
The world is losing the war against climate change - sethbannon
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/08/02/the-world-is-losing-the-war-against-climate-change
======
WhompingWindows
If you look at global power sector emissions from 1998 to 2018, you'll see
that while we have dramatically improved upon the energy intensity
(energy/capita) and even are making improvements on carbon intensity
(carbon/capita), but the sad reality is this: we are still using around 35%
coal power in 2018, the same as we did in 1998.

And the power sector is the easiest sector to decarbonize, by the way. If you
look at electric vehicles, even if we had the most rapid, insane ramp-up
that's beyond even Elon's crazy predictions, we'd still have massive fossil
fuel use for non vehicle uses of petroleum for chemical industries, airplanes,
plastic production, and for the numerous numbers of legacy cars that will be
leftover that are not EV.

We need massive innovation across all our uses of fossil fuel. We can not rest
on our laurels, saying PV and wind are so cheap now. They are still around 4%
of total energy consumption, and when you factor in the decline of nuclear and
relative decline of hydropower in the ever-increasing industrial energy base,
we see that fossil fuels are basically the same % of our energy mix as they
were before 2000.

For an energy realist, I recommend checking out Vaclav Smil, who has long been
predicting 21st century as the century of natural gas, and who has been
skeptical of renewables taking over instantly. It will take us until the 22nd
century to truly decarbonize, and by then the seas will have risen over Miami
and Shanghai on a regular basis.

It's a truly scary future. Get innovating, in your personal lives and in your
professional careers, everyone!

~~~
radicalbyte
I've been looking into carbon capture recently because it's going to be vital
to slowing down the warming (and buying us another 50 years for the
transition).

What surprised me is that I can cover _double_ my two-car-owning European
family's carbon footprint via planting trees in the UK at an annual cost of
around $400. It'll cost half that to do the same in a developing country.

We need a global carbon tax and we need it now. Heck, even a carbon tax in the
EU / US applied to local emissions and, importantly, to imported goods would
go a long way to solving the problem.

We can't just sleepwalk into oblivion, can we?

~~~
swebs
>What surprised me is that I can cover double my two-car-owning European
family's carbon footprint via planting trees in the UK at an annual cost of
around $400. It'll cost half that to do the same in a developing country.

Then what happens when the trees are fully grown? Processing them for industry
would just reintroduce the carbon back into the environment. Letting them stay
in the forest is nice, but you would quickly run out of room. There needs to
be some sort of way to bury the biomass in order to put that carbon out of the
atmosphere for good.

~~~
coryrc
Build housing out of them. There's a 14-story skyscraper going up in Portland,
OR made of cross-laminated timber; basically no concrete.

~~~
Scarblac
At 1000 trees per year per person, that's a lot of building per person.

------
rb808
The war is unwinnable. Global warming can only be reversed if we stop all Co2
and methane emissions, and then start net carbon capture to reduce current co2
levels.

Its just not going to happen. No one ever says that out loud. There is noise
about reducing carbon emissions - in reality this is a lot of argument about
reducing carbon emissions in wealthy countries. We can't even do that.
Meanwhile even my greeny-lefty friends enjoy their central heating, imported
food, masses of electronics and vacations in foreign countries. There is
little hope in getting the world's peoples to reduce their quality of life.
Generally everyone is happy to just blame Americans/China/Big
Business/Coal/etc and keep on living as they please.

Realistically not much is going to change. It might be possible to slow down
the warming a little. But its going to get much more uncomfortable, its
probably worth moving to somewhere cooler.

~~~
atlantic
The war is perfectly winnable, but not within the context of a democracy. Here
you would need the equivalent of a state of emergency, lasting for perhaps a
century, to force the necessary changes upon an unwilling public, who are
quite happy to sort trash into three piles, stop using straws, or engage in
other such cargo-cult behaviours, but not to give up their iPhones, 2nd cars
or annual vacations.

Ironically, a country such as China is much better equipped than the US or
Europe to handle this kind of emergency. Once the leading figures become
convinced of what needs to be done, they can implement the necessary measures
in full and overnight, and ensure the necessary public support via the state-
controlled educational system and media.

In the West, we are reduced to endless haggling, as lobbies strive to convert
the emergency into additional demand for new "green" product lines or for
bogus geoengineering solutions, and political representatives end up
implementing toothless half-measures that achieve nothing.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
A large majority of Americans support adding a revenue-neutral carbon tax,
which demonstrates a willingness to reduce consumption as long as it is part
of a concerted action and not just an insignificant choice by a single person
that will make no noticeable difference to climate change. We need "leaders"
to catch up with the general public's views on this matter, not the other way
around.

~~~
leereeves
Or a large number of Americans think they personally could afford to pay a
carbon tax and are happy to place the burden on poor people who cannot.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
The money has to come from somewhere. If I have to pay a tax on carbon, I have
to spend less money on something else. Regardless of whether or not I can
afford a carbon tax, it still has to result in lower consumption.

~~~
leereeves
That's only true if you live hand-to-mouth and spend every penny on
consumption.

The poor would be forced to reduce consumption; the wealthy already have more
money than they can spend.

------
Reason077
Is there even a "war" against climate change? If there is, it's barely gotten
started.

For the most part, politicians are at best apathetic and at worst, actively
hostile to the idea of "fighting" such a war.

~~~
chosenbreed
The politicians largely reflect the people they govern. I don't think we can
expect much better from them as compared to the general population...not to
mention of course the vested interests and lobbying capability of
corporations. And again corporations have shareholders, employees, etc...

~~~
colordrops
> The politicians largely reflect the people they govern

Is that really true though? The statement is so vague.

~~~
PeterisP
In this regard it's absolutely true - the vast majority of people clearly are
_not_ willing to undertake meaningful lifestyle sacrifices to fight against
climate change.

------
nonbel
"War against" ("War on") seems to mean it is a never-ending boondoggle that,
at best, wastes a bunch of resources. Is there any example of these "wars"
being a success? The three that come to mind are:

    
    
      War on drugs:   fail
      War on cancer:  fail
      War on poverty: fail
    

Why is the economist trying to link climate change to this?

~~~
steego
I can't help but think that picking apart a magazine's headline is a huge
distraction from an important issue, but I also can't help myself in pointing
out how off the mark you with such a superficial observation.

As far as global poverty is concerned, between 1990-2013 more than a billion
people were lifted out of poverty according to the World Bank. I'm sure you
can point to local and anecdotal evidence that does not correlate, but to say
efforts to reduce poverty have failed are just flat wrong.

Cancer is an intractably complex disease, but to dismiss all efforts and
advancements is also off the mark. Life expectancy for many types of cancers
has improved significantly. Oncolytic viruses have been shown to treat some
very advanced forms of cancer with _profound_ results.

I wish I could be more optimistic about the war on drugs, so I'll concede that
one to you.

If you think the branding of the effort is that terrible and counter
productive, I'd love to hear your ideas on how we should brand the effort.

~~~
tripplethrendo
A billion people consuming more is surely bad for climate change though, no?

Millions of people pouring into 1st world countries and consuming more is
surely bad for climate change.

~~~
steego
> A billion people consuming more is surely bad for climate change though, no?

Let me ask you a question: How do you incorporate the concept of efficiency
when you talk about wealth? Is wealth and not being impoverished defined by
how much you can consume?

I'd argue that the history of technology shows us that we tend to value things
that provide more value using fewer resources over a the long term. Most
wealth is derived from extracting more value from the same resources and not
simple resource consumption.

Let's take light for example. There was an article written by Tim Harford
discussed the economic history of producing light and how price per lumen has
dropped by a factor of 500,000.
[https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38650976](https://www.bbc.com/news/business-38650976)

Obviously, not all consumables can enjoy those tremendous gains in
efficiencies, but there are technologies today whose price/performance is
improving at a rate far faster than inflation. That's what we should invest in
and accelerate.

In my lifetime, I've watched the cell phone and laptop replace the need to buy
dozens of other things, not just in the home, but in the office too.
Cheap/viable/comfortable augmented reality will only push this trend further.

A billion people consuming more natural resources, non-renewable resources and
carbon emitting resources at the levels we consume them would be bad for our
environment.

A billion people having access to cheap/free sources of energy, a quality
education, an inexpensive digital infrastructure and devices, and knowing how
to use their land efficiently is magnitudes better than a billion people
simply living in poverty. Poverty isn't cheap, nor is it good for the
environment, especially if it leads to wars destroying wealth and raping
natural resources.

My hope is the markets in developing countries will be a huge opportunity for
producers of efficient technology, providing those technologies a space where
they can incubate until their quality begins to match their less-than-
efficient competition. In some circumstances, this is true today.

------
vowelless
I am a little out of the loop and so I have a few questions:

1\. At what point in time can we arrest ocean temperature rise purely by
reducing emissions?

2\. Even if we stopped further rise in temperature, is the current temperature
(land and ocean) sustainable, or is a chain reaction already underway that
will increasingly lead to more and more turbulent weather?

3\. Are there viable ways to extract greenhouses gasses from the atmosphere?
Will extraction necessarily lead to lowering of temperature?

4\. Are there risk factors in extracting greenhouse gasses? Could we trigger
excessive cooling?

5\. Alternatively, is the Futurama approach of dropping a massive icecube in
the ocean a viable approach?

6\. Are there long term benefits of warming?

~~~
StavrosK
How are we going to make the ice cube? Where's all the heat from cooling the
water going to go? Back in the atmosphere?

Maybe we should just make a massive solar array, power a large laser with it,
and shoot the beam into space.

~~~
pjc50
There was actually a very clever paper on nano materials which, instead of
emitting IR on the blackbody spectrum, emit it in a band the atmosphere is
transparent to. Reversing the greenhouse at ground level.

~~~
StavrosK
Oh huh, that's interesting... So we could just lay down large sheets of that
material on a desert or something?

~~~
marmadukester39
Or cover all non- solar generating roofs with it, and all roads...

------
randomThoughts9
Not even the people that pretend to care are putting in the minimum necessary
effort to fight this. So where does the war in the title come from?

"War on/against x" is becoming a meaningless expression.

As far as I can see, our only real plan is: we'll invent something. The rest
is just rhetoric.

~~~
Brakenshire
We will invent things, the question is the market conditions which will allow
inventions to arise and then quickly gain market share. Even with the amazing
progress in solar, wind and electric batteries, it’s still not enough. We need
some meaningful pricing of carbon to allow the market to solve the problem.

------
317070
Legitimate question: will there be a point where we speak about this war in
the past tense, as in `The world lost the war against climate change'? How do
we determine that turning point?

~~~
btrettel
I wonder if future generations will think people were even serious about
solving the problem. In this respect the war was lost long ago.

The vast majority of people who believe climate change will have large
negative consequences make no major changes to their lifestyles. As someone
who rides bike for transportation largely to save money and stay in shape (I
think climate change is a lost cause), the environmental crowd seems to think
I am doing something saint-like. But it really isn't anywhere near as
difficult as they believe. They rarely adopt cycling to work, and at least
part of the reason why seems to me that their environmentalism is not entirely
sincere. This is speculation, but I think most people stop at signalling that
climate change is bad. They rarely take effective action.

~~~
eropple
A large part of it is that it is a _collective_ action problem. If you want to
talk about "effective action"? You're talking about shutting down coal plants,
not going after the man or woman on the street. A person needing a car to get
to work is, both in real and proportional terms, causing _overwhelmingly_ less
damage to the environment than industrial-scale polluters. If everybody who
could switch to a bike instead of a car (which is fewer people, at least in
America, than you might realize), you would see a blip on the graph.

Calling into question the sincerity of people concerned about climate change
but also concerned about actually getting to work on time and not stinking and
getting fired because their _bosses_ don't care is just some nasty,
uncharitable stuff. And it's also counterproductive. It's the "but Al Gore
flies in jets!" thing all over again, discrediting what state actors need to
be doing because of the actions of private citizens. Don't do that. It's bad
for you and bad for us.

~~~
btrettel
Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the US.

[https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-
transportation-...](https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-
transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions)

Not all of that is personal transportation, but a lot of it is. This is not a
blip on the graph.

I also agree that large polluters need to change, and that we need state
action. I was just pointing out that people who seem to believe climate change
is a problem rarely make major lifestyle changes consistent with their stated
beliefs.

Saying this is primarily a collective action problem is passing the buck. It's
a convenient excuse for doing nothing. Collective action is much harder than
personal action. Ultimately, we need both collective and personal action.

> Calling into question the sincerity of people concerned about climate change
> but also concerned about actually getting to work on time and not stinking
> and getting fired because their bosses don't care is just some nasty,
> uncharitable stuff.

You seem to believe that cycling to work is much more challenging than it
actually is. You may be surprised, but no cyclist I know has the problems
you've mentioned. Those problems can happen, but they are not that common in
my experience.

Yes, the US is a car dependent society, but you can choose where to live and
choose your job. Like most people choose where to live based on their driving
commute, I choose where to live based on my cycling commute. It is not a long
commute, and I arrive on time and usually am not sweaty.

Also, cycling was just an example. It doesn't need to be cycling. Work at
home, switch from your gas guzzler, etc.

~~~
Symmetry
Cars are bad but they're a pretty small problem compared to airplanes. A
single trip across the Atlantic and back is about equivalent to commuting in a
SUV for a year. Per passenger-mile cars and planes use about the same amount
of carbon but people tend to take far longer plane trips.

~~~
btrettel
I agree in principle.

But it seems to me that the marginal cost in terms of CO2 emissions is not
exactly clear for flying. Whether I fly or not, the planes will fly. My
addition to a single plane in terms of the weight is not that significant. It
becomes a more murky economic argument. I agree people should not fly, but
this is more of a collective action type approach in my view. It takes roughly
a plane load of people to make a difference.

In contrast, a driver has much more direct control over the CO2 emissions. The
marginal addition of CO2 is much clearer.

~~~
Symmetry
If people stop or reduce flying one by one there's clearly some point at which
a stepwise reduction in service occurs. Your are unlikely to be the person who
triggers this but the reduction will also be proportionately larger than your
contribution too. So you should think of yourself as reducing carbon emissions
by the person-mile amount in expectation even if it will never actually be
that amount.

Or to frame it another way, when you fly you're playing Russian roulette with
adding an amount of CO2 to the atmosphere dwarfing anything else you might be
causing.

------
okket
I don't know if the "war against" theme fits here. There is no enemy but
ourselves.

~~~
codeafin
The war is between those who wish to act on it, and those who wish to ignore
it.

~~~
moduspol
Framing it as binary serves only political ends.

At best, you could frame it as "people willing to act sufficiently to
meaningfully combat global warming" and "everyone else," but the former group
is far smaller than "those who wish to act on it."

Put plainly: It will take far more dramatic action than most climate alarmists
advocate to even have a measurable impact on (let alone solve) global warming.
The opposing side isn't just "those who ignore it," it's most people who
rationally evaluate policy claiming to be capable of a significant effect.

------
safgasCVS
The article fees cheaply alarmist to me. Its incredibly difficult to make good
predictions even 2-3 years into the future let alone whats going to happen
globally decades from now. We have only started to see the effects of global
warming but the really bad stuff has yet to happen - and when it does the
reaction wont be linear as whats being projected here.

------
forapurpose
I think Americans have a special responsibility: Not only have they probably
contributed more GHG than anyone else,[0] they have the power (and thus
responsibility) to do the most about climate change, and they are the chief
obstacle (see below). People are dying, and will die in greater numbers. Most
people who will die didn't benefit from those GHG (the people in wealthy
nations, such as the U.S., benefited), in countries where they can't afford to
mitigate the problem. Is it ok to do that, to watch people die, and to be a
bystander?

As much as people on HN don't like to politicize issues, sometimes the problem
is political and to talk about other causes and solutions is misleading. There
is one powerful political entity standing in the world's way, the U.S.
Republican Party; the rest of the world is generally united. The solution
isn't technical or scientific, but political: Organize against them and vote
them out of office if you are American.

[0] I think China may produce more GHG now, but that's just recent history; I
would guess that the U.S. is the all-time leader by a good margin.

------
alkonaut
So we need a quick plan B. The required goals from nations won’t be met and
people won’t change lifestyle to do something about it. We need to _also_ do
something that ensures warming stops without any sacrifice made by people
(other than taxe to fund the massive programs)

Maybe we could turn things around in 10 or 30 years but the damage done may
either be irreversible or runaway.

So a short term solution that ensures no temperature increase for the next 30
years would be great. But what is it? Carbon capture? Artificial Whitening of
oceans? Is there _any_ solution that is even remotely viable?

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
We haven't done $%# to try and execute Plan A i.e. reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. It's the cheapest and easiest plan _by far_ , so why do you think
we can afford to switch to some fanciful plan B?

Most alternative are either distractions by/for those who can't accept the
harsh reality, Get-rich-quick schemes by some industrialists or science-
fiction by/for those who prefer to dream of a nice future rather than doing
something _now_.

"The American way of life is not up for negotiations. Period." \-- The People
In Charge.

~~~
alkonaut
> It's the cheapest and easiest plan by far,

It’s the _simplest_ plan, but I’ll argue we are seeing it’s pretty _difficult_
as it requires changing the behavior of a lot of people, if even just a little
abd/or changing policies of a lot of countries.

I’m not saying plan A should be somehow abandoned or slowed (so perhaps B is a
bad name because it’s typically used when A is abandoned) But it should be
complemented. We should _also_ investigate the stupidly sci-fi get-rich-quick
(or perhaps lose weight fast?) schemes. Technological solutions might at least
buy some time for the slow change we are seeing in behavior and policy.

And yes, I realize there is a hazard that some of these schemes risk giving an
impression that the problem is being solved, and plan A isn’t necessary. That
can’t happen.

I also realize that anything other than simply limiting emissions is a complex
and expensive plan, but even a complex and expensive plan is better than a
simple and cheap plan that is politically impossible.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
>a simple and cheap plan that is politically impossible.

If it's impossible to execute the cheap and simple plan because of political
obstacles, we just have to change politics. It's also simple and cheap once
you know that money has nothing to do in politics.

~~~
spdionis
Just offering a thought-provoking POV here:

Do you work in IT?

As far as I could see the hardest problems in technology are not actually
technical, but organizational/political/management problems. Politics is just
management at a different scale.

We shouldn't underestimate the complexity of societal problems. They may be
harder to solve than the hardest technical challenges. I think dismissing
these political issues with a "just change the politics, lol" is short-sighted
at best.

------
sir_brickalot
Humanity is the problem. Address it!

One focus should be on the root cause: The human population is the reason for
our environmental problems, all-of-them. And the population growth rate is
frightening [0]. It renders any other approach almost impossible to succeed.
So even if it is an ethically difficult topic it should be addressed!

The conclusion of this line of thinking could be less human population means
less environmental problems and more prospects of success for every other
approach to stopping climate change. So why not try to think of ways to
incentivise birth control?

Is it really to much to ask to stop producing more than 2 offsprings per
family? This would bring population growth down. I'm sure otherwise human
future is doomed.

To support this you could install tax reduction for no/one/two child/ren. As
any solution has to be globally installed, maybe something similar to emission
trading with birth rights. Shrinking countries may need more growth,
developing countries might need financial help and so on.

I know this is drastic, but you know the saying... [1]

[0] [https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-
growth](https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth)

[1] [https://www.theidioms.com/drastic-times-call-for-drastic-
mea...](https://www.theidioms.com/drastic-times-call-for-drastic-measures/)

------
api
I'm not optimistic about this for game theoretic reasons. It would require a
global scale all-cooperate scenario, since any single defector gets massive
economic benefit from defecting and using cheaper energy to undercut everyone
else.

The only hope we have is the development of post-carbon energy sources that
are _cheaper_ than fossil fuels. If we can't do that I do not see a plausible
scenario where we don't burn every bit of profitably accessible carbon.

------
Sol-
Was there a serious attempt to begin with? Yes, there are some efficiency
gains and in some developed nations CO2 emissions seemed to stagnate, but much
of that seems incidental (for instance partly caused by the Great Recession 10
years ago) and rarely part of a coordinated effort. Though I guess you can at
least partly credit the rise of renewable energy like Solar to some government
programs.

Wonder how much faster the effort would have been if we had an actual cap-and-
trade system that encompasses the global economy instead of the lackluster
attempts which aren't legally binding, only cover limited industries or have
an oversupply of emission certificates to render the system useless (like the
European one).

But it's pointless to ponder about that. It's not there's a lack of ideas
regarding possible solutions, it's a just lack of foresight by humanity. We
probably can't even blame previous generations, because we would have acted
the same in their situation.

~~~
maze-le
Its not that much, but it's a start:

[https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/negotiatio...](https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/international/negotiations/paris_en)

------
desireco42
Maybe instead of going to war, we should come to peace with our environment. I
think mindset is important in looking into this issue.

------
marcosdumay
Hum...

Solar prices are comparable to coal nowadays, and getting lower by the month.
Besides, where is that investment in solar or wind stalled? I haven't seen any
place like that. Instead, I only see people talking more and more about solar,
even to the point that some want to get off-grid for economical reasons (I
don't agree with their calculations).

I would really like to see some study about how long will solar power need to
ramp-up until coal becomes uneconomical. I would also like to see some study
about how much oil, gas and coal we can actually use, with what levels of
energy returns.

Instead, here it is that sensationalist piece based on basically no data at
all, claiming the end of the world... At the economist.com. Journalism used to
be better.

------
konschubert
Do we know what will happen if we keep burning all fossil we can find, at
today's rate?

~~~
andy_ppp
Sort of...

[https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/21/opinions/sutter-6-degrees...](https://edition.cnn.com/2015/05/21/opinions/sutter-6-degrees-
climate/index.html)

I worry that all the sink holes appearing in Russia are massive methane
deposits which are probably are not factored into estimates. It being this hot
in Europe and specifically the UK for this long is insane.

~~~
chosenbreed
Yep. That could be a bit of a problem. The land mass affected appears to be
huge...

------
artemisyna
It sucks that we're in such a bad place right now, but I'd probably bet money
that there are going to be some big geoengineering startups in the next couple
of years.

------
luord
Improved education and quality of living tends to have an inverse proportion
with birth rates.

With that in mind, maybe the way to win the "war" could be killing poverty: No
more poor people, and the population is going to decrease. Looking at Japan,
according to the estimates and trends, they would no longer be around anymore
in roughly 100 years.

So, we still would go extinct (eventually, in a long time from now), but the
planet will keep on living, so there's that.

------
gorpomon
Serious question: whatever happened to mechanical solutions like seeding the
atmosphere with a chemical that will reflect light? Are those things
considered too risky to try? I remember hearing about those solutions some
years ago, but they seem to have fallen out of vogue now.

------
snissn
Is there an optimistic argument to be made that we are winning the war on
climate change?

~~~
Brakenshire
One optimistic way of looking at it is that the models for success already
exist. The US 2050 target for per-head CO2 emissions is to get to the same as
France today. And France has just as industrial an economy, and a similar
population density to a lot of US states.

So, the idea cutting emissions is impossible or will inevitably lead to
massive damage to the economy or reductions in quality of life is obviously
not correct. And that doesn’t even take into account the technological
developments which can occur to make the transition easier again. The problems
are to do with politics, economic models, and technology development, there
are no fundamental barriers.

Also, the economy functions at scale, so if the majority of rich countries
follow a transition other countries will likely follow by default. It’s a
matter of pushing enough technologies over the tipping point where they take
over even if you assume the value of the atmosphere is zero.

------
FrozenVoid
The loss is because we invent half-solutions that only delay the
inevitable(reducing/storing/filtering emissions instead of removing sources),
but are more profitable for the industry/economy in the short term vs
renewables.

------
sparkling
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade)

Thank me later.

------
acd
We should switch to a carbon/anti pollution based crypto currency that is
mined in a earth friendly way. All goods and transports and all other
pollution is such a system should be accounted for.

As it now with the current economic system it is too easy to offset the cost
on somebody else.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons)

~~~
kang
solar mining in space and beaming the results to earth
[https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/897631806899597312](https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/897631806899597312)

~~~
samfriedman
I think orbital solar collection is interesting, but I'm not sure why it needs
to be used to mine BitCoin: can't we just use the energy to power a microwave
beam to collectors on the surface? Not sure what the economics of that is vs.
the cost of launching a geostationary satellite though.

------
hacknat
Losing? We already lost.

It's probably too late to save modern civilization, the new war on climate
change is about making sure we don't make the planet uninhabitable for almost
ever land animal. But, our chances of accomplishing that are pretty good (of
keeping the planet habitable, not failing to do so), especially as we lose
billions of people that __will __die because of catastrophic climate change.

------
cletus
So in the last month or so I stumbled across SFIA [1]. This guy has produced
150+ videos about futuristic topics but grounded in science. Everything from
how to get into space cheaper to the Fermi Paradox to Black Hole
civilizations.

Anyway, one thing I like about it is the optimism. This guy is genuinely
optimistic about the future. And he has pretty good reason. Like this planet
can realistically be home to _trillions_ of people with not much more tech
than we have right now.

But a recurring topic is the subject of fusion and how much of a game-changer
it will be if we can do it in any kind of economic fashion. Now I'd previously
somewhat dismissed this because of the naive view that it is free energy. Well
the fuel might essentially be free (even that depends on what the fuel is;
deuterium is common enough to essentially be free, Helium-3 not so much) but
the plant itself costs money, has a power output, requires maintenance and we
still need power lines and the like.

But he points out some of the reasons why this is a complete game changer and
why certain problems simply cease to be. One of these is the greenhouse gas
problem. Why? Because as soon as you have energy cheaper than hydrocarbons you
simply use your power to make hydrocarbons from the CO2 in the atmosphere.
This is pretty simple chemistry and we can do that now. There's just no point
because we'd be powering the process largely with hydrocarbons (solar and wind
notwithstanding).

I should also point out that I remain somewhat skeptical about nuclear fusion
being economic because of the neutron problem (in that neutrons quickly
destroy the container). This works fine for stars, not so well for
superconducting magnets.

But (as Isaac Arthur points out) you don't even need fusion for some of these
rosier outcomes. You just need cheaper than what we have now and there's good
reason to think that solar may get us there, particularly if we can mass
produce solar collectors in low Earth orbit (these produce about seven times
the power of Earth bound collectors). And there's actually pretty good reasons
to be optimistic about that.

The human condition is one of exaggeration, unfortunately. Namely that both
fear and optimism tend to be overstated. You see this in markets all the time.

The counterargument against radical changes to combat climate change tends to
revolve around the idea that markets will eventually solve that problem (for
those that admit there's even a problem at any rate). And it makes me somewhat
uncomfortable to admit that this idea probably isn't 100% wrong.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZFipeZtQM5CKUjx6grh54g)

~~~
mattygh
I'm similarly optimistic that outcome is possible, maybe even probable, but
I'm not excited for it. When it comes to population and the future, the
question is less whether we can survive, the question is what kind of world is
consistent with 20Bn people? Or 1 Trillion people?

If you value open space, wild places, other species' existence, bucolic
lifestyles, or other non-techno sci fi outcomes, that's a scary thought. Maybe
we will all move to space and keep earth as a re-wilded paradise for
vacationing and research. Or maybe future generations won't care about any of
that and will densely cover the whole planet, snuffing out anything that came
before.

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fokinsean
Is there an agreed upon consensus on when SHTF? I've been trying to limit my
climate change/collapse reading (keeping away from /r/collapse), but this
article triggered my anxiety again. I know things aren't looking good, but is
there any hope? Are we completely fucked?

~~~
mikestew
_Is there an agreed upon consensus on when SHTF?_

The only consensus is that the shit will hit you in dribbles. So much so, you
might not even notice until you just kind of become used to smelling a little
bit like shit. As the stench becomes overwhelming, perhaps you might look back
and think, "you know, I don't remember _always_ smelling like shit."

------
nitrix
The war? It's not about war, but symbiosis.

------
fancyfish
In the US we've been having this "debate" and talking about the "war" since at
least the late 1970s. Even that long ago it was nearly impossible in our
country to garner the political will to fight climate change.

Our question now is, how do we best stall the inevitable? But the political
will is still sorely lacking. The idea of a globally effective Paris Accord
with teeth is laughable.

From the NYT Magazine:
[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/clim...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-
change-losing-earth.html)?

The scientists knew the consequences of warming: "When, at Charney’s request,
Hansen programmed his model to consider a future of doubled carbon dioxide, it
predicted a temperature increase of four degrees Celsius. That was twice as
much warming as the prediction made by the most prominent climate modeler,
Syukuro Manabe, whose government lab at Princeton was the first to model the
greenhouse effect. The difference between the two predictions — between
warming of two degrees Celsius and four degrees Celsius — was the difference
between damaged coral reefs and no reefs whatsoever, between thinning forests
and forests enveloped by desert, between catastrophe and chaos."

When the dire climate forecasts were established science, the foremost
American scientists, senators, industry representatives, etc met to discuss
what to do about it. They started their conference - in 1980 - with this:

“We might start out with an emotional question,” proposed Thomas Waltz, an
economist at the National Climate Program. “The question is fundamental to
being a human being: Do we care?”

This provoked huffy consternation. “In caring or not caring,” said John
Laurmann, a Stanford engineer, “I would think the main thing is the timing.”
It was not an emotional question, in other words, but an economic one: How
much did we value the future?

We have less time than we realize, said an M.I.T. nuclear engineer named David
Rose, who studied how civilizations responded to large technological crises.
“People leave their problems until the 11th hour, the 59th minute,” he said.
“And then: ‘Eloi, Eloi, Lama Sabachthani?’ ” — “My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?” It was a promising beginning, Pomerance thought. Urgent,
detailed, cleareyed. The attendees seemed to share a sincere interest in
finding solutions. They agreed that some kind of international treaty would
ultimately be needed to keep atmospheric carbon dioxide at a safe level. But
nobody could agree on what that level was."

------
Bachoglider
Hey guys,

Let me present the project our team have created for tree planting
[https://treespond.com/](https://treespond.com/)

\- treespond is a web platform where one can offset Trump's ignorant Twitter
quotes by planting trees.

\- the twist is simple: the more ignorant the phrase, the more trees are
treesponded.

Your feedback is huuugly helpful

Thanks!

------
angersock
We have nuclear power, but people are bad at evaluating risks, so here we are.

~~~
21
We were told that Fukushima will NEVER happen. So yeah, some people are very
bad at evaluating risks.

~~~
losvedir
Well, what happened? Last I heard the outcome is some land lost, no immediate
deaths, and about 100 deaths due to cancer over the next 50 years. A tragedy,
but not apocalyptic. (And minuscule compared to the deaths and destruction
from the earthquake/tsunami itself.)

~~~
21
> _A private think tank says the total cost of the Fukushima disaster could
> reach ¥70 trillion ($626 billion), or more than three times the government’s
> latest estimate._

But I guess you'll say that $626 bil is just 15% of Japan's GDP, totally
manageable over the long term.

I'm sure the communities where future nuclear plants are to be build will love
this argument: "if disaster strikes, remember, it's for the greater good"

~~~
carry_bit
What's the cost of rising sea levels over the long term?

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biznickman
Yet another article that emphasizes how absolutely garbage our politicians
are. They are also actively complicit in Trump's war against environmental
protection and the continued apathy that began before Trump.

The problem is that environmental driven campaigns have been incredibly
ineffective. Perhaps it's our responsibility to generate noise the same level
of that with Net Neutrality?

------
PunchTornado
is there a proof somewhere that these wild fires are linked to climate change?

For example the really bad one in Greece happened because someone decided to
burn some wood.

(I'm convinced that climate change is real and we're responsible)

~~~
fabricexpert
Trying to link individual, recent news events to climate change is generally a
bad idea. You're taking a long term term trend (climate change) and comparing
it with short term extreme events - there may or may not be a direct link,
it's hard to say.

This makes it easy for climate change deniers to give cherrypicked examples of
outliers that tune to emotional responses, rather than factual evidence.

It's better to look at overall trends over time to see the impact of climate
change, e.g. are we getting more of the extreme weather scenarios? Yes. Are
temperatures globally going up? Yes. Are sea levels rising? Yes. Are the polar
ice caps melting? Yes. etc.

