Climate Threats Now Dominate Long-Term Risks, Survey of Global Leaders Finds (trust.org) 180
Climate-change-related threats such as extreme weather, large-scale biodiversity losses and a failure of political leaders to slow planetary heating are now the top long-term risks facing the globe, business and other leaders said. From a report: An annual risk survey published ahead of the World Economic Forum next week put climate threats ahead of risks ranging from cyberattacks and pandemics to geopolitical conflict and weapons of mass destruction for the first time. "That's new. Last year we didn't have it," said Mirek Dusek, deputy head of the Centre for Geopolitical and Regional Affairs and an executive committee member of the World Economic Forum, of the rise of environmental issues up the list. The shift comes as climate-changing emissions continue to rise strongly globally, despite government and business commitments to reduce them, and as the potential impact of runaway climate change becomes clearer. From wildfires in Australia, Brazil and California to worsening storms, floods and droughts, "all key indicators point that this is a situation that's bad and it's getting worse," said John Drzik, chairman of Marsh & McLennan Insights, a global risk, insurance and professional services firm.
When (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:When (Score:5, Informative)
When will America's political leadership acknowledge what has been empirically shown to be the case? The rest of the world is debating about the appropriate response and course of action should be. America can't acknowledge the problem exists.
Well, every large empire comes to an end eventually. Completely ignoring pressing problems is usually something that happens in the later stages of this process. In the West, nobody is even remotely as unprepared for what is to come as the US is.
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Except the US is at the forefront of actually reducing CO2 emissions and deploying renewables. But don't let your jealousy of the US get in the way of facts.
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Only when measured in absolute terms. As a percentage, many European countries have far higher reductions.
Hint: Forbes isn't a reliable source of unbiased news.
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Except the US is at the forefront of actually reducing CO2 emissions and deploying renewables. But don't let your jealousy of the US get in the way of facts.
This is because the footprint of the goods for the USA's immense per-capita consumption is externalized to where they are being manufactured.
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Well, isn't that pretty much the way it is for EVERY western country?
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Well, isn't that pretty much the way it is for EVERY western country? ... but I somehow doubt you meant that.
Depends what you call west.
Technically most of Europe is actually east of Greenwich
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No, they are 20 - 30 years behind Germany.
And only something like 10 years behind the spot where China overtook them in CO2 emissions.
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The previous leadership did acknowledge the problem. The current fake leadership can't get their heads out of the sand because their wealthy donors are holding them by the neck to keep their heads inertly buried. Also, climate change is well-known to be a hoax perpetrated by China, scientists, Europeans, George Soros, left-wingers, etc., i.e. the usual right-wing nut hobgoblins.
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It's like the whole encryption-backdoor nonsense: it's senseless to want backdoors in encryption, unless you consider tha
Re:When (Score:4, Informative)
Because the problem does NOT exist.
The only proof out there show that we are safer and live longer - despite all the "doom and gloom" that the climate-changers have been pushing for decades (and have been wrong in EVERY prediction).
When you are you sheep going to wake up to the fact that the whole "climate change" nonsense is nothing more than a power grab?
First, United States has declined in average lifespan for the 3rd year in a row now.
Second, every large insurance company in the world is saying the same thing; "the world is getting to risky for insurance if climate change continues". Lloyds of London has some amazing research on this.
Third, your point has absolutely nothing to do with the future. By your logic we could all live in huts because it's good enough to survive. Well, sure, but you'd thrive a lot better and longer in a real house. All you are doing is using straw arguments to hold up a world view you can't sustain otherwise. You might as well believe in a flat earth.
Re:When (Score:5, Informative)
First, United States has declined in average lifespan for the 3rd year in a row now.
Not because of climate. Because of opiates.
Life expectancies globally continue to increase. Infant mortality continues to decrease. Poverty continues to decrease. Access to food, water, sanitation, energy, and education all continue to improve year over year.
Pretty much no matter where on earth you are, life is a hell of a lot better than it was in 1850. Ostensibly ideal pre-industrial climate notwithstanding.
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Not because of climate. Because of opiates.
There's also issues of depression causing suicides, alcohol and drug abuse, and general poor health. What's causing this? Well for one is the constant mention of just how fucked we are because of global warming. This global warming scare mongering is far above and beyond anything that actual scientists will predict. We have people like Al Gore and Bill Nye that have been claiming that Manhattan would be underwater, DC would never again see snow, and the glaciers in national parks would be gone. All tha
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There's also issues of depression causing suicides, alcohol and drug abuse, and general poor health. What's causing this? Well for one is the constant mention of just how fucked we are because of global warming. This global warming scare mongering is far above and beyond anything that actual scientists will predict.
Yup. Judith Curry had a good article on this phenomenon recently.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/1... [judithcurry.com]
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Yup. Judith Curry had a good article on this phenomenon recently.
https://judithcurry.com/2019/1... [judithcurry.com]
Indeed, that is a very good article. Quoted in the hope to increase visibility.
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Well,
the likelihood that the letter is made up is 101%.
And then the idiotic author brings some made up statistics:
Over the past century, there has been a 99% decline in the death toll from natural disasters, during the same period that the global population quadrupled.
Which kind of disaster? Hurricanes and Taifuns? Perhaps ... no flue infection, check. What about earthquakes ... ooops, not natural disasters. What about Tsunamis?
Sorry, but your Judith is a fraud ...
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We have people like Al Gore and Bill Nye that have been claiming that Manhattan would be underwater, DC would never again see snow, and the glaciers in national parks would be gone. All that was supposed to happen before the year 2020. ... as the glaciers are soon gone, I wonder what your point is.
I doubt any of those said: before 2020
What's added to my optimism is that Trump and company has done more to lower CO2 emissions in three years than the Democrats and RINOs did in three decades. ... because h
Sure
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Not because of climate. Because of opiates.
There are most likely many points, e.g.:
o lack of health insurance
o homeless situation
o gun control
Pretty much no matter where on earth you are, life is a hell of a lot better than it was in 1850.
Depends on country and situation. E.g. Bismarck introduced health insurance and accident insurance 1883.
Life was not particular hard, just because you had no (electric) fridge or aircon. However around that time big european cities were covered with smog in winter. And
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The real problem is in between the extremes of you and the GP, but I actually think it's closer to GP's. Read the IPCC reports, trust the science - the
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there is no imminent nor unmanageable risk.
Depends what you call a risk.
Most of Isaan is suffering from a drought, 3rd year now. Obviously there is a risk as in a certainty that we will have many many draught periods in future that are similar.
During 2019 an El Nino event ended. At the moment we are in a kind of neutral phase, heavily influenced in many parts of the world (e.g. both americas) by the heat stored in the upper region of the ocean. It is unclear how long the neutral phase will last, current es
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I cannot figure out whether this is terminally stupid or just paid propaganda.
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Yes. Both actually.
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Possibly, yes.
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"The climate runs away and we get another ice age."
The climate runs away? Is that like a sissy confronted by a bully?
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About 90% of the energy accumulating the previous 100 years due to global warming is "stored" in the oceans. 6% heated up land and air, the other 4% ended mostly in heated up glaciers - not enough to melt them, though.
Regardless what is now happening with your "cloud scenario", we have thousands of years to go until the ocean has released that amount of heat - in case we curl back CO2 level to about 50 or 100 years ago - thousands, perhaps several ten thousands ... not only a few decades or a century.
A litt
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And lets not leave out that the stored heat has very real, very damaging effects right now [abc.net.au].
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Another effect of a sea that's warmer is that it can't hold as much dissolved CO2.
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Actually while troposphere clouds cool the planet, stratospheric clouds warm it, and so does increased humidity. ( https://eos.org/research-spotl... [eos.org] )
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Actually, volcanoes provide temporary cooling, sometimes for a year or two.
And the only serious idea for stopping them that I've ever heard of was to use them as a geo-thermal power source. This, however, has the potential problem of causing them to eventually explode rather than merely erupting.
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Are they expecting the west to give up its way of modern life and go back to all of us living rural and doing our own farming, with no machines, transportation and basically live in one place all our lives?
I mean, from the desperate numbers I keep seeing thrown around, nothing short of that will save the planet for human kind....at least that's what it seems from all the alarm ringers.
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That's exactly the problem. They love to whine about the problems, and say we need to "do something". But when you ask what they propose, they have nothing. So the old guard keeps on doing the same thing they always have like propping up coal. I'm a fan of renewables, but I don't think we're to the point we could reliably switch entirely. 80% maybe, but that last bit is tough. Nuclear, which I'm not a great fan of, could probably fill the gap. I'm not sure how the CO2 from all that concrete plays into the m
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Are they expecting the west to give up its way of modern life and go back to all of us living rural and doing our own farming, with no machines, transportation and basically live in one place all our lives?
No, they expect the west to produce its electricity and conduct its transportation without producing CO2, can't neither be to hard to grasp nor to hard to actually do!! What the fuck does your fridge care if it gets CO2 free produced electricity, or your AC? Why do you care? Why do you think you have to a
Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm glad leaders are finally starting to see the real peril the world is in because of the pervasive "oh but it'll cost money to fix" attitude.
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Depends on what you mean by leaders. The World Economic Forum isn't exactly leaders, but they do advise various leaders, some of whom pay attention to them.
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Scientific much? (Score:2)
A survey of global leaders...
I'm not sure that's even worth the very minor key wear creating this study has caused.
Climate change isn't a threat to the globe. (Score:5, Informative)
In the mid to long term the globe will adapt. But in the short term, human societies will struggle. Wealthy countries like the US will fare better than poor ones like Bengladesh. Wealthy people in the US will fare better than middle class and poor people.
Climate change is a man-made analog of the "natural disaster". Strictly speaking, there is no purely "natural" disaster; there are natural events like hurricanes or volcanoes that human populations are unprepared for. That's why countries like the US take events like Hurricane Harvey in stride;that is something that would have been catastrophic in a poor country. Our wealth allows us to prepare for and adapt to discrete events like that.
Because climate change is man-made, we basically have three choices. (1) We can try to prevent it, although the window of opportunity is closing on that. (2) We can prepare for its effects, although that is expensive. Or (3) we can let it happen and try to adapt as it happens, which is the most expensive option of all. However, the expense of waiting and reacting will not be borne *evenly*. The more that your income is based on financial assets as opposed to labor or land, the easier it is to avoid paying the costs of climate change. In fact all you have to do is rebalance your portfolio annually and you'll make money in the creation of the problem and make money in the dealing with the problem.
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In the mid to long term the globe will adapt. But in the short term, human societies will struggle.
Exactly.
... Because climate change is man-made, we basically have three choices. (1) We can try to prevent it, although the window of opportunity is closing on that.
I wish people would stop saying that the "window of opportunity is closing".
I understand why people say that-- it's hard to get people motivated without a deadline-- but no, there is no "window" that's "closing". If carbon dioxide keeps increasing, temperature will keep rising. There's no point where it levels out and we say "ok, this is the end, we had the effects of CO2 now.". Nope. IF we don't cut emissions by, say, 2030, it's even more important to stop emission.
(2) We can prepare for its effects, although that is expensive. Or (3) we can let it happen and try to adapt as it happens, which is the most expensive option of all.
And, option (3): All of th
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I don't say things I think are false in order to make them sound rhetorically better. There comes a point where the Earth will find a new equilibrium point, and without massive (and probably futile) geoengineering projects we won't be able to stop it.
But even if we reach a tipping point, delaying that tipping point for a few decades has enormous value.
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The globe will manage. I mean Venus is doing quite well.
The real truth is that we don't have a very good idea of what will happen if the temperature rises 4 degrees. It might wipe out the mammals, but the globe would survive. We've got models, but they haven't been tested for how well they work in that temperature range, and they can't be because we lack basic data. It's possible that the oceans would evaporate enough water to provide extreme tropospheric cloud cover and the temperature would drop back
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The planet has been much hotter-- eight degrees hotter, in the Cretaceous, as an example-- and without ice at the poles, so yes, the planet in itself, and life on the planet, can survive much hotter temperature. It's the rapid (on a geological scale) rate of CHANGE that causes problems.
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I've never seen an estimate of how much land was above sea level when the world was hotter. But Antarctica did have a temperate forest in at least one such time.
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But at that time Antarctica was not at the pole but more where Australia is now ... a tropical forrest at a pole with 3 month polar night: is impossible. And that is a no brainer ...
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That was my initial assumption, but the context seemed to imply otherwise. So I have to ask, "Are you sure?", and wonder what your source for the position of the continent was.
I can't remember my exact source, but it was something by Dawkins, possibly "The Ancestor's Tale". I'd run across the information before, but the position of the continent always seemed unclear in the earlier references. In the latest references it seemed clear that Antarctica had maintained it's current position. And a brief web
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What is fairly certain is that if warming continues past 2 degrees, Antarctica will melt, and almost all seacoast cities will need to be evacuated.
You are mixing up Greenlands/Arctics with Antarctica. For Antarctica to melt you need more than just +2C (we are actually already very close to +2C).
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If carbon dioxide keeps increasing, temperature will keep rising. There's no point where it levels out and we say "ok, this is the end, we had the effects of CO2 now.". Nope.
I saw an interview on YouTube with some climate scientists that will disagree with you.
There is a limit on how much CO2 will raise the temperatures. This is because the more CO2 high in the atmosphere the less heat lower levels of the atmosphere can soak in, or something like that. There's also heat loss to space, the higher the temperature on Earth the greater the loss. The water cycle plays a big part too because the warmer the air the more clouds, which blocks the sun and aids in heat loss to space.
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If carbon dioxide keeps increasing, temperature will keep rising. There's no point where it levels out and we say "ok, this is the end, we had the effects of CO2 now.". Nope.
I saw an interview on YouTube with some climate scientists that will disagree with you.
A good rule to use in browsing the internet: never believe anything you see on Youtube unless you have verified it with a reliable source.
There is a limit on how much CO2 will raise the temperatures. This is because the more CO2 high in the atmosphere the less heat lower levels of the atmosphere can soak in, or something like that. There's also heat loss to space, the higher the temperature on Earth the greater the loss. The water cycle plays a big part too because the warmer the air the more clouds, which blocks the sun and aids in heat loss to space. Or something. It's all very complicated.
I'm not sure anything there makes any sense. However, yes, the rise in temperature is logarithmic in CO2 concentration. At the moment we are well within the linear range, but no, you can't extrapolate this arbitrarily. You can extrapolate it reasonably for a few decades, though.
The point is that we don't know how hot it can get. The models are all over the place and some are more accurate than others. I've seen people claim they can reduce the errors in the models by averaging the results from all the models. I don't know how that's supposed to improve the accuracy. I'm not a climate scientist but I did take courses in statistics, math, and engineering, while at university. I'm pretty sure that noise in the signal doesn't average out like that.
Noise averages out, but bias doesn't.
The point is that the models from the past have over estimated the temperature rise considerably.
No they haven't. Where the hell are you hearing that fr
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A good rule to use in browsing the internet: never believe anything you see on Youtube unless you have verified it with a reliable source.
I have done this. Multiple highly credentialed people made this claim. I believe them more than the other highly credentialed people with opposing claims because the "global lukewarmer" crowd did a better job explaining themselves than the "climate crisis" crowd. Again, I am not a climate scientist myself but I have received an education in engineering which has given me enough insight in statistics, sciences, and math to recognize many problematic claims in some of the models and demonstrations used to
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A good rule to use in browsing the internet: never believe anything you see on Youtube unless you have verified it with a reliable source.
I have done this. Multiple highly credentialed people made this claim.
"Multiple highly credentialed people made this claim"... and yet you cite youtube.
Right.
I believe them more than the other highly credentialed people with opposing claims because the "global lukewarmer" crowd did a better job explaining themselves than the "climate crisis" crowd.
If you never read any of the actual science, the information you get is the stuff you read.
Have you read any of the actual science?
I will suggest the IPCC Working Group 1 report as a starting place, "The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change": https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5... [www.ipcc.ch]
(don't just read the "summary for policymakers"-- read the actual report).
Again, I am not a climate scientist myself but I have received an education in engineering which has given me enough insight in statistics, sciences, and math to recognize many problematic claims in some of the models and demonstrations used to "prove" concepts behind these models.
Since your idea of the actual science seems to be youtube videos,
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I will suggest the IPCC Working Group 1 report as a starting place, "The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change":
^^^^This. The IPCC working group gets a lot of flack from people who've never read anything they've done, but it's quite doable to get the story straight from the horse's mouth because they aren't writing for a technical audience.
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"Multiple highly credentialed people made this claim"... and yet you cite youtube.
If I mentioned a video in which Bruce Schneier was talking about the security of 5G cellular on YouTube then is that "citing YouTube"? No, it is not. What he says should hold the same weight if he says what he said on YouTube, Fox News, his personal website, or in a TED Talk. That is citing Bruce Schneier, not the medium in which he choose to transmit his message. You just demonstrated that I should not take you seriously.
Since your idea of the actual science seems to be youtube videos, I doubt you even know what the actual science claims are.
Did I say that was the only place I saw this? Should the fact these scientists ch
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The video An Inconvenient Truth also isn't science. Don't get your science from YouTube; don't get your science from videos from politicians.
Get your science from science.
The reason I think you don't get your science from real sources is the list of various inaccurate statement you have made in this thread. But actually, I think most of these are simply superficial knowledge poorly remembered. I don't see that the logarithmic dependence of temperature on trace gas concentration is under attack by any of
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The video An Inconvenient Truth also isn't science. Don't get your science from YouTube; don't get your science from videos from politicians.
Get your science from science.
I mentioned that movie only to set a time frame. It was only 14 years ago that people like Al Gore were pointing to scientists that said some major glaciers in the USA would be melted away by 2020. Again, that's only the medium of communication and not the source. Again, that's also simply setting the time frame. That's not my only source for how bad the science has been then and now, but that's what the state of the "science" was roughly 15 years ago.
I've read many papers. I've seen many videos too.
Don't get your science from Youtube. Period. (Score:2)
I've read many papers.
No, you haven't. In a long series of posts, you've made a lot of assertions, but you haven't cited a single actual reference to real science. The closest thing to a reference was "I saw an interview on YouTube". And over and over you have demonstrated that your understanding of the science barely rises the level of "superficial". No? So then tell me what science have you read that lays out the basis for our understanding that human-generated carbon dioxide contributes to greenhouse warming?
If you're deciding whether the science is correct by what solution people advocate, you're doing it wrong.
Science says there is no solution to global warming that excludes nuclear power.
What? Science s
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The thing to remember, CO2 is a trace gas. The current concentration of CO2 is about 400 ppm or about 0.04%. We are nowhere near the upper limit of what CO2 can do.
As for sea level rise, it's true they've been rising for the last two hundred years (we think), but the rate from 1800 - 1860 was extremely slow, enough that it might be statistical noise. The rate between 1900-and 1990 was 1.5mm/year, and since 2000 the rate has been over 3mm/year. That corresponds to nearly all the hottest years in the inst
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The thing to remember, CO2 is a trace gas. The current concentration of CO2 is about 400 ppm or about 0.04%. We are nowhere near the upper limit of what CO2 can do.
Okay, fine. What should we do about it?
If the answer does not include building a new gigawatt nuclear power plant every week somewhere in the world then we aren't doing enough. That's just where we start, one gigawatt of new nuclear power capacity is just the breakeven point of retiring old nuclear and coal. There's still a need for hydro, wind, and geothermal energy to add to make up for growth in need and to diversify the grid.
As for sea level rise, it's true they've been rising for the last two hundred years (we think), but the rate from 1800 - 1860 was extremely slow, enough that it might be statistical noise. The rate between 1900-and 1990 was 1.5mm/year, and since 2000 the rate has been over 3mm/year. That corresponds to nearly all the hottest years in the instrumental record having been since then.
3 mm/year is less than a foot per century. That does not sound like somethi
There are MANY global, serious problems. But ... (Score:2)
... the primary global problem is the overpopulation. ... to gain more taxes.
The world leaders should better concentrate on curbing the population growth, or better to decrease the population.
However, the dominant "world problems solution" is for many governments the population growth
-z
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Certainly overpopulation is a major problem, and climate change is derivative. But climate change is worthy of cataloging as a separate risk factor.
What are a few billion dead? (Score:2)
It's not like having more than 2 billion people die, and twice that be displaced by climate change, is like, a Climate Crisis ...
Or is it?
Pro tip: It's far worse than you think. You have 7 years to reduce global emissions 7% each year. And then costs start escalating rapidly.
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Human Stupidity has ALWAYS been like this. Doomsday folks are always like this. The Author of the Population Bomb STILL thinks he is right despite being proven wrong a billion human lives over.
Well duh! The world can support infinite numbers of people, always has been able to, and always will. Limits do not exist - that is just liberal claptrap.
The problem is that these people are so married to their ideas that everything that goes wrong is now either a cause or an effect of "climate change" and you will never talk them out of it because that is what their identities have now become!
All science is just Marxist propaganda.
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I once went to a conference on the carrying capacity of the Earth, where an economist got up and claimed that the capacity was, in his words, "roughly infinite". His evidence was that food production had been able to keep pace with or outpace population growth for the past fifty years.
A biologist got up next and said that human population was at present limited by the solar energy plants could convert to biologically available calories. You can make an acre of plants more efficient at converting sunlight
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>limited by the solar energy plants could convert to biologically available calories... when you are converting 100% of the energy received by an acre of crops into calories, there's no more to be had
How would a vertical farm play into that? Or lab grown meat?
Not arguing. Just curious.
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Except with population, things have changed. The world population growth rate is half what it was in the 1970, when it had been accelerating for twenty years. Around the time people started to worry about population, population growth rates started to fall around the world. Maybe that was coincidence.
If you disaggregate the current 1.08% average (something you should always do), you'll find that populous countries near the top of the list are usually dysfunctional (South Sudan, Chad) are usually deeply dy
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people starving, homelessness out of control, refugees from war torn nations everywhere, let alone socio-political issues growing by leaps and bounds but CLIMATE CHANGE(TM) is the most important thing our leaders care about.
And perhaps that's the REAL problem.
Ok, let's tackle this one at a time, shall we?.
People starving, because our food outtake cant correlate with local population because of droughts, floodings and desertification, etc.
Homelessness out of control: If your house got destroyed in a flood and again next year, and again next year, eventually youll end up homeless. If you are on a subsistance economy and your environment get wrecked (again, think drought or serial floodings), youll end up homeless. Now think this stuff is becoming more and more fre
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However, keep in mind, the poor trilobites who suffered during the End-Triassic mass extinction 200m years ago.
Solution to our problem: five billion people decide to jump into the ocean. Now, you just need to figure out which five billion.
Re:oh please (Score:5, Insightful)
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Seriously wtf. The world keeps reporting bumper crop after bumper crop.
I can tell you that we're getting that amazing crop at a much higher cost than before. Good example, US winter wheat. We're growing the ever loving eff out of winter wheat and the number of acres per year yield is just an upward slope. However, the US winter wheat is suffering from falling numbers [wikipedia.org]. This means the starch content of the wheat goes down a bit. now we can mitigate this by mixing different batches of wheat and drying it. So if a single acre of wheat has lost 2% starch content, we can then
Re: oh please (Score:2)
Admit it - you wanted to type "war never changes" for that last part. ;)
Re: oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: oh please (Score:2)
If you're whining about the shit McDonald's serves around the world that's not our fault. I don't eat that shit and no one is forcing people in your food importing country to eat that either.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Which they cannot do, because the kleptocrats permit foreign exploitation of their natural resources in exchange for foreign military support of their kleptocratic regimes. It's hard for the farmers of Africa to overthrow their overlords when those overlords are equipped with US and UK supplied military goodies. Pitchfork vs M4 does not make for good odds.
Yes, let us talk whole world (Score:3, Informative)
A bumper crop of corn in Nebraska does little to help famine hit Zaire.
What I really freaking hate about you ignorant climate alarmist cultists is that you never even bother to look at the data [ourworldindata.org], instead you just make some utterly uniformed statement like "famine in Zaire".
What you find if you actually examine the data, is that Africa overall has improving crop yields (as any intelligent person would expect with advances in technology and a warming climate with more CO2).
Now some areas of Africa it's not re
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Not meddling into the rest of the discussion.
But the maps are not for a single year(2014). They have a slider underneath it that allows you to explore it across several years.
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Did you actually examine the data you linked to?
The increase of Africa's crop yields is entirely due to better technology, mechanization, crop rotation, improved irrigation and use of fertilizer. And that's in spite of the droughts that has plagued the continent lately.
The link doesn't even mention anything about CO2 and warming helping improving the yields. Why would YOU make that connection when the information you linked to doesn't?
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A lot of the US was once rainforest. Large areas of Michigan, New York, California, Nevada, Texas etc. were all temperate rainforests at one point in time and cultivation from eg. Native Indians and pre-American Europeans indeed turned many areas to desert (a lot of the Northern plains weren't grasslands thousands of years ago, but humans burned and turned them into deserts, which only started to regrow centuries later.
Large swathes of the African deserts are partially due to humans as well, but they don't
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To be fair, all those things happened without climate change. It's just that they were more infrequent, and less widespread.
CO2 and warming efffects [Re:oh please] (Score:5, Interesting)
Those are the proposed effects, however warming climates and rising CO2 helps plants grow bigger.
Partly. Rising CO2 helps plant growth... in the cases where CO2 is the limiting factor. Most of the world's agricultural capacity, however, is not in places where the limiting factor for plant growth is CO2. (most of the "CO2 improves plant growth" results you see are from greenhouses, where pretty much all the other factors are ideal.)
Warming climates makes droughts in some places, moves growing areas around (usually northward), and in general is something making a lot of trouble for farmers. In the long term--centuries-- it may just mean that different crops are now growing in different locations, but in the short term-- decades-- it is a problem.
I'm not sure the world is politically ready to take on China and India to stop their global emissions,
China is a leader in implementing solar power. It is possible that they may solve their problems,
Technology is getting better.
but we sure have enough food and places to live, industrialization and CO2 emissions has helped China and India grow out of poverty and starvation, not into it.
"industrialization" and "CO2 emissions" are two different things. Making energy by burning fossil fuels may not be the only way to industrialize.
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Errmmm...seems the fires are burning down a fair amount of that the bigger plants. And Greenland melting will put more of them under water. But rest assured, any remaining plants will be bigger.
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however warming climates and rising CO2 helps plants grow bigger
Only if they maintain the area that they are in. All the CO2 in the world won't make a plant that was accustomed to sunlight in a equatorial region, grow in a region where sunlight happens a lot less.
I'm not sure the world is politically ready to take on China and India to stop their global emissions
People keep pointing these countries out, but we're not going to be able to address anything if we don't go into it with the moral high ground. So if we're not even going to start here, then why would we start there?
but we sure have enough food and places to live
Until at some point we do not. People live in flood plains area because the government subsid
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We are starting 'here' (unless you're in Europe), various US emissions have dropped significantly with or without the Paris accords.
Not sure what the rant about flood insurance is about, farmers will grow crops with or without insurance as long as it is profitable, insurance will be sold until it's no longer profitable (which typically is around the 1-per-100 years per subscriber calculable event threshold). The only reason insurance is subsidized for farmers is because, as with health insurance, nobody wan
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Yes, and feeding kids pop helps them grow bigger in the same way that CO2 helps plants.
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None of what you said is accurate.
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Nuclear War between India and Pakistan would have two benefits. It would end "global warming" ...
Care to elaborate on that?
Re: oh please (Score:2)
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I'm not surprised this was downmodded by the censorious, but the arrogancy of some who think, golly, it's just da woist thing ever!
No, it isn't, even in the worst case projections. I'd rather live with unameliorated AGW than in North Korea, and so would you.
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Every single proposed "solution" to AGW is #2 on your list. Except the ones that rely soley on #1.
There's a reason governments love AGW.
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While you have a point, I don't think you understand it. Some points:
1) Historically climate change has tended to remove the dominant species (and lots of others). Currently humans are the dominant species.
2) While it has been an opportunity for a new species, generally the new species did not exist prior to the climate change.
3) The time period we're talking about for recovery is at the minimum in the hundreds of thousands of years, and frequently in the millions of years.
4) There are a lot of government
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Getting people to do things they don't want to do for the good of others involves politics, and always has. Your statement is nonsensical.
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Getting people to do things they don't want to do for the good of others involves politics, and always has. Your statement is nonsensical.
As long as $your_preferred_interest_group gets to decide what is good for the rest of us.
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As long as the rest of you are blowing off the most serious existential threat humanity has faced since nuclear annihilation, you clearly need help making decisions.
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As long as the rest of you are blowing off the most serious existential threat humanity has faced since nuclear annihilation, you clearly need help making decisions.
Things that have a much greater chance of occurring and having an actual impact on humanity:
:-/
- asteroid impact
- worldwide pandemic
- super volcano
But do go on rambling about your phantom climate threat...
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As long as the rest of you are blowing off the most serious existential threat humanity has faced since nuclear annihilation, you clearly need help making decisions.
Things that have a much greater chance of occurring and having an actual impact on humanity: - asteroid impact - worldwide pandemic - super volcano But do go on rambling about your phantom climate threat... :-/
I just realized that you would probably ascribe an asteroid impact to climate change... :D