> What frustrates me is that there's still significant resistance to not destroying our own home...

It's really not a big deal - humans will adapt to deal with the changes, or they'll go extinct and something else will evolve.

Sure, but I'd rather live in paradise than burn my house. In that sense nothing's a big deal, but it is for me. I believe we all deserve good lives.

The best adaptation to burning your house is the rational thought "Perhaps I should not burn my house". :)

It dreads me to think we so much lost contact with living well that many don't care anymore. I think the first step in the journey would be to stop the destructive culture of desperate consumerism, greed, consumption, overwork and ill-being. Maybe that's something we should be prioritizing alongside climate change, as a species. Living well in our homes, and as a community.

Living well requires energy and lots of it. There are billions of people who aspire to use far more energy than they are currently using, in order to live better. Who are we to say that they can't use as much energy as we do/did? (I know you're not saying that directly, but it's hard to imagine how half the population could bring themself up to even the median energy consumption without dramatic increases in climate changing forces.)

I think this is a false conundrum. We should use as much energy as we sustainably can, without destroying ourselves, if that improves our well being. But not more. And we should also make sure that all humans have good conditions. I think the essence of what makes a good life is surprisingly inexpensive in terms of resources. I believe that planning well, we can achieve a good compromise for everyone involved, with a larger focus on those more in need.

Moreover, energy consumption isn't so significant as emissions per Watt. Our capacity for solar energy could sustain even energy growth without significant emissions. We already have the technology to make the transition.

To reiterate, whatever we do, sitting back and watching the world burn (in an almost literal sense) is not a reasonable option!

Even solar panels aren't emissions-free. They take 1-3 years to payback the emissions used to create them, which is a great trade (a decrease full-lifecycle emissions as compared to do) for people who would already be consuming the power they'd create, but is still an increase in full-lifecycle emissions when created to supply power to someone who wouldn't otherwise have access to that power. Anyone who is without stable electricity today should gain access to it, by all means, but that is a net increase in emissions as compared to today.

Stable supplies of food (and fertilizer and machinery to grow and process it), clean water, refrigeration, transport, (somewhat ironically) HVAC, lighting, and some amount of outputs of manufacturing are desired by all.

I'm sure there are some emissions we still don't know how to avoid relating to solar manufacturing, but typically we look at energy return on energy invested (EROI). As the supply chain becomes less carbon intensive, less the energy to produce panels themselves produces emissions. The most carbon intensive countries are countries like US and China -- I'm sure just the emissions they cut back could compensate a lot of energy growth for developing countries. This is only a temporary spike. And being the large industrial producers, as they transition the emissions per Watt will go down significantly.

Again, it's not clear what your proposal is. Ignoring the problem is a bad idea. Doing the best we can to rapidly (of course, not so rapidly we couldn't handle it) transition to renewable energy is what we should be doing. Doing it now is the best time to be doing it. And are doing it! Just some countries are lagging behind somewhat, including the US and China. A big part of the problem is not recognizing the scale and importance of what we're facing. With reason and compassion in our hearts, we shall find the best solution for all :)

This is surely bait. Human extinction and 'not a big deal' in the same comment? Am I misunderstanding?

Cosmically, I don't think we matter, and that person is right. Even if we don't destroy ourselves in this century, the Earth will eventually be roasted to a crisp by the Sun expanding. Not that it makes me feel any better, just trying to consider what that perspective is.

...often, here on HN, whose members pride themselves on rational thinking and scientific prowess.

> It occurs over several decades, just enough to cause skepticism or feelings of "it's not changing so quickly".

It's also important to realize that this isn't all "natural" skepticism and there's plenty of money being thrown around to spread FUD about the causes, severity, and consequences of climate change.

Skepticism isn't the problemj; blind belief is --- and there's plenty of money being thrown around to do that too.

Yes, but mostly on the denialism side

Judging by the posts here and in mainstream media, I doubt that.

Consider the economics. There are HUGE companies with a history of influencing legislature, lobbying an lying to everyone, whose existence depends on us to continue not caring about climate change. People like us can hardly imagine the amount of money they are throwing at us in the form of marketing, lobbying, astroturfing, etc. They are literally making money off us not taking action.

Otoh, I cannot think of a single billion dollar company that got where it is by being climate friendly.

Media companies get views by being sensationalistic and spreading paranoia. Governments love that too, since it means another excuse they can use to enact more authoritarian policies. The Internet has taken that to the next level.

I'm not a fan of Greenpeace and I haven't checked their number here .. but it passes the "it'd be at least that much" test for order of magnitude:

    Koch Family Foundations have spent $145,555,197 directly financing 90 groups that have attacked climate change science and policy solutions, from 1997-2018.

https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/fighting-climate-chaos/climat...

My main quibble is that as I've been around geophysical energy and mineral exploration since the 1980s I'd argue that Koch and Co. started funding anti-climate change think tanks and policy groups a lot earlier than 1997.

They've been prepackaging all manner of FUD talking points and passing them out to media groups for almost 50 years.

They torpedoed any chance of decent widespread public transport in the US, simply to keep the demand for individual freedom loving liberty driven gas guzzling high and profits flowing.

It's remarkable how easily led by the nose central north americans have been.

Based on the posts by denialists here repeating literally 30 year old paid for talking points—that we’ve had exposed in court filings—as of they were new or profound…?

Gonna have to disagree with you there champ.

Except it isn't blind and it isn't belief? A hypothesis that has been amply supported by decades of evidence of many forms is hardly a subject for "blind belief".

> Also, there will be significant consequences for humans (which could be catastrophic and hard to predict if we don't limit warming to say 2C)

I have trouble visualizing what form the catastrophe would take. The worst I can imagine is global famine, is that what we are talking about here? Or rather local famine, acting as catalysts to civil unrest, wars etc?

Basically, I think the climate debate gets fuzzy here. Granted, just like you say, it gets hard to predict, but given that, what makes certain temperatures a threshold for disaster?

Then what? Keep going.

It's interesting you chose the boiling frog parable because it's a fallacy. Skeptics contend that climate change will not precipitate an abrupt catastrophe; rather, humanity will simply adapt to it.

To illustrate, the Earth's temperature has already risen by approximately 1 degree since the inception of industrialization, yet our lives have arguably improved significantly during this period. Would we willingly forsake the past century of human progress to revert the global temperature back by that single degree? This seems improbable, and yet it is a viewpoint advocated by certain climate change alarmists who propose concepts like degrowth.

> Would we willingly forsake the past century of human progress to revert the global temperature back by that single degree?

Eh. I see what you are saying but have we felt the full effect? Do any of us have a perception of what was lost that would let us even make such a determination?

Why do we need to sacrifice living standards to control emissions?

Because we waited too long.

When you take out debt there’s a period where you can pay it back without much impact. But if you continue to ignore it eventually you’ll have to make life changes to pay it back.

If you continue to ignore it you’ll ruin your life.

How could we not? In the western world we might be able to, but that means poor people will start dying elsewhere.

It's not alarmism to say we should take action to prevent out extinction. By your logic, people who call emergency services when a building is on fire are "alarmists".

There has literally NEVER been a problem anywhere near as large as climate change, including World War 2. If being concerned about literally the largest problem to have ever existed is 'alarmism', then your position is simply that it's impossible for anything bad to ever happen.

> By your logic, people who call emergency services when a building is on fire are "alarmists".

By my logic, people who call emergency services when the room temperature rises 1 degree are "alarmists". The building is not on fire. We are not headed towards extinction, not even close. How do you explain that the world has gotten significantly better over the last century despite warming over one degree?

My position is that this "extinction" fear you speak of makes absolutely no sense. And any attempt to prevent warming through economically harmful policies will likely have a greater negative impact on humanity.

Which notable people think we should go back to a pre-industrial age?

I’ve never heard anyone seriously suggest that. I don’t believe you’ve heard serious people suggest it either.

> Which notable people think we should go back to a pre-industrial age?

It's being suggested quite clearly in some of the most unexpected places. One of the most curious things about the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, is that a great deal of the funding for some of its largest exhibits comes from one of the Koch brothers. Specifically there is the floor sized exhibit on human evolution which repeatedly emphasizes a subtext of adaptation, adaptation, adaptation as the driving force behind development of modern humans. The proponents don't care if this adaptation can also take the form of a misery-soaked return to pre-industrial society in 500 years, they won't be around to deal with it.

But they know that it's an asymmetrically structured argument that is difficult to counter using the language of progressive politics, in which adaptation is also emphasized but of course in different contexts.

If denialists had anything other than irrational arguments & mischaracterizations they wouldn’t be denialists.

Well, the capabilities (or lack thereof) of the person(s) doing the categorizing is rather important as well.

For example, I am a conspiracy theorist, and the number of nasty things that have been said about "me" by literally delusional Normies over the years gets a little annoying after a while. It would be a real shame if these chickens were to come home to roost at a particularly inconvenient time.

Anyways, I wish you and your Rational crew best of luck with your climate problems!

Mostly it’s obvious you’re just tired of being consistently called out on your nonsense. It hurts your unearned feelings on superiority. A trait conspiracy theorists have been repeatedly shown to have I might add.

Like I said: you’ve made it an emotional core of your identity.

Protip: you can't actually read my mind, neurotypical. It is your mind you are reading, not mine.

Please read up on some science.

No, you misunderstood what I meant.

I've seen people claim that slowing down or stopping economic (or even reversing, but I admit this position is rarer) progress was an acceptable tradeoff to counter global warming. Almost all solutions proposed by climate alarmists follow this pattern, albeit to varying degrees.

The analogy was that 100 years from now, people would see our current era as we see the industrial age. That is, unless we stop progressing.

Formulated differently, if degrowth had been followed in the industrial age, we would still be living in the industrial age (but the Earth would be a degree cooler).

Given that it's such a small change... Surely this is not a problem for our generation. It definitely does not appear to be a problem that's worth destroying financial opportunities on a massive scale and enabling totalitarian governments in the current era.

The way I see climate change activism is that elites want to fix the climate at the expense of the lower classes of society... In a time when wealth inequality is at an all time high and without the consent of the lower classes. This is incorrect.

First, we have to fix inequality problem so that the pain of the transition will fall more or less evenly on everyone's shoulders... Then once this is the case, everyone should have more time to think about climate problems and we can expect broad support.

Of course, 'we' will all be long dead by then. I feel totally fine and morally justified in leaving this problem to a future generation. Most people in my generation have way too many concrete personal problems concerning their own survival in a week's time to worry about abstract problems such as the survival of the human race in a few hundred years.

...Not to mention that in a few generations' time, if we focus on maximizing access to opportunities, through the resulting innovation, we will probably end up with extremely efficient renewable energy which will be able to fight climate change far more effectively with no sacrifices necessary.

It seems literally like a no-brainer to me to just let the free market do what it does best in terms of innovation. Shut down government money printers and dismantle policies that are harmful to the free market and which centralize opportunities and create tech monopolies to control the masses. That's not the way. It needs to be done honestly.

What's the point of even allowing the human race to survive if it turns the global economy into a squid game and only the most dishonest, manipulative people will remain?