
Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change - jdowner
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-earth.html
======
jamesblonde
Great read. It's always interesting to see how individuals (John Sununu, Rush
Limbaugh) have the capacity to change the arc of history - against prevailing
wisdom and agreed facts. Sure, they had massive support from the oil industry,
but Europe also has an oil industry and it didn't change Europe's stance on
climate change.

For a real-time update on climate change, just look at the canary in the cold-
mine - Arctic Sea Ice. I have a look daily in summer to see if we will again
break the record minimum and when the summer will be ice-free there - it will
happen within a decade or two at the most. For Arctic sea ice voyeurs, check
this out:
[https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/](https://sites.google.com/site/arcticseaicegraphs/)

~~~
yostrovs
US emissions of CO2 have fallen much faster than Europe's. Europe likes to
talk a lot but not to compromise. So while they could be fracking and
displacing dirty energy sources, they instead use oil and coal where the US
uses natural gas.

~~~
sremani
That is correct no country in the world has reduced CO2 emissions like the US
did in the past decade, thanks to Shale revolution. Pennsylvania is the
world's #3 producer of NG. I mean one state in US.

Even if some people grudge this fact, the Grid is not ready for variable
generation that Wind and Solar does, they do buy some time for Grid to become
smarter (Grid of MicroGrids) where it can digest Solar and Wind, especially
now that viable storage like batteries and fuel cells are coming off age.

~~~
jamesblonde
Hang on. The US pulled out the Paris accord. The US also had a huge financial
crisis that caused emissions to drop. I don't think policy can take credit for
the slight reductions in Co2 emissions, from ridiculously high levels.

~~~
sremani
Policy tinkering as a solution to climate problem is like EU trying to force
Windows to include other browsers to dethrone IE.

What actually dethroned IE was Chrome and better Firefox.

Policy wonking can push you in certain direction, but they do not solve.
Sometimes the bridge technologies are the ones that save from imminent doom.

People demonstrating urgency with climate change, can certainly set an example
by cutting their quality of life by half for starters!

~~~
majewsky
Who's to say that regulations didn't play into the demise of IE? Maybe if we
hadn't had the antitrust cases in the EU (and the US!), at some point MS
would've been confident enough to just make it impossible to install a
different browser. Similar to how Apple requires all iOS browsers to use the
Apple's engine.

------
yesyesno
Ouch. I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest
of the time I have left. Should I even bother with my current career in tech,
or would it be better to quit it and do something that could have even a
slight impact now?

These articles are great, but preaching to the choir. What should any of us
do? I'm seriously and sincerely asking. Are there any suggestions, from a
personal stand point i.e. excluding a completely new economic model and
government structure? Is it to drive less and cut out meat? (done) Buy less
stuff? Support the right organizations and political candidates?

What if one is doing all of those things already, now what? Just sit here and
watch our homes go up in flames as the entire place becomes a desert? Some
actionable things would be great to have.

~~~
jerf
"I read this and I am completely confused about what to do with the rest of
the time I have left."

It is a grave life error to assign excessive likelihood to the doomsayers.
I've been reading about inevitable doom for 25 years now. Some of what I read
as a kid dated to the 60s and the guaranteed dates of inevitable doom had
already passed by the time I read them in the early 90s.

Even assuming they are completely 100% right about the problems, which is
frankly a _big_ assumption, they rarely, if ever, even remotely account for
the fact that people and the economy change in reaction to problems.

Also, consider the possibility that this feeling of hopelessness is something
that perhaps somebody _wants_ to instill in you. Why? Who benefits? Are their
hands as clean as you suppose? Are you _sure_? I'm a big fan of "follow the
money"; where most people fuck that up is that they only want to follow the
money _sometimes_ , when it suits them. Nope... _always_ follow it. "Follow
the money" is almost always used wrong; you don't need it to debunk the people
you already don't trust, you need it to vet the people you _do_. Doomsaying
has been exceedingly profitable over the past ~60 years. (It's been profitable
even farther back than that, but mass market doomsaying really took off
somewhere around then, which is where the real money is.) Do not forget to
take that into account.

(Also, as my post implies, don't assume I'm speaking just to the particular
_doom de jour_ , about which you might still have emotional reactions. I'm
talking about nuclear war, population bombs, a multitude of claims we're
running out of some resource, trash management issues, a wide variety of
eschatological claims, all sorts of things I've read in the last 30 years. You
may say "But jerf, some of those are still problems and may be problems in the
future" and I say, I agree. I often like to say "Stand up. Point in a random
direction. You are pointing at a problem." There are always problems and
always will be problems. But we're not talking about problems... we're talking
about _doom_. The _doom_ has not happened. I believe fully in environmental
problems both in the present and the future. I do not anywhere near fully
believe in _inevitable doom_.)

~~~
neltnerb
It's tricky when a preponderance of evidence and theory tells us that the lag
time on the signal is several decades but human generations are also measured
in decades. It doesn't matter how strong your negative feedback is if the
system it's controlling is in thermal runaway by the time you apply a
corrective signal.

Maybe we can bandaid or mitigate the worst effects for some people. Probably
richer people. But just see Harvey and wildfires and droughts for strong
evidence that we will not do anything whatsoever even when cities are being
destroyed by inaction.

~~~
jerf
Harvey? The hurricane that was the first to make landfall after 12 years of no
hurricanes? After we were repeatedly explicitly promised increased hurricanes
because of global warming? The one that Wikipedia lists as merely a category 4
and looms large in your mind simply because of where it happened to hit?

Did anyone ever admit their predictions about increased hurricanes during
those 12 years were wrong? I never saw it. You just remember the images, not
the 12 years of no images.

And I remember wildfires in California when I was a kid, too. Except now
probably about 10 million people live closer to them and like to build houses
in the way of them. (Oh, and let's not forget how many of those fires turn out
to be less about "global warming" and more about _arson_. After a certain
point, dry is just dry.)

This is part of why I really can't get myself too worked up over Certain
Environmental Doom... it's always people sharing emotionally vivid anecdotes
instead of data. When I look at the statistical data, it isn't much to get
worked up over. The IPCC warming estimates have already been revised down to
the point that it's hardly worth worrying about; it's not as if "zero degrees
of change in a century" was ever on the table.

It's the emotionally charged anecdotes that get you worked up and feeling
doomed and hopeless. Again, who benefits? Sure isn't you.

I'm personally more interested in the ocean plastic problem than global
warming at the moment. Global warming has really failed to pan out as a
threat, in my opinion.

But then, bear in mind once again I'm brushing 40. If you're twenty-something
and inclined to pull your hair out over what I'm saying here, think about
where you would be with another 15 years of your current level of concern, but
if you looked outside on the same world you do now. I see anecdotes and
anecdotes and anecdotes about how horrible climate change is, but the data
isn't anywhere near as scary as the news stories being written... in fact I
see the news stories getting scarier even as the data gets less scary to me.
In fact it's downright bizzare to compare the predictions made now nearly
twenty years ago to what actually happened, and to read all these stories that
are written as if the predictions made twenty years ago actually happened, or
perhaps even happened worse than predicted, instead of being rather a ways off
the mark.

Personally, I'd probably actually be more concerned if I read a story that
basically said "Here's the predictions made 20 years ago. Here's why they
didn't pan out. Here's the models that we made 10 years ago that fixed the
problem and evidence that they've done a great job predicting the last ten.
Here's why those models are showing problems 20 years down the road and why
this time we actually know what we are talking about." But that's not what I
read. What I see is just screeching panic, and most damningly, denial that any
error was ever made when it is plainly obvious that errors were made, and that
IPCC report estimates have in fact been trending _down_ and not up. When no
error can ever be admitted, it's clearly a political process, not a scientific
one, because it's in politics you can't ever admit you were wrong, not even a
little, with the only error you're allowed to admit to is that you didn't
realize how right you were at the time. I don't recommend driving yourself
into anxiety and insanity for a process so obviously filled with politics.

~~~
gamblor956
_And I remember wildfires in California when I was a kid, too. Except now
probably about 10 million people live closer to them and like to build houses
in the way of them. (Oh, and let 's not forget how many of those fires turn
out to be less about "global warming" and more about arson. After a certain
point, dry is just dry.)_

The problem isn't what sets the fire. It's that the heat dries out the
forests, making any fires larger and more devastating. For example: you can
light a fire pretty much anywhere in an Eastern forest, because they're
sufficiently wet that a fire won't grow very large. You could even do that a
few decades ago in the West. But try that now in California, you and could
start a thousands-acre conflagration so hot it kills the soil and doesn't burn
out until literally all available fuel has been used up.

 _Did anyone ever admit their predictions about increased hurricanes during
those 12 years were wrong? I never saw it. You just remember the images, not
the 12 years of no images._

There have been way more hurricanes. Luckily for us, the oceans are very
large, and most of those hurricanes did not make landfall.

~~~
ericd
How much of that is also due to improved fire fighting causing more fuel
buildup than is natural?

------
lacker
I feel like this article underestimates the difficulty of stopping climate
change. Would China have remained poor, if in the 1980's a better anti-
climate-change treaty had been signed? Would the world have discovered better
clean technology? There is a tendency to assume that treaties just solve the
problem. I suspect that a different treaty would have failed, just like
current negotiations are failing, because of the immense cost of slowing
climate change.

~~~
Aloha
I feel much the same.

I think the concerns about climate change are wildly overstated for the
developed world. There are some more concerns when subsistence farming is the
primary way of living, but humans (and humanity) adapt, and we adapt with
great alacrity.

~~~
throwaway5752
_" concerns about climate change are wildly overstated for the developed
world"_

Can I ask you why you think that is the case? Why would industrialized farming
and the food supply chain that feeds the developed world do better?

~~~
stale2002
The simple answer is because modern day society has a lot of money, and
decades in the future we are going to have even MORE money. Compound interest
is a hell of a drug, and GDP growth. is showing no signs of slowing.

What I mean by this is that we as a society arent fully exploiting our land
even CLOSE to as much as it could be.

Our food production system operates in the normal economic model of marginal
costs. We could produce way more food if we wanted, it would just cost more.

And in the future, if global warming has reduced our food production capacity,
we wouldn't run out of food. The only thing that would do is force us to use
these more expensive methods of food production.

And we have more than enough money now, and definitely in the future, to pay
for it. Food is a small percentage of everyone's paychecks. Costs going up by
20% doesn't mean much.

~~~
throwaway5752
What are those methods of production that will feed 8B people in a world that
is 5 deg C warmer? I think you are just hand-waving around hard, unsolved, and
possibly intractable problems.

~~~
stale2002
Firstly, 5 degrees C is a much larger degree of warming than anyone is
predicting for any of their worst case scenarios in the next 200 years. So 200
years from now, the problem will likely sound laughable.

But to answer your question anyway, yes I think that we could solve that
problem today with current technology.

There are a couple reasons why. For 1, increasing temperatures also opens up
unused land in cold places, that werent bring used before. Potentially, it
might produce MORE arable land than it removes, once we get all the
infrastructure up, of course.

And 2, it's not about "technology". There are tons of land that we "could" be
using for food right now. We aren't using that land, because it is mountainous
or has a bad climate, and would therefore produce lower yields.

But just because a mountainous area or a bad climate produces low yeilds
doesn't mean that it would produce literally 0 food. It would produce SOME
food, and the only reason we aren't using it now is because it is more
expensive.

So the answer is the tons and tons of land that we aren't using for farming
right now, but we could be using.

~~~
throwaway5752
[https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm...](https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm-
projections-of.html)

------
amorphous
How can a dev get into clean-tech today? What are the current problems a
software engineer could solve? Please, someone with the knowledge give us a
path. I wish there was an HN on clean-tech with emphasis on IT

~~~
mattygh
I agree, would love to find HN for cleantech.

I went through this search recently - companies at the nexus of software and
cleantech in the bay area, here was my shortlist so you can see what kinds of
things these companies are working on: AutoGrid, Bidgely, Ohm Connect, Tesla,
Utility API, Omnidian, Stem, Advanced Microgrid Solutions

If you're thinking of starting something yourself, energy seems to be an
especially idiosyncratic industry that I think doesn't lend itself easily to
outside in solutions, it really pays to work in it for a couple years to soak
up the knowledge. You'll find tons of opportunities once you're on the inside.

A few of the better opportunities that come to mind from my point of view: 1\.
Software & analytics based EE and DR (Bidgely, Autogrid, Ohmconnect, First
Fuel) 2\. Grid analytics, especially around citing and incorporating
renewables, controlling batteries to maximize value to the grid and owner
(AMS, Stem, Tesla) 3\. Customer acquisition for cleantech products - small
scale (helping sell devices to homes) and large scale (helping developing
projects)

All of these things have significant software and analytics bent and will be
key parts of the solution

------
erikrothoff
Why isn't there a billion dollar reward to any person or company that comes up
with a cost-effective way to capture carbon from the air and convert back to
solid carbon? I'd love to understand the physics (or chemistry? maybe
economy?) that prevents this from materialising.

~~~
jamesblonde
We have a solution - reduce carbon/methane emissions. Why bet the bank on a
technology that hasn't been invented yet? If you said to somebody with 100
billion dollars: capture as much carbon as you can. What would they do? I
would just plant trees for that money. Sure, we need basic research on carbon
sequestration, but we need fundamental breakthroughs to make it happen. Time,
we don't have.

~~~
ForHackernews
> Why bet the bank on a technology that hasn't been invented yet?

Because it's too late. Unless magic non-existent carbon capture technology
materializes soon, we're basically fucked.

[https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-
fos...](https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels)

 _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._

 _Ten years from now._

That article is two years old and, to state the obvious, global CO2 emissions
are not on track to reach zero in the next eight years.

~~~
catawbasam
But the world doesn't end when we hit 1.5. We'll still be here, and we can
still shape how much things change.

~~~
ForHackernews
> we can still shape how much things change.

No we can't, because most of the CO2 _has already been emitted_ :
[https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-four-years-left-one-
poi...](https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-four-years-left-one-point-five-
carbon-budget)

Unless you invent a time machine, or as postulated by OP, some magic
sequestration technology to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and put it back in
the ground, it's too late.

It's like we're in a car that's driven over a cliff, and you're saying "Well,
we're still here, as long as we invent a way for this car to fly in the next
15 seconds before impact, then we'll be okay"

------
dzuc
Why was this removed from the front page?

~~~
throwaway5752
There is a vocal minority of people don't believe the overwhelming scientific
consensus about global warming, and they downvote, flag, and argue in these
posts aggressively. Consequently, the topic gets the reputation of being
"divisive". It's playbook how to make an important topic taboo, and an
extraordinary success for the people that don't believe the overwhelming
scientific consensus about the impact of modern human activity on the climate
(or believe it, but profit from the status quo).

------
cmurf
_Six weeks after Hansen’s testimony, Exxon’s manager of science and strategy
development, Duane LeVine, prepared an internal strategy paper urging the
company to “emphasize the uncertainty in scientific conclusions.” This shortly
became the default position of the entire sector. LeVine, it so happened,
served as chairman of the global petroleum industry’s Working Group on Global
Climate Change, created the same year, which adopted Exxon’s position as its
own._

This is lying, spreading lies, with malicious intent. There was no scientific
uncertainty.

A proper public policy would be to wipe out the Exxon, and all petrol
companies, shareholders. Claw back all profits from all shareholders
proportionally going back 40 years, all profits on those profits, and unwind
the companies over the next 20 years strictly to public benefit. And if that
is still not enough to pay for fixing what has been damaged, the corporate
veil should be pierced and make every shareholder of these companies
personally liable. And I'm one of those shareholders - I've owned BP directly
and indirectly through funds.

And it is also quite damning for an unlimited 1st amendment concept that
proposes telling lies is a right. Unlimited opinions however unpopular should
be protected, but spreading proven falsehoods should not be protected. It
should be used as evidence the speaker is culpable, in part, of the ensuing
damage. Criminal? Perhaps. Civil? Absolutely.

------
rwallace
Okay, the article claims there was a lost opportunity to do something about
the problem in the eighties, but reading the actual text, the presented
historical facts (which are very interesting and very well presented!), I'm
not seeing it. What I'm seeing is that the world was not ready to face the
problem back then.

And it seems to me the reason why not is economic. At the end of the day,
people care more about the roof over their heads than they do about global
problems. In the eighties, we didn't have much by way of good substitutes for
fossil fuel. So the message people heard was that they would have to accept
economic hardship for the sake of the environment. That was not what people
wanted to hear.

The lesson to learn from this is that we need to address the economic issues
alongside the environmental ones. The message needs to not be that you must
accept unemployment and poverty. The message needs to be that the task of
transitioning the world to renewable energy is doable but enormous - and has
the potential to create millions upon millions of jobs, as well as breaking
the resource curse that decoupled the interests of the rulers from those of
the people. That successfully turning our hands to the new energy industries
will bring more prosperity than holding onto the old ones.

~~~
ianai
I think nothing will be politically viable until people, and large amounts of
them, are hurt by encroaching waters or inhospitable land.

~~~
rwallace
Maybe. But hundreds of millions of people have already been hurt by
disappearing jobs and falling real wages. To say nothing about that is to let
the narrative of sacrifice stand. I think it would be worth focusing on the
potential to create jobs.

~~~
ianai
It’s absolutely worth it. I just can’t imagine anything quieting the deniers
down other than something very clear and undeniable.

------
mikestew
It's weird, reading that article reminds me about all of that talk in the 80s.
It was a real, undebated (for the most part as far as _my_ bubble went) thing,
the question was, "what are we going to do about it?" Ideas were put forth,
etc.

And then it's like we talked ourselves out of it. Then someone found an old
copy of _Time_ magazine at a yard sale, and said, "aha! See, they can't make
up their minds!" No, "their minds" were kind of made up, don't let a crap
article from a weekly news magazine sway you.

I haven't finished the article; I'll do that tonight, because I'm kind of
curious in NYT's take on why we changed our minds.

------
rement
I find it really interesting that this has been published along with all the
news/media about how hot it is in Europe/Asia and in the end of the hottest
month of the year for the United States.

------
androidgirl
This is just a silly idea and doesn't fix all the problems, except heat.

Could we position a sheet, or a carpet of asteroids in a Lagrange point around
the Earth, or as a sort of reverse Dyson sphere?

I heard that such a thing could be used to cool down Venus.

That doesn't address the ocean acidification, or mass extinctions, etc.
Certain high-light plants would also likely perish without intervention. Also,
solar energy on Earth would be stifled.

~~~
lazysheepherd
Problem I see is not climate change really. Real problem is not that we have
problems, but the fact that we create problems. Unless human society transform
into a more reactive structure, we will generate new problems or stand short
in reacting naturally generated ones.

And one of those problems will see the end of us if not climate change. It is
much like playing Russian roulette in the risk of extinction. We just may
avert the climate change but some next problem will be our bullet.

------
agumonkey
Who is into low tech and (near) zero waste ?

How much would you be happy to lose in today's practices ? (I'm curious about
what people need/want)

~~~
cup-of-tea
People want more than they already have.

~~~
nmeofthestate
This isn't actually true (although there are billions who do, understandably)
- a lot of people would be fine with continuing with their level of energy
usage. The problem is how to produce that much energy without releasing CO2.

~~~
cup-of-tea
Who said anything about energy usage. People don't care about their energy
usage, they only care about what they get from it. Every time we make
something more efficient we don't save energy, people just take more.

~~~
agumonkey
Maybe influence utility provider prices. Kinda like insurance. If you stay
inside some range per month, you'll get bonuses. If you want more, you'll pay
a single digit % premium ?

------
netgusto
When will we release our trillionth tonne of CO2 in the athmosphere?
[http://trillionthtonne.org/](http://trillionthtonne.org/)

------
darepublic
Can anyone supply a tldr?

~~~
mpr6
A group of scientist and environmental lobbyists worked hard so that by the
late 70's everyone knew about the problem of rising CO2 emissions and the
impending doom of a changing global climate. The issue required action and
limitations on the use and burning of natural resources. That messed with the
status quo too much so the people with the power at the time said fuck it. The
'it' being young people, their kids, and their kid's kids.

------
netgusto
Why is this entry already on page 2 of HN?

Seems a bit fast given the popularity and the fact that it was posted 2 hours
ago (also, compared to those that are present on p1)

\-- edit: we're now on page 3 just 30 minutes after my comment.

~~~
grzm
This subthread may very well be contributing to the submission sinking: one of
the factors involved is the "overheated discussion detector", which, as I
understand it, takes into account rate of comments.

From the FAQ:

> How are stories ranked?

> The basic algorithm divides points by a power of the time since a story was
> submitted. Comments in comment threads are ranked the same way.

> Other factors affecting rank include user flags, anti-abuse software,
> software which downweights overheated discussions, and moderator
> intervention.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)

In general, comment threads like the one you've started generate more heat
than light (19/116 comments as of this writing). If you think something odd is
going on, contact the mods via the Contact link in the footer, as they're the
ones who can actually view what's happening and do something about it.

Otherwise, the best thing you can do is make insightful, substantive comments
to the thread yourself.

~~~
netgusto
Some good points, but : 0 comment on this thread when I started it
(obviously), and yet the situation seemed real enough for 2 persons to take
notice of it.

------
d33
White on black? Seriously? Thanks to Firefox for reading mode.

~~~
Jare
You may want to keep scrolling and check the whole (and it's huge) post.

