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We seem to be tracking for 4C of warming. 4C of warming would probably cause a collapse in the ability to feed the populace, and render large chunks of the wor

We seem to be tracking for 4C of warming. 4C of warming would probably cause a collapse in the ability to feed the populace, and render large chunks of the world uninhabitable without active cooling, or because they'll be underwater. It's hard to imagine how civilization survives this, without those regions that do continue to have arable land putting up walls and turrets and mowing down the streams of starving migrants. At what point do you look at preppers and think "honestly they might be on to something?" (edit: additions below) Sources abound but https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/18/climate-crisis-heat-is-on-global-heating-four-degrees-2100-change-way-we-live https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/18/climate-... "Indeed, the consequences of a 4C warmer world are so terrifying that most scientists would rather not contemplate them, let alone work out a survival strategy. Rockström doesn’t like our chances. “It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that,” he says. “There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world.” " "Since 2005, total global greenhouse-gas emissions have most closely tracked the RCP 8.5 scenario, " https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-the-climate-change-disaster-scenario/579700/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/01/rcp-85-t...

koheripbal 7y ago
Can you source these predictions? The timetable matters, for example. If a transition in sea level takes place over a hundred years, it seems reasonable that populations would gradually move uphill. Also, as land becomes less farmable, other land at higher latitude and elevations might become more so. There's also the increase in vegetation associated with higher CO2 levels that might actually improve some farming. I don't feel like we should fall into to emotional trap of throwing up our hands and predicting the apocolypse.
- mempko 7y ago
  Let's say you are right and we can farm the newly methane heavy, sinkhole infested permafrost in Russia and Canada. What does it mean for everyone else? Will they rely on food supply from Russia and Canada? Will Russia and Canada end up having huge migrations and become the biggest countries with billions of people?
  - JoeSamoa 7y ago
    I've wondered this as well.
  - koheripbal 7y ago
    Would they rely on food produced in the newly fertile lands? Of course. They'd probably themselves move there in order to farm it. Russia might be the next super power simply due to a population rush from lower latitudes.
    - mempko 7y ago
      There is currently a climate-related "population rush" from Syria into Europe and South America into the USA. In both cases, refugees have been subjugated to extremely inhumane conditions. If the USA, the freest country on earth, has caged climate refugees in concentration camps, do you expect Russia to be more generious?
- chongli 7y ago
  A lot of these trends are nonlinear. Warming reaches critical thresholds and causes ice caps to disappear, decreasing the Earth’s albedo. Permafrost melts and releases huge stores of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. If it takes a hundred years, it’ll be more like 99 years of buildup before the dam bursts.
- mellavora 7y ago
  where do you get the idea that populations will slowly move uphill? The effects are non-linear. What you see is that Bangladesh goes from being a habitable city one year to one which is underwater 1/4 of the time, look at the massive floods there this year. Next year might be dry, but the year after that? It is already not sustainably habitable, but the people still live there. China (noting that most of their industrial cities are coastal) might have a bit more time, but it is going to mean rebuilding all of the infrastructure they have built--where do the resources come from for that? And another question, before the people move, are they going to clean up all of their toxic waste? If not, it all goes into the water with the flooding, which then kills their uphill livelihood because they live next to a huge pool of poison. Fuck, after the hurricane hit Texas, they decided to scrap environmentally sound cleanup because it was "too expensive given the scale of the loss." If the US can't clean up, why would developing countries?
  - kfrzcode 7y ago
    > Fuck, after the hurricane hit Texas, they decided to scrap environmentally sound cleanup because it was "too expensive given the scale of the loss." If the US can't clean up, why would developing countries? Source? I'm not sure I've heard about this...
  - leereeves 7y ago
    > What you see is that Bangladesh goes from being a habitable city one year to one which is underwater 1/4 of the time, look at the massive floods there this year. Next year might be dry, but the year after that? It is already not sustainably habitable, but the people still live there. Really bad example. Floods have always been a problem in Bangladesh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_Bangladesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_Bangladesh
  - tux1968 7y ago
    > Bangladesh goes from being a habitable city Which city in Bangladesh are you talking about?
  - rayiner 7y ago
    Bangladesh’s GDP loss from climate change under a 3C scenario is under 10%: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018EF000922 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
- keanzu 7y ago
  Populations might move uphill if they are unfamiliar with "dike" technology. About one third of the Netherlands lies below sea level, with the lowest point being 22 feet (6.7 meters) below sea level. Perhaps other nations might be capable of building small walls to keep the sea back as well.
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
What many seem to forget is 2C or 4C of warming is not an end equilibrium state, it's merely an arbitrary date of measurement (end of 21st century) for the track we may irreparably lock in for centuries and millennia. One a tipping point tips it's damn near impossible to tip it back. That seems more than a little cavalier given the limited range of regions we find our planet's landmass in. The future looks more and more terrifying, and despite public opinion supporting action in much the world, still the political class have little to no answer anywhere...
- cmurf 7y ago
  Not the political class, the monied classes. No one wants to accept haircuts to their lifestyle.
  - JoeSamoa 7y ago
    None of them have been alive to see a revolution.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  They have the answers, they’ve just decided that they’d rather the world devolve into chaos and destruction than challenge the ruling class. I know the whole Jeffrey Epstein scandal is more or less verboten on HN, but if there is one thing it has exposed, it is this truth. Those who act in service to elites will deploy the most obvious lies, evince they most pathetic cowardice, and the embrace the basest nihilism instead of confronting the reality of our circumstances and those who are its authors.
- JoeSamoa 7y ago
  Oh they have answers. You can see it everywhere. Haven't you noticed how authoritarian things are getting lately?
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Compared to my father's generation who went through Great Depression and fought WW2, compared to the pre-Prague Spring world I was born into, with Cold War, Soviet Bloc, apartheid, US segregation and student rights riots in Paris and London, and the assorted dictatorships. Err, no I can't say we currently have an excess of authoritarianism lately. We have a slight lean back after seventy years of steady post-WW2 liberalisation, decline of deference and increasing freedoms. Economically we could have had a more interesting conversation... :)
throwaaway8328 7y ago
This is why I choose not to have children, because I have a hard time seeing that people (the majority) will start paying mind to it. I think most people choose (probably on a sub-conscious level) to not be bothered by it, because doing something about it would mean giving up on many things we (citizens of rich countries) take for granted.
- vinclou 7y ago
  Couldn't you just say - I dont want to have children, since I'm enjoying my life without any children.
enitihas 7y ago
Which parts of the words will be worst and least affected?
- JoeSamoa 7y ago
  Any place least affected will be most sought after by the masses of migrants. There is no safe place.
  - growlist 7y ago
    Difficult to see many hungry migrants making it to Tristan da Cunha, for example.
    - JoeSamoa 7y ago
      Neat island, but I can assure you South Americans and Africans would have no issues invading it by boat. It would be a decent stronghold though for awhile I bet, but in the end desperation would lead to its discovery and pillaging. Have you ever played the game rust? It's a survival game where the world you spawn in is pretty large. It always amazes me how similar people think in survival games. No good spot ever goes undiscovered. If the islands were not mapped that would be your best bet.
      - DuskStar 7y ago
        Probably rather easy to enforce a sea border with drones and SDBs - barring submarines. (Like the ones the cartels are using for drug smuggling) Inhumane, but...
      - growlist 7y ago
        > Neat island, but I can assure you South Americans and Africans would have no issues invading it by boat. > It would be a decent stronghold though for awhile I bet, but in the end desperation would lead to its discovery and pillaging. So in a climate apocalypse scenario where people are starving and desperate and resources sparse, said people are going to be able to gather enough provisions and fuel to organise a weeks long trip across thousands of miles of open ocean in order to invade a settlement that is living at subsistence level. Right...
markosaric 7y ago
It certainly doesn't look good for us. Curiously enough it's not something that's easy to notice looking out of the window at the way we live now.
rayiner 7y ago
The scientific consensus view of the 4C scenario is not a “collapse in the ability to feed the populace.” In fact world population doubles by 2100 in the RCP 8.5 scenario, while world GDP more than triple: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo469/node/145 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo469/node/145
WhompingWindows 7y ago
We need to SERIOUSLY start considering geo-engineering and artificial methods of cooling the planet. Most people laughed when Andrew Yang brought up space mirrors, but seriously, this is a WAY better option than mowing down streams of migrants. We need to cool this planet with technological solutions, as well as with MASSIVE carbon sequestration by farmers. It's clear our energy transition is going FAR too slowly, so we have to work on the other side of the coin if we have any chance of keep civilization alive.
- ianleeclark 7y ago
  > We need to SERIOUSLY start considering geo-engineering and artificial methods of cooling the planet. We can't even collectively decide to stop taking the stuff out of the ground that ought to stay there. How are these fanciful ideas more politically viable?
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    They are more viable politically be cause they are further away, so you can pretend to support them while doing nothing, and use them as a magical excuse for burning yet more fossil fuels. I'm still convinced that Musk's Boring Company is just a similar ploy to prevent investment in much needed mass transit to keep car sales up.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  We have been engaged in a massive geoengineering experiment over the last century which involves putting out massive amounts of CO2. Even after decades of research the impacts of it are disputed and there is no will to make serious adjustments. I doubt we could set up a cooling effort in a way on the necessary scale where we understand the consequences and are willing to pay for it.
cryptica 7y ago
The problem with environmental scientists is that they fail to recognize just how much people and organisms will adapt to situations. Sure, maybe some organisms will die out, but new exciting ones will appear to replace them. Humans will be able to start farming in Antarctica. Some people's houses might go underwater but on some inland properties might suddenly become prime beach-front real estate. Human population might drop, but then house prices will drop too! It's not all bad.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  That's not how any of this works. House prices will drop where people cannot live anymore. And scientists have accounted for newly opened land... there is less of it then what is becoming uninhabitable. Continuing climate change isn't some whimsical economic reorering, it's the largest genocide in history.
belorn 7y ago
I doubt food productions will be a issue. The problems I foresee is transporting food to people and the willingness of the rich to give to the poor. Aquaculture and particularly aquatic plants and algae are such as small part of the global diet that statistically it might not even exist, and yet civilization could almost exclusive survive on it if needed. We have the know how to make such food edible. Oceans like the Baltic sea is basically in a death spiral because too much eutrophication. The nutrients is there, the farming technique is available, but the culture and economics are not. Similar to how people don't want bread made with grinned down insects, which is also a food production efficiency concept, algae is something that we could produce but won't because people will not buy the products. Even when giving away food we tend to use food that we culturally would also eat. Right now in local context, this kind of culture crash can result in edible food having a value that is below transport costs. In lakes that suffer from overpopulation you sometimes do a push where you extract hundred of tons of fish in order to restore health to the ecosystem. As I hear, that fish usually get turned into methane and burned as bio fuel. Food production all over the world is mostly the result of culture and tradition. With global trading we can add a bit more nuances, but even here we can find plenty of example where something which people eat in one place get thrown on the garbage heap in places which don't share the same food culture.

koheripbal 7y ago

Can you source these predictions? The timetable matters, for example. If a transition in sea level takes place over a hundred years, it seems reasonable that populations would gradually move uphill. Also, as land becomes less farmable, other land at higher latitude and elevations might become more so. There's also the increase in vegetation associated with higher CO2 levels that might actually improve some farming. I don't feel like we should fall into to emotional trap of throwing up our hands and predicting the apocolypse.

mempko 7y ago
Let's say you are right and we can farm the newly methane heavy, sinkhole infested permafrost in Russia and Canada. What does it mean for everyone else? Will they rely on food supply from Russia and Canada? Will Russia and Canada end up having huge migrations and become the biggest countries with billions of people?
- JoeSamoa 7y ago
  I've wondered this as well.
- koheripbal 7y ago
  Would they rely on food produced in the newly fertile lands? Of course. They'd probably themselves move there in order to farm it. Russia might be the next super power simply due to a population rush from lower latitudes.
  - mempko 7y ago
    There is currently a climate-related "population rush" from Syria into Europe and South America into the USA. In both cases, refugees have been subjugated to extremely inhumane conditions. If the USA, the freest country on earth, has caged climate refugees in concentration camps, do you expect Russia to be more generious?
chongli 7y ago
A lot of these trends are nonlinear. Warming reaches critical thresholds and causes ice caps to disappear, decreasing the Earth’s albedo. Permafrost melts and releases huge stores of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. If it takes a hundred years, it’ll be more like 99 years of buildup before the dam bursts.
mellavora 7y ago
where do you get the idea that populations will slowly move uphill? The effects are non-linear. What you see is that Bangladesh goes from being a habitable city one year to one which is underwater 1/4 of the time, look at the massive floods there this year. Next year might be dry, but the year after that? It is already not sustainably habitable, but the people still live there. China (noting that most of their industrial cities are coastal) might have a bit more time, but it is going to mean rebuilding all of the infrastructure they have built--where do the resources come from for that? And another question, before the people move, are they going to clean up all of their toxic waste? If not, it all goes into the water with the flooding, which then kills their uphill livelihood because they live next to a huge pool of poison. Fuck, after the hurricane hit Texas, they decided to scrap environmentally sound cleanup because it was "too expensive given the scale of the loss." If the US can't clean up, why would developing countries?
- kfrzcode 7y ago
  > Fuck, after the hurricane hit Texas, they decided to scrap environmentally sound cleanup because it was "too expensive given the scale of the loss." If the US can't clean up, why would developing countries? Source? I'm not sure I've heard about this...
- leereeves 7y ago
  > What you see is that Bangladesh goes from being a habitable city one year to one which is underwater 1/4 of the time, look at the massive floods there this year. Next year might be dry, but the year after that? It is already not sustainably habitable, but the people still live there. Really bad example. Floods have always been a problem in Bangladesh. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_Bangladesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_Bangladesh
- tux1968 7y ago
  > Bangladesh goes from being a habitable city Which city in Bangladesh are you talking about?
- rayiner 7y ago
  Bangladesh’s GDP loss from climate change under a 3C scenario is under 10%: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018EF000922 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/201...
keanzu 7y ago
Populations might move uphill if they are unfamiliar with "dike" technology. About one third of the Netherlands lies below sea level, with the lowest point being 22 feet (6.7 meters) below sea level. Perhaps other nations might be capable of building small walls to keep the sea back as well.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

What many seem to forget is 2C or 4C of warming is not an end equilibrium state, it's merely an arbitrary date of measurement (end of 21st century) for the track we may irreparably lock in for centuries and millennia. One a tipping point tips it's damn near impossible to tip it back. That seems more than a little cavalier given the limited range of regions we find our planet's landmass in. The future looks more and more terrifying, and despite public opinion supporting action in much the world, still the political class have little to no answer anywhere...

cmurf 7y ago
Not the political class, the monied classes. No one wants to accept haircuts to their lifestyle.
- JoeSamoa 7y ago
  None of them have been alive to see a revolution.
claudeganon 7y ago
They have the answers, they’ve just decided that they’d rather the world devolve into chaos and destruction than challenge the ruling class. I know the whole Jeffrey Epstein scandal is more or less verboten on HN, but if there is one thing it has exposed, it is this truth. Those who act in service to elites will deploy the most obvious lies, evince they most pathetic cowardice, and the embrace the basest nihilism instead of confronting the reality of our circumstances and those who are its authors.
JoeSamoa 7y ago
Oh they have answers. You can see it everywhere. Haven't you noticed how authoritarian things are getting lately?
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Compared to my father's generation who went through Great Depression and fought WW2, compared to the pre-Prague Spring world I was born into, with Cold War, Soviet Bloc, apartheid, US segregation and student rights riots in Paris and London, and the assorted dictatorships. Err, no I can't say we currently have an excess of authoritarianism lately. We have a slight lean back after seventy years of steady post-WW2 liberalisation, decline of deference and increasing freedoms. Economically we could have had a more interesting conversation... :)

throwaaway8328 7y ago

This is why I choose not to have children, because I have a hard time seeing that people (the majority) will start paying mind to it. I think most people choose (probably on a sub-conscious level) to not be bothered by it, because doing something about it would mean giving up on many things we (citizens of rich countries) take for granted.

vinclou 7y ago
Couldn't you just say - I dont want to have children, since I'm enjoying my life without any children.

enitihas 7y ago

Which parts of the words will be worst and least affected?

JoeSamoa 7y ago
Any place least affected will be most sought after by the masses of migrants. There is no safe place.
- growlist 7y ago
  Difficult to see many hungry migrants making it to Tristan da Cunha, for example.
  - JoeSamoa 7y ago
    Neat island, but I can assure you South Americans and Africans would have no issues invading it by boat. It would be a decent stronghold though for awhile I bet, but in the end desperation would lead to its discovery and pillaging. Have you ever played the game rust? It's a survival game where the world you spawn in is pretty large. It always amazes me how similar people think in survival games. No good spot ever goes undiscovered. If the islands were not mapped that would be your best bet.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      Probably rather easy to enforce a sea border with drones and SDBs - barring submarines. (Like the ones the cartels are using for drug smuggling) Inhumane, but...
    - growlist 7y ago
      > Neat island, but I can assure you South Americans and Africans would have no issues invading it by boat. > It would be a decent stronghold though for awhile I bet, but in the end desperation would lead to its discovery and pillaging. So in a climate apocalypse scenario where people are starving and desperate and resources sparse, said people are going to be able to gather enough provisions and fuel to organise a weeks long trip across thousands of miles of open ocean in order to invade a settlement that is living at subsistence level. Right...

markosaric 7y ago

It certainly doesn't look good for us. Curiously enough it's not something that's easy to notice looking out of the window at the way we live now.

rayiner 7y ago

The scientific consensus view of the 4C scenario is not a “collapse in the ability to feed the populace.” In fact world population doubles by 2100 in the RCP 8.5 scenario, while world GDP more than triple: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo469/node/145 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/meteo469/node/145

WhompingWindows 7y ago

We need to SERIOUSLY start considering geo-engineering and artificial methods of cooling the planet. Most people laughed when Andrew Yang brought up space mirrors, but seriously, this is a WAY better option than mowing down streams of migrants. We need to cool this planet with technological solutions, as well as with MASSIVE carbon sequestration by farmers. It's clear our energy transition is going FAR too slowly, so we have to work on the other side of the coin if we have any chance of keep civilization alive.

ianleeclark 7y ago
> We need to SERIOUSLY start considering geo-engineering and artificial methods of cooling the planet. We can't even collectively decide to stop taking the stuff out of the ground that ought to stay there. How are these fanciful ideas more politically viable?
- kazagistar 7y ago
  They are more viable politically be cause they are further away, so you can pretend to support them while doing nothing, and use them as a magical excuse for burning yet more fossil fuels. I'm still convinced that Musk's Boring Company is just a similar ploy to prevent investment in much needed mass transit to keep car sales up.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
We have been engaged in a massive geoengineering experiment over the last century which involves putting out massive amounts of CO2. Even after decades of research the impacts of it are disputed and there is no will to make serious adjustments. I doubt we could set up a cooling effort in a way on the necessary scale where we understand the consequences and are willing to pay for it.

cryptica 7y ago

The problem with environmental scientists is that they fail to recognize just how much people and organisms will adapt to situations. Sure, maybe some organisms will die out, but new exciting ones will appear to replace them. Humans will be able to start farming in Antarctica. Some people's houses might go underwater but on some inland properties might suddenly become prime beach-front real estate. Human population might drop, but then house prices will drop too! It's not all bad.

kazagistar 7y ago
That's not how any of this works. House prices will drop where people cannot live anymore. And scientists have accounted for newly opened land... there is less of it then what is becoming uninhabitable. Continuing climate change isn't some whimsical economic reorering, it's the largest genocide in history.

belorn 7y ago

I doubt food productions will be a issue. The problems I foresee is transporting food to people and the willingness of the rich to give to the poor. Aquaculture and particularly aquatic plants and algae are such as small part of the global diet that statistically it might not even exist, and yet civilization could almost exclusive survive on it if needed. We have the know how to make such food edible. Oceans like the Baltic sea is basically in a death spiral because too much eutrophication. The nutrients is there, the farming technique is available, but the culture and economics are not. Similar to how people don't want bread made with grinned down insects, which is also a food production efficiency concept, algae is something that we could produce but won't because people will not buy the products. Even when giving away food we tend to use food that we culturally would also eat. Right now in local context, this kind of culture crash can result in edible food having a value that is below transport costs. In lakes that suffer from overpopulation you sometimes do a push where you extract hundred of tons of fish in order to restore health to the ecosystem. As I hear, that fish usually get turned into methane and burned as bio fuel. Food production all over the world is mostly the result of culture and tradition. With global trading we can add a bit more nuances, but even here we can find plenty of example where something which people eat in one place get thrown on the garbage heap in places which don't share the same food culture.