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I like the way the 350.org science page put's it: 1. It’s warming. 2. It’s us. 3. We’re sure. 4. It’s bad. 5. We can fix it. (https://350.
by cel1ne 6y ago
I like the way the 350.org science page put's it:
1. It’s warming.
2. It’s us.
3. We’re sure.
4. It’s bad.
5. We can fix it.
(https://350.org/science/ https://350.org/science/)
- oh_sigh 6y agoInteresting that the claims get less and less certain as you go down the list.
- roenxi 6y agoThe 'its bad' section could use some work; it isn't immediately obvious why it is bad. It says things like 10% decrease in grain yield. World population has increased by ~40% in my lifetime; so a 10% grain yield is not the biggest problem we're facing for food security. Ditto the 10 million migrant number. Australia has 7 million migrants living here right now; 10 million globally spread over many years is not particularly devastating. Climate change is supposed to be a threat significant enough for people to abandon their way of life, not those so-so numbers.
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoIs there any evidence at all that global warming is causing any migration? I look at the problems in Syria and I’m definitely not saying “Yep global warming causes that.”
- tito 6y agoThe World Bank's Groundswell Report [0] from 2018 may be a useful resource for you: "Internal climate migrants are rapidly becoming the human face of climate change. According to the new World Bank report "Groundswell - Preparing for Internal Climate Migration", without urgent global and national climate action, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America could see more than 140 million people move within their countries’ borders by 2050." [0] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/groundswell---preparing-for-internal-climate-migration https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/infographic/2018/03/19/gro...
- Udik 6y agoOk. So that infographic mentions 147 million migrants, of which 86 in sub-saharian Africa. It also says that the population of sub-saharian Africa is projected to double in the same timeframe, but of course it's easier and less expensive to decarbonize the entire world than to introduce family planning practices in Africa?
- tsimionescu 6y agoGiven that one of the 10 biggest countries in the world has virtually no elevation and is already having drinking water problems (Bangladesh), a migrant crisis is certain.
- Udik 6y agoThe water problems of Bangladesh seem to have little to do with climate change. It's a mix of political problems with neighboring countries, arsenic contamination of the soil, lack of sanitation.
- ant6n 6y agoDrought is a big factor for the conflict in Syria.
- Udik 6y agoSure, it's not the fact that the US, UK and Saudi Arabia financed, trained and armed the rebels with 1 billion dollars a year [1]. Noo, it's climate change. Imagine what would happen in your country if any group of rebels or terrorists where given weapons and training for several billions to take down the government. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timber_Sycamore
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoThe "Arab Spring" kicked off in response to escalating bread prices following droughts in Russia, Ukraine, China and Argentina and torrential storms in Canada, Australia and Brazil. All major wheat and grain producers. I might or even probably would have happened anyway but climate change probably accelerated it.
- chrisco255 6y agoCrop yields have trended up for the past century. CO2 fertilization improves crop yields. Edit reply: Yes, it has. This macronutrient myth has to do with the profile of carbs to proteins shifting by single digit percentages, whereas crops will produce more carbs per gram and less protein per gram under higher CO2. The effect is extremely minimal. In soy beans, it's just 2% difference. Either way, when your yields double and you lose 2-10% protein per gram, you are still producing more food overall. This has nothing to do with GMOs. It's just a natural effect of photosynthesis. Most plants are C3 plants, which means genetically they are optimized for CO2 levels that are at least 3x higher than modern levels. It is theorized that this is because plants evolved under these conditions for millions of years. Only very recently in geological terms, did Earth's CO2 levels drop to sub-1000 ppm. https://www.cropsreview.com/c3-plants.html https://www.cropsreview.com/c3-plants.html
- tsimionescu 6y agoThat's yield by kg, but în tema of calories or nutrients, the yield has not improved because of CO2 (there were other improvements of you eat GMOs).
- ben_w 6y ago> 10 million globally spread over many years is not particularly devastating. While I personally agree with you, the UK (news and opinion polls) regularly regard ten thousand on that island (1/10th of a fair share of 10 million worldwide) as an existential threat. Most recently, the addition of half a dozen bailing out a rubber dinghy with Tupperware are seen as so dangerous that the Royal Navy is considered an appropriate response by a majority.
- roenxi 6y ago> The 2011 census recorded that 2,998,264 people or 36.7% of London's population are foreign-born [0] The politics of the situation would be brutal; but the UK has a pretty reasonable tolerance for migrants. Strategically the numbers in the article are not a global threat. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_London https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_London
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoYet the UK voted to leave the EU largely because of immigration.
- goatlover 6y agoWhich although probably not in UK or the EU's longterm interest, is not an existential threat. Political unrest and migration are not new.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoNo but it does make me question the statement "but the UK has a pretty reasonable tolerance for migrants".
- ben_w 6y agoI ought to have specifically said “refugees”, which is what I think people fleeing catastrophic climate change count as.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago"It's us" could use much more work. Suppose you could make the case 1. It's warming. 2. It's not us. 3. We're sure. 4. It's bad. 5. We can fix it. What would be different? That point speaks exclusively to the morality of the issue (It's us: environmentalists are noble! - It's not us: environmentalists are evil!), not to what's happening or what should be done.
- dqpb 6y agoIt's relevant to item 5.
- tonyedgecombe 6y agoWhat would be different? It would be incorrect, the evidence is clear that it is a man made problem. This has nothing to do with the morality or lack of, that's your projection.
- thaumasiotes 6y ago> It would be incorrect, the evidence is clear that it is a man made problem. This isn't how you do hypotheticals. If, in the hypothetical world, it isn't us, the claim that it isn't us is correct, not incorrect by virtue of disagreeing with the non-hypothetical world. And you didn't even address my point that this bullet point is completely irrelevant to what's happening and to what should be done. All the recommendations are identical in either case. Why is the bullet point present in the list? Wouldn't it make more sense to have a four-item list?
- jlebar 6y ago> 10% decrease in grain yield Wikipedia has a good article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_and_agriculture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_and_agriculture One thing to consider when you're reading anything about the predicted effects of climate change: The effects will not be uniform in space or time. For example, warming itself has been highly nonuniform. It's not that every day, every location on earth is X degrees warmer. Rather, that's an average; some days in some places are a lot hotter, and on other days in other places, it's less hot. This means that in addition to the average temperature increasing, extremes are also more common (has to be). See the first picture at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming, or this video: https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/video-global-warming-from-1880-to-2019/ https://climate.nasa.gov/climate_resources/139/video-global-... I expect that "10% decrease in average [time and space] grain yields" would also be spiky, in time and space. That means some places and times will experience significantly more than a 10% drop.
- cel1ne 6y ago> For example, warming itself has been highly nonuniform. It's not that every day, every location on earth is X degrees warmer. What is happening is this: For a location and a time somewhere on earth plot a curve depicting the probability of it's temperature. The highest point in the middle is the average, typical temperature for that day, but of course there are less probable outliers left and right, like in a normal distribution. What climate change does is a) it flattens that curve, meaning more varying temperatures, unusually hot or unusually cold days, become more likely and b) it moves that entire curve to the right, so that the average overall temperature becomes hotter, even though there are more cold outlier-days than before.
- Udik 6y ago> the 10 million migrant number. Just the other day I read a long and detailed article about a predicted number of 200 million "climate migrants" by 2050, 86 million from Africa alone. Nowhere in the long article was ever mentioned that in the same timespan Africa's population is predicted to double, adding 1.2 billion people to the current number. But of course, hey, "climate change".
- imtringued 6y ago10 million migrants just from sea level rise. Sea level rise is actually one of the smallest threats that arise from climate change. There are some specific countries like Bangladesh that will suffer heavily from flooding but the vast majority of countries can deal with it. Climate change involves much bigger threats than that.
- RestlessMind 6y agoHighlighting the cost alone is not sufficient. Entire Maldives and big parts of Bangladesh going underwater thus resulting in millions of refugees will generate at most a few outraged tweets and a touching article in some news outlet in USA (something similar in China). For climate change to be taken seriously, one needs to find the lever which will move the powerful actors. For example, leaving oceanfront homes' insurance to market forces. Swing states of Florida and North Carolina will instantly propel this to a big political issue, leaving the party of Free Markets and Climate Change Denial (TM) in an awkward position. Sadly, the politicians on all sides are way too smart to let this happen - they will instead prefer driving issues which sap electorate's attention but affect <5% of the population (transgender bathroom access, extreme cases of the spectrum of abortion issue, marginal tax rate on 0.1% of people etc).
- lightgreen 6y agoThe website starts good, but loses all credibility for not mentioning nuclear in “we can fix it”. Shame.