Hacker News Reader

Comment by jongjong | Hacker News Reader

The frustrating thing for me about climate change data is that anecdotally it doesn't correspond with my personal experiences over the past decade. This is particularly surprising given that I've lived in 3 different continents over multiple seasons and visited several others. With the exception of 1 particularly hot European summer (I think it was 2019), it has mostly been cooler than normal everywhere I've lived both in the southern and northern hemisphere. This winter in Australia has been one of the coldest I can remember and last summer was pleasantly cool... I was in central Queensland at the time which usually has quite hot summers. Before that, I was in Europe for half a decade and most of the people I know said the temperatures were normal or cold except for that one summer I mentioned.

Whenever I read articles about temperatures, the heat wave is always happening in some foreign country that I didn't visit.

View on HN

That's to be expected, the global variation over the last 2 decades has been about .2-.3 celsius. That's very difficult to notice, and basically completely swamped by local variations (what is called weather, not climate).

The thing is climate change is an almost perfect example of the boiling frog parable. It occurs over several decades, just enough to cause skepticism or feelings of "it's not changing so quickly".

See NASA's graph: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/

This rate however is probably almost without precedents geologically, save for extreme events like giant eruptions or something. It's hard for life to adapt this quickly, on top of the many other habitat pressures we've introduced. Also, there will be significant consequences for humans (which could be catastrophic and hard to predict if we don't limit warming to say 2C).

What frustrates me is that there's still significant resistance to not destroying our own home...

...often, here on HN, whose members pride themselves on rational thinking and scientific prowess.

> What frustrates me is that there's still significant resistance to not destroying our own home...

It's really not a big deal - humans will adapt to deal with the changes, or they'll go extinct and something else will evolve.

Sure, but I'd rather live in paradise than burn my house. In that sense nothing's a big deal, but it is for me. I believe we all deserve good lives.

The best adaptation to burning your house is the rational thought "Perhaps I should not burn my house". :)

It dreads me to think we so much lost contact with living well that many don't care anymore. I think the first step in the journey would be to stop the destructive culture of desperate consumerism, greed, consumption, overwork and ill-being. Maybe that's something we should be prioritizing alongside climate change, as a species. Living well in our homes, and as a community.

Living well requires energy and lots of it. There are billions of people who aspire to use far more energy than they are currently using, in order to live better. Who are we to say that they can't use as much energy as we do/did? (I know you're not saying that directly, but it's hard to imagine how half the population could bring themself up to even the median energy consumption without dramatic increases in climate changing forces.)

I think this is a false conundrum. We should use as much energy as we sustainably can, without destroying ourselves, if that improves our well being. But not more. And we should also make sure that all humans have good conditions. I think the essence of what makes a good life is surprisingly inexpensive in terms of resources. I believe that planning well, we can achieve a good compromise for everyone involved, with a larger focus on those more in need.

Moreover, energy consumption isn't so significant as emissions per Watt. Our capacity for solar energy could sustain even energy growth without significant emissions. We already have the technology to make the transition.

To reiterate, whatever we do, sitting back and watching the world burn (in an almost literal sense) is not a reasonable option!

Even solar panels aren't emissions-free. They take 1-3 years to payback the emissions used to create them, which is a great trade (a decrease full-lifecycle emissions as compared to do) for people who would already be consuming the power they'd create, but is still an increase in full-lifecycle emissions when created to supply power to someone who wouldn't otherwise have access to that power. Anyone who is without stable electricity today should gain access to it, by all means, but that is a net increase in emissions as compared to today.

Stable supplies of food (and fertilizer and machinery to grow and process it), clean water, refrigeration, transport, (somewhat ironically) HVAC, lighting, and some amount of outputs of manufacturing are desired by all.

I'm sure there are some emissions we still don't know how to avoid relating to solar manufacturing, but typically we look at energy return on energy invested (EROI). As the supply chain becomes less carbon intensive, less the energy to produce panels themselves produces emissions. The most carbon intensive countries are countries like US and China -- I'm sure just the emissions they cut back could compensate a lot of energy growth for developing countries. This is only a temporary spike. And being the large industrial producers, as they transition the emissions per Watt will go down significantly.

Again, it's not clear what your proposal is. Ignoring the problem is a bad idea. Doing the best we can to rapidly (of course, not so rapidly we couldn't handle it) transition to renewable energy is what we should be doing. Doing it now is the best time to be doing it. And are doing it! Just some countries are lagging behind somewhat, including the US and China. A big part of the problem is not recognizing the scale and importance of what we're facing. With reason and compassion in our hearts, we shall find the best solution for all :)

This is surely bait. Human extinction and 'not a big deal' in the same comment? Am I misunderstanding?

Cosmically, I don't think we matter, and that person is right. Even if we don't destroy ourselves in this century, the Earth will eventually be roasted to a crisp by the Sun expanding. Not that it makes me feel any better, just trying to consider what that perspective is.

> It occurs over several decades, just enough to cause skepticism or feelings of "it's not changing so quickly".

It's also important to realize that this isn't all "natural" skepticism and there's plenty of money being thrown around to spread FUD about the causes, severity, and consequences of climate change.

Skepticism isn't the problemj; blind belief is --- and there's plenty of money being thrown around to do that too.

Yes, but mostly on the denialism side

Judging by the posts here and in mainstream media, I doubt that.

Consider the economics. There are HUGE companies with a history of influencing legislature, lobbying an lying to everyone, whose existence depends on us to continue not caring about climate change. People like us can hardly imagine the amount of money they are throwing at us in the form of marketing, lobbying, astroturfing, etc. They are literally making money off us not taking action.

Otoh, I cannot think of a single billion dollar company that got where it is by being climate friendly.

Media companies get views by being sensationalistic and spreading paranoia. Governments love that too, since it means another excuse they can use to enact more authoritarian policies. The Internet has taken that to the next level.

I'm not a fan of Greenpeace and I haven't checked their number here .. but it passes the "it'd be at least that much" test for order of magnitude:

    Koch Family Foundations have spent $145,555,197 directly financing 90 groups that have attacked climate change science and policy solutions, from 1997-2018.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/climat...

My main quibble is that as I've been around geophysical energy and mineral exploration since the 1980s I'd argue that Koch and Co. started funding anti-climate change think tanks and policy groups a lot earlier than 1997.

They've been prepackaging all manner of FUD talking points and passing them out to media groups for almost 50 years.

They torpedoed any chance of decent widespread public transport in the US, simply to keep the demand for individual freedom loving liberty driven gas guzzling high and profits flowing.

It's remarkable how easily led by the nose central north americans have been.

Based on the posts by denialists here repeating literally 30 year old paid for talking points—that we’ve had exposed in court filings—as of they were new or profound…?

Gonna have to disagree with you there champ.

Except it isn't blind and it isn't belief? A hypothesis that has been amply supported by decades of evidence of many forms is hardly a subject for "blind belief".

> Also, there will be significant consequences for humans (which could be catastrophic and hard to predict if we don't limit warming to say 2C)

I have trouble visualizing what form the catastrophe would take. The worst I can imagine is global famine, is that what we are talking about here? Or rather local famine, acting as catalysts to civil unrest, wars etc?

Basically, I think the climate debate gets fuzzy here. Granted, just like you say, it gets hard to predict, but given that, what makes certain temperatures a threshold for disaster?

If oceans get too hot, fisheries will collapse and wreck coastal communities. Sea level rise will make storm surges worse and make "once in a lifetime" events more common.

This instability will drive a migration of people inland, essentially as ecological refugees.

Then what? Keep going.

It's interesting you chose the boiling frog parable because it's a fallacy. Skeptics contend that climate change will not precipitate an abrupt catastrophe; rather, humanity will simply adapt to it.

To illustrate, the Earth's temperature has already risen by approximately 1 degree since the inception of industrialization, yet our lives have arguably improved significantly during this period. Would we willingly forsake the past century of human progress to revert the global temperature back by that single degree? This seems improbable, and yet it is a viewpoint advocated by certain climate change alarmists who propose concepts like degrowth.

> Would we willingly forsake the past century of human progress to revert the global temperature back by that single degree?

Eh. I see what you are saying but have we felt the full effect? Do any of us have a perception of what was lost that would let us even make such a determination?

Why do we need to sacrifice living standards to control emissions?

How could we not? In the western world we might be able to, but that means poor people will start dying elsewhere.

It's not alarmism to say we should take action to prevent out extinction. By your logic, people who call emergency services when a building is on fire are "alarmists".

There has literally NEVER been a problem anywhere near as large as climate change, including World War 2. If being concerned about literally the largest problem to have ever existed is 'alarmism', then your position is simply that it's impossible for anything bad to ever happen.

> By your logic, people who call emergency services when a building is on fire are "alarmists".

By my logic, people who call emergency services when the room temperature rises 1 degree are "alarmists". The building is not on fire. We are not headed towards extinction, not even close. How do you explain that the world has gotten significantly better over the last century despite warming over one degree?

My position is that this "extinction" fear you speak of makes absolutely no sense. And any attempt to prevent warming through economically harmful policies will likely have a greater negative impact on humanity.

Which notable people think we should go back to a pre-industrial age?

I’ve never heard anyone seriously suggest that. I don’t believe you’ve heard serious people suggest it either.

If denialists had anything other than irrational arguments & mischaracterizations they wouldn’t be denialists.

Well, the capabilities (or lack thereof) of the person(s) doing the categorizing is rather important as well.

For example, I am a conspiracy theorist, and the number of nasty things that have been said about "me" by literally delusional Normies over the years gets a little annoying after a while. It would be a real shame if these chickens were to come home to roost at a particularly inconvenient time.

Anyways, I wish you and your Rational crew best of luck with your climate problems!

Mostly it’s obvious you’re just tired of being consistently called out on your nonsense. It hurts your unearned feelings on superiority. A trait conspiracy theorists have been repeatedly shown to have I might add.

Like I said: you’ve made it an emotional core of your identity.

Protip: you can't actually read my mind, neurotypical. It is your mind you are reading, not mine.

Please read up on some science.

> Which notable people think we should go back to a pre-industrial age?

It's being suggested quite clearly in some of the most unexpected places. One of the most curious things about the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, is that a great deal of the funding for some of its largest exhibits comes from one of the Koch brothers. Specifically there is the floor sized exhibit on human evolution which repeatedly emphasizes a subtext of adaptation, adaptation, adaptation as the driving force behind development of modern humans. The proponents don't care if this adaptation can also take the form of a misery-soaked return to pre-industrial society in 500 years, they won't be around to deal with it.

But they know that it's an asymmetrically structured argument that is difficult to counter using the language of progressive politics, in which adaptation is also emphasized but of course in different contexts.

No, you misunderstood what I meant.

I've seen people claim that slowing down or stopping economic (or even reversing, but I admit this position is rarer) progress was an acceptable tradeoff to counter global warming. Almost all solutions proposed by climate alarmists follow this pattern, albeit to varying degrees.

The analogy was that 100 years from now, people would see our current era as we see the industrial age. That is, unless we stop progressing.

Formulated differently, if degrowth had been followed in the industrial age, we would still be living in the industrial age (but the Earth would be a degree cooler).

Given that it's such a small change... Surely this is not a problem for our generation. It definitely does not appear to be a problem that's worth destroying financial opportunities on a massive scale and enabling totalitarian governments in the current era.

The way I see climate change activism is that elites want to fix the climate at the expense of the lower classes of society... In a time when wealth inequality is at an all time high and without the consent of the lower classes. This is incorrect.

First, we have to fix inequality problem so that the pain of the transition will fall more or less evenly on everyone's shoulders... Then once this is the case, everyone should have more time to think about climate problems and we can expect broad support.

Of course, 'we' will all be long dead by then. I feel totally fine and morally justified in leaving this problem to a future generation. Most people in my generation have way too many concrete personal problems concerning their own survival in a week's time to worry about abstract problems such as the survival of the human race in a few hundred years.

...Not to mention that in a few generations' time, if we focus on maximizing access to opportunities, through the resulting innovation, we will probably end up with extremely efficient renewable energy which will be able to fight climate change far more effectively with no sacrifices necessary.

It seems literally like a no-brainer to me to just let the free market do what it does best in terms of innovation. Shut down government money printers and dismantle policies that are harmful to the free market and which centralize opportunities and create tech monopolies to control the masses. That's not the way. It needs to be done honestly.

What's the point of even allowing the human race to survive if it turns the global economy into a squid game and only the most dishonest, manipulative people will remain?

I live in Australia. Since 2019 I’ve seen outrageous nationwide bushfires, intense rain and flooding in the central coast which forced us to evacuate for a week, followed of course by 2 years of a pandemic and then an entire year of rain so heavy in the northern rivers that it catastrophically flooded the entire area and cut off our plateau town from food and fuel deliveries for about a week.

Prior that I had never been evacuated or cut off from anything because of weather events, so I guess that’s why scientists are keen to distinguish between anecdotal evidence and statistical, empirical or experimental evidence.

What do you think is the connection between Australian bushfires and climate change?

Did Australia not drastically cut back and stop the amount of back burning that Australia used to traditionally do in order to prevent larger bushfires? You only have to ask anyone who has lived for a while in an at risk area to discover first hand that these activities had been curtailed and stopped for quite a few years.

> Did Australia not drastically cut back and stop the amount of back burning that Australia used to traditionally do in order to prevent larger bushfires?

No, that didn't happen.

“Hazard reduction work has increased because of increased funding to the RFS and to national parks. There has been more carried out in recent years than in previous decades.”

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/nov/12/is-th...

> You only have to ask anyone who has lived for a while in an at risk area to discover first hand that these activities had been curtailed and stopped for quite a few years.

Farmers get all their information from Sky News and Facebook. I've lived in at risk areas for over 15 years, and I can't tell you first hand that the activities have been curtailed and stopped. Very few people would be able to tell you that first hand. A lot of people will tell you bullshit conspiracy theories they've read on Facebook though.

Not in Western Australia, no.

https://www.dfes.wa.gov.au/hazard-information/bushfire/plann...

I've been around fuel reduction burns for 60 years.

As a local practice it dates back tens of thousands of years.

Think of it as more and more energy being kept within a closed space.

That closed space is the thin layer of land + ocean + lower atmosphere, it's spinning and it's quite large in comparison to single human.

Now think of a closed room with energy being pumped into that room, to (among other things) a fridge on the floor with door open.

The energy increase makes the heat exchange coils on the back of the fridge hotter and the space inside the fridge colder.

Overall the average energy within the room in increasing.

This is a poor but in some ways accurate picture of the earth .. or at least one climatic cell - the earth has a number of these in the North and South hemispheres and they interact and spill energy from one to the other.

Energy can express itself in many ways by cascade transfers - to wind and storms, to melting ice (at zero degrees) to create water (also at zero degrees).

In Australia that energy has driven the decadal scale La Niña and El Niño oscillation that, so far, has worked out fairly well for Australia ... (a very catastrophic fire season a few years back aside).

Elsewhere on the globe, not so much for others.

But wait, there's more, especially in the longer term if steps aren't taken.

In the near term, you can expect Australia to see a hot, dry El Niño:

https://phys.org/news/2023-07-australia-hot-dry-el-niohere.h...

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html\*

I'll point out a few things that maybe you have noticed but not correlated because they're not obviously "headline grabbing" (in a personal sense). I'm in Australia too (Melbourne), and have travelled to Europe several times in the last 25 years. Have you noticed that the "overnight low" temperatures and aren't as low as they used to be? If you're an avid gardener or a farmer (or know one), have you noticed plants flowering/blooming earlier/later? If you're a bird watcher, have you noticed changes in migration timing? I'd also point out that unless you're nearer the polar regions (which have sustained higher temperatures over time), you may not personally notice changes. This also depends of course on how old you are. I was born in the 60's. Winters in Melbourne are decidedly different these days from those of my childhood.

Funny. Anecdotally, my experience has been completely different. Progressively hotter summers and harsher winters. I guess that’s why we rely on accurately measured data.

For me and my network of friends, it has definitely corresponded to many personal experiences in the past 5 years. I wish I could say the opposite.

That's why climate change is a more accurate term than global warming. Snow in Sydney is as bad as a heat wave in Seattle.

I am in Melbourne and it seems like we have had the most mild summer and winter. Last winter however was incredibly cold and you can already see that this coming summer is going to be a bad one!

It is very dry and all the signs are point towards a big El nino + the Indian Ocean Di-pole being in full swing. Going to be a rough one in the south at least.

Relying on other people anecdotally and probably unprompted to judge relative weather is a pretty bad methodology. Why would you rely on that in Europe? Historical local data is easily accessible, especially in the last twenty years.

But yes, to make it average to a slightly higher temperature, but have some places have much hotter temperatures, some places have to cool off.

Hence "global warming" became "climate change". You do seem to be using the latter which is consistent with your personal experience, no?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com