Facing the consequences of climate change

http://www.economist.com/node/17572735

by rahooligan • 16 years ago

13 16 16 years ago

dannyb2• 16 years ago

Here's the problem that I see that few people discuss. Why should China and India care? The vast majority of their combined population, about 30% of the world's total, live under miserable circumstances by western standards. Move 100 million people off the coastline? No big deal. More typhoons? Oh well, we'll just rebuild the shacks.

China has a far greater problem in balancing the needs and wants of the haves and have-nots and they are going to address those issues first. They have everything to gain by continuing to industrialize and I think that anyone who believes that they will actually cut their emissions is kidding themselves.

I think we could take a huge step towards energy independence by building nuclear plants and driving hydrogen cars. Instead of dozens of smaller problems to solve, we could focus on just one: what to do with nuclear waste.

marknutter• 16 years ago

Can't we just reprocess that nuclear waste like the French do?

dannyb2• 16 years ago

Yes, we could make reactors much more efficient than they were in the past, but there still will be waste to deal with.

icegreentea• 16 years ago

100 million off the coastline??? China's shining jewels of modernity are right on the coast, or hell, a goddamn island. I think China would care very much if they lost half of Shanghai or Hong Kong (ok, probably exaggerating a bit). I mean, even if they were as callous as popular belief, it would still be a huge loss of face.

Its one thing for China to forcefully relocate its lower classes, but Shanghai/Hong Kong is full of China's middle and upper class, and they won't like it when they have to move.

zb• 16 years ago

From memory there are around 100 million people living in the Ganges delta in Bangladesh. It's hard to imagine that India would welcome the kind of instability that climate change could cause right on their doorstep.

arethuza3• 16 years ago

I know you can't extrapolate from local isolated weather conditions, but it does strike me as slightly ironic that I'm reading this article about Global Warming after a day spent outside in the record early snowfalls and cold conditions here in Scotland.

Which after last years epic amounts of snow and cold is beginning to looks like a pattern.... (I hope).

celoyd• 16 years ago

The overall warming trend means there’s more energy in the system, which means some patterns will change, and some patterns (like the Gulf Stream) are local warmings.

So, in some cases, consistently colder weather is evidence for anthropogenic climate change.

arethuza3• 16 years ago

I know I shouldn't, but the prospect of consistently colder and snowier winters makes me very happy.

tomjen3• 16 years ago

Agreed - I was just outside and had to clear a crapload of global warming of me.

I would just think it was kind of funny if it wasn't for climategate.

c1sc0• 16 years ago

'I hope' ... let me guess: you're into mountaineering, right?

arethuza3• 16 years ago

Skiing is my thing - usually a week or two in the Alps and another 10-15 days in Scotland per year.

Skiing in Scotland can be fantastic, but it is a marginal enterprise - all the skiing is well above the treeline and suffers from the very changeable British weather.

Some links giving a flavor of what it can be like here (easily drivable there and back from where I live in Edinburgh):

http://vimeo.com/10797924

http://www.haggistrap.co.uk/photostrs/easyspikes.shtml

lukeschlather• 16 years ago

Yes, well I was hiking in 56 degree weather at 3500 feet in the Cascade mountains only a few weeks ago. It was an absolute record high. Now of course we're covered in snow, but we had absolutely no snow in October. (Which is highly irregular.) We usually shut down the Jacuzzi in mid-October to conserve power (our power is dependent on a creek that is fed by melting glaciers, and consequently runs lower and lower as we get into the depths of winter.) As of this writing the Jacuzzi is still running.

So, we can play the anecdote game all day.

hugh3• 16 years ago

It seems that by 2100, if the stated effects (which are certainly at the high end of what's realistic), it ought to be relatively easy to do some large-scale engineering to mitigate them. Either dig some new seas to soak up the water (Australia could use its own Mediterranean) or put mirrors in orbit to cool the planet.

MichaelSalib• 16 years ago

Yes, large scale terraforming is both simple to understand, easy to do, and poses no political difficulties at all! I can't imagine what could possibly go wrong.

I mean, you realize that even if we could put giant space mirrors in orbit, it wouldn't solve all the biggest climate change problems, right? Reducing the amount of sunlight that reaches the Earth's surface does nothing to reduce the amount of CO2 in the oceans, which means we might still devastate the ability of a few billion people to get sufficient protein to survive.

rbranson• 16 years ago

erm... there's more issues than just the sea level rise. If it was that simple, we'd already have a plan. The overwhelming parts are the widespread destruction and depletion of usable farmland, ocean acidification & oxygen depletion, water scarcity, jumps in disease vectors, and the increased use of energy-intensive technology to mitigate the effects of climate change which in turn creates a vicious cycle.

Facing the consequences of climate change

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