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I’ve come to terms with the fact that there is no stopping human consumption. It is simply not possible to get enough people to reduce to make an impact. The failure of the environment movements over the last 60 years are proof. The only way is ‘up and out’ developing clean, cheap methods of energy generation and lobbying to get that infrastructure built out as quickly as possible. At this point, investing more in Fossil fuels is a joke and anyone claiming “coal” or whatever is the future is simply a conman or a clown.

The skepticism is from people who are making money emitting CO2 and don’t want to stop making money in the same old way. It is well documented that oil companies have been sewing skepticism for decades, go figure.

> If the current climate trends continue, vast areas of the Earth may not be suitable for habitation within half that time, and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real

The areas to be rendered “uninhabitable” in our lifetimes are all poor. Hence the disconnect.

"and we still can't seem to convince some people this is real."

There will always be outliers who don't believe something. But even for the people who do believe climate change is real, there is a huge variance of how we should address it. Most people have more immediate problems. Many take the same type of argument as the infinite population growth is good crowd - future tech will save us.

> the world panics and goes into overdrive because an alien invasion is due in... 400 years.

It's the difference between Chinese planning philosophy versus the West's.

if people have a hard time convincing themselves to brush their teeth, what do you expect from a whole civilization of those type of people?

We can't slow down burning stuff for energy, this is politically untenable.

...so the answer is to accelerate the burning, but not for the sake of burning more, but to focus on getting to true clean energy sources which will allow us to economically unwind the mess before the whole house of cards collapses, i.e. fusion + global scale solar (maybe even space solar and microwave beam down) + boatloads of batteries.

In most countries the public "believes" in climate change. But it don't matter: People still consume much more than the planet can bear. Because they like to consume. And because they don't want to change "if no one else does it" (tragedy of the commons). So you're asking the wrong question (maybe not for a US audience, I give you that). The real question would be: How to change the behavior of a population? My best guess would be: by reforming capitalism (and/or democracy), e.g. carbon tax (imo best way would be that there's a second currency next to money for the carbon effect of every good/service). But good luck with that.

Disclaimer: For myself, I do believe in personal changes, e.g. consuming less (red meat, flights, gas etc). Not because it makes a big impact but because that's just my personal morality and it makes me feel better to do it. On a societal level it's tougher because most/many people's brains don't work like that (I think).

>So, exactly what is the source of skepticism?

We should define climate skepticism, to avoid indicting a strawman. I'd start with my definition, as someone with unorthodox views on climate that often place me at odds with progressives.

It may be easier to start with the elements we agree on. Is the climate changing? Yes, obviously, visibly, measurably. Do human activities, including burning of coal and hydrocarbons, likely have a causal, contributory impact? Absolutely. Is the adoption of cleaner sources of energy: solar, hydro, geothermal, wind, nuclear, as well as investment in transmission and storage upgrades, a good thing? Unquestionably. Is climate change causing a growth in a class of threat to human life and prosperity (e.g. heat deaths, coastal flooding, extreme weather events, etc.)? Of course.

As for the areas where I diverge from progressives: Do I expect any amount of reduction in human activity, including reduction of coal and hydrocarbon combustion, reduction of overall energy usage, reduction of living standards and growth targets, to make any difference in the magnitude of the coming climate change at all in the long run? No.

The earth has both heated and cooled by orders of magnitude more than worst-case projections before humans started burning hydrocarbons.

Earth's climate is changing, yes, but historically, over the last 500 million years, the global average temperature has been as low as ~11° C at times; as high as ~34°C at others. You're reading that correctly: strictly natural processes that predate humanity itself have repeatedly changed the global averge temperature by as much as ~23°C. Ice ages occurred with zero human impact, just as the Cretaceous Thermal Maximum and global atmospheric CO2 levels exceeding 1000ppm occurred with zero human impact.

If you were to measure the full range of earth's climate variation over the history of the earth, and attempt to assign and attribute causality to all sources of that climate variation, you'd find that both the presence of all of humanity and the sum impact of all of human activity is an insignificant footnote. If this duration were a football field, humanity itself would be the last centimeter of grass in the distance of that football field; the period in which we've been measuring the climate is a thin slice of a single blade of grass.

The potential and capacity of natural processes to raise global average temperatures by 23° C has always been present, and nothing we can do will eliminate that potential and capacity.

The focus of human climate concern, accordingly, should be preservation of human life and wealth through adaptation to a changing climate, not futile efforts to prevent change itself, or an irrational alarmism that seeks to instill a widespread sense of anxiety over a process that cannot (and never could be) stopped, and for which the sum of humanity is not responsible for.

Build AC in Seattle. Set up better floodgates in New York City. Winterize the grid in Texas. Fix building codes to make houses more safe from hurricanes in Florida, and develop better solutions to stop the destruction of homes from wildfires in Colorado.

And yeah, do invest in alternative sources and production of energy. Energy is good. Energy is prosperity - it's causally linked to GDP, it's a direct requirement for quality of life / comfort / happiness. We need renewable energy. We need dispatchable energy. We need zero-emissions energy. We need energy that works at night, when it's cloudy, when we run out of oil, and when the wind's not blowing. We need better storage, better transmission. More energy, more sources, and lower costs for all of humanity.

We can't stop the world from changing, and trying to is foolish; we should accept that it is changing whether we try to prevent that or not, and focus on protecting and improving quality of life for all of humanity in the face of this always-changing environment on this little blue dot instead.

Here are the positive points, relatively speaking:

- solar/wind/batteries have a fundamental economic advantage already, and there is further runway for gains in efficiency, yield, and cost reductions. All its competitors are, generally speaking, tapped out in terms of economic costs and efficiencies

- population declines are currently an inevitability of urbanization and techno-capitalism, less people, less pollution

- contrary to #2, it is likely that life extension will start to come into play for the billionaire class, and that will mean the rich elites DO need to think about the future

However, I agree, those are glimmers of hope in the grand scheme of the current system

What's that scientific saying about correlations and causations? But, yeah, let's all go back to middle ages pre-industrial economy just in case.

I believe the article says it is uncertain if climate change is responsible for the gradual weakening. It is gradually weakening though. This el nino should be a banger

Since covid I’ve actually become less convinced of this. Yes there were national interests at play and there was a lot of general chaos.

But. The level of international coordination with vaccine rollouts and agreements between countries was way more than I had initially expected. Of course this feeling depends on what your own baseline expectations are.

My takeaway was that if the conditions arise that we all decide to do something about climate change (because of political conditions or because of actual effects) we (humanity) are willing to make big sudden changes

> is=avWFidbKxRvW3YUY

PSA: the is (as well as pp) parameter is for tracking. If possible try to trim it.

The farmers have generally opposed policies meant to address this.

i get the sense that its probably overblown, sicne we've only got a couple years worth of measured data on it.

we're jumping to a catastrophe when it might just ring, and whatever the environmentalists who prioritize it qant to do about it might change something that doesnt need changing, and result in actual catastrophe when the ringing stops

I am interested in your implication that European farmers would have someone other than themselves to blame for this outcome. As a whole they are at least as backwards as American farmers. They are largely deniers of climate change either as a thing altogether or as something attributable to man, or are prone to believing it helps them with longer growing seasons, and their main political activity is protesting any changes in their diesel fuel subsidies.

I do kinda wish the european farmers would "declare war on the governments" so the governments can win and end this way too powerful lobby once and for all.

"The first season there isn't European wine/cheese/olives because of climate change is the first season European farmers probably literally declare war on their governments,"

Unlikely. The government will be the only one who can bail them out.

Generally don't do this but this is apropos my recent comment about externalities here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48527158

also we can close our eyes and stop monitoring it

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/06/03/climate/ocean-monitoring-...

Capitalism is just a way to manage numbers.

If the true costs were accounted for, Capitalism would work great. The problem is a lot of the costs are left for someone else to eat.

It isn't simply capitalism. What system could handle this with grace? The only solution is world-wide care, which can only be achieved through civilization, education. Using an old-fashioned word: Bildung (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildung). That could lead to the moderation required, but social-democracy is dead, and other political ideologies can't deliver. Hedonism triggered by material well-being in the last decades will kill us.

is fascinating that a software developer can have such a lack of awareness of the relative size of things

Probably makes more sense than putting them in a friggen vacuum.

ah the "boil the oceans" strat. Interesting play.

The rich, who have disproportionately contributed to the current crisis can buy and relocate to safety, while the poor will be hit the hardest.

Mmm, ecofascism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecofascism