5 ms·

What are the main challenges when it comes to climate change? I can come up with some challenges, but they all do not seem too hard to solve: Produce food und

by TekMol 4y ago

What are the main challenges when it comes to climate change? I can come up with some challenges, but they all do not seem too hard to solve: Produce food under the new conditions More roofs and air condition to keep people protected from sun and heat Move people away from the oceans as those rise What else?

smt88 4y ago
You don't think that moving billions of people, moving millions of acres of food production (often across borders), and replacing millions of workers' livelihoods would be "hard to solve"?
- TekMol 4y ago
  So many questions. Let's start with the first one: Do we really need to move billions of people? We humans couldn't live under current conditions without the tech we built. Why can't we build the tech to cope with new conditions? Put roofs made from solar panels over peoples heads and air conditin below the roofs?
  - reustle 4y ago
    I think it's not so much about us adapting to the new climate, obviously we can figure that part out. It seems to be more about our systems adapting fast enough to keep up with the changing climate. How many crops this year were plagued by drought? Were we able to produce enough food? What about livestock, how did they fare? What if those droughts continue to get more frequent and longer?
  - mellavora 4y ago
    You forgot to mention how you build the rest of the boat, the part that goes under the solar panel roof. > a quarter of Bangladesh’s landmass, bound on the south by the northern Indian Ocean, hovers less than seven feet above sea level. And as floods grow increasingly frequent and severe, the 163 million who make their home in Bangladesh, the world’s most populous delta, know little escape from water. https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/bangladesh-country-underwater-culture-move https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/bangladesh-country-underwater-c...
hackerlight 4y ago
Stopping dictators from coming to power when the going gets tough and there are millions of climate refugees from near the equator wanting to migrate to the habitable global north. Look at what a few million Syrian refugees has done to German and French politics during a period of relative abundance. What do you think will happen if you multiply that number by 100, and add in some economic turmoil and hyperinflation? You get some modern iteration of the Russian Revolution or Nazi Germany. But this time, everyone has nukes.
- TekMol 4y ago
  Why would people vote for dictoators because of refugees? Couldn't they just vote for parties that close the borders?
  - hackerlight 4y ago
    The people that want to close the borders tend to be right-wing populists, who tend to hold illiberal and anti-democratic values with a higher frequency. Orban, Le Pen and AfD are a reaction to a few things, but one of those things is a fairly modest number of refugees. If there are 100x as many refugees, and economic collapse, I don't see it likely that the elected politician isn't some kind of populist strongman.
    - TekMol 4y ago
      Are you saying there is a flaw in the system of democracy? If a majority of people want a certain decision (in this example closed borders) - why can't they have it without anti-democratic forces coming into play? Why wouldn't there be a democratic party offering to implement it?
      - hackerlight 4y ago
        Firstly, there are some things that should be disallowed irrespective of majority opinion. Raping people, for example. That's why countries have constitution-type documents that require super majorities to overturn instead of a simple majority. Secondly, putting aside whether closed borders are in this category of things (I personally happen to believe it is), it unlikely that the economy can crash and refugees can 100x and we can get a right-wing populist who is also pro-democracy and liberal. Right-wing populists have consistently shown that they don't care about democracy -- they care about nation and empire and glory and race, not liberalism and not individuals. In fact, they hate liberalism with a passion. Look at how Orban has undermined the free press in Hungary. Look at how Trump has undermined confidence in US elections. Look at Turkey. And this is when things are prosperous. Look what happened after Russia's post-Soviet economic turmoil. We got Putin who threw away democracy the first chance he got. Hitler's popularity went up from the single digits to about 30% in 1 or 2 years into the Great Depression, mostly driven by the impoverished in rural areas. The Russian Revolution happened immediately after the extremely dire conditions post-WW1, leading the authoritarian Bolsheviks to take power. The CCP took power from the KMT in the context of poverty and humiliation resulting from British then Japanese imperialism (among other causes). It's causal, and it happens again and again.
opinologo 4y ago
if you read the article, it talks about the sea level rising and having to relocate a lot of people that live around the coast.
- TekMol 4y ago
  If you read my post, this is the first point it lists. It's not as if we lack the space to move the people living around the cost elsewhere. When you drop a refrigerator from the sky, the probability to hit someone is basically zero.
  - berkut 4y ago
    You mean third point? Sure there's a lot of empty space here, but places like Wellington have very little space left for development, and significant suburbs (Lyall Bay, Seatoun, Petone, Eastbourne) will likely need to have significant properties moved elsewhere, which means out of the current urban areas... Same goes for Christchurch and Auckland... Where exactly will new areas be created? It's not impossible, but will people want to do that? Already there are many properties on the south coast of Wellington (Owhiro Bay, Moa Point), which regularly have flood risks at least once a year with strong southerlies and high tides, and people stay there... Given how bad the availability of property is here, I doubt it will be that easy (although that might be a way: subsidised property in a new suburb if you move?)...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
throwawaylinux 4y ago
- Raise taxes or debt sufficient to pay politicians and their consultant and corporate friends to develop climate change plans which generally involve paying more money to this same friendship group. - Make slight adjustments to urban and infrastructure planning to accommodate for expected changes, e.g., updating catchment forecasts and flood and tide maps are probably some of the big ones (although the former two are wildly unpredictable at the best of times).
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The IPCC is regularly publishing updates on this: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/sustainability-blog/ipccs-report-on-climate-change-impacts-adaptation-and-vulnerability-what-business-leaders-should-know https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/o... Note that so far, politics has led them to be conservative in their predictions (no tipping points for good -- cheap renewables -- or bad) but it still makes economic sense to prevent the impacts. > The report further identifies two types of limits to adaptation: “hard adaptation limit,” when no amount of money or technology can solve a problem, and “soft adaptation limit,” which means that the required technology or policy intervention will be too costly to realistically implement. Hard limits include irreversible, large-scale changes to the Earth system or ecosystem functions (for example, the loss of glaciers feeding major inland water systems). Soft limits include changes to local climatology. Working Group II notes, for example, at 2⁰C it is expected that some staple crops may reach soft adaptation limits to changes in temperature and precipitation across the tropics, which will make them prohibitively difficult or expensive to grow.
cyphar 4y ago
> Produce food under the new conditions This alone is an incredibly difficult problem to solve, as evidenced by the fact that the entire history of our species has been spent trying to solve the food problem. Only very recently have very wealthy western nations overcome food insecurity for most people, while the rest of the world (and poor people in wealthy nations) are already struggling with food insecurity, without adding more crop failures due to climate change on top. The Haber process was only discovered in 1909! > Move people away from the oceans as those rise Given that a very large percentage of the world population lives near the ocean, what makes you think relocating hundreds of millions if not billions of people and their jobs and communities is not a hard problem?
- ephbit 4y ago
  > Only very recently have very wealthy western nations overcome food insecurity for most people, ... Yes, and it should be mentioned that they have managed to do so _only_ with the help of basically feeding unimaginable amounts of energy contained in fossil fuels directly to the plants in the form of nitrogen (fixed in the form of Ammonium). > Given that a very large percentage of the world population lives near the ocean, what makes you think relocating hundreds of millions if not billions of people and their jobs and communities is not a hard problem? IMO it really isn't that much of a problem. Sea levels will not rise suddenly but gradually. That will put (slowly) increasing economic pressure on coastal areas, which will gradually drive people from there by giving them incentive to move somewhere else. If there were a flood instead, relocating all the people living on the coast sure would be a huge problem. But the way things are, it will IMO just be one of the minor problems humanity will face.
  - cyphar 4y ago
    > Yes, and [artificial ammonia production] should be mentioned I did mention it, that's what the Haber process produces (and the discovery of the Haber process is what allowed us to produce ammonia on an industrial scale rather than relying on natural guano deposits). > That will put (slowly) increasing economic pressure on coastal areas, which will gradually drive people from there by giving them incentive to move somewhere else. Who will they sell their homes to?
mustardo 4y ago
What about living things other than humans?
peterashford 4y ago
I think you are massively underestimating the problems. With just 1.1% warming we're starting to see famines, floods, droughts. 1/3 of Pakistan is under water right now. The Glasgow conference failed to "save" 1.5%. This is going to get much, much worse.

by TekMol 4y ago

smt88 4y ago

You don't think that moving billions of people, moving millions of acres of food production (often across borders), and replacing millions of workers' livelihoods would be "hard to solve"?

TekMol 4y ago
So many questions. Let's start with the first one: Do we really need to move billions of people? We humans couldn't live under current conditions without the tech we built. Why can't we build the tech to cope with new conditions? Put roofs made from solar panels over peoples heads and air conditin below the roofs?
- reustle 4y ago
  I think it's not so much about us adapting to the new climate, obviously we can figure that part out. It seems to be more about our systems adapting fast enough to keep up with the changing climate. How many crops this year were plagued by drought? Were we able to produce enough food? What about livestock, how did they fare? What if those droughts continue to get more frequent and longer?
- mellavora 4y ago
  You forgot to mention how you build the rest of the boat, the part that goes under the solar panel roof. > a quarter of Bangladesh’s landmass, bound on the south by the northern Indian Ocean, hovers less than seven feet above sea level. And as floods grow increasingly frequent and severe, the 163 million who make their home in Bangladesh, the world’s most populous delta, know little escape from water. https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/bangladesh-country-underwater-culture-move https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/bangladesh-country-underwater-c...

hackerlight 4y ago

Stopping dictators from coming to power when the going gets tough and there are millions of climate refugees from near the equator wanting to migrate to the habitable global north. Look at what a few million Syrian refugees has done to German and French politics during a period of relative abundance. What do you think will happen if you multiply that number by 100, and add in some economic turmoil and hyperinflation? You get some modern iteration of the Russian Revolution or Nazi Germany. But this time, everyone has nukes.

TekMol 4y ago
Why would people vote for dictoators because of refugees? Couldn't they just vote for parties that close the borders?
- hackerlight 4y ago
  The people that want to close the borders tend to be right-wing populists, who tend to hold illiberal and anti-democratic values with a higher frequency. Orban, Le Pen and AfD are a reaction to a few things, but one of those things is a fairly modest number of refugees. If there are 100x as many refugees, and economic collapse, I don't see it likely that the elected politician isn't some kind of populist strongman.
  - TekMol 4y ago
    Are you saying there is a flaw in the system of democracy? If a majority of people want a certain decision (in this example closed borders) - why can't they have it without anti-democratic forces coming into play? Why wouldn't there be a democratic party offering to implement it?
    - hackerlight 4y ago
      Firstly, there are some things that should be disallowed irrespective of majority opinion. Raping people, for example. That's why countries have constitution-type documents that require super majorities to overturn instead of a simple majority. Secondly, putting aside whether closed borders are in this category of things (I personally happen to believe it is), it unlikely that the economy can crash and refugees can 100x and we can get a right-wing populist who is also pro-democracy and liberal. Right-wing populists have consistently shown that they don't care about democracy -- they care about nation and empire and glory and race, not liberalism and not individuals. In fact, they hate liberalism with a passion. Look at how Orban has undermined the free press in Hungary. Look at how Trump has undermined confidence in US elections. Look at Turkey. And this is when things are prosperous. Look what happened after Russia's post-Soviet economic turmoil. We got Putin who threw away democracy the first chance he got. Hitler's popularity went up from the single digits to about 30% in 1 or 2 years into the Great Depression, mostly driven by the impoverished in rural areas. The Russian Revolution happened immediately after the extremely dire conditions post-WW1, leading the authoritarian Bolsheviks to take power. The CCP took power from the KMT in the context of poverty and humiliation resulting from British then Japanese imperialism (among other causes). It's causal, and it happens again and again.

opinologo 4y ago

if you read the article, it talks about the sea level rising and having to relocate a lot of people that live around the coast.

TekMol 4y ago
If you read my post, this is the first point it lists. It's not as if we lack the space to move the people living around the cost elsewhere. When you drop a refrigerator from the sky, the probability to hit someone is basically zero.
- berkut 4y ago
  You mean third point? Sure there's a lot of empty space here, but places like Wellington have very little space left for development, and significant suburbs (Lyall Bay, Seatoun, Petone, Eastbourne) will likely need to have significant properties moved elsewhere, which means out of the current urban areas... Same goes for Christchurch and Auckland... Where exactly will new areas be created? It's not impossible, but will people want to do that? Already there are many properties on the south coast of Wellington (Owhiro Bay, Moa Point), which regularly have flood risks at least once a year with strong southerlies and high tides, and people stay there... Given how bad the availability of property is here, I doubt it will be that easy (although that might be a way: subsidised property in a new suburb if you move?)...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

throwawaylinux 4y ago

- Raise taxes or debt sufficient to pay politicians and their consultant and corporate friends to develop climate change plans which generally involve paying more money to this same friendship group. - Make slight adjustments to urban and infrastructure planning to accommodate for expected changes, e.g., updating catchment forecasts and flood and tide maps are probably some of the big ones (although the former two are wildly unpredictable at the best of times).

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

The IPCC is regularly publishing updates on this: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/sustainability-blog/ipccs-report-on-climate-change-impacts-adaptation-and-vulnerability-what-business-leaders-should-know https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/o... Note that so far, politics has led them to be conservative in their predictions (no tipping points for good -- cheap renewables -- or bad) but it still makes economic sense to prevent the impacts. > The report further identifies two types of limits to adaptation: “hard adaptation limit,” when no amount of money or technology can solve a problem, and “soft adaptation limit,” which means that the required technology or policy intervention will be too costly to realistically implement. Hard limits include irreversible, large-scale changes to the Earth system or ecosystem functions (for example, the loss of glaciers feeding major inland water systems). Soft limits include changes to local climatology. Working Group II notes, for example, at 2⁰C it is expected that some staple crops may reach soft adaptation limits to changes in temperature and precipitation across the tropics, which will make them prohibitively difficult or expensive to grow.

cyphar 4y ago

> Produce food under the new conditions This alone is an incredibly difficult problem to solve, as evidenced by the fact that the entire history of our species has been spent trying to solve the food problem. Only very recently have very wealthy western nations overcome food insecurity for most people, while the rest of the world (and poor people in wealthy nations) are already struggling with food insecurity, without adding more crop failures due to climate change on top. The Haber process was only discovered in 1909! > Move people away from the oceans as those rise Given that a very large percentage of the world population lives near the ocean, what makes you think relocating hundreds of millions if not billions of people and their jobs and communities is not a hard problem?

ephbit 4y ago
> Only very recently have very wealthy western nations overcome food insecurity for most people, ... Yes, and it should be mentioned that they have managed to do so _only_ with the help of basically feeding unimaginable amounts of energy contained in fossil fuels directly to the plants in the form of nitrogen (fixed in the form of Ammonium). > Given that a very large percentage of the world population lives near the ocean, what makes you think relocating hundreds of millions if not billions of people and their jobs and communities is not a hard problem? IMO it really isn't that much of a problem. Sea levels will not rise suddenly but gradually. That will put (slowly) increasing economic pressure on coastal areas, which will gradually drive people from there by giving them incentive to move somewhere else. If there were a flood instead, relocating all the people living on the coast sure would be a huge problem. But the way things are, it will IMO just be one of the minor problems humanity will face.
- cyphar 4y ago
  > Yes, and [artificial ammonia production] should be mentioned I did mention it, that's what the Haber process produces (and the discovery of the Haber process is what allowed us to produce ammonia on an industrial scale rather than relying on natural guano deposits). > That will put (slowly) increasing economic pressure on coastal areas, which will gradually drive people from there by giving them incentive to move somewhere else. Who will they sell their homes to?

mustardo 4y ago

What about living things other than humans?

peterashford 4y ago

I think you are massively underestimating the problems. With just 1.1% warming we're starting to see famines, floods, droughts. 1/3 of Pakistan is under water right now. The Glasgow conference failed to "save" 1.5%. This is going to get much, much worse.