8 ms·

I suspect that we can expect a lot of bad news to emerge over the next few decades, as the promise of climate change becomes the reality of climate change.

by M_Grey 10y ago

WillPostForFood 10y ago
On the other hand, people have been saying that for last few decades, and the bad news hasn't had much impact.
- CardenB 10y ago
  That's the nature of an exponential, runaway trend.
- epistasis 10y ago
  People (well, climate science researchers) have been saying that the changes are decades ahead of us, even now, but that we need to take action now and in the past to prevent these changes. Given the general staidness of the actual research, I think we need to worry a lot more about where climate science has underestimated the change than where they've overestimated it. The loss function will be brutal on that side.
  - tjic 10y ago
    > People (well, climate science researchers) have been saying that the changes are decades ahead of us, even now, but that we need to take action now and in the past to prevent these changes. Climate researchers have _not_ been implying that the bad effects are way out in the 21st century: they've made hundreds of testable predictions that catastrophe was at hand in the 80s, 90s, and aughts. We were going to see the end of arctic ice, have a perpetual ozone hole necessitating sun screen when venturing outside and decimating wildlife from cataracts, see New York and other major cities drowned, etc. (Not to mention famine killing billions of people, etc.) It is possible to think that climate research is useful and interesting even while acknowledging that they are often alarmist and full of nonsense in their predictions.
    - flavor8 10y ago
      Source on the ozone hole? Last I heard that was actually shrinking dramatically as a direct result of the CRC ban.
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Yeah, AFAIK ozone hole predictions made sense, they were actually acted upon, and by doing so we actually fixed the problem.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - afarrell 10y ago
      > the end of arctic ice nitpick: it is actually antarctic ice we need to worry about. Arctic ice (except on Greenland) is floating and so it is already displacing its weight in water.
      - the_gastropod 10y ago
        Melting Arctic ice is also worrisome because it alters the salinity of the ocean, potentially altering ocean currents.
      - ealloc 10y ago
        Melting Arctic ice also changes the surface albedo so more solar energy is absorbed, it changes the ocean salinity, and no longer cools the winds above it. Thermal expansion of the ocean contributes almost half of total observed sea level rise. (1.1mm out of 2.8 mm total per year)
        afarrell 10y ago
        Good point
    - 0xfeba 10y ago
      But are the ones making alarmist claims the same as the ones making more solid predictions? There are many climate change/AGW groups.
- adrianN 10y ago
  Maybe not for you. The people threatened by desertification for example might think differently. Or the corals in the great barrier reef.
- fsloth 10y ago
  Yeah, it's apparently too abstract of a threat to most people. Maybe they don't get it - intuitively - that 'the planet' actually includes their home as well.
- NumberCruncher 10y ago
  >> Reminds me of that fellow back home that fell off a ten story building. [...] as he was falling people on each floor kept hearing him say, "So far, so good." /The magnificent seven/
- Shivetya 10y ago
  It is always in how the numbers are used, cherry picking by both sides. However the real take away here is that they figured out they were wrong yet again. Of course they lean towards the more extreme each time but even some publications indicate that Antarctic changes are due to natural variability. Then lets play with sea rise, the fear is always that some islands will wash away and port towns will be at further risk. Yet studies of the Marshall islands show the reverse, the islands continue to grow in the majority. What about changes leading to flooding, changes in rain fall patterns, and the like. Well the common trend is to over exaggerate unique events as if they were common place, ie Katrina leading to years of violent hurricanes wrecking the US (oops). Sixty years of studying rain falls in some central US states show no changes, the recent floods in Louisiana weren't even unusual. Even China has had an area in drought for centuries. In other words, the climate does change but we don't know all the variables and people's whose very jobs depend on income from both studying it and "fixing it" (read : GE) will always push the numbers that support their side. Just like big oil will try to claim that oil isn't the leading cause; its cows btw. So take it all with a grain of salt. Articles on Vice lean one direction and one direction only and tend to exaggerate . however those inclined to always believe this type of alarmism won't think otherwise.
  - merlincorey 10y ago
    >In other words, the climate does change but we don't know all the variables and people's whose very jobs depend on income from both studying it and "fixing it" (read : GE) will always push the numbers that support their side. Just like big oil will try to claim that oil isn't the leading cause; its cows btw. Potentially, not anymore! http://modernfarmer.com/2016/10/seaweed-livestock-methane-emissions/ http://modernfarmer.com/2016/10/seaweed-livestock-methane-em...
    - wott 10y ago
      In my place, animals die if they wander in places with seaweed (the sprawl of which is caused by industrial agriculture and breeding), because those produce toxic gases when they rot.
  - givinguflac 10y ago
- jfoutz 10y ago
  The whole hurricane thing sucks though. They'll happen no matter what you do, of course. It does seem like we have some influence over how many bonus bullets we want to put in the gun while playing russian roulette.
- givinguflac 10y ago
  Yeah, there definitely hasn't been an increase in fires, consistently experiencing the hottest months/years repeatedly, increasingly severe record drought in many places, or general extreme weather records being set. Yeah, no big deal..
- ocschwar 10y ago
  Only if you're still living in a bubble of comfort. (Which I am as well. The bad news has had very little impact ON ME. Because I live in a part of the US with the best infrastructure. )
- jhayward 10y ago
  > On the other hand, people have been saying that for last few decades, and the bad news hasn't had much impact. People are really bad at understanding nonlinear effects. For any kind of supra-linear system, "nothing" happens for a relatively long time, then "all the sudden" effects start piling up and people who say the above claim it's completely unexpected, out of the blue.
madaxe_again 10y ago
I'm afraid it will start emerging much sooner than on a decadal timescale - we're already seeing the impact in terms of crop yields and weather damage costs, all over the globe. Simultaneously, our political systems are gyrating wildly as they struggle to function in an ever faster and more interconnected and complex world. No, I think we're going to see a lot of bad news over the next few years. The impacts of climate change don't need to be crippling to overtopple a fragile society - just pernicious and frequent. Demolish metropolises in the gulf states a few times more - when do they stop rebuilding? When it's impractical, or when it's impossible? Flood rural areas of England a few more years in a row - do people remain there? Do insurers continue to offer coverage? Who pays to rehome these migrants? A political crisis grows rapidly. Cynically, I note in the U.K. that the devastating regional floods have only been reported regionally. They don't really want people to get the picture it's happening everywhere. I do wonder if some of what's happening in the media and state around migrants is to harden us for a future where many or most are dispossessed and homeless. The anticipation of all hell breaking loose can be as bad as the reality.
- tjic 10y ago
  Crop yields continue to climb. http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/uploads/cereal_yields_0.jpg http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/uploads/cereal_yields...
  - flukus 10y ago
    That looks like a decline and stagnation to me.
- Hondor 10y ago
  You might be painting too rosy a picture of the past. Gyrating wildly? The UK no longer gets bombed by the IRA, there's no cold war, there's no crippling union strikes everywhere. As for more serious but less sexy problems, it'll take a lot of climate change to compete with disasters we've already had/are having: Global deaths from famine from 1900-2000: 80,000,000 [1] Global deaths from malaria from 2000-2015: 9,000,000 [3] Global deaths from WWII: 60,000,000 Global traffic deaths in 2013: 1,000,000 [2] We've got most of those problems on the run now, and the future looks even more promising with medical and safety tech. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines [2] http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/traffic_deaths_number/en/ http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/traffic_deaths_... [3] http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/ http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/

I suspect that we can expect a lot of bad news to emerge over the next few decades, as the promise of climate change becomes the reality of climate change.

by M_Grey 10y ago

I suspect that we can expect a lot of bad news to emerge over the next few decades, as the promise of climate change becomes the reality of climate change.

WillPostForFood 10y ago

On the other hand, people have been saying that for last few decades, and the bad news hasn't had much impact.

CardenB 10y ago
That's the nature of an exponential, runaway trend.
epistasis 10y ago
People (well, climate science researchers) have been saying that the changes are decades ahead of us, even now, but that we need to take action now and in the past to prevent these changes. Given the general staidness of the actual research, I think we need to worry a lot more about where climate science has underestimated the change than where they've overestimated it. The loss function will be brutal on that side.
- tjic 10y ago
  > People (well, climate science researchers) have been saying that the changes are decades ahead of us, even now, but that we need to take action now and in the past to prevent these changes. Climate researchers have _not_ been implying that the bad effects are way out in the 21st century: they've made hundreds of testable predictions that catastrophe was at hand in the 80s, 90s, and aughts. We were going to see the end of arctic ice, have a perpetual ozone hole necessitating sun screen when venturing outside and decimating wildlife from cataracts, see New York and other major cities drowned, etc. (Not to mention famine killing billions of people, etc.) It is possible to think that climate research is useful and interesting even while acknowledging that they are often alarmist and full of nonsense in their predictions.
  - flavor8 10y ago
    Source on the ozone hole? Last I heard that was actually shrinking dramatically as a direct result of the CRC ban.
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Yeah, AFAIK ozone hole predictions made sense, they were actually acted upon, and by doing so we actually fixed the problem.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - afarrell 10y ago
    > the end of arctic ice nitpick: it is actually antarctic ice we need to worry about. Arctic ice (except on Greenland) is floating and so it is already displacing its weight in water.
    - the_gastropod 10y ago
      Melting Arctic ice is also worrisome because it alters the salinity of the ocean, potentially altering ocean currents.
    - ealloc 10y ago
      Melting Arctic ice also changes the surface albedo so more solar energy is absorbed, it changes the ocean salinity, and no longer cools the winds above it. Thermal expansion of the ocean contributes almost half of total observed sea level rise. (1.1mm out of 2.8 mm total per year)
      - afarrell 10y ago
        Good point
  - 0xfeba 10y ago
    But are the ones making alarmist claims the same as the ones making more solid predictions? There are many climate change/AGW groups.
adrianN 10y ago
Maybe not for you. The people threatened by desertification for example might think differently. Or the corals in the great barrier reef.
fsloth 10y ago
Yeah, it's apparently too abstract of a threat to most people. Maybe they don't get it - intuitively - that 'the planet' actually includes their home as well.
NumberCruncher 10y ago
>> Reminds me of that fellow back home that fell off a ten story building. [...] as he was falling people on each floor kept hearing him say, "So far, so good." /The magnificent seven/
Shivetya 10y ago
It is always in how the numbers are used, cherry picking by both sides. However the real take away here is that they figured out they were wrong yet again. Of course they lean towards the more extreme each time but even some publications indicate that Antarctic changes are due to natural variability. Then lets play with sea rise, the fear is always that some islands will wash away and port towns will be at further risk. Yet studies of the Marshall islands show the reverse, the islands continue to grow in the majority. What about changes leading to flooding, changes in rain fall patterns, and the like. Well the common trend is to over exaggerate unique events as if they were common place, ie Katrina leading to years of violent hurricanes wrecking the US (oops). Sixty years of studying rain falls in some central US states show no changes, the recent floods in Louisiana weren't even unusual. Even China has had an area in drought for centuries. In other words, the climate does change but we don't know all the variables and people's whose very jobs depend on income from both studying it and "fixing it" (read : GE) will always push the numbers that support their side. Just like big oil will try to claim that oil isn't the leading cause; its cows btw. So take it all with a grain of salt. Articles on Vice lean one direction and one direction only and tend to exaggerate . however those inclined to always believe this type of alarmism won't think otherwise.
- merlincorey 10y ago
  >In other words, the climate does change but we don't know all the variables and people's whose very jobs depend on income from both studying it and "fixing it" (read : GE) will always push the numbers that support their side. Just like big oil will try to claim that oil isn't the leading cause; its cows btw. Potentially, not anymore! http://modernfarmer.com/2016/10/seaweed-livestock-methane-emissions/ http://modernfarmer.com/2016/10/seaweed-livestock-methane-em...
  - wott 10y ago
    In my place, animals die if they wander in places with seaweed (the sprawl of which is caused by industrial agriculture and breeding), because those produce toxic gases when they rot.
- givinguflac 10y ago
jfoutz 10y ago
The whole hurricane thing sucks though. They'll happen no matter what you do, of course. It does seem like we have some influence over how many bonus bullets we want to put in the gun while playing russian roulette.
givinguflac 10y ago
Yeah, there definitely hasn't been an increase in fires, consistently experiencing the hottest months/years repeatedly, increasingly severe record drought in many places, or general extreme weather records being set. Yeah, no big deal..
ocschwar 10y ago
Only if you're still living in a bubble of comfort. (Which I am as well. The bad news has had very little impact ON ME. Because I live in a part of the US with the best infrastructure. )
jhayward 10y ago
> On the other hand, people have been saying that for last few decades, and the bad news hasn't had much impact. People are really bad at understanding nonlinear effects. For any kind of supra-linear system, "nothing" happens for a relatively long time, then "all the sudden" effects start piling up and people who say the above claim it's completely unexpected, out of the blue.

madaxe_again 10y ago

I'm afraid it will start emerging much sooner than on a decadal timescale - we're already seeing the impact in terms of crop yields and weather damage costs, all over the globe. Simultaneously, our political systems are gyrating wildly as they struggle to function in an ever faster and more interconnected and complex world. No, I think we're going to see a lot of bad news over the next few years. The impacts of climate change don't need to be crippling to overtopple a fragile society - just pernicious and frequent. Demolish metropolises in the gulf states a few times more - when do they stop rebuilding? When it's impractical, or when it's impossible? Flood rural areas of England a few more years in a row - do people remain there? Do insurers continue to offer coverage? Who pays to rehome these migrants? A political crisis grows rapidly. Cynically, I note in the U.K. that the devastating regional floods have only been reported regionally. They don't really want people to get the picture it's happening everywhere. I do wonder if some of what's happening in the media and state around migrants is to harden us for a future where many or most are dispossessed and homeless. The anticipation of all hell breaking loose can be as bad as the reality.

tjic 10y ago
Crop yields continue to climb. http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/uploads/cereal_yields_0.jpg http://www.wri.org/sites/default/files/uploads/cereal_yields...
- flukus 10y ago
  That looks like a decline and stagnation to me.
Hondor 10y ago
You might be painting too rosy a picture of the past. Gyrating wildly? The UK no longer gets bombed by the IRA, there's no cold war, there's no crippling union strikes everywhere. As for more serious but less sexy problems, it'll take a lot of climate change to compete with disasters we've already had/are having: Global deaths from famine from 1900-2000: 80,000,000 [1] Global deaths from malaria from 2000-2015: 9,000,000 [3] Global deaths from WWII: 60,000,000 Global traffic deaths in 2013: 1,000,000 [2] We've got most of those problems on the run now, and the future looks even more promising with medical and safety tech. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines [2] http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/traffic_deaths_number/en/ http://www.who.int/gho/road_safety/mortality/traffic_deaths_... [3] http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/ http://www.who.int/gho/malaria/epidemic/deaths/en/