7 ms·

Climate change risk assessment 2021 [pdf]

39 points by hh3k0 5y ago

rwmj 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House "Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an independent policy institute headquartered in London. Its mission is to provide authoritative commentary on world events and offer solutions to global challenges. It is the originator of the Chatham House Rule. Its presidents are Alistair Darling and John Major."
- junon 5y ago
  Reading the wikipedia page, I'm highly skeptical of the validity of anything that comes out of that org.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
secnono 5y ago
Not one mention of phytoplankton, responsible for between 50 and 80% of oxygen in the atmosphere. We're doomed.
- bryanlarsen 5y ago
  Actually, I think it's more of a problem that we're not doomed. Us rich people living in rich temperate countries with good barriers between us and the poor countries will be "fine" (https://giphy.com/explore/everything-is-fine https://giphy.com/explore/everything-is-fine) We'll hide in our air-conditioned houses, eat greenhouse grown food since the natural environment is fucked, playing with our robot factory produced toys. Life will suck, but we'll be "fine". We'll be spending tens of trillions on flood barriers and other mitigation measures, but we'll be "fine". Most of us anyways, super storms will definitely get some of us. Others will die on the borders defending the rest of us from climate refugees. But most of us will be "fine". Anybody or anything else that isn't a homo sapiens living in a rich temperate nation will be doomed.
  - rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
    Fascists are close to take power in some Europeans countries just because they had to accept a few dozens thousands of migrants from Syria/Afghanistan. And you expect rich countries to stand when dozens if not hundreds of millions of people will have to leave their countries? There would be mass murder for the rich to keep doing business as usual.
    - bryanlarsen 5y ago
      Sure, we'll be "fine" under our fascist dictators who will be fine mass murdering refugees on the border. You are familiar with the "everything is fine" GIF I linked, right?
  - dchapp 5y ago
    Suppose all of those mitigations in your second paragraph are true. If phytoplankton die off in meaningful amounts, where will we get our oxygen?
    - frazbin 5y ago
      We have thousands of years of oxygen banked in the atmosphere so it's not an issue on the same time scale as co2
      - dchapp 5y ago
        Thanks! Since this was not obvious to me (and maybe isn't to others) here's a summary that cleared things up for me: https://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/citizenscientist/oxygen-in-the-atmosphere/ https://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/citizenscientist/oxygen-in-t...
stavros 5y ago
Fucking hell, widespread famines in 20 years and a 7° C temperature increase. We're fucked very, very soon.
- reducesuffering 5y ago
  More precisely it says: "Any relapse or stasis in emissions reduction policies could lead to a plausible worst case of 7°C of warming by the end of the century (10 per cent chance)."
  - tamaharbor 5y ago
    The economic ramifications of increased emissions reduction will fuck us as well.
    - haimez 5y ago
      > The economic ramifications of increased emissions reduction will fuck us as well. So are you proposing that the best course of action is to literally do nothing because of the economic ramifications? This is the obviously important question and the fact that you chose not to address it is at best: lazy, but at worst and most likely: negligent. There will be economic ramifications no matter what we do. Society needs to make hard decisions about what positive actions to take, including inaction, and there are no easy answers. Please try harder in the future to avoid being flippant and/or partisan and also aim to meaningfully engage with the discussion about the problem at hand constructively.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
junon 5y ago
Can anyone more informed than I attest to the credibility of the institute behind this paper?
- eynsham 5y ago
  Chatham House is a perfectly respectable part (perhaps the most prestigious—they’ve a nice place next to the London Library) of the (British) blob. Whether that lends itself to credibility is of course another matter and I won’t pretend to be able to answer it in one comment. But they don’t generally lack competent analysts or anything like that.
curiousgal 5y ago
I think one of the reasons governments are reluctant to act is because most of the models used to calculate the social cost of carbons are based on Integrated Assessment Models [0] which are very limited. The effects of climate change are not fully understood and we need our brightest minds to be working on that instead of how to sell us more ads. Just my 2c. 0.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_assessment_modelling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_assessment_modell...
- rapind 5y ago
  I mean if we all just stopped using advertising based products then they couldn’t afford to pay our best and brightest.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    That does not follow..
    - rapind 5y ago
      If no one uses Facebook, they can’t afford to pay the brightest engineers. Same for Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Obviously not going to happen. I just don’t think it’s fair to put the onus on the workers instead of the consumers who enable the business model.
      - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
        Facebook/google/etc. don't have to be add funded. Microsoft employs great people too, they charge money for their products instead of duping people into sharing data, a much fairer business practice in my mind. Put it another way: the fastest money you can make is by drug dealing, if there are no drug addicts we can't pay our brightest!
- nikhilsimha 5y ago
  I read the last sentence as "Just my 2°C". I blame it on the over use of 2°C in all these reports.
the_third_wave 5y ago
From Malthus through the Club of Rome and now this Chatham House there is an ongoing stream of dire predictions of apocalyptic events, none of which have come to pass. The same will be true for this report and - and this is the unfortunate part - nothing will be learned from yet another failed prediction of doomsday which evens the path for the next iteration of this cycle. In 20 years the world will mostly look like it does now, give or take the results of a few international conflicts and natural disasters. Some parts will have progressed in some way, other parts will have regressed in some way, the rest will be comparable to the way it looks now. The temperature will be different, possibly somewhat warmer unless an as of yet unknown factor ends up playing a role in the fluctuations of the climate - e.g. an increase in albedo due to an increase in cloud cover, changing ocean currents, etc. Meanwhile the public has to absorb yet another failed prediction of doomsday, leading to an even lower trust in these types of predictions. What was gained, other than giving Chatham House a place at the table? What is to happen if there is some real emergency - an incoming asteroid is detected, there ae real signs of a supervolcano on the verge of eruption - and people ignore it as yet another piece of panic porn?
- golemotron 5y ago
  > Henny Penny, more commonly known in the United States as Chicken Little and sometimes as Chicken Licken, is a European folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes that the world is coming to an end. The phrase "The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Similar stories go back more than 25 centuries; it continues to be referred to in a variety of media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny 25 centuries.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tuatoru 5y ago
  IMO the new thing in this report is the emphasis on the likelihood of multi-region simultaneous crop failure - the "expert panel elicitation". That should feed into agricultural policy, and possibly into funding for research on heat-, drought-, and flood-tolerant varieties of key grain crops. More funding might also be put into staying on top of crop disease outbreaks, no matter where they appear in the world. With luck it feeds into funding for artificial meat and dairy, and puts an end to our brutal use of intelligent animals. (Disclosure: I work in the meat industry. Cattle/hogs/chickens are not the only animals brutally used.) I doubt an average member of the public has heard of Chatham House, but they are well known and respected in policy-making circles.
squid_demon 5y ago
Immediate action! Some person actually told me that Florida would be underwater in less than ten years now (I guess it kind of already is with all the hurricanes). Eagerly awaiting the excuses when that time passes us all by. Does this document apply to US (which is a mere tiny fraction of a percent of overall pollution)? Not sure how acting now would have any impact.

39 points by hh3k0 5y ago

rwmj 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatham_House "Chatham House, also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs, is an independent policy institute headquartered in London. Its mission is to provide authoritative commentary on world events and offer solutions to global challenges. It is the originator of the Chatham House Rule. Its presidents are Alistair Darling and John Major."

junon 5y ago
Reading the wikipedia page, I'm highly skeptical of the validity of anything that comes out of that org.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

secnono 5y ago

Not one mention of phytoplankton, responsible for between 50 and 80% of oxygen in the atmosphere. We're doomed.

bryanlarsen 5y ago
Actually, I think it's more of a problem that we're not doomed. Us rich people living in rich temperate countries with good barriers between us and the poor countries will be "fine" (https://giphy.com/explore/everything-is-fine https://giphy.com/explore/everything-is-fine) We'll hide in our air-conditioned houses, eat greenhouse grown food since the natural environment is fucked, playing with our robot factory produced toys. Life will suck, but we'll be "fine". We'll be spending tens of trillions on flood barriers and other mitigation measures, but we'll be "fine". Most of us anyways, super storms will definitely get some of us. Others will die on the borders defending the rest of us from climate refugees. But most of us will be "fine". Anybody or anything else that isn't a homo sapiens living in a rich temperate nation will be doomed.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  Fascists are close to take power in some Europeans countries just because they had to accept a few dozens thousands of migrants from Syria/Afghanistan. And you expect rich countries to stand when dozens if not hundreds of millions of people will have to leave their countries? There would be mass murder for the rich to keep doing business as usual.
  - bryanlarsen 5y ago
    Sure, we'll be "fine" under our fascist dictators who will be fine mass murdering refugees on the border. You are familiar with the "everything is fine" GIF I linked, right?
- dchapp 5y ago
  Suppose all of those mitigations in your second paragraph are true. If phytoplankton die off in meaningful amounts, where will we get our oxygen?
  - frazbin 5y ago
    We have thousands of years of oxygen banked in the atmosphere so it's not an issue on the same time scale as co2
    - dchapp 5y ago
      Thanks! Since this was not obvious to me (and maybe isn't to others) here's a summary that cleared things up for me: https://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/citizenscientist/oxygen-in-the-atmosphere/ https://blogs.nicholas.duke.edu/citizenscientist/oxygen-in-t...

stavros 5y ago

Fucking hell, widespread famines in 20 years and a 7° C temperature increase. We're fucked very, very soon.

reducesuffering 5y ago
More precisely it says: "Any relapse or stasis in emissions reduction policies could lead to a plausible worst case of 7°C of warming by the end of the century (10 per cent chance)."
- tamaharbor 5y ago
  The economic ramifications of increased emissions reduction will fuck us as well.
  - haimez 5y ago
    > The economic ramifications of increased emissions reduction will fuck us as well. So are you proposing that the best course of action is to literally do nothing because of the economic ramifications? This is the obviously important question and the fact that you chose not to address it is at best: lazy, but at worst and most likely: negligent. There will be economic ramifications no matter what we do. Society needs to make hard decisions about what positive actions to take, including inaction, and there are no easy answers. Please try harder in the future to avoid being flippant and/or partisan and also aim to meaningfully engage with the discussion about the problem at hand constructively.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

junon 5y ago

Can anyone more informed than I attest to the credibility of the institute behind this paper?

eynsham 5y ago
Chatham House is a perfectly respectable part (perhaps the most prestigious—they’ve a nice place next to the London Library) of the (British) blob. Whether that lends itself to credibility is of course another matter and I won’t pretend to be able to answer it in one comment. But they don’t generally lack competent analysts or anything like that.

curiousgal 5y ago

I think one of the reasons governments are reluctant to act is because most of the models used to calculate the social cost of carbons are based on Integrated Assessment Models [0] which are very limited. The effects of climate change are not fully understood and we need our brightest minds to be working on that instead of how to sell us more ads. Just my 2c. 0.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_assessment_modelling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_assessment_modell...

rapind 5y ago
I mean if we all just stopped using advertising based products then they couldn’t afford to pay our best and brightest.
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  That does not follow..
  - rapind 5y ago
    If no one uses Facebook, they can’t afford to pay the brightest engineers. Same for Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. Obviously not going to happen. I just don’t think it’s fair to put the onus on the workers instead of the consumers who enable the business model.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Facebook/google/etc. don't have to be add funded. Microsoft employs great people too, they charge money for their products instead of duping people into sharing data, a much fairer business practice in my mind. Put it another way: the fastest money you can make is by drug dealing, if there are no drug addicts we can't pay our brightest!
nikhilsimha 5y ago
I read the last sentence as "Just my 2°C". I blame it on the over use of 2°C in all these reports.

the_third_wave 5y ago

From Malthus through the Club of Rome and now this Chatham House there is an ongoing stream of dire predictions of apocalyptic events, none of which have come to pass. The same will be true for this report and - and this is the unfortunate part - nothing will be learned from yet another failed prediction of doomsday which evens the path for the next iteration of this cycle. In 20 years the world will mostly look like it does now, give or take the results of a few international conflicts and natural disasters. Some parts will have progressed in some way, other parts will have regressed in some way, the rest will be comparable to the way it looks now. The temperature will be different, possibly somewhat warmer unless an as of yet unknown factor ends up playing a role in the fluctuations of the climate - e.g. an increase in albedo due to an increase in cloud cover, changing ocean currents, etc. Meanwhile the public has to absorb yet another failed prediction of doomsday, leading to an even lower trust in these types of predictions. What was gained, other than giving Chatham House a place at the table? What is to happen if there is some real emergency - an incoming asteroid is detected, there ae real signs of a supervolcano on the verge of eruption - and people ignore it as yet another piece of panic porn?

golemotron 5y ago
> Henny Penny, more commonly known in the United States as Chicken Little and sometimes as Chicken Licken, is a European folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes that the world is coming to an end. The phrase "The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Similar stories go back more than 25 centuries; it continues to be referred to in a variety of media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henny_Penny 25 centuries.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tuatoru 5y ago
IMO the new thing in this report is the emphasis on the likelihood of multi-region simultaneous crop failure - the "expert panel elicitation". That should feed into agricultural policy, and possibly into funding for research on heat-, drought-, and flood-tolerant varieties of key grain crops. More funding might also be put into staying on top of crop disease outbreaks, no matter where they appear in the world. With luck it feeds into funding for artificial meat and dairy, and puts an end to our brutal use of intelligent animals. (Disclosure: I work in the meat industry. Cattle/hogs/chickens are not the only animals brutally used.) I doubt an average member of the public has heard of Chatham House, but they are well known and respected in policy-making circles.

squid_demon 5y ago

Immediate action! Some person actually told me that Florida would be underwater in less than ten years now (I guess it kind of already is with all the hurricanes). Eagerly awaiting the excuses when that time passes us all by. Does this document apply to US (which is a mere tiny fraction of a percent of overall pollution)? Not sure how acting now would have any impact.