More Fucked Today Than Yesterday
Comments
Z0rp
ZeroGravitas
I think the current air pollution deaths of fossil fuels (several millions per year) are roughly an order of magnitude higher than even expected climate change deaths.
Many of the big estimates of death rates in say 2100 combine the air pollution of continuing to use coal and combustion engines with heat and climate effects.
The good news is that we have cheaper, better, cleaner options for the vast majority of that fuel burn today and they continue to get better, cheaper and cleaner. There's a clear shift in the market, it just takes time to work it's way through.
But if your kid has asthma today then that is probably doing more damage to them than climate change.
Of course, to state the obvious, both problems have the same solution. Stop burning fossil fuels.
api
There are even more reasons to phase out fossil fuels.
They are non-renewable, meaning the more we use them the more we have sunk cost in an energy infrastructure that in the long term can only get more expensive and more scarce. That's the opposite of what you want. It also means there's hard limits to how big they can scale, and the more you scale them the worse their scaling gets. Also the opposite of what you want.
They are geopolitically problematic and bind us to foreign conflicts.
Many of the most virulently anti-American and anti-Western ideologies (like fundamentalist radical Islam) are propped up and funded by petrostates. Domestically a lot of authoritarian far-right ideology (which IMO is also anti-American if you think America should be a free country) is funded by the fossil fuel industry. The term fundamentalism comes from a tract called The Fundamentals published by an oil baron.
Many, many reasons to phase out fossil fuels.
jojogeo
Agreed. Our 9 year old keeps talking about "When I grow up I'm going to be a chef", he's really set on it. Our 5 year old says she wants to be a "girl scientist".
It tears me up inside to think that we might not even have food and water by the time they get there, let alone the level of pretend we have to maintain so that their childhood is preserved now.
api
I grew up thinking there was a decent chance we would run out of oil and civilization would collapse. EVs were not a thing and I remember reading about how an economical battery big enough to give a car good range was not possible, and that modern civilization in general was impossible without cheap oil. I read detailed articles about how impossible powering modern society without fossil fuels was… articles that are now clearly wrong.
My parents grew up thinking they might die at any moment in a nuclear war.
I’m not saying nothing will happen. Obviously we are already dialed into this and it’s physics and it will have effects. I’m also not saying past successes guarantee future ones.
I’m just saying that every generation since WWII has grown up with at least one impending doom scenario and yet here we are.
“May you live in interesting times.”
Personally I think we will be forced to adapt to climate change, and that it will be expensive and in parts of the world ugly. It will drive migration and conflict. It will rob us of dividends we could have spent on better things but instead must be spent on infrastructure mega projects. It will kill and impoverish and start wars.
But we will make it.
People will say never again, let’s never ignore warnings like that again. But we will probably forget that lesson, unfortunately, and future generations will grow up under some other avoidable doom cloud.
nomel
I think the best initial effort is to get the corrupt politicians (for example, Gavin Newson received a record $16,700,000 from utility lobbyists this year) to tear down the utility monopolies/duopolies, to make power, and therefore cooling, more stable/cheap.
anon-3988
> to make power, and therefore cooling, more stable/cheap.
and make the problem even worse. lol. There's only one actual solution to this problem but no one wants to talk about it :)
nomel
How would solar, which these companies are fighting, make it worse!?
api
Solar would make it worse because the religious dogma says we must de-industrialze and do degrowth. Replacing fossil fuels with solar or anything else is like wearing condoms or using PReP instead of abstaining from sex. To the faithful that's worse because it allows the sin to continue. The only approved answer is abstinence.
"Forgive me nature, for I have sinned..."
red-iron-pine
i assume you're talking about guillotines
tito
It appears you're being downvoted, but I think this is an extremely normal reaction. See my post above, come ask your questions on Wednesday!
greygoo222
How exactly do you think you are going to die in a heatwave? Please explain the logistics of this.
adrian_b
In Europe, during each heatwave of the recent years, some people have died.
Obviously, until now the victims have been among the most vulnerable, i.e. old people with cardiovascular diseases.
Nonetheless, there is a non-negligible risk that in the future the heatwaves will become so intense that they could affect even the healthy people.
In most countries the majority of the people cannot afford air conditioning.
t0bia_s
Statistically, about 8 times more people die from cold environment. You'll be ok.
Multiple studies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48524696
tito
If someone knows how to unflag this, I'd appreciate it. I think this is a fair climate discussion and I'm happy to weigh in. Also, Eliot Jacobson is an active figure in climate science, so it's not just some rando's blog post.
jmclnx
I agree, it was very clear in what it was saying.
I have said this thousands of times. Now in a different way. Collectively, people born in rich countries between 1930 and 1980 could have done something.
When the oil crisis hit in the early 70s, governments could have decided it was time to get out of fossil fuels. I was there on the cusp of adulthood. There was lots of talk, but the extreme rich and the oil barons started a huge propaganda campaign. People in gov. at the time were not stupid, they saw through it. But instead wanted to keep their jobs and the status quo. So here we are.
What could we have done ? Instead of crying about gas prices in the 70s, waiting hours in gas lines*, people could have started using other forms of transportation and kept at it. Back then public transportation worked fine in many places and bicycling was booming. Also many people lived relatively close to their work place. Instead we cried and cried about gas prices and continued to drive 2 or 3 or 5 miles to our work place daily. Same goes for shopping. Most shops were also rather close to were people lived.
So here we are, handing our grandchildren a life probably worse than what people experienced in the late 1800s to early 1900s. This way we avoided a bit of inconvenience in our life style.
Hope we are all happy as we age out.
* in many cases people waited hours with their cars running, some even ran out of gas waiting in lines. Others drove around for hours looking for a gas station with the lowest price. How stupid was that!
bryanlarsen
Most governments and people did nothing, but there were some that did take decisive action.
We're particularly indebted to Germany and Denmark and a few others. In the 90's and 00's they installed a lot of wind and solar power at particularly ridiculous prices. They were the ones that really bootstrapped the production curve that has lowered the prices so much that today solar and wind power are cheaper than any fossil fuel source.
Today the world is spending over $2T a year on clean energy and electric vehicles.
It's far from enough, but it's likely the difference between 4-5 degrees of climate change instead of the 6-8 we could have ended up with. That's a massive difference.
jmclnx
From what I have read, Europe did a better than the US at the time. Maybe not on purpose.
From what I remember, they let their gas prices raise, keep public transportation viable and some countries even supported bicycling as an alternative.
But it was not enough, especially with a giant at the time spewing CO2 into the air at ever increasing rates. I remember the manufacturing smoke stacks pumping it into the air. Only in the 80s did I start seeing the smoke lessen. By the late 80s, most manufacturing left my area.
greygoo222
> So here we are, handing our grandchildren a life probably worse than what people experienced in the late 1800s to early 1900s. This way we avoided a bit of inconvenience in our life style.
Lol. We are going to get richer. Climate change means becoming richer at a somewhat slower pace.
atmavatar
> Collectively, people born in rich countries between 1930 and 1980 could have done something.
In the US, I would narrow that a bit and place the blame squarely on the boomer (or "me") generation. Slightly less than a majority of congresspersons (both house and senate) are boomers, with many of them having served for decades. Similarly, Clinton, Bush, and Trump were all born in 1946, with Biden barely predating them in 1942. Obama technically fits the bill as well, having been born in 1961, which is the tail end of the generation.
The generation is marked by enacting policies that rob from future generations to enrich themselves and continue pushing fossil fuels to this day despite overwhelming, irrefutable evidence that they not only contribute to climate change but also no longer make economic sense, again screwing later generations for their own gains.
blooalien
It's not the generation that's the problem. It's (as always) the specific (increasingly) psychotic individuals that we've foolishly allowed (or placed) into positions of power, and then increasingly worshiped in cult-like fashion, and defended the "honor" of because "Fearless Leader" (favorite public figure of the moment) can't possibly be wrong about anything ever. We keep doing it, and we keep doing it more fervently as if it'll somehow get better for us if we repeat the same mistakes only harder this time.
newsomix9xl
There is no unflag button I'm aware of.
As for the merits of the article and author I'm not so sure, but I like to disagree widely.
grebc
I don’t disagree with the sentiment or any of the data.
But what actionable steps can an individual take that will actually affect the “it’ll be worse tomorrow” outcome?
I feel like there’s more resources put towards marketing that there’s a problem rather than coming up with practical steps people can do. And not picking on vegans but “turning vegan” isn’t really an acceptable answer for a industrial society.
Installing solar panels is something that I view as actionable by almost anyone. Battery is a bit out of reach. There’s questions to be asked about how sustainable that all is but in terms of getting people onboard, lower outgoings is a mighty big pull compared to endless impending doom articles.
kulahan
In the US, the midterm elections are absolutely, 100% your chance to show what you care about.
Write and call your local leadership. You cannot do much as an individual. But if you convince your local leadership (city, county, state, etc.) to consider nuclear, geothermal, solar, and wind where possible, you can be part of an enormous tidal wave of good.
edit: If you're hoping for a "what can I do TODAY" type of thing, write or call. They hardly ever get anything but emails and internet comments. Hell, go downtown for a visit. This is one of the best ways for a politician to know what their constituents care about. If people start showing up to your door with the same complaint, you'll fix it knowing it'll make happy all of those highly enthusiastic people (probably enthusiastic enough to vote in my reelection campaign!), things move much faster.
grebc
I'm not based in the US, so your upcoming vote doesn't matter me. But the general idea of write/interact with your local representative I think warrants more attention.
Just actual practical advice is all I'm after, as mentioned it's never quite laid out in simple steps. More just doom at 6 o'clock. Never having kids. We're all fucked(which I don't believe is the outcome we'll end up at).
piloto_ciego
I hate to be a "debbie downer" with regard to the politics of this, but... the mid terms aren't going to change what happens with the environment, even if the Dems got a super majority.
There's a global war on, we're not going to be burning less Jet A or Diesel any time soon... The left will not be able to disengage from Iran no matter how much they want to now because of the ramifications of the IRGC controlling the global oil supply. Along with that, because prices are high companies and nation states are hyper incentivized to drill more to try to get as much oil as they can since it is scarce, so it's not like we're going to stop exploration now.
The high prices might deter some use, but probably not as much as we'd need. But yeah, the day Russia invaded Ukraine most of my dreams of decarbonization evaporated. You can't fight a war with one hand tied behind your back - and it's only gotten worse since then.
Now, electing the Dems might staunch the bleeding some, but this is going to get much much worse before it gets better. Bear in mind that a ton of people are likely going to starve as a result of the increased gas prices? So there's that too... The whole thing is a mess.
Now, what to do about it? I don't know, I live in Alaska, my state will probably come out better from this whole mess on a 30 year time horizon? But I expect the salmon runs to be much smaller and the forest fire season to be much worse year after year. On the bright side, we might end up solving a lot of chemistry and health issues with the open fold stuff, and we might get cheap access to space, which could change things a lot? But things are going to be quite weird.
kulahan
I didn't say anything about the Dems, and a huge number of them suck on environment. I said you should vote for nuclear, geothermal, wind, and solar.
People in America aren't nearly as likely to starve because of gas prices. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you've got land for growing and/or hunting if legal. If you live in a city, there's food everywhere (even if much of it is unhealthy).
We're going through a rough period whether we like it or not. The milk is on the floor. What we can do is work to limit how bad it will get. There's nothing you personally can do beyond getting the right people in the right seats. We need regulations and investments.
Edit: It's also super weird how many people are like, actively downplaying the most powerful right almost any standard citizen anywhere holds. Is this what the kids are thinking these days? I certainly hope not.
piloto_ciego
> I didn't say anything about the Dems, and a huge number of them suck on environment. I said you should vote for nuclear, geothermal, wind, and solar.
Oh I agree with that, but the NIMBYs aren't going to get out of the way of any of those technologies likely in the next decade or 2... while I'm genuinely optimistic for the world, I expect things to get a lot worse before they get better at least environmentally.
> People in America aren't nearly as likely to starve because of gas prices. If you live in the middle of nowhere, you've got land for growing and/or hunting if legal. If you live in a city, there's food everywhere (even if much of it is unhealthy).
America will be fine, but there's going to be people in the global south die from this war that couldn't find Hormuz on a map if their life depended on it. It's an unmitigated tragedy, but I suppose war always is.
> We're going through a rough period whether we like it or not. The milk is on the floor. What we can do is work to limit how bad it will get. There's nothing you personally can do beyond getting the right people in the right seats. We need regulations and investments.
And I'm saying, "sure" you can vote blue or whatever, and I plan on it. The both sides thing is a farce, clearly one side is objectively worse... however I think nothing will likely change materially regardless of who wins this fall.
> Edit: It's also super weird how many people are like, actively downplaying the most powerful right almost any standard citizen anywhere holds. Is this what the kids are thinking these days? I certainly hope not.
This certainly isn't your most powerful "right" (if there are such things). But I probably can't really delineate what the "most powerful rights" are without getting into trouble on this forum.
ZeroGravitas
Just following your doctor's advice on diet (less red meat) might have 10-20% of the impact of switching to an EV for an average American.
The are diminishing returns to going full vegan from a greenhouse gas standpoint, beef and cheese are the big ones.
In general individual choices don't matter but helping kick of a cultural trend does. It's the same wierd logic as voting, no individual vote counts but voting matters.
Techies should really be leading the way on installing solar, heat pumps, induction hobs and EVs and in fact often are.
tito
I'm curious about this too. This upcoming El Niño, the cost impact is expected to be 4x the worst El Nino humanity has ever seen...
I'm putting together an event next Wednesday, We should have climate scientist Zeke Hausfather there to weigh in: https://luma.com/tu0uvbx1
mping
I'm not vegan, but what's wrong with turning vegan as a suggestion for an industrial society?
grebc
Society isn’t going to change change what they eat unless forced to do so.
Not what I’m asking.
aziaziazi
What makes you think your current society won't change in the future ?
Looking at the past, societies did changed a lot. Indeed, "Force" is often used : I'm forced by the law to not use slavery workforce, or to not eat an endangered species.
I'm peer-forced to consider people with disability in the code I produce, but not yet law-forced, although that is probably going to change soon.
alehlopeh
Given that, throughout history, a handful of volcanic eruptions have triggered periods of global cooling, will global warming become a non-issue if a particularly large volcano happens to erupt in the next few years?
OgsyedIE
I think it could solve all of our problems so that we are never inconvenienced by having to do anything. To promote the success of sitting around waiting for a volcano to save us while our portfolios appreciate, I've started a Wiccan druid circle for attuning our spirits to the volcano god Pele.
tito
This is why I always say my goal is "a stable climate and thriving human civilizations on Earth", because if your only criteria is a stable climate, well, then a nice big asteroid takes care of that for you.
curtisf
Not meaningfully.
Volcanic winters only last a few years. The largest ones are estimated to only have a few degrees effect on global temperatures, so we could temporarily be in 1980s climate before returning after 3-5 years to an even hotter one than ever.
The climb would probably accelerated by the inevitable policy reversals by climate change deniers who would take hold of the temporary rapid reversal of global warming to burn as much fossil fuels while they have the chance
tito
A volcanic eruption by itself can trigger some cooling by reflecting a bunch of sunlight off the dust/gas that's in the volcano emissions. Those cooling periods last a couple years.
In terms of having a longer cooling period with volcanoes, what happened historically was you had several volcanic eruptions in a row that caused something else to happen entirely -- sea ice restoration which caused a feedback loop. Generally, more sea ice begets more sea ice (Effectively, you're trading black ocean surface that absorbs light/heat for white ice that reflects light/heat. And so you get this feedback loop, more ice, cooler temps, even more ice) Anyway, The More You Know Star about some climate history stuff. (One issue with global warming is we're nearing the opposite end of that feedback loop, where less sea ice begets less sea ice and everything melts super fast. For shorthand, you can say that the temperature of Earth is likely rising as slowly as it will during the rest of our lifetimes. The ice is melting as slowly as it will for the rest of our lifetime. The sea level is rising as slowly as it will for the rest of our lifetime. etc)
The other thing to point out here is that volcanic emissions just mask warming caused by greenhouse gasses (ignoring the ability to start feedback loops). At the extreme end, for example, human IQ starts to suffer around 1,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide, so no matter what the temperature is in that scenario it's likely a decent idea to deal with carbon dioxide.
newsomix9xl
The sub text is generally "people are to blame" and "people must buy into a solution" with symbolic action.
Pointing out that were in an iceage and the planet used to be warmer or the role of volcanos isn't playing ball with the narrative.
red-iron-pine
they (volcanos) also released so much carbon dioxide that we got a "Great Die Off", and walked the line between livable atmosphere and utterly-toxic-to-everything
volcanos ain't the answer, mate
tito
Whoever wants to go to work on combatting El Niño this year, I'm getting the gang together here on Wednesday: https://luma.com/tu0uvbx1
The timing is still being finalized but we should have climate scientist Zeke Hausfather there to give his take, and then we can talk about actions to avoid the worst impacts of El Niño this cycle, what innovators can build etc. I heard one idea of building modular battery powered Starlink systems that activate when the cell system gets knocked out.
But yeah, if nothing changes El Niño this year will likely be fucked.
InvertedRhodium
I don't quite know why, and I don't think it's particularly your fault - but I find this a very depressing response to the information laid out in this article.
tito
Happy to hear more. Perhaps some room for reflection by you and me and the rest of everybody reading this.
jauntywundrkind
Why is there no vouch? Why do naysayers get full ability to deny what they will? I thought the algorithm here was supposed to allow some counter to those who flag.
VCFundedGenYer
This was incorrectly flagged and there is no disputing this.
I'm disappointed in the climate change deniers on HN.
Unflag this.
newsomix9xl
Climate change deniers?
I don't deny climate change. I do doubt that people can stop what amounts to civilization with possibly may be massive geo engineering on an unprecedented scale.
metalman
The discussions going forward need to include how we identify tipping points that can create extream weather and where our globaly interconected industrial transprtatiin systems vulnerabilitys are, and what we can do to monitor those failure modes. I feel that industry's worship of profit has destroyed our ability build durable infrastuctur that has been designed and engineered to survive more challenging scenarios, and if there is one thing that the profiteers understand (grudgingly), is that without "consumer confidence" everything falls apart quickly. What we have in the west is industrial theater, saftey theater, security theater, work theater, on and on, but essential nothing that is bieng built as public infrastructure that will survive anything other than a direct meteor strike, which is in our power and for a reasonable sociatal cost if the theater hidding the waste and "profit" is removed. my point is that we are fucking ourselves through non sustainable waste and missmanagement not counting climate change. ie: we are so fucked
zingababba
Who's more fucked the earth or us in particular? And who is doing the fucking then? I'd like some answers to these serious questions.
sph
The Earth has lived through periods of being a massive fireball to being a ball of ice and anything in between. The Earth is fine.
Life as we know it, on the other hand, is a little more delicate.
red-iron-pine
the microbes at the bottom of the ocean chillin on the vents will probably be okay.
everything is gonna have a bad time. other critters first, then people.
eulgro
1. Us 2. Us
mrmujo
[dead]
giardini
[flagged]
tito
me! (Not sure why people are downvoting. This is a very predictable response. And in fact, the median response on Earth currently, based on what we've done and are doing to the climate) (and then everyone clapped and replied "me" to this thread and then a rainbow appeared)
As a father of two small children I feel heartbroken. Will we die together in a heatwave in a few years? Do I flee north now? How should we (can we?) prepare (them) for what is coming. Can the next generation have something close to a "normal" live?