Charts show how little progress has been made in limiting greenhouse emissions

Talking about things in terms of GDP glosses over the human suffering that it represents.

> a 10% increase in per capita real income is associated with a 1.5% decrease in the crude death rate

It seems reasonable to assume that the inverse is also true.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mortality_rate#Economics

https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/world-development-...

What a clueless comment.

It's a tragedy for reasons MUCH beyond 'unnecessarily lost wealth'. I know you are trying to argue in good faith, but you're flat out wrong in the sense that doomsday despair is EXACTLY what we should all be feeling.

A world depleted of its glaciers, lacking in drinkable water, lacking in animal diversity, lacking in arable land, lacking in coral reefs, coastal cities with all their rich history and culture buried underwater and on, and on, is EXACTLY a hellish nightmare.

Who'd want to live on such a planet? Who'd give a fuck about 290% richer?

There are potential tipping points that very much could result in much of the world becoming an unlivable hell-scape, at least for humans. We probably can't turn ourselves into Venus, thankfully, but we could end up raising global temperatures by 11-12 C, which would be enough to render most of the Earth unsuitable for human habitation.

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

Someone at Reason actually read the UN/IPCC report. There is no doomsday in it. From https://reason.com/2018/10/11/how-big-of-a-deal-is-half-of-a...

> So how much economic damage will pursuing the IPCC's fast transition to a no-carbon energy system spare us? The report asserts that if no policies aimed specifically at reducing carbon dioxide emissions are adopted, then average global temperature is projected to rise by 3.66°C by 2100, resulting in global GDP loss of 2.6 percent from what it would otherwise have been. Comparatively speaking, in the 2°C and 1.5°C scenarios, global GDP would only be reduced by 0.5 percent or 0.3 percent respectively.

> Concretely, the global GDP of $80 trillion, growing at 3 percent annually, would rise to $903 trillion by 2100. A 2.6 percent reduction means that it would only be $880 trillion by 2100. A 0.3 percent decrease implies a loss of $2.7 trillion resulting in a global GDP of $900 trillion. Note that the IPCC is recommending that the world spend between now and 2035 more than $45 trillion in order to endow $2.7 trillion more in annual income on people living three generations hence. Assuming the worst case loss of 2.6 percent of GDP in world with a population of 10 billion that would mean that they would have to scrape by on an average income of just $88,000 per year (the average global GDP per capita now is $10,500.)

For some people "unnecessary lost wealth" is just that. For the poor, it can mean dying in the street.

IMHO the major threat does not originates from any natural effect of the climate change but rather, as parent has tried to illustrate, from the wars that are likely to erupt for resource/land/water/migrations control.

I mean, when you see how easily we set the world on fire because of some oil or water today, it is not unreasonable to assume that this is going to become even more violent when resources becomes more scarce.

In the US people are getting increasingly angry due to their economic circumstances, despite the fact we live in a growing economy, because the future looks less promising.

What kind of dangerous demagoguery will people turn to if the world economy gets sucker punched? Sure, people will lose, but what happens if a class of people lose far more than everyone else, and refuse to take it passively?

We don't even know what a world without constant growth looks like.

The biggest thing to fear in such a scenario is other people and their weapons.

> it's simply not the case that it's going to turn the world into some unlivable hell-scape. There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence.

I think what GP presented is too mild. What I personally fear is this: increasing migration pressure from the most affected areas and contention for resources starts triggering wars, at which point the global economy collapses, at which point at least half of the world's population dies of starvation. Remember, cities everywhere are running on just-in-time supply chains; they have food and water for a couple of days. It's mostly harmless when one city in a country suffers a catastrophe, because emergency response can be put into place. But if the whole country goes into disarray, or the imports of food suddenly stop, things are going to get very ugly very fast.

> Frankly this kind of doomsaying view has no basis in reality. While it's true that unmitigated global warming will impose a very large economic cost, it's simply not the case that it's going to turn the world into some unlivable hell-scape. There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence.

There's plenty of evidence for an unlivable hellscape, some of it is in your post, you just fail to see it.

> The best estimates say that global warming will lower per capita GDP by somewhere between 5-20% by 2100. That's a tragedy, because in aggregate it represents a huge amount of unnecessarily lost wealth. But a 5-20% in GDP per capita does not mean that we'll be dying in the streets.

A 5-20% drop in global GDP is not going to be a temporary drop, like what we have in a recession. It is going to be a permanent drop in global GDP. Bear in mind that the Great Depression was about a 15% drop in GDP over a few years. Think about how much pain and misery is represented by a drop as big or bigger that is permanent.

Furthermore, it's not going to be 2% year-over-year then suddenly in 2100 it goes backwards. Growth is going to stagnate, and start reversing as the consequences of climate change grow worse.

> Unmitigated global warming will make the people of the future substantially poorer. But not nearly by enough to cancel out the effect of continuous economic growth and technological development. It's almost certainly the case that the people of 2100 will enjoy higher living standards than the present.

I don't think you're grasping the scale and impact of destruction that is possible and indeed, probable if we don't address the problem. Ocean acidification and warming oceans means that coral reefs not only will die, but they will dissolve. Entire ocean ecosystems will collapse because a wide swath of plankton that forms the base of the food chain, will not be able to form their calcium carbonate exoskeletions. Overfishing is already a problem, when fisheries start collapsing, overfishing will finish the job. Today, 2 billion people rely on the sea for their primary source of protein.

Some regions are going to see heat waves that are several degrees above the 2 degrees C average rise. Heatwaves and droughts will drastically reduce crop yields and outright kill crops. Heatwaves can and will kill livestock as well. Disruption of global food supplies and water supplies will create multiple humanitarian crises.

And that's not even getting into the fact that something like 600 million people live in coastal areas around the world. A much hotter climate will not only result in several feet of sea level rise, it will result in much stronger storms and flooding that will destroy trillions of dollars in real estate, not to mention that it will kill people.

Put all of those things together, then think about how hard it's going to be for governments to maintain order. Especially in parts of the world that are already unstable.

> There's just no basis for that belief in the actual evidence.

You Sir have clearly not been paying attention. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/586541/the-uninhabi...

> Let's be very conservative and assume global GDP per capita grows at 2% per year. In the baseline scenario, the median world citizen would still be 390% richer than the average person today. Applying the worst global warming impact (20% of GDP), the median person would still be 290% richer than the average person today.

This is an absolutely stunning claim to make. It assume growth can just continue in perpetuity forever as if no external factors (food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation, air pollution, global pandemics, extreme weather events, ocean rise etc) could possibly have any impact on that continued growth.

https://i.cbc.ca/1.5192931.1562703009!/fileImage/httpImage/i...

Moreover, I would actually argue that the only way we're going to affect climate change is if we find at least one big slice of emissions that can be reduced without having to change habits or going against engrained values too much.

In order of what will probably work best:

* Something barely noticeable (eg: any improvement in electricity production that does not make the customer's price skyrocket.)

* Something noticeable but not fundamentally annoying (Pay people to get electric vehicles, Norway-style. Make a large part of your transportation public and electric.)

* Something noticeable, but fun . I don't have a big idea on this one, and it kinda sucks.

* Something noticeable, and that "gets you laid" (tm). Something along the lines of "I have a Tesla. You should have sex with me.", but scalable. If someone finds this, we're saved.

The last one would be even more powerful as it could reshape at least some people's identity into "I'm the kind of person who care about climate change", so all the other changes that actually require discomfort could get rationalized away (apparently, we're pretty good at this as a species.)

So maybe someone needs to organize Vegan Supermodel Orgies as well as marching in NY. Just saying.

> Sounds like you're always the first one to reply to anything climate related with some false dichotomy.

Nah, somehow I just got unlucky enough to log on when alarmist articles are somehow in the feed. I'm simply not huge on alarmism.

> moving to EVs

Which run on electricity generated by coal.

> In fact, we might improve our living conditions by reducing our addition to oil, as long as it's managed and not cold-turkey.

And we will. Just not huge on articles where every comment essentially says the world is going to end 10 years from now. It won't.

Yes, it's the leading theory. That doesn't mean is true, just the most likely explanation for the data we have now.

Hardly anything is "conclusively proved", although theories we can design experiments for are much more robust than theories about historical or geological events where we don't have that luxury.

Nobody is going to drown. People will do some combination of building walls, raising land, and moving. It will play out over a period of a thousands years or more. There will be a non-zero cost associated with diverting resources for these things, but that's not the end of the world. I'm not saying it's an excuse for not acting though. We have a responsibility to take care of our own mess, rather than just dump it on our children.

I still think the comparative lack of low-lying coastal land, plus ample freshwater, increased growing season, and increased arable land will be net benefit for Canada and Russia. Plus if things are as bad as you say, they'll benefit from increased demand for immigration as well (even if you don't take on more people, you can select more desirable immigrants.)

This is not a crash situation like 2008, this is more like a glacier that's flowing towards you. You have plenty of time to plan your response, like moving out of the way, but you can't stop it. Trouble in other countries will have unpredictable, but not necessarily all bad effects.

People should be very worried about this. Some parts of the world are already unstable, imagine what happens when food supplies dramatically contract or areas are hit with multiple weather disasters. There is a lot of strain and turmoil over migrations as is (see Syria), imagine what that looks like when hundreds of millions of people are displaced.

What happens when millions of hungry and displaced people try to move across borders to countries that are their outright enemies? Or if an already oppressed ethnic group is hit with a water crisis? One doesn't need to look far into history to see that it could lead to mass murder

You're the only one talking about not giving a crap. Don't strawman my argument.

50-100cm of sea-level rise over a period of 100 years is a non-issue really. Most places won't be affected and those that will be have time to employ one of the three strategies mentioned. Everyone alive will be dead before it starts to really bite - that does not equate to permission "not to give a crap" to be perfectly clear. It's also not climate denialism to talk about the facts, which I shouldn't need to say.

> Carbon emitted as a result of manufacturing should count toward the destination country, not the production country.

Has anybody studied this yet? This point comes up every time this issue is discussed, but I don't remember ever seeing any effort into quantifying what the situation looks like from this perspective.

> I suspect reducing emissions is cheaper in the long run than dealing with the effects.

I'm not entirely sure. People seem to be convinced that climate change will destroy all civilization, but in the distant past the earth has flourished with significantly higher temperatures than what we have today. Once our climate reaches a new equilibrium, humanity will adjust and everything will probably be OK.

And we can be certain that there will be a new equilibrium, otherwise life wouldn't have lasted for hundreds of millions of years.

>India will eventually have the largest total emissions, which is fine because per capita is really low.

Earth doesn't care about "emission per capita" though, it just cares about the total sum of emissions...

So "India eventually [having] the largest total emissions" means a huge extra tonnage of emissions will be added to the already troubling amounts...

So, the per capita number is mainly relevant in regards to fairness...

I was referring to the article's claim that because India is "emerging as a leader in renewable energy" we can expect it to contribute significantly less to climate change.

Including a big fraction (most, I think) of solar capacity installed around the world.

This is a whole part of the problem. Globalisation and the offshoring of manufacturing to the east has meant a corresponding offset of emissions from the Europe and the US to China and other places. We in the West have to take some responsibility for this. You can argue that globalisation does have a noble goal - i.e. to reduce global inequality by raising the standard of living of all to that of the most well-off nations - but the now obvious trends of climate change, global heating and emissions, are showing this to be a dangerous and unobtainable goal. It seems to me that we have to start looking at reductions of living standards in the West (to maybe what we had 30-40 years ago) with corresponding reductions in global trade. I have little confidence that we can actually achieve this in an organized and equitable manner.

Nah, see? The mods got up Monday morning and put the kibosh on the hijiinks.