The World Bakes Under Extreme Heat
wsj.com
wsj.com
I get this is a relatively slow-moving problem, unlike war or abrupt famine, but crivens.
Because there are people who are in denial, it's too much for them to acknowledge mentally/emotionally. There are also people with a vested interest in the status quo, and believe they can overcome/mitigate the consequences of climate change with all of the resources they are currently gathering. Just a couple of reasons, I'm sure there are more...
Tragedy of the commons. Even when you know the problem, and solution, you can't get ALL parties to implement it.
This is exactly the case of my mother and many of her peers (in their 70s, boomers). Whenever the topic comes up she'll say something to the extent of "well someone really smart will figure out a solution and fix it. I hope." It's not that any of them deny it's happening, they just think humans are smart and will figure out how to reverse the consequences of the way they lived their entire lives. I love my mom, but it's delusional to think this is a problem someone will have a single "aha" moment over.
The tough decisions are to be taken by a few very specific people, and the rest can either support them or not. The way I see it, we haven't reached the point where such decisions would be met with unanimous support yet.
The science has been clear for decades. But when their generation was younger and presented with the opportunity to do something about it, they punted. It was too difficult. It will let China “win”. It’s not even happening anyway, and if it is, it’s the sun and volcanoes but not anthropogenic.
Now that we’re all living in the future brought about by their political and economic choices, they’re supposed to get a pass because they’re too old to make an impact? Their generation is still the main voting bloc that prevents real change.
And the poor don’t want to give up the possibility of increasing their living standard to become like the rich.
In the developing world, millions of people dream of having air conditioning and cars. They will not be happy with politicians that do things that take away that possibility from them.
A heat pump is also an air conditioner, so lots of Germans are getting air conditioning for the first time while at the same time significantly reducing their carbon output.
Expect to see those debates as long as civilization continues. :/
here's some from the past month (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr...):
"Climate change is overhyped in my view"
"While local climate change is always with us, the reality of global change is lacking, and the projections have been pushed out year for year over the last forty years now."
"Does it really seem reasonable that our little human technology, an infinitesimal fraction of the energy at work in the Solar System is making a huge difference?"
"I immediately know the article is trash the moment they start blaming global warming for how hot or cold it is today rather than broader weather patterns. The upper and lower bounds for temperature at a given time of year are far more dependent on geography. It's trivially easy to see that all this "record breaking" is just recency bias, not global warming."
"Climate has been changing since earth got a climate."
"I think it's unwise to constantly associate normal temperature fluctuations with any threat to civilization"
This, however, cannot be plainly acknowledged because it would incite people to revolt against those who impose this logic on everyone else. So, the only alternatives are to lie, dissemble, compartmentalize etc.
It’s a bit like asking why did they invent all those fairy tales about the divine right of kings and why did people ever believe them? The answer is because there was no other alternative on offer until the whole order became so violently unstable as to be usurped. Most people are not anything resembling brave until their baseline survival is on the line, and the the first world is ordered in such a way to foist the worst of its consequences onto the global south.
Right or wrong, it's hard for developed economies to destroy their economies while China (and others) are rapidly making the problem worse. [1] Progress is being made through:
"The Climate Action Tracker says that between 2015 and 2022 China's greenhouse gas emissions increased nearly 12%, while U.S. emissions declined some 5%. China's methane emissions rose about 3% from 2015 to 2021, the latest year with good data, while the U.S. cut them by 5%." [1]
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerry-china-climate-econom...
The only way to solve this has always been governments enforcing the change via the law. If CO2 emissions reflected the true cost to humanity they would be a lot less competitive. Even then this requires legislation to move us on, such as banning new petrol and diesel cars sales by 2030. Neoliberal governments have passed on doing their jobs to solve this crisis by creating a fair environment where CO2 emissions can be replaced and the consequence is a disaster.
First, there are many myths about climate change that are believe by many [1].
Second, George Marshall investigated why 'we' don't take measures and wrote a book about it [2]. He found the problem is hard wired in our brains and caused by "our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe".
[1] https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php
[2] George Marshall - Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change
So now I'm literally just watching the world burn and trying to figure out long term plans. The more you look at what's going on in planet Earth, the more absurd it seems.
I'd be interested to hear how other HNers plan for the future.
I still pay attention to global events, vote, minimize my "carbon footprint", march, and all the stuff that feels morally necessary. But when that's all I was doing I felt pessimistic because I felt like none that actually made a dent in the world's problems. Since then I've found it more useful to focus attention on local problems. For example, hosting refugees, helping at the food bank, teaching repair or technology classes, supporting locally-owned farms and businesses, motivating friends and neighbors to get around town by foot or bike, advocating for low-income housing in your neighborhood, that sort of thing.
Climate change will not end civilization. But it'll cause a lot of misery. So if you're already fulfilling whatever moral obligation you feel you need to do at the global level then maybe consider finding a resilient community, putting down roots, and figuring out what you can do to help your neighbors.
I understand that many people may disagree with this prediction and some of those people will disagree with even communicating this prediction, as they will see it as boosterism for our decadent industrial society. However, I think if we are interested in what is true, we need to allow ourselves to conceive of such things as human civilization continuing on without much fuss.
Your prediction has no evidence behind it. On the contrary, the evidence suggests that we are currently at the beginning of a mass extinction event. It’s not that there will be a mass extinction if we don’t stop. It’s already started my dude.
A mass extinction event is underway, but it's not just starting. We are not at the beginning. There is this idea that the premodern world was "basically natural", but the reality is that 70% of animals larger than 45kg that were present in North America when humans arrived are already extinct.
There is no Eden to go back to or preserve. The world hasn't been in equilibrium since hominid intelligence started taking off and our only constant is change.
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Climate Change isn't happening
And if it is, it isn't that bad.
And if it is, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not our fault.
And if it is, we didn't mean it.
And if we did, you should have stopped it.
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Your comment is on line 3.
> we need to allow ourselves to conceive of such things as human civilization continuing on without much fuss.
There is a large difference between "conceiving of possibilities" and burying our heads in the sand. Climate Change is not a new phenomenon, we've known about it for 50 years (and the oil companies have known for longer). We have decades of research telling us that climate change will drive extreme weather. We have decades of research predicting the effects it will have on human civilization.
None of this is new info. The "alternate possibilities" have been considered and disproved a long time ago. We know, without ambiguity, what's happening.
perhaps that the effects will be different than your expectations, perhaps that human ingenuity will overcome the challenges, perhaps that some other, bigger problem will rear it’s head
- you have no mechanism left to tell. If that sounds like the narcissists prayer to you then so be it.
Even without global warming, earth always had times and places which have been very inhospitable to humanity. Energy helps make earth habitable. Starting with fire, and continuing on with air conditioning, energy makes the world habitable for humanity.
Finding efficient ways to use our energy matters just as much as finding efficient ways to produce our energy. Keep in mind as well that many of the current methods of manufacturing green technologies only end up exporting their carbon to the global south.
Increasing efficiency has a brutal difficulty that is constrained by thermodynamics whereas the universe is almost limitlessly full of energy, space, and mass.
Is this more or less energy than would be used for heating, in an equivalent city that seldom wants A/C? Remember, with the exception of heat pumps (hardly universal and less efficient at low temperatures) A/C is usually much more efficient at changing indoor temperatures, and also that 100F -> 72F is a smaller temperature difference than 32F -> 72F.
Part of the problem with heat is that above a certain threshold you basically just die without recourse. Whereas with the right survival equipment, humans can tolerate a surprising amount of cold for a surprising duration, with a wide range of sophistication from "a blanket because you're shivering" to "full-body survival suit because the wind will instantly freeze your skin". That is, you can survive fairly cold temperatures without "burning" anything other than calories, if you have the right clothing. But above a certain heat and humidity threshold, there's no recourse and you automatically die without external energy input.
It would be pretty interesting to do some kind of analysis on the total energy expenditure on maintaining human homeostasis in a hot climate compared to an equivalently cold climate. But you have to take that threshold effect into account, that people can tolerate being cold for a while, but cooling becomes a strict requirement sooner than heating becomes a strict requirement, so you actually might need to pump around more total energy in the hot climate case compared to the cold climate case, even though cooling is more efficient than heating.
Whereas if you increase the price of energy (e.g. carbon fees) then you will reduce consumption and incentivize more efficient air conditioning as a side effect.
Unfortunately while the former is counterproductive the latter is politically unpalatable so we'll end up either doing nothing or making the problem worse.
Good. That means more people now have access to it and it is a good thing.
Another example is clean water. If clean water is abundant, people will use it for more drinking and cooking and bathing. That is a good thing.
However, I should have been more specific when I said making air conditioning more efficient is counterproductive. I solely meant counterproductive towards the assumed goal of decarbonization in response to the prior comment's claim that "finding efficient ways to use our energy" is a viable strategy to address climate change.
Without pairing that efficiency with real solutions like putting a price on negative externalities, increasing efficiency is significantly more likely to increase overall energy consumption than to decrease it.
Edit: for context, this redistricting happened in 2011
Edit 2: I will happily walk back my first sentence to “purple”; however, the impact of partisan redistricting has been made repeatedly clear as Republicans in the state legislature significantly over perform in capturing seats vs statewide voter count. I will also add that I believe the problem here is partisan gerrymandering, not specifically that Republicans over-perform. Partisan gerrymandering is explicitly anti-democratic whether it is taking place in Wisconsin or New York.
Not sure how you can say that. Trump won Wisconsin in 2016, and Biden just barely won Wisconsin in 2020. Democratic Governor Tony Evers squeaked out a 1% victory in 2018 over Scott Walker. His reelection margin last year was a little higher at 3%, but Republican Senator Ron Johnson also won reelection last year by 1%. These were all statewide races, where redistricting was irrelevant.
It's a quintessential swing state.
Chicago was 6 months of winter this last year. Hate to see how it used to be.
I think we're especially well-suited because of our water resources—the Great Lakes are an extremely valuable asset. We just emerged from the worst drought in 90 years, but we didn't even have lawn irrigation restrictions put in place. And here in West Michigan, the lake also mitigates a lot of severe weather (the number of bad storms in Chicago that are mere whimpers by the time they reach us...).
Like, the hottest temperatures from Death Valley are from a century ago.
Tornadoes, droughts, heat waves, monsoons, floods, hurricanes -- not to mention earthquakes and volcanic eruptions -- will all continue even if CO2 goes back to pre industrial levels.
Then what?
Africa: 1931
Antarctica: 1982
Asia: Tie, 2023 and 2017
Europe: 2021
North America: 1913
Oceania (incl. Australia): Tie, 1960 and 2022
Oceania (excl. Australia): 1973
South America: 1905