Carl Sagan testifying before Congress on climate change (1985) [video] | Hacker News Reader

Carl Sagan testifying before Congress on climate change (1985) [video]

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146 pointsthunderbong189 comments

If OP's argument is that we could have bought time had we taken action, then Svante Arrhenius was publishing results about this in the late 1800s as the industrial revolution CO2 was in full swing.

Lack of information was never the problem. Money and Liability are the only two things that the people that can make a change will speak.

Start suing start and start lobbying. It is pretty much the only thing left bar from going full eco terrorist (which I believe is entirely likely in our current timeline).

You can surely justify doing whatever you want regardless of how bad it is if your justification is that you're saving all humanity. Even killing the people you want to save.

Eco terrorism is just like any other form terrorism. Usually the religious terrorists also think they are completely in the right and commanded by God. Nobody becomes a terrorist thinking they are wrong in their beliefs.

Vote for what you want, form a new party, join a company working on climate change, stop having kids and stop buying things. Those are all things that will help without forcing your views on others through force, and if the majority agrees we'll deal with it. Advocating for terrorism is a new one.

You’re looking at this the wrong way.

Violence is inevitable, in some form or another, if the climate effects are ignored to such a degree.

At some point, some people are going to draw a line and say: “We tried to explain it calmly, we tried to be loud, we tried to vote, we did all the things we could but greed has won”.

You’re arguing in terms of what people should do, and many people are doing those things, but if we look at it realistically it’s not enough.

It’s incredibly naive to think that this won’t cause violence down the line.

People who have no hope of actually helping the situation getting involved is the problem. Their only response might be violence, but that doesn't mean it'll do anything.

Complaining works for children, because they're normally complaining about things their parents can do something about. It doesn't work for reducing pollution while avoiding plunging the world into the 1800s. That takes adults with brains.

The whole point is complaining hasn't done anything. Direct action is ugly but historically gets things done.

Direct action is the same as complaining in this case. This isn't a social issue; it's a technological one, and reality doesn't respond to complaining or violence. Only people-created things do.

Ironically, less Greenpeace complaining in the 1980s would've meant more countries went the France route for power generation, which would've reduced a lot of CO2 over the last 40 years.

The richest 10% account for 52% of the emissions added to the atmosphere.

It is not a technological issue, it is a societal one.

Governments need to take action and regulate, but they don't because it is against the (financial) interest of a political party.

Can you link to the source?

Here is a source of a similar statistic. [0]

Ten seconds on your favorite search engine will turn up many more saying pretty much the same thing. The "ultra-rich" tend to contribute to the issue far more than everyone else combined. Them and their corporations really are the "lion's share" of the problem. Obviously they're not the entire problem, but taking care of that (somehow; "eat the rich" perhaps?) would take a massive "bite" out of it.

[0]: https://www.statista.com/chart/26904/estimated-global-co2-em...

That statista pages cites this paper in 'nature sustainability': https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00842-z

Which does not seem credible, it has way too many guesstimates.

> The "ultra-rich" tend to contribute to the issue far more than everyone else combined

The link does not appear to show this at all.

Sorry, didn't read the replies until now.

There are several studies coming to similar conclusions.

Here's the study from Stockholm Environment Institute:

https://www.sei.org/publications/the-carbon-inequality-era/

Here's one about the impact of private jets vs. average carbon emissions of other travellers:

https://ips-dc.org/report-high-flyers-2023/

Carbon inequality report from Oxfam:

https://www.oxfam.org/en/research/confronting-carbon-inequal...

It's not a technological issue, it's entirely societal. Trying to find technical solutions to social problems is a common but mega mistake.

Not always.

Social problem: I live far from my parents. Solution: WhatsApp/Zoom.

Social problem: I don't want to be a farmer. Solution: mechanisation; fertiliser.

Social problem: too many kids have polio. Solution: vaccine.

Social problem: some people can't see. Solution: glasses.

None of those have anything to do with the climate change disaster at hand. Do you have something more substantial than dismissive handwaving to contribute?

I was replying to your claim, as follows:

> Trying to find technical solutions to social problems is a common but mega mistake.

Commuting violence now because you think it’ll happen in the future is a horrible argument and can be used to justify anything.

I mean Hitler argued exterminating the Jews was necessary to save the German people from extermination.

Logic don’t work that way.

I'm not trying to justify violence. I'm predicting it.

I simply think it is unrealistic to think that the reaction to environmental issues will stay pacifist, when these issues become more critical and directly felt.

Just think of what things like mass migrations and environmental hardships and calamities have triggered in history. Pair that with a movement that has been trying to prevent it for more than half a century (by now), but was constantly met with disbelief and excuses. Put this mixture under enough pressure and it combusts.

But none of those things are guaranteed, and *none of those things are violence directed against you.

Logic does work that way.

Just war theory is completely based in the moral logic that committing violence now can be acceptable to prevent violence in the future.

The police are authorized, within limits, to use violence to prevent future violence. An officer, for example, may get end up getting into a fight with someone being arrested for conspiring to commit murder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_disobedience#Violent_vs.... is a section on violence in the context of civil disobedience. "Zinn states that while the goals of civil disobedience are generally nonviolent, 'in the inevitable tension accompanying the transition from a violent world to a non-violent one, the choice of means will almost never be pure, and will involve such complexities that the simple distinction between violence and non-violence does not suffice as a guide ... the very acts with which we seek to do good cannot escape the imperfections of the world we are trying to change.'"

Lastly, "[T]here is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that, when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law

No it doesn't work that way. Your arguments don't support your claim in the least.

Just war theory isn't blanket justification to go to war based on whatever "threat" you think exists. I mean, was Japan justified in going to war with the US because it felt a conflict was inevitable? Of course not, because such a conflict was not inevitable.

The police are empowered with special rights to use violence, not sure how that's at all applicable to an average person.

Nobody cares about Godwin's law. If Nazi Germany is a good analogy, it's a good analogy.

I notice you left out my civil disobedience example.

> Just war theory isn't blanket justification to go to war based on whatever "threat" you think exists.

Yes, that's EXACTLY MY POINT. It's an example of a logical argument used to justify when violence can be used to prevent future violence.

It doesn't say that all war is just war. That's why it uses the word "just".

Your argument seems to be that no threat justifies violence. Ukraine shouldn't fight back against Russia. Those held as slaves shouldn't be violent to self-styled "owners." Thoreau, author of Civil Disobedience, famously supported John Brown's violent raid on Harper's Ferry, arguing Brown's commitment to justice required him to fight a government which enforced the injustice of slavery.

You would deny all of these cases of using violence to (at least try to) prevent future violence by characterizing them as equivalent to an un-just war with horrific genocides? Really?

It's actually a horrible analogy because by your logic the US should not have gotten involved in the European theater of WWII - why use violence to prevent future violence?

I agree with dgb23 - your view is incredibly naive. Simply say you are a pacifist and reject all violence. That's fine. But that's a moral argument, while you asserted there was invalid logic.

MLK Jr. commented that 'A riot is the language of the unheard'. I agree with King's characterization of the riots he was talking about.

dgb23's point is a direct parallel: "Violence is inevitable, in some form or another, if the climate effects are ignored to such a degree."

I also agree with dgb23.

All of your examples are situations where violence has already occurred, not preemptive.

Russia attacked Ukraine. The slave is a victim of violence.

Your argument doesn't even make sense in a situation where violence hasn't occurred.

> All of your examples are situations where violence has already occurred, not preemptive.

Incorrect. One of my examples was "An officer, for example, may get end up getting into a fight with someone being arrested for conspiring to commit murder." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37145828

Is dumping poison into the town's water supply, knowing it will kill plants, animals, and people, an act of violence?

If it is violence, it's acceptable to use violence to prevent that act, correct?

If it isn't violence, suppose a staff member see someone about to do that. May that person use violence to prevent the act from happening?

May a police officer?

If not, and it's too late to try any other options, is it really logical to avoid preemptive violence in order to save lives?

Next, re-run the example with someone actually pouring poison into the town's water system, but it will take a day before the first people are affected, and a week until the toxic effects start killing people.

When is it acceptable to use violent methods to stop the poisoner? In 23 hours? In 6.9 days? Or right now?

Or is that enough that that we can should avoid violence and instead, say, install water filtering systems in everyone's sink and make everyone pay for new filters each month?

It’s really hard to follow your train of logic since it keeps changing.

Preemptive use of violence is generally seen as acceptable when it: 1) is equal to the level of violence faced (e.g. you don’t shoot someone in the head if the look like they are going to punch you) and 2) the threat of violence is imminent and threatens humans life.

Violence due to climate change doesn’t fulfill any of those requirements: 1) it far exceeds the violence being committed now, 2) the future violence isn’t imminent and 3) it’s unknown if the future violence will threaten human life.

My responses shift because I am trying to understand your position.

Your original position was "Commuting violence now because you think it’ll happen in the future is a horrible argument and can be used to justify anything."

Your current position is that some level of violence is acceptable to prevent some types of future violence.

It therefore seems that you agree with the logic of "just war".

Why then did you write "Logic don’t work that way."?

You seem to only allow violence when faced with violence.

Is dumping toxic pollution into a drinking supply, knowing it will cause deaths in the future, a form of violence?

If yes, then violence can be used to oppose such action, proportionate to the expected deaths, illnesses, etc. based on your best model of the effect.

If no, then poisoning the drinking water for the board of BigOilCo. is a form of non-violent eco terrorism.

> Violence due to climate change doesn’t fulfill any of those requirements

Has ExxonMobil committed any form of violence in its contribution to CO2 emissions? Remember, their own staff scientists sounded the warning about future dangers back in the 1980s.

The level of eco terrorism now are things like deflating the tires of SUVs. This is not violence, so appears to meet your criteria.

However, your comment was in responded to a prediction about the future: "Violence is inevitable, in some form or another, if the climate effects are ignored to such a degree." at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37144135

If things progress as many fear, then your own logic says that eco terrorism may be justified, agreeing with dgb23.

“Logic doesn’t work that way” in the sense of equating an immediate, personal, lethal threat to distant, indirect and vague lethal threat.

> Is dumping toxic pollution into a drinking supply, knowing it will cause deaths in the future, a form of violence?

That is such a vague statement I’m not sure anyone can answer that. If someone puts cyanide in my bottle of water? Sure. If someone dumps a chemical into a river that eventually gets treated and tested such that the threat to me is minimal, then no.

> Has ExxonMobil committed any form of violence in its contribution to CO2 emissions?

No because there is no proof that CO2 emissions are a direct lethal threat to you personally. We don’t know what the consequences of climate change will be to the degree to say “it’s going to kill this person”.

I mean by your logic if your neighbor decides to burn plastic in a camp fire you’re allowed to kill them because “they released carcinogens that I could breath and give me cancer that kills me”.

> equating an immediate, personal, lethal threat to distant, indirect and vague lethal threat

You are missing something very fundamental.

Eco terrorism requires neither personal threats nor lethal threats.

I already gave the example of deflating the tires of SUVs.

Spiking trees is a classic example for woodland preservation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tree_spiking . The primary goal is to increase the economic cost (increased damage to saws) and decrease the profit (by causing discoloration). The goal is not to harm people. Common practice is warn people that given area of woods has been spiked.

By your definition, this sort of eco terrorism is a valid response. There is no direct lethal threat to spiking a forest and posting plenty of warning signs, so it is not a violent action. Logging the forest becomes riskier, but then again, swimming in many rivers became riskier due to industrial pollution.

> That is such a vague statement

It was a reminder of the scenario I previously posed, with details that already answered your questions.

The main goal is to get you to realize that you are too focused on requiring violence, when there are many other ways to harm or kill people.

As a matter of general good governance we must often be informed by statistical models estimating the numbers of people affected and severity, rather than names. We know lead causes health problems, even if we can't single out who will be affected, so we've worked to phase out lead.

> I mean by your logic if your neighbor decides to burn plastic in a camp fire you’re allowed to kill them because “they released carcinogens that I could breath and give me cancer that kills me”.

There is nothing in what I wrote whereby one can logically draw that conclusion.

> Eco terrorism requires neither personal threats nor lethal threats

I know, that's why we call it terrorism.

> There is no direct lethal threat to spiking a forest and posting plenty of warning signs, so it is not a violent action

No, because spiking is done because loggers can get killed sawing down a spiked tree. Sounds violent to me.

> The main goal is to get you to realize that you are too focused on requiring violence, when there are many other ways to harm or kill people.

What do you mean "too focused"? I think the problem is you fail to see any difference between someone shooting you in the head and someone poisoning a river. There is no logical train of thought where someone can claim those are equivalent.

> There is nothing in what I wrote whereby one can logically draw that conclusion.

Of course there is - you've been claiming violence like "polluting" justifies violence and reduced it down to "my life is threatened, so I can threaten yours".

> that's why we call it terrorism.

Is tree spiking an act of violence directed to someone personally?

You clearly say "yes."

> spiking is done because loggers can get killed sawing down a spiked tree. Sounds violent to me.

Yet earlier you said ExxonMobil has not committed any form of violence in its contribution to CO2 emissions "because there is no proof that CO2 emissions are a direct lethal threat to you personally."

Have tree spikers made a direct lethal threat to you personally? I assume not, so either they are not violent or your mean "you personally" in the more wider sense of "someone personally."

Have all tree spikers personally threatened someone? I'm sure some have, but your view requires that all tree spikers personally threaten someone, and I know that's not true of all tree spikers.

You write "loggers", but that's not a direct personal threat but a career threat. People are not intrinsically loggers who must cut down trees. They could decide to stop being loggers and do something else, though emotional and financial reasons make that a difficult choice.

I'm a swimmer. If I get ill from swimming in polluted waters, who is at fault - me for swimming in waters I know are increasingly dangerous, or the polluter knowingly dumping dangerous materials into the water?

Does the polluter commit a violent act by continuing to pollute the waters knowing that swimmers and those who must drink the water, or live off of fish caught in those waters, are very likely to suffer as a result, even if the polluter isn't personally threatening anyone?

Your answer to that seems to be "no", yet I can't discern a difference between that and violence you see in tree spiking. Both lead to death and injury, but one is called "violence" and "terrorism" while deaths from the other are .. what .. the cost of doing business?

> you've been claiming violence like "polluting" justifies violence

I've never said disproportionate violence is justified like you claim I did. I started off by talking about just war theory, as an example of logical justifications for when it is okay to use violence to prevent future violence. I believe violence may be justified to prevent future harm, even when that future harm is not due to violence.

For some reason, you do not, and I truly do not understand why, given that you are not a pure pacifist.

That some examples may be justifiable (to a non-pacifist like me) does not mean I think all examples are justifiable as you wrongly assume I must.

I’m not sure why it’s so hard for you to grasp the nuance here. You seem to view everything as black and white. Shooting someone in the head is equal to contributing to CO2 which may or may not threaten someone’s life in the distant future.

I mean it’s pretty clear a spiked tree is a danger and potentially lethal.

And it’s pretty clear climate change isn’t. And it’s pretty clear pollution isn’t a lethal threat to a swimmer.

If you cant grasp the gray area here I’m not sure it really worth more discussion. It’s a very common logical mistake I see on HN.

> Vote for what you want

What if your country is locked in a two party system captured by elite interests with no desire to actually solve the problem? What if what you want is not available by vote?

> form a new party

What if your system is designed to ensure new parties always fail?

> stop having kids

Is our sacrifice really what is needed to stop climate change? Would it even make a difference? Are we doomed to live unhappy lives because of the system we were born in to?

> stop buying things

Shall we just perish then?

> if the majority agrees we'll deal with it

What if the majority agrees but a minority that disagrees controls the political system?

You seem to want to prove that the only thing left is terrorism, and I posit to you that you should genuinely ask yourself if other terrorists do not feel as justified as you do, and what you think about their methods.

This would be true if I believed your argument is sound, but I don't believe that. You say terrorism is not appropriate, and we should do these other things. My question for you is, what should we do if those things have been ineffective? The goal is to get you to think more about what your are saying. Generally I would say the solution is to use every legal measure at our disposal including lawsuits[1], plus peaceful protest including blockades, to stop new fossil fuel projects from advancing and show corporations and politicians that we will not stop until the projects end. We also must learn about and pressure politicians to adopt rail and bike transit projects which aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our cities. We must advocate for right to repair so existing machinery is not discarded in favor of the manufacture of more equipment and its associated emissions. We must advocate for veganism and an end to extreme meat consumption and all of the emissions associated with it. There is SO MUCH we can do beyond personal habits and voting.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/climate-change-youth-montana-tria...

Some of the things you mention are not like the others, and many are not terrorism.

To this line which I hear from time to time: "My question for you is, what should we do if those things have been ineffective?"

I say, keep thinking. Specially if your answer is terrorism or para-terrorist activities.

> Some of the things you mention are not like the others, and many are not terrorism.

Just say what you mean please. What have I suggested which is terrorism?

If you read the original comment you replied to, you will see my only position is against terrorism, that is suggested as the next only possible step after lobbying and litigation. You piled on that train to again propose the idea that every single suggestion I made was innefective and therefore "what can we do?". Since my comment was purely denouncing terrorism, I made the obvious connection that this is what you proposed to do. You then mentioned a bunch of suggestions similar to my own suggestions in my original post, except for blocking roads which I believe is a serious offense as you do not know what you are blocking people from getting to, though I'm not sure it amounts to terrorism.

If someone says "purple is bad" and you comment a bunch of reasons why purple is not bad, am I that much at fault to think you believe purple is good? If you are for democratic and societal change through legal means then you're with me. I'm sorry if I annoyed you for hinting that you were proposing terrorism, but please re-read the original comment and see how that might've happened, I also got annoyed myself due to the fact that I didn't think people would find offense to an anti-terrorist stance, so perhaps I exaggerated.

What I found irritating is the suggestions to vote, form a new party, or change personal habits. It is surprising to hear someone in 2023 suggesting these things as these are all the things which have failed us for 20+ years.

My point was not to advocate terrorism but to highlight the folly of your suggested alternatives.

Your intention may have been purely to argue against terrorism but in the process you made other arguments I felt compelled to critique. I was not arguing in favor of terrorism.

" It is surprising to hear someone in 2023 suggesting these things as these are all the things which have failed us for 20+ years"

But maybe it is not all because of an evil elite, but also the very common people who don't believe or care about climate change, because it would mean bad consciousness or reduced comfort?

And the people who say they care, but still fly around the world for a vacation?

A scientific consensus alone is not enough, it needs a general human consensus that something needs to happen. And slowly slowly it is forming in some ways. In other ways things are going backward (russia for example is thinking out loud that climate change is just caused by earths natural radiactivity).

But I also fail to see how terrorism can help create such a consensus.

I am not arguing in favor of terrorism! I am arguing against the idea that voting is enough. Put simply, in between voting and terrorism is activism and legal action (that is, using the legal system and suing organizations and governments as was done recently in Montana).

> But maybe it is not all because of an evil elite

Our system is elite-driven, and popular attitudes are strongly driven by elite manipulation through the media.

> because it would mean bad consciousness or reduced comfort

It would not mean this, but we have been led to believe it would mean this by an elite that doesn't want to make these changes due to reduced profits.

"It would not mean this, but we have been led to believe it would mean this by an elite that doesn't want to make these changes due to reduced profits."

Flying is bad, right? And not flying reduces comfort. What does this has to do anything with evil elites?

I felt like not adding those examples would make people think I don't believe in climate change, so I wanted to make it clear I do think there's available options for people that want to do it.

I don't think it's great for you to be irritated by a suggestion of change through democratic means, that is how our society works. Maybe some of my other suggestions weren't the ones you'd choose, but I was merely making a list of things that can be done to affect change. Believe me you don't want to live in a system where any group can modify everyone else's life in the whole world in less than several decades. That system would be likely to be corrupted very easily. It takes a while to re-align our priorities as a global society.

Unlike the voices that say "it isn't working", I think it is in fact working because we have more and more green parties in power and there's more and more awareness and change. If you step back from the doom voices you can see that voting does work. Of course the warming metrics will keep going up as we still have work to do and there will be a lagging effect, but voting isn't the only option, there's other things one can do as I mentioned in my comment and more even like some of the ones you mentioned.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/how-green-party-success-res...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026137942...

https://www.eyes-on-europe.eu/greens-in-europe-an-impressive...

> I don't think it's great for you to be irritated by a suggestion of change through democratic means, that is how our society works

There is a LOT to how our system works. It's not just a bunch of people going to their 9-5 for two years, skipping over to the ballot box, and then forgetting about politics for another 24 months. You did not explicitly say that is what we should do and I don't even believe you think that, but when someone says "the solution is to vote for change", to me as someone who believed in voting under Obama and then saw how the change we voted for gave way to the status quo, I learned how limited voting is in affecting real change. It is a component sure, but when the establishment on both sides is in agreement that we should either continue aggressively mining, selling, and burning fossil fuels, or we should continue mining and burning fossil fuels while agreeing to a very slow, scientifically disastrous slow wind down of their use, then obviously voting is not enough. And we have had 20 years to digest and reject the notion that individual changes are where we should focus. I mean sure, I am literally vegan, I believe in some sense of responsibility, but I believe more strongly that activism and agitation for broader social change, which requires MUCH MORE than voting, is necessarily required.

That's why in an earlier comment I linked to the lawsuit in Montana. Young people in that state sued the state government for failing to protect the environment for the future as required by the state constitution. That's not voting or starting a new party! When someone says "the solution is to vote" it strikes me as naive. I have been voting for this for 20+ years. It is painfully clear to me that voting is not sufficient. I watched as Obama attended COP21 and failed to make any meaningful commitments. We must do way more than voting.

Some thoughts but I see we're not going to reach much common ground:

- elites aren't a monolithic group

- regular people don't all agree with you, specially in their actions, which is the main problem

- change comes about as fast as it comes about, you don't get to dictate what is "fast enough" through revolution or terrorism without facing opposition

- change is in fact coming as I shared with sources showing more governments turning green with trends predicting even more

- decrying a hijack of democracy is folly, and something anyone who's annoyed that their country doesn't do what they personally want can say at any point without any proof. That's what trump said when people didn't vote for him, that democracy was hijacked.

If anything it was a great discussion, hope you have a nice day even if we don't agree on a bunch I respect your fervor and thoughts on the topic.

> democratic means, that is how our society works

You keep missing the point that the system has been captured and perverted.

Without absorbing that fact, you'll never understand the world you live in.

> I think it is in fact working

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

At some point we're going to be forced to dump the Tea Into The River.

I'm not sure anyone is advocating terrorism. Certainly that's not what I read in the previous posts.

I agree.

Happy to be proven wrong, but I don’t believe TaylorAlexander has ever advocated for such, at least here on this forum, and there’s no reading, that I can imagine, of their comments here that would lead to me think they’ve started doing so.

DoingIsLearning wrote "Start suing start and start lobbying. It is pretty much the only thing left bar from going full eco terrorist (which I believe is entirely likely in our current timeline)."

That's a prediction that suing and lobbying won't work, leaving only eco terrorism.

You posit that it will work because "if the majority agrees we'll deal with it".

I consider that either an unfounded article of faith, or a confusion between political majority and population majority. (Under apartheid South African whites were a minority of the population but with the majority of political power.)

"Sixty-four percent of people believe climate change is a global emergency," says https://www.undp.org/press-releases/worlds-largest-survey-pu... . From the report:

> • Regionally, the proportion of people who said climate change is a global emergency had a high level of support everywhere - in Western Europe and North America (72%), Eastern Europe and Central Asia (65%), Arab States (64%), Latin America and Caribbean (63%), Asia and Pacific (63%), and Sub-Saharan Africa (61%).

> • Of the people that said climate change is a global emergency, 59% said that the world should do everything necessary and urgently in response. Meanwhile 20% said we should act slowly, while 10% percent of people thought the world is already doing enough

Given that a majority of the world's population believes there is a climate emergency, where is the corresponding government response that you say should exist now that a majority agrees?

If the population majority agrees we need urgent and radical change now, but the political majority does not deal with it - what's the next step? What will you do?

> Those are all things that will help without forcing your views on others through force

CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions are being forced on us, very strongly, backed by the use of police and military power. "Fossil Fuels Received $5.9 Trillion In Subsidies in 2020, Report Finds" - https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuels-received-5-9-trill... . Where did that money come from? Our taxes. What if we don't pay taxes? I'll let you finish that.

We may see MLK Jr now as a leader in non-violent protests, but focusing only on his non-violent methods ignores the effect of riots ("A riot is the language of the unheard") and more militant organizations on establishing legal civil rights equality.

Remember, violence can be effective. Violence supported centuries of racial oppression in the US. Violence also ended slavery in Haiti.

> Eco terrorism is just like any other form terrorism.

Especially in that the government gets to define what is and is not terrorism.

Dumping poisonous waste into a waterway, knowing that the fine is cheaper than actual clean up, and knowing that even if it kills plants, animals, and people at most the company will get a fine, is not eco terrorism.

Why not? Because it's not 'violent' (even though it's deadly) and because it's not in support of environmental causes. The government is set up to support large companies over individual people, so fines like this are a simple cost of doing business rather than a death penalty for the company and manslaughter charges against its employees.

The violent attacks on the Dakota Access pipeline protestors were also not eco terrorism, because the attacks are not in support of environmental causes.

Let's call it "biz terrorism", like how coal companies used to hire people to carry out machine gun attacks on strikers. Odd that biz terrorism isn't it's own special category, yes?

Famously, "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter", and Nelson Mandela was on the US terrorist watch list until 2008. Quoting the commentary at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/is-one-... :

] "As a descriptor, terrorist is almost never applied rigorously and consistently to describe the tactics a group is using -- rather, it is invoked as a pejorative to vilify the actions only of groups one wishes to discredit. People who agree with the ends of the very same groups often don't think of them as terrorists, the negative connotation of which causes them to focus on what they regard as the noble ends of allies they're more likely to dub freedom fighters."

All systemic change is hard, but it can happen, and when it does, it’s because people kept pushing and pushing in whatever small way they could. Your line of questioning above is how people argue themselves into inaction (or radicalization).

The inflation reduction act was the largest piece of climate change policy ever passed in the US. Yes, it could be significantly more extreme, it uses levers of tax breaks and markets rather than regulation, and it was softened considerably by Manchin, but it is absolutely not the case that both parties in the US treat climate change the same.

Not having kids isn't a sacrifice. Not having kids is the default. Children, just like smoking or drug addiction (or driving ICE cars), are opt-in.

This opinion is evolutionary selected against.

"Not having children is the default"

I take it you, unlike the vast majority of people, don't enjoy sex. With enough sex, there will be children, either through negligence or failure of birth control methods.

It still is opt-in, even though it is enjoyable.

> Not having kids is the default.

Are you sure? How many of your ancestors didn't have kids?

Then work to change the system.

Become a proponent for direct democracy and work to replace the institutions that aren’t serving you how they should.

Direct democracy is a terrible idea, unless you love populism.

Why? It’s working extremely well in Switzerland.

> The first federal vote in which women were able to participate was the 31 October 1971 election of the Federal Assembly. However it was not until a 1990 decision by the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland that women gained full voting rights in the final Swiss canton of Appenzell Innerrhoden.

It's not working extremely well. It's also quite slow which is quite the opposite of what's needed now.

Honestly that's like citing the Scopes Monkey Trial to discredit the US on science as a whole.

Appenzell Innerrhoden is a tiny half-canton, 67 sq.mi, population ~16,000 or 0.2% of Switzerland (8.8m). Dayton, Tennessee (of Scopes Monkey Trial infamy) has a population of 7,000.

Women in Switzerland obtained the right to vote at federal level in 1971, and at local cantonal level between 1959 and 1972 [0][1], except for Appenzell.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_women%27s_suffrage

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_suffrage_in_Switzerl...

Have you been there? I’ve moved to Zurich, but I travel a lot for work(worldwide). Every time I return home it’s like stepping into a bright future.

If your average GDP/capita is over $90k you can probably use any system you like and it will work. It's the economy.

The system brings the economy. The people are friendly and take care of their country because they’re involved, not dictated to.

I don't think you can know that. For example, I could say culture brings economy and system. If you have a culture of hard work and merit then you will generate a high economy, and whether you have representative or direct democracy you will steer certain ways.

One I think clearer example is a direct democracy can choose to ignore minorities (of any stripe) more, and have more to spend on visible things that help most people, but also allow smaller groups to fall away (or not allow them in at all). I don't know if that's the case for Switzerland, as with wealth comes the ability to mitigate this, but that is the traditional danger with direct democracy.

So basically, it is not a terrible idea like you said, but something that will work(and in my opinion, extremely well) in a highly developed society? And considering how well they are thriving, obviously it is not detrimental at all?

None of your concerns have happened in Switzerland, quite the opposite. I don’t know what you mean by minorities, but in Zürich a third of the population aren’t even Swiss citizens. In Switzerland, everything is extremely decentralized.

Additionally, Switzerland is not a homogeneous culture - the differences between Vaud, Zürich, Ticino etc. are massive.

All I know is Switzerland is a wonderful place, and I believe it is because they never really had a king, but ruled their country together.

> something that will work(and in my opinion, extremely well) in a highly developed society

I don't see the point in changing what I said. I said I think most systems can look good if there's enough money sloshing around.

My point is - e.g. in the US, who also never had a king, most people live in cities. If there were direct democracy then those people could vote for very pro-city policies, and neglect rural. Given there's representational democracy, that's much more difficult, and national rules need to be more balanced.

> What if your country is locked in a two party system captured by elite interests with no desire to actually solve the problem?

That's not the world we live in, so your argument for terrorism falls apart. This is not a "both sides" issue. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-is-the-social-cost-o...

Agree. But majority agreement is not a measurement for reasonable action. When seatbelt laws were introduced, the science was clear, the majority of the public was against it.

You could have decided to voluntary wear a seatbelt, and still put no dent in the stats of lethal car-accidents...

This is not a good comparison. The people not wearing seatbelts didn't affect the lives of others, they only (voluntarily) risked their own.

ECO terrorism is trying to force others to live how they want them to live. Regardless how convincing your belief, I don't think this is ever a good strategy.

Seatbelts made cars more expensive for people who didn't want them and a person without a seatbelt is much more likely to traumatize someone in an accident with their easier and more gruesome death.

Few decisions are made in a vacuum with no impact to others.

A friend of mine got paraplegic because a person in the back seat of a car wasn’t using a seat belt during a crash. The body got launched on my friends seat, killing her and breaking my friends spine.

So seatbelts do protect others.

It's weird that this is so right, but so backwards at the same time.

When you don't wear a seatbelt, you risk your own life. When the oceans heat up, and the fish start drowning, then everybody is affected.

Destroying the shared environment is not your personal freedom.

Seatbelt laws force seatbelts onto people that don't want them.

Global warming forces negative outcomes onto people that don't pollute much.

Anything and everything can be framed as an act of force. It is therefore unhelpful to think of things in these terms.

I don't understand. How does not wearing seatblets being a risky choice for one's self strengthen your point? It was indeed exactly forcing people to live a different way by compelling them by law to use a specific implement while driving or riding in a car.

Seatbelts also protect the other occupants of the car from having a body thrown at them at high speeds.

> stop having kids

I wonder if such major personal and individual sacrifices are actually worth it, and if at all effective, when we leave those handful of companies which spew massive amounts of CO2 and other pollutants into the environment to operate

Not having a kid cuts off a whole branch of human reproduction; it's undoubtedly the best thing you can do for the planet, on the personal scale. Everything else pales in comparison.

It might be true within a very narrow scope but is irrelevant. There is no path to climate change mitigation that involves population control that isn't substantially worse than than problem. Just as individuals' decisions are only relevant when taken in aggregate, so too should an individual act as though their behaviour was an aggregate one.

Climate change solutions can only be implemented at the societal level, as is becoming abundantly clear.

Stopping migration/immigration from poorer to richer countries would be an even better solution. Stopping all long haul air travel would even be better. If you are being honest you know this will never be solved because no one believes it.

> Stopping migration/immigration from poorer to richer countries would be an even better solution

Only instantaneously; integrated over the relevant timescales, the poor countries burn more while industrialising, and everyone (including the poor countries) installs renewables.

I visited Kenya about a decade ago, the taxi was old enough to not have electric windows (so I suspect electric cars will take a while to become affordable for Matatu drivers); there was a geothermal power station.

To actually solve the greenhouse gas problems needs everyone and everything to get greener, including air travel — given how long CO2 stays in the air, if we fixed everything worldwide except rail, that's still 400% of our global greenhouse gas budget.

Aviation is about 19x, cement 30x, livestock and manure 58x; yet all of those combined — rail, air, cement, and livestock & manure — are still only about a tenth of our emissions

So the only people who will have kids are those who don't believe in climate change?

And all those noble hearted pepople not having kids will make the overpopulation/competition for scarce resources look more manageble meaning those who do not believe in climate change (and/or are greedy egotisticials) might go "actually, it looks like I can still have that third child after all".

Blaming those emissions on companies is such an interesting shift of blame to me.

Who do you think those companies serve and who consumes the end product of whatever they’re doing?

"Serve" have multiple meanings.

The title of the TV series "Are You Being Served?" refers to a customer receiving sales service from the store.

However, Grace Brothers (the aforementioned store) exists to make a profit for the "Old" and "Young" Misters Grace, so in that respect the company serves its owners.

The former use of "serve" is subordinate to the latter. Indeed, a widely held view is that a company serves its shareholders, and the goal of the company is to maximize shareholder wealth.

If this means using greenwashing or other forms of deceit to falsely persuade the public that the product isn't harmful, then go ahead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing

If it means ExxonMobil uses PR techniques, funding, and lobbying to discredit global warming research and limit restrictions on its ability to make money for its shareholders, then go ahead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExxonMobil_climate_change_deni...

If it means persuading governments to grant tax breaks and other subsidizes for cheap fossil fuel, making most of the population dependent on continual cheap fossil fuel with no easy way to wean themselves off, then go ahead. Lock-in is great for shareholder wealth.

That's who those companies serve.

The vast majority of shareholder wealth increase is by either having more customers, or increasing spend per customer. Customer being the individual.

How the corpos go about doing that is largely irrelevant as they're only producing emissions so that individuals can consume their goods.

I don't think so. maybe giving children good education is more important.

The difference is that there is not a single inkling of evidence God exists. So becoming a terrorists doing Gods will is silly. Climate change on the other hand...

That sounds like the Mother of All Venn Intersections.

> You can surely justify doing whatever you want regardless of how bad it is if your justification is that you're saving all humanity. Even killing the people you want to save.

This is a snide way of saying that no valid justification can possibly exist. Yet you probably think dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan was a good idea. So clearly valid justifications for extreme levels of forceful action against an unwilling party -- far, far, far more extreme than blowing up an oil pipeline -- can and do exist.

> Yet you probably think dropping a nuclear bomb on Japan was a good idea

Does pretending you know my position on topics not discussed make it easier to disagree with me? I'm anti-war and wish everyone would refuse to go to war, individually. Maybe that helps you process my actual comment with that out of the way.

I didn't think it was possible to have such an unserious worldview to the point where you believe that it is inherently and automatically wrong to take any forceful actions against an unwilling third party. So if a brutal dictator takes power, and I wish to take forceful action against that, I will be sure to remember that it is me and not the dictator that is the morally bad party.

Now you know it is, here's a wikipedia page for you to learn more as it is a tenet of several religions and philosophical thinkers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacifism

I think it's as childish to discard this as it is to think it's "inevitable" to nuke people or to go to war. Everyone can have their own childish thoughts specially when I'm not in power or seeking a position where I have to make that hard choice, so I choose for me and I'll tell it to whoever asks.

> and if the majority agrees we'll deal with it

In the U.S., a clear majority supports the party that wants to do something about climate change, but because of (1) gerrymandering (with the U.S. House), (2) disproportionate representation (the U.S. Senate), and (3) the electoral college (presidency / executive branch), the ability of the majority of Americans being able to exert their will has been severely damaged and dampened[1].

If the GOP succeeds at overthrowing even the feeble democracy that the U.S. has and establishing an illegal and cruel/evil dictatorship, would you still say that all liberals and progressives need to be peaceful and non-violent?

[1] Hence the lack of action when it comes to things like climate change, civil rights, voting rights, treating immigrants with kindness, reparations for former slaves and the First Nations / native Americans, welfare to help low-income people, universal healthcare (or even just Medicaid expansion), etc.

Also - in 2023 - if you really want to be an eco terrorist, you should be terrorising china, and most of asia. They are increasing their carbon emissions like there's no tomorrow.

Frankly, nothing the EU or the USA is doing at this point will matter, if Asia carries on doing what they are doing.

So these motorway blocking and paint throwing stunts are not only ridiculous narcissistic acts, that do more damage than good to the reputation of this whole eco activist movement, they are also completely useless in terms of CO2 reduction.

We need to either invent technology (which we are) to reduce emissions, or even extract them for the air, OR we need some crazy form of diplomacy to stop Asia from growing (this is called war btw).

It really is laughable that China is never part of the equation for these save the planet types.

China's per capita emissions are about the same as a middle of the road European country, and about 1/2 that of the US.

And yes, per capita is a much more relevant measure than per country as far as determining whether or not a given country is emitting over or under its fair share of the world's total emission budget, because the atmosphere does not care about arbitrary political boundaries.

If you go per country than any country that is emitting more than its share could simply split into 2 or more smaller countries, without any change whatsoever in the total emissions of that set of people, and go from being over their share to under their share. Doing so slightly lowers the fair share of other countries which might cause some of them to be over, but no problem--they can just split too. The end game for that is a huge number of tiny countries which converges to per capita.

Best would be something like per capita with adjustments for trade between countries.

If you brought emissions per capita in the US and EU down to levels of Asia, would that not far exceed the outcomes people are currently trying to get to?

If you relocated the subset of manufacturing emissions that eminate from Asian manufacturing for the purposes of selling products to US/EU, while keeping to the above, so that product lifecycle emissions are accrued where they’re consumed rather than the current proxy emissions by outsourcing manufacturing to asia. Would that not automatically crater Asia emissions?

Neither of these actions would require impressing action upon foreign sovereigns.

For accuracy most of these discussions revolve around the dichotomy between China and EU+US but in reality if we look at emissions per capita the real outliers are the Gulf countries, Australia, US, Canada (in that order).

So lets not forget about the Gulf countries and Canada/Australia role and responsability in our public discussion on this matter.

China's exports are actually flat at this point, yet their emissions are exploding. They have 1bn people who want to be richer. There is enough internal demand now that will mean emissions will rise without exports to the west.

Have you seen the graph or how emissions have fallen for the US and EU in the last 5 years, yet every year more emissions are added by china than those put together?

If China were to keep depending on coal.

In 2020 China has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2060, they will be under pressure to do better than that.

> Have you seen the graph or how emissions have fallen for the US and EU in the last 5 years,

What, including Covid, when the west temporarily turned off coal-power stations? Better to compare 2023 to 2019 numbers.

I think you're focusing on the percieved biggest part of the problem and ignoring that it's both possible and useful to adress other parts. Especially if you can't do anything about the big one.

Per-capita emissions is the only valid way of looking at it. If China split up into 20 separate countries, would you point the finger elsewhere because each of those 20 separate countries doesn't pollute much?

> Per-capita emissions is the only valid way of looking at it

No. Rate of change is what matters. How does per capita emissions matter when the graph looks like this? https://twitter.com/GuntramWolff/status/1627029836727459840

CO2 remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, so it is the area under the curve over the last few hundred years that matters.

China's emissions are currently rising, but they are also deploying a ton of solar and nuclear power plants, and electric cars use is rapidly growing (much faster than in the US). Most analysts expect China's emissions to peak in a few years and then decline.

Global warming isn't caused by the first derivative of emissions. It's caused by total emissions.

And again, per-capita is what matters. If China split up into 20 countries, your focus would not be on China, because it would not show up on that chart of yours. The focus on China really is that bone-headed.

Why should people in emerging economies stop improving their lives when it's emissions that made the first world into the advanced economies that they are that got us to this point in the first place?

I would agree that China, India and USA are probably the key countries here ( and to a lesser extent other parts of Asia, Africa and South America). However I can't see China and India doing anything significant here. USA could be leading the change along with parts of Europe, but I agree it will be difficult to do anything without the largest and more developing countries getting on board.

I know a lot of climate activists in the UK and while it's a noble goal, the UK is probably contributing less than 0.5% so any change there is fairly insignificant relatively.

> Frankly, nothing the EU or the USA is doing at this point will matter, if Asia carries on doing what they are doing.

Perhaps something that EU or the USA ends up doing, will make Asia not to carry what they are doing?

> We need to either invent technology (which we are) to reduce emissions, or even extract them from the air, OR we need some crazy form of diplomacy to stop Asia from growing

This seems to give some hope that EU or the USA can do something on their own, which feels like it may even matter. Or did you mean "AND" instead of "OR"?

> So these motorway blocking and paint throwing stunts are not only ridiculous narcissistic acts, that do more damage than good to the reputation of this whole eco activist movement,

This is worth emphasizing. This sort of acts are [generally rightly] seen as narcissistic trust-fund kids attacking the working class who are just trying to get to work so they can pay rent. Attacks on commuters is how you build animosity, not support. It is counterproductive but the people who do it don't care because they have narcissistic motivations. The more the victims of their protest hurl verbal or physical abuse back at the protesters, the more the protesters feel they have accomplished. Utterly counterproductive.

I see the eco-terrorist tag more and more abused for anything. I mean, if some organization plan to terrorize population, for example with bombs killing random citizens, that's matching terrorism for sure. Otherwise that is raw propaganda.

Fear of death is not the only kind of terror.

Sure but fear created by biosphere collapsing all around, massive human migrations, desertification and miscellaneous climate catastrophes are not things that mere terrorist groups can plot. :)

Yeah, we don't speak enough of the existential dread people have of seeing someone throw paint on a building.

Svante Arrhenius considered the greenhouse effect to be a blessing, because arctic regions would become fertile and a possible new ice age could be averted.

even this is true, there are vast amount of people will killed by typhoon, drought, storm and other disaster. in another way, it is posible that global warming can kill all creature on earth bfore polar become fertile.

I'm not saying he was right, I'm just stating what he was writing about the greenhouse effect at the time; so unlike what OP suggested, he wasn't warning people about it, quite the opposite, he was celebrating it.

thank you, I understand you displays his opinion, not yours. I wanted to make sure no people trust him here.

In another way, there are opinions which similar to his opinion are a little racism. people who probably killed by typhoon usually are not western/white county.

What about people that live in the tropics? What are they to do? Migration laws are strict all throughout the Global North.

If you're trying to argue with Svante Arrhenius you're too late, he passed away a long time ago. I'm just stating his opinion in reaction to OP, I don't agree with it.

A 19th century Swede, caring about what happens to those colonial savages in the tropics? How irrelevant I say, sir!

Remember, this was the era when Belgium was cutting off people's hands in the Congo for not making enough rubber. The regard for people in those regions was below zero.

Why is legal action and eco terrorism the only two options?

Better to work on solutions, like fusion power and battery technology for electric transport.

I will not comment for eco-terrorism, but if you want to get the companies to change what they are doing you only have one solution: the power of the law.

This is because taking care of your externalities as a company means instant added costs. You save money only on the long run as you make your production processes more efficient, you reduce waste, improve your supply chain, etc.

So, if you want a change now, you have only the law to force the company because on the short term it will be bad for the profits.

Changing the laws take time, finding a point where you hook into and take a legal action is going faster and can have rippling effects. You can see such action in Montana.

And of course in parallel you need to develop the technologies, reduce consumption, reuse, etc.

> fusion power and battery technology for electric transport

You mean praying for a miracle to save us instead of doing what's needed? Both of those can just as easily turn out to be unfeasible.

No, I mean developing the technology required to sustain a population nearing 10 billion people. What makes you think the good people working at Commonwealth Fusions Systems are “praying for a miracle”?

They are putting in the effort, not praying.

The prayer is that such systems will be working soon enough, and deployed soon enough, that it will be an effective way to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Wikipedia, Commonwealth Fusions Systems doesn't expect a working pilot plant for at least another 10 years. Commercial deployment will take even longer. But we need such reductions NOW.

And that's assuming it works, and not an overly optimistic expectation. I've been reading about plans for fusion power ever since I was a teenager in the 1980s.

Also, the Wikipedia entry for CFS comments "as a result of sanctions against Russia, CFS faced significant supply chain problems". CFS cannot simply use effort to make all future supply chain problems disappear. They can only pray there isn't a COVID25 that makes 2020 movement restrictions seem a walk in the park.

Any solution to climate change will take decades to implement. There is no turning this around quickly.

CFS are working on their first prototype reactor to be finished within a few years, but their factory to begin mass producing will take another decade. It is of course possible CFS will fail. However they have been on track for a while now.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4&pp=ygUhZGVubmlzIHd...

> Any solution to climate change will take decades to implement. There is no turning this around quickly.

Certainly.

But your assertion was it's "Better to work on solutions, like fusion power and battery technology for electric transport" than follow the alternatives of "legal action and eco terrorism".

Are you really arguing we should do nothing until technology solves things for us?

If so, that sounds like the "Parable of the drowning man" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_drowning_man - your faith in unproven future technology seems indistinguishable from prayers.

No, I am saying you should not be hoping someone else fixes the problem but that you join in and be a part of the solution.

Helping develop fusion power and battery technology are just two examples. You could become a wind turbine technician as another example(if you think wind power is good for the environment).

"legal action" does not mean "hoping someone else fixes the problem".

Nor, for that matter, is so-called "eco terrorism."

Why aren't both part of the solution?

> are just two examples

I wrote "until technology solves things for us" to include the wider range of possibilities you mean, rather than two limited examples.

We don't have decades.

The decades will pass whether we will it or not. I doubt we will all be dead in some cataclysmic event until then. Put in the work and hope for the best. What else is there?

> I doubt we will all be dead in some cataclysmic event until then.

Please don't derail the topic.

Your first comment on this thread was a response to DoingIsLearning's prediction: "Start suing start and start lobbying. It is pretty much the only thing left bar from going full eco terrorist (which I believe is entirely likely in our current timeline)."

That isn't a claim or concern that there will be cataclysmic event.

Think more like 'Weather Underground'-style bombings on local gas stations.

BTW, the way you wrote it makes it appears that you only care about yourself, and don't care if a cataclysmic event affects your children or any others who come after you. You might want to think of a better way to phrase your argument.

> "Start suing start and start lobbying."

This could actually have an effect (at least in the USA) now that those kids in Montana set a precedent with a favorable ruling in their case if enough people take the cue and file credible (non-frivolous) cases. It's certainly a preferable option over the whole "eco-terrorism" path which in the end will likely just escalate to literal all-out civil war.

> which in the end will likely just escalate to literal all-out civil war.

Why though? Purely hypothetical as I would prefer to not end up on a list.

But lets say hypothetically, if people started targetting Oil&Gas board members and lobbyists. Do you actually believe that there would be a significant percentage of the population against it, to the point of precipitating us/them factions?

Or would it just create fear and intimidation of key policy makers and light speed business plan transitions away from hydrocarbon economies?

For clarity most of these companies already have plans in place they are just waiting it out because there is still another 30 to 40 years horizon of 'profitable' extraction.

> "Why though?"

From what I've seen, humanity in general appears to be gravitating toward further and further political and ideological extremes, and corporations / governments / media appear all too happy to "profit" from encouraging those divisions and capitalizing on them in any way they can. To approve wars, tax expenditures / shelters, government spending, whatever all they do to gather more of everything for themselves. That combined with "eco-terrorism" feels like a dangerous path to me. One that could easily go way out of control entirely too quickly once started. Especially with all the other craziness that's goin' on in the world right now, with Russia "saber-rattling" their nukes, North Korea tryin' to get nukes goin', climate change, growing scarcity of certain super-important resources (water especially), etc. All seems like it's leading to pretty certain violence sooner or later, if humanity don't start lookin' for some better options real hard, real fast.

> ... "as I would prefer to not end up on a list."

Pretty sure we're all already "on a list" somewhere if Snowden's "revelations" taught us anything. "They" are watching at all times. ;)

What you really don't want is to get flagged for a "closer look".

Looking from a distance you are living a very unique media situation in the US that I feel doesn't necessarily extend across the whole globe.

I do agree with you that water wars will be the principal source of world order instability.

Let me tell, the biggest (de facto) "ecological saboteurs" are the "ecologists" who pushed against nuclear power

Then, I'm one of them.

I own a PV covering 120 % of my yearly power consumption. I obtain the remaining (night-time) energy from a 100 % renewable provider (no nuclear). I rarely use my car, which only consumes 5 l / 100 km. Most is done via bike. I work from home, use a Fairphone and teach my kids to produce less waste and try to repair everything that breaks.

I'd rather invest my money into developing seasonal power storage than building another nuclear plant.

France is already overheating their rivers and Germany has to fill the gap, whenever they have to shut down too many their plants. In Germany we still have to figure out how to get rid of the existing nuclear waste (and fix the previously failed attempts). Uranium has to be imported from other countries. Fukushima and Chernobyl are still not cleaned up. Even regular plants take decades to be decommissioned. We still cannot eat Mushrooms and Boar from Bavarian forests due to Chernobyl.

I know that being anti-nuclear is an unpopular opinion on HN, but that's how I think about that.

Try scaling your solution to 8 billions of people... oh you can't. You can't even scale it to Europe level, nor Germany level. Welcome to reality where imperfect solutions are required. Nuclear is much better than coal, which is what Germany runs on now, 'thank you' for polluting half of the world with mildly radioactive waste from burning coal and killing way more people than all nuclear disasters combined.

Its unpopular opinion since its stupid, very narrow, ignore-bigger-picture approach. We can do better than that. Not surprised its coming from Germany, since greens there brainwashed once a great nation into some seriously stupid long term moves (from economical and environmental view) that hurt and will hurt whole Europe for next few decades. I'd say Germany economy is still strong despite government it had/has, not thanks to it.

> Try scaling your solution to 8 billions of people... oh you can't

Yes we can, why do you think we can't?

I like nuclear power, and yes it's much safer than the reputation, but its geopolitical (and local political) issues are killing it.

For scale (while I like the idea it has its own geopolitical issues), a global power grid would involve about as much Aluminium as we produce globally every 3.75 years, costing about as much as just what China alone spends on coal every 12 months.

I never suggested that "my personal solution" is to be applied everywhere. I suggested to work on making renewables more approachable and to reduce the energy consumption where it's feasible.

Not sure why I'm being personally attacked like this.

Well you didn't suggest anything useful to the discussion then, just bragged a bit about your un-scaleable and un-useable personal situation which had a slight condescending aspect.

Absolutely nobody here argues renewables shouldn't be invested in, same for minimizing footprint, that's not even up to discussion. Its like saying in a topic about russian war on Ukraine that people should stop being nasty and be nice to each other, because I am nice to people around me. Feels nice but useless.

This alone doesn't solve anything we discuss today nor tomorrow, nor next year nor next decade. That's when imperfect practical solutions I mentioned need to be used, despite people like you on high horse telling everybody how bad it is and how they use something better.

I hope this explains my reaction enough.

> I obtain the remaining (night-time) energy from a 100 % renewable provider

I'd be curious to know how that particular sausage is made. Batteries? reversible dam? Or certificates?

> France is already overheating their rivers and Germany has to fill the gap, whenever they have to shut down too many their plants.

I would advise you to look into the details of energy exports in Europe, because that is not matching with public datasets.

Well, at least you're trying to compensate with PV. That's fine by me

> overheating their rivers and Germany has to fill the gap

Germany is filling the gap by importing electricity from France

> we still have to figure out how to get rid of the existing nuclear waste

Maybe ask France or the US, they seem to be more practical on how to do this

> Uranium has to be imported from other countries.

And PV panels don't? You need many less trucks of uranium than of coal

> We still cannot eat Mushrooms and Boar from Bavarian forests due to Chernobyl.

I know. But this doesn't sound too healthy neither https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11900206/

> Germany is filling the gap by importing electricity from France

Not to disagree, but the picture is more complex.

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/even-crisis-germany-...

> Maybe ask France or the US, they seem to be more practical on how to do this

Was curious about that as well, but I only keep finding "solutions" that are in the make or disputed.

This is from 2014, so maybe they found a solution in the meantime? https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-26425674

I'm also trying to find the final costs of any disposal.

Renewables aren't without problems of course. We still need a solution where the blades of the wind turbines don't end up in landfills. That's effectively not renewable.

> And PV panels don't? You need many less trucks of uranium than of coal

I don't understand. Coal isn't required to build PV? We once had PV industry here but everything moved to $China :(

> I know. But this doesn't sound too healthy neither https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11900206/

Not sure why everyone assumes I'm pro coal when I explicitly stated that I'm trying to push renewables.

> Not sure why everyone assumes I'm pro coal when I explicitly stated that I'm trying to push renewables.

Because the discussion is not about you, but what happened when people pushed against Nuclear

I get your point, but meaning of the word "eco-terrorist" is kind of the opposite

Re: eco terrorism, I strongly suspect this will happen too. Domestically in places like the UK where the penalties for peaceful protest are increasing dramatically, and internationally when people start realising their lives being destroyed by climate change is as a result of westerners refusing to make even basic choices to mitigate their impact on the world.

  Start suing

You mean the "got caught" tax? Still cheaper. The entire system (from monetary policy to shareholder value) is incentivized to extract all resources and grow capital until everything is dust.

Even our "natural parks" are sold to corporations for resource extraction. There is no going back. Only certain catastrophe or a radically alternative system is implemented.

Tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes, then use that money to clean up the pollution.

Magically cheaper ways to clean up pollution, and ways to cause less pollution will be then created

> Magically cheaper ways to clean up pollution, and ways to cause less pollution will be then created

Sure. Also while we're at it, we can tax companies for not using perpetual motion in their industrial processes, and, magically, perpetual motion machines will be invented.

That would require way more magic/sufficiently advanced technology than we can afford currently

> Tax everything the amount it costs to clean up the pollution it causes

This would be very fair but note that it instantly kills anything that produces nuclear waste, as you must factor in the cost of maintaining that waste for 100 000 years or more.

It would instantly kill anything full stop depending on what you call pollution. There is no such thing as a fully cyclic industrial production system.

Nuclear is only special in that it's one of the very few industries for which we are careful to track its impact. If we started using the same standard for everything we do, everything would disappear overnight, starting with agriculture.

If so then there's no solution except most people dying, which is why we should at least try something better

...and in the 70s they were told the exact opposite [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

Your own link points out that "... less than 10% were inclined towards future cooling, while most papers predicted future warming."

Even if that were not to be the case, I'm still not sure why it would be relevant in any kind of good-faith discussion/debate about our rapidly changing global climate. 1970-1980 was a ten year period, forty years ago.

> Some press reports in the 1970s speculated about continued cooling; these did not accurately reflect the scientific literature of the time, which was generally more concerned with warming from an enhanced greenhouse effect

And the term "Gell-Mann amnesia effect" wouldn't be coined for another few decades.

I've currently got a big wildfire within walking distance from me. I moved to the community where I live less than a decade ago and there were never any serious wildfires, now we have a major one every year and it looks like there won't be much unburnt forest left after the next decade is out. And if it isn't the fire that kills the forest, the heat will. We've started to see a lot of trees dying off in local populations during the past 2 years. Can't find a spot of forest without a bunch of fresh snags mixed in anymore.

I almost got caught in a fire a few years ago and thought it was a freak event but it's really just a new normal. I'll be moving soon, not sure where, but I'm fed up.

/rant

Forest fires are a great example of direct result ecological policy. We are at the point we’re at precisely because of bad public policy surrounding forest fires.

Partly yes, but 10 years ago, or even 5, were not even 1% as bad as they are now. Forest litter, undergrowth and logging practices didn't really change in that time, but the heat did. Drought cycles have happened periodically, but the fires didn't get anywhere like this. I think we've pushed the limits of a complex system and we're seeing the beginnings of a sudden and dramatic shift.

Look at wildfires probably anywhere on the planet. The trend is the same, independent of policy.

If you don't do occasional controlled burns, when you leave it several years the next fire will be a huge one.

yeah no joke. But that's not what were looking at here on a global scale...

It may very well be the case that your region is experiencing unusual fires, but citing a decade of experience with that land to make that point is pretty ridiculous. A decade is nothing, even a century of consideration is just the bare minimum. Ideally you should be able to look at records going back hundreds if not thousands of years and when those records are lacking (the case in much of the New World), geological evidence is important.

People thinking one lifetime of experience is significant is how you get people living in the PNW who think wildfires are a new aberration in the past 10 years because 15 to 50 years ago there was relatively little smoke.. but if you read accounts from people 150 years ago they all say the summers were insufferably very smokey. In Europe and Asia communities have much longer memories for these sort of things, for instance warnings about droughts and tsunamis hundreds of years ago. But in America people think 10 years is an eternity.

The old joke has a lot of truth; in America people think 100 years is a long time, while in Europe people think 100 miles is a long distance.

Geological data like ice cores? https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/

Ice cores are good for global climate trends, not so much for local wildfire trends. However the later can be revealed by examining char layers in the soil.

I sense a combative attitude coming from your comment so let me be clear about this: Man-made climate change is real. And simultaneously, drawing conclusions about a specific region's propensity to burn from only 10 years of personal experience is farcical.

Unfortunately despite the media coverage, most of these fires have nothing to do with climate change [1], and in fact in europe for example this year we had less fires by area than in the last 10 years [2].

I'm all for sustainable living, and looking after our planet, but the hysteria that media is riding now is absolutely ridiculous. I suggest following Bjorn Lomborg [3] for more rational coverage of climate issues.

[1] https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/35/13/JCLI-D...

[2] https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/1688536889974816768

[3] https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg

> we had less fires by area than in the last 10 years

The nature of wildfire is changing - a massive reduction in open grassland, savannah, managed area fires does nothing to offset the fact that old growth forests and long standanding thick woolands are being burnt to the ground.

Part of of climate change is a change in distribution of humidity - rain forests drying ut and burning is no light matter to be dismissed with a vapid "yes, but..."

I'm not hysterical,as you so condescendingly put it, I'm pragmatic about the real nature of actual data - comes from decades in global scale exploration geophysics and earth mapping.

Your Bjorn Lomborg is just doing the conservative misdirect tango.

Please point me to the data then. How are these fires worse than before, if acres burned are the lowest in 10 years?

Sure.

First point though, you bought up "but actually .. fires are decreasing".

As a STEM educator used to talking to students my first question to you is, why aren't you already across the primary data yourself?

Do you not care? Is this no more than a talking point for you like a meaningless afternoon tennis match?

So ..

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145421/building-a-l...

    “There are really two separate trends,” said Randerson. “Even as the global burned area number has declined because of what is happening in savannas, we are seeing a significant increase in the intensity and reach of fires in the western United States because of climate change.”

https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/topics/human-dimensions/natur...

    The number, severity, and overall size of wildfires has increased,

FIRMS: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map

See also: recent Australian Bushfires, Canadian Bushfires

> How are these fires worse than before, if acres burned are the lowest in 10 years?

I'm going to assume that as you're on HN you're more than bright enough to understand the difference between 3D volume and 2D area .. correct? That you understand a wide open grassland is different to a dense tall forest in terms of fuel volume?

The tweet I linked shows european wildfires. Last time I checked, there are no savannas in europe.

"I'm going to assume that as you're on HN you're more than bright enough to" know there are no savannas in europe.

You are falling in the trap of thinking that ecologists argue in good faith.

They hate you, you are the carbon they want to reduce. Don't engage.

Bjorn Lomborg is great to read if you don't have an honest desire to understand and want to ignore the actual problem and feel better about yourself. Lomborg essential draws heavily on Nordhaus, who, like many economists starts from his point and then finds some maths to justify it. Nordhaus's IPCC contribution is disgraceful and should be utterly disregarded for its unjustified extrapolations and wishful thinking.

The paper you cite in [1] is interesting and worth reading. However, it doesn't support a claim that fires on Hawaii have nothing to do with climate change (and of course it says nothing whatsoever about fires elsewhere -- Hawaii's weather, and climate, are extraordinarily localized).

Yes if you do look at individual data points you'll find outliers, that's like the whole damn point people are making...

Look at 2022 now, one year ago, on the complete opposite of the spectrum:

https://emergency.copernicus.eu/mapping/sites/default/files/...

What does it mean ? That it's becoming increasingly unstable. Does it fit the """"narrative"""" ? yes

This dude is so obviously just trying to sell his books it's painful, "believe me and you'll be part of the in group of people who _know_ the _truth_". For every single data point he finds that doesn't fit the """"narrative"""" you'll find a hundred that do.

Cherry-picking data to support your biases hardly falls under the category of rationalist coverage. Just like the radical environmentalists, Lomborg seems particularly prone to his biases.

Unfortunately, reality is more complicated than what fits in a few tweets about wild fires, polar bears and coral reefs.

As a sibling has noted, the paper you cite does not support your claim. In fact, it doesn't even mention wildfires.

The authors suggest that existing predictors of Hawaiian precipitation need to be updated so they're more accurate. They note that "dryness has been observed over the islands, indeed the driest such 20-yr period on record" and that this has become particularly unpredictable in the 21st century.

In their "suite of atmospheric model simulations" the authors describe "the observed 2010–19 ocean boundary forcings and atmospheric chemical composition" as the "factual" which is contrasted with the "climate of that period absent effects of long-term global warming drivers" as the "counterfactual" (emphasis mine). They test three models, finding that "all three models produce Hawaiian-region drying in response to a zonally uniform ocean warming".

Their preferred theory of "atmospheric decadal variability" is "ENSO" -- El Niño Southern Oscillation. They cite [0] which describes "decadal scale changes in the general atmospheric circulation [and] long-term changes in the atmospheric circulation itself."

Finally, every author of the paper you cited has published repeatedly about the relationship between global warming and wildfires, e.g. [1], [2], [3], [4]. In conclusion, I find your post here to be disingenuous and either made in ignorance at best, or in bad faith at worst.

[0] https://rmets.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.631

[1] https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2013AGUFMGC51B0971P/abstra...

[2] https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/23003

[3] https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/bams/103/12/BAMS-...

[4] https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/53/12/jamc-d...

Nothing to do with record heat and record droughts? dude.. seriously.. Get out of here with this nonsense.

That's Al Gore at 11:28.

https://youtu.be/Wp-WiNXH6hI?t=688

If you watch the entire video, you'll see he's actively involved on this committee presentation, arguments and deliberation.

https://climatestate.com/2018/02/23/carl-sagan-al-gore-in-19...

Meanwhile in Canada:

https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/copernicus-emissions-canadi...

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