Earth is Warming Faster Than Previously Thought, and the Window is Closing To Avoid Catastrophic Outcomes (cnn.com) 323
JoshuaZ writes: As the world battles historic droughts, landscape-altering wildfires and deadly floods, a landmark report from global scientists says the window is rapidly closing to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and avoid catastrophic changes that would transform life as we know it. The state-of-the-science report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world has rapidly warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, and is now careening toward 1.5 degrees -- a critical threshold that world leaders agreed warming should remain below to avoid worsening impacts.
Only by making deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, can we halt the precipitous trend. "Bottom line is that we have zero years left to avoid dangerous climate change, because it's here," Michael E. Mann, a lead author of the IPCC's 2001 report, told CNN. Unlike previous assessments, Monday's report concludes it is "unequivocal" that humans have caused the climate crisis and confirms that "widespread and rapid changes" have already occurred, some of them irreversibly.
That is due in part to the breakneck pace at which the planet has been recently warming, faster than scientists have previously observed. Since 2018, when the panel published a special report on the significance of 1.5-degrees, greenhouse gas emissions have continued mostly unabated and have pushed global temperatures higher. Even under the IPCC's most optimistic scenario, in which the world's emissions begin to drop sharply today and are reduced to net zero by 2050, global temperature will still peak above the 1.5-degree threshold before falling. In a statement, UN Secretary-General Antanio Guterres called the report "a code red for humanity," and noted the 1.5-degree threshold is "perilously close." "The only way to prevent exceeding this threshold is by urgently stepping up our efforts, and pursuing the most ambitious path," Guterres said.
Only by making deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, while also removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, can we halt the precipitous trend. "Bottom line is that we have zero years left to avoid dangerous climate change, because it's here," Michael E. Mann, a lead author of the IPCC's 2001 report, told CNN. Unlike previous assessments, Monday's report concludes it is "unequivocal" that humans have caused the climate crisis and confirms that "widespread and rapid changes" have already occurred, some of them irreversibly.
That is due in part to the breakneck pace at which the planet has been recently warming, faster than scientists have previously observed. Since 2018, when the panel published a special report on the significance of 1.5-degrees, greenhouse gas emissions have continued mostly unabated and have pushed global temperatures higher. Even under the IPCC's most optimistic scenario, in which the world's emissions begin to drop sharply today and are reduced to net zero by 2050, global temperature will still peak above the 1.5-degree threshold before falling. In a statement, UN Secretary-General Antanio Guterres called the report "a code red for humanity," and noted the 1.5-degree threshold is "perilously close." "The only way to prevent exceeding this threshold is by urgently stepping up our efforts, and pursuing the most ambitious path," Guterres said.
Please stop saying that. (Score:4, Insightful)
I wish people would stop saying things like "Window is Closing To Avoid Catastrophic Outcomes".
It's a continuum. The longer we wait to deal with the problem, the greater amount of warming we will see, but there's no on/off date for solving the problem such that "the window is closed."
pCatastrophic outcomes is not a sharply defined term. There are levels of more and more catastrophic as you go farther into the greenhouse regime.
Re:Please stop saying that. (Score:5, Insightful)
> It's a continuum. The longer we wait to deal with the problem, the greater amount of warming we will see, but there's no on/off date for solving the problem such that "the window is closed."
Except there is.
If you're headed fast towards a cliff, you have a limited window of time to avoid driving off it.
There is a point at which the problem becomes so severe that it begins to self-perpetuate, and the rate at which the problem gets worse begins to accelerate. At that point, no amount of human intervention will "solve the problem" and it will be absolutely too late.
=Smidge=
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OP is right. I mean, it may not be a continuum, but saying "window is closing to avoid catastrophic outcomes" is counter-productive. The goal people have when they say that is to get people off of their asses and make change. But the problem is that some people start to think the problem is too big and we have already lost, so we might as well give up. It leads to fatalism.
And the other thing is that nobody knows where the tipping points REALLY are. They make their best guesses, but climate is very complex
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And the other thing is that nobody knows where the tipping points REALLY are. They make their best guesses, but climate is very complex and hard to model accurately.
Tipping point and closing window are kind of the same thing. So if you don't believe in a closing window, you shouldn't reference a tipping point.
It will be what it will be at this point. This almost certainly not lead to our extinction, but given the likelihood of water wars and altered ecosystems that might happen in places, as well as how the people in those places will survive or become refugees or whatever they end up doing, the human population could be looking at a decimation. People looking at d
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But it's not a cliff. It's a steep slope that is getting steeper. At what point do your auto tires fail to grip well enough that braking is impossible.
I had that problem once, where I had both feet on the brake and I was not slowing nearly as fast as I wanted to even though it wasn't a cliff. At some point we're going to want to be jettisoning extra weight, trying to swap in better tires and replacing brake pad while we're still moving, etc.
With a cliff, then you're somewhat safe if you can stop a meter
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This is why I say stop taxing me if we are going over the cliff anyway. I'll need that money to pay for the increased cost of everything since there will be fewer resources to go around, making everything cost more.
Since we clearly will not be able to stop ourselves from driving over this cliff, we should stop the fleecing.
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But since everyone will have more money, it's gonna cost even more and you won't really benefit from having it. Didn't you learn anything from the UBI discussions?
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> It's a continuum. The longer we wait to deal with the problem, the greater amount of warming we will see, but there's no on/off date for solving the problem such that "the window is closed."
Except there is.
If you're headed fast towards a cliff, you have a limited window of time to avoid driving off it.
Reminds me of the deniers during the sinking of the Titanic. As the stern rose, and the bow fell, you could hear many murmuring "How can we be sinking - we're 200 feet in the air?"
The bad news, is that we might already be at that 200 feet in the air phase.
Bifurcation [Re:Please stop saying that.] (Score:2)
continuous models don't apply that well to climate systems. There are definitely tipping points where huge equilibrium shifts can occur. https://academic.oup.com/clima... [oup.com]
That's a fascinating article (thanks for the link) but it says nearly the opposite of what you say. It says that simple models of "future abrupt climate change" that have been popularized under the term ‘tipping points’ are misleading. The conclusion is "the uncertainties associated with the possible future occurrence of abrupt shifts are large and not well quantified."
People telling us that the window of opportunity is closing because they know a tipping point is about the be reached... are be
Re: Please stop saying that. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Picture a ball at the top of a hill about to roll off... IT's much easier to stop it before it heads down the hill.
Exactly!
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There are several known feedback loops whose local eigenvalues are only likely to undergo a catastrophic reversal of sign to positive runaway feedback if heating exceeds a certain threshold. Most recently in the news is the upcoming shutdown of the north atlantic overturning circulation (which will among other catastrophic outcomes plunge Europe nearly back into the ice age), but the permafrost meltdown that has already begun and potential triggering of the clathrate gun are two others with om
If we wait longer things will be more extreme (Score:4, Interesting)
It depends. There are several known feedback loops whose local eigenvalues are only likely to undergo a catastrophic reversal of sign to positive runaway feedback if heating exceeds a certain threshold.
Yes... and no. There are some proposed tipping points, but they are not well quantified, and not universally agreed on, and we most certainly can't say that "the window of opportunity is closing" at any well-defined time. Yes, there are indeed some proposed positive feedback mechanisms. Most of them, however, are continuous and not discontinuous. Release of methane from clathrates, for example, does not happen all at once; it's continuous.
And none of these have well defined tipping points such that you can say "the window of opportunity is closing" and "we have zero years left". No. If we wait longer things will be more extreme, if we had acted earlier things would be less extreme. The longer we wait the more extreme they will be; there's no point at which we say "ok, that happened and it's over. No sense in fixing it, the problem's already here.
Most recently in the news is the upcoming shutdown of the north atlantic overturning circulation
Yes, one paper on that was in the news recently... but didn't have a deadline "we must act by X date". (Also, it's not a "shut down" of the thermohaline circulation that they're talking about, but a state change to a less strong circulation.)
but the permafrost meltdown that has already begun and potential triggering of the clathrate gun are two others with ominous implications.
Not a discontinuous process. The longer we wait, the more will melt and trigger.
We're not yet at the point where clathrate blowouts cause enough warming to cause more blowouts, but we are headed that way.
That part I don't disagree with. It's the part "if we don't do something absolutely immediately, it's too late and we might as well do nothing" that I disagree with.
And if that happens, we're talking about 5C or more of warming practically overnight. Within years.
No, not overnight. Climate change is a slow phenomenon. Implacable, but slow. Within decades, maybe.
Re:Please stop saying that. (Score:5, Insightful)
I wish people would stop saying things like "Window is Closing To Avoid Catastrophic Outcomes".
It's a continuum. The longer we wait to deal with the problem, the greater amount of warming we will see, but there's no on/off date for solving the problem such that "the window is closed."
pCatastrophic outcomes is not a sharply defined term. There are levels of more and more catastrophic as you go farther into the greenhouse regime.
Kind of, the problem is we're also the apocryphal frog in the pot of soon-to-be boiling water, and without sharply defined deadlines (artificial or not) we'll inevitably fail to act.
There is a very real possibility that global action will only become feasible when significant catastrophes are already upon us, and even then, as one can see with COVID, people can still look at millions of deaths and still rationalize away the existence of a catastrophe.
Re: Action only possible after catastrophe (Score:2)
The difference being that with the climate system, the mistake of delayed action will cause oh, around 500 years minimum of relative misery, instead of COVID's few years. The climate system has massive inertia. If you want to stop it rolling downhill, you needed to apply the brakes when it first started moving slowly.
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Read through the comments. [youtu.be]. The secret to solving climate change is finding someone else to blame. If it's the Democrats, or "big business" then we'll be done with this issue by the end of the year.
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Actually, there are trigger points. If you go over them, whole climate sub-systems flip and you go from relatively nice conditions to "catastrophe" in a pretty short time. This, incidentally, has been known for about 40-50 years now.
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One other small detail that doesn't show up in discussions too often -- if greenhouse gasses ceased, how long would it take for the natural processes to purge themselves back to what we claim was 'normal'? A recovery period, if you will. And it seems reasonable that during this transition period extreme weather will continue in some form. Hopefully, the climate models should be able to make this sort of prediction -- various levels of cutbacks out to a humanity ceases to exist so it all stops point. How lon
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You mean except for the runaway nature of what we're seeing today. Hotter planet = changed weather patterns. Changed weather patterns = more intense fire seasons in heavily forested areas. More fires = more release of carbon that takes decades to sequester back out of the air and into wood. More carbon = hotter planet. Repeat.
So yeah, there is a tipping point where things start to get catastrophically worse because it becomes a self-sustaining cycle instead of one we're causing. I don't have data abou
Offtopic - deal with the crisis at hand (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans across the political spectrum are not curbing our own behaviour adequately to prevent ourselves from screwing ourselves and the eco-systems over.
This has more to do with scientific illiteracy and general ignorance across the board and less to do with a particular political system for organizing a solution.
A carbon fee and dividend solution would allow the free market to continue to its utmost power while helping solve this problem.
Stop with the marxism garbage and learn why changes are needed in our energy system.
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If you've learned nothing else over the past century, it's that Marxists love to deal with absolutes.
What on earth are you talking about?
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It's the American model of simple minded politics - always have a bogeyman to blame problems on.
Oh please. In America things aren't black and white, they're red and blue.
We're strictly more sophisticated than that.
Re: Please stop saying that. (Score:2)
The data blames the USA (Score:2)
Specifically, the historical cumulative emissions per capita data.
Look it up.
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Yeah yeah, USA sucks. I get it. Last I checked, we were at least on a downward trend on emissions. We are doing better. More renewals are coming online. More electric cars are being bought and we are working on it.
On the other hand, other countries that are trying to improve the quality of life for their people are trending upward in their carbon output, so even if USA vanishes, we are very screwed if we don't drastically change how overall society works.
We've never preached sustainability in the USA that I
Focusing on the wrong thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I see it as like having diabetes. You don't "fix" diabetes. You mitigate it. Of course you don't want to make your diabetes *worse*, and so you change your diet and do things to keep it from getting worse. But there is no magical fix, or reversal. So you have to start doing things to deal with this new reality of you having diabetes.
It's increasingly less likely to avoid calamity, so we need to focus on mitigations.
Access to fresh water is going to be the single most important resource in a hotter environment. So we need to work *now* on new water management strategies, to both collect/preserve as much water as possible, generate as much fresh water as possible, and distribute that water to where it's needed.
Coastal communities will need to relocate, so they will need mitigations. Weather events will get more severe, so more communities need to get prepared for them now. Insurance is going to change. Building will need to change. Climate control. Fire control. And a billion other things that probably somebody has mentioned in passing "oh, in the future we will need more X". But we need to actually develop all of that *now*. Not to _prevent_ climate change, but to prepare for what we know is coming.
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Coastal communities will need to relocate
How much exactly do you expect the water levels to rise from AGW?
Re:Focusing on the wrong thing (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to worry about this, but then I found NOAA's Sea Level Rise Viewer. [noaa.gov]
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Coastal communities will need to relocate
How much exactly do you expect the water levels to rise from AGW?
It depends on events and time frames that you’re talking about. The Greenland ice sheet is degrading much faster than was modeled a few years ago, and if were to collapse completely (unlikely any time soon) it would add 6 meters to sea level. The East Antarctic ice sheet has enough water to raise levels by 60 meters. That’s if all of the ice were to melt and end up in the oceans. That will take a long time, but in geologic terms there were periods when there were no major ice sheets.
For comparis
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I have no idea if this is accurate, but re: Greenland ice sheet melting time frames: http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pete/greenland.html
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it's 3mm / year currently, is it not? So yeah. It's rising, but a seawall built 1m higher than the highest astronomic tide is going to keep working for a while yet - in our puny human terms.
But. You might want to factor in increased storm strength and frequency in many seaboard places. Big storm + onshore wind + spring tide = those millimetres start to count.
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Throughout the geological record we see that cities have moved and rebuilt after cataclysms and changes to their climate. Getting back to the idea that cities and people should move instead of doing everything possible to preserve a city in a worsening location isn't a step backwards so much as an
Re:Focusing on the wrong thing (Score:5, Insightful)
... but it did remind me to think about this subject in a non-political manner (if that is possible at all).
It's really incredible that in the US, climate change is still a partisan issue. Just goes to show how married the right is to the petrodollar. The rest of the world has moved on and is trying to fix the issue. Can we get all of the US finally on board, please?
Fucking Fox News, Heartland Institute and other conservative "think tanks" messing with the heads of 50% of Americans for decades now. These people are so eager to protect their profits, they would rather see the world burn.
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Well, part of the attitude is dollars but a whole lot is due to other reason. Sure, we're all going to die so I'd like to retire to my great big mansion with automatic turrets to keep the riffraff out first...
But first there's the religious aspect, seriously, that says God promised to not destroy the world with a flood, therefore, QED, all this whining about floods is just from a bunch of evil atheists. Never mind that we have catastrophic flooding all the time it won't happen to us, cover your ears and si
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And to add to this: even though what you just said is a very rational statement, doesn't mean people will go along with it.
When your town gets leveled by tornadoes for the 10th time, you'd think they'd consider moving. Welp...
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I see it as like having diabetes. You don't "fix" diabetes. You mitigate it. Of course you don't want to make your diabetes *worse*, and so you change your diet and do things to keep it from getting worse. But there is no magical fix, or reversal. So you have to start doing things to deal with this new reality of you having diabetes.
It's increasingly less likely to avoid calamity, so we need to focus on mitigations.
Access to fresh water is going to be the single most important resource in a hotter environment. So we need to work *now* on new water management strategies, to both collect/preserve as much water as possible, generate as much fresh water as possible, and distribute that water to where it's needed.
Coastal communities will need to relocate, so they will need mitigations. Weather events will get more severe, so more communities need to get prepared for them now. Insurance is going to change. Building will need to change. Climate control. Fire control. And a billion other things that probably somebody has mentioned in passing "oh, in the future we will need more X". But we need to actually develop all of that *now*. Not to _prevent_ climate change, but to prepare for what we know is coming.
You're making the assumption that we CAN mitigate.
It's hard to say what happens to our food growing capacity when the temperature goes up several degrees and we start looking at ecosystem collapse. Sure, Europe and North America probably have the industrial capacity to adapt, but the developing world might not. What happens when we start looking at mass famines over major portions of the globe? What if China and India with their Nuclear weapons start dealing with mass starvation? Even if the G7 could insula
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I mean, it's not even a question at this point, developing countries are already struggling more with food production due to climate change. So absolutely this is a concern. But there are things we can start working on (not "solving", but "beginning to solve") to reduce the impact as much as possible. Things like the projects trying to collect water from air. Or new developments in irrigation, or hydroponics, or... I have no idea because I'm not well-read on these issues. But definitely we should start / co
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"I see it as like having diabetes. You don't "fix" diabetes. You mitigate it. Of course you don't want to make your diabetes *worse*, and so you change your diet and do things to keep it from getting worse. But there is no magical fix, or reversal. So you have to start doing things to deal with this new reality of you having diabetes."
Except that is all wrong. Diabetes (type 2) is reversible and there is a fix. Type 1 is not, but there is no "new reality" with type 1 because you are born with it.
"Not to _
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Except that is all wrong. Diabetes (type 2) is reversible and there is a fix. Type 1 is not, but there is no "new reality" with type 1 because you are born with it.
Except that is all wrong. There are no current fixes for T2 diabetes, although for some people they can manage it via diet and exercise. Others require pills to deal with insulin resistance. Fewer yet require insulin shots. YMMV
For T1 diabetes, you aren't "born with it". Having a genetic predisposition for it is not the same as having it. While you may get T1 as a baby or child, it can happen quite a bit later. In my case, I wasn't diagnosed until I was 25 years old.
There is absolutely a sudden shift in you
You can absolutely fix diabetes (Score:4, Interesting)
Furthermore just because we can't cure type 1 diabetes now doesn't mean we can't figure out how to do it we just need time and effort. Somewhere along the line we gave up on science being able to solve problems. I think mostly because a handful of Rich assholes want to hoard all the money and it costs money to solve big problems. And hey climate change is no skin off their backs. They have private compounds in the mountains plenty of food and those compounds are only reachable by helicopter so even if a horde of angry starving climate refugees wants to get at them they can't.
One of the major problems with modern capitalism is that a modern capitalist is completely disconnected from the problems of modern capitalism. The system Adam Smith talked about didn't take into account private helicopters and jets and private armies and drones. Adjustments need to be made in light of that technology but nobody seems to want to do it.
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We will solve the problems of global warming precisely because there is profit in doing so. We can produce energy in a way that makes money and lowers CO2. The problem has been government subsidies making these profitable solutions no longer profitable. To some the solution is more subsidies, but to the people that see what is happening the solution is to end the subsidies.
You are correct that nobody wants to make the necessary adjustments. That's because there's no glory for politicians for lowering sp
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Coastal communities will need to relocate, so they will need mitigations.
Yes, the most ideal "mitigation" is to convince Greed to give up trillions in real estate value within those prized coastal communities that should be condemned going forward.
Good luck convincing Greed. We can't even get remote work to be accepted universally because of corruption in the commercial real estate sector. Coastlines could be 120 degrees and 6 inches under water and they would still want millions for what was "prime" real estate.
Insurance will want to bleed that dry to the last possible minut
This tune has only one note (Score:2)
If an article began with "There is a new deadly coronavirus strain circulating", you would be rightfully annoyed if all of the remaining text and discussion was only about locking yourself in your home - nothing else. No mention of masking, distancing, hand washing, developing vaccines, work from home - just locking yourself up.
Well, here we have "The planet is getting dangerously hot", and the only discussion is about reducing emissions - nothing else.
Like a lockdown, reducing emissions may have a role.
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When you write "a complete top-to-bottom restructuring of every daily aspect of every human life on the planet", what do you mean? Restructured how?
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My carbon foot print is tiny compared to the the ones doing all the shouting and ranting about what I need to be doing. And how they require more of my hard earned money.
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The problem is you're dealing with people who're gonna stuff their face just to spite their doc because they don't let some "sciency guy" tell them what to do.
Unfortunately in the case of the climate problem, they don't just kill themselves, else that problem would actually have a solution.
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I see it as like having diabetes. You don't "fix" diabetes. You mitigate it.
A lot of people do fix their diabetes with proper diet and losing weight.
Blame developing countries (Score:2)
Re:Blame developing countries (Score:4, Insightful)
Every report or talking head that doesn't put "China" and "India" in the first sentence on this topic should be dismissed. China in particular gets emission exemptions intended for third-world developing nations, and put out more CO2 than anyone. It'll only get worse as they continue to expand, despite having 1.45 BILLION people, as they need to build the technology and infrastructure *today* to prevent emissions tomorrow.
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Not only this but everyone loves to dump on the US while ignoring that the US is actually out-performing the Paris Accords without kneecapping itself.
And of course all of the "sacrifices" and "drastic changes" are things that devastate the middle and working class. They need to give up cars, meat, and air conditioning. Corporations are going to keep using cargo ships that out-pollute every single car on earth though. Funny how Saint Greta never even mentioned those.
Re:Blame developing countries (Score:4, Informative)
Then let's tax their carbon emissions, divide the money equally, and send each person in the country a check every 3 months. The higher cost of shipping will encourage more domestic production, meaning more local jobs, and poor people especially will be happy to get that quarterly check.
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... and poor people especially will be happy to get that quarterly check.
Why would they when everything they need to buy with that money has gone up in price?
Too much government is the problem and more government will only make it worse. Less government is the solution.
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Because they buy less stuff than the average person and therefore the check will more than cover the difference.
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> Not only this but everyone loves to dump on the US while ignoring that the US is actually out-performing the Paris Accords without kneecapping itself.
That's quite a claim considering the Paris Agreement doesn't actually set any specific goals. I suppose it's easy to say you're ahead of schedule when nobody actually set a schedule!
> Corporations are going to keep using cargo ships that out-pollute every single car on earth though
https://ourworldindata.org/co2... [ourworldindata.org]
Transport emissions are responsible for
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China is doing a massive amount of work. Yes they are building more coal plants now, but they are retiring their older coal plants, and building a lot of solar and wind power. China now has more solar power than the EU and is building at a very fast rate https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/china-add-55-65-gw-solar-power-capacity-2021-industry-body-2021-07-22/ [reuters.com]. China is also rapidly expanding their nuclear power https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/china-nuclear-p [world-nuclear.org]
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This too. We've had the solution since the 70s
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Now developing countries need to get kneecapped right as they ramp up, since they are the fastest growing contributors to global warming.
Depends a lot upon how you define "developing nation" there's a lot of debate about if China should be included on the list or not, and if you wanted to cherry pick your metrics then the United States has regressed [independent.co.uk] into a developing nation.
However, with regards to your broader point. It's really hard to say if developing nations, in general, would be kneecapped. Developed nations had to learn a lot to get where they are, but developing nations don't necessarily have to go through the same process - for e
What happened to ... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:What happened to ... (Score:5, Informative)
The goal of the Paris Accords is to achieve RCP 2.6, under which we expect the temperatures in 2100 to be 1.5 degrees warmer than pre-industrial, plus or minus about 0.5C.
The goalposts haven't moved: 2.0 is the worst case under the goal scenario; 1.5 is the average case and 1.0 is the best case.
Up until recently we were tracking RCP 8.5, but it now appears we've had some success in improving upon that [scientificamerican.com].
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Oh oh. The Scientific American. I was reading one of their stories on CO2 mitigation a few years back. They started off by listing some of the approaches that they would not evaluate. Because reasons. (None actually ever given.) I haven't considered them to be a valid source of scientific information since then.
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a) carries substantially more damage to eco-systems and human quality of life than +1.5 degrees. We are only at +1.1 degrees (warming since pre-industrial revolution) now, and people in fire zones and mega-flood zones would already call this a catastrophe.
b) carries substantially more risk of runaway negative-feedback loops causing further warning. i.e. +2 degrees may very well not be stable, but may inevitably go to +3, +4 etc on its own. e.g. methane release, albedo change etc.
Cancel Cruise Ships Then (Score:2)
Until these jokers get serious and globally ban cruise liners, I'm just going to assume they're blowing smoke. My six cylinder truck isn't contributing very much to global warming, Carnival Cruise lines however is.
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They'll never do anything to impede corporate profits, like dealing with the sludge burning cargo ships that out pollute every single car on earth and then some. Just like they "defund" the police but hide behind gated communities and private security, destroy public schools then send their kids to private ones, ban guns but then surround themselves with armed guards and get exemptions and special permits for their friends...
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Cruise ships are a hyper-polluting industry and should be forced to repower or shut down, true. But if it's politically difficult to switch us to EVs and change where the electrons in our power lines come from, imagine how politically difficult it would be to either have a bunch of nuclear ships sailing around or simply lop off a huge industry.
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More to the point, cruise ships are a luxury. As in not at all necessary. So cutting them is an easy reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
The truly rich can go by sailing ship. The ten gallons of diesel to get in and out of harbor wouldn't matter much, or can even be vegetable oil.
When John Kerry sells his private jet to the scrapyard I'll take it that the situation is serious. When various governments ban commercial air travel. then it's very serious. When most governments are desperate enough to ground m
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Your car individually may not contribute very much. A few kilograms of greenhouse gas a year. But a hundred million automobiles when combined make a significant difference. Even more when you add in everything else (all the shoes coming from Vietnam and China, all the shirts coming from Bangladesh, all the rare earth metals in the phones coming from southern Africa, etc). Yes, I agree that we have to deal with other massive polluters. However we do need individuals to stop thinking that they have not si
If you want people to act (Score:4, Insightful)
You'll note that "you must fight climate change for your children" doesn't factor in. A dirty little secret is most people don't really care what happens to their kids all that much. If all else fails they'll convince themselves that their crotch fruit is so Amazing or God Blessed or whatever that they'll be fine.
You'll also note "that it's real" doesn't factor in. You can't convince somebody something is real when believing in it puts their job at risk.
The left figured this out a while ago, and came up with the "Green New Deal". They did manage (in true American left wing manner) to cock it up by including a bunch of irrelevant crap about racial justice in the preamble bill, but the ideas are still good.
Jobs first. Make it so no American fears losing their job. Then they'll let you do something about climate change. Until then you're just pissing in the wind.
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If only everyone read this inspiring post, all our problems would be solved. Everyone is a piece of shit who cares about no one other than themselves, so that's how we fix it.
When Obama sells his mansion on the sea (Score:3, Funny)
... then we'll know they believe their own press. Until then, do as they do, not as they say, and party on.
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Yes, bet your life and the future of human civilization on how rich people treat their disposable toys, very wise.
Who's "they", Sparky? (Score:3)
Obama was a bigger oil man than both Bush's combined - nearly doubling America's production and bragged that it was being drilled faster than it was going to market. He's a right wing freakshow who doesn't give the tiniest, greenest little shit about climate change.
So Depressing (Score:2)
It
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It's going to be the end of the world as we know it. We need a miracle.
Uh, what exactly are you worried about that will "end the world as we know it?"
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Less work - less gas (Score:2)
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Why not go for the catastrophic outcome ? It might be bad for humanity but good for the earth.
Depends on what you mean by "the earth," I suppose. The planet itself is in no danger-- it's a hunk of rock with a liquid core, and will be unchanged by small changes in the equilibrium thermal balance of the surface.
What people usually mean by "save the Earth" is saving the ecosystems of the Earth. These are very sensitive to climate. Humans won't have any problem surviving. It may be costly in economic terms, but humanity itself is in no danger. But we are likely to stress ecosystems to the breaking poin
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Mmm... I'm not so sure that humanity itself can survive this. But aside of this minor problem, there is little danger to the planet or life on it. Life has always somehow prevailed. May take a few million years again to recycle our crap and some intelligent life may finally settle on the planet.
By then we may already have become oil, so they have something to pump and run their cars with.
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Well, in the long term there may be benefits- like a million years. A warmer climate may create a higher biodensity.
But the next 10,000 years will really suck because the changes will come on so rapidly.
The system will reach an equilibrium. The problem is that the process of reaching equilibrium will probably destroy civilized humanity.
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I suspect one of the reasons we haven't seen a full-focus shift towards mitigating global warming is simply that the people actually able to make those massive changes: governments, massive industrial players, etc.; see no motive to do so. The people in charge will be fine. It's those of us on the "lower rungs" of society (and not directly participating in society in underdeveloped countries) that will pay the price. The decision makers, the movers, the shakers, the money holders, the power brokers? The
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Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I, for one, accept those of people who have spent their careers studying this issue.
Please provide references to the peer-reviewed, scientific literature supporting your opinion -- or shut up.
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Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I, for one, accept those of people who have spent their careers studying this issue.
Please provide references to the peer-reviewed, scientific literature supporting your opinion -- or shut up.
Me too - but if you gave a line or two of quoting, we could see who you were replying to.
Re:Nice round number paradox (Score:5, Insightful)
There is no clear dividing line between night and day; that doesn't mean there's no difference.
The night day transition is conventionally determined by the angle of the sun to the eastern horizon:
(1) night: < -18 degrees
(2) astronomical twilight < -12 degrees
(3) nautical twilight < -6 degrees
(4) civil twilight < 0 degrees
(5) day >= 0
These divisions are a *convention*; you could chose to have any number of divisions. But that doesn't make them *bullshit*. They were chosen to be useful.
Likewise nobody is saying 1.49 degrees temperature increase is perfectly fine but 1.51 is a catastrophe. Bad things start to happen well before you hit 1.5. 1.5 was was chosen to be *useful*, i.e., a figure that we could conceivably achieve if we had the will.
Re: Nice round number paradox (Score:2)
Twilight isn't bullshit. Civil twilight is geometric sunset and the other ones denote sufficiently dark skies for various purposes from sighting bright navigation stars by eye to doing deep sky astronomy.
Re: Right (Score:3)
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Well considering the US is looking to spend $3.5 TRILLION on fixing "climate change" I think those are valid questions to ask. Even scientists are not above wanting money.
The US will spend trillions on "climate change" like they've spend billions on "internet infrastructure".
Which is to say 90% of that will end up in corrupt pockets at taxpayer expense, and then Greed N. Corruption will come around for another holy-shit-we're-all-gonna-die round of taxpayer robbery 5 years from now, while falsely promising this time the money will get appropriated properly.
Sure hope Greed has a planet in mind, not that it gives a shit past the next fiscal quarter.
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Do you have a solution that is not merely "do nothing"?
Water vapor per degree of temperature? (Score:2)
If you have to feed an AC troll, please don't perpetuate the vacuous subject. If you have an actual point to make, you should be able to think of a Subject that is related to your point. (Unless perhaps you are actually trying to help the troll get bonus money? Maybe you're just a named troll?)
I did have a funny question on the topic and my initial websearches came up dry, so I'll ask here:
For each degree the average temperature increases, how much additional water evaporates from the oceans?
The obvious pro
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If you have to feed an AC troll, please don't perpetuate the vacuous subject. If you have an actual point to make, you should be able to think of a Subject that is related to your point. (Unless perhaps you are actually trying to help the troll get bonus money? Maybe you're just a named troll?)
I did have a funny question on the topic and my initial websearches came up dry, so I'll ask here:
For each degree the average temperature increases, how much additional water evaporates from the oceans?
The upshot of the increased evaporation is that yes - there will be more precipitation. I'm not certain of the increased amount of evaporation.
Right now, the weather patterns are a bit chaotic, so we won't be able to tell which places will get much/most of the increased rainfall.
The whacked thing is that with the changing weather patterns, it's not a lock that places like the American West will get back to anything normal. There is even some thought that the Nebraska Sand dunes may return. It only tak
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Great idea. What planet are we gonna move to?
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Yeah and we keep ignoring the warnings and we keep getting the dire consequences. Funny how that works.
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The inland region of my Province is close to uninhabitable due to wildfires right now, and has been for the majority of the last half decade of summers.
Europe and parts of Asia had some spectacularly extreme flooding over the last month.
Look more carefully, and try to understand the trend predictions.
The experts are talking about a slow catastrophe that keeps getting worse for a century o
Re:How many of their alarming predictions have fai (Score:5, Informative)
With respect to the IPCC? None of them. We’re doing worse than predicted.
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It's actually just a minor factor, countries can have increasing populations and decreasing CO2 output at the same time:
https://www.wired.com/story/op... [wired.com]
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"COVID-19 was one way nature tried to regulate. Next will be harvest crisis. Then wars. Problem is in process of being solved."
Right, there is a higher intelligence guiding this. COVID was an "attempt to a solve a problem". Sure thing, preacher.
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Maybe try to explain that it's 2C is a global average and point out what that can mean in terms of local extreme weather - flooding, heat waves, hurricanes, etc. Focus on the local effects and how they're going to change.
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The point is, we've approached and blown past so many declared "tipping points" the term has become meaningless.
Only to people who don't understand climate science. "Tipping point" is a well defined scientific term. Scientists have identified a lot of potential tipping points. It is possible we have already passed some of them, and if we haven't, we will very soon. It's hard to tell exactly when you pass one, because nothing dramatic happens. It's just an inflection point. It's when a negative feedback turns into a positive feedback. It's like cresting the top of a hill. Before gravity was slowing you down, an
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Hmm... I don't have kids, what's your excuse?