13 ms·

Climate change: Six tipping points ‘likely’ to be crossed

121 points by vanilla-almond 4y ago

hmmmcurious1 4y ago
Malthus always gets his due in the end no matter how much we kick and scream
- spywaregorilla 4y ago
  He really doesn't though
- the_third_wave 4y ago
  Malthus was wrong in 1798 when he failed to predict the industrial revolution. He is long dead but still wrong since Malthusians fail to take solutions to the envisioned problems into account. Had Malthusians been in charge when the Netherlands was populated they'd have moved all people above sea level to keep their feet dry. Fortunately for the Dutch they ignored the Malthusians and built a system of dikes, channels and pumps to keep the sea at bay and on that small patch of land they built the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world. That is the model to follow, not a Malthusian 'run to the hills'.
  - hellothere1337 4y ago
    And yet all our technological innovations have incurred a huge amount of technical debt in the form of carbon emissions. The result of that debt is fast approaching and I'm not seeing how we're going to science ourselves out of this one without incurring more debt.
vanilla-almond 4y ago
From the article: > The six tipping points "likely" to be crossed, according to the research, published in Science, are: - Greenland Ice Sheet collapse - West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse - Collapse of ocean circulation in the polar region of the North Atlantic - Coral reef die off in the low latitudes - Sudden thawing of permafrost in the Northern regions - Abrupt sea ice loss in the Barents Sea. The Science research article: Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950
- titzer 4y ago
  > - Sudden thawing of permafrost in the Northern regions It seems like I was reading a lot of articles about the Permafrost in Siberia hitting temperature records as well as suffering from massive wildfires. Now it seems like there is less news from that region.
  - hgh 4y ago
    A well done (gated) recent FT article on the boreal forest that also speaks to decreased scientific collaboration post-Ukraine war: https://www.ft.com/content/e59c800f-3704-4504-91b0-06e583d9cd42 https://www.ft.com/content/e59c800f-3704-4504-91b0-06e583d9c...
    - dredmorbius 4y ago
      Archive.Is (Archive Today) bypasses FT paywall. <https://archive.ph/nmaK7 https://archive.ph/nmaK7>
  - onion2k 4y ago
    Now it seems like there is less news from that region. The news industry is a business like any other. Journalists don't stop reporting on things when the things stop happening; they stop reporting when they feel the reports aren't driving engagement with the audience, eg revenue. There is only a loose correlation between what's happening in the world and what's being reported in newspapers and journals when it comes to long term trends.
    - biorach 4y ago
      excellent summary
    - Joeri 4y ago
      They report only what is novel and salient for the target audience. If something is on-going but not novel it won’t be reported on until something novel happens (e.g. climate change only gets reported on when there’s some kind of study, report, natural disaster or climate conference), and they will only report what they consider salient facts (e.g. general news will not report on the actual science, because that’s too technical and boring, only on controversy around the science or controversial conclusions drawn from the science). What is novel and salient is only a tiny fraction of what is relevant to come to an informed opinion. That’s why news is set up for failure if its role is seen as informing the public. I see more potential for documentaries when it comes to informing the public, but the news controversies around past climate documentaries have made the category somewhat burnt.
LatteLazy 4y ago
Decades of not doing anything have somehow led to nothing getting done...
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Decades of actively fighting things getting done has led to very little getting done. It's an interesting question as to whether the human race has collectively spent more time and energy trying to solve climate change or more time and energy pretending it wasn't happening.
  - Roark66 4y ago
    Perhaps we should spent more money trying to mitigate the outcomes rather than have those few regions that do limit their co2 output become entirely dependent for industrial goods(steel, concrete etc) on those that don't? It seems so obvious that it begs the question if all the officials that made for example EU's industry so dependent on Russian hydrocarbons in the past, and East Asian steel/other goods going forward do this because of stupidity or are they serving self interests? I propose the latter. As an example, take one decision to shut down all of Germany's nuclear power plants in absence of carbon neutral alternatives. In short term it benefited Russian regime and allowed it to conduct its barbaric war on Ukraine in full knowledge the most powerful country of EU is in their pocket. In long term destroying EU's industry serves Chinese interests.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      "Absense of carbon neutral alternatives"? You mean those things that most people now consider cheaper than both nuclear and fossil fuels despite the billions of dollars spent creating conspiracy theories to undermine them? By people with a vested interest in gas prices being high? Their absence seems more political than technical, an argument that is often used for nuclear. Fossil fuel producers on the other hand really don't like those things. China for example rolled out nuclear but also more wind, more solar, more EVs, more Hydro and so on. Seems like a sensible thing to do if you dont want to be beholden to fossil fuel suppliers.
prohobo 4y ago
Wouldn't crossing these tipping points also accelerate toward more warming? Like the thawing of permafrost in the northern regions would possibly release a huge amount of methane, creating a greater greenhouse gas effect.
- candiodari 4y ago
  The big problem with Global warming is that it's a feedback loop. The main cause of warming is warming, despite the massive human CO2 production. Even stopping human CO2 production all together would slow global warming, bringing it back to 2 degrees over 1000 years or so, instead of 100. Even that would be a lot faster than the natural rate. Earth heats up, then you get an ice age, then it heats up again, that's the natural cycle. The point of climate policy is not to stop global warming, in the sense of cooling the planet in an absolute sense. It's to slow it down, cooling it in a relative sense.
  - canoebuilder 4y ago
    - mavhc 4y ago
      No https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits...
    - aero-glide2 4y ago
      https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-volcanoes-co2-idUSL1N2XV1HA https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-volcanoes-co2-idUS...
    - lloppal 4y ago
      You could have debunked that thought with one simple search like https://www.google.com/search?q=volcanic+eruption+co2 https://www.google.com/search?q=volcanic+eruption+co2
- 4y ago
st-keller 4y ago
If we know of those six tipping-points, how many are there we don‘t know of? How can it be, that we are so careless with a system so volatile?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  The IPCC et al was intentionally conservative in its predictions because even the conservative estimates suggested it made economic sense to fix the problem. Like getting shot is bad. If a scientific and economic consensus tells you to put on a Kevlar vest, you do it. They shouldn't really need to detail all the other things that could go wrong if you get shot, because the conversation should already be over and you should have the vest on, which means even if you do get shot things will probably go better for you and you now have the mental energy to work towards not getting shot.
  - spuz 4y ago
    I think you are mis-reading your parent comment. They are saying we should be humble when it comes to predicting all the things that could happen when manipulating such a complex system as the climate. If our best science is saying there are at least 6 different ways in which we are already causing harm, then it stands to reason there are probably more dangers than that that our science can't yet predict. I think they are saying, let's always assume there are details that we won't understand and act on that basis, i.e. put on the kevlar vest and work towards removing carbon gases from the atmosphere.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      I was agreeing with them, just with some more details of why we (sensibly) haven't spent even more effort on cataloging all the terrible impacts of climate change in extreme detail. What we know is bad and convincingly supported enough and bad political actors will seize on anything they can portray as an overreaction.
- krona 4y ago
  Because there's no objective, empirically based criteria for a tipping point; all such things are hypotheses which are falsified by the passage of time. I can think of a few in the past 40 years. That's not to say there aren't 'tipping points' (you certainly can't prove they don't exist.)
cloutchaser 4y ago
It's important to remember that the IPCC, the UNs group of scientists who study climate change say that the worst case scenario is that growth in GDP will be 4% less by 2050 due to climate change. Growth. Not actual GDP. Over the next 28 years that means if the world GDP expands 100%, so doubles, unchecked climate change will mean that is only 96%. That is not the apocalyptic situation that is constantly in the media. The world won't die in a fireball. It's a problem, that needs to be dealt with, but we need to keep context. Covid and the Ukraine war have already had a worse impact on humans worldwide that climate change. And there are a million other black swan events we could be afraid of that are just as likely as climate change, yet we don't care about them because it's not on the BBC. Supervolcanoes, asteroids, tsunamis, more deadly viruses, etc etc.
- chki 4y ago
  Can you provide a source for that number? I didn't find it in the IPCC reports and googling the impact of climate change on GDP gives _very_ different results: https://www.reuters.com/world/climate-change-putting-4-global-gdp-risk-new-study-estimates-2022-04-27/ https://www.reuters.com/world/climate-change-putting-4-globa... Edit: to be clear, that's not the only thing dubious about your comment. The IPCC does not study climate change but aggregates climate change studies. Asteroids are obviously less "likely" than climate change which shouldn't even be a category because climate change is already happening and already has a real impact. "The world won't die in a fireball" is a red herring, the world will be fine but people will be far worse off, especially poor substance farmers in sub-saharan Africa, who also – to come back to you original point – don't contribute a lot to global GDP but are still humans that matter and shouldn't starve to death.
  - cloutchaser 4y ago
    https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warming-report-is-more-chill-than-you-have-read https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warmin... https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-08-11-bjorn-lomborg-climate-hysterical-media-glosses-over-upsides-and-caveats-in-ipcc-report/ https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-08-11-bjorn-l... A few extracts (I got the date wrong its 2100 not 2050): Because of economic development, the UN estimates that the average person in the world will become 450 per cent as well-off by 2100 as they are today. But climate change will have a cost, in that adaptation and challenges become somewhat harder. Because of climate change, the average person in 2100 will “only” be 436 per cent as well off as today. Also: This matters, because globally, many more people die from cold than from heat. A new study in the highly respected journal Lancet shows that about half a million people die annually from heat, but 4.5 million people die from cold. As temperatures have increased over the past two decades, that has caused an extra 116,000 heat deaths each year. This fits the narrative, of course, and is what we have heard over and over again. You don’t hear this, but so far climate change saves 166,000 lives each year. But it turns out that because global warming has also reduced cold waves, we now see 283,000 fewer cold deaths. You don’t hear this, but so far climate change saves 166,000 lives each year.
canoebuilder 4y ago
- lloppal 4y ago
  Different people can come to different conclusions. And maybe, in 50 years, we will know that the tipping point was well before 2008 even. The earth is a complex system and surely you don't want to deny the massive changes that human activities do to its ecosystems. It's better to be careful than continuing the careless exploitation.
  - canoebuilder 4y ago
    The earth is a complex system that is true, and if you know what that means, it means it is impossible to accurately predict with any consistency what will happen in the future. I don’t think it is “being careful” to promulgate relentless doomerism with no self reflection as to whether or not your predictions panned out in the past. I do think we should be mindful of earth ecosystems. I think it would be better to do that in ways that are concretely addressable and quantifiable. Not the climate doom religion fear mongering , buy my carbon offset, or pat me on the back for my corporate green washing. There is no path forward for human civilization as we know it without fossil fuels any time soon. I don’t understand this drive people have to induce this sense of anxiety and foreboding in themselves and others.
    - lloppal 4y ago
      The drive is fueled by more than a century of hard science. Imagine being convinced by countless, well proven and reproducible facts, that e. g. our CO2 emissions create a greenhouse effect but seeing little effort to mitigate that. Of course the voices get more loud and panicked. Especially when you see clear patterns of drastic, fatal and irreversible changes like permafrost melting or species after species vanishing. I don't understand how people can put up blinders and pretend there is no actual and horrific danger.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  If we hit one of these tipping points and Obama could have changed that via some action in those 4 years then he did have 4 years to save the planet. Possibly he did, we just don't know it. Generally the positive action towards climate change has delayed and minimised the predicted impacts. So Obama's administration probably gets some credit for that.
bamboozled 4y ago
Why are we not already Geoengineering, sequestering carbon at scale? It’s either this or the very likely collapse of civilisation. We’re still just hoping we stop polluting. It’s not happening fast enough. Edit: Do we actually have any chance of using geoengineering to turn things around?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Because it's more expensive than the simple solutions. It keeps fossil fuel suppliers rich at the expense of everyone else though, so it's regularly suggested as a solution. Ask them to pay for it though, and you'll get a different answer.
  - bamboozled 4y ago
    Can you explain what the solution is ? Is there even a geoengineering solution that is feasible? I’m imagining sulphates being something to do with it, but I really have no idea if this is practical etc.
    - VaxWithSex 4y ago
      Switch to renewables and storage for energy production, switch over everything to electric, making it more efficient. Then let the natural systems deal with the remaining excess carbon how they deal with volcanic co2.
      - bamboozled 4y ago
        Do the natural systems keep working though ? Once we’ve ruined everything? Do you mean rock weathering etc ?
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      The ipcc reports cover solar-radiation-modification/management and geoengineering generally along with mitigation and adaptation. Currently they say if we don't move to renewables, carbon fees etc. faster then we'll need to do some of this. But it would be cheaper to avoid it as much as we can: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-4/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-4/ Their summary on solar-radiation-modification is: > Uncertainties surrounding solar radiation modification (SRM) measures constrain their potential deployment. These uncertainties include: technological immaturity; limited physical understanding about their effectiveness to limit global warming; and a weak capacity to govern, legitimize, and scale such measures. Some recent model-based analysis suggests SRM would be effective but that it is too early to evaluate its feasibility. Even in the uncertain case that the most adverse side-effects of SRM can be avoided, public resistance, ethical concerns and potential impacts on sustainable development could render SRM economically, socially and institutionally undesirable (low agreement, medium evidence)
ricardo81 4y ago
Here in the UK I still hear many climate sceptics. Also arguments from developing countries that they're less responsible due to them being industralised for much less of a time. Would argue on the last point that the last quarter millenia of tech and social advance mitigates their effects. The UK's "overshoot day" is in May. This is the point I try make to people who are sceptical about making personal decisions in their life to reduce consumption and demand because they feel other countries aren't pulling their weight.
- nicbou 4y ago
  My favorite argument is that China - a very populous country - pollutes more and therefore it's out of our hands. Nevermind North America's disastrous per capita emissions, despite not being the world's factory. It seems like everyone will point fingers right until collapse.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    These people never heard of cumulative emissions. China isn't responsible for most of the CO2 that is in the atmosphere. If you want to talk about fairness then the west already blew their CO2 budget.
chimprich 4y ago
There's an interesting graphic in this Guardian story a few days ago showing graphically how dangerously close we are to a lot of these tipping points. ("The risk of climate tipping points is rising rapidly as the world heats up"/ "Estimated range of global heating needed to pass tipping point temperature"). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on... (Based on the data in the study this story is referring to.)
ThomPete 4y ago
I have learned a long time ago to look for words like 'likely', 'might', 'could' 'potentially' to differentiate between pure speculation and sensationalization and then actual scientific evidence. This is no different. These things might happen, but so does an astroid hitting earth in an hour. That's not science. Science doesn't deal in probability but rather in explanations. And you can either explain exactly how it will happen or you can't. The rest is catastrophizing. Yes the climate is changing, yes it will have an impact. But there are currently no scientifically demonstrated (not just speculated) consequences of climate change, we don't know how to deal with.
- ben_w 4y ago
  While I would absolutely agree that journalists engage in catastrophism… > Science doesn't deal in probability but rather in explanations. And you can either explain exactly how it will happen or you can't. Science absolutely does deal with probabilities. It's much easier to find correlations than causations, but even with causation, there are unknowns. In the case of the global climate, while we can say CO2 raises the global temperature, we don't know what specific temperature will break any specific system on lists like this, the best we can do is give a graph of probability against temperature; while the article linked to does not have such a graph, that says more about the BBC than about the actual science.
  - ThomPete 4y ago
    Science is about creating explanations. The laws of nature is not probabilistic. Probabilities are used when we have a limited set like a deck of cards. But it's not used to create scientific explanations.
    - ben_w 4y ago
      > The laws of nature is not probabilistic Today's your lucky day, you're one of the 10,000 who learn about quantum mechanics (fundamentally random) and chaos theory (sensitivity to initial conditions such that even classical mechanics might as well be fundamentally random) for the first time today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ Edit: Also, p-values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value

Malthus always gets his due in the end no matter how much we kick and scream

spywaregorilla 4y ago
He really doesn't though
the_third_wave 4y ago
Malthus was wrong in 1798 when he failed to predict the industrial revolution. He is long dead but still wrong since Malthusians fail to take solutions to the envisioned problems into account. Had Malthusians been in charge when the Netherlands was populated they'd have moved all people above sea level to keep their feet dry. Fortunately for the Dutch they ignored the Malthusians and built a system of dikes, channels and pumps to keep the sea at bay and on that small patch of land they built the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world. That is the model to follow, not a Malthusian 'run to the hills'.
- hellothere1337 4y ago
  And yet all our technological innovations have incurred a huge amount of technical debt in the form of carbon emissions. The result of that debt is fast approaching and I'm not seeing how we're going to science ourselves out of this one without incurring more debt.

From the article: > The six tipping points "likely" to be crossed, according to the research, published in Science, are: - Greenland Ice Sheet collapse - West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse - Collapse of ocean circulation in the polar region of the North Atlantic - Coral reef die off in the low latitudes - Sudden thawing of permafrost in the Northern regions - Abrupt sea ice loss in the Barents Sea. The Science research article: Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points - https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950

titzer 4y ago
> - Sudden thawing of permafrost in the Northern regions It seems like I was reading a lot of articles about the Permafrost in Siberia hitting temperature records as well as suffering from massive wildfires. Now it seems like there is less news from that region.
- hgh 4y ago
  A well done (gated) recent FT article on the boreal forest that also speaks to decreased scientific collaboration post-Ukraine war: https://www.ft.com/content/e59c800f-3704-4504-91b0-06e583d9cd42 https://www.ft.com/content/e59c800f-3704-4504-91b0-06e583d9c...
  - dredmorbius 4y ago
    Archive.Is (Archive Today) bypasses FT paywall. <https://archive.ph/nmaK7 https://archive.ph/nmaK7>
- onion2k 4y ago
  Now it seems like there is less news from that region. The news industry is a business like any other. Journalists don't stop reporting on things when the things stop happening; they stop reporting when they feel the reports aren't driving engagement with the audience, eg revenue. There is only a loose correlation between what's happening in the world and what's being reported in newspapers and journals when it comes to long term trends.
  - biorach 4y ago
    excellent summary
  - Joeri 4y ago
    They report only what is novel and salient for the target audience. If something is on-going but not novel it won’t be reported on until something novel happens (e.g. climate change only gets reported on when there’s some kind of study, report, natural disaster or climate conference), and they will only report what they consider salient facts (e.g. general news will not report on the actual science, because that’s too technical and boring, only on controversy around the science or controversial conclusions drawn from the science). What is novel and salient is only a tiny fraction of what is relevant to come to an informed opinion. That’s why news is set up for failure if its role is seen as informing the public. I see more potential for documentaries when it comes to informing the public, but the news controversies around past climate documentaries have made the category somewhat burnt.

LatteLazy 4y ago

Decades of not doing anything have somehow led to nothing getting done...

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Decades of actively fighting things getting done has led to very little getting done. It's an interesting question as to whether the human race has collectively spent more time and energy trying to solve climate change or more time and energy pretending it wasn't happening.
- Roark66 4y ago
  Perhaps we should spent more money trying to mitigate the outcomes rather than have those few regions that do limit their co2 output become entirely dependent for industrial goods(steel, concrete etc) on those that don't? It seems so obvious that it begs the question if all the officials that made for example EU's industry so dependent on Russian hydrocarbons in the past, and East Asian steel/other goods going forward do this because of stupidity or are they serving self interests? I propose the latter. As an example, take one decision to shut down all of Germany's nuclear power plants in absence of carbon neutral alternatives. In short term it benefited Russian regime and allowed it to conduct its barbaric war on Ukraine in full knowledge the most powerful country of EU is in their pocket. In long term destroying EU's industry serves Chinese interests.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    "Absense of carbon neutral alternatives"? You mean those things that most people now consider cheaper than both nuclear and fossil fuels despite the billions of dollars spent creating conspiracy theories to undermine them? By people with a vested interest in gas prices being high? Their absence seems more political than technical, an argument that is often used for nuclear. Fossil fuel producers on the other hand really don't like those things. China for example rolled out nuclear but also more wind, more solar, more EVs, more Hydro and so on. Seems like a sensible thing to do if you dont want to be beholden to fossil fuel suppliers.

prohobo 4y ago

Wouldn't crossing these tipping points also accelerate toward more warming? Like the thawing of permafrost in the northern regions would possibly release a huge amount of methane, creating a greater greenhouse gas effect.

candiodari 4y ago
The big problem with Global warming is that it's a feedback loop. The main cause of warming is warming, despite the massive human CO2 production. Even stopping human CO2 production all together would slow global warming, bringing it back to 2 degrees over 1000 years or so, instead of 100. Even that would be a lot faster than the natural rate. Earth heats up, then you get an ice age, then it heats up again, that's the natural cycle. The point of climate policy is not to stop global warming, in the sense of cooling the planet in an absolute sense. It's to slow it down, cooling it in a relative sense.
- canoebuilder 4y ago
  - mavhc 4y ago
    No https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits...
  - aero-glide2 4y ago
    https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-volcanoes-co2-idUSL1N2XV1HA https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-volcanoes-co2-idUS...
  - lloppal 4y ago
    You could have debunked that thought with one simple search like https://www.google.com/search?q=volcanic+eruption+co2 https://www.google.com/search?q=volcanic+eruption+co2
4y ago

st-keller 4y ago

If we know of those six tipping-points, how many are there we don‘t know of? How can it be, that we are so careless with a system so volatile?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The IPCC et al was intentionally conservative in its predictions because even the conservative estimates suggested it made economic sense to fix the problem. Like getting shot is bad. If a scientific and economic consensus tells you to put on a Kevlar vest, you do it. They shouldn't really need to detail all the other things that could go wrong if you get shot, because the conversation should already be over and you should have the vest on, which means even if you do get shot things will probably go better for you and you now have the mental energy to work towards not getting shot.
- spuz 4y ago
  I think you are mis-reading your parent comment. They are saying we should be humble when it comes to predicting all the things that could happen when manipulating such a complex system as the climate. If our best science is saying there are at least 6 different ways in which we are already causing harm, then it stands to reason there are probably more dangers than that that our science can't yet predict. I think they are saying, let's always assume there are details that we won't understand and act on that basis, i.e. put on the kevlar vest and work towards removing carbon gases from the atmosphere.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    I was agreeing with them, just with some more details of why we (sensibly) haven't spent even more effort on cataloging all the terrible impacts of climate change in extreme detail. What we know is bad and convincingly supported enough and bad political actors will seize on anything they can portray as an overreaction.
krona 4y ago
Because there's no objective, empirically based criteria for a tipping point; all such things are hypotheses which are falsified by the passage of time. I can think of a few in the past 40 years. That's not to say there aren't 'tipping points' (you certainly can't prove they don't exist.)

cloutchaser 4y ago

It's important to remember that the IPCC, the UNs group of scientists who study climate change say that the worst case scenario is that growth in GDP will be 4% less by 2050 due to climate change. Growth. Not actual GDP. Over the next 28 years that means if the world GDP expands 100%, so doubles, unchecked climate change will mean that is only 96%. That is not the apocalyptic situation that is constantly in the media. The world won't die in a fireball. It's a problem, that needs to be dealt with, but we need to keep context. Covid and the Ukraine war have already had a worse impact on humans worldwide that climate change. And there are a million other black swan events we could be afraid of that are just as likely as climate change, yet we don't care about them because it's not on the BBC. Supervolcanoes, asteroids, tsunamis, more deadly viruses, etc etc.

chki 4y ago
Can you provide a source for that number? I didn't find it in the IPCC reports and googling the impact of climate change on GDP gives _very_ different results: https://www.reuters.com/world/climate-change-putting-4-global-gdp-risk-new-study-estimates-2022-04-27/ https://www.reuters.com/world/climate-change-putting-4-globa... Edit: to be clear, that's not the only thing dubious about your comment. The IPCC does not study climate change but aggregates climate change studies. Asteroids are obviously less "likely" than climate change which shouldn't even be a category because climate change is already happening and already has a real impact. "The world won't die in a fireball" is a red herring, the world will be fine but people will be far worse off, especially poor substance farmers in sub-saharan Africa, who also – to come back to you original point – don't contribute a lot to global GDP but are still humans that matter and shouldn't starve to death.
- cloutchaser 4y ago
  https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warming-report-is-more-chill-than-you-have-read https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warmin... https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-08-11-bjorn-lomborg-climate-hysterical-media-glosses-over-upsides-and-caveats-in-ipcc-report/ https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-08-11-bjorn-l... A few extracts (I got the date wrong its 2100 not 2050): Because of economic development, the UN estimates that the average person in the world will become 450 per cent as well-off by 2100 as they are today. But climate change will have a cost, in that adaptation and challenges become somewhat harder. Because of climate change, the average person in 2100 will “only” be 436 per cent as well off as today. Also: This matters, because globally, many more people die from cold than from heat. A new study in the highly respected journal Lancet shows that about half a million people die annually from heat, but 4.5 million people die from cold. As temperatures have increased over the past two decades, that has caused an extra 116,000 heat deaths each year. This fits the narrative, of course, and is what we have heard over and over again. You don’t hear this, but so far climate change saves 166,000 lives each year. But it turns out that because global warming has also reduced cold waves, we now see 283,000 fewer cold deaths. You don’t hear this, but so far climate change saves 166,000 lives each year.

canoebuilder 4y ago

lloppal 4y ago
Different people can come to different conclusions. And maybe, in 50 years, we will know that the tipping point was well before 2008 even. The earth is a complex system and surely you don't want to deny the massive changes that human activities do to its ecosystems. It's better to be careful than continuing the careless exploitation.
- canoebuilder 4y ago
  The earth is a complex system that is true, and if you know what that means, it means it is impossible to accurately predict with any consistency what will happen in the future. I don’t think it is “being careful” to promulgate relentless doomerism with no self reflection as to whether or not your predictions panned out in the past. I do think we should be mindful of earth ecosystems. I think it would be better to do that in ways that are concretely addressable and quantifiable. Not the climate doom religion fear mongering , buy my carbon offset, or pat me on the back for my corporate green washing. There is no path forward for human civilization as we know it without fossil fuels any time soon. I don’t understand this drive people have to induce this sense of anxiety and foreboding in themselves and others.
  - lloppal 4y ago
    The drive is fueled by more than a century of hard science. Imagine being convinced by countless, well proven and reproducible facts, that e. g. our CO2 emissions create a greenhouse effect but seeing little effort to mitigate that. Of course the voices get more loud and panicked. Especially when you see clear patterns of drastic, fatal and irreversible changes like permafrost melting or species after species vanishing. I don't understand how people can put up blinders and pretend there is no actual and horrific danger.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
If we hit one of these tipping points and Obama could have changed that via some action in those 4 years then he did have 4 years to save the planet. Possibly he did, we just don't know it. Generally the positive action towards climate change has delayed and minimised the predicted impacts. So Obama's administration probably gets some credit for that.

bamboozled 4y ago

Why are we not already Geoengineering, sequestering carbon at scale? It’s either this or the very likely collapse of civilisation. We’re still just hoping we stop polluting. It’s not happening fast enough. Edit: Do we actually have any chance of using geoengineering to turn things around?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Because it's more expensive than the simple solutions. It keeps fossil fuel suppliers rich at the expense of everyone else though, so it's regularly suggested as a solution. Ask them to pay for it though, and you'll get a different answer.
- bamboozled 4y ago
  Can you explain what the solution is ? Is there even a geoengineering solution that is feasible? I’m imagining sulphates being something to do with it, but I really have no idea if this is practical etc.
  - VaxWithSex 4y ago
    Switch to renewables and storage for energy production, switch over everything to electric, making it more efficient. Then let the natural systems deal with the remaining excess carbon how they deal with volcanic co2.
    - bamboozled 4y ago
      Do the natural systems keep working though ? Once we’ve ruined everything? Do you mean rock weathering etc ?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    The ipcc reports cover solar-radiation-modification/management and geoengineering generally along with mitigation and adaptation. Currently they say if we don't move to renewables, carbon fees etc. faster then we'll need to do some of this. But it would be cheaper to avoid it as much as we can: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-4/ https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-4/ Their summary on solar-radiation-modification is: > Uncertainties surrounding solar radiation modification (SRM) measures constrain their potential deployment. These uncertainties include: technological immaturity; limited physical understanding about their effectiveness to limit global warming; and a weak capacity to govern, legitimize, and scale such measures. Some recent model-based analysis suggests SRM would be effective but that it is too early to evaluate its feasibility. Even in the uncertain case that the most adverse side-effects of SRM can be avoided, public resistance, ethical concerns and potential impacts on sustainable development could render SRM economically, socially and institutionally undesirable (low agreement, medium evidence)

ricardo81 4y ago

Here in the UK I still hear many climate sceptics. Also arguments from developing countries that they're less responsible due to them being industralised for much less of a time. Would argue on the last point that the last quarter millenia of tech and social advance mitigates their effects. The UK's "overshoot day" is in May. This is the point I try make to people who are sceptical about making personal decisions in their life to reduce consumption and demand because they feel other countries aren't pulling their weight.

nicbou 4y ago
My favorite argument is that China - a very populous country - pollutes more and therefore it's out of our hands. Nevermind North America's disastrous per capita emissions, despite not being the world's factory. It seems like everyone will point fingers right until collapse.
- imtringued 4y ago
  These people never heard of cumulative emissions. China isn't responsible for most of the CO2 that is in the atmosphere. If you want to talk about fairness then the west already blew their CO2 budget.

chimprich 4y ago

There's an interesting graphic in this Guardian story a few days ago showing graphically how dangerously close we are to a lot of these tipping points. ("The risk of climate tipping points is rising rapidly as the world heats up"/ "Estimated range of global heating needed to pass tipping point temperature"). https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on... (Based on the data in the study this story is referring to.)

ThomPete 4y ago

I have learned a long time ago to look for words like 'likely', 'might', 'could' 'potentially' to differentiate between pure speculation and sensationalization and then actual scientific evidence. This is no different. These things might happen, but so does an astroid hitting earth in an hour. That's not science. Science doesn't deal in probability but rather in explanations. And you can either explain exactly how it will happen or you can't. The rest is catastrophizing. Yes the climate is changing, yes it will have an impact. But there are currently no scientifically demonstrated (not just speculated) consequences of climate change, we don't know how to deal with.

ben_w 4y ago
While I would absolutely agree that journalists engage in catastrophism… > Science doesn't deal in probability but rather in explanations. And you can either explain exactly how it will happen or you can't. Science absolutely does deal with probabilities. It's much easier to find correlations than causations, but even with causation, there are unknowns. In the case of the global climate, while we can say CO2 raises the global temperature, we don't know what specific temperature will break any specific system on lists like this, the best we can do is give a graph of probability against temperature; while the article linked to does not have such a graph, that says more about the BBC than about the actual science.
- ThomPete 4y ago
  Science is about creating explanations. The laws of nature is not probabilistic. Probabilities are used when we have a limited set like a deck of cards. But it's not used to create scientific explanations.
  - ben_w 4y ago
    > The laws of nature is not probabilistic Today's your lucky day, you're one of the 10,000 who learn about quantum mechanics (fundamentally random) and chaos theory (sensitivity to initial conditions such that even classical mechanics might as well be fundamentally random) for the first time today: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_mechanics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/ Edit: Also, p-values: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value