It's difficult to overstate just how quickly we are destroying the planet.
I spend a lot of time snorkeling and I tell my kids to really take in what they see because it probably won't be there when they're parents themselves.
IPCC predicts existential risks to marine ecosystems at temperatures much higher than today. Your child will probably be able to go snorkelling just fine as an adult. My local coral reefs have returned to health after a major bleeching event that was predicted to be the beginning of the end. Sometimes our catastrophic predictions are wrong, or exaggerated.
https://www.aims.gov.au/reef-monitoring/gbr-condition-summar...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing#Examples_and_evide...
Or did you mean "Don't worry, the impact of oxygen level change is exaggerated, because we'll make sure those fish are gone one way or other!"?
Meanwhile whale numbers are increasing, polar bear numbers are increasing and in my local fishery the fish population is increasing!
Don’t take my comment as saying there are no problems, I’m merely pointing out that telling children “this probably won’t exist when you are an adult” isn’t particularly honest and I don’t think it’s very useful.
Hope they'll flourish when we'll have ice free arctic summer in/before 2030.
Around 2010 I remember reading a prediction of ice free arctic by 2020. It used to go hand in hand with the polar bear panic.
And with this year's temperatures it might be even sooner.
They might be correct, but I don’t have much faith. They have essentially done a temp-ice area regression to fit a model to 50 years of data. Thus they rely on the accuracy of the temp predictions of the IPCC models which I also don’t have much faith in. I lost a lot of confidence in them this year, under-predicting warming so significantly. Most climate scientists imply that this error is simply them underestimating anthropogenic warming rather than it being an indication that their models are not particularly accurate. From the climate science community I have heard some suggestions the volcanic eruption last year was to blame for the extra warming, as well as changes to sulphite pollution policies.
I believe the earth is warming, but that much of it is probably due to existing natural trends and that adaptation will not be particularly hard. When models can predict El Niño with precision or changes in large scale circulation then I think I will be convinced.
That's called denial and hopium.
> When models can predict El Niño with precision or changes in large scale circulation then I think I will be convinced
We can't predict what local weather will be 3+ days from now. You're being unrealistic, at least.
There’s no fundamental reason our climate models can’t have resolution that allows us to see major natural processes. If we can’t confidently predict weather 3 days out at decent resolution, why are we so confident in forecasts of 50 years with a coarse resolution?
And if our models don’t contain important forcing such as sulphite aerosols and volcanic activity, how can be so certain of attribution to GHG? I know people usually start talking about the precautionary principle at this point, but I think a big part of that is being skeptical of the models unless their predictions closely match observation.
I consider myself pretty aware of climate change but I suddenly realize I've never actually looked at the direct numbers. That's scary.
Between catastrophic climate change and resource depletion, AI, the danger of nuclear war, COVID and other potential pandemics, economic insecurity for most of the population, and farmed irrational extremist political movements, we seem to have quite a lot to deal with.
Might as well just have Carrington Event 2.0 and be done with it.
Now at 2023 we have lifted more people out of poverty and ill-health in both raw numbers and as a percentage of the population than any time in the planet's history.
Without prescribing anything in so far as dealing with the world's problems, be careful flippantly trading that off. It may not be you, your friends and your family that previously watched their children die and now don't but I don't see that as making this quite frankly stunning achievement as an irrelevance.
Poverty has some very definitional issues with the chosen metrics and I am hesitant to actually draw any conclusions on if it has brought net positive human fulfillment.
In any case the whole system is a pretty precarious place at the moment with rapidly closing windows to maintain stability, and if we don't those "stunning achievements" are going not going to persist in a meaningful way.
It is easy to pull people out of poverty when short term thinking can overshoot beyond long term carrying capacity.
However many of these threats can collapse organised civilisation and push us back to medieval level of development.
It's unlikely that any pandemic would make humans go extinct. Covid showed that isolating population groups is possible, especially if bounded by water (Australia, new Zealand etc). Mass death sure, but not extinction.
Climate change will probably reduce livable spaces (although people already live in extremes like Alaska and Sahara) but humans are adaptable and certain parts will still be temperate. Again huge impact, but not existential.
Sure there's a lot of "other stuff" going on, but honestly it has always been thus. Two world wars for example caused several daily concerns for most of Europe, and much of Asia. Throw in revolutions in Russia and China, and independence for India, plus the technology booms, and life in 1950 was different to 1910.
I could write a whole comment on economics, but again a 2 year blip in inflation (it's down again now) is not going to end anything. Given the economic improvements in Asia over the past 50 years (China, S Korea, Japan, Vietnam etc) "most" of the world is better off than before. There's a long way to go, but its been an upward trend for a long time.
With the rise of ecological blow back, resource scarcity/hoarding, and seeing the seeds of authoritarian policies being planted - I suspect that this moat will be used in future to welcome immigrants with open arms. Those arms being rockets, machine guns and grenades.
A grim future ahead if true.
The primary hydrogen carrier in water is oxygen.
Are deoxygenation & acidification different problem, or different slants on the same problem?
im very much inclined to say these are not problems.
these are symptoms of a larger scale problem, namely an atmosphere pushing thermal bounds beyond global buffering capacity,
and CO2 accumulating beyond biospheric buffering ,and regulation.
Take ocean deoxygenation: it happens locally due to fertiliser runoff in places that have a history of low oxygen. It’s good to put some resources towards fixing this, but it’s not useful to think of it as an extinction level problem that we “now have.”
All the interaction of species, effects of (mass) extinctions? Invasive species? Habitat destruction, soil loss from farming, AND you can predict the impacts of human industry, economics, and technology change?
You have ALL THAT NAILED DOWN, internet expert?
Forgive me if I don't take your assurances about that as being "no big deal" with any iota of reliability.
There are literally 20 major scientific domains that all are in lockstep agreement about anthropogenic global warming, from geologists, atmospheric scientists, basic chemistry and physics, oceanographers, biologists, archaeologists, historians. A massive collection of scientific inquiry that basically all ends at the same conclusions. It's quite literally thousands of PhDs, maybe tens of thousands.
Of course, all of them don't know as much as you, internet guy.
Just a few things you get wrong: thinking models are 100% accurate, thinking scientists have everything “nailed down” and assuming that I don’t know enough to back up my opinion.
Because you, single person, do not have the ability to ingest all the data, do not have access to the necessary supercomputers, do not have the decades of time to write and adapt the simulation software, do not have the PhDs.
You are simply one brain. Who very most certainly does not have the accuracy of the current models (yours is FAR less reliable, because it is your lone opinion), you think you have everything nailed down to brazenly assert "it won't be that bad", and well, you are just one dumb internet person, so I KNOW you don't know enough to back up your opinion.
If you followed the simulations alone, you'd see that they have had a surprisingly good track, even the late-1990s models are doing disturbingly well (which were more pessimistic than what the climate scientists wanted to say back then).
Ocean acidification and the potential collapse of oceanic phytoplankton should scare the living shit out of you. Fishery health aren't really the concern if oxygen production from phytoplankton drops. The inability to eat sushi is far down the list from "inability to breathe". Hint: phytoplankton produce 70% of the oxygen we breathe, and our society is actively participating in Russian Roulette on a global scale to see if we kill ourselves with that, among other "fun games" that "you aren't concerned about".
In fact I follows many scientists who do all the things you mention and who agree with me. Some even think climate change might be good overall! Most skeptics think that it is real and that it is bad, but that it is not something worth panicking about.
As I said before, I’m always open to learning more. What predictions frighten you the most? You mention ocean acidification, when do scientists predict that this problem will become existential?
Two types, not one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_deoxygenation#Types_and_...
I wouldn’t claim I have knowledge that it’s not a problem, but I’d like to see a model where it becomes a problem and for that model to predict observations. Until then, I just mentally file this away under doomer predictions.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abm3468
Global decline in ocean memory over the 21st century
https://phys.org/news/2023-04-devastating-greenland-antarcti...
'Devastating' melt of Greenland, Antarctic ice sheets found
The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are now losing more than three times as much ice a year as they were 30 years ago
https://www.commondreams.org/news/ocean-warming-study
the planet has accumulated as much heat in the past 15 years as it did in the previous 45 years, the majority of the excess heat has been absorbed by the oceans
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/15/oceans-h...
A technical chart in a chapter of the latest UN climate assessment laid out the unfathomable heat gain. Between 1971 and 2018, the ocean had gained 396 zettajoules of heat.
How much heat is that? Scientists have calculated it is the equivalent energy of more than 25bn Hiroshima atomic bombs. And that heat gain is accelerating.
A study in January found the ocean gained 10 ZJ more in 2022 than the year before – enough heat to boil 700m kettles every second.
https://phys.org/news/2023-05-climate-ocean-plankton-microbe...
Warming climate could turn ocean plankton microbes into carbon emitters
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330316398_How_fast_...
How fast are the oceans warming? - Observational records of ocean heat content show that ocean warming is accelerating
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/06/17/world/four-climate-charts...
Four alarming charts that show just how extreme the climate is right now
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-24/antarctic-sea-ice-lev...
Antarctic sea ice levels dive in 'five-sigma event', as experts flag worsening consequences for planet
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/07/2...
Scientists detect sign that a crucial ocean current is near collapse
> I’d like to see a model where it becomes a problem and for that model to predict observations
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-08-16/revisiting-the...
https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/2021/y...
"I conducted a data update to Limits to Growth (LtG), best known from the 1972 bestseller that forecasted a scenario of global societal collapse occurring around the present time if humanity did not alter its priorities. Empirical data comparisons since then indicated that the world was still heading for collapse. ... I found that the scenarios aligned closely with observed global data, which is a testament to the LtG work done decades ago. The two scenarios aligning most closely indicate a halt in growth over the next decade or so, which puts into question the usability of continuous growth as humanity’s goal in the 21st century. Both scenarios also indicate subsequent declines, but only one—the scenario in which declines are caused by pollution, including greenhouse gas pollution—depicts a collapse pattern. The scenario with the smallest declines aligned least with empirical data, however, absolute differences were rarely big and sometimes insignificant. This suggests that it’s almost, but not yet, too late for society to change course."
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332655753_Limits_Re...
"We unravel the arguments that have raged for forty years in its aftermath and explore more recent findings which relate to the original hypothesis. There is unsettling evidence that society is still following the ‘standard run’ of the original study – in which overshoot leads to an eventual collapse of production and living standards. Detailed recent studies suggests that production of some key resources may only be decades away. Certain other limits to growth – less visible in the 1972 report – present equally pressing challenges to modern society. We highlight, in particular, recent work on our proximity to ‘planetary boundaries’ and illustrate this through the challenge of meeting the Paris Agreement on climate change. We also explore the economic challenge of a ‘secular stagnation’. If the Club of Rome is right, the next few decades are decisive."
> I just mentally file this away under doomer predictions
Ok :)
I see a lot of evidence that the planet has been/is warming, but still see lots of issues with the attribution / prediction / catastrophe papers. Take your KPMG report: it has lots of predictions of catastrophic trends, but cannot be used to make an actual prediction since "he LtG scenarios were thus not meant to produce point predictions, but rather to help us understand the behavior of systems in the world over time." "Although the steepness of a scenario’s decline cannot be used for predictive purposes (Meadows et al., 2004), it can be said that BAU2 shows a clear collapse pattern"
I believe the Lakatosian solution to the demarcation problem is best: judge a scientific programme by its progressiveness over time. Evidence of a progressive programme comes about through repeated confirmation of theory against evidence without adding arbitrary auxilliary hypothesis. I worry that some corners of climate change science are degenerate: when a model doesn't match predictions there is always an explanation using an auxillary hypothesis ("there are less fires than we predicted, but we now use a different metric. And our new metric is getting worse!!", "the record temps didn't appear in our model because we didn't include X, but will come eventually", "the coral didn't die because Y, but will die eventually", "the ice caps haven't melted yet because Z, but will eventually"). I'm not saying these auxillary hypothesis are necessarily wrong, just that they are used as excuses for wrong predictions. This years record heat was an opportunity for climate scientists to say: "see! We predicted this in 99% of our models, now you should trust us", instead we got "our models missed this, but because we didn't include X,Y,Z; so you should still trust the models." Even worse X,Y,Z have been known about for years so either the modeller thought they weren't important and was wrong, or thought they were important but didn't include the. Both scenarios worry me and feed my skepticism.