Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points
science.org
science.org
Given the lag in the climate, isn’t 1.5C warming more or less unavoidable now? We would need extremely steep emissions reductions that aren’t happening.
I enjoyed ‘Under a Green Sky’, which combines a brief history of palaeontology (and amusing academic point settling) with the prediction that warming will eventually cause huge releases of hydrogen sulphide.
We are perhaps entering a negative feedback loop where disruption makes countries less keen to work together on emissions reductions as metaphorical bridges get pulled up (is Russia going to bother even pretending to care any more?).
The major tipping points that are estimated at 1.5 degrees are Greenland, the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, and coral reefs dying off.
The former two have an associated sea level rise of about 3.5-4.5 meters all together.
So I think this article isn't changing the "some of us are screwed" narrative substantially; it's more interesting because it pulls out all of the major forecast disasters and gives estimates of when (temperature wise) they'll happen.
> widespread abrupt permafrost thaw
Which is “fun” because that releases a boatload more carbon into the atmosphere.
The other thing we have to consider is that if the model's range is between "everybody suffers" and "everybody dies" do you want to gamble with that?
Humanity is like a toddler, only learns when you feel the consequences, rather than learning by being told about it. Also like a stubborn toddler like first needing to experience an almost trauma to change behavior, and apparently we haven't had that trauma yet.
> The impact on the climate may mean an influx of permafrost-derived methane into the atmosphere in the mid-21st century, which is not currently accounted for in climate projections.
(Note this is an unexpected type of abrupt thaw; the models probably do include the impact of more gradual permafrost thawing. Cold comfort though, and polar ice is melting at a faster rate than predicted overall.)
Extreme latitudes are colder because they receive their sunlight at an angle. The tilt of the Earth and the seasons make things more complicated, but conceptually, if you are at latitude 45, you are also at a 45 degree angle relative to the sun, so sunlight is only 70% as intense as it is at the equator.
With increased global temperatures, northern latitudes may have longer growing seasons, but they'll still have a different, probably inferior climate to what you're losing further south.
So while there may be winners and losers on a global scale, the winners will probably win less than the losers lose.
However, and maybe it's worse, human civilizations do have huge inertia when it comes to changing our way of doing things. I have no doubt that someday in the future, we will be a zero emission species. But I'm really unsure it will be soon enough.
That means some level sea level rise and any other climactic changes resulting from melting polar ice are coming regardless of what we do now. We can influence how much this happens, but we’ve already committed to a lot of damage.
Our current situation is like a big glass of ice tea that you have set out in the sun. For some time it will remain cool and refreshing, but once the ice cubes have finished melting it quickly becomes warm and blah. We need to move it back into the shade, but that's not possible until we've invested heavily into carbon sequestration, and that's not even fully feasible yet. There are a few pilot programs here and there, but nothing that could be scaled up affordably. Not even close. Worse, any solution requires political will to implement, and as you can see from even this thread there are rich and powerful interests willing to spend a lot of lobbying money to make anything like it as politically unpopular as possible. Even in a normally calm and rational HN forum you have them stopping only slightly short of calling climate change activists the new Hitler. Carbon Capture is supposed to be the supply side of the carbon market, but since the technology doesn't exist those markets have never worked.
We can’t fight the planet. We quadrupled our population in just one century. Should have invested in anti ageing tech, reproductive technology and controlled our consumption/population. Point of no return now.
> The impact event is an allegory for climate change, and the film is a satire of government, political, celebrity, and media indifference to the climate crisis.[6][7]
After watching, I agreed that when the world eventually burns, people will be live streaming and tweeting about it instead of going out and actually doing something about it. We all have a part to play in this, and armchair activism behind the comfort of social media will do jack shit to solve this problem. Addressing climate change head on will be the biggest amount of cooperation humanity will ever have to do. After we address it, it will not be as hard to maintain decent temps. We can sail on this rock for millennia once we get out there and make shit happen.
We're in the frying pan now and flame is cranked...
When the revealed policy preference of world leaders is to shut down the AC in summer in a desert, turn off the heat in a Scandanavian winter, and restrict energy supplies to developing countries, you don't have a workable solution. Current policy prescriptions are going to kill a lot more people than the warming they are trying to prevent. Further, it suggests that the most ardent activists are not actually serious about solving the problem: If they were serious, they would propose something less anti-human.
Creating more studies about how bad it could be actually hurts the cause of stopping climate change at this point. It doesn't convince anyone.
What gives you that kind of optimism?
> shut down the AC in summer in a desert
Lower AC in the summer
> turn off the heat in a Scandanavian winter
Lower the heat in the winter
> restrict energy supplies to developing countries
Not a thing.
> Current policy prescriptions are going to kill a lot more people than the warming they are trying to prevent
Incredibly dubious
> Creating more studies about how bad it could be actually hurts the cause of stopping climate change at this point. It doesn't convince anyone.
Not when people like you pop up to spout strawmen counter arguments at every point.
Even cutting back to China levels would be a great improvement. China is around 50% of US emissions per capita.
And yes, per capita is the correct way to distribute whatever total greenhouse gas allowance we decide we need to live with because the atmosphere is a shared resource that doesn't care about arbitrary political boundaries. For an illustration of why per country makes no sense see the hypothetical here [1]. Where countries are relevant is enforcement, and in developing some sort of system to allow people to trade (directly or indirectly) some of their share of the global greenhouse gas allowance, such as by some sort of cap and trade system or some sort of carbon tariffs on imports/exports.
Most countries seem to recognize that to successfully address climate change the rich countries will have to give aid to the developing countries to help them move off of fossil fuels. The big hold out is the US.
I think the energy crisis in Europe makes it very clear that when the choice is between people's livelihoods and climate change:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/08/germany-reacti...
So let's get real: we need to get all humans up to at least European per-capita energy expenditure levels. Timing can be discussed, but it's when, not if.
And lowering per-capita energy expenditure ... more than 10-20% is just not in the cards.
> What gives you that kind of optimism?
I think OP meant that if someone claims that climate change would is not an existential threat, they are claimed as deniers. There is one axis for balancing short term vs long term issues, and so called deniers believes that we are on the in the correct point or right of that in that axis. Activist believes we are in the far left end of the axis, that we are risking long term for fixing short term issues.
And then right wing voters went along with it because "that's my team".
How strange
And so it is only Democrats proposing anything that seriously addresses climate change. Like most big bills in Congress such proposals end up with other things attached.
Normally what would then happen is that there were would be bipartisan negotiations to get a bill with mostly just the parts that both parties could agree on, but the far right wants nothing to do with that and so few or no Republicans in Congress will have anything to do with the drafting of the bill.
I'm not sure there's much evidence for that view unfortunately. But I may now pretend it is true because it would be a much more interesting world to live in if it was.
Certainly part of what pisses me off about this is that when you're writing well, you're a valuable corrective to a lot of groupthink that would otherwise go unchallenged here. Instead, you're writing stuff that anyone from the Sunrise Movement could knock down with a meme.
This is part of a longstanding psychodrama of mine regarding late-period Rayinerism, though. You might just need to be read in on it.
But, if one did exist, where would you differ from them on actual policy?
You don't want people to do studies. You don't want governments to fund stuff. You don't want governments to restrict energy (by which you mean fossil fuels, not cheap renewables). You appear to be suggesting that even the believers don't actually believe.
I mean, there's a whole range of opinions on climate change from eco-communists to eco-capitalists to eco-futurists to eco-fascists, even fossil fuel companies have published net-zero plans, but your take seems to be just "don't do stuff".
Can you expand on that a bit more, because that response feels very like climate change denial to me, which you say you're not, and indeed no one is, doing.
How about a study on studies not being reliable? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16060722/
Why do you think this is the case? You should double check your sources.
And yes, I think that you should be burning oil or coal until you can get over 99% grid reliability with clean sources. Politicians should recognize that restricting energy supplies during times when there is high demand has a human cost, and that people will die without that energy.
A lot of people talk about "cheap renewables," and while renewable energy is pretty cheap when it's on, it's very expensive to produce 1W of solar power at night. We are in a situation where grids have to burn excess power when it is plentiful, and struggle to supply power when it is not. When the demand for energy is higher than the supply, you get energy restrictions. Energy restrictions are not about "total MW produced this month vs total MW demanded," they are about "total MW produced this ~hour vs total MW demanded." Once we have a scalable technology for grid-scale energy storage, renewable energy looks amazing. We don't have it now.
An actual climate denier would have no problems with continuing to use dinosaur-based power forever. I disagree.
As for studying the problem, it looks like the focus of science is skewed heavily toward computer models of just how bad things might be rather than computer models that will help us stop the bad things. This is why people make models of pandemics, for example.
Which world leaders have revealed these as their policy preferences?
Edit: They also prefer that to coal power, or any other course of action.
> They also prefer that to coal power, or any other course of action.
Pretty sure Newsom is in favor of increasing grid capacity by way of renewables. Just because you don't agree with a course of action doesn't make it not exist.
[1] https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/yachts-be-exempt-eus-carbo...
Even here, while we technically have a law to keep employers from trying to keep individuals from coming to the office unnecessarily, there are so many social factors and caveats it is very, very difficult for individuals to call upon that law.
There are milder versions like the cap-and-trade schemes that the EU or California implemented. They aren't perfect, but any perfect solution would be outright rejected for the massive impact it would have.
Even if it’s a fee and dividend system where the proceeds are redistributed back to everyone evenly?
> If they were serious, they would propose something less anti-human.
Turns out living in the desert in a 200sqm house and driving a ford f350 to move you 80kg ass and buy 10kg of groceries isn't sustainable
If your kitchen is on fire you have to extinguish the fire, not move to the living room, close the kitchen door and start the TV
Will you die if I tell you the tesla cybertruck won't be released ? Or the iphone 15 will be skipped ? Or that you model S will be capped to 70mph
There aren't a huge number of possible solutions here. In fact, there are only two: 1) decrease energy usage, or 2) increase sustainable energy production. Claiming that one of these is not a workable solution is not particularly helpful.
> Current policy prescriptions are going to kill a lot more people than the warming they are trying to prevent.
Reference for this statement?
Have you considered whether this might be physically impossible? If so, would you prefer no action and dealing with the full effects of climate change, or would you prefer to accept a flawed climate policy that migrates off fossil fuels while civilization deals with the impact of expensive and/or limited energy?
Rising energy prices means poor folk will have to turn off their AC in the summer and turn off their heat in the winter.
Sorry, nuclear doesn’t pass the bar you’ve set.
(Note: many sources do suggest nuclear levelized cost is not much higher than other energy sources, but even then it’s a massive capital investment so any nuclear policy would look like “trillions in spending and limiting [fossil fuel] energy”, as earlier derided)
By the way, nuclear and photovoltaic solar technologies are about equally old - the trope that nuclear power has had a lot longer to become scalable is incorrect. Solar has become scalable due to the amount of money being poured into it. If you pour a lot of energy into nuclear reactors, the price will go down by a lot, too.
A true straw man classic.
You could have saved a lot of text in your original post by saying something like “we need more nuclear than is currently planned to achieve climate goals sustainably”. A lot of HN (myself included!) would have agreed with you.
Every other technology in human history has improved significantly with investment. You can look at all of the studies about Wright's law: when Wright's law gets studied, it is found to apply to every product, resulting in 10-30% unit cost reductions as production doubles - the only question is how big the reduction is. Whether you are talking about vegetables, power plants, or microchips, production gets cheaper the more of them you produce.
Batteries, by the way, are undergoing similar improvements. However, there are a lot more open questions in terms of the scalability of battery technology, and it is nowhere near the scale where nuclear is today.
Also, if you agreed that nuclear power would have made energy cheap and plentiful, why did you argue that there was no way to keep energy cheap and plentiful without fossil fuels?
Finally, I just noticed that you put some brackets in a quote of mine: "trillions in spending and limiting [fossil fuel] energy." I never said "fossil fuel energy." I said energy. Energy restrictions are about restrictions at point of demand irrespective of the technology that generates the energy. The "peaky" and unreliable nature of renewables requires this (until batteries are ready). When you want to argue with someone, don't try to put words in their mouth.
Regardless, even if you’re right, the point is that you can’t know that for sure yet to are so quick to talk of the revealed preferences of opposing policy, as if everyone took a look at free energy and said “nah I’d rather have blackouts”. When in reality everyone looked at how expensive nuclear was and didn’t share your excessive optimism on future price reductions
> I never said "fossil fuel energy." I said energy.
“Limit fossil fuel” I meant supply side restrictions on cheap non renewables which would outcompete expensive nuclear on one hand, or cover the gap from insufficient/peaky energy production via solar/wind (should we not pursue nuclear). I didn’t realize you were talking about demand side restrictions.
If you think climate change is real, I don’t understand how you can believe that the current prescriptions (which aren’t even addressing the problem head on) will kill more people than the effects of climate change. The effects of climate change will probably kill at least several tens of millions of people and more likely the count may an order of magnitude more through direct and indirect effects (including displacement, riots, disease, etc.).
I am yet to see an activist take this stance. What are you talking about?
Who could possibly believe that climate change is problem, when new cars, phones, houses, etc. are still manufactured and there are ton's of ads for buying it.
Climate change is not something we could have stopped or influenced. We could have only made a difference in how we chose to perpetuate our species and the eco system we need to survive as a super apex predator.
Our politicians failed us. But it’s our collective fault because we elected them and got our priorities wrong. I also blame the proliferation of religions that chose politics over a search for divinity. The zeal to keep adding members to the flock exploded exponentially.
We used science and tech to keep the ageing barely alive but not thriving. It costs environmentally more to create and raise a child than to keep us living longer and maintain lower rates of obsolescence. Our survival/thrive/productivity rates are not efficient.
We have just begun to understand the expansiveness of intelligence and it’s knowledge amplification. Automation and AI is just the tip of the iceberg. Too bad we find babies cute and hug the age of retirement.
It’s like blowing our lungs out into a balloon that can be the size of the room but we prick it when it’s the size of a grapefruit because we think that’s the limit of it’s expansion. What a waste of air..waste of materials and for such short lived fun.
Everyone dies, but we really didn’t have to die like a dumbass species that forgot its collective survival instinct and latent potentials.
[..]The most insidious threat to humankind is something called “extinction debt.” There comes a time in the progress of any species, even ones that seem to be thriving, when extinction will be inevitable, no matter what they might do to avert it. The cause of extinction is usually a delayed reaction to habitat loss. The species most at risk are those that dominate particular habitat patches at the expense of others, who tend to migrate elsewhere, and are therefore spread more thinly. Humans occupy more or less the whole planet, and with our sequestration of a large wedge of the productivity of this planetwide habitat patch, we are dominant within it. H. sapiens might therefore already be a dead species walking.
The signs are already there for those willing to see them. When the habitat becomes degraded such that there are fewer resources to go around; when fertility starts to decline; when the birth rate sinks below the death rate; and when genetic resources are limited—the only way is down. The question is “How fast?”[..]
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed...
use all the solar, wind, geo and hydro you want. even use as much nuclear as you want and build any nuclear plants that you can build cost competitively (but you probably won't be able to).
just stop using carbon-based energy.
This past year I went from seeing Climate Change as a "challenge to be overcome" to something that is simply happening during my lifetime. I suddenly realised that the truth is, in 20 years time 30+ degrees Summer Days will be completely normal in the Netherlands. I was jokingly asking myself when Switzerland will introduce the Siesta.
I my attitudes went from Denial to Activism to Acceptance. Interesting how the mind works. Anybody else experiencing an attitude change?
Could you elaborate?
There are narrow streets, low-speed zones, even bike paths. Where's the horrible part?
Compared to Utrecht (which was the initial point of comparison here), it looks awful for cycling.
Why bike though? Plenty of places in Europe where children can walk to school.
School isn’t the only place a kid might want to go; their friends might live further away, there might be a park that would take quite a while to walk to but is an easy bike ride, etc.
Sure, I cycled, but for leisure, not transport.
I’m about to move somewhere slightly less dense though, with no local transit to speak of. From my house to the local high school is 27 min on foot vs. 7 by bike. From the high school to the neighboring town is 41 minutes on foot vs. 12 by bike. From there back home is again 41 minutes on foot or 12 by bike.
You can probably see how this might make an after-school trip possible that wouldn’t be otherwise.
That speed is totally doable on a bike, but there’s some time taken up at intersections so top speed would need to be higher to make up. (Although the main roads on these routes don’t have many signaled intersections, so maybe not too much faster.)
It certainly won't be too hot in 30 years. And sea level rise shouldn't be problematic yet this century.
Just like to put out there that it it may be too late to stop climate change altogether, but things can get much worse and can get much better, and it is very much worth reducing emissions, preparing for a changing climate, and generally striving to survive.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/05/world/thwaites-doomsday-g...
Thwaites gone would constitute a sea level rise of 10 feet, iirc.
There is some concern that a bracing portion of the glacier may collapse soon, which would take Thwaites from 4 to 6% of contribution to sea level rise.
Now I realize it just doesn’t matter to the people really behind the wheel.
Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we’ll die. Fuck it
If there is a physical signal strong enough to orient the capable majority of 8 billion people with a common vector field in regard to the climate situation, I haven’t seen it yet.
We're on the cusp of something major. There's no guarantee it will get here in time to save us. But it's a real possibility.
Is like saying civilization-scale delegation is a failure, like saying mankind is a failure
> Quiet quitting
Maybe, but also maybe they’re all just like me, maybe my nihilism and apathy is raging against the machine despite my desire
If you're able to help to any degree, for any reason, then you've done your part. It'd probably be healthier if it were hopeful and motivated by wanting to build a better world, but if it's nihilism and rage, then that's okay. If all you can do is work less or consume less, or just not to stand in the way, then that's okay; that's enough.
Democracy is not optimal for decision making (far from it), but at least it does allow the activists to have boots on the ground. Under other forms of government, activists tend to go more like IEDs on the ground.
Still, considering the worst-case scenarios, if we're going to go authoritarian (a big IF!), I'd rather get there instead of being decimated by global warming rather than after.
To be clear I do not advocate authoritarianism and would like to see direct democracy (or more direct, at the very least). I don't believe authoritarianism is compatible with surviving climate change, and even if I did I didn't think it would exacerbate climate change, I wouldn't advocate for it because I believe horizontal structures make better decisions & create more just societies then heirarchical ones.
but also
> I am not a fan of democracy
> Capitalism is not an eternal fact of nature
In our lifetime, when capitalism is the weaker fundamental force driving man’s priorities, I’ll come and give you all of my money.
What? Democrats just passed the Inflation Reduction Act, while Republicans are the lead villains in the world when it comes to aggravating the problem.
https://earthjustice.org/blog/2022-august/inflation-reductio...
I don't know how you can say that. I know exactly where jet fuel comes from and knew my flight to Britain was going to melt something like 2 m^2 of arctic ice.
Don't get me wrong, I try to avoid travelling and reduce my footprint where I can, but like they say, there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. Consuming less is great, but the problem is that this economy is structured in a way that will kill us, not that we need to consume things to live.
Big change has to come from the bottom up. If the electorate doesn’t ask for changes to be made, politicians aren’t going to make them. Now that climate is a political left/right issue, it’s even less likely for meaningful change to happen. The right seems to have forgotten how much of our existing environmental protections were put in place by Republican administrations (especially Nikon’s).
I doubt many of us will give that up voluntarily. Most people don’t want to walk away from Omelas.
I don't get the <throws hands in the air>It's just a done deal, back to netflix</> attitude, and prefer the 'Hey, our generation(s) have a task, let's get it done' one.
Climate change is continuous. 1.6 degrees is worse than 1.5. 2.2 degrees is worse than 2.1. Every ton of CO2 reduced improves the situation. This is true regardless of the harm already caused.
I’m not convinced activism is much more effective - everyone hates extinction rebellion every time they block a highway and politicians get points for saying they’ll stop it happening again. It really feels like the only real way a single person can make a difference is by running for office, and I would be a terrible politician.
Don't be so quick to disempower yourself. Everyone has something they can do (you're already doing a lot). Even just talking about it is extremely important (https://www.ted.com/talks/katharine_hayhoe_the_most_importan...)
FWIW there was a good comment piece in nature recently about activism. Summary thread: https://twitter.com/ThierryAaron/status/1564276454904430596 . There was another study - can't find it now :( that showed that actions from Insulate Britain (blocking roads) were effective.
Please keep on keeping on, we can't let up.
Try to account for possible scenarios when deciding where to live. Not too far south, on high ground.
I do find it hard to get used to the idea that everything will (probably) keep getting harder. More frequent pride spikes, weird weather, more instability. But even within that I think you can carry on happily if you only focus on what you can control. Possibly this attitude is what helped get us into this mess in the first place.
I understand the despair. But it is not too late and the problem is not "human nature". The problem is a status quo that can be abolished.
All the money my local bank is putting in local project will go to Total and Exxon, i will stop my hiking vacations and choose all inclusive hostels on others continents, and visit cities or areas that will become unlivable in the future.
Or maybe not. But i decided that this next five years will be the last years I'm really caring.
I had serious anxiety a few years ago about this, and ended up in Acceptance. I'm not happy ending up here, but I figure I got about 30 years left. That's pretty good, I'll take it.
I feel unmoored and untethered. The reasonable predictability of weather patterns is completely broken now.
I think doomerism is pretty common now, especially since groups like XR have started to become far more individualistic and neoliberal in their messaging, switching from more intense protests and occupations to more often just posting "please don't fly" things on Facebook.
My theory is that so many people in Europe especially are so incredibly wedded to their western democratic liberal ideals that they, as Jameson and Zizek said: find it "easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism", where for "capitalism" if you don't agree with a totally Marxist analysis you can really substitute any structural issue that is causing us to not take anywhere near enough action on the climate.
And it is, isn't it? It's far easier to imagine that we will keep accelerating towards climate catastrophe than to imagine that the structural changes that would need to occur for us to stop it will actually happen.
Also I literally said
> where for "capitalism" if you don't agree with a totally Marxist analysis you can really substitute any structural issue that is causing us to not take anywhere near enough action on the climate.
If you don't agree that it's capitalism, choose your own systematic issue...
Resource over-use is caused by government intervention. It's the governments who try to pump up their GDPs with various policies, which causes ever-growing consumption and resource use. They literally control the interest rates to get everyone to consume as much as possible.
However, whether it grows is another question. Today, we are seeing a massive collapse in populations around the world, which is a huge problem and no one really knows the root cause.
Please engage in the conversation rather than trying to score internet points on a platform that is specifically trying to avoid such.
I live in a country where I still don't have the right to vote (maybe a decade from now). Instead of being anxious and getting stressed out everyday from thinking about the worsening climate, I feel it's better for my health to accept the fact and move on.
The truth is richer European nations are unlikely to be the worst directly affected. No doubt there will be crop failures, disasters and deaths, but we will probably escape the worst of it. We have the resources to build effective infrastructure. The warmer climate could even make Europe more hospitable once we've adapted to it.
However, we won't be able to escape the consequences of the enormous humanitarian disaster due to many in poorer countries becoming climate migrants. I expect populist right wing parties to take an even tougher line on migration as the crises deepen, and possibly society in general to become more authoritarian as a result. Significant wars too, possibly.
Accepting it as inevitable means accepting hundreds of millions of people being displaced. If we want to deal with that gracefully, we need to start planning for how the rest of the world will absorb those individuals. Otherwise I fear we're going to be responsible for a lot of horrifying acts in the next century...
The titanic is sinking, the best thing you can do for yourself is pop a bottle of champaign, find the most comfy chair and enjoy the spectacle.
Everybody cares about climate change, nobody will ever give up technological "progress", we're doomed, but hey, at least you can get free same day delivery on toilet paper
I think the next step is adaptation. Try to build some sort of resilient life for yourself and your family, try to help out the local community as much as possible etc. Try to not be too terrible to the people who will really suffer the most (Africa, parts of Asia etc.). This is kind of where I am right now.
It is important to note that in the language of these simulations no "overshoot" is included in the temperature trajectory. A 1.5°C global warming is talking about the long term (millenial timescale) stable temperature we reach after our little "experiment".
If we can "quickly" (a few hundred years) return to 1.0°C or even less warming, compared to pre-industrial levels, these tipping points have not actually happened yet. (https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1418830/latest.pdf summarizes this very well)
Nico Wunderling shows that while for some systems (like the Amazon rain forrest) peak temperature (even over only a few years) is most important, for slower systems like the Greenland ice sheet the target, long-term temperature is most dominant.
Priotizing the most urgent matter should therefor lead us to talk about the quickly acting tipping points, often related to biological ecosystems. For those it is most important to actually stay below 2°C of warming. For the Greenland ice shield there is ample time after the year 2100 for us to prevent the worst.
In the worst case, we would likely end up with something like the Eocene, where the whole planet is covered with forests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene#Flora
Even if it is not, how is it of any consolation that a round rock revolving around a burning ball of hydrogen and helium will be fine? Even stating that "humanity will survive (but millions or billions will suffer and die)" isn't any consolation at all.
I'm optimistic that humans and most animals could adapt into a warmer planet.
Even if it is S-curve I do not sure lots of people can survive Venus' climate.
In reality, the planet will stall out around 100C due to all of the water that needs to boil off and the huge steam clouds that would then increase the planet's albedo (but also trap heat). That's probably the top of the S-curve for the lifetime of mankind. Having the solar rays split that water and let the hydrogen escape to make an actual Venus like atmosphere is a more geological timescale process.
Here's one link I followed: https://www.science.org/content/article/after-40-years-resea...
Sun expanding over the next billion years might just about do that, unless the water vapour dissociates and the hydrogen escapes, but that's about the only way we get even close to Venusian conditions, IIRC.
[0] as in, the biomass and all of the fossil fuel reserves; I'm not including carbonate rocks, though it looks like including inorganic minerals still wouldn't be Venusian even though it would be far enough from today that it might as well be as far as "life" was concerned.
Do you think permafrost is giant bubbles of air that got trapped in frost or something? Your comment baffles me somewhat.
What do you think of the concentration of carbon in our current atmosphere when you see a rotting log?
Edit: hey dang. I now delete the last sentence of most of my posts. Thanks for the advice!
If you're worried about whether stuff will continue to live on earth it's not a big deal. If you're worried about whether humans in particular will continue to live on earth and the parameters of what 'live' means you should be very, very concerned.
It may mimic a quadratic curve in smaller values, but for pragmatic purposes it becomes asymptotic to some arbitrarily chosen value, in most cases.
There is no decay either, because the value of y is still always increasing.
I mean it's a big, low hanging fruit because renewables are so cheap now, but even after getting that done we have transport and agriculture and land use chemical feedstocks and old leaking mines and wells and on and on. Plenty to do.
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emis...
though with we make electric cheap enough most of the others are easy to switch, and that is already happening.
All I could find was this - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_in_France but this shows improvements beginning at 1990s and later.
this is what allows France to produce electricity at ~50-100 grams of CO2 eq. per kWh, a performance that is only rivaled by countries with also nuclear- and/or hydro-heavy grids. for comparison, Germany sits between ~200-600 gCO2eq./kWh (last year's average). Germany's grid is renewable-heavy, but also intermittent, relying on the use of GHG-intensive backups (coal, gas). [1]
[1] ENTSOE data aggregated by @BotElectricity, https://twitter.com/BotElectricity/status/134536262422201548...
And they have problems with excessive heat in the summer, because they cannot be properly cooled when water temperatures rise.
Doesn't look like a future solution but more of an future problem to me.
Incorrect, the can still be cooled but rivers must be kept below 28 degrees [1]. Because apparently the fish in this one stretch of river are more important than global climate change. Perhaps the takeaway is that we should reconsider the acceptable impact on local environment given the impact on global environment. Similar deal with America lithium mines held up behind environmental review.
1. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/warming-rivers-threa...
It is not only the temperature. Did you miss the extreme lack of rainfall in much of Western Europe in the summer, including in France?
(Low river levels to affect French nuclear power generation) https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-electricity-idUSKC...
Which is part of why they get too warm, there is less water in them so the impact of the plants is higher.
More generally, "France drought: Parched towns left short of drinking water": https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-62436468
"France's Going Through Its Most Severe Drought Ever, PM Says" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-05/france-s-...
You are hand-waving away quite a few environmental issues too.
Whatever environmental issues caused by heating a river is tiny comparison to global warming. If say I'm handwaving environmental issues, yet you neglect to specify what I'm overlooking. If you have reasons to think that heating a river is more important than averting climate catastrophe, I'm all ears.
And lastly, plenty of nuclear power plants are cooled by ocean water, or by wastewater [1].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palo_Verde_Nuclear_Generating_...
The key to all this is starting ASAP and building constantly. Iowa has been building wind turbines at a rate of about 2/day (a bit over 500 per year) for many years now.
Try to estimate the elevation above sea level of this house.
Why buy a house that will very likely be under water, I mean in the non-financial sense?
Some conservatives (those with a libertarian bent at least) have long noted that government bailouts as flood insurance has been a moral hazard allowing people to live cheaply in places they couldn't afford to live in otherwise.
Even if he's made more since then, 10-15% of your net worth definitely isn't peanuts.
Not to mention being as high profile as he is, and talking "my legacy this and that", you'd think he would have paid more attention as to what kind of message he's sending by doing that.
If it is going to be a civilization-ending force, wealth won't matter and all properties (and even the very concept of “property”) are at risk.
Your question makes more sense if the conditional is changed to “if climate change is going to have little effect on society at large but severe, highly localized effects... ”
Will the species go extinct or would communists take over?
Property—at least real, as opposed to personal—property seems to be unlikely to survive as a thing in the absence of civilization, even the species survives, and “civilization-ending” was the scenario being discussed.
> Will the species go extinct or would communists take over?
Well, species-ending would be compatible with civilization-ending, but not necessary to it. Ideological communism probably wouldn't survive the end of civilization, either; the problem it addresses would no longer exist nor would there be means to implement most forms of it, nor would any people that survived probably have much energy for theory.
"A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of a political state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken language (namely, a writing system)."
Even in most post-apocalypse antiutopia science fiction, all of these attributes are present except perhaps urbanization. E.g. a roving gang with a warlord at its helm has a political state and social stratification, and they would still have access to pencils.
That's the key one for real property (well, settled agricultural society probably more than urbanization per se, but if you have one you probably have the other.)
> E.g. a roving gang with a warlord at its helm has a political state and social stratification, and they would still have access to pencils.
But probably not have a system of real (as opposed to personal) property. Which is my point.
"Parts of Martha's Vineyard are only feet above sea level today. Recent projections target Edgartown as the first town to submerge.
In less than a hundred years, you might be strolling down South Water Street in a kayak. A hundred years - nothing in geologist years. In fact, it doesn't seem like a terribly long time in our years either."
And besides the known ones, there may be more tipping points that we are becoming aware of, like the increase of methane emissions from wetlands because hotter conditions, another positive feedback loop that may had been unexpected for some. And as feedback loops are becoming important protagonists on emissions over fossil carbon, things are getting out of our hands. We must do far more than just slow down if we want to survive in the long term.
Sure, with an average warmer global climate, many places will become worse for human life and worse for agriculture with warming. But there is an absolutely enormous amount of land that moves into a better habitable and agriculture zone with warming as well. It’s not that a warmer climate makes human life impossible; we currently thrive from the Equator to Scandinavia just fine. It’s the change part thats the problem. It’s difficult to deal with whole agricultural areas needing to switch crops. Cities suddenly flooding when they used not to. New areas entering a death zone of heat index that previously were manageable
Yes, change is a problem. You can't just move a city, you can't make millions or billions of people lose what they had without ripples. But is not change to a new stable. It won't be a new stable. Even if we drop everything, stop emissions, commuting, economy and even our existence, things will keep changing, because at some point feedback loops will take the lead. We are at a point where doing less won't solve anything. And where risky path of actions will be taken.
Among the areas expected to be the most affected by global warming are large parts of China, India and Pakistan. 1.5C on average might be 5-6C there, which is enough to make large, densely populated areas unlivable (as in you will die without AC).
2+ billion people living there having to move elsewhere is nothing we've seen before, the only direction they can really move is north, into Russia. All countries mentioned have nuclear weapons.
Saudi Arabia's capital, Riyadh has this forecast for next Tuesday: 44C(110F). And that temp is there most of the summer.
"Saudi population has grown rapidly since 1950 when it was estimated to be 3 million, and for many years had one of the highest population growth rates in the world at around 3 per cent a year."
- Conservatives in wealthy, cold countries refuse to stop polluting.
- Pakistan becomes uninhabitable.
- Conservatives in wealthy, cold countries pull up the draw bridge and refuse to let in migrants.
- People in Pakistan die.
- Conservatives in wealthy, cold countries blame the people in Pakistan.
This isn't an intentionally politically charged post made with animus. It's just factually outlining what's currently going on and a plausible sequence of events from here.
A war, famine, or general economic collapse (or all of the above) on a very large scale would technically solve this.
This is what I believe policy makers and corporations think, and of course, none of them are saying that quiet part out loud.
Anybody who says that the Earth has been this hot before and survived is technically correct, but they should look at this map and consider the implications:
https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/map-united-states-late-cre...
This is not a minor inconvenience for some people if we do nothing. This is avoidable disaster that we are ignoring.
Lots of people did die 8000 years ago (of course!). It was also the time when important agricultural plants were being domesticated and civilization was beginning - probably because the climate was nice, allowing that to happen, when it hadn't for the previous 200,000 years of Homo sapiens' history.
The Cretaceous had CO2 levels around 1000ppm so we aren't there yet. We are currently at around 418ppm and rising about 2ppm per year (but that rate is increasing). If we don't change our ways soon this scenario becomes increasingly likely.
Also, there is an alternate theory that Humans finally developed agriculture because the climate change had made their previous hunter-gatherer lifestyle untenable and they were forced to improvise. Many species of animal died out.
People are alarmed because a) the compositions of today's atmosphere is much different from 8000 years ago. So very different feedback circle become relevant for the future dynamics of the weather/climate, and we have every reason to expect that no limiting feedback circle kicks in before it does not get a lot worse than today. b) we are already well beyond the Holocene Climate Optimum (see the "2016" marker in the diagram of the Wikipedia page) and the increase of temperature (the derivative of the curve) has no known equivalent in the current Cenozoic period of earth's history.
> Did the lucky people 8000 years ago just barely escape disastrous climate tipping points?
I would rather rephrase the question into: Why did climate stabilized in the Holocene the way it did? and thus avoid "tipping points", because tipping points are not directly observable. They are features of (complex) dynamic systems. It makes only sense to discuss actual tipping points in the context of models that describe those systems.
The CO2 level is higher. But the usual "tipping point" dynamics (eg, melting of permafrost) involves just the change in temperature, unrelated to the cause of the warming. And when the "tipping point" is supposed to cause yet more warming because it leads to release of yet more CO2, starting from a higher CO2 level actually reduces the effect, because the warming effect of CO2 is proportional to the logarithm of the CO2 concentration (so releasing X amount of CO2 causes a smaller temperature rise if the CO2 concentration is high than if it is low).
"we are already well beyond the Holocene Climate Optimum"
From the Wikipedia page: "the 2021 IPCC report expressed medium confidence that temperatures in the last decade are higher than they were in the Mid-Holocene Warm Period". That doesn't sound like "already well beyond" is firmly established.
"Saudi population has grown rapidly since 1950 when it was estimated to be 3 million, and for many years had one of the highest population growth rates in the world at around 3 per cent a year."
Amsterdam and a lot of the Netherlands are below sea level (for centuries) and the dikes do its job, why can’t that be replicated elsewhere?
In Germany some PR campaign made people like my mother think "the greens plan to destroy our wealth" because they fear higher energy prices etc. but to be honest the conservatives now in charge for almost two decades did exacly that with not investing enouth in our grid and so on. It's so ironic that in the end the short term conservative approach destroys the mid and long term living conditions for so many.
On geologic time scales the CO2 level has been way way higher than it is today and the planet was still teeming with life.
Hey, speaking of tipping points, wasn’t climate change supposed to mean a constant stream of cat 5 hurricanes crashing into the eastern seaboard? And yet we just had a very quiet start of our hurricane season. Ah, but that’s weather, not climate. And yet whenever a bad weather event occurs, that’s evidence of climate change. Absence of bad weather is also evidence I guess. Almost like the whole thing is unfalsifiable. The climate changed before we ever got here and it will continue changing well after we’re gone.
Just as the petrochemical lobby has an interest in downplaying effects, there are plenty of other people with a profitable interest in the fearmongering as well. Their salaries depend on you being terrified and they’re doing a great job of it. They use your tax money to fly to climate conferences in Bali, Singapore, Paris, Rome. I’d take them more seriously if the conferences were held via Zoom or in places like Cleveland or Houston.
The politicians who keep telling me that this is a huge problem still fly their private jets everywhere and still own plenty of beachfront property. I’m more worried about a True Believer funding some kind of bioweapon to “heal the planet” and kill us all.
Also, please cite that Hurricane study. Your strawman private jet flying climate scientists should also be named. Two faced politicians aside, you do realize that people like Joe Biden have been riding the train for years to get to and from DC? Bernie Sanders doesn't own a private jet. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn't own a private jet, heck she was vilified in the media for upgrading to first class once.
Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment," Green Book Award winner, and the best-selling author of San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities (HarperCollins 2021) and Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All (HarperCollins 2020).
He’s been called an “environmental guru,” “climate guru,” “North America’s leading public intellectual on clean energy,” and “high priest” of the pro-human environmental movement for his work.
Michael has broken major stories on crime and drug policy; homelessness; Amazon deforestation; climate change; eco-anxiety; fracking; and California’s fires.
He is a leading energy expert who testifies and advises governments around the world including in the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.
He is founder and president of Environmental Progress, an independent nonprofit research organization that incubates ideas, leaders, and movements. Michael And he is cofounder of the California Peace Coalition, an alliance of parents of children killed by fentanyl, parents of homeless addicts, and recovering addicts.
Michael is currently writing two books. In Spring 2023, Carus Books will publish The War on Nuclear: Why It Hurts Us All. In Fall 2023, HarperCollins will publish the third and final book in the trilogy Shellenberger is writing about threats to civilization from within.
He has been a climate and environmental activist for over 30 years. He has helped save nuclear reactors around the world, from Illinois and New York to South Korea and Taiwan, thereby preventing an increase in air pollution equivalent to adding over 24 million cars to the road.
In the 1990s, Michael helped save California’s last unprotected ancient redwood forest, inspire Nike to improve factory conditions, and advocate for decriminalization and harm reduction policies. In the 2000s, Michael advocated for a“new Apollo project” in clean energy, which resulted in a $150 billion public investment in clean tech between 2009 and 2015.
https://www.lomborg.com/about/
Dr. Bjorn Lomborg researches the smartest ways to do good. With his think tank, the Copenhagen Consensus, he has worked with hundreds of the world’s top economists and seven Nobel Laureates to find and promote the most effective solutions to the world’s greatest challenges, from disease and hunger to climate and education.
For his work, Lomborg was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. He is a visiting fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and is a frequent commentator in print and broadcast media, for outlets including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, CNN, FOX, and the BBC. His monthly column is published in many languages by dozens of influential newspapers across all continents.
He is a best-selling author, whose books include "False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet", "The Skeptical Environmentalist", "Cool It", "How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place", "The Nobel Laureates' Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World 2016-2030" and "Prioritizing Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis of the UN's SDGs".
https://www.energy.gov/seab/contributors/steven-e-koonin
He previously served as the U.S. Department of Energy’s second Senate-confirmed Under Secretary for Science from May 19, 2009 through November 18, 2011. As Under Secretary for Science, Dr. Koonin functioned as the Department’s chief scientific officer, coordinating and overseeing research across the DOE. He led the preparation of the Department’s 2011 Strategic Plan and was the principal author of its Quadrennial Technology Review. Dr. Koonin particularly championed research programs in High Performance Simulation, Exascale Computing, Inertial Fusion Energy, and Greenhouse Gas Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification. He also provided technical counsel on diverse nuclear security matters.
He joined the California Institute of Technology’s faculty in 1975, was a research fellow at the Neils Bohr Institute during 1976-1977, and was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow during 1977-1979. He became a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech in 1981 and served as Chairman of the Faculty from 1989-1991. Dr. Koonin was the seventh provost of Caltech from 1995-2004. In that capacity, he was involved in identifying and recruiting 1/3 of the Institute’s professorial faculty and left an enduring legacy of academic and research initiatives in the biological, physical, earth, and social sciences, as well as the planning and development of the Thirty-Meter Telescope project.
As the Chief Scientist at BP from 2004 to early 2009, Dr. Koonin developed the long-range technology strategy for alternative and renewable energy sources. He managed the firm’s university–based research programs and played a central role in establishing the Energy Biosciences Institute at the University of California Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Dr. Koonin is a member and past chair of the JASON Study Group, advising the U.S. Government on technical matters of national security. He has served on numerous advisory committees for the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, including the Defense Science Board and the CNO’s Executive Panel. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a former member of the Trilateral Commission. In 1985, Dr. Koonin received the Humboldt Senior U.S. Scientist Award and, in 1998 the Department of Energy’s E.O. Lawrence Award for his “broad impact on nuclear many-body physics, on astrophysics, and on a variety of related fields where sophisticated numerical methods are essential; and in particular, for his breakthrough in nuclear shell model calculations centered on an ingenious method for dealing with the huge matrices of heavy nuclei by using path integral methods combined with the Monte Carlo technique.”
These three authors (among many others) are critical of the concept of a "climate catastrophe". Are they people who have just read maybe a book or two and some youtube videos as well? I guess you would not given the mountain of evidence against such a claim. Now image one of them had posted a critical reply to this thread, what would your response be? 'Get your ego checked'?