The Uninhabitable Earth (2017)
nymag.com
nymag.com
“Bjørn Lomborg is author of "False Alarm". Andrew Revkin is a climate journalist (21 years at NY Times).”
They refute many of the claims in this article about how much of a doomsday event faces us.
Are they full of shit? Is this article sensationalist?
My gut tells me Lex’s guests are downplaying too much and this article is sensationalizing the issue, but that may be my bias to look for the middle ground.
If a full scale society wide mobilization happens now, it will be very different, but even under the best case scenario climate related conflicts will dominate domestic and geopolitics by the late 2030s and into the rest of the century, and it will be very difficult for economic growth to exceed annual losses in infrastructure, housing, etc.
I find that extremely hard to believe since the dinosaurs evolved on an Earth that was far hotter than what we'll see this century (as much as 10°C warmer). Yes, they evolved over millions years from the previous mass extinction event, but the point is that plenty of plants and animals were able to survive in such a warm world. It wasn't mostly inhospitable to life.
Also because humans have existed in all sorts of environments from tundras to deserts for tens of thousands of years with stone-aged technology, including ice ages. The latest IPCC reports puts the upper limit of warming under 4°C.
Dinosaurs are large creatures of a completely different order, not mammals. The sea ecosystem which had evolved over millions of years to deal with those temperatures is a completely different ecosystem from what we have now.
It's not about whether some humans can survive in difficult conditions, it's whether the current ecosystem can survive the unprecedentedly fast and rapid warming. And whether billions of humans will starve
What this looks like for civilization and to what extent humans can mitigate is debatable. Climate models aren't civilization models.
• Burning all the known fossil fuels is more than enough to raise CO2 to the level necessary to severely impact (>25% slowdown) human cognition
• Although plants like CO2, they are often limited by other things instead
• Although we can build personal air supplies for us and greenhouses for plants to optimise each, this is more expensive than not causing the damage in the first place, so not doing the latter implies we will not do the former either
• We've messed up local environments more than once, and observed mass migrations as a result; while I'm fine with migrants and confused by those who aren't, I don't let my utopian ideals blind me to the political reality that this will end badly for many innocent people
• Quite a lot of property and infrastructure at low elevation and near the coast, combined with a significant risk that the threshold for total loss of various major ice sheets[1] is less than or equal to 4 C
[0] written 3h into a post flight cancellation queue for making it the airline's problem that I have work 2000 miles away in 5.5 hours and all the alternative flights they offer are booked out until a week tomorrow, so I apologise for anything weird in this comment
[1] I want to say Greenland, but I don't trust myself in this sleep-deprived state
failed harvests around the world and famines killing millions are an absolute certainty.
Of course by then $100 USD will have the purchasing power of ~$10 USD, so it’s not the riskiest bet on my part.
Some of them may have armed conflict as the proximate cause. The civil war in Syria had as one of its triggers a prolonged drought with associated crop failures, partly attributed to climate change.
I think we should welcome it.
> Also because humans have existed in all sorts of environments from tundras to deserts for tens of thousands of years with stone-aged technology
The abstract perspective of some humans surviving somehow may not be as comforting as you think.
You are right. Humans will likely survive as a species, but not in the numbers and with the comfort we are currently used to.
And while this is still unlikely (and we were overdue for a colder, more normal for our Ice Age climate with the end of our interglacial, give or take a few thousand years), we are certainly turning up the heat in an alarming fashion ! (P.S.: the risk comes from the self-reinforcing feedback loops some of which the article describes.)
[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/climate-change-after...
Leslie Groves said it best, about choices of how to proceed in the Manhatten project: "do both" -And in fact, this turned out to be key because using thermal diffusion as a feed stock enrichment to the calutrons turned out to be critical for time dependent delivery: Massive improvement in delivery because they didn't cheapen the investment.
I personally would have had no problem with CCS, BioChar and Solar/Wind being pursued aggressively at broadly equal levels of funding, and then looking back to decide which one had the best bang for buck. Instead, CCS was massively over funded against evidence of fugitive gas leak problems, Biochar was sold to the idea of "not having to do the others" and as a bribe to farmers, and both CCS and Biochar backers howled down funding for wind and solar claiming it was green nonsense.
Considering most climate models even from 30 years ago have been reasonably accurate (within 10%) there isnt much chance that the predictions are totally incorrect.
[1] https://www.unep.org/resources/emissions-gap-report-2021
I don't personally believe much will improve globally without stronger global governance. I also think the latter is possible, but unlikely within the next couple of centuries. And we probably will be well and truly fucked by then.
So, we're reasonably fucked.
In short - I haven't read the compressed article, but I did read Wells' book and followed up most of the refs in detail. Yes, parts of it were exaggerated. Little outright false, but he tended to take worst-case scenarios, particularly regarding the chance of vast methane burps from tundra, etc. It was a reasonable if tendentious summary of what could happen, but it didn't describe the most likely trajectory. It was more like a possible black swan warning.
But much has changed since. Somewhat to our advantage on the basic science - temperature sensitivity to CO2 increases seems to be towards the lower end of earlier IPCC estimates. It also seems that earth's systems are more responsive to reductions in CO2 emissions, so there's a better payoff to actions we do take. Renewable energy costs have reduced much faster than earlier projections suggested.
One significant factor is worse - extreme weather events are worsening much faster than climate models had prevously suggested. The on-the-ground effects of climate change are worse per degree of increase than we thought. The higher-end temp rises once talked about (4 degrees plus) are now all but ruled out.
So, no, we're not technically fucked. But 30 years wasted since we understood climate change dangers at least in outline have taken their toll. We have made it much harder to keep the globe's temperature within limits that our societies can deal with than if we had just thrown a few fossil fuel suits in prison 3 decades ago (semi-joking).
Our political chances of staying within the 1.5C (which isn't a magic number, just an estimate of the temp rise whose costs we can reasonably deal with) are in my estimation miniscule. But political guesses aren't worth much.
No-one is really confident that our political systems can deal with the vast numbers of refugees and disasters resulting from a likely 3C end-of-century rise. Our best projection isn't anything silly like human extinction or complete global collapse. More a sort of increasing dystopia: more wars, more disposessed, more hunger. And ever fewer nonhumans.
expressing or intending to promote a particular cause or point of view, especially a controversial one.
"a tendentious reading of history"https://www.americanscientist.org/article/uncovering-prehist...
There are more than enough apocalypses to go around even if the optimists are right about this one.
Yes. The idea that a couple of degrees rise in temperature makes most of the Earth uninhabitable is nonsense. Two simple observations will help to put all of this in a better perspective:
(1) The range of human habitation on Earth is limited by cold, not heat: the hottest areas of Earth are inhabited; the coldest are not. (Also, in the range that is inhabited, humans find it more difficult to adapt to cold than to heat--extreme cold causes more deaths.)
(2) The temperature rise is not uniform over Earth; in the hottest regions (the tropics), the temperature rise is much less than the average, while in the coldest regions (the poles), it is significantly more than average.
Putting these two observations together makes it clear that the overall effect of a couple of degrees rise in average temperature will most likely be to increase the portion of Earth that is habitable for humans, not decrease it. Adding in the fact that humans can and will adapt to these changes, just as we have been adapting to change throughout human history, makes it even less likely that the net impact will be negative--if only the alarmists will stop trying to get huge amounts of resources squandered on "mitigation" efforts that will cost far more than any putative benefits they might provide.
How would you convince a skeptic that that is actually true?
Or, if you are wondering if Lomborg is a partisan source, look at the study in The Lancet that he references:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
There is also the fact that making areas like Siberia more habitable in terms of temperature isn’t exactly helpful if it doesn’t have soil conducive to growing food or for enough infrastructure to house large numbers of people. It’s a much better investment of time/wealth to spend it on mitigation than what humanity currently focuses on.
Life on Earth will continue regardless of what we do. What may not continue is how we currently live.
But it doesn't, not "massively". "Warming" here means increasing air temperatures, but the atmosphere is tiny considered as a heat sink.
> This will necessitate a period of dramatic “turbulence” (wild local swings) while a new equilibrium is established. This will potentially cause massive disruption in the world order.
Alarmists might claim this, but there isn't any evidence for it. A far more likely source of disruption in the world order is alarmist claims themselves.
> making areas like Siberia more habitable in terms of temperature isn’t exactly helpful if it doesn’t have soil conducive to growing food or for enough infrastructure to house large numbers of people.
People already manage to grow things in Siberia (and in some colder parts of Canada) despite the temperature. That will only improve as the region warms.
As for infrastructure, that's what adaptation is for: as more people want to move there, you build the infrastructure. Just like we do now in other areas that people want to move to. This has been going on for as long as humans have moved around the planet.
> What may not continue is how we currently live.
"How we currently live" has already changed massively in the past century or two. Of course it will continue to change, and of course people should be aware of that and should be planning accordingly. But there is no need for alarmism about it.
I don't think you read my post very carefully.
> if hundreds of millions of people migrate to Siberia
Who said hundreds of millions? All I said was that the habitable range would be much more likely to expand with warming than to contract. That doesn't require that we shove a huge number of people into the edge of the new habitable range.
> The supply chain issues these past two years shows how fragile our globalized system is to shocks.
That has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with how dysfunctional and corrupt our political systems are. The way to fix that is to fix our political systems, not to wring our hands about climate change.
Clearly I brought supply chain issues as a way of demonstrating fragility in the global system. It was obviously used as an example to demonstrate that it doesn’t take much disruption to cause shocks to the system. The obvious reason for mentioning this is to show that it is quite plausible for climate change to cause major disruptions in how societies work. Your response is: This has nothing to do with climate change…. You failed to understand the clearly made point.
Another example. You mention that throughout human history migrations have happened and humans built societies where they migrated. I point out that the scale that this would have to be done under scenarios envisioned being a consequence or global warming is unprecedented. There 8 billion people now and mass migrations on the scale that would be needed have never happened before. Also, very few people actually grow food these days and so mass migrations would need massive amounts of new infrastructure in conditions that are not conducive to building said infrastructure. Your response to this is a non sequitor.
You haven’t thought through the implications and clearly you don’t have the slightest idea of what you are talking about.
I comprehend what you have written just fine. I just recognize, as apparently you don't, that you are responding to a straw man, and failing to respond to the actual points I have made.
> clearly you don’t have the slightest idea of what you are talking about.
I think the same about you, so it seems unlikely that further discussion will be fruitful.
Is a bunker fragile just because a direct hit by a nuke will destroy it?
The issue is that a couple of degrees is likely to be reached this mid-century, and things might continue to get worse from there.
So the article explores the less likely scenarios that might happen in the higher temperature ranges.
A couple of degrees from the "pre-industrial" baseline, which is as of something like 1750, not now. From now to mid-century is only a couple of tenths of a degree. In other words, we have already adapted to most of the "couple of degrees" of change.
> things might continue to get worse from there.
"Continue to get worse" implies that things are already getting worse and have been over the past few centuries while the "couple of degrees" of temperature rise was taking place. That's not the case.
> the article explores the less likely scenarios
Which all fail to take human adaptation into account. That has always been the problem with alarmist predictions like this.
Fires, floods and extreme storms are one thing, but wet bulb temperature events are what really terrify me.
Here's just a few counter-arguments: https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/a-closer-examin...
Answer: Lomborg is not a climate scientist or economist and has published little or no peer-reviewed research on environmental or climate policy. His extensive and extensively documented, errors and misrepresentations, which are aimed at a lay audience, "follow a general pattern" of minimizing the need to cut carbon emissions.
Not a reliable source at all. He’s been linked to climate deniers for more than 20 years.
[0] In Wall Street Journal op-ed, Bjorn Lomborg urges delay with misleading stats https://skepticalscience.com/lomborg-WSJ-debunk-CSRRT.html
[1] Annual Report 2003 Danish Committees Scientific Dishonesty. https://web.archive.org/web/20081217162831/http://en.fi.dk/p...
[2] Bjorn Lomborg Think Tank Funder Revealed As Billionaire Republican 'Vulture Capitalist' Paul Singer https://www.desmog.com/2015/02/05/exclusive-bjorn-lomborg-th...
[3] The Millions Behind Bjorn Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus Center US Think Tank https://www.desmog.com/2014/06/25/millions-behind-bjorn-lomb...
Lomborg has spent the last 24 years putting roadblocks in the way of taking action, all the while falsely claiming he supports it. This has been covered widely for decades. "While not explicit climate denial, [he] undermines climate action and the fight against the climate crisis." That helps the deniers meet their stated goals, and therefore is indistinguishable from denial by itself. "He attacks renewable energy, notably solar and wind, and other climate solutions while ignoring or downplaying the costs of fossil fuels and the effects of greenhouse gasses- melting ice, sea level rise, droughts, tropical storms, wildfires and other extreme weather events".
If you fall so easily for climate disinformation from the likes of Bjorn Lomborg, then you probably need to work on your critical thinking skills.
Yes, 3.5 degrees increase won't make the earth uninhabitable. 50 Million years ago it was 10-15 degrees hotter and we survived it.
Data: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...
FSVO "we".
I think the point of the article is that the authors regard the issue as grossly under-sensationalized.
Being generous, that is -at best- a lie of omission. The Permian event was caused by massive lava flows from tectonic changes and a rise on the lava stratum to to lower end of the earth crust " The scientific consensus is that the main cause of extinction was the large amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the volcanic eruptions" [1]
Its really hard to take articles like this seriously when they play so hard and fast with the facts to fit their narrative.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_ext...
Second, here's the best summary of Wallace-Well's piece I have seen over the years:
https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/scientists-explain-wh...
This is preposterous for so many reasons. High blood sugar and hypertension are causes #1 and #2 for CKD, and El Salvador, like the rest of the world and Latin America in particular, is suffering from the epidemic of metabolic syndrome. And what percentage of Salvadorans do they expect us to think work the fields? (When only 20% work in the agricultural sector.) And what temperature difference makes the difference between comfort and injurious dehydration? Which presumably cannot be compensated for by drinking more water? And who said dehydration is a significant contributor to CKD?
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/kidney-disease/...
Perhaps this article was re-submitted to portray climate activists as alarmist and unconcerned with the truth?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_ap...
Yes, I find it problematic. Questioning climate doom is nearly a heresy. Is it cult like?
At what point do we take those who implore us to "believe the science" literally?
When does this become scientism, a system of belief rather than science, a system of rational inquiry?
Perhaps there really is an impending apocalypse. Thus far doomsaying hasn't panned out. Doomsday fears have been used to rationalize financial schemes and power grabs. But then, perhaps this time is different.
1. 1967: Dire Famine Forecast By 1975
2. 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
3. 1970: Ice Age By 2000
4. 1970: America Subject to Water Rationing By 1974 and Food Rationing By 1980
5. 1971: New Ice Age Coming By 2020 or 2030
6. 1972: New Ice Age By 2070
7. 1974: Space Satellites Show New Ice Age Coming Fast
8. 1974: Another Ice Age?
9. 1974: Ozone Depletion a ‘Great Peril to Life (data and graph)
10. 1976: Scientific Consensus Planet Cooling, Famines imminent
11. 1980: Acid Rain Kills Life In Lakes (additional link)
12. 1978: No End in Sight to 30-Year Cooling Trend (additional link)
13. 1988: Regional Droughts (that never happened) in 1990s
14. 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
15. 1988: Maldive Islands will Be Underwater by 2018 (they’re not)
16. 1989: Rising Sea Levels will Obliterate Nations if Nothing Done by 2000
17. 1989: New York City’s West Side Highway Underwater by 2019 (it’s not)
18. 2000: Children Won’t Know what Snow Is
19. 2002: Famine In 10 Years If We Don’t Give Up Eating Fish, Meat, and Dairy
20. 2004: Britain will Be Siberia by 2024
21. 2008: Arctic will Be Ice Free by 2018
22. 2008: Climate Genius Al Gore Predicts Ice-Free Arctic by 2013
23. 2009: Climate Genius Prince Charles Says we Have 96 Months to Save World
24. 2009: UK Prime Minister Says 50 Days to ‘Save The Planet From Catastrophe’
25. 2009: Climate Genius Al Gore Moves 2013 Prediction of Ice-Free Arctic to 2014
26. 2013: Arctic Ice-Free by 2015 (additional link)
27. 2014: Only 500 Days Before ‘Climate Chaos’
28. 1968: Overpopulation Will Spread Worldwide
29. 1970: World Will Use Up All its Natural Resources
30. 1966: Oil Gone in Ten Years
31. 1972: Oil Depleted in 20 Years
32. 1977: Department of Energy Says Oil will Peak in 1990s
33. 1980: Peak Oil In 2000
34. 1996: Peak Oil in 2020
35. 2002: Peak Oil in 2010
36. 2006: Super Hurricanes!
37. 2005 : Manhattan Underwater by 2015
38. 1970: Urban Citizens Will Require Gas Masks by 1985
39. 1970: Nitrogen buildup Will Make All Land Unusable
40. 1970: Decaying Pollution Will Kill all the Fish
41. 1970s: Killer Bees!
Update: I’ve added 9 additional failed predictions (via Real Climate Science) below to make it an even 50 for the number of failed eco-pocalyptic doomsday predictions over the last 50 years.
42. 1975: The Cooling World and a Drastic Decline in Food Production
43. 1969: Worldwide Plague, Overwhelming Pollution, Ecological Catastrophe, Virtual Collapse of UK by End of 20th Century
44. 1972: Pending Depletion and Shortages of Gold, Tin, Oil, Natural Gas, Copper, Aluminum
45. 1970: Oceans Dead in a Decade, US Water Rationing by 1974, Food Rationing by 1980
46. 1988: World’s Leading Climate Expert Predicts Lower Manhattan Underwater by 2018
47. 2005: Fifty Million Climate Refugees by the Year 2020
48. 2000: Snowfalls Are Now a Thing of the Past
49.1989: UN Warns That Entire Nations Wiped Off the Face of the Earth by 2000 From Global Warming
50. 2011: Washington Post Predicted Cherry Blossoms Blooming in Winter
The long term predictions can be correct with some error bars on the time it takes. If those bars are just a few lifetimes, sure maybe you wont see it, but that is still instant on a planetary timescale.
But we did get an interesting movie out of the fake population bomb hysteria: Soylent Green.
I knew it deep down, it was all just college kids freaking out like in the 70's.
Silent spring and all that crap. Ha.
1. 1982 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
2. 1983 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
3. 1984 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
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5. 1986 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
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7. 1988 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
8. 1989 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
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20. 2001 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
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22. 2003 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
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25. 2006 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
26. 2007 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
27. 2008 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
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29. 2010 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
30. 2011 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
31. 2012 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
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34. 2015 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
35. 2016 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
36. 2017 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
37. 2018 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
38. 2019 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
39. 2020 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030s
40. 2021 Burning fossil fuels leads to climate desaster in 2030sI’m genuinely trying to understand your point but you seems to copy paste lists a lot.
Can you expand on what they mean for you?
14. 1988: Temperatures in DC Will Hit Record Highs
2. 1969: Everyone Will Disappear In a Cloud Of Blue Steam By 1989 (1969)
https://cei.org/blog/wrong-again-50-years-of-failed-eco-poca...