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> this is one of the few issues where convincing people it's real makes a huge difference for our civilization Without arguing over the validity of AGW here, i

> this is one of the few issues where convincing people it's real makes a huge difference for our civilization Without arguing over the validity of AGW here, is there really any evidence that we could make a "huge difference" as you claim? Apart from using technology to deal with extreme climate conditions, is there anything demonstrably within the realm of human possibility that could significantly delay or reverse such climate change?

mikeash 10y ago
It's too late to stop it, but greatly cutting CO2 emissions will make the damage much less severe. Climate change isn't a binary proposition, where we either get it or we don't. We're pretty much locked in to some degree of change at this point, but how much change we get still depends on how much more CO2 we dump into the atmosphere.
- malchow 10y ago
  "We're pretty much locked in to some degree" I'd say so! [1] [1] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-cha...
- flukus 10y ago
  > Climate change isn't a binary proposition In some ways it kind of is. If we hit the threshold of a particularly nasty feedback mechanism then we go from little impact to severe impact quite quickly.
- curiousgeorgio 10y ago
  > cutting CO2 emissions will make the damage much less severe What does that actually mean? The best models of a few years ago predicted huge increases in the loss of life due to climate change by today, yet we continue to see a decrease in climate-related deaths (thanks to technology that helps people adapt to climate rather than the other way around). We've been wrong, not just in scale, but in the direction of the trend that (at least in my opinion) matters most. So if there is a warming trend, how much do you really think we can postpone or alleviate its effects by driving a Prius and using recycled shopping bags - in terms of human lives saved? Even under the completely unrealistic, hypothetical assumption that we could get every country on earth to make it priority #1, how does that affect the overall picture? Do you think, possibly, that kind of focus/priority might actually be a net loss if we sacrifice innovation that saves lives in the face of any climate change (as we do now) for a drop-in-the-bucket-scale difference in an otherwise unavoidable trend?
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Which models predicted a huge loss of life due to climate change by today? The technology for adapting to climate has been around for decades, so I'm skeptical that some change there has made a difference. Your mention of "recycled shopping bags" as if it had anything to do with climate change makes me suspect that you're not being entirely sincere here.
  - zbyte64 10y ago
    You are not wrong, simply driving a Prius won't save the world. If however we start including the actual costs to society in the cost of petro then you won't need to encourage people to drive hybrids or recycle. I am not so sure that the price of petro is negatively tied to innovation, or at least the innovations needed to mitigate global warming.
  - woodandsteel 10y ago
    It just occurred to me that pro-fossil fuel trolls might realize they are losing the argument that there is no anthropocentric global climate change, and instead decide fight government regulations by arguing it is out of control and so there is no point in trying to stop it.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      In my experience, the "skeptic" side transitions fairly freely between "the world isn't warming," "the warming is natural," and "the warming is anthropogenic but beneficial" based on whatever best fits the argument at any given moment. Adding in "the warming is anthropogenic and harmful but unstoppable" wouldn't be much of a change.
    - curiousgeorgio 10y ago
      I'm hardly a "pro-fossil fuel troll" as you seem to imply, though I do think it's odd that you'd resort to framing someone with opposing views as "losing [an] argument" when scientifically speaking, facts should speak for themselves - no arguments needed. The facts relating to AGW are far from clear. Anyone telling you otherwise is either funded by powerful political agendas, or too ignorant to recognize the manipulation happening in the media. There are very legitimate reasons to support the use of fossil fuels and to consider the cost - in human lives - of trying to reduce the use of fossil fuels. To ignore that side of the debate is simply irresponsible. They certainly aren't free from negative consequences, but the negative consequences of eliminating fossil fuel use are far greater. Lastly, pointing out additional flaws in the AGW narrative is not an indication of "losing an argument" or subsequently deciding to fight another. I raised this particular point to help illustrate the fact that even if you do happen to subscribe to the idea of AGW, if you follow that idea to its logical conclusion, you're still no better off in terms of actually fixing anything. It's just one more clue that the whole AGW ideology serves a hidden political purpose. In my experience, ideological flaws tend to travel in pairs - or in this case, herds. I bet it feels like you're doing the world a favor by perpetuating the flawed idea that climate change and fossil fuels are the most important problems of our time, but unless you're actually willing to give up everything that fossil fuels do for us (FYI, that includes pretty much all the conveniences of modern civilized living), then that's a pretty hypocritical position to take. Worst of all, the anti-fossil-fuel agenda ends up hurting the people who stand to gain the most from industrial progress - especially those in developing countries.
- legolas2412 10y ago
  Contrary to the climate change deniers, I think the models aren't aggressive enough. I have tried to read climate change predictions, and all models I saw predict CO2 concentration with reference with increases seen in history. The assumption is that history will model future correctly. However, I think that's really wrong. Right now 1.5 billion chinese are at middle income stage. What happens when they start polluting/consuming at first world levels? History hasn't seen such a migration and can't model that. What happens when 1.5 billion in South Asia and 1.5 billion in africa raise their per capita pollution? No historical data has seen effects this extreme. Changes as driving green cars/turning vegan/recycling are really good but might be far from sufficient. What's needed is complete shift to green energy right now. And even that may not be enough.
MaysonL 10y ago
Stop using fossil fuels?
- zbyte64 10y ago
  Or at the very least stop distorting the market to favor fossil fuels over alternative energy sources.
strommen 10y ago
Mitigation is the key word here. The best-case scenario is that over the next 30 years we ramp down our greenhouse emissions to zero, and the planet warms up by ~2 degrees Celsius and stays there. We're not currently on track for this, but it's still achievable (or close to it). The worst-case scenario is that we do nothing at all to solve the problem, and the planet warms up by 10+ degrees over the next century. And the temperature would continue to increase until we literally run out of fossil fuels to burn. There's a big difference between 2 and 10 degrees warming. I think modern civilization could survive the former, not so sure about the latter.
- curiousgeorgio 10y ago
  > and the planet warms up by ~2 degrees Celsius and stays there Everything I've read from the "experts" seems to suggest that we're experiencing a runaway trend that realistically cannot be stopped, regardless of what we do. Why should we believe 10 degrees, 2 degrees, or any of the figures mentioned are possible, probable, or frankly anything more than numbers pulled from a hat when they've been absolutely wrong, pretty much every time an "expert" has made predictions for more than about 5 years (and not just wrong by a hair, but by orders of magnitude)?
  - infinite8s 10y ago
    Do you have any references to a scientific expert making a prediction that was off by orders of magnitude?
- antisthenes 10y ago
  AFAIK, we're already committed to a 2C rise by 2100 even if we stop any and all CO2 emissions today. And those models don't take into account potential feedback loops.
nikdaheratik 10y ago
By "we" do you mean the few people reading this on the forum, or all of humanity? There are a number of actions that can be taken to keep things from getting too hot to handle. People seem to be under the mistaken assumption that AGW is a problem to be solved and then we can just go have a party of something and move on with our lives. It's more like a relay race for a world record or something. Each new technology or change gives us more time to get ahead of the problem. We may not see the end of the race no matter what, we can't even know if we're ahead really until 80-100 years from now, but we just gotta do the best we can on our leg and make things easier for the next runner when we pass off the baton. Getting as much coal (especially) and oil left in the ground as possible buys us more time before something bad happens. Advancing the tech for solar and wind or putting another non-fossil fuel power plant in place buys us more time. If we had to, we could go towards more extreme strategies like solar deflection or CO2 sequestering, but those are dicey at best. The end goal isn't a world without any problems, but some place where clean energy is everywhere and the potential for war, famine, and extreme weather is better than it otherwise would be. This isn't going to happen overnight, but then the problems that caused it started 100 years ago.

mikeash 10y ago

It's too late to stop it, but greatly cutting CO2 emissions will make the damage much less severe. Climate change isn't a binary proposition, where we either get it or we don't. We're pretty much locked in to some degree of change at this point, but how much change we get still depends on how much more CO2 we dump into the atmosphere.

malchow 10y ago
"We're pretty much locked in to some degree" I'd say so! [1] [1] http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-change.html http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-cha...
flukus 10y ago
> Climate change isn't a binary proposition In some ways it kind of is. If we hit the threshold of a particularly nasty feedback mechanism then we go from little impact to severe impact quite quickly.
curiousgeorgio 10y ago
> cutting CO2 emissions will make the damage much less severe What does that actually mean? The best models of a few years ago predicted huge increases in the loss of life due to climate change by today, yet we continue to see a decrease in climate-related deaths (thanks to technology that helps people adapt to climate rather than the other way around). We've been wrong, not just in scale, but in the direction of the trend that (at least in my opinion) matters most. So if there is a warming trend, how much do you really think we can postpone or alleviate its effects by driving a Prius and using recycled shopping bags - in terms of human lives saved? Even under the completely unrealistic, hypothetical assumption that we could get every country on earth to make it priority #1, how does that affect the overall picture? Do you think, possibly, that kind of focus/priority might actually be a net loss if we sacrifice innovation that saves lives in the face of any climate change (as we do now) for a drop-in-the-bucket-scale difference in an otherwise unavoidable trend?
- mikeash 10y ago
  Which models predicted a huge loss of life due to climate change by today? The technology for adapting to climate has been around for decades, so I'm skeptical that some change there has made a difference. Your mention of "recycled shopping bags" as if it had anything to do with climate change makes me suspect that you're not being entirely sincere here.
- zbyte64 10y ago
  You are not wrong, simply driving a Prius won't save the world. If however we start including the actual costs to society in the cost of petro then you won't need to encourage people to drive hybrids or recycle. I am not so sure that the price of petro is negatively tied to innovation, or at least the innovations needed to mitigate global warming.
- woodandsteel 10y ago
  It just occurred to me that pro-fossil fuel trolls might realize they are losing the argument that there is no anthropocentric global climate change, and instead decide fight government regulations by arguing it is out of control and so there is no point in trying to stop it.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    In my experience, the "skeptic" side transitions fairly freely between "the world isn't warming," "the warming is natural," and "the warming is anthropogenic but beneficial" based on whatever best fits the argument at any given moment. Adding in "the warming is anthropogenic and harmful but unstoppable" wouldn't be much of a change.
  - curiousgeorgio 10y ago
    I'm hardly a "pro-fossil fuel troll" as you seem to imply, though I do think it's odd that you'd resort to framing someone with opposing views as "losing [an] argument" when scientifically speaking, facts should speak for themselves - no arguments needed. The facts relating to AGW are far from clear. Anyone telling you otherwise is either funded by powerful political agendas, or too ignorant to recognize the manipulation happening in the media. There are very legitimate reasons to support the use of fossil fuels and to consider the cost - in human lives - of trying to reduce the use of fossil fuels. To ignore that side of the debate is simply irresponsible. They certainly aren't free from negative consequences, but the negative consequences of eliminating fossil fuel use are far greater. Lastly, pointing out additional flaws in the AGW narrative is not an indication of "losing an argument" or subsequently deciding to fight another. I raised this particular point to help illustrate the fact that even if you do happen to subscribe to the idea of AGW, if you follow that idea to its logical conclusion, you're still no better off in terms of actually fixing anything. It's just one more clue that the whole AGW ideology serves a hidden political purpose. In my experience, ideological flaws tend to travel in pairs - or in this case, herds. I bet it feels like you're doing the world a favor by perpetuating the flawed idea that climate change and fossil fuels are the most important problems of our time, but unless you're actually willing to give up everything that fossil fuels do for us (FYI, that includes pretty much all the conveniences of modern civilized living), then that's a pretty hypocritical position to take. Worst of all, the anti-fossil-fuel agenda ends up hurting the people who stand to gain the most from industrial progress - especially those in developing countries.
legolas2412 10y ago
Contrary to the climate change deniers, I think the models aren't aggressive enough. I have tried to read climate change predictions, and all models I saw predict CO2 concentration with reference with increases seen in history. The assumption is that history will model future correctly. However, I think that's really wrong. Right now 1.5 billion chinese are at middle income stage. What happens when they start polluting/consuming at first world levels? History hasn't seen such a migration and can't model that. What happens when 1.5 billion in South Asia and 1.5 billion in africa raise their per capita pollution? No historical data has seen effects this extreme. Changes as driving green cars/turning vegan/recycling are really good but might be far from sufficient. What's needed is complete shift to green energy right now. And even that may not be enough.

MaysonL 10y ago

Stop using fossil fuels?

zbyte64 10y ago
Or at the very least stop distorting the market to favor fossil fuels over alternative energy sources.

strommen 10y ago

Mitigation is the key word here. The best-case scenario is that over the next 30 years we ramp down our greenhouse emissions to zero, and the planet warms up by ~2 degrees Celsius and stays there. We're not currently on track for this, but it's still achievable (or close to it). The worst-case scenario is that we do nothing at all to solve the problem, and the planet warms up by 10+ degrees over the next century. And the temperature would continue to increase until we literally run out of fossil fuels to burn. There's a big difference between 2 and 10 degrees warming. I think modern civilization could survive the former, not so sure about the latter.

curiousgeorgio 10y ago
> and the planet warms up by ~2 degrees Celsius and stays there Everything I've read from the "experts" seems to suggest that we're experiencing a runaway trend that realistically cannot be stopped, regardless of what we do. Why should we believe 10 degrees, 2 degrees, or any of the figures mentioned are possible, probable, or frankly anything more than numbers pulled from a hat when they've been absolutely wrong, pretty much every time an "expert" has made predictions for more than about 5 years (and not just wrong by a hair, but by orders of magnitude)?
- infinite8s 10y ago
  Do you have any references to a scientific expert making a prediction that was off by orders of magnitude?
antisthenes 10y ago
AFAIK, we're already committed to a 2C rise by 2100 even if we stop any and all CO2 emissions today. And those models don't take into account potential feedback loops.

nikdaheratik 10y ago

By "we" do you mean the few people reading this on the forum, or all of humanity? There are a number of actions that can be taken to keep things from getting too hot to handle. People seem to be under the mistaken assumption that AGW is a problem to be solved and then we can just go have a party of something and move on with our lives. It's more like a relay race for a world record or something. Each new technology or change gives us more time to get ahead of the problem. We may not see the end of the race no matter what, we can't even know if we're ahead really until 80-100 years from now, but we just gotta do the best we can on our leg and make things easier for the next runner when we pass off the baton. Getting as much coal (especially) and oil left in the ground as possible buys us more time before something bad happens. Advancing the tech for solar and wind or putting another non-fossil fuel power plant in place buys us more time. If we had to, we could go towards more extreme strategies like solar deflection or CO2 sequestering, but those are dicey at best. The end goal isn't a world without any problems, but some place where clean energy is everywhere and the potential for war, famine, and extreme weather is better than it otherwise would be. This isn't going to happen overnight, but then the problems that caused it started 100 years ago.