzrOpo2s

A big problem is there's no vocal positive or optimistic environmental movement. What gets attention are doomsday prophesies and people using the environment to push their political beliefs. It's almost impossible to get everyone on board with negativity. You just get a base of true believers while alienating everyone else, as you say.

We need to push positive solutions (nuclear power and carbon capture) that aren't thinly veiled religion and politics.

There's solarpunk, at least.

Also, I think there's optimism in people talking about how living a happier, more social life can also be one that happens to be lower in carbon intensity. I currently live in a very car-dependent detached house on an island (so reliant on planes to go anywhere) and am viewing flats now in a place where I can live car-free and go places via train.

And on top of all that, every time I have lived in a place where I could walk, bike, or take public transit, I was happier, healthier, and saw my friends _much_ more. But people have been sold a lie that living near their friends and being able to take a train or bus places is a "downgrade".

There’s stuff people can do. Eat less/no meat. Buy an EV. Etc. But then commentators will refute that with all sorts of stuff “one person can’t make any sizable impact,” “EVs are powered from the grid which isn’t carbon neutral”, “EV tires spread particulate emissions.” Etc.

Thing is, denialism and stopping progress makes people looking for solutions also more extreme.

So who knows. Maybe part of the answer is partially ignoring or severely discounting certain Internet discourse.

Edit-so the early replies to my comment highlight my point.

On thinking further, people do need to talk. But the internet is clearly a noisy channel that props up voices that might not even exist outside of a special interest funding them (through bots and well funded campaigns). And people doing futile (because of bigger, larger problems an individual can’t directly stop) personal efforts might act as a pressure release. So what if they can’t turn off a big container ship or stop a wasteful airliner there’s at least doing what they can do. Especially if it’s relatively peacefully and part of normal process. Better than destroying a piece of art in the name of “awareness.”

Edit2-Unless radicalism from the other side is what commentators against individual emissions choices want? Push down thise concerned about climate change so that they do something radical, point to it, and suggest people should just continue business as usual.

I don’t think that people shouldn’t make individual decisions, but I think their individual decisions should be made in much broader contexts that individual lifestyle adjustments have limited impact. (Eg. Any veganism on one persons part would be wiped away by a non-necessary plane ride.)

It is important to also make broader policy changes, like regulating wasteful plastic packaging in the pipeline (not just at the retail, but storing manufacturing/processing materials).

An individual cannot make a sizable impact compared to the insurmountable damage corporate greed has already caused. Not to mention the proposed “solutions” only cause further ecological damage and reinforce corporate interests.

We have billionaires like Bill Gates telling us to eat bugs instead of meat to “save the planet” while he forcibly e-wastes billions of devices with Windows 10’s end-of-life. We have EV manufacturers pushing to mine lithium, which like most mining is incredibly ecologically damaging, while simultaneously making repair (and thus the sustainability of their cars) nearly impossible. Petroleum products produced en masse and discarded into literal trash islands in the oceans. The destruction of wildlife habitats such as the rainforests. Hell, entire cities in China are nearly uninhabitable due to mass pollution from corporations moving production there.

While we are all to blame, some are more to blame than others. And no, going “carbon neutral” doesn’t mean anything when you’re still actively dumping waste products onto the Earth.

EV's are a half-assed patch and meant to be a drop-in replacement for ICE's until we can do something better, but sadly they've mostly been an excuse for even bigger, faster, heavier, more dangerous vehicles.

I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips.

> I just want to ride my bike and take the train for most of my daily needs, maybe using an hourly car hire for the other trips.

If that's what you want, cool, you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible. It's people who want to forcibly make everyone live that way that are the problem.

Yeah to re-make public spaces across the cities and towns in that image would require probably a 10s to 100s of trillions in infrastructure spending. Enough to make my personal dream of an aqueduct in to the southwest from the Pacific and associated desalination projects (and mineral separation) a pittance.

We already spent trillions bulldozing cities for cars and building speedways everywhere.

"you almost certainly can find a life situation where it's possible"

The opposite, really. Car-dependence is the default and being able to live well without a car, especially as a family, is very challenging. Sadly we've forcibly made everyone live that way (imagine that!) except for the few who can afford well designed places.

> We need to push positive solutions (nuclear power and carbon capture) that aren't thinly veiled religion and politics.

What if what we really need to do is wonder what we should do?

I'd have to imagine for any issue, I can nut pick someone (thanks social media for making this ever easier) and portray anyone who agrees with them as lunatics who are unwilling to have a real public conversation, but I wouldn't consider that honest.

I too enjoy “nut” picking individuals from social media.

Of course, the predicament is what to do when the end times (at least for our civilisation) is one of the plausible outcomes of our current actions.

Communicating the impending doom of man-made climate change had been done in all possible shapes and forms since the 1970s. The approach does not matter, because the truth is too uncomfortable no matter how it's worded. If non-alarmist language is used, then nobody cares. If alarmist langauage is used, people like you compare scientists to flat earthers.

Don't criticise the messengers if you don't like the message.

If you use alarmist language you can rile up and entice a lot of agreeable people but rarely effective people.

So are we going to ignore the exx-lephant in the room?

This isn't just a debate between normal people and 'eco-fanatics' or whatever you want to call them. On the other side you have multi-billion dollar industries that want to maintain status quo until the rivers are on fire and have learned from the tobacco industry on how to spend millions in 'doubt-seeding' to keep making billions in profits.

I literally alluded to the fact that I could see alarmists being funded by people with interests of seeding doubts. As long as we're ignoring, there is a trillion dollar "green" industry that has just as much skin in the game mining cobalt and lithium as energy companies that pump oil or lfg. This isn't a debate between the "good guys" vs "bad guys", it's trillion of dollars being fought over to dictate how you get your energy.

You're whitewashing the past eco movements. They've been alarmist since the beginning with claims that everyone would be starving by the late 70s or that the air would be unbreathable due to smog or that the global temperature would drop drastically and on and on. It was the same alarmist bullshit that got us into this mess by advocating against nuclear power.

Warning of the problem, recognizing the problem, putting real measures in place to correct the problem is exactly what LA did to reduce smog [1]. In 1952, London had a smog event so bad that it literally killed 12,000 people [2]. That is pretty alarming, and the UK enacted clean air laws. Meanwhile, in 2013 over a third of all deaths in and around Bejing were linked to pollution (unbreathable air due to smog). Alarmists warned of the destruction of the ozone layer, but where are they now? Nowhere, because significant action was taken, and the damage was reversed. Panic over acid rain? Cap and trade restrictions on SO2 and NOx in the US and EU reduced acid rain causing emissions faster and cheaper than predicted [3]. In every single case, big business fought and complained and were forced to comply.

Being alarmist about real issues is like being a fire alarm for a real fire.

[1] https://www.aqmd.gov/home/research/publications/50-years-of-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_London

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain

I agree with this.

I don't believe that guys like e.g. Just Stop Oil in the UK are genuine people.

There might be some who got taken in by the movement and have good intentions, but the actual antics that go on just turn off literally everyone I know, to the extent that the entire environmental movement is now seen in a bad light.

> I don't believe that guys like e.g. Just Stop Oil in the UK are genuine people.

The people on the ground are genuine alright. But genuinely useful idiots for the likes of Dale Vince.

They are funded by oil baroness to discredit environmental movements as bunch of crazy freaks and they are not even aware of it. So far it works wonders against environmentalism in the mind of common folk.

I agree. But we really should be eating less red meat.

I agree. But we should limit crop yields by restricting human manufacture of ammonia and return to 1890 levels of population.

I think the problem comes to 'return to. Your method sounds rather violent.

We can do it gradually or nature will do it violently.

Every species needs population control. If we want air conditioning, commercial jets, and bottled water, then we need to get global population under a billion people.

The #1 method of population reduction is to increase education and opportunity for girls and women in developing countries.

>We can do it gradually

Good news, we already are. Most countries now are below population replacement level. Many countries like Japan are near panic because the population is going to drop very quickly in the next 20 to 40 years.

Capitalism is a pyramid scheme that feeds on population growth, but dealing with a shrinking population once is better than dealing with a large population forever.

Fortunately it becomes easier to reach that goal if you eat less red meat because most crops are grown as animal feed to produce meat.

Americans really should be eating more grass fed beef.

Too bad that people don't dismiss, as hysterics, the ones who cry that any kind of new green deal will undoubtedly tank the economy.

I feel like it's not about the form of the message, but who has the money to have it framed in his preferred way in the media.

okay so don't eat meat, take public transit, don't live in a suburb, never run AC or use gas stoves, and never fly in an airplane. is that about right?

this is such a bad pitch that it makes me wonder if it's actually a conspiracy funded by the energy incumbents.

Eat less meat (especially beef)

live in a well designed suburb (like Houten, NL, for instance https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/16/welcome-cycle...)

use AC powered by solar or wind or nuclear

use an induction stove (they're way better)

build enough excellent rail that flying is unappealing for most options aside from transoceanic journey.

Doesn't sound like a bad life to me. It's the one I'm trying to achieve.

The point of phrasing like "the new normal" is to frame the debate in the correct manner and focus on the actual issue at hand rather than people who attempt to exploit crises.

In the pandemic we had a whole bunch of sweeping changes to society, some of which stuck for reasons wholly disconnected from the matter at hand.

Some of us really care about climate change and environmental destruction, but at the same time don't want to throw out the baby with the bathwater. It's not worth "saving the planet" if we come out of the other side living in anthills unable to even enjoy the nature we have.

Phrases like "the new normal" are clues that what you are reading is propaganda. The author has an agenda, and is not just relaying information.

If you find yourself using such phrases, stop. It's cliche, and weakens the message. Stick to facts, or if you are writing persuasively, make a proper argument instead of falling back on stock phrases.

What do you suggest instead? My favorite phrase that I think captures the urgency and the desperate nature of the situation is “This is only gonna get worse, and we are all going to die”.

We shouldn't be spewing bullshit like this...

It's going to get worse, but trying to spin climate change as some apocalyptic event where we all die is just silly.

> we all die is just silly.

Not all then, just hundreds of millions of person. Phew!

I remember a time when this was phrased as an “inconvenient truth” or that “we can all do our part to make the world a better place”. Honestly I prefer the alarmist hyperbole. The truth is that a lot of us are going to die, more of us will have our lives uprooted. Keeping calm and pretending otherwise seems like a greater bullshit and I at least am not gonna take it. The world is worse, it is gonna be worse. Some rich folks and politicians are responsible. And I want them to feel bad about it.

A point of comparison. The pandemic does seem like a walk in the park next to the climate catastrophe, I don't recall people warning about alarmist speech at the onset of it.

When I was growing up in the 1980s everyone was convinced we would have a huge nuclear World War III and it would be the end of civilization, and that at best living under that threat was "the new normal." The same alarmist hyperbole was used. TV movies were made. Now it's hardly something anyone thinks about.

And people were warning about the alarmist talk about COVID-19. They were just shouted down, for the most part, or canceled.

Surely you must see the difference between the hypothetical destruction of an all out nuclear war and the very real existing conditions of the climate emergency.

But regardless, I love this analogy. Because the alarmist hyperbole actually worked. In the 1980s we had over 70,000 nuclear bombs. People called for disarmaments and we got several bilateral agreements on top of the existing non-proliferation treaty. Today we have just over 13,000 bombs. Not a total success, but a success nonetheless. (An aside. 92 countries have signed the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, meaning alarmist rhetoric has convinced as many governments to totally eliminate this existential threat).

Comparing this to climate actions is apt because this is what people are asking for and what climate scientists are recommending. International agreements comming to eliminate this threat. In 1997 (before Inconvenient Truth) such an agreement was signed with support from the Clinton administration, the congress, and the general public. However it failed to ratify because the senite had "concerns". Perhaps the rhetoric at the time wasn't alarmist enough. And some senators were allowed to serve the oil lobby and delay action for another 3 decades. As a result now we are all going to die!

I wish we had a better word or phrase to encapsulate "the rate of change in our planetary systems has increase, and will continue to increase, with greater and greater disruptions and crises as time goes on"

Basically taking second derivative of crises.

Accelerating

But it hasn't. Sea level rise and extreme weather events are not on an accelerating trend. Hurricanes for example. Fires in the twenties and forties were much worse. North America is greener now more than ever in the last two hundred years.

"Between 1901 and 2018, the average global sea level rose by 15–25 cm (6–10 in), or 1–2 mm per year.[1] This rate is increasing; sea levels are now rising at a rate of 3.7 mm (0.146 inches) per year.[2] "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise

sources are 1: IPCC, 2019: Summary for Policymakers

2: IPCC, 2021: Summary for Policymakers

seems credible?

That 3.7mm per year is dubious. But, yeah sure I'll even give you that, and it's easily manageable over that time frame. More from your source: "" If global warming is limited to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F), then sea level rise does not accelerate, but it would still amount to 2–3 m (7–10 ft) over the next 2000 years, while 19–22 metres (62–72 ft) would occur if the warming peaks at 5 °C (9.0 °F)

Why (Stop Calling Each New Disaster “The New Normal”);

- because it's hype

- because it's entitlement: embellisher's don the hat of a super sophisticated tech in the middle of a maelstrom that only his 1000 yard stare can reconcile. You can't really know how tough this stuff is... and it's what make me and my job cool. I'm a warrior!

- cause it's an implicit admission one has no solutions.

- cause it's not quantified. If I wanna know if it's normal I'll talk to accountants and insurers to see trends not the cool guy.

This is an "old man yells at clouds moment." Eventually you either give up on expecting the media to be a purveyor of good or, at a minimum, frame an argument such that laymen have a thoughtful view on an issue OR be perpetually frustrated - yelling at clouds, so to speak. I realized I had to choose the former for my own mental health. The incentives of 24 news cycle media in no way align with a healthy society. Best to accept that truth and move on.

And how do you move on?

With systems (and the media is a system) incentives are destiny. Unless you can change the dynamics and incentives of the news/media market, I'm not sure what choice one has. Again, you can keep hoping but reality will win out.

I mean, go ahead, write your articles like this but the incentives will win out and the broader media will keep writing according to what perverse incentives say gets the most eyeballs.

How about not calling something a crisis if it isn't? A crisis is usually short-lived, not a permanent state.

I got one better. Use actual math to decide how bad it is.

COVID 1% death rates among the elderly, sick, and obese? Not a crisis, that is essentially a bad flu year prior to 2020. (And 2018 and 2019 had a relatively low excess winter mortality, keeping the people on the brink of death, alive).

There is a particular issue the news loves to report on in America, its basically a rounding error, but when children are involved, its especially emotional.

Climate crisis that could kill 100% of humans, all hands on deck.

Obesity related issues, nearly all hands on deck. Cancer, just past fixing obesity. Car accidents are something worth extra investment too.

Not even sure how to take this problem on, you mention the irrationality of an issue, and people get even more emotional.

Covid was a sad reminder that we can rally the troops and make huge society-wide changes to protect old people, but won't lift a finger to protect kids from climate breakdown.

I'm not even sure it was to protect old people. It felt more like a political game.

> Climate crisis that could kill 100% of humans

This wording is just a bait for clicks and taps and does nothing to improve anything. That's why people get tired and call it the new normal.

Let them get emotional. It's part of the process of finding real solutions. Real solutions must work in the real world, globally in this case. It's not an easy problem to fix.

That's why a lot of activists seem to have taken to calling it the "climate catastrophe" or the "climate disaster" I guess. "Climate change" is just another way to say "new normal".

Initially, it wasn't. Every new term is new only for a certain time. The way these terms are being used in the media can lead to semantic bleaching, which is why from time to time new terms are made up.

In the end, this doesn't change anything about what it is. It's a somewhat slow process with a big lag between action and outcome. Using terms to describe this that typically are reserved for events that are fundamentally different in nature (much shorter time scales, short lag between actions and outcome, etc.) is counter productive.

We have to grow up and learn to look at it from a calm, non-panicky view point and take action where action makes sense in the context of our lives (not only from a reductionist view point that only looks at the climate and nothing else). Maybe even more importantly, we have to learn how to be fine with not taking action where it doesn't make sense and would come with a high probability of making things worse.

Calling things the "New Normal" is the "New Normal".

Calling each new disaster the new normal is now the new normal

Disasters are normal! In past 10,000 years global sea level has risen by 100 meters.

Extinction is normal, but we probably don’t want to go extinct either.

Accuracy, please.

    During the peak of the last Ice Age (~20,000 years ago), sea level was ~120 m lower than today. As a consequence of global warming, albeit naturally, the rate of sea-level rise averaged ~1.2 cm per year for 10,000 years until it levelled off at roughly today's position ~10,000 years ago. [1]

The important part being things have been stable for a very long time wrt human history.

All our established patterns, infrastructure, agriculture, etc. risks being upended by relatively drastic change as a result of our activity as humans ... or not, if we recognise the causes and take action to mitigate.

[1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/grantham-i...

Accuracy, please.

Florida has been both completely submerged and prior to the ice age had much much more coast line. If you dig anywhere in Florida you can find evidence of it being the sea floor.

> with the result being that the oceans were about 400 feet (122 meters) lower than today. During the last global "warm spell," about 125,000 years ago, the seas were about 18 feet (5.5. meters) higher [1]

https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/coastline-eastern-us-chang...

Except it never leveled off. It's been rising at the same rate for several thousand years.

Source? Evidence?

When someone says "X", and provides a source for their position, saying "no, Y" with no source, evidence, or even argument is rightly viewed as a very weak reply. Saying "no, Y, according to source Z" is a bit better, but it still leaves you with dueling sources and no reason why the reader should believe your source. A really strong reply is "no, Y, see source Z to explain what's wrong with the source the parent cited".

So... can you give us some reason why we should believe your position, instead of the GP's cited one?

1-3mm a year is totally fine. Triple it even, it's not going to wipe out humanity or be the root cause of anything really bad. If it really gets warm, you'll see a lot more snow deposited in the higher latitudes, less rise. Obama's, Clinton's, Al Gore all have fabulous ocean front mansions.

Here's some sauces: https://www.clo.nl/en/indicators/en022909-sea-level-dutch-co...

https://research.csiro.au/slrwavescoast/sea-level/sea-level-...

https://www.stats.govt.nz/indicators/coastal-sea-level-rise/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level

> Obama's, Clinton's, Al Gore all have fabulous ocean front mansions.

I see people make this argument sometimes, but all it probably indicates is "mega-rich people can absorb a monetary loss", not "they don't believe it exists".

It also speaks to the fact that "rational agents" don't fully exist in making economic decisions. These are purchases that are largely driven by emotion not logical, I imagine

Fair enough, I checked it was 60 meters, not 100m [1]

However I do not buy "stable for a very long time wrt human history". There was little ice age in 17th century. 11th century had very warm and fertile weather in Scandinavia, population boom and Vikings... We can go into Egyptian history and droughts that lasted centuries... Entire Sahara was garden in living memory, when pyramids were build...

> take action to mitigate

I guess I should buy Tesla then? Do you own any stock btw? Perhaps slight conflict of interest?

We will have to drastically reduce our life standards. Not to "take action" but to live within our means! For US that means no more 4000 pound cars, but small electric bikes!

[1] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/earth107/node/1506

The link you provided doesn't support your claim of any particuly substantial change in global sea levels within the past 10,000 years.

The hodge podge collection of minor localised climate cell changes had little impact on the general stability of global climate parameters during the past 10,000 years. (You're rather overstating the chill spell in Europe for example).

Do you think that buying a Telsa will solve the pressing climate issues?

I don't follow your reasoning there.

> We will have to drastically reduce our life standards. Not to "take action" but to live within our means!

I'm not in the US and I suspect I may very well live with a lower carbon impact than most in G20 countries.

Nobody cares

Stop telling me what to do

“Stop being a doomer!” sounds even better, especially after two years of Covid-related doomer mandates that have brought us (and especially our kids) more harm than good.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com