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Climate change driving entire planet to dangerous 'global tipping point‘

cletus 7y ago
So let me get this off my chest before I start: I fully believe mankind has influenced the climate. That being said I find doom and gloom predictions of runaway greenhouse effects... problematic. After all, if this is possible and the earth has been much warmer, why hasn’t this happened already? I just don’t believe we’re that close to a tipping point. Climate is complicated and the earth can’t have been livable for billions of years without some balancing factors, right?
- jdnenej 7y ago
  The timescales are completely different. Past climate changes have been on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years. Now we are seeing it on the scale of a hundred years. Life on Earth will most likely exist after climate change but it won't be any of the life as we know it.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Most of life will adapt. Thousands of species will go extinct, probably not including us, but including the other apes. Likely, billions will die, only a few million by nuclear incineration. Most will starve. The stragglers, probably mostly primitives plus a bunch of rich bastards, will repopulate the Earth and pick up in what is left.
  - Yetanfou 7y ago
    Nonsense, simply put. Past climate change has been driven by all sorts of factors, from bolide impacts through volcanic eruptions to large-scale forest fires. In several cases these changes came abruptly, far more so than the change caused by human activity. Also, the previous interglacial period was warmer than the current. During the Viking age wine was being grown in Scandinavia. The Roman empire arose and thrived during a warmer period, its fall coincided with a marked cooling which only lifted at the end of the 'little ice age' - when the Thames was frozen and all those famous Dutch masters painted scenes of Dutchmen and -women skating over canals and lakes. May I suggest looking back into the rich history of doomsaying? All the way back to Malthus who, even though he was wrong in his prediction of the planet being incapable of feeding more than a billion human beings, actually did touch upon the problem of overpopulation which is a larger threat than any of the ones subsequently dragged up by the latest crop of doomsayers. To name a few causes more worthy of attention than the current CO₂ hysteria: - Population growth. Malthus thought the planet could not feed more than 1 billion people. He was wrong, he failed to foresee the industrial revolution which makes it possible to feed 7 billion and has the potential to feed the 10 billion which is expected to be the number of humans reached before population starts to decline. - That industrial revolution has given its blessings but it also came with the curse of large-scale environmental pollution. While these problems are being tackled in some parts of the world the same can unfortunately not be said about others. - Population growth also leads to increased migration which has the potential to lead to increased conflicts which has the potential to lead to the undoing of many of the efforts currently put in the negation of the negative aspects of the industrial revolution. People at war have different priorities from those at peace. Just like with the doomsayers it makes sense to use history as a guide here. Genghis Khan (who, when seen in the percentage of the world population killed (estimates range from 5% to ~10%) still reigns supreme as the biggest killer of them all [1]) started a wave of migration which was felt all the way to the west and north of Europe with one displaced population on the move jostling for space with the next. So, what can be done about these? The population growth will, bar the intervention of any catastrophic events, probably follow the predicted curve with the total world population reaching about 10 billion people somewhere in the 2100s. It took the west more than a century to realise than unbridled industrial growth and the accompanying pollution was a recipe for disaster, hopefully the now industrialising parts of the world will have learned this lesson well so they don't continue to make the same mistakes. Migration will lead to conflicts, this is probably unavoidable. It can only be hoped that these conflicts don't escalate too far. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Every doomsayer who was right was either: 1. Listened to, or 2: part of a civilisation which no longer exists.
      - papermachete 7y ago
        Kaczynski is still alive.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      There is no reason to suppose that the mass migrations will not lead to global thermonuclear war. We are already witnessing a rise of fascism in response to the barest beginning of that migration. Fascism always ends in genocide and war.
      - Yetanfou 7y ago
        Fascism has a specific meaning and should not be abused to indicate a state form which you find disagreeable. There have not been that many true fascist states, Italy under Mussolini and Spain under Franco are examples of such, Germany under the National Socialist party was variation on a fascist state. The Soviet Union under communist rule was not a fascist state although the ideologies have many similarities, the same goes for China under communist rule and the Russian Federation under Putin's oligarchy. Those who use the term fascist to indicate states like the United Kingdom under Boris Johnson or the United States of America under Donald Trump have no idea what fascism actually means. For one, it does not mean 'resistance against immigration from non-western states'. Here's a good start on what Fascism is, the definition of the doctrine as declared by its originator, Benito Mussolini. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html More can be found in Britannica's article on the subject: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism In short - and mostly from Britannica's definition, supported by Mussolini's words Fascism is characterised by an extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a 'Volksgemeinschaft' (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. Even shorter would be 'a militaristic nationalist dictatorial ideology which subjugates the individual for the (perceived) good of the nation'. It is such a close cousin to Communism and Islamism (and other similarly structured doctrines) that this short characterisation also applies to those ideologies.
- tass 7y ago
  In terms of scale of the planet’s life, the amount of time we are here is extremely short. The earth has been struck by at least one large rock resulting in mass extinctions. The planet recovered just fine along with the atmosphere, but there was significant change to the life left over. I also believe Earth will be fine this time, and there is some balancing factor that will eventually correct the changes to the atmosphere, but we and the majority of life on the planet will have difficulty surviving in the interim period.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Humanity will not, like so many species, go extinct, but the radical population decline will not be comfortable, particularly for those who starve.
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  It's not the temperature that kills. It's the rate of change. When organisms can't evolve fast enough with a changing environment, extinctions occur. We are causing a rate of change that is very significant. Not unprecedented (e.g. asteroid impact) but daunting nonetheless.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    We have every reason to believe that the human species will survive. Civilization, much less so.
- remarkEon 7y ago
  If I squint hard enough I can find a way to agree with you. I personally believe that we’re on the edge of a change in climate that will cause huge and potentially devastating problems. But I also think that most of the people that would agree with that statement don’t actually act like they agree with it. If you honestly think we have “12 years left” (as a certain congresswoman has said) you would be doing things like stocking arms, getting ready to grow your own vegetables and husband livestock, figuring out how barter economies would work in this apocalypse that is, allegedly, around the corner. Of course none of them are doing this.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    The “12 years” thing: AFAIK, that’s “12 years to get moving, given how much political inertia we know we’ve got”, not “12 years to actually fix everything”.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    "Twelve years" is like every idiot cliffhanger movie, where the bomb is defused with two seconds to spare, and everything is suddenly fine again. Things will get continuously worse, and continue worsening long after the twelve years, even if we manage to do enough by then for civilization not to collapse. There is little point in setting up to grow vegetables when civilization collapses and roving bands of armed thugs raid anyone who seems to have anything they want. We will either avert disaster together, as a global society, or not at all. Growing vegetables is not a response. Do it anyway, if you like, just don't fool yourself that it improves your or anybody's chances.
- shakna 7y ago
  > After all, if this is possible and the earth has been much warmer, why hasn’t this happened already? We have two large-scale extinction events on record that may have been caused by or exacerbated by global warming: Tirassic-Jurassic Extinction event, and the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (more a series of small-scale extinction events than a single large one). In world-scale timelines, humans haven't been around that long. > I just don’t believe we’re that close to a tipping point. Climate is complicated and the earth can’t have been livable for billions of years without some balancing factors, right? It wasn't. We've had many extinction level events. Humanity should be concerned about not becoming one.
- mj370 7y ago
  I agree. After adding all the uncertainties of the proxy data and our models (which we use to calculate temperature throughout Earth's history) it's not that sure change like this has never happened before, or that it is happening faster than ever before. There's no doubt we have impact, but it's not certain that it's the major driving force (though it may be, of course). Earth has several effects which periodically changes the climate. Those effects can coincide. At least that's what paleobiologist on a lecture I visited said. His appeal was: hold on to strict facts and take uncertainties into account. Don't hop on the doomsday wagon. We simply don't know enough about complexities of the climate.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Uncertainty does not favor continued status quo. In fact even the climate models of decades ago have turned out to be dead on. There is no reason to believe the planet favors conditions we are used to, but our civilization depends on those conditions. Drive the planet to another norm, and civilization collapses, and billions starve. A minority survive and rebuild, and (who knows?) maybe learn something. In a thousand years, it will be as if nothing happened, except with a hell of a lot of species missing.
  - pale-hands 7y ago
    Even if it were true that the climate has changed as much and as rapidly in the past, what difference does that make to our current situation? All but a few years in the next 3 centuries will be hotter than all but a few years in the past 3 centuries, and look at the impacts we're experiencing already. > There's no doubt we have impact, but it's not certain that it's the major driving force Just false. There is no reasonable doubt that human activity is responsible for about 100% (could be less, could be more) of the current warming.
  - perchecrik 7y ago
    >After adding all the uncertainties of the proxy data and our models (which we use to calculate temperature throughout Earth's history) it's not that sure change like this has never happened before, or that it is happening faster than ever before. This is misleading. The rate of human injection of CO2 into the atmosphere has no analogue in the past, at least we've not found a similar excursion as yet. What effect this will have on the global climate system is inherently unpredictable, again, because we lack analogues from the past. What we do know is that global climate state changes have occurred rapidly; indeed, the whole Pleistocene is distinct in that the global climate system seems to have been in a boundary state in which it flips, sometimes within 50 years, from cold to warm, or the reverse. So that can serve as an analogue for how the global climate system can respond when perturbed. I say "have been" in the paragraph above because, in terms of atmospheric CO2 concentration, we've already exceeded any level observed during the Pleistocene. (And, not to belabor what I hope would be obvious by now, we have many lines of evidence that indicate with a high degree of certainty that it was human emission of CO2 in the last 150-200 years that has caused the spike in atmospheric concentrations.) Hence, researchers are looking to periods such as the Miocene and the Pliocene for a world that had continents in roughly the same configuration, but was much warmer, and, moreover, was warmer in a global pattern that fundamentally differs from that of the Pleistocene. We also have paleo-analogues for the effects of large increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration, and those are: acidification of oceans, ocean basin wide anoxia, local (confined, for example, to a particular ocean basin, or to a given depth range in oceans) and global extinctions, and interruption of the global oceanic thermo-haline circulation system. Another commenter stated that humans are as adaptable as roaches, and I'm afraid that this, too, may be a bit optimistic. In general, species resident at the highest trophic levels, with larger body sizes and habitat areal requirements, tend to be more vulnerable to change, and therefore to extinction, and thus tend to be much more ephemeral than smaller species in the fossil record.
- FranzFerdiNaN 7y ago
  The issue is that the earth is being brought out of balance within a few decades. This has rarely happened, and when it did happen (meteorites, volcanos etc) the consequences were bad. And yet we are arrogant enough to think we can pump billions of tons in the atmosphere without consequences. Our ancestors did enough to balance out a natural decrease in temperature that should have happened. And that was without a global industrial system. So of course what we do will massively influence the system. Going “I don’t believe things will be bad” is basically the same as “I don’t believe in climate change”. Both are an excuse not to do anything.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > I just don’t believe we’re that close to a tipping point. Your beliefs matter not one tiny little bit. We either are, or we are not. If a large enough body of scientists in a field that is not my expertise appear to agree on something then I am going to believe them regardless of what I as a layperson in their field could come up with to say the opposite. Yes, it is complicated. The earth hasn't been livable for 'billions of years', and enough little people like us doing things that have never been done before and such balancing factors as there are can be upset. The Earth has many modes of existence, the current one is not a guaranteed one at all.
- cletus 7y ago
  Several replies brought up that the climate change caused by mankind is too quick that it is causing or will cause mass extinction. Now I don't necessarily dispute that we may already be in a mass extinction event. I do however think that practically speaking there's very little we can do about it at this point. But as for the abruptness of these changes consider [1]: > Each successively deeper ice layer represents a snapshot of Earth's climate history from the past, and together, the oxygen isotope record told a story of abrupt, millennial-scale climate shifts in air temperatures over Greenland between extremely cold stadial conditions and relatively mild interstadial periods during the last ice age (Figure 1) (Alley 2000, Alley et al. 2003). There are twenty-five of these distinct warming-cooling oscillations (Dansgaard 1984) which are now commonly referred to as Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, or D-O cycles. One of the most surprising findings was that the shifts from cold stadials to the warm interstadial intervals occurred in a matter of decades, with air temperatures over Greenland rapidly warming 8 to 15°C 8-15C in "a matter of decades". So my point stands: we've had many abrupt climate changes, at least 15 in the last 100,000 years. So I remain skeptical that we're reaching some tipping point and we'll have anything approaching Venus-like runaway greenhouse effects. As well as these predictions not really gelling with historical events, I find the level of alarmism to be generally unhelpful. I realize there's probably good intent here and I'm sure many genuinely believe these slarmist predictions but I also think some of it is motivated the desire to get people to act. I think this has the opposite effect. I mean, if you're screwed anyway, why not enjoy yourself? [1]: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-climate-change-during-the-last-ice-24288097/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-cli...
  - atq2119 7y ago
    The real question for our human self-interest isn't about Venus-style runaway warning, it's whether civilization can survive any of these dramatic shifts.
- macrolime 7y ago
  I think the thinking is that it has happened a couple times before, perhaps causing mass extinctions. The earth is cycling between hotter and colder temperatures. There used to be no ice on the poles. Large changes to the environment kills lots of species and brings about many new ones.
dmix 7y ago
I sometimes struggle to reconcile the consequences of our actions on the planet with the fact were we all basically randomly put on this planet and never really "choose" to be here. And pretty much every other species and even many non-living things depend on massive amounts of resource consumption (usually in the form of mass murder of weaker species or co-opting the surrounding environment for mass automated nutrient extraction processes). Even the most harmless things engage in at least some manipulation of the world around them. Take coral reefs for example, they are a massive self-interested survival mechanism that over a very long period co-opted some part of of the ocean floor near costs, largely existing as feeding grounds of countless exotic species who uniquely benefit from the arrangement. An arrangement which wouldn't normally be there without massive manipulation of the environment by millions of different fish and plant species. Then we have humans who by some random luck of the draw are capable of mass exploitation of resources, often at the detriment to the environment but largely until recent times in very sustainable way. Humans didn't choose the terms of the survival game which we were given for our own short existence and there's a billions other planets out there which are 'pristine' in an idealistic environmentalist perspective. Our responsibility we give to our own environment, which is a relatively modern phenomenon is interesting to consider in this context. It will always be largely our doing but also our decision to do something about it (or not). I don't mean to suggest any of this justifies the destruction of habitats and hurting our own long-term odds by over-consuming. But I still feel like this trillion-mile-high context is glossed over in many of these environmental diatribes and the endless drumbeat to protect it which we've all grown up with in modern times.
- shakna 7y ago
  > But I still feel like this trillion-mile-high context is glossed over in many of these environmental diatribes and the endless drumbeat to protect it which we've all grown up with in modern times. I'd guess, because in the end, it isn't really relevant. Sustainability isn't really about living in some kind of partnership with nature, it's making sure that our exploitation of resources doesn't reach a point at which our species experiences dramatic loss. We can't reasonably move to another planet. Barring breakthroughs in terraforming or the invention of FTL engines, we're stuck here. Which means we need to continue to live here for the foreseeable future, and we don't want to cross that tipping point and screw over the up-and-coming generations. We've become largely dependent on a series of things that won't be able to continue to exist in their current form. We will continue to exploit and manipulate the natural world. We just need to change that manipulation so it can continue to persist. We're not talking about reducing our consumption of power - we instead talk about more efficient or less damaging ways to consume it.
blargmaster33 7y ago
Only global communism and white genocide can save the planet................. Commie bastards
bamboozled 7y ago
There is so much technology available to combat it, yet those people elected seem hell bent on wrecking it to support a shrinking fossil fuel industry. They’re obviously failing to realise they will be victims too. How pathetic and what an unusual time to be alive. Take a look at the Australian PM. What a stick in the mud, the whole state of NSW is practically on fire, and all he can say is that isn’t not really caused by climate change, there are “other factors involved. What these climate scientists have done to predict this would’ve been witchcraft a hundred years ago, the work they’ve done is amazing. The people who matter still don’t listen.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  > What these climate scientists have done to predict this would’ve been witchcraft a hundred years ago You may be on to something there: if cause and effect are too far related that an ordinary person without any training in the matter will be able to say 'Aha!' then trying to argue that scientists have proven it is a losing battle. The reason for that is that decades of being oversold by advertising and guys in white lab coats have conditioned people to disbelieve scientists over the words of other lay people that they feel they have a closer connection with. See also: vaccination, various 'truthers' and so on. Add in another healthy factor based on the fact that people will have to give up some luxuries and you have the stage set for a perfect disaster.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > yet those people elected seem hell bent on wrecking it to support a shrinking fossil fuel industry. This is a silly recurring narrative that has no basis in reality. Politicians aren't clinging to some particular industry, they're interested in not destroying the whole economy that is necessary for our wealth and prosperity, certainly not for the FUD that is currently being spread in an area where nobody even takes a closer look at outrageous claims anymore for fear of being shouted down and where quoting IPCC reports is considered "being in denial".
  - strombofulous 7y ago
    They're not actually trying to support the fossil fuel industry. They don't really care about it at all. It just happens to be the case that a lot of people who vote for them are involved in the fossil fuel industry and will be directly affected by its downfall.
aritmo 7y ago
There is a choice between scientific fact and "fossil fuels like coal are too important to our short-term economy". Several governments make the political decision in favour for short-term benefits, just like they do for other issues. They do not want to risk having today a recession because the voters vote for a good economy now. Is long-term planning incompatible with democratic elections?
- jdnenej 7y ago
  >Is long-term planning incompatible with democratic elections? Maybe, but the alternative doesn't necessarily seem to work either. China has an awful environmental record as well. It seems that humans are incompatible with long term planning for things that extend beyond our lifetimes.
googlerx 7y ago
Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
nkkollaw 7y ago
China is the biggest pollutant by far: over twice as much CO2 as the USA, and of course they've been poisoning everything with toxic waste for decades. Why can't governments stop all Chinese imports until the get in line, instead of banning plastic straws? That's the real question no one asks.
- ben_w 7y ago
  I’ve witnessed people asking that question even when the opening statement was in the form “in ten years China will be a bigger polluter than the USA.”
- bloak 7y ago
  China emits less than half as much CO2 as the USA per capita, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... It's interesting to see that there are several countries that emit more per capita than the USA, including Canada and Australia. Maybe the USA should stop trading with those countries?
  - papermachete 7y ago
    'per capita' is a manipulative and unproductive metric.
    - redavni 7y ago
      Chinese people exhale less CO2. Free speech causes global warming.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Is it worse than ‘per country’? The problem isn’t going to be changed one way or the other by, e.g., China breaking apart into 34 provinces, nor by the union of literally every nation into a world government. (Well, except for the economic impact of those scenarios). The optimal place to focus effort is wherever a marginal unit of effort has the most impact. I’m not aware of any research that estimates that, and while I won’t be surprised if some cities in China are more important targets of effort than some cities in the USA, I’d also expect a unit of intervention in a randomly selected city in the USA to be more effective than “the same”[0] intervention in a randomly selected city in China. [0] adjusted for exchange rates, etc.
papermachete 7y ago
We've been hearing about tipping points and irreversible consequences for 30 years now. So wake me up when it happens or you bring up scientifically backed solutions. Until then, I'll just watch 2012 every christmas.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  30 years ago the consequences were 30 years further away. We now only have a decade to act.
  - papermachete 7y ago
    Sorry, who's 'we'?
    - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
      Humans who are alive.
      - papermachete 7y ago
        How about humans who are in charge or deal the most damage.
- javajosh 7y ago
  It's true that some scientists have made very dour (and wrong) predictions about, for example, over population. But no-one argues the fact that the average global temp has increased dramatically, compared to the previous thousands of years, in the last 100 years. That's lightening fast on a geologic scale, but still pretty slow on a human scale. My point is: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because some people overstated the case doesn't mean it's all bunk.
  - boyadjian 7y ago
    Over population is now a reality, you should be blind for not seeing it.
boyadjian 7y ago
Climate change is a problem, but only one of many. Climate is just a natural resource, like building land, oil, drinkable water, lithium, and so on. The GDP of countries is now proportional to the availability of these natural resources. So from now on, people will get poorer and poorer, leading to politic instability, civil war, and the like. We have been warned in 1972, with the Club of Rome, and they survey, "The limits to Growth". Now, we have reached those limits.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  We have not, but events are overtaking them. The difference in outcomes are interesting academically, but not practically.
Proven 7y ago
30 years of that nonsense. This time it could be for real!
lcall 7y ago
I don't think we are competent to solve this when we can't trust each other to keep our word, and especially when we have rejected the specific advice of the planet's Creator. I realize many will think that is silly, but I have put reasons I think this, and why I know some of these things, in some depth, at my simple site: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html -- for what it's worth.
vstuart 7y ago
Why is this post "flagged" (originally flagged | deleted)? The NatGeo article refers to a Nature article on climate change and tipping points: [2019-11-27] Climate tipping points -- too risky to bet against. The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0 "Politicians, economists and even some natural scientists have tended to assume that tipping points in the Earth system [Lenton TM et al. (2008) "Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system." Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA. 105: 1786-1793. https://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786 https://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786] -- such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the West Antarctic ice sheet -- are of low probability and little understood. Yet evidence is mounting that these events could be more likely than was thought, have high impacts and are interconnected across different biophysical systems, potentially committing the world to long-term irreversible changes. "Here we summarize evidence on the threat of exceeding tipping points, identify knowledge gaps and suggest how these should be plugged. We explore the effects of such large-scale changes, how quickly they might unfold and whether we still have any control over them. "In our view, the consideration of tipping points helps to define that we are in a climate emergency and strengthens this year's chorus of calls for urgent climate action -- from schoolchildren to scientists, cities and countries. ..."

So let me get this off my chest before I start: I fully believe mankind has influenced the climate. That being said I find doom and gloom predictions of runaway greenhouse effects... problematic. After all, if this is possible and the earth has been much warmer, why hasn’t this happened already? I just don’t believe we’re that close to a tipping point. Climate is complicated and the earth can’t have been livable for billions of years without some balancing factors, right?

jdnenej 7y ago
The timescales are completely different. Past climate changes have been on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years. Now we are seeing it on the scale of a hundred years. Life on Earth will most likely exist after climate change but it won't be any of the life as we know it.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Most of life will adapt. Thousands of species will go extinct, probably not including us, but including the other apes. Likely, billions will die, only a few million by nuclear incineration. Most will starve. The stragglers, probably mostly primitives plus a bunch of rich bastards, will repopulate the Earth and pick up in what is left.
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  Nonsense, simply put. Past climate change has been driven by all sorts of factors, from bolide impacts through volcanic eruptions to large-scale forest fires. In several cases these changes came abruptly, far more so than the change caused by human activity. Also, the previous interglacial period was warmer than the current. During the Viking age wine was being grown in Scandinavia. The Roman empire arose and thrived during a warmer period, its fall coincided with a marked cooling which only lifted at the end of the 'little ice age' - when the Thames was frozen and all those famous Dutch masters painted scenes of Dutchmen and -women skating over canals and lakes. May I suggest looking back into the rich history of doomsaying? All the way back to Malthus who, even though he was wrong in his prediction of the planet being incapable of feeding more than a billion human beings, actually did touch upon the problem of overpopulation which is a larger threat than any of the ones subsequently dragged up by the latest crop of doomsayers. To name a few causes more worthy of attention than the current CO₂ hysteria: - Population growth. Malthus thought the planet could not feed more than 1 billion people. He was wrong, he failed to foresee the industrial revolution which makes it possible to feed 7 billion and has the potential to feed the 10 billion which is expected to be the number of humans reached before population starts to decline. - That industrial revolution has given its blessings but it also came with the curse of large-scale environmental pollution. While these problems are being tackled in some parts of the world the same can unfortunately not be said about others. - Population growth also leads to increased migration which has the potential to lead to increased conflicts which has the potential to lead to the undoing of many of the efforts currently put in the negation of the negative aspects of the industrial revolution. People at war have different priorities from those at peace. Just like with the doomsayers it makes sense to use history as a guide here. Genghis Khan (who, when seen in the percentage of the world population killed (estimates range from 5% to ~10%) still reigns supreme as the biggest killer of them all [1]) started a wave of migration which was felt all the way to the west and north of Europe with one displaced population on the move jostling for space with the next. So, what can be done about these? The population growth will, bar the intervention of any catastrophic events, probably follow the predicted curve with the total world population reaching about 10 billion people somewhere in the 2100s. It took the west more than a century to realise than unbridled industrial growth and the accompanying pollution was a recipe for disaster, hopefully the now industrialising parts of the world will have learned this lesson well so they don't continue to make the same mistakes. Migration will lead to conflicts, this is probably unavoidable. It can only be hoped that these conflicts don't escalate too far. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Every doomsayer who was right was either: 1. Listened to, or 2: part of a civilisation which no longer exists.
    - papermachete 7y ago
      Kaczynski is still alive.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    There is no reason to suppose that the mass migrations will not lead to global thermonuclear war. We are already witnessing a rise of fascism in response to the barest beginning of that migration. Fascism always ends in genocide and war.
    - Yetanfou 7y ago
      Fascism has a specific meaning and should not be abused to indicate a state form which you find disagreeable. There have not been that many true fascist states, Italy under Mussolini and Spain under Franco are examples of such, Germany under the National Socialist party was variation on a fascist state. The Soviet Union under communist rule was not a fascist state although the ideologies have many similarities, the same goes for China under communist rule and the Russian Federation under Putin's oligarchy. Those who use the term fascist to indicate states like the United Kingdom under Boris Johnson or the United States of America under Donald Trump have no idea what fascism actually means. For one, it does not mean 'resistance against immigration from non-western states'. Here's a good start on what Fascism is, the definition of the doctrine as declared by its originator, Benito Mussolini. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html More can be found in Britannica's article on the subject: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism In short - and mostly from Britannica's definition, supported by Mussolini's words Fascism is characterised by an extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a 'Volksgemeinschaft' (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. Even shorter would be 'a militaristic nationalist dictatorial ideology which subjugates the individual for the (perceived) good of the nation'. It is such a close cousin to Communism and Islamism (and other similarly structured doctrines) that this short characterisation also applies to those ideologies.
tass 7y ago
In terms of scale of the planet’s life, the amount of time we are here is extremely short. The earth has been struck by at least one large rock resulting in mass extinctions. The planet recovered just fine along with the atmosphere, but there was significant change to the life left over. I also believe Earth will be fine this time, and there is some balancing factor that will eventually correct the changes to the atmosphere, but we and the majority of life on the planet will have difficulty surviving in the interim period.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Humanity will not, like so many species, go extinct, but the radical population decline will not be comfortable, particularly for those who starve.
acidburnNSA 7y ago
It's not the temperature that kills. It's the rate of change. When organisms can't evolve fast enough with a changing environment, extinctions occur. We are causing a rate of change that is very significant. Not unprecedented (e.g. asteroid impact) but daunting nonetheless.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  We have every reason to believe that the human species will survive. Civilization, much less so.
remarkEon 7y ago
If I squint hard enough I can find a way to agree with you. I personally believe that we’re on the edge of a change in climate that will cause huge and potentially devastating problems. But I also think that most of the people that would agree with that statement don’t actually act like they agree with it. If you honestly think we have “12 years left” (as a certain congresswoman has said) you would be doing things like stocking arms, getting ready to grow your own vegetables and husband livestock, figuring out how barter economies would work in this apocalypse that is, allegedly, around the corner. Of course none of them are doing this.
- ben_w 7y ago
  The “12 years” thing: AFAIK, that’s “12 years to get moving, given how much political inertia we know we’ve got”, not “12 years to actually fix everything”.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  "Twelve years" is like every idiot cliffhanger movie, where the bomb is defused with two seconds to spare, and everything is suddenly fine again. Things will get continuously worse, and continue worsening long after the twelve years, even if we manage to do enough by then for civilization not to collapse. There is little point in setting up to grow vegetables when civilization collapses and roving bands of armed thugs raid anyone who seems to have anything they want. We will either avert disaster together, as a global society, or not at all. Growing vegetables is not a response. Do it anyway, if you like, just don't fool yourself that it improves your or anybody's chances.
shakna 7y ago
> After all, if this is possible and the earth has been much warmer, why hasn’t this happened already? We have two large-scale extinction events on record that may have been caused by or exacerbated by global warming: Tirassic-Jurassic Extinction event, and the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (more a series of small-scale extinction events than a single large one). In world-scale timelines, humans haven't been around that long. > I just don’t believe we’re that close to a tipping point. Climate is complicated and the earth can’t have been livable for billions of years without some balancing factors, right? It wasn't. We've had many extinction level events. Humanity should be concerned about not becoming one.
mj370 7y ago
I agree. After adding all the uncertainties of the proxy data and our models (which we use to calculate temperature throughout Earth's history) it's not that sure change like this has never happened before, or that it is happening faster than ever before. There's no doubt we have impact, but it's not certain that it's the major driving force (though it may be, of course). Earth has several effects which periodically changes the climate. Those effects can coincide. At least that's what paleobiologist on a lecture I visited said. His appeal was: hold on to strict facts and take uncertainties into account. Don't hop on the doomsday wagon. We simply don't know enough about complexities of the climate.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Uncertainty does not favor continued status quo. In fact even the climate models of decades ago have turned out to be dead on. There is no reason to believe the planet favors conditions we are used to, but our civilization depends on those conditions. Drive the planet to another norm, and civilization collapses, and billions starve. A minority survive and rebuild, and (who knows?) maybe learn something. In a thousand years, it will be as if nothing happened, except with a hell of a lot of species missing.
- pale-hands 7y ago
  Even if it were true that the climate has changed as much and as rapidly in the past, what difference does that make to our current situation? All but a few years in the next 3 centuries will be hotter than all but a few years in the past 3 centuries, and look at the impacts we're experiencing already. > There's no doubt we have impact, but it's not certain that it's the major driving force Just false. There is no reasonable doubt that human activity is responsible for about 100% (could be less, could be more) of the current warming.
- perchecrik 7y ago
  >After adding all the uncertainties of the proxy data and our models (which we use to calculate temperature throughout Earth's history) it's not that sure change like this has never happened before, or that it is happening faster than ever before. This is misleading. The rate of human injection of CO2 into the atmosphere has no analogue in the past, at least we've not found a similar excursion as yet. What effect this will have on the global climate system is inherently unpredictable, again, because we lack analogues from the past. What we do know is that global climate state changes have occurred rapidly; indeed, the whole Pleistocene is distinct in that the global climate system seems to have been in a boundary state in which it flips, sometimes within 50 years, from cold to warm, or the reverse. So that can serve as an analogue for how the global climate system can respond when perturbed. I say "have been" in the paragraph above because, in terms of atmospheric CO2 concentration, we've already exceeded any level observed during the Pleistocene. (And, not to belabor what I hope would be obvious by now, we have many lines of evidence that indicate with a high degree of certainty that it was human emission of CO2 in the last 150-200 years that has caused the spike in atmospheric concentrations.) Hence, researchers are looking to periods such as the Miocene and the Pliocene for a world that had continents in roughly the same configuration, but was much warmer, and, moreover, was warmer in a global pattern that fundamentally differs from that of the Pleistocene. We also have paleo-analogues for the effects of large increases in atmospheric CO2 concentration, and those are: acidification of oceans, ocean basin wide anoxia, local (confined, for example, to a particular ocean basin, or to a given depth range in oceans) and global extinctions, and interruption of the global oceanic thermo-haline circulation system. Another commenter stated that humans are as adaptable as roaches, and I'm afraid that this, too, may be a bit optimistic. In general, species resident at the highest trophic levels, with larger body sizes and habitat areal requirements, tend to be more vulnerable to change, and therefore to extinction, and thus tend to be much more ephemeral than smaller species in the fossil record.
FranzFerdiNaN 7y ago
The issue is that the earth is being brought out of balance within a few decades. This has rarely happened, and when it did happen (meteorites, volcanos etc) the consequences were bad. And yet we are arrogant enough to think we can pump billions of tons in the atmosphere without consequences. Our ancestors did enough to balance out a natural decrease in temperature that should have happened. And that was without a global industrial system. So of course what we do will massively influence the system. Going “I don’t believe things will be bad” is basically the same as “I don’t believe in climate change”. Both are an excuse not to do anything.
jacquesm 7y ago
> I just don’t believe we’re that close to a tipping point. Your beliefs matter not one tiny little bit. We either are, or we are not. If a large enough body of scientists in a field that is not my expertise appear to agree on something then I am going to believe them regardless of what I as a layperson in their field could come up with to say the opposite. Yes, it is complicated. The earth hasn't been livable for 'billions of years', and enough little people like us doing things that have never been done before and such balancing factors as there are can be upset. The Earth has many modes of existence, the current one is not a guaranteed one at all.
cletus 7y ago
Several replies brought up that the climate change caused by mankind is too quick that it is causing or will cause mass extinction. Now I don't necessarily dispute that we may already be in a mass extinction event. I do however think that practically speaking there's very little we can do about it at this point. But as for the abruptness of these changes consider [1]: > Each successively deeper ice layer represents a snapshot of Earth's climate history from the past, and together, the oxygen isotope record told a story of abrupt, millennial-scale climate shifts in air temperatures over Greenland between extremely cold stadial conditions and relatively mild interstadial periods during the last ice age (Figure 1) (Alley 2000, Alley et al. 2003). There are twenty-five of these distinct warming-cooling oscillations (Dansgaard 1984) which are now commonly referred to as Dansgaard-Oeschger cycles, or D-O cycles. One of the most surprising findings was that the shifts from cold stadials to the warm interstadial intervals occurred in a matter of decades, with air temperatures over Greenland rapidly warming 8 to 15°C 8-15C in "a matter of decades". So my point stands: we've had many abrupt climate changes, at least 15 in the last 100,000 years. So I remain skeptical that we're reaching some tipping point and we'll have anything approaching Venus-like runaway greenhouse effects. As well as these predictions not really gelling with historical events, I find the level of alarmism to be generally unhelpful. I realize there's probably good intent here and I'm sure many genuinely believe these slarmist predictions but I also think some of it is motivated the desire to get people to act. I think this has the opposite effect. I mean, if you're screwed anyway, why not enjoy yourself? [1]: https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-climate-change-during-the-last-ice-24288097/ https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/abrupt-cli...
- atq2119 7y ago
  The real question for our human self-interest isn't about Venus-style runaway warning, it's whether civilization can survive any of these dramatic shifts.
macrolime 7y ago
I think the thinking is that it has happened a couple times before, perhaps causing mass extinctions. The earth is cycling between hotter and colder temperatures. There used to be no ice on the poles. Large changes to the environment kills lots of species and brings about many new ones.

dmix 7y ago

I sometimes struggle to reconcile the consequences of our actions on the planet with the fact were we all basically randomly put on this planet and never really "choose" to be here. And pretty much every other species and even many non-living things depend on massive amounts of resource consumption (usually in the form of mass murder of weaker species or co-opting the surrounding environment for mass automated nutrient extraction processes). Even the most harmless things engage in at least some manipulation of the world around them. Take coral reefs for example, they are a massive self-interested survival mechanism that over a very long period co-opted some part of of the ocean floor near costs, largely existing as feeding grounds of countless exotic species who uniquely benefit from the arrangement. An arrangement which wouldn't normally be there without massive manipulation of the environment by millions of different fish and plant species. Then we have humans who by some random luck of the draw are capable of mass exploitation of resources, often at the detriment to the environment but largely until recent times in very sustainable way. Humans didn't choose the terms of the survival game which we were given for our own short existence and there's a billions other planets out there which are 'pristine' in an idealistic environmentalist perspective. Our responsibility we give to our own environment, which is a relatively modern phenomenon is interesting to consider in this context. It will always be largely our doing but also our decision to do something about it (or not). I don't mean to suggest any of this justifies the destruction of habitats and hurting our own long-term odds by over-consuming. But I still feel like this trillion-mile-high context is glossed over in many of these environmental diatribes and the endless drumbeat to protect it which we've all grown up with in modern times.

shakna 7y ago
> But I still feel like this trillion-mile-high context is glossed over in many of these environmental diatribes and the endless drumbeat to protect it which we've all grown up with in modern times. I'd guess, because in the end, it isn't really relevant. Sustainability isn't really about living in some kind of partnership with nature, it's making sure that our exploitation of resources doesn't reach a point at which our species experiences dramatic loss. We can't reasonably move to another planet. Barring breakthroughs in terraforming or the invention of FTL engines, we're stuck here. Which means we need to continue to live here for the foreseeable future, and we don't want to cross that tipping point and screw over the up-and-coming generations. We've become largely dependent on a series of things that won't be able to continue to exist in their current form. We will continue to exploit and manipulate the natural world. We just need to change that manipulation so it can continue to persist. We're not talking about reducing our consumption of power - we instead talk about more efficient or less damaging ways to consume it.

blargmaster33 7y ago

Only global communism and white genocide can save the planet................. Commie bastards

bamboozled 7y ago

There is so much technology available to combat it, yet those people elected seem hell bent on wrecking it to support a shrinking fossil fuel industry. They’re obviously failing to realise they will be victims too. How pathetic and what an unusual time to be alive. Take a look at the Australian PM. What a stick in the mud, the whole state of NSW is practically on fire, and all he can say is that isn’t not really caused by climate change, there are “other factors involved. What these climate scientists have done to predict this would’ve been witchcraft a hundred years ago, the work they’ve done is amazing. The people who matter still don’t listen.

jacquesm 7y ago
> What these climate scientists have done to predict this would’ve been witchcraft a hundred years ago You may be on to something there: if cause and effect are too far related that an ordinary person without any training in the matter will be able to say 'Aha!' then trying to argue that scientists have proven it is a losing battle. The reason for that is that decades of being oversold by advertising and guys in white lab coats have conditioned people to disbelieve scientists over the words of other lay people that they feel they have a closer connection with. See also: vaccination, various 'truthers' and so on. Add in another healthy factor based on the fact that people will have to give up some luxuries and you have the stage set for a perfect disaster.
lazyjones 7y ago
> yet those people elected seem hell bent on wrecking it to support a shrinking fossil fuel industry. This is a silly recurring narrative that has no basis in reality. Politicians aren't clinging to some particular industry, they're interested in not destroying the whole economy that is necessary for our wealth and prosperity, certainly not for the FUD that is currently being spread in an area where nobody even takes a closer look at outrageous claims anymore for fear of being shouted down and where quoting IPCC reports is considered "being in denial".
- strombofulous 7y ago
  They're not actually trying to support the fossil fuel industry. They don't really care about it at all. It just happens to be the case that a lot of people who vote for them are involved in the fossil fuel industry and will be directly affected by its downfall.

aritmo 7y ago

There is a choice between scientific fact and "fossil fuels like coal are too important to our short-term economy". Several governments make the political decision in favour for short-term benefits, just like they do for other issues. They do not want to risk having today a recession because the voters vote for a good economy now. Is long-term planning incompatible with democratic elections?

jdnenej 7y ago
>Is long-term planning incompatible with democratic elections? Maybe, but the alternative doesn't necessarily seem to work either. China has an awful environmental record as well. It seems that humans are incompatible with long term planning for things that extend beyond our lifetimes.

googlerx 7y ago

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/

nkkollaw 7y ago

China is the biggest pollutant by far: over twice as much CO2 as the USA, and of course they've been poisoning everything with toxic waste for decades. Why can't governments stop all Chinese imports until the get in line, instead of banning plastic straws? That's the real question no one asks.

ben_w 7y ago
I’ve witnessed people asking that question even when the opening statement was in the form “in ten years China will be a bigger polluter than the USA.”
bloak 7y ago
China emits less than half as much CO2 as the USA per capita, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di... It's interesting to see that there are several countries that emit more per capita than the USA, including Canada and Australia. Maybe the USA should stop trading with those countries?
- papermachete 7y ago
  'per capita' is a manipulative and unproductive metric.
  - redavni 7y ago
    Chinese people exhale less CO2. Free speech causes global warming.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Is it worse than ‘per country’? The problem isn’t going to be changed one way or the other by, e.g., China breaking apart into 34 provinces, nor by the union of literally every nation into a world government. (Well, except for the economic impact of those scenarios). The optimal place to focus effort is wherever a marginal unit of effort has the most impact. I’m not aware of any research that estimates that, and while I won’t be surprised if some cities in China are more important targets of effort than some cities in the USA, I’d also expect a unit of intervention in a randomly selected city in the USA to be more effective than “the same”[0] intervention in a randomly selected city in China. [0] adjusted for exchange rates, etc.

papermachete 7y ago

We've been hearing about tipping points and irreversible consequences for 30 years now. So wake me up when it happens or you bring up scientifically backed solutions. Until then, I'll just watch 2012 every christmas.

TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
30 years ago the consequences were 30 years further away. We now only have a decade to act.
- papermachete 7y ago
  Sorry, who's 'we'?
  - TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
    Humans who are alive.
    - papermachete 7y ago
      How about humans who are in charge or deal the most damage.
javajosh 7y ago
It's true that some scientists have made very dour (and wrong) predictions about, for example, over population. But no-one argues the fact that the average global temp has increased dramatically, compared to the previous thousands of years, in the last 100 years. That's lightening fast on a geologic scale, but still pretty slow on a human scale. My point is: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Just because some people overstated the case doesn't mean it's all bunk.
- boyadjian 7y ago
  Over population is now a reality, you should be blind for not seeing it.

boyadjian 7y ago

Climate change is a problem, but only one of many. Climate is just a natural resource, like building land, oil, drinkable water, lithium, and so on. The GDP of countries is now proportional to the availability of these natural resources. So from now on, people will get poorer and poorer, leading to politic instability, civil war, and the like. We have been warned in 1972, with the Club of Rome, and they survey, "The limits to Growth". Now, we have reached those limits.

ncmncm 7y ago
We have not, but events are overtaking them. The difference in outcomes are interesting academically, but not practically.

Proven 7y ago

30 years of that nonsense. This time it could be for real!

lcall 7y ago

I don't think we are competent to solve this when we can't trust each other to keep our word, and especially when we have rejected the specific advice of the planet's Creator. I realize many will think that is silly, but I have put reasons I think this, and why I know some of these things, in some depth, at my simple site: http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html http://lukecall.net/e-9223372036854581820.html -- for what it's worth.

vstuart 7y ago

Why is this post "flagged" (originally flagged | deleted)? The NatGeo article refers to a Nature article on climate change and tipping points: [2019-11-27] Climate tipping points -- too risky to bet against. The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0 "Politicians, economists and even some natural scientists have tended to assume that tipping points in the Earth system [Lenton TM et al. (2008) "Tipping elements in the Earth's climate system." Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA. 105: 1786-1793. https://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786 https://www.pnas.org/content/105/6/1786] -- such as the loss of the Amazon rainforest or the West Antarctic ice sheet -- are of low probability and little understood. Yet evidence is mounting that these events could be more likely than was thought, have high impacts and are interconnected across different biophysical systems, potentially committing the world to long-term irreversible changes. "Here we summarize evidence on the threat of exceeding tipping points, identify knowledge gaps and suggest how these should be plugged. We explore the effects of such large-scale changes, how quickly they might unfold and whether we still have any control over them. "In our view, the consideration of tipping points helps to define that we are in a climate emergency and strengthens this year's chorus of calls for urgent climate action -- from schoolchildren to scientists, cities and countries. ..."