IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-45653099

by Kemet • 8 years ago

76 66 8 years ago

lancewiggs• 8 years ago

Nothing is more important than getting our reaction to climate change right. It’s so frustrating that so few genuinely helpful companies are emerging out of our ecosystem.

We can and must do better. And quickly.

jacquesm3• 8 years ago

Good luck in the current political climate.

Simon_says2• 8 years ago

Even in the worst case scenario, global warming will not annihilate the human species. AI, nanotechnology, weaponized bioweapons, nuclear war, asteroid impacts, or alien contact could all potentially wipe out humanity.

fabricexpert2• 8 years ago

Probably unlikely that those will wipe out humanity, at least we don't have any concrete evidence or examples of them (e.g. we have't built an AI that can do much yet, we don't have nanotech that will self replicate and kill us all, aliens have yet to show up etc.). Bioweapons seems unlikely to end humanity as someone will win the war, and personally I think MAD prevents widespread use.

The only thing in your list that does make sense is an asteroid impact, which we don't have much say over.

With climate change we know a) it's happening, b) it's going to affect us in some pretty major ways and c) we can do something about it.

None of those hold true for your points.

DennisP• 8 years ago

If nine billion people have to compete for enough food to feed one billion people, it won't be surprising if some nukes fly.

stephengillie3• 8 years ago

Driving safely is more important than climate change. Don't phone and drive.

stephengillie3• 8 years ago

The community response to this is very telling.

fabricexpert2• 8 years ago

so few genuinely helpful companies are emerging out of our ecosystem.

What would a genuinely helpful company look like?

Some examples I can think of:

- New materials development (e.g. plastic that takes 30% less carbon to create)

- New carbon-reduced operation pipelines (e.g. a process for manufacturing cars at 30% less carbon)

- A consultancy that focuses on energy reduction across business verticals

- ...

What else?

pjc50• 8 years ago

Some of those exist, but the problem is externality: so long as the high carbon option is more profitable than the low carbon one, we have a problem.

claydavisss4• 8 years ago

What are you doing? If I must change, why not you? The people telling me to change must also change. People think this is an adolescent response but really, it boils down to us merely sneering at each other and not doing anything.

edit: totally predicted...people are reacting with a simple question about actual change by downvoting my comment into Oblivion. You need no better explanation for our fate.

stinos2• 8 years ago

edit: totally predicted...

Well maybe because of your general tone and because you didn't seem to react to the OP directly. You see, with a question like "If I must change, why not you?" you imply the OP said you must change while he/she doesn't. But the OP came nowhere near mentioning such thing. On the contrary, OP used we.

shoo2• 8 years ago

another slightly more palatable way of framing this is:

i don't want to change my lifestyle to lower carbon emissions, because that ends up being a net loss for me.

i want you to change your lifestyle to lower carbon emissions, because that ends up being a net win for me. that's right, i'm talking to all n billion of you!

what can i do to get you to agree to doing that? can i coerce you, or do we end up negotiating or trading?

CalRobert3• 8 years ago

It always seems odd to me that people still plan their lives as though the world fifty years from now will be basically the same as now. I hope they're right, to be honest. But we're talking 3+c warming (5.4F) and that could be horrific. I guess it's nice if you want a winery in Norway but that's small comfort.

mabbo• 8 years ago

People are growing corn further and further north here in Ontario. Places where it used to be unthinkable because the season was too short.

The pessimistic oportunist in me thinks it might be wise to start buying up vacation property in Newfoundland.

barrow-rider• 8 years ago

Newfoundland? Too coastal. Gamble on future waterfront property in SK or AB.

2ion• 8 years ago

It always seems odd to me that people still plan their lives as though the world fifty years from now will be basically the same as now

Even planning for anything 10 years in the future is a daunting task. For any prognosis there are a dozen more claiming different results or different trends with different outcomes. It's an information flood that does not let you make a definite judgement since it's overwhelming, and even when you try to base a decision on scientific evidence, because there's usually a "model", the certainty of the outcome "depends" (on any number of "variables").

What do? Make a conversative projection on what things are like today, and a plan based on that.

madaxe_again2• 8 years ago

You also have to adjust for the fact that most of what climate scientists publish is already conservative. Get them talking one-to-one and their predictions for the next decades are dire.

Me, I take a pessimistic view - I don’t think you have to have a large percentage change in, say, crop production, or storm damage rebuilding costs, for economies to feel the effect - prices rise, labour is diverted from growth to maintenance, and adaptations are ultimately made, but in the intervening period expense has been incurrred, and by now the climate has warmed further. The costs end up growing astronomically, and at what point do governments fail due to popular discontent, at what point do further governments collapse and even wars start due to resource cost rises and the need for popular distraction, and mass migration caused by revolution and war nearby?

I’ve put my money where my mouth is - I’ve become itinerant, while I scope out where on earth to live this out - somewhere quiet, and remote, and self-sufficient, that hasn’t yet seen ecological disaster and might escape the worst of climate change due to geography. Sadly, everywhere I’ve been in the past few years, across all continents and hemispheres, even when these places as yet appear verdant and untouched, are feeling the wrath of a changing climate, and human-wrought ecological destruction, from drought to flood, from aquifer pollution to overfarming and desertification, and vast agricultural monoculture, highly vulnerable to moving growing zones and viable climates for pests.

I’d love to be able to do something to prevent this - I recycle, I don’t buy much, I travel overland wherever possible - but I fear we’re too far gone.

What humanity and our civilisation will be in 20 or 30 years I don’t know, but I fear it’ll be unrecognisable and almost unimaginable to us, even now.

lazyjones3• 8 years ago

I don‘t like alarmism. Most of it is simply proven wrong in the long term. People are good at adapting most of the time. For example, I got myself air conditioning in a country famous for skiing. People in poor countries will probably suffer much more, but they need to tackle their population growth issues anyway. In essence, there are life-changing problems affecting us every day (who would have thought 50 years ago that we‘d need barriers againt car attacks at all major public events?), don‘t obsess over one thing like some sort of religious freak („the end is nigh...“).

dm319• 8 years ago

I think alarmism is a retrospective assessment. We can probably say a lot of our reporting on current Western terrorism is alarmist - numbers wise, it didn't compare to road deaths or regular shootings.

But global warming will be/is unprecedented and will affect the whole world. Immediate action is unlikely to reverse this process either.

Your comment about population growth issues is disgusting.

CalRobert3• 8 years ago

"who would have thought 50 years ago that we‘d need barriers againt car attacks at all major public events"

To be honest, we still don't need them. Obviously it's horrible but considering that we accept ~1.25 million people a year killed on the roads (~25k in the EU, 30-40k in the US, or about one 9-eleven a month) it's probably not the best ROI. Though to be honest I think we should put massive barriers between cars and people anywhere we can, or just remove the cars wherever possible, but I'm odd that way.

Like I said I hope I'm wrong, but right now it looks like all the earlier estimates were too conservative and to think that we can cause major disruptions to the world's food supply, as well as making some places simply uninhabitable without air conditioning, strikes me as naive. To think that you can do it while still planning a 401(k) and buying holiday houses on the beach a cheap flight away for when you retire seems especially naive (though I worry we'll still have the cheap flights, which would be a bummer unless they're electric).

As far as population - it's true that we could stand to have far fewer people around, but even if your motivations are purely selfish, making hundreds of millions of people hungry, thirsty, and desperate doesn't sound like a good idea. And of course, most poor people emit basically nothing, so reducing the population of people living on under 5 dollars a day won't do much for the planet as a whole.

konschubert• 8 years ago

I think you're falling for a fallacy of scale.

The perceived need to add car barriers to public events ks nothing in comparison with having to air-condition homes and public spaces around the globe. Also, remember nature?

Daishiman2• 8 years ago

This is some seriously shortsighted thinking.

There's nothing you'll be able to do about oceanic anoxia, or a myriad other effects that are simply catastrophic.

Speaking of skiing, good luck when those economies collapse when the brunt of tourism goes away.

tumetab1• 8 years ago

Weird quotes from the article:

In this case, there are 86 lead authors from 39 countries, of which 39% are female.
These researchers, who are unpaid, have reviewed the available scientific literature on the feasibility, impacts and costs of staying under 1.5C.
"If one can imagine the governments holding the hands of the scientists, this means you don't know how science works!"

antientropic• 8 years ago

What is weird about them?

glenra• 8 years ago

The entire article reads like a blog post. It obviously wasn't written by a news writer or edited by a news editor - there are grammar issues and tonal issues and sourcing issues.

Does the BBC now have something like the Fortune "Contributor's Network" - a group of random bloggers who get to write under their domain as if they were BBC writers, weakening the brand but bringing in more click revenue? That'd be my guess as to what's happening here.

Regarding just the first sentence example:

In this case, there are 86 lead authors from 39 countries, of which 39% are female.

The sentence structure suggests it's the countries rather than the authors who are female. The clause is misplaced and "of which" applies to things not people ("of whom" would have been better). Basically the writer wanted to cram in a bit of extra information, couldn't figure out where or how to do so gracefully and grammatically, yet stuck it in anyway.

marmaduke3• 8 years ago

I found them prescient

In this case, there are 86 lead authors from 39 countries, of which 39% are female.

speaks to diversity, e.g. it's not just a bunch of white men from a thinktank in south Florida (born there, nothing against it)

These researchers, who are unpaid, have reviewed the available scientific literature on the feasibility, impacts and costs of staying under 1.5C.

unpaid suggest impartiality and dedication, the rest specifies the scope of their work nicely, as opposed to very unspecificed term "climate change"

"If one can imagine the governments holding the hands of the scientists, this means you don't know how science works!"

this is over the top but the point would be it's not a bunch of lobbyists writing the report on the behalf of politicians

Sol-• 8 years ago

I guess governments will just skip the prevention step when they realize their own inaction made that impossible and just try to find ways to adapt to the inevitable changes instead. There's pretty much no way, purely for political/human reasons, that keeping the temperatures below 2 or even 3 degrees seems feasible at that point, so humanity will just have to deal with it and adapt over the next century. Shame about the planet and the natural ecosystem, though.

ced• 8 years ago

Right. We'll claim it's too late to "prevent global warming", keep our lifestyle exactly the same because it's "radical" to suggest otherwise, and shoot for +5 degrees in 50 years instead of stabilizing at +2/+3.

rcMgD2BwE72F• 8 years ago

so humanity will just have to deal with it and adapt over the next century

So far, how much did you lose by fighting for the climate, to get the system to change? Your time? Your wealth? Your reputation? Your comfort? How much?

I can't believe we're becoming fatalist without a fight. I'd rather join the rebellion than watch the world burn and adapt to hell.

rayiner• 8 years ago

There was never anything the government could have done. To simply maintain carbon output at current levels, folks in the west would have to reduce their usage to a small fraction of the current amount to account for the increased usage in India and China.

rotw2• 8 years ago

so humanity will just have to deal with it and adapt over the next century. Shame about the planet and the natural ecosystem, though.

I don't think you understand that efforts to prevent climate change are efforts to preserve humanity - the planet will survive in any case, and just form new ecosystems. It's us who'll be the first victims.

stephengillie3• 8 years ago

Buy an air conditioner now, before governments start to ban them.

Daishiman2• 8 years ago

The only reason it's controversial is because all prior reports have been retouched by lobbyist and politicians who wanted to play down the effort.

Hope for the best and prepare for the worst, but worst increasingly looks like an extinction-level oceanic anoxia event.

Nursie• 8 years ago

I still frequently encounter people who consider the whole thing either a conspiracy or an outright lie, a way to bring America down, or some sort of left-wing class war in the UK, or all sorts of other bizarre things.

I even encountered one commenter recently who claimed that we fundamentally misunderstand the action of gasses in a a gravity field, and he was going to single-handedly prove it all wrong (and invent a source of free energy at the same time).

With this, and the long-term nature of the problem meaning that the can can always be kicked just a little further down the road, I'm not surprised that little gets achieved.

chinamarriage• 8 years ago

A key factor contributing to climate change is the number of people weighted by energy consumption.

Should governments in rich countries encourage people to have fewer kids or otherwise constrain their life choices in various other ways? This goes against liberal values. What do most progressives think?

garmaine• 8 years ago

That's not a causal relationship.

XorNot• 8 years ago

Also most western countries are in negative population growth sans immigration.

shoo2• 8 years ago

A key factor contributing to climate change is the number of people weighted by energy consumption.

It is sometimes framed as I=PAT equation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_%3D_PAT

It's probably important not to take that equation too seriously, as it's roughly an accounting identity based on structural assumptions. If you don't like it, pick any other factors to factorise one side of I=I. But it does provide a helpful perspective: in terms of what you stated, we'd also need to multiply by a coefficient that describes carbon emissions in terms of per-capita energy consumption.

Should governments in rich countries encourage people to have fewer kids or otherwise constrain their life choices in various other ways? This goes against liberal values. What do most progressives think?

I'm not sure if I am a progressive. My short answer is "yes, governments should constrain life choices to help force a controlled crash ahead of continued overshoot then a forced hard collapse". In the future I suspect we'll end up in scenarios where either we have the luxury of choosing one or more ecologically incompatible liberal values to break, or reality will go on ahead and break one or more of our incompatible values for us.

A liberal perspective of free individual choice in the short term that causes uncontrolled growth and consumption at the population level is not logically compatible with a desire to avoid wide-scale suffering due to famine, resource war, etc in the future (assuming that the latter concern is a value we wish to maintain).

Specifically regarding population, the carbon emissions of a US family* + descendants versus a Bangladeshi family + descendants, projected forward 100 years, estimates that the US family & descendants generates about 40x as much carbon emissions. (picking those two countries as extremes of (high per-capita pollution, low population growth) versus (low per-capita pollution, high population growth)). The US family & their descendants still incurs a higher carbon emission footprint even up to time horizons of 900 years. This is even with a US birth rate of 1.9, which isn't sufficient to maintain population over the longer run.

From an overall population level, arguably "we" the human endeavour should seek to minimise the number of people with affluent high-pollution lifestyles.

On the other hand, of course there is no "we" that includes all of us. Perhaps myself and my neighbours can figure out how to push more of the costs of global warming onto you and your neighbours while keeping a disproportionate share of the benefits, or vice versa. Or maybe together we can collaborate to share the benefits of the current cheap energy jackpot and push more of the costs on to our actual/hypothetical grandchildren.

* i dont mean to pick on the US, I'm australian, we're about the same or worse in terms of per-capita impact of ruining your children's atmosphere and climate. you should impose trade sanctions on my country to encourage my government to stop pushing for new coal mines. my federal government can't seem to think of anything cleverer to do than digging up all of australia's coal and selling it before it loses all market value.

tobyhinloopen• 8 years ago

I guess I'll be investing in building houses on Antarctica or something. Oh wait, it will still be dark there the majority of the winter... hmm...

tqkxzugoaupvwqr• 8 years ago

Too shortsighted. You also need to invest in housing in the Arctic region, as well as in shuttling between the Arctic region and Antarctica. The inhabitants will likely want to move to their summer home every half year.

claydavisss4• 8 years ago

Yet I doubt even these scientists have engaged in radically rewriting their lifestyles to reduce climate impact. If they had, they would have video conferenced instead of flying to Korea.

Basically no one in the West other than the very poor live a low impact life.

In the US in particular, we are really only very good at telling others how they should change. Case in point was the "March For Science" that took place a while back...in San Jose the parking for the event was full of giant SUVs...yet they all seemed so angry.

2sk21• 8 years ago

Carbon pricing is probably the only way to effect a change in behavior.

claydavisss4• 8 years ago

Doubt it, most in the West can afford moderate price spikes, and anything more profound will be viewed as job-killing. Indeed this was the exact response from Jerry Brown when asked about more impactful carbon taxation...he specifically stated that he refused to put "10 million people out of work".

r_smart• 8 years ago

And yet, aren't emissions in the US down to 90s levels? Less pollution is always good, but let's not pretend like nothing has happened.

marmaduke3• 8 years ago

they would have video conferenced instead of flying to Korea

that's a good point, but having found a 10 person video conference unbearable, how could they get much done as 86 people?

jeletonskelly• 8 years ago

Can we make significant progress in carbon capture technologies within the next 20 years that would not require such dramatic changes to society?

growlist2• 8 years ago

I think I can live with the drastic changes. Can the elite?

avmich• 8 years ago

According to Wikipedia, Earth atmosphere weights about 5e18 kg. A m^3 of air is alightly above 1,2 kg under normal conditions.

Suppose that on average each person from the most resourceful 1 billion people on Earth installs a device for air cleaning. The machine sucks air in, removes CO2 and releases the clean air. The device works using renewable energy, so by itself it doesn't contribute additional CO2 to the atmosphere. Suppose we want to remove 10% of CO2 from air, or in other words we want to pass 10% of Earth atmosphere through such cleaning devices. The year has about 365 * 24 * 3600 seconds, so to have those 10% in 10 years each device has to process 5e18 / 1e9 / 365 / 24 / 3600 / 10 / 10 = 1.6 m^3 of air per second.

This is not a small number, yet it's not immediately obvious why this isn't possible. For example, energy requirements can be small, because the device effectively doesn't change the bulk of the air. 10 years isn't that much comparing with the speed of raising air temperature. Cost of such a device could be perhaps smaller than a modest car. We still have option to deploy more devices, to separately clean ocean water etc. This is largely technical and not political solution.

What's wrong with this approach?

4dahalibut• 8 years ago

1. Cost to produce devices 2. Assumes perfect processing rate 3. That seems like quite a lot of air. For reference, a 52 in ceiling fan does 2.8 , and you're talking about pushing air through some type of filter probably

IPCC: Climate scientists consider ‘life changing’ report

Related Stories