Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

When the End of Human Civilization Is Your Day Job (Esquire)

great article, thanks for posting

But climate change happens gradually and we've already gone up almost 1 degree centigrade and seen eight inches of ocean rise. Barring unthinkably radical change, we'll hit 2 degrees in thirty or forty years and that's been described as a catastrophe—melting ice, rising waters, drought, famine, and massive economic turmoil. And many scientists now think we're on track to 4 or 5 degrees—even Shell oil said that it anticipates a world 4 degrees hotter because it doesn't see "governments taking the steps now that are consistent with the 2 degrees C scenario." That would mean a world racked by economic and social and environmental collapse.

"Oh yeah," Schmidt says, almost casually. "The business-as-usual world that we project is really a totally different planet. There's going to be huge dislocations if that comes about."

But things can change much quicker than people think, he says. Look at attitudes on gay marriage.

And the glaciers?

"The glaciers are going to melt, they're all going to melt," he says. "But my reaction to Jason Box's comments is—what is the point of saying that? It doesn't help anybody."

As it happens, Schmidt was the first winner of the Climate Communication Prize from the American Geophysical Union, and various recent studies in the growing field of climate communications find that frank talk about the grim realities turns people off—it's simply too much to take in. But strategy is one thing and truth is another. Aren't those glaciers water sources for hundreds of millions of people?

"Particularly in the Indian subcontinent, that's a real issue," he says. "There's going to be dislocation there, no question."

And the rising oceans? Bangladesh is almost underwater now. Do a hundred million people have to move?

"Well, yeah. Under business as usual. But I don't think we're fucked."

Resource wars, starvation, mass migrations . . .

"Bad things are going to happen. What can you do as a person? You write stories. I do science. You don't run around saying, 'We're fucked! We're fucked! We're fucked!' It doesn't—it doesn't incentivize anybody to do anything."

starting to think about moving north tbh. montana seems like a good option.

But things can change much quicker than people think, he says. Look at attitudes on gay marriage.

dude i...waht?

he's referring to public attitudes/political will re: climate change

hah, ok. the more immediate reference as pasted appears to be "there's going to be huge dislocations if that comes about," which made it scan to me as "no biggie, people can move across continents in the face of famine, look at...gay marriage!"

that probably wasn't a good portion to c+p (the whole thing is worth a read), i found it interesting to see gavin schmidt walk the line between reality and not wanting to alienate people with doom

i haven't finished reading it yet, but the encyclical from the pope is really worth the time:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/269022055/Laudato-Si-the-Pope-s-encyclical-on-the-environment-and-climate-change

i am seriously contemplating buying some land in the upper peninsula. who's with me?

Can you get iPhones shipped there?

i feel mostly ambivalent about climate change

the one thing it's convinced me to do is to never have children

denmark sounds nice

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

Can you get iPhones shipped there?

― Jeff, Wednesday, July 8, 2015 5:12 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think you have to smuggle them inside a pastie, but yes.

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

― e-bouquet (mattresslessness), Wednesday, July 8, 2015 7:09 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

um. really? is the latter that incomprehensible in 2015? like yeah in the grand scheme the planet being fucked is a bigger problem and spells greater doom for humankind in the medium to long run. no question. but "racial inequality" can mean getting directly screwed over in countless ways in the here and now. not least, facing the possibility of being murdered by police, or having that happen to people around you. of course people would care much more about that.

no, that makes sense.

i phrased my sentiment poorly. i meant to say that i think it should be more visible, cared about and included along that axis. environmental / life care is a piece of the intersectionality puzzle. it affects us all in the long term but is definitely having / has had immediate effects on native americans and others who are disadvantaged not only by class and race but location, removed from the global economy, subject to environmental degradation, etc.

i find it difficult to understand how someone could not care about global warming, or care much more about, say, racial inequality as a social issue.

― e-bouquet (mattresslessness), Wednesday, July 8, 2015 7:09 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

there's maybe more hope for changing one than the other

also ambivalent in the sense of the "guess this will be the thing we die from" sense, not the "who cares if the temp is rising" sense

so does anyone know yet what year this is all going to get so bad that i can blow off work/bills and start hunting/gathering?

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, July 3, 2013 4:15 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

p much. i mean it seems like such an inevitability at this point and the things you'd need to do (basically become self sufficient & independent of a monetary economy), plus the fact that we are one of the few countries where guns are plentiful, and the thought of having to become a brutal warlord eating bugs and defending my property by killing others seems so so so so bad, i'd rather just die.

yeah don't really see this being avoidable barring some crazy terraforming shit (which a. no one will agree on and b. will be too unpredictable for the rich countries to consider worthwhile trying)

just as well i'm old

guys tony stark totally wants to terraform, and won't eat bugs (but will devise a way for _you_ to eat bugs, don't worry).

the human capacity to compartmentalize / rationalize / full-on ignore a climate charging headlong toward the inimical is absolutely fucking amazing and maybe related to that dynamic right when waking up every morning, forgetting altogether in the first five or so minutes of the day, hours of bizarre dreams / horrific nightmares? get in the shower, get dressed, get to work, where heavens forfend caring about such nonsense might get you known as a weirdo

the human capacity to compartmentalize / rationalize / full-on ignore a climate charging headlong toward the inimical is absolutely fucking amazing

this is so true, and it's astonishing and depressing at the same time. like pick a metaphor for blind stupidity and that's humanity right now. i mean we persist in trying to find more of the fuel that's destroying the ice in areas where we must destroy ice to find it.

i can feel ambivalent about my own death, but much less so for some reason about us just wiping huge swathes of the planet away - part of our humanity is the sense of others coming afterwards. i tweeted that esquire article yesterday and some stranger who follows me rt'ed it with the comment: "good news here, the victim lefties are losing heart"

i mean, how can people deny this?

boiling frog effect?

i can't find a reason to care about this stuff.. i mean, we're all dying... do y;all believe in some god that will reward you for saving mankind? yeesh

no but no matter how blasé i am about my personal existence and no matter how much comedy misanthropy people throw around i still think the extinction of the human race would be a tragedy and a net deficit to the universe

i dont' think there's any chance the human race will go extinct

but it will probably get pretty medieval for a while

i suspect total extinction is unlikely too, but there's room in what we know for that to be very wrong

i think the optimistis view is that the weather is gonna change pretty severely in the next 50 y0rs but as long we have enough oil (lol) & other fossi fuels to shuttle around resources and food and stuff (read - to the west and other prosperous nations) then things won't go too far bad

Medieval for a while may be permanent - an article around (maybe on this thread) about how a lot of how we got here is based on taking stuff from the ground that isn't there any more because, well...

if peak oil is real sure

"getting here" is largely the problem so a society using different tech with a qualitatively different way of life is not exactly a nightmare to me

i thought this part of the article was pretty lol

http://i.imgur.com/WEhwvIf.png

basically the changes required, if brought up in the US prez race, wd literally bring accusations of Soviet-style communism. From Democrats.

the problems seem to me insoluble under market capitalism, so Kiehl is right - to contemplate putting them right is to contemplate dismantling the way we live now

Wonder if there's lots of people trying to invent solutions so they can be the first people who can actually say they saved the planet.

There was that guy who (illegally) dumped iron shavings off of the Canadian coast to try to spur carbon-consuming algae growth.

Wonder if there's lots of people trying to invent solutions so they can be the first people who can actually say they saved the planet.

this is def happening

we'll see how successful anybody is, a combination of various approaches is going to be necessary, and huge amounts of money are going to have to be redirected from the carbon sector to better investments

I don't care about global warming but i do care about pollution. Global warming is mainly a convenient pro-business way to frame the very real and current problem of environmental pollution as something that MAY happen in 50-100 years and MIGHT raise the sea levels rather than focusing on the real-time effects of plundering the Earth, poisoning the population, water supplies, etc.

erm no

lol no it's not

???

Carbon/methane pollution is what's driving global warming, and its effects are already happening.

I don't even know where to begin with that formulation

xxp

tbh the problem with modern hedge fund and retirement fund-focused business, which most public companies are beholden to, is the push for immediate dividends and profits and no planning longer than five years out, which means even well-intentioned corporate leadership is pushed to do whatever it takes to make profits today, regardless of environmental impact

working in a business that definitely has strong environmental effects and a scientific/product research pipeline, it is insanely frustrating to have dipshits in suits trying to bleed profit out of a stone when you're just trying to get the blood flowing over here

When did so many people stop giving a shit about future generations, and what caused that? Like, even though I basically have no intention of having kids (see: this thread), I would still like to think that the people who come after me could have a habitable and not entirely shitty planet to exist upon. So it makes my brain seize knowing that people with actual progeny are able to make such terrible decisions and exist as if the future of the human race (along with any number of other species) isn't being ingraciously flushed down the toilet.

Not saying global warming is fake or not real, it definitely is. But imagine newspapers running stories about industrial pollution's effects on cancer rates or birth defects rather than lowering ice levels in Antarctica. There would probably be much more political will to fix things.