Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

All futures are fathomable. +7° F (3.89° C) is a world that's been seen and surpassed before in the geological record. I think in our future context, its one where current breadbaskets are scrubland, carrying capacity is reduced by perhaps 4 billion, majorities support killing migrants at the border, and coastal cities are replaced by aggregations of houseboats.

But that's not the future I'm scared about. 2.9-3.5° C is the current Paris Accords commitments future, 3.9° C is a Black Death scale calamity, but the business as usual future is 5-6° C by 2100, maybe pushing 8° C after ocean equilibration and carbon feedbacks, assuming most of humanity starves and can't burn the deep coal. A world that supports a few hundred million in current Arctic/Antarctic basins.

It's decades too late in any plausible politics to avoid catastrophe, but there remains a chance to prevent the human carrying capacity from plummeting from a future 4-5 billion on more prudent paths to < 500 million. That 3-5° C margin between Paris Accords and business as usual runaway is the margin between *Homo sapiens* and Earth being a failed project, never again advancing beyond Renaissance technology (fossil fuels are a single-chance bootstrap), and our descendants becoming our universe's self-awareness and cosmologically significant.

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

Well that explains a lot about you xp

It's decades too late in any plausible politics to avoid catastrophe, but there remains a chance to prevent the human carrying capacity from plummeting from a future 4-5 billion on more prudent paths to < 500 million. That 3-5° C margin between Paris Accords and business as usual runaway is the margin between *Homo sapiens* and Earth being a failed project, never again advancing beyond Renaissance technology (fossil fuels are a single-chance bootstrap), and our descendants becoming our universe's self-awareness and cosmologically significant.

― godless hippie skank (Sanpaku)

oh, you're talking about hope, aren't you? i remember that stuff. didn't we use up the last of it in 2008, though? maybe there's an additional source of it under the arctic ice.

That hope was converted to methane a long time ago

twbb_drainage.gif

our descendants becoming our universe's self-awareness

to be accurate, as self-aware constituent parts of the universe, we are already the universe's self-awareness

Above, I was probably just channeling a memory of this quote by UC Santa Cruz cosmologist Anthony Aguirre, from Peter Brannen's Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions:

Even though Aguirre works with scales and time spans that reinforce the astronomical insignificance of our species, he nevertheless thinks that our stewardship of the planet in the coming years is existentially, even cosmologically, consequential.

“I think we’re at the point where essentially—depending on what happens in the next 100 years—I think it’s likely that either civilization and potentially all life on earth is going to self-destruct, or if it doesn’t, I think the likelihood is we will manage to get to nearby planets, then faraway planets, and sort of spread throughout the galaxy,” he said. “And so, if you compare those futures, one of them has basically zero interesting conscious stuff going on in it—depending on where you count animals and things—and one of them has an exponentially growing supply of interesting conscious experience. That’s a big deal. If we were just one species among many throughout the galaxy, it would kind of be like, ‘Well, if we do ourselves in, we had it coming. We got what we deserve.’ But if we’re kind of the only one in the galaxy—or one of very few—that’s a huge future that we’ve extinguished. And it’s all just because we’re being stupid now.”

just because we’re being stupid now

Stupidity isn't a temporary aberration, but the shadow side of our "interesting" consciousness. It's a package deal; you can't separate them.

how dare u suggest there’s anything interesting about my consciousness

Climate Change Will Get Worse. These Investors Are Betting on It

Investors focused on climate change have traditionally bet on fixes, such as renewable power and electric vehicles. Mitigation and adaptation is a grimmer project. But Jay Koh, co-founder and managing director of the Lightsmith Group, a private equity firm focused on climate adaptation, says it's necessary to acknowledge that things could get worse. “There is a requirement for some kind of psychological journey that people have to go through,” Koh says. “I’d rather have a strategy designed for the set of circumstances where we might not 100 percent win.”

also known as sets of circumstances where we lose

we should really just get plans in place for an orderly wind-down at this point

invest in a chain of assisted suicide centers and sterilization clinics

get a Junior Anti-Sex League up and running

maybe just kick off some wars now so we can spread it out a bit, not have to eradicate too many populations at once

this is good. it's about a week-long workshop in sweden for people overwhelmed by the world, run by one of the Dark Mountain guys (i had forgotten about them). somehow it's both exactly and not at all what you'd expect

Group Therapy for the End of the World

hmm i’m no sanpaku for sure (i mean that in the informational sense) but i rather think the progression will shake out as a series of eruptive, economically extrinsic events, possibly geopolitical ones, which are so difficult to monetize reliably that theyre (we’re?) just burning money to stay fed, ultimately. I guess itll be rather long way down tho.

silby otm re: the assisted suicide centers and sterilization clinics

"i'm not only the president, i'm also a member"

er, a "client"

https://i.imgur.com/IJNAHQm.png?1

FEMA’s public assistance program has provided at least $81 billion in this manner to state, territorial and local governments in response to disasters declared since 1992, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. But an examination of projects across the country’s ever-expanding flood zones reveals that decisions to rebuild in place, often made seemingly in defiance of climate change, have at times left structures just as defenseless against the next storm.

hm yep that'll definitely be above water for at least eight more weeks

Have I posted about the little group meetings I've been running, that could fairly be characterised as group therapy about climate change? It's been good.

You haven't mentioned this here, AFAIK.

If you're a mental health professional I hope you're aware of reddit's r/CollapseSupport, which seems the current nexus guiding towards resources for those coming to terms with climate change, overpopulation, resource constraints, human extinction etc. Personally I'm past depression and into acceptance, but it cost me some years of life.

xp: The entirety of Plaquemines parish will succumb to the waves within the next 50 years, all of Lousiana south of I-12 in the next 200. I live here, but only rent.

I'd really like a Dem majority to require that flood maps reflect the 1-2 m of sea level rise by 2100, the 4-5 m by 2200. As well as either limiting subsidized flood insurance to property above flood plains in updated maps. There no point in subsidizing coastal/marsh property that has no future, besides as scuba destination.

Elsewhere i already predicted that trumpist developers/scotus will determine that remapping for safety and value is actually causing sea level rise and ocean encroachment, and deem it to be a violation of the takings clause, and order repayment of oceanfront owners for actual costs plus investment expectation $$. I mean it’s hella dumb but if it gets on fox news he could start tweeting—

In fact, even this report is overly conservative, as these IPCC reports often are. It turns out that in some ways this latest report has actually understated the amount of warming that we’ve already experienced because of the burning of fossil fuels and the increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And so arguably we are actually closer to those 1.5 degrees Celsius and 2.0 Celsius thresholds, temperature thresholds, that are discussed in the report.

https://therealnews.com/stories/michael-mann-we-are-even-closer-to-climate-disaster-than-ipcc-predicts

good mourning

more mourning

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/un-says-climate-genocide-coming-but-its-worse-than-that.html

A lot of this IPCC report has been in the literature for over a decade.

So the remarkable thing here is that the US (and other fossil producer) diplomatic representatives didn't veto the language. Either outright official dissent or indifference by appointees who don't think IPCC report matter (more true than not).

Another remarkable thing is the *much* higher carbon prices the IPCC report suggests. Currently, they're under $50/ton where pricing exists, I've been thinking north of $200/ton and ramping up (to match targets) would be necessary, but the IPCC report goes straight to "135 to $5,500 per ton in 2030, $245 to $13,000 per ton in 2050, $420 to $17,000 per ton in 2070 and $690 to $27,000 per ton in 2100".

This change in language, I hope, presages a time when international bodies call for tariffs against countries with sub-par GDP/emissions ratios. If US/Canada/Russia/China are forced to pay for their climate externalities through tariffs on their export goods, it will go a long way towards saving civilization.

this was a hell of a thing to come out the week of Mental Health Day

I'm generally an optimist by nature but I'm just so completely worn down by this, as I have been the last five years or so. What gets me is how it's always bad news, every single article on the topic is bad news, either the millionth iteration of "it's worse than we thought" or the hundredth "here's another really bad feedback loop" or another "here's a cool carbon capture technology that will never work". The cherry on top of course being the "we could've stopped this in the 80's but we didn't", cool, good to know.

my kids are 3 and 1. by the time they get out of college the conventional wisdom by well be "we're properly doomed and there's nothing we can do to stop it. your dad's generation probably could've though"

I've been very reassured in the last several years that there's nothing to be done and mass death and destruction are an inevitability. It's freeing.

Even if there were something to be done I'm certainly not in a position to do any of it.

My long-range life plan is to kill myself around the time I'm facing starvation

Assuming my supply of life-sustaining antidepressants doesn't get cut off before then

"Our dad could have stopped all this, but he was too busy posting about Cardiacs and YMO on www.ilxor.com" :)

It's fucked up, no-one cares, and I am p much with Silby here, but no reason to beat yourself up about it Frogbs. But yes, it is fucked up.

it will be interesting to see how the superpowers react when the first nine-figure-death drought hits

hopefully outright revolution and various bombings of factories/mass cattle slaughter but yknow

sucks to slaughter those poor cows though. but it's gonna have to happen. :(

defeatism and nihilism are generally not helpful or productive to achieving the necessary ends. there's things everybody can do. figure out what they are and do them.

maybe all it'll take will be the undersea eradication of the maldives. maybe that'll be enough. doubt it though

I would start firebombing cars but people keep getting mad at me on here when I advocate terrorism

anyway nihlism's great

I'm vegan. I turn off lights in *every* unoccupied room. I drive a used car, sparingly, and long to move to where I can rely on public transport and a bicycle. I'm voting for the greener of viable candidates every election. I've given up hobbies like overseas scuba diving as a) I couldn't justify the air travel emissions, and b) I got depressed looking at bleached, lifeless reefs. I'll never have children.

I don't think I've convinced a single other human being to become conscious. Of late, I've mostly spent my eco-conscious internet time explaining to teens/students that human extinction won't come in their lifetime, so they should step away from that ledge, but civilizational suicide will occur over the next two centuries on business as usual trajectories.

I wouldn't doubt that I'm on some lists for my sentiments, but Kaczynsk1 is looking a lot like a future folk hero.

my hope is that the first catastrophe will result in instant global reaction and shame

obviously we can all hope for no catastrophe but lol

cars are less of a big deal than big beef and big energy tbh

big deforestation maybe even worse idk

Is there gonna be a "first catastrophe"? Just gradual escalation of familiar catastrophes. Miami Beach is getting perfused by the sea as we speak. Various beach communities will collapse one storm at a time. Everybody'll just adapt to each new indignity I would think, until there are much fewer of us.

"much fewer of us"

^^ it's a start