7 ms·

2015 Set a Frenzy of Climate Records

castratikron 10y ago
Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.
- jeremyt 10y ago
  Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places. I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
  - rjsw 10y ago
    One of the big news stories right now is how people are unhappy with the idea that other people want to relocate to other places. I'm guessing that even more people wanting to relocate in the future would be slightly unpopular.
  - matty123 10y ago
    Is this no longer a problem because it wont affect YOU during your lifetime?
  - chadgeidel 10y ago
    One big impact is the change to food supply. Plants and animals thrive in certain climates (the midwest of the United States for example). Those zones are moving due to climate change. Does that mean they are getting larger or shrinking? Will it require more energy (water, fertilizer, mechanical harvesting) to get the same amount of food? It's my understanding that both land-based and water based sources of food will shrink with a warming planet. (Not sourced as I am currently at work - presumably someone is composing a detailed response to you as well)
  - SwellJoe 10y ago
    Already climate change is causing disease and death on an alarming (and growing) scale. Rich people, as always, have a buffer. We in the developed world will be the last to be hit by it and the least impacted. But, Africans are already feeling it. The Zika virus, which was identified in the 40s, was never been considered a serious health crisis, until climate change enabled it to spread farther and faster. Anything that enables mosquitoes to live longer and breed faster is a death sentence for people in many parts of the world. Drought-prone regions are also feeling it already. It isn't a matter of "just move to another place" when your wages are measured in single-digit dollars per week or month. So, as climate change progresses, more people go hungry. And, I think what's most alarming about it is that it is progressing faster than even the most extreme (mainstream) projections predicted. Where small changes were expected over a long period of time, we seem to be seeing a domino effect, where slight rises in temperature trigger other events that cause faster change. So, we probably don't have a century to adjust, particularly in areas that already have challenging weather events; Florida and Louisiana because of hurricanes and flooding, Texas and California because of drought. Many of our food producing states will be forced to evolve rapidly...I doubt it will be a smooth transition. There's already constant political battles over water in some parts of California.
    - mod 10y ago
      Like the guy you replied to, I don't want any tone inferred into my question. Those points you made, while worrisome, are not "civilization-ending" or catastrophic. Is there worse, or is that what you expect to continue?
      - SwellJoe 10y ago
        That's what I expect this decade. My concern is that it is all happening faster than even many of the most pessimistic scientists in the field expected, and it seems to be accelerating. What I see when I try to extrapolate from what is happening today: Less food and clean water for more people, sometimes dramatically so in places that are already stressed for food and clean water (again, this will strike the poor far sooner than it will hit the developed world...but, that doesn't make it less horrifying, to me, and it is merely a leading indicator of what we will all experience). More forced migration, more refugee crises, more war over resources (including resources we don't yet generally currently consider worth going to war over, like water and arable land), more disease epidemics (and with no effective antibiotics to treat them), more mosquitoes, etc. All of these things are already happening. We can see and measure them. And, they are trending in the wrong direction, and accelerating. I just don't see how to interpret what we see happening as anything other than a slow moving disaster. There's only so much "relocation" can solve, when speaking of a world with billions of people. If you consider literally millions (or even billions) of people dying off to be a non-catastrophic event, I guess it's not catastrophic. But, it looks like a catastrophe, to me. And, when that many people are put at risk of starvation and disease, the likelihood of war, even world war, seems likely to increase remarkably. Edit: A useful current article on the subject, with references: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/climate-crisis-media-relegates-greatest-challenge-hurtle-us-collapse-planet https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/climat...
  - scribu 10y ago
    You seem to assume that the temperature will slowly increase, giving us time to adapt, without descending into another global war due to all the shufling of agricultural areas and mass migrations. But there's a scarier scenario, where temperatures change much more rapidly due to a positive feedback loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      The even more scary thing is our models are so bad that we have no idea of how likely a positive feedback loop is. We are basically driving down the freeway at 100 miles per hour with our eyes shut with the hope the road stays straight.
  - swalsh 10y ago
    The regugee crisis of today, one could argue, is a result of supply issues caused by climate change... and things haven't even really started to get bad yet. As things get worse, the people who are impacted will resort to more extreme measures. Even if we turn this planet into Mars, we can figure out how to live on it... humans are amazing adaptable. The issue is can we scale that up to 10 billion people? I imagine resource wars are the biggest threat from climate change.
  - strommen 10y ago
    Yes, It would take a very long time for global warming to cause the sea levels to rise such that cities are underwater. But the primary way that global warming manifests itself is by causing severe weather events to be more frequent and more severe. (This happens mainly because warmer air holds more water vapor.) So the next Katrina will happen sooner, and it will be worse - because of global warming. Another problem is that warming will cause lots of problems for agriculture. Those of us growing corn in the Midwest will be okay - but places with marginally fertile land will have famines. Another problem is that insect-borne illnesses (which already kill millions) are helped in a huge way by warming, even just a few degrees' worth. These are all bad. But the civilization-threatening part is what happens politically with the people displaced by floods, famine, and plagues of malaria/etc. This kind of stuff causes refugee migrations, political upheaval, revolutions, dictators, etc. The U.S. government is legitimately worried about this stuff [1]. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/National_Security_Implications_of_Changing_Climate_Final_051915.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/National...
  - monk_e_boy 10y ago
    As climate change leads to more frequent and intense natural hazards, it is expected that climate displacement will only increase in Bangladesh. The best estimates suggest that up to 18 million people may be displaced by sea level rise alone. I don't think people can comprehend re-housing 18 million souls.
  - tpm 10y ago
    The rising temperature and acidification of the oceans threatens their oxygene production. Climate change on land threatens oxygen production there. With falling oxygene production, oxygen in the atmosphere will not be replenished, and aerobic organisms will die.
- b_emery 10y ago
  I dont doubt that it is a threat, but disagree that its the greatest threat. I think it will have costs and that the 1st world will be able to (reluctantly) afford these costs. Its the people who cannot afford the costs that will suffer, due to reasons listed below, such as disease, food and water supply, etc. I'd list accidental nuclear war as the greatest threat to civilization, fwiw.
  - zbyte64 10y ago
    If a 2nd world country with nuclear weapons cannot adapt to climate change, then nuclear war becomes more likely...
- mikerichards 10y ago
  Global Warming coincides with leftist economic/political policies very neatly. That can't be denied.
  - tonmoy 10y ago
    And denying it coincides with rightist parties very neatly. Neither statements prove anything
    - mikerichards 10y ago
      "the right" didn't invent "global warming"....the left did. Listen, maybe, or maybe not, there is man-made global warming, but when the left calls for the death-penalty for global warming "denialists", then we know it's the official religion of the left. The politics of "global warming" is too intertwined with leftist political agenda. You people can keep on being "denialists" about that in public, we know its true.
- Amygaz 10y ago
  Narcissists are the greatest threat, with a few exceptions (I am careful who I label a narcissist. It's not because they are known to be tough boss that they have narcissistic personality disorder according to DSM-5). Anyway, they are centrally responsible for many global ailment, including global warming, and more importantly for not doing much to solve any problems.
SwellJoe 10y ago
The scary thing about this (well, one scary thing) is that we, as a worldwide community, needed to be making hard decisions about the climate two or three decades ago, to stave off the worst of the impact of climate change. We're several years too late to stop it, and we still have half of our government (in the US) utterly denying the problem even exists. The decisions that need to be made now to stave off complete disaster are too extreme for even the non-insane elements in our government to support, because there's a whole segment of the population that still believes in fairy tales spun by the oil and gas industry. The human mind is just terrible at grasping problems on the scale and timeline of global climate change, and it's plausible that it'll be the end of life as we know it in another few decades. All the assholes who denied it was happening will be dead, already, of course...so they won't care. I just don't see any significant movement on solving these problems; despite cool stuff like electric cars and renewable power becoming cheaper than coal, emissions are still increasing worldwide, not decreasing (and, again, it needed to begin decreasing decades ago). I'm an optimist in the general case, but when it comes to climate and the environment, I see little reason to be optimistic.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  I keep thinking that capitalism, the pursuit of money above all else, can't be the correct way forward. Not with weak governments that refuse to correctly TAX pollution and non-recyclable items. [edit] Down votes, OK. But why do you disagree? I can't think of a solution other than having Guido van Rossum as our benevolent dictator for life for the entire globe.
  - ams6110 10y ago
    Capitalistic democracies are the only thing likely to solve the problem. The dictatorships are among the worlds worst offenders in terms of pollution and overall environmental protection.
    - zbyte64 10y ago
      Was curious about the data on this, here is green house gasses per capita (circa 2000): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous... Does anyone have more recent data then this? Canada, America and Australia were some of the worse offenders back in 2000. It would be interesting to see how this has changed.

Global warming is the greatest existential threat to civilization. And when today's Republican nominee says that global warming is a "hoax", it makes me almost certain that that's what's going to end up doing us in.

jeremyt 10y ago
Could you lay out the play-by-play on how global warming is a threat to civilization? It seems to me, at worst, a slow-motion problem that will take almost a century to unfold and perhaps force large chunks of people to relocate to other places. I would appreciate it very much if you wouldn't read any kind of tone into my question. Straight up honest question.
- rjsw 10y ago
  One of the big news stories right now is how people are unhappy with the idea that other people want to relocate to other places. I'm guessing that even more people wanting to relocate in the future would be slightly unpopular.
- matty123 10y ago
  Is this no longer a problem because it wont affect YOU during your lifetime?
- chadgeidel 10y ago
  One big impact is the change to food supply. Plants and animals thrive in certain climates (the midwest of the United States for example). Those zones are moving due to climate change. Does that mean they are getting larger or shrinking? Will it require more energy (water, fertilizer, mechanical harvesting) to get the same amount of food? It's my understanding that both land-based and water based sources of food will shrink with a warming planet. (Not sourced as I am currently at work - presumably someone is composing a detailed response to you as well)
- SwellJoe 10y ago
  Already climate change is causing disease and death on an alarming (and growing) scale. Rich people, as always, have a buffer. We in the developed world will be the last to be hit by it and the least impacted. But, Africans are already feeling it. The Zika virus, which was identified in the 40s, was never been considered a serious health crisis, until climate change enabled it to spread farther and faster. Anything that enables mosquitoes to live longer and breed faster is a death sentence for people in many parts of the world. Drought-prone regions are also feeling it already. It isn't a matter of "just move to another place" when your wages are measured in single-digit dollars per week or month. So, as climate change progresses, more people go hungry. And, I think what's most alarming about it is that it is progressing faster than even the most extreme (mainstream) projections predicted. Where small changes were expected over a long period of time, we seem to be seeing a domino effect, where slight rises in temperature trigger other events that cause faster change. So, we probably don't have a century to adjust, particularly in areas that already have challenging weather events; Florida and Louisiana because of hurricanes and flooding, Texas and California because of drought. Many of our food producing states will be forced to evolve rapidly...I doubt it will be a smooth transition. There's already constant political battles over water in some parts of California.
  - mod 10y ago
    Like the guy you replied to, I don't want any tone inferred into my question. Those points you made, while worrisome, are not "civilization-ending" or catastrophic. Is there worse, or is that what you expect to continue?
    - SwellJoe 10y ago
      That's what I expect this decade. My concern is that it is all happening faster than even many of the most pessimistic scientists in the field expected, and it seems to be accelerating. What I see when I try to extrapolate from what is happening today: Less food and clean water for more people, sometimes dramatically so in places that are already stressed for food and clean water (again, this will strike the poor far sooner than it will hit the developed world...but, that doesn't make it less horrifying, to me, and it is merely a leading indicator of what we will all experience). More forced migration, more refugee crises, more war over resources (including resources we don't yet generally currently consider worth going to war over, like water and arable land), more disease epidemics (and with no effective antibiotics to treat them), more mosquitoes, etc. All of these things are already happening. We can see and measure them. And, they are trending in the wrong direction, and accelerating. I just don't see how to interpret what we see happening as anything other than a slow moving disaster. There's only so much "relocation" can solve, when speaking of a world with billions of people. If you consider literally millions (or even billions) of people dying off to be a non-catastrophic event, I guess it's not catastrophic. But, it looks like a catastrophe, to me. And, when that many people are put at risk of starvation and disease, the likelihood of war, even world war, seems likely to increase remarkably. Edit: A useful current article on the subject, with references: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/climate-crisis-media-relegates-greatest-challenge-hurtle-us-collapse-planet https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/climat...
- scribu 10y ago
  You seem to assume that the temperature will slowly increase, giving us time to adapt, without descending into another global war due to all the shufling of agricultural areas and mass migrations. But there's a scarier scenario, where temperatures change much more rapidly due to a positive feedback loop: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    The even more scary thing is our models are so bad that we have no idea of how likely a positive feedback loop is. We are basically driving down the freeway at 100 miles per hour with our eyes shut with the hope the road stays straight.
- swalsh 10y ago
  The regugee crisis of today, one could argue, is a result of supply issues caused by climate change... and things haven't even really started to get bad yet. As things get worse, the people who are impacted will resort to more extreme measures. Even if we turn this planet into Mars, we can figure out how to live on it... humans are amazing adaptable. The issue is can we scale that up to 10 billion people? I imagine resource wars are the biggest threat from climate change.
- strommen 10y ago
  Yes, It would take a very long time for global warming to cause the sea levels to rise such that cities are underwater. But the primary way that global warming manifests itself is by causing severe weather events to be more frequent and more severe. (This happens mainly because warmer air holds more water vapor.) So the next Katrina will happen sooner, and it will be worse - because of global warming. Another problem is that warming will cause lots of problems for agriculture. Those of us growing corn in the Midwest will be okay - but places with marginally fertile land will have famines. Another problem is that insect-borne illnesses (which already kill millions) are helped in a huge way by warming, even just a few degrees' worth. These are all bad. But the civilization-threatening part is what happens politically with the people displaced by floods, famine, and plagues of malaria/etc. This kind of stuff causes refugee migrations, political upheaval, revolutions, dictators, etc. The U.S. government is legitimately worried about this stuff [1]. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/National_Security_Implications_of_Changing_Climate_Final_051915.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/National...
- monk_e_boy 10y ago
  As climate change leads to more frequent and intense natural hazards, it is expected that climate displacement will only increase in Bangladesh. The best estimates suggest that up to 18 million people may be displaced by sea level rise alone. I don't think people can comprehend re-housing 18 million souls.
- tpm 10y ago
  The rising temperature and acidification of the oceans threatens their oxygene production. Climate change on land threatens oxygen production there. With falling oxygene production, oxygen in the atmosphere will not be replenished, and aerobic organisms will die.
b_emery 10y ago
I dont doubt that it is a threat, but disagree that its the greatest threat. I think it will have costs and that the 1st world will be able to (reluctantly) afford these costs. Its the people who cannot afford the costs that will suffer, due to reasons listed below, such as disease, food and water supply, etc. I'd list accidental nuclear war as the greatest threat to civilization, fwiw.
- zbyte64 10y ago
  If a 2nd world country with nuclear weapons cannot adapt to climate change, then nuclear war becomes more likely...
mikerichards 10y ago
Global Warming coincides with leftist economic/political policies very neatly. That can't be denied.
- tonmoy 10y ago
  And denying it coincides with rightist parties very neatly. Neither statements prove anything
  - mikerichards 10y ago
    "the right" didn't invent "global warming"....the left did. Listen, maybe, or maybe not, there is man-made global warming, but when the left calls for the death-penalty for global warming "denialists", then we know it's the official religion of the left. The politics of "global warming" is too intertwined with leftist political agenda. You people can keep on being "denialists" about that in public, we know its true.
Amygaz 10y ago
Narcissists are the greatest threat, with a few exceptions (I am careful who I label a narcissist. It's not because they are known to be tough boss that they have narcissistic personality disorder according to DSM-5). Anyway, they are centrally responsible for many global ailment, including global warming, and more importantly for not doing much to solve any problems.

SwellJoe 10y ago

The scary thing about this (well, one scary thing) is that we, as a worldwide community, needed to be making hard decisions about the climate two or three decades ago, to stave off the worst of the impact of climate change. We're several years too late to stop it, and we still have half of our government (in the US) utterly denying the problem even exists. The decisions that need to be made now to stave off complete disaster are too extreme for even the non-insane elements in our government to support, because there's a whole segment of the population that still believes in fairy tales spun by the oil and gas industry. The human mind is just terrible at grasping problems on the scale and timeline of global climate change, and it's plausible that it'll be the end of life as we know it in another few decades. All the assholes who denied it was happening will be dead, already, of course...so they won't care. I just don't see any significant movement on solving these problems; despite cool stuff like electric cars and renewable power becoming cheaper than coal, emissions are still increasing worldwide, not decreasing (and, again, it needed to begin decreasing decades ago). I'm an optimist in the general case, but when it comes to climate and the environment, I see little reason to be optimistic.

monk_e_boy 10y ago
I keep thinking that capitalism, the pursuit of money above all else, can't be the correct way forward. Not with weak governments that refuse to correctly TAX pollution and non-recyclable items. [edit] Down votes, OK. But why do you disagree? I can't think of a solution other than having Guido van Rossum as our benevolent dictator for life for the entire globe.
- ams6110 10y ago
  Capitalistic democracies are the only thing likely to solve the problem. The dictatorships are among the worlds worst offenders in terms of pollution and overall environmental protection.
  - zbyte64 10y ago
    Was curious about the data on this, here is green house gasses per capita (circa 2000): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhouse_gas_emissions_per_capita https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_greenhous... Does anyone have more recent data then this? Canada, America and Australia were some of the worse offenders back in 2000. It would be interesting to see how this has changed.