We knew climate change in ’50s. Why an author tracked the history of denial | Hacker News Reader

We knew climate change in ’50s. Why an author tracked the history of denial

latimes.com

73 pointsBrajeshwar26 comments

Not sure it matters that we knew. World population in 1950 was only 2.5 billion. We definitely knew 40 years ago we’ve done little over that time as the population grew to 8 billion.

Today we’re using more coal than ever.

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/16/world/coal-use-record-high-cl...

Staying below the 1.5C goal is now impossible and we will breach it within 10 years.

George Bird Grinnell of Grinnell Glacier fame in Glacier National Park, wrote during a 1926 trip [1]:

"...the glacier is melting very fast and the amount of water coming from it is great. All these glaciers are receding rapidly and after a time will disappear."

[1] https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub/747/

That's interesting but it seems too early to be caused by anthropogenic climate change. The Little Ice Age extended into the 19th century, during which those glaciers presumably expanded. The end of that era would have resulted in the glaciers shrinking back.

Without more context, it doesn't seem like he's talking about climate change.

Im pessimistic about slowing climate change significantly.

The world is once again very fractured with little interest in working together - in fact many people see collaboration between the West and the East as evil.

We simply do not have anything to work with. Its not a collaboration problem it's a denial problem. One side is in denial about the change of the climate and one side is in denial about the fact that nothing we currently do against it has any relevant effect. Even if we would increase all our effort by an order of magnitude, it would not matter at all. Humans today with the technology we have now can only survive trough pollution. If pollution could be turned off we would have a mass extinction not green sustainable economy or whatever feelgood term people want to use.

The concepts that could potential work to reduce temperature, like putting stuff in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, are just way way to risky to just try out and see what happens.

And last but not least we started recording temperatures at about the lowest point in the last 10k years and now we measure warmer and warmer temps. Regardless of how much human activities made the increase faster, it is going up anyway an its not reversible and we have simply no clue about whether speeding up or slowing down the warming will cause or prevent some large scale humanitarian catastrophe for the next generations.

If we assume there will be a mass extinction in the future no matter what. Our action today can only shift the date for that mass extinction, sounds logical but we do not know which actions shift the date in which direction.

Also should we even care? Through all out human history the people never did and humans survived anyway through adoption not through careful planning of our ancestors. In fact if you would ask a person just 200 years ago what they and their generation could do to make our life better they would comm up with all kinds of nonsense that is totally irrelevant to us now.

Climate change has been known since the 1800s.

https://theconversation.com/scientists-understood-physics-of...

This is garbage, top to bottom.

First, arguing that we "knew" about climate change before satellites, major expansion of energy consumption, and advanced computer models is counter productive at best to the human caused climate change theory.

If true, it could only reinforce the idea that the human impact on climate change is negligible and is a natural process that would be absorbed by any state of global energy consumption.

That is to say, you MIGHT be able to convince someone to change their life to live like people did in the 50's, be we're not going back to pre-industialization.

Do you realize it’s possible to know something before it happens? For instance, I can know that dropping a hammer on my foot will hurt without actually doing it. Similarly, you can know that increasing rates of energy consumption can lead to climate change before it happens. Imagine that!

Climate science is not as causal as you suggest.

Your assertion that understanding climate change in the 50s implies a natural cause is simply false.

I'm saying, if what humans had done to the planet by 1950 had caused levels of climate change that could be known and forcasted without advanced tools and research, then what we have done since should be way more observable without advanced tools and research. But it's not.

Take from that what you want.

Your assertions have lots of unstated assumptions, mainly that "what humans had done to the planet by 1950" would require advanced tools and research to study.

>then what we have done since should be way more observable without advanced tools and research. But it's not.

This is also asserted without evidence.

I'm not sure this is the forum to provide evidence to what is obviously true.

Around 1950 the global emissions of co2 from human causes was about 5 billion tons. It explodes after 1950, hockey stick like growth and is now about 35 billion tons.

Humans have produced more co2 in 70 years than we have since we started to walk on two feet.

The basic premise of your argument is flawed. You’re asserting that we can only know about climate change after it happens. That’s not true. We can predict climate change will happen before it actually happens by understanding the relationship between CO2 and global temperatures.

Take something like general relativity for example, which was first theorized in 1915 and predicts things that we're only validating today. It's completely possible to predict something before it happens by understanding the underlying mechanisms of its action.

“… be we're not going back to pre-industialization.”

That’s up to you? Or anyone in particular?

No one assumed 2020 and 2021 would lost to pandemic.

No one expected 9/11.

We’ll intentionally do nothing, reality will decide for us

I suppose that is true as a baseline understanding of life. I should have inserted the word "voluntarily" in that sentence to be more explicit.

My goal for 2023 is to cast off the chains of domestication and become completely feral

Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas--Not Less

> Flourishing

For a very limited, short-term, definition of "flourish"

...Not starving or freezing to death.

...Have access to low-cost energy for cooking and economic activity.

...Reduction in the cost of starting and operating small businesses which arguably create the overwhelming volume of jobs.

At minimum, not squeezing an already over-burdened tax base.

Sweet. We’re dealing with rolling global catastrophes which are going to get worse and you’re worried about taxes. Your lifestyle will change. Please consider preparing for it.

In the last 50 years, have any catastrophic chicken little predictions ever come true? I'm more prepared than Obama, Kerry, or any one of 100 climate grifters and their ocean-front mansions and villas. No private jet yet, but soon.

Climate has been changing since earth got a climate.

And it has never been changing so fast as in our current time.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

The lies in this cosmic are the dotted lines that pretend that we could actually change the future of the line in any meaningful way.

Unless you include mass murder of a few billion people ofc , that would work.

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