Europe has had five 500-year summers in 15 years
nationalgeographic.comThis is a great video that explains how climate change is slowing the jet stream and how that is affecting the climate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQliow4ghtU
This kind of rhetoric is fueling the opposite camp. It really doesn't matter which camp you are in: we should admit to the vagueness this video is full of: "some scientists believe...", "this scientist thinks...", "there is at least some influence of...".
It reemphasizes the climate sceptists standpoints. They (most) are not denying there is a problem, but claiming there is widespread misinformation and propaganda around this topic and a strong exaggeration of the scale of the problem.
We have a kernel of truth around climate change. Let us cherish the kernel, instead of watering it down by popular media and scientists trying to jump the bandwagon by making vaguely substantiated claims.
There is no misinformation or propaganda in this video.
The indisputable observable facts are:
1) The polar jet stream is slowing down.
2) This creates meandering air currents which produced the current heatwave in Europe and the so called polar vortexes in the US.
If anyone wants to get more in depth, here is a great talk by Jeniffer Francis:
"Scientists are finding that as temperatures in the arctic rise, changes here may be contributing to extreme weather thousands of miles away."
keyword: may. This statement tells us nothing new. Everyone already knows that local changes in climate have global effects. That's why we have global climate models.
(cue: extreme forest fires, partly caused by mismanagement of forests)
"Temperatures are rising in the world, but the warming is strongest in the arctic."
Nothing new.
"Here the warming is twice as fast as the global average."
Interesting: we know that the polar jet has been slowing since the 60's, but the warming of the arctic seems to be equal to global warming in the first part of this graph. Also, very shoddy time-series analysis, imho.
"And that's causing the ice to vanish."
"...international group of researchers who've come North to see how it has been rapidly changing."
So here I really wonder. Why would you do that? We've got great sensor networks and satellite measurements.
"Without the ice, more water evaporates, contributing to more greenhouse gasses."
True, but locally. Increased cloud cover also has a net negative effect. It really depends on a complex interplay and requires a sophisticated simulation.
"Some scientists think this is supercharging extreme weather across the world."
This seems highly hypothetical. Why not make a factual claim, such as: "Scientists have proven this actively contributes to the number of extreme weather events."
"Call atmospheric scientist... who explains how the polar jet stream effected the US this past winter."
"There was a huge northward swing in the jet stream over the west coast, bringing lots of warm air over Alaska."
So, this is true, but the jet streams are not constant, and have never been. Connecting it with a slowing down of that stream is intentionally left to the viewer.
... news report ...
"Took a southward drive over the rockies and dipped way down into Florida."
... another news report, claiming that such events have happened in the past??? Wouldn't that debunk this line of thinking? ...
"At times 20 degrees above average, and warmer than NY city."
These local fluxes of temperature are normal in this region.
... more claims of the jet stream, causing problems. No scientific claims, however, just news reporting. ...
"Tokyo had its coldest day in 48 years." So what happened about 48 years ago?
"Some prominent climate researchers are skeptical."
Good for them. We'd better be.
"Scientists can't definitively say whether any one weather event was caused by the warming Arctic, conditions elsewhere, or by random chance."
So, this is one of two scientific claims. At this point I am wondering why I just watched 4 minutes of melting ice bergs.
"But Francis and others think the warming Arctic is loading the dice for extreme weather."
Think? What does that mean? They don't agree with the other scientists? Have they found proof?
"FRANCIS: We can confidently say that some amount of the increase in extreme weather that we're seeing, is because of climate change."
So... eh, what about the jet stream? The arctic? I agree with this statement, because... it is obviously true! When global temperatures rise, we obviously get more droughts and more extreme temperatures.
KINTICH: "One thing is for sure, extreme weather in North America is occurring more often."
And the relationship to the Arctic? The jet stream? Tell me more!
"Climate scientists have given this phenomenon a new name: cold arctic, warm continents."
But, this has always been the case! This does not automatically prove the opposite.
... summary ...
So my conclusion: nothing new has been said! The only true statement is that we cannot conclude anything yet.
Now, multiply these kind of videos by hundreds, and you might start to understand why certain people are getting tired. Stick to the facts! The facts are scary enough as they stand.
> keyword: may
Because saying 'they do' is setting an extremely high bar. It would be saying the matter's settled, and some people will not accept any level of evidence. Even a very few climate scientists don't, as you yourself recognise.
> Why not make a factual claim, such as: "Scientists have proven this actively contributes to the number of extreme weather events."
Ditto. If you are saying these things, what 'proof' would you find incontrovertible?
I don't understand your post, it talks about 'proof' in a way that scientists would be very wary of doing outside mathematics.
To "Temperatures are rising in the world, but the warming is strongest in the arctic." you respond "Nothing new" so you seem to be accepting climate change is happening
You then quote "Some prominent climate researchers are skeptical" and respond "Good for them. We'd better be" so you seem to think strong doubt is appropriate about climate change.
Which is it?
I can't even tell if you've any qualifications in this area (you may well have), and whether you accept or reject anthropogenic climate change, could you elaborate please?
I intentionally leave my position on climate change out of the discussion, because it is irrelevant. Also, my qualifications on this topic, how little I might have, should not interfere with finding common grounds. However, if it helps, I do not have any ties with scientific research, pro, or contra groups wrt climate change.
The situation is painted black and white by popular media and social websites. There are, however, many shades of gray. Most climate scientists are not on either end. However, due to duplicitous media coverage the discussion is quickly polarizing.
The polarization is the bigger issue. For example, we can agree global warming is happening and we can agree this causes increasingly extreme weather conditions. However, there are many secondary and tertiary effects. These, alleviating or contributing to global warming, are not part of our climate models.
Instead of jumping to conclusions, we should acknowledge the limitations of our understanding and our scientific findings. The foundation (IPCC climate models) should be discussed. Where are they accurate? How can they be improved? Does it help us predict local climate change, so we can prepare migrations and structural changes?
Thanks for the answer. I notice that you have not stated, per my request, what type or quantity of evidence you would need before accepting climate change as incontrovertible ie. proof of climate change.
> Also, my qualifications on this topic, how little I might have, should not interfere with finding common grounds.
You tell me which is more valuable: the testimony of an expert, or of someone with no qualifications? I think the former - do you disagree?
> The situation is painted black and white by popular media and social websites.
My fear is we're quite possibly terribly damaging the planetary ecosystem. That's pretty black and white to me.
> Most climate scientists are not on either end.
If you are going to claim this, please back this up when you say it. Claims without references are useless.
https://skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-conse... - "Depending on exactly how you measure the expert consensus, it’s somewhere between 90% and 100% that agree humans are responsible for climate change, with most of our studies finding 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists."
<https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2017-06-15/97-per... - a more careful look at those figures.
> due to duplicitous media coverage
duplicitous - please justify that.
> However, there are many secondary and tertiary effects. These, alleviating or contributing to global warming, are not part of our climate models.
These being...? Specifically? I actually need to know these because I take a (non expert) interest in climate models. It's actually tangentially related to my current job.
> Instead of jumping to conclusions
At some point we have to accept or reject a hypothesis that we're putting ourselves at enormous risk. Or we can keep putting it off until we find out for sure whether that lump is or isn't cancer, by which may be too late.
There does not need to be a 'quantity' of evidence. Merely that the evidence can be refuted (not taken at face value). A 'proof' is what I associate in popular media with scientific evidence. 'Think' is code-word for: hypothesizes. Especially when the weasel words 'may', 'might', 'could' appear.
W.r.t. qualifications I think the answer should be obvious. I am addressing (as a layman) the mode of communication as it appears in popular media, and try to distance myself from the contents of whatever is communicated.
> My fear is we're quite possibly terribly damaging the planetary ecosystem. That's pretty black and white to me.
Yes, that fear is on my mind as well. There is irrefutable evidence in coral bleaching and there are other globally occurring phenomenon. And because of that, we need to be extra careful on how we convince our fellow earthlings.
> > Most climate scientists are not on either end.
> If you are going to claim this, please back this up when you say it. Claims without references are useless.
Well, it depends on how you define 'the ends'. There are those who believe we are all going to die within a decade. There are those who reject all evidence. There are those who believe it is irreversible and those who think we are able to cope.
So, this is on the predicted effects of climate change and its extend. Most models are relatively accurate globally, but subcontinental predictions can still be way off (2-5 degrees either way).
In my opinion, the media goes either way: left wing brings us doom and gloom scenario's, while right wing paints a rosy picture. That should be a clear sign that we are not making progress. We should be finding common ground! I believe the viewership still has common ground, but the media is creating a Babylonian tower.
Then there is the whole discussion about what to do about it. People come up with all kinds of ideas, such as carbon tax (how to deal with CO_2 from imported products), solar panels (could be a real option, but requires heavy investing in infrastructure), biomass, political and diplomatic approaches, underground storage, etc.
And each of these approaches comes with another doom-and-gloom story, connected with these 'solutions'. Consider what it does for the non-scientific oriented population. Climate is now seen by many as a means to push products. Many switch to ignore mode.
Take this [1] article in National Geographic for example. It's all due to climate change! Not a word on bad forest management, bad water management, increased population density and more. It's outright duplicitous to not mention the other factors. And it's also sad, because the 'opponent camp' can now point at these articles and say: "You see! This is what they feed you!". Global warming is calculated to be around 24% accountable for these wild-fires.
> > However, there are many secondary and tertiary effects.
> These being...? Specifically?
Precipitation is still very difficult to model. Increased temperature means increased evaporation, increased cloud cover and increased precipitation. It depends on what kind of cloud cover is generated whether this will have a net cooling or heating effect.
Another factor is the mixing of salt and sweet water, which due to the melting of the polar ice has effects that, if I'm not mistaken, is not yet precisely modeled.
We can accept that we are putting ourselves at risk. However, I am sure we will come to the right conclusion faster if we let people make their own conclusions and not make this into a polarizing shouting match.
[1] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2018/11/clima...
We take your anonymous word for it that every single creditable researcher in the field agrees on this?
These are observable facts, it's not a matter of agreeing.
Please, if you down-vote, engage with my arguments. I am intentionally not picking sides, but pointing out flaws which I believe need to be fixed.
Do not buy into this stupid nonsense trend of late to attack the legitimacy of science. "Scientists say" is a perfectly legitimate way to convey scientific results. There is neither misinformation nor propaganda in the video. The climate deniers are not acting in good faith and will be intellectually dishonest no matter what you do. No reason to give them heed.
Where do I attack the legitimacy of science? Could you please quote me?
The phrase, 'scientists say...' is often connected to hypotheses scientists have, which are partly backed up by models or proof. Often popular media falls back to "Johnny said X" to dumb down the complex findings for their ignorant viewership.
The following statements show that there is a proof:
- <person> proved <statement> - <person> discovered <statement> - <person> found <statement> evidence
Too many times I've looked up scientific results based on 'X said Y', only to find that the effect was more marginal than claimed, or purely hypothetical based on other findings. This is not isolated to climate change, but all of popular science.
I agree. Also common is what basically amounts to lies through omission. They showed X, but it actually only holds in a very limited set of circumstances. And the manuscript is worded in a very clever way to dance around this fact.
The legitimacy of science is getting attacked because science is losing legitimacy. C.f. Every other thread on HN about science/acedemic publishing that’s not specific to climate change. If researchers would lose the sales tactics and just do the science, maybe they can win back our trust.
I am really starting to worry about climate change but not because of sea level rising or other popular reasons. The big issue that no one is talking about is that the world’s densely populated areas closer to equator are having agriculture yields starting diminish due to high temperatures and land becoming more and more dessert like. In places like North America, Europe and even Siberia, the weather is becoming much more pleasant longer parts of the year and farms are appearing on scene where it was unimaginable few centuries ago. The most productive agriculture band is moving more north up leaving massive population it previously helped grow behind. This is certain to create crises we have never seen before.
Also a schism between those who benefit somewhat and those who don't.
For many countries this is also a domestic divide rather than the traditional nationalism soaked debate that most people or news orgs focus on.
Southern US stands to lose a lot more from the charts I've seen. Surprised it isn't raised a lot more by their representatives.
"Charts" don't matter much in politics.
That's probably because when those reps were in high school, they were told that by now entire cities would be under water and storms would rule the world. It didn't happen because the panic is much more intense than the reality. So they're not going to panic this time. It's the fault of those who tried to "raise awareness".
It feels like we're at a point where simply dropping emissions down to 0 wouldn't be enough, we need to outright start pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere and have negative emissions. Given the way politics is right now, catastrophe feels inevitable.
On the topic of CO2, I recently learned some surprising numbers in a reddit thread [0] about a nonprofit hitting the 250 million planted trees mark.
One top comment said "Over the next 40 years, (those 250 million tress) will absorb about as much carbon as the United States emits in a week."
[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/c6lj7u/nonprofit_pl...
So what? Trees don't live forever. As soon as they die and rot, that CO2 is right back in the atmosphere. This is not a real plan, it's some feelgood video clickbait.
I read it as it takes 250 millions trees 40 years to remove the carbon emitted by the US in a week. That being they have very little effect overall.
It isn’t just the trees that matter. It’s the rest of the forest ecosystem around the trees. Reforestation is still a great idea as part of a larger plan to restore the atmosphere to and global temperatures to what they were, but it isn’t a silver bullet. There is not one place in the world where you can plant a bunch of trees and declare mission accomplished, but you’ll want those forests there flourishing and absorbing carbon dioxide when we do neutralize emissions.
We can chop down the trees and landfill them to prevent the carbon from being released back into the atmosphere. Of course, with that we are talking about re-doing millions of years of prehistorical carbon capture by the earth.
And how much carbon does the forestry and digging equipment to do all that generate? That's one of the problems. Yes, growing trees and 'discarding' the wood is a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, but we have to do it in an efficient way, and we're not there yet.
Why not turn them into houses before putting them in a landfill?
The trees won't all die at once.
From what I understand, the best course of action recommended by scientists a long time ago was:
- Step one: _stop_ polluting (in like 1995).
- Step two: Work out ways to get the genie back into the bottle or co2 back into the ground.
It seems like we forgot to enact step 1 and now step 2 will pretty much be pointless because we are still spewing out co2 faster than ever.
If we're too survive we need to do both steps as of yesterday, unfortunately I don't think there are very efficient says to sequester enough carbon yet, so I think we might be in some trouble.
>> If we're too survive we need to do both steps as of yesterday,
Huge supporter of climate change action, but scientifically is there any basis for the idea that current models point to human extinction? (Don't answer if you don't have a hard source, but I'd like what the projected point is for that)
Extinction, no. Collapse of civilization, quite likely. A lot of people say the former and mean the latter. This isn’t really an error, as most people don’t interpret phrases like “if we survive” to mean the literal extinction of every breeding pair of humans.
What do you mean by “collapse of civilization”?
This sort of thing. Possibly worse, as it would happen on a global scale, and collapsing societies would have nuclear weapons access.
So, those events seem to be the dissolution of continent-sized political regimes. Is that what you’re talking about? And then they were replaced by other regional political regimes in due course?
I’m trying to think of what regimes would qualify: the US, China, the EU... India, Brazil. One of those? Is that what you’re thinking?
I guess it would be easier to understand what you think is a high probability event if you give just an example of a a regime that think is at risk.
The global regime. So, all of them, to some degree at least. Large tracts of the world will simply become uninhabitable for humans due to rivers drying up, wet bulb temperatures being too high for human survival absent ac, etc
This will push people to kigrate or start wars. And our system won’t be able to handle a much larger amount of migrants, it’s straining even under existing low numbers.
You generally never saw a collapse in just one part of an empire. So I mean a collpase of lur global civilization, on the scale of past collapses that affected prior local civilizations.
We depend on caebon to feed the people we have, too. If we try to reduce and can’t replace, we have trouble. But if we don’t reduce, we have worse trouble as temperatures keep going up.
If we sort out energy and figure out how to suck co2 from the sky we can reverse this of course.
"The good news is that humans [probably] won't go extinct from climate change. The bad news is that was the good news."
Eventually, you need to leave the theater for the next group to enjoy the show.
Can we at least try not to trash the theater on the way out? Maybe we can get another screening for good behavior?
But for us, we pretty much are the show!
I always take that as a simple shorthand for "civilisation to survive", or "survive as a technologically advanced civilisation".
I suspect for most of us, and our descendants, it's pretty academic if the future holds extinction, some Mad Max future where the few survivors have the capability of the 19th century, middle ages, or somehow bomb^W emit ourselves back to the bronze age. All will see them surrounded by tons of surviving things (and packaging) they can see but can't understand, make, repair or refill.
Yes, that's been the case for a while now: https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos...
> This image should terrify you. It should be on billboards.
> As you can see, in either scenario, global emissions must peak and begin declining immediately. For a medium chance to avoid 1.5 degrees, the world has to zero out net carbon emissions by 2050 or so — for a good chance of avoiding 2 degrees, by around 2065.
> After that, emissions have to go negative. Humanity has to start burying a lot more carbon than it throws up into the atmosphere. There are several ways to sequester greenhouse gases, from reforestation to soil enrichment to cow backpacks, but the backbone of the envisioned negative emissions is BECCS, or bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration.
> BECCS — raising, harvesting, and burning biomass for energy, while capturing and burying the carbon emissions — is unproven at scale. Thus far, most demonstration plants of any size attaching CCS to fossil fuel facilities have been over-budget disasters. What if we can’t rely on it? What if it never pans out?
...
> Check out that middle graphic. If we really want to avoid 1.5 degrees, and we can’t rely on large-scale carbon sequestration, then the global community has to zero out its carbon emissions by 2026.
To state the obvious, we will not reach 0 CO2 emissions in the next 7 years. Everyone better strap in, because it only gets worse from here.
Carbon Engineering [0] is working on this and they have the backing of Bill Gates.
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/21/carbon-engineering-co2-captu...
Yep, if you are rich/affluent you need to support carbon sequestration.
Sounds like you know what you are saying...
The whole idea of normal and the basis on which 1:500 and 1:1,000 events are built is starting to feel well past expiry date. We've had no end of them in the 21st century, whether cat 5 hurricanes, flood, fire or as in this case summers. It's not normal now, it's before we broke it, and normal is starting to sound and feel archaic.
After 5 in 15 years, and on course for a sixth, the benchmark looks way off. At what point should it simply become a 1:3 year summer, or just "summer"?
How deniers can experience it and keep acting like nothing's happening beats me.
> How anyone can experience it and keep acting like nothing's happening beats me.
I look around my workplace, nobody seems to be compelled to change their lifestyle. Nobody seems to mind using a disposable cup every day, buying latest gadgets they don't need, talking about traveling to new places, etc.
I bought people on my team reusable coffee mugs to reduce the amount of disposable waste, but inevitably they get too lazy to clean it and they are back on disposable cups.
Using a re-usable cup in the face of climate change is like passing by a burning house, spitting into the fire and feeling good for having helped.
We need political action and economic incentives. Individuals changing their lifestyle isn’t going to accomplish anything.
Political action, economic incentives and individual lifestyles are all inter-dependent. We need to acknowledge that at this point, no single action can save us.
So using reusable cups may not on its own solve global heating... But neither will any single election, tax or international agreement.
Instead of telling each other “what you’re doing is not solving everything therefore it’s useless”, we should be saying “what you’re doing is a good first step, and here are other ideas for doing more”.
I am worried that people switch to re-usable cups and say: "Well, I've done my part, I'm good."
Yes, I worry about that too. But I also worry about the opposite: reinforcing the cynical idea that it’s all pointless anyway, so why bother doing anything.
The way I see it, someone who makes the effort to switch to reusable cups is very likely willing to make another effort. They might just need you to point you in the right direction. For example, the issue of why we make so many non-reusable cups in the first place, where they come from, who has the power to stop them but doesn’t, and how they can be held accountable. Just a suggestion of course! :-)
What if it is all pointless and humanity is just f$%ked? That's a very real possibility at this point. The best scientific evidence suggests that we might still have a chance to avoid the worst-of-the-worst of climate change, but changes keep occurring sooner than predicted and that already slim chance is slipping away as we speak.
What is the ethical way to live staring an unavoidable catastrophe in the face? When can we honestly give up?
Personally I think we should never give up. We are not in a video game with a binary outcome - win or lose. There’s a wide spectrum of possible outcomes, and some involve less suffering than other. I think it’s our responsibility to keep going, and push towards less suffering. If only to make the most of the time we have.
I appreciate your point of view and your arguments are good.
You're absolutely right that in the scheme of it all the impact may be small but there is climate change and there is also a huge problem of waste which needs addressing.
I agree that a single individuals actions will have minimal impact, but isn't it the individual that makes up the whole?
"Individuals changing their lifestyle isn’t going to accomplish anything."
Why do you say that?
Does any evidence exist that individuals making changes doesn't do anything?
For example, my partner and I no longer own cars, that's hopefully two whole cars off the road for practically a lifetime. Does this have zero impact ?
Also think of it this way, imagine if all of the people in the world right now who couldn't afford to fly, own cars and consume as much as you, could afford to do so and proceeded to do so without thinking about the consequences, it would be 2050 pretty quickly.
I agree legislation and emissions trading schemes etc are important but i don't see it happening fast enough just yet. So why not take some ownership of your own and do your best in the meantime ?
Thanks for not driving.
An obvious observation: Individual change and collective change are not mutually exclusive, so I think the choice between them is a bit of a false dilemma.
To pick an extreme example: Me not stabbing anyone is not enough to end knife crime in general, but this individual action (of not stabbing anyone) can still be considered an ethical baseline, so it's still good for me to not do that. Similarly, you aren't going to stop climate collapse by not driving, but...
> For example, my partner and I no longer own cars, that's hopefully two whole cars off the road for practically a lifetime. Does this have zero impact ?
The impact is that you inspire others, which makes political change possible in the long run.
But beyond that... as long as oil is coming out of the wells, and it's legal to burn it, somebody will do it.
In fact by not burning the oil yourself, you reduce the demand for oil which can depress the price, causing others to use more oil since gas prices are lower!
Are there good reasons to think that the rate at which oil is extracted and burned is independent of consumer demand? It's not far-fetched, but it would be surprising.
The rate might be affected by consumer demand.
But I think that the total amount of oil that will be burnt only depends on the price of extracting the next barrel vs the price of other energy sources.
The French High Council for Climate published its first report last week. It says that if everyone were doing "heroic" efforts: ditching cars for public transport and biking, never ever flying, going vegetarian, heat less their homes (and no A/C), then emissions would go down only 25 to 40% at most; this is significant, but they must drop much more than that.
Therefore strong, decisive political action is mandatory. Individual actions, personal incentives can't be enough: we need an effort similar to what Great-Britain did when it entered "war economy".
What would happen if we would publish each individual estimated CO_2 emissions of the past year? You'd be obliged to place it under your emails, on your Facebook and LinkedIn account and it'll be placed squarely on your WhatsApp photos. No way to hide it.
Published CO_2 emissions would include an estimation of the total CO_2 emissions estimates of the complete production flow of each product you buy, the distance you travel for work and all other energy consumption.
Would that incentivize people?
(for the purpose of this argument, assume we can actually make such an estimate)
I'd be delighted if that were to happen, impractical though it might be. Only if every product and company had to do the same, including all their externalities. That would both incentivise and enable people to shop and invest wisely. Colour code and grade them just like EU energy efficiency labels - which were so successful in pushing to higher efficiency they had to re-rate them all.
Right now it's almost impossible to know the impact of what you buy, or which is better. Or how the impact of some produce available year round varies across the year. I know buying a lettuce in winter is going to have larger impact than in summer, but I have no way to quantify it.
It would also be an excellent starting point for building a carbon tax, that could slowly escalate to punitive.
There is complete accounting in the food chain. It is precisely known where your lettuce was grown, when and how it was transported, stored, frozen, thawed and placed in the supermarket. It is even known who's picking it up from the shelves and paying for it.
The only problem is: the general public knows nothing of this!
I'm sure that's the case in most industries. They know what they buy, sell, who they outsource to etc. Lenovo and Apple know where their laptops were made, which bits and what raw materials or suppliers they used.
All we need is to derive the impact from each step, and some helpful way to present it. For presentation we know approaches that work. So it's really just requiring the carbon/impact accounting - and penalties for fraud. :)
Then we can decide if we're better off, environmentally, buying a Thinkpad, a Macbook, or a Mac Mini with LG monitor. Whether to pass on those out of season lettuces, or should really be concerned about something making more impact. All we can do right now is guess for just about everything.
That would be brutal to people who write widely-used Electron apps.
Good.
> Would that incentivize people?
No, because, much like the "water crisis" in California, individuals didn't make the direct choices the led to the crisis. Shipping your food from half a world away was not a direct choice any consumer made. Making your clothing half a world away was not a direct choice any consumer made. Building all infrastructure around cars was not a direct choice any consumer made.
If you want to reduce CO2, you have to do something to bake it's price into wherever it is being used or created.
(The "water crisis" in California is actually an "agribusiness water crisis"--if every individual in California quit using water for drinking, showers, lawn watering, swimming pools, etc., the Central Valley agribusinesses would still be unable to irrigate without pumping out the aquifers. The only solution to the California "water crisis" is to shut down the agribusinesses and make them move to somewhere with water. We are actually seeing this with desalinization in California--desalinization can actually supply almost all the people but isn't going to do anything for businesses.)
Short answer, because I really have to get some sleep.
You assume people are incentivized by price, but people are incentivized by status. That's why they buy fake Rolexes and put themselves in extreme debt.
Connect CO_2 emissions with status.
I guess I wasn't very clear.
The problem is that if an individual makes every single choice they can to reduce their CO2 footprint, they still won't make a dent in CO2 emissions. It's effectively pissing in the ocean.
So, you can connect it to status and make people feel good, but you have to go after the big things if you want to actually dent CO2 emissions (this is simply a case of Amdahl's law in reverse).
And the big one is transportation. If you can get every single car and truck onto electricity, you win multiple times. Traffic jams don't convert energy to CO2; electric motors are quite a bit more efficient than internal combustion engines at low speeds with high torque; multiple distributed CO2 sources now become single point sources (at the power plant--much easier to apply technology to).
After that, the next big thing, if I remember correctly, is that you need to switch from AC transmission lines to high-voltage DC transmission lines as the loss is so much better. And a LOT of energy gets lost to simple transmission (also has the advantage that your grids are much easier to interconnect and stabilize).
After those two, then you take a look around and see what the next big 2 or 3 are, and go attack those. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Until you are at CO2 negative.
Wouldn't it be the sorry saps who buy real Rolexes putting themselves in debt? The guys buying fake ones are the smart ones, getting status without paying the full price.
I was attempting to make the point that status and money are only partly connected.
It's almost impossible to compute. What's the CO2 impact of your google searches?
What's easy and effective is a CO2 emissions tax directly on the emitter. Anyone who burns coal or gas or oil has to pay.
It's a bit old research, and probably flawed, but at least some researchers tried to answer this question back in 2008: https://searchengineland.com/calculating-the-carbon-footprin...
I see big privacy concerns with this, because most likely the only practical way to make this work is to log every purchase any citizen does and store it for several years. It would also be very unlikely to incentivise those people who don't already care about climate change, and might actually serve to disincentivise them because being more wasteful makes them look better among their peers. For a case study on this, consider the Rolling Coal movement.
Supermarkets already do this. They store it for much longer than several years.
I'm sure it would, but also some people would try to game it. Maybe also eco shaming would be involved. I'm all for it.
No. Individuals openly resisting norms alters the discourse and the boundaries of acceptable thought. Sufficiently aggregated, it is precisely what brings about change.
I see that point.
But, what’s the new norm we want to establish?
“Let’s all use 20% less energy”
Vs
“Let’s produce all energy from renewable sources”
I feel like the second option is the only one that’s going to save us, and option 1 is a distraction.
If you were to, say, mount a solar panel on the roof of your electric car, that would probably be a better message to send than to drive less.
Yeah, for sure, there are degrees of success (as you suggest, "you might think it would be successful but it really isn't", or, "you spent loads of resources on something that felt good but achieved nothing when you could have done this unappealing effective thing"). I do think 'consume less, fix things, make reuse a hobby' is a good norm to work towards. I think the Restarters community is a good example (casual affiliation) [1]
I'm quick to defend the belief at a 'meta level'. It seems good to pretend we each can make a difference, in the same way it's useful to pretend free will exists: if you act 'as if' such a thing is true, then you avoid the outcome of acting as if it is false, one that seems to me utterly terrible - 'you could have made a difference, but you chose not to'.
I'd rather bring important but optimistic goals down a peg than abandon them - thinking I may as well leave things up to Moloch [2] leads me to despair.
[1] https://www.restarters.net/about [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
If enough people "spit on the fire" it will go out. And of course, the people spitting on the fire are the same people sounding the fire alarm.
I'm with though, people are too selfish and too short sighted to be mildly inconvenienced to spit on the fire and some government action needs to happen, I guess all we can do is be vocal about it and hope people cause science friendly politicians come election time
You need to look at the size of the fire and how much spit everyone can produce. It might not be a viable solution. If so we, we should focus our energies on other solutions.
If we want to to beat climate change, we have to do the math. And then check it twice.
What matters isn't the action. It's the will to solve the problem. Right now no one cares and therefore the politicians don't care either.
I know places that use disposable carton cups, because their impact on the environment is less than cleaning a reusable cup. Which will probably make people scream that it's all too complicated to keep up with. I would love for people to be smart and change their lifestyle, but I'm afraid it's too much to ask. And I'm also afraid the solution lies with Big Government. Bans on gasoline cars, only allow disposable dishwasher detergent, subsidize train travel, speed up hydrogen powered air travel, etc, etc. It won't be fun, but it will be necessary. I believe it will happen. Hopefully we're not too sloooow to vote the right people in office
This is quite mind-blowing. In the UK workplace it is a common cultural norm to use the same 'favourite' cup every day for every drink. Same at home. People would think there was something wrong with you if every drink was a takeout. People do have single use cups on train journeys and as a special carry-in treat from a lunch break but generally the re-used cup idea is the normal, default option.
Have people really got that lazy? Or is their work really that important?
In all fairness though, in America the power is only 110v not 240. So boiling a kettle is not going to happen. Plus the Boston Tea Party thing means y'all don't have a nice sharp cup of tea. So it is kind of not economically viable to just have a cup of tea, which for me, with no milk or sugar, comes in at less than 1p per cup + electricity. (58 tea bags cost 80 pence). Even then I often re-use the same tea bag, so totally different economic level.
I imagine my blood wouldn't be too useful if it was laced with caffeine, sugar, dairy products and/or artificial sweeteners on an hourly basis and that I might get too lazy to wash a cup. Maybe this is what happens.
There is a feedback loop that goes on with the wasteful lifestyle with people not able to regulate their body heat in winter or summer. So everything has to be air conditioned the whole time. In the USA this is a requirement but in England there was no such thing as air conditioning in the 1970's. You would open a window instead. Nowadays the windows have to be closed and the AC is on. Also in the 1970's you put lights on when it got dark. You didn't have the lights on mid day in mid summer, the glowy thing in the sky was considered sufficient.
Try turning off the lights in your workplace and see how people moan. Don't tell them that you are saving the environment, just say you had glare on your screen. See how they react.
I would like to see an office segregated into two zones much like how places used to be segregated into smoking and non-smoking areas. In one zone there would be the planet trashers. Then in the other the people who can do actual work without having to be overly nannied.
The 'eco' work zone would have no AC in places like England, instead there would be a breeze, some silence (instead of fans), nobody moaning about the weather but enjoying it and some sensible hours worked, so nobody sauntering in at 10 to moan all day, more of a decent lunch time, French style.
Meanwhile, in the other zone would be the people who are no longer able to regulate their body temperatures due to weight considerations. They would be paid slightly less as in their part of the building there would be the fizzy drinks machine to pay for, the disposable cups, the air conditioning, the excess lighting and the excess trash to landfill.
If this were in place then I am sure productivity would increase.
Maybe this is how?
(Max time on top chart goes back to 1919)
That's a remarkably unhelpful way of presenting it too.
Each year's high and low in the same line so there's no chance of noticing a trend or moving average, without plotting one.
You have to consider a majority of deniers either believe it's a "phase" the earth goes through, it's a scam by the liberals or God will fix it.
On the streets this may be so, but I'm convinced many rich high-profile deniers are simply liars. They're making hay while the sun shines (manageably). They'll have read their Tainter et al, and know the wealthy are likely to be able to buy themselves a plum spot from which to view the collapse. All those super-wealthy Americans weren't (pre-Ardern) snaffling up chunks of New Zealand just because it's pretty.
I don't know if all Abrahamic religions believe this, but in Islam at least we believe that as we near the end of the world natural disasters will increase greatly, so it seems that the end of humanity and eventually this reality entirely is how God will fix this.
Unless I am misunderstanding something, I would argue that belief is incredibly harmful if it is not true, as it will lead people to avoid trying to solve problems that they may actually be able to solve.
As a former Mormon, this is exactly correct and scary for that reason. I am ashamed that I used to think this way.
I disagree, death for example is inevitable but nonetheless we are commanded to protect life. The inevitable does not exempt a person from doing their best, everyone will be held to account for their actions.
I'm simply saying that if someone believed a disastrous situation was directly caused by a deity, it seems that would be a strong disincentive to actually trying to fix the situation themselves. Why on Earth would anyone work directly against the actions of God, or try to take responsibility for something that God is clearly in charge of?
I have seen people use similar logic before, even specifically for climate change.
>I'm simply saying that if someone believed a disastrous situation was directly caused by a deity
satan himself was a creation of God, that doesn't mean we just lie down and indulge all manner of sin.
>Why on Earth would anyone work directly against the actions of God, or try to take responsibility for something that God is clearly in charge of?
All things that occur, do so by the will of God (i.e: occasionalism).
>I have seen people use similar logic before, even specifically for climate change.
I'd assume their theology has shaky foundations.
Ah ok, I see where you are coming from. Thank you for clarifying that.
No worries, thanks for giving me the chance to explore this.
And the award for best headline goes to ...
It made sense to me?
Is it an obscure idiom (Native English speaker, so hard to tell)?
I initially parsed it as five summers, each lasting 500 years, in a time span of 15 years. Logic then kicked in and "corrected" it to five summers, each as summer-y as 500 years worth of summers combined, in a time span of 15 years.
I had to read the article to finally made sense of it.
I'm confused, how do you know the summers in question have been the hottest, not the coldest for example?
Assumption - corroborated by reading the article. That's often unavoidable by the nature of headlines. The fact that the headline writer successfully communicated the correct assumption means they did their job.
Yeah it's pretty confusing.
The article explain later what that means:
> Europe’s five hottest summers in the past 500 years have all occurred in the last 15 years, not including this summer.
More colloquially/informally, a "500 year event" is something which has historically once every 500 years.
Pessimistically, global warming is going to kill us. You might as well install that window unit in Munich and be comfortable for the next few decades.
Except there's another wide cultural gap when it comes to windows: in Europe you almost never find windows which open by raising a pane vertically...
And that means window units are not an option.
There are wall mounted duct-pipe and ductless air conditioners. They aren't as efficient, but they work. They are the most common A/C units I've seen here in Mexico.
So if you don't have A/C, it's certainly not because you physically can't. I personally get by with a fan.
Though I definitely have culture shock when I return to Texas and remember people will have their A/C on 24/7 at 69F.
I live in Seattle and I finally broke down and bought a window unit but my windows open horizontally (Honeywell MN10CESWW), the unit I got is actually floor one with rollers so I can stow it in a closet when not in use, and it has a duct that connects to a vertical thing that goes in the window. I never thought I would need one, I have lived here my whole life but now we have 3 or 4 weeks a year where it is just unbearable so I use it to cool my bedroom. Just Crazy.
There are also ones that fit in windows that slide horizontally, which ought to be just as good as "normal" ones.
Replacing windows isn't exactly difficult.
So, if we compare real estate with new weather trend --.. we could find areas both going to be affected adversely and positively.
Wonder what sort of change that will bring to countries or regions in the world.
Big winners: Canada, Russia, Scandinavia. Big losers: India, Southeast Asia, equatorial regions. Crushed by climate refugees: USA, Continental Europe. Buy a cabin in the mountains, not a beach house.
i think that is where conservatives will go. denial denial denial...then too late nothing we can do just do what you want.
Well you can sort of see the point. If the world really can't be arsed to get together and actually try and fix it, may as well go out in a blaze of fire, heat and complex hydrocarbons...
It’s make sense if the conservative viewpoint wasn’t continuing to engage in misinformation and denial.
It's scary seeing the evolution of the effects of climate change over time. How anybody can continue to deny it is unbelievable. This [1] plots out global average temperatures since the Industrial Revolution, month by month.
Overpopulation is not helping either. Would it be this bad if there were only 500million people?
Depends on which 500 million... Wealthy people in industrialised countries tend to produce much more CO2. Compare e.g the us versus India at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_... . With China, I guess a lot of the CO2 comes from making stuff for everyone else.
If think there was a calculation that one 300g steak produces as much CO2 as somebody living in kenya.
It's not really about the population it's about usage and greed.
edit: sorry, wrong calculation:
2 Steaks a week produce about 300Kg Co2 per year, which is the same as 7 People living DR Kongo produce
I wonder what one could do to help with this as a startup. Most of the green tech is expensive and/or can’t compete with oil and gas subsidies. Education will take too long at this point.
Who would pitch in to help me build a giant Mr Burns sun blocker in space?
I think we (the tech and business community) need to face the uncomfortable reality: that the world needs us to be better citizens more than it needs us to be genius entrepreneurs.
If everyone on this site simply 1) exercised their right to vote fully, 2) invested enough research time to make sure their vote helps fight global heating, in even a tiny way, and 3) made one change per month, no matter how small, in their individual routine in a way that diminishes their contribution to global heating...
... That would contribute more to saving the world than all our “world-saving” startups combined.
But that would require admitting that we’re not as special as we think we are, which is hard.
What makes you think this? Can you give even ballpark numbers for how many tones of CO2 your #1/2/3 would save over ten years?
Compared to a visionary engineering team raising let’s say $100 million to push forward new methods of sequestration?
YC has specifically called for startups in this field. Startups like SKH are pushing to get sequestration under $100 per tonne — compared to US per capita average of 20 tones, of which 8.5 tones is considered “innate” just for living in the US...
So while the absolute maximum personal impact an individual can have is around 10 tones, cost effective sequestration is the path forward to pricing and taxing carbon.
Once we have a reasonable sequestration cost, we can charge everyone and everything for their own emissions and use that money to actually negate it.
At current rates it would be ~$3,000 per capita which is still politically untenable. But at $300 per capital it becomes trivial. Somewhere in the middle in there it becomes economically and politically possible to actually eliminate the entire carbon emissions of the US, without even having to ask anyone to change their footprint.
So the question is what’s more important to you? Moralistically preaching to everyone how they should be living their lives, or actually reaching zero net emissions?
For example, you don’t need to eliminate international travel in order to eliminate the carbon footprint of international travel.
Your reply is actually a perfect illustration of the problem.
Sure, we need to ramp up carbon capture capabilities, and we need to do it fast. That is a great challenge for the tech industry to tackle.
However.
Carbon capture is not a silver bullet. At best, it is a short-term fix which can buy us time to actually fix the root cause of global heating. To state the obvious: the root cause is unsustainable extraction and ignition of fossil fuels. Carbon capture does nothing to address that root cause! In fact, it may end up making things worse in the long run, if we insist on over-selling it as a silver bullet - like you're doing right now.
Did you know that when you build more freeways to alleviate traffic congestion, you actually make traffic worse? And did you know that after decades of scaling up "plastic capture" capabilities in the form of consumer recycling, we have basically nothing to show for it? There's no evidence that it has made a dent in the production of new plastic. In fact plastic production has accelerated: we've produced as much plastic globally in the last 13 years than in the 54 years before that.
Building more freeways, over-selling plastic recycling, and over-selling carbon capture are all examples of the same flawed reasoning. They are short-term patches to fundamentally unsustainable systems, and when we allow them to become substitutes to an actual solution, they actually make our problem worse down the line.
Which brings me to my criticism of the tech industry's priorities. Collectively, we are one of wealthiest and most influential groups of people on the planet. Our resources are immense, therefore our responsibility to allocate our resources wisely is also immense. And we are failing miserably in that responsibility, because although we are investing plenty of resources in short-term fixes like carbon capture, our investment in fixing the real structural problem (again: unsustainable extraction and ignition of fossil fuels) are basically ZERO.
The reason we're failing is simple: carbon capture can be solved with technology and venture capital. Those are things we understand, and conveniently they allow us to keep doing what we like to do while telling ourselves we are saving the world. On the other hand, solving the root cause of global heating requires dismantling the fossil fuel industrial complex. The biggest obstacle to doing that is political corruption, which no amount of technology or venture capital can solve. The way we fight corruption is by becoming better citizens. That requires things like: voting; researching issues and candidates thoroughly; protesting; calling our representatives; showing up at town hall meetings; informing our friends and family about important political issues; getting other people to vote; etc. Unfortunately, most techies do none of those things. Political apathy is the norm. Even worse, remember that the tech industry played a direct role in Brexit and Trump's election, both of which are catastrophic setbacks in the fight against global heating.
I am not "moralistically preaching" as you call it. I am simply describing a pragmatic strategy to solving global heating. Unfortunately it's neither fun not profitable to make the effort to be a better citizen, so techies just don't bother. This makes us collectively part of the problem rather than the solution, and I think that's a shame.
PS: for the sake of completeness, here are other catastrophic consequences of fossil fuel emissions which carbon capture won't solve:
- rampant plastic pollution (remember, plastic comes from oil)
- mercury poisoning of the entire oceanic food chain (did you know that most of the mercury accumulating in the ocean comes from the fumes of coal plants?)
- the rise of fascist regimes in the US and Europe, bankrolled in great part by the Koch brothers in the US and Putin's oligarchs in Russia - in both case that is oil money
- the rise of violent Salafist groups such as Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Boko Haram, bankrolled by Saudi Arabia - also oil money.
- countless oil spills;
I could go on.
One thing I thought about would be decarbonisation of the atmosphere. Could be as simple as planting as many trees as possible, or some fancy new technology...