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> As it will get hotter, hundreds of millions will die of heat stroke and water and food shortages We used to die in droves from heatwaves and water and food s

> As it will get hotter, hundreds of millions will die of heat stroke and water and food shortages We used to die in droves from heatwaves and water and food shortages, but we don't anymore, because of technology. Is increased CO2 going to harm crop yields? No, it's the opposite. Was increased CO2 bad for life on ancient earth? No, it was the opposite -- earth used to be an endless jungle teeming with life. It seems to me like some people want to mess around with the climate because they imagine some neo-Malthusian horror story about the future, like we won't use technology to adapt. But they don't want to call themselves nature obstructionists, like I suggested elsewhere, because they insist that the warming is the fault of humans, despite the fact that the climate seemed due to warm up anyway, even if all humans had been wiped out by a plague in the year 1000 or whatever, since it had been in the Scotese "ice box" stage.

tsimionescu 5y ago
We still die because of heatwaves and water and food shortages. It doesn't happen so much in the colonial empires of Europe and the USA, but it is still happening in most other places on Earth. Any attempt to export the lifestyle of average US and European citizens to the billions of other people would accelerate the problem even more, requiring an ever-increased rate of energy use to maintain livable conditions. The solution is precisely the opposite: dial down energy use (from all sources - industry, consumerism, travel etc) in the parts that consume too much. Increased CO2 is creating higher temperatures, which in turn is disrupting temperature-regulation mechanisms everywhere on earth - leading not only to higher temperatures, but to more temperature variability throughout the year, more than has been seen in 10,000 years. It's also leading to more water remaining trapped as vapor, creating longer and more devastating droughts. > Was increased CO2 bad for life on ancient earth? No, it was the opposite -- earth used to be an endless jungle teeming with life. This only happens if forests and jungles are allowed to grow to use up the extra CO2. The opposite is happening today: everywhere in the world, jungles and forests are being actively cut down and the land cleared for agricultural use - capturing significantly less CO2 than an entire forest ecosystem. > because they insist that the warming is the fault of humans, despite the fact that the climate seemed due to warm up anyway They insist on this because we can actually quantify almost precisely how this is the fault of human activity. The rate of global warming is almost perfectly matched to greenhouse gas emissions. Historical ice age / warm age models entirely fail to account for this miraculous coincidence, and are in fact propaganda held up by massive industrial and financial interests that have an institutional lack of care for the long-term viability of current societies.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  The solution is precisely the opposite: dial down energy use (from all sources - industry, consumerism, travel etc) in the parts that consume too much. The solution to the risk of societal decline is to force society to decline? No. The solution is to make clean energy (solar, nuclear, etc.) abundant to the point that everyone has more energy available than they know what to do with. We have the scale to change the climate of the entire planet, and the technology to understand that we are doing so. We undoubtedly have the ability to overcome this hurdle, just like the many hurdles faced by humanity before. And yet people's first thought is, "My life is too good, let's (let everyone else but me) go back to subsistence farming and dying of cholera." Nature is indifferent to us. It will not provide for us if we just let it do its thing, with or without CO2 emissions. Its fragility is a problem to be engineered through, not a call to abandon all progress. The solution is to double down on the technological sophistication that allowed for all modern life, not to give up at the first hint of a real challenge.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Fossil fuels have energy densities far in excess of anything except nuclear energy. There is no way for the world to continue consuming as much energy as it is today, with current technologies, but without burning more fossil fuels. There is no fast enough solution to sequester carbon. Remember that, to avoid the bad effects of global warming (1 degree warming), we should have stopped net production of CO2 into the atmosphere entirely a few years ago. From now on, we can only hope to avoid the catastrophic effects of 2+ degrees warming, and the Paris accords, even if they were followed, would not even achieve that. Not to mention, global transportation is currently impossible without fossil fuels, in the current volumes - there is no way to have cargo ships and cargo planes and cargo trucks that deliver anywhere near as much as today without burning fossil fuels, and even futuristic batteries are not going to change that. So, the only possible solution is to reduce our economies in the developed world. We are anyways consuming far, far in excess of needs, to the benefit of no one except the Apples and Amazons and Huaweis of the world. I'm not talking about food necessarily, but much more about goods - changing phones every year, changing cars every 3-5, new computers, new plastic crap, new clothes, new appliances etc. All of this contraction will happen. We can taper off slowly over the next 50 years (?), or keep going at full throttle and have a massive crash. Unless we believe in some magical technology that will somehow create clean energy out of nothing without putting carbon in the air for mining and production, there is no changing this simple reality. Perhaps if we had started seriously investing in renewables 50 years ago when the problem was first discovered, we could have actually built enough to avoid this. Alas, companies who knew chose to bury it, and scientists who knew chose to keep quiet.
davidhbolton 5y ago
Cold is still the big killer. 20x that of heat. According to this scientific study. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.h... "Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings, published in The Lancet, also reveal that deaths due to moderately hot or cold weather substantially exceed those resulting from extreme heat waves or cold spells."

tsimionescu 5y ago

We still die because of heatwaves and water and food shortages. It doesn't happen so much in the colonial empires of Europe and the USA, but it is still happening in most other places on Earth. Any attempt to export the lifestyle of average US and European citizens to the billions of other people would accelerate the problem even more, requiring an ever-increased rate of energy use to maintain livable conditions. The solution is precisely the opposite: dial down energy use (from all sources - industry, consumerism, travel etc) in the parts that consume too much. Increased CO2 is creating higher temperatures, which in turn is disrupting temperature-regulation mechanisms everywhere on earth - leading not only to higher temperatures, but to more temperature variability throughout the year, more than has been seen in 10,000 years. It's also leading to more water remaining trapped as vapor, creating longer and more devastating droughts. > Was increased CO2 bad for life on ancient earth? No, it was the opposite -- earth used to be an endless jungle teeming with life. This only happens if forests and jungles are allowed to grow to use up the extra CO2. The opposite is happening today: everywhere in the world, jungles and forests are being actively cut down and the land cleared for agricultural use - capturing significantly less CO2 than an entire forest ecosystem. > because they insist that the warming is the fault of humans, despite the fact that the climate seemed due to warm up anyway They insist on this because we can actually quantify almost precisely how this is the fault of human activity. The rate of global warming is almost perfectly matched to greenhouse gas emissions. Historical ice age / warm age models entirely fail to account for this miraculous coincidence, and are in fact propaganda held up by massive industrial and financial interests that have an institutional lack of care for the long-term viability of current societies.

nitrogen 5y ago
The solution is precisely the opposite: dial down energy use (from all sources - industry, consumerism, travel etc) in the parts that consume too much. The solution to the risk of societal decline is to force society to decline? No. The solution is to make clean energy (solar, nuclear, etc.) abundant to the point that everyone has more energy available than they know what to do with. We have the scale to change the climate of the entire planet, and the technology to understand that we are doing so. We undoubtedly have the ability to overcome this hurdle, just like the many hurdles faced by humanity before. And yet people's first thought is, "My life is too good, let's (let everyone else but me) go back to subsistence farming and dying of cholera." Nature is indifferent to us. It will not provide for us if we just let it do its thing, with or without CO2 emissions. Its fragility is a problem to be engineered through, not a call to abandon all progress. The solution is to double down on the technological sophistication that allowed for all modern life, not to give up at the first hint of a real challenge.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Fossil fuels have energy densities far in excess of anything except nuclear energy. There is no way for the world to continue consuming as much energy as it is today, with current technologies, but without burning more fossil fuels. There is no fast enough solution to sequester carbon. Remember that, to avoid the bad effects of global warming (1 degree warming), we should have stopped net production of CO2 into the atmosphere entirely a few years ago. From now on, we can only hope to avoid the catastrophic effects of 2+ degrees warming, and the Paris accords, even if they were followed, would not even achieve that. Not to mention, global transportation is currently impossible without fossil fuels, in the current volumes - there is no way to have cargo ships and cargo planes and cargo trucks that deliver anywhere near as much as today without burning fossil fuels, and even futuristic batteries are not going to change that. So, the only possible solution is to reduce our economies in the developed world. We are anyways consuming far, far in excess of needs, to the benefit of no one except the Apples and Amazons and Huaweis of the world. I'm not talking about food necessarily, but much more about goods - changing phones every year, changing cars every 3-5, new computers, new plastic crap, new clothes, new appliances etc. All of this contraction will happen. We can taper off slowly over the next 50 years (?), or keep going at full throttle and have a massive crash. Unless we believe in some magical technology that will somehow create clean energy out of nothing without putting carbon in the air for mining and production, there is no changing this simple reality. Perhaps if we had started seriously investing in renewables 50 years ago when the problem was first discovered, we could have actually built enough to avoid this. Alas, companies who knew chose to bury it, and scientists who knew chose to keep quiet.

davidhbolton 5y ago

Cold is still the big killer. 20x that of heat. According to this scientific study. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.h... "Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings, published in The Lancet, also reveal that deaths due to moderately hot or cold weather substantially exceed those resulting from extreme heat waves or cold spells."