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Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

People often seem to think that climate change eventually will lead to a catastrophic event, but before that they can live as always and are not concerned. And with some luck, that event would be in some indetermined future. But that is not how climate change is going to impact us. It is more like death by a thousand cuts. It already is started. We are experiencing a multitude of climate caused changes, most of them detrimental. Especially for those, who argue against moving to more green technologies, because that could endanger "their prosperity". It is exactly the other way around. We are globally losing prosperity because of the changes that are already happening. Like with this example. Humanity would certainly survive, if the Panama canal had to close for good. But it would be a large economic impact. And that is only one item on a very long list.

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I think it is fairly clear to most people that moving to carbon-free technologies is usually bad for their future profit/utility/quality of life. Thats because the individual person/city/state/country won't have much impact on climate change alone, so they'll have the downside/cost of moving to green tech, without the climate benefits.

For it to have benefits, everyone has to do it. And getting everyone to do something costly worldwide for the benefit of others is hard. Basically the only way it's going to happen is if the west decides it's a good idea, and puts sanctions (backed with military threats) on any country that doesn't comply. So far, there is no appetite for such an approach, and therefore climate change won't be solved.

So basically the West giving up any and all claims it has or ever had had (given morally questionable behaviors in the history books) to moral legitimacy for the sake of climate programs?

I already strongly question the legitimacy of the US and anything it claims to be based on how they claim a permanent parasitical right to my life (e.g. worldwide taxation of nonresident US persons)

Your comment seems to imply such a world order could be stable enough to accomplish your goals, I counter that with: it wouldn't be more than a few months before we(poster exclusive) would turn to any level of force necessary to put them down.

None of the social engineering projects of the 20th century turned out, a wholesale violation of our most basic rights to try variations on the theme now really isn't negotiable. I almost hope it is tried while the memory of Covid is fresh enough that the number of people we need to be awake still are.

That seemingly isn't as clear to the many companies and households who move to carbon-free technologies with the goal of decreasing energy costs, thus increasing profit/utility/quality of life by simply investing in energy efficiency.

Oh yes - there are some green technologies that are a good idea even ignoring any climate impacts. But those technologies alone won't fix the climate. The painful changes will need to be made too. For example CO2-free production of steel and concrete, which, even if you assume magical 100% efficiency and zero R&D and capital costs, still don't make sense economically - and in a competitive world market, that means whoever goes green goes bankrupt shortly afterwards, unless governments step in with rules, caps, credits, or subsidies.

> bad for their future profit/utility/quality of life.

Even EV's suffer this - it's a bore to have to plan your whole life around your EV's battery - detouring to charge up, remembering to precondition and charge up to 100% before you leave, telling the kids not to open the windows because it drains the battery like crazy, if you're travelling with another car, you can't stop in the same place because different cars need different chargers and charge at different rates, etc.

Heat pumps seem to suffer the same - arrive home from work at an unusual time, and a gas boiler will bring the whole house up to temp in 45 mins. Whereas a heat pump will take 6 hours to do the same. Worse quality of life.

If your heatpump takes six hours to warm up your home, the system is wrongly designed.

gas systems normally are very powerful because gas is cheap and houses weren't well insulated. The boiler therefore had to be very powerful to overcome losses of the coldest nights, but the rest of the time could heat the building fast.

Heat pumps are far more expensive per btu, both to buy and to run, so it makes more financial sense to insulate the house well and have a heat pump just big enough for the coldest nights losses. But that means that any other time, heating up the thermal mass of the house can take days.

This is only a problem for those who want their house to change temperature.

In my experience neither of your points is true of a modern heat pump nor a modern gas system. All heating systems are generally optimized to bring homes from 16°C to 22°C in about two to three hours. If your heat pump can't do that it's too small (or your radiators are too small). If your gas system can do it in an hour it runs way too hot and you're wasting a lot of gas.

First of all, a properly insulated house won't need a huge warming up. And for that, there are timers or these days there is this thing called internet, which allows you to control your home devices from afar.

Actually, I think most transitions to a cleaner future are going to increase our quality of life. EVs beat combustion engined cars in most aspects. Cleaner air benefits everyone.

Just to be clear - climate change has an impact, but what's not said in this article nor here is that El Niño is the real culprit for this unusual drought in that region (and flooding in others). El Niño is totally natural, albeit it's likely to be stronger than usual due to climate change.

They expect these restrictions to remain in place until next September as it's also until then that El Niño shall be active.

If anything it's just a preview of what's to come, El Niño always existed it's just that now, the problem is that the current baseline make it even worse than in the past

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3c/20...

Thanks, that's exactly what I've said, and is missing from the article.

As long as there’s a thousand of highly motivated surgeons, thousand cuts will not cause death. The balance between doing something and business as usual is already gradually shifting: demand for climate adaptation solutions is growing and investment is going in that direction, meaning more surgeons. We will not stop climate change and will see +2-+3° eventually. Mass extinction is going to happen, sea level will rise, huge areas of land will become uninhabitable, but we will adapt and survive. Scars will be ugly though.

„We“ will most likely not include all eight billion of us in that scenario.

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