How Accurate Were EPAs Predictions of climate change from 40 years ago?

It's certainly not proof of absence. But when the need for climate models that discount AGW pertains to a trillion dollar industry with a large staff of computer modeling specialists, using the same hardware and often the same software as climate scientists, and they can't come up with something, it's evidence, and it's strong evidence.

We posted almost the same comment. I do disagree with one point. The US is the country with the most global power and is instrumental in driving global change so I really disagree that they do not hold a huge responsibility.

I mean, Germany is trying to lead by example, but their attempt is pathetic. Nobody is going to care what Germany does and they do not have the economic and political power to enforce global change. But the US does.

I am not saying the US can do it alone, but it has to show both initiative and willingness.

> Both of these no one has any plans yet which wouldn’t require major changes in the way people live

Eh... I mean, nearly every country in the EU has seen reducing greenhouse gas emissions for years (even _with_ replacement of some gas generation with higher-intensity coal generation due to the invasion of Ukraine), on the foot of building retrofitting, increased renewable generation, etc. The US and China have also been investing significantly in renewable generation (though, I believe, at least in the US's case, building retrofitting has yet to start on a large scale). US emissions are broadly declining and have been for a while, Chinese emissions have almost flatlined, though are still inching up. People are doing stuff.

> the way the US interacts with the world which would put them at a major disadvantage with everyone else

Huh? I would think that the US is actually in a rather good position here, certainly relative to Europe and probably to China. The US is very physically big, so lots of space for renewables, and is more self-sufficient on lower-carbon-intensity fossil fuel (ie gas, likely realistically essential as a transition fuel) than the others. It would also likely find lower-intensity agriculture easier to cope with, if it comes to that.

> And this isn’t a problem caused just by the US. So even if the US did this, the rest of the world would keep on trucking and making the issue worse.

China is if anything currently outpacing the US on renewable and other low-intensity (nuclear) generation capacity.

This feels like a comment written 30 years ago, back when no-one was doing anything much. Today, the big three are doing some stuff, with plans for more.

> Until the problem is causing real, unavoidable, unambiguous issues for everyone, of course it’s going to be denied.

The denial is interesting. In the developed world, it's only a significant factor in the US, Canada, and Australia, all of which have large fossil fuel industries, and in all of which it has been highly politicised. (Similar pattern in the developing world; the big denial cheerleader there being Indonesia). In most countries, it is fairly broadly accepted to be happening, and to be at least largely humanity's fault. Even in countries where denial is a significant political issue, it is generally on the decline (as you'd expect; the percentage of the electorate who'll die off anyway before we see really major impact is declining).

> . . . mostly about what people want.

Which is all marketing. Marketing is designed to influence and to make us want. We can't blame people because marketing to them works.

> If you’re ever tried to take the booze from an alcoholic, it’s obvious what’s going to happen

I don't think it is obvious what happens when you take booze away from an alcoholic. Are you aware that the absence of alcohol can kill them? Were you trying to kill them?

> The political climate is mostly about what people want.

Man someone should tell all the oil companies that are actively running campaigns to push propaganda on folks to change political opinions.

Yes, it is "what people want". You're missing the line of "How did we get to the point of people wanting this".

But instead of asking that question, you're jumping to blaming the victims and not the system that allowed a few people with money to completely change the thoughts and behaviors of millions of people.

Now you're cooking with gas!

> I am actually not convinced either way. Some people believe it is so expensive it will necessitate degrowth, while others think that so much economic change will almost certainly spur economic growth. Either way I think that people who push the degrowth narrative are further reinforcing the view that climate action is too costly. Nonetheless it could be that they are right.

Whatever your view on that is, it doesn't really matter because the costs if climate change goes unchecked are going to be catastrophically high - direct in terms of e.g. having to rebuild burned down/flooded/etc. areas, more electricity for AC, etc. or indirect such as having to accommodate mass migration from climate refugees.

> The electorate perceives the change to be too costly […] I am actually not convinced either way.

The insurance companies are convinced:

* https://www.munichre.com/en/risks/climate-change.html

* https://www.insuranceinstitute.ca/en/resources/insights-rese...

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is...

* https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2023/08/09/climate-change-cana...

They regularly have to pay out for what happens, and they're not happy about the direction things are going and are passing the cost along. Just ask anyone living in Florida:

* https://www.newsweek.com/florida-insurance-crisis-explained-...

* https://www.pnj.com/story/money/2023/07/12/florida-insurance...

> If people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000% due to recalculated natural disaster risks, that would suddenly make people rethink their positions.

Insurance costs what it does due to the risk of paying out. Changing risks makes the price of the insurance change as well. If insurance companies aren't changing their prices, then the risk isn't changing either.

By asking to inflate the cost of insurance artificially, you're really only pointing out that natural disasters have not yet increased enough to notice.

> The political climate is just an obfuscation. The electorate perceives the change to be too costly* and the climate risks to be too remote to justify this cost

This is true but it’s really important to remember that’s not some historical accident but the result of decades of anti-science messaging and political campaigning by the fossil fuel industry after their internal scientists confirmed the problem was significant. In the absence of that huge amount of distortion most people would have an accurate understanding of the risks. We should remember those companies in the same light as the tobacco companies, Purdue Pharmaceuticals, etc.

Unfortunately as we can see even in a relatively educated community like HN there are a lot of people willing to parrot that propaganda because the alternative is not just making lifestyle changes but now also having to admit that they have been repeating falsehoods for a long time.

What does this even matter? Seriously. Consumers aren't the architects of consumer capitalism. They aren't the ones who decided that economic growth must continue forever, in part by the middle class “consumers” who have to spend most of their money on commodities that ideally last so short that they will eventually have to buy the same thing again. Imagine if most people could buy all their appliances and get their needs met within a few years by things that are of good quality (which means more second-hand resale). Imagine if society was built for mass transit instead of (especially in America) urban sprawl, which would mean that far fewer families would need 1–2 cars. (And the US road network was designed top-down: you don't build a car-dependent society based on consumer actions.)

But that would be bad for the economy: less money in circulation, less growth.

If consumers (as citizens) got mad because “people's home insurance suddenly jumped up 1000%“. Then they would do protests... so what? Protests can change things but it's a very low form of power.

>> "Let's not call out India and China"

> You do realize that the US is doing way worse in Co2/capita/year

> right now than both of those (~15tons compared to ~9 and ~2, respectively)?

If you call out "per country", China is double the US.

If you call out "per capita per country", there are 14 countries worse than the US, including Canada and Australia.

Not saying the US is blameless, but you're playing games with the stats. Why aren't you criticizing individuals in Qatar? They're emitting more than double the CO2 per person than the US.

https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by...

You do realize that the US is also down from its' peak of CO2/Capita production, whereas china is getting there per-captia. (13 US, ~9 China), and the trend doesn't seem to be stopping? Per capita becomes kind of a bad comparitor when the trend is towards parity, and the overall output isn't slowing.

I've been around long enough to see that the climate change stuff really only ratchets up in the US when going into an election year, and if the correct candidate makes it in, it immediately stops, regardless of their actual climate change policy. (Sure, let's ignore the drilling that's going on under the current administration. Or the oil permits being given out. Or the lessenings of tarrifs on import goods leading to an increase of fantastic microplastics in your drinking water and additional CO2 emissions overseas). There really is no room to not be harsh on articles like this. The only thing articles like this are doing is proving the denlialists right.

(Grabbing my data from https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... here)

I sometimes dream of a situation where we seek status through virtuous behaviour. Unfortunately there’s no religion with sufficient authority at the moment to gather a big enough community where this would take place, at least none that I could see myself joining. And at the same time consumerism is quite aggressive when you decide to opt out of it. It becomes hard to socialize when you publicly state that most of the available work contributes to worsening the environmental conditions and earns you money that you can’t spend on something else than consumerism.

Fair points. How to help people find a healthy sense of purpose without the pitfalls of many (all?) religions (this may reveal my ignorance about religion; perhaps the problem isn't religion itself but how we humans interpret and implement religious practices?) seems key.

Culture shapes behavior, individuals can affect culture, and culture transcends individuals; if I have a positive impact towards decreasing the amplitude of climate-change catastrophe (part of what matters to me while I'm alive), that may help me die with more grace, knowing that my contributions will carry on awhile. After I'm dead nothing matters to me anymore (presumably), but while I'm alive it feels right to push for what I value.

As human being have been doing since the dawn of history.

“Probably ok” doesn’t seem adequate to cover wildfires, large scale storm flooding in areas which weren’t previously prone to it, tropical diseases becoming endemic, etc. We probably won’t have massive famines but we’re definitely going to have cost increases and reduced availability which a lot of people are going to have a hard time with. People who aren’t rich are going to struggle with all of this at the same time, especially when homeowners insurance starts meaning you can’t get a mortgage (or sell your home to someone who’ll need one).

I don't like the idea of living someplace where if the air conditioning fails, I die. I don't know where the wet bulb temp is hitting/will hit 35/95, but those places are off my list of places to live.

I'm legitimately curious, if food supply is disrupted, how do you plan to stop starving people from stealing that food while you are asleep? Armed guards doing shifts along the walls? If you've got enough food production that's probably a legit option, as long as they are loyal. Also how about water supply for the crops?

Is that the global cooling that all the denier sites were predicting for 2016?

You know, because the global warming was all caused by the sun and the sunspot cycle was going to enter a new Maunder Minimum leading to a new Little Ice Age.

How did that work out?

There were a small number of scientists who in the '70s were predicting cooling.

Those scientists agreed that greenhouse gases cause warming, but they thought that the cooling effect from particulate pollution would be more significant.

The thing about particulates is that they and some of theor bad effects are very clearly directly noticeable to the average person. You could see them in the air, and feel and taste and smell then when you would breath that air.

That makes it much more feasible politically to deal with them, and Congress and the states enacted many laws and programs to do so.

And so particulate levels dropped dramatically over the next several years, invalidating the assumption of the models that predicted cooling.

I wish people would educate themselves about this myth.

Global cooling was never a concern for climate scientists. It was the press that promoted it.

https://gizmodo.com/reality-check-most-scientists-never-beli...

Greed = stupid when it comes to removing all resources and destroying the habitat that sustains you.

How do you simply adapt to temperatures which are literally unlivable such as wet bulb temperatures hitting 33C+ in areas such as the Middle East and South Asia? Humans literally cannot survive at such temperatures. Mass migration or mass investment in redoing the building stock and electrical grid to make indoors habitable are the only options, and neither are really viable (tens of millions migrating will cause severe issues up to and including wars, meanwhile most of the countries likely to be impacted simply do not have the money nor governance needed to rebuild everything with AC).

Most people couldn't even handle masking and staying indoors during a plague. At a time when hospitals were rationing oxygen they were folks acting like not being able to go to Applebee's was a human rights violation.

The most likely adaptation is some form of eco-fascism.

being a refugee is an adaptation to climate change, you and the OP are not in disagreement.

TBH, I enjoyed the series more than I wanted to admit; plot holes galore, everyone carrying the stupid ball, but I enjoyed it

Exactly, at this stage the panic inducing "OMG we're all going to die/out children will live in MadMax world for sure" mental state should be added to the long list of dangers caused by the climate around the climate change. Right after the danger of knee-jerk deindustrialisation of the West and collapse of democracies in favor of autocracies. These countries (like China) not only double their greenhouse emissions for each tonne we limit, they also actively promote fear and panic amongst our populations that leads to the very deindustrialisation that will form the basis of their power over us.

However, I remain optimistic, yes there is climate change, yes it will have a range of effects on people depending on where they live. From the lengthening of the growing season and all the positive outcomes, through minor inconvenience, to crop failures/lack of water and death of the others. Sadly, some of the poorest regions on the planet will be hit the worst and some of the most wealthy will reap the benefits.

Without actual physical power over countries like China there is no stopping of climate change. The best we(democracies) can do is to retain as much power as possible to help as many people as possible during this time.

Imagine scenario 1 where a climate change is slowed down by 1C over next 20 years at the cost of entire deindustrialisation of Europe, and it's subsequent subjugation to Russian-Chinese partnership.

Then scenario 2 where we have 1C of extra warming now not in 20 years, but Europe remains free, wealthy and able to continue to help poorer countries, accept refugees etc. Which world is going to be a better one?

I think people will choose option 2.

> This is not even close to the scientific consensus on climate change. It’s just as unscientific and counterproductive as the drivel repeated by climate denialists.

Nonsense: climate scientists have been making accurate predictions since the 1970s and, more importantly those have become more precise over time because their goal is to do scientific research and see where the results lead rather than starting from the precept “we can’t reduce profits for polluters” and working backwards. You can see the difference in how many different things deniers have latched onto over the years – each time we’re told that some minor gap completely disproves the entire field, and then when that’s debunked they move on to some other random point, very similar to creationists’ “god of the gaps” where it’s left with increasingly insignificant claims between multiple lines of robust argument and evidence.