
Massive Government Report Says Climate Is Warming and Humans Are the Cause - jonbaer
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/02/561608576/massive-government-report-says-climate-is-warming-and-humans-are-the-cause
======
dschuler
It's hard enough to know how to approach a tragedy of the commons problem like
climate change if everyone could agree that it is a problem, but it's
difficult for me to understand why some people will argue that it is in fact
happening.

I would be interested in understanding the root cause of why people will
disagree about this point.

For example, a conservative friend of mine, who I think is one of the most
intelligent people I know, will argue that climate change does not exist.

I've asked him what he makes of e.g. the rising level of CO2 in the
atmosphere. His response was there are scientists interested in self promotion
and are willing to fabricate data, and/or that we can't actually measure CO2
accurately. Those are very unconvincing counterarguments in my view. I'm led
to believe there must be a deeper root cause that prevents someone from
objectively looking at data and seeing that some change is occurring (without
even coming to a conclusion about what that change means or what to do about
it).

Yet, I have no idea what that root cause could be. Any ideas?

~~~
uncle_d
There are a number of questions here.

Is CO2 rising? Fairly unequivocally, yes.

Has the planet warmed? Again, faily clearly yes, since pre-industrial times.

Is it still warming? Ok, here we get more contentious.

How much of the warming is down to CO2? Contentious, again - e.g. see this
book for an argument of how we could explain much if not all of the warming
down to various natural cycles: [https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-
Precludes-Catastrophe-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes-
Catastrophe-Independent/dp/1909022241)

Is a warming planet a problem? Again, debatable. Rising sea level and ocean
acidification scares aside, history suggests that we tend to do better with a
warmer climate.

This is actually one of the scarier articles I read recently about why rising
CO2 is bad - and it's nothing to do with climate:
[https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-
nutrie...](https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/09/13/food-nutrients-
carbon-dioxide-000511)

~~~
guelo
So basically: I know better than all the scientists that have studied the
issue deeply and who keep sounding the alarm more and more urgently.

~~~
replicatorblog
What, exactly, do you want to do about it?

What, exactly, do you want to do about it, that's politically viable?

Should we tell a billion people in China, and another billion in India to shut
down their coal-fired plants? Back to the farms and rural poverty?

Do you want to convince rich westerners to stop eating meat in such large
quantities? Tell them to stop driving so much?

Both sets of suggestions are politically unpopular positions and forcing them
on their respective populations would lead to strife and lives lost far beyond
what we'll see with climate change.

We push for incremental changes in the US, but even their proponents admit
they won't make much of a difference in a global context.

The Earth is warming. Almost everyone is on board with that now. Absent a
global totalitarian government that can constrain carbon emissions by fiat,
what can we do that will make a difference?

It seems like the answer is "not much," so the revealed preference of most of
the world's citizens seems to be rolling the dice that the change won't be
catastrophic, hope for a tech breakthrough that obviates the problem, and
assume that we'll deal with the disruptions as they come. It's not an
inspiring message, but it's where we're at.

~~~
matt_j
Throwing your hands in the air because it's 'too hard' is not an acceptable
reaction. What is popular is rarely what is good. I'd venture to suggest that
what is popular is often vapid, self-serving and short-sighted.

The longest journey starts with a single step. The man who moves a mountain
begins by carrying away small stones. Many hands make light work. There is
precedent for accomplishing great things by 'just starting and keeping at it
until you get there'. Start local. Start small.

Waiting for a 'tech breakthrough' is akin to waiting for 'the rapture'.

~~~
replicatorblog
It may not be acceptable to you, but it's a decent description of what's
happening today.

------
SubiculumCode
A massive push to clean electricity tech and infrastructure funded by the
Federal government may seem expensive, but is SO much cheaper than Climate
Change related war+starvation+sea-rise+giant storms.

~~~
gerry_shaw
But what if climate change isn't real and all we end up with is a cleaner,
healthier and quieter environment to live in? /s

~~~
afarrell
If climate change isn’t real, there’s no good reason for us to cause the
unemployment, crime, and suicides that will result from dismantling the main
industry of America’s 4th largest city (Houston).

~~~
VikingCoder
That's inevitable. Will it be replaced by nuclear or solar is basically the
only question.

~~~
afarrell
Unless we can mine enough lithium to make grid-scale battery farms viable or
can make large-scale flywheels work, both forms have issues with demand
response that are currently being solved by natural gas.

~~~
VikingCoder
Or we use electricity to make gas, and then burn the gas.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-
gas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power-to-gas)

------
abtinf
Why wouldn't NPR publish the source report?

~~~
mikehotel
NPR doesn't have the report, it's not published yet. Considering the OSTP
vacancy and the current administration's stance on climate change[1], even the
anticipated late 2018 date is doubtful.

 _Alley notes that "there's a little rumbling" among climate scientists who
are concerned that the Trump administration will ignore this effort. "I think
the authors really are interested in seeing [the report] used wisely by policy
makers to help the economy as well as the environment."

The report has been submitted to the Office of Science and Technology Policy
at the White House. Trump has yet to choose anyone to run that office; it
remains one of the last unfilled senior positions in the White House staff._

[1]
[https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news](https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news)

~~~
dv_dt
If ever there was a case for an anonymous leak - this doesn't even have the
downsides of questions of releasing military or intelligence secrecy attached
to it. It would likely carry other risks to the leaker though.

------
bodono
The scientific method means making a prediction based on a theory and seeing
if it matches the observed results.

So honest question - have any predictions from climate science about the
change in global temperatures come true? Have what climate scientists said ten
years was going to happen in ten years actually happened? Global climate
dynamics are very complicated and it's very hard to understand, but real
science makes testable predictions and then theories are accepted as 'our best
theory at the moment' when the observations match predictions within a small
tolerance and the theory is thrown out when it doesn't, regardless of how hard
or complicated it is.

------
mithoon
Every week, I read an article about this, all I say in my head is 'but then
what'. Unless there is money bleeding no politicians will take this to rest.
It's sad but true and this will keep on continuing.

~~~
monk_e_boy
Its a shame you can't pay a "core 80%" set of taxes, then choose what other
things your "extra 20%" would go towards. NASA, climate stuff, recycling, bee
stuff, extra education... etc

~~~
anigbrowl
I wonder how hard would it be to just start building the infrastructure like
this in some sort of 'wikibudget.org' and then using that as political
leverage? Everyone who liked the system well enough to participate in it could
get behind that, even if their individual allocation preferences did not win
out or were different from others'. this might overcome the divide-and-conquer
strategy of the polity-industrial complex.

For example, suppose Alice wants to spend less on defense and more on schools;
Bob wants to spend less on schools but more on veterans, and Carol hates the
F-35 program but likes both schools and veterans. As individuals they might
donate to and volunteer for different organizations with different missions,
but if they were all able to participate in dividing up an imaginary budget
they could work together to get their compromise budget enacted even though
they would be doing so for different reasons.

My gut says it would take between 5 and 10 years for such a thing to gain
sufficient political momentum to seriously threaten the current system, maybe
longer; but then the idea that Wikipedia might become the introductory
reference source of choice was once considered laughable too, notwithstanding
its current imperfections.

Anyone?

------
s3nnyy
Hate the fact that politics intervene, fund or don't fund this kind of stuff
and hence interfere with almost every study on this topic.

~~~
Delmania
The irony here is that under Scott Pruitt, the EPA is removing any references
to climate change from the department. Yet, the same government that gives him
the power to do that also made this report.

------
vondur
I’m thinking it’s too late for just CO2 reduction alone. We need to get CO2
sequestration going.

~~~
mnglkhn2
Not really.

Plant a ton of trees and the CO2 problem solves by itself. The problem stems
also from the huge deforestation that has taken place in the last couple of
centuries.

~~~
mac01021
> Plant a ton of trees and the CO2 problem solves by itself.

Citation? Obviously we're emitting CO2 at some rate E and a ton of trees will
sequester that CO2 at another rate S.

But it's not clear that you've measured and compared those two numbers.

~~~
mnglkhn2
Here we go [1]:

This has to do with a study about the measurement of the impact deforestation
of tropical forests has on global warming.

> How big is three billion tons?

Three billion tons of anything is a lot, but it’s hard to grasp just how much
— particularly when it’s tons of CO2, which we don’t have any everyday
experience in weighing. One way to look at it is that the average U.S. car
emits about 5 tons of CO2 a year from the tailpipe, so three billion tons is
the equivalent of 600 million cars — about twice as many as there are in the
whole United States. Another way of expressing it is that this is the
equivalent of about 13 million railcars full of coal, which would stretch
about 125,000 miles (half the distance to the moon). It's also equal to the
total emissions from Western Europe, including Austria, the Czech Republic,
Slovenia, all the Scandinavian countries, and Finland.

[1] [http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/stop-
deforest...](http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/solutions/stop-
deforestation/deforestation-global-warming-carbon-emissions.html#.Wft_T0xFyHs)

~~~
fishcolorbrick
Plantation forestry grows about 20 cubic meters per hectare-year [0]. Doug Fir
weighs ~600 kg-m3 [1]. 3B US tons / (20x600 kg) per hectare-year = 6,796,166
hectares. Plantation lumber is harvested in 7, 14, and 21 year cuts [0], so to
ensure you're always sequestering enough carbon you need 21x6.8 million
hectares of new forest to defray the current CO2 production... which is about
551,000 square miles, which is approximately [2] Texas + California + New
Mexico... or [3] France + Spain + Italy.

The new forest would still be ~20% of the size of the Amazon rain-forest
though [4].

[0]: [https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-pine-trees-
grow](https://www.quora.com/How-fast-do-pine-trees-grow)

[1]: [https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/weigt-wood-
d_821.html](https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/weigt-wood-d_821.html)

[2]: [https://state.1keydata.com/states-by-
size.php](https://state.1keydata.com/states-by-size.php)

[3]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_area)

[4]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_rainforest)

------
fmsf
Given that this starts with 'It is "extremely likely" that human
activities...', that is enough for folks and organisations behind pushing that
there is no global warming and it's not human's fault if there is. To say
"they don't know for sure" and stop reading it.

------
kylek
Terrifying if this report has an impact on policy.

Ctrl-f sun

(No matches)

Garbage article with no source

------
kapauldo
Surprised this isn't flagged.

------
liberte82
Why was this flagged the first time? The number of flagged articles on HN is
becoming ridiculous. It's creating a precedent where any group with an extreme
opinion can shut down conversation by deciding a topic is 'controversial'.

~~~
wooter
any idea why my comment below is flagged?

------
wooter
so maybe we should reign in the largest polluter in history? The US Military.
As a citizen, I think this is a logical first step. Isn't it fully within the
government's control?

~~~
saas_co_de
sorry, but how is the U.S. military the largest polluter in history?

Surely the billions of people using electricity and driving cars and living
off of products created with fossil fuels have managed more pollution than a
few million in the U.S. military?

~~~
intopieces
[https://www.ecowatch.com/military-largest-
polluter-240876060...](https://www.ecowatch.com/military-largest-
polluter-2408760609.html)

~~~
kolbe
This provides absolutely no basis for comparison, jut a few slightly
quantitative anecdotes. I am, without doing any research, supremely confident
that US civilians and private industry are far more environmentally
destructive than the US military in 2017.

~~~
toomuchtodo
"The U.S. military is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world.
Every year, our armed forces consume more than 100 million barrels of oil to
power ships, vehicles, aircraft, and ground operations—enough for over 4
million trips around the Earth, assuming 25 mpg."

[http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/smart-transportation-
so...](http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/smart-transportation-solutions/us-
military-oil-use.html)

~~~
wooter
Scary how ive been censored on here. Flagged, buried, and couldn’t answer any
comment till now. I’m done with HN.

------
randyrand
I've long been on the human-caused GW band wagon - ever since I learned about
global warming 10+ years ago.

But the alarmism turned me off to the idea that dramatic legislation is
actually needed, or that GW is even all that big of an issue. As far as I can
tell unabated GW would never have a big impact on my life [edit:] even if all
the change happened within my lifetime.

~~~
liberte82
Your children would be so proud.

~~~
randyrand
They wont care. It'd be even less noticeable to them than it us for us - the
people that will be alive for most of the changes. Unless someone spends a lot
of effort trying to convince them to be mad about it, I don't see them being
less happy than we are today because of GW.

------
wdn
Can we just give Al Gore and his buddies 15 trillions and settle this issue?

For Christ sake, the Earth has been warning before human was here. There are a
lot of extra factors that we don't know yet. At the very least, have a debate
about it. This is not settled like the government funded research tell you.

If there is a solution, it will not be more government regulations. Just look
the past 20 years in the financial markets, how many scandals were there and
have SEC and their regulations prevent anything?

