
What Kind of Problem Is Climate Change? - mitchbob
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/opinion/climate-change.html
======
corodra
I agree that global warming is real. Global warming is a problem. However...

> If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that
> climate change is real, probably nothing will.

That's an amazingly stupid comment. This is why global warming deniers exist,
because people make these types of stupid comments. A hurricane strengthening
and stalling on land is not linked to global warming. It's always happened and
always will. What was hurricane Andrew then in 1992? What about Katrina 2005?
How about in 2004 where 4 hurricanes hit Florida in a 6 week time span? I
lived through that one.

Hurricane Lorenzo, right now, is a better example due to where it's at in the
Atlantic and its strength. Still not a great example, but better than Dorian.
Dorian was technically a normal hurricane. Nothing that special or different.
Devastating yes. But devastation is not an indicator of climate change. A
higher number of hurricanes and higher than average number in Cat 4 and Cat 5.
That's an indicator. And to be honest, this year has been pretty chill when it
comes to hurricanes. Only one FL scare. Most years there are 3-5 scares by the
end of September. We're only on L when it comes to named storms. Bad years in
the past are around S by now. Hurricanes are named in order of the alphabet if
you didn't know. In 2004, we went through the whole alphabet, plus some.

I agree global warming is happening. But this year's hurricane season does not
show it.

~~~
dyslexit
That's not at all why global warming deniers exist. The reason they exist is
because the fossil fuel industry managed to make believing in climate change a
political issue rather than a scientific one, which is why the denial is
embraced by one party but not the other. The actual "arguments" don't matter,
this one especially since it's impossible to tell if Dorian would've even
existed or not had the climate not changed.

~~~
justsubmit
Don't you recognize that your words are just as meaningful if the parties are
switched? For example:

 _That 's not at all why global warming alarmists exist. The reason they exist
is because the green energy industry managed to make believing in climate
change a political issue rather than a scientific one, which is why the
alarmism is embraced by one party but not the other. The actual "arguments"
don't matter, this one especially since it's impossible to tell if Dorian
would've even existed or not had the climate not changed._

Perspective matters.

~~~
pintxo
Actually it does not.

Converting an scientific issue into a political (or better say an emotional)
one is only needed if the science does not support your side.

Therefore it makes sense for deniers to move from a scientific discussion
(which has largely been lost) to a political/emotional one, where things are
more flexible and a good presented bad argument might still enable you to win.

So why should the "green energy industry" move the debate from a science
driven (which pretty much supports their argument) to a political one?

~~~
justsubmit
You're falling into the same trap. Your words also work from the other
perspective:

 _Therefore it makes sense for alarmists to move from a scientific discussion
(which has largely been lost) to a political /emotional one, where things are
more flexible and a good presented bad argument might still enable you to
win._

This very submission is an example of the alarmists doing that.

There are none so blind...

~~~
pintxo
Only under the premise that there is no large scientific consensus.

~~~
justsubmit
Did you read about the 500 scientists who wrote a letter to the U.N. a few
days ago indicating just that?

Well, you probably didn't, because the mainstream media didn't cover it.
You'll have to search for it. Up to you.

~~~
pintxo
From [1]:

> And while some outlets described the co-signers as experts in climate
> science, most are not. As noted in an analysis below, a significant portion
> of the co-signers are either engineers or professionals in non-technical
> fields. Only 10 identified themselves as climate scientists.

So 10! climate scientists argue against climate change? Still looks like there
is an overwhelming support for it in science.

[1] [https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/letter-signed-
by-500-...](https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/letter-signed-
by-500-scientists-relies-on-inaccurate-claims-about-climate-science/)

~~~
justsubmit
Ah, gatekeeping, how convenient.

1\. Invent a pseudoscientific field.

2\. Make normative, political claims from said field.

3\. When people outside the field express dissent, invent a non-profit to
"verify the credibility of influential claims," and only allow people in said
field to join said non-profit and verify the credibility of said claims:
[https://sciencefeedback.co/for-scientists/](https://sciencefeedback.co/for-
scientists/)

> To Apply: You need to have a PhD in a relevant discipline, have at least one
> published article in a peer-reviewed scientific journal within the last four
> years in the field they are commenting on.

To criticize climate science, you must first become a climate scientist, which
requires assenting to the belief in the validity of climate science, because
anyone who dissents from that belief would not be awarded a PhD in the field
nor have peer-reviewed articles published in it.

So only people who agree with them are allowed to criticize them. Hm, sounds a
lot like HN. And so scientific! I'm convinced, thanks for the link.

------
bryanlarsen
> Is there any way to escape the prisoner’s dilemma facing the provision of a
> public good?

Wrong question. We're not creating public goods, we're preventing the creation
of a public bad, aka externalities. How to prevent creation of externalities
is well-known: Pigouvian taxes, which are similar to but not quite the same as
sin taxes.

The prisoner's dilemma also exists here, but there is a solution which also
won the Nobel Memorial Prize: William Nordhaus' climate clubs.

[https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-
riding/](https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/)

~~~
tomatotomato37
Using taxes to change public behavior only work for things that are completely
optional, ala alcohol or cigarettes. A tax like this on essentials like fuel
just leads to people wearing traffic vests burning down your capital.

~~~
avar
Most OECD countries pay 60-100% of the price of the US price of a gallon of
gasoline _just_ in taxes[1]. It absolutely works as an incentive, and e.g.
Berlin isn't in flames right now because gas is closing in on $6 per gallon.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_tax_in_OECD_countrie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fuel_tax_in_OECD_countries,_2010..png)

------
RobertRoberts
When I was a child, my parents were in a dooms-day cult.

When people threaten your future with vague notions of impending, and
irrevocable doom, there is only one answer:

Live for today.

Why don't climate dooms-dayers not see that their very tactics of spreading
irrational fear (instead of rational solutions) is antithetical to their
desired outcomes?

(there's a post about planting trees I haven't read yet, seems reasonable to
do _something_ that everyone agrees with instead of trying to ram down ideas
very few people agree with)

~~~
lm28469
> Live for today.

Isn't that the cause of the issue though ? "Who cares about 100+ years in the
future, my v8 mustang and my weekly plane trips are pretty convenient, and
planting a tree won't change much anyway, and china is doing anyway, plus if
I'm the only one doing it it won't help that much, and &c."

> seems reasonable to do _something_ that everyone agrees with instead of
> trying to ram down ideas very few people agree with)

The problem is that the things most countries agreed on are not nearly enough
and even if they were almost none of the goals are met.

~~~
corodra
Wouldn't you say though that "live for today" is a logical response to high
amounts of insurmountable and uncertain fear? If you're an average person,
what can you logically do to overcome the actions of governments and
corporations with pocketbooks that make more per minute than you do per year?
I'm not defending it. I'm just asking, how do you convince someone otherwise?

You can't go "Just buck up and do something!" That's something you tell
someone who is depressed and that doesn't work. Plus they can point to
survivorship bias to the very, very few that meaningfully accomplish anything.

~~~
lm28469
People who don't have the will to personally do something about it shouldn't
discuss it. It all boils down to you in the end. If you just want to continue
with your life and don't care about it feel free to just do that, but at least
don't try to persuade others they shouldn't care, you go from inactive
carelessness to actively trying to make things worse. If you feel concerned
take actions. Who's going to challenge politicians, lobbies, industries, if
everybody thinks "I can't do anything and nobody can anyway", we put ourselves
in this situation, we can get out of it. I think everyone aware of the issues,
aware of the solutions, and not taking any actions is an insult to humanity.

~~~
corodra
But in terms of climate change, that's not viable. It's literally a global
effort to make change and the current discourse doesn't say anything about
that. In my youth, don't waste water by much, every little bit counts if we
all do it. Don't litter, if everyone cleans up a little, there's not much
trash out there. When I was a kid growing up in Florida, there was a special
place in Hell for you if you didn't cut the soda can rings before throwing
them away. Where even Hitler looked down on you. While living in Florida, that
was the norm. I didn't know anyone who didn't do this. I leave the state to
travel for a few years, NO ONE DOES IT. Colorado, Washington, Virginia and
Oregon to name a few. I look like a freak to people. They all wonder WTF I'm
cutting the rings for. Mind you, these are people who are at least relatively
environmentally friendly. And I'm a republican (ish).

I yell at people who don't snip those rings and shame them with pictures of
sea turtles. Lots of shaming. Don't use plastic straws, at least use paper
ones if it has to be disposable (which Florida coastal restaurants do). Don't
crank your AC too low, or get an HE fan to help it out. And again, I'm a
republican. Little things compound over time.

But when someone goes "How the hell am I to offset the CO2 of a cruise ship or
cargo ship?" I mean... yea. Little actions I can defend pretty easily. And
while I understand the powers of compounding efforts. Still.

The current environmental rhetoric doesn't leave room for the average person
to make change. In the 90s, the rhetoric was "everyone, down to the individual
level can make a difference". Naive and childish statement now that I'm in my
30s. But I do see the value. And that message is no longer spread. It's just
"Big companies and governments are to blame and there's nothing we can do
about it! We have to rely on governments and companies to make change!"

------
jokoon
The world of today is highly individualistic, and climate change is exactly
how nature will punish humans for not being able to be more cooperative. It's
as simple as that.

To me inequality and global warning are siblings. They are about the same
thing, and share a common cause. If you cannot solve inequality you cannot
solve global warming.

Unless Elon Musk or somebody else is able to finance a big breakthrough in
several technologies that makes ALL greenhouse gasses machines obsolete, there
is literally no way humans will avoid having their population reduced.

This article is short and it's a good summary on why individualism not only
makes society unfair, but also threatens humanity.

~~~
beat
I'd say we _are_ making big breakthroughs in technology that will make
greenhouse gas machines obsolete, and that's where we'll get eventually. But
getting there will take decades, because we have to obsolete out (and/or buy
out) existing fossil-dependent infrastructure - heating in cold climates, and
international shipping are two big ones that come to mind. But do what we can.

That said, I'm not convinced this is going to lead to a global population
reduction. In modernized economies, food isn't the boundary on population
growth (all modern economies are at near-zero growth or even negative growth,
and developing nations are modernizing to low birth rates at an astounding
pace). Barring any huge changes, we're looking at the global population
growing maybe 50% over the next century, and being completely level or
shrinking after that, and most of that growth happening in the next few
decades.

So for the population to shrink significantly, it would require billions to
die, of famine or resource wars. So what's going to shrink the food supply
that much? Enough to induce famine at a global scale? Keep in mind that global
warming moves more slowly than harvest cycles. Farmers and nations can make
decisions on what crops to plant and adjust their farming practices based on
new information and reasonable predictions. Next year's weather won't be much
different than this year's was, even if it will be significantly different
than the weather in 20 years.

We are also on the cusp of two massive technological changes that will impact
our farming abilities - IoT, and GMO. IoT allows plant-by-plant management of
crops, reducing tilling and chemical use. GMO allows adaptation of crops to
growing conditions more quickly than hybridizing does.

It just seems to me that the concerns about feeding everyone, in the wake of a
previous century that absorbed a quadrupling of the population while making
more food than ever and a future of at least two key technological
breakthroughs, is more doomsday than solid reasoning.

------
bristleworm
text without paywall:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20190930123234/https://www.nytim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190930123234/https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/30/opinion/climate-
change.html)

~~~
british_india
Thank you!

------
garmaine
> _If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that
> climate change is real, probably nothing will._

If you think the "other side" is a climate change denier, you don't have a
grasp of the issues involved and I'm really suspect that your op-ed is
preaching to your crowd rather than actually trying to engage the problem.

The issue has never been denying the scientific fact that CO2 reflects
infrared light, causing a greenhouse effect. It's a question over the scale of
the problem, the timelines in which it plays out, and the panic and alarmism
exhibited by one side of political debate.

Moving off fossil fuels is going to cost a lot of money, and it is going to be
substitutive spending, not the growth-building kind. The Green New Deal, if
enacted as specified, would send us into a prolonged, generation-long
recession. Is is worth it? Is it necessary? That depends on how alarmist you
are in your global warming predictions. And that is where we disagree. I've
lived through two major economic recessions, and seen the effect that has on
young people and opportunities. I wouldn't want to wish that on an entire
generation. Millennials think boomers gave them a bad break, but wait until
their kids see what opportunities their climate change policies leave them
with...

We need to move off fossil fuels. But we can do it in a way that is gradual
and growth-positive, while exploiting the warming climate in a way that boosts
agricultural yields and adds living space for the growing population of the
world. That requires a healthy debate about trade-offs and choices, and
recognition that this is a complex, multi-faceted issue that people come to
with multiple opinions and that's okay.

~~~
Miner49er
> The Green New Deal, if enacted as specified, would send us into a prolonged,
> generation-long recession.

Source? The last New Deal helped get us _out_ of the Great Depression. Seems
crazy to suggest that a new similar one would cause one.

~~~
justsubmit
Are you saying, then, that any legislation entitled "Foo Bar New Deal" will
therefore have a positive effect?

If so, I would like to propose a Pink New Deal. It's even better than the
Green one, trust me. And it seems crazy to suggest otherwise.

~~~
Miner49er
The legislation is similar, not just the name. It creates jobs, reduces wealth
inequality, it builds new infrastructure, etc. It's a stimulus package, of
sorts.

~~~
justsubmit
Wow, who could argue with such a great package.

BTW, since you care about reducing wealth inequality, can you send a dono to
my paypal?

------
spodek
The article's opening sentence:

> _If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that
> climate change is real, probably nothing will._

However big they seemed compared to the past, they're _nothing_ compared to
the future, though everything we do affects it. We can still avoid some of the
worst.

~~~
hnarn
My biggest gripe with that type of argumentation is that it plays into the
idea that weather and climate are pretty much the same thing, when they
_really_ aren't.

~~~
cos2pi
Agreed, this has repeatedly been one of the biggest failings in communicating
the reality of anthropogenic climate change.

Climate change is _not_ a single event, nor a cluster of events, that occur(s)
over a summer. Strong hurricanes have occurred well before Dorian [1]. So have
heat waves [2].

Extreme weather happens. The change in the frequency of (some) extreme events
can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change, but a single event cannot.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1935_Labor_Day_hurricane)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_North_American_heat_wave)

------
tgbugs
One phrase that seems to be missing from the article is is larger category of
problem -- a collective action problem. The public good framing has to do with
a citizen/state relationship. The collective action framing reflects a
state/state relationship. A number of the more technical terms throughout the
article imply this, but I was surprised that the term itself was left out
because including it immediately tells us that certain solution simply will
not work.

Further note (edit). I think it is unlikely that a single state will ever be
able to mitigate alone unless all other states stop or drastically reduce CO2
release. Maybe one state could threaten to set off a bunch of nukes in the
upper atmosphere to destroy electronics and power grids around the world as a
threat to encourage compliance, but that seems extremely far fetched.

------
gmuslera
The problem of seeing this as a cost-benefit equation is when you may risk
facing infinite cost.

Climate change, as a single, isolated factor, won't cause by itself human
extinction or at least the end of the human civilization in a foreseeable
future, but reality is complex, current civilization and most of mankind
depends on a lot of connected systems. Positive feedback loops happen, in
climate, economics and in cultures, and from time to time the effects catch by
surprise experts. We might be betting it all, and losing the bet, forever.

~~~
amanaplanacanal
You might be right, but you can make that same argument about any change in
any complex system.

~~~
gmuslera
In this case, it is the complex system at which we all live in.

And we are not talking about the fly of a butterfly, the climate system is
gaining an atomic bomb worth of energy each second
[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/07/global-w...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/07/global-
warming-of-oceans-equivalent-to-an-atomic-bomb-per-second)

------
chooseaname
Stronger storms, heat waves, drought, floods, erratic weather. Check. Where I
live, we are on track to have the driest September on record. We have also
broken or tied 7 record hot days (and looks like we might go for 8 today)[0].
How much more common does this have to be before people start acting?

Edit: [0] Had someone argue with me that this just means we had record hot
months before. I'm like, no, that's not how that works. Those record days were
from _different years_. The new ones were from _the same year_.

~~~
whatshisface
Remember when people were saying that global warming wasn't happening because
we were in the middle of a particularly cold winter? Treating this year's bad
weather as proof of global warming is making the same error in the other
direction. The climate can only be understood as a long-term average of the
quite large annual variations in weather.

~~~
chooseaname
I get that. I do. I said:

>How much more common does this have to be before people start acting?

Because it _is_ becoming more common. Just as predicted.

------
specialist
I like the game theoretic framing. Winners and losers. Currently a zero sum
game. Where we non-zero sum games, filled with win-win outcomes.

Robert Wright's book Nonzero, which advocates for these kinds of reforms,
deeply influenced my worldview, way back when.

[https://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Destiny-Robert-
Wright/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Nonzero-Logic-Destiny-Robert-
Wright/dp/0679758941)

\--

I'm a treehugger. During the 90s, I volunteered at Wetlands Conservation
Network (WetNet), a short lived Audubon offshoot trying to save the Pacific
salmon.

During my time there, I somehow got the impression that all environmental
(ecological) challenges could be fixed with better accounting and fair
markets.

More than just addressing externalities.

With our salmon, the (economic) winners were timber companies and developers.
Who reaped outsized rewards for developing habitat. (Timber companies were
turning second growth forests into urban sprawl thru their subsidiaries.)

Other beneficiaries were power (hydroelectric) and some farmers (irrigation).

The biggest losers were the commercial & tribal fishers, anglers, and the hard
to quantify "culture".

But for some reason, beyond my experience and understanding, commonsense
structural reforms were completely out of bounds.

For instance, (I'm told) that water rights in the West are "use it or lose
it", so potato farmers in Idaho continue to grow an oversupply. Whereas if
they somehow rent (or transfer) those water rights in an open marketplace,
that water could be put to better uses.

\--

Note that I've been out of the treehugger game since 2000, so I don't know
what, if any progress, has been made since.

Also, I continue to be surprised that Wright's Nonzero thesis apparently
hasn't gotten any traction. Neither with the libertarian Freedom Markets™
cultists. Or the weirdly regressive leftists who reject markets and
incentives, and continue to conflate corporatism & cronyism with capitalism.

Oh well.

------
programminggeek
It's an invented problem based on a belief that we control the planet. Yet, if
we DID control the planet, we could simply fix it.

What if the planet got warmer without our input? What then?

~~~
dragonwriter
> It's an invented problem based on a belief that we control the planet.

Climate change is a problem whether or not it's anthropogenic (which there is
massive evidence that it is).

> Yet, if we DID control the planet, we could simply fix it.

Us having the capacity to initiate a warming trend doesn't imply that we could
simply stop it.

> What if the planet got warmer without our input? What then?

Then we'd have just as much interest in bringing it under control. The impacts
don't change of the source is different.

------
liaukovv
Imagine if humanity has treated other technological problems as societal ones:

>What do you mean plague vaccine? We need to stop dreaming about magic
solutions and just stop living in cities

>Farming? No this will never work, just stop reproducing. And collect more
berries.

>Fire? Why do we need fire? It's dangerous and hot food is a luxury.

~~~
ptah
the second one would have actually helped us to avoid current dilemma :-P

~~~
noonespecial
So what then? A few thousand humanoids would have picked berries for a few
dozen thousand years until the next ELE wiped them out and be gone? That's
better how?

We've got exactly one planet's worth of resources to consume in our reach for
the stars. Doing nothing and doing it wrong gets us extinction on basically
the same galactic time scale.

What a tragedy though, to have a real shot and burn it all up trying to get
each other to click on ads for plastic crap no one needed.

