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Ok, so this question has been asked before, but here goes!

What are we going to do about it?

I hear people say it's just too late to stop a catastrophe, but I find it hard to believe.

It's not too late to stop this. But if you try, some people who will be dead before the worst happens and so won't suffer or pay for the consequences, and who can profit in the short term by punting the problem into the long grass will fight to prevent you from doing so.

In order to stop it, roughly $10 trillion dollars worth of fossil fuel assets will need to be left in the ground. As a historical parallel, the economic value (inflation adjusted) of the slaves in the southern US before the civil war was $10 trillion dollars.

The people who owned those slaves opted to fight the most destructive war the planet had seen at that time rather than give up their property.

Have you noticed that nearly all the big names pushing Brexit are climate change denialists? That Trump claims it's a hoax and chose as his Secretary of State the head of Exxon that discussed climate change on a seperate email alias which the company then "lost" when asked to provide them in a court case?

It's not looking good, but it's not a technical issue.

Would you stop people from driving; heating and cooling their homes; watching TV and using computers; eating food grown with fertilizer made from fossil fuels?

Energy makes life better for everyone, not only for people who profit by selling it.

Predictions suggest actually dealing with climate change will save trillions of dollars per year. That's why all the sane and sensible people support it.

If you're the one proposing that we just throw all that money away, then you're the one that needs to answer questions about depriving people of material wealth.

You didn't answer the question. How would we "deal with climate change" now without making the sacrifices people aren't willing to make?

My original point was that people not wanting to make sacrifices was why we're probably doomed as a civilization.

But, they will inflict greater losses on other people by doing so. Overall, dealing with this issue is the cheaper option and cheaper = less sacrifices. So your question is equivalent to "How can you stop running up the credit card bill if that will stop us from spending money right now" and acting like I'm the irresponsible crazy person.

I've accepted that if the worst predictions are true, we're doomed.

No one is willing to make these sacrifices. How much energy are we wasting having this discussion here? How much energy is wasted on computers and entertainment and machine learning and bitcoins and other popular topics here?

How much energy do celebrity environmentalists and "green" politicians waste flying around the world?

Has any Democrat proposed making serious sacrifices to stop climate change?

It seems to me that there are always two sides in this argument: one denies climate change, the other expects it and changes nothing.

So, there are a few interesting nuances here.

First, we've already passed 400 PPM CO2, and it's very hard to imagine we won't hit 500 PPM. It's entirely possible we'll hit 600 PPM. It's very crucial how much warming is really associated with these various CO2 levels - and that is not known to a high precision at this time.

If energy technology is developed as it should be, with solar, nuclear, wind, and geothermal continuously being improved, CO2 emissions will fall off pretty quickly over the next few decades. It seems likely this can be done with constantly increasing quality of life.

The real issue is how will we mitigate the peak atmospheric CO2 concentration if needed? I would argue the only sane approach is aggressive investment into science and technology. Mitigations may have to include many things, even up to the scope of orbital sunshades.

This is a straw man argument (use fossil fuels or lose all benefits of modern life. We can still enjoy these benefits by switching to renewables, or power.

The naive nature of this comment seems pretty synthetic, but I'll give it a grown up response:

One answer to preserve GDP while shifting to carbon neutral renewables is to increase the cost of fossil fuels through the use of a Carbon Dividend. This consists of three points 1. Taxing carbon fuels at the wholesale market. 2. Providing a dividend to every citizen of the U.S. (mitigates the impact on low income families, estimates range about $4k / person) 3. Provide an adjustment tax at the border punishing other countries like China that do not institute their own Carbon fee structure.

This is a market based solution advocated by James Baker & others within the conservative establishment to help our society accelerate the shift to carbon neutral power. Currently a group of 17 house republican representatives support the measures.

More information can be found by researching / participating / volunteering for the citizen's climate lobby - http://citizensclimatelobby.org/

"Use renewables" is the naive answer here.

It's going to take decades to replace the world's energy infrastructure with renewables at a natural pace. Trying to do so more quickly would waste a lot of energy and that would also release more carbon.

To stop climate change, we'd have to make larger sacrifices than that.

I know this is a massive side-track, but...

How was the American Civil War the "most destructive war the planet had seen at that time"? It had nothing like the scale of casualties of eg. the 30 Years' War.

You're correct, possibly I misinterpreted an American-centric statistic I heard.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_by_death_toll

Still very bad, but not genre defyingly bad on a global scale, even at that time.

Yes, when thinking about the events of the mid 19th century it's useful to remember that the United States of that time wasn't the global superpower of today, but just another middle power among many.

If you really want destructive, check out the An Lushan Rebellion or the Taiping Rebellion. The former killed millions, perhaps several tens of millions, back when the world population was only 200-300 million. The latter was roughly contemporary with the American Civil War and killed 20-30 million people.

I'm just back from Antarctica, and chatted with a number of scientists from McMurdo & Vernadsky stations - while stood outside wearing shorts and a shirt (apparently this is not normal Antarctic apparel, but it was hot), and their outlook is dour. They're not talking in terms of prevention or reversal, rather, mitigation - how can human life survive in a vastly changed biosphere?

Animal behaviour was all sorts of weird too - Orca and humpbacks in abnormally large groupings (hundreds of individuals), salps flourishing in the water just below the rotted away feet of glaciers, penguins nesting and mating at exactly the wrong time of year.

The only way to lessen the disaster will be to subvert existing systems to the purpose - make it financially rewarding to leave oil in the ground, to use renewables, to not burn down forests for short-lived ranch-land. Doing this on a global scale can only be achieved through capitalism - it's the one constant across borders, as its increasingly clear governments either cannot or will not respond to this crisis. Don't ask me for specifics - I haven't figured that much out yet, but it seems to be the only viable pathway.

I have a friend who works for Exxon material science division. His goal in life is to find "the next oil", obviously Exxon is willing to hedge its bets and fund some alternative energy research so they can position themselves if a new breakthrough is discovered.

Here is the problem: Oil is currently the most energy packed material that humans easily have access to. And its not even really close, wind / solar / etc are not just 40% less efficient, more like orders of magnitude.

I think the demonization of oil may be causing more total CO2 than just burning it. A craze starts which convinces everyone to buy electric cars - except those rare earth materials for the batteries are really hard to find. They require millions of tons of mining to gather enough a usable quantity for one electric vehicle.

How does all that mining get accomplished? Certainly not in a CO2 friendly manner. Where does the electricity come from to charge those batteries?

Many reasonable people in the energy industry are eager to find a "better oil" but realize that rushing off into hysterical tulip manias is probably doing more harm to the enviroment than just using the 'cheap / easy' oil that we have.

The viable alternatives aren't so simple as replacing one product with another that's just as energy dense. They involve things like biking instead of driving, not making frequent trips across the country, spending less time doing busy work and more time taking care (cooking, mending, gardening, walking, studying, adapting).

The global economic norms are predicated on a simplified models of humans, in which we are needy, pathetic little hungry creatures who must be managed and trained, sorted and extracted.

But really, we are 8 billion capable, creative individuals who, free of our doubts and demons, could really make the world more livable for ourselves and each other. Do you realize how many capable hands are among us? I see it clearly on a good day. We need to realize it, and I believe we will, but probably not without some fire.

I think those claims about total CO2 have been repeatedly debunked in the past. And materials are readily recyclable anyway even if they are energy intensive to, source.

But really we are in a transitional state. And the constant search for the "next oil" could have serious opportunity costs.

For people who haven't read this article -

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a36228/ballad-of-the-sa...

Climate scientists are depressed because of the results they are seeing.

Wow, this is was a really interesting, albeit sad read. Thanks.

Ok, so this question has been asked before, but here goes!
What are we going to do about it?

I hear people say it's just too late to stop a catastrophe, but I find it hard to believe.

It is probably not too late to stop a "catastrophe," but it is too late to stop climate change. It is my understanding that even if we were to stop putting more CO2 into the atmosphere immediately, temperatures would continue to rise for a few decades due to the CO2 that is already there. The only way to fight that would be massive investments in carbon capture and storage. Realistically, we are going to experience significant climate change over the next 50 years.

That doesn't mean nothing can be done, of course. By reducing or eliminating greenhouse gas emissions, we can slow the rate of change. By investing in carbon capture technology, we can slow and perhaps one day reverse the change. We also need to look into ways of mitigating the effects of the change that is coming.

Howdy! I work in cleantech, and I guess it's that time again for a what-are-we-going-to-do-about-it post :)

To start, here's my favorite climate change joke: "They say we won't act until it's too late... Luckily, it's too late!"

So what can you do about it?

Work at a new energy technology company! We are currently growing exponentially[1], and we need as many smart people as we can get. There are lots of companies hiring software engineers.

How do I find a job fighting climate change?

I'd recommend browsing the exhibitor and speaker lists from the most recent conference in each sector (linked below).

    * Energy Storage[2][3]
    * Solar[4][5]
    * Wind[6]
    * Nuclear[7]
    * Electric Utilities[8][9]
    * Electric vehicles[10]

Also, if you're in the SF bay area, I'd recommend subscribing to my Bay Area Energy Events Calendar[11]. Just start showing up to events and you'll probably find a job really quickly.

[1]: https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/22/energy-is-the-new-new-inte...

[2]: http://www.esnaexpo.com/

[3]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/u.s.-energy-stora...

[4]: https://www.intersolar.us/

[5]: http://www.solarpowerinternational.com/

[6]: http://www.windpowerexpo.org/

[7]: https://www.nei.org/Conferences

[8]: http://www.distributech.com/index.html

[9]: https://www.greentechmedia.com/events/live/grid-edge-world-f...

[10]: http://tec.ieee.org/

[11]: https://bayareaenergyevents.com/

Great job! It's nice to see someone being proactive rather than simply complaining.

It's also good to see nuclear power included in your list.

The fact is that if energy technology is developed as it should be, market forces will lessen CO2 emissions, and nobody will have to "sacrifice" anything.

We're well past the point where nobody will have to sacrifice, regardless of how energy technology and markets develop in the future. Without anything short of international scale geoengineering projects (aka a miracle), sea levels will rise at least several inches over the next century, which translates to several extra feet during storms and surges. Already cities like Miami are seeing the consequences and most of the people living in vulnerable regions will not have the capital or infrastructure to easily move inland. Meanwhile, agricultural industries like in Italy and France have already begun to move northward, which will disrupt food supplies for hundreds of millions of people. There is strong evidence that this disruption has already begun to happen in the Middle East, except at a larger scale than the desertification of the Fertile Crescent or any other agricultural shock in recorded civilization.

Slowing down our CO2 output will give millions of people more time to adapt to a changing environment but lets not kid ourselves. We're decades past the point of no return and mitigating the effects of climate change on our societies will soon become just as important as reducing our GHG output.

I think our definition of "sacrifice" is different. I'm referring to a systemic drag on the standard of living going forward, due to reduced energy availability. Abundant, cheap energy is crucial for the best outcome going forward.

I concur that international scale geoengineering will be required if the worse of the current estimates for CO2 induced warming are correct. So, we had best proactively prepare for that, just in case.

As to current sea level rise and other climate change related effects, it's actually currently impossible to definitively separate the human signal from natural variability. We'll know more over time, of course.

It'll be interesting to see if the upcoming Grand Solar Minimum will do anything to lower global temperatures on decadal timescales.

For anybody in the RTP (NC) area, looks like some local energy events can be found here:

https://rtec-rtp.org/events/

Most likely not much we can do now. Add to that the fact that the government of the most powerful country in the World straight up denies the science.

There's always something we can do. If we can't prevent the problem from happening, we can try to slow it down, mitigate its effects and eventually reverse it. Can't imagine a worse reaction now than just giving up.

Most likely what will happen is the rich will create gated cities and private armies and leave the rest to fend for themselves.

The environment must become a political issue. There will be people on both sides of the argument. It has to be about more than science.

Excellent article on that topic by Brad Plummer at Vox:

http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/3/23/15028480...

We do nothing about it because it's a natural cycle.

What's so natural about extracting large pockets of carbon deposits (which took millions of years to form) and releasing it into the atmosphere over an extremely short period (~150 years)?

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