The Disappearing Doomsday
harpers.org
harpers.org
This is very much a scenario like the Y2K problem — if the doomsday scenario does not occur it will be because people dug in and did the hard work to avoid it.
Clueless people like the author of this article, who apparently only experience the very real crisis of climate change as a media spectacle, will continue making dumb comments like “ha ha, remember when those dumb scientists said the sky was falling?” all along the way to eventual drawdown of CO2, while those of us engaged in the problem are up to our necks in the muck, actually doing the work.
The problem is that the IPCC doesn’t factor in climatic tipping points. When we pass 2°, chances are, we’ll accelerate toward 3-5 and beyond.
Yeah, buckle up, because it looks like there's not a lot of dampening forces; only bad surprises ahead. I think the methane in permafrost is going to be very problematic.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Global_co2_emissions...
If dealing with climate change is turning an oil tanker, then we've started to brake and turn, but are still moving mostly in the original direction. Which isn't great, but is better than accelerating into the rocks ahead.
1. People need to be aware of the science of climate change. Some of it is quite basic and has been known since the 19th century.
2. People need to be aware of the largest CO2 sources.
3. People need to be aware of human psychology and how people respond to threats. To wit, look what happened with toilet paper during the pandemic. Anybody who has spent any time studying people knew that was totally predictable - yet the people who should have known better seem to have been taken by surprise by so many people buying years' worth of toilet paper.
4. Likewise, people need to be aware of how civilization works. How have civilizations collapsed before? What were the causes of collapse? How did human psychology expedite the collapse? How did human psychology ensure the collapse couldn't be avoided?
5. Finally, what are the causes of war?
There's a high probability the "declare a victory and go home" crowd are going to be caught off-guard. Even worse, their kids and grandkids are going to take the brunt of their wishful thinking.
Global warming isn't likely to end the human race (sure, there's always the chance, but it's not likely). What's far more likely is the civilization we know today will undergo a dramatic, i.e. stressful for everyone involved, change. It may even be a change for the better (okay, now my optimism is showing!). But we're just fooling ourselves if we think the change won't have significant impacts to everyone enduring it.
There may be a light at the end of the tunnel but not everybody is going to make it through the tunnel. That's the hard reality we face.
Humans are short-sighted, although not as much as compared to the other animals, but imagine how much further we might look if we couldn't just count on dying out of investigations. Perhaps some of those nuns might be called to account for those mass unmarked graves of children and infants behind "care homes" in Canada and Ireland and so on.
Those in power would just extend the limit.
(yes, Tuskeegee, and syphilis is a known example of very bad behavior. However, that does not include Canada or Ireland) Please apologize for that comment. Or, back it up with data.
If you think you're offended, imagine how the children and their families felt.
https://www.npr.org/2021/07/01/1012100926/graves-found-at-ne...
A Canadian Indigenous group said Wednesday a search using ground-penetrating radar has found 182 human remains in unmarked graves at a site near a former Catholic Church-run residential school that housed Indigenous children taken from their families.
https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2021/06/24/...
Over 600 bodies found at another Catholic school for Indigenous children in Canada
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/03/mass-grave-of-...
A mass grave containing the remains of babies and children has been discovered at a former Catholic care home in Ireland where it has been alleged up to 800 died, government-appointed investigators said on Friday.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/opinion-residential-schools-...
Like I said, offensive, and apologies are in order. I do not know the issue in Ireland. Since I am a first-generation immigrant to Canada, I have no stake in this. But "denialism"? Since when is a demand for proof a denial? Especially for something as sensitive as making the accusation that a Religion is Genocidal. I am not Catholic. I am not Muslim. Nor am I Jewish (no, I am NOT going to bring my own faith into this discussion). But I would not level that accusation against any believer.
Now to continue:
https://globalnews.ca/news/7996606/cranbrook-residential-sch...
Yes, people died. Quite a few from TB. and...
"The concern for Pierre is that the term “unmarked grave” is now so closely associated with victims of Canada’s residential school system.
“To just assume that every unmarked grave inside a graveyard is already tied to a residential school, we’ve got to be a little bit more respectful of our people who are buried in our graveyards,” Pierre said.
The graveyard near Cranbrook originally dates back to Christian missionaries who settled in the area in the early 1800s, prior to the construction of the school. A church and a hospital were also built in the area.
It eventually became a graveyard for the community, which it remains to this day."
There is no suggestion of "foul play" here. Wooden markers will disintegrate. Mass grave? Burial yard? Yes, words do matter.
No. If you insist on it, though, you can find countless other sources with information on the countless other atrocities that have been committed.
I have no stake in this. But "denialism"?
What are you talking about? Did you get lost in the comments?
Anyway, it's hilarious that you'll refuse to read one news source, ignore all the other articles, but latch on to one article trying to spin a weird narrative that, what, natives were burying their own en masse, coincidentally next to residential schools? Or that the abused women and children in Ireland just happened to be buried in the basement in astonishingly high numbers?
Finally, you seem to be hung up on the concept of wooden markers disintegrating while ignoring that so many children shouldn't be dying in the first place, and that there are first-hand accounts of intentionally starving babies that couldn't be "adopted" (i.e. sold) out of the Irish facilities.
As for being offensive, I don't care at all if you are offended by any of this. Your feelings about the atrocities mean nothing to me.
They're Catholic care homes, of course they were run by nuns.
Do some research, look into the Catholic care homes for unwed mothers in Ireland. I have no idea what sources you'll accept and which ones you will reject, so I won't bother doing any pick and shovel work for you.
If you're offended, well, you're going to stay offended, largely because you want to.
I seriously doubt this is the case. Maybe a few septuagenarians have YOLO'd something because they expect to die soon, but few young people are considering their mortality when assessing the consequences of their actions.
Source on this? Climate crisis could quite possibly lead to extinction of humans and most life on Earth [0].
Now I do want to emphasized the word could. Extinction events are certainly "on the table", but certainly not a certainty.
However this is the true essence of the reason why we'll never stop climate change. The immediate cost of stopping or even slowing is high, and certain. The cost of not stopping it, is often considered higher, but is always probabilistic and less certain in nature.
Compounding this is that the more we rely on non-renewable hydro-carbons, the more painful it is to reverse or even slow our march towards catastrophic climate change, while at the same time the cost of not stopping it becomes less uncertain.
For example in 1900 it would have been incredibly easy to slow economic progress in order to prevent climate change, but the uncertainty around the cost of not slowing progress was very high, so the perceived expected value of stopping our march toward climate change was much lower than the present time expected cost.
It is strange to see calls for moderate pragmatism when our current state has been accelerating CO2 emissions. We're, quite literally, stepping on the gas to meet whatever future awaits us.
0. See Peter D. Ward's "Under a Green Sky" for one example scenario.
Of course it's absurd to treat it as a certainty, but the geological evidence of the destruction to life caused by past period of rapid CO2 escalation are at the very least a bit concerning.
Depends on whose quality of life you mean. A lot of people (who were never using a lot of fossil fuels to begin with) will be deprived of water, food and shelter.
There is a lot of uncertainty concerning tipping points, etc. It seems conceivable to me that in a hunderd years we'll wish we had banned fossil fuels completely this very decade, even starting from now, despite the dramatic effects this would have on economies worldwide. As things are looking now, global civilization collapse as a result of climate change, leading to starvation, migration and war for resources, seems to me a very realistic scenario. You have to discount the future an insane amount to argue today's profits are worth even a small chance of this.
This is pure conjecture and climate fear mongering.
As someone else pointed out,
> Calls for extreme curtailment of fossil fuel usage for example would lower quality of life beyond what global warming will do.
is also conjecture. If you were to insist on adding a pejorative to that, I suggest "pure conjecture and climate denialism". However, continuing the discussion like this is clearly a waste of time.
You probably think your conjecture is more plausible than mine. But you haven't argued that it is or why you think that. And even if it is more plausible, a cost-benefit analysis also takes into account the cost. How unlikely does my scenario have to be to counterbalance the potential insane loss of value?
It's also not clear what you mean by "extreme". Some people still think "phasing out fossil fuels ever" is extreme. Is "net zero by 2050" extreme? I absolutely think the word is appropriate, but that a desperate situation requires extreme measures.
They know that proper mitigation would spell the end of their comforts (no more flying, for instance), but they can’t bring themselves to admit it to the public.
This is not something I recognize here in Sweden. Here the doom and gloom has only intensified over the last few years.
>[...] the banal (palm trees growing in London, wind turbines off Coney Island) to the bleak (bleached coral reefs, desertification) to the already happening (a line of silhouetted migrants fleeing their homelands).
and other such quotes justify drawing a smiley on the globe, maybe a "neutral face" emoji...
It's saying climate catastrophe journalism was overblown (apparently starting in 2016 when Trump was elected?) but that now it's gone too far the other way, and is too optimistic because our already achieved level of warming is going to lead to some bad stuff.
But given the many feedback loops involved, and the uncertaintities of prediction, I don't see how the catastrophes can be considered not in line with the science? They're still a possibility if we hit tipping points.
Edit: Corn, too.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...
https://www.agry.purdue.edu/ext/corn/news/timeless/images/US...
https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/soyyld...
You'll notice from the charts year to year variability happens (droughts, heat waves, freezes, etc) but the long term trend is up and to the right.
This has led to some politicians setting the climate stick aside to reach for another one, e.g. in the Netherlands 'climate' has had to make way for 'nitrogen' as the main cause for our coming demise. Seeing how as cows farting methane did not rile up the populace enough to force the farmers to get rid of the beasts - they like their cheese and milk after all and feel some national pride in the farmer's prowess in producing ever more of it - politicians in need of a stick thought to have found one in the fact that they not only fart methane but also dump a significant amount of nitrogen [1] - i.e. 'fertiliser' - in the soil and air. And lo, the more you look, the more nitrogen you find, nitrous oxides produced by internal combustion engines (including jet engines) being a major source. With this new-found stick they started whipping up the populace, this time they really meant it, cows-be-gone and don't you dare build a house because that involves diesel-driven machinery which would exceed the nitrogen budget for the area [2]. It seems though that the population, tired of yet another doomsday scare, is not planning on cooperating [3] this time. What is a politician to do when not even a good righteous scare can push the voters in the desired direction?
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Estimate...
[2] https://nos.nl/artikel/2436935-juristen-voorzien-bouwstop-na...
There might be a few people who believe that. However, a little coaxing and question asking will bring most people around to understanding that we're merely severely fucked.
Even this minor step then admits to the possibility of some mitigation, and that's a good thing.
Climate change is not going to wipe out humanity or life on earth. It could, however, completely reset or destroy what we currently consider "civilization", and for most people (especially those who particularly enjoy the comforts of said "civilization") there may not be not be much of a distinction between that an extinction. In addition, while losing only 1-2B people due to climate change is a far cry from human extinction, it is still a very big number. Even 400M would still be a very big number, with very substantial consequences for migration, resource control etc. You think people living in the tropic-to-tropic latitudes are going to just sit back while the outer latitudes live it up? I don't think so.
As for the timeline, that's always hard to say, but I'm almost 60 and I find it likely I'll see some severe disruption in the tropic-to-tropic zone before I'm done with this mortal coil.
Global industrial civilization is driving the sixth mass extinction on earth. Every species that goes extinct is gone, forever. If you’re a member of one of those species (or depend on them for your survival), it’s an existential problem.
Already there’s been a 75% decline in insects, over the past 30 years.
When all the pollinators die out, how much longer will humans survive?
The huge increase in immigrants to the US from central America is driven by climate change. Agriculture there can't feed the people there any more.[1]
Among these variables are also trends in terrible government, horrible land policies and infrastructure problems that make certain industries in which millions work unsustainable. All of these are human problems of politics instead of literal climate and all of them could even benefit from more development, instead of hand waving about climate change to fit a fashionable narrative.
Your own link references several very human, very global political trends that have little or nothing to do with climate change as being responsible for central american migration. It doesn't reference any literal notable climate changes that somehow made agriculture in central america worse.
I'm not saying that climate change has nothing to do with migration in the world, but to call it a main cause is tenuous in the extreme and dishonestly symptomatic of flogging this specific thing in all contexts to the point of just making absurd arguments..
"Encounters (Border Patrol/ICE) soared in fiscal 2021 for some countries that have not historically been common sources of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border. The number of encounters involving people from Ecuador, for example, increased more than eightfold, from 11,861 in fiscal 2020 to 95,692 in fiscal 2021. There were also stark increases in encounters involving people from Brazil (from 6,946 to 56,735), Nicaragua (from 2,123 to 49,841), Venezuela (from 1,227 to 47,752), Haiti (from 4,395 to 45,532) and Cuba (from 9,822 to 38,139)."
Some of that is political, but those are all different countries. All are near the equator.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/11/09/whats-happe...
Nicaragua is in the midst of a decade of political turmoil and Ortega is actively deporting dissidents. People are fleeing persecution in droves, not a climate disaster.
Haiti is literally without a functioning government, which is why people are leaving.
Brazil is multi-factorial.
I don't know anything about Ecuador.
* South sudan is definitely a case where severe weather events including flooding has driven up emigration, but most of the refugees have ended up in Uganda which is on the equator!
The weather here just wants to kill people a lot of the time...