
'We're doomed': Mayer Hillman on the climate reality no one else will mention - rbanffy
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/26/were-doomed-mayer-hillman-on-the-climate-reality-no-one-else-will-dare-mention?CMP=share_btn_fb
======
tejohnso
We don't hear enough serious talk like this. Dr. James Hansen called out the
problem as Scientific Reticence [1].

While I'm not certain that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change, it's
clear that there are wildly out of norm changes occurring. Minimum Arctic sea
ice extent is one of the main measurements that I've started paying attention
to lately, and it's been outside of, or close to the -2s mark for five of the
last seven years compared to a 1981-2010 average [2].

According to the IPCC things will be very bad somewhere near the end of the
century, and according to Guy McPherson civilization is coming to an end
within the next ten years [3]. There's a huge variation in time frame and
severity in predictions, but it's clear that climate change is already
severely affecting certain groups of people, and changes are occurring faster
than expected [4].

[1] [http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/24/dangerous-
scientific-...](http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/24/dangerous-scientific-
reticence/)

[2] [https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-
sea-...](https://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-
graph/)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqIt93dDG1M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqIt93dDG1M)

[4] [http://www.fasterthanexpected.com/](http://www.fasterthanexpected.com/)

~~~
specialist
_" While I'm not certain that CO2 is the primary driver of climate change..."_

The alternatives being methane, increased albedo, loss of biomass...?

~~~
AstralStorm
And emission of methane and other hydrocarbons from thawing permafrost. Plus
changes in global ocean currents. Plus emissions of sulphide and nitride into
atmosphere.

The answer is all of the above and they feed into each other. The main
question that remains is whether we should try to attack CO2 or methane
emissions first. Which will be more cost effective and more attainable in
short term.

~~~
specialist
Ok, thanks. I misunderstood, worried tejohnso was ‘skeptical’ (denier). Agree
on thawing permafrost, don’t know anything about atmospheric sulphides &
nitrides (will read up, thanks).

Regarding (human) emissions, sure, reduce at best available speed. But now
that warming is self sustaining, we need to aggressively sequester, and
hopefully figure out ways to slow and reduce ongoing methane release.

~~~
tejohnso
I don't think skeptics and "deniers" should be considered equivalent. One
group endeavours to verify facts before accepting them, while the other
ignores facts or deliberately misrepresents them.

~~~
mcphage
> I don’t think skeptics and "deniers" should be considered equivalent.

You’re right in that they’re not equivalent, but often deniers (of any widely
supported viewpoint) have learned to speak in terms of skepticism in order to
deflect criticism of their denial. They say “oh, I’m a skeptic”, but provide
the same stale arguments, and when those arguments are refuted (yet again),
they don’t move their position one jot. They just retreat, and bring them up
again at the next opportunity.

So no, they’re not the same, but plenty of people are suspicious of
“skeptics”, having run into too many that don’t argue in good faith.

~~~
meko
So would you say you're... skeptic of skeptics?

------
adrianN
IMHO our only hope are technologies that actively remove carbon from the
atmosphere, i.e. "unburn" the fossil fuels we used so far. Turning massive
amounts of biomass into charcoal and burying it seems to be the most low-tech
solution. That's even an energy positive process. But maybe we need faster
methods to avoid catastrophe.

~~~
pedrocr
>Turning massive amounts of biomass into charcoal and burying it seems to be
the most low-tech solution

If you've found a way to convince people to do that wouldn't it be easier to
just not burn coal for energy? Or do you mean doing it at such a massive scale
we reverse the net flow of coal from the ground to the atmosphere?

~~~
adrianN
Not burning coal kills the job market for coal miners. Presidents have been
elected on promises of keeping them employed. Burying more charcoal than the
amount of coal we dig out creates jobs ("clean coal" can even be reused as a
slogan!), and you can sell the energy you get from burning the wood gas.

~~~
mavhc
There's not many coal miners, don't worry about that. 50000 in usa, just pay
them all to not work.

~~~
kbob
Or pay them to be coal sequesterers.

------
mabbo
One begins to wonder if there's going to be a future business in climate
modification. Could the UN spend money to pay for a reduction in world wide
temperature?

This isn't all hypothetical either. Release a large quantity of sulfur
dioxide, like one sees in a volcanic eruption, and you can measurably reduce
the global temperature for a year or two. Capture carbon or other greenhouse
gases and bury them. Somehow reflect a large amount of sunlight from hitting
the Earth. Probably a dozen other good ideas exist- this is hacker news, I'm
sure we could invent a hundred more.

The only challenge is going to be convincing the powers that be that it's on
their economic interest to pay you to do so. But as sea level rise, it may
quickly become self evident.

~~~
nabla9
>The only challenge is going to be convincing the powers that be that it's on
their economic interest to pay you to do so. But as sea level rise, it may
quickly become self evident.

I don't believe the idea that hurt from climate crisis spurs sufficient
action. Our time horizon shrinks during crisis.

Any corrective actions starts to have an effect decades in the future. Once
the sea level raise starts to inflict "unbearable pain" all money is channeled
to treat the acute consequences. If governments go to emergency mode, they put
trillions to relocating people, solving immediate food crisis, stopping hunger
, fighting military conflicts etc. All the cool technical solutions requiring
trillions in investment go out of the window.

~~~
AstralStorm
The trouble is, nobody is equipped for this large scale of interventions. Cool
technical solutions will be required, such as genetic adaptation, building
nanostructures with internal climate systems, artificial islands etc. And
power sources and/or ethical changes to run all of this.

------
meric
Let's do an exercise as presented in the article and accept CO2 level
increases are irreversible:

The Jurassic had 5 times more CO2 than today. [1]

Modern climate change is slower than the K-T mass extinction event, when
photosynthesis was halted. [2]

[1] [https://www.livescience.com/44330-jurassic-dinosaur-
carbon-d...](https://www.livescience.com/44330-jurassic-dinosaur-carbon-
dioxide.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinctio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous–Paleogene_extinction_event)

~~~
anvandare
We can deal with small and fast changes, or big and slow changes, but not big
_and_ fast. The problem is not the CO2 levels themselves, or the heat, or even
the climate. Life can exist and thrive in phenomenally hostile environments.
It's the speed and size of the shift. Life needs time to adapt, depending on
its size (which is why almost nothing >25 kg survived the K-T event).

I'm comfortable when my car goes from 60 mph to 0 in half a minute. I'm not
going to be comfortable when my car goes from 60 mph to 0 in a second.

~~~
liberte82
Additionally, what "life" are we talking about? We know about certain
lifeforms existing in hostile environments, but can we talk about humans?

~~~
zeth___
To quote George Carlin: The Earth will be fine, you're screwed though.

------
shubhamjain
> "The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because
> we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels."

Climate change is a problem of grave concern but isn't doomsaying a hyperbole?
Most countries plan to make transportation fully electric by 2040. But even
without that, the cost of green energy is going down every year. The
moment—which might be forthcoming in a few years—when owning a fossil fuel
vehicle becomes an exorbitant deal, people will switch in droves.

~~~
netsharc
Targets in 2040 or 2050 make me laugh, for one it's just politicians making
statements to make some people feel good, and for another, in 20 years it'll
be a bit late.

~~~
gepi79
Targets for 2040 and 2050 are required.

The problem is what targets will be determined for 2020, 2030, 2040 and 2050.

Several Trillions of dollars have been wasted just to finance war in the
Middle East.

Support of the fossil fuel industry and wars and military and waste of time
and money and lack of technological investment is the shame and inexcusable
guilt of politicians and the democratic majority worldwide for the last 50
years.

~~~
rbanffy
> Targets for 2040 and 2050 are required.

Unless politicians of 2030 decide it's 2050 and 2060.

This is one generation of politicians making commitments the next couple
generations of politicians will have to honor.

------
nsporillo
I see the problem to be that any investment in greenhouse gas reduction now
takes away from present consumption or other investments so that future
generations can benefit, but it is generally considered that as time goes on
people get more wealthy. Furthermore, it'd take significant emissions
reductions commitments from the US and China in an international climate
agreement to make any progress, while countries like Maldives, Turkey, etc
benefit greatly.

Basically the incentives arent necessarily aligned because not all countries
will be impacted the same by climate damages. Although, economists consider
climate damages to be externalities which are market failures that cause
economic inefficiency. I believe that with the right carbon tax, unpaid
externalities can be resolved by correcting the price of energy such that the
future damages are accounted for. The issue again is no nation can agree to
anything on an international scale and steps to decarbonizing must start from
the bottom up.

~~~
nabla9
You recognize the real problem. It's the incentives and time horizon that
dooms us. It has never been the case that we don't have a solution. There is
always a technical solution but it does not matter. We had several solutions
decades ago, we have several solutions now, we have even more in the future.

Our incentive structure means that we can only modulate the intensity of hell
for the future generations with our electric cars, next 30-50 years is already
locked in.

We are not willing to invest enough. Economic analysis puts the current cost
of timely and sufficient corrective action around 0.5 to 1 percent of global
GDP. That would be a real cost and money out of other things. Even concerned
voters don't want to hear that. They want to hear green jobs and green growth.
You can't sell actions as a net cost and sacrifice.

When the effects really hit it's too late. The idea that people take an action
when it really hurts does not apply to climate change. If the global GDP stats
decrease and we are constantly in recession and conflicts survival values take
precedence. Investments go to military, food security and welfare and climate
actions get little or no attention. Many developed countries will be at least
'okayish'. If the price of wheat and rice increases 500% they still make it.
It's the others who die. We could develop carbon capture and suck the CO2 out
of air but nobody wants to invest trillions into something extra that has
noticeable effect 30-40 years from now when there is constant downturn.

------
Havoc
The endless rolling stream of ‘we’ve only got x years left to do something’
from scientists does seem rather suspicious

~~~
thomasahle
Alternatively, they could say: "It's already too late", but then surely nobody
would do anything.

It's better to keep coming up with new goals, so they can say "Do something in
the next X years or Y" will happen. Then at least we might be able to prevent
something.

------
CalRobert
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929405](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16929405)

------
Tomminn
Want to make the US carbon zero? Plant and maintain a forest 5x the size of
New Zealand on a cheap piece of land somewhere.

Or just start a damn carbon tax priced at the cost of offsetting the carbon.
Which will turn out to be _so freaking cheap_ , almost certainly less than
~$10/tonne. To put this in perspective, you know how air travel makes you a
terrible person? Well not if you offset with _a dollar of trees per hour of
airtravel_.

What pisses me off most about climate change is that it is stupidly easy to
solve. Offsetting the 5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum the US
produces would cost at most $50B per annum. And I suspect a lot less if you
actually put some thought into it, or better yet, got market forces to work on
it.

~~~
sandworm101
>> ...or better yet, got market forces to work on it.

This is not an area where market forces can work. Market forces got us to
where we are now. There will never be a healthy free market for carbon
sequestration. It is an energy-negative activity. Absent artificial stimulus,
it ain't going to happen.

Government is for doing what the market (ie Freedom!) cannot. This is a multi-
decade problem for which open markets are ill-equipped. We need massive
government intervention. This is an area where we need to take tax dollars and
spend them directly on both reducing carbon output (now) and active
sequestration once that becomes more efficient than further reductions.

~~~
Tomminn
In New Zealand, the government buys drugs from pharmeceutical companies. There
is no reason why the US government cannot buy carbon offset from the free
market, using the revenue generated from a carbon tax. There will be
monitoring/inspection issues, to ensure the carbon is actually being
sequestered, but this doesn't make it impossible.

~~~
sandworm101
Because carbon offset is a shell game. Paying people to not emit at X so that
other people can emit at Y opens too many loopholes. The desire for profit by
cutting corners and cheating will creep in. Emissions need to be directly
curtailed. W don't need "if you want to burn, pay someone else to not burn."
We need "thou shall not burn", or at lease "thou shall burn less tomorrow than
thou didst yesterday."

~~~
Tomminn
It's not "pay someone else not to burn", it's "pay someone else to eat all the
carbon you are spitting out". It would totally work, and it's the only way to
get to zero emission.

------
fallingfrog
My understanding is that the climate sensitivity per doubling of CO2 is about
3 degrees celsius; if we keep putting CO2 into the atmosphere at our current
rate we'll get to one doubling in about 56 years; therefore we'll probably
wind up at one doubling or a bit less by the time we go completely renewable.
That would be around 2.5 degrees of warming. Which is very bad, but not
civilization-ending. Have I missed something?

------
Radim
A fascinating talk, and a counter viewpoint from a top physicist:

 _" Freeman Dyson on the Global Warming Hysteria"_
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiKfWdXXfIs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiKfWdXXfIs)

~~~
ahmedalsudani
One who is supremely unqualified for commenting on this topic and an outlier
within the mass of scientists.

~~~
StavrosK
It doesn't matter, though. The way your brain is wired, if you read one
article denying climate change for every article you read that warns about it,
your brain will consider the two hypotheses about equally likely, and you'll
probably believe the more comforting one.

That way, it doesn't matter that there's a shitload of significant evidence to
one and only circumstantial evidence to the other. Your brain just goes by
volume.

~~~
ahmedalsudani
You are absolutely correct. However, it’s still important to vocally disagree
with opinions that dismiss the impact of climate change. It could prevent
observers from falling into the trap of thinking those old and tired red
herrings lead to some undiscovered path that the rest of us have missed.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh yes, certainly.

------
ghthor
I actually think history will look back on the carbon blanket with thanks.
Without the warmth of the carbon blanket the earth would likely be entering an
Ice age, based on the cycle of energy release of the sun which is entering a
long cycle of which the last minimum presented as an Ice age. By protecting
ourselves with the carbon blanket we actually are protecting our civilization
and giving ourselves enough time to tech past our survival being so critically
linked to the sun.

~~~
iovrthoughtthis
I am not convinced of this.

I think I would need calculated study into the interrelated variables involved
before I would begging to entertain this idea.

------
Lidador
If there is really nothing we can still do, the best thing to do is to go on
with our lives, and forget about it.

------
TausAmmer
Business and entertainment.

------
hackeraccount
Climate change seems too much to me like a stick being used to advance an
agenda. Whenever a solution is proposed it always dovetails with something the
person proposing it would want anyway.

Instapundit - right wing law blogger - used to put up posts that would start
"I'll believe Climate Change is a problem when X believes it is" and then link
to an article about some celebrity flying 50,000 miles a year or doing
something else that put a trillion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere. Good for a
laugh I suppose but honestly I wonder if there's not some truth there.

Why are the solutions always sold on the basis of "win/win" with the both wins
going to the same end of the political spectrum? I understand that it sounds
like extortion or blackmail but it seems like if you really want a solution
you have to sell it to people who don't agree with your politics not just try
and ram it down their throats.

~~~
esarbe
At this point, there really is no discussion anymore about whether or not
there is climate change. The question is what we can do to survive as a global
civilization.

Continued survival seems pretty like win/win to me, no matter what the
political orientation.

Also, I seem to remember that environmental protection came pretty much out of
the conservative corner. See Teddy Roosevelt and his national parks.

Also also, coal vs. renewables is /not/ a conservative vs. progressive
discussion. I've yet to find a conservative that thinks the public should
allow the externalization of the costs caused by private pollution.

------
sandworm101
Note that the original author is 86. He does not fly and that is great. But he
is also heading into a very energy-intensive period of life. Most of a
person's lifetime heath costs come in the last few years of life. Health care
is expensive for a reason. It consumes massive amounts of energy and generates
enormous piles of waste. Will he forgo medical treatments as willingly as he
has forgone flying?

~~~
majewsky
> Health care is expensive for a reason.

Yeah, but there are other reasons than just energy use. IP laws for example,
or market segmentation. Or do you think that the regular edition of, say,
Visual Studio is more energy-intensive than the student edition?

~~~
sandworm101
In 2013, the health care sector was also responsible for significant fractions
of national air pollution emissions and impacts ... greenhouse gas emissions
(10%),

[http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....](http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0157014)

That puts health care far ahead of aviation in terms of carbon emissions.
Anyone rationally looking to be carbon neutral for the good of the planet
should therefore address their consumption of health care before their
consumption of aviation.

