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Comment by altacc | Hacker News Reader

Human reasoning is an amazingly flexible thing. We've gone from "this problem doesn't exist" to "this is natural variance" to "even if it was real we shouldn't do anything about it because it would cost us and others aren't doing the same" to "well, it's too late now and we need to keep consuming to save ourselves from the consequences of our consumption". Anything to avoid inconveniencing ourselves or force significant & meaningful action to truly reign in the industries with the biggest effects on climate.

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This "too late" narrative is dangerous. Climate change is not a binary, we can choose what the maximum temperature will be, and the higher, the worse. It appears that each degree is increasingly bad. The change from 4 to 5 degrees of warming will cause far more damage than the rise from 3 to 4.

Yes, stopping at 1.5 is now impossible. But stopping at 2 isn't impossible and stopping at 3 is realistic. Stopping at 5 will be catastrophic. Let's not do that.

I wonder how we stop at 2 or 3? Or ever? When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly. I live a very energy-conscious life but I believe it mostly just codes to society as "loser". That I can live with; it's essentially the only way I can live with myself knowing the cost that I create to the planet. But exceedingly few will choose to live the way I do.

"Too late" is also a bit of an academic question as well; there are dragons lurking in the Earth systems - tipping points where carbon sinks become carbon sources and other feedback mechanisms waiting to be tipped. It's very easy to imagine that one tipping point cascades into another to create a runaway effect, though I don't believe there is scientific consensus on exactly where these points are, so we can perhaps hope to avoid them. That the oceans are so much hotter now than models predicted is an ominous sign that our understanding of such a complex system is still quite limited.

Individuals choosing to live an energy-conscious life is commendable, and if enough people did it it might even ripple some small effects upwards, but ultimately I don't think that would ever be enough to actually solve anything. It has to be a top-down solution where lawmakers force the big corporations to be energy/environment conscious, but of course with the politicians (in the U.S. at least) being in the pocket of those very companies that's a tall order.

> When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly.

Isolating everyone to only ever see the place they were born and never travel the world seems like a big overreaction to me. Transport (and specifically aviation) is hardly the biggest offender as well. Energy, Industry, and Agriculture are 80% of emissions, we should start there.

There are less carbon intensive methods of travel, though they obviously come with inconveniences. Also, the technology to see and learn about other places has never been better or more available to everyone. People seem to like working from home, perhaps they can learn to do more from home generally (and again I'll be told that that is a ridiculous notion).

But if I really wanted to start a flamewar, I'd suggest agricultural changes; that is eating less beef in particular and meat generally. There are reasons so many religions have diet restrictions - it's a fairly fundamental part of human identity.

There are large-effect changes that can be made industry-wide (reducing the carbon intensity of power grids for example) that can be done before we start asking people to change fundamental aspects of their culture like diet.

These efforts targeted at changing individual behavior are distractions from actual things that economies could choose to do centrally to largely fix the problems. There is no reason we need to continue burn coal/gas to generate power, except that we think it is too expensive to make the effort to switch over. For example, Germany choosing to shut down nuclear power plants while there are still fossil power plants on their grid means they don't really believe that climate change is as big a threat to civilization as they say elsewhere.

The large-scale vs personal scale thing is a false dichotomy, ultimately it means individuals sacrifice energy use. But moreover, I cannot control the economy; I can only control my own actions, and I feel a responsibility to do so. Perhaps this is a fault of my character - it certainly brings me more discomfort than I'd like, but ultimately I do feel more at peace with my existence on this planet.

> When I suggest that people shouldn't fly in planes, I get responses like I've called their children ugly

It's one thing to do something to make yourself feel comfortable, it's another to say things to make others feel uncomfortable.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I actually acknowledged that my own life is less comfortable than it could be (and I still probably use more than "my share" of carbon compared to global means). I will in fact be traveling this summer and I assure you that flying on a plane would be more comfortable than the arrangements I have made.

But life is often uncomfortable; sometimes you must endure a needle or a surgery in order to receive life-saving medicine. My city in South Texas hit a record heat index of 117 last year - I can assure you that that is very uncomfortable, and yet we are still in the relatively early stages of global warming; I assume that I'll need to move north at some point in my life.

But even I fear some discomforts - I cannot imagine a frank discussion with children today about the future they are staring down, and I have to imagine its one that nearly all parents will face (not that I am among them).

The main issue is the actual effect of your actions. One person living as energy-frugally as possible may make them feel good, but ultimately it's pointless unless another couple of billion people join you, and sadly, many of us are some varying degree of apathetic or ignorant.

I may be wrong, but I think larger actions like replacing power plants, etc. are far easier to do at this point.

It's a funny thing these days; there are two "optimistic" camps. One that says that social change is impossible, but technology can save us, and the other that says that we have no real near-term technological fixes, but we can be saved by large-scale changes to society. In an irony that would be delicious if it weren't so existentially terrifying, I think they are both right and both wrong, but not the way we'd wish.

Building out technology that we already have can save us. We just need to agree to pay for it, which we can't because some of us are too poor to make changes required, some of us are apathetic, some of us are actively antagonistic (think coal rollers and such), and some of us are ignorant (willfully or otherwise). Like all large-scale problems, it's the people who are in the way, not tech.

> Energy, Industry, and Agriculture are 80% of emissions, we should start there.

Both transport and heating each comprise more than 20%.

And telling people they shouldn't eat meat will likely result in even more backlash than telling them they shouldn't fly.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Nature doesn't care how much enjoyment people get from travelling the world. It just experiences the impact on the atmosphere.

Energy, industry and agriculture all improve everyone's lives, while less than 20% of the world population has taken even a single flight.

The New Climate Institute has a study showing how we can hit 2 degrees without carbon capture or geo-engineering. It's painful, but possible.

3 degrees basically requires countries to meet their commitments. Which for the developing world basically means net zero electricity generation by 2035, 99% of new vehicle sales being EV by 2030 and no new fossil heating in a similar time frame. That's 3/4 of the major emitters. Those are the "easy" ones, since those 3 changes all save money over the medium term. Some sort of technological or social miracle in the 4th (agriculture, especially meat) would give us a lot more slack.

We're simply following the Four Stage Strategy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak

Large scale multiplayer Four Stage Strategy is basically Existential Chicken. You keep doing the most profitable thing, in the hope that your competitors care more about the continued existence of the commons than you do, and so become comparatively less competitive.

There is a silver lining: the market is, in its perverse way, priority-sorting what people focus on. At some point things will get so bad that addressing them will be more profitable than any other thing companies can do...

The market by itself can never solve this problem because the tragedy of the commons is not addressable by market mechanisms. It is impossible due to the game theory dynamics at play. You need top down force applied to align incentives with the public commons, it's the only way.

100% agreed, of course. I didn't mean the market will solve this problem - just that if things get bad enough, the market incentives will align towards solving the problem... just a tiny bit, just until it stops being profitable enough to continue solving it.

> "well, it's too late now and we need to keep consuming to save ourselves from the consequences of our consumption"

As an every day person with no power outside of voting, eating mostly vegetarian, outfitting my home with climate friendly options and buying less overall... That's literally all I can do as a household. Not many seem interested in doing similar things though so I literally have nothing else to give. That's a drop in the bucket and meaningless though unless others choose to join

I don't see any point in even trying to change any more. There is too much damage already, international cooperation has always been primarily driven by national interests, and I don't see there ever being a global movement significant enough to make a difference.

What I don't get is why people are still having children in societies where it is not necessary to have offspring to provide you with income and care in your later years. Anyone approaching middle age can still look forward to a relatively comfortable life, but it's the babies being born today that are truly screwed.

I think about this more than I probably should, but people have always had hope for the future in spite of certain (personal) doom. In some sense it's just the human condition. I do wonder how people will behave if/when more and more come to the same conclusion.

Climate change isn't binary. If we limit it to 2-3C that's a lot less suffering, war and devastation than 4-5C. And I think we have a shot at achieving that thanks to the miracle of economies of scale driven cost declines we are seeing with renewables and batteries.

People are a resource. You could have the next Einstein or Norman Borlaug.

It's entirely possible that there is an Einstein or two working in climate science and telling us to cut down on CO2 emissions.

There could be a Tesla or Edison waiting to be born that could solve the problem.

There could be as much as there couldn't be one. Betting on a black swan event like a yet unborn baby that will become the Tesla/Edison/Newton/Einstein/Mozart of climate engineering to solve an issue that will destroy the fabric of modern society while taking a lot of Earth's life in the process is just stupid.

Wishful thinking won't take us anywhere, we need to work with the reality we have right now not with extraordinary potential saviours might provide if they ever exist...

I feel like that would actually be a white swan event. But yes, to me it essentially sounds like an alcoholic with a failing liver saying they can keep drinking because someone is going to invent a cure for cirrhosis any day now.

You should have children because having children is the most amazing thing a person can do.

I was just making the point that people aren't necessarily a net detriment. If people honestly believed that you'd see mass suicides as well.

There isn't going to be a "Climate Engineering Messiah". We know what we have to do already, and it will take everyone cooperating to make it happen.

There are no technological solutions? Cold fusion? Electric cars with no drawbacks? Near perfect efficiency solar power? Tidal/wave power?

No. An Einstein would be giving us the technology to do so practically. Telling us to cut down on CO2 emissions is, quite frankly, useless. We don't exactly have a shortage of pundits in 2024.

Worst resource that caused and will cause this biggest issue. Realistically they will most probably be a corporate slave and never be an Einstein.

Despite everything going on we're in a better place than we've ever been. Our children will likely be in an even better place.

Yes. People seem to have forgotten what a catastrophe the 20th century was. WWI, WWII, Spanish flu, famine in China, famine in USSR, Pol Pot. I've never seen predictions that climate change will be as bad as all that, yet people still kept having kids despite all those risks that actually eventuated and humanity overall flourished.

None of those are close to the potential destructive power that a truly global catastrophe like climate change is. Pol Pot? Soviets? WW1 and WW2? Famines in China? You are comparing political events against the laws of thermodynamics in a global scale. Even the Spanish flu has an understandable/predictable time period for the tipping point where it will be stopped due to how viruses and adaptations to it occur.

I don't think you comprehend the level and degree of difference between all of those events against the effects where laws of physics dictating how a planetary-level of change in energy retained will mess up with every single thing we as humanity need to survive on this Earth.

You haven't quantified that comparison so you really don't have a clue. Just saying physics is more powerful than politics doesn't mean the outcome will be worse.

Do I really need to get you figures for how many gigajoules are required to heat up the whole world by 3-4C on average, studies on the effects of that energy added to the atmosphere and oceans, and the second and third order effects on the biosphere or are you smart enough to figure that one out?

I assume folks on HN are smart enough to understand the basic premise of what I said, if needed I can track the data for you but you could probably do the same instead of a stupid rebuttal dressed as snarkiness.

Of course that part's simple. What's not is "a planetary-level of change in energy retained will mess up with every single thing we as humanity need to survive on this Earth". Yes, you need to specify what that means because it's just emotional language that could mean anything.

You probably don't know. I've never found anyone who knows what that means, or can even provide even the crudest estimate of the human impact of climate change such as number of deaths, financial cost, etc. that comes close to 20th century disasters.

I don't think this hope is warranted. Our species is doing awful things to the planet:

* Animals and plants are dying at a mind-boggling rate. This has consequences for us eventually too, but on it's own, this is an atrocity.

* We're stuffing the air, sea and water with plastic, PFAs, insecticides, herbicides, etc. This will also have consequences for us.

* Our polar ice is melting, our vital weather systems collapsing, our topsoil eroding, our old growth forest near forgotten. As noted above, our oceans are doing some terrifying shit. Consequences are imminent.

* Inequality exacerbates all the above, and gives me serious doubt as to how our children will actually fare. Climate refugees are already a thing, and it could get soo much worse if our current path is maintained.

A stunning proportion of our leaders, megacorps, media, banks, and institutions are making this all worse. They subsidize and invest in fossil fuels, arms, big agri etc. They provide cover for them, enable them, and profit from them. They savagely beat anyone fighting against their acts into submission; sometimes with mortal methods, sometimes just with smears and legal abuse.

Have you considered any of this in your declaration of "we're in the best place ever"? I feel like we have a responsibility to our children and grandchildren to be honest about our fuck-ups.

If we're not in the best place now, when in history was humanity ever in a better place?

I don't think you realize where we're coming from. Poverty, famine, violence, child mortality etc are all globally lower than ever and on a downward trend.

Yes climate change is a huge challenge, but it's not likely that we fuck up so bad that we undo all the progress from the last few hundred years (but also not impossible either, I'll give you that)

Mandmandam has made many good points. I feel that we won't be able to fix climate change until we reduce the political power of corporations and make them liable for their actions that have negative social and climate impacts.

Or they won't and it might take a long time for societies to recover from the costs that climate change is bringing.

Societies having to spend more in dealing with effects from climate change have to spend less in other stuff that are investments, stuff like education, R&D, healthcare, transportation; to build dikes, pumping stations, purchasing ever increasing food products after crop failures, rebuilding cities destroyed by climatic events (or moving whole cities/population centres that aren't possible to be rebuilt nor protected), building border defences to stop millions of climate refugees from immigrating to dwindling inhabitable spaces. All of that will have massive costs that will make life much harder for future generations.

We don't know what our children futures will be because as humanity we never been through a truly global catastrophe affecting every single corner of the planet at the same time, not even World Wars were any close to the potential destructive power that fucking up our climate is.

I must live in a bubble, the top rated comments here are all depressing.

I don't know a single person that believe or thinks this way (that we're doomed). Maybe they do, but they don't say anything about it.

Fwiw, I live in a rural area, have kids and most of my friends have families. We all are good people, that recycle and try to conserve and not be wasteful. But I spend almost 0 thoughts on this topic and it causes me no worries.

Call it head in the sand if you want but I'd rather live this way than most of these comments.

I'd call it blessed ignorance.

Have a look at this for some very informed and depressing opinions: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/may/08/...

Group dynamics of doom are an interesting thing. At one point I worked for a company that was taken over by private equity who worked quite diligently to send all the jobs to India. Joining team meetings was a bit surreal; we all seemed to be trying to put a happy face on the situation (myself included) but occasionally there would be cracks. I'd also hear about people breaking down and crying in more private moments.

> Call it head in the sand if you want but I'd rather live this way than most of these comments.

I think denial is an important human quality; ultimately, we are all doomed anyway. It's something I've never been all that good at. I certainly see the dichotomy between those that have children and those that don't. I'm sure there are selection affects there regarding optimism, but if you have children, it's very hard to believe that they will face terrible hardship in the future. But the data is the data, regardless of our belief.

I would say it is more of a mindful philosophy. Worry about the things you have control over, don't worry about things you don't. Do what makes you happy and don't harm others.

The problem with these comments here are that some people suggest that having kids, having a car, a house, or occasionally flying, etc... is harming other people. Humans are not wired for this risk calculation, even so most are doubtful this is a forgone conclusion.

Further, most people (That I know) are not choosing a path based on data and charts. They are happy if the bills are paid, kids are in a good school, little crime and plenty of food TODAY.

So I don't think it is denial, it is a philosophy that allows us to live a fulfilled life, not one out of denial and dispair.

> Further, most people (That I know) are not choosing a path based on data and charts. They are happy if the bills are paid, kids are in a good school, little crime and plenty of food TODAY.

Every time I read one of these threads on HN I simply cannot believe the doomsaying, condemnation of the heretics, and repent preaching that goes on in these rabbit holes. It’s like someone transported me to an ‘80s tent revival meeting.

I live my life, do my best to be a good steward of the earth and community, but I am certainly much more worried about the now than what might happen 100 years from now.

> Worry about the things you have control over, don't worry about things you don't.

Yes, I've never been good at this, but in my defense, it doesn't really make sense to worry about the things you can control since you can... you know... control them. It also doesn't make sense to worry about the things you can't because you can't control them. Then why every worry about anything? I suppose it's just the way some of us are built.

Anything that adds carbon to the atmosphere is indeed harming other people; that is the what we have learned. To some of us, living beyond our sustainable means is the opposite of fulfilling; only living for today can cost you your future. Obviously the actions of an individual are nearly meaningless in the sense that no one drop of water makes the flood, but our own actions are the only things we can control as you say and so perhaps the only thing we should worry about.

Many of the top level comments here are made by people who are fetishizing doom through intelligent-sounding but mostly unfounded and entirely speculative scenarios that they love to talk about as if they knew what they're talking about.

It's common on this site on many topics way outside of tech and if you add in the popularity of making the worst out of climate change, it's only magnified for that subject among a certain social subset that predominate here.

Many of the completely despondent, "we're fucked" opinions here don't even reflect the actual latest scientific consensus on what climate change will likely do, and some HN comment opinions are outright irrational on claiming apocalyptic scenarios.

Nobody who is serious about the good science around the effects of climate change should take them seriously.

That care will be provided by other people's children. The people who invested in raising those children will miss out if they're not rich enough to pay yet other people again's children to look after them. This goes beyond aged care and applies to generally running the whole economy. Even before retirement, the older you get, the more you depend on younger people to support your life.

What happens if/when all countries are close to western levels of wealth? There'll no longer be a readily available underclass to support the less capable old-people in rich countries and they'll effectively be poor again.

In New Zealand, we already rely heavily on immigrants for aged care, health care and various trades.

What evidence do you have that babies born today are screwed by climate change? If they live 80 years, they will see the end of most predictions (2100), which aren't actually a disaster for people in rich countries. It might be a problem in Bangladesh but not America.

It seems likely that 2023 is going to be the highest CO2 emissions ever. If not 2023, 2024 definitely will be. We're pretty much at the point where CO2 emissions are dropping. We have a long way to go, but don't lose hope, we are making progress.

This sentiment was was represented in probably any generation ever.. fact is we don't have any clue what will be in 50 years.. be it a positive or negative development.

> "well, it's too late now and we need to keep consuming to save ourselves from the consequences of our consumption".

To be fair, sometimes the only way out is through. What may save us is shift towards cleaner manufacturing, cleaner energy generation, better ecological policies, and (unironically) eventually expanding out into cislunar space. What definitely won't save us is cutting down on consumption and halting economical growth, because that will collapse economies, which means we'll all starve to death if we don't kill ourselves first.

What we're going "through" is the planet and there's nothing on the other side. The green economy has a lot of potential (and it's fair share of grifters) but the mindset I refer to openly rejects the green economy. It seems that in the US at least the political spectrum most aligned with climate denial is intentionally pushing to increase industries with high climate emissions and suppress investment in the green economy.

Sooooo you do know that a small % of people create most co2 right?

Just because some people can't afford a new car every x years or can fly around 2 3 or 5 times a year, our society will not starve to death.

There are plenty of people who have holiday houses and other shit they don't need. If we make it less attractive for the rich to work, the rich will stop working and the others get a chance.

That's an interesting theory. Do you have some reference for this claim?

If you look at this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-.... you see the emissions by country e.g.

Don't get me wrong.. I don't think anybody needs a Yacht or private jet.. however I think the emissions come primarily from industry.

Let's compare per capita for a little balance:

1. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t... 2. https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

Yeah, but that strategy isn't bad in the abstract. There just needs to be one good reason to keep going as we are.

I met a person from a town in Russia where the record low is a hair higher than -50 degrees Celsius and the annual mean is -1 degree Celsius. The town is habitable. The worst case for the pro-climate change in terms of getting to say "I told you so" is that the climate crowd turn out to be right about literally every prediction, and we still ignore them and continue our merry way. We know humans are remarkably adaptable, and the climate trying to kill us every so often isn't new to us as a species. War is a substantially worse threat.

The chart is concerning, but it still doesn't break my top 3 worries right now (#1 being nuclear war, #2 being lack of cheap energy and #3 being a resurgence of authoritarianism from poor economic policy in places like the US [0]). The indicators are still pretty good that our ability to just barrel through climate-related problems is good enough. If there is an honest-to-goodness problem with climate change that we can't deal with people need to talk about it more.

[0] 5 minutes of thought later, I'd swap in overpopulation in somewhere there and bump out authoritarianism to #4

I think you underestimate the costs of climate change.

When areas of the planet become uninhabitable for humans without air conditioning, then there's going to be a mass movement of people which will most likely lead to famine and wars. Currently we rely on stable weather patterns to produce most of our food and that's not likely to be able to continue.

I fear that war is going to come about because of the changing climate.

That scenario is so complicated and requires so many tenuous assumptions that it might just happen anyway. The demographic stats already suggest that the future is going to be very African, that there will be lots of migration and we've had a couple of migration waves triggered by stuff that isn't climate change.

The problem isn't climate, it is that there are too many people and they keep having kids. Although right now the trend in global birth rates is extremely promising and if that keeps up (keeps down?) we'll be fine.

I don't understand what you mean by "tenuous assumptions".

There's almost certainly going to be areas which are already near the limits of human survivability without air conditioning (high wet bulb temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius) and some of those areas will become even hotter in a warming earth.

The problem most definitely is a changing climate and especially if it becomes unstable as we rely on stable conditions to grow food. Yes, there are too many people, but we're not going to have to wait for declining birth rates as lots of people will die from famine and wars due to the pressures involved with climate change.

You start with "climate is changing", then there are a lot of implicit steps and you end up at "there's going to be a mass movement" and transition to "most likely lead to famine and wars". There are two jumps there; both unlikely to play out.

People might import food from newly created foodbowls for example - as far as I recall China technically can't feed its own population without imports and that hasn't caused any famines. Or it may turn out edible plants can adapt really easily to temperatures in the 40+ range, it wouldn't be the first time we've adjusted our food to suit conditions that it wouldn't naturally cope with.

And we already have mass movements; something like 4% humans [0] migrated during their life. Things like people fleeing world wars I & II were probably extreme too. The movements were generally net positives for the receiving country. It isn't clear mass movements do lead to wars, or implicitly need to.

And to top it all off, people might just not migrate. It is most likely cheaper to build local shelters than uproot a family and move countries. As I mentioned upthread, if you describe normal conditions in a random Russian town it sounds like hell on earth - it is hell on earth, 9th circle stuff - people still live there. No mass migrations.

[0] https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2022-interactive/

Okay, you don't seem to appreciate the scale of the issues.

It's not just a case of getting crops to adapt to higher temperatures - it's the unpredictability of rainfall that's going to cause (and is starting to cause) crop failures. People have already suffered famines in countries where crops have failed due to unusual dry or wet periods, so it's hardly a jump to predict that those kinds of famines are going to become more frequent and severe.

You don't seem to understand the concept of high wet bulb temperatures either as building a shelter is not going to be of any help unless those shelters have extensive cooling or air conditioning. Humans just can't survive a wet bulb temperature of more than 31 degrees Celsius or so, even with unlimited access to drinking water and fans.

I don't see how it is possible for people to continue living in their current country if they have to cope with lack of food, water and survivable temperatures. I think you're being excessively optimistic, but I hope you're right. Unfortunately, experts don't agree with you.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2024/...

Looking at https://ourworldindata.org/famines though, we've pretty much solved famine as a problem. You're assuming that we can't do it a 2nd time if the climate changes - but we probably can. Organising food isn't a new problem for society, we've been working on this for all of recorded history and gotten really good at it.

I can imagine a brutal transitional famine if we get caught unprepared; could happen. But so many people are looking at climate change it seems like the people who need to know would know. The farmers know about it, the insurers know about it, the governments know, so on and so forth. It might just as easily be a non-issue.

> ... building a shelter is not going to be of any help unless those shelters have extensive cooling or air conditioning...

Yep. If it were you, would you build an extensive shelter with air conditioning or declare war on someone a continent away? I think the shelter is the easy option. It is roughly analogous to a snowstorm - I have relatives who are prepared to live in isolation for a good month.

Climate events trying to kill us is not all that new. Surprises hurt, but if they happen a few times we'll just start taking them in stride.

That link to famines only goes up to 2016 which is missing out the famines in Yemen, South Sudan, Unity State, Somalia, Nigeria, Tigray, Madagascar and arguably Gaza Strip and Palestine.

I would disagree that we've gotten really good at organising food - we've gotten good at organising food for wealthy countries, but have done very little for poorer people - they usually just starve when crops fail.

I think you're treating climate change as a single event that can be dealt with, but the truth is closer to a fast changing series of events that will overwhelm governments as they'll still be reacting to the first catastrophe when the next one comes and then the next one and so on. Despite your optimism, this is exactly the kind of thing that destroys civilisations. It's like an insurance company hedging money against a once-in-a-hundred years event, but when those events happen every couple of years, the company will find itself bankrupt.

I have doubts about how easy it is to build an extensive shelter with air conditioning in areas that don't even have an electricity supply. Why would we suddenly start to care about those poorer regions when we don't currently? It's far more realistic that the richer countries will make token statements and then just leave people to die, which will inevitably involve people moving from the uninhabitable areas into places that can support human life without continual money and investment.

You seem to be judging the climate crisis with previous events, when the big problem is that we're seeing unprecedented weather events - it's not going to be like anything that we've encountered previously.

> I have doubts about how easy it is to build an extensive shelter with air conditioning in areas that don't even have an electricity supply.

Picking on this as the best example of the thinking; the problem here is that people are living in terrible conditions. The urgency of the situation ... almost doesn't change if they are about to be hit by a new crisis in 20 years. It is urgent, right now, to set up an electrical plant, grid and other infrastructure. Conditions are already bad enough that they should mass-migrate.

I agree the west is probably going to leave Africa to their own devices; but the Africans have agency too. They should copy the successful parts of what China did as a matter of life-and-death urgency.

> I think you're treating climate change as a single event that can be dealt with, but the truth is closer to a fast changing series of events that will overwhelm governments as they'll still be reacting to the first catastrophe when the next one comes and then the next one and so on.

Governments don't provide food, build shelter or keep people cool in summer (well, I suppose public housing is an exception but it isn't the norm). Them being overwhelmed doesn't have that much bearing on the important stuff.

> It's like an insurance company hedging money against a once-in-a-hundred years event, but when those events happen every couple of years, the company will find itself bankrupt.

That seems unlikely, actually. They'd adjust their coverage and premiums to remain profitable. Insurance companies hire some of the best actuaries and forecasters. Your positing that they're going to be caught completely by surprise from things that are common knowledge problems - always possible I suppose, but not really the baseline expectation.

> when the big problem is that we're seeing unprecedented weather events - it's not going to be like anything that we've encountered previously

Yes and no. They will be unprecedented, but we're not talking magnitudes that are that outside the human experience. The pitch I'm seeing seems to be there will be week-long (maybe month-long in some areas) periods where humans can't survive without shelter. Some of the most prosperous regions of the earth already have that problem.

And you've convinced me that people currently so poor as to be at risk of famine are probably going to be hit by famines; but not that anyone else is. So it seems quite likely that the status quo will be preserved. And the solution is for the poorer countries to build up their industry, not for anyone else to shrink theirs.

I wish I were so optimistic, I think we are truly screwed and there's pretty much no safe place on earth. What isn't vulnerable to fire is to flooding, tornados or other extreme events.

The current change is absolutely disastrous already and the climate lag will push us even further into chaos no matter what happens.

I really hope we do invent some miraculous tech because that's the only thing I can see being a mattress on the fall down. I'd be in a position of power now, I'd push every last resource I could into this last hope.

> I wish I were so optimistic, I think we are truly screwed and there's pretty much no safe place on earth.

Yeah. But that isn't that unusual in the human experience. In fact, that was the default state of play for pretty much the period from 1900 (conditions become ripe for world wars) -> 1990 (end of the pressing nuclear threat of the cold war). The start date can be dragged back in time if you include the risk of being overrun by Europeans which was a substantial global concern and from which there was no escaping.

These threats will probably add up together. When you have economic decline and harder conditions, it's a sure receipe for wars to start.

We already have some local food shortages here and there caused by climate change which are somewhat smoothed out by global trade for now but that's only the beginning right now so I don't know how long it's going to last.

The current global situation is consistent with the lead up to a World War II style event. The future is never guaranteed so hopefully it isn't that consistent and doesn't spiral any further out of control. We didn't need any climate change to get us to this point as a combination of bad policy, lousy diplomacy and the COVID insanity seems to have done it.

These risks exist independently of climate change and, frankly, the link the climate people make between crop pressure and these wars is tenuous. There'll be some bad years as farmers adapt. If the scientists are worth the money we spend on them that might be averted.

> When you have economic decline...

I don't think there is any strong reason to suspect that climate change will cause economic conditions to decline. Glancing at Wikipedia, there are figures suggesting that global GDP will be down 30% from baseline by 2100, which assuming 1% real growth rates globally would still leave us better off than we are now.

Even though that sort of model is notoriously delicate.

Consider that your geographical location may be biasing your top 3 worries. If you were forced to live near the equator and suffered the wet bulb temperatures for yourself, and you couldn't afford air conditioning, I am confident you would beg to differ. Remember that you can't keep removing clothes to cool down. At a certain point you just die.

I cannot argue with the premise; if I were someone else I'd be someone else.

But I suspect my #1 concern would be earning enough to get an air conditioner and #2 would be that no war breaks out that would threaten the ability to run it.

Maybe that would be your mindset, but I think you haven't grappled with the potential consequences of global warming. If we get to 3-5C warming, what do you think will happen to equatorial countries where half the population can't afford air conditioning? Given that they often have wetbulb temperatures at the threshold of survivability today in the era of 1-1.5C warming, a 3-5C warming world would be catastrophic. We're talking a tremendous amount of human suffering, potential death and likely political instability and waves of mass migration to colder climates like NA and Europe. I can't see how you'd rank internal US political stability above this particular problem in the scheme of things. What about 6C warming? At what point does it become a primary concern? And what is your plan for these people in such a world, are you willing to have an open border mass migration intake policy in the global north?

I see 3 options - the community will need to come together to prepare a communal area with air conditioner; the people with air conditioners will need to take other people in, or they will die.

And I doubt they will get any help from us, but I expect it'd be more cost effective to donate air conditioners and expertise in setting up an electrical grid (which would promote prosperity) than any other approach. The answer isn't to make their life comfortable in poverty, it is to drag them up into the middle class.

> At what point does it become a primary concern?

If someone comes up with an outcome that makes me think "wow, this is worse than people being born without access to cheap energy!" then it'll probably make it to top 3. That is my basic test.

FWIW, global warming will start making large swathes of Earth uninhabitable, and compromise global food production. Way before this starts killing people directly, there will be enormous migration pressure, and that leads directly to your worries #1, #3 and #4.

The real problem of climate change is, and has always been, global stability - because that will get us first.

All that is already present without climate change. By not quantifying it, your claims are meaningless. Perhaps burning oil (and all the technology enabled by it) is what gave us global stability in the first place since countries could get richer by being productive instead of conquering each other.

> Perhaps burning oil (and all the technology enabled by it) is what gave us global stability in the first place since countries could get richer by being productive instead of conquering each other.

That, and nuclear weapons (MAD), very much yes. It's not oil per se, but cheap energy (non-energy use of petrochemicals notwithstanding). We're not in danger of running out of that resource.

Climate change is threatening food supply and habitability. That much is obvious, since it's already happening. The rest is not hard to guess, as mass migrations (albeit on a much lower scale) are also a thing that happened in the past.

I agree with the first sentence. Alternatively, it's amazing how the environmental activists pushing these agendas are focusing on such bad faith efforts. Where has the outcry been to put sulfur back in maritime fuel, as another commenter mentioned? Where is the effort to fix America's broken recycling system? Where is the effort to eliminate the millions of pieces of daily junk mail?

If environmental efforts weren't targeted at the most authoritarian and obtuse results (demands to stop all car use, mass polluters being labeled green through the use of carbon credits, etc.) it'd be a lot easier to take the threat seriously. When the solution to the problem is 'pay me more money and do the things I want you to do' it turns the 'extinction level threat' into just another sales pitch.

Ironically enough, burning lots of sulfur is the only thing that has ever worked against global warming.

As in it's the only thing that has both been tried and that has worked.

For very good reasons (eg we don't like acid rain) we stopped putting so much sulfur in the atmosphere. And if we were to do it again, we wouldn't do it by burning dirty coal near to the ground. We would probably do it via additives to jet fuel.

Has it really decreased the prevalence of acid rain that much, and was acid rain really that large an issue? I haven't heard anything about it since the 90s.

If you're in the West then you haven't heard about it much because it really was a big problem and reducing it was a success story: "Wet sulfate deposition – a common indicator of acid rain – dropped by more than 70% between 1989-1991 and 2020-2022." https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/acid-rain-program-results

It's an increasing problem in Asia: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S135223101...

I think you've demonstrated how forgetful we are. A problem gets solved but because it's not a problem we question if the fuss was worth it. Same with the Y2K bug, that got loads of hype and afterwards people complained that no planes fell out of the sky, ignoring the massive amount of work that went into reducing the problem.

Yes. Though the Y2K bug was 'only' ever going to affect boring backend operations, not planes falling out of the sky (nor nukes going off..)

I put 'only' in scare quotes, because that would have still been enough chaos and disruption.

(Compare to how Covid was/is by and large a fairly harmless and mild disease and only really poses any danger, if you have pre-existing issues or supremely bad luck (just like lots of diseases we already have), but still managed to paralyse society.)

Coming back from the tangent: in the West sulfur emissions were tamed with a cap-and-trade regime (if I remember right), which is a pretty good example that these things can work, if implemented and enforced properly. Alas, so far similar efforts for CO2 have been lacking.

Quite a straw man argument you’re making here

That climate activists should be immediately pushing to re&add sulfur? Please show one source citing negative effects of an effort to re-add, and one source citing positive effects of its removal. I find it funny to have three such vapid responses in such a short time.

Almost as if people latch onto the emotional immediacy of being 'activists for good' instead of making substantive change.

https://www.epa.gov/acidrain/what-acid-rain

Complain about "bad faith efforts" and finish with a bad faith argument, beautiful

idk where you get your sources but if all you see is activists asking to ban cars and advocate for carbon credits you really haven't look hard enough (or at all)

Why aren't activists immediately pushing to re-add sulfur? If you see that as bad faith, I guess we don't see the world close enough to discuss

Because it causes acid rain. Why are you having strong opinions if you don't know basic facts of the issue?

(I'm not the person who commented before, but) I don't personally know much about the sulfur situation, and your comment plus another user's have made me decide to read up on it later today to learn more.

Since your first comment showed a complete lack of understanding / belief of misinformation about climate change, I would suggest making an effort to learn about it yourself rather than deciding to be happy not understanding and dismissing those who are well informed as just having different views on the world.

Please quantify the economic damage related to the decrease of sulfur in the worlds oceans. I'd love to see the breakout on the impact on Phytoplankton reproduction and the repurcussions on global fish reproduction.

Because it obviously is just delaying the problem ? And air pollution isn't just about temperature, it's what you and every living thing breath, and it's a factor of ocean acidification which is a major problem...

Also:

> the 2020 regulations to cut air pollution from shipping is to increase global temperatures by around 0.05C by 2050.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-how-low-sulphur-shippin...

Again idk what your sources are but they seem to over simplify things so much that they end up not making any sense whatsoever

Here are some things you might want to read, it's much more complex than what the average people debate on twitter and other cesspools

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

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permafrost#Climate_change_feed...

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

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

Downvoted for straw man argument, dog whistles and uninformed comment about what activists are doing, not because I disagree (I do).

I am confused by the use of the term dog whistle in this context. Can you point out the dog whistles in the GP post?

Common pejorative terms used by the right to whip up anger on their side against opponents:

"activists" as a slur.

"pushing ... agendas" for those seeking change (see for instance the famous "gay agenda").

"authoritarian" for anything vaguely regulatory.

TBH these aren't dog whistles anymore because everyone has heard them enough to know what is being implied.

These are differences in perspective. If you can't handle my disagreement with your imposition of regulation on my life, then you are the overbearing lack of evidence I fundamentally disagree with.

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