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Also, HDI growth and economic growth are both rather decoupled from energy growth. We can in fact grow the global standard of living without equally growing energy demand.
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Sep 23, 2013 20:19
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Finndo posted:Well, the world runs on fossil fuels, and there's no "shovel ready" replacement to meet current energy demands. If the world cut off the use of those fuels at the levels that the most aggressive alarmists suggest is necessary (well I guess maybe the MOST alarmist would say the damage is already done and we're already doomed?), the resulting economic calamity and societal breakdown would result in catastrophes of biblical levels -- war, famine, disease. No one would escape the effects, although I guess those already living in the stone ages might take some satisfaction in seeing everyone else fall to their level, at least they would if they knew, but they probably wouldn't, since all forms of communication would be gone... That's just not true, there's no "magic power plant" but that doesn't mean there aren't systemic solutions. Its not about building enough wind/solar to replace capacity factor GW for GW, its about using all of our tools available to increase efficiency and decrease impact. The cost of switching to sustainable energy production is not that high and currently feasible. Check out the work by NREL: http://www.nrel.gov/analysis/re_futures/ that shows a high-renewables scenario that doesn't negatively impact economics. Or the new research out this week showing that in fact the saving from switching to renewables (in fuel costs) outweighs the relative capital costs. Or check out Reinventing Fire (http://www.rmi.org/ReinventingFire), a pro-economic growth argument that we can resolve our climate impact while spurring positive growth. (Also I love your extreme hyperbole...really makes you seem willing to engage in a reasonable conversation  )
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Sep 25, 2013 18:59
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Finndo posted:Well, I guess I'd just say, to me it's pretty hard to argue that, regardless of whether we're a few decades from waterworld or not, it makes sense to mitigate air emissions and water emissions. They aren't good, even if they aren't going to end the world. So literally the line for action is "destroys the world"? We should do nothing to stop harm unless it destroys us all! I mean, that's basically Godwinning yourself....
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Sep 25, 2013 19:01
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satan!!! posted:http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24261-world-wont-cool-without-geoengineering-warns-report.html?cmpid=RSS|NSNS|2012-GLOBAL|online-news#.UkOwYJIbDIV Pretty stunning that you can defeat your own point with the exact same statement you quoted. The draft IPCC report is saying nuclear can't solve the problems we've created.
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Sep 26, 2013 06:05
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Paper Mac posted:The science is incredibly bleak. If you spend any time talking to climate scientists or just reading between the lines of their work, many of them are privately predicting 5-7 degrees of warming and the end of organised global society if BAU continues another couple of decades. You can go look at the OP for a paraphrase of some of Kevin Anderson's work. Someone might be a nihilist if they deny that this matters, but arriving at the assessment just means you've looked at papers recently. There is no research that supports "the end of organized global society", horrible human impacts? Yes. But the end of global society? No.
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Sep 26, 2013 20:55
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Paper Mac posted:"The end of organised global society" means "the end of any possibility of an organised, institutional response to climate change". To me, that generally means "people somewhere will burn most recoverable FFs and we're going to 1000+ ppm CO2 equivs". It's a possibility that the failure of large institutional structures and global governance may actually make FF extraction too costly and difficult to continue emissions apace, so I'm not putting any money on where we stop emitting, but it's a pretty safe bet that at 7-10 degrees the human carrying capacity of the earth slips an order of magnitude or more, depending on feedback effects. Acknowledging this is for me the opposite of nihilism- it means that we have a gun to our head and we need to come up with very good answers to "what kind of a society do we want to live in" very quickly. My general assessment is that we're almost certainly getting at least 4-5 deg C above pre-industrial and maybe more, so I'm more concerned with local capacity-building than I am with transnational governance, but I think you need to look long and hard at the evidence one way or the other to decide where to best direct your efforts. But many argue "the end of any possibility of an organised, institutional response to climate change" occurred when Kyoto failed, so that's a hard line to draw. I'm trying to make the argument that when people use meaningless (and wrong) platitudes like "climate change will destroy civilization unless we stop it soon" those arguments actually strengthens the deniers because they then lump the true damage in with "exaggeration of climate impacts". Hyperbole makes the true impact (significantly worse lives for most humans) more difficult to communicate.
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Sep 26, 2013 21:34
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Paper Mac posted:Kyoto was a failure of our current sclerotic institutions, not the end of any possibility of an institutional response. It might be too little, too late, but it's not like the door will be closed as long as we have a massively interconnected global institutional landscape. I'm sorry but there's not a research consensus to support global economic collapse in a 7-10˚F (no one seriously argues for a 7-10˚C model) scenario. Look at this chart. This is all awful stuff we should prevent, but its not the collapse of the global economy.
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Sep 26, 2013 22:09
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Paper Mac posted:A1F1, which we're tracking at this point, takes us to 5 deg C by 2100 in the absence of any feedbacks and conservative assumptions about climate sensitivity. 7-10 deg C is usually a post-2100 scenario, not "by-2100" unless you postulate feedbacks, but there's sufficient fuels in the ground to take us there. In any case, I'm not sure who you've been talking to, but there's a consensus that 4 deg C above pre-industrial represents widespread disaster in terms of population health, social cohesion, etc. The 7-10 deg C warming scenarios I'm talking about are beyond imagination. We're in the process of baking in 4 deg C with our current emissions. Whether or not we get to 7-10 will depend on our emissions course over the next 50 years or so. Which is really my point. We'll never make meaningful action if our argument is "Do what I say or else the world will be doomed in +100 years". We sound just like a doomsday cult, and we'll have the same predictive accuracy. Widespread disaster and an end to global society and economics are two vastly different things. We've had widespread anthropogenic disasters for the last 200+ years and often it strengths global trade and institutions. We are talking about climate change undoing a large chunk of the advances in human quality of life, and that's going to be a dark age if we let it happen, but it won't destroy our human institutions. Really, mitigation is a dead horse (not enough money to be made) and geoengineering is going to be the new hotness (which might mean worse impacts but certainly not the predicted ones).
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Sep 26, 2013 22:40
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New report to quote out of context yay:IPCC 2013 posted:Relative to the average from year 1850 to 1900, global surface temperature change by the end of the 21st century is projected to likely exceed 1.5°C for RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (high confidence). Warming is likely to exceed 2°C for RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (high confidence), more likely than not to exceed 2°C for RCP4.5 (high confidence), but unlikely to exceed 2°C for RCP2.6 (medium confidence). Warming is unlikely to exceed 4°C for RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP6.0 (high confidence) and is about as likely as not to exceed 4°C for RCP8.5 (medium confidence). Everyone go check it out and play the game too!
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Sep 27, 2013 18:05
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TACD posted:This is not quite true. Yeah, but in the post above you I included the newest IPCC conclusion which is: IPCC 2013 Policymaker Summary posted:Relative to the average from year 1850 to 1900, global surface temperature change by the end of the 21st century is projected to likely exceed 1.5°C for RCP4.5, RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (high confidence). Warming is likely to exceed 2°C for RCP6.0 and RCP8.5 (high confidence), more likely than not to exceed 2°C for RCP4.5 (high confidence), but unlikely to exceed 2°C for RCP2.6 (medium confidence). Warming is unlikely to exceed 4°C for RCP2.6, RCP4.5 and RCP6.0 (high confidence) and is about as likely as not to exceed 4°C for RCP8.5 (medium confidence). Also the paper that the article cites in fact has a vastly different conclusion than ThinkProgressive makes: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1211.4846.pdf
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Sep 27, 2013 19:06
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TACD posted:That's true, I forgot the context of 'by 2100' in my quote. I don't think it's unreasonable to look at the effects of burning 'all fossil fuels' when that appears to be our default trajectory, though. Please, even if climate change didn't exist we wouldn't ever "burn all fossil fuels" just simply because it doesn't make economic sense to do so. Hanson's paper was answering a "what-if" question, it doesn't tie back a realistic policy scenario.
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Sep 27, 2013 21:22
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Vermain posted:I'm sorry, but this is neoliberal ideology at its purset: the idea that humans have a drive to just "consume" endlessly with no prompting and no thought as to the consequences as a part of a biological identity (ignoring the tremendous economic structure that practically enforces consumption as a prerequisite to social being). The issue of economic change and climate change are actually just tangential. We don't need to change our economics to dramatically reduce the future impact of climate change. So in some ways the issues end up distracting each other, because they both may be needed but not because of each other.
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Oct 2, 2013 23:56
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Vermain posted:I wouldn't be so certain. Jevons paradox definitely still operates here, and there is always the lingering threat of a government backing off from its promises due to political pressure from major economic forces. I'm not arguing that we as a society will chose to make the long-term investment, just that our systems can achieve it. I'm a big fan of Amery Lovin's Reinventing Fire (http://www.rmi.org/ReinventingFire) as an example of how we can overcome the Jevon's paradox via design thinking and how we can achieve effective climate goals within a growth context.
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Oct 3, 2013 00:04
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The IPCC models have overestimated atmospheric warming to a statistically significant degree, that's one of the updates in the 2013 report, but underestimated ocean warming. Regardless of the refinement of a complex model, the overall conclusions are only projected with greater confidence with each revision. There is a big ethical fight within the climatology community over if the impacts of climate change should be exaggerated for policy impact. Some do believe that its better to use a bit of hyperbole to scare people into action while others believe that trust will be lost and policy influence along with it if scientists become associated with hyperbole. So you see this metered out in the difference between refereed conclusions and private conclusions and in other ways.
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Oct 3, 2013 20:58
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Bruce Hussein Daddy posted:Doesn't this change everything? And why have I not heard about it before today from some lovely forum I lurk: This is a good example of the problem of a lot of technological solutions. That timeline means that technology would only begin to have meaningful impact starting in 2050, when the technology comes online, since if the first production plant was to be completed in 2022 it is unlikely to have widespread follow-on adoption and construction in less than 25 years (this is assuming all positive predictions for the technology are correct and all negative ones are wrong). If we're not meaningfully reducing emissions because we're waiting on plants that will take 20-30+ years to come online, we're not going to have the impacts that are required. What are the current energy costs per kg in the lab and what are the estimates when scaled to production? \/ Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 20:46 on Sep 22, 2014 |
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Sep 22, 2014 20:43
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gently caress You And Diebold posted:The actual environmentalists I know are mostly at least ok with nuclear until we can transition to renewables when the technology is there. A lot of the research into grid alternatives actually works backwards of this. We can build a new wind farm and have it connected to the grid in less than a year, while currently licensed nuclear designs take 20+ years to complete in the US/Europe and new designs have to bake in the licensing lead time too. If you want to see reductions in carbon emissions in the next couple of decades its going to be on the backs of renewables and natural gas replacing coal. In 30-40 years when every fission/fusion dream comes true we can start installing these new amazing designs, but until then renewables are available here and now. SedanChair posted:I guess a lot of the assumption that left-hippies are anti-nuclear comes from the official platform of the Green Party and a few activist groups. You might as well get upset that your local farmers market is anti-nuclear; it has about as much power and influence. Exactly, if you want to build more nukes the real "anti-nuclear" crowd that would need convincing are utilities and power generation companies. They're the ones with the real power that have been burnt by nuclear before. Also there are a lot of environmentalists who have alternative plans for the grid that are 0 nuclear power plans, not because they're rabidly anti-nuclear, but because they want to avoid overcoming anti-nuclear opposition and instead are able to present the plan as "look we can do this even without nukes". \/ Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 02:40
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ductonius posted:Guess who Joe/Jane Public takes their environmental cues from. You realize that Joe (but not Jane) Public actually supports nuclear, including 50% of Democrats/leaners, right? Here have some data instead of just throwing links about : http://www.gallup.com/poll/153452/americans-favor-nuclear-power-year-fukushima.aspx Its almost as if nuclear's problems aren't just an artifact of public opinion....
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Sep 23, 2014 05:14
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:The people here are pointing out there are too many people on the planet already who either want or already have a unsustainable energy/resource usage. Citation needed. There are tons of sustainable resource plans out there. We can live at a energy/resource sustainable level. We choose not to do so, but the only solution isn't a reduction in population.
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Sep 23, 2014 09:50
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Energy and resources are becoming increasingly scarce while our population is growing. So I get that there are a lot of people with these feelings, but its not a citation. People have been arguing that the world was over populated for all these reasons since the 1700s at least. There were a lot of generalizations in there, but I want to focus on this one because it seems very misleading. Global energy production and availability are both at an all time high and likewise, resource availability is dramatically higher than ever seen before in history. We have consumer products made with titanium. Tent stakes. The issue isn't that these resources are scare, but that we're concerned about the rate of growth. Its not that power is an expensive resource today, but how much will electricity cost in half a century, that's the concern. The important difference is, there are many sustainable proposals for the out years that don't involve massive population controls or dramatic decreases in cost of living. Sure, if we were facing a per-person energy quota or something, the Malthusian argument would make more sense. But until then, its not the only or the most sensible choice. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 10:37 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 10:35
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Much of our economy, energy production, and industry is ultimately based on oil. There is only so much oil and it's getting harder and harder to get out. The theory is that we're going to run out in a matter of decades. Phosphorus is also a major component of modern farming methods and, guess what? We're running out of that too. Really, peak oil? We can do better than this. Please find a reputable source that backs this up (that is post-fracing). I get the finite resources argument but it is nowhere near as simple as "stop reproducing or else."
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Sep 23, 2014 11:20
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PC LOAD LETTER posted:If you truly believe fracking is anything more than a short term 'fix' I don't know what to say. Can you post a version of that chart that is readable? Or link the source? Fracing does however displace coal rather nicely in the next 0-20 years. Luckily we can wait 20+ years to deal with global warming.
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Sep 23, 2014 11:41
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ToxicSlurpee posted:There's also entire chunks of the ocean that nothing can live in thanks to all the drat nitrates washing off of farms. Yeah we're getting gently caress tons of corn but we're wrecking fish as a food source. We're loving things up on a grand scale. We are not running out of oil. To say so belies a misunderstanding of the difference between resource and reserve. We are "running out" of oil at this price point. Which is to say, we're tapping oil reserves in general order of cheapness, so yes expect the price of oil to rise in the medium term, but that's not the same as "running out." Please find a post fracing study that says we're running out of oil.
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Sep 23, 2014 14:31
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JeffersonClay posted:We can make hydrocarbons out of seawater. This is an energy intensive process but it puts an upper bound on the price of oil, and guarantees we will never run out. Fame Douglas posted:"Running out of oil" in this thread's context means running out of (cheap) oil that is an energy source. The discussion of running out of economical oil is moot compared to our current impacts on the carbon cycle. The timescales are different. Proven reserves of oil have been rising dramatically in the US, for example, because of the tight oil boom (a technological shift in the supply curve). Meanwhile, carbon-equivilent emissions abatement is far below our target. We don't have time to wait for oil to become to expensive to use due to resource constraints (however, a carbon tax on the other hand....).  Because we've survived worse. The prospects for everyone dying are slim, it just will suck perhaps lethally so for wide swaths of humanity depending on how long we wait for true systemic action. \/ Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 22:22
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Kurnugia posted:Ok so maybe I like hyperbole, sue me. To rephrase, do I have any reason not to be utterly pessimistic about the prospects of technological civilization surviving this century? This too is pretty absurd. Why would we have to give up on technological civilization? Canada and Russia will at the very least be doing quite well for the foreseeable future. Kurnugia posted:the possibility of the global amount of arable land shrinking by however many percentages due to rapidly changing weather patterns and causing worldwide famine isn't really something you can do anything about. Except make new farm land, grow different crops, build greenhouses, have a few million/billion people starve while the rich eat grapes, etc etc etc
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Sep 23, 2014 22:56
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Kurnugia posted:Would they? You look at the weight the current crisis' of migrations of people out of Africa and the Middle-East put on places like the EU and then multiply that by however much worse that poo poo is going to get when those places really start experiencing drought and famine, do you think there'd be a nation on Earth that wouldn't be dearly tested by that? But why are you working from the assumption that immigration policies wouldn't change in response to migration pressure? Like they did in Australia. At the end of the day I think you need to define dearly tested. I think that adaptation and geo-engineering will both be costs and destabilizing factors that might contribute to a few nation-states collapse (sorry Micronesia), but there are many other pressures and I don't see adaptation even being the biggest. Nations have done crazy poo poo before and they'll do it again. Survival is likely, its just not likely fun. Humanity is choosing to activate hard mode on Earth because those with power believe they can profit (not just in money) more from doing so than not. The implication of this is that those in power are also betting their power structures will remain. Davos will still be nice even if you can't ski. Benny Profane posted:I don't think this is absurd at all -- it's perhaps not a done deal, but I do think there's a decent chance that technological human civilization won't make it out of the century. A +2°C stabilization, which we're not on target to hit, is pretty bad already from the perspective of agriculture as well as poorer countries. I think there's fairly compelling evidence to suggest that the global power structure is going to shift in a rather major way as the current American empire falls, and assuming the world goes through the usual post-empire power grab routine, it seems unlikely that climate change will be a top priority (which is basically has to be at this point). I think the leaps from +2C to collapse of American Hegemony to collapse of global order to collapse of technological society are a little under supported. Complications from adaptation will lead towards a further need for technology and we might see the collapse of non-technological societies if soil amendments become mandatory as we shift away from the best soil areas due to rainfall changes. If we increase resource costs it is those without a technological advantage who will find it more difficult to survive. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Sep 23, 2014 |
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Sep 23, 2014 23:15
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Benny Profane posted:As an Australian citizen, I shudder to think that Australia's immigration policies are being held up as exemplary. What Australia has done, and continues to do, to refugees fleeing genuine horror, is really nothing short of a complete failure of human compassion and good will. And I would agree that ignoring climate change is a complete failure of human compassion and good will. Benny Profane posted:Sure, but the thing being argued here was whether or not or technological civilization was going to make it -- look how many human societies have risen and fallen throughout the relatively short period of time within which humans have been wandering around. What exactly gives you confidence that this society that we currently belong to is somehow, unlike the empires that have preceded it, immune to collapse? Ah, see I'm not arguing that any specific society or empire will survive, just that humans with technological society will. When I say Canada and Russia will be fine, I'm not really contending that the states and societies that occupy that land today will continue, just that human society with technology will continue there, from a GCC perspective. Benny Profane posted:I would argue a number of points here, including (01) humanity is making a conscious choice here, (02) it's a "hard mode" that's being activated, rather than creating a set of conditions that make winning impossible, and (03) that there are actually people that hold power in the current global societal structure that are actually able but unwilling to make changes that would avert a climate catastrophe. I agree that's a complicated argument, but I really use "choice" here as a proxy for the complex decision-making super-structure that is the complex of all human decision-making. Through our societies, institutions, and individuals we are collectively making a bunch of choices all to some degree of consciousness which is having the impact of ignoring global warming. If you're arguing GCC will make human technological society impossible, I'd like to know what exactly makes you so sure of that. Likewise, from the perspective of the construct of society, any change is possible even if within that construct there is no willingness. I'm being vague because I'm completely unsure about the future path of these constructs. Who knows what society will look like in even 20 years? Benny Profane posted:Oh, I didn't mean to say that +2C means that the American Empire will collapse, I think those are two separate things. I do think the timing is unfortunate, though. As for technological solutions, I'm personally pessimistic about their long term viability for keeping humans around and dominant on Earth, but I suppose time will tell. But where does the pessimism come from? Malthusian resource arguments? Technological obliteration? A race condition over resources that we'll fail to escape in time (e.g. we don't invest in space enough)? Really, pessimism about the long-term survival of humanity is the best argument against mitigation, adaptation, and geo-engineering. Why fix the climate if we're all going to die anyway....
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Sep 24, 2014 00:01
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Benny Profane posted:I'm definitely not arguing that that GCC will make human technological society impossible. Kurnugia asked whether s/he had any reason not to be utterly pessimistic, and this was called absurd. I disagree; while I don't know that we are absolutely doomed (i.e. giving reason to be utterly pessimistic), I certainly think there's a decent chance that if humans fail to address GCC in a meaningful way that our current society could well collapse. I think the perspective that "no matter what, humans will survive in some way with their technology intact" is dangerous, in that it doesn't stress the absolute need for immediate and significant action. I mean a lot of that makes sense at a macro-level, but I personally believe humanity has shown its power to complete epic tasks when it chooses to do so. We just won't do so unless our backs are against the wall and unfortunately many people will suffer because of that delay. I do think you're right that as we wreck our world the technology to fix other plants will be the same to fix our own. Already China has a massive and mostly ineffective forestation campaign where they've planted 2+ Billion trees. Multination companies are already looking into atmospheric engineering and geo-engineering. I'm sure we'll test and improve these technologies on earth (where the money is) long before we use them in space. But I think its short sighted, less than 50 years since the first human visited another celestial body to declare the entire endeavor a dead end. Also, the "why bother" is really the third step in the: 1. Its not happening, 2. We can't do anything, 3. We could have done something, but its too late now. The last argument that the "denialists" will make will be the strongest because it is a self-fullfilling prophecy. Nihilism is a powerful tool of the status quo and Apocalyptic talk is already used as an excuse to ignore climate change.
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Sep 24, 2014 01:06
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^ Yeah, if they would actually meet thees goals is another question entirely. The US is one of few countries that hasn't failed to meet its Kyoto obligations Inglonias posted:I found this. It seems rather ambitious to say the least and I'm hoping it really happens. The bolded part makes me confused though. They're saying that they are going to stop X acres of forests from being destroyed every year. The amount of forests now saved each year have a net-carbon (equivalent) impact equivalent to the size of the emissions of the global car emissions. The issue with preventing land use changes as a method of emissions controls is say, unlike replacing all the world's cars, as soon as institutional controls stop the emissions start again. Future emissions reductions are contingent on future budgets for the prevention of land use change.
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Sep 24, 2014 19:09
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A Bag of Milk posted:Oh good, so extinction is off the table for the near future. I feel better already. Hyperbole about human extinction makes it more difficult to convince people that the real impacts are valid and require action.
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Sep 25, 2014 20:19
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Unfortunately the world is divided into a bunch of rival capitalistic nation states and that makes things a lot harder It does, but spreading untruths when people are having trouble believing the facts isn't exactly helpful. By the way, it is in globalist, capitalists and stateists best interests' to mitigate and adapt to global climate change. Why do you think they talk about it at Davos and Jackson hole? A Bag of Milk posted:Who here is making hyperbolic statements about human extinction? Anyone who says human extinction is likely in the next 100 years due to 4+C
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Sep 25, 2014 20:38
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A Bag of Milk posted:Nobody said that. Radbot posted:I just don't understand the faith people are placing in "technology will save us and we won't technically go extinct in the next 100 years due to +4C" Kurnugia posted:So the question I keep asking myself is, do I have reason not to be utterly pessimistic about the prospects of humanity to survive this century on Earth? You can bicker about semantics, but those are both hyperbole. Who's climate scenarios predict human extinction in the next 100 years or due to +4C? Apocalyptic talk is already being uses to resist mitigation and adaptation. If humanity is doomed, why ruin the party just to clean up before the cops arrive? If we care about trying to mitigate or adapt hyperbole won't help us convince recalcitrant actors. Radbot posted:It's funny watching people hand wave away the collapse of modern civilization like that wouldn't be a big deal. A lot of people would die. I guess it's goony to be concerned about the greatest Holocaust humanity will ever endure though, since technically humans will still be able to eke out a miserable existence. The collaspe of modern civilation in the next 100 years either has nothing to do with climate change or is completely unsupported by climate science.
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Sep 25, 2014 22:03
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^ Yes, that's what this IPCC report does. There are tons of other studies too. The IPCC is inherently conservative in their results since it is a consensus document. Kurnugia posted:How much of the world's arable land do you figure we could lose and not have a more-or-less global collapse of civilization? How much arable land do you figure we're going to lose at +2C? What about at +3C? +4C? Well, there's a nice report that this group called the IPCC did you might want to read if you're interested in the topic: http://ipcc-wg2.gov/AR5/images/uploads/WG2AR5_SPM_FINAL.pdf But please make sure to read where they define their terms as they use them in very specific ways. quote:For the major crops (wheat, rice, and maize) in tropical and temperate regions, climate change without adaptation is projected to negatively impact production for local temperature increases of 2°C or more above late-20th-century levels, although individual locations may benefit (medium confidence). Projected impacts vary across crops and regions and adaptation scenarios, with about 10% of projections for the period 2030–2049 showing yield gains of more than 10%, and about 10% of projections showing yield losses of more than 25%, compared to the late 20th century. After 2050 the risk of more severe yield impacts increases and depends on the level of warming. See Figure SPM.7. Climate change is projected to progressively increase inter-annual variability of crop yields in many regions. These projected impacts will occur in the context of rapidly rising crop demand. Fig SMP.7:  Note that this figure includes a wide range of climate response scenarios including a no adaptation scenario. So when you see the 20% potential for massive crop losses in the out years, that's if we stopped adapting (which we're funding much better than mitigation because its easier to sell). Here's another chart looking at the range of possibilities of % change per decade by crop:  Edit: to drive the point home about climate change and the global economy... quote:For most economic sectors, the impacts of drivers such as changes in population, age structure, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, and governance are projected to be large relative to the impacts of climate change (medium evidence, high agreement). Climate change is projected to reduce energy demand for heating and increase energy demand for cooling in the residential and commercial sectors (robust evidence, high agreement). Climate change is projected to affect energy sources and technologies differently, depending on resources (e.g., water flow, wind, insolation), technological processes (e.g., cooling), or locations (e.g., coastal regions, floodplains) involved. More severe and/or frequent extreme weather events and/or hazard types are projected to increase losses and loss variability in various regions and challenge insurance systems to offer affordable coverage while raising more risk-based capital, particularly in developing countries. Large-scale public-private risk reduction initiatives and economic diversification are examples of adaptation actions. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 22:46 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 22:42
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Kurnugia posted:I think I read the last year's version of that, but thanks. Are you sure they covered the same topics? The IPCC Working Group II is not the same thing as the IPCC Working Group I. Kurnugia posted:But really, my question was what would be the consequences if we lost a few percentages of agricultural yields by say, 2030? You'll remember what caused the Arab Spring I'm sure. Point being, it doesn't take a whole lot to make social order to shake. How much does it take for it to crumble? But if you actually read the report you claim to have read, the IPCC addresses the incremental impact of climate change on those risks: quote:For most economic sectors, the impacts of drivers such as changes in population, age structure, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, and governance are projected to be large relative to the impacts of climate change (medium evidence, high agreement). Climate change is projected to reduce energy demand for heating and increase energy demand for cooling in the residential and commercial sectors (robust evidence, high agreement). Climate change is projected to affect energy sources and technologies differently, depending on resources (e.g., water flow, wind, insolation), technological processes (e.g., cooling), or locations (e.g., coastal regions, floodplains) involved. More severe and/or frequent extreme weather events and/or hazard types are projected to increase losses and loss variability in various regions and challenge insurance systems to offer affordable coverage while raising more risk-based capital, particularly in developing countries. Large-scale public-private risk reduction initiatives and economic diversification are examples of adaptation actions. quote:Climate change over the 21st century is projected to increase displacement of people (medium evidence, high agreement). Displacement risk increases when populations that lack the resources for planned migration experience higher exposure to extreme weather events, in both rural and urban areas, particularly in developing countries with low income. Expanding opportunities for mobility can reduce vulnerability for such populations. Changes in migration patterns can be responses to both extreme weather events and longer-term climate variability and change, and migration can also be an effective adaptation strategy. There is low confidence in quantitative projections of changes in mobility, due to its complex, multi-causal nature. Instead of asking leading "what if" questions, I think its more effective to look towards the things we can actually back up with evidence. The less we mitigate and adapt the more climate change will weaken international peace, create new refugees, endanger food security and disproportionally impact the poor. That's bad enough, we don't need to mislead with impacts we can't support through science. Because critics will point out these unsupported claims and use a wide brush to discredit the valid ones. We need to give critics of mitigation and adaptation less ammo not more. Trabisnikof fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Sep 25, 2014 |
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Sep 25, 2014 23:14
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Hello Sailor posted:Critics are capable of pillaging strawmen for ammunition at will and this thread should be proof enough of that. Limiting the scope of our arguments to known certainties keeps us from using the tools that the critics are using to sway their audiences. Just because critics use fear, untruths and distrust doesn't mean we should use those same tools. They just need to stop action, we need to coordinate action which is a more challenging task. You won't beat Rush to his audience by making claims that aren't backed by evidence. I'm not even arguing we should limit the scope of discussion to purely consensus, but recognize that apocalyptic talk is actively being used to delay or reduce mitigation and adaptation activities. So the more we talk about how humanity is doomed because *reasons* the more we reinforce apathy and nihilism. We can discuss a number of "what-if" scenarios that aren't supported by scientific evidence. Maybe global warming will cause the UN to become all powerful and we'll finally unify humanity? But if we start claiming that Climate Change has impacts that aren't backed by science we're no better than the denialists claiming Climate Change will be good for crops because CO2 and reduced winters (We can swim everyday in November!).
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Sep 26, 2014 18:34
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Kurnugia posted:Let's limit our discussion only a very small set of very boring topics like climate change advocacy politics and *faaaaaaaaaaaaaart* Yeah, why should we discuss climate change in the climate change thread? 
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Sep 28, 2014 17:23
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Hello Sailor posted:Okay, then citation needed. Go ahead and prove that people can't be moved to action by anything other than scientific fact or that scientific fact is the most effective motivator to action. Great strawman, I never claimed we shouldn't use emotional appeals, just we shouldn't sit on a high horse about how we use science and our critics don't then proceed to mislead people about what is backed by credible scientific evidence. The impacts of global warming are in fact bad enough we don't need to make poo poo up or ask "what-ifs" to make a strong arguement on emotional, logical and ethical grounds.
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Sep 28, 2014 19:12
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:And it's irreversible We're working on that: http://longnow.org/revive/
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Oct 1, 2014 05:16
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:Only the cute species like pandas are marked for concervation. I believe this will also apply when choosing which species to bring back from extinction. On short timescales sure, but New England has more forests than it ever has in 200+ years because we stopped cutting down the forest. There are countless examples of formerly brownfield that's been successfully remediated into ecologically viable wildland. It just takes generations to complete. The Revive and Restore project actually has "non-cuteness" based criteria that they use, the biggest one of course is: Do we have a DNA sample to use? So we can't revive a species we never knew existed. I actually think the wolves in Yellowstone are a good example of how this can work. They reintroduced 41 wolves to Yellowstone between 1995-1997 and now there are 400-450 wolves in the park ecosystem. In less than 30 years we've seen a 10x rise. So in a few (human) generations the wolves will be back to an ecologically appropriate population level. These processes are slow and many people are impatient, but they can be done.
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Oct 1, 2014 16:41
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Tight Booty Shorts posted:United States is not the world. Sure these things can happen there, but I'm skeptical that they can occur in places like the amazon and the great barrier reef. You're mistaking a statement about capacity for a statement about intent.
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Oct 1, 2014 16:54
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Radbot posted:Hold up guys, New England has more forest (than it had compared to a period of maximal devastation, and there's no evidence that wildlife has rebounded in any significant way) so we're good. Yes, that's exactly what I said I was pointing out that the idea that recovering ecological devastation is impossible is only true for short timescales.
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Oct 1, 2014 17:22
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