Hacker News Reader

Comment by tim333 | Hacker News Reader

There are lots of things to talk about other than the 'climate crisis' and exaggerating it can lead to a misallocation of resources really.

View on HN

We are nowhere near exaggerating it.

We should be simple executing what was agreed in the Paris Agreement as it reflects our best evaluation of the cost to benefits ratio.

But current policies are aiming at 1.5 degree higher than what we evaluated as the optimal solution.

>> We are nowhere near exaggerating it.

If you want to talk about the "climate crisis", I'm going to keep pointing to the lack of good modeling in regard to water vapor and air travel (which has a specific phase relationship with sunshine that must be taken into account). I'll also try to dig up that graph correlating the rise in air travel with temperatures. I'll insist that even if I accept human cause of these changes (which I'm willing to do), it is reasonably likely due to air travel and you can't show otherwise without those models.

In general, when you think you have evidence supporting your case it's a good idea to go ahead and just use it rather than talking about how you plan to use it.

It comes across as less adversarial this way.

Here's a fluff piece: https://globalnews.ca/news/2934513/empty-skies-after-911-set...

Something better, but need to follow references: https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Bright-Green/2010/0201...

The jury is still out on this and it seems to have a large effect and can do so in a very short time (on the order of days).

The lack of good modelling is no reason to do less to reduce emissions. Poor modelling can mean that the problem is worse than the models predict. Every time we improve our models the predictions seem to get worse.

no one who is struggling to survive gives a shit. maybe if wealth were distributed more evenly you could get more people on board to care about this.

The poorest people will be hit the hardest. EU and USA will find it relatively easier to adjust given our location and overall wealth.

So far we are grossly understating it to avoid mass panic, is my guess. If people all really understood the impact and timeframes, society would fall apart.

It's not "simple" though, because this affects a lot of people's lives. I mean we're already experiencing what happens when fossil fuels get cut off; record price hikes, record inflation, and it'll have a knock-on effect for years to come.

Of course, this translates to democracy; if a sitting government decided to, for example, force a whole industry to shut down, do you think the people working in that industry would vote for the same party again? I mean granted, this issue is bigger than sitting parties and votes and I'm sure some are willing to sacrifice their political career - or the lives and livelihoods of civilians - for it, but you get what I mean.

>We are nowhere near exaggerating it.

https://theconversation.com/four-hiroshima-bombs-a-second-ho...

A second! We are basically in a nuclear holocaust of epic proportions and this is nowhere near exaggerating it.

SO lets apply logic to your statement. How can applying more resources to climate change be a misallocation of resources?

Lookat this way, when jobs that are less efficient and re-structured to be more efficient the tendency is that we have job losses. Those can and will be offset by the re-allocation of resources towards green energy in the form of brand new jobs and career opportunities.

We can either fear the unknown or want to explore it.

Taken to the extreme: if you allocate literally all resources to fighting global warming, you're bound to end up with no resources for something. Let's take nuclear disarmament as a trivial example.

Moreover, I'm not seeing what job loss has to do with the parent's statement.

I think that any approach to climate change needs to actively monitor the motivations that a given country has to sabotage it.

In that respect, I don't think that climate change is solved by 'just give the EV companies all the money ever' but by pro actively addressing and then monitoring those detractive motives, nuclear threat inclusive.

The climate crisis coalesces wealth inequality, war tension, national resources, economy, and a host of other pressing current issues. It is trivial to find the link to each of these topics.

I mean this respectfully, but there is absolutely no way a nation can 'over-allocate' to the climate crisis. Please provide a precise example or retract your claim.

Edit: I'm getting a lot of down votes for this comment but not a lot of conversation to explain how I have gone wrong here, and I think the request for a precise argument is not unreasonable.

Perhaps one of my critics could enlighten me to my error?

Anything that causes a backslide to the point people are burning more fossil fuels would be an over allocation. So would any attempt to pull so much CO2 out of the atmosphere that caused a mass green plant die-off.

It is possible to overshoot the problem. It seems improbable, but we could overshoot.

Thanks for clarifying. I think I understand the objection but I have a follow up question: are these hypothetical overshoots realistically possible? With the rate we enact change now, is it even possible to get 'slightly overshot' without opposing interests jumping all over it?

(This is not a rhetorical question: I'm not sure one way or another, though my expectation is that it isn't possible)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com