Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2016/11/global-warming?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/globalwarmingthestateoftheclimatein2016

by jseliger • 10 years ago

206 224 10 years ago

economist.com

buckbova• 10 years ago

According to research published last year, spending a day in Beijing is currently akin to smoking almost 40 cigarettes. Decoupling emissions from economic growth thus helps both people and planet. Convincing Mr Trump of this fact is now an urgent and daunting challenge.

How is convincing Trump here the answer? Isn't convincing China more important? How about convincing the American people? Do this and politicians will follow.

Perhaps if Trump can bring back more industry to the US, he is on his way to helping already.

knowaveragejoe• 10 years ago

I think all of the above are part of the answer. Convincing Trump not to try to prop up coal as he's promised.

Delmania2• 10 years ago

The Republican leadership has already said there's not much that can be done because coal is private and that government money shouldn't be spent on it. They know, and have known for some time, that coal is a dying industry, but you have to appeal to voters.

papercrane2• 10 years ago

China is convinced.[1] The American public is convinced, although not as much as they probably should be.[2][3][4]

The problem here is to convince world leaders to actually do something.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-16/china-tell...

[2] http://climatepublicopinion.stanford.edu/sample-page/opinion...

[3] https://environment.yale.edu/poe/v2014/

[4] http://www.gallup.com/poll/190010/concern-global-warming-eig...

strictnein2• 10 years ago

China is convinced? Then China should tell China to stop building coal power plants.

They burn slightly more coal than the rest of the world combined.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy-environmen...

kristopolous• 10 years ago

Biggest problem is that climate change aggressively challenges many foundations of capitalism and consumerism.

That's a religion to some people. And this is akin to changing it.

yodsanklai• 10 years ago

Yes, people are convinced. But ask them to give up a little of their comfort and they start rioting. I see it in my (european) city, even smallish measures to restrict car usage lead to major contestations.

jameskilton• 10 years ago

I'm confused with this statement but I'll try to clear up something you seem to be missing.

1) China is already convinced. It's in the article. They are the world-leading user of solar power and are pushing harder than anyone to get away from dirty power.

2) Trump wants to push and invest in dirty power. He wants to significantly increase the production of coal and gas. The very stuff that causes global warming. Convincing Trump is about saving the world from itself. If Trump has his way, the last 20 years of progress towards renewable energy will be wiped out, with a strong possibility of making life very difficult for humanity in the next 50 - 100 years.

strictnein2• 10 years ago

are pushing harder than anyone to get away from dirty power.

Where do you gather that from? They use more coal than the entirety of the rest of the world combined. Their coal usage has more than doubled over the past ~15 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/26/business/energy-environmen...

Pica_soO• 10 years ago

The problem is that these green energy politics are working within a artesic system of problems, meaning if you start for example the massive creation of bio-ethanol- you destroy by demand and supply jungle in other countrys (freeing carbon dioxide) and unleash social unrest (due to starvation - Egypt, Africa and the south America). The cost of re stabilization, eats via tax into the economy but is unable to reach the cost-creator, creating cascading instability's as the burden is shifted upon those who are unable to evade it.

Solar is fine though, once it paid back its energy production debt. I think bio-fuels should be taxed for the undoing of the distributed damage.

Mixed feelings never make for good punchlines :.)

brian-armstrong2• 10 years ago

We (the US) are in a good position to lead the renewables industry, and part of that is dogfooding what we make. But that dogfooding is harder if our domestic nonrenewable prices are low. Yes that means that, for now, those products aren't fully competitive. But they could get there with scale, and we get that scale by rolling them out domestically. It helps us build this industry in the long term.

China is also jumping on this opportunity, by the way. I saw an article recently that competitive solar will be a big focus point for its electronics industry.

maxxxxx• 10 years ago

The US would be in great position to take the lead here. For example, I don't understand why not every house in Southern California is covered with solar panels. Instead Trump's program seems to be to burn as much coal and oil as possible.

malnourish2• 10 years ago

This is exactly what I think we should be doing (as a nation). We should be pushing innovation and becoming a leader in R&D for green energy. It seems like a fantastic way of creating jobs and I have a hard time comprehending why people are so resistant to it.

andrei_says_• 10 years ago

I tend to believe that if we stop subsidies for dirty energy sources, the market will take care of the rest.

So it comes down to policy.

reality_czech• 10 years ago

China pretty much destroyed the US solar panel manufacturing market. If the US wants to "lead the renewables industry," ironically for you, the only way to do it is probably Trump-style protectionism. Otherwise China will continue to wipe out the next crop of Solyndras with its subsidies and other dirty tricks.

Of course, we can always put solar panels on top of things. That's a thing. They're doing that in Africa too. But the profits mostly go to solar panel manufacturers in China. And solar panels can't sustain a heavy industrial base... you need coal or nuclear for that, as other industrial nations know very well.

the8472• 10 years ago

As far as building renewables is concerned both countries are currently doing their share. But that trend needs to accelerate and at the same time fossil sources need to be scaled back. Trump's statements on energy policy are mostly contrary to the latter part.

http://www.ren21.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/REN12-GSR201... (page 20)

jamesblonde• 10 years ago

The canary in the coalmine for global warming is Arctic sea ice. It is melting at an alarming rate, and we can expect an ice-free (>1m sq km of sea ice) Arctic in the summer within a decade or two (or 3-4 years if recent trends continue!). There's a small active community who follow this. We tend to hang out here - a HN level of polite discussion goes on: http://neven1.typepad.com/

mugdho2• 10 years ago

So what happens to the indigenous population of animals (polar bears are the first that come to my mind) when this happens? Do they just die out or are there groups trying to get them to safety?

yellow_postit2• 10 years ago

Outside of captivity, where would it be safe for arctic animals?

Shivetya• 10 years ago

well fortunately the Antarctic is gaining mass, so things happen. We are still only 12k years out an ice age and learning as we go. Natural variability is quite boring so it doesn't make headlines as much as it should.

the real reality is that the Paris agreement is a horrid piece of do nothing legislation that lets the major developing powers do what they want all the while getting the nod of acceptance from the UN because of the hundred billion dollar payout. Basically we have what is a one time voluntary agreement to pay out to certain groups so that developing countries can continue to pollute provided they plan to eventually slow it

sqeaky6• 10 years ago

On a geological timescale we are in a cooling trend, but what non-biased source grants credence to the idea that CO2 and Methane aren't warming things right now in greater amounts?

It seems entirely reasonable that anthropogenic climate change is a bigger deal than ice ages and we could prevent one.

NumberCruncher7• 10 years ago

> Natural variability is quite boring

After protecting the earth from the giant meteors (at least at the end not a single one hit the earth) we need some new disaster porn.

rudolf0• 10 years ago

Even if the Paris Agreement has its problems, do you really think it's worse than no climate agreement?

fweespeech• 10 years ago

well fortunately the Antarctic is gaining mass, so things happen.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/nasa-study-mass-gains-o...

But it might only take a few decades for Antarctica’s growth to reverse, according to Zwally. “If the losses of the Antarctic Peninsula and parts of West Antarctica continue to increase at the same rate they’ve been increasing for the last two decades, the losses will catch up with the long-term gain in East Antarctica in 20 or 30 years -- I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”
“The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away,” Zwally said. “But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”

It was gaining mass for a long, long time and that trend is reversing and it ultimately doesn't change the fact the sea level rise is still occurring despite the mass gain.

That isn't a 'so things happen' situation. It is a "Well, traditionally Antarctica gains X each year. The rate of this gain is offsetting the Y in losses for now but the rate of loss is accelerating and overall we are still losing ground regardless'.

ocschwar2• 10 years ago

"We are still only 12k years out an ice age and learning as we go"

Some of us are learning more than others. Some of us have noticed that the Milankovich cycles, in particular the precession of the earth's perihelion versus the solstices, is right now COOLING the earth because it is favoring the southern hemisphere which has less mass.

elif• 10 years ago

I believe that your premise is a mis-statement. My understanding is that the surface area is increasing due to the protective effect of melt-water, but that increase in melt-water is the result of increasing mass loss.

Furthermore, neither surface area nor mass are a complete enough picture from which to draw conclusions due to the complex physics of calving and cliff collapse.

http://www.nature.com/news/antarctic-model-raises-prospect-o...

jackmott2• 10 years ago

No, there is an Antarctic ice sheet that is gaining mass. As a whole, Antarctica is losing ice mass. As is the case for global ice mass balance. Chart of satellite gravity measurements for Antarctica: http://www.skepticalscience.com/images/Antarctica_Ice_Mass.g...

JimboOmega• 10 years ago

There's a spin-off forum neven moderates (well, sometimes): forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/board,3.0.html

It's a bit slow in the freezing season, even this completely out of control one, and can often degenerate into ridiculous arguments between a few posters.

But just in case... if there's any Sea Ice geeks in SF, I'd love to talk about it in person!

clumsysmurf• 10 years ago

"Convincing Mr Trump of this fact is now an urgent and daunting challenge."

By appointing Myron Ebell to lead the transition at the EPA, Mr Trump has made it clear he's made up his mind.

Personnel is policy.

joering2• 10 years ago

For those who want to ask obvious follow up question, based on Wikipedia article on Mr. Ebell:

Through CEI, Ebell has stated his belief that global warming is a hoax, that most of the data predicting climate change is false, and that the scientific consensus was "phony".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myron_Ebell

blondie9x2• 10 years ago

It's too bad Americans cannot vote for some of the most prominent cabinet members the way they vote for President/Vice-President. Many of these appointees will have a more direct impact on people's lives but yet they have no say in who will represent them. Democracy?

mordocai• 10 years ago

Representative Democracy yeah. The people voted in Trump who now gets to appoint those positions.

thesimpsons1022• 10 years ago

as if they're smart enough? they're the ones who put this guy in charge in the first place and filled the house and senate with deniers as well.

exolymph• 10 years ago

I don't think allowing the public at large to vote on cabinet members would be a good idea. The whole point of representative democracy is you elect a representative who seems reasonable and delegate specialized decisions — like who is the best climate authority — to your rep. (No, this obviously doesn't always work.)

colemickens2• 10 years ago

What makes you think that would go over any better though? It's not like any of his cabinet picks have been surprising to anyone paying attention to his rhetoric and stances during the election.

maxerickson3• 10 years ago

We have representatives that do that. The prominent cabinet members have to make it through the Senate.

Rand Paul has already come out publicly against a couple of names floated for Secretary of State and is making noise that 2 or 3 other Senators (enough) are also concerned.

I don't really like Rand Paul, but at the moment I'm pretty glad that he actually has a coherent and strong ideology.

cmurf• 10 years ago

127 million voted in 2012, 120 million voted in 2016 despite population growth of ~0.7% per year. So, yay democracy? The plurality winner was the none of the above candidate, but the non-participants by and large think their none choice puts them outside politics, even though there is no such actual thing as no president. There will be one, it's a matter of which one, and not choosing one does have the same effect as choosing one.

And Americans vote in even fewer numbers for the non-presidential candidates. So it'd be almost the fringe that would be voting for cabinet members, were that possible.

barneygumble7422• 10 years ago

It comes down to the DOD having a serious talk with Trump. They have been taking it just as seriously as the EPA.

gavinpc• 10 years ago

Exactly. I'm wondering how that circle is going to be squared. It can be done, though.

zanny• 10 years ago

This is from the man who thinks that US generals are inept and don't understand ISIS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-Mjy9ETtRY

I'm not sure how hes supposed to give a damn what they say.

TheSpiceIsLife• 10 years ago

That's it.

I'm keen to see how Trump evolves as his presidency progresses.

Let's see how he goes after the DoD and other TLAs[1] have told him how it's going to be.

1. Three Letter Agencies

tzs3• 10 years ago

Congress has been trying to put restrictions on the DoD prohibiting them from using any money to address climate change. For instance, the Navy wants to start preparing its bases for rising sea levels, but Congress is trying to stop that (the base preparation, that is, not the rising sea levels).

So even if the DoD makes some headway in getting Trump to change his mind, Congress will be right there to try to change it back. Considering Trump's history of public statements on climate change, I suspect that Congress will have the easier task in the struggle with the DoD:

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26400729697001881...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26401012910666547...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/26589529219124838...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/27062860981797683...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/31474447982120550...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/31625201619005440...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/31937728568793907...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/32678179234029977...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/32687452457652633...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/32687562896611737...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/33425433511658700...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/33842934264642355...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/33844829602251161...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/33897838163698483...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/34997329988905779...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/34997384522826956...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/40221753675195187...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/40442009511371571...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/40750593877475737...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/40801845136276684...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/40838030220644352...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/40897761692683059...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/40898378983081574...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/41215967404229427...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/41216206898987417...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/41653970209605222...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/41690900498484428...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/41781603510729932...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/41781839282623283...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/41854213789949132...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/42033388259746611...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/42281959312025600...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/42317918219810406...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/42722642498738585...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/42755669210957414...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/42841640628024115...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/42841832366016512...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/42895438291522355...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/43101867469544243...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/43539308838388940...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/43557404335461171...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/44081115128348672...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/45096479198597120...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/47566899392821248...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/48881360795875737...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/48882520918971187...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/48892600622528512...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/48938185135031910...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/49393581520704307...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/51224620396761907...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/52186235121857331...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/53510273583077376...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/56802153313171865...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/56838779892496384...

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/65338538152680652...

Edit: fixed tweet list order so they should be chronological

twright• 10 years ago

What will convince leaders and the American masses of climate change? I'm afraid that they won't accept it until its effects smacks them in the face, twice.

5511992• 10 years ago

There isn't a policy that is going to change anything on world scale. Technology is going to be the solution if there is any.

tomelders• 10 years ago

However it is a top priority for the pentagon. Since Trump is the kind of guy that adopts the position of the last person he spoke to, one hopes the pentagon will step up their game and scare him into taking the drastic measures needed.

Trump supporters are usually the most vocal opponents to the climate change campaign, but like all people they will perform mental gymnastics to agree with their champion for a linited amount of time.

Through that (albeit ridiculously optimistic) lens, it's a golden opportunity.

anon12536• 10 years ago

My worry is that Trump doesn't deny it (well he does publicly), but rather privately realizes that it's already far too late. There's nothing we can do, collapse of global civilization before mid-century is probably inevitable. So what can you do, well ramp up every dirty trick you can think off … because it doesn't really matter and it makes you look good with the public (sorry to say, it does, climate change is still not popular in public discourse).

To stay within the 1.5 to 2ºC bounds, the IPCC already includes massive carbon sequestering technologies in even its most simple recommendations. This is technology that does not exist. We're betting life on Earth (and truly, it is that dire) on tech that might be impossible to build and scale. Even if we reduce our carbon emissions to 0 today the delayed effects and non-linear dynamics are so poorly understood, that it could very well be that nothing truly can be done to avoid our mass extinction. And, this too goes for carbon sequestering; even if we magically suck the last 5 decades of carbon out of the air, some stuff that is broken can't be fixed. Thresholds, catastrophes, oscillations, bifurcations, etc are real. We really have to think in non-linear systems when dealing with climate, and that is something we're very bad at. Especially when it comes to the media-voter complex. But picture this, you are driving your car down some road, and everything is fine. You're minding your own business. There's nobody else there, so what the heck, let's ramp up some of the speed. And you go faster and faster. Until bam, unexpected steep corner, your car flies off the road and you die. At that point going back a couple of miles is never going to fix you. It's too late.

sqeaky6• 10 years ago

Carbon sequestering is not as hard as it would seem. We have several technologies, but we can also just plant trees.

anon12536• 10 years ago

Yes trees are a perfect solution. They've optimized this process through millions of years of evolution. However, we're still removing more trees than adding them per year. Quite impressively so, even. It takes time for forests to grow. A lot of its carbon sink properties are because of soil succession, which takes decades to mature.

DennisP4• 10 years ago

First we'd have to stop the massive deforestation that's happening right now. A lot of that is for agriculture, so we'd have to find another way to feed those people.

We might also want to stop clearcutting vast forests in the Southeastern U.S. to ship wood pellets to Europe, which burns them.

Then we'd have to save the rest of our existing forests, many of which are struggling due to various effects of climate change, including heat stress, drought, topsoil loss, disease, and forest fires. Many large forests are net carbon emitters now.

After we've done all that and finally stopped losing trees, we can think about having more trees. We'll need space for them, so that means reducing agricultural area even more. We've been emitting about ten billion tons of carbon every year for quite a while, so it's going to take a lot of land.

We're also running out of fish in the ocean, so with that food source going away we're going to need more from agriculture than we get now.

"Just plant trees." Like many, perhaps even most purported climate change solutions, it sounds great until you work out the scale.

sammydavis• 10 years ago

By all reports, Trump can't stay focused on any one thing more than a few minutes, whether it was 20 years ago talking to reporters, people working for him, whatever. So he's not likely to be the person who will care about a long term, non-immediate risk.

I still can't believe someone like him can be president. If Jeb Bush had won, I would have been a little disappointed, but I would have gone to sleep and not worried that much about it. But he's terrifying. Maybe he'll just be unable to accomplish anything, so he will self-block, doing as much as obama with republican congress. More likely is he won't be in touch and pence can do whatever he wants.

Al-Khwarizmi2• 10 years ago

Honest question: do you think a person like you describe could have his record in business management? Reportedly he was almost bankrupt in the 90's and recovered a quite large fortune afterwards. While I'm not a big believer in the capitalist mythology that people get rich by their effort and skills, and I'm aware that luck plays a huge factor, I do suppose that there is a bare minimum of cleverness and focus needed to pull off that kind of thing. I have a hard time imagining how someone that "can't stay focused on any one thing more than a few minutes" could do it. And hey, he did become president elect with the opposition of most of his own party and the media, which is quite an achievement as well.

Maybe I'm wrong (also not an American, so I haven't been as exposed to Trump as most Americans have) but my impression is that he's not dumb, he plays dumb.

dharma12• 10 years ago

This graph of global sea ice area is kind of alarming:

https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JX41K2UK6Io/WCvyXQ6CFvI/AAAAAAAAW...

More info:

http://arctic-news.blogspot.co.uk/

spacehacker2• 10 years ago

Fortunately, sea ice does not contribute much to the sea level because it displaces about the same volume it will add when melted.

dharma12• 10 years ago

Yep, but it does have other negative effects. https://www.carbonbrief.org/five-reasons-why-the-speed-of-ar...

wiredfool• 10 years ago

But sea ice has an albedo affect. Dark seas absorb more heat.

flukus7• 10 years ago

Depends on where it's coming from. Some of those increases are because of on land glaciers thinning and spreading over the ocean.

snowwrestler• 10 years ago

I don't actually believe this, but it occurred to me the other day as a funny way to look at a very sad situation:

What if Trump does believe global warming is real, but recognizes that we're too late to stop its worst effects? What if he expects the world to go to hell over the next 50 years and is focused on protecting the U.S. specifically? What would he do?

He'd build a wall across the lower border of the U.S. to keep out southern populations fleeing extreme heat. But he'd keep the border with Canada open, so Americans can flee there if they need to. The oceans will protect us from the rest of the world.

He'd disentangle us from overseas treaty obligations that might draw us into wars we wouldn't otherwise want to fight. And he'd focus international relations on the few biggest countries who are most likely to secure and defend their own societies.

He'd incentivize U.S. companies to manufacture domestically: long supply chains are a risk.

He'd ramp up infrastructure spending--particularly on the coasts--to be ready to build sea walls and other mitigating structures.

He'd strengthen law enforcement to deal with internal unrest.

Like I said, I don't actually believe this...

EDIT: Another (and perhaps more likely) way to look at this is that Trump and his posse are just paranoid nuts, but by ignoring global warming, they will inadvertently bring about the global calamity that they fear.

zelon88• 10 years ago

I like that the theory has to assume that Canada is just naturally expected to take in American refugees while Mexico can go screw itself. With such ignorant American exceptionalism it's no wonder why we haven't fixed global warming yet.

jdavis703• 10 years ago

You do realize a plurality of American voters voted for Hillary Clinton? She's leading by margins larger than Kennedy and Nixon.

Edited to use correct terminology.

hbt• 10 years ago

I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought this.

No one has a solution for climate change that doesn't involve changing personal habits. People don't want to do that. Eating less meat or a carbon tax (i.e taxing the working poor) is not a solution. It's admitting defeat.

People don't need to "believe in climate change". We simply need to build a solution that is much better than what they have available now. What that solution is? Plenty of ideas, no one has a clue how to execute them.

The current strategy for the left is: let's see how guilty we can make people feel about their consumption habits and scare them with far distant consequences. Talk about funding "green"/eco-friendly businesses which barely make a difference and try to sell people on carbon tax.

For the right, the strategy is: deny, deny, deny. Double down on economic growth and hope innovation follows.

Of course, "hope and dreams" sells. Admitting defeat wouldn't get you elected. The rhetoric is adjusted accordingly.

maxerickson3• 10 years ago

Wind is almost 5% of US electric production.

Solar is finally ready to make a difference (look at the last 5 years of the table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_the_United_Stat... ).

Adding 0.3% of generation each year isn't fast enough, but it's ridiculous to say that no one knows how to execute a move towards clean electricity and that it can barely make a difference.

And batteries are almost there as far as being affordable storage.

yungchin• 10 years ago

Eating less meat or a carbon tax (i.e taxing the working poor) is not a solution.

As for taxing the poor, that's fixable: the legislation should have all revenues from a carbon tax returned as per-capita "rebates" (I'd think of it as a Basic Income paid for by polluters).

eli_gottlieb6• 10 years ago

Eating less meat or a carbon tax (i.e taxing the working poor) is not a solution.

The poor emit disproportionately little CO2. A carbon tax mostly taxes industry.

jhobag• 10 years ago

thank you for writing down what's been going through my head for the past 2 years

madaxe_again• 10 years ago

I do. At any rate, I do in the case of world leaders and the actions of states over the last decades. Or at any rate I'd like to believe I do.

Virtually everything has been consistent with preparing for the worst case climate disaster. You might think that if we knew it was unavoidable it might comprise protecting populations in cities and so-forth by building huge coastal works, or moving populations, or other such huge projects, but were you to do something so overt you would instill mass panic and bring about a preemptive disaster. No. You would play a very subtle hand.

You would tighten border security, and normalise surveillance and the idea of searches, scans, and armed police.

You would instill a fear of refugees and migrants - this makes it far easier down the line when we hear how many hundreds of millions are in "temporary accommodation". They're far off. They're different to us. Callousness is a survival attribute, if the suddenly popular zombie horror and post apocalyptic genres tell us anything.

You'd saturate popular media with programmes in favour of securitised states, and which deal with unmanageable mindless hordes that need mowing down for the greater good.

You'd engage in wars which build a security apparatus and provide a distraction, while simultaneously feeding your black budgets for the preservation of the, hm, economically and socially valuable sectors of society and technology.

You hold hope around the idea of escape to another world to keep those whom might act problematically mollified until it's too late.

In your end game you start moving your population. Again, you don't want it done in chaotic panic, so you do it piecemeal. A move to the political right, you send your liberal elite scarpering to new climes, and while they're at it they pick places that they think will be mitigated against climate change because they think it might be a problem in their lives. A bit of civil unrest, more leave. Start a war. People flee. People die. Those without the means to flee get left behind - remember that desensitisation bit, and the whole concentrating upwards of wealth - if you wanted to design a system that would leave the majority of humanity unempowered and in the lurch if it all gets climatic, but give the "economically productive elite" a fire escape, you'd build it like what we have today.

I don't actually believe this either (although it would almost be comforting to, as it provides an explanation of sorts for the world), but I do wonder what home truths made Obama want to jump after his security briefings eight years ago - and that DoD report from a while back about the defence (civil and national) implications of climate change revealed a sobering level of thought has already gone into some rather dire possibilities.

It's a fairly crap hypothesis as one can't readily prove or disprove it.

mzw_mzw14• 10 years ago

It's a fairly crap hypothesis

That's the only even remotely true thing in this entire comment. HN would really benefit without all the frantic paranoia and cinematic apocalypse-mongering that has unfortunately become the default position around here. Keep it to Alex Jones, please.

ced• 10 years ago

recognizes that we're too late to stop its worst effects

I see this sentiment a lot on HN these days. What's the reasoning behind it? If the temperature in my room increases, I'll go from feeling uncomfortable, to sweating profusely, to fainting, to death. Is there any scientific reason to believe that, say, a 4C increase gives us horrible outcomes, but a 8C increase will be "not much worse"?

stouset3• 10 years ago

4˙C is already reaching an extinction-level event for humanity.

burkaman2• 10 years ago

I think the warming itself is not really the biggest problem, it's the secondary effects like rising sea levels, increased natural disasters, etc. So for example if it's too late to stop coastal cities from being flooded, twice that much sea level rise is not much worse, because all the important cities and infrastructure are already gone.

cel1ne• 10 years ago

I see this sentiment a lot on HN these days. What's the reasoning behind it?

By concluding it's too late, one does not have to feel bad for not doing anything about it. Humans are simple that way.

linkregister• 10 years ago

Some prevailing climate models indicated that beyond a certain CO2 concentration, the temperature will continue to spiral upwards continuously, even if there are no further CO2 increases. At that point it would be necessary to reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. It is far more difficult to capture CO2 than it is to abstain from releasing it at this time.

blueprint• 10 years ago

The answer lies in the fact that the amount of heat to get the surface of the Earth from 1 -> 3°C is not so huge, but when the amounts of heat to get the surface temperature to 4-6° exists in the Earth there will be tremendous tectonic activity.

flukus7• 10 years ago

It's a sentiment that I'm unfortunately starting to accept. I don't think we are in a position as a society to act properly on climate change.

hourislate• 10 years ago

It's an interesting theory but I doubt he has looked that far ahead. What you have laid out would be something more along the lines of US Strategic Thinking for the next 100 years.

The one thing most folks over look is how far are we ready to go to protect America? Global warming will unleash the largest migration the world has ever seen. There will be more than 2.5 billion people trying to escape somewhere more hospitable. You will have millions showing up on your shores from the far reaches of the world. An example is the 400 Sri Lankans that showed up in a boat off the coast of British Columbia 3 years ago. What to do? At some point there could be a million people showing up on the shores of North America (US/Canada) every month, can you imagine the chaos.

eli_gottlieb6• 10 years ago

No, Trump is not the God-Emperor of Mankind and does not possess century-level prescience. You can totally make a decent science fiction novel out of this, though.

mmel2• 10 years ago

There is already fanfiction depicting Donald Trump as Warhammer 40,000's Emperor of The Imperium of Man.

https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=donald+trump+warham...

nhaehnle• 10 years ago

I like and upvoted your comment for the discussion and thought it encourages. However, realistically speaking it's extremely unlikely that Trump thinks like that. All the evidence points towards him being extremely incompetent, even completely misunderstanding the extent of the office he's been elected for. He's not the guy to pull off smart conspiracies.

The clearest evidence for this is his repeated emphasis on increasing the use of coal and oil. Even if you believe massive global upheaval of societies can no longer be avoided, burning more coal and oil is still going to hurt you.

spacehacker2• 10 years ago

Here is a disturbing summary of potential effects of sea level rise (but be warned that this subreddit tends to be a bit alarmist):

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/5abz8e/why_rising...

mzw_mzw14• 10 years ago

But he'd keep the border with Canada open, so Americans can flee there if they need to.

See, this kind of loopy apocalypse-mongering is why you guys are having such a hard time persuading average voters that your cause is legit. Under what possible worst-case scenario are Americans going to need to "flee" to Canada? Is that one-foot ocean rise over the next hundred years going to flood the United States all the way to Grand Forks?

EdSharkey5• 10 years ago

I believe "stop pollution" was always the goal and they had to crank the message to alarmist levels to get any traction.

As technology progresses and we get better at keeping our local environments clean, I predict their predictions will become increasingly dire. These doomsday warnings are just a sign that we're improving.

intrasight2• 10 years ago

I believe that it is already too late. Here's my proposed solution. Send a robot into space. Pickup an asteroid and bring it to Lagrangian L1. Have it begin weaving a solar curtain.

anon12536• 10 years ago

doesn't fix the ocean acidification

intrasight2• 10 years ago

you got me there

CptJamesCook• 10 years ago

The conclusion of this article is not that global warming is dangerous but that local air pollution is bad for public health: "According to research published last year, spending a day in Beijing is currently akin to smoking almost 40 cigarettes. Decoupling emissions from economic growth thus helps both people and planet. Convincing Mr. Trump of this fact is now an urgent and daunting challenge."

Why should Donald Trump worry about local air pollution in Beijing? This has nothing to do with climate change. I highly doubt Donald Trump thinks thick smog is a good thing.

acqq• 10 years ago

It's mentioned at the end of the article but it's not the main message. The reason it's mentioned is to give the argument why China will have to reduce their own emissions, no matter what other countries do. Then it concludes that Trump should understand the same that China has to understand: "Decoupling emissions from economic growth thus helps both people and planet."

dcgudeman• 10 years ago

"According to research published last year, spending a day in Beijing is currently akin to smoking almost 40 cigarettes."

Wow

greeneggs• 10 years ago

There have been a number of studies on how many deaths can be attributed to air pollution. It seems to be ~1 million deaths a year in China. Here's a typical source (a press release with good graphs, the original paper is linked in it):

https://www.healtheffects.org/system/files/HEI-GBD-MAPS-Chin...

meganvito• 10 years ago

If it is truely a big problem, it will be more strengthful to let the denying end to fully deploy their defense. The hope may the system resilient enough not on an irreversable track which has a penalty not bailable.

pmarreck• 10 years ago

Can someone point me to a URL with an arguably good prediction of how these increasing temperatures would negatively effect the ecosystem specifically? Are we talking mass extinctions? More powerful storms/more extreme weather events? And/or something else?

cbennett• 10 years ago

http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

codecamper3• 10 years ago

What about the Elon Musk <-> Peter Thiel <-> Trump connection?

Trump respects Peter. He's young & rich.

Peter is an engineer. He must believe in global warming. He wants to live forever, so he'll need a good planet for that.

Musk is a firm believer in green tech.

Peter respects Musk?

The future of the planet depends on how Peter Thiel explains the role of clean tech to Trump! (I'm starting to be very happy about that $1 million Peter handed over to Trump)

grzm4• 10 years ago

"He must believe in global warming."

While I understand what motivates your thinking so, I don't think you can assume this. I haven't looked for anything that addresses Thiel's opinion on this btw, so I'm agnostic on the issue.

codecamper3• 10 years ago

Peter has invested in clean tech before. He's a technologist. He wants to live forever (on a stable climate planet). We can assume he believes in global warming.

lossolo• 10 years ago

I've read interesting post couple of days ago about Global Warming on reddit:

"Hey guys this research isn't really finding out anything that wasn't already known. RCP 8.5 scenario, which they assumed in their modelling, has long been known to be effectively Armageddon. Any temperature rise past 5.5 degrees is probably irrelevant because there wont be any humans left to deal with that outcome.

However it's looking increasingly likely that we aren't on the RCP 8.5 pathway. RCP 8.5 calls for steady continued growth in emissions of around 3%+ per year, which is what we were on in the early part of this decade. The last three years emissions have been effectively flat in spite of ongoing economic growth, and the Paris pledges that will keep warming to about 2.8 degrees call for the emissions peak to be in 2040~ (RCP 4.5). Based on trends in renewables, the downturn in the coal industry, and emissions growth halting, it's increasingly hard to see how we could possibly get back on track to an RCP 8.5 scenario.

2.8 degrees will still be terrible for environment, the economy, and poorer nations of course, and we should really be aiming for the RCP 2.6 scenario, where emissions peak no later than 2020. It's possible emissions have peaked already, but we will need more than three years of data to determine that. Of course, than comes the hard part of taking offline the carbon intensive elements of the world economy (i.e Coal)"

source: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/5cz4a7/new_climate...

Global warming: The state of the climate in 2016

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