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Good News on Climate Change

forum.effectivealtruism.org

61 pointsmpweiher43 comments

The “good news” here is that probabilities of 6C warming are reduced from what they have been historically. If you’re paying any attention you are aware that 6C warming would be beyond catastrophic, and that many very negative effects are likely to be seen at 4C or even 2C warming. Indeed we are already seeing strong negative effects from warming despite only 1C increase over the last 75 years (2C since pre-industrial times).

So good news, the planet is less likely to be uninhabitable except in high latitudes.

> Indeed we are already seeing strong negative effects from warming

I keep reading this over and over, everywhere. Yet sea level rise at the Dutch coast has not accelerated and is at a steady 1.5-2mm/yr for over a century.

https://www.klimaatfeiten.nl/gevolgen/zeespiegel/nederland-z...

It's a dynamic and complex system, not all metrics tracking the consequences of climate change will be evolving in perfect synchrony, and they will not change everywhere in the same way.

Also sea level does not rise equally all around the globe: "Sea level rise at specific locations may be more or less than the global average due to local factors such as land subsidence from natural processes and withdrawal of groundwater and fossil fuels, changes in regional ocean currents, and whether the land is still rebounding from the compressive weight of Ice Age glaciers." [1]

Looking at a single metric from a single place is quite shallow reasoning. Ask a Canadian if they are already seeing strong negative effects from warming and you will get the exact opposite reaction from you after what happened there over the last year.

[1]: https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/sealevel.html

Yet nobody seems to produce sea level graphs with an accelerating trend from anywhere. Yet for the The Netherlands we have 4 measuring stations which are consistent.

Your link only mentions 'and the rate has increased in recent decades' but then only talks about sea level rise.

Nobody is disputing sea level is rising : we have exited an ice age.

And before you accuse me of shallow reasoning : why don't you come up with the graphs?

> "And before you accuse me of shallow reasoning : why don't you come up with the graphs?"

Because that's irrelevant to my point? That sea level is rising or not, and specifically in The Netherlands at that, cannot reasonably be used as a proxy to decide whether or not we are globally starting to feel the consequence of global warming.

But here is a graph anyway: https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/climate-chan...

And here is another one: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...

And here is a quote: "The rate of sea level rise has accelerated considerably relative to the pre-industrial era. Over the twentieth century, global sea level increased at an average rate of about 2 mm yr–1, which is substantially larger than the rate of the previous three millennia. Furthermore, evidence now exists for additional acceleration during the twentieth century" [2]

But I see you are pulling your climate facts from a website that states "The warming is beneficial for people and nature" and "Large-scale use of 'renewable' energy is bad for nature and the environment", so I don't really know why I am bothering arguing with you.

[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/49588416_Global_Sea...

I should have known everything would be used against me. That site was the first that popped up in zhe Google when I was looking for the graph.

In previous comments, I linked directly to the measuring stations feeds ( if only I could search my HN comments ).

The graph is the same, what does it matter which site it is hosted on?

How come the rise in the late 1800's and early 1900's is already 'substantially larger' ( how much? ) than the millenia before ( if true? ). The car was hardly invented.

And your graphs : if I squint really hard, I might see some acceleration in the last 10-15 years. But it could as well be statistical insignificant in the time frames we are talking about.

Your points are fair and it is always a healthy situation to be suspicious of ominous news. At the same time, it is important to keep looking for answers to our misunderstanding on the climate change. The good news is that the IPCC did a really great job for pointing all the resources in their executive summary. The main answer to your counter intuitive observation is that the internal variability of the climate is huge. For example, the European countries might know no warming during 10 years and then a sudden rebound in a few years. So it is important not looking at the small scale but only at the global scale. It is difficult to summarize the internal variabilities on a single comment, but you will easily find a lot of explanations about it on the iinternet .

> that site was the first that popped up in zhe Google when I was looking for the graph

I apologise for my tone then. I have too much faith in Google, and thought that this was the kind of site you would have to explicitly look for.

> And your graphs : if I squint really hard, I might see some acceleration in the last 10-15 years. But it could as well be statistical insignificant in the time frames we are talking about.

I have plotted what would roughly be a constant yearly increase of the sea level from both graphs here so it can be seen more clearly: https://imgur.com/a/Lts6MEU

The acceleration can very clearly be seen starting from around the 90s, especially in the second graph since this one goes to 2020s instead of 2010 in the first.

I have no idea why specifically the sea level as measured in The Netherland would not show that acceleration, it might be due to one of the reason highlighted in my first post, but sadly it's not something that holds globally.

Not just Canada. I'm the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany there were massive river floods this year leading to great loss of life.

The Netherlands had more physical mitigations so was spared the deaths but it was still a disaster

« Let me cherry pick one thing that has not gone wrong yet so I don’t have to worry about this » is how you become RIM.

Go back 20 or 30 years and the "story" with warming was sea level rise. However, as we learn more about how ecosystems respond to increased temperatures, we've learned that there's many more things to worry about than whether or not Miami Beach millionaires are going to have to add a floor to their garages. For instance, heat waves are hotter now than they used to be, leading to increased mortality rates in the very young and very old in areas that don't have reliable cooling available. Places like, oh, Paris. Entire populations are being displaced in mountain communities where fresh water came from snow/glacier melt, but now the glacier is gone and the snow doesn't accumulate anymore. Watch this space, because this could easily be a source of water problems in California before long, since most of Northern California's water supply depends on the Sierra snow pack. (Although, real talk: we should just stop giving almost all the water to farmers to grow more almonds). Sea level rise has caused recurrent tidal flooding across the Eastern seaboard and those effects are coming to the West coast and Hawaii next. Because of this, coastal communities are getting their flood plain boundaries redrawn by FEMA, leading to increased home insurance costs and disclosures that directly affect property values. Beetle populations have exploded as they can both overwinter more easily and, in some places, now have two breeding cycles a year instead of one. This in turn means trees are being killed by beetle infestations in NA at a rate that is literally higher than what is burned every year in wildfires.

I could go on...

> areas that don't have reliable cooling available. Places like, oh, Paris

Most of Europe has extremely poor cooling of buildings even without AC. Stop making buildings black and add outdoor blinds instead of living in a greenhouse (the kind of stuff that is super common in Mediterranean countries), that will already help a lot. Trying to solve the problem with more electricity is making it worse, not better.

what effects of global warming do we see today, exactly?

warmer temperatures, warmer oceans, more acidic oceans, higher oceans.

More frequent and more damaging bushfires, hurricanes, droughts, heat waves, cold snaps,

Permanent loss of glaciers, vastly longer fire seasons, melting permafrost, coral bleaching, loss of farmland, etc. And anecdotally winters are just much less cold these days (I’m in Northern Europe).

> The “good news” here is that probabilities of 6C warming are reduced from what they have been historically.

So I guess it’s a good thing we didn’t listen to the old science and go scorched earth to prevent what they thought would happen.

The question becomes, why should people trust or believe the new science any more than the old? What if that’s also greatly exaggerated?

Sometimes I wish science were treated more like the fallible concept it is, rather than a religion whose followers can be more fervent than even the most fundamentalist of [insert religion here]

In general, this bias towards preferring data that preserves the status quo vs data that tells us we need to be active in anticipating and mitigating future risks is 1) very human and 2) detrimental to long term success, regardless of the domain in question. I don't blame you for having doubts, and you're probably aware that scientists also have doubts. That doesn't mean they shouldn't do their work, and give us the best information they have with the tools at their disposal.

Regarding climate change specifically, I make the point that we are seeing effects already because it neutralizes this line of reasoning entirely. This isn't about some future risk that we can see debated in academic journals of questionable provenance. This is about real effects that are happening today.

Why do you think it is good thing we waited so long? The carbon budget to not go over 1.5C is now pretty much used. Without aerosols, it is even likely that we have already overshoot 1.5C. Adaption and reduction would have been so much easier if it were better anticipated.

When you base a prediction on something else then science and it turns out to be too alarming, that's exaggerating.

When science predicts something that turns out to be too alarming, that's the model being perfectible.

What else do you suggest we should trust, if not science?

> Indeed we are already seeing strong negative effects from warming despite only 1C

I think you are spending too much time listening to the media and not enough listening to what academics are saying.

Anthropologists have learned to identify historical warming periods in our history because they are characterized by an explosion of human civilization and life on earth around the world. A large part of the reason the earth currently holds 7 billion people without the mass starvation predicted by academics in the 1960s is because of the current warming period that started around 1870.

As for current academic thought on there matter, there is a large amount of work that predicts up to 2C of more warming could continue to be beneficial for humans. These facts appear in the IPCC reports as summarized here, for example https://www.netzerowatch.com/richard-tol-moderate-global-war....

Also this recent study predicts up to 3C of warming could be beneficial https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/12/18/3575/htm#B4-energies-12...

Wow, one of these is super old and does not really say what you write it does, the other one only considers heating costs dropping, with no mention of rebuilding burnt houses, replanting forests, etc etc...

>Wow, one of these is super old

2015 is super old?

>and does not really say what you write it does

to quote the letter:

Since 2009, however, more estimates of the economic impact of climate change have been published. These new results do affect the fitted trend, but not in the way suggested by Mr Ward. The new trend shows positive impacts for warming up to about two degrees global warming, just like the old trend did. The new trend, however, shows markedly less negative impacts for more profound warming than did the old trend. In other words, in the last five years, we have become less pessimistic about the impacts of climate change.

How is this not what I said?

The second study says that the economic benefits of warmer winters in terms of less energy needed for warming homes is economically positive as compared to the costs of cooling homes due to warmer summers etc.

I’m not going to try and fact check the paper, but even accepting it at face value it’s obviously a very narrow view of the overall economic impact of global warming and no one should take this paper and derive the claim that 3C of warming will be good for the economy.

The first link is a response to a criticism of a paper by Richard Tol that has had to be revised twice now and at this point is unclear if, post-correction, it truly supports the thesis, that warming may be good for the economy. Tol is an economist who has stated that warming will be economically positive at higher latitudes and economically negative below these latitudes. His math says if you live north of Montreal you should be better off due to a warmer climate. Those south of Montreal (or Munich/Paris for those of you in Europe) will be negatively affected.

If you live in Alaska, Siberia or Scandinavia you may appreciate this analysis. Myself, not so much. If this is the strength of the support for the case that I shouldn’t be worried about a few degrees of warming, I may be a little less worried than I should be!

In so many of these papers it seems to be almost a given that the global south is fucked so, holding that constant, they do a cost-benefit analysis on various levels of warming for already (mostly) rich countries.

Even if you’re okay with that (I’m not) it seems like burying the lede to the point of lying to say “warming is economically positive” without mentioning that, “oh, but only if you live in Canada” (at least in North America).

50 years from now someone will dig up this report and say "they knew about it all the way back then, why didn't they take more effective action?"

Hmm for some reason the webpage loaded as a blank page first time. "Guess no good news"

RCP 8.5 was never expected to happen. It was a prediction based the entire world doing nothing at all, banning things like green tech, and increasing fossil fuel use AND even the introduction of new techs to increase the amount of available fossil fuel reserves. Afterall we only have ~50 years left anyway. To get to 8.5 we would need to expand upon this significantly.

RCP 7 was kind of status quo, which isn't even possible because Tesla is worth a trillion $.

RCP 6 is we kind of half-assed it and we never properly reduce anything, no new techs etc. This one is possible but given political climate I see this as practically impossible.

RCP 4.5 is highly likely. We have until 2045 or so until we peak. I see this happening, China has many coal power plants in construction right now. They wont be reducing. Much of the world wont be. Though around this 2045 date is when fossil fuels start increasing in price quite significantly just because of supply/demand. The cost to go non-fossil fuel will simply make more sense before this. So those coal plants in construction now, mainly by china, will be getting shut off then. The rise in temps will be roughly 2 celcius and that's completely manageable by our society. Especially given decades to respond. There are arguments that features like greenification is actually a good thing and not a bad thing. Therefore 4.5 is actually unlikely.

RCP 3.4 is where it's all at. It's literally the line we are tracking already with everything we have done. It's slightly less than 2 celcius in increase. There's no major need to declare war on china and blow up their fossil fuel operations.

We got very, very lucky with several factors

Population stabilized faster than expected. Gas as a bridge fuel. Marine, solar thermal, geo-thermal, new nuclear did not hit the exponential curve. Luckily PV, wind and Li-Ion did. The world is relatively sane and peaceful. A US/USSR world would have been more difficult. Interest rates can easily crush renewables even today

Etc, etc

>We got very, very lucky with several factors

Not at all.

You look at pages like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

RCP8.5 is the only RCP listed on the graph with no context that it was never expected to ever happen. They did this because they are wrongfully blowing the issue out of proportion. A clear case of unscientific bias portraying data as far more extreme than is appropriate.

There's also this 'greening' factor. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/greening-of-the-earth-mitigates...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Nature_and_wild...

In the entire article the global greening and anti-desertification is simply not mentioned. This is because they are biased. Another clear case of unscientific bias portraying data as far more extreme than is appropriate.

We're on the fourth prediction of the end of the world, they keep saying we have ~10 years left and when their time runs out they just predict it again. Their unscientific bias is clear.

You must account for the unscientific bias and then climate change is far less of a concern and we weren't 'lucky'. There's a concerted effort to blow it out of proportion for political reasons.

The fact that nuclear power exists and no politician is talking about it makes me question the intentions and ethics of government. It seems like a lot of this just has to do with money. Huge losses would be made if we converted everything but if we did all of our warming issues would be fixed. We can store the radioactive waste temporarily until we can easily ship it to the moon and bury it. We will likely have that space tech very soon. IDK what the hell is going on bc this plan seems SO EASY and fixes EVERYTHING!!

If the rocket taking the nuclear material to the moon blows up during take off, you've just scattered nuclear waste over huge areas of the world. It is basically a dirty bomb.

Tons of politicians talking about it. Several countries actively going that route.

However, nuclear takes a long time to implement. Much slower than renewables.

That is not exactly true. You can't put electricity for all of the major sources of co2 consumption. For example, the chemistry for building cement is emitting co2. Also, steel requires so much heat than electricity is 10x more expensive than coal for this application.

It seems bizarre to bury nuclear waste on the moon. Why not just shoot it into the sun?

It will require even more fuel for one.

But rockets are still risky, I wouldn't want to think of what happens if one of those explodes in the atmosphere. All off-planet storage options carry this risk.

Would it really require very much more fuel? Once you're headed in the right direction, you can just coast. Who cares if it takes months for the payload to get there?

No this is not how orbital mechanics work. You need to escape the earth's gravity completely to go to the sun. In order to go tot the moon you don't.

The "Just point at it and keep going" doesn't work in an orbital system. Here's a nice delta-V map that explains it a bit more: https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1ktjfi/deltav_map_of...

Forgive me ...

I wonder what commenting engine this site is using ?

It looks very similar to the comments used on lesswrong and I think that perhaps effectivealtruism and lesswrong are related entities ?

It's very well done ...

The same codebase powers both lesswrong and ea forum.

LessWrong is the big-R rationalist forum. EA has some of its roots in the rationalist community as well (Yudkowski, for example, is listed as a key figure on EA's wikipedia page).

"However, for a variety of reasons, SSP5-RCP8.5 now looks increasingly unlikely as a ‘business as usual’ emissions pathway. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the costs of renewables and batteries have declined extremely quickly. Historically, models have been too pessimistic on cost declines for solar, wind and batteries: out of nearly 3,000 Integrated Assessment Models, none projected that solar investment costs (different to the levelised costs shown below) would decline by more than 6% per year between 2010 and 2020. In fact, they declined by 15% per year."

Nice to see this in writing, lots of studies are based are on pre 2010 solar and battery prices.

Recent updates:

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...

The skeptic in my head said "you'll just see an empty page here". The actual page: "hold my beed" :]

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