World on 'catastrophic' path to 2.7C warming, warns UN chief

https://www.france24.com/en/science/20210917-world-on-catastrophic-path-to-2-7c-warming-warns-un-chief

by bjourne • 5 years ago

177 253 5 years ago

scarmig4• 5 years ago

Is fatalism (in an all too unfortunately literal sense) all we have left?

When an official says "unless governments credibly commit to immediate, massive decreases in emissions, we're screwed," it just amounts to "we're screwed."

Encouraging and striving for some radical new technological innovation is all we can do.

RandomLensman3• 5 years ago

No. We just cannot sustain panic continuously. I am confident that eventually a mix of decarbonization, mitigation of climate change effects, and some sort of geoengineering will avoid any apocalypse.

scarmig4• 5 years ago

The point is that by all measures decarbonization isn't happening. Mitigations are a critical part of any solution, but expensive and hacky. And geoengineering is exactly the kind of radical new technology we might need, but the key point is that it doesn't exist right now and might not ever be practical.

silisili• 5 years ago

Agreed, but I quit saying as much, as often here you are met with disdain for saying such things, and that you are creating distractions. TBF I do see both sides - by saying 'ah we'll figure it out' it makes it seem like it's not a huge issue(it is). But I do think we will figure it out, even if it means vaporizing the sky to block the sun while carbon increases.

RicoElectrico• 5 years ago

The problem lies much more in the realm of politics, rather than technology and science. We opted to wage pointless wars instead of modernizing the energy mix.

There are also instances when politicians do want to change something, but their cluelessness shows - solar freakin' roadways anyone?

jonny_eh2• 5 years ago

We opted to wage pointless wars instead

No, we opted to provide incentives to fossil fuel producers and consumers. That is how we got into this mess.

Pointless wars are bad for other obvious reasons.

wing-_-nuts• 5 years ago

Is fatalism (in an all too unfortunately literal sense) all we have left?

If you wish to keep 'the world as we know it'? Yes, that ship has sailed. What we're fighting for now is the degree to which the world we know will be destroyed.

AnimalMuppet2• 5 years ago

I think the wording gives it away. "Unless government credibly commit to..." Not "unless governments do". Just if they "credibly commit to doing". They still aren't thinking in terms of actually doing things, just in terms of committing to do them.

Talk != action, not even if the talk is "credible". You think this is an existential problem? Great. Start doing something. Don't tell me what you're going to do, do it.

DanHulton• 5 years ago

Keep in mind, it's not pass/fail. 2.7 is different from 2.8 is different from 2.9, etc. They're all bad, sure, even terrible, but limiting it _at all_ could make the difference for literal millions of people.

Fatalism leads to giving up, which leads to us hitting all those higher numbers, which leads to an unnecessary amount of extra suffering.

mercurywells• 5 years ago

Due to the feedback loops, isn't 2.9 potentially significantly worse than 2.8 versus 2.8 compared to 2.7?

errantspark• 5 years ago

I feel like we could go a long way toward this through individual choice. You can just y'know, refuse to help ruining our planet. I bet for most people on this forum that's absolutely a practical choice but the money is too good to worry about that.

I don't think that's the best solution, but at least it's one I can personally enact, and if deontologically expanded it does lead to solving the problem. Don't play negative or zero sum games and ostracize those that do.

luckylion2• 5 years ago

You can just y'know, refuse to help ruining our planet.

People don't like that. A friend of mine likes driving his car, and does so a lot to go places on the weekend and stuff. He'd like to see the government mandate reduced car usage. I've asked him: you're free not to use your car, why do you still use it if you believe it would be best if you didn't? Because he likes it and if it's not made into law, he won't do what he thinks is best.

"We should outlaw personal air travel, but until that has happened, I'm going to fly around the globe" is what I see in far too many proponents of those rules.

I have no idea what goes on in their head, it's completely alien to me.

tsimionescu6• 5 years ago

There are huge industries pumping money into making sure this doesn't happen. Modern advertising is one of the biggest industries on the planet, and it's only goal is to get people to consume more. One of the means of doing this is specifically convincing people that global warming is not that risky.

Not to mention, many behaviors are in fact impractical. The vast majority of people can't afford equipment and clothes that can last a few decades, as used to be the norm, for example. In much of the west, responsibly grown sustainable food is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than fast food.

focusgroup02• 5 years ago

Have any of these dire predictions ever come true?

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-park-202...

kergonath10• 5 years ago

Predictions of specific events at a specific date are most often stupid. What we know is that the global average temperature is trending upwards, that Greenland is on the way to losing its ice sheet, and that some large ice sheets are sliding into the sea in Antarctica. It is certain at this point that Greenland will be ice free and that there won’t be any glacier left in Europe, but putting a specific date is foolish.

scarecrowbob• 5 years ago

Is that article not saying explicitly that these "dire predictions" are being demonstrated by the loss of ice in the park?

Or am I misunderstanding what you are writing?

Supermancho• 5 years ago

To summarize, yes.

mikojan• 5 years ago

So much this. "Science" predicts there's a 17% chance you won't survive a game of Russian roulette. It's a fun game, though.

jonny_eh2• 5 years ago

No one has ever expressed regret from playing Russian Roulette.

nielsbot• 5 years ago

"fun"

marcellus232• 5 years ago

Have you been to Glacier Park? I suggest you go there and take a tour. Especially look at the pictures of what the glaciers used to look like, and then look at the real glaciers now. Hard to argue against global warming then.

swader999• 5 years ago

Sure but they've been shrinking for twenty thousand years so I don't see this as definitive.

mikestew• 5 years ago

It's interesting that you chose that link to illustrate your point. The only thing Glacier NP did wrong was being overly-pessimistic. But anyone that has been to Glacier in, say, 2010 or prior can visit today and see quite visibly noticeable differences. I'm hardly qualified to give even a half-assed prediction, but it wouldn't surprise me much if it turns out that Glacier NP was just 10 years off in their prediction, and I certainly wouldn't expect to see much in the way of glaciers in 2040.

Glacier NP isn't the only place that I've looked up and wondered, "wasn't that a lot bigger when we were here ten years ago?", either.

gilbetron• 5 years ago

Honestly, what would change your mind? Really? Like if the oceans were literally boiling and you could be outside without a thermal suit, would you still be saying it was just a little spike? At what point would you say, "we need to do something"?

kergonath10• 5 years ago

We tend to low-ball the predictions from the models for political reasons and not to sound too alarmist, but we get more and more data showing that the numbers we use are severely underestimated. 1.5°C was always a pipe dream, but it looks like even 2°C or 2.5°C are all but inevitable, just because of the stuff that’s already in the atmosphere.

Yeah, there is little to be optimistic about.

TazeTSchnitzel• 5 years ago

What really spooks me is: how much of the baked-in warming, and warming we are unlikely to avoid, is going to set off irreversible tipping points?

ljf• 5 years ago

This - the tipping point where a glacier melt is sped up, and then exposes peat and releases more co2 etc etc - there are so many little tipping points that we just don't know about. Maybe easy alone would have a minor impact, but cumulatively the impacts may be huge.

A lot will also depend on the state of society in general when the things get tough, will extreme heat or extreme rain come during a war, or economic downturn, or in a pandemic?

rayiner4• 5 years ago

Okay but what does 2.7C really mean in terms of aggregate effects? Quantify it relative to something concrete.

smaddox• 5 years ago

Global average temperature was 4C lower than pre-industrial levels during the last ice age. New York was a kilometer under ice.

Tepix3• 5 years ago

2.7°C is the world wide average. It will be a lot more in places.

This would mean 200 million refugees compared to 44 million refugees that we can expect when we manage to pull of a climate-friendly scenario (which looks rather unlikely at the moment).(1)

I suggest you have a look at the sixth IPCC assessment report released in August https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/ especially chapter 12 of the full report.

(1) https://www.pri.org/stories/2021-09-13/report-climate-change...

kergonath10• 5 years ago

More extreme events, more frequently, causing more damage both in economic and human terms, mostly. Also, some places uninhabitable around South and South-East Asia, leading to lots of millions of refugees.

It is very difficult to quantify accurately, because this is unprecedented in the history of the planet, never mind the history of the human race.

dredmorbius2• 5 years ago

http://wondermark.com/1k62/

sjatkins• 5 years ago

If we generously assume the models which do not have a good record of maching actual data are correct, 2.7C is not remotely catastrophic by the IPCC's own analysis. Average temperature has been up by much more than that at times in the last few thousand years.

isoprophlex• 5 years ago

Yes and society as it exists now is what, at most 200 years old? Your point is moot.

This temperature rise is totally out-of-context for us, and will cause a lot of pain.

scarmig4• 5 years ago

A slow, steady increase over millennia of a couple degrees Celsius is fine and possibly even on net good (more agriculture in the northern parts of the globe, which contain a lot of land).

The same increase over a century is disastrous, because infrastructure and capital doesn't change or move nearly so rapidly.

Mehito2• 5 years ago

Yes most people on hn will not experience much issues through climate change the other 100million and more will.

They will loose land, health, money etc.

People whoms homes will be burned etc.

We will experience future animal diversity reduction. This is something very depressing but depending in the Person how much you care for such things.

Also we will experience more dramatic Events as well. Like droights and lots of rain. The Impact on you might range from 'not leaving my flat today' to 'I lost everything'. Your surroundings will slowly change. Woods will start looking different.

And still we are not very certain about all those things. It could get much faster much worse through tipping points.

It also forces future generations to already plan their future accordingly: they will know that they will experience an increase of sealevel of 60cm and more.

baron_harkonnen2• 5 years ago

most people on hn will not experience much issues

If the AMOC collapses as we are already starting to see [0] then at least the European portion of the HN community will be deeply impacted.

If the American South West continues it's path of aridification [1] then plenty of HN member will be impacted as well.

[0]. https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceano...

[1]. https://www.pnas.org/content/117/22/11856

lisper• 5 years ago

Average temperature has been up by much more than that at times in the last few thousand years.

That is simply not true. Global average temperature has been stable for 10,000 years, since the end of the last ice age. It is that long-term stability that made the rise of human civilization possible.

baron_harkonnen2• 5 years ago

much more than that at times in the last few thousand years.

When was that?

If you look at this estimate of temperature on Planet Earth[0][1] you can clearly see the last time the planet saw > +2C was the Pliocene.

Even if you look more closely at just the Holocene you don't see > +2C anywhere[2]

[0] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5f/All_pala...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_temperature_record#/med...

jbay8085• 5 years ago

the models which do not have a good record of maching actual data

They don't? Which models are you referring to? The model forecast in James Hansen's 1988 congressional testimony was almost spot on.

https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hanse...

Uhhrrr5• 5 years ago

The second graph there shows land-ocean measurements being often below Hansen's conservative estimate.

mbrubeck2• 5 years ago

Average temperature has been up by much more than that at times in the last few thousand years.

This is simply false. The last time global average temperature was more than 2.7°C higher than modern times was over 100 thousand years ago.

outside1234• 5 years ago

Every 1C increase results in 2.5m of sea level increase. 8ft of sea level rise will be devastating for Florida for example.

This prediction is for 6.75m of sea level rise or 22ft.

paulmd3• 5 years ago

It's an interesting hack for the electoral college, certainly. The state is still going to be there, build an artificial island and be the only person left on the island and you get yourself 3 electoral votes and a personal rep and two senators.

relativeadv• 5 years ago

obligatory https://xkcd.com/1732/

breakyerself4• 5 years ago

The models do actually have a very good record of matching the actual data. The way that propagandists convince you they don't is by cherry picking model runs with higher co2 levels and showing a discrepancy between those model runs and reality.

If you instead only look at model runs with co2 levels close to reality you find that the models have done an amazing job of predicting current warming levels. 50 years more than one study showed 1C of warming by 2020 if co2 levels were around 420. Which is exactly spot on to where we are.

Climate modeling predictions are some of the most stunningly accurate predictions in the history of earth science and someone should have gotten a Nobel for it by now.

breakyerself4• 5 years ago

Also temps are higher right now at 1C of warming than they have been in 100,000 years. I'm not aware of any scientists predicting 2.7C of warming as manageable. Society may not collapse, but the amount of degradation of agriculture and biodiversity would be one of the worst tragedies in human history.

splistud4• 5 years ago

Well, 2.7 from here would be likely not a good thing.

That said, why should we generously assume the models are correct? Because, despite the hundreds of lines of hand-waving in this topic, they have not proved to be correct.

gotoeleven• 5 years ago

There is a solution, it's called nuclear power. When will the perceived risk of nuclear power be overtaken by the risks of global warming? Why does it seem like we, as a society, are not capable of making grown-up assessments of this issue?

azinman2• 5 years ago

That's A solution, but it's not like energy plants are the only source of CO2. They also take many billions to create and many many years, need rare materials that can also be turned into weapons, and need to be located near some large body of water for cooling. It's not like you can just roll that out to the entire world in time even if you started now.

api• 5 years ago

They're by far the main source. Coal burning for electricity is the source of >60% of all fossil CO2 emissions.

That's just coal power plants. No oil, no gas, no other sources.

kergonath10• 5 years ago

We also need to electrify everything that can be, and use fuel cells for what can not.

The capital issue really is political, as not doing it will cost way more in the long run. Pricing adequately carbon emissions would be a first step.

Nuclear plants don’t need rare materials, and the waste in current designs cannot be used in a nuclear bomb (well, they could be used in a dirty bomb, but then there are loads of cheap as chips chemicals that are much better for this use).

It is true that it is too late now to rely only on that. We still need all the tools we have, and we should build as much reactors as we can, and as much wind turbines (and solar panels where it makes sense) as we can. We are not in a situation where we can prioritise one or the other, otherwise we end up with gas and coal, like in Germany.

breakyerself4• 5 years ago

We need a price on carbon emissions. Probably coupled with subsidies on a per kwh basis for carbon free energy. Different energy sources will be appropriate in different markets. Mandating specific technologies is going to end up being wasteful and inefficient.

my_usernam3• 5 years ago

I'm a single issue voter on this. Be pro nuclear energy and you're my candidate.

fighterpilot2• 5 years ago

Wind and solar can get you very far and are significantly cheaper and easier than nuclear, so it only makes sense that we ramp that up to 50%+ of the energy mix immediately, with power lines and natural gas peaker plants in place to smooth out temporal availability.

I'm not discounting nuclear and see its value for base load power, and I think anti-nuclear energy people are puritanical idiots and definitely do not want to vote for anyone who is against nuclear, but I get the sneaking suspicion that nuclear power is often mentioned as a way to misdirect away from wind and solar for political reasons which is a shame since these technologies are such easy wins that can be implemented right now.

splistud4• 5 years ago

Okay grownup, assess this. How do we credibly maintain that we can properly maintain stored wastes for centuries, in order to prevent some sort of ecological cataclysm? This is a particularly sensitive question in light of the fact that the overall conversation we are having is concerned with preserving society as we know it?

I'm not against nuclear power. But if we are to be adult about it, we need to be clear about the risks (and not pretend that there is a risk in assuming the same type of society in 1500 years). We also need to be clear what it means to take this risk if all we are solving is a 'problem' that our best efforts at modelling CAN NOT REPLICATE, and evidence for which only exist if one cherry-picks the dates.

the_why_of_y• 5 years ago

This is actually being done in France:

Construction on a new reactor, Flamanville 3, began on 4 December 2007.[4] The new unit is an Areva European Pressurized Reactor type and is planned to have a nameplate capacity of 1,650 MWe. EDF estimated the cost at €3.3 billion[4] and stated it would start commercial operations in 2012, after construction lasting 54 months.[5] The latest cost estimate (July 2020) is at €19.1 billion, with commissioning planned tentatively at the end of 2022.

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

coryrc8• 5 years ago

35%+ of the US population won't even get vaccinated to save their own lives. The majority of people aren't willing to sacrifice their own standard of living at all to help. 97.8% of cars sold in the US are gasoline-powered even though people could afford to buy EVs. Nearly every house built today is not at passivhaus standard, and probably not a single apartment building.

And even if the US completely changed... there's oil and coal distributed fairly evenly across the whole world. Even if the USA used all its power, it couldn't stop the rest of the world from exploiting every last drop of oil and last chunk of coal. Tell me where I'm wrong, what could any group do to stop every drop of oil in the middle east and Nigeria from being pulled out?

aaomidi4• 5 years ago

It would help to avoid thinking on the individual level and more so on the system level of what we could do to encourage certain behaviors?

For example, Netherlands was able to completely revolutionize their cities and optimize them for bike travel. Now biking is the main mode of transportation.

A lot of the changes we want to see individuals do, the system discourages it or makes it hard to do those changes.

Electric cars have dubious benefit for the environment as well, so I don't think using that as a solution is fair.

coryrc8• 5 years ago

And yet, they're not on approach to get net-zero in time. All that change and it wasn't enough.

EVs are just the tiniest inconvenience to Americans over gas and still they won't embrace it. It's much cheaper than the other things we need to do.

powvans• 5 years ago

People will do what is economical for them personally. Effectively no one would pull carbon from the ground if they could get cheaper energy from somewhere else. The answer is to develop the technology to produce that energy and give it away if that is what it takes to undercut the fossil fuels.

coryrc8• 5 years ago

Saudis can profitably pull oil out of the ground at ~$10/bbl. We have some oil "replacements" which could be cheaper than the current price of $70/bbl. We're not even close to $15/bbl equivalent.

sylvainr653• 5 years ago

and give it away

But who would pay for this? At the end, the States can only take the money in the pocket of its citizens, present or future.

mbrubeck2• 5 years ago

35%+ of the US population won't even get vaccinated to save their own lives.

Only 26% of eligible Americans are unvaccinated, and that number is still shrinking every day. Yes, there is a depressing number of hardcore anti-vaxxers, but it's a much smaller minority than 35% of the population.

mrxd• 5 years ago

there is a depressing number of hardcore anti-vaxxers

According to polls, one-third of the unvaccinated say they would get the shot if they were given time off work to deal with the symptoms. That suggests their "vaccine refusal" is related to their precarious economic circumstances and isn't a political stance. That brings the number of hardcore vaxxers down even further, to around 17%. This is probably still an overestimate, since some proportion of this population are minors and not making their own medical decisions, or may have other non-political reasons.

yummypaint• 5 years ago

I agree we are likely spiraling toward our collective demise, but there are still some ways to try to attack the problem. One thing we can do is shift the economics of energy production by increasing research funding for alternatives. I would argue cost effectiveness of modern panels is the real reason solar installations are becoming more common. They are a solid investment for individual homeowners. We need better storage and transmission technologies to lower the remaining barriers to running a grid on renewables.

Once renewables become the most cost effective option, people will switch regardless of their politics or location.

I would argue the huge investments needed to conduct modern fossil fuel exploration and get the remaining (and least accessible) material from the ground may become unjustifiable if demand drops sufficiently.

breakyerself4• 5 years ago

If the stimulus checks had been tied to vaccination status we would be at 99%. The government asking the populace to "Please do the right thing" isn't an effective strategy. Who would have thought?

deniscepko2• 5 years ago

Don't think EV is going to help much. On the individual level anything you would do is miniscule. The change has to come from politicians, so its all about voting.

hansthehorse• 5 years ago

Nothing will change politically until the predictions contain the phrase "by the next election" and by then it's far too late.

coryrc8• 5 years ago

I agree with you, but I think it shows the level of commitment from the population is so low that we aren't willing to prioritize the issue when voting. WA even shot down multiple carbon-tax-like initiatives.

oliv__2• 5 years ago

35%+ of the US population won't even get vaccinated to save their own lives

As far as I know those 35% are still around so it seems like they've successfully saved their own lives.

commandlinefan3• 5 years ago

won't even get vaccinated to save their own lives

See, that kind of hyperbole makes me question the whole climate change narrative. There's virtually 0 chance that Covid is going to kill me. I'm vaccinated because I don't like getting sick even if I don't die at the end of it, but Covid is actually very mild. When the same people who treat it like the bubonic plague are always the ones who are telling me that the world is going to end in 10 years unless I vote to pay higher taxes, I'm inclined to discount them.

newbamboo• 5 years ago

Is this because of the submarines?

aboringusername• 5 years ago

[deleted, sorry]

jonahbenton3• 5 years ago

Upvote. One of the many disconnects in climate is around measurable day to day impacts both individually and on aggregate.

The same UN report that points to high-C temperature increases claims in economic terms only a smaller rate of GDP growth for a high-C world, compared to GDP growth for a stable world. That means we may well have both climate disaster AND flying cars and disease and aging elimination and all the benefits that "progress" makes available, now not just from traditional tech but acceleration in energy and biology development as well.

If that is true, then even a dramatic rise in episodic disasters just becomes a cost of doing business. I don't think that's true, but I also don't think we are headed for population crash. And I would be very, very, very surprised to see e.g. travel rationing.

Much much more work to do on localized analysis and narrative.

splistud4• 5 years ago

Let's be very clear. Every mitigation strategy discussed will have massive downward pressure on the population. You don't get to make it harder/more expensive/impossible to generate food and energy and also have the same amount of people.

oliv__2• 5 years ago

Count me out of that world, thanks

the-dude3• 5 years ago

I am no alarmist, but just look at how most governments reacted to COVID.

sneak• 5 years ago

Every major world government, even the supposedly good/professional ones, lied about various things both big and small, and engaged in different types of ass-preserving coverups.

the-dude3• 5 years ago

I was hinting about the time it took them to actually do something. Anything.

RandomLensman3• 5 years ago

Did we not have vaccines operational and distributed on a large scale in record time? Shows what we can do to solve crises - might not all be government action, but does that matter?

irrational• 5 years ago

Recent I was having a "discussion" with an anti-vaxxer (though they don't like that term since it's not really a vaccine, according to them). They claim that "studies" prove that mRNA drugs cause cancer in almost all cases. So I responded that this was great news since it means almost everyone will die which will solve the Covid crisis, over-population, and the dumping of gases from the burning of fossil fuels into the atmosphere. Killing 3 birds with 1 stone! They were not amused.

Zababa12• 5 years ago

(though they don't like that term since it's not really a vaccine, according to them)

To be fair, compared to the other vaccines that we're used to (except for the flu shot), this vaccine appears really weak. I wonder if giving it another name (immunity booster?) would have helped.

freeone30002• 5 years ago

It's more effective than most vaccines, but most vaccines are for relatively rare diseases (due to near-universal vaccination for decades). The pertussis vaccine is only about 80% effective against contracting pertussis, but, nearly nobody is exposed to pertussis EVER, versus nearly everyone being exposed to the flu (or to covid) -- usually several times.

agumonkey• 5 years ago

who here is working on planning socio-economic scenarios and responses to the plausible crisis ? (migrants, anger, poverty)

I'm a bit stumped to see nobody trying to model social dynamics in potentially catastrophic contexts. Sure, some people are doing the usual "It's gonna be war and crime and bla" but I'm talking about almost quantitative modeling. How to see society as chemical or proteic reaction bath and try to see how we can dope the material here and there to smoothen the future problems.

Zababa12• 5 years ago

I'm not using any scientific tools for now, but I think the changes coming are a good reason to run away from the cities. The shift to work from home have made this even easier than before. I wouldn't want to be there when the climate refugees arrive.

jonahbenton3• 5 years ago

With respect- in the US I would suggest the opposite.

Cities are the only places that know how to scale, that have the capital and human infrastructure to handle influx, and that can and will command resources when there are scarcities and constraints. I would double down on cities. Everywhere else will be a crapshoot.

adventured2• 5 years ago

There's lying, delusion, denial, opportunism occuring in vast abundance. I commonly see a large amount of living in denial, living in delusion, about it, even among people that (supposedly) fully buy in to the worst climate change scenarios.

See: The Obamas buying an $11 million ocean-side property. They either don't believe any of it, or they don't care how bad that looks. Similar to rich climate change evangelicals flying around on private jets all the time. Are they rationalizing? Are they pathological liars? Are they in denial? Standard hypocrites?

Or see: Chuck Schumer & Co. pushing the fraud that we have to act immediately on their proposed green agenda to save the US from climate change. It's all bunk, they're lying very belligerently. The US isn't an isolated magic realm, climate change is overwhelmingly global. There's nothing they have proposed that will matter stacked next to China's rapid emissions expansion. They conveniently ignore that of course, they go out of their way to not talk about that aspect, and then lie and claim their plans can rescue the US from global climate change.

With most people you can't have a rational discussion about any of this. For the same reason you can't have rational discussions about Covid. Out of control emotion, irrationality and propaganda rule the day.

FooBarBizBazz• 5 years ago

This is tangential, but I don't like this word "heating" -- and not for the political reasons you think.

I know why we use it. It sounds more severe than "warming", and more active. That's not my problem with it.

My problem is that it misleads about the physical mechanism. Temperatures don't go up because of additional heat inputs to the system. They go up because of the greenhouse effect.

A better description would be something that evokes, somehow, that you are wrapping something in insulating blankets until it overheats and dies. It's less "heating", more "smothering".

"Heating" conjures this mental image of the Earth in a pot on the stove. That's dramatic but not how it works. It's more like the Earth is your beloved dog, who you've just locked in the car with the windows up on a hot day.

Additionally, a phrase like "2.7C degrees of heating" has a little of the problem that popular science-speak often does, where it insists on saying, say, "power", where "force" would have been a more accurate word, and no less communicative to those who don't know any physics anyway. Because "heat" is measured in units of energy, while "2.7C" is in units of temperature. Granted, if you multiply this temperature delta by the thermal capacity of the Earth, you do get a change to thermal energy. But again, what's misleading is the idea that humans are directly injecting that energy. They -- we -- aren't. We're shifting an equilibrium, in an energy flow -- from the Sun to the Earth, and radiated from the Earth to space.

A good thing about the focus on temperature, though, is that that's more directly relevant to the environmental issues. The thermal energy of the Earth is not really relevant. The temperature is.

Anyway, I wish that our efforts at communicating urgency could also embed some communication of the underlying scientific concepts, the causal mechanisms.

Maybe "smothering" does it.

ASalazarMX2• 5 years ago

I think we are beyond semantics. Calling it smothering, greenhouse, warming, climate change, etc. doesn't make a difference. The only people who still want to believe that it isn't happening won't be convinced by names.

They'll be convinced only when it (drought, desertification, flooding, hunger, etc.) affects their own neighborhood.

pjc50• 5 years ago

Not even then. The pandemic has made it very clear how good people are at ignoring a disaster happening around them. And look at the Texas response to its power crisis last winter.

splistud4• 5 years ago

Or, you know, people who can read the data. And no, you can't convince me with names, threats, warnings, tears or any amount of nonsense.

deelowe• 5 years ago

My issue is that the problem is more about "energy" than heat. While the average over time will be a gradual warming, the impacts locally will be much different on the time scales normal people care about. We should be talking about weather extremes, not "heat." When we say the earth is going to get warmer, people think "fine, Canada is kind of nice anyways." In reality, we'll also see extreme blizzards, floods/rain, tornados, insect swarms, mass deaths of flora/fauna, and more. Pretty much all natural phenomena will be amplified both in terms of frequency as well as severity. And we may have many years before that 2.whatever C warming trend is realized, extreme weather events are increasing now. My home was almost leveled this year by an F4/5 tornado this year in an area where tornados are typical but never much more than an F2.

ziddoap• 5 years ago

I think you're making a pedantic mountain out of a molehill.

For Mr. and Ms. Average Person, what do they gain in understanding by you saying "smothering" or "warming" over "heating"? Do you think that will lead to increased activism? More efficient activism? Or is it solely to satiate the scientists who already understand the difference of heating vs. warming?

While I think precision in speech is a good thing, there is a point where it really just doesn't matter anymore - because the end result remains exactly as intended.

When I'm explaining security concepts in a security awareness presentation, for example, I sometimes make a non-perfect analogy to get my point across. Anyone who understands why the analogy isn't perfect probably doesn't need the talk. Anyone who doesn't understand why the analogy isn't perfect probably doesn't care about the nuance. The average person doesn't care if it's a gigabit or a gigabyte of data stolen, they just care about the end result - data was stolen. The same applies here.

I personally don't care whether the earth is technically "heating" or "warming" - I only care about the end result and what I can do to help.

jl62• 5 years ago

Don’t give up.

Even if we get to catastrophic 5 or 8 or 10 degree warming, it won’t wipe us out completely and we will still have to find a way to pay back our pollution debt.

Why is this supposed to be encouraging? Because every little bit of pollution avoided today is a little bit less pollution to clean up in the future.

Every bit does count.

Even if avoiding 2.5 degree warming seems impossible, let’s at least make it 3 instead of 5 or 8 or 10.

I use “pollution” to make it clear that this is not just about CO2 but also about every other type of trash that we dump onto this planet.

slumpt_3• 5 years ago

Mobile phone culture is really disturbing in this regard. The amount of annual-upgrade-onto-the-next shit with devices that can last years and years. It’s not the problem in itself, but it highlights an aspect of consumer psychology that really damages the planet and probably our mental health too.

krainboltgreene• 5 years ago

The pollution from mobile phones is actually not even worth thinking about.

We have found that, if unchecked, ICT GHGE relative contribution could grow from roughly 1–1.6% in 2007 to exceed 14% of the 2016-level worldwide GHGE by 2040

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09596...

rastafang• 5 years ago

We need to make the Government care first... planned obsolescence can easily be avoided. But of course they don't want to fix that because it hurts the economy in the short term.

t8e56vd4ih• 5 years ago

i know this is cynical but it is also the truth. if i die or my life is ruined then you can all go and fuck yourself. i don't give a flying shit about humanity surviving me.

AnimalMuppet2• 5 years ago

Some of us have kids, though. Some of us care about them and not just ourselves.

effingwewt2• 5 years ago

Now you understand why homeless people piss and shit on wealthy doorsteps and trash every place they visit.

Is it any wonder they want to watch the world burn?

dr_dshiv7• 5 years ago

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Stratospheric aerosol injection "is the most-researched SRM method, with high agreement that it could limit warming to below 1.5°C."

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_geoengineering

gralx• 5 years ago

In case anyone missed the IEEE Spectrum piece "Here's How We Could Brighten Clouds to Cool the Earth" published Sept 7:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/climate-change

Discussion on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28451710

BLanen2• 5 years ago

5 to 8 degrees is probably the death of the biosphere with only extremophiles left.

fighterpilot2• 5 years ago

I have a question which might betray ignorance - why wouldn't humans still be able to live in colder countries which are now warm countries?

I agree that 5-8C warming will lead to mass death through war, famine. But why would Siberia be too hot for habitation for the remaining population (whether that's 100 or 500 million people)?

jl62• 5 years ago

Not true. The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum was this hot, or even hotter, and life was thriving.

But not human life.

Could humans survive this? Probably yes - we are resourceful and adaptable. But probably with a vastly smaller population and with a type of civilization radically different to our own.

TomSwirly2• 5 years ago

Even if we get to catastrophic 5 or 8 or 10 degree warming, it won’t wipe us out completely and we will still have to find a way to pay back our pollution debt.

8 or 10 degree warming!? It wouldn't "wipe us out completely", but mostly, and certainly civilization would not survive, so how are we going to pay back the pollution debt?

Cosmin_C• 5 years ago

I think what the parent comment meant was that the pollution debt will be automatically paid when civilization collapses and industry basically stops functioning.

A good way of looking at the situation is that the Earth will be fine regardless - it's been through worse (the Premian-Triassic saw extinction of 57% of biological families, 83% of genera, 81% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species), it's humanity that will be in deep, deep trouble in the near future.

arcanon• 5 years ago

If you work for the oil industry, by all means give up.

mrfusion2• 5 years ago

Here’s what they were saying in 2004:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t...

I’m not ready to subscribe to the panic just yet. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still worth taking measures to limit co2 but I’m not going to panic about it.

ryandrake• 5 years ago

News about climate change always reminds me of that "Truck almost hits a pole" meme [1]. We're always "on the catastrophic path" and "nearing irreversible damage" and "almost permanently fucked". I'm personally not a climate denier, but I can understand the skepticism. For the last 20 or so years, we've always been really really close to utter disaster. To get a little more provocative, it feels like Christians declaring Jesus will be returning Any Day Now, for the last 2000 years.

1: https://imgur.com/r/gifs/kuplW0m

paulmd3• 5 years ago

Science communicators try to avoid it because implying that things are on an irreversible course tends to cause people to shrug and say "oh well, guess that's that then". But things can actually always get worse, and they will if something isn't done.

But we're already there. Things are catastrophic right now. Wildfires are intensifying, hurricanes are intensifying, we're having "hundred year" floods every 5-10 years, the coral reefs are dying from the carbon dioxide in the air. And this is just the start, things are going to be far worse in another 50 years unless we take action now.

coolspot• 5 years ago

Less people on the planet -> less CO2 emissions.

I just don’t understand why no one talks about how we produce more and more people, each consuming a lot.

martincmartin• 5 years ago

We did in the 1970s. Have you seen Soylent Green?

Zababa12• 5 years ago

Because ecologists are often left-wing people, and talking about overpopulation would shift the blame from the occident to Africa and Asia.

Edit: as an example of that, look at that map of mismanaged plastic https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution#share-of-global.... Do you think that fighting against plastic straws and bags had any kind of meaningful impact?

billiam• 5 years ago

What a lazy and irrelevant point. Social scientists won't shift the blame to Africa and Asia because their energy intensity is still a tiny fraction of the developed world, and unless and until we deal with energy intensity, we don't have political authority to dictate terms to the rest of the world.

delecti2• 5 years ago

why no one talks about

Because most people frown on genocide.

And it's not like it's a secret that people living is why CO2 emissions happen. A big part of the Paris Agreement includes details about the varying development states of different places around the world (the average Ghanian is responsible for way less carbon emissions than the average American, but it's not fair to enforce them staying that way).

But fine, I'll bite; lets talk about it. What do you suggest? Who are you suggesting we have fewer of?

commandlinefan3• 5 years ago

most people frown on genocide.

We don't necessarily have to kill everybody to get them off the planet - if we focus on space travel and terraforming, we can reduce the population of a given planet to an almost arbitrary number... once we figure out a way to safely get somewhere else.

dr_dshiv7• 5 years ago

Can we please start the geoengineering R&D work now? Let's not have those positive feedback loops start spiralling out of control.

tsimionescu6• 5 years ago

No. That is by far the most dangerous option, at least as likely to make the problems worse as it is to help at all.

Geoengineering is absolutely to be discarded in these discussions. Technology will kot save us this time.

civilian2• 5 years ago

hmmm. Everything has a trade-off, including of risk. I think your blanket statement against geoengineering has got to be wrong.

Geoengineering is a broad category, and it'd probably be better if we split it into specific strategies.

Why are olivine beaches at least as likely to make the problem worse?

Why is injecting Sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere at least as likely to make the problem worse?

Why are shade satellites at least as likely to make the problem worse?

Are the risks associated with these strategies really worse than 2.7+ C of global warming?

civilian2• 5 years ago

shade satellites, let's go!

also, olivine beaches.

jobigoud• 5 years ago

Who's funding? What's the business model? How do we convince people that we need to experiment directly on the live system even though we don't really know what we are doing?

It feels too big and without tangible ROI for private companies, too long term for politics, too hard for governments to justify the shot in the dark.

dr_dshiv7• 5 years ago

1. Funding: NSF? Hell, how about DARPA. It isn't big money. It's a few science grants of $10 million, which, let's be honest, is pocket change compared to coastal flooding.

2. Business model: government contracting. Or carbon credits, eventually.

3. How to convince people: Good question. Probably by doing it small scale and getting convincing scientific evidence. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that Stratospheric aerosol injection "is the most-researched SRM method, with high agreement that it could limit warming to below 1.5°C." People might not believe the IPCC, but with more empirical evidence they might.

Tangible ROI: avoiding rapid climate change and enabling companies to transition out of fossil fuels. It's happening, we just need another couple decades. It isn't a shot in the dark, it is building on a scientific legacy. This isn't crazy business. It's science and engineering.

kergonath10• 5 years ago

How do we convince people that we need to experiment directly on the live system even though we don't really know what we are doing?

This. All these “geoengineering now!” pleas are infuriating. It’s like a programmer’s simplistic solution to a complex problem, except that we don’t get to roll back a dodgy patch. We already have tools to avoid the worst if we wanted to, and waiting 20 years for the next technological breakthrough is dangerously stupid, particularly considering how little we know about how the biosphere works in general and the likelihood to fuck it up.

egberts1• 5 years ago

so we all know that some 10,000 temperature reading stations get ommited from most climate change whitepapers, leaving with with ~7,200 legacy 1973 stations in which to use for our much bias/less readings and analysis.

But I’ve yet to read how today’s whitepaper sought to compensate for creeping but heat-producing urban and suburban sprawl.

What I really want to see is how are the rural regions faring decade-over-decade.

api_or_ipa2• 5 years ago

This line from the article really bothered me

With only 1.1C of warming so far, the world has seen a torrent of deadly weather disasters intensified by climate change in recent months, from asphalt-melting heatwaves to flash floods and untameable wildfires.

I'm really bothered by the recent trend in science reporting to take a carte blanche approach to attributing every natural disaster to climate change. Yes, it's indisputable that climate change is absolutely changing our weather patterns, and it's very probably causing and/or strengthening the consequences of disasters happening now, but it's just plain bad science reporting to lump up all recent natural disasters and go "see! Climate change!". And yes, I'm aware that this might be the only way to catch people's attention to the current crisis, but that doesn't excuse the disservice to bone fide science reporting.

/rant.

enkid4• 5 years ago

So, how would you report it? You can't point at two hurricanes and say "this one was caused by climate change and this one wasn't", you can only say, statistically, we should be seeing one hurricane instead of two.

jsudi2• 5 years ago

You can not say that climate change caused them in the same way we don’t say that God caused them.

drclau• 5 years ago

you can only say, statistically, we should be seeing one hurricane instead of two

I was actually curious if climate change results in more hurricanes. Apparently, not so:

"Because of climate change, tropical cyclones are likely increasing in intensity, have increased rainfall, and have larger storm surges, but there might be fewer of them globally. Tropical cyclones may also intensify more rapidly, and occur further polewards. These changes are driven by rising sea temperatures and increased maximum water vapour content of the atmosphere as the air heats up."

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclones_and_climate_...

api_or_ipa2• 5 years ago

The disservice is the causal inference that global warming is behind all the recent natural disasters. The sentence I quoted could be better written as:

Many scientists believe that with a warming climate, certain natural disasters, such as floods, heatwaves and wildfires will become more frequent as well as severe. Scientists also say the world has warmed by about 1.1C which they believe has already begun to increase the frequency and severity of natural disasters and, as climate change continues to warm the plant, anticipate further increases in the frequency and severity of these disasters.

Or whatever. I'm not a climate scientist. The point is, nobody can say for certain that the current set of natural disasters is climate change, or sheer luck. That's not a political statement, that's a scientific statement of fact. Science cannot change the facts to suit it's disposition, regardless of its good intentions.

whydoyoucare• 5 years ago

To my mind, it is "correlation" that is being posed as a "causation". Science is never certain, though the Climate Scientists are absolutely certain. See the disconnect? It is more likely this alarmist/doomsday position will be ignored completely by the public (the boy who cried wolf scenario).

A better framing may be to say something like this: "All physical systems of this planet are interconnected. While we cannot be absolutely certain the worsening of weather is related to our behavior, there is mounting evidence that our behavior does, to a great extent, influence the climate. So it is in our hands to alter our behavior so the future generations can enjoy the earth like we do today. We owe it to them."

disambiguation2• 5 years ago

i think "record breaking..." has been effective reporting

- record breaking rainfall

- record breaking droughts

- record breaking glacier melt etc.

followed by "the previous record was set last year"

noasaservice• 5 years ago

But, we plebes will still be shamed for our straws.

In reality, it's the massive industry that has no reason to be clean.

And it's the transportation infrastructure in the USA that favors cars over everything else.

And its massive deforestation across the world.

And it's massive CO2 causing evolution of H2CO3 in the ocean, systematically destroying oceanic life.

In reality, it's capitalism, hockeystick required growth (as opposed to sustainability), bad/no planning at larger governance levels, and obsolete-by-design goods that used to be durable.

hesdeadjim4• 5 years ago

One pet peeve of mine with climate change articles is that in the US Celsius is often used.

A&W tried introducing a 1/3 lb burger, and it failed horribly because the average consumer couldn't understand that 1/3 is greater than 1/4.

Now with climate change, that same person is going to shrug off 2.7C because "2.7 isn't much". Re-frame that as 5-10F, and that person is suddenly going to be much more interested, because a 5-10F increase in summer temperatures anywhere in the US is meaningful.

anamexis2• 5 years ago

I don't think the global mean temperature change is going to come off as particularly impactful either way. 5-10°F increase is notable, but doesn't sound particularly scary or urgent. It's the catastrophic consequences that are the scary part.

hesdeadjim4• 5 years ago

Yep I won't disagree that the actual consequences are far more severe than turning up the A/C and not going outside.

Depending where you live though, adding 5-10°F isn't entirely ignorable. If you live in Texas, that's taking a 100°F day and making it sound even more brutal. Or as a Coloradan, it's experiencing temperatures you never thought you'd see in the mountains, and being able to intuitively associate the increase in temperatures with the increase of wildfires.

woodruffw2• 5 years ago

A 10 degree increase in the average summer temperature would probably mean tens of thousands of deaths per day in less developed countries with humid climates. The human body doesn’t tolerate wet-bulb temperatures above 95F.

mkr-hn• 5 years ago

Ten degrees is the difference between manageable and deadly with enough humidity. It's meaningful if you live in a place where it's meaningful.

WastingMyTime89• 5 years ago

the average consumer couldn't understand that 1/3 is greater than 1/4.

The average reader of France 24 understands Celsius and has no clue what a Fahrenheit is. No one uses Fahrenheit apart from the US. It's like imperial units, totally irrelevant if you are addressing a global audience.

themodelplumber• 5 years ago

F does have that nice comfort-zone granularity though. Swingier whole numbers around the zone of human activity. Maybe there's a way in which the numbers could be displayed side by side... Even for sheer generic number effects

hesdeadjim4• 5 years ago

You're missing my point completely. If a news article is targeted at a US resident, it should use Fahrenheit for maximum impact. Globally and scientifically, of course use Celsius -- or even better, mention both.

josephcsible2• 5 years ago

How did you turn 2.7C into 5-10F, when 2.7C is less than 5F?

sylvainr653• 5 years ago

A&W tried introducing a 1/3 lb burger, and it failed horribly because the average consumer couldn't understand that 1/3 is greater than 1/4.

Why then they didn't come up with a 1/5 lb burger?

syntaxstic• 5 years ago

So we're fucked?

gibsonf1• 5 years ago

How many predictions not coming true, and there have been so many, will it take for people to become skeptical of these kinds of predictions?

titzer2• 5 years ago

You're right, the predictions that it would all be fine seem not to have come true. I mean, seriously, are skeptics even making predictions? No. They have no model, they have no calculations, they have no idea of the future except that nothing's a problem and it'll all work out. Or whatever. They put nothing on the table.

sylvainr653• 5 years ago

are skeptics even making predictions?

I think that this is their point: predictions cannot be made with our current understanding of climate.

lightsurfer• 5 years ago

No pain no change, only highly evolve and conscious people can change out of conscience, which is not the case of people who derived their sense of identity out of profit. They wont change. Maybe that's what people like Elon Musk have figure, the will destroy the planet, I may as well start working on a plan b, Mars. Or maybe simply stop having children as we may be bringing them to this world to face a terrible calamity.

medlazik• 5 years ago

Yet another thread about climate change on HN where ctrl+f capitalis returns zero results. It's time to say the fucking word. It's time to admit you were wrong about the free market. It's time to vote for anticapitalist regulationists whenever you can. Capitalism did some great things while destroying the planet, it now needs to be radically regulated. Solution is 100% political.

adventured2• 5 years ago

It's time to say the fucking word. It's time to admit you were wrong about the free market. It's time to vote for anticapitalist regulationists whenever you can.

I'm going to remain a staunch Capitalist. I wasn't wrong about market based economics. I won't be admitting to such a thing.

The greenest, cleanest, nicest nations in the world are all market based economies, and that includes the nations of Scandinavia (which are all market based economies; none are Socialist nations). There have been no actual free market economies in existence in the past century. Hong Kong perhaps came closest. The US for its part hasn't been anything close to a free market during most of the post Civil War era, however it remains a market based economy as with all of Western Europe. The US and all economies of Europe (as well as all relevant economies of Asia) are highly regulated, and nowhere near free market systems.

The most polluting nation in world history, modern China, is very openly anti-Capitalist and very aggressively pro-Socialism. They have never been Capitalist, nor have they ever had a free market economy. Their system is becoming less market based by the day, and they're set to double their emissions again in the coming decades. They currently operate under a totalitarian Communist one-party dictatorship. Socialism with Chinese characteristics, as they're so fond of saying.

atotic• 5 years ago

I was helping prep my high school kid for his evolution quiz. One of the concepts was "punctured equilibrium". To get his attention, and make it relevant I used: "global warming is puncturing the equilibrium today. What do you think that looks like?"

titzer2• 5 years ago

It's "punctuated equilibrium". Meaning, there are relatively long periods of stability separated by short spells--punctuations--of upheaval.

lacrosse_tannin• 5 years ago

Read Desert

focusgroup02• 5 years ago

Disappointed with the HN crowd - of all groups of posters, we should understand the inaccuracy of mathematical models, and the unexpected emergent behavior of complex interconnected systems. How are we so arrogant to believe that we can predict the future with certainty?

clipradiowallet• 5 years ago

Devil's advocate here. The article mentions imminent "massive loss of lives and livelihoods". Wouldn't that lower emissions? ie, we aren't likely to need to keep smog factories pumping out pollution 24/7 when the population is slashed in half. I realize that's not an ideal scenario, but it's a fail-safe of sorts.

disambiguation2• 5 years ago

yes, all systems reach equilibrium eventually.

IMO this is the buried lede of the whole topic, any solution we come up with is going to look like a "controlled crash" in the sense that nature will force us to crash at some point

effingwewt2• 5 years ago

To quote someone in the dolphin massacre thread- 'Fucking humans.'

We are and have always been the problem. I feel like we legitimately are parasites, we even ravage/consume ourselves.

Shit like this makes me hope we never get off this planet to just infect more planets and systems.

Blackstrat• 5 years ago

The lack of healthy skepticism in these comments is somewhat concerning. I guess most here haven’t lived through the last 50+ years of climate and population growth catastrophic warnings. If you are really concerned about CO2 pollution, talk to China, Brazil, and Africa. The States is a net CO2 sink. Or you could simply quit listening to politicians and bureaucrats, who at the end of the day simply want power, control, and your money.

World on 'catastrophic' path to 2.7C warming, warns UN chief

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