1.5C will be bad, but it won’t directly kill 800+ million people in a short timeframe. People simply don’t respond to harm spread across 100 years the way they react to harm concentrated into a few large events.
1.5C is the (likely to be overshooted) goal. The IPCC report assesses that 2011-2020 is already 1.1C warmer than 1850-1900 (page 7), that the world has been warming by ~0.2C/decade (saw it somewhere), and that current policies (if implemented) will lead to a warming of +3.2C by 2100 (page 23). Page 16 shows various ways in which a +3.2C world will be hostile to humans. For instance most of south and south-east asia, and some of the most populated areas in Western Africa will experience temperatures and humidity levels that are dangerous for human survival >200 days a year. This is now all determined with rather high confidence.
False, 35C is described as the highest optimal temperature not the maximum in your link. Yields do slowly decline with increased temperature. For specifics, “Germination occurs within the temperature range of 50° to 107°F with an optimum temperature of about 87°F.”
Before saying "False" and dropping the mic, you should pull the paper and look at Table 1. High temperature stresses start at 25°C. Above 35°C, photosynthesis drops by 15%, grain size suffers, etc.
"Yields slowly decline" is a mischaracterization of the situation.
Ahh fantastic. Now let's talk about the rest of the flora and fauna that is absolutely essential for crop growth beyond the few staples that get researched.
I'd argue we have no idea what will happen when the glaciers melt, given the lack of accurate climate change predictions to date. We have a lot of models that have historically proven very incomplete with no reason to believe they're any more complete now.
The oceans rising is more a problem, but it's not going to end human civilization and will happen slowly enough that adaptation is possible, albeit expensive. "Drowning" is hyperbole.
Uncertainty is just that, uncertainty. It will be positive for some areas and negative for others. Those of us who benefit from the status quo (myself included) can argue it would be unwise to mess up a good thing, but the simple fact is we have no idea. There will be winners as well as losers. It's quite possible that the midwest becomes wet enough that American farmers will become even more productive through double-cropping, for starters. Likewise the Russians look forward to their northern coastline thawing.
The sky isn't falling, it's shifting, and while we probably should minimize the shift as much as practical, we shouldn't plunge ourselves into an economic depression to do it.
>> How would you describe something previously on land becoming submerged by the ocean?
A tide. Sea level rises are small and highly predictable over time. All claims of dramatic sudden flooding or drowning are based on assumed correctness of models that, as scottLobster points out, have always been wrong (they always overshoot).
Oh my Sweet Summer Child, you really have an unplaced faith in humanity - especially given our track record. "The sky is shifting" - is a hand-wave to the life-changing impacts headed our way and what our collective response to those impacts will be. Look how nuts people are getting over what are mere trivialities in comparison. Wait until there's crop failures threatening our food supply, fresh water supplies being threatened, property damage on the scale never seen in history, the religious blaming the non-religious for all our woes - the list goes on.
Just wait until our upcoming reality hits the conspiracy theorists and religious fanatics. Climate change is going to herald in Dark Ages 2.0. I suppose the upside to that is eventually there will be an Enlightenment 2.0 also, and hopefully we'll get there faster than it took the first time.
BTW, Dark Ages 1.0 wasn't even the first time humanity has been through a dark age...
...honestly, it pays to study history to start understanding what's headed our way.
We’ve arguably had 2 dark ages in western history though they were both localized. Meanwhile people constantly predict imminent disaster.
If there’s anything to learn from history it’s that things might suck but they will probably be relatively ok. Hell the Black Death didn’t doom western civilization and it got really bad.
PS: 500-1500 actually saw a great deal of innovation and improvements to the average persons quality of live compared to the heights of Rome. For a direct competition both total steel production and steel production per person dramatically increased. Socially peasants where dramatically better off than Roman slaves etc.
The black death must have seemed like the end of the world in a fairly literal sense. Rates of change and relative quantities matter when it comes to population growth: losing a billion people over a century probably isn't a big deal, but losing a billion people in 14 years would be the single largest loss of life in human history. And yet it would only be a negation of the growth we saw going from 7 billion to 8 billion, which took 13-14 years.
In relative terms, lower estimates of the fatalities between 1347-1351 are 30% of the population of Europe. So on a global level we would be looking at more than 2 billion dead in 4 years to get a sense of what that must have been like. 100 million dead in the US alone. That's staggering to think about, and it's no wonder that the pandemic left such an indelible mark on Europe.
I don't disagree with the existential threat proposed by climate change. I just think that you're being a condescending jerk, which will ultimately only impede progress toward your goals.
You're not going to convince people of your cause by calling them ignorant. Jesus.
"The sky is shifting" is a euphemism to hide the ugly truth of what we face. The OP is lying to themselves. The phrase "Sweet Summer Child" doesn't connote ignorance, it connotes innocence and naïveté.
To your point, we know quite a bit, and it's pretty bad.
Will 10% of the world's population perish? Most likely. There's already a population die-off in progress in many areas of the world as the birth rate continues to decline. People don't have to drop dead for the population to die off, they can simply not be born in sufficient numbers to replace the existing population.
As for those who are alive - adversity leads to war. What we should be thinking about is how much disruption is required to foster chaos - especially in a political environment that has become so divisive.
All in all it's easy to imagine a population decline of 10% over 100 years. Chillingly, it's also easy to imagine a lot higher percentage. Over the next 100 years people are going to rediscover that we are, in fact, animals. Animals who will react violently should our existence be threatened. Hopefully we'll also rediscover that we're social animals and that the key to our survival will be working together.
The old saying is it's darkest before the light. I'm afraid of how dark it's going to get. There's thousands of years' worth of junk in humanity's attic we have to sort out before we come through to the other side. People are fooling themselves if they think sorting through all this will be easy and that the price won't be paid in lives lost.
>Will 10% of the world's population perish? Most likely. There's already a population die-off in progress in many areas of the world as the birth rate continues to decline. People don't have to drop dead for the population to die off, they can simply not be born in sufficient numbers to replace the existing population.
There are two very different points being conflated here. What's the time scale for the reduction in population? 10% of the world's population disappearing today is very different from a gradual reduction over the course of decades. 10% of the world's population disappearing over 100 years is almost certainly a good thing at our current population level, when every indication is that sustainability just isn't possible with 8 billion people. At the very least, it'll force us to challenge existing economic models that are all predicated on endless growth.
And I don't see anyone saying that things will be easy. In fact, I think most acknowledge that the opposite is very much true. But a) on an individual level, there's not much you can do when income, consumption, and emissions are all Pareto distributed -- I can no more instigate a bank run on my own than I could affect carbon emissions -- and, b) the species has survived worse population declines than this before, on numerous occasions. The black plague in Europe and the Mongols tearing through Central Asia both come to mind. Tomorrow has never been guaranteed, for anyone.
As an average person who does his best to live sustainably, there's only so much I have the time and energy for. I live semi-rurally within an hour of a major population center and on the edge of a state park, so believe me, I get it. But if it gets bad enough, at some point it really is out of my control. There's only so much I can care when I have bills to pay and a life to live. I'd imagine most people are in a similar position.
Population declines on the other hand are expected because birth rates have been dropping for hundreds of years. This is a good thing you can’t support infinite growth on a finite planet. Suggesting global warming is the cause completely ignores these long term trends.
Peoples quality of life globally has been consistently improving and that’s unlikely to change with global warming. China had one of the worlds largest famines in living memory 1958-1961, it’s simply been the norm for most of human history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines
Not sure where you take your optimism from but the network effects global warming is causing are not to underestimate. There's been plenty of research that we're talking about several threats to modern civilization at once where each of them alone could already be disastrous. And chances are high that there will emerge additional effects along the road we don't even know about.
The argument of "look back, it always got better in average" is ignoring the fact we're dealing with a global chaotic situation in a world that fragile, it is already shaking because of interrupted supply chains due to a pandemic or a secondary bank for techbros going down.
We have no clue what we'll be dealing with in 30 years but what we know, it's definitely not gonna be good.
People have said that frequently for all kinds of things, but in practice civilization is just really shockingly resilient.
Look at say Ukraine it was literally invaded with a war going on last year plus mass migration etc, but it also exported crops last year and are likely to do the same in 2023. Yes they are down significantly from 2021, but it’s not even close to zero.
It’s easy to get into this mindset that everything must work perfectly or the world falls apart but people adapt fairly quickly and in the end global warming is slow. It’s a death of a thousand cuts, but each of them gives a great deal of time to react. Cities aren’t going to flood on day X of year Y, it’s going to take decades of slightly worse storm surges etc. Crops wouldn’t suddenly fail because this year is 0.02C warmer than last the yield will mostly just slowly decline until alternative crops and methods are used etc etc.
Yes, local crop yields vary significantly year to year based on weather but that’s been the case since agriculture was a thing. The difference is we have much better transportation infrastructure and more ability to make substitutions.
Peoples quality of life globally has been consistently improving due to the "green revolution" transpiring during the 1960's, a revolution that's imperiled by GCC.
Peoples lives have been improving long before the green revolution started. Also, global yields aren’t particularly threatened by global warming due to the overwhelming surplus we currently have there’s a huge buffer before problems start.
To be clear yes some declines are likely in some areas for some crops. But 2100 is expected to have a much larger problem with obesity than crop failure.
Very few things give me as much hope as reading this kinda of doom spam. To know the people pushing this are so detached from reality gives me a lot of confidence we'll be all right.
Imagine you live in a valley where elderly people die of heat stroke every summer: 100 three years ago, 500 the summer after, 2,000 last summer. Your parents are 70 and 71 and barely made it. You immigrate, with your children, right? To where? The big city with worse heat management?
Repeat with peasants who can’t grow crops without expensive feedstock, or pig farmers whose water supply is dry. Where will they go?
People will want to flock to places that are currently openly considering tall walls and machine guns to prevent immigration — and that’s when thousands are coming at a time.
You think that having several millions every year will not make that situation a lot more tense?
800M is 10% of the current population - the OP's point is that if he's right, there's a non-trivial chance that he, and you, may be dead, making the prediction moot.
In terms of EV, it never pays to bet on the apocalypse since you can't collect. Markets can't price in their own demise. (it would actually be quite interesting if they could).
(Also, given how often people make predictions online, how often do you see people saying "mea culpa, I was totally wrong about that one!" It's close to zero. Guessing wrong, even in earnest, about important things, doesn't matter anymore, and doesn't pose even a minor threat to one's reputation. This lack of social/cultural corrective has made our zeitgeist is so remarkably polluted with utterly ignorant, bad faith BS like bets about the apocalypse that it doesn't even register any more. How fascinatingly horrible!)
And underestimating what's actually going to happen, and how difficult it's going to be to reverse, or even put brakes on it is intellectually criminal, but the pro-AGW group hasn't ever cared about that. Why would they, the track record of 'Let industry self-regulate' has worked out great for them in the past.
Longer term projections on 2.5C look more hopeful.
Globally electricity production has gotten significantly more green, though offset by increased demand. But, new coal power plants for example were down 66% globally in 2020 vs 2016 and existing infrastructure only lasts so long. Project things forward to 2040 and emissions should be noticeably below current levels even with increasing demand simple because of economic forces.
In 2022 10% of all new cars globally were EV’s and that number keeps rising. Combined with an even cleaner grid and things could look quite different in 2040 again even with increasing demand for cars.
Now I don’t want to project those trends over the following 60 years, but lower emissions give even more time to lower them further. 2.5C could easily hit in 2200 rather than 2100, or even be avoided entirely.
Thus we might be able to shift 1.5C by a few years, 2C by decades, and 2.5C by literal centuries.
Coal is only going out of style because we are building out new natgas plants. The greatest trick that has been pulled on us this century is somehow billing gas as a 'green' source of energy.
Electric cars are an expensive distraction from the problem. The sustainable future of transportation is the electric train, the electric trolley, the electric scooter, and the electric bicycle. Personal automobiles, electric or otherwise, were, are, and will continue to be an environmental catastrophe.
And while we can electrify some fraction of personal automobiles by 20whenever, we aren't lifting two fingers on the task of rebuilding our societies to be less car-manic. A few underused bike lanes, a few rental scooters scattered around town, and a light rail extension 10 years from now aren't it.
> The greatest trick that has been pulled on us this century is somehow billing gas as a 'green' source of energy.
Gas has significantly lower emissions than coal. Progress is progress.
Absolutism gets us nowhere, unless your goal is to drive humanity back to the stone age by "switching" to energy production systems that do not currently exist (with the exception of nuclear, which is the only currently practical solution for "green" base load that we stubbornly refuse to consider).
All of those electric transportation doo-dads add significant load to a system that can barely keep up as it is (in the US, anyway).
Just to emphasize the point, in NYC environmental extremists shut down Indian Point, thus converting about a quarter of NYC's power demands from clean energy (nuclear) to fossil fuel. Meanwhile, each of the past few summers the city has come close to rolling blackouts. Good job, folks.
And building out natgas will get us into a situation where we are locked into decades of guaranteed emissions, as all the vested interests in the production and consumption space fight tooth and nail to protect their line of business, and the capex they've dumped into it.
There's no plausible net-carbon zero path this century that's compatible with our current buildout of natgas. Perfect is the enemy of the good, but this isn't even good!
Natural gas is a great pathway to net zero because the fuel is so vastly more explosive than the equipment. People own gas turbines that are literally used for less than a week a year and are simply paid for standby capacity.
Quite literally you’re better off building solar where 1/2 it’s output is wasted over a year than burning natural gas. When you’re building that much solar things are very close to net zero.
Eventually batteries will replace natural gas, but until that happens we need technologies that can fill the gaps in demand and nuclear can’t do it economically.
No country on earth can operate nuclear at 20% capacity factor economically. It needs massive subsidies to operate at even 70% capacity factor quite literally everywhere.
Every hour in operation 2GW of natural gas emit the same CO2 as 1GW of coal. In terms of how quickly we hit 2.5C of global warming that makes a big difference on its own.
However, large steam turbines simply take a lot of energy to warm up to operating temperature. This means simply turning coal power plants on and off releases lots of CO2.
This makes a huge difference as we add wind and solar because you can turn natural gas off and on multiple times a day with minimal cost. Which enables you to dramatically scale just how much wind and solar is connected to the grid.
Nobody wants to turn off a wind farm in favor of a coal power plant but it happens. Eventually we want to swap to energy storage, but for now getting off of coal is a huge deal in both directly and because it allows the grid to be more flexible.
> Electric cars are an expensive distraction from the problem.
As long as people live outside of cities they need personal transportation. Electrifying roads is a viable option, but it’s much easier when cars carry a big battery so you get similar results with 1% of the infrastructure.
*Actual efficiency varies somewhat, but it’s still big gap.
> However, large steam turbines simply take a lot of energy to warm up to operating temperature.
Boilers, not turbines. The boilers at a coal plant are gigantic -- 5+ story hunks of metal the size of city buildings. They don't turn on/off on demand. The whole system is complex, of course, but the boilers are giant boxes of fireball that flash-vaporize water using pulverized coal at ~500C and 200+ bar of pressure [1].
My father was a control systems engineer for coal plants (and later, gas) for a major utility. When I was a child, he'd be away for weeks at a time when plants were spun up or down for maintenance.
One of the more memorable events in my life was when I was allowed to take a tour of a big coal plant when it was down for maintenance. Those boilers were terrifying, even when "off". The gates of hell.
I was referring to a nuance that’s easy to overlook. As you say the coal power plant needs to heat up a boiler to operating temperatures before it’s turbine can generate power. Yet, that’s still not enough for maximum efficiency.
Cold pipes and turbine blades steal energy from the steam. Similarly the boiler is less efficient when fed cold water vs hot water from the condenser. Thus the startup process is more involved than just how long it takes to start generating power.
Yes, definitely. Not disagreeing with you, just adding color and an anecdote.
The broader point that we can't just turn these things on and off is 100% correct, and one of the (many) things that people don't understand when talking about the power system and emissions.
I don't know the details of wind and solar, but any system that deals with hundreds-to-thousands of megawatts can't just be spun up on a dime. Make a mistake, and things blow up.
Also > Coal is only going out of style because we are building out new natgas plants.
False. Total electricity produced from fossil fuels (coal + natural gas + Oil) is down even ignoring efficiency gains which reduced the amounts needed per kWh.
US per person total Fossil Fuel based electricity production production: 2020: 7,322 kWh, 2019: 7,861 kWh, 2015: 8,499 kWh, 2010: 9,321 kWh, 2005: 9,838 kWh. It’s offset somewhat by increased population but the overall trend is still really clear.
> The greatest trick that has been pulled on us this century is somehow billing gas as a 'green' source of energy.
It kind of is, in that before it was being used all over the place, natural gas would just be vented or flared when it was extracted as bycatch for oil. Burning it instead of venting it is climate positive, and burning it in a power plant instead of onsite is energy with no impact to the climate.
Of course, when you extract it specifically, that's no longer the case.
Natural gas also makes for decent peaker plants which can complement solar and wind until/unless storage fills that need better.
It has been the "mean, bad Capitalist" vs the "nice, social minded Socialist". I tend to go with the Capitalist. Why? Because it has never been good to kill the consumer of the product. In general, this particular principle does NOT hold with Socialists. They (and again, not all) generally do not care.
It doesn't seem hyperbolic to me, and I don't understand the addition of "short timeframe". "next natural equilibrium" implies something like 100 years to me, at least. I am very concerned about climate change even though I understand it's not going to directly kill me in 10 years.
Let's be really clear: it's not going to "directly" kill many people at all in the next ten years.
People will die from things like storms and floods and heat waves and droughts. Maybe more people will die from causes that someone, somewhere attributes to climate, but these are all indirect.
The real, immediate threat of climate is that we'll have to spend huge amounts of money mitigating these things.
The “real, immediate threat of climate” is trillions of dollars changing hands? A massive TAM, with tons of otherwise intelligent people distracted by chatbots and crypto?
Sorry… this is supposed to be a threat? What are you threatening me with, a good time?
I mean, yes? I'd personally rather see money spent on housing and feeding and educating people than building new seawalls. Particularly in places like Bangladesh, which are both poor and low-lying.
The collective delusion of the climate conversation is that first-world countries are going to be the ones who suffer, but that isn't what the risk looks like at all. For example, New York City will be OK, even though mass media loves to show apocalyptic visions of the climate future set in lower Manhattan.
Not hyperbolic. What is NOT factored in by the IPCC is the effect of NOT using "fossil fuels". Agriculture is affected. NOT using fossil fuels simply means no fertilizer. Famine killing 1 billion would be expected. So -- bad if you do, bad if you don't. My "bet" is simple. I simply purchased natural gas stocks. The bet is that the need for fertilizer will beat the "stop fossil fuels". Because, if it doesn't, the money is worthless. If it does, I will be "sitting pretty". If a billion people die "one way or the other", I am going with my comfort, and my childrens comfort.
Please read some of these reports before you say stuff like this. Of course they factor this in, of course it isn't true that you need fossil fuels to make fertilizer, of course the IPCC does not advocate eliminating fertilizer use.
Producing ammonia is one of the primary uses for hydrogen discussed in the reports. There are many companies doing this as we speak (Yara, CF Industries, BP). If it turns out to be too difficult to scale up or become cost effective, then fertilizer production will be one of the last sectors to use fossil fuels. That's ok, because there are so many other sectors that we can decarbonize right now.
I agree with you. But I caution -- shipping lng is not something that Canada does or will do. Canada's stated goal is to TRY to ship hydrogen. Dangerous as that is. Yes, fertilizer production becomes "one of the last sectors to use fossil fuels". I see no other path. Of course, THAT has to be transported. As does the food produced... That entire chain relies on fossil fuels. A simple bet -- I invest in NatGas and pipelines. The IPCC may not advocate fertilizer reduction... Canada does. No LNG to Europe (for now). Canadian farmers are told to cut fertilizer use by 50%... or else. Market and production controls will be put into place.
And, it is NOT CLEAR that the current perturbations are CO2 related: Snow in Miami on Jan 19, 1977 would be an interesting case (in my lifetime, anyway).
As to the IPCC reports AND the local media reaction -- the Toronto Star reports that Canada will have to CUT CO2 emissions in half.
Here are the numbers:
2T per year for each human:
840lbs to 6710lbs (resting to active) exhalation. Which means, not below 0.5T/year/human.
We are at 20T/year/human here in Canada -- but, of course, at 8953 trees/human, with each tree absorbing 48lbs of CO2/year, Canada absorbs 215T/year/human (carbon negative in Canada by 195T/year/human).
Cutting in half? 10T/year pure human, or 205T/year. But, we are on track to "100 by 100" that is, the Federal Govt here wants 100M people in Canada by 2100. With an additional 30M people (putting the immigration growth in line with the climate objectives), the budget for each human is... well under 5T/year. Not just 1/2, 1/4 (by the specified date) How is THAT to be accomplished? What is interesting (if you have been following the numbers here) is that EVEN at the target date, NO MATTER WHAT the Government does, Canada is still "Carbon Negative". Go figure. It isn't even a problem here.
Solar, I guess... Won't be wind here... Oh, we are too far North for Solar to be that effective. Burn trees , just like our ancestors. That goes over really well... My bet is NatGas. Maybe Nuclear.
You don't need to use hydrogen directly. Methanol is made catalytically from hydrogen, can be reformed back into hydrogen fairly easily, and makes a good fuel on its own. The main link in the chain the needs to be replaced is switching hydrogen production from a natural gas feedstock over to a water feedstock.
But yes, the Canadian government's immigration policies sound like madness and directly contradict a stated goal of sustainability.
I'm not going to argue with your investing strategy, if you want to make money investing in gas companies is probably a good idea in the short term. Personally I have priorities other than making money but I'm not going to try to change your life philosophy in an internet comment.
I will say that "it isn't a problem here" is nonsensical. Canada isn't on its own planet. It is a problem on Earth, and you are on Earth.
> decimated
1.5C will be bad, but it won’t directly kill 800+ million people in a short timeframe. People simply don’t respond to harm spread across 100 years the way they react to harm concentrated into a few large events.