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What 3°C of global warming looks like

159 points by esarbe 5y ago

yummybear 5y ago
What would everyday life look like for a westener if we target 1.5-2 degrees? Can we eat meat? Drive cars? Heat houses?
- timbit42 5y ago
  There are much less CO2 and methane producing ways to do each of those. Pork produces less than beef, chicken less than pork, fish less than chicken. Smaller, more fuel (whether gasoline or electric) efficient vehicles, public transportation, bicycling (like an Organic Transit ELF or a Better Bikes PEBL) produce less than SUVs. In ground or air-to-air heat pumps produce less than electric baseboards, oil furnances or wood stoves.
more_corn 5y ago
It might be better for everyone if we ignore paywalled sources and post content from open news sources.
- orangeoxidation 5y ago
  The side is doing nothing but embedding this YouTube video https://youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo https://youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo
- mnd999 5y ago
  I disagree. Quality is hard to measure in journalism and it’s definitely not as simple as free = bad, paid = good (or the reverse). I don’t consider asking for money for writing to be a big negative, folks gotta earn a living somehow.
Proven 5y ago
These people really are morons.... Why not 4C, or 2.5C? It's like the Fed targeting 2% inflation. Just a bunch of bullshit.
- joeberon 5y ago
  What are you talking about??
  - threatofrain 5y ago
    There's no need to respond to an account that just talks at people, as you can see from their account history.
    - joeberon 5y ago
      I don't stalk people's account histories every time I reply to them. Do you expect me to?
      - threatofrain 5y ago
        Do you expect me to have expectations for you? Also, using a term like "stalking" is quite morally judgmental. Did you forget that we are all proudly posting on a forum with Permanently Public History?
        joeberon 5y ago
        You are imposing your beliefs on me.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        ctdonath 5y ago
        We do find it odd how some will dig into a poser's history for the apparent purpose of rendering judgement on those expressing diverse views.
        threatofrain 5y ago
        We find something odd? Since you are "apparently" interested in diverse views, what is wrong with oddity, and in this case, the oddity of interpreting text in context of permanently public historical output? Note that I have pointed to no specific views, and instead solely point at the activity of talking at people. Is this the diverse view you mean?
melling 5y ago
A higher temperature than what we want is almost a given. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/01/climate-optimism-is-an-illusion-un-chief-tells-cop26 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/01/climate-... China is talking 2060 for net zero. India is talking 2070: https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/live/2021/nov/01/cop26-begins-world-leaders-glasgow-climate-crisis-live https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/live/2021/nov/01/cop... The United States is claiming by 2050 but there seems to be no actual political ability to meet that.
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  Politicians "committing" to things that will happen after they are out of office, are mostly just saying pretty words.
  - munk-a 5y ago
    It's definitely tough to have confidence in these sorts of statements - but I just wish we'd get beyond the people who actively fight against even the probably empty promises.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      I do too, but I think that “empty promises” empower them. I also agree with Andrew Sullivan (https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/how-to-turn-the-gop-green-dae https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/how-to-turn-the-gop-gr...) that conservatives could be persuaded to support climate initiatives if we on the left allow ourselves to prioritize climate above our own tribalism tendencies (those who would reply, “But conservatives aren’t prioritizing climate over tribalism” are missing the point entirely).
      - munk-a 5y ago
        I would say, that in America at least, flip-flopping is only viewed as an insult by conservatives though. People criticized Biden over his busing policies during the election, but nobody critized the fact that he changed his mind on the topic, people discussed how he "grew". I know there are extremist pockets on both sides of the aisle - but I don't think the majority of liberals would really prefer a gotcha "I told you so" moment over actually getting meaningful policies done. I've always viewed it more as an unfortunate coincidence[1] that social conservatism was so closely tied to climate change denial. In theory those folks wanting to make sure their children can hunt and hike like they did growing up should be strongly set in favour of preserving an environment where that remains a possibility. Instead we have the media pushing this shallow form of conservatism where we specifically want to preserve the unsustainable post-war boom years where every river had a paper mill on it, every driveway had two cars (except they didn't and they weren't SUVs) and nobody realized what the consequences of that were. How do you overcome conservative media when it's pushing such a strong agenda? Inviting them over for tea isn't going to cause a sea-change. 1. Sorta - I think some folks worked hard to make sure this happened.
exhibitapp 5y ago
https://archive.fo/4wQBC https://archive.fo/4wQBC
philipkglass 5y ago
The article body is just an introduction to this video, freely viewable on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo
davidw 5y ago
People won't even wear masks during a pandemic caused by an airborne pathogen for political reasons. I feel pretty hopeless about any meaningful action on climate change, so I suppose the best route is to try and live in a place that will adapt well, but that's tough to figure out. Here in Oregon a lot of people thought ... well, maybe our climate might be a bit warmer or even 'nicer'? But the reality is that every summer, massive forest fires are making the air unbreathable.
- altcognito 5y ago
  Those forests will thin out, a new normal will be found.
  - saboot 5y ago
    A new normal will always be found. Whether it's compatible with humanity though ...
  - buu700 5y ago
    I kind of like the current normal that includes humans.
  - graeme 5y ago
    A normal requires fairly stable conditions. Constantly changing conditions means constant flux.
    - criddell 5y ago
      Instability could be the new normal.
  - barbazoo 5y ago
    A lot of wood has to burn for forests to "thin out". That's decades of unbreathable air during the summer months.
    - ByersReason 5y ago
WhompingWindows 5y ago
I worry that part of the reason some Americans don't fear climate change is: 3 degrees Fahrenheit is only 1.67 Celsius, so Americans might be practically understanding the warming as "half" of what other countries/people think. The counter-argument: surely Americans are informed enough to understand the phrase "1.5 degrees of warming" means Celsius...I'm not confident average Americans know that. I'm not sure the science education is up to snuff in the USA. The Americans who don't consider climate change a big deal, generally live in the interior of the country without as many severe weather events. Generally speaking, these folks are misinformed voters and it's hurting our climate policy. They think: Why should they care about "3 degrees of [Fahrenheit] warming", especially because there's no fires or storms near them?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- criddell 5y ago
  > these folks are misinformed voters and it's hurting our climate policy For the electorate it isn't really a matter of information or education. People have things they care about more or are vote based on emotion. In a way it's like trying to use logic to convince somebody to support The Atlanta Braves rather than the Yankees. They didn't get there through a process of logic and isn't logic that's going to change them.
  - WhompingWindows 5y ago
    Doesn't it matter if they think it's 1.5 degrees or 3 degrees of warming? Doesn't that 1.67X change their perspective substantially?
    - spiderice 5y ago
      What on earth are you talking about? You literally made up the 1.5 vs 3 degrees thing above, and now you're basing your argument on that being true, despite you having made it up moments ago. Do you have a single source that says "Americans think climate change is only half as bad because of F vs C"? Personally I doubt that a meaningful percent of Americans (or people anywhere) even know this "3" number to begin with, let alone the unit. This isn't something most people are focused on.
lambdaba 5y ago
I've heard a figure citing world GDP growth forecasted at 450% without factoring the costs of climate change, and 415% deducting the costs. If this reflects the consensus, why isn't anyone talking about this? The impression we sometimes get is that the forecast is total collapse.
- foolfoolz 5y ago
  because “total collapse” is the scare tactic so it gets views. in reality this apocalyptic foreshadowing just erodes trust in climate science. the news has played chicken little with climate articles for decades. people are desensitized at best and no longer believe it at worst. climate change has a severe messaging problem
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  If you came across the forecast, someone is obviously talking about it. But if you stay in more liberal bubbles you are going to get more Democratic (liberal? progressive? idk the groupings) information. If one is trying to stop climate change, you are going to fail to persuade a large portion of people with showing how little it will affect GDP.
- wbeckler 5y ago
  Maybe mass starvation and wars are not projected to impact GDP, because it's mostly going to affect people living in Africa.
- downWidOutaFite 5y ago
  Care to share that forecast?
merpnderp 5y ago
We've already had 1.5C of that 3C increase, which mostly happened over 80 of the last 140 years. I'm not sure that saying "we're about to have the same amount of warming we just had for the last few generations" is a real rallying cry to action. Maybe stop playing shell games with numbers and dates and just stick with what the IPCC says are the 2100 predictions. They're serious enough and don't make you look manipulative and untrustworthy.
rjzzleep 5y ago
The biggest problem with global warming is that it's such a stupid term. Global warming is only a small portion of a bunch of different kinds of abuse we put the planet through. Plastics, destruction of the ocean plankton, topsoil etc. have all conveniently been put into a single term called global warming, which is just one symptom of many things. As a result we still have these discussions whether global warming exists or not, when it's really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.
- tda 5y ago
  I disagree: the climate crisis is the single most scariest thing that we have done to our planet. Other forms of mass environmental destruction (next to what you mentioned also mass animal extinction,rainforest destruction,PFAS) are all horrible but are more of a temporal and localized nature. With enough will and effort they can all be addressed like the hole in the ozon layer. The climate crisis is already many decades in the making and cannot realistically be prevented. It is happening and the only question is not if but how much you will be impacted
- esarbe 5y ago
  Well, since 'global warming' is only concerned about the damage resulting from greenhouse gas emissions, that term is not to bad, actually. I like 'global warming' much better than the 'green'washed term 'climate change' we've had to use in the last 15 years because, you know, part of the earth got cooler, sometimes, and who even believes in 'global warming'? Even the term 'global warming' is/was considered political. What the heck... To collect all the consequences and processes you mentioned, I usually like to use the term "predatory ecosystem exploitation", because that pretty much describes what we're doing to our life support system.
  - ihumanable 5y ago
    Climate Change is a reaction to people going, "There's still snow" or "There's a polar vortex in Texas" and using cold weather (driven by Climate Change) to argue against Global Warning. It makes sense as when most lay people think of "warming" in connection with the "global climate" they likely think "weather" and the idea that it will be 2-3 degrees "warmer" out doesn't seem like a big deal. 68F feels pretty close to 71F, no biggie. At a planet wide scale though, this is a huge amount of energy and causes a massive change in the climate. There's a lot of "greenwashing" in the world, but the term is generally applied to corporations that use "a form of marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization's products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly." The term "Climate Change" is the preferred term from the scientific community and isn't promoted by corporations to make themselves seem more green.
pfisherman 5y ago
One of the things that is most worrying about global warming to me is what a 3C increase on a planetary scale means for the very nature of the reality we experience. What impact will all that energy / entropy have on the probability distribution of possible events and states of our world? Will reality become less predictable?
- desertraven 5y ago
  Intriguing... can you elaborate or give some context to this?
  - pfisherman 5y ago
    I think that global warming is generally hard for people to wrap their heads around because it is a planetary scale event, and our consciousness experiences the universe on a much smaller scale. Imo, the best way to reason about the impact in our daily lives is to think about systems that exist in much smaller spacetime scales than ourselves. So in this case statistical mechanics. What happens to the atoms or molecules of a system when you dump a bunch of heat into it? What might that look like at the scale of individual atoms and molecules?
- what_is_orcas 5y ago
  Isn't that sort of already happening? This year we've seen floods in Germany, huge wildfires in the US west, snow in Texas (and the Pacific Northwest), storms up the US east coast (wasn't there flooding in New England, too?), and I'm sure other stuff I've either forgotten or not heard about. I think what's going to compound that is the push for "carbon neutrality", the idea that any emissions will be offset by... offsets (carbon capture, tree-planting, whatever). That tends to only be about the period of time from achieving carbon neutrality forward, but ignores the carbon emitted leading up to that milestone. I'm guessing that reaching carbon neutrality, for many industries, is not going to be a carbon-neutral mission. For example, if we want to move to electric vehicles prior to a carbon-neutral supply chain, then every EV build can have a significant carbon-footprint.
polote 5y ago
These one-sided apocalyptical type of content are useless: - They are porn for people who are already believer in global warming, and show more material to say "look that what I said will happen" without doing changing anything in their daily lives. - They are maybe right but display a false negative picture of what is going to happen for people who tend to deny global warming. The reality is we don't know what is going to happen, that's things we can't predict. So stop be sure about things, accept nuance. EDIT: I'm not saying we are powerless or don't know at all what is going to happen. We have a feeling of what is going to happen (temperature increase, sea level increase and other things) but we cannot accurately predict what, when and how this is going to happen
- saboot 5y ago
  The video is cheesy but to say we are powerless to predict and prepare, and hopefully mitigate, is nihilism and apathy.
  - xboxnolifes 5y ago
    Not once does the commenter suggest we cannot prepare or take action.
- esarbe 5y ago
  > already believer Hrm. So, if one follows the scientific consensus[0] and actually takes into consideration the political and social consequences of the scientific consensus one is a ... believer? I think at that point, you really have to ask yourself where the burden of proof really is. And if not the ones not-"believing" in the fact of global warming are the ones following some kind of believe system. > The reality is we don't know what is going to happen, that's things we can't predict. So stop be sure about things, accept nuance. Dude, that bullshit and you know it. We know what's happening. We've known it for a very long time. The scientists employed by companies like Exxon, BP, Total et all recognized in the seventies that there's a huge problem and that we are wreaking havoc with our dependence on fossil fuels. So don't 'We don't know what's happening" me. We know what's happening, we can model it and we can use these models to create predictions. And the picture is not nice, you know. Funny thing; the predictions by previously mentioned scientists from world-famous oil producers actually created very accurate models that hold up today. It's only political meddling that 'softened' these models to to make climate change and global warming not appear as drastic as it is. > doing changing anything in their daily lives. That's a fallacy. I can doing changing everything in my life and it will not change a iota. This is not some kind of personal responsibility-issue. This needs a concentrated global effort. Not some backyard hippies doing composting. [0] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-ag...
esarbe 5y ago
I'm very happy to see that the danger of climate change finally is being takes (somewhat) serious. We have known for the last fifty years that we are doing serious harm to our ecosystem and will run into disaster if we don't stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Exxon knew it by the 1970ies, so did Shell and Total and BP. How they have managed to hoodwink everyone into climate denialism[0] is beyond me, but I guess it has to do with the millions and millions that have been spent lobbying[1] local, national and global leaders. And that just illustrates the problem with our precious life support system[2]; it's a commons and as such not protected by anyone. If you can profit by externalizing costs created by damaging the ecosystem, it usually pays off. The damages will only appear years and years later and the perpetrators will all be long gone by the time the real consequences hit. Win-Win, I guess? Just imagine not having to pay the cleanup and reparation in the order of trillions of dollars and you _still_ get to keep the few billions you made? Amazing. If even economy-focused publications like .. well... The Economist are finally taking climate change serious, it makes me sad, because it just goes to show that the situation is dire indeed. Otherwise it would just be the Hippies that are concerned about 'Mothership Earth'. In the end I doubt that anything will change - but hey! - there's to hopin'. [0] Or as we nitpickers like to say; denial of the fact that the recent climatic changes have been caused by humans [1] bribing [2] Earth and it's diverse and wonderful ecosystems
emkoemko 5y ago
imagine how much extra energy that is, 3C increase sounds insane.
- clydethefrog 5y ago
  Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second. https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/earth-is-heating-at-a-rate-equivalent-to-five-atomic-bombs-per-second-or-two-hurricane-sandys/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/earth-is-heating-at-a-rate-e...
  - EForEndeavour 5y ago
    > It’s relatively easy to visualize five atomic bombs detonating every second Is it!?
  - emkoemko 5y ago
    wow...that is a lot, i think a lot of people don't understand what a 3c increase is, we need to explain it in term of energy.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    As I've read it described, we're boiling ourselves to economic prosperity...
  - vixen99 5y ago
    Not uniformly though. The last six months in the Antarctic were the coldest on record (1957) https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-cold-antarctica-climate-change/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-co...
    - inkywatcher 5y ago
      I think the lack of uniformity is a big part of many peoples' climate skepticism. Certainly it is a talking point. It seems like many people have too little imagination to comprehend climate science, much less the appetite to learn something inconvenient.
tamaharbor 5y ago
What did the dinosaurs do when this happened to them?
- TacticalCoder 5y ago
  They started reproducing less.
- timbit42 5y ago
  Most of them died off.
gmuslera 5y ago
It should be a lot of emergent weather events and other affected areas if global warming goes so high. The predictions of this article is pretty dry in that sense, sea rise, normal heatwaves, droughts, stronger storms, in general the same but stronger, more of it. It is a safe bet, but the global system is pretty complex and interconnected, and a big change will affect most subsystems in ways that it may not look so obvious now, but that will be in hindsight. We are already seeing some weird things, like the disruption of the polar vortex, the disproportionate heat near the poles where some of the most dangerous positive feedback loops happens, or the heath dome of some months ago, and still we are pretty low in the change scale. And all the road to any line set in the sand will be bumpy and with a lot of bad surprises. And it won't be an way back, only forward, no matter at which bad event people decide that it shouldn't happen again. We keep doing things worse, and faster than ever, there is no hope while no meaningful and disruptive actions are taken. But we will prefer to not cut our leg now, and be left having no way to stop our body dying later.
superflit2 5y ago
We could fix all with nuclear... Just saying.
- outside1234 5y ago
  This
- spywaregorilla 5y ago
  Nuclear is a good idea, but its hardly a silver bullet.
- missedthecue 5y ago
  Electric power generation accounts for only 25% of greenhouse gas emissions.
meibo 5y ago
No way we can stop this now - even with a New Zero Carbon breakthrough, like fusion. The people and entities that could fix this just don't have the incentives. See you all in 2050 in our CO2-filtered bedrooms :) Live your lives, folks, we only have so much of it. Earth is beautiful, take it in while you still can.
thriftwy 5y ago
This video can't stop showing foreign, poor rural people having problems. This is ideal content to get a lot of likes of pity but zero actual demand for policy changes. Everybody is going to assume somebody else has got to finally do something!
- vixen99 5y ago
  Best to ignore them if it upsets you. Foreigners? Poor? Rural? Ugh!
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    Average person watching this video likely already spends $0 of their monthly income towards supporting poor rural foreigners. How many times do you think that number will increase after watching it? You won't sell your elephant that way
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kyrra 5y ago
WSJ opinion pages has been publishing an alternate view to all of this that has at least been interesting. Specifically they have been articles by Bjørn Lomborg. NYTimes has covered one of his books before too: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/books/review/bjorn-lomborg-false-alarm-joseph-stiglitz.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/books/review/bjorn-lombor... My take on his view of all of this is that the climate is going to change, and trying to fight/reverse that is a losing battle. Rather, we should take a multi-pronged approach and attempt to move away from carbon based energy (using carbon tax), but also start working to build up our infrastructure to deal with the changes that climate change will bring. I think the point of his WSJ pieces is to point out that even the worst case scenario of the climate predictions aren't that bad, because people adapt to changes in their environment (humans are really good at this). Here are the 10 pieces he's written leading up to the climate conference going on right now: https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-natural-disasters-ahr-river-flood-germany-wildfire-risks-11628177742 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-natural-disaster... https://www.wsj.com/articles/flood-climate-change-ipcc-united-nations-infrastructure-deaths-cost-severe-weather-11631134276 https://www.wsj.com/articles/flood-climate-change-ipcc-unite... https://www.wsj.com/articles/hurricane-ida-henri-climate-change-united-nations-un-galsgow-conference-natural-disaster-infrastructure-carbon-emissions-11630704844 https://www.wsj.com/articles/hurricane-ida-henri-climate-cha... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-heat-cold-deaths-medical-journal-health-risk-energy-cost-fossil-fuels-11631741045 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-heat-cold-deaths... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-world-doomed-gdp-warming-earth-11632338084 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-world-doomed-gdp... https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdown-climate-fossil-fuels-electricity-energy-production-africa-carbon-emission-11632943155 https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdown-climate-fossil-f... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-malnutrition-regulation-economic-growth-glasgow-conference-11633551187 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-malnutrition-reg... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-cost-economy-emissions-tax-per-person-net-zero-joe-biden-11634159179 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-cost-economy-emi... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-adaptation-panic-exaggerating-disaster-11634760376 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-adaptation-panic... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-activists-blow-smoke-on-wildfire-fears-adaptation-land-11635367688 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-activists-blow-smoke-on...
maerF0x0 5y ago
Do we know if the cost to the economy of adapting to greener standards would cost more than supporting the adaptation of the poor to the new warmer world? I have often wondered if it just makes more sense to incentivize people to not live right on the places most likely to flood and hurricane? (and earthquake for that matter). just to stave off likely claims I am not saying we should prioritize the economy over people, but I am saying we should consider if we can positively address the catastrophe both more effectively (remove risk) and less drastically by directly addressing where people live.
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  Before making any suggestion, think if you would like it applied to you. If the answer is no, I call bullshit. First, because it is highly unfair and elitist, second because there's no reason to think that the "poors" would accept it any better than you would.
  - maerF0x0 5y ago
    I, and i think especially more poor people, would be willing to relocate to a better region if adequately compensated. I'm not calling for just telling people they cannot in low lying coastal places, but basically incentivizing a lot, very fairly, and telling the others they're now out of scope for emergency response (but retain their freedom of movement). I've had similar thoughts about how we (as humanity) tend to build big cities on some of the most fertile land just because agricultural success drew people proximally to those lands. But then we pave over fertile fields to put up offices that house people who just work on computers... We get sucked into local maxima and find it uneconomical to move out of it (or often an organizational issue where all have to move to not have massive first mover risks)
- sofixa 5y ago
  > I have often wondered if it just makes more sense to incentivize people to not live right on the places most likely to flood and hurricane? (and earthquake for that matter But that's not all the dangers. The heat dome over the Pacific Northwest this summer isn't something that can accurately be predicted.
Dig1t 5y ago
I'm somewhat confused as to why nobody ever seriously discusses geo engineering as a solution for these problems. If we could block some percentage of light from the sun hitting the earth would that not go a very long way in solving the problem?
- curtis3389 5y ago
  > We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. Generally, the hope is that we don't have to further destroy the world that we know to keep it from killing us.
- pietrovismara 5y ago
  No thanks, sounds too much like the matrix. This is the kind of irreversible action that could very easily destroy us. Before doing something like this I'd rather give up our modern lifestyle or reduce the global population by 3/4 with growth control.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    > reduce the global population by 3/4 with growth control. Given that most of the world's population is under 30 years old[0], even if you could get every country in the world to simultaneously ban child birth tomorrow, the world population wouldn't even halve by 2070. (You also need to take into account global life expectancy changes that far into the future[1]). [0] https://socialnomics.net/2010/04/13/over-50-of-the-worlds-population-is-under-30-social-media-on-the-rise/ https://socialnomics.net/2010/04/13/over-50-of-the-worlds-po... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/673420/projected-global-life-expectancy/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/673420/projected-global-...
    - tda 5y ago
      Better get on with it then. There is not a single solution, we must pursue each and every viable path. But in the meantime our religious leaders are still advocating against anti conception and against abortion. Reducing population growth will not magically solve anything, but ignoring it would be foolish IMHO
fleddr 5y ago
The situation looks dire, as people will resist changes to address this at every level. At the very top, there's nations. Whom are meeting as we speak at the climate summit. China and Russia aren't even there. For other participants, they're all eye balling each other to find the sweet spot where they do the least possible whilst not embarrassing themselves. There's the additional complexity of developing nations still using a lot of fossil fuels and feeling they have the right to continue this for a little longer, for historical reasons and due to wealth inequality. Which is a fair moral point, but the planet doesn't care. It's the tragedy of the commons. At the national level, we bash political leaders for ignoring the issue for decades but our anger is misplaced. As soon as any of these politicians propose meaningful reform, we vote them out. Because the measures obviously will be unpopular. Democracy is voting for what is popular for the coming 4 years, not for what is needed for the coming 10, 20, 50. We simply don't have the political system for that. At the people/individual level, group A full on denies the issue in the same way you can deny COVID or the earth being spherical. Group B deep down knows what's up yet still is unwilling to make a change, instead just wants to ride it out. Group C is on board with the issue and tries to live better, but it's still questionable if it's enough. Not at any level do we seem capable to solve a problem of this nature, as evidenced by decades of doing nothing regarding any ecological issue. A depressing personal example. One of my friends is the chair of a committee of apartment owners in an apartment complex. In this building live rich senior citizens. The committee votes on shared investments regarding the building. The building is old, poorly isolated and heating uses a lot of fossil energy. Its energy system clearly has to be redesigned at one point, hence my friend put months of work into a plan. Through government subsidy and very favorable capital lending, it would basically mean that the service fee would increase by a mere 120 euros per month for a fixed number of years (I think it was 5-10 years). This would completely redesign the energy system to not use any fossil energy at all, increase isolation whilst improving ventilation. The inhabitants massively rejected the proposal. These people are rich and already retired, with 100% economic security (government pension + private pension). It's a financial non-sacrifice. And still they reject it. They reject it still when explained that due to the rising fossil fuel prices, their monthly fee will soon be upped enough to match this investment fee. So in light of doing some tiny good for the future, part of which you will even live to see, at no meaningful personal sacrifice...the answer is still NO. We will continue our ways, and whatever problem comes from it, is for somebody else. This isn't some specific group of evil old people. These are lovely grandparents, people you admire and believe are kind and good hearted. Which means its me and you. It's typical of our species. The way I see it, we can't wait for any of the above people dynamics. Just print 100T$ in new money and get to work. Today. We'll figure it out along the way. It doesn't matter if its "not conventional". Conventional got us into this situation.
b3nji 5y ago
This is a fun list of all the predictions including current ones, and all the previous ones used to increase taxes that never came true. https://extinctionclock.org/ https://extinctionclock.org/

159 points by esarbe 5y ago

yummybear 5y ago

What would everyday life look like for a westener if we target 1.5-2 degrees? Can we eat meat? Drive cars? Heat houses?

timbit42 5y ago
There are much less CO2 and methane producing ways to do each of those. Pork produces less than beef, chicken less than pork, fish less than chicken. Smaller, more fuel (whether gasoline or electric) efficient vehicles, public transportation, bicycling (like an Organic Transit ELF or a Better Bikes PEBL) produce less than SUVs. In ground or air-to-air heat pumps produce less than electric baseboards, oil furnances or wood stoves.

more_corn 5y ago

It might be better for everyone if we ignore paywalled sources and post content from open news sources.

orangeoxidation 5y ago
The side is doing nothing but embedding this YouTube video https://youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo https://youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo
mnd999 5y ago
I disagree. Quality is hard to measure in journalism and it’s definitely not as simple as free = bad, paid = good (or the reverse). I don’t consider asking for money for writing to be a big negative, folks gotta earn a living somehow.

Proven 5y ago

These people really are morons.... Why not 4C, or 2.5C? It's like the Fed targeting 2% inflation. Just a bunch of bullshit.

joeberon 5y ago
What are you talking about??
- threatofrain 5y ago
  There's no need to respond to an account that just talks at people, as you can see from their account history.
  - joeberon 5y ago
    I don't stalk people's account histories every time I reply to them. Do you expect me to?
    - threatofrain 5y ago
      Do you expect me to have expectations for you? Also, using a term like "stalking" is quite morally judgmental. Did you forget that we are all proudly posting on a forum with Permanently Public History?
      - joeberon 5y ago
        You are imposing your beliefs on me.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - ctdonath 5y ago
        We do find it odd how some will dig into a poser's history for the apparent purpose of rendering judgement on those expressing diverse views.
        threatofrain 5y ago
        We find something odd? Since you are "apparently" interested in diverse views, what is wrong with oddity, and in this case, the oddity of interpreting text in context of permanently public historical output? Note that I have pointed to no specific views, and instead solely point at the activity of talking at people. Is this the diverse view you mean?

melling 5y ago

A higher temperature than what we want is almost a given. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/01/climate-optimism-is-an-illusion-un-chief-tells-cop26 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/nov/01/climate-... China is talking 2060 for net zero. India is talking 2070: https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/live/2021/nov/01/cop26-begins-world-leaders-glasgow-climate-crisis-live https://amp.theguardian.com/environment/live/2021/nov/01/cop... The United States is claiming by 2050 but there seems to be no actual political ability to meet that.

BurningFrog 5y ago
Politicians "committing" to things that will happen after they are out of office, are mostly just saying pretty words.
- munk-a 5y ago
  It's definitely tough to have confidence in these sorts of statements - but I just wish we'd get beyond the people who actively fight against even the probably empty promises.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I do too, but I think that “empty promises” empower them. I also agree with Andrew Sullivan (https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/how-to-turn-the-gop-green-dae https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/how-to-turn-the-gop-gr...) that conservatives could be persuaded to support climate initiatives if we on the left allow ourselves to prioritize climate above our own tribalism tendencies (those who would reply, “But conservatives aren’t prioritizing climate over tribalism” are missing the point entirely).
    - munk-a 5y ago
      I would say, that in America at least, flip-flopping is only viewed as an insult by conservatives though. People criticized Biden over his busing policies during the election, but nobody critized the fact that he changed his mind on the topic, people discussed how he "grew". I know there are extremist pockets on both sides of the aisle - but I don't think the majority of liberals would really prefer a gotcha "I told you so" moment over actually getting meaningful policies done. I've always viewed it more as an unfortunate coincidence[1] that social conservatism was so closely tied to climate change denial. In theory those folks wanting to make sure their children can hunt and hike like they did growing up should be strongly set in favour of preserving an environment where that remains a possibility. Instead we have the media pushing this shallow form of conservatism where we specifically want to preserve the unsustainable post-war boom years where every river had a paper mill on it, every driveway had two cars (except they didn't and they weren't SUVs) and nobody realized what the consequences of that were. How do you overcome conservative media when it's pushing such a strong agenda? Inviting them over for tea isn't going to cause a sea-change. 1. Sorta - I think some folks worked hard to make sure this happened.

exhibitapp 5y ago

https://archive.fo/4wQBC https://archive.fo/4wQBC

philipkglass 5y ago

The article body is just an introduction to this video, freely viewable on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uynhvHZUOOo

davidw 5y ago

People won't even wear masks during a pandemic caused by an airborne pathogen for political reasons. I feel pretty hopeless about any meaningful action on climate change, so I suppose the best route is to try and live in a place that will adapt well, but that's tough to figure out. Here in Oregon a lot of people thought ... well, maybe our climate might be a bit warmer or even 'nicer'? But the reality is that every summer, massive forest fires are making the air unbreathable.

altcognito 5y ago
Those forests will thin out, a new normal will be found.
- saboot 5y ago
  A new normal will always be found. Whether it's compatible with humanity though ...
- buu700 5y ago
  I kind of like the current normal that includes humans.
- graeme 5y ago
  A normal requires fairly stable conditions. Constantly changing conditions means constant flux.
  - criddell 5y ago
    Instability could be the new normal.
- barbazoo 5y ago
  A lot of wood has to burn for forests to "thin out". That's decades of unbreathable air during the summer months.
  - ByersReason 5y ago

WhompingWindows 5y ago

I worry that part of the reason some Americans don't fear climate change is: 3 degrees Fahrenheit is only 1.67 Celsius, so Americans might be practically understanding the warming as "half" of what other countries/people think. The counter-argument: surely Americans are informed enough to understand the phrase "1.5 degrees of warming" means Celsius...I'm not confident average Americans know that. I'm not sure the science education is up to snuff in the USA. The Americans who don't consider climate change a big deal, generally live in the interior of the country without as many severe weather events. Generally speaking, these folks are misinformed voters and it's hurting our climate policy. They think: Why should they care about "3 degrees of [Fahrenheit] warming", especially because there's no fires or storms near them?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
criddell 5y ago
> these folks are misinformed voters and it's hurting our climate policy For the electorate it isn't really a matter of information or education. People have things they care about more or are vote based on emotion. In a way it's like trying to use logic to convince somebody to support The Atlanta Braves rather than the Yankees. They didn't get there through a process of logic and isn't logic that's going to change them.
- WhompingWindows 5y ago
  Doesn't it matter if they think it's 1.5 degrees or 3 degrees of warming? Doesn't that 1.67X change their perspective substantially?
  - spiderice 5y ago
    What on earth are you talking about? You literally made up the 1.5 vs 3 degrees thing above, and now you're basing your argument on that being true, despite you having made it up moments ago. Do you have a single source that says "Americans think climate change is only half as bad because of F vs C"? Personally I doubt that a meaningful percent of Americans (or people anywhere) even know this "3" number to begin with, let alone the unit. This isn't something most people are focused on.

lambdaba 5y ago

I've heard a figure citing world GDP growth forecasted at 450% without factoring the costs of climate change, and 415% deducting the costs. If this reflects the consensus, why isn't anyone talking about this? The impression we sometimes get is that the forecast is total collapse.

foolfoolz 5y ago
because “total collapse” is the scare tactic so it gets views. in reality this apocalyptic foreshadowing just erodes trust in climate science. the news has played chicken little with climate articles for decades. people are desensitized at best and no longer believe it at worst. climate change has a severe messaging problem
xboxnolifes 5y ago
If you came across the forecast, someone is obviously talking about it. But if you stay in more liberal bubbles you are going to get more Democratic (liberal? progressive? idk the groupings) information. If one is trying to stop climate change, you are going to fail to persuade a large portion of people with showing how little it will affect GDP.
wbeckler 5y ago
Maybe mass starvation and wars are not projected to impact GDP, because it's mostly going to affect people living in Africa.
downWidOutaFite 5y ago
Care to share that forecast?

merpnderp 5y ago

We've already had 1.5C of that 3C increase, which mostly happened over 80 of the last 140 years. I'm not sure that saying "we're about to have the same amount of warming we just had for the last few generations" is a real rallying cry to action. Maybe stop playing shell games with numbers and dates and just stick with what the IPCC says are the 2100 predictions. They're serious enough and don't make you look manipulative and untrustworthy.

rjzzleep 5y ago

The biggest problem with global warming is that it's such a stupid term. Global warming is only a small portion of a bunch of different kinds of abuse we put the planet through. Plastics, destruction of the ocean plankton, topsoil etc. have all conveniently been put into a single term called global warming, which is just one symptom of many things. As a result we still have these discussions whether global warming exists or not, when it's really irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.

tda 5y ago
I disagree: the climate crisis is the single most scariest thing that we have done to our planet. Other forms of mass environmental destruction (next to what you mentioned also mass animal extinction,rainforest destruction,PFAS) are all horrible but are more of a temporal and localized nature. With enough will and effort they can all be addressed like the hole in the ozon layer. The climate crisis is already many decades in the making and cannot realistically be prevented. It is happening and the only question is not if but how much you will be impacted
esarbe 5y ago
Well, since 'global warming' is only concerned about the damage resulting from greenhouse gas emissions, that term is not to bad, actually. I like 'global warming' much better than the 'green'washed term 'climate change' we've had to use in the last 15 years because, you know, part of the earth got cooler, sometimes, and who even believes in 'global warming'? Even the term 'global warming' is/was considered political. What the heck... To collect all the consequences and processes you mentioned, I usually like to use the term "predatory ecosystem exploitation", because that pretty much describes what we're doing to our life support system.
- ihumanable 5y ago
  Climate Change is a reaction to people going, "There's still snow" or "There's a polar vortex in Texas" and using cold weather (driven by Climate Change) to argue against Global Warning. It makes sense as when most lay people think of "warming" in connection with the "global climate" they likely think "weather" and the idea that it will be 2-3 degrees "warmer" out doesn't seem like a big deal. 68F feels pretty close to 71F, no biggie. At a planet wide scale though, this is a huge amount of energy and causes a massive change in the climate. There's a lot of "greenwashing" in the world, but the term is generally applied to corporations that use "a form of marketing spin in which green PR and green marketing are deceptively used to persuade the public that an organization's products, aims and policies are environmentally friendly." The term "Climate Change" is the preferred term from the scientific community and isn't promoted by corporations to make themselves seem more green.

pfisherman 5y ago

One of the things that is most worrying about global warming to me is what a 3C increase on a planetary scale means for the very nature of the reality we experience. What impact will all that energy / entropy have on the probability distribution of possible events and states of our world? Will reality become less predictable?

desertraven 5y ago
Intriguing... can you elaborate or give some context to this?
- pfisherman 5y ago
  I think that global warming is generally hard for people to wrap their heads around because it is a planetary scale event, and our consciousness experiences the universe on a much smaller scale. Imo, the best way to reason about the impact in our daily lives is to think about systems that exist in much smaller spacetime scales than ourselves. So in this case statistical mechanics. What happens to the atoms or molecules of a system when you dump a bunch of heat into it? What might that look like at the scale of individual atoms and molecules?
what_is_orcas 5y ago
Isn't that sort of already happening? This year we've seen floods in Germany, huge wildfires in the US west, snow in Texas (and the Pacific Northwest), storms up the US east coast (wasn't there flooding in New England, too?), and I'm sure other stuff I've either forgotten or not heard about. I think what's going to compound that is the push for "carbon neutrality", the idea that any emissions will be offset by... offsets (carbon capture, tree-planting, whatever). That tends to only be about the period of time from achieving carbon neutrality forward, but ignores the carbon emitted leading up to that milestone. I'm guessing that reaching carbon neutrality, for many industries, is not going to be a carbon-neutral mission. For example, if we want to move to electric vehicles prior to a carbon-neutral supply chain, then every EV build can have a significant carbon-footprint.

polote 5y ago

These one-sided apocalyptical type of content are useless: - They are porn for people who are already believer in global warming, and show more material to say "look that what I said will happen" without doing changing anything in their daily lives. - They are maybe right but display a false negative picture of what is going to happen for people who tend to deny global warming. The reality is we don't know what is going to happen, that's things we can't predict. So stop be sure about things, accept nuance. EDIT: I'm not saying we are powerless or don't know at all what is going to happen. We have a feeling of what is going to happen (temperature increase, sea level increase and other things) but we cannot accurately predict what, when and how this is going to happen

saboot 5y ago
The video is cheesy but to say we are powerless to predict and prepare, and hopefully mitigate, is nihilism and apathy.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  Not once does the commenter suggest we cannot prepare or take action.
esarbe 5y ago
> already believer Hrm. So, if one follows the scientific consensus[0] and actually takes into consideration the political and social consequences of the scientific consensus one is a ... believer? I think at that point, you really have to ask yourself where the burden of proof really is. And if not the ones not-"believing" in the fact of global warming are the ones following some kind of believe system. > The reality is we don't know what is going to happen, that's things we can't predict. So stop be sure about things, accept nuance. Dude, that bullshit and you know it. We know what's happening. We've known it for a very long time. The scientists employed by companies like Exxon, BP, Total et all recognized in the seventies that there's a huge problem and that we are wreaking havoc with our dependence on fossil fuels. So don't 'We don't know what's happening" me. We know what's happening, we can model it and we can use these models to create predictions. And the picture is not nice, you know. Funny thing; the predictions by previously mentioned scientists from world-famous oil producers actually created very accurate models that hold up today. It's only political meddling that 'softened' these models to to make climate change and global warming not appear as drastic as it is. > doing changing anything in their daily lives. That's a fallacy. I can doing changing everything in my life and it will not change a iota. This is not some kind of personal responsibility-issue. This needs a concentrated global effort. Not some backyard hippies doing composting. [0] https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-agree-humans-caused-climate-change https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2021/10/more-999-studies-ag...

esarbe 5y ago

I'm very happy to see that the danger of climate change finally is being takes (somewhat) serious. We have known for the last fifty years that we are doing serious harm to our ecosystem and will run into disaster if we don't stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Exxon knew it by the 1970ies, so did Shell and Total and BP. How they have managed to hoodwink everyone into climate denialism[0] is beyond me, but I guess it has to do with the millions and millions that have been spent lobbying[1] local, national and global leaders. And that just illustrates the problem with our precious life support system[2]; it's a commons and as such not protected by anyone. If you can profit by externalizing costs created by damaging the ecosystem, it usually pays off. The damages will only appear years and years later and the perpetrators will all be long gone by the time the real consequences hit. Win-Win, I guess? Just imagine not having to pay the cleanup and reparation in the order of trillions of dollars and you _still_ get to keep the few billions you made? Amazing. If even economy-focused publications like .. well... The Economist are finally taking climate change serious, it makes me sad, because it just goes to show that the situation is dire indeed. Otherwise it would just be the Hippies that are concerned about 'Mothership Earth'. In the end I doubt that anything will change - but hey! - there's to hopin'. [0] Or as we nitpickers like to say; denial of the fact that the recent climatic changes have been caused by humans [1] bribing [2] Earth and it's diverse and wonderful ecosystems

emkoemko 5y ago

imagine how much extra energy that is, 3C increase sounds insane.

clydethefrog 5y ago
Earth is heating at a rate equivalent to five atomic bombs per second. https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/earth-is-heating-at-a-rate-equivalent-to-five-atomic-bombs-per-second-or-two-hurricane-sandys/ https://thebulletin.org/2020/02/earth-is-heating-at-a-rate-e...
- EForEndeavour 5y ago
  > It’s relatively easy to visualize five atomic bombs detonating every second Is it!?
- emkoemko 5y ago
  wow...that is a lot, i think a lot of people don't understand what a 3c increase is, we need to explain it in term of energy.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  As I've read it described, we're boiling ourselves to economic prosperity...
- vixen99 5y ago
  Not uniformly though. The last six months in the Antarctic were the coldest on record (1957) https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-cold-antarctica-climate-change/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2021/10/09/weather/weather-record-co...
  - inkywatcher 5y ago
    I think the lack of uniformity is a big part of many peoples' climate skepticism. Certainly it is a talking point. It seems like many people have too little imagination to comprehend climate science, much less the appetite to learn something inconvenient.

tamaharbor 5y ago

What did the dinosaurs do when this happened to them?

TacticalCoder 5y ago
They started reproducing less.
timbit42 5y ago
Most of them died off.

gmuslera 5y ago

It should be a lot of emergent weather events and other affected areas if global warming goes so high. The predictions of this article is pretty dry in that sense, sea rise, normal heatwaves, droughts, stronger storms, in general the same but stronger, more of it. It is a safe bet, but the global system is pretty complex and interconnected, and a big change will affect most subsystems in ways that it may not look so obvious now, but that will be in hindsight. We are already seeing some weird things, like the disruption of the polar vortex, the disproportionate heat near the poles where some of the most dangerous positive feedback loops happens, or the heath dome of some months ago, and still we are pretty low in the change scale. And all the road to any line set in the sand will be bumpy and with a lot of bad surprises. And it won't be an way back, only forward, no matter at which bad event people decide that it shouldn't happen again. We keep doing things worse, and faster than ever, there is no hope while no meaningful and disruptive actions are taken. But we will prefer to not cut our leg now, and be left having no way to stop our body dying later.

superflit2 5y ago

We could fix all with nuclear... Just saying.

outside1234 5y ago
This
spywaregorilla 5y ago
Nuclear is a good idea, but its hardly a silver bullet.
missedthecue 5y ago
Electric power generation accounts for only 25% of greenhouse gas emissions.

meibo 5y ago

No way we can stop this now - even with a New Zero Carbon breakthrough, like fusion. The people and entities that could fix this just don't have the incentives. See you all in 2050 in our CO2-filtered bedrooms :) Live your lives, folks, we only have so much of it. Earth is beautiful, take it in while you still can.

thriftwy 5y ago

This video can't stop showing foreign, poor rural people having problems. This is ideal content to get a lot of likes of pity but zero actual demand for policy changes. Everybody is going to assume somebody else has got to finally do something!

vixen99 5y ago
Best to ignore them if it upsets you. Foreigners? Poor? Rural? Ugh!
- thriftwy 5y ago
  Average person watching this video likely already spends $0 of their monthly income towards supporting poor rural foreigners. How many times do you think that number will increase after watching it? You won't sell your elephant that way

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

kyrra 5y ago

WSJ opinion pages has been publishing an alternate view to all of this that has at least been interesting. Specifically they have been articles by Bjørn Lomborg. NYTimes has covered one of his books before too: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/books/review/bjorn-lomborg-false-alarm-joseph-stiglitz.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/16/books/review/bjorn-lombor... My take on his view of all of this is that the climate is going to change, and trying to fight/reverse that is a losing battle. Rather, we should take a multi-pronged approach and attempt to move away from carbon based energy (using carbon tax), but also start working to build up our infrastructure to deal with the changes that climate change will bring. I think the point of his WSJ pieces is to point out that even the worst case scenario of the climate predictions aren't that bad, because people adapt to changes in their environment (humans are really good at this). Here are the 10 pieces he's written leading up to the climate conference going on right now: https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-natural-disasters-ahr-river-flood-germany-wildfire-risks-11628177742 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-natural-disaster... https://www.wsj.com/articles/flood-climate-change-ipcc-united-nations-infrastructure-deaths-cost-severe-weather-11631134276 https://www.wsj.com/articles/flood-climate-change-ipcc-unite... https://www.wsj.com/articles/hurricane-ida-henri-climate-change-united-nations-un-galsgow-conference-natural-disaster-infrastructure-carbon-emissions-11630704844 https://www.wsj.com/articles/hurricane-ida-henri-climate-cha... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-heat-cold-deaths-medical-journal-health-risk-energy-cost-fossil-fuels-11631741045 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-heat-cold-deaths... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-world-doomed-gdp-warming-earth-11632338084 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-world-doomed-gdp... https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdown-climate-fossil-fuels-electricity-energy-production-africa-carbon-emission-11632943155 https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-lockdown-climate-fossil-f... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-malnutrition-regulation-economic-growth-glasgow-conference-11633551187 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-malnutrition-reg... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-cost-economy-emissions-tax-per-person-net-zero-joe-biden-11634159179 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-cost-economy-emi... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-adaptation-panic-exaggerating-disaster-11634760376 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-change-adaptation-panic... https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-activists-blow-smoke-on-wildfire-fears-adaptation-land-11635367688 https://www.wsj.com/articles/climate-activists-blow-smoke-on...

maerF0x0 5y ago

Do we know if the cost to the economy of adapting to greener standards would cost more than supporting the adaptation of the poor to the new warmer world? I have often wondered if it just makes more sense to incentivize people to not live right on the places most likely to flood and hurricane? (and earthquake for that matter). just to stave off likely claims I am not saying we should prioritize the economy over people, but I am saying we should consider if we can positively address the catastrophe both more effectively (remove risk) and less drastically by directly addressing where people live.

pietrovismara 5y ago
Before making any suggestion, think if you would like it applied to you. If the answer is no, I call bullshit. First, because it is highly unfair and elitist, second because there's no reason to think that the "poors" would accept it any better than you would.
- maerF0x0 5y ago
  I, and i think especially more poor people, would be willing to relocate to a better region if adequately compensated. I'm not calling for just telling people they cannot in low lying coastal places, but basically incentivizing a lot, very fairly, and telling the others they're now out of scope for emergency response (but retain their freedom of movement). I've had similar thoughts about how we (as humanity) tend to build big cities on some of the most fertile land just because agricultural success drew people proximally to those lands. But then we pave over fertile fields to put up offices that house people who just work on computers... We get sucked into local maxima and find it uneconomical to move out of it (or often an organizational issue where all have to move to not have massive first mover risks)
sofixa 5y ago
> I have often wondered if it just makes more sense to incentivize people to not live right on the places most likely to flood and hurricane? (and earthquake for that matter But that's not all the dangers. The heat dome over the Pacific Northwest this summer isn't something that can accurately be predicted.

Dig1t 5y ago

I'm somewhat confused as to why nobody ever seriously discusses geo engineering as a solution for these problems. If we could block some percentage of light from the sun hitting the earth would that not go a very long way in solving the problem?

curtis3389 5y ago
> We don't know who struck first, us or them, but we know that it was us that scorched the sky. Generally, the hope is that we don't have to further destroy the world that we know to keep it from killing us.
pietrovismara 5y ago
No thanks, sounds too much like the matrix. This is the kind of irreversible action that could very easily destroy us. Before doing something like this I'd rather give up our modern lifestyle or reduce the global population by 3/4 with growth control.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  > reduce the global population by 3/4 with growth control. Given that most of the world's population is under 30 years old[0], even if you could get every country in the world to simultaneously ban child birth tomorrow, the world population wouldn't even halve by 2070. (You also need to take into account global life expectancy changes that far into the future[1]). [0] https://socialnomics.net/2010/04/13/over-50-of-the-worlds-population-is-under-30-social-media-on-the-rise/ https://socialnomics.net/2010/04/13/over-50-of-the-worlds-po... [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/673420/projected-global-life-expectancy/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/673420/projected-global-...
  - tda 5y ago
    Better get on with it then. There is not a single solution, we must pursue each and every viable path. But in the meantime our religious leaders are still advocating against anti conception and against abortion. Reducing population growth will not magically solve anything, but ignoring it would be foolish IMHO

fleddr 5y ago

The situation looks dire, as people will resist changes to address this at every level. At the very top, there's nations. Whom are meeting as we speak at the climate summit. China and Russia aren't even there. For other participants, they're all eye balling each other to find the sweet spot where they do the least possible whilst not embarrassing themselves. There's the additional complexity of developing nations still using a lot of fossil fuels and feeling they have the right to continue this for a little longer, for historical reasons and due to wealth inequality. Which is a fair moral point, but the planet doesn't care. It's the tragedy of the commons. At the national level, we bash political leaders for ignoring the issue for decades but our anger is misplaced. As soon as any of these politicians propose meaningful reform, we vote them out. Because the measures obviously will be unpopular. Democracy is voting for what is popular for the coming 4 years, not for what is needed for the coming 10, 20, 50. We simply don't have the political system for that. At the people/individual level, group A full on denies the issue in the same way you can deny COVID or the earth being spherical. Group B deep down knows what's up yet still is unwilling to make a change, instead just wants to ride it out. Group C is on board with the issue and tries to live better, but it's still questionable if it's enough. Not at any level do we seem capable to solve a problem of this nature, as evidenced by decades of doing nothing regarding any ecological issue. A depressing personal example. One of my friends is the chair of a committee of apartment owners in an apartment complex. In this building live rich senior citizens. The committee votes on shared investments regarding the building. The building is old, poorly isolated and heating uses a lot of fossil energy. Its energy system clearly has to be redesigned at one point, hence my friend put months of work into a plan. Through government subsidy and very favorable capital lending, it would basically mean that the service fee would increase by a mere 120 euros per month for a fixed number of years (I think it was 5-10 years). This would completely redesign the energy system to not use any fossil energy at all, increase isolation whilst improving ventilation. The inhabitants massively rejected the proposal. These people are rich and already retired, with 100% economic security (government pension + private pension). It's a financial non-sacrifice. And still they reject it. They reject it still when explained that due to the rising fossil fuel prices, their monthly fee will soon be upped enough to match this investment fee. So in light of doing some tiny good for the future, part of which you will even live to see, at no meaningful personal sacrifice...the answer is still NO. We will continue our ways, and whatever problem comes from it, is for somebody else. This isn't some specific group of evil old people. These are lovely grandparents, people you admire and believe are kind and good hearted. Which means its me and you. It's typical of our species. The way I see it, we can't wait for any of the above people dynamics. Just print 100T$ in new money and get to work. Today. We'll figure it out along the way. It doesn't matter if its "not conventional". Conventional got us into this situation.

b3nji 5y ago

This is a fun list of all the predictions including current ones, and all the previous ones used to increase taxes that never came true. https://extinctionclock.org/ https://extinctionclock.org/