Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

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

You know LJ I thought the same thing for a while but it’s like, look around...we’re having extreme “once in a hundred year” weather events every month and I think it should be obvious everyone over the age of 40 that the weather is very different now. And yet the most powerful administration on the planet uses the report to take potshots at the UN and cast doubt on science. I do think there will come a time where even the right wingers accept that this is happening but I fear their reaction isn’t gonna be “let’s try and fix this”.

their reaction already is 'how can we make money off this'

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-08/climate-change-will-get-worse-these-investors-are-betting-on-it

Our ancestors evolved to seek social status for better reproductive success, and Cassandras don't procreate. I didn't, and won't. As a species, we're just not adapted to prevent crises that take decades or centuries to fully emerge.

In 300 years, there will be a few hundred million survivors, eeking out a living on poor circumpolar soils. If they lose the capability to manufacture renewable energy infrastructure, they'll never reemerge from Renaissance-level technology, even as the heat declines over the next 100,000 years. The shallow fossil fuels will be gone, at least for our specie's lifetime.

I really wish there were more projects like the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, more pragmatic organizations than the Long Now Foundation, who are looking to preserve as much as possible through the bottleneck centuries. The heroes of this era will be the librarians, and preservation oriented biologists saving tissue samples.

And yet the most powerful administration on the planet uses the report to take potshots at the UN and cast doubt on science.

Well, yeah. Because the most powerful administration on the planet has an absolute tool, a monkey for president. Trump's administration doesn't "cast doubt on science": it doesn't get science at all but abuses it for self-glorification or gains.

You know this, though. 'Let's try and fix this' is off the table iirc.

wonder if there are actually some cia briefings where this shit is being discussed seriously, or is that ridiculously far-fetched

the bilderberg group all meeting up being like 'so this is actually going down huh, we'd better make sustainable energy the big dollar, everyone pivot yesterday'

Bilderberg's our only hope xp fuck me

n.b. i think some nations are doing this, esp nations like saudi arabia who will obviously cease to be habitable in a couple of decades

also lol

I don't think I've convinced a single other human being to become conscious.

Hey now, you and Karl have changed the way I live! I'm a vegetarian because of this thread 100%.

lmao xp

I'm pessimistic about nations or services or whatever discussing this seriously tbh. Today is way more pressing and stressful than tomorrow, and that even goes for Saudi-Arabia and the likes.

xp Leee, whoa!

nah i know for a fact that the saudi honchos are getting seriously into alternative energy

i don't know much inside baseball but i know that

word has it they also enjoy bombing yemen and assassinating journalists, but give the lads some credit

They damn well should. Still sitting on oil they can - and prob will - deny the west at some point though.

The unbearable heat there, that is a thing. Global warming isn't going nearly fast enough to slap us in the face and into action, it seems.

We all bomb Yemen so that's not that far out here tbh (and same with murdering journalists, sadly)

Institutional investors have been moving out of fossil fuels and into renewables/green energy for over a decade. It's been a constant headwind for fossil exploration and production companies, so they've all turned to the debt market instead. No green energy companies offer reasonable valuations or dividends.

In terms of investment, things have long *since* changed. That's why Tesla is trading at 3.2 x sales while legacy firms with similarly effective electric vehicles and much better management are trading at 0.3 x sales.

But its just not going to happen without carbon pricing. Stick a $200/ton tax on carbon (just $0.55/gal gasoline) and things might start to move in the right direction.

"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.

― lbi's life of limitless european glamour (Le Bateau Ivre)

future generations (i won't say "the children" because like many, i'm not having any) may well blame us, as is their right, but i'm trying to figure out what the hell we could have done to keep this from happening, and i'm drawing a blank. textbook tragedy of the commons, right? humanity has innately self-destructive tendencies - ignorance, tribalism - that are beyond our power to control.

Ryuichi Sakamoto talks a lot about climate change, that was actually what I was posting about son

Individual efforts are understandable but tragically pathetic. 100 companies are responsible for 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Countries such as France or the UK could vanish overnight and it wouldn't make a significant difference in the long run. Nothing short of a radical overhaul of the way of life of 7 billion people will save us, and that's simply not going to happen. We've fantasised about the apocalypse since the dawn of time, perhaps because we're subconsciously aware of how fucked up we are. None of us will be there to witness it, but for the first time we can at least say with almost complete certainty that the end is nigh, in the grand scheme of things. Of course, the earth itself will overcome it, this blip we call the Anthropocene. Most species won't, though.

what the hell we could have done to keep this from happening

'ronald reagan, lewis f. powell, and charles koch removing president carter's solar panels from the white house roof' is my vote for the scene that should be etched into the gravestone of "human" (or at least american hegemonic) "civilization"

maybe if Inconvenient Truth featured a dynamic and likeable figure like, I dunno, Keanu Reeves, instead of a literal block of wood whose controversial election loss made the whole thing come off as a partisan issue

xposts

leee, thank you so much for saying that, upthread. :) everything feels very futile, in so many different ways. it's really easy to sink into into it. so that really means a lot, especially right now.

speaking of despondency, elizabeth kolbert's latest review for the new yorker is worth reading:

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/how-to-write-about-a-vanishing-world

'ronald reagan, lewis f. powell, and charles koch removing president carter's solar panels from the white house roof' is my vote for the scene that should be etched into the gravestone of "human" (or at least american hegemonic) "civilization"

― reggie (qualmsley)

this is what makes me the most furious - the people who have spent the last forty years actively trying to destroy the planet and what passes for "human civilization", and having succeeded, are now shrugging their shoulders like "well, too late to do anything now, gaudeamus igitur motherfuckers". it makes me furious because they're simultaneously right (moralistic views of civilizational collapse are mostly useless, the only real error i can see is the huge number of people, myself included, who were duped into believing that we, as a species, were capable of behaving in our long-term rational self-interest) and tremendously culpable, and i really don't believe anybody is ever going to hold them accountable for what they did. these assholes will die peacefully in their sleep, not screaming in terror like their subjects.

i hope the species dies out entirely. i'm not sure it will happen. i think most of the best people will die and the worst and most ignorant people will survive, blame it on the people they murdered, and perpetuate their mistakes on and on and on.

i mean, fuck it, at least i don't have kids.

I don’t think the species will die out. But out current civilization might end.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2018/10/10/brian-stone/the-rising-sea/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DpSQXcxU4AEk0xN.jpg

my first visit to this thread ... you all are a fun lot. :)

srsly, tho, i'm as depressed as any of you about this, but not nearly as knowledgeable.

just tell me this: my upper-middle-class, American 8-year-old and 6-year-old ... are they going to see horrible things or die a horrible death, or will the really bad stuff happen after they're gone.

(serious question.)