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It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem

by roenxi 9mo ago

It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem but it seems to be fairly well understood and there is lots of time to adjust. Worst case scenario seems to be that people will stop migrating to Europe.

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
PinkMilkshake 9mo ago
> humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. That's not the problem, though. The problem is almost nothing else can. Livestock, staple crops, pollinating insects, etc.
- greygoo222 9mo ago
  Livestock, staple crops, and pollinating insects cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. Some specific crops don't, but that's not a problem as long as changes are predicted.
- roenxi 9mo ago
  How big a problem is that over a multi-decade time horizon? There is a pretty big variation in average temperatures by country [0]. Somehow People everywhere from Thailand to Greenland manage to find food. All else failing it is a possibility to trade for calories. Let alone technology improvements that might save the day by accident. I mean, it might make places uninhabitable over the course of a few generations, but things that change so slowly are't actually much of a threat on an individual level. Worst of the worst cases people can move or not have children - the statistics suggest that is an acceptable option to a lot of people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_yearly_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_y...
  - SupremumLimit 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - t0bia_s 9mo ago
      And you know future because of... Wikipedia?
    - roenxi 9mo ago
      > Multi-decade time frame can only be thought of as catastrophic when it comes to change of this magnitude. If someone moves from Singapore to Poland is that a catastrophe? We'd be talking a smaller temperature delta than that and this is still a theoretical risk. That isn't necessarily something that people worry about beyond saying "it is very hot" or "it is very cold". It doesn't have a lot of implications beyond needing to move crops around and changing building standards (which is achievable over long periods of time). Now just a 10-15 degree swing isn't the end of the story because if the average temperature crosses 0 that might well be a big problem. I dunno. But it sounds solvable, these aren't particularly scary scenarios being put forward. They're more of the expensive and inconvenient variety.
  - danaris 9mo ago
    Right, and we know that modern human societies are really good at planning for a major disaster on a multi-decade time horizon! Look at how well we've dealt with the climate cri—oh, wait. This won't end humanity, no. But it is likely to cause absolutely catastrophic levels of upheaval and probably billions (with a b) of deaths—from famine, disease, exposure, and war.
  - lucyjojo 8mo ago
    famines and wars. very real at the individual level. if you're rich you might insulate yourself from that to some extent.
SupremumLimit 9mo ago
The ignorance of this comment is breathtaking. How are the crops going to grow if the temperature drops by 15 degrees Celsius? What marine and terrestrial ecosystems can survive a sudden catastrophic change like that? What’s going to happen to the weather patterns after this planet-scale shift? How do you “adjust” to the collapse of your food supply and entire ecosystems?
- tim333 9mo ago
  Grow the crops somewhere else? The earth's climate has always changed - the sea was 100m lower 20k years ago and much of Europe covered by ice. But it doesn't change so much over one human lifetime.
  - vdupras 9mo ago
    20k years ago, humans hadn't invented agriculture. Our whole civilization has existed in one particular geological time, an exceptional one. There is absolutely no indication that it's flexible enough to be transposed in another, and particularly not at that speed of transition, which is, in geological time, exceptionally fast.
  - simgt 9mo ago
    We've gotten this far because we've had a rather stable climate for the past few thousand years. The current rate of the change is the problem. You must have missed it: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
    - deleted 9mo ago
      [deleted]
    - tim333 9mo ago
      It's still ~1C over a human lifetime which gives you a fair bit of time to adapt. I mean I may fly to Bali next month due to climate but that's just London being crap in winter as usual.
      - 9mo ago
lossolo 9mo ago
Europe is one of the world's largest agricultural producers and exporters. France alone is one of the top grain exporters globally. The EU exports massive quantities of wheat, barley, dairy, and processed food to North Africa, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Countries like Egypt, Algeria, and Nigeria are heavily dependent on European grain imports. An AMOC collapse would devastate growing seasons, slash yields, and potentially make large parts of Northern Europe unsuitable for current agriculture. And it's not just food. Europe is a major producer and exporter of fertilizers. If European industrial and agricultural output collapses, the ripple effects hit global food supply chains hard. Countries that depend on those imports will face famine. Then there's the knock-on, hundreds of millions of people in food-insecure regions losing a key supply source, simultaneous disruption to Atlantic weather patterns affecting rainfall in West Africa and the Amazon, potential shifts in monsoon systems affecting South and East Asia. It's a cascading global food security crisis. > lots of time to adjust This assumes a gradual slowdown, but paleoclimate evidence suggests AMOC transitions can happen within a decade or even less. The idea that we'd just smoothly adapt to one of the most dramatic climate shifts in human civilization is not supported by what we know about how these systems behave.
__d 9mo ago
Yes. And totally no. Some humans will very likely survive. Millions, possibly hundreds of millions, will die. Life as it has been known for hundreds of years will change dramatically. An unwillingness or inability to conceive of this possible future as anything more than “it’ll be colder, but fine” would make it vastly worse for many people.

by roenxi 9mo ago

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

PinkMilkshake 9mo ago

> humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. That's not the problem, though. The problem is almost nothing else can. Livestock, staple crops, pollinating insects, etc.

greygoo222 9mo ago
Livestock, staple crops, and pollinating insects cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. Some specific crops don't, but that's not a problem as long as changes are predicted.
roenxi 9mo ago
How big a problem is that over a multi-decade time horizon? There is a pretty big variation in average temperatures by country [0]. Somehow People everywhere from Thailand to Greenland manage to find food. All else failing it is a possibility to trade for calories. Let alone technology improvements that might save the day by accident. I mean, it might make places uninhabitable over the course of a few generations, but things that change so slowly are't actually much of a threat on an individual level. Worst of the worst cases people can move or not have children - the statistics suggest that is an acceptable option to a lot of people. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_yearly_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_average_y...
- SupremumLimit 9mo ago
  [flagged]
  - t0bia_s 9mo ago
    And you know future because of... Wikipedia?
  - roenxi 9mo ago
    > Multi-decade time frame can only be thought of as catastrophic when it comes to change of this magnitude. If someone moves from Singapore to Poland is that a catastrophe? We'd be talking a smaller temperature delta than that and this is still a theoretical risk. That isn't necessarily something that people worry about beyond saying "it is very hot" or "it is very cold". It doesn't have a lot of implications beyond needing to move crops around and changing building standards (which is achievable over long periods of time). Now just a 10-15 degree swing isn't the end of the story because if the average temperature crosses 0 that might well be a big problem. I dunno. But it sounds solvable, these aren't particularly scary scenarios being put forward. They're more of the expensive and inconvenient variety.
- danaris 9mo ago
  Right, and we know that modern human societies are really good at planning for a major disaster on a multi-decade time horizon! Look at how well we've dealt with the climate cri—oh, wait. This won't end humanity, no. But it is likely to cause absolutely catastrophic levels of upheaval and probably billions (with a b) of deaths—from famine, disease, exposure, and war.
- lucyjojo 8mo ago
  famines and wars. very real at the individual level. if you're rich you might insulate yourself from that to some extent.

SupremumLimit 9mo ago

The ignorance of this comment is breathtaking. How are the crops going to grow if the temperature drops by 15 degrees Celsius? What marine and terrestrial ecosystems can survive a sudden catastrophic change like that? What’s going to happen to the weather patterns after this planet-scale shift? How do you “adjust” to the collapse of your food supply and entire ecosystems?

tim333 9mo ago
Grow the crops somewhere else? The earth's climate has always changed - the sea was 100m lower 20k years ago and much of Europe covered by ice. But it doesn't change so much over one human lifetime.
- vdupras 9mo ago
  20k years ago, humans hadn't invented agriculture. Our whole civilization has existed in one particular geological time, an exceptional one. There is absolutely no indication that it's flexible enough to be transposed in another, and particularly not at that speed of transition, which is, in geological time, exceptionally fast.
- simgt 9mo ago
  We've gotten this far because we've had a rather stable climate for the past few thousand years. The current rate of the change is the problem. You must have missed it: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
  - tim333 9mo ago
    It's still ~1C over a human lifetime which gives you a fair bit of time to adapt. I mean I may fly to Bali next month due to climate but that's just London being crap in winter as usual.
    - 9mo ago

lossolo 9mo ago

Europe is one of the world's largest agricultural producers and exporters. France alone is one of the top grain exporters globally. The EU exports massive quantities of wheat, barley, dairy, and processed food to North Africa, the Middle East, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Countries like Egypt, Algeria, and Nigeria are heavily dependent on European grain imports. An AMOC collapse would devastate growing seasons, slash yields, and potentially make large parts of Northern Europe unsuitable for current agriculture. And it's not just food. Europe is a major producer and exporter of fertilizers. If European industrial and agricultural output collapses, the ripple effects hit global food supply chains hard. Countries that depend on those imports will face famine. Then there's the knock-on, hundreds of millions of people in food-insecure regions losing a key supply source, simultaneous disruption to Atlantic weather patterns affecting rainfall in West Africa and the Amazon, potential shifts in monsoon systems affecting South and East Asia. It's a cascading global food security crisis. > lots of time to adjust This assumes a gradual slowdown, but paleoclimate evidence suggests AMOC transitions can happen within a decade or even less. The idea that we'd just smoothly adapt to one of the most dramatic climate shifts in human civilization is not supported by what we know about how these systems behave.

__d 9mo ago

Yes. And totally no. Some humans will very likely survive. Millions, possibly hundreds of millions, will die. Life as it has been known for hundreds of years will change dramatically. An unwillingness or inability to conceive of this possible future as anything more than “it’ll be colder, but fine” would make it vastly worse for many people.