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recognizes that we're too late to stop its worst effects I see this sentiment a lot on HN these days. What's the reasoning behind it? If the temperature in my
by ced 10y ago
recognizes that we're too late to stop its worst effects
I see this sentiment a lot on HN these days. What's the reasoning behind it? If the temperature in my room increases, I'll go from feeling uncomfortable, to sweating profusely, to fainting, to death. Is there any scientific reason to believe that, say, a 4C increase gives us horrible outcomes, but a 8C increase will be "not much worse"?
- stouset 10y ago4˙C is already reaching an extinction-level event for humanity.
- mike10010100 10y agoNot really for humanity directly. We'd survive. But the plants and animals we depend on probably wouldn't have a very good time, and our biodiversity as a planet would significantly decrease. Not quite extinction level, perhaps another Great Dying, though.
- rybosome 10y ago> Not really for humanity directly...perhaps another Great Dying, though. It seems hard to believe that such a drastic shock to our planet won't trigger panic and resource wars which have the potential to finish us off.
- crpatino 10y agoA great decrease in population, yes. That is different from extintion.
- mike10010100 10y agoFinish us off? I doubt it. We're a tenuous species.
- stouset 10y ago> We'd survive. But the plants and animals we depend on probably wouldn't have a very good time... I'm not sure how you can reconcile these two adjacent statements. Yes, some humans would undoubtedly exist somewhere. But only a tiny fraction of our current world population.
- mike10010100 10y ago> Yes, some humans would undoubtedly exist somewhere. That's called survival.
- stouset 10y agoOh come on, you're just splitting hairs at this point. Pockets of a few thousand people is, yes, technically survival. Congratulations, you're "technically correct" — the most useless, pedantically, and antisocial kind of correct. The original question was "how is 8˚C "not much worse" than 4˚C? Surely you can concede that "tens of thousands of humans" and "zero humans" are not so much different compared to today's "billions of humans".
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- burkaman 10y agoI think the warming itself is not really the biggest problem, it's the secondary effects like rising sea levels, increased natural disasters, etc. So for example if it's too late to stop coastal cities from being flooded, twice that much sea level rise is not much worse, because all the important cities and infrastructure are already gone.
- yongjik 10y agoHowever, if it's-too-laters really hold that opinion, they will also oppose (among other things) development of affected areas, because those areas are a foregone conclusion. For example, they will oppose any new buildings (at least major urban developments) in low coastal areas such as Manhattan, (part of) San Francisco, or Miami. Such projects are a waste of resource in the same way reducing CO2 emission is, and they will make relocation much more costly when the inevitable happens. Funnily enough, I don't hear that opinion often, which makes me suspect that most people just want an excuse to keep their lifestyle unchanged.
- burkaman 10y agoI have actually heard that opinion, for example: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-future-flooding-climate-change.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/09/new-york-future... However, most people I've talked to who say "there's nothing we can do" are really saying "I think I will be dead before this is a really big problem, so fuck it".
- cel1ne 10y ago> I see this sentiment a lot on HN these days. What's the reasoning behind it? By concluding it's too late, one does not have to feel bad for not doing anything about it. Humans are simple that way.
- linkregister 10y agoSome prevailing climate models indicated that beyond a certain CO2 concentration, the temperature will continue to spiral upwards continuously, even if there are no further CO2 increases. At that point it would be necessary to reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. It is far more difficult to capture CO2 than it is to abstain from releasing it at this time.
- blueprint 10y agoThe answer lies in the fact that the amount of heat to get the surface of the Earth from 1 -> 3°C is not so huge, but when the amounts of heat to get the surface temperature to 4-6° exists in the Earth there will be tremendous tectonic activity.
- crpatino 10y agoNot sure about tectonic activity, but definitively more extreme weather events. Each 1°C increase does not mean that the whole atmosphere goes a little up uniformly, but that in general there's much more energy available to make stronger storms, more tornadoes, etc, and mess up with established climatic patterns. Not Global Warming, but Global Weirding.
- flukus 10y agoIt's a sentiment that I'm unfortunately starting to accept. I don't think we are in a position as a society to act properly on climate change.