Stop telling kids they’ll die from climate change (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Stop telling kids they’ll die from climate change (2021)

wired.co.uk

48 pointsQuillbert182101 comments

I'll say two things that will be controversial. But first, just want to be clear: global warming is real; human caused; and will have negative effects on many parts of the world.

1) We are not heading for "the end of the world". There are lots of projections of what things can go wrong. But the climate changes slowly, we are becoming richer and we'll adapt. Also a lot of what is reported is on "worst case" (or things might get as bad as so-and-so) that are often based on CO2 projections that have almost no chance of coming true.

2) Even if you disagree with #1: we are already on our way to solving the problem. We will still have warming, for sure. But we will likely be at or near the goals we've set for end of century. Tech is improving: we are deploying solar, wind and (suddenly) more nuclear; electric cars; heat pumps; and so on. We will eventually run out of fossil fuels. And, population growth is slowing faster than anyone predicted.

Yes, we should be vigilant and continue to try to reduce CO2 emissions. But the idea that "we're all gonna die!" -- or anything close to it -- is wrong. And it's not supported by the science at all.

There are two things which have kind of cancelled out in terms of climate predictions: the worst-case CO2 emissions have not occured (mostly because growth became linear instead of exponential), but also a lot of the negative effects of climate change have happened sooner than expected (especially extreme weather events).

The really, really bad scenarios depend either on the CO2 emissions not reaching an inflection point and decreasing (which I think will happen, but how quickly it happens will have a big impact on outcomes), or on some positive feedback mechanism kicking in, of which there are a few potential candidates but a lot of uncertainty for where the thresholds are (predictions range from 'already passed' to 'in the relatively far future'). These should neither be ignored as a possibility nor treated as inevitable.

We're still fighting to keep below the 2 degree C milestone, because we already passed the 1 degree C milestone which was the worst-case projection by some 1970s scientists. There is certainly a sense that we're not "expecting the worst-case" today because we keep inventing new "worst case" predictions instead.

Also, some of the frighteningly hard to stop feedback mechanisms have started, such as glacier melting has hit some extremes that scientists feared would be points of no return. Whether this will play out in the ways of those 1970s worst case predictions we don't know, and a variable here is that we are working to avoid them (badly, but still some avoidance work is better than doing nothing).

Some of that is like the Y2K problem: the self-unfulfilling prophecy. We've warned ourselves for decades what the risks are and what the worst cases are. We've put in a lot of work to mitigate/slow/stop the worst cases. We've partly failed, several times over, and had to invent new worst cases. We're still working to prevent those new worst cases. We likely will not ever hit a worst case, we're just in our own feedback loops trying to find the acceptable compromise. If the acceptable compromise "turns out alright" people will claim we never really were in danger of the worst cases, discounting the huge amounts of effort we put into avoiding it. "The prophecy was self-unfulfilled so it wasn't really a big deal was it?" "Y2K didn't happen, so why was everyone so worried about it?"

We're not "all going to die", but "A lot of your coastal historical cities are going be be underwater and parts of your country will become uninhabitable, meaning you and everyone else will need to move elsewhere" is absolutely horrific.

Add that to housing being increasingly out of reach for most people and it's hard to not feel disillusioned. In some sense, you could argue that "Work all your life to be able to buy a house on land that will be destroyed" is worse for morale than the Cold War's version of "We'll probably all just die from nuclear war at some point all at the same time".

> In some sense, you could argue that "Work all your life to be able to buy a house on land that will be destroyed" is worse for morale than the Cold War's version of "We'll probably all just die from nuclear war at some point all at the same time".

In some sense, sure, I guess - maybe mostly for those who bought a house on land like this a long time ago. But if you're choosing to buy a house on land in an area like this now, or in the future, or even the relatively recent past, when we all know the risk and/or inevitability of it's eventual destruction, then I don't know what to tell you...

Depending on how bad it goes, it's unavoidable without upending your (current) life. Sure, let's assume things don't go too bad and you just avoid properties at close to sea level right next to the ocean. That's fine.

But what if you're expecting for things go real bad? Do you rule out living in NYC completely? Do you preemptively move out of Florida leaving all your family behind? The issue is that this is not a swift "now the bad thing happened and it took us all together" crisis. For the better or worse, humans are actually reasonably ok with dealing with situations like that.

This is a "your life is going to suck at some indeterminate point in the future, maybe, and depending on where your roots are, maybe you can avoid it at the cost of continuous great personal expense" crisis. No one can possibly be well prepared to deal with that and I'd wager that's where the incredible frustration around climate change comes.

Even if you are smart enough to move somewhere safer (or lucky enough to have generational wealth there), you can't avoid the effects of things like refugee crises when the worst happens. If people have to leave NYC or Florida in large mass waves, that's going to destabilize in its own ways anywhere there are escaping to in large groups. There's a perspective that "nowhere" will be safe from the effects of climate change because if you aren't the ones getting flooded out (or drought destroyed or wildfire devastated or tornado wrecked; flooding isn't the only thing that gets extra energy in global climate change) and are lucky enough to be in whatever "the nice places" will turn out to be, you get to possibly deal with everyone else. (Some will make some money on that as slum landlords, perhaps, so there's a "silver lining" for disaster capitalists, but those are the same people that will be just fine turning any "nice place to live" into a terrible place for all in its own ways by preferring money to human happiness and kindness.)

America has some lovely sometimes self-delusional myths of being a shining beacon for refugees in a crisis, but anti-immigrant rhetoric is already in a bad place this decade and overall America's worst internal refugee crisis was the dust bowl of the Great Depression and it took a lot of effort and today a lot of politicians don't believe the drastic changes made to save the country from the Great Depression were good changes and have spent the last few decades rolling them back and/or destroying them and/or trying to run a Great Depression speedrun like it is a GDQ category that should have been banned pre-emptively. That probably doesn't bode well for the next crises.

> "A lot of your coastal historical cities are going be be underwater and parts of your country will become uninhabitable, meaning you and everyone else will need to move elsewhere" is absolutely horrific.

Which cities and what timeline are you talking about? Sea level has risen like a half a foot in the last 70 years. That's not all that fast.

Meanwhile, places like Netherlands are increasing their land area over that time.

How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage? They probably aren’t going to end up permanently underwater but everything suggests a lot of pricey real-estate is going to end up getting washed away (California already has billions of dollars in real estate threatened by erosion) or regularly flooded. There’s no realistic long-term outcome other than relocating from the affected areas and letting them become buffer parks (hopefully with lush mangroves in Florida).

That’s in a rich country with a lot of resources, and at least a history of helping other states out. Bangladesh is facing another climate change-boosted storm but has thousands of people who are still homeless from last year’s storm which also hammered food production. That’s the kind of scenario where things get ugly because millions of people live in areas which will see the worst impacts but lack anything like the resources to harden infrastructure or relocate large numbers of people.

> rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage

Miami will likely end up mostly underwater and dykes and seawalls will not be able to protect it. The city is built on porous limestone that will allow seawater to just bypass them unless you dig down past that limestone bedrock layer.

> How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage?

We have continued to build in disaster-prone areas. That's a real problem. But that is somewhat orthogonal to climate change.

Imagine a world without climate change. Are there still hurricanes? Is Miami still a low-lying city in a high-hurricane area? Do we continue to build more condos there?

Imagine a world without climate change and ask again: How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after "a big" hurricane does damage?

You didn’t really respond to the parent comment’s question. Sea level around Miami will rise about a foot over the next thirty years and a little over an additional foot over the following 30 years [1]. Most of Miami is about 6-8 feet above sea level. So again, what timeline are you worried about? Other parts of the Florida coast are definitely screwed, though (ex. The Keys).

[1] https://climatecenter.fsu.edu/topics/sea-level-rise

The rise is a mean. That means that high tides, water surges due to storms, etc. will also be amplified.

If you consider the current risk of flooding as a stochastic process, moving the mean may result in an exponential risk increase.

Most of Miami is 6-8 feet today because Miami has had mayors (mostly democrats) for multiple decades now that took climate change seriously, made it a core part of city planning, and overall, in general, the city paid a lot of money to avoid some of the most egregious mistakes ahead of time in its infrastructure.

"Miami is going to be fine, mostly" isn't a slam dunk argument that climate change won't have real impacts, because Miami has already been fighting against it. (A lot of the rest of Florida has more to worry about in part because they haven't been nearly as proactive.)

Yes, we’re not going to rename it to New Atlantis with submarine tours but that doesn’t mean everything is fine. Storm surges are the most dramatic problem since the max matters more than the median for where you can build things, but there are other problems around the water table rising and septic systems. Flooding of low roads, parks, etc. is common even without storms and storm flooding can take longer to drain, too.

Before they moved, some family members saw hefty increases for insurance premiums and restricted coverage – and that trend is just getting started. Each of the things which needs to be hardened or redesigned costs billions, and there’s no guarantee that those projects will be enough, or that there won’t be other impacts on the economy if, say, popular tourist beaches aren’t as attractive due to erosion or some hotels are severely damaged.

> How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage?

There is no evidence that hurricanes are getting bigger or more frequent. If anything, the record shows the opposite.

https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pastdec.shtml

Edit: this data set goes through 2022 (the previous chart only went up to 2004)

https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.htm...

The scientific consensus is that hurricanes will be stronger and wetter, but it’s complicated to say exactly what that means regionally since there’s considerable natural variation and we have limited historical records for most of the oceans and many regions which weren’t historically densely populated. There’s a good overview here which discusses different aspects and the confidence levels on predictions both globally and for the Atlantic:

https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/

> Sea level has risen like a half a foot in the last 70 years. That's not all that fast.

The pace of ice melting is still an unpredictable process due to its non-linearity, but the current imbalance between ice melting and new snow in the Greenland ice sheet commits a 27cm rise, according to [1]. This with current temperatures (not temperature rises).

From my layman understanding, antarctic runoff is less understood, but also its effect is potentially much larger. Article : [2]

Finally people with more knowledge than me, IPCC AR6, have estimates based on paleoclimates that depend on climate trajectory. [3], box TS4 pp. 77-78. Their optimistic story is 28-55cm by 2100. Their pessimistic assessment is "Under the higher CO2 emissions scenarios, there is deep uncertainty in sea level projections for 2100 and beyond". Also note that even in the best scenario, sea doesn't stop rising after 2100. Sea level rise is likely locked in for centuries.

A last word on "mean sea level": it's just a mean, impact may be worse for some areas.

> Meanwhile, places like Netherlands are increasing their land area over that time.

That's, like, a tiny confetti of wealthy people. Not sure this kind of anecdotal information is relevant to rising sea levels.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-022-01441-2 [2] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201... [3] https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...

> almost no chance of coming true

I agree, with caveats.

The worst case emissions scenarios (RCP 8.5) are not likely to happen because we'll hit economic limits that prevent us from accessing every last drop. We're already past peak conventional oil and dipping into the low EROI tight oil. At some point in the future, there will be plenty of oil left but it will be the bottom of the barrel, too expensive to access at a profit. So even if we technically have enough carbon in the ground to spike CO2 to those levels, economic incentives and availability of alternatives are likely to prevent it long before we get there.

That said, I think we're underestimating the impacts of even low emissions scenarios. Even if we stopped all CO2 emissions today, we're locked into a wild ride of feedback loops for the next century or more. A low carbon future doesn't free us from climate impacts. I'm not saying we should give up on mitigation but we certainly can't ignore adaptation - no one is "fixing" climate change without a time machine.

> But the climate changes slowly, we are becoming richer and we'll adapt.

WE are, sure, as in the people in this comment section having this conversation right now. Billions of people are not included in this "we" and have much grimmer outcomes predicted. Seems nasty to leave that out.

No, outside or a few specific places everyone in the world has been getting richer for the last half century and the trend is continuing[1]. That isn't to by pollyannaish, there are certainly going to be some places that really struggle with aridification and increased flooding. However flooding is mostly a solvable technical problem, and plenty of people already live in deserts. The biggest problem for adaptation might turn out to be heat waves.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/WLD/world/gdp-per-capi...

People are going to get richer than they were by some measure of wealth, but not rich enough to save them from climate change. Which is basically what you're saying I think, though you're more optimistic about it.

> but not rich enough to save them from climate change

I'm not sure what this really means. It seem clear that adaptation will happen, and that may mean some amount of migration by the end of the century which is personally upending for a lot of people but not unprecedented in the last century.

Desalinization is showing a lot of progress recently and will likely be much more affordable in the next 20 years. Lithium prices are dropping so we might have a path for ward for grid scale power storage, which would be huge. Major flooding and heat risk that effect large numbers of people are concentrated in a few spots so it seems like infrastructure can be built to handle flooding, and architectural changes coupled with cheaper renewable power can address the heat.

We collectively managed to tackle the ozone layer issue before Australia got cooked, so it think there's precedent here. Technology is getting better and we collectively have more resources to bring to bare now. Its not going to be easy or fun, but probably won't be an unraveling of civilization either.

I acknowledge your position but it is very blind to the real impact global warming is already having. Yes, we, meaning the decently off in rich countries, will adapt. In other places this is much more difficult - see Bangladesh, Pakistan, various sub-saharan countries.

We will not go extinct, but millions or tens of millions will die from climate change over the coming years and decades (and many have already died), many many more will suffer for it. No, technology will not fix this in the near term.

It's similar to air pollution, which we have many ways of stemming and are estimated to kill 7 Mio per year, much less however in todays rich countries which can invest to reduce it (and still do woefully little as everyone wants a big car). https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution#tab=tab_2

> but it is very blind to the real impact global warming is already having.

Can you be specific?

Like, I get that every time there is a natural disaster, the media blares about climate change. But, for example, there's been no trend in hurricanes. Political leaders love to blame climate change for their poor policies (water management, forrest management, etc). And certainly some of the small sea-level rise we have seen is definitely from climate change.

But we've also seen "global greening". Productivity of crops keep going up: maybe in spite of climate change -- but maybe partially due to CO2 increases.

> Can you be specific?

Warming of the arctic and sub-polar regions is probably the most visible in-your-face trend we can look at. It's been warming, it's getting faster, it's breaking records of temperature. Another point we can look at is oceans warming, which is definitely happening and we don't have a complete picture of all the cascading effects such warming might trigger.

The issue of being specific is that you need to look at a diverse dataset, point out trends, while still being prepared and ready with arguments for the counterpoint of "but these are tiny timeframes in geological scale". It's a very slow moving phenomenon, if there's a small increase right now in forest fires it'd require to plot it over 30-50 years to show someone "look, this is definitely the result of what we've done 100 years ago".

It might be alarmist to link every atmospherical natural disaster to global warming, at the same time it's hard to ignore an uptick of droughts, massive flooding events, if we need to wait until we gather enough empirical data to absolutely conclude it is directly caused by global warming we will be too late.

Could there be a failure of water management, forest management and so on affecting us? Yes, I agree, those need to properly address a changing environment, we just don't know how fast that environment will change and how drastic our changes need to happen.

> But we've also seen "global greening". Productivity of crops keep going up: maybe in spite of climate change -- but maybe partially due to CO2 increases.

Global greening will not keep up with all the energy we're making the atmosphere retain as a result of CO2, just thinking in pure thermodynamics terms: if there's more energy being contained in the system, everything subsystem has more energy to use: winds, currents, rain, etc.

It won't help either with ecosystems that don't depend on greenery, like the Arctic.

Benefits of fossil fuels for developing countries greatly outweigh risks of climate change. Preventing climate change is a luxury good for wealthy countries so that they can get the psychological benefits from stability and nature worship.

Luckily, that's no longer true. Solar panels and $8000 EV's are cheaper than natgas plants and gasoline cars. And if the fossil fuel deliveries are interrupted for any reason, the economy doesn't immediately collapse.

What's an example of an $8000 EV?

A 2023 Chevrolet Bolt EV starts at $26,500. A 2023 Mitsubishi Mirage starts at $16,245. A new golf cart is about $8K, says https://thefunoutdoors.com/golf/golf-cart-prices/

Otherwise, if you aren't buying a new car, a $4,000 gasoline car is cheaper than an $8,000 EV.

Here's an EV which sells for $4500:

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56178802

"However, the price is likely to be twice as high due to European environmental requirements" brings it into the $9,000 range.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/neilwinton/2021/04/27/chineseus... says the European model is about $12,000 after tax.

For what it's worth, the Suzuki S-Presso seems to be about $5,200 in India, according to https://www.marutisuzuki.com/price-list/s-presso-price or $9,000 in South Africa, according to https://www.cars.co.za/motoring-news/updated-suzuki-s-presso... .

Oh, hey! The Citroen Ami is an electric car^Wquadracycle for about $7,000 in France. https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2021-citroen-ami-first-dr...

The Wuling mini is available in some African countries for around $5000.

I am pleased about my new knowledge of small electric vehicles. Your pointer lead me to https://cleantechnica.com/2022/07/13/what-a-lovely-surprise-... which highlighted how much fuel costs in Zimbabwe, leading to interest in these cars.

Thank you to all who answered my question!

> In other places this is much more difficult - see Bangladesh, Pakistan, various sub-saharan countries.

At this point I have to ask what's these countries excuse not to adapt. Isn't it the government's job to plan for these events? What makes it so difficult?

Perhaps this [0] has more to do with it than climate change...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

Their excuse is that rich countries have not followed through with the money that was promised.

Rich countries promised $100B climate change mitigation and adaptation but have not kept that promise.

Most of that was to go to China, who are building coal plants the breakneck pace of two a week.

That's not true. India is the top recipient. China was a recipient before 2021 but became ineligible in 2022.

My information is outdated, but India is also currently building a ton of coal plants as well.

The west is working hard at lowering it's emissions, but all that work is getting undone because China's emissions aren't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. One of the many reasons it's cheaper to manufacture in China and why North Americans and Europeans can't compete [0]. Comparing the US[1] and China[2], the US has:

- Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%)

- A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%)

Meanwhile for the same period China has had

- a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)

- 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007

So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation.

Time to add tariffs on goods produced by states who made the decision of going all-in on polluting power generation, and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emis...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china

Just calling out that inevitably, you'll hear from another side of this debate that will claim the West is trying to suppress rising countries like China from becoming globally competitive because the west is trying to get them "force green policies" on other countries and skip the parts we had the luxury to go through.

Never mind the fact that you can modernize in a way that isn't environmentally destructive, mind you. I've seen this happen on HN multiple times w/r/ to mentioning China's environmental policies

I think we can reasonably only complain about China when it is beyond the per capita levels of USA.

Morally sure. When we all start dying anyways, then all bets are off.

> per capita levels

The thing is, from the planet's perspective, per-capita or whatever made-up metric don't matter.

A ton of CO2 is a ton of CO2 no matter what.

So from planet's perspective best would be to downgrade living standards of everyone alive today to pre-industrial levels. As that will lead to lowest CO2 emissions?

Why not use green tech from the outset?

Really no good reason not to at this point. Its demonstrably beneficial from less pollution to lower overall emissions, and builds up a "next gen" of expertise that will be extremely valuable over the next century, whoever gets these investments done will be in a great place over the next century relative to those who are later to the game, and that expertise will be very valuable (and a huge engine for economic growth).

Go where the puck is moving, not where it is.

From the planet's perspective, climate change doesn't matter. Mass extinction events are rounding errors on geologic / deep time scales. We can launch all the nukes tomorrow and it won't matter in a few thousand years.

Climate change "matters" in relation to it being an anthropocene problem, and the only way to make it matter to humans requires using metrics that can be coordinated around.

> will claim the West is trying to suppress rising countries like China from becoming globally competitive because the west is trying to get them "force green policies" on other countries and skip the parts we had the luxury to go through.

What these posters don't understand (and I'm sure certain are paid not to understand it [0]) is that the West didn't have the luxury to just be able to import environmentally friendly technologies and industrial processes from somewhere else; it had to bootstrap itself from nothing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

It seems that the same people that complain that China is building too many coal plants are the same people that complain that China builds 80% of the world's batteries and 80% of the world's solar panels.

China gets a higher percentage of its electricity from renewable than the US. China's EV market share is 34%. China's emissions per PPP$ are dropping at a rate faster than US's are.

Could China do better? Absolutely. But those in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.

> It seems that the same people that complain that China is building too many coal plants are the same people that complain that China builds 80% of the world's batteries and 80% of the world's solar panels.

Usually these are two different sets of people. But people tend to assign an homogenous identity to all China critics. In fact, I don't think anyone is really complaining about Chinese solar panels beyond dumping allegations (that they are selling them undercost to force out international competitors), battery is just another variation of pollution concerns and hoarding of rare earth minerals (which really aren't that rare). Coal plants, well, it really only affects China. My complaints about them came from living in Beijing during bad AQI days.

> But those in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.

I believe this phrase was coined by Kruschev when he invented the what aboutism.

We are effectively shitting in our only home and pretending it won't make things really unpleasant, but instead we'll adapt.

I don't want to adapt to plastic strewn all over the planet, air pollution that chokes us, or warming ocean waters that is having deleterious effects on ecosystems and our food chain.

> We are effectively shitting in our only home and pretending it won't make things really unpleasant, but instead we'll adapt.

I mean: yes.

We (including you) could stop using any form of fossil-fuel derived energy tomorrow. But that would actually cause a collapse of civilization.

Is that better than "making progress with renewables" and/or "adapting"?

As others have pointed out, there are parts of the world where increased mortality is actually a problem. Places that will either experience famine & drought, or where the outside temperatures may exceed habitable / safe ranges. (Thinking of parts of e.g. the Indian subcontinent).

So not only does it suck for those people, but in that context, Political and economic instability is a huge concern. Mass migration is already happening, but it will become more intense. People will try to gravitate to areas perceived as more stable. Border wars have the potential to become more frequent. Concerns about control over fresh water and arable land will be heightened. Demands to exploit currently protected regions (e.g. great lakes watershed) will be made.

We have an entire politico-economic system built on cheap fossil fuel energy. There are whole regimes whose power and control and prosperity is founded on petro-chemical extraction. If/as that collapses, there will be major crisis. We already seeing this.

In the context of raising my children, my wife and I are coming around to the perspective that our number one priority is to build resiliency. Not survival-prepper stuff (though we do have a modest 6 acres of arable land, that's not really the focus), but family resiliency: trying to keep kids local to us, concentrating family assets and committing to taking care of each other, making sure we're in a position where we can pass on a stable living situation (house, property), etc.

That, and emotional/ideological/intellectual resilience: understanding what climate change is, understanding what we can or cannot do about it as individuals and a family, understanding the role of collective action... and trying to avoid fear and anxiety by emphasizing knowledge over the unknown and distress.

I'm generally positive about both climate tech, and climate diplomacy, but don't feel it's right to be so cavalier about the potential downsides.

Like, one of my "climate apocalypse" bingo squares was "Russia starts a war to prolong fossil fuel usage". It currently looks like that will backfire and, on balance, be a positive for sorting out climate change, but we're talking about the "positives" of a war with potentially hundreds of thousands of dead! Where people were gleefully predicting the collapse of Western Europe governments and replacement with right wing populists who would stop any attempts to continue supporting the "climate hoax"!

A war is the kind of thing that can go very wrong, and this is neither the first, nor the last, war that people could attribute to climate change.

> But we will likely be at or near the goals we've set for end of century.

...And then it'll simply magically stabilize, and will stop being a problem, right?

Have you looked at the scientific data of the temperatures of the world the last month? Global warming has breached 1.5°C threshold in summer for 1st time. Ocean temperatures this spring have been the hottest ever at this time of year, in records going back 174 years. Even the most dependable net-zero pledges would still lead to close to 2.5C of warming according to recent study. The world must slash emissions by 43% by 2030 in order to hold warming to 1.5C, by one estimate. No single country has actually implemented policies to make it happen.

And how chaotic the climate has already become after just 1.2C of warming over pre-industrial levels! Deadly heatwaves, droughts and wildfires. Storms and floods. Millions of people have died, been displaced or suffer long-term health effects from these disasters. Species are going extinct en masse. This is just a taste of what may come. The science supports that many, many of us will die.

Climate tipping points are definitely a thing that my colleagues discuss. For instance:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0

It might not be 1.5 degrees, or even 2--3 degrees, but the longer the current trajectory holds, the closer we will get to it. That's the tricky thing with climate change, if you sleep on it, it's not that you lose the opportunity -- you just suddenly face the next, even bigger challenge. I don't agree with 2) that we are on our way to solving the problem. If you just look at global emissions trajectories and GHG concentration in the atmosphere, there is no sign of slowing down. Everything we do, we just do on top of business as usual.

Most scientists don't want to be perceived as lunatic alarmists in the public, and most have a sentiment that you should try to convey some hope, and maybe folks also do that to keep their own sanity. The counterargument is that people who panic a bit are more likely to take action, but I don't see a lot of folks taking that stance. But a debate exists on dangerous tipping points that we could realistically run into, and it is lead by knowledgeable and famous people like Johan Rockström. Every opinion in the media though is already thought over for the effect scientists want to achieve, nobody just goes in guns blasting.

It’s not that we’re all going to die. What has died is the myth of progress- the idea that every generation will have it better than the one before. It’s hard to be forward thinking if you believe that your country is going to be worse off in 50 years than it is now, no matter what you do. I don’t think people really understand the degree to which any country is held together by belief. Progress is our national religion, and it’s dying right in front of us. Some will find scapegoats, some will lash out in anger, some will respond with denial, some will blame generations that came before. But how can you hold a nation together when they no longer believe in its foundational mythos? That’s what is being lost, and you can’t just gaslight us into believing it again as it becomes more and more clear that it’s really dead.

The myth of technological progress may be dead, but the myth of social progress is alive and well. Tearing down the old institutions is the most "progressive" thing you can do.

What's your read on the state of social progress the last decade or so?

My read is that America is all falling apart because in the last decade more and more institutions came under the control of self-proclaimed progressives and their ideas don't work. But that doesn't mean progressivism isn't popular conceptually--the usual response is "those weren't really progressives; in fact, their corruption proves they were actually conservative, and now we need real change."

Interesting. My take is more that progressivism is still popular but is being crushed by an organized reactionary revanchist movement actively dedicated to undoing decades of social progress.

We've been dragged backwards on some very significant social issues and it only seems to be accelerating. The idea that social progress will march steadily forward does seem to be a myth in that light.

My take is that this "progress" will eventually end in internal ruin, because there will be no "there" there. Pursuing sexual and racial identity for its own sake, under "justice" or any other name, is a recipe for disaster.

Good thing no one "pursues" those "for its own sake" then.

You can’t erase leftism or progressivism, because it’s a reaction to injustice. Every ossified social hierarchy has its underclass, so there will always be a reaction to that. You can’t kill leftism any more than you can kill your own shadow.

Moreover, climate change didn’t happen because of gay marriage or women’s rights, so trying to force the clock back in terms of social progress won’t make the real problems go away.

Treating favored social classes as eternally oppressed doesn't fix the injustice, though; it ossifies it by creating an eternal "them" that is unconnected to social problems. Irish and Italians can apply now, and it's not because of any government program (unless you count war).

Keeping any group from achieving equality requires constant violence or the threat of violence. That is mostly what progressives seek to remove.

I'm a father and very concerned about climate change. I talk to my son about greenhouse gases, fossil fuels and their unique role in our economy, and the current impacts to extreme weather. Importantly its all about observations of today's bio-geophysical-economic reality. Not speculation about tomorrow's. Building a solid foundation in the scientific method is far more important than scaring him with worst-case-scenarios.

Don't get me wrong, climate models and predictions of their impacts are important for planning our future. I keep up on the literature but I don't expect an elementary school child to. Until he has the foundation to understand the models and a framework for how to do risk assessment with them, we'll be working on the fundamentals.

Also important to emphasize that climate in not the only issue. There is a "polycrisis" of other environmental, economic, and social problems that threaten our civilization; climate change has to be dealt with (or adapted to) alongside these concerns, not with blinders on.

Schwarznegger recently said it very simple. Think of climate change as just another form of pollution. Pollution is unhealthy.

“I’m on a mission to go and reduce greenhouse gases worldwide,” Schwarzenegger told CBS, “because I’m into having a healthy body and a healthy Earth. That’s what I’m fighting for. And that’s my crusade.”

Unhealthy is a bad thing in plain terms and it is a categorical imperative in complex terms. Therefore pollution is morally bad. [Schwarzenegger the philosopher]

[Schwarzenegger the philosopher] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/30/schwarzenegger-no-one-gives-...

"This is out of line with the science, and scientists should call this out more prominently."

I completely agree with this. I'm also familiar with people I've talked to, and myself at times, falling into doomsday scenarios.

No, we aren't all going to die, not in rich countries st least. It's just going to really, really, suck.

I've never noticed climate scientists having any particular control over the narrative at all. I've only ever seen them being realistic and focusing on solutions when they're trying to communicate.

I don't think the coverage is the climate scientists fault.

Some pop culture context. In the hit TV series "Family Ties" episode "Rain Forests Keep Falling on My Head" from 1989, Jennifer becomes very concerned about the environment, worried that if people don't act, the rain forests would be destroyed, the ozone layer destroyed, and we would live in a long hot endless summer.

Later, she's depressed since it's 1°F hotter than it was in 1956, and doesn't want to go to school, feeling like she's dealing with the end of the world.

The episode is available at https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8gyxf5 if you want to verify this yourself.

That was a fictional portrayal, certainly, but I doubt it was made up whole cloth. If so, the writers were extremely good at predicting how kids would react!

Things are significantly worse now than in 1989 - why wouldn't even more kids be worried?

Right? If I don't tell my hypothetical children that they are facing a significant climate crisis and that most of their lives is going to be governed by the consequences of that crisis, that we caused, should I simply lie to them? Why? Plugging your ears and singing "LALALA" isnt going to make climate change go away. If anything, we should teach them how oil companies were aware of impending doom and chose profit over the planet repeatedly, installing at least some class consciousness in them.

“Dinosaurs” TV show. Last episode. I have never been able to watch it fully, only some parts.

Oh.... my... I can see why! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaurs_(TV_series)#Series_f...

Relatedly, I feel like "Soylent Green", "Logan's Run", and more in the 1970s all had climate change related concerns/worries and/or messages. A lot of it got lost in the action/thriller genres, especially in the film adaptations, and a lot of it still inherited mistakes and traps from the Malthusians of previous sci-fi generations (50s/60s sci-fi especially was prone to believing in the since-disproven Malthusian trap), but even in the 1970s you can read a lot of early climate change anxiety from the more intended-to-be empathetic parts of pop culture. (The 70s is where I generally draw the boundary line in sci-fi between Malthusianism and Climate Change concerns.)

Climate change fears have been in the pop culture air for longer than a lot of people realize.

The point that gets overlooked in a lot of these conversations is that while my kids (and grandkids, and their kids…) may not die from climate change, their lives could (and I think will) be altered by it. So for example if you are in an area that is going to be under water (or at least all those underground sewer systems will be…) then what’s it going to cost your coastal city in property taxes to fix the problem? Can’t get your home insured in CA or FL any longer? What’s the cost to you then when a fire or hurricane wipes out your house? Massive investment needed in water systems? - more property tax. I suspect we will reach a point where the kinds of food available in our grocery stores is altered by all of this too. So maybe nobody in rich nations actually “dies” but that doesn’t mean they aren’t impacted in very serious, life-altering ways.

I was reminded of this watching my garden this spring… things didn’t germinate until we had a freak day cool enough so the seeds could pop. Think food is expensive now, see what it’s like when temps rise and we’ve got to develop even more new varieties and growing techniques to accommodate.

Some of the concerns here are economic. Children are smart.

I'm not sure gaslighting them will work.

It's definitely a sign that the children are correct.

Bit of a straw man argument. We should be telling kids not to think twice about buying properties in any zone with high flood risk, high wildfire risk, high hurricane risk, high coastal erosion risk, etc. and that they should expect greater frequencies of extreme weather events (heat waves etc.) and this should be taken into account in their own personal planning for the future.

It's rather like teaching kids why signing onto an adjustable-rate mortgage is a bad idea. It just makes them better prepared for the future.

However, the fossil fuel sector and its financiers don't even want to admit there's a problem, as that increases the pressure to stop using fossil fuels and switch to renewables, which is probably what motivates articles like this.

You mean to think twice rather

How is it a straw man? Are you saying no one's telling kids that climate change will doom us all? It includes specific examples.

> It's rather like teaching kids why signing onto an adjustable-rate mortgage is a bad idea.

For most time periods and for the average mortgage holder ARMs are going to be cheaper. Fixed rates mortgages are superior when interest rates are rising and you intend to be in a home long term. So this isn't universally good advice to give people.

More accurately: Stop telling kids they'll die from climate change. They won't. We are first world publication preaching to first world parents. Its the third world kids who will grow up to starve and die.

I can see "Don't worry kiddo, someone else is gonna die for all your emissions" fitting really well in christian gospel, too.

I think that this narrative (about kids dying from climate change) has likely come out of the responses that attempt to downplay climate change, but also, for what appears to be a hot take on this issue here... I don't think it's bad.

We are an incredibly polarized society, and not even leastwise because we are spread across many different countries. There are so many ways that we are polarized.

I think, that makes climate change the best thing that could be happening in terms of a unifying common evil. While it is human caused, it can be human solved. The fixing of it is something that could unify humanity. And the only thing we really need to do to get there, is to focus on how it is a common evil for all of our children.

My only concern is that I don't actually know if we can unify/fix this in time to save our planet. They seem to think we can. I don't know if I'm that optimistic.

The big change isn't actually one that I need to see from kids. It's one I need to see from the parents of those kids. Cause there is a controlling minority of this country that is throwing caution to the wind as if this is already solved. That's the real danger, to me. I think kids understand that better than pretty much all baby boomers I've talked to about this...

Its funny for a large publication to tell their readership to stop scaring kids with death (did i say that right?).

Success in the modern world requires ever increasing cognitive dissonance: You know climate change is coming but have to pretend not to, you know the economy is stacked against you but have to remain hopeful, you know you cannot access the sort of life you want, but have to pretend to like what IS on offer.

Success in the ancient world was built on no fewer delusions

Capitalism (as successful as it can be) is built fundamentally around cognitive dissonance. We know for a fact that the universe can't support unbounded exponential growth; one day, there will be no more resources to support that growth. On the other hand, the system requires the optimism that capital invested will produce value at an exponential rate forever. If the people ever became convinced that after tomorrow the growth will stop, the system would collapse overnight.

>We know for a fact that the universe can't support unbounded exponential growth;

I am never entirely convinced by this.

First because it does not need to, it only needs to support exponential growth for (say) 100 years and that is plenty of time for me. Or 1000 for me and my grandchildren's grandchildren. Then we can go to "stable state" etc

Second because economic growth is not purely a matter of physical resources. Oil use cannot grow forever. But Dollar value can.

>If the people ever became convinced that after tomorrow the growth will stop, the system would collapse overnight.

This is 110% true though. The main source of growth is optimism, the main source of optimism is growth. God help the government that cannot sustain those (like now here in the UK).

Mastodon needs a downvote button.

What book(s) can I read to hear a realistic perspective on climate change? Even better, what book(s) would be best for someone skeptical of it?

The current IPCC report is readable and pretty comprehensive: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6...

Stop telling your aunt it’s ok to cry. Your mother is dead and crying won’t change it.

Progress is a process and, like grief, there are no short cuts.

Stop short circuiting acceptance. It’s step 1

Sometimes people have nothing fun in their life to look forward to so they obsess about something which they have no control over except their perception that if we all did "X" everything will change. But the funny thing is, most aren't giving up car ownership, most aren't trying to offset their energy consumption in a meaningful way, most aren't commuting sepiku, they're only blaming systems without any personal change.

Leave the kids out of your delusion. It's hard enough to become a well balanced person with everything else going on.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com