4 ms·

The initial pain will be diffuse and not obviously caused by global warming. For example, destabilization of equatorial countries due to wet bulb temperatures,

The initial pain will be diffuse and not obviously caused by global warming. For example, destabilization of equatorial countries due to wet bulb temperatures, through multiple causal paths: worse education outcomes (many days off school during hot months), worse economy (can't work outside), worse life satisfaction -> more autocracies, more water scarcity. Then you get more emigration to the colder north, more conflict and more suffering. But not much of it is easily and directly attributable to temperatures. Much of it is foregone upside, like GDP growth that's 3% instead of 5%.

marcyb5st 8mo ago
I am not sure how not directly linked to global warming. I am currently on the phone but I remember a study that mentioned that Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh would see a deadly heat (wet bulb temperatures) from basically 0 as it is right now to 30 days/year by 2050 or 2060. I can't remember right now. If that is not linkable to global warming I am not sure what is. And that is a huge event. In Europe we are struggling with accomodating perhaps 10M people. What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?
- cess11 8mo ago
  "What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?" More taxes go to ammunition for autonomous border guard systems.
  - wizzwizz4 8mo ago
    This is not inevitable. We have time, now, to prepare for the future, which doesn't have to be a carbon copy of today.
    - wkat4242 8mo ago
      Right now things are getting worse in that regard, not better
    - jedberg 8mo ago
      Unfortunately most political systems around the world reward short term results, not long term thinking. Just look here in the USA -- the Democrats tried to do some forward thinking things like subsidizing solar and wind, and they were rewarded by losing at the ballot box (of course that isn't the only reason, but it's one of many). There are no rewards for long term thinking, so it's hard to get anyone to do it.
      - wizzwizz4 8mo ago
        So, those of us with no suede in this race, who will see no reward from the system anyway, are the only people who can be trusted to make change. That means you and I (and I dare say a significant portion of the populace). It's not obvious what we can do (individual actions taken within the context of a system are dwarfed by structural forces of the system), but we're the only ones who are going to do it. So, let's assume we did fix things, and we're looking back from 2050, doing a retrospective. What things did we end up doing, that got us to that point?
        jedberg 8mo ago
        There's nothing you as an individual can do, or even a small group of individuals. This is where government is supposed to work. Using its power to force everyone to do something for the collective good that isn't profitable. Almost all emissions come from factories. There are only two ways to reduce that -- a global set of rules that increases costs to reduce emissions, and an overall reduction in consumption, via a carbon tax.
        wizzwizz4 8mo ago
        Factories are staffed by people. Those people have the physical capability to change the way the factories operate. Any individual person attempting to modify / replace the factory equipment against their line manager's will would quickly find themselves out of a job, but collective action among factory workers (e.g. unions) might work. So might getting the line managers on board with the proposal, if you can get enough buy-in that "we used our discretion" is an acceptable answer: it's not like most companies actively want to pollute, rather that it's usually cheaper to do so, and they don't care about not. Being able to say "this move reduces turnover among our workers, slashing training costs; and you can probably use it in the B2B / B2C [delete as appropriate] marketing, since environmentalism sells in some markets; and this way, we're prepared for future legislation expected in jurisdictions A, B and C" may be sufficient justification. Alternatively, there may be ways to exploit the principal-agent problem. I'm sure there are people who've specced out detailed proposals for this sort of thing. There might even be previous cases where they've succeeded, which we can learn from. Neither of those "two ways" you mentioned are things that I can do, but I may be able to slightly reduce the intensity of the opposition. (Companies tend to like when regulations require their competitors to do things they're already doing, after all.)
    - cess11 8mo ago
      Sure, but if you were to make that concrete, what would you recommend and where do you see potential for it to be implemented?
  - rapind 8mo ago
    > "What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?" You think that’s bad... Up here in Canada we’ll have to deal with Murican immigrants as things heat up. Talk about killing the vibe.
    - un-diletante 8mo ago
      I think the least of your worries will be immigrants when an imperialistic nation with superior military power realizes that the annexation of your land is necessary for its survival.
      - rapind 8mo ago
        I actually am moderately concerned with that to be honest. If the US doesn't have free and fair midterms I don't think it's really that paranoid to be worried about it.
        jpadkins 8mo ago
        This is why it's so important we pass the America SAVE Act. We have to stop MAGA from cheating in 2026.
      - asdff 8mo ago
        Why would the US annex canada? It is already in the american hegemony.
        JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
        To distract from the Epstein files.
        asdff 8mo ago
        I'm surprised even the smarter democrats are saying that stupid line. Distraction would imply there are still to be people who have not yet learned and formed an opinion on the Epstein files. Everyone knows about these already and made their positions about it. As it turns out the most abhorrent things can come out with those Epstein files and it doesn't seem to hurt Trumps support among his base any. Doesn't seem to be threatening any legal action for him or implicated parties. Once again only Maxwell is in jail, somehow, with dozens and dozens of witnesses stepping forward. Democrats have been grandstanding on this man for 10 years now and haven't been able to stop him. I think by this point it is clear he is going to get away with everything even if people want to write about him "flailing." Him flailing is literally him achieving all his domestic and foreign policy goals right now and his base couldn't be more pleased...
- ragall 8mo ago
  > What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die? We sink the boats.
  - skvmb 8mo ago
    Y E S
    - peterpost2 8mo ago
      Are you that excited to see innocent people die? Or am I misunderstanding your comment?
  - gzread 8mo ago
    Indeed, no reason to expect anything will happen differently from what is currently happening, but on a 150x bigger scale.
- boutell 8mo ago
  Patricia Anthony published a novel about this in '93. Cold Allies. It's good military sci fi. Doesn't pretend to offer answers.
- dontwearitout 8mo ago
  Chapter 1 of "The Ministry of the Future" describes a fictional wet bulb event. It's grisly and horrific and I highly recommend you read this chapter, it changed my view on climate change. https://books.rockslide.ca/read/780/epub#epubcfi(/6/14!/4/2/2[chapter001]/2/2/1:0) https://books.rockslide.ca/read/780/epub#epubcfi(/6/14!/4/2/...
  - marcyb5st 8mo ago
    Thank you. I will
- numpad0 8mo ago
  > What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die? Like let them build few of those sci-fi domes and let them keep buying disposable bottled oxygen? I don't get the pessimism. India makes its own rockets. Pakistan has nukes. Why are they supposed to be incapable of holding the nation together on Mars-like Earth? Tokyo is already hitting 40C/100F at >90% RH during summers. It's already mildly unsurvivable. Nobody cares. Maybe in 10-20 years we'd be wearing spacesuits, but do anyone seriously think the equatorial regions will be uninhabitable and land prices on northern Europe is going to skyrocket???
  - asdff 8mo ago
    The fact people already live in some of the hottest places in the world today should speak a little to human resiliency.
    - vlz 8mo ago
      We can live in hot places if the air stays dry, which it usually does or historically did. If the air gets more humid we cannot anymore. > Humans may also experience lethal hyperthermia when the wet bulb temperature is sustained above 35 °C (95 °F) for six hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoregulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoregulation
- t0bia_s 8mo ago
  There are also statistics showing that mortality because of cold is much higher than mortality because of heat. About 9 times higher. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542519625000543 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254251962...
morkalork 8mo ago
Wasn't a drought originally part of the cause of Syria's collapse into civil war? Climate change is already causing unrest in equitorial countries, mass migration and a corresponding rise in authoritarianism / right wing populism in Europe.
- parineum 8mo ago
  You're making the "It's snowing there can't be global warming" argument in reverse. One local drought can't be attributed to or be proof of global warming. It's like smoking causing lung cancer; (the following numbers are made up) 5 in 100 non-smokers might get lung cancer but 20 in 100 smokers do. 5 of those smokers would have gotten lung cancer anyway and 15 wouldn't have but there's no way to know which individuals are in which cohort.
  - gzread 8mo ago
    Not necessarily. Climate change means there will be more droughts; and if droughts cause civil war, there will be more civil war (that's the GP's relevance); even if we can't tell which ones were caused by global warming, that's still bad.
  - morkalork 8mo ago
    Oh no, on the contrary, I'm saying it's already started and people aren't paying attention.
    - parineum 8mo ago
      > Wasn't a drought originally part of the cause of Syria's collapse into civil war? Climate change is already causing unrest... You're drawing (or seem to be) a causal link from climate change to this specific drought/war. Climate change is a statistical anomaly that cannot be seen in individual events.
ACCount37 8mo ago
That's the sum of climate change. "GDP growth of 3% instead of 5%." Severe enough to be noticeable, but not severe enough to warrant radical climate action. Not an extinction threat. A "slow trickle of economic damage, some amount of otherwise preventable death and suffering, diffused across the entire world, applied unevenly, and spread thin across many decades" threat. And stopping the GHG emissions demands radical, coordinated global action. Major emitters would have to pay local costs now - for the sake of global benefits many decades down the line. And those emitters are not the countries that face the worst climate risks. Global superpowers can tolerate climate change - it's countries that already struggle as it is, that don't have the resources to adapt or mitigate damage, that can face a significant uptick in death and suffering rather than damage in the realm of economics. That makes climate action a very hard sell for the politicians. Thus the tepid response. By now, I'm convinced that the only viable approaches to climate change lie in the realm of geoengineering. Which does not require multilateral coordinated action against a "tragedy of commons" scenario, and is cheaper than forcing local GHG emissions into negatives. Even non-permanent geoengineering solutions offset impacts here and now - thus buying time for fossil fuel energy to succumb to the economic advantage of renewables. And geoengineering measures can be enacted unilaterally by many powers - as long as the political will is there to absorb a few strongly worded condemnation letters.
- gzread 8mo ago
  And then when the GDP finally collapses, there will have been nothing that could be done about it for the last 50 years and they'll ask wtf we were doing in 2040, why we didn't stop it then.
  - ACCount37 8mo ago
    That's the nasty thing. It doesn't "finally collapse". The world just eats the climate costs and keeps going. There's no global catastrophe. No single moment when the magnitude of your folly is revealed to you a blinding flash. Just a slow trickle of "2% worse". A loss of what could have been.
    - 8mo ago
realo 8mo ago
"Migration to the colder north..." Maybe that's why the Trump regime wants so badly to invade Canada and the Groenland?

marcyb5st 8mo ago

I am not sure how not directly linked to global warming. I am currently on the phone but I remember a study that mentioned that Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh would see a deadly heat (wet bulb temperatures) from basically 0 as it is right now to 30 days/year by 2050 or 2060. I can't remember right now. If that is not linkable to global warming I am not sure what is. And that is a huge event. In Europe we are struggling with accomodating perhaps 10M people. What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?

cess11 8mo ago
"What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?" More taxes go to ammunition for autonomous border guard systems.
- wizzwizz4 8mo ago
  This is not inevitable. We have time, now, to prepare for the future, which doesn't have to be a carbon copy of today.
  - wkat4242 8mo ago
    Right now things are getting worse in that regard, not better
  - jedberg 8mo ago
    Unfortunately most political systems around the world reward short term results, not long term thinking. Just look here in the USA -- the Democrats tried to do some forward thinking things like subsidizing solar and wind, and they were rewarded by losing at the ballot box (of course that isn't the only reason, but it's one of many). There are no rewards for long term thinking, so it's hard to get anyone to do it.
    - wizzwizz4 8mo ago
      So, those of us with no suede in this race, who will see no reward from the system anyway, are the only people who can be trusted to make change. That means you and I (and I dare say a significant portion of the populace). It's not obvious what we can do (individual actions taken within the context of a system are dwarfed by structural forces of the system), but we're the only ones who are going to do it. So, let's assume we did fix things, and we're looking back from 2050, doing a retrospective. What things did we end up doing, that got us to that point?
      - jedberg 8mo ago
        There's nothing you as an individual can do, or even a small group of individuals. This is where government is supposed to work. Using its power to force everyone to do something for the collective good that isn't profitable. Almost all emissions come from factories. There are only two ways to reduce that -- a global set of rules that increases costs to reduce emissions, and an overall reduction in consumption, via a carbon tax.
        wizzwizz4 8mo ago
        Factories are staffed by people. Those people have the physical capability to change the way the factories operate. Any individual person attempting to modify / replace the factory equipment against their line manager's will would quickly find themselves out of a job, but collective action among factory workers (e.g. unions) might work. So might getting the line managers on board with the proposal, if you can get enough buy-in that "we used our discretion" is an acceptable answer: it's not like most companies actively want to pollute, rather that it's usually cheaper to do so, and they don't care about not. Being able to say "this move reduces turnover among our workers, slashing training costs; and you can probably use it in the B2B / B2C [delete as appropriate] marketing, since environmentalism sells in some markets; and this way, we're prepared for future legislation expected in jurisdictions A, B and C" may be sufficient justification. Alternatively, there may be ways to exploit the principal-agent problem. I'm sure there are people who've specced out detailed proposals for this sort of thing. There might even be previous cases where they've succeeded, which we can learn from. Neither of those "two ways" you mentioned are things that I can do, but I may be able to slightly reduce the intensity of the opposition. (Companies tend to like when regulations require their competitors to do things they're already doing, after all.)
  - cess11 8mo ago
    Sure, but if you were to make that concrete, what would you recommend and where do you see potential for it to be implemented?
- rapind 8mo ago
  > "What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die?" You think that’s bad... Up here in Canada we’ll have to deal with Murican immigrants as things heat up. Talk about killing the vibe.
  - un-diletante 8mo ago
    I think the least of your worries will be immigrants when an imperialistic nation with superior military power realizes that the annexation of your land is necessary for its survival.
    - rapind 8mo ago
      I actually am moderately concerned with that to be honest. If the US doesn't have free and fair midterms I don't think it's really that paranoid to be worried about it.
      - jpadkins 8mo ago
        This is why it's so important we pass the America SAVE Act. We have to stop MAGA from cheating in 2026.
    - asdff 8mo ago
      Why would the US annex canada? It is already in the american hegemony.
      - JumpCrisscross 8mo ago
        To distract from the Epstein files.
        asdff 8mo ago
        I'm surprised even the smarter democrats are saying that stupid line. Distraction would imply there are still to be people who have not yet learned and formed an opinion on the Epstein files. Everyone knows about these already and made their positions about it. As it turns out the most abhorrent things can come out with those Epstein files and it doesn't seem to hurt Trumps support among his base any. Doesn't seem to be threatening any legal action for him or implicated parties. Once again only Maxwell is in jail, somehow, with dozens and dozens of witnesses stepping forward. Democrats have been grandstanding on this man for 10 years now and haven't been able to stop him. I think by this point it is clear he is going to get away with everything even if people want to write about him "flailing." Him flailing is literally him achieving all his domestic and foreign policy goals right now and his base couldn't be more pleased...
ragall 8mo ago
> What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die? We sink the boats.
- skvmb 8mo ago
  Y E S
  - peterpost2 8mo ago
    Are you that excited to see innocent people die? Or am I misunderstanding your comment?
- gzread 8mo ago
  Indeed, no reason to expect anything will happen differently from what is currently happening, but on a 150x bigger scale.
boutell 8mo ago
Patricia Anthony published a novel about this in '93. Cold Allies. It's good military sci fi. Doesn't pretend to offer answers.
dontwearitout 8mo ago
Chapter 1 of "The Ministry of the Future" describes a fictional wet bulb event. It's grisly and horrific and I highly recommend you read this chapter, it changed my view on climate change. https://books.rockslide.ca/read/780/epub#epubcfi(/6/14!/4/2/2[chapter001]/2/2/1:0) https://books.rockslide.ca/read/780/epub#epubcfi(/6/14!/4/2/...
- marcyb5st 8mo ago
  Thank you. I will
numpad0 8mo ago
> What happens when 1.5B come knocking because if they stay they die? Like let them build few of those sci-fi domes and let them keep buying disposable bottled oxygen? I don't get the pessimism. India makes its own rockets. Pakistan has nukes. Why are they supposed to be incapable of holding the nation together on Mars-like Earth? Tokyo is already hitting 40C/100F at >90% RH during summers. It's already mildly unsurvivable. Nobody cares. Maybe in 10-20 years we'd be wearing spacesuits, but do anyone seriously think the equatorial regions will be uninhabitable and land prices on northern Europe is going to skyrocket???
- asdff 8mo ago
  The fact people already live in some of the hottest places in the world today should speak a little to human resiliency.
  - vlz 8mo ago
    We can live in hot places if the air stays dry, which it usually does or historically did. If the air gets more humid we cannot anymore. > Humans may also experience lethal hyperthermia when the wet bulb temperature is sustained above 35 °C (95 °F) for six hours. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoregulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoregulation
t0bia_s 8mo ago
There are also statistics showing that mortality because of cold is much higher than mortality because of heat. About 9 times higher. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542519625000543 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S254251962...

morkalork 8mo ago

Wasn't a drought originally part of the cause of Syria's collapse into civil war? Climate change is already causing unrest in equitorial countries, mass migration and a corresponding rise in authoritarianism / right wing populism in Europe.

parineum 8mo ago
You're making the "It's snowing there can't be global warming" argument in reverse. One local drought can't be attributed to or be proof of global warming. It's like smoking causing lung cancer; (the following numbers are made up) 5 in 100 non-smokers might get lung cancer but 20 in 100 smokers do. 5 of those smokers would have gotten lung cancer anyway and 15 wouldn't have but there's no way to know which individuals are in which cohort.
- gzread 8mo ago
  Not necessarily. Climate change means there will be more droughts; and if droughts cause civil war, there will be more civil war (that's the GP's relevance); even if we can't tell which ones were caused by global warming, that's still bad.
- morkalork 8mo ago
  Oh no, on the contrary, I'm saying it's already started and people aren't paying attention.
  - parineum 8mo ago
    > Wasn't a drought originally part of the cause of Syria's collapse into civil war? Climate change is already causing unrest... You're drawing (or seem to be) a causal link from climate change to this specific drought/war. Climate change is a statistical anomaly that cannot be seen in individual events.

ACCount37 8mo ago

That's the sum of climate change. "GDP growth of 3% instead of 5%." Severe enough to be noticeable, but not severe enough to warrant radical climate action. Not an extinction threat. A "slow trickle of economic damage, some amount of otherwise preventable death and suffering, diffused across the entire world, applied unevenly, and spread thin across many decades" threat. And stopping the GHG emissions demands radical, coordinated global action. Major emitters would have to pay local costs now - for the sake of global benefits many decades down the line. And those emitters are not the countries that face the worst climate risks. Global superpowers can tolerate climate change - it's countries that already struggle as it is, that don't have the resources to adapt or mitigate damage, that can face a significant uptick in death and suffering rather than damage in the realm of economics. That makes climate action a very hard sell for the politicians. Thus the tepid response. By now, I'm convinced that the only viable approaches to climate change lie in the realm of geoengineering. Which does not require multilateral coordinated action against a "tragedy of commons" scenario, and is cheaper than forcing local GHG emissions into negatives. Even non-permanent geoengineering solutions offset impacts here and now - thus buying time for fossil fuel energy to succumb to the economic advantage of renewables. And geoengineering measures can be enacted unilaterally by many powers - as long as the political will is there to absorb a few strongly worded condemnation letters.

gzread 8mo ago
And then when the GDP finally collapses, there will have been nothing that could be done about it for the last 50 years and they'll ask wtf we were doing in 2040, why we didn't stop it then.
- ACCount37 8mo ago
  That's the nasty thing. It doesn't "finally collapse". The world just eats the climate costs and keeps going. There's no global catastrophe. No single moment when the magnitude of your folly is revealed to you a blinding flash. Just a slow trickle of "2% worse". A loss of what could have been.
  - 8mo ago

realo 8mo ago

"Migration to the colder north..." Maybe that's why the Trump regime wants so badly to invade Canada and the Groenland?