Climate change: IPCC report is 'code red for humanity'

If anyone actually believed it was &quot;code red for humanity&quot; they&#x27;d be pushing nuclear power. There is zero chance of moving off carbon energy sources without causing catastrophic mayhem, unless we use massive amounts of nuclear.<p>For instance, the last 4 years my state has averaged 37% production of total possible installed wind generation capacity. This is a very windy state which is in the top 2 for installed wind capacity and number one per capita. But throughout a day wind power can very from nearly zero to close to max capacity. Those periods of near zero production can last non-trivial amounts of time no realistic battery could provide for.<p>The only solutions are continue with our gas turbine&#x2F;wind power mix where we build enough gas turbines to handle 100% of the load for when the wind production is bottoming out, or replace everything with nuclear.<p>Nuclear gets us to net carbon zero fastest and with technology easy to export to developing countries in desperate need of plentiful, reliable, cheap electricity.

Just. Tax. It.<p>We have warmed the earth because we love comfort and money. We will never stop loving those things. So instead let&#x27;s use the same systems to fix this (or at least slow things down).<p>As an individual my largest carbon impact is air travel. I like to go places, it&#x27;s one of the main things I work to afford. Every single plane ticket I take should have a tax which is used to offset or capture the carbon emissions of my flight. I will pay it. Anyone not willing to pay it will have to fly less. Any airlines that can&#x27;t operate under the tax will not operate.<p>Now do the same thing for corporate polluters, packaging waste, etc. If a country won&#x27;t do this for domestic goods we can at least impose climate tariffs at borders.<p>The only other thing that could work is some fantastic new technological solution, but let&#x27;s not wait for that.

It’s just so hard to know what actions have what impact on CO2 production. Some are high-pain, low-gain (switching devices off instead of standby?), some are opposite (cycling instead of driving when possible etc).<p>For that if for no other reason, I’d rather if consumer prices included an explicit CO2 tax. The here can be a rebate for poorer people, or personal allowance, whatever, but there would be a fixed yardstick for measuring your personal impact.<p>Off the top of my head, I have no idea which if my activities generates the most CO2. My car? Energy use? Diet? Going skiing once a year? No idea.<p>Newspaper articles only help a little, they usually present an incomplete picture, and optimising against an incorrect utility function is often counterproductive.<p>I’m imagining something like VAT, where “value added&#x2F;carbon” adds up over the lifetime of product&#x2F;service production.

We bought an expensive washing machine 3 years ago thinking it will last us a long time. It already broke down twice. It&#x27;s been broken for almost a month now waiting for parts and whatnot. There&#x27;s a good chance we&#x27;ll have to get another one.<p>Does Electrolux&#x2F;AEG care? No. They don&#x27;t care about the environment, their only obligation is to their shareholders. But frankly neither do I anymore. Next time, I&#x27;ll buy the cheapest one and when it inevitably breaks down I&#x27;ll throw it away and get another cheap one.<p>It&#x27;s absurd that in the world where planned obsolescence, cruising industry and fast fashion exist, ordinary people are tasked with saving the planet. This is like trying to improve performance of a program using naive algorithm with O(n^2) complexity by rewriting it in assembler.

So now we can get rid of fast fashion, mandate reusability for products, reintroduce basic woodworking, metalcrafting and sewing&#x2F;repair work in school and with that get rid of a huge chunk of the needless shipping?<p>Or are we still going to go after individuals eating traditional food while thought leaders fly across the globe in private jets (no kidding) telling us we need to change our diet?<p>PS: I&#x27;m already a enthusiastic carbon cutter even if it historically has been because it correlated very well with cost cutting and self sufficiency.

&gt; This pact aims to keep the rise in global temperatures well below 2C this century and to pursue efforts to keep it under 1.5C.<p>It seems to me that continuing to communicate just the average temperature increase is a missed opportunity to engage with a greater portion of the population.<p>1.5 or 2 degrees do not seem like much, but once one understands that’s an average made out of much bigger positive and negative swings in temperature, one gets a much more dramatic picture.<p>I suspect focusing on the widening of the temperature range, rather than the average temperature change would work better with communications to the wider public

If there is anything covid has taught me its that collective action isn&#x27;t something we can rely on and is a lot more wishful thinking about the state of humanity rather than a sober look at the reality. Governments need to tax CO2 emissions on the business side and pour the money into carbon capture technology in the private space through investment and perhaps some sort of bounty program (you get $x for each ton you capture). The greatest hope I see for the future of humanity is the incentive for a brilliant mind&#x2F;leader to become the next Bezos&#x2F;Musk via climate change technology and to do that the incentives have to be setup to make it happen. I&#x27;m past hoping for people to do the right things en masse.

&gt; Climate change: IPCC report is &#x27;code red for humanity&#x27;<p>What almost alarms me more than the thought of a climate apocalypse is that I don&#x27;t think this (a UN report) is going to have any effect on the opinions of 40% of the public who see climate change as some kind of job destroying conspiracy.<p>Nothing short of Florida disappearing under the sea is going to make any difference, perhaps we (as a species) don&#x27;t deserve to continue.

The article, and many like it, does a poor job of explaining the consequences we will face. 1.5°C doesn&#x27;t mean much to the lay man. Explain that uncertain harvests, tied to speculation on risks, will much likely lead to an increase in the price of bread. Add to that an increase in oil will also lead to a price increase.<p>Heatwave in Greece ? Greece is usually hot in summer so one doesn&#x27;t care. Now explain how many houses were burnt in fire, how many people died, how much it costs to rebuild houses, where that money will be taken from, etc.<p>Consequences... Not prediction. Interestingly, my kids have hard time understanding the word &quot;consequence&quot;. It&#x27;s a difficult concept to get.

I&#x27;m still very skeptical how the measures will take into effect if they ever happen. In france the yellow vests protest was caused by a planned carbon tax increase on gas. Car dependent citizens rioted.<p>A carbon tax will reduce the living standard of everyone, and it will take time for society to readjust. I really think the economy will tank and take a lot of time to adjust to a green economy, as it&#x27;s not only electricity, transportation and meat: it&#x27;s also the production of cement and steel, landfills, chemical production, crop burning and deforestation, rice. There are tens of little things that once combined, emit a lot of CO2.<p>Road transport is only 12% of co2 emissions. So to be clear, electric cars are nice, but they&#x27;re solving almost nothing.<p>Since humans generally compete against each other for everything, and since we live in an age of individualism and not collectivism, I&#x27;m quite pessimistic about humanity reducing their emissions, because the air is the single thing that is collectivized.<p>Edit: fixed grammar

Project Drawdown has a nice overview with things we could do and what their respective impact would be: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.drawdown.org&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;table-of-solutions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.drawdown.org&#x2F;solutions&#x2F;table-of-solutions</a>

For all the carbon capture that the Devonian&#x2F;Carboniferous period did over 100 million years, humanity undid a large part of it in 150 or so years. And now to preserve human civilisation in some form, the most direct way is probably to rebuild that carbon sink within a much shorter time. Much shorter than 150 years, not 100 million.<p>Current carbon emissions are over 10 billion tonnes per year, so the capture speed will have to exceed that by however much required, probably something like 10x as much. If a process could be scaled to capture 100 billions tonnes of carbon per year, it could be a viable way out of the mess.<p>Is it even possible with current technology given unlimited funding and political will? For example, if insoluble carbonates could be synthesised from atmospheric carbon dioxide, that could be a form of long-term carbon storage.

I really liked Bill Gates new Book: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster[1]. I liked that it shows what we have to do to get to 0 greenhouse gas emissions. What&#x27;s the current state of technology and what&#x27;s still left to do to get there.<p>I often find suggestions like &quot;Meatless Monday&quot; or &quot;Only fly when really necessary&quot; etc, while probably good, not really useful advice. In Gates book he talks about that transportation and &quot;building things&quot; is good and we should not stop it, but instead find a way to make it emission free.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gatesnotes.com&#x2F;Energy&#x2F;My-new-climate-book-is-finally-here" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gatesnotes.com&#x2F;Energy&#x2F;My-new-climate-book-is-fin...</a>

The notion that humanity would go extinct from any of this is absolutely unrealistic.<p>What we are talking about is at worst massive economic damage and loss of life, similar to a very serious war.<p>Which is horrible, but really not the threat it is made out to be.<p>Moreover, since these changes happen relatively slowly (compared to bombs and such) much of the loss of life can be mitigated.<p>So we are talking economic damage and loss of property and infrastructure. Primarily.<p>Let’s be honest that the most likely course through all this is to adapt to the changing planet. I think that would be so much more refreshing than all the hand wringing.

Possibly-relatedly, I&#x27;m in the process of getting some retrofit work done on my house to improve its insulation and reduce the carbon costs of heating it. I absolutely had not appreciated that a place like this, an 80s brick-built terraced house in southern England, could be responsible for 3.4 tonnes of CO2 emissions per year in heating costs alone.<p>The necessary retrofit work is expensive, on the order of £50&#x27;000 over the next ten years, which makes it pretty much out of reach for the huge majority of people in the UK, but will take that down to 0.2 tonnes&#x2F;year (narrowly missing net-zero because of the concrete-slab construction of the floor). We really need to be subsidising retrofit work like this, so that ordinary people can afford to have it done, because it makes a huge difference to what must be millions of similar houses in the UK alone.

I have this overwhelming feeling that it’s over.<p>Are there publications and articles or studies etc about how the rich are preparing for the impact of climate change?<p>Are there large swaths of Alaska being bought up? Farms in California being sold cheap? Mega security mansions popping up in New Zealand? Fresh water supply chains suddenly being consolidated under the same biz? Is this part of the reason why China is getting half of Africa in debt? To secure a food bowl and have a legitimate reason to deploy force when needed?

Isn&#x27;t it time to block the sun&#x27;s radiant energy? What is the real disadvantage to trying to lift a giant solar umbrella that blocks light from hitting the Earth? It may be pricy but we spend billions per climate disaster, if we could use a few falcon heavy launches and reduce incoming energy by 1 or 2%, we could buy ourselves the time to fix our emissions and ramp up carbon capture.<p>The other alternative could be increasing cloud cover by releasing aerosols into the upper atmosphere. This would be like an artificial volcanic eruption, a purposeful but temporary hazing which would buy us a little time and let the planet cool off for 50 years before we&#x27;re ready to go au natural again.<p>Can someone give me the critiques of these? They seem much simpler than crying about disasters and reports to GOP foot-draggers and all those who don&#x27;t care about science. The sad reality is around 10,000 government and business officials have 90% of the power on climate, I don&#x27;t see convincing all these power brokers to help the biosphere, they want profits not environmental restoration. So, let&#x27;s have them block the sun&#x27;s energy until we&#x27;ve transitioned our energy system.

The good (and bad) news is this will solve itself: if we don&#x27;t act, humanity will die off substantially and technologically regress. Without dense and easily extractible energy source like hydrocarbons we&#x27;re unlikely to achieve this level of technology again, and famine, war, and disease will take their natural courses when we can&#x27;t fertilize our crops like we have in the past, are fighting new weather patterns, and don&#x27;t have the research base to create sophisticated medicines. We can avoid it and become a post hydrocarbon energy based world, but given the last 5 years, I don&#x27;t think collectively people are intelligent enough to pull it off. It is a shame, it would have been nice to discover more secrets of the universe and to colonize the solar system.

Seinfeld was correct, the only warning we are afraid of is &quot;dry clean only&quot;.

If some things &quot;are irreversible on timescales of centuries to millennia&quot; then really just going carbon neutral etc. sounds like a pretty weak approach as it would create costs now and large benefits only far in the future. Maybe this really needs geoengineering (and more spending on mitigation)?

The internet causes around 5% of global carbon emmissions.<p>It&#x27;s invisible, and difficult to measure, so little gets done about it. But if you&#x27;re a developer who wants to help. Check out:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sustainablewebdesign.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;sustainablewebdesign.org&#x2F;</a><p>Pretty much all the solutions to making a greener web would make the web better in general.<p>- Send less data (efficient video, images, fonts, etc) - Make fewer requests - Use a CDN (the greenest one you can) - Stop collecting vast amounts of personal data - Better bot blocking - Use PWAs when appropriate<p>- Change the culture, foster competition for doing the above.<p>I&#x27;m sure there&#x27;s a thousand more items you could add to the list.

Related ongoing thread: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28113821" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=28113821</a>

The nuclear solution has been there this whole time.<p>Too many solar &#x2F; wind dummies getting in the way of this being a viable replacement claiming &#x27;oh yeah these green sources can cleanly swap into coal&#x2F;gas plants&#x27; while completely ignoring base load &#x2F; growth requirements which nuclear can fill without being dependent on external variables.

For those interested, here&#x27;s a link to the report that was released today: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ipcc.ch&#x2F;report&#x2F;sixth-assessment-report-working-group-i&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ipcc.ch&#x2F;report&#x2F;sixth-assessment-report-working-g...</a>

The world&#x27;s population was at around 5.3 bn in 1990 and is now approaching 7.7 bn. This ain&#x27;t a popular opinion on HN, but I think a key factor to getting climate change under control (whatever that means), is to reduce the growth and to stabilize the population.

(disclaimer, I work in a Climate&amp;Energy group)<p>- There are a number of technical solutions for climate change.<p>- There are a number of technical entrepreneurs who would love to implement those solutions.<p>... there is no market to pay for it.<p>I will echo other folks in this thread in calling for a carbon tax (or Carbon Dividend, possibly the most politically feasible option) to create such a market. Please call your representative! The number of people that have asked me how they can help, but haven&#x27;t called their representative is driving me crazy!<p>Such legislation is not intrinsically complicated. If we can just get that passed, I would go to bed at night knowing that the majority of the problem is basically solved.

Still, it is so sad to see companies who could avoid their employees commuting and polluting, fighting to get their employees back to the office! This shows how overall businesses and people don’t really care for climate change.

There is absolutely no way in this world that any politician can get elected on the promise to increase gas prices and electricity costs.<p>If only we actually properly taxed the parasites who hoard wealth at the expense of our very existence..

I still don&#x27;t see how our individual actions can have a widespread impact regarding climate change, sure, it will have <i>some</i> effect, but I&#x27;m willing to bet it would add up to fractions in the end. Pushing political and economic leaders to take action by tackling just the top mega polluters on the other hand seems like it would have significant impact <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.1088&#x2F;1748-9326&#x2F;ac13f1" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;iopscience.iop.org&#x2F;article&#x2F;10.1088&#x2F;1748-9326&#x2F;ac13f1</a>

More science doesn&#x27;t hurt, but we lack leadership. Scientists are trained to research, report, and expand knowledge, but not the social and emotional skills to influence behavior.<p>If we want other people to change, we have to recognize that information, however accurate and valuable, and telling people what to do is of limited effect. If we want different outcomes we have to do different things.<p>Yes, still research, but don&#x27;t expect it to change people&#x27;s behavior. There are things that do, more like listening, role models, vision, empathy, stories, images, and what leaders do. I work on creating role models, stories, and vision.<p>I started my podcast, originally Leadership and the Environment, now This Sustainable Life <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;joshuaspodek.com&#x2F;podcast" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;joshuaspodek.com&#x2F;podcast</a>, to bring leaders and leadership to the environment. Maybe it&#x27;s for you, maybe not, but it&#x27;s what I wish was around before I started acting. The first episode <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shows.acast.com&#x2F;leadership-and-the-environment&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;000-what-leadership-and-the-environment-is-about" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;shows.acast.com&#x2F;leadership-and-the-environment&#x2F;episo...</a> describes the strategy.

Can air-conditioners capture CO2, collect fuel while keeping you cool as the world heats up? [1,2,3]<p>Humans added fossile fuels into the atmosphere and oceans already. This won&#x27;t disappear completely for a thousand years [4], so we need to find ways to remove it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&#x2F;90342957&#x2F;what-if-every-air-conditioner-was-stopping-climate-change-as-it-kept-you-cool" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fastcompany.com&#x2F;90342957&#x2F;what-if-every-air-condi...</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duanetilden.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;18&#x2F;using-building-air-conditioning-systems-for-carbon-capture-and-synthetic-fuels&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;duanetilden.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;05&#x2F;18&#x2F;using-building-air-condit...</a><p>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;radio&#x2F;quirks&#x2F;may-4-2019-brain-resuscitation-hippos-supply-algae-skeletons-slug-surgical-glue-and-more-1.5119885&#x2F;how-air-conditioners-could-keep-you-cool-and-capture-carbon-1.5119911" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cbc.ca&#x2F;radio&#x2F;quirks&#x2F;may-4-2019-brain-resuscitati...</a><p>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skepticalscience.com&#x2F;why-global-warming-can-accelerate.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;skepticalscience.com&#x2F;why-global-warming-can-accelera...</a>

1. That the planet is warming and we can accurately measure that<p>2. That we can accurately model the effect of CO2 on temperature and sea levels<p>3. That we can accurately model increasing levels of &#x27;bad weather&#x27; and disasters based on temperature increase<p>4. That we can translate these climate forecasts into socioeconomic repercussions well enough to make global policy decisions that should be enforced at great cost<p>My credulity decreases with each successive layer.

I don&#x27;t understand the underlying argumentation. Going &quot;net zero&quot; would require changing the live of every human on the planet, that&#x27;s just not going to happen in a controlled manner. How about some achievable goals like not building new coal plants? And slightly less BS along the lines of replacing (houses, cars, whatever) with new slightly more efficient variations.

Is there any sign something will happen at COP26? Or will we just carry on with the same? Can you imagine what the anti-vax nut jobs will do when confronted with the reality of extremely expensive everything and less of it? For example moving the food system over to local produce with very little meat would help a lot but there is no political ability to make such a change.

If you are looking for an overview of future climate scenarios of each country worldwide: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.howhotwillitget.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.howhotwillitget.com</a>. The coming months I am going to update the website with the new data and fix some running issues. Follow my Twitter if you want to stay updated.

We are running head first into the Great Filter.

The Energy Transition Show podcast is a resource that should receive more attention. It is subscription based, but a free-as-in-beer &quot;best of&quot; episode was released recently.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xenetwork.org&#x2F;ets&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;episode-151-best-of-ets&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;xenetwork.org&#x2F;ets&#x2F;episodes&#x2F;episode-151-best-of-ets&#x2F;</a><p>I shared many of the attitudes popular on HN regarding technology and climate change. ETS has convinced me that:<p>1. We don’t need to utilize nuclear power to account for the intermittency of solar and wind.<p>2. Carbon capture and storage technology doesn&#x27;t need to exist in order achieve decarbonization.<p>I used to despair about climate change. I&#x27;m still quite worried about displacing the centralized incumbent interests. This podcast and its associated resources has gotten me off the couch and thinking about how to apply myself to be part of the solution.

As someone else pointed out, this is a huge collective action problem that we don&#x27;t seem to have the institutions and social structures to solve this. Some people are willing to make sacrifices to solve this but many are not. We don&#x27;t have means or willingness to force the non-cooperating people to cooperate. I&#x27;m surprised we haven&#x27;t seen more terrorism targeted at carbon emitters. But then I see that recently a huge pipeline and a beef processing plant got hacked. That got blamed on Chinese or Russian hackers. It makes me wonder though, if those had been hacks by climate activists would the government tell us? The public discussion sparked by that would be quite different and might lead to an increase in that type of activity. This also is straight up a plot line from The Ministry for the Future which.

How about building more nuclear electric stations? The nuclear energy production hasn&#x27;t increased in the US for past 30 years, while oil and gas have exploded. Retards. Saame thing in EU - closing down the plants in Germany and Spain

I recently learned about the idea of the &quot;global carbon reward&quot;, which is an idea to create a monetary (meaning not fiscal) incentive to reduce or capture carbon emissions. Kind of like a gold backed currency is based on gold mined from the ground but based in carbon &quot;mined&quot; from the air. And through the monetary route it doesn&#x27;t create any direct expenditure or debt on govt balance sheets, a bit like quantitative easing that is happening anyway.<p>There is a summary video here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;Kmd2TSHsdoM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;Kmd2TSHsdoM</a>

1967: ‘Dire famine by 1975.’ - Source: Salt Lake Tribune, November 17, 1967<p>1969: ‘Everyone will disappear in a cloud of blue steam by 1989.’ - Source: New York Times, August 10 1969<p>1970: Ice age by 2000 - Source: Boston Globe, April 16, 1970<p>1970: ‘America subject to water rationing by 1974 and food rationing by 1980.’ - Source: Redlands Daily Facts, October 6, 1970<p>1971: ‘New Ice Age Coming’ - Source: Washington Post, July 9, 1971<p>1972: New ice age by 2070 - Source: NOAA, October 2015<p>1974: ‘New Ice Age Coming Fast’ - Source: The Guardian, January 29, 1974<p>1974: ‘Another Ice Age?’ - Source: TIME, June 24, 1974<p>1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life’ -<p>1976: ‘The Cooling’ - Source: New York Times Book Review, July 18, 1976<p>1980: ‘Acid Rain Kills Life in Lakes’ - Noblesville Ledger (Noblesville, IN) April 9, 1980<p>1978: ‘No End in Sight’ to 30-Year Cooling Trend - Source: New York Times, January 5, 1978<p>1988: James Hansen forecasts increase regional drought in 1990s - Source: RealClimateScience.com<p>1988: Washington DC days over 90F to from 35 to 85 - Source: RealClimateScience.com<p>1988: Maldives completely under water in 30 years - Source: Agence France Press, September 26, 1988<p>1989: Rising seas to ‘obliterate’ nations by 2000 - Source: Associated Press, June 30, 1989<p>1989: New York City’s West Side Highway underwater by 2019 - Source: Salon.com, October 23, 2001<p>1995 to Present: Climate Model Failure - Source: CEI.org<p>2000: ‘Children won’t know what snow is.&#x27; - Source: The Independent, March 20, 2000<p>2002: Famine in 10 years - Source: The Guardian, December 23, 2002<p>2004: Britain to have Siberian climate by 2020 - Source: The Guardian, February 21, 2004<p>2008: Arctic will be ice-free by 2018 - Source: Associated Press, June 24, 2008<p>2008: Al Gore warns of ice-free Arctic by 2013 - Source: WattsUpWithThat.com, December 16, 2018<p>2009: Prince Charles says only 8 years to save the planet - Source: The Independent, July 9, 2009<p>2009: UK prime minister says 50 days to ‘save the planet from catastrophe’ - Source: The Independent: October 20, 2009<p>2009: Arctic ice-free by 2014 - Source: USA Today, December 14, 2009<p>2013: Arctic ice-free by 2015 - Source: The Guardian, July 24, 2013<p>2013: Arctic ice-free by 2016 - Source: The Guardian, December 9, 2013<p>2014: Only 500 days before ‘climate chaos’ - Sources: Washington Examiner

My gut feeling is that a combination of naturally recurring chaotic weather cycles, together with human produced damage will either be fatal to humanity, or cause huge problems.<p>I also believe that the Universe is teaming with life, intelligence, and love, and in the grand scheme of things, how important really is human life on this one planet. As individuals people tend to over emphasize their own importance, and I would argue that as wonderful as human culture is, an asteroid or weather knocking us out is sad, but that is about it.

The genie is out of the bottle.<p>We have been talking in circles for the last three decades and nobody has done anything to address the corporations who represent the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions.<p>And every time I talk to my parents or meet someone new who is my age: &quot;so are you planning to have kids? No? Why not?&quot; I am so tired of living at the end of the world.<p>At this point the question is not &quot;is it going to get bad?&quot; It is &quot;how bad will it get?&quot; Mass deaths from famine, drought, and plague do not seem out-of the question.

There&#x27;s a chart in the article from the IPCC report showing observed vs simulated global average temperature changes. How are the scientists making these models guarding against overfitting?<p>I am <i>not</i> a climate change skeptic - I am simply asking an honest question that I don&#x27;t know the answer to (which will be useful for dispelling the common argument that I hear some of my friends make). I also shouldn&#x27;t have to place this kind of disclaimer in my post in the first place.

Interestingly, if we add an offset tax to gasoline it&#x27;d only be 30 cents a gallon for inefficient capture (a lot, politically, but not harsher than living in your house for a year). With newer capture technologies it could be closer to 4 cents a gallon, which is less than the price difference between gas stations.<p>The second-order effects are that once you build thousands of these capture stations there&#x27;s huge financial upside to making them even better.<p>Tax actually seems very feasible.

I see a future where Carbon Capture Utilization and Sequestration (CCUS) will allow the transition to renewables and sustainability (without nuclear). There are significant advancements in CO2 Capture and when there is a commitment to innovation (R&amp;D$s) to develop new commodities that permanently sequester the captured CO2, we will learn how to integrate the environment with profit motivation. The Green Industrial Carbon Cycle will enable the transition.

Too. Many. People.<p>The corporations do bad things because you give them money. Your lifestyles are horribly wasteful because you buy too much stuff that you don&#x27;t need, and for the wrong reasons. Then you throw it away.<p>You buy new clothes not because you need them but because it makes you feel better about yourself and because you think the other monkeys will be impressed.<p>In turn, the other monkeys feel like they have to buy new clothing.<p>Then you throw it all out when fashion changes and you buy more.<p>The end result is that tonnes of clothing are discarded annually in my small neighbourhood.<p>I gather so much of this for my clothing bank that the homeless people don&#x27;t want it any more. They are overwhelmed with clothing.<p>We run a clothing exchange for everyone and we still can&#x27;t get rid of it. We try to ship it to other countries but they already have mountains of it. It has to be sent for industrial re-processing or put into landfills.<p>Your consumer goods last about one month after their already-short warranties expire and then you throw those out, too. Over 80% of what comes into my e-waste program is working or can be easily repaired. You don&#x27;t even bother; you just throw it out.<p>Several groups in my neighbourhood have active campaigns against me because they feel like it is beneath their dignity to repair and recycle what they call &quot;garbage&quot;. These people are defective monkeys who feel that they are better than others because they can afford to waste more and destroy the planet faster than everyone else.<p>Then you reproduce unrestrictedly and teach your little monkey babies the same ridiculously wasteful lifestyle. &quot;You&#x27;re a princess; you&#x27;re a beautiful and unique snowflake; everything revolves around you. Go out and destroy the animals and pollute the oceans and kill the insects and wipe out the wetlands because you&#x27;re worth it!&quot;<p>No, you are monkeys who have gotten uppity. You have a few successes in technology, but you are actually horrible monsters who care only about themselves and maintaining your idiot social order by force.<p>You need to control your own numbers and stop the horrific waste of your idiot monkey lifestyles before you choke on your own exhaust and drown in your plastic refuse.

Climate engineering is obviously incredibly fraught for a variety of reasons (unintended consequences&#x2F;etc) but at what point do we start to consider it ? start developing and evaluating technologies related to it ? it seems like it would be something we want in the toolbox since its a solution orthogonal to consumption of carbon

Given how impossible it is achieve global consensus on policy, I&#x27;m pretty inclined to believe that a technological breakthrough is the only solution. Maybe a series of them.<p>In the best case, carbon removal and sequestration tech. In the neutral case, clean and efficient energy tech. In the worst case, climate-catastrophe coping tech.

If you&#x27;re in the US, now is the time to contact your representative and senators. This is possibly our last chance at real climate action for a decade:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.volts.wtf&#x2F;p&#x2F;crunch-time-this-is-americas-last" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.volts.wtf&#x2F;p&#x2F;crunch-time-this-is-americas-last</a>

Climate science has advanced quite a bit since the last IPCC assessment in 2014. We&#x27;re also seeing far more impact in the real world in terms of more frequent storms, floods, droughts and wildfires. Previously it was more difficult to prove these were related to climate change as there are natural variations.

Humanity has basically evolved with the innovation in technology in the last 50 years. Of course there&#x27;s gonna be a 2 degree change in climate. I cant believe the author of the article is trying to compare the last 50 years with every other 50 year period in 2000 years lol.

Was there anything about food supply? I see that as the biggest concern. We can deal with heat and floods and such. But when the world&#x27;s bio ecosystem starts looking like the Great Barrier Reef&#x27;s, then that&#x27;s when we start talking about collapse or extinction.

A.E. Currie&#x27;s Utopia 5 series of books are well worth a read. They are speculative fiction, describing how the world burns over the second quarter of the 21st century. But frankly terrifying as each year passes and they align with reality.

Brilliant minds of HN, serious question: what needs to happen for us to be able to extract CO2 from the air and place it in containers somewhere? What&#x27;s the root problem there?<p>(I&#x27;m guessing off-planet, but that can come later).

Most of the comments here are opinions on what other people should do to stop climate change.<p>For those that have read up on it, What are the highest impact things the average hacker news reader can do over the next few years?

This drives so much existential angst for me. We utterly and abysmally failed at collective action with COVID-19. How can I anticipate that we achieve anything when people are left to their own devices?

While it is important to be good stewards and not pollute etc, and I respect &amp; admire the scientists and others working to help us do better -- I don&#x27;t think we are competent to solve climate issues as a whole, when we can&#x27;t trust each other to keep our word (so much of the time), and especially when we have rejected much specific advice of the planet&#x27;s Creator. At the same time, things can be OK for us in the long run, if we really try to learn what we should do, and do that. I would include praying, honesty, kindness and humility (willingness to learn) among those things. Really there is good reason for hope for the best; these problems are expected now.<p>(Edit: thoughtful comments appreciated, with any downvotes; thank you.)

We still cannot be sure if it is anthropocentric climate chance but that doesn&#x27;t really matter. If we want to &quot;return to baseline conditions&quot; - what we try to show on graphs, then we need to cool down the atmosphere using aerosols: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedaily.com&#x2F;releases&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;160519120731.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.sciencedaily.com&#x2F;releases&#x2F;2016&#x2F;05&#x2F;160519120731.h...</a><p>Realistically there is not and there isn&#x27;t going to be in the current decade an agreement between nations on CO2 reduction. Whatever we change in EU China and India is going to undo by mining coal. So geo-engineering negotiations should start now.

So why I am still manipulating html documents forty hours a week. I guess I should be getting involved in activism or just plain disaster prepping. Time to bone up on gardening

Why isn’t there a metric like:<p>Cumulative CO2 emissions per capita, per consumption, etc.<p>Would that give us a better sense of how much more the developed countries have emitted so far vs the developing countries.

Rastafarians where right:<p>- Don&#x27;t eat meat<p>- Don&#x27;t use plastic<p>- Don&#x27;t use cars<p>- Grow your own food<p>- Love the earth<p>And yes Babylon is literally burning.

I find messaging like this on climate change poor, and possibly counter productive.<p>There need to be concrete solutions offered, be that nuclear, wind, solar, electric vehicles etc..

How is the world preparing for millions of climate refugees?<p>According to the latest estimates Southern India will not be inhabitable for humans by 2050.<p>250 million people live in Southern India.

This is not only a question of transitioning to &quot;green&quot; energy. It&#x27;s also a question of values. For me, humanity is at a cross roads, all possibilities are open, and we need to choose, individually and collectively: short term growth or long term sustainability, consumerist delirium or happy sobriety [1], mission-to-mars escapism or this-planet-is-our-only-home realism.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lejournalinternational.info&#x2F;en&#x2F;pierre-rabhi-interview-1&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.lejournalinternational.info&#x2F;en&#x2F;pierre-rabhi-inter...</a>

I&#x27;m surprised that after that many decades of complete BS propaganda, corruption and misleading information, people still take UN studies seriously.

The only way to stop this catastrophe is global population reduction and consumption limitations.<p>Nothing so far. No effort by anyone has flattened the curve. CO2, CH4, SF6, and N20 are all consistently growing linearly with human consumption. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gml.noaa.gov&#x2F;ccgg&#x2F;trends&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gml.noaa.gov&#x2F;ccgg&#x2F;trends&#x2F;</a><p>We have to do everything possible to flatten the curve and that will take sacrifice and changes today.

I fail to see the same climate-related apocalyptic messages coming from the mainstream media exactly one year ago. It&#x27;s either the situation has gotten exponentially worse in this last year (unlikely) or that the focus has turned from one apocalypse (covid in the wealthy countries) to another one (climate change). At this rate only a big regional war can shift the focus again from this specific subject.

Out of curiosity, who here is trying to make a change? Through either lifestyle or lobbying. If not why?

why is the main focus on CO2 and not sulphides and nitrogenous gasses that cause a helluvalot more greenhouse effect than CO2 and are released by industries all around? am I missing something or is this fact ignored?( not saying that nothing should be done about CO2 tho)

Where is the company that specializes in retrofitting combustion vehicles to electric?

It&#x27;s hard for me to believe humanity will get it&#x27;s act together. Shit will hit the fan and then every man for themselves. Due to luck of the draw some will get hit much harder than others

it was code red YEARS ago when the first report came out. what you thought they were just joking the first time around

Here come &quot;climate&quot; lockdowns

At some point we need to consider ramping down mass production no matter the consequences. This is getting out of hand.

In Canada our so called environmentalist parties BC&#x2F;AB NDP and Fed Liberals are still insisting we can meet our climate goals while expanding the oil sands and developing liquified natural gas for export.<p>It&#x27;s like they&#x27;re conducting the train, saying that only they can stop it, while continuing to shovel coal in the furnace.<p>We need someone that has the strength to pull that emergency brake instead.

It is time that the people of earth build a consensus and prepare for stagnant growth.<p>It is clear that the ever present pressure of capitalism to show &quot;growth YoY&quot; is a major cause of pollution.<p>The incentives are wrong. Sustainability should be paramount and carbon tax should be handed down heavily.

What&#x27;s &#x27;code red&#x27; mean? Did we pass amber? Is purple the next stage? I love our obsession with coloring our alarms. I wanna see indigo on there next if you&#x27;re listening designer.

Getting rid of bitcoin would be a start.

nice

If the Sahara and Grand Canyon once flowed with water before civilization<p>What makes a paper straw the solution so our polar ice caps have less thaw?<p>This is a serious question and not denying climate change. What’s our ultimate end goal after everything has gone green if we <i>cannot</i> change the planet’s cycles?

Al gore proven right once again. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politifact.com&#x2F;factchecks&#x2F;2021&#x2F;mar&#x2F;02&#x2F;facebook-posts&#x2F;fact-checking-claims-al-gore-said-all-arctic-ice-w&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politifact.com&#x2F;factchecks&#x2F;2021&#x2F;mar&#x2F;02&#x2F;facebook-p...</a>

When COVID isn&#x27;t alarmist enough anymore, time to switch topics.

I know this will just haul in the downvotes, but I just want to point out the EVERY IPCC report, EVER, has been dead wrong. Every single one of them.

Can someone please explain why should a middle class, middle aged blue collar worker care about this? How does any of this make his life better or worse?

How many doomsday predictions do we need to see not coming true before these people finally give up.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change#Criticisms" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Cli...</a>

The responses in this topic alone are enough to see the chances of success are very low.

Climate change is bad. Govt are not doing anything.<p>But has any model taken into consideration about covid deaths?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xqTanhErR_E" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=xqTanhErR_E</a>

If this was really &quot;code red for humanity&quot;, the global elite jetsetters, China, &amp; military should set the example &amp; drastically reduce their emissions to be in line with the average population. Otherwise, it&#x27;s another case of &quot;rules for thee but not for me&quot;.

&gt; But there is new hope that deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases could stabilise rising temperatures.<p>How is this possible when you have water vapor in a positive feedback loop, which is a far more potent, prevalent ghg that increases with any rise in temperature.<p>&quot;Water vapor reduction&quot; has to be part of the message at this stage, not just carbon reduction.

There&#x27;s a lot of nonsense in these comments that doesn&#x27;t hold up to the most basic scrutiny.<p>&gt;Humanity is going to go extinct<p>There&#x27;s no evidence for that. A temperature rise of 2 degrees celsius is by no means a threat to the human race. It is a problem, but not an extinction event.<p>&gt;We should invest in nuclear<p>Nuclear is extremely expensive and prone to going wrong. It&#x27;s not a valid argument to state that &quot;nuclear has improved and now it&#x27;s safe&quot; because nothing is 100% safe and the Fukushima Daiichi disaster is a perfect demonstration of how even recent iterations of the technology with multiple redundancies can go wrong.<p>&gt;Wind&#x2F;solar doesn&#x27;t work because it&#x27;s intermittent<p>There&#x27;s no reason we can&#x27;t have a distributed network of wind and solar farms around the world that can fulfill demand at all times.<p>&gt;We should tax carbon<p>Taxing carbon could reduce output, sure, but the fact is that humanity is dependent on fossil fuels right now. How can you possibly suggest we start punishing consumers for their carbon footprint when there is no viable alternative? Besides, reducing output at this scale won&#x27;t have any impact now, it&#x27;s too late for that. We need to be reversing output.<p>&gt;We need to stop eating meat on Mondays<p>Sorry but these schemes have no purpose other than to make one feel good about themselves. Most people are not interested in giving up meat at all, let alone for one day a week, so the demand for meat isn&#x27;t budging. Meat alternatives are promising but won&#x27;t take hold unless the consumer has an incentive to switch.<p>&gt;We need to capture carbon from the atmosphere<p>This kind of technology has been debunked by Thunderf00t and many others. To grab that carbon you need to spend at least as much energy as you got from the combustion. So, effectively we need AT LEAST as much energy as we have used since the beginning of the industrial revolution. Trees are good at gathering carbon but they&#x27;re not good as a long-term carbon sink.<p>&gt;We need to use electric cars<p>...this solves nothing. The energy still needs to come from somewhere, the carbon is still in the atmosphere, and moreover we need to build everybody a new car which is a carbon-heavy and environmentally unfriendly process in itself.

We should reduce pollution, not panic about weather. Seas are full of plastic and organic waste, dry land too, rain forests are burned down to make more field. I don&#x27;t claim that human would not affect to climate, but it is extremely difficult to prove statistically when the data we have is something like 100 years from the full 5 billion years of existence of earth. How can you take all factors into account in this kind of statistical analysis?

The actual report <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ipcc.ch&#x2F;assessment-report&#x2F;ar6&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ipcc.ch&#x2F;assessment-report&#x2F;ar6&#x2F;</a><p>I suspect that bad-faith-social-actors will attempt, as always, to undermine this report and minimize the obvious need to act in reality on Earth circa 2021.<p>I suspect that we must come up with social and economic mechanisms for making ALL pollution the problem of the polluter, versus an externality for everyone to absorb.<p>I suspect that we had better find such mechanisms NOW, vs a later that is too late.

No, it&#x27;s not. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;RogerPielkeJr&#x2F;status&#x2F;1424712163281694725" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;RogerPielkeJr&#x2F;status&#x2F;1424712163281694725</a><p>This is more media fearmongering.<p>Edit: Threadreader link <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threadreaderapp.com&#x2F;thread&#x2F;1424712163281694725.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;threadreaderapp.com&#x2F;thread&#x2F;1424712163281694725.html</a>

&gt; &quot;We will see even more intense and more frequent heatwaves,&quot; said Dr Friederike Otto, from the University of Oxford, UK, and one of the IPCC report&#x27;s authors.<p>&gt; &quot;And we will also see an increase in heavy rainfall events on a global scale, and also increases in some types of droughts in some regions of the world.&quot;<p>According to TFA these are the consequences to expect if 1.5 degrees rise occurs. Doesn&#x27;t sound like &quot;code red&quot; to me.

As usual the elephant in the room is the global population.<p>We can&#x27;t eradicate poverty, protect the environment, and maintain the human population we currently have.<p>Bikeshedding is always easier than facing hard issues so people focus on marginal things, like air travel or plastic cups, rather than facing the root cause of it all.<p>Do we want all humans to have a good life with high living standards among a thriving natural world? If the answer is yes then we need to be lucid enough to realise that this is not doable on this planet if we are 8+ billions.

Every one is focused on climate change.<p>But climate change is just a symptom, and absolutely not the disease.<p>No one seems to want to discuss or even mention the actual root cause of climate change, namely: there are simply too many people on the planet.<p>Go back to less than 1B human on planet earth, and climate change will stop being a problem in a heartbeat.<p>But the implications of such a drastic population decrease are simply impossible for any politician to even consider, much less discuss openly.<p>Not to mention the swath of folks for whom &quot;be fruitful and multiply&quot; is still a basic moral tenet.

People, it&#x27;s easy. If we are having difficulties to reduce our consumption because the lack of preparation let&#x27;s first reduce how many people are living in the world with a worldwide One Child policy. Obviously this will produce future issues that will have to be addressed but it&#x27;s a necessary step (temporally?) to gain some time.

Anyone who claims to be &quot;following the science&quot; knows that there is no such thing as &quot;code red&quot; in science and lo and behold it&#x27;s not what the IPCC report says but a UN representative. This is a media and ideologically driven narrative and have absolutely nothing to do with reality yet it&#x27;s used to scare people who can do absolutely nothing and will only be used to push draconian and anti-human decisions on the energy front.<p>Anyone who wants to actually understand what the IPCC is finding should go read the actual report and they will find just like all the other IPCC reports that things are not even close to what the media and environmental organizations want you to believe, in fact, the IPCC reports are getting less concerned not more and you will find there is a lot more uncertainty with a lot of metrics.<p>There is no scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change we don&#x27;t know how to deal with today let alone in 80 years from now. Yes the use of fossil fuel have externalities, some of them negative luckily most of them positive.