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Comment by f_allwein | Hacker News Reader

> while 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record in the past 140 years since the world began to keep a track on temperatures, NASA expects 2019 to be still hotter.

In this context, here's an interesting map on what the world will look like 4 degrees warmer: https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/what-the-world-will-look-l... - apparently, much of the Indian subcontinent will be uninhabitable...

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On a side note, I always wondered if Americans would be more aggressive trying to prevent global warming if these projections were in Fahrenheit, not Celsius.

This may sound really simple and dumb, but I think you’re actually on to something. Americans read all of these stories about 1° warming and have NO idea what it means. In fact, since so much global policy-making involves American multinationals, maybe it should be a rule that all climate increases/decreases are written in the context of Fahrenheit, so Americans better understand what scientists are estimating, regardless of whether it is pro- or anti-climate-science.

I don't think it would matter. One (or four) degree(s) is a similar change in either scale. I think the larger issue is the disconnect between global average temperature and local weather systems. I think people read "4 degrees warmer" and think that all of their weather forecasts are going to be 4 degrees higher than they used to be. It seems like a small change when viewed like that, but of course that's not what is going to happen at all.

I’m concerned about climate change. I know about the flooding, glaciers and ice melting, coastal areas and islands filling up with water. I understand some of the natural ecosystem of the world would be messed up with some animals dying out as well. But I have no concept of how much of the latter will be done or how much it’ll effect things.

However as I don’t know too much, why would 4 C increase result in a lot of South Asia being uninhabitable and making most of America into hostile land. The other link said most of it would be desert land. And that Siberia and north west Antarctica would be green inhabitable. Wouldn’t part’s of Siberia and any part of Antarctica still be crazy cold and awful places to be?

I guess I’m a “dummy” because I also don’t get how global weather increase will mess and change things so much outside of what I acknowledged in my first paragraph. Though again I’m all for fixing up our behavior wrt environment and controlling climate change.

Here's one example: increasing average temperatures raises the incidence of extreme heat waves. There is an upper limit of temperature+humidity above which humans cannot survive. Under business-as-usual rates of CO2 emissions, those conditions will start to happen, and India is one of the earlier areas to see it.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/aug/02/climate-...

I don't know why you were downvoted, I think it's a good question. My understanding is that this is a 4 degree difference in the average temperature. Meaning there might be times of the year that don't change much at all but other seasons get dramatically hotter. That affects rainfall distribution, the speed that snow melts (and wether snow ever falls in the first place), etc.

My guess is that "uninhabitable" in this context refers to specific critical periods that are deadly short of water or deadly hot which last long enough to make building/maintaining cities in those places a losing (i.e. prohibitively expensive) proposition

Maybe people thought I was against believing in man made climate change? I remember a year ago I posed a similar question amongst a liberal crowd (of which I’m one as well) and someone took it upon himself to be sure I believed there is no man made climate change. I’m pretty sure he just didn’t know anything either and enjoyed being offended.

That’s not what’s happening here exactly but perhaps some people thought I wasn’t being genuine.

Thanks! Yes that’s a big difference if it’s average and some seasons might not change much. That would be a big difference.

Uninhabitable explanation makes sense too. Thanks.

> maybe it should be a rule that all climate increases/decreases are written in the context of Fahrenheit

Nah, the rest of the world is fine with using SI units and understanding them. No need to dilute it down by using different systems.

Absolutely, 'one degree' has an intuitive sense of 'negligible' in my experience of going outside. The actual danger of a warming world is in the energy moving around us, pushing water inland and forcing higher wind gusts etc etc.

So if you want to impress large numbers upon the public, maybe Joules or Watts of excess energy would be good.

Poking around a random Quora post it looks like the equivalent for 1*C of warming would be on the order of a billion TeraJoules.

A billion TJ, or the ocean's total warming is 436 ×10^21 J since 1871[1] is a bit like billion pounds to most of the public - most of whom disliked maths - huge, but utterly meaningless. Why else is every media story associating things with the size of a football field, the area of 63 Wales, or length equivalent to the height of the Empire State or 23 double decker buses? And I always wondered why double decker buses when they're the same length as a single decker... Must be a British thing. :)

Guardian reported the ocean warming since 1871 study as "...equivalent of one atomic bomb explosion per second for the past 150 years" (1.5x the power of Hiroshima), which seemed a bit hyperbolic. Except the same article then asked the author of the study[1]:

“I try not to make this type of calculation, simply because I find it worrisome,” said Prof Laure Zanna, at the University of Oxford, who led the new research. “We usually try to compare the heating to [human] energy use, to make it less scary.”

At which point I think Guardian might have been on to something in their choice of visualisation...

[1] https://www.pnas.org/content/116/4/1126

1° doesn't mean anything for those who are used to those units either, when it comes to global warming. A day that's 1° hotter or colder is not that much hotter or colder. You go by the effects scientists say it has on the environment, not by whether it feels as a lot or a little.

This is unreasonably rosy. Acidification of the ocean and ecological breakdown from overly rapid environmental change appears likely to cause a catastrophic failure of the food chain. Rapid change is necessary. The status quo is not OK.

Rosy or not, we need to plan when it happens. The only if we don't know is how bad it will exactly be.

And don't forget, that a very valid answer is "food chain collapses, causing mass starvation and death".

It's happening. What's the plan?

The rise of ISIS was driven by crop failure due to climate change. The temperature in India reached 123 degrees already this year.

The rise of ISIS was not due to climate change, it was a group that arose from AQI, which itself had it origins from Jordanian Jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who, in the 1990s ran jihadist paramilitary camps in Afghanistan. ISIS wasn’t driven by crop failure “due to climate change.” It was essentially a war due to Sunnis not liking Sh’ites — a conflict that has been ongoing for literally centuries. And, in this specific case was due to a power vacuum in the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But the roots of that conflict are as old as the 1975 Algiers agreement between Iraq and Iran.

Attributing ISIS to climate change is about the same as blaming social media for ISIS; arguably social media’s existence actually helped ISIS propagate more than any causes attributed to climate change. ISIS and it’s origins are exceptionally complicated as are most conflicts in that region. To trivialize it by claiming it was because of climate change is to reveal a profound misunderstanding of the history of that region.

We can discuss climate change and it’s causes and effects, but it weakens credibility when almost everything gets blamed on it. It’s getting to the point where when one used to say this bad thing happened because “it’s God’s will,” but now people say, “climate change.” It’s taking on religion-levels of influence to where actual causation gets ignored in favor of attributing everything to CO2. Every storm, every war, every bad thing that happens has a least some people trying to use those events to justify their belief systems. Sometimes weather is just weather, war is just war. If we ended all CO2 emissions tomorrow, the Middle East would still be a cauldron, wars would still happen, crops would still fail from time to time, hurricanes would still destroy things, tornados would still happen. Climate is an important issue, but let’s not turn it into a religion.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/climate-change-d...

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/06/world/climate-change-terroris...

> As described here, water and climatic conditions have played a direct role in the deterioration of Syria’s economic conditions. There is a long history of conflicts over water in these regions because of the natural water scarcity, the early development of irrigated agriculture, and complex religious and ethnic diversity. In recent years, there has been an increase in incidences of water-related violence around the world at the subnational level attributable to the role that water plays in development disputes and economic activities.

https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/WCAS-D-13-0005...

It might be psychologically satisfying to blame Mother Nature for a particular problem that is the direct result of recent USA military and diplomatic policy, but it seems sort of silly. Millions of people who are still alive right now witnessed the intentional destruction of Iraq's government and civil society, the deliberate transfer of weapons and matériel to nascent anti-civil-society groups, and the intentional weakening of Syria's government and civil society through sanctions and military attacks. We don't have to learn about this; we saw it happen in real time. The Middle East hasn't had rain forests at any time in recorded history.

This line of argument is so ridiculous that one is tempted to speculate you're trolling us to make real warming enthusiasts look worse...

I've always wondered what I, as an individual, could do to help. I work full time, and I have a chronic illness which makes it difficult to physically contribute. I am a software engineer, so I do have technical skills to contribute if there were problems that needed technical solutions, but I simply don't know where to look.

Nothing. We're far past the point of no return at this point. Minimizing the disastrous consequences of climate change requires a coordinated worldwide effort. In principle, the only thing you can do that might make a difference is get active politically. In practice, given the level of dysfunction exhibited in global politics right now, I'm extremely pessimistic that there's any hope of doing anything on that level either.

"It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not. It is wisdom to recognize necessity, when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope."

Seems like for the next 50 years, politics will be about passing the buck to the next guy in the office.

We do have one problem that could do with a technical solution:

If we managed to invent a carbon removal technique scalable and cheap enough to deploy on a massive scale, we'd still be able to prevent the worst.

The problem is, currently there is no money in it, so the efforts are not the size they should be. We'd need a war economy on all fronts here.

Get in the face of your political representatives:

https://www.sunrisemovement.org/

https://rebellion.earth/

There is no chance your individual actions will have any impact. Our only hope is drastic, large scale policy changes at the national and international level.

Well you're doing as much as you can right now it seems. Methink the solution is mostly of social nature. Are your neighbors nature friendly ? Talk with them, do more things without waste, do more things locally. There's a guy in Florida who turns neighborhoods in semi-gardens. People gather around and plant some stuff.

Big factors like industrial pollution, transport, long distance shipment are 1) too heavy to move (you need political power, and political power is also heavy to move) 2) but they do depend on people spending their money for their product.

I dream of a smooth swap (https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Flh4.googleu...) where people allocate more to simple and local life. Forcing the economy to curb accordingly.

I have the feeling that it will make (and it does already) people a lot happier[0], and since having to do locally you can't rely on economies of scale so people will have things to do instead. It won't be fancy or pretty but plausibly more meaningful to work with and for your surroundings, even if it means no more white collar position in a shiny tower.

There are online places to discuss, reddit has many (r/collapse, r/guerrillagardening), some people also make discord groups. You might take a peek.

Pessimistic outlook maybe, but on seeing that I tend to think it misses a sub-head. If that proportion of the population needs to relocate and that much is abandoned, something like:

What the world will look like 4°C warmer

For the 5% of humanity that survived World Wars 3, 4, 5, and 6.

Maybe there'll be world government by then...

> Maybe there'll be world government by then...

I really need convincing that a world government wouldn't be extremely inefficient. I believe this would be the most disappointing utopia ever tried with a guarantee for regular civil wars.

I get that unity is required for dealing with global life threatening disasters waiting to happen, but it would just suck so badly if you think closer about it.

Just my take to add to the pessimism.

My observation is that humans' ability to effectively self-govern maxes out around 100 million, maybe even closer to 70 million.

If you look at the world happiness report/index, the top 50 countries are all under 100 million (exceptions: US, Mexico) and not especially large landmass (exceptions: US, Australia).

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

Growing up watching Star Trek I always thought the idea of some benevolent global government running in a post scarcity future was the goal we should all be shooting for but in retrospect it looks about as flawed as traditional communist command economies.

Maybe the effect is countered by the relative autonomy of US states and perhaps money does indeed make happy:

https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/articles/news-and...

But nevertheless I think that distributed and subsidiary governance is at least less less efficient.

That said, I would instantly exchange my government for the united federation of planets.

Man Russia has it sweet.

Also Africa and Australia has a head start, they know how to live in deserts.. but maybe this one will be lunar void of life.

Sarcasm aside I wonder:

- Will humanity find wisdom and courage in doing what's simple and right (degrowth, relocalized, green first)

- Will humanity will pile head on to fix the problem through gigantism (let's be mad: fusion powered geo engineering)

What's going on around the Great Lakes on that map? It looks like most of Michigan has been swallowed by them, significantly more land loss than I would think a 2m rise in water levels would cause. https://i.imgur.com/tdX7vyr.png

Aren't the Great Lakes somewhat higher than sea level? (At least until Niagara erodes all the up - which will be 50K years or so).

Edit: Lake Michigan is at 176m - which is quite a bit higher than the level seas would reach if all ice melts (which I think is about 90m).

Yes. The map is sensationalist trash. Not to say that global warming won't impact the lakes: The far more likely outcome is depletion, as water diversions considered unthinkable become politically feasible, both within and without the basin. A map like that might as well show the Colorado River shores expanding with sea rise, it would make as much sense (for non-Americans, the Colorado is so heavily diverted to southwestern farms and municipalities that its riverbed is dry, or a trickle, most of the year).

Of course it won't help the narrative when the Lakes right now are near record highs due to lower levels of evaporation and more rain in the autumn months of the past few years (according to Army Corps of Engineers' data that started records in 1918, anyway). These fluctuations aren't uncommon. Last time they were this high was the mid-80s.

But you're right about the political ramifications of where the Great Lakes Compact line gets drawn. Waukesha, WI is one place that comes to mind where their own water supply became inadequate (mostly due to radium levels) and they requested to have access to Lake Michigan's water. My understanding is within a few years, they'll have the infrastructure in place and be able to legally draw from it.

It doesn't take a deep imagination to think of what a few dozen new such situations will do to Michigan let alone the other Lakes.

Yes, the Waukesha diversion shows that if a community is patient and wealthy enough, the lakes are for sale. At the risk that we share sources, https://www.amazon.com/Great-Lakes-Water-Wars/dp/159726637X is great and has a chapter on Waukesha.

Lake Ontario has had record high water levels in 2017 and again in 2019, maybe they think that will get much, MUCH worse? But given the rest of the map, I think it's just bad science.

The flooded areas are surprising. I always thought Japan would be the first place to go. Look at Brazil, why is it so flooded compared to everywhere else?

The earth was once 6 degrees warmer according to the geologic record. From what we know, it looked nothing like that map.

Edit - here, for people who can't do their own homework: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/travel-through...

And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record

Source?

Is this a joke? Dunno, grade school? Corroborated by a multitude of sources, some of which are on Wikipedia, and should be general knowledge. Did you not learn about this in grade school?

Is "taught in grade school" your standard of proof?

Some things are common enough knowledge that asking for a source is disingenuous. Everyone should know the earth was once warmer and went through various cooling periods.

It's like asking for a source to prove the sky is blue or that the earth is round...

This community claims to be one of educated professionals, yet somehow there's comments questioning things that are literally common knowledge and if somehow they don't know, can't spend 2 seconds to google it? Instead write "Source?". It's intellectually lazy as hell.

>Some things are common enough knowledge that asking for a source is disingenuous.

Yes. But then we invented science and "common knowledge" was proven ignorant time and time again.

>It's like asking for a source to prove the sky is blue or that the earth is round...

Hardly. I can't look out my window and see what the temperature was thousands of years ago.

>This community claims to be one of educated professionals

You're claiming that, not 'the community.'

What is intellectually lazy is not providing information that verifies your claims, and instead preferring to debate the social circumstances of an internet discussion. You're not obligated to provide a source. You don't have to do it. But don't think you're somehow more intellectually honest or hardworking because you refuse to.

If 2 seconds of googling solves this problem, then you should have probably just done that rather than arguing about whether you should need to.

I googled it for the intellectually lazy.

As an aside, the reason we know that CO2 affects earth's temperature is the same reason we know what kind of vegetation existed during that same time period. Because of observations in the fossil record.

The problem with things that "everyone knows" is they are often hyper simplified abstractions that form useful models but are not appropriate to discussions of anything specific or for shaping policy. Everyone "knows" Pluto is farther than Neptune (except when it isn't[0]), traits are passed via dna (except when they aren't[1]), sex matches with gender (except it doesn't[2]).

Sure the earth was warmer in the past, it was also colder, it was also a molten hellscape. Trying to relate a grade schooler's understanding of geologic time to specific climate models seems to be far more intellectually lazy than asking for a source so people can put your very vague claims into context.

[0]https://curiosity.com/topics/pluto-and-neptune-swap-places-e... [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigenetics [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_and_gender_distinction

It’s not a joke. What are you talking about? 56 million years ago (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, the last time temperatures were six degrees higher? Or, back when earth was a molten rock of lava? That’s completely irrelevant to this discussion. Temperatures haven’t been higher than a degree since the last ice age (see the excellent relevant xkcd: https://www.climatecentral.org/news/climate-change-xkcd-comi...). Rapid anthropogenic global warming does not bode well for human civilization. That doesn’t mean life on earth or humans as a species will be wiped out, but you can’t say “earth was hotter when the dinosaurs were around, so, no problem”

Didn't say no problem, only that the map of the original post I replied to is shit. Which it is. There's no reason to believe everything south of Siberia and Canada will be a desert.

Climate science is based on past CO2 levels and uses the fossil record of foliage to estimate temperatures. Not even the most dire predictions claim the earth will be mostly desert in 100 years. There will be flooding and some desertification, but many regions will also become greener.

Even NASA has observed that the earth is greener today than 40 years ago.

Do we have map estimates of what it looked like at that time?

Sure. This is pretty basic, but here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/travel-through...

Anyhow, we know from the geologic record of fossils that the world, at it's hottest, had vegetation in most regions. It wasn't 80% desert like the OP I responded to.

I don’t know anything about how the world would change. But me being skeptical of everything being ruined with 4 degree increase doesn’t mean anything. I don’t know much science.

Thanks for link. The topic interests me and I’d like to know more.

How many people lived on earth at that time? And how interwoven was everything they did on a global scale?

> From what we know, it looked nothing like that map.

Yes, because at that point it was a map of pangea.

And I'm just starting to learn about the fact that the placement of landmasses massively influences the global climate. We're looking at a very different system here.

I posted a map. During the Jurassic, the world was much warmer, greener, and Pangea was already broken up, although the continents weren't in their current positions. They did span from pole to pole however.

The point is that the map posted by OP is junk and not based on any science, just alarmist rhetoric.

The key point is how fast the temperature changes. Over several thousands of years that change can be tolerated by the ecosystem (animals and plants evolve over several hundreds of generations and can survive). We already increased the temperature of 1. something degrees Celsius in perhaps a 100 of years and the trend in accelerating. That's way too fast for natural selection to make a difference.

So, yeah, Eocene was super warm, but the flora and fauna was well adapted to survive in those conditions.

Also, if you don't believe me, look better in the article you linked: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m... (pay attention to the non uniform time axis...)

Not saying there won't be ill effects. But the alarmist idea that the world will be 80% desert isn't based on any science.

How a map at +4 or +6 degrees may or may not look is pretty far from "grade school", and definitely requires sources. I agree that the map in the parent comment doesn't meet my standards for scientific accuracy, due to lack of sources, but that doesn't mean I'd discount it. It's not exactly implausible, extrapolating from current desertification. Seems like the map is from a book (https://www.paragkhanna.com/home/2016/3/9/the-world-4-degree...), so presumably that book would contain explanations. Your Smithsonian map is quite bad, too: It contains no legend, an no explanations at all, although based on the coloring it would seem that there's less desertification than in the parent comment map. But then, it also looks like due to continental drift, the majority of landmass was on the Southern hemisphere. I think it's pretty silly to draw too many conclusions about desertification in the next century from a picture of the earth 170 million years ago, with a completely different distribution of land mass and weather patterns.

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