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World Bank envisions a +4°C future

50 points by iProject 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- markkat 14y ago
  I think the '+' indicates that it's 4°C warmer.
tjic 14y ago
Unless the World Bank has climatologists on staff doing original research, this boils down to "we found a paper that we're basing our planning on". It's as relevant and interesting as "Boston Symphony envisions a world with quantum cryptography". Absent researchers on staff who can add something new or display some expertise in choosing to rebroadcast the news or not, I really don't care what the Boston Symphony's opinion is.
- gregsq 14y ago
  Well sustainable economic development is part of the World Banks remit. The report is a summary of other sources. The qualification required for summary differs from that of the originating science. As it forms the basis of donor contributions and allocation, it would seem to have some interest from that point of view.
- scarmig 14y ago
  Many posters even here, however, seem to be unaware of climate cahnge. Providing a summary of current scientific results and a discussion of how it applies to your area of specialty is a valuable goal.
  - tjic 14y ago
    > Many posters even here, however, seem to be unaware of climate cahnge. Based on what? I grant you that many posters - even here - think that the science is uncertain or that the economics of trying to prevent it as opposed to deal with it are other than the press suggests. ...but I find it utterly wrong to say that people are not aware of the topic.
    - scarmig 14y ago
      Well, thinking that the science is uncertain or split 50/50 or even cuts against climate change is a pretty sure sign that they aren't aware of the science. It's akin to someone saying they don't like GMO foods because they're radioactive. They well know about the concepts of radioactivity and genetics, but that doesn't mean that they know the science. Even if it's a learned and purposeful disregard for scientific evidence, its still fair to say they're not well-acquainted with it.
    - skylan_q 14y ago
      The logic is as follows: 1. Believe that human-caused increases in CO2 cause catastrophic climate change. 2. Therefore, anyone who doesn't agree doesn't know about climate change.
      - scarmig 14y ago
        1) No one in this thread has mentioned even anything approaching "catastrophic climate change"--you're attributing a position to others that they, especially me, do not hold. It's a matter of mitigation, prevention, and adaption, and the correct balance of those. 2) Having read a bunch of blog posts does not mean knowing about climate change. Herbal supplement and alternative medicine believers also have a vibrant community of email newsletters and advertorial magazines.
macavity23 14y ago
Thus far we have done precisely zilch about global warming. Nothing, nada, not a thing. Every significant target has been missed, every opportunity for increased use of fossil fuels has been taken, nuclear power is now practically-speaking off the table, and now that the Arctic ice cap is retreating, we're taking the opportunity to drill for more oil under it! We have evolved under natural selection pressures to maximise our exploitation of the world around us - the winning apes were those that could make bigger & sharper tools, bigger fires, bigger farms. The idea that mankind has somehow veered away from the 'natural' path, that he is a 'disease' (the Matrix's Agent Smith), could not be further from the truth. Every organism competing in Earth's biosphere is trying to maximise their resource usage, maximise their mastery over the environment. Our problem is that we have succeeded! We have grown to dominate the entire planet, and (Elon Musk notwithstanding) that's a hard limit. So we have what Iain Banks calls an 'outside context problem'. The strategies our genes have evolved over eons are now insufficient: there is no more competition between Man and anyone else. Even the competition of one human tribe against another is lessening, now that the big tribes have nuclear weapons. Solving this problem will require post-Darwinian strategies. Getting to the point where that is a realistic prospect will be highly non-trivial.
- meaty 14y ago
  Yes us evil Eukaryotes are responsible for the demise of this planet. Why don't we all do the honourable thing and kill ourselves rather than solving the climate problems with taxation and working out how to trade carbon and leverage trade sanctions to gain more tangible but useless bits of metal and plastic... I mean those sulphur breathing bacteria which we oxygenated out of existence are utterly pissed at us now. For those who don't get my comment: we don't know how the planet works. Don't know what our impact is. Oh and the climate changes anyway without our intervention which may cause our demise or not - just go with the flow.
  - Gravityloss 14y ago
    I'm not exactly sure if I understood your comment. But we know quite a lot about how the planet works and what our impact is. We don't know everything, but we know a lot more than nothing. It's like sending a blind person over a busy road. If you do it when the pedestrian light is red, you might not know which car might hit her at what velocity, but you know that the outcome is quite likely much much worse than if you wait for the green light.
guard-of-terra 14y ago
I am living in a pretty cold place and away from the shore so I don't see why I should be scared.
- jsmcgd 14y ago
  Here's a reason. I, like most humans, live near the coast. When my home is submerged I'm going to come and live in your neighborhood. And when I run out of food, I'm going to go to your house and steal yours.
  - baq 14y ago
    you forgot to mention that he's probably going to try to shoot you and you'll probably try to shoot back. extrapolating to whole nations is left as an exercise to the reader.
  - aes256 14y ago
    Population density is not a problem. Even at a relatively low population density equivalent to that of Los Angeles, you could fit the entire population of the world 3.4 times over in the contiguous United States. Agriculture is a potential problem, but technological advances are improving the situation. If everyone switched to vastly more efficient plant-based diets, it wouldn't be a problem at all.
- silvestrov 14y ago
  Food. You probably eat grains and other food which are grown in warmer areas, which might become too hot or too dry to continue growing that food. Migrations and property destructions will matter too. If New York gets a even bigger Sandy a few times every year, the rest of USA will too suffer economically.
  - ctdonath 14y ago
    And areas too cold now will be able to grow food. Global temperatures have a long-term cycle of about 12 degrees C. We're at a peak, so indeed it seems temperatures have been going up for a while. Now it's time for them to come back down. http://ctdonath.blogspot.com/2012/02/global-climate-change-in-context.html http://ctdonath.blogspot.com/2012/02/global-climate-change-i... Climate changes. Cope.
aes256 14y ago
I don't see what's so bad about this? Temperatures will rise, sea levels will rise, what's the big deal? Certain parts of the world that are low-lying or subject to extremely high temperatures will become uninhabitable. Too bad for those who thought it would be a good idea to settle there, they'll have to migrate. Once all the ice has melted, sea levels will plateau. By the 22nd Century (notwithstanding a global nuclear war between now and then) we will have mastered nuclear fusion and will no longer be dependent on fossil fuels. So what's the big deal?
- cryptoz 14y ago
  It's much more complicated than that. Weather patterns will shift dramatically, meaning that our current locations for growing food (for the world) will change. Natural resources by country will shift immensely. There will likely be significant turmoil to sort all this out, with of course the possibility that many will die due to unexpected weather (see Sandy: hundreds dead despite near-perfect short-term weather prediction), food shortages, etc. Someone more qualified will hopefully answer you - but I can say for sure that your understanding of the potential consequences is so simplified as to be wildly incorrect.
- Gravityloss 14y ago
  The sea level will go up something like 25 meters (100 feet) if all the ice melts.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    Luckily enough, no one is predicting that all the ice will even come close to entirely melting. Unfortunately enough, levels of melting that range from likely to possible will by themselves be very expensive and difficult to deal with.
Shivetya 14y ago
Fortunately this isn't one of those "we are doomed unless you give us money" but its probably leading to one of those types of proposals. This is a worst case scenario. It even goes as far as stating it may not be possible to prevent and simply lists possible outcomes; climate science is not exact. So what do I take away from it? Nothing much. Its nothing we haven't seen before, most predictions are being pushed far enough out so they cannot be invalidated. If the temperature does change as drastically as they suggest why do they think we would not be adjusting as well? A lot can happen in the span of two or three generations. New technologies can minimize if not eliminate the effects. Look, we went through scares of overrunning the planet with people, mass starvation and disease were to be rampant but it didn't happen, we simply grew into our new existence and population numbers. We certainly can grow into most changes to the planet. Until the change is drastic enough to end life on this planet we will adjust to it. I do not think short of nuclear war we can even engineer that.
- scarmig 14y ago
  A couple things: 1) "overrunning the planet with people, mass starvation and disease were to be rampant" These were never consensus viewpoints. Anthropogenic climate change, in the low to mid single degrees Celsius, is. 2) There's a whole lot wrapped up in the word adjusting. If it's to mean anything more than "survive" (as a species--many individuals' lives would be cut short), it has to include an active component. We "adapted" to the ozone hole. Yes, that involved new technologies and habits like better sunscreen and norms around using it. But it also involved people getting together and banning substances that contributed to the problem. That made individual-level adaption much less costly than it would have been otherwise.
Zenst 14y ago
Not exactly the best title, induces initial feeling of `hey havn't the banks messed up enough, keep them away from the climate`. But on a serious note, this is a worst case analysis and one area when people say rising oceans is that recently in many area's they have gone down. Oceans are like stock it seems! Now alot of these studies also do not factor in land rising and sinking and the effect that has along with even measureing the global water tables on land. But weather is alot like finance as it is chaotic (ok less predictable over time) and with that maybe th World bank are suited to analyse such things with some authority. But also as with finance, the level of prediction you can make does not mean you can change. So with that weather can effect finance, but finance can not effect weather. People do in part effect the weather and finance effects people. Its just a vicious circle of people, weather, finance.
cryptoz 14y ago
So, who is working on a startup to help with climate change? There are many avenues: adaptation, mitigation, research.
tokenadult 14y ago
The Ars Technica article kindly submitted here is based on a World Bank press release that has prompted many news articles today. Several of the articles mention the underlying World Bank report .PDF file "Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided," http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_world_must_be_avoided.pdf http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_... which was a dead link for me the first few times I tried to follow the link, but is working fine as I type this. The World Bank report was "written by a team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, including Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, William Hare, Olivia Serdeczny, Sophie Adams" and other co-authors. Other scientists and commentators reviewed the report, with acknowledgment from the World Bank, and the bank expressed gratitude to the organization Connect4Climate for contributions to the production of the report. The Ars Technica article summarizes the report as estimating that even if all countries are able to meet their current emissions pledges there's still a 20 percent chance global average temperatures will rise by 4°C by the end of the century. Predicted sea level rise would be a half-meter or more. Just last week here on HN another participant shared a speculative essay by science fiction author Charlie Stross on the world 500 years from now. Stross predicted sea-level rise of at least a meter, so I looked up sources about the effect of sea level rise. An interesting series of online maps shows projections of flooded land based on various degrees of sea level rise for places of interest such as New York City, http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/new-york.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/new-york.shtml San Francisco, http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml the Netherlands and England, http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/netherlands.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/netherlands.shtml and Chesapeake Bay. http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/washington.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/washington.shtml In all cases, the maps default to showing seven meters of sea level rise and do not project any civil engineering projects to protect existing infrastructure. Having read Matt Ridley's blog post "Go Dutch" http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/go-dutch.aspx http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/go-dutch.aspx back when it was published, I wonder if the most dire predictions about the Netherlands are true, or if the Netherlands, the land of polders, http://static.nai.nl/polders/e/index.html http://static.nai.nl/polders/e/index.html can continue to be "living proof to climate pessimists that dwelling below sea level is no problem if you are prosperous." The report continues with dire predictions of hot summers and changes in rainfall. "It is my hope that this report shocks us into action," is World Bank President Jim Yong Kim's statement about the report. "Even for those of us already committed to fighting climate change, I hope it causes us to work with much more urgency." I fully agree with the premise that there will continued widespread use of fossil hydrocarbon fuels for electricity generation, transportation, and building heating. There are no effective incentives in place today, nor any likely in the next few decades, to prevent further consumption of fossil hydrocarbons, and that will surely result in a substantial increase in atmospheric concentration in CO2. Predicting climate change is a safe prediction any time, because over 100 year and especially 500 year time scales, we have often observed climate change in historic times. Over longer time scales, but since Homo sapiens populated much of the earth, rock art in the Sahara Desert shows that the Sahara was once much less arid than it is now, and cave art in Europe shows that the climate of Europe was once much more frigid than it is now. I live in the United States Midwest, and my mother grew up in a hotter part of the United States Midwest during the Dust Bowl era. Most of her family is still near the family farm on the windswept Great Plains. I don't expect any part of the earth to become uninhabitably hot. We have, according to the best developed models of influences on world climate, a sure prospect of a generally warmer Earth, warming currently lethally cold areas into areas that will be habitable. My experience living in subtropical east Asia in two long stays about two decades apart suggests that we will have more warming of cold areas than turning hot areas into unbearably hot areas from global warming. Despite the dire predictions in the World Bank report, it is not necessarily the case that port cities will be inundated even by more substantial sea level rise than is anticipated by the report. New York City is sufficiently prosperous to attract some of the world's brightest minds to live there (I know some young people who have moved there recently) and the current city administration actively encourages making New York City a technology hub. New York will thrive, whatever the climate. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/11/new-york-can-be-a-vibrant-venice-as-sea-level-now-rises-say-engineers/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/11/new-york-can-... Venice and New Orleans have been in long-term decline for quite a while, from bad governance, and will surely suffer further relative decline, regardless of sea levels. There will still be a great port at the mouth of the Mississippi-Missouri river system, and it will be a thriving and cosmopolitan city, but it may well be in a different place along the river delta from the current location of New Orleans. Venice may basically vanish, but current ports that matter for the world economy will gain the infrastructure investment to build up protection against the sea faster than the sea will rise. There is much more interesting content in the long World Bank report referenced in the submitted article, but allow me to explain why I think the high end of global warming predictions (and thus the high end of sea level rise and climate pattern change predictions) is unlikely. We already have a known model for induced global cooling from the "natural experiment" of volcanos erupting and ejecting much dust high into the atmosphere. If the climate change we now experience produces more pain than gain (where I live, at 800 feet above sea level in a continental dry, cold winter climate zone, global warming has so far mostly produced gain), then there will be political and economic incentives to sequester greenhouse gases, or directly shade the Earth with high-altitude dust, or to do whatever else science discovers to slow and perhaps eventually reverse global warming. The end of the century is about eighty-eight years from now, and surely our understanding of climate models and geoengineering possibilities will be stronger then than it is now. Over the time span of the report, I would expect enough of an increase in understanding of climate models to bring about workable means to moderate global warming and shape climate change in the direction of making most inhabited regions better off.
fauigerzigerk 14y ago
"winter months that are warmer than our current summers—sound pretty ugly" I know that the 4 degrees are supposed to be an average, but that statement sounds pretty unbelievable nonetheless.
- noiv 14y ago
  Well, 4°C temperature change do not sound scaring, you have that between night and day. Usually the majority estimates consequences of climate change from their past experience. The thing is nobody ever experienced a +4°C anomaly driven by CO2 in 200 years (probably even not this planet). So, forget about what you've learned about weather and expect the worst and multiply this by two. In other words our uncontrolled experiments with the atmosphere do not lead to a weather upgrade, it is more of a system change - introducing bugs and BSODs.
Gravityloss 14y ago
What is it about global warming links that bring a deluge of totally stupid fallacious postings on Hacker News every time? There's almost not a single good comment here that would show even rudimentary understanding of the subject. I thought this was better than Slashdot. - "Climate has always changed." check. - "I live in a cold place, I welcome warming." check. - "We can just adjust." check. Maybe check if your insightful argument has actually already been debunked here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
- jellicle 14y ago
  Hacker News is mostly older white men, which is a demographic associated with Republicanism and Fox News watching in the United States. Understanding global warming is not going to be easy for them. The reality is that every set of global warming predictions so far has understated the actual amount of warning observed. Models are giving too much weight to long-term stable trends over the recent data, plus scientists don't want to be tarred as "kooks" for having the most extreme projections. So if their model says 5C increase, it's probably low to start off with and it will be lowered more before publication, and it will end up underpredicting warming. When you read about X or Y amount of warming, it's most likely to be a minimum, not a "most likely" and certainly not a maximum. Current global warming observed has exceeded the absolute maximums predicted in previous generations of warming predictions.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    That's false--Hacker News is a demographic mostly of younger white coastal American men who have no particular affection for Fox News. Because they tend to be higher income, they have libertarian tendencies, one of which is denialism. You're also getting a skewed view. Climate change posts on HN always drive out the people with the strongest opinions: an actual poll of HNers would likely have them supporting the consensus position.
  - skylan_q 14y ago
    "The reality is that every set of global warming predictions so far has understated the actual amount of warning observed. Models are giving too much weight to long-term stable trends over the recent data, plus scientists don't want to be tarred as "kooks" for having the most extreme projections. So if their model says 5C increase, it's probably low to start off with and it will be lowered more before publication, and it will end up underpredicting warming." Scientists that have to lie to us for our own good. Now that's Science!
patrickgzill 14y ago
Not two weeks ago I posted this: === We were told back in the late 1980s and early 1990s that huge computer models were written, that ran on supercomputers, to model and predict climate change. The fastest Cray in 1990 could do (I think) 60 GFlops when loaded with 32 processors, which is roughly the sustained GFlops as a high end i7. So clearly it is not a case of "just need a faster supercomputer and we will have an accurate prediction". Reality is, from what I can tell, is that we don't have an accurate mathematical model of all the pieces that go into global climate to run on a supercomputer, no matter how powerful. === No one challenged me and I got several upvotes and follow-on posts in agreement. link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761364 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761364 Did something change in the meantime?
- lclarkmichalek 14y ago
  I don't really think that the idea that something must be perfect to be useful is correct. Trying to find a perfectly accurate model is impossible, so you must qualify your meaning of the phrase. Mathematics has a whole subject named statistics which spends quite a lot of its time dealing with the proportional incorrectness of models. If you look at the graphs or figures in the report (not just the headline of +4 degrees celcius), you will notice that almost all of them have a degree of uncertainty; figures without uncertainty values are as good as useless. Also, if you are going to use "No one challenged me and I got several upvotes and follow-on posts in agreement" as a pseudo appeal to authority, I don't think that the readership of a Hacker News comments section really qualifies as authority on this particular issue. Edit: Oh, apparently models have already predicted temperatures since 1900 correctly via hindcasting, along with changes in climates after significant events such as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. And so far, they seem to be on-track with empirical data: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/SLR_models_obs.gif http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/SLR_models_obs.gif, though I fully understand if you want to discard that graph due to it's source; the risk of selection bias is very high when taking a shallow look at a large and deep subject.
  - patrickgzill 14y ago
    I am not using an "appeal to authority" argument, but I figure the HN readership would have pointed out my errors. (It's certainly happened before :-) ) We do not understand even the basics. For instance, we do not fully understand how the Gulf Stream works. The problem is that we can't just sum or multiply the uncertainty values and try to arrive at a consensus. Perhaps an analogy can be made to trying to model the US or Europe's financial system - clearly even the largest banks, spending large amounts of money on IT systems and modeling over the past number of years, have grossly mis-calculated things. And the financial world is arguably less dynamic than Earth's climate system.
rjzzleep 14y ago
is that the same world bank that wants infinite growth to sustain itself?

50 points by iProject 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

markkat 14y ago
I think the '+' indicates that it's 4°C warmer.

tjic 14y ago

Unless the World Bank has climatologists on staff doing original research, this boils down to "we found a paper that we're basing our planning on". It's as relevant and interesting as "Boston Symphony envisions a world with quantum cryptography". Absent researchers on staff who can add something new or display some expertise in choosing to rebroadcast the news or not, I really don't care what the Boston Symphony's opinion is.

gregsq 14y ago
Well sustainable economic development is part of the World Banks remit. The report is a summary of other sources. The qualification required for summary differs from that of the originating science. As it forms the basis of donor contributions and allocation, it would seem to have some interest from that point of view.
scarmig 14y ago
Many posters even here, however, seem to be unaware of climate cahnge. Providing a summary of current scientific results and a discussion of how it applies to your area of specialty is a valuable goal.
- tjic 14y ago
  > Many posters even here, however, seem to be unaware of climate cahnge. Based on what? I grant you that many posters - even here - think that the science is uncertain or that the economics of trying to prevent it as opposed to deal with it are other than the press suggests. ...but I find it utterly wrong to say that people are not aware of the topic.
  - scarmig 14y ago
    Well, thinking that the science is uncertain or split 50/50 or even cuts against climate change is a pretty sure sign that they aren't aware of the science. It's akin to someone saying they don't like GMO foods because they're radioactive. They well know about the concepts of radioactivity and genetics, but that doesn't mean that they know the science. Even if it's a learned and purposeful disregard for scientific evidence, its still fair to say they're not well-acquainted with it.
  - skylan_q 14y ago
    The logic is as follows: 1. Believe that human-caused increases in CO2 cause catastrophic climate change. 2. Therefore, anyone who doesn't agree doesn't know about climate change.
    - scarmig 14y ago
      1) No one in this thread has mentioned even anything approaching "catastrophic climate change"--you're attributing a position to others that they, especially me, do not hold. It's a matter of mitigation, prevention, and adaption, and the correct balance of those. 2) Having read a bunch of blog posts does not mean knowing about climate change. Herbal supplement and alternative medicine believers also have a vibrant community of email newsletters and advertorial magazines.

macavity23 14y ago

Thus far we have done precisely zilch about global warming. Nothing, nada, not a thing. Every significant target has been missed, every opportunity for increased use of fossil fuels has been taken, nuclear power is now practically-speaking off the table, and now that the Arctic ice cap is retreating, we're taking the opportunity to drill for more oil under it! We have evolved under natural selection pressures to maximise our exploitation of the world around us - the winning apes were those that could make bigger & sharper tools, bigger fires, bigger farms. The idea that mankind has somehow veered away from the 'natural' path, that he is a 'disease' (the Matrix's Agent Smith), could not be further from the truth. Every organism competing in Earth's biosphere is trying to maximise their resource usage, maximise their mastery over the environment. Our problem is that we have succeeded! We have grown to dominate the entire planet, and (Elon Musk notwithstanding) that's a hard limit. So we have what Iain Banks calls an 'outside context problem'. The strategies our genes have evolved over eons are now insufficient: there is no more competition between Man and anyone else. Even the competition of one human tribe against another is lessening, now that the big tribes have nuclear weapons. Solving this problem will require post-Darwinian strategies. Getting to the point where that is a realistic prospect will be highly non-trivial.

meaty 14y ago
Yes us evil Eukaryotes are responsible for the demise of this planet. Why don't we all do the honourable thing and kill ourselves rather than solving the climate problems with taxation and working out how to trade carbon and leverage trade sanctions to gain more tangible but useless bits of metal and plastic... I mean those sulphur breathing bacteria which we oxygenated out of existence are utterly pissed at us now. For those who don't get my comment: we don't know how the planet works. Don't know what our impact is. Oh and the climate changes anyway without our intervention which may cause our demise or not - just go with the flow.
- Gravityloss 14y ago
  I'm not exactly sure if I understood your comment. But we know quite a lot about how the planet works and what our impact is. We don't know everything, but we know a lot more than nothing. It's like sending a blind person over a busy road. If you do it when the pedestrian light is red, you might not know which car might hit her at what velocity, but you know that the outcome is quite likely much much worse than if you wait for the green light.

guard-of-terra 14y ago

I am living in a pretty cold place and away from the shore so I don't see why I should be scared.

jsmcgd 14y ago
Here's a reason. I, like most humans, live near the coast. When my home is submerged I'm going to come and live in your neighborhood. And when I run out of food, I'm going to go to your house and steal yours.
- baq 14y ago
  you forgot to mention that he's probably going to try to shoot you and you'll probably try to shoot back. extrapolating to whole nations is left as an exercise to the reader.
- aes256 14y ago
  Population density is not a problem. Even at a relatively low population density equivalent to that of Los Angeles, you could fit the entire population of the world 3.4 times over in the contiguous United States. Agriculture is a potential problem, but technological advances are improving the situation. If everyone switched to vastly more efficient plant-based diets, it wouldn't be a problem at all.
silvestrov 14y ago
Food. You probably eat grains and other food which are grown in warmer areas, which might become too hot or too dry to continue growing that food. Migrations and property destructions will matter too. If New York gets a even bigger Sandy a few times every year, the rest of USA will too suffer economically.
- ctdonath 14y ago
  And areas too cold now will be able to grow food. Global temperatures have a long-term cycle of about 12 degrees C. We're at a peak, so indeed it seems temperatures have been going up for a while. Now it's time for them to come back down. http://ctdonath.blogspot.com/2012/02/global-climate-change-in-context.html http://ctdonath.blogspot.com/2012/02/global-climate-change-i... Climate changes. Cope.

aes256 14y ago

I don't see what's so bad about this? Temperatures will rise, sea levels will rise, what's the big deal? Certain parts of the world that are low-lying or subject to extremely high temperatures will become uninhabitable. Too bad for those who thought it would be a good idea to settle there, they'll have to migrate. Once all the ice has melted, sea levels will plateau. By the 22nd Century (notwithstanding a global nuclear war between now and then) we will have mastered nuclear fusion and will no longer be dependent on fossil fuels. So what's the big deal?

cryptoz 14y ago
It's much more complicated than that. Weather patterns will shift dramatically, meaning that our current locations for growing food (for the world) will change. Natural resources by country will shift immensely. There will likely be significant turmoil to sort all this out, with of course the possibility that many will die due to unexpected weather (see Sandy: hundreds dead despite near-perfect short-term weather prediction), food shortages, etc. Someone more qualified will hopefully answer you - but I can say for sure that your understanding of the potential consequences is so simplified as to be wildly incorrect.
Gravityloss 14y ago
The sea level will go up something like 25 meters (100 feet) if all the ice melts.
- scarmig 14y ago
  Luckily enough, no one is predicting that all the ice will even come close to entirely melting. Unfortunately enough, levels of melting that range from likely to possible will by themselves be very expensive and difficult to deal with.

Shivetya 14y ago

Fortunately this isn't one of those "we are doomed unless you give us money" but its probably leading to one of those types of proposals. This is a worst case scenario. It even goes as far as stating it may not be possible to prevent and simply lists possible outcomes; climate science is not exact. So what do I take away from it? Nothing much. Its nothing we haven't seen before, most predictions are being pushed far enough out so they cannot be invalidated. If the temperature does change as drastically as they suggest why do they think we would not be adjusting as well? A lot can happen in the span of two or three generations. New technologies can minimize if not eliminate the effects. Look, we went through scares of overrunning the planet with people, mass starvation and disease were to be rampant but it didn't happen, we simply grew into our new existence and population numbers. We certainly can grow into most changes to the planet. Until the change is drastic enough to end life on this planet we will adjust to it. I do not think short of nuclear war we can even engineer that.

scarmig 14y ago
A couple things: 1) "overrunning the planet with people, mass starvation and disease were to be rampant" These were never consensus viewpoints. Anthropogenic climate change, in the low to mid single degrees Celsius, is. 2) There's a whole lot wrapped up in the word adjusting. If it's to mean anything more than "survive" (as a species--many individuals' lives would be cut short), it has to include an active component. We "adapted" to the ozone hole. Yes, that involved new technologies and habits like better sunscreen and norms around using it. But it also involved people getting together and banning substances that contributed to the problem. That made individual-level adaption much less costly than it would have been otherwise.

Zenst 14y ago

Not exactly the best title, induces initial feeling of `hey havn't the banks messed up enough, keep them away from the climate`. But on a serious note, this is a worst case analysis and one area when people say rising oceans is that recently in many area's they have gone down. Oceans are like stock it seems! Now alot of these studies also do not factor in land rising and sinking and the effect that has along with even measureing the global water tables on land. But weather is alot like finance as it is chaotic (ok less predictable over time) and with that maybe th World bank are suited to analyse such things with some authority. But also as with finance, the level of prediction you can make does not mean you can change. So with that weather can effect finance, but finance can not effect weather. People do in part effect the weather and finance effects people. Its just a vicious circle of people, weather, finance.

cryptoz 14y ago

So, who is working on a startup to help with climate change? There are many avenues: adaptation, mitigation, research.

tokenadult 14y ago

The Ars Technica article kindly submitted here is based on a World Bank press release that has prompted many news articles today. Several of the articles mention the underlying World Bank report .PDF file "Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided," http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_Down_the_heat_Why_a_4_degree_centrigrade_warmer_world_must_be_avoided.pdf http://climatechange.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/Turn_... which was a dead link for me the first few times I tried to follow the link, but is working fine as I type this. The World Bank report was "written by a team from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, including Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, William Hare, Olivia Serdeczny, Sophie Adams" and other co-authors. Other scientists and commentators reviewed the report, with acknowledgment from the World Bank, and the bank expressed gratitude to the organization Connect4Climate for contributions to the production of the report. The Ars Technica article summarizes the report as estimating that even if all countries are able to meet their current emissions pledges there's still a 20 percent chance global average temperatures will rise by 4°C by the end of the century. Predicted sea level rise would be a half-meter or more. Just last week here on HN another participant shared a speculative essay by science fiction author Charlie Stross on the world 500 years from now. Stross predicted sea-level rise of at least a meter, so I looked up sources about the effect of sea level rise. An interesting series of online maps shows projections of flooded land based on various degrees of sea level rise for places of interest such as New York City, http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/new-york.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/new-york.shtml San Francisco, http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/san-francisco.shtml the Netherlands and England, http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/netherlands.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/netherlands.shtml and Chesapeake Bay. http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/washington.shtml http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/washington.shtml In all cases, the maps default to showing seven meters of sea level rise and do not project any civil engineering projects to protect existing infrastructure. Having read Matt Ridley's blog post "Go Dutch" http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/go-dutch.aspx http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/go-dutch.aspx back when it was published, I wonder if the most dire predictions about the Netherlands are true, or if the Netherlands, the land of polders, http://static.nai.nl/polders/e/index.html http://static.nai.nl/polders/e/index.html can continue to be "living proof to climate pessimists that dwelling below sea level is no problem if you are prosperous." The report continues with dire predictions of hot summers and changes in rainfall. "It is my hope that this report shocks us into action," is World Bank President Jim Yong Kim's statement about the report. "Even for those of us already committed to fighting climate change, I hope it causes us to work with much more urgency." I fully agree with the premise that there will continued widespread use of fossil hydrocarbon fuels for electricity generation, transportation, and building heating. There are no effective incentives in place today, nor any likely in the next few decades, to prevent further consumption of fossil hydrocarbons, and that will surely result in a substantial increase in atmospheric concentration in CO2. Predicting climate change is a safe prediction any time, because over 100 year and especially 500 year time scales, we have often observed climate change in historic times. Over longer time scales, but since Homo sapiens populated much of the earth, rock art in the Sahara Desert shows that the Sahara was once much less arid than it is now, and cave art in Europe shows that the climate of Europe was once much more frigid than it is now. I live in the United States Midwest, and my mother grew up in a hotter part of the United States Midwest during the Dust Bowl era. Most of her family is still near the family farm on the windswept Great Plains. I don't expect any part of the earth to become uninhabitably hot. We have, according to the best developed models of influences on world climate, a sure prospect of a generally warmer Earth, warming currently lethally cold areas into areas that will be habitable. My experience living in subtropical east Asia in two long stays about two decades apart suggests that we will have more warming of cold areas than turning hot areas into unbearably hot areas from global warming. Despite the dire predictions in the World Bank report, it is not necessarily the case that port cities will be inundated even by more substantial sea level rise than is anticipated by the report. New York City is sufficiently prosperous to attract some of the world's brightest minds to live there (I know some young people who have moved there recently) and the current city administration actively encourages making New York City a technology hub. New York will thrive, whatever the climate. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/11/new-york-can-be-a-vibrant-venice-as-sea-level-now-rises-say-engineers/ http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/technology/2012/11/new-york-can-... Venice and New Orleans have been in long-term decline for quite a while, from bad governance, and will surely suffer further relative decline, regardless of sea levels. There will still be a great port at the mouth of the Mississippi-Missouri river system, and it will be a thriving and cosmopolitan city, but it may well be in a different place along the river delta from the current location of New Orleans. Venice may basically vanish, but current ports that matter for the world economy will gain the infrastructure investment to build up protection against the sea faster than the sea will rise. There is much more interesting content in the long World Bank report referenced in the submitted article, but allow me to explain why I think the high end of global warming predictions (and thus the high end of sea level rise and climate pattern change predictions) is unlikely. We already have a known model for induced global cooling from the "natural experiment" of volcanos erupting and ejecting much dust high into the atmosphere. If the climate change we now experience produces more pain than gain (where I live, at 800 feet above sea level in a continental dry, cold winter climate zone, global warming has so far mostly produced gain), then there will be political and economic incentives to sequester greenhouse gases, or directly shade the Earth with high-altitude dust, or to do whatever else science discovers to slow and perhaps eventually reverse global warming. The end of the century is about eighty-eight years from now, and surely our understanding of climate models and geoengineering possibilities will be stronger then than it is now. Over the time span of the report, I would expect enough of an increase in understanding of climate models to bring about workable means to moderate global warming and shape climate change in the direction of making most inhabited regions better off.

fauigerzigerk 14y ago

"winter months that are warmer than our current summers—sound pretty ugly" I know that the 4 degrees are supposed to be an average, but that statement sounds pretty unbelievable nonetheless.

noiv 14y ago
Well, 4°C temperature change do not sound scaring, you have that between night and day. Usually the majority estimates consequences of climate change from their past experience. The thing is nobody ever experienced a +4°C anomaly driven by CO2 in 200 years (probably even not this planet). So, forget about what you've learned about weather and expect the worst and multiply this by two. In other words our uncontrolled experiments with the atmosphere do not lead to a weather upgrade, it is more of a system change - introducing bugs and BSODs.

Gravityloss 14y ago

What is it about global warming links that bring a deluge of totally stupid fallacious postings on Hacker News every time? There's almost not a single good comment here that would show even rudimentary understanding of the subject. I thought this was better than Slashdot. - "Climate has always changed." check. - "I live in a cold place, I welcome warming." check. - "We can just adjust." check. Maybe check if your insightful argument has actually already been debunked here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

jellicle 14y ago
Hacker News is mostly older white men, which is a demographic associated with Republicanism and Fox News watching in the United States. Understanding global warming is not going to be easy for them. The reality is that every set of global warming predictions so far has understated the actual amount of warning observed. Models are giving too much weight to long-term stable trends over the recent data, plus scientists don't want to be tarred as "kooks" for having the most extreme projections. So if their model says 5C increase, it's probably low to start off with and it will be lowered more before publication, and it will end up underpredicting warming. When you read about X or Y amount of warming, it's most likely to be a minimum, not a "most likely" and certainly not a maximum. Current global warming observed has exceeded the absolute maximums predicted in previous generations of warming predictions.
- scarmig 14y ago
  That's false--Hacker News is a demographic mostly of younger white coastal American men who have no particular affection for Fox News. Because they tend to be higher income, they have libertarian tendencies, one of which is denialism. You're also getting a skewed view. Climate change posts on HN always drive out the people with the strongest opinions: an actual poll of HNers would likely have them supporting the consensus position.
- skylan_q 14y ago
  "The reality is that every set of global warming predictions so far has understated the actual amount of warning observed. Models are giving too much weight to long-term stable trends over the recent data, plus scientists don't want to be tarred as "kooks" for having the most extreme projections. So if their model says 5C increase, it's probably low to start off with and it will be lowered more before publication, and it will end up underpredicting warming." Scientists that have to lie to us for our own good. Now that's Science!

patrickgzill 14y ago

Not two weeks ago I posted this: === We were told back in the late 1980s and early 1990s that huge computer models were written, that ran on supercomputers, to model and predict climate change. The fastest Cray in 1990 could do (I think) 60 GFlops when loaded with 32 processors, which is roughly the sustained GFlops as a high end i7. So clearly it is not a case of "just need a faster supercomputer and we will have an accurate prediction". Reality is, from what I can tell, is that we don't have an accurate mathematical model of all the pieces that go into global climate to run on a supercomputer, no matter how powerful. === No one challenged me and I got several upvotes and follow-on posts in agreement. link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761364 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761364 Did something change in the meantime?

lclarkmichalek 14y ago
I don't really think that the idea that something must be perfect to be useful is correct. Trying to find a perfectly accurate model is impossible, so you must qualify your meaning of the phrase. Mathematics has a whole subject named statistics which spends quite a lot of its time dealing with the proportional incorrectness of models. If you look at the graphs or figures in the report (not just the headline of +4 degrees celcius), you will notice that almost all of them have a degree of uncertainty; figures without uncertainty values are as good as useless. Also, if you are going to use "No one challenged me and I got several upvotes and follow-on posts in agreement" as a pseudo appeal to authority, I don't think that the readership of a Hacker News comments section really qualifies as authority on this particular issue. Edit: Oh, apparently models have already predicted temperatures since 1900 correctly via hindcasting, along with changes in climates after significant events such as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo. And so far, they seem to be on-track with empirical data: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/SLR_models_obs.gif http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/SLR_models_obs.gif, though I fully understand if you want to discard that graph due to it's source; the risk of selection bias is very high when taking a shallow look at a large and deep subject.
- patrickgzill 14y ago
  I am not using an "appeal to authority" argument, but I figure the HN readership would have pointed out my errors. (It's certainly happened before :-) ) We do not understand even the basics. For instance, we do not fully understand how the Gulf Stream works. The problem is that we can't just sum or multiply the uncertainty values and try to arrive at a consensus. Perhaps an analogy can be made to trying to model the US or Europe's financial system - clearly even the largest banks, spending large amounts of money on IT systems and modeling over the past number of years, have grossly mis-calculated things. And the financial world is arguably less dynamic than Earth's climate system.

rjzzleep 14y ago

is that the same world bank that wants infinite growth to sustain itself?