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Comment by Transpire7487 | Hacker News Reader

99.9% species to ever exist have gone extinct. Just because we see one happening in front of us with expensive measuring equipment doesn't mean much.

This has big "the polar bears are starving" because of climate change vibes.

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The most exhausting aspect of climate denial is the rehashing of bad faith arguments that have, for all intents and purposes, been refuted hundreds of times.

I don't deny climate change. Quite the opposite. I just don't believe there's anything we can actually do about it. Seems a lot of the climate fanatics also agree with me, because we've passed many of their so-called "points of no return" and failed to achieve anything that would have averted them.

Seems to me that we should be trying to make people's lives easier in the meantime, rather than making them miserable and poor with bonkers legislation, regulation and taxes.

The "Earth is dying, oh well let's live it up in the meantime" argument is one I keep hearing more and more from former climate deniers. This is the third stage of grief if I'm not wrong.

"The Earth is dying, lets make everyone's life miserable anyway" doesn't quite have the same ring to it.

Fanatics still seem to be stuck in the "bargaining" phase, I feel ahead of the curve to be honest.

I've read the 5 stages of climate denial as:

  1. It's not happening
  2. It's not our fault
  3. It's not that bad
  4. We can't solve it
  5. It's too late

So in that framing we're on step 4 or 5 I think.

That's not complete.

6. Let's (try to) do something about it.

I've believed/had a basic understanding of the science since around high school, and at this point, I'm pretty much in the "get my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames" camp too. It's quite clear at this point what direction it's all headed. I suppose the deniers "won".

I think solar radiation management is the only last-ditch idea that might pull things out.

Until the prognosis is "100% chance of the imminent death of all humans", there will always be something we can do. We have passed "points of no return" meaning we won't avoid all consequences of climate change, but climate change isn't a binary "either we're fine or everybody dies" kind of thing. The more we reduce emissions, the fewer people will ultimately die from climate change, the fewer people will be displaced as climate refugees, the fewer people will have their quality of life reduced, the slower the changes will occur, etc.

In terms of outcomes, "climate change is real but nothing we could do would have any effect" is identical to "climate change is fake", which is why you're getting lumped in with the deniers.

This fails to take into account the reduced quality of life from implementing things like carbon taxes and other regulations that increase the costs of everyday goods and services, ultimately increasing the cost of living. Essentially making everyone poorer. Poverty increases your risk of mortality quite substantially.

Canada implemented carbon taxes to reduce emissions. Emissions still rose and everything just became more expensive.

From what I understand, large infrastructure investments (such as building out a green electric grid) are great for the economy.

Even if it's a net cost though... it's not like there isn't enough money to go around. If only there was a way to redistribute that wealth so that poor people didn't get even poorer.

I really truly don't think the only two options are "do nothing" or "do something but at such a great cost to people's quality of life that the cost outweighs the many millions or billions of lives saved".

I'm all for large infrastructure investments in clean energy. Unfortunately the people in power where I live (Northern Ontario in Canada) only seem interested in inneffective taxes and crony capitalism.

Any so-called attempt to "redistribute wealth" has led to massive inflation and a borderline humanitarian crisis in our cities with people losing their homes and becoming addicted to deadly drugs on the streets.

I'm much more likely to agree with criticism of any particular climate policy than the general statement "it's too late and the cost of any climate policy would outweigh the benefits".

This fails to take into account the reduced quality of life due to climate change itself.

This would be incredibly insightful if only we didn’t know that the current rate of extinction is extremely high, and on par with (if not exceeding) that of other mass extinction periods in our planet’s history.

> the current rate of extinction is extremely high, and on par with (if not exceeding) that of other mass extinction periods in our planet’s history

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

"The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates, and is increasing"

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/13/almost-7...

Animal populations experience average decline of almost 70% since 1970, report reveals

Mass extinction events are generally not good for the animals which happen to exist during them. As one such animal, I would prefer if we tried to limit the damage.

There are many technologies which are inspired by animals found in nature as they have adapted several features after many generations, all such knowledge will be lost.

If I create a new kind of tool based on the beak of an emperor penguin, that tool doesn't suddenly vanish if emperor penguins go extinct.

Also, for reference, thousands of animals die in the annual wildfires.

And thousands of animals also die due to industrial agriculture.

Especially due to animal agriculture (80% of agricultural lands).

Animal ag is the leading driver of biodiversity loss, deforestation, droughts, water usage, eutrophication etc.

We could switch to plant-based diets, reforest the pastures (the size of both Americas) and stop climate change (together with phase-out of fossil fuels) and store enough carbon in those forests to cause new little ice age and reverse the warming.

100% of all people who have ever lived have died. Does this mean we don't draw attention to genocide?

There's no such thing as genocide in the (non-human) animal kingdom. There is only natural selection.

You've completely sidestepped the analogy and are just talking past me.

The analogy is nonsense.

I’ll lay it out for you more explicitly:

Animals have always died as a part of nature, therefore we shouldn’t care about humans causing extinctions.

Is the same as saying:

Humans have always died as a part of nature, therefore we shouldn’t care about humans causing genocides.

Is this an intelligent way to think?

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