Comment by didibus | Hacker News Reader

Comment by didibus | Hacker News Reader

It's fun to be able to know if the cause is man made, or just bad luck (happening naturally), but what is more important either way is what can we do to reverse or mitigate the negative impact of the changes to the climate?

Now I don't think there's many left who deny that the climate is changing at all. But I think there are still some who aren't sure the changes to the climate will have a negative impact on humanity. I think this aspect I don't often hear discussed, after all, the climate changing could be good, or it could be bad, or it could be a mix of those in different places or different use cases.

And once we start to agree that some of the changes will be bad, it also becomes important to discuss what could be done to mitigate the negative effects?

The actual cause being man-made isn't that important, except possibly as a way to understand how to remediate the change. Like if we stopped all CO2 emissions would it really help?

Off course, this is where things will get political, because any policy to attempt to mitigate the negative effects (current or predicted) will inevitably affect someone's bottom line (their money). So expect a lot of push back from the people who'd lose money, and a lot of promotion from the people who would make money. That political dance will make it really hard to figure out which are the actually good solutions and which aren't.

Edit: It's true, beyond just financials, policies could also have an impact on people's lifestyles and life affordances and conveniences, that will also play a lot in the political dance.

You can’t “solve” climate change via mitigation as the simple act of building infrastructure has an associated cost. The only thing you can do is minimize cost. Canadians buying air conditioners for example would reduce the numbers of dead in coming heat waves, but they’re not free.

It’s not even just about economic impact. Mandating all roofs be painted white for example has a tiny mitigating effect, but while the economic cost is low enough to justify people don’t want to be forced to paint their roofs white.

I didn't use the word "solve" anywhere in my comment, can you clarify what you're referring too?

Mitigation means to reduce something. Building a taller levy reduces flooding associated with increased rainfall variability, but a taller levy doesn’t mitigate climate change as you still have not changed rainfall or climate.

In other words mitigating impacts isn’t (solving/reducing) climate change.

> Mitigation means to reduce something [...] mitigating impacts isn’t (solving/*reducing*)

I don't really understand what you're getting at, it seems you're contradicting yourself?

Mitigating the painful impact of climate change to humanity is what we care about. What we need are solutions that can help with that. What about this do you disagree?

Edit: Not sure, but after rereading you I think you're thinking by mitigating impact I somehow exclude options of the solution space that would be able to reverse, halt or slow down the change of climate? If so, I am not, stopping the change on climate or controlling how it changes in ways that reduce the negative impact of the current change in climate are definitely valid solutions if they can be implemented and work and have the right trade offs against others etc.

> I somehow exclude options of the solution space

I really don’t think their are mitigation options.

The classic example of an attempt to reverse climate change is to put a large sunshade in space at L1. That sounds like a direct solution as it lowers the global temperature except climate is more complex than just average global temperatures. The ratio of energy released into space at the equator vs the poles changes as you alter the worlds CO2 concentration. A sunshade has a huge range of less obvious knock on effects due to this which alters jet streams, rainfall, etc. Thus, you still end up with a huge shift in climate even if the temperature is returned to normal.

Similarly, reducing the rate of CO2 release isn’t mitigation because there isn’t improvement. Gaining weight slower isn’t weight loss.

Now, reversing climate change by having net negative human CO2 emissions is an actual solution. Except to reach that point we would need to have zero net emissions at some point which on it’s own stops climate change. Personally, I wouldn’t call building a levy after a flood ends as mitigating the flood, but that’s more of a semantic argument.

PS: I know that seems silly, but consider this. Diversified investing is a risk mitigation strategy because risk is actually reduced. On the other hand if if your broke and don’t invest then there isn’t any investments at risk which IMO isn’t risk mitigation. Carbon capture after zero net emissions seems like that to me.

Many houses in British Columbia still burn fuel oil so in that particular case if they all switched to reverse-cycle air conditioners it would be a net improvement

Heat pumps that only heat or only cool a house are still cheaper to build than heat pumps that do both.

> Like if we stopped all CO2 emissions would it really help?

I assume yes. Right now CO2 emissions outnumbers the rate plants transform CO2 to O2.

No, it would take a hundred year for CO2 concentrations in the troposphere to start going down significantly. Cutting all emissions today won't help us enough as thresholds are being triggered that will release more and more greenhouse gases, reduce earth's albedo and acidify the oceans.

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