https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/climate-change/changing-ice...
In the absence of human activity, we would not be seeing the glacial retreat that we are seeing now. In fact we would expect relative stability until the onset of the next glacial period--then growth.
And of course, we care about all this because the civilization we've built is deeply integrated with the current climate, and it will be extremely expensive and traumatic to alter or adapt, especially on timelines as short as 50 to 100 years. Cities that rely on glaciers for year-round water are thousands of years old in some cases. Most of India, for example.
I get that there will be consequences to climate change that's how it's always been, but nature throws that at us all the time and have always been doing that. If anything we've just become better and better at dealing with it.
So I wish someone could provide anything other than speculation here.
Also, it's important to be clear. We are throwing this one at ourselves.
Earthquakes, tsunamis, animals, forest fires, bad crops, flooding, undrinkable water, tornados, storms I could go on.
It's really quite fascinating just how many people which I assume are normally rational thinking beings have decided to throw out any sense of critical thinking when it comes to nature and climate.
It's like Scientology. Lots of talk about science and then when you dig into it the actual science does not lead you to conclude what is claimed.
You seem to have trouble distinguishing between "there was a fairly stable set amount of problems" and "there will be an increase in problems"
We were used to certain operating conditions for earth, and they're shifting rapidly.
You have no base for the claim that there are going to be more problems just like you have no base for knowing if we are going to be better to deal with those that come.
We have more crops than ever and we are better at making sure they survive than ever in ever more hostile environments.
You are only looking at one side of this discussion and forgetting the other.
Yes, there are ways to adapt. But previously the glacier provided a free service and now we must soend energy to replace it.
It likewise doesn't take a soeculative model to observe "hmm, more plants die in heat waves. If it keeps getting warmer more crops will die"
Certainly we can motigste, but again we pay more energy for the same result.
It likewise needs no speculative model to note that storm surges now send water seeping up through the streets of Miami, and that if oceans keep rising, this will worsen.
You seem to be saying that we can't know anything about the future, and if anything bad happens we will surely adapt.
Your optimism is admirable but you would make a lousy general.
So again it still comes back to the simple fact that neither you nor anyone else have even remotely demonstrated that we should be as worried about the future as many would like us to be.
I am not saying we can't know anything I am saying we don't know what exactly it is we should worry about and whether we should worry and we don't know what the consequences of prematurely doing things like making fossil fuel illegal or focusing on an inferior technology like solar and wind long before they can provide enough energy and replace the current energy sources reliably is the wrong way to go about it EXACTLY BECAUSE there is nothing that suggest that the consequences whatever they are will be cataclysmic which means it's not actually an argument for forgetting about the peoeple who exist today and who also want live better lives, also want to live like we do in the west.
You and others seem to assume that hindering climate change is without consequences for people living today. I have yet to see a suggestion that isn't fundamentally about stopping what we are doing to some extent.
So you are misrepresenting how this works.
So yes the conclusions are based on a lot of speculation. The problem is that people like you try to claim that these specific scenarios which are only one of many potential outcomes is somehow science. It's not. Not even by a longshot.
If we're good on both of those, then I think the disagreement is whether we'll continue to dramatically improve or not. In other words, if we can drive the total negative cost (premature deaths, property damage, civil unrest, etc.) of certain disasters towards 0 by improving our response/mitigation capability, then it won't really matter if they come at an increased rate, the additional impact is a rounding error. If you agree with this, or see how one could agree with it, then maybe you can see why it's frustrating to hear people freaking out about climate change being an existential threat (it can be, given Venus, but that planet had no humans opposing it) which will doom our planet unless and only unless global CO2 is reduced (at some cost, perhaps partly of our species' ability to improve our mitigations fast enough).
Yet this discussion is being had AS IF we are debating what is scientifically true when in fact we are debating which interpretation of the science we should prioritize.
If someone can demonstrate scientifically to me that it's a cataclysmic event and that humans have no way of dealing with it you have my attention.
Other than that I prefer to worry about the current generations issues not panicking and rushing to conclusions making absurd political decisions like we are doing today, btw decisions that won't actually solve the very problems they are claiming to deal with.
Do places like Flint Michigan not make you think that maybe your hope in the collective power of mankind is a little misplaced? It's well within our means to solve that particular problem, but no one can be bothered.
But it's mostly speculation and this conversation would be much more useful also for future generation if we didn't as we see in this thread here completely panic at every sensationalist headline and start asking ourselves some more constructive questions.
Again give me a concrete scientifically demonstrated consequence of those issues that we don't know how to deal with. I have asked my times in this thread yet all I got back was downvotes. Doesn't that tell you something?
We will always have to deal with nature whether, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanos, floods, water rising some places and disappearing other places. Sahara used to be green.
Lets' stop panicking and start rationalizing.
And could you please define "don't know how to deal with" - what are the indicators that we should start to deal with something, and what is a successful example of "dealing with"? In the case of a catastrophe, what defines a failure and success for you?
These are things that humans have always had to deal with and we are much better at dealing with them today.
The list of deaths related to extreme weather is down not up.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/resources/weather_fatali...
With don't know how to deal with it i mean show me something that we can't deal with. Drought, flood, etc. but which is also demonstrated to happen not just speculated can happen.
We can't solve problems we can't see. We have to solve the problems we can see and do that in a way that doesn't just throw everything out
Should we stop poor countries from using fossil fuels which is what they primarily are using right now?
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05219-5
In this thread I've had a hard time figuring out what you mean by "dealing with" the effects of climate change, by mentioning "price" you give some hint that economic analysis. Do you consider this a worthy way of deciding whether to take action or not? It sounds like you've made up your mind on costs, but again, I can't tell.
I mean, that would one thing we could work on.
This is a strawman argument, and you know it. The rest of the world is hard at work trying to come up with better ways to meet energy needs that have a smaller impact on our climate.
Don't believe the hype.
We aren't debating climate change v.s astroid we are debating cataclysmic climate change vs. astroid thats quite a different discussion which is the whole point here.
They have high albedo as well; their retreat is decreasing the albedo of the terrain. This isn't their most important feature, but they are a piece in the puzzle of keeping temperatures stable, and stability is good for us.
I would still ask those most worried to point to a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change we don't know how to deal with or that they believe we won't be able to find solutions for over the next 50-100 years or so.
Edit: It's funny how downvotes are being used instead of argument by people I assume consider themselves on the side of science.
Humanity may survive, yes, but civilisation as we know it will regress to a large degree if the world leaders are as flippant about the issue as you are.
Software will not solve climate change, no matter how many startups you create and sell. Climate Change is a human lifestyle addiction problem that affects the suppliers of the lifestyle more than the consumers - until the number of suppliers start dwindling and then the consumers wonder why their coffee habit starts costing so much. Addictions and habits aren't easy to break even individually, much less for a whole society.
Rising oceans, changing climate zones, less arable land, fewer food resources, civil unrest, mass migration, resource wars, economic collapse.
(edit: the first three are things in the above list are already occurring, the rest are logical extensions).
Again you are just listing a bunch of things that might or might not happen without any evidence: 1) that they will happen, 2) that we can't deal with them if they happen. 3) when they will happen.
Yet you consider yourself the rational one.
Again we are discussing the difference between accepting there are some consequences of the climate changing and then these catastrophist claims that the world is going to end and we can't deal with it.
Zapp: Come back when it's a catastrophe
Sure, but making it more unstable is clearly worse for us. Sure, we have ways of making even the most unstable environments survivable (like the Moon!) but saying that we should just make things worse and hope that we can undo it in 50 years isn't a really good strategy.
http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/resources/weather_fatali...
I would really encourage you to stop for a minute and start digging into the data. You will be shocked when you realize how little is based on actual facts.
> Nature has never been stable especially not for humans
Yeah, it changes on geologic timescales, i.e. thousands and millions of years. We've subjected nature to catastrophic shocks 1000x faster. It does not respond well. It collapses. We're in the middle of shit storm because of our own actions. It is absolutely not business as usual for Earth.
> I would still ask those most worried to point to a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change
We're not really sure how Earth is gonna function if the oceans are dead and there are no insects, and parts of it are literally uninhabitable for humans because it will be too hot to go outside (~130F).
> If anything we have made it more stable
Nonsense. We chopped down most of the forests in the US [1] to make farmland. Literally. My home state of Indiana was _literally_ solid hardwood forest 250 years ago. Take a look at it on Google maps sometime.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_St...
Edit: added handy reference
Please do not break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong or annoying other comments may be.
You take the most catastrophic interpretations as gospel while at the same time admitting we have no idea what the consequences will actually be.
That's exactly the point here.
So instead of jumping to conclusions like you are doing perhaps it would help if you started being concrete.
The quesiton still stands. What scientifically demonstrated problem which will arise over the next 100 years can't we deal with?
It's like with bees. Some people go, who cares if neonicotinoids wipe them out, we'll simply make a billion incredibly advanced miniature robot bees to replace them. Ok, sure, we can probably figure that out in the next fifty years. But that seems like way more of a pain in the ass than just cutting it out with the neonicotinoids.
P.S. the insect populations are already massively cratered. That part isn't wild speculation about 2100, that's today. I'm sure you remember the headlines about the study in Europe finding 75% reduction in insect biomass over the last twenty five years. Oh, and the year round fire season is here in California.
We need energy to survive especially being as many as we are, poor countries are depending on cheap reliable energy and don't care about the climate. They are trying to survive today.
So it all comes back to what the consequences will be of what you are going to propose as a solution.
If for ex. the choice was between making fossil fuel illegal or allow it to be used as it is being used today then I would definitely be choosing the latter so that we can continue to have growth and create the surplus to come up with better solutions.
Personally I figure we need a lot of things- heavy investment in sequestration technology, clean energy, and carbon free transport in the first world, but also clever spot fixes like the $1 grate for cookfires (https://www.engineeringforchange.org/news/a-1-insert-for-coo...) that could cook the same meal with less fuel in millions of households. Maybe someone will come up with a cheap clever way to slow down the melting of drinking water glaciers to buy a few decades. The floating shade-ball experiments in reservoirs to reduce evaporation also come to mind.
P.S. The barely-surviving communities you mention concern for are the least able to cope with the consequences of climate change. Desalination plants and robot bees are simply not on their list of options.
And lets not pretend that whatever solution most people think of it isn't somehow going to be based on slowing down growth.
P.S. They certainly will be having big problems dealing with the consequences if they aren't allowed to grow and become richer and won't have access to cheap reliable energy.
The build-out of renewable power and electrifying everything in a matter of two or three decades would be superhero-level industrialism worthy of the legacy of WWII America. Solar panels & windmills need people to install them, and that new battery-electric F-150 is going to need a lot of people to develop & build it. Sequestration, too, will be a massive industrial works if we get it going, and synthetic fuel could balance the flow of carbon in the transit sector overnight.
That future would be built on a lot of American sweat & hard work. Plenty of growth, too. Frankly, I'd have thought that was something the country that rebuilt her fleets in like a year after Pearl Harbor & landed on the moon could get excited about.
More or less environmentally friendly than climate change?
I'm surprised for someone pro growth and all, you aren't interested in the opportunity to build all this out. Why not?
Only Nuclear solves that today but there is a huge anti-nuclear sentiment by the environmental organizations and thus politically against nuclear which of course is absurd as that's probably the only energy form that actually can deliver on the no-emission promise which is the one everyone claims to be so worried about.
I have nothing against wind and solar but they are just inferior to nuclear and hopefully in some distant future fusion and in a less distant future thorium but the current sentiment makes that even more filled with friction.
To give you an example of the absurdity.
This summer the weather was amazing in Denmark, the result no wind which in a country largely based on wind energy means they are relying on other countries to provide energy in this case Germany. Germany who also had a great summer and has been focusing on solar.
What happened? Germany used coal. And now that they are closing their nuclear powerplants that will only increase and is a good example of the consequences of a ideologically driven rather than a rationally driven energy policy.
Thanks but no thanks.