One of my current concerns is that the demonization of climate scientists over the last 30 years has resulted in models that underestimate the timelines of how bad things get. Not an intentional conspiracy or anything, just a systemic natural response to the pressure of not wanting to be raked across the coals in the media as the "crazy".

As an example, the heat wave in the northwest of the USA and Canada this year was something I remember reading about as a problem to expect ~2050. Ditto for Siberia this year. Ditto for the snow in Sao Paolo.

I hope my concerns are misguided. I general though, short of a deus ex machina, I have no hope for the world doing anything about the climate emergency, even after it's obviously too late and even after the worlds seen a major city burned/wet bulbed/typhooned off the map.

> Not an intentional conspiracy or anything, just a systemic natural response to the pressure of not wanting to be raked across the coals in the media as the "crazy".

Well, I'm pretty sure the monies spent by certain global corporations also do their part explaining why climate change and global warming has not been taken serious for the last fifty years - when it was first recognized. By scientists of the aforementioned global corporations.

It is well documented how 'big oil' (for the lack of a better name) has lobbied hard and heavy to kill any effort that took climate change serious.

> I general though, short of a deus ex machina, I have no hope for the world doing anything about the climate emergency, even after it's obviously too late and even after the worlds seen a major city burned/wet bulbed/typhooned off the map.

Oh boy, I agree. It pains me so hard and so much but I absolutely agree. Our monkey brains and monkey societies are just not able to deal with the kind of dangers that we've been able to put ourselves in.

There was no snow in São Paulo AFAIK; and snow in the south of Brazil, which did happen, happens more or less yearly.

(just a minor correction, not arguing against your general point)

I can't cite that example, I just have a friend whose parents are there tell me a story about how they were saying how pretty the snow flurries were and how he had to inform them about how ominous it was for there to be snow there. It's possible that they were referring to the frost that Sao Paolo got (which is still pretty crazy), and the videos of snow from further south.

TIL the term "wet-bulb temperature": https://www.iflscience.com/environment/why-is-everybody-talk...

tl;dr: It's essentially just a humidity-adjusted temperature, like wind chill factor for hot weather. The important figure to know is that a wet-bulb temperature of 35°C / 95°F (equivalent to that temperature at 100% humidity, or higher temperatures with lower humidities) will kill everyone.

This makes me wonder if it is (or will become) economical for cities to use renewable energy to dehumidify the outdoors, and if so whether the yield of water would actually be useful.

> This makes me wonder if it is (or will become) economical for cities to use renewable energy to dehumidify the outdoors, and if so whether the yield of water would actually be useful.

Well people will likely first start cooling and lowering the humidity indoors with their ACs. The condensate might be used to feed the household hydroponic systems.

For places where people have AC, which isn't everywhere, and which will make the situation even worse (as of now, and in the foreseeable future, ACs will use not fully carbon free electricity in most places, and will contribute to the warming everyone is trying to avoid directly with hot air and indirectly with CO2).

Politicians "committing" to things that will happen after they are out of office, are mostly just saying pretty words.

Even worse, most of these "commitments" are for after the politician's death. Xi Jingping isn't particularly old for a politician with his 68 years, but by the time 2060 rolls around he would be 107 years old.

I really wish the Queen (who is 95) would say to the world leaders: "it really is your problem: you might live to my age!"

It's definitely tough to have confidence in these sorts of statements - but I just wish we'd get beyond the people who actively fight against even the probably empty promises.

I do too, but I think that “empty promises” empower them. I also agree with Andrew Sullivan (https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/how-to-turn-the-gop-gr...) that conservatives could be persuaded to support climate initiatives if we on the left allow ourselves to prioritize climate above our own tribalism tendencies (those who would reply, “But conservatives aren’t prioritizing climate over tribalism” are missing the point entirely).

The article doesn't support your characterization of it.

Nuclear isn't rejected by the left because of tribalism, as you seem to imply. It is rejected for other reasons, completely unrelated to tribalism, as the article points out. And many on the right reject nuclear for the exact same reasons.

My comment doesn't support your characterization of it. :)

My original remark was about rising above tribalism for sake of the environment. I was specifically thinking about the line in the article:

> Climate is simply too important to be sacrificed to cultural prejudices.

I would say, that in America at least, flip-flopping is only viewed as an insult by conservatives though. People criticized Biden over his busing policies during the election, but nobody critized the fact that he changed his mind on the topic, people discussed how he "grew". I know there are extremist pockets on both sides of the aisle - but I don't think the majority of liberals would really prefer a gotcha "I told you so" moment over actually getting meaningful policies done.

I've always viewed it more as an unfortunate coincidence[1] that social conservatism was so closely tied to climate change denial. In theory those folks wanting to make sure their children can hunt and hike like they did growing up should be strongly set in favour of preserving an environment where that remains a possibility. Instead we have the media pushing this shallow form of conservatism where we specifically want to preserve the unsustainable post-war boom years where every river had a paper mill on it, every driveway had two cars (except they didn't and they weren't SUVs) and nobody realized what the consequences of that were.

How do you overcome conservative media when it's pushing such a strong agenda? Inviting them over for tea isn't going to cause a sea-change.

1. Sorta - I think some folks worked hard to make sure this happened.

Hard to feel guilty about energy usage when the politicians arriving for the summit all arrive by private jet.

Even the loudest politicians usually maintain 3 or 4 homes, often with heated swimming pools.

I'm a bit tired of the extreme hypocrisy. If someone like Jimmy Carter or Ralph Nader (they both live humble lives) were to be the leading voice, I'd feel better about things.

This isn’t hypocrisy. The message from the leaders isn’t “we all need to do our part to emit less carbon”—that kind of personal responsibility approach isn’t going to work. We need to stop subsidizing carbon so that people’s economic interests are aligned with the interests of our planet. We need to solve this systemically.

I really don't want to deflect to "which party is worse"--to do so would be to completely miss my point. Let's tackle the existential threat first and then we can resume politics-as-sport.

Politics isn't going to take a pause for climate change.

At our peril.

> in America at least, flip-flopping is only viewed as an insult by conservatives though. People criticized Biden over his busing policies during the election, but nobody critized the fact that he changed his mind on the topic, people discussed how he "grew"

Both parties are tolerant of drift. Donald Trump wasn't always a Republican.

What then? A real estate developer like described in:

[DaDa] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverside_South,_Manhattan#Tel... ?

Trump is really weird for a number of reasons. He broke the mold in a significant way from the more traditional conservative politician so I'm not certain if he's that good of an example. I'm trying to avoid "no true scotsman"ing but Trump really was a pretty big contrast to most other republicans.

> Politicians "committing" to things that will happen after they are out of office, are mostly just saying pretty words.

And these same politicians are taking private jets and massive motorcades to summits when there's a much more carbon footprint-friendly alternative available (hint: we've all been doing it for the last 18 months).

They tell us we're "past the point of no return" w.r.t. sea levels rising to the point that some large percentage of our coastal cities will be underwater, yet haven't started building sea walls to at least attempt to prevent the flooding.

And these same politicians are hellbent on importing unlimited numbers of third world immigrants into first world countries, instantly elevating the carbon footprint of those people. All while telling Joe Blow in the first world that he should stop having children, think of the carbon footprint they're producing! How could you be so selfish!

This is why I don't take this stuff seriously. We get lectured about carbon footprint this and "past the point of no return" that by people doing the complete opposite of what should be done to reduce carbon footprint or try to mitigate the disaster that we're too late to prevent.

I don't understand countries like India. Do they think the west is going to bail them out when Delhi is baking at 55 C every summer?

The US i can understand. It's arguably set to be relatively impacted least.

No, the politicians expect to be out of office or dead by the time their commitments either come to pass or (more likely) it becomes clear those commitments will never work.

It's a shell game to them, and they have exit plans.

Do the politicians not plan on having grandchildren?

They probably don't plan on having poor grandchildren.

They expect to have grandchildren that are sufficiently powerful enough to choose their own geography.

When the glaciers in the Himalayas have melted they're going to be hurting for water.

The leaders' kids should be able to make it out to somewhere least impacted.

It's simple - the majority of the population lives in awful circumstances and to allow them to live in better conditions, you have to generate a lot of emissions.

What that really means is that people will try geoengineering to reduce the temperature, absorb CO2, or block sunlight. No sure why this is always assumed to not happen.

This will come with its own risks, but at the time in future when this is done, the risk-reward characteristics might not be so bad.

Yeah, that's what I'm really afraid off. By the time the shit hits the fan, everyone will be so desperate, they will try everything.

I'm pretty sure that kind of techo-utopian fantasy is part of the reason why people are so reluctant to face the problem we have. To think that there will be some Deus Ex Machina that saves us all, without us having to actually do the hards things is just too tempting.

I think that we will just mentally adjust and adapt to the suffering.

If people in Bangladesh are losing their farms to flooding because of global warming, then voters in Kansas will simply... not care.

It is absolutely taken as a given, especially in discussions involving people who might make money from such projects.

A government committing to emissions reduction is like your deadbeat sibling committing to pay you back next Tuesday.

65% of China's energy production is from coal. They're probably even less likely to have the political ability to meet these goals, given how much of the country's infrastructure relies on coal for basic functioning (like even home heating).

Yet in 2020 their renewable energy capacity expansion accounted for nearly 80% of global additions in 2019-2020

See page 6 of this report from the international energy agency: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/18a6041d-bf13-4667-...

And they appear to be one of the few nations currently pursuing expansion in next generation nuclear reactors that cannot be weaponized: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02459-w

This was my understanding of China. They do use a lot of coal, but it is because they are having to ramp up energy usage with coal-fire plants to keep the factories going. They do have long term plans to phase out coal, but when energy needed to keep up production or add new production (perhaps offshoring of jobs and factories to China), they have the build the coal-fire plants. Last I looked, they had about 30 nuclear reactors planned/in-construction/still at the drawing board.

Isn't it much easier in China? Obviously they can't change things overnight, but Xi just has to decree that getting on renewables is the top priority, and it'd get done.

Or is there something particularly thorny about this that could cause massive civil unrest if he were to take that step?

I wonder how much of the Bitcoin ban was electric production related and how much was economic control related.

As China continues to modernize and become more energy-intensive, that power has to come from somewhere. If he bans coal too early or restricts it too much, progress that the people saw happening and intensely want could slow dramatically.

People will follow a strong dictator as long as they don’t see a much better path. If they see a much better path, support will wane quickly and possibly in an ugly fashion.

yea with China's energy crisis problem its increasing coal production and consumption.. plus a massive increase in LNG

Whether your primary source of electricity is coal, or natural gas, you face very nearly the same problem, and China has a much more powerful central government that can dictate radical change than the USA, if they choose to do so.

yea their change is to force coal producers to limit price and to increase production, unban Australian coal and buy more.... plus buy a massive amount of LNG from the USA... China is increasing its carbon output while still having to massively ration electricity... not so sure if they are taking this so seriously nor the world.

There was no net zero commitment from the US, yet it has reduced it's per capita emissions to 1960s levels. https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#place=country%2FUSA&s...

There is enough public pressure to make even more changes, and the CO2 intensity will keep going down regardless if it's Bush, Obama, Trump or Biden in office.

Some of that reduction in per capita emissions came from outsourcing low-end manufacturing to foreign countries. Our per capita numbers don't look as good once you net out the impact of imports and exports.

And it's still number one per capita.

There's a long way to go and no laurels to rest on.

If your are counting on politicians to save us you will probably be disappointed. The solution will almost certainly be market based.

I the book "Collapse", it gives a survey of dozens of civilizations tackling problems like this and how they did, or didn't, solve them. There are many cases each of market or grassroots based solutions and top down government based solutions.

My conclusion from this empirical evidence is that there are many ways to arrive at solutions, what is important is that someone makes it happen. Anyone claiming that only government, or only free markets can do it, is probably wrong.

My comment should be read as an observation on the current state of things not an absolute statement of universal truth.

Well, that's what "market leaders" have been paying the politicians to say for decades. It would be nice if a market-based solution could save the day, but the market can only go so far while politicians ignore externalities.

They could start by eliminating all subsidies for oil and gas exploration until that happens government is part of the problem.

We really are doomed, then. As long as we allow companies to externalize climate costs (which requires political decisions in order to change), there will be no reason for the market to care... at least not until it's too late to care.

Climate change is a market failure. Market-based solutions exists, but they require directly affecting market dynamics through policy.

The collapse of our civilization will be because we are no longer able to accomplish anything except via "the invisible hand".

At this point it looks to me like China is humanity's only hope since they don't have our society's extremist market ideology.

"The collapse of our civilization will be because we are no longer able to accomplish anything except via "the invisible hand"."

then you say ...

"China is humanity's only hope"

what on earth? am i missing a joke?

Well the capitalist extremist countries aren't going to do anything about it. The chip-on-their-shoulder countries like India and Brazil aren't going to do anything about it. I think it's up to China and maybe Europe to pull something off while USA prays for some Elon Musk billionaire to save us.

To the contrary I would suggest that the market will end up being the purest form of direct democracy ever to exist. This is only possible because modern technology lets everyone participate from anywhere.

That's right. In a democracy, a rich person can always vote more often than a poor one. Perfect democracy.

Sorry, that was a bit sarcastic. Obviously, the market is not a form of direct democracy. It's a form of resource allocation. And a pretty stupid one, where everything is allocated by short-sighted impulse decisions and without any consideration of emergent phenomena.

There are tons of scenarios where the free market simply does not have any solution at all. See the tragedy of the commons or of externalizing cost. Nothing in the free market will ever be able to address these issues. Even the often quoted and constantly misunderstood 'invisible hand' of the market is not some kind of mythical or emergent phenomena of the free market itself; it's the moral and social considerations of the actors themselves that make up the 'invisible hand'.

Pretty stoopid.

Money has always been an element of political influence. It’s just more obvious and honest in a free market.

Not every historical system has privatized profits with socialized costs. With regards to climate change, it is a vitally important blind spot.

A fatal blind spot?

When you look at who's polluting and who's emissions are on an upward trajectory, there's one obvious country that's actively working against the environment. China's emissions aren't slowing down. Coal is incredibly cheap when there's no carbon tax or emission standards. One of the many reasons it's cheaper to manufacture in China and why North Americans and Europeans can't compete [0]. Comparing the US[1] and China[2], the US has:

- Decreasing per capita emissions in the US starting in 1973 (-27%)

- A decrease in the countries emission starting in 2007 (-13%)

Meanwhile for the same period China has had

- a 7x increase per capita since 1973 (+532%)

- 48% increase for its global emissions since 2007

So it is possible to drastically reduce our carbon footprint thanks to innovation and smarter power generation.

Time to add tariffs on goods produced by states who made the decision of going all-in on polluting power generation, and potentially apply immigration quotas to citizens of these countries.

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/26/us-leads-greenhouse-gas-emis...

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-states

[2] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china

It's hard to blame this on China. After all, they make a lot of the stuff we want in the west. And they make is precisely because we don't want to make it here, and because we don't want to face choices like which of our own rivers to pollute, or which of our own factories needs relaxed safety standards.

I think "don't want" isn't the right way to look at this. We "want" China to build all our stuff because it's cheaper, and it's cheaper in part because China doesn't care about pollution, so energy costs are lower. (Cost of labor and other factors of course also tie into that.)

If China were to put strict, California-style controls on pollution, energy generation would get more expensive there, and goods made in China would also get more expensive. That would be an incentive for other countries to manufacture more of their own goods (or find a new, cheaper country to build things in), and certainly China does not want that, so they continue to pollute.

We want cheap stuff above non-polluting stuff, so we make them do the polluting. If we really cared about pollution we would put a stipulation that the stuff is made a certain way, and we would send someone to actually check this. The way it's done now there's a wink and a nudge, and the Chinese know perfectly well what the deal is.

Note that labor would still be cheaper there, so we could still have cheaper stuff, we just want it even cheaper, to hell with the consequences that we don't see anyway.

It's not just energy either, there's various chemicals and safety concerns that people discovered in the west a long time ago. It's just that the allure of cheap stuff is so great, it was fine to just stop making it in the west and pretend that standards overseas were acceptable.

Developed country is developed

Developing country is developing

I would say your viewpoint there is overly simplistic.

I think your comment is a bit too glib; your point though I think is entirely correct. You can't compare the average living standard in China to the US and claim bad faith on their part.

" Coal is incredibly cheap " not that cheap that the CCP had to force coal producers to limit the price because it increased more then 3x in a year.

what is going on in China? that they are having such energy production problems? to the point where they are rationing electricity for months now. Where is all this extra demand coming from? and at what point will it peak ?

the excuse is always well the rest of the world got to pollute so we have our turn now.. seems crazy and childish when this will impact us all.

As the world economy picks up again, demand has grown at Chinese factories. The government has fixed electricity prices but worldwide coal prices have also increased, so some coal fired power plants have shut down instead of operating at a loss. The Chinese government also temporarily stopped importing coal from Australia for political reasons.

> Where is all this extra demand coming from?

Blockchains?

(More seriously, I guess an awful lot of it is used to keep producing the cheap goods that Western consumers demand. We need to adjust our lifestyles to "consume" much less, in every way.)

China's emissions per capita are still almost half the US