16 ms·

A 3°C world has no safe place

199 points by lsllc 5y ago

wyager 5y ago
This article smells more like religious eschatology than rational economic discussion about the costs and benefits of climate change. This sort of sensationalist and opinionated reporting hardly advances the credibility of its cause.
- revscat 5y ago
  "It's not what you're saying, it's how you're saying it that I have a problem with." This doesn't change the underlying reality, and I have a strong suspicion there is no means of discussing this issue that would meet with your approval, or your recognition that this is a crisis requiring significant action.
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    I can't speak for the original commenter, but I'm thoroughly on board with every concrete action item proposed in the article. By all means, let's cut emissions, let's invest in prevention and mitigation for natural disasters, and let's understand how we could geoengineer temperatures back down if needed. I don't like the crisis framing because I think it leads people to hyperfocus on stopping climate change - on cutting emissions - to the exclusion of the rest. If I proposed a huge subsidy to put HVAC systems in more homes, that would be a huge help in fighting the actual human impact of climate change, but quite a lot of people would see it as irrelevant to climate change because it doesn't reduce emissions.
  - wyager 5y ago
    Your suspicion is unfounded. There are plenty of people who discuss the issue on rational terms. However, their writing is less entertainingly alarmist, so it doesn’t get as much traction. Same as any political-economic issue.
chana_masala 5y ago
Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"
- xupybd 5y ago
  Humans have trouble detecting less than a 2°C change in temperature. The truth is changes on global averages seem tiny because we use temperature as the metric. The temperature change is tiny. The heat energy is huge. We should use energy as the metric.
- mulmen 5y ago
  Ok but even 1°C is pretty bad? Even 1°F is bad. If we were going for emotional effect shouldn't it be expressed in Kelvin, or a temperature scale that is designed specifically to scare the public? Something where 3°C is 20°Scare? E: Kelvin doesn't work for scaring the public unless it is reported as an absolute temperature. TIL.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > If we were going for emotional effect shouldn't it be expressed in Kelvin A difference in 1K is equivalent to 1C difference. The thing is, when Celsius scale was invented, they didn't have a concept of "absolute zero" yet. Once "absolute zero" was known, then Kelvin units were invented, which were equivalent to C except that 0 means absolute zero.
    - mulmen 5y ago
      Whoops. Well, my point remains. 1, 3 and 5 all seem like pretty small numbers. I don't think C to F would change public perception.
  - nnamtr 5y ago
    FWIW Celsius and Kelvin have the same scale, they're just shifted.
ardit33 5y ago
Canada and northern part of the US will be fine (north of the mason dixon line). Places like Albany, NY, or Minesota, or most of Canada, appart from the occasional crazy swings, are going to be more lovely places to live, with slightly milder winters. The southern part is toast, both from water level rises, and lack of fresh water. In this country, the ones that are going to be the most affected by global warming, seem like to care the less. PS: Canada has a target goal to reach 100mil by 2100. They know they are going to be a more milder place to live overall (with the crazy swing), and there will be much more areas open for human habitation. That's why they are increasing their immigration quotas. https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/ https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/
- danans 5y ago
  > In this country, the ones that are going to be the most affected by global warming, seem like to care the less. This is ignoring the fact that if the southern coastal US is toast the northern areas are going to have a climate refugee crisis on their hands.
  - ardit33 5y ago
    That's true. We have already been dealing with it (the last central american immigrant surge), and NYC had a huge influx of comers from Porto Rico after the last two hurricanes. Dealing with it is still easier than having your place underwater like 1/3 of Florida might be one day. Places like NYC have to shore up low land areas, but it is still in much better shape than either Florida, Arizona, Southern CA (lack of fresh water, and fires). Global warming is really going to hit places differently. There is a huge difference between having to deal with the occasional heat wave, or flood, and with having to deal with your whole area being permanently under-water, or complete lack of drinking water.
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    Many coastal people seem to assume that the federal government will bail them out in great abundance, which, let's face it, is probably true.
lettergram 5y ago
What are they talking about? In the US this will mean more rain in many regions and longer growing seasons. A lot of plants will quickly adapt. Historically, our planet for most of its history was warmer. It’s all going to be fine, while we will need to adjust the world will continue on. Note: I’m not saying it won’t be hard, but this will be a gradual change and will actually assist some places, while others get more harsh. I’m just so tired of the negativity. There’s also a lot of common errors people make. For instance, is this avg temp? Where are we taking measurements? Everyone realizes year to year there’s average drifts that are pretty substantial around the earth... etc etc
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  The geopolitical reality of, say, a billion people in India becoming climate refugees is likely to have worldwide implications.
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    India is a big and diverse place. I don't see any realistic scenario where 1 billion Indians become climate refugees.
    - saagarjha 5y ago
      Ok, several hundred million?
  - jsbdk 5y ago
    The ballistics industry should be rubbing their hands.
- titzer 5y ago
  Will they adapt to the raging wildfires that ~1.2C has already induced across much of the west coast? That's some adaptin'!
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
sicromoft 5y ago
https://archive.is/omEFY https://archive.is/omEFY
noasaservice 5y ago
I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics with my knowledge of circuitry and 3d printing. I recycle, but that's if its not repairable or reusable/repurposable. I look at what I'm actually doing, and I'm at my limit. There isn't anything else I can add on to reduce footprint. And in reality, the same goes for many people. These global climate change issues are the sum of all the work in this world, but the bulk of it is emitted by companies who do the cheapest thing. And if dumping gigatons of CO2 or methane in the air makes more sense, that's done. I can petition my congresscritters, but it's well known they do not listen to the little guy (https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-... ). Your party is irrelevant here. So what do I do? know what we're doing is what we can and hope some rich people pull up the cause, and not try to escape the atmosphere in a penis-shaped rocket. I've given up hope that this will be solved.
- eointierney 5y ago
  Hope is what we share when we don't know what to do because someone else might just have the solution. Never give up hope :)
- holoduke 5y ago
  Its like a little kid making a mess of his room. He or she will never prevent the mess. But the mess will always be fixed. I have good faith that the human species will fix it. One day the entire biosphere will be controlled.
  - rexpop 5y ago
    The mess will not "always be fixed," because we have no parents in this analogy. We are the leaders in this world. You are simply taking on the role of an adolescent shirking responsibility.
titzer 5y ago
Keep in mind that it's 3C average, over the entire globe, over a year. The locale, variance, seasonality all matter. Like, suppose that you are "lucky" in that your region gets only the average of 3C, so your year is 3C warmer on average, but that only happens during 3 months of the year, so you get 12C hotter in summer--basically, el fuego--or you get 12C in winter--basically, no more winter. A warmer winter can be catastrophic for forests in cold climates that depend on freezing temperatures to kill off invasive bugs. So an entire forest can be absolutely ruined by a damn beetle.
- mrits 5y ago
  Wouldn't it take a short amount of time to kill the beetles? Certainly it doesn't take a whole winter?
  - dillon 5y ago
    My understanding, from whatever nature TV show when I was younger, is that the beetles don't actually die. They literally freeze in ice. I also remember reading that certain countries are releasing tens of thousands of birds (possibly hummingbirds?) to deal with them as well. I don't have links so possibly grain of salt here. If you look at California as an example, you can see hundreds of acres of trees that are dying year over year. I remember going camping in lush green forests that are all gone now. I'm in the PNW now and from what I've seen and heard from others the summers are getting longer and hotter so it's only a matter of time before what's happening to California comes here. EDIT: From what I remember as well, every tree comes with defenses to keep beetles away. This is why trees are sappy. In order to produce sap the trees need water, and they produce their own sugars through photosynthesis (sap being a mix of water and sugar). Trees in certain areas are adapted to the length of their winters. A longer winter means more time without dealing with beetles but might also mean less time spent in dry soil.
  - danpat 5y ago
    It's somewhat complicated - timing of cold weather is important to kill off the beetles: https://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/formain15814/$file/MPBColdTemperaturesFacts-Jan2010.pdf?OpenElement https://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/fo... > For example, an under-bark temperature of –37°C will kill 50 per cent of a mountain pine beetle population, even in mid-winter; however, a low temperature of –20°C in the fall, be- fore the beetles are prepared for winter, or in the spring, when beetles are start- ing to become more active, will also kill beetles if it is preceded by temperatures above 0°C. The relatively warmer temper- ature causes the larvae to start to lose its natural antifreeze.
endisneigh 5y ago
I fear the one-two punch of disproportionate use of energy coupled with rampant world-wide inequality (in both resources and income) result in those who caused the issues having little reason to care about the result. In a democratic country, how will a leader convince the population to care about this if the country is rich and currently is unaffected? Well, we're about to see how successful or unsuccessful they might be- so far, it's not looking great. Furthermore - in the classic phrase: reduce, reuse and recycle. The most important of the three is reduction - how can we reduce consumption in a capitalist world that values mindless consumption and advertising to promote more mindless consumption? How many of us work for companies that directly or indirectly promote mindless waste of resources and endless consumption? This is not a TV show - a happy ending is not guaranteed.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  > In a democratic country, how will a leader convince the population to care about this if the country is rich and currently is unaffected Depends on the definition of "unaffected". I'm not sure that the Pacific Northwest, nor the Southwest nor the West would necessarily accept the "unaffected" label. Can they afford to smooth over the impact by using more energy & money? To some extent, certainly, but not entirely.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  Just look at Covid response. The rich countries are thinking "Us first" and are just doing symbolic gestures to help the poorer ones. Just like humans would try to save themselves first, even countries in unions like the EU shut down borders between each other when the virus first came there. On the topic of waste, I had a realization that even as developers we're contributing to a lot of waste. We want conveniences, like inefficient frameworks so you can just write HTML and CSS instead of native UI, and we get to have these conveniences because processors are getting faster, but on the consumer side, it means top of the line hardware from 10 years ago might now be too slow to render a webpage, and is ending up as e-waste...
scoofy 5y ago
American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished and more cynical. I honestly don't know how to deal with the level nihilism and genuine bitterness I feel toward my fellow man regarding climate change. This was never a political divide. The american culture was full of anti-scientific absurdity on the the right, and complete symbolism without substance on the left. We don't even have serious bicycle or transit prioritization in our major urban areas. We don't have any concern for reducing our meat consumption. We don't have any concern for alternatives to airlines. We're to the point where only geoengineering can help, which is honestly nuts. I just, I mean, I know where I'm planning on settling down literally based on real estate in relation to climate change. It's surreal.
- eplanit 5y ago
  We are the lifelong chain-smoker who, when diagnosed with lung cancer, chooses to keep smoking because of a misguided belief that "at least I'll die happy".
  - ddingus 5y ago
    Or, they believe the point of no return has been passed, nothing to be done. I gave seen people evaluate the pain they perceive is a part of quitting exceed their perception of value. Literally, not worth it.
  - tuatoru 5y ago
    Après moi, le déluge.[1] The attitude has been around since before tobacco and is commonly ascribed to Boomers. With justification. (Disclosure: I am one.) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge
- dmead 5y ago
  You're asking people to suffering annoyances and spend lots of money when the average income has been going down for 40 years. I'm surprised you're surprised.
hindsightbias 5y ago
James Burke's After the Warming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfE8wBReIxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfE8wBReIxw Circa 1989.
bostonsre 5y ago
Silicon valley is safe climate wise (it's like artificial weather here), we just need to build a damn or some kind of lock system under the golden gate bridge, then a series of walls and mine fields to keep out the rifraf. </s>
davidw 5y ago
Transportation accounts for around 30% of carbon emissions in the US. We could do a lot worse than rethinking our 'suburban experiment' where many people are forced to use an automobile for things our ancestors could walk to in 5 minutes, to paraphrase Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Having started bike commute (20km round trip), I basically don't want to anything by car. With bike-day people could realize how cool it is to glide at 11 mph without traffic. Things are way closer than they appear if you remove congestion, lights and the obligation to do more distance to reach larger roads people use for fast cars. free workout, free health, gas savings, pollution free .. it's really something to push
_robbywashere 5y ago
I always enjoy the apocalypse articles being paywalled
6d6b73 5y ago
We're about to go into a mini ice age and there is no stopping it.
fspacef 5y ago
Fascinating.
longtom 5y ago
We might as well have to accept that there is no solution to this problem.
- criddell 5y ago
  I know there are groups making good progress on CO2 scrubbers. Last I read about them, they were saying $100 / ton is within reach.
debo_ 5y ago
If you want to feel some level of empowerment around this but don't feel like you have much time or direction, I'd recommend joining the Citizen's Climate Lobby. It's quite influential in the U.S., and is gaining influence globally. I'm Canadian, and I joined a year ago. Since then I've been able to join several lobby meetings with politicians and gotten involved in many other local issues that I never would have learned about otherwise. It's quite organized, I get to see the impacts of lobbying, and I meet many other groups that I could choose to join if I am so inclined. I've found it to be productive. If you feel helpless and are thrashing when it comes to figuring out how to make a difference, I think this is a great first step.
- it_citizen 5y ago
  I whole-heartedly agree. I found out about the Citizen's Climate Lobby two weeks ago. I jumped into a few zoom calls with members of the organization and they immediately came up with various ways I could help with. For a person who has been extremely worried about climate change for years, it felt good to feel that I could do something about it and meet people sharing the same goal. Pricing carbon in a revenu neutral way is probably the most impactful thing we can push for. There is more and more political will to implement or double down on it depending on the country. Grass-root lobbying might be the nudge those policies needs to become a reality. Try spreading the word, educate your friends and family about it. Like many legislations, implementing it the right way will be difficult but the more people are informed about it, the more chances we have.
zabzonk 5y ago
No human civilisation has lasted very long. I guess that ours has been going on since the Renaissance, but eventually it will fall. And then maybe another will come along, or maybe not - if we make the world too hard to exist in.
gpt5 5y ago
From a game theoretic perspective - fossil fuels will be depleted. Even if the US reduced its consumption to zero, other countries, as independent players that want to maximize their benefit will be glad to take over and enjoy the effects of reduced demand and price. This means that there are two ways to deal with it: 1. Force all countries to reduce use. To make this really worldwide, this can only worked by force, economical or military (i.e. a world cop). Unfortunately, even if we had that, it is not a stable solution since the short term benefits of using these fuels create constant political pressure. 2. Mitigate the emissions, for example by carbon sequestration. I'm a strong believer in technological progress and our ability to reduce the cost exponentially, the tricky part is to make profitable at any cost. 3. Direct the limited fossil fuel supplies towards economical uses that do not have the same negative impact. For example, by encouraging consumption of more plastics. Plastics essentially trap the carbon in the oil into a very stable form, essentially sequestering the carbon in the oil without first going into the atmosphere.
willis936 5y ago
The symptom of global warming is not the sole long term concern of climate change. We already have the tools to reverse global warming. I wager that a poor country with most of its GDP within 5 feet of 2021 sea level will unilaterally decide to stop global warming in the next 50 years. Maybe it's not a logical move, maybe it's already too late to save their cities, maybe it won't stop millions from dying of heat or famine, but it will be the politically savvy move of the leaders of desperate people. The decision won't be made by a bunch of rich people sitting around a nice clean table in an air conditioned room in the US or EU. The political backlash of not asking permission weighs far less than not doing it. What does this pandora's box prospect really mean for the future? If not handled carefully then we may face even more serious ecological collapse (a la Snowpiercer). I don't think that's very likely. I think we'll see a more tempered implementation that will take a while to cool the planet. That meets the political demands of the desperate people while trying to appease the angry neighbors. The ice caps will still melt, the sea level will still rise 10 feet, and we'll still likely face ecological collapse from half a dozen different directions. Which directions we care about most will start to matter. Should we not even bother talking about them today since us, as rich air conditioned folks wouldn't even consider the option of reflective particles in the atmosphere? Or should we face the real possibility and begin planning contingencies for it?
- nabergh 5y ago
  I'm curious which method you're referring to when you talk about one country unilaterally stopping global warming.
  - taktoa 5y ago
    Stratospheric sulfur dioxide injection is one option
jiggawatts 5y ago
> It's surreal. It's also most certainly not the only example of such behaviour. My personal favourite to use on people with an IT background is IPv4 exhaustion. Global warming is related to the finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb an excess pollutant, which is growing exponentially thanks to a burgeoning human population. Address exhaustion is due to a finite resource being exhausted due to an increasing population of people with networked devices. Both are slow-motion, global-scale disasters. Both have no clear deadline or dramatic event. Neither has any immediacy, it's all just graphs trending the wrong way. Just like how no individual or enterprise profits from fixing global warming, nobody profits from fixing IPv4. If you make a personal sacrifice to give up IPv4, nobody will reward you. In both cases, the incumbents are hoarding resources, and trying to stave of the inevitable change that will devalue their accumulated capital. IPv4 has become a commodity resource traded on markets, to be hoovered up by mega-corporations to fend off smaller players from competing head to head with them. Do you think Saudi Aramco will just let go of their trillion dollars of unexploited oil fields? Do you think Azure or AWS will just give up on their millions of accumulated addresses? There is one key difference however: Global warming has some legitimate debate about its exact course: what specific path the curve will follow, and which model is accurate. IPv4 exhaustion had no debate whatsoever. The exhaustion of each regional pool was predicted to the week, years ahead. Each one occurred exactly on schedule. What have YOU done to "save the world"? What have you sacrificed, personally to enable IPv6-only networking? You have no excuses, you can't even say you didn't see it coming! So: Have you forced your company to upgrade to IPv6? Have you written your software to work flawlessly in an IPv6-only network? Have you made it a hard requirement for all networked products you purchase or use to be IPv6 native? No, no you haven't. Azure doesn't support IPv6 in any meaningful way. Neither does any other major cloud provider. It's an add on. An optional extra, that may or may not work. Kubernetes, the "future", does not support IPv6 right now, 21 years after it became widely available, and years after several regions dropped below their last /8 of available address space. "It would be a lot of work to add IPv6 support" I hear people complaining. Oh... oh wow. Gee. Golly. I didn't know! I take it all back. Let's just stay on IPv4 forever and use NAT five layers deep. I hear Global Warming is going to take a lot of work to fix also. Let's just all buy air conditioners and never venture outside again.
john579 5y ago
Higher amounts of carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures are excellent for plant growth. A greener earth and more wildlife is paradise on earth. I wish it was true, but unfortunately people easily fall for propaganda. They will end up climate engineering us into an ice age and destroying civilization in the process. Take a deep breath, relax, and look forward to the warmer climate forecast for your future: an eternity in hell.
noxer 5y ago
Daily reminder that all the emission reduced by the complete "western" world (the rest doesn't care about the green move) in the last years was all reversed by the additional emission of a single Asian country (China) and this does not even include the grows in emissions in other fast growing places like India. The whole green move is a lie. There is no evidence that any of that has any relevant positive effect. And no, "we tried" or "a little bit is better than nothing", is not a valid argument all the efforts combined effects are within the margin of error for our predictions so we dont even know if or how much it makes a different. The only way forward that makes sense is the one humans always did - technological progress. fusion reactors for example. Imagine what we could have by now if all that effort (financial) would have been used to actually find better ways to do the things that cause the pollution rather than making people feel bad for doing what they have to do survive. But instead our politics puts money into nonsensical "progress" like for example replacing a certain % or fuel with biofuel which is know to be energy-negative. It needs more energy to produce than it gives back (not true if made form waste biomass but true if its made from crops planted for this.)

199 points by lsllc 5y ago

This article smells more like religious eschatology than rational economic discussion about the costs and benefits of climate change. This sort of sensationalist and opinionated reporting hardly advances the credibility of its cause.

revscat 5y ago
"It's not what you're saying, it's how you're saying it that I have a problem with." This doesn't change the underlying reality, and I have a strong suspicion there is no means of discussing this issue that would meet with your approval, or your recognition that this is a crisis requiring significant action.
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  I can't speak for the original commenter, but I'm thoroughly on board with every concrete action item proposed in the article. By all means, let's cut emissions, let's invest in prevention and mitigation for natural disasters, and let's understand how we could geoengineer temperatures back down if needed. I don't like the crisis framing because I think it leads people to hyperfocus on stopping climate change - on cutting emissions - to the exclusion of the rest. If I proposed a huge subsidy to put HVAC systems in more homes, that would be a huge help in fighting the actual human impact of climate change, but quite a lot of people would see it as irrelevant to climate change because it doesn't reduce emissions.
- wyager 5y ago
  Your suspicion is unfounded. There are plenty of people who discuss the issue on rational terms. However, their writing is less entertainingly alarmist, so it doesn’t get as much traction. Same as any political-economic issue.

chana_masala 5y ago

Maybe it wouldn't have mattered, but I wish that the Fahrenheit increase would have been more prominently used over these years. I think that most Americans don't realize that 1°C is more than 1°F so it doesn't sound as bad when it's "only a few degrees"

xupybd 5y ago
Humans have trouble detecting less than a 2°C change in temperature. The truth is changes on global averages seem tiny because we use temperature as the metric. The temperature change is tiny. The heat energy is huge. We should use energy as the metric.
mulmen 5y ago
Ok but even 1°C is pretty bad? Even 1°F is bad. If we were going for emotional effect shouldn't it be expressed in Kelvin, or a temperature scale that is designed specifically to scare the public? Something where 3°C is 20°Scare? E: Kelvin doesn't work for scaring the public unless it is reported as an absolute temperature. TIL.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > If we were going for emotional effect shouldn't it be expressed in Kelvin A difference in 1K is equivalent to 1C difference. The thing is, when Celsius scale was invented, they didn't have a concept of "absolute zero" yet. Once "absolute zero" was known, then Kelvin units were invented, which were equivalent to C except that 0 means absolute zero.
  - mulmen 5y ago
    Whoops. Well, my point remains. 1, 3 and 5 all seem like pretty small numbers. I don't think C to F would change public perception.
- nnamtr 5y ago
  FWIW Celsius and Kelvin have the same scale, they're just shifted.

ardit33 5y ago

Canada and northern part of the US will be fine (north of the mason dixon line). Places like Albany, NY, or Minesota, or most of Canada, appart from the occasional crazy swings, are going to be more lovely places to live, with slightly milder winters. The southern part is toast, both from water level rises, and lack of fresh water. In this country, the ones that are going to be the most affected by global warming, seem like to care the less. PS: Canada has a target goal to reach 100mil by 2100. They know they are going to be a more milder place to live overall (with the crazy swing), and there will be much more areas open for human habitation. That's why they are increasing their immigration quotas. https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/ https://www.centuryinitiative.ca/

danans 5y ago
> In this country, the ones that are going to be the most affected by global warming, seem like to care the less. This is ignoring the fact that if the southern coastal US is toast the northern areas are going to have a climate refugee crisis on their hands.
- ardit33 5y ago
  That's true. We have already been dealing with it (the last central american immigrant surge), and NYC had a huge influx of comers from Porto Rico after the last two hurricanes. Dealing with it is still easier than having your place underwater like 1/3 of Florida might be one day. Places like NYC have to shore up low land areas, but it is still in much better shape than either Florida, Arizona, Southern CA (lack of fresh water, and fires). Global warming is really going to hit places differently. There is a huge difference between having to deal with the occasional heat wave, or flood, and with having to deal with your whole area being permanently under-water, or complete lack of drinking water.
- jeffbee 5y ago
  Many coastal people seem to assume that the federal government will bail them out in great abundance, which, let's face it, is probably true.

lettergram 5y ago

What are they talking about? In the US this will mean more rain in many regions and longer growing seasons. A lot of plants will quickly adapt. Historically, our planet for most of its history was warmer. It’s all going to be fine, while we will need to adjust the world will continue on. Note: I’m not saying it won’t be hard, but this will be a gradual change and will actually assist some places, while others get more harsh. I’m just so tired of the negativity. There’s also a lot of common errors people make. For instance, is this avg temp? Where are we taking measurements? Everyone realizes year to year there’s average drifts that are pretty substantial around the earth... etc etc

ceejayoz 5y ago
The geopolitical reality of, say, a billion people in India becoming climate refugees is likely to have worldwide implications.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  India is a big and diverse place. I don't see any realistic scenario where 1 billion Indians become climate refugees.
  - saagarjha 5y ago
    Ok, several hundred million?
- jsbdk 5y ago
  The ballistics industry should be rubbing their hands.
titzer 5y ago
Will they adapt to the raging wildfires that ~1.2C has already induced across much of the west coast? That's some adaptin'!
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago

sicromoft 5y ago

https://archive.is/omEFY https://archive.is/omEFY

noasaservice 5y ago

I'm sitting in my air conditioned room, in the USA. Doing computer stuff, naturally. I look at what I can do about this. I can turn up the temp in my room, and the house. Meager difference. I can use less water - I already am, with getting showers every other day on average. I can eat less meat - which I do with purchase of the beef CSA. I'm big into the repair movement, and repair household equipment and electronics with my knowledge of circuitry and 3d printing. I recycle, but that's if its not repairable or reusable/repurposable. I look at what I'm actually doing, and I'm at my limit. There isn't anything else I can add on to reduce footprint. And in reality, the same goes for many people. These global climate change issues are the sum of all the work in this world, but the bulk of it is emitted by companies who do the cheapest thing. And if dumping gigatons of CO2 or methane in the air makes more sense, that's done. I can petition my congresscritters, but it's well known they do not listen to the little guy (https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-theories-of-american-politics-explained https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-... ). Your party is irrelevant here. So what do I do? know what we're doing is what we can and hope some rich people pull up the cause, and not try to escape the atmosphere in a penis-shaped rocket. I've given up hope that this will be solved.

eointierney 5y ago
Hope is what we share when we don't know what to do because someone else might just have the solution. Never give up hope :)
holoduke 5y ago
Its like a little kid making a mess of his room. He or she will never prevent the mess. But the mess will always be fixed. I have good faith that the human species will fix it. One day the entire biosphere will be controlled.
- rexpop 5y ago
  The mess will not "always be fixed," because we have no parents in this analogy. We are the leaders in this world. You are simply taking on the role of an adolescent shirking responsibility.

titzer 5y ago

Keep in mind that it's 3C average, over the entire globe, over a year. The locale, variance, seasonality all matter. Like, suppose that you are "lucky" in that your region gets only the average of 3C, so your year is 3C warmer on average, but that only happens during 3 months of the year, so you get 12C hotter in summer--basically, el fuego--or you get 12C in winter--basically, no more winter. A warmer winter can be catastrophic for forests in cold climates that depend on freezing temperatures to kill off invasive bugs. So an entire forest can be absolutely ruined by a damn beetle.

mrits 5y ago
Wouldn't it take a short amount of time to kill the beetles? Certainly it doesn't take a whole winter?
- dillon 5y ago
  My understanding, from whatever nature TV show when I was younger, is that the beetles don't actually die. They literally freeze in ice. I also remember reading that certain countries are releasing tens of thousands of birds (possibly hummingbirds?) to deal with them as well. I don't have links so possibly grain of salt here. If you look at California as an example, you can see hundreds of acres of trees that are dying year over year. I remember going camping in lush green forests that are all gone now. I'm in the PNW now and from what I've seen and heard from others the summers are getting longer and hotter so it's only a matter of time before what's happening to California comes here. EDIT: From what I remember as well, every tree comes with defenses to keep beetles away. This is why trees are sappy. In order to produce sap the trees need water, and they produce their own sugars through photosynthesis (sap being a mix of water and sugar). Trees in certain areas are adapted to the length of their winters. A longer winter means more time without dealing with beetles but might also mean less time spent in dry soil.
- danpat 5y ago
  It's somewhat complicated - timing of cold weather is important to kill off the beetles: https://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/formain15814/$file/MPBColdTemperaturesFacts-Jan2010.pdf?OpenElement https://www1.agric.gov.ab.ca/$department/deptdocs.nsf/all/fo... > For example, an under-bark temperature of –37°C will kill 50 per cent of a mountain pine beetle population, even in mid-winter; however, a low temperature of –20°C in the fall, be- fore the beetles are prepared for winter, or in the spring, when beetles are start- ing to become more active, will also kill beetles if it is preceded by temperatures above 0°C. The relatively warmer temper- ature causes the larvae to start to lose its natural antifreeze.

endisneigh 5y ago

I fear the one-two punch of disproportionate use of energy coupled with rampant world-wide inequality (in both resources and income) result in those who caused the issues having little reason to care about the result. In a democratic country, how will a leader convince the population to care about this if the country is rich and currently is unaffected? Well, we're about to see how successful or unsuccessful they might be- so far, it's not looking great. Furthermore - in the classic phrase: reduce, reuse and recycle. The most important of the three is reduction - how can we reduce consumption in a capitalist world that values mindless consumption and advertising to promote more mindless consumption? How many of us work for companies that directly or indirectly promote mindless waste of resources and endless consumption? This is not a TV show - a happy ending is not guaranteed.

PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
> In a democratic country, how will a leader convince the population to care about this if the country is rich and currently is unaffected Depends on the definition of "unaffected". I'm not sure that the Pacific Northwest, nor the Southwest nor the West would necessarily accept the "unaffected" label. Can they afford to smooth over the impact by using more energy & money? To some extent, certainly, but not entirely.
bellyfullofbac 5y ago
Just look at Covid response. The rich countries are thinking "Us first" and are just doing symbolic gestures to help the poorer ones. Just like humans would try to save themselves first, even countries in unions like the EU shut down borders between each other when the virus first came there. On the topic of waste, I had a realization that even as developers we're contributing to a lot of waste. We want conveniences, like inefficient frameworks so you can just write HTML and CSS instead of native UI, and we get to have these conveniences because processors are getting faster, but on the consumer side, it means top of the line hardware from 10 years ago might now be too slow to render a webpage, and is ending up as e-waste...

scoofy 5y ago

American here. I took a bunch of earth science classes in college in 1999. I realized then, I would just plan ahead and aim for an urbanist lifestyle, because our country would have to change. I focused on transit alternatives as my primary advocacy, because it was the most obvious low-hanging fruit and paired with the public health. I never imagined this would happen, but as the years went on, I grew less astonished and more cynical. I honestly don't know how to deal with the level nihilism and genuine bitterness I feel toward my fellow man regarding climate change. This was never a political divide. The american culture was full of anti-scientific absurdity on the the right, and complete symbolism without substance on the left. We don't even have serious bicycle or transit prioritization in our major urban areas. We don't have any concern for reducing our meat consumption. We don't have any concern for alternatives to airlines. We're to the point where only geoengineering can help, which is honestly nuts. I just, I mean, I know where I'm planning on settling down literally based on real estate in relation to climate change. It's surreal.

eplanit 5y ago
We are the lifelong chain-smoker who, when diagnosed with lung cancer, chooses to keep smoking because of a misguided belief that "at least I'll die happy".
- ddingus 5y ago
  Or, they believe the point of no return has been passed, nothing to be done. I gave seen people evaluate the pain they perceive is a part of quitting exceed their perception of value. Literally, not worth it.
- tuatoru 5y ago
  Après moi, le déluge.[1] The attitude has been around since before tobacco and is commonly ascribed to Boomers. With justification. (Disclosure: I am one.) 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apr%C3%A8s_moi,_le_d%C3%A9luge
dmead 5y ago
You're asking people to suffering annoyances and spend lots of money when the average income has been going down for 40 years. I'm surprised you're surprised.

hindsightbias 5y ago

James Burke's After the Warming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfE8wBReIxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfE8wBReIxw Circa 1989.

bostonsre 5y ago

Silicon valley is safe climate wise (it's like artificial weather here), we just need to build a damn or some kind of lock system under the golden gate bridge, then a series of walls and mine fields to keep out the rifraf. </s>

davidw 5y ago

Transportation accounts for around 30% of carbon emissions in the US. We could do a lot worse than rethinking our 'suburban experiment' where many people are forced to use an automobile for things our ancestors could walk to in 5 minutes, to paraphrase Chuck Marohn of Strong Towns.

agumonkey 5y ago
Having started bike commute (20km round trip), I basically don't want to anything by car. With bike-day people could realize how cool it is to glide at 11 mph without traffic. Things are way closer than they appear if you remove congestion, lights and the obligation to do more distance to reach larger roads people use for fast cars. free workout, free health, gas savings, pollution free .. it's really something to push

_robbywashere 5y ago

I always enjoy the apocalypse articles being paywalled

6d6b73 5y ago

We're about to go into a mini ice age and there is no stopping it.

fspacef 5y ago

Fascinating.

longtom 5y ago

We might as well have to accept that there is no solution to this problem.

criddell 5y ago
I know there are groups making good progress on CO2 scrubbers. Last I read about them, they were saying $100 / ton is within reach.

debo_ 5y ago

If you want to feel some level of empowerment around this but don't feel like you have much time or direction, I'd recommend joining the Citizen's Climate Lobby. It's quite influential in the U.S., and is gaining influence globally. I'm Canadian, and I joined a year ago. Since then I've been able to join several lobby meetings with politicians and gotten involved in many other local issues that I never would have learned about otherwise. It's quite organized, I get to see the impacts of lobbying, and I meet many other groups that I could choose to join if I am so inclined. I've found it to be productive. If you feel helpless and are thrashing when it comes to figuring out how to make a difference, I think this is a great first step.

it_citizen 5y ago
I whole-heartedly agree. I found out about the Citizen's Climate Lobby two weeks ago. I jumped into a few zoom calls with members of the organization and they immediately came up with various ways I could help with. For a person who has been extremely worried about climate change for years, it felt good to feel that I could do something about it and meet people sharing the same goal. Pricing carbon in a revenu neutral way is probably the most impactful thing we can push for. There is more and more political will to implement or double down on it depending on the country. Grass-root lobbying might be the nudge those policies needs to become a reality. Try spreading the word, educate your friends and family about it. Like many legislations, implementing it the right way will be difficult but the more people are informed about it, the more chances we have.

zabzonk 5y ago

No human civilisation has lasted very long. I guess that ours has been going on since the Renaissance, but eventually it will fall. And then maybe another will come along, or maybe not - if we make the world too hard to exist in.

gpt5 5y ago

From a game theoretic perspective - fossil fuels will be depleted. Even if the US reduced its consumption to zero, other countries, as independent players that want to maximize their benefit will be glad to take over and enjoy the effects of reduced demand and price. This means that there are two ways to deal with it: 1. Force all countries to reduce use. To make this really worldwide, this can only worked by force, economical or military (i.e. a world cop). Unfortunately, even if we had that, it is not a stable solution since the short term benefits of using these fuels create constant political pressure. 2. Mitigate the emissions, for example by carbon sequestration. I'm a strong believer in technological progress and our ability to reduce the cost exponentially, the tricky part is to make profitable at any cost. 3. Direct the limited fossil fuel supplies towards economical uses that do not have the same negative impact. For example, by encouraging consumption of more plastics. Plastics essentially trap the carbon in the oil into a very stable form, essentially sequestering the carbon in the oil without first going into the atmosphere.

willis936 5y ago

The symptom of global warming is not the sole long term concern of climate change. We already have the tools to reverse global warming. I wager that a poor country with most of its GDP within 5 feet of 2021 sea level will unilaterally decide to stop global warming in the next 50 years. Maybe it's not a logical move, maybe it's already too late to save their cities, maybe it won't stop millions from dying of heat or famine, but it will be the politically savvy move of the leaders of desperate people. The decision won't be made by a bunch of rich people sitting around a nice clean table in an air conditioned room in the US or EU. The political backlash of not asking permission weighs far less than not doing it. What does this pandora's box prospect really mean for the future? If not handled carefully then we may face even more serious ecological collapse (a la Snowpiercer). I don't think that's very likely. I think we'll see a more tempered implementation that will take a while to cool the planet. That meets the political demands of the desperate people while trying to appease the angry neighbors. The ice caps will still melt, the sea level will still rise 10 feet, and we'll still likely face ecological collapse from half a dozen different directions. Which directions we care about most will start to matter. Should we not even bother talking about them today since us, as rich air conditioned folks wouldn't even consider the option of reflective particles in the atmosphere? Or should we face the real possibility and begin planning contingencies for it?

nabergh 5y ago
I'm curious which method you're referring to when you talk about one country unilaterally stopping global warming.
- taktoa 5y ago
  Stratospheric sulfur dioxide injection is one option

jiggawatts 5y ago

> It's surreal. It's also most certainly not the only example of such behaviour. My personal favourite to use on people with an IT background is IPv4 exhaustion. Global warming is related to the finite capacity of the atmosphere to absorb an excess pollutant, which is growing exponentially thanks to a burgeoning human population. Address exhaustion is due to a finite resource being exhausted due to an increasing population of people with networked devices. Both are slow-motion, global-scale disasters. Both have no clear deadline or dramatic event. Neither has any immediacy, it's all just graphs trending the wrong way. Just like how no individual or enterprise profits from fixing global warming, nobody profits from fixing IPv4. If you make a personal sacrifice to give up IPv4, nobody will reward you. In both cases, the incumbents are hoarding resources, and trying to stave of the inevitable change that will devalue their accumulated capital. IPv4 has become a commodity resource traded on markets, to be hoovered up by mega-corporations to fend off smaller players from competing head to head with them. Do you think Saudi Aramco will just let go of their trillion dollars of unexploited oil fields? Do you think Azure or AWS will just give up on their millions of accumulated addresses? There is one key difference however: Global warming has some legitimate debate about its exact course: what specific path the curve will follow, and which model is accurate. IPv4 exhaustion had no debate whatsoever. The exhaustion of each regional pool was predicted to the week, years ahead. Each one occurred exactly on schedule. What have YOU done to "save the world"? What have you sacrificed, personally to enable IPv6-only networking? You have no excuses, you can't even say you didn't see it coming! So: Have you forced your company to upgrade to IPv6? Have you written your software to work flawlessly in an IPv6-only network? Have you made it a hard requirement for all networked products you purchase or use to be IPv6 native? No, no you haven't. Azure doesn't support IPv6 in any meaningful way. Neither does any other major cloud provider. It's an add on. An optional extra, that may or may not work. Kubernetes, the "future", does not support IPv6 right now, 21 years after it became widely available, and years after several regions dropped below their last /8 of available address space. "It would be a lot of work to add IPv6 support" I hear people complaining. Oh... oh wow. Gee. Golly. I didn't know! I take it all back. Let's just stay on IPv4 forever and use NAT five layers deep. I hear Global Warming is going to take a lot of work to fix also. Let's just all buy air conditioners and never venture outside again.

john579 5y ago

Higher amounts of carbon dioxide and warmer temperatures are excellent for plant growth. A greener earth and more wildlife is paradise on earth. I wish it was true, but unfortunately people easily fall for propaganda. They will end up climate engineering us into an ice age and destroying civilization in the process. Take a deep breath, relax, and look forward to the warmer climate forecast for your future: an eternity in hell.

noxer 5y ago

Daily reminder that all the emission reduced by the complete "western" world (the rest doesn't care about the green move) in the last years was all reversed by the additional emission of a single Asian country (China) and this does not even include the grows in emissions in other fast growing places like India. The whole green move is a lie. There is no evidence that any of that has any relevant positive effect. And no, "we tried" or "a little bit is better than nothing", is not a valid argument all the efforts combined effects are within the margin of error for our predictions so we dont even know if or how much it makes a different. The only way forward that makes sense is the one humans always did - technological progress. fusion reactors for example. Imagine what we could have by now if all that effort (financial) would have been used to actually find better ways to do the things that cause the pollution rather than making people feel bad for doing what they have to do survive. But instead our politics puts money into nonsensical "progress" like for example replacing a certain % or fuel with biofuel which is know to be energy-negative. It needs more energy to produce than it gives back (not true if made form waste biomass but true if its made from crops planted for this.)