‘We should have better answers by now’: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating
‘We should have better answers by now’: climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating
The leap in temperatures over the past 13 months has exceeded the global heating forecasts – is this just a blip or a systemic shift?
Temperatures above 50C used to be a rarity confined to two or three global hotspots, but the World Meteorological Organization noted that at least 10 countries have reported this level of searing heat in the past year: the US, Mexico, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India and China.
In Iran, the heat index – a measure that also includes humidity – has come perilously close to 60C, far above the level considered safe for humans.
Heatwaves are now commonplace elsewhere, killing the most vulnerable, worsening inequality and threatening the wellbeing of future generations. Unicef calculates a quarter of the world’s children are already exposed to frequent heatwaves, and this will rise to almost 100% by mid-century.
If the world was warming even faster than scientists thought it would, seemingly jumping years ahead of predictions, would that mean even more crucial decades of action had been lost?
Yes. Yes it would.
Rivers in Alaska have been running bronzish-orange... because the permafrost is melting.
The 'perma' frost, is melting.
That has huge amounts of methane locked up in at.
Which is 8 to 80x more effective at being a greenhouse gas than CO2.
And also ancient bacteria that could cause previously unknown kinds of diseases in wildlife and possibly humans, they now may or may not be seeping into the environment.
...
We have already had a consecutive 12 months at or above 1.5C global average temps, as of last month.
...
Shit's looking pretty bleak.
Definitely don't watch the Arctic Sinkhole documentary from PBS Nova if you like sleeping at night. It's all about the trapped methane in the permafrost and the trapped gasses under the permafrost. Shit is getting real scary. It wasn't even sensationalist.
Capitalism is a death cult.
Living and dying are the same process. You can't be born without dying. You could say biology condemns us all - very loosely - to a cult of death, as we must all participate.
Capitalism is worse than that. Capitalism is an ideology of exploitation. I'm fine with dying, it's my fault for being born. I don't see why I must submit to exploitation while I do, temporarily, exist.
If you’re fine with dying, Tepco is still looking for guys to clean up under Fukushima. They ran out of old gambling addicts who had big debts with the Yakuza.
And yet its the least worst functional economic system we currently have...
"Wow this cancer sure is good at growing and staying alive!"
"it's the least worst way to spiral into definite hell on earth" doesn't really sound that positive.
It doesn't matter how "safe" capitalism is, it's not solving our problems and we need something different.
Capitalism has a historical tendency of imperializing all over the place and sabotaging other systems. It did not earn its spot as "best", despite what capitalistic propaganda would have you believe.
Can’t believe people are saying this meme.
climate scientists baffled by unexpected pace of heating
Could it be ... fossil fuel producers lying about their output of greenhouse gases? Nah.
"Are you telling me that our valued wealth creators are capable of... lying???"
You don’t have to lie if you don’t measure …… for example, methane leaks from natural gas drilling, refining and distribution
Aren't climate scientists also measuring atmospheric composition levels around the world to track this, usivg satellites and whatnot? I.e., do they really rely that much on self reported data?
The fossil fuel companies would fund like 9 studies for every independant one.
oh it's much worse than that. not that it isn't also that and them doing that isn't the reason we didn't get started mitigating this shit seventy years ago when we wouldn't have needed substantial sacrifices.
see, climate scientists are scientists. that means they can only announce what they KNOW, what they can be very confident in, what IS in the data.
the thing about climate change is; it's full of unknowns, most of them bad. so they can't say "we have had this many unknown unknowns pop up and fuck our shit up, and expect (range of numbers) more", because that's predictive, and it's useful, but its not SCIENCE, because science is inherently a very conservative bedrock-of-knowledge try-not-to-give-permission-to-fuck-up paradigm of knowledge. that's not a flaw generally, it's why we can trust it and why it's hard to compromise, but generals and combat sports athletes do not choose their actions scientifically-it's too fucking slow, and they would all fucking die/get punched in the face and lose literally every single time.
so while they have calculated the known dangers of the path we're tumbling down, they can't really include the assumption that there was a military base here during a civil war 20 years ago, and both sides in that conflict really liked land mines. they can only point to specific mine fields they know about, even if that's way less than any other site that was involved in that conflict.
so however bad a climate scientist says it's going to be, dude, holy shit, it's going to be so much fucking worse. however much time they say we have, we have less than that. how much worse? how much less? no fucking clue.
no way to know unless we sit on our asses and let it happen, at which point everyone dies.
Don't forget countries, especially China.
If these companies and countries could just show their real numbers, we could be at least be helping each other better.
There are also some comments about aircon not being a good answer if solely relied on, including:
One of the key effects of heatwaves, which send demand for electricity soaring and cause extreme storms that stress electrical grids, is to cause blackouts. Blackouts mean no more air-con. A recent study suggested a blackout lasting just two days could hospitalise more than half of Phoenix residents and kill 12,000, mostly in their own homes. This is why the author Jeff Goodell warns of a “heat Katrina”: you thought the hurricane in New Orleans was bad?
Further, what happens when everyone knows the power isn't coming back and instead the roads out of Phoenix all get backed up and people die in the heat of their cars trying to escape the heat of Phoenix. Because heat can kill a lot of vehicles, and a lot of people have ill-maintained vehicles, meaning roads being completely blocked from escape can happen fast.
I really think Phoenix will become the first mass casualty event from climate change in the USA.
EDIT: Obligatory Peggy Hill. Peggy gets it.
That's one of those nightmare thoughts - when the power goes out, what do people usually do for a while? Wait for it to come back on. Someone is coming to fix it, right? Much of modern society is built upon such assumptions, and it mostly works. So I think you're right for some, but many would perish at home, trying to outlast the day (and what if the night doesn't cool?)
EDIT: Obligatory Peggy Hill. Peggy gets it.
And considering how rarely she "got" things, that's saying a lot!
That’s when it becomes Rita as opposed to “heat Katrina”.
For folks who don’t remember/know about Rita because they didn’t live through it, less than a month after Katrina a record-breaking cat 5 hurricane was heading for Texas. Everyone still had Katrina on their minds and panicked. Millions of people (literally estimated as 2.5–3.7 million) evacuated, or tried.
The highways out of Houston came to a total standstill. About 100 people died before the storm even hit land because of the evacuation. And then the hurricane itself was nbd; the evacuation was literally the worst part.
Realistically it'll be when people can no longer insure their homes when we see the first mass migrations. Florida is already at the point where only state insurance will cover hurricane prone areas, and it sounds like that currently costs $7k/year. Anyone have any bets for if it'll be the southwest suffering more frequent more severe fires that gets it first or Florida and neighboring states from more severe hurricanes?
Frankly, I am amazed it has not already happened in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, or Austin. The power grid here in Texas is a disaster and the weather conditions are unforgiving. At least in the desert you can do evaporative cooling. That doesn't work where its hot and humid.
Air conditioners will soon be considered life support. In some places it will be a death sentence to have a power outrage. This isn't speculation. It's already happening.
I keep an old evaporative unit in the shed just in case. It only needs 70 watts and can thus run for quite a long time off a car battery or similar. Add a basic camping solar panel and you're more or less set for the day as long as you have water and don't live in a really high humidity place.
A significant amount of greenhouse gasses are emitted because of air conditioning. It's a feedback loop.
Wait really? Do you mean by the electricity generation or by a refrigerant process?
I know those processes are inefficient and create overall heat in the system as they can’t create cool but only push heat, there should be no green house emission, just heat generation.
Are you saying extra heat will stay in the atmosphere? That’s not good but it’s not the same as carbon which allows heat to build up.
wow have we procrastinated real climate action long enough yet?
Doubt procrastination will stop even after 60-70 becomes a new high in those countries and people start dying en masse
"But mah profits!!!!"
Nope
Yes we have ages ago. So might as well relax and keep posting
we are way past that point, its just that it takes a while to heat up.
The reason nothing will be done is because the only realistic option we have to save our planets ability to sustain life is economic degrowth.
We don't have enough of the minerals we need to go fully nuclear or renewable and even getting close would use up vast amounts of the very same energy were looking to save in the first place.
As the record levels of equality directly after ww2 showed, economic degrowth due to nearly all the men being at war, only results in the loss of the super rich which is why they'll never allow economic degrowth.
We all work too much, produce too much and pollute too much. Worse, we're all forced to produce the very wealth thats used to force us into wage-slavery and kill our planet.
The answer is and will always be the strategic refusal of labour, above what we need to survive and have a good quality of life. This, by default, will result in economic degrowth.
Want to sit around and do nothing to save the planet? Well, now you can.
Uranium is extremely common on Earth. What minerals are we lacking to go nuclear? If you were arguing that we need to switch the type of reactors we use, I could see that. A lack of fissile material isn't an issue.
Uranium is extremely common on Earth.
I wouldn't be so uncritical about this. Depending on rate of consumption (and data source) the world's Uranium supplies will last for about 50 to 200 years. (The latter a low demand scenario based on current consumption rates.)
Technological advancements may push these limits. Possibly even into 10.000 to 60.000 years, when filtering active substances from seawater, which is currently quite a timeframe to consider it long-term sustainable even for a limited resource. However, we're not there yet.
If I remember correctly, we don't have enough of it to go fully nuclear with our current energy demands. More so, we've mined nearly all of the soil thats anything above 0.02% uranium. As such, not only do we not have enough on the planet, getting it and refining it would almost defeat the whole point of doing so in the first place.
It is a problem in that there might be plenty of it but that doesn't mean there's enough.
Just to be clear, I'm not saying we have to go back to the stone ages. Its just that we can't afford the super rich anymore.
the reason nothing will be done
nothing will be done peacefully. plenty could be done.
see, the ultra rich die either way. either they kill everyone, including themselves, and end all life, or someone kills them. those are the only two outcomes here.
I mean, i guess they could just fuck off and stop being super rich. fuckerberg could be a creepy robot man who lives above his kinda cringe MMA dojo or something, but they're not going to do that. I don't think they're psychologically capable of it.
Remember the Titanic sub? How those rich guys thought they knew more than scientists and engineers? When they died, I realized that was exactly what they were doing with our planet. They will kill us all for their ego and hubris. Quite clearly. That's why they are building their bunkers and super cities and not allowing governments to actually address this issue - they think they'll come out on top. And there's evidence they've thought this since at least the 70s, so this implies a couple generations of them plotting to kill us.
The answer is and will always be the strategic refusal of labour, above what we need to survive and have some quality of life. This, by default, will result in economic degrowth.
It's at the point where I don't accept the label of being human. Humans lack the logic and morality I identify with.
One point I have to disagree on is the point you made about nuclear energy. Its untrue. If we switched to primarily using nuclear energy we would be able to successfully power the majority of the species using that technology. Its fear that stops us. Everyone is worried about another Chernobyl or Fukushima. When the logical course of action would be to find tectonically stable sites for any nuclear facilities. That'd be number one to solving a lot of meltdown concerns. The other would be to use well researched and planned designs. Chernobyl was a faulty design for a reactor that should never have been allowed to be produced.
Lookup Thorium reactors. Those are the true future of nuclear technology. Thorium is also abundant when compared to Uranium or Plutonium. It does not have the same weaponization issues. It does not produce the same high levels of radiation. It is also safer to handle and store once depleted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle#Thorium-fueled_reactors "Using breeder reactors, known thorium and uranium resources can both generate world-scale energy for thousands of years. "
Literally with nuclear power we can power the whole world for the next 2,000 to 3,000 years. Possibly longer. It's fear that holds us back on this.
nuclear energy we would be able to successfully power the majority of the species using that technology
But that energy will be used for what? To mine for more minerals, create more waste, destroy more land, and make more species extinct? Our problem is not a shortage of energy nor is it even a problem of the efficiency or cleanliness of the energy. It's a problem of our species living far beyond the sustainable bounds of the planet.
Yes and majority of time and expense that goes into building nuclear reactors is due to regulations, espeically NIMBY/fear based regulations. They have to hire teams of special lawyers for these and cases last years. That's why when you see people describing the cost and time of building these, they always start at the planning stage which can include years of legal battles.
And these lawyers are usually nuclear engineers who went to law school afterwards, so they are pretty expensive to staff.
Biggest thing against nuclear power is the cost associated with it. Other, sustainable sources of energy like wind and solar, combined with hydrogen and batteries, are way cheaper due to their simplicity. Thorium reactors are a nice idea but need so much development (costs) that they will take a while to become a reality, if ever at all. Probably nuclear fusion will be available sooner than thorium fission for power generation, which also needs decades of development. And then there's still the problem of nuclear waste. Maybe not a huge problem, but still one without a viable solution.
I kind of hate this kind of narrative here.
Yeah, capitalism is shit etc... but let's get to the real root cause: we're all still animals, and want our pack to be the best. The root issue isn't money, it's power. Many societies wouldn't mind degrowth if it didn't mean all the others would bury them & dance on their grave.
If one single country would actually degrow, all the others would dominate it financially, loot it for all its worth, and unless it can completely 100% sustain itself without outside trade (pretty much impossible in our globalized society), it would mostly collapse. And even if it could sustain itself, the power imbalance would be so huge we'd run in all other kinds of issues soon (hey, why not just conquer that country that is pretty much powerless now?)
Imo we're all just animals knowing we're headed for extinction, but at the same time it's a big game of chicken on the road, the first to stray from this path will get fucked in so many ways by all the others who see their chance to improve their situation... And imo capitalism isn't the cause of that, but one of the results of this. It's just another way for us to compete and try to fuck eachother over like the animals we still are.
So either we get to some near global agreement on how to get out of this situation, or we just keep doing far too little since... what's the point of trying to improve things if it just means you get annihilated by those that don't, and things will remain the same despite your best efforts...
So either we get to some near global agreement on how to get out of this situation, or we just keep doing far too little since… what’s the point of trying to improve things if it just means you get annihilated by those that don’t, and things will remain the same despite your best efforts…
I feel like the way out is global and cultural in nature, and I think it's in progress now, in fact we're doing it now, talking about this on Lemmy. This wasn't practical, wasn't being done outside of "elite circles" before a decade or so ago. This global conversation is going to take some time and have bumps, but it's happening, this is novel on this planet.
What I hope comes of this, and seems to be happening, perhaps slower than I'd like, is a paradigm shift in the way we think about ourselves, others, our communities, our situation, and our goals. We need a new "mythology" that allows us to live on this planet sustainably, and it only needs to be true enough and could even be done transparently and with purpose.
I feel like our species is in a existential battle and almost nobody (at least on the left-ish) is talking strategy. As if any valid strategy (e.g. "capitalism", "communism", "competition", "religion", "growth" "zero sum" etc) has been identified by the 1960s and we're all just battling amongst 20th century ideas for domination.
I'm thinkiing stuff like this (sorry for the poor organization of my thoughts, to lazy to cleanup)
Define some axioms/statements that are mostly true and fairly agreeable, not based in faith, not limited by materialism.
- Most people would be happy to just live and thrive and don't feel a need to dominate others or hoard resources
- There is a tiny number of people who do feel a need to dominate and/or hoard
- We are all vulnerable to propaganda
- Nobody is inherently better or more deserving than anyone else
- Nobody is entitled to the time or labor of anyone (except a child being entitled to their parents)
- Nobody actually knows the meaning of life or the nature of reality (not even materialists).
- Our own conscious experience is all we can be certain of, nobody knows any absolute truths
- The most logical assumption is that others' experience is similar to my own
- I don't want to suffer or be coerced, I don't feel others are entitled to cause me to suffer or coerce my behavior
- It's ok to defend myself against those trying to harm or coerce my behavior, dominate or hoard at my or my community's expense
- If I cause another to suffer or coerce their behavior I should expect a response
--> The goal of these axioms is not to get everyone to agree to them, it's to blaze a new path that can evolve into the way, to plant a seed that can inspire moving in new directions.
A set of explicit stated axioms allows taking the next steps and figure out how to evolve into a sustainable culture. Clear eyed strategy and goals are why the Heritage Foundation is making progress and the left is not.
Strategy like this could allow a better understanding of who and what the actual threats are and identify appropriate responses to them.
--> The "global agreement" will not be a formal inter-governmental thing, it will be loosely coupled set of cultural evolutions spurred by global conversations happening now.
While some argue that the world will soon pass the lower Paris agreement guardrail of 1.5C of heating above the preindustrial average, Schmidt says
Unless 2022 - present turn out to be an anomaly, we already have.
It's okay. Remember the IPCC panel decided in 2018(?) that we'll just go over the limit a bit and then figure out how to pull back down. With magic or something.
Giant ice cube in the ocean?
Global warming is a test. We're failing the test, so the warming is going to start accelerating until we learn our lesson
I believe a mix of runaway elitism + ecological devastation is the Great Filter. We're at our great filter and definitely will not overcome considering the galactic evidence.
And I'd be ok with this. I see that humans are failing the test. I think it would be totally fair for us to take some really huge losses as a consequence of our collective hubris. But the thing that makes me sad and angry is that we're taking down everything else with us.
There's such a huge diversity of life, basically just minding its own business in a totally sustainable way. It's been like that for billions of years. More than 1,000,000,000 years. But then humans work out that burning stuff is an easy way to do mass-production, and in less then 1000 years things start turning to shit - for everyone. That's so unfair. If it was just our own house we were burning down, I'd say its fair. But we're burning down the whole world. We're already causing mass extinction, and by all predictions it is going to get much much worse.
Other organisms and natural disasters do that, too. Ice ages, meteors, waves of diseases. The difference seems to be we have the consciousness to predict consequences, then decide whether to embark upon a path of behavior, or continue it when latent consequences emerge. I guess the question ends up being whether the course chosen is "natural," and how can we know, since plenty of organisms kill the host, while also surviving and even propagating? Then observation also changes the behavior of things. And we don't kill everything. Just whatever life is left continues to evolve in expected and unexpected ways.
Maybe ten thousand years. That last ice age ending literally changed everything but yeah, ok, let's pretend its hundreds of millions of years the same.
Or until the test is complete and humanity has failed.
Like will the bacteria survive the self cleaning cycle?
Mother Nature, Earth, or Gaia, is an organism. In my loose perspective, I like to think that this is it's "fever" attempt at eliminating the virus.
And thereby eliminating a whole bunch of other species than just humans as well.
Although I'm totally in for the occasional misanthropy, I don't like seeing it as "just a fever" anymore as too many species will go down. Life will probably persevere in the end, but so will probably a bunch of rich shitpieces, who are significantly responsible for this fever in the first place.
The earth, by any definition, is not alive. Sure there are ecological systems that interact with each other, but there's absolutely no guarantee they are able.to address issues together in an environment. I highly recommend Half Earth by EO Wilson explaining about species diversity loss and ecology.
It's important that we realize that life is the exception. None of the other planets have conditions needed to support life. Our planet would be fine to join them. It doesn't care about fevers or anything. It isn't alive.
What if humanity was created to cause climate change for the next phase of Earth's biological evolution? Is no-one considering a grander plan than what happens to humans?
A test for what? From where? I don't get it
A test of long-term sustainable viability, conducted by the limitations within the forces of nature that we audaciously call our home.
“I want to play a game”
Maybe John Kramer has gone too far this time.
Late or not, we have to do all we can to stop runaway warming and ecological collapse. We know corporations and populations won't do anything voluntarily. That is why legislation is the only way. EU is taking the lead on this. I'm hoping world countries will follow.
A lot of companies won't even allow remote work which would put a huge dent in commuter related pollution. Will that fix everything by itself? Nope, but it'd be a step in the right direction.
But they won't even do THAT. This one little thing that'd be better for a lot of people and reduce car dependence related pollution for people in areas with little to no public transit access.
I have a hard time believing the US will ever catch up to green initiatives since corporate lobbying pays corrupt assholes more...
This one little thing that’d be better for a lot of people and reduce car dependence related pollution for people in areas with little to no public transit access.
It's better for everything, cheaper, and notably has exactly zero impact on productivity, but God damnit Johnson, how can I force the interns to get me my coffee without everyone being back in the office?!
This'll happen when the corporations causing this don't do anything about it.
First you have to stop capitalist government
lol yeah right
But really though humanity is doomed unless we figure out a way to actually reverse it, because we wont do anything to stop it until its too late to stop (decades ago), so then we wont do anything until it begins creating worldwide problems, which is soon, so by then we will have to have a solution to reverse it.
When we let them do it
times like these, I feel pretty shitty about how the world and I have condemned my kids to suffer the water wars in a handful of years
Yeah, I feel the same. I was having a tough day already but reading this has made me particularly gloomy.
I feel as though we will look back at these days wistfully.
Here are some sites to remind you that not everything in the world is bad, friend:
Here are some sites to remind you that not everything in the world is bad, friend:
I thought the consensus was that it was El Nino exacerbating things, but I guess that's not the only factor.
The new evidence that Greenland lived up to its verdant name in the not-so-distant past may represent an exciting scientific breakthrough, but it also heralds ominous possibilities for the future of humanity. Present-day atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are higher than they’ve been in millions of years; evidence of an ice-free Greenland in the more recent past means that it could take even less warming than once expected to deplete the continent’s all-important ice sheet. The frozen stronghold that covers Greenland contains enough fresh water to raise sea levels by 23 feet — a staggering volume that would reshape coastlines around the world.
23 feet sounds like a lot.
I found a visualiser which goes up to 30 feet / 10m: https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/6/5.3311/51.8749/?theme=water_level&map_type=water_level_above_mhhw&basemap=roadmap&contiguous=true&elevation_model=best_available&refresh=true&water_level=23.0&water_unit=ft
Impossible. Michael Crichton and the experts in Superfreakonomics assured us that scientists would be able to quickly implement geoengineering projects to reduce CO2 and cool the earth. /s
Technology is great! Let's incite hatred through social media.
Nonlilnearity has begun
Thanks for using the term 'nonlinearity', I'm now reading about nonlinear dynamic climate systems.
I'd say "thanks, now I'm scared," but I fully expect humans to be a self-limiting species, anyway, so I'm just 'oh, okay' about it all.
Its cause none of these systems are static or by themselves in a vacuum. There are feedback loops in all parts of our environment. Its not a coincidence that the temperature started to accelerate after the recent series of MAJOR volcanic eruptions in the many parts of the worlds oceans. Throw in the absolute monstrosity that is human industry and well the feedback there is more heat from industry combined with greenhouse gases means the the heat in those areas rises. What does heat do? It rises and moves outwards until it reaches equilibrium. Where is it cold? The arctic and antarctic. What's happening in those places recently? Oh yeah huge spikes in temperature that are causing shifts by over 40-50 degrees Fahrenheit or about 8-10 degrees celsius. Sure it's technically still freezing over the arctic and antarctic for portions of the year. However the arctic has, for the last several years during summer, been almost entirely ice free. The North fucking Pole is ice free during the summer time. That's fucking insane. Everything feeds into everything else with our environment and climate.
Until more people in power actually understand these facts, we are all going to suffer needlessly.
“It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." -Upton Sinclair
Plenty of powerful people know these things. The profit motive makes these things hard to care about. We will continue like this until options are gone.
It is almost like we are stupid fucking monkeys with rockets and bullets
Rockets and bullets are a problem. But it is the desire to use them against a scapegoated group to cement our own power and status that is the bigger issue.
Anyone who is "baffled" is either lying or hasn't been paying attention.
I like to link this video when the subject comes up.
This isn't just climate deniers though - even those that were expecting significant climate shifts are still seeing higher than expected. This isn't "huh, things are getting hotter, who would've thought?" This is "we knew it would get hotter, but we predicted it would take longer." We thought we were fucked, but we're actually double fucked.
The issue here is that leading climate scientists are saying our current models aren't accounting for the actual reported climate, and they're not sure why it's off. They're hoping the new NASA climate program will provide more data for the causes. Currently it's not explainable by CO2 emissions, sulfur from boats, volcanoes, etc, all of which when factored in still don't account for more than 90% of how much warmer it is getting.
Yes, human caused global warming is real and happening. The big concern right now is it's happening much faster than expected and we have no good, proven theory as to why. That's a problem.
By definition, ideology is based on fantasy ideal. And the concept that 'human economic growth is primarily good' is a fantasy that can't tolerate the reality of that economic growth harming our world.
"faster than expected" lol
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I see a lot of doom and gloom in the comments here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but is not the main concern being that sea levels will rise and flood costal cities? Plus some parts of the world will be too hot to comfortably live? Human beings are remarkably creative when they need to be. Right now most are overweight watching TV and worried about stupid unimportant things. But if the need arose to build new towns/cities in higher and cooler locations, we have the man power. Literally BILLIONS of humans, some smart ones to plan it all, and the rest to build it. I don't see an "end of humanity" or "don't have kids" as being reasonable. Humanity will adapt. Please correct me if I'm missing something here.
I agree that humans are remarkably creative, and I agree "don't have kids" is reasonable. But the "end of humanity" might come through this. However, I agree that we might be able to survive this. But please take it seriously. The whole climate crisis is a complex challenge by itself, and the politicization of it, along with the capitalistic interests, are complicating it further. We need urgent global action if we want humanity to survive.
Consider: Not all those billions of people will survive the sudden shift in climate. The breaking points in climate make everything super difficult to plan for. It is not just about finding higher ground that is climatic for humans, the whole agriculture will be a big problem. The climate will be so different from what we have right now, we are not perfectly sure how which crops would work where. We need globally aligned tests, knowledge sharing at the very best, along with all the action we need to take along with carbon emissions.
This challenge, is our biggest yet. We need a global, aligned, focused effort. But, we are far from it. The stress is causing conflict everywhere. Our international order is not up to coordinate this global effort, unfortunately. And if COVID-19 showed us what we can have on a global scale as a response, it means every nation state will turn inwards, try to fight against it by themselves while also fighting against everyone else. This problem is the crux. Our systems, our worldviews, our doctrine are not up for this fight ahead.
There is hope. But there is also a lot to despair about.
And if COVID-19 showed us what we can have on a global scale as a response, it means every nation state will turn inwards, try to fight against it by themselves while also fighting against everyone else.
My money is on hot, stressed, scared people tending to vote for politicians who blame immigrants / feminists / queer people. Maybe there will even be sacrifices.
Sea levels rising is only one of the concerns. I think the biggest concern is the reduction of ariable land due to climate change. I.e. the carrying capacity of the Earth will decrease (and I'm of the opinion that the human species has already greatly overshot Earth's carrying capacity; hence the current degradation of our environment).
I think the species will survive, but may experience a population crash (i.e. mass death), and severly reduced quality of life. I think having 1 or 2 kids is fine for now, and hope I'm wrong in my Malthusian-like thinking.
Pretty spot on, except the part condemning only 1 or 2 kids to a horrible death is fine for now.
Yea I'm twisting your words around a bit, but really that's the horrible reality I'm seeing.
It's just very on point - too much to ask humans to stop procreating.
Human beings are remarkably creative when they need to be.
Yes! Humans say they think children are important, then create situations where children are hungry, abused, or killed in war. Then they create rationalisations for that being inevitable, or acceptable, or even deserved.
Humans also create technology to 'make the world better', then use it to convince people as a group to do things which make the world worse.
Aren't humans creative? They're going to create a lack of humans eventually - isn't that imaginative?
Please correct me if I'm missing something here.
Those in power often use crises to invent reasons to take more power, and to direct it against scapegoats. The point is not often to make the world better for everyone, the point is very often to make the world better for those who already have the most.
There is a lot more to it than rise of sea levels on the one hand and some places being too hot.
TL;DR: Climate change causes mass extinctions, ecosystem collapse, extreme weather, and life-threatening heat. Technology alone won't save us; prevention is crucial. Ignoring climate action risks severe economic damage, comparable to a permanent Great Depression.
(Prepare for a great wall of fuck.)
In short (list is not exhaustive, there's surely more which I also don't know of or don't think of right now):
- Mass extinction of several species, which can't keep up with the pace of climate change. You might have heard already how insect popluations dramatically declined in the past decades.
- Extinction or even significant deaths and lack of offspring in various species leads to imbalance and collapse of entire eco systems.
- Humans are part of and relying on functioning and healthy eco systems. Without them our very basis of life starts collapsing, leading to numerous human deaths and a lot of misery.
- The occurence of extreme weather conditions as well as catastophes in consequence of climate change increases. The occasional summer storm might become less occasional, which is less of a problem. But so do floodings, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts or forest fires increase. And those cost lives and do a lot of damage. We experience weather conditions in places today, which most common people would've deemed impossible or extremely unlikely at least. (Not every extreme weather condition is the result of climate change though. But a lot are. An entire field of attribution science has emerged to elaborate which catastrophe has been a direct cause of climate change.)
- Increased temperatures, but especially heatwaves, are already now costing more and more lives and that's not just some particular places with extremely hot temperatures, but it's also occuring in entire nations known for more temperate conditions. For example in the EU.
- Being "too hot" is only one side. You can survive 40°C or higher, if the air humidity is low. But due to global warming we can also observe time frames in regions where the air humidity plus temperature reaches such levels that people are exposed to life-threatening health risks already at 31°C. (See also "wet bulb temperature" in general.) Higher humidity makes it harder to cool ourselves by sweating, i.e., evaporative cooling. This is being observed more and more often in south-east asia and the middle east but also started to affect the USA in some regions (Texas, last year in 2023).
You might now understand a bit better why even a few degrees more around the globe incur existential threats.
Human beings are remarkably creative when they need to be. [...] if the need arose [...] some smart ones [...] plan it all, and the rest [...] build it
(Sorry for quoting you a bit more freely here.)
Technology can do much, but it is not magic. (I'm an engineering scientist, because I realised at some point that I can't become a magician.) Entropy is a bitch and current solutions or attempts I know of regarding carbon capture are a nice idea at best, but in practise currently not feasibe and therefore a money-pit at worst. "Building higher and cooler" seems a naive approach given the scale and complexity of human lives and disregards the problems we're facing due to climate change. I don't mean that condescendingly, rather to highlight how massively impractical that approach would be on the one hand and no solution for most problems caused by climate change on the other hand.
I absolutely think that it's necessary to continue research in that area, but until we have developed solutions which can tackle the problems we've caused in a significant way (which can still take decades until we've got large-scale applicable solutions), I think it's best to practise prevention. Avoid contributing factors to climate change at allmost all costs.
Don't put all your money on the "technology will save us"-horse.By the way:
The people who think that climate and environmental protection are damaging the economy are short-sighted, as climate change is projected to cause a tremendous amount financial damage world-wide in the long-term. One of many many sources on this puts it like this:when the researchers added in the possibility of a moderate 2 degrees of warming before the end of the century, this led to a decline in future GDP of between 30 and 50 percent by 210 [...] In the U.S. alone [...] A 50 percent decline in 2100 GDP relative to baseline means a loss of $56 trillion each year, which exceeds the current GDP. Such declines would leave individuals with “a 31 percent drop in purchasing power relative to a world without climate change,” Bilal adds. Such losses are “comparable to living in the 1929 Great Depression, forever,” he says.
https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2024/09/harvard-economic-impact-climate-change
Environmental protection is economical protection. They go hand-in-hand.
The answer is aluminum roofing! I was a the beach a couple of weeks ago and you just couldn't step on the hot magma for any amount of time. But if you sat down on the shadeless aluminum benches provided by the idiots at the government, you were welcome to the best feeling of freezing your ass off while searing your nuts off. It's aluminum, we know it can reflect like 90% of all incoming light including heat and UV....and Wi-Fi. But I much rather have antennas that allow phone communications than to have to run the AC non stop even when the house has more insulation than my fridge.
110⁰ heat wave in a high humidity climate
"Have you tried switching out your shingled roof for aluminum?"
Like, idk, maybe this can save a few bucks on your AC bill. But this isn't magic. It can't keep the air getting into your house from being superheated.
But it isolates radiated heat. You'll have to pump heat built up inside. But also, aluminum radiators pointing upward can help reduce climate temperatures similar to the way trees do. Trees absorb the heat and shade the ground. These would shade and reflect heat creating a cooler area underneath if heat is not actively being generated...no humans or computers or pets. So not a silver bullet but just makes me so puzzled to see people using tar, which pollutes the ground, and steel which perfectly absorbs heat. No, the best solution is to use aluminum.
Aluminum oxidizes and no longer reflects after long term exposure to moisture. It would have to be painted white, which is really no different than current metal roofing.
Which does bring up a good point though... all we need is some really environmentally friendly and long lasting white paint (that doesn't get dirty) and we could easily slow down climate change. Unfortunately white paint gets dirty real quick and the dirt absorbs radiation the same as a dark paint.
Anodized aluminum absorbs some heat, but that's only one single light pass. Or well two passes. But that's way better than aluminum with white bird poop on it which is easily cleaned. Clear anodized aluminum or white reflective aluminum would be quite superior to anything out there.
Maybe, just maybe, if things are not behaving as expected, then maybe the cause isn't what theory says. Look at that list of countries. All contain deserts. All of whom I was taught experience these temperatures when I was in school in the eighties. I'm fucking old with a long memory.
LOL, what now? Are you claiming countries are experiencing significantly higher temperatures than forecasted due to having or being in deserts?
All of whom I was taught experience these temperatures when I was in school in the eighties.
If they only experienced those temperatures in the 80s, when you were at school, it wouldn't be hot now. QED.
Maybe, just maybe, if things are not behaving as expected, then maybe the cause isn't what theory says.
Yes. Maybe the cause is that you went to school in the 80s.