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Who’s “we” and what do you mean by “livable”? There’s no mainstream climate model that predicts the globe becoming uninhabitable for humanity. Even the worst ca

Who’s “we” and what do you mean by “livable”? There’s no mainstream climate model that predicts the globe becoming uninhabitable for humanity. Even the worst case scenarios in well done models only show global growth slowing by a few percent without any climate mitigation. Meanwhile we have a carbon neutral technology, nuclear energy, that even with its problems can easily provide energy albeit at a higher cost than coal. The predicted higher temperatures existed in the past and had some of the highest archeological rates of biodiversity. Thats not to say the outcome will be all positive; certainly some regions will encounter issues during the transition, but there’s also going to be a lot of opportunity opened up within the range of predicted outcomes by climate models. Increased agricultural production in northern regions, less cost of heating in many heavily populated areas, and of course new transport routes across the arctic. That’s not to mention all of the benefits fossil fuels are bringing to people much poorer than you in the global south.

wizofaus 3y ago
You hardly need to go anywhere near "the globe becoming uninhabitable for humanity" before you run into pretty devastating consequences for significant percentages of the world's population. And even if we encouraged poorer countries to burn as much cheap fossil fuel as they possibly could to improve their standards of living, I very much doubt it would even come close to enabling them to mitigate against some of the worst sorts of natural disasters and weather extremes that are expected to be more severe and frequent as the planet continues to warm. Though realistically it won't be lack of cheap energy that continues to hold back economic development for much of the world anyway.
Paul-Craft 3y ago
"We" is "humanity." You, me, and everybody. I didn't say "uninhabitable," although, yes, FYI, major climate models do predict certain areas becoming uninhabitable due to intolerable wet bulb temperatures. I said "liveable," as in "can sustain some modicum of semi-modern civilization." That's a far lower bar. Meanwhile, we have a technology we literally cannot build enough of in the next 5 years to stop any of this from happening. And, if we continue to burn fossil fuels, once we exhaust them, we'll literally reach C02 levels not seen since the Cretaceous period, when temperatures were 10 C above the pre-industrial revolution era. How does that benefit the global south, or anybody? I do not believe you have thought this through. You bring up so called "opportunities" forecast by climate change models, yet fail to consider that we're already looking at severe weather events such as floods, storms, and heat waves, that would normally be 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 events, starting to happen on a multiple times a decade time scale. It's not possible to build in the face of that; even insurance companies are recognizing that today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous_Thermal_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous_Thermal_Maximum
- simple-thoughts 3y ago
  Most of humanity already lives in conditions you would consider “semi-modern”. I understand that change can be scary and that yes you personally will either need to adapt your expectations to live a comfortable semi-modern lifestyle. Or perhaps decide to seize the situation and make life better for yourself and others by providing goods and services that assist the transition and maintain your current luxurious lifestyle. It’s funny to me when people point to weather events and blame climate change. Yes there will always be some place in the world experiencing extreme weather events, and climate change will change the distribution of extreme weather events so that some places become more extreme and others become more mild. I wouldn’t want to live in California ;-)

wizofaus 3y ago

You hardly need to go anywhere near "the globe becoming uninhabitable for humanity" before you run into pretty devastating consequences for significant percentages of the world's population. And even if we encouraged poorer countries to burn as much cheap fossil fuel as they possibly could to improve their standards of living, I very much doubt it would even come close to enabling them to mitigate against some of the worst sorts of natural disasters and weather extremes that are expected to be more severe and frequent as the planet continues to warm. Though realistically it won't be lack of cheap energy that continues to hold back economic development for much of the world anyway.

Paul-Craft 3y ago

"We" is "humanity." You, me, and everybody. I didn't say "uninhabitable," although, yes, FYI, major climate models do predict certain areas becoming uninhabitable due to intolerable wet bulb temperatures. I said "liveable," as in "can sustain some modicum of semi-modern civilization." That's a far lower bar. Meanwhile, we have a technology we literally cannot build enough of in the next 5 years to stop any of this from happening. And, if we continue to burn fossil fuels, once we exhaust them, we'll literally reach C02 levels not seen since the Cretaceous period, when temperatures were 10 C above the pre-industrial revolution era. How does that benefit the global south, or anybody? I do not believe you have thought this through. You bring up so called "opportunities" forecast by climate change models, yet fail to consider that we're already looking at severe weather events such as floods, storms, and heat waves, that would normally be 1 in 100 or 1 in 1000 events, starting to happen on a multiple times a decade time scale. It's not possible to build in the face of that; even insurance companies are recognizing that today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous_Thermal_Maximum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous_Thermal_Maximum

simple-thoughts 3y ago
Most of humanity already lives in conditions you would consider “semi-modern”. I understand that change can be scary and that yes you personally will either need to adapt your expectations to live a comfortable semi-modern lifestyle. Or perhaps decide to seize the situation and make life better for yourself and others by providing goods and services that assist the transition and maintain your current luxurious lifestyle. It’s funny to me when people point to weather events and blame climate change. Yes there will always be some place in the world experiencing extreme weather events, and climate change will change the distribution of extreme weather events so that some places become more extreme and others become more mild. I wouldn’t want to live in California ;-)