Global warming disaster could suffocate life on Earth (2015)
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And we (in the USA) just elected a leader who doesn't believe that humans have anything to do with climate change.
China has 60% more CO2 emissions than the United States, but Trump's promise to wage war on clean energy while investing heavily in coal and oil, there's a good chance US will be back to #1.
So I guess the question is will civilization ultimately perish from climate change or nuclear war? With Trump at the helm, it's hard to say which happens first, but we can conclude that we're all fucked.
Hint: Drill, baby, drill!
She was not even very popular with women. Democrats screwed themselves.
4% lower than Obama. Pathetic.
Enough said.
Can you imagine Trump doing that?
Edit: Hell, I can hardly even imagine Hillary doing that.
Will the world come up with a plan to actually curb carbon emissions as much as we need to? Remove carbon?
A wide scale rises in temperature and other problems?
A huge impact on standard of living (setting us back X years)
A near extinction of humans? Full?
Or somewhere else on the scale, or somewhere distinct from my portrayal?
I'm really not sure personally. I'm recently veering towards the last on the list, a near extinction of humans. If I'm very optimistic, just a large rise in temperature and drop in standard of living. But then perhaps I'm being very overly pessimistic.
[0] http://futureoflife.org/2016/07/22/climate-change-is-the-mos...
There is an alternate universe where we took this threat seriously 10-15 years ago and have made great strides to curb the sources of the problem, and are even working on reversing the effects on the oceans, etc.
Longer term, though, trends look good. Due to new technology, renewable power is getting cheaper almost as fast as carbon sources are getting more expensive, and the crossover is probably going to be within our lives. Given that, and the ability of the oceans to sink HUGE amounts of CO2 over thousand-year timescales, I'd say that permanent climate damage may never really come to pass.
So... no suffocation of life on earth, no human extinction. Just a mild dystopia where people have to read wikipedia to understand what a forest is supposed to look like.
Curiously, this ongoing mass extinction event has a name already -> Holocene Extinction[1].
> The Holocene extinction, otherwise referred to as the Sixth extinction[1] or Anthropocene extinction,[2] is the ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (11,700 years before AD 2000) mainly due to human activity.
My understanding is that the ongoing extinction event is not showing any signs of slowing down and is likely accelerating.
Are you not concerned about the impacts of ocean acidification as a result? My understanding is that the ramifications of that are potentially scary as well.
[0]http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidificati...
"studies have shown that a more acidic environment has a dramatic effect on some calcifying species, including oysters, clams, sea urchins, shallow water corals, deep sea corals, and calcareous plankton. When shelled organisms are at risk, the entire food web may also be at risk. Today, more than a billion people worldwide rely on food from the ocean as their primary source of protein. Many jobs and economies in the U.S. and around the world depend on the fish and shellfish in our oceans."
So, it's really bad, but not irreversible or unmitigatable (again, from the "human extinction" angle).
And as far as the "billion people" thing goes: yeah. Disruption is unavoidable. Nonetheless there is sufficent arable land to feed the world, and alternative ocean-sourced proteins exist (jellyfish, say) that are unexploited for historical reasons.
Which, too, is really bad. But not apocalypse-level bad, just mass extension bad.
This isn't an argument against climate change but using these terms really doesn't help.
Tho at least it's better than save the planet, earth isn't going anywhere we just might tho.
Some smart scientist will find a way to scrub CO2 out of the air if it becomes a serious problem, or there will be strong political consequences to being a polluting country. And then it won't be a problem any more.
Do not blindly trust the universe! How do you know it is on our side?
Not in time. Unless the plan involves some form of genocide. But even genocide probably won't be fast enough without weapons of mass destruction.
> A wide scale rises in temperature and other problems?
That's not really a prediction anymore. The only question here is about the degree to which it rises and what the progression of the rise will look like (better or worse than log(n)?)
> A huge impact on standard of living (setting us back X years)
I think I'm going to start using the "entitlement of living" instead of standard of living here. Much of the western lifestyle seems purposefully wasteful, with planned obsolescence, unreasonable luxury and commitment to wasteful planning (suburbia, etc.) The reduction is inevitable, but the question here again, is of scale and time.
>A near extinction of humans? Full?
A near extinction of western civilization lifestyle. Possible split into 2 subspecies based on education, wealth and deliberate exclusion. I don't believe humans will become extinct on the Holocene scale (tens of thousands of years), but the difference between the current civilization and somewhere, say in 2500 might be staggering. Then again, humans are notoriously bad at planning at long time scales, so the year 3000 might be just as good as now or even better (but with the caveat of, say, vastly reduced population, perhaps of only 200-300 million worldwide)
>Or somewhere else on the scale, or somewhere distinct from my portrayal?
It seems you've made several very different portrayals that cover pretty much the entire scale of possibilities (catastrophic to optimistic).
The good news is this: under status quo we can probably expect to live reasonably well in our lifetimes. The bad news is: if we want our future generations to live better than us, we have to consciously live much more frugally now and enact changes that might seem horrible and regressive to the current western mentality.
I think humanity is slowly coming to an understanding that the planet really was a zero-sum game all along and that the period of unprecedented wealth and fossil fuel exploitation will come to an end eventually.
>Not in time. Unless the plan involves some form of genocide. But even genocide probably won't be fast enough without weapons of mass destruction.
Well, we're on track to address that problem. Russia is stepping up their nuclear programs, America has a man with little self-discipline in charge of the final decision, India & Pakistan really dislike each other, Iran is ignoring the nuclear treaty, and I'm sure Israel has a few nukes to spare as well.
On the upside, the following nuclear winter will mitigate some of the greenhouse effects for a while, so we've got that going for us.
> The good news is this: under status quo we can probably expect to live reasonably well in our lifetimes.
That will be until roughly 2050, when things will go somewhat pear-shaped. So if you're younger than, say, 35 right now? Ooops. Sorry.
> I think humanity is slowly coming to an understanding that the planet really was a zero-sum game all along
Alas, it also understand that after they're dead, things don't really matter to them. And so we're in a race to extract maximum value in our lifetimes. We're pretty much doomed.
That's why Millenials are at a turning point. Do I just live it up trying to extract maximum value from my life before 70? Or do I really put in maximum effort into making Earth habitable for future generations?
I'm just a monkey with a lizard brain, how can I possibly make an informed choice for the future 10-20 generations? And the choice is pointless without at least a 90% consensus.
http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2016/11/un-report-climate-g...
Make oil and put it back in the ground?
1 gallon of gas contains 33.4 kWh (this is a standard unit and can be converted to an equivalent volume of natural gas) so assuming we can convert electricity and carbon dioxide to gasoline at a 33% efficiency that's 100 kWh of carbon neutral power needed for every 33.4 kWh of gasoline. If we assume that we get a 50% effeciency converting the fuel to energy (highest efficiency achieved so far with state of the art natural gas plants but more than twice that of an auto ICE) we'd need over 1 MWh for every 167 KWh of energy produced using fossil fuels and this is probably way too unrealistic for a best case scenario. Technology capable of 33% efficient energy and CO2 to fuel conversion is extremely unlike to happen for a very long time and ICEs are way less efficient than natural gas power plants.
For example, you'd have to grow California's energy output by about three times using only renewables or nuclear just to make up for the CO2 from its natural gas power plants and that's not including what you'd need to make up for rush hour traffic. It would literally be cheaper for California buy all of the natural gas plants at original value and replace them with renewables than to try to offset our CO2 output. Only once we replace all large scale fossil fuel energy sources can we start thinking about carbon sequestration or conversion.
For one, we're over-fishing the oceans and putting massive strain on the ocean ecosystem. Mix that with polluting the oceans and rivers.
Mix that, with massively transforming the landscape around the world. Building roads/cities, damning rivers, and chopping down vast areas of the rain forest. Disrupting natural animal migration patterns. Leading to a mass extinction event.
Plus on top of all of that, climate change. The world can only take so much abuse. Yet, we seem hell bent on pushing that as far as we possibly can. Very dangerous game to play in my opinion. By hey, the economy.
+ Protecting coastal (and some inland) populations against higher water levels will be huge infrastructure projects that will allow us to re-imagine cities, many of which are even now burdened by very ancient designs and infrastructure. This will be a great use of resources that will put people to work on grand and civically engaging projects. Work to be proud of.
+ New coastal land will be created and deserts will slowly re-green, encouraging populations to migrate to and develop areas previously thought worthless. With that we'll have an opportunity to build thoughtful, efficient cities and the infrastructure to connect them from the ground up. Imagine the wealth and opportunities, economic and political, that would be created developing Greenland, Antarctica, or the Sahara.
+ Total potential agricultural output of the world will increase drastically, possibly making food cheaper for all.
+ Human civilization will be forced to recognize that we exist at the mercy of a bountiful Earth, which might make some of those other celestial bodies a bit more appealing.
Of course some obvious consequences will be painful, but I think change isn't automatically bad, and that the best of humanity always comes through during periods of non-violent adversity. A slow but certain and predictable warming of the Earth's climate is just that.
That's the theory anyway. The current impact of that evaporation seems to be increasing frequency and strength of hurricanes and monsoons. It is really hard to get fine grained reliable data on temperature and humidity across the entire planet, let alone account for unknown factors, so specific medium to long term impacts on agriculture are hard to pin down.
A lot of people seem to believe these models are right more out of fear than a rational validation of the models themselves. On top of that, creators of these models seem to be tripping over each other to come up with more outlandish results.
Part of my skepticism is the timescales that we're working with. Other issues are perhaps a poor understanding of how the earth and everything on it might react to changing conditions.
If I'm wrong, I'm also ok with the weather getting hotter. From a livable land mass perspective, the human race will be much better off with a warmer earth than another ice age.
And finally, how is it that it's currently more socially/scientifically acceptable to believe that matter can travel faster than light than it is to be a climate change skeptic? Science is never settled, unless it's a computer model predicting the future? I hope I'm not the only person who finds that ludicrous.
So here is my prediction: every generation of humans will have their boogeyman, religious apocalypse, nukes, GW, etc... but in the end an asteroid will cause a mass extinction event, just like it has before.
No, it won't
> And finally, how is it that it's currently more socially/scientifically acceptable to believe that matter can travel faster than light than it is to be a climate change skeptic?
In which part of the Universe is more acceptable to believe that matter can travel faster than light?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_a...
The point is that scientists took a "wait and see" approach instead of lambasting them for releasing results that was so obviously wrong while pointing out that it's absolutely impossible that matter can travel faster than light.
Especially given that just as the fears of climate change may be overblown, they may also be underestimated due to previously missed positive feedback loops of which we're unaware.
Can't see germs, after all, and people make a lot of bold claims about the things they can do.
Your tone is understood though. Calling me an idiot is childish and only hurts your credibility.
While nuclear war did not happen, there is nothing to suggest that it could not have happened. That it was a "boogeyman" as you suggest.
Any evidence of that? Normally a range of scenarios get published and I haven't seen them get any more dramatic over the last 20 years. On top of that, many of the models have greatly underestimate the temperature increase.
>If I'm wrong, I'm also ok with the weather getting hotter. From a livable land mass perspective, the human race will be much better off with a warmer earth than another ice age.
You do realize that this will involve relocating massive amounts of our population and rebuilding all the infrastructure of coastal cities? We will also end up with a lot less good farmland than we have now to feed a growing population.
The chance that humans will go extinct is close to zero over the next 100 years. Even in the worst case scenarios, thousands of people with access to huge resources will do what it takes to survive in the long-term.
The biggest natural threat I see to society and civilization isn't sea level rise, even though that's going to become a huge problem.
I think there is a good chance that within the next 50 years, it will be very difficult to grow sufficient food for billions of humans. If my concern comes to pass, then billions of humans will die of starvation, and our society and civilization will be utterly changed, though I would not hazard to guess how.
The scenario is straightforward: in the past decade especially, global weather has gotten a lot more wild. We know that it is getting wilder, and many climatologists believe that the rate at which it is getting wild is increasing.
How does wild weather starve billions? Too much rain, too little rain, too much heat, too little heat and too much wind. Everywhere.
I think there's a chance that in the next 50 years, it will be difficult to find plots of earth that aren't exposed to crop killing weather over the course of a growing season.
We're already seeing the beginnings of this, all over the world, though the total human impact hasn't yet been extreme. Indeed, we live in extraordinarily stable times. I believe it's safe to say that the average level of food safety today is higher than it has ever been.
Hopefully I'm wrong, and as the overall global temperature warms, the weather's intensity won't increase, increasingly quickly.
PS: Most of the people reading this will be alive past 2050. Think carefully about how many '100 year' and '500 year' weather events have come about in the past few years. Also note that, 30 years ago when I was a teenager, a '100 year' or '500 year' weather event anywhere in the world would have been big news, because of how uncommon those events were. Last I checked, we've had something like six or seven '100 year' or '500 year' weather events just in the United States, just in the year 2016. My point is that unless you're digging, it's quite likely that you aren't aware of even a majority of such weather events worldwide. They just don't get consistent mainstream coverage anymore.
PPS: I didn't vet this too closely, but it's interesting: https://www.google.com/#q=frequency+of+100+year+storms&tbs=q...
For example, temperatures during the Paleocene–Eocene thermal mamimum were 8 degrees warmer than today and by all apperences there was enough oxygen to support the diverse fauna that existed then.
Similarly the Jurassic era had 5 times the CO2 of today's earth and much higher temperatures but also enough oxygen to support a variety of dinosaurs and other fauna 1.
1. http://www.livescience.com/44330-jurassic-dinosaur-carbon-di...
And more importantly what plankton we are taking about here isn't for me to address, it's something that would have been addressed in the paper were it worth anything. Are we talking about diatoms, cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates?
The biggest contributor to oxygen would be cyanobacteria, to think they can survive these billions of years and all these mass extinctions and temperature fluctuations and then stop working because of a 6 degree increase is also nonsensical.
The more pressing concern is that larger, more slowly-reproducing aquatic organisms will experience significant strain to accommodate their metabolic needs. For many fish, crustaceans, coral, and others: rapid change in dissolved content on the ocean will cause population loss.
A study led by Sergei Petrovskii, Professor in Applied Mathematics
from the University of Leicester’s Department of Mathematics,
has shown that an increase in the water temperature of the world’s
oceans of around six degrees Celsius – which some scientists predict
could occur as soon as 2100 - could stop oxygen production by phytoplankton
by disrupting the process of photosynthesis.
Basically, same reasons why supercomputers are usedto predict weather. Predicting climate is probably even harder
Terrifying conjecture.
But I absolutely agree that civilisations boiling or suffocating themselves out of existence, most likely through carbon dioxide, is a much greater filter than nuclear war or hostile extraterrestrials. Just look at Venus. If we have runaway, I just hope we might survive by darkening the skies, lowering our albedo. That hopefully seems like a survival (whatever that means in the context) strategy once chlorophyll fails us.
I probably should have said "reduce the amount of sunlight reaching us", i.e. make the place less bright from our perspective instead of "lowering our albedo", which is the opposite of the relevant outside view.
Talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_radiation_management
I even have a headline for it: Stop Global warming or your kids won't have grandsons.
Now we've got one year less to stop this mess.