I went to Glacier National Park a while ago and stood before a sign that said "The glaciers you see will be gone by year 20xx" or something like that. The year was 20xx and I was looking right at the glaciers and they were decidedly not gone. I understand the motivation. The reality is that an action of strength A is required to create outcome X, but if one expresses this need, it's likely one achieves only an action of strength A- < A and consequently the outcome X- != X. This encourages us to say "we need an action of strength A+ or we will get the outcome X-". The hope is that the discount that people apply on the prediction results in an action of strength A' ~ A and an outcome X' ~= X.
But public exhortation is a repeated game and unless you're Heaven's Gate the success of your popularized predictions has a significant effect on the discount that the public applies to your predictions. Failed predictions have an effect on the discount rate asymmetric to the direction. It is likely that a successful public authority allows some number of people to experience catastrophe pour encourager les autres. Attempting a zero error rate by biasing to zero catastrophe is likely to cause repeated discounting until true catastrophe cannot be averted.
I'm reminded me of the short story The Wandering Earth. Spoilers to follow so don't read if you care. In the story, a group of scientists determine that the Sun is going to flare enough to kill everyone, so all of humanity mobilizes to install massive engines to move the Earth far enough to survive while creating technology that survives the dark. After years of traveling to past Pluto, no Sun catastrophe materializes, resulting in a massive Earthwide revolt that eventually takes control of the control center and the scientists and government officials are sentenced to death by walking into the cold waste. Just as the last of them dies, the Sun flares as predicted, just a little later.
In a democracy, credibility is an important resource. To avert actual existential catastrophe, it is better to err on the side of local under-predicted disaster. It is probably best to let Rancho Palos Verdes fall into the ocean without compensating the homeowners. It is probably best to let the Texan flood plains flood and people to lose their homes entirely. It is probably best to let the Californians lose their homes to the wildfires.
If this doesn't get us we still have massive insect extinction, ocean acidification, permafrost thawing, prolonged droughts, etc.
There is just no way out at the point, the planet is tanking the damage for now but once it'll crack, and it's starting to, many systems will fail simultaneously, no amount of theatrical green washing will undo the damage
Why? Deindustrializing especially Europe moved factories into coal powered regions. It was put forward as green policy, but how can this result be a surprise to anyone?
If that was the case, then global GHG emissions would have remained roughly stagnant for over 2 decades.
The reality is the world got richer, and households who 30 years ago would have had little access to electricity, finished manufactured goods, and automotive vehicles can now purchase those.
In 2000, China and India's HDIs were comparable to Cameroon and Ethiopia's present HDI. That isn't the case in 2023 (UNDP HDI calculations have a 2-3 year lag because transnational data collection is hard). And large, poor countries like Pakistan (260 million), DRC (100 million), and Ethiopia (139 million) are now hitting developmental indicators comparable to those two in the early 2000s.
Most countries have chosen to use both GreenTech and Coal to expand electricity generation from Vietnam [0] to India [1] to Indonesia [2]. You are talking about 3 billion people living in an economic region that is expected to see 6-8% GDP growth rates for at least the next decade. And even countries at the lower end of the developmental cycle like Pakistan [3][4] and Ethiopia [5] are now doing the same.
Frankly, it doesn't matter what reduction Europe does because India and ASEAN's GHG emissions expansion eats up any reduction from the EU-27 and US.
Good point, we should probably do the same thing with our carbon emissions that we did with the chemicals that deplete ozone. The Montreal Protocol of 1987 successfully phased out over 99% of them.
The world is full of issues everyone is okay with until they are presented as apocalyptic to the public. Like seasonal flu whose annual death toll is in the range of 600-1200 thousands.
And then, as easily forgotten as soon as there's a new scarecrow on the table.
With weather prediction accuracy of 90% for 5 days, 50% for 10 days and basically that of a TRNG for longer terms, what makes you all so sure you're facing a climate apocalypse and not a natural harmonic in the weather fractal?
Glad you brought that up. Because we fixed it. Now because of ignorance, we are not fixing this. As a person without kids, its not my problem. Strange that anti-science conservatives wants us to have more children while willfully destroying their future.
Given how we are at the tail end of a small ice age, shouldn't it be expected that temperatures recover to what they were previously? I never quite understood how climate is simultaneously too complicated to understand and predict the weather accurately while also a solved problem that we just need to take action on. And somehow the action we need to take is more taxation?
Since I keep hearing about this for at least 30 years now and still nobody took action the whole thing might be a bit more complicated than what the news media would have you know.
It's pretty easy to model to a first approximation. Gases like Carbon Dioxide reflect certain wavelengths of infrared. When they are present in the atmosphere, they are present at a certain percentage concentration, and as that increases they reflect more infrared.
This matters because there are three ways for a body to eliminate thermal energy: radiation, convection, and conduction. Earth is not in contact with anything else, so it cannot conduct. It does not share an atmosphere with anything else, so it cannot convect. So that leaves radiation, which is largely in the form of infrared. Then it stands to reason that if you change how much IR is reflected back to the surface by the atmosphere, say by changing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, then you will increase the amount of heat the Earth contains as long as there is a source of heat nearby or within. Earth has both in the form of a molten core and the Sun.
This is why they call them "greenhouse gases." Because they cause the Earth to retain more heat than it radiates in the infrared spectrum, like the glass on a greenhouse.
1. The global temperature has never in human history done what it's doing now.
2. Weather isn't the same as climate. They operate on way different scales and timelines. Uncertainty in the one does not necessarily map to uncertainty in the other.
3. Climate change is most definitely not a solved problem. We know some big things we can do, and none of them are easy.
> Given how we are at the tail end of a small ice age, shouldn't it be expected that temperatures recover to what they were previously?
The speed at which the temperature is increasing is what is concerning, it’s much faster than a usual warming cycle. The XKCD comic of the timeline of human history and climate really drives home how steep the increase in temperature has been vs in the past: https://m.xkcd.com/1732/
I went to Glacier National Park a while ago and stood before a sign that said "The glaciers you see will be gone by year 20xx" or something like that. The year was 20xx and I was looking right at the glaciers and they were decidedly not gone. I understand the motivation. The reality is that an action of strength A is required to create outcome X, but if one expresses this need, it's likely one achieves only an action of strength A- < A and consequently the outcome X- != X. This encourages us to say "we need an action of strength A+ or we will get the outcome X-". The hope is that the discount that people apply on the prediction results in an action of strength A' ~ A and an outcome X' ~= X.
But public exhortation is a repeated game and unless you're Heaven's Gate the success of your popularized predictions has a significant effect on the discount that the public applies to your predictions. Failed predictions have an effect on the discount rate asymmetric to the direction. It is likely that a successful public authority allows some number of people to experience catastrophe pour encourager les autres. Attempting a zero error rate by biasing to zero catastrophe is likely to cause repeated discounting until true catastrophe cannot be averted.
I'm reminded me of the short story The Wandering Earth. Spoilers to follow so don't read if you care. In the story, a group of scientists determine that the Sun is going to flare enough to kill everyone, so all of humanity mobilizes to install massive engines to move the Earth far enough to survive while creating technology that survives the dark. After years of traveling to past Pluto, no Sun catastrophe materializes, resulting in a massive Earthwide revolt that eventually takes control of the control center and the scientists and government officials are sentenced to death by walking into the cold waste. Just as the last of them dies, the Sun flares as predicted, just a little later.
In a democracy, credibility is an important resource. To avert actual existential catastrophe, it is better to err on the side of local under-predicted disaster. It is probably best to let Rancho Palos Verdes fall into the ocean without compensating the homeowners. It is probably best to let the Texan flood plains flood and people to lose their homes entirely. It is probably best to let the Californians lose their homes to the wildfires.
Too bad all seems that we are heading to even faster rate of warming. It may end being something we will see by next decade.
And it won't be the only big thing that will be sensibly changing by then.
If this doesn't get us we still have massive insect extinction, ocean acidification, permafrost thawing, prolonged droughts, etc.
There is just no way out at the point, the planet is tanking the damage for now but once it'll crack, and it's starting to, many systems will fail simultaneously, no amount of theatrical green washing will undo the damage
"How did human civilization collapse?"
"Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly."
I guess we should probably start looking for a new planet. Nothing else to be done I’m afraid.
I hope this is sarcasm. I sometimes can’t tell here
I realized that this your comment outlines almost the whole plot of Chrono Trigger, just on a slightly different scale.
Probably easier to just merge our consciousness with machine based bodies in the long-term. Biology is a bitch compared to mechanical engineering.
Why? Deindustrializing especially Europe moved factories into coal powered regions. It was put forward as green policy, but how can this result be a surprise to anyone?
If that was the case, then global GHG emissions would have remained roughly stagnant for over 2 decades.
The reality is the world got richer, and households who 30 years ago would have had little access to electricity, finished manufactured goods, and automotive vehicles can now purchase those.
In 2000, China and India's HDIs were comparable to Cameroon and Ethiopia's present HDI. That isn't the case in 2023 (UNDP HDI calculations have a 2-3 year lag because transnational data collection is hard). And large, poor countries like Pakistan (260 million), DRC (100 million), and Ethiopia (139 million) are now hitting developmental indicators comparable to those two in the early 2000s.
Most countries have chosen to use both GreenTech and Coal to expand electricity generation from Vietnam [0] to India [1] to Indonesia [2]. You are talking about 3 billion people living in an economic region that is expected to see 6-8% GDP growth rates for at least the next decade. And even countries at the lower end of the developmental cycle like Pakistan [3][4] and Ethiopia [5] are now doing the same.
Frankly, it doesn't matter what reduction Europe does because India and ASEAN's GHG emissions expansion eats up any reduction from the EU-27 and US.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/vietnam-allows-coal-...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/india-fuels-global-g...
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-coal-power...
[3] - https://www.climatepolicylab.org/climatesmart/2022/1/27/what...
[4] - https://www.thefridaytimes.com/19-Jun-2026/thar-coal-pakista...
[5] - https://afrinz.ru/en/2026/07/there-is-a-request-to-supply-60...
It'll never be too late to mitigate even worse effects. Remember that the defeatism is what people who want no change want.
This is a tepid sort of optimism.
I heard in 1988 that we all must be dead by now from the ozone hole.
Good point, we should probably do the same thing with our carbon emissions that we did with the chemicals that deplete ozone. The Montreal Protocol of 1987 successfully phased out over 99% of them.
The hole is still there as far as I can tell, though. I hate it when the news cycle alerts people and then never gives out updates and closure.
It's called agendas.
The world is full of issues everyone is okay with until they are presented as apocalyptic to the public. Like seasonal flu whose annual death toll is in the range of 600-1200 thousands.
And then, as easily forgotten as soon as there's a new scarecrow on the table.
With weather prediction accuracy of 90% for 5 days, 50% for 10 days and basically that of a TRNG for longer terms, what makes you all so sure you're facing a climate apocalypse and not a natural harmonic in the weather fractal?
WE FIXED THAT. We literally listened to professionals, introduced legislation and fixed it. The worst possible example you could use.
If YOU fixed that, what stops YOU from fixing this again?
People like you.
How? By asking what stops you?
By derailing the conversation.
Just the stupidest take you could ever have, well done.
Luckily the Montreal protocol was implemented and CFCs were banned. Something like that should be considered for more green house gasses. Maybe Paris?
This exact sentiment has been expressed and addressed ad nauseum.
Weird how something was done about that though
Pretty trivial to replace CFC with HCFC gases (which breaks down more easily in the atmosphere) compared to moving away from fossil fuels.
And we fixed the ozone hole by taking decisive action internationally banning the worst ozone-destroying gases
Glad you brought that up. Because we fixed it. Now because of ignorance, we are not fixing this. As a person without kids, its not my problem. Strange that anti-science conservatives wants us to have more children while willfully destroying their future.
> As a person without kids, its not my problem.
If you're under 50 it definitely will be your problem
Given how we are at the tail end of a small ice age, shouldn't it be expected that temperatures recover to what they were previously? I never quite understood how climate is simultaneously too complicated to understand and predict the weather accurately while also a solved problem that we just need to take action on. And somehow the action we need to take is more taxation?
Since I keep hearing about this for at least 30 years now and still nobody took action the whole thing might be a bit more complicated than what the news media would have you know.
It's pretty easy to model to a first approximation. Gases like Carbon Dioxide reflect certain wavelengths of infrared. When they are present in the atmosphere, they are present at a certain percentage concentration, and as that increases they reflect more infrared.
This matters because there are three ways for a body to eliminate thermal energy: radiation, convection, and conduction. Earth is not in contact with anything else, so it cannot conduct. It does not share an atmosphere with anything else, so it cannot convect. So that leaves radiation, which is largely in the form of infrared. Then it stands to reason that if you change how much IR is reflected back to the surface by the atmosphere, say by changing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, then you will increase the amount of heat the Earth contains as long as there is a source of heat nearby or within. Earth has both in the form of a molten core and the Sun.
This is why they call them "greenhouse gases." Because they cause the Earth to retain more heat than it radiates in the infrared spectrum, like the glass on a greenhouse.
1. The global temperature has never in human history done what it's doing now. 2. Weather isn't the same as climate. They operate on way different scales and timelines. Uncertainty in the one does not necessarily map to uncertainty in the other. 3. Climate change is most definitely not a solved problem. We know some big things we can do, and none of them are easy.
> Given how we are at the tail end of a small ice age, shouldn't it be expected that temperatures recover to what they were previously?
The speed at which the temperature is increasing is what is concerning, it’s much faster than a usual warming cycle. The XKCD comic of the timeline of human history and climate really drives home how steep the increase in temperature has been vs in the past: https://m.xkcd.com/1732/
Nobody took action because the global south (logically) decided that economic growth and rising living standards is worth the global cost.